Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: ARSON - Revenge, Money, Cover-Up Crime, Pyrophilia.

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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: ARSON - Revenge, Money, Cover-Up Crime, Pyrophilia. · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:01
Speaker 1: Quality dams. But Joseph's gotten more. You know, I don't
0:07
Speaker 1: really know how how man originally discovered fire. We always
0:17
Speaker 1: have this image in our minds. I don't know about
0:19
Speaker 1: you guys. I have it of you know, these kind
0:23
Speaker 1: of chromagnum looking creatures that are sitting around in a
0:27
Speaker 1: cave and all of a sudden, one of them, you know,
0:31
Speaker 1: strikes a rock against another rock, and suddenly they discover,
0:36
Speaker 1: you know, fire. I've always thought that maybe it was
0:39
Speaker 1: a lightning strike, perhaps this kind of natural manifestation, maybe
0:44
Speaker 1: from the sweet Lord above. Something caught on fire, and
0:47
Speaker 1: they were amazed by it, and they took it and
0:49
Speaker 1: they kept it, and it provided so much for them.
0:53
Speaker 1: It provided it split the night at that point in time,
0:57
Speaker 1: no artificial light. Suddenly they had naturally occurring light where
1:00
Speaker 1: they could see in the darkness those things that were
1:03
Speaker 1: out there. Suddenly they had access to warmth when it
1:09
Speaker 1: was very, very cold. Can you imagine being in the
1:12
Speaker 1: midst of the ice age or at the end of
1:14
Speaker 1: the last ice age, and you're freezing to death, but
1:19
Speaker 1: yet you have this cloe that you can sit around
1:22
Speaker 1: and rub your hands in front of. They learned how
1:27
Speaker 1: to cook, perhaps with fire. But now in the modern context,
1:36
Speaker 1: fire represents many other things. We can manufacture things with it,
1:41
Speaker 1: we can fuel things, industry runs on it. But in
1:48
Speaker 1: my world fire fire generally comes down to this, something
1:55
Speaker 1: is being destroyed that may be a criminal otherwise would
2:00
Speaker 1: not want to be found today on bodybags, We're going
2:05
Speaker 1: to have kind of a brief primer, a brief discussion
2:10
Speaker 1: on fire and arson. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this
2:18
Speaker 1: is bodybags. Dave. The scaredest I have ever been at
2:26
Speaker 1: any type of scene. For me, this is me personally. Okay,
2:30
Speaker 1: let me run down this. Let me break this down
2:32
Speaker 1: to you. Where cases not where there was an active
2:38
Speaker 1: shooter still running around, or there was an angry crowd
2:42
Speaker 1: or something like that. Because I had my share of those.
2:45
Speaker 1: It was always involving structure fires. First off, since I
2:49
Speaker 1: was a little boy, I've always been fascinated by firefighters,
2:54
Speaker 1: not cops. I was not one of those kids that
2:55
Speaker 1: wanted to be a cop. I always loved firefighters and
2:58
Speaker 1: when I was little, I don't know if you remember this.
3:01
Speaker 1: Do you remember Texico fire Chief? It was like the
3:04
Speaker 1: gas they used to have Texico fire Chief. Texico used
3:10
Speaker 1: to sell firefighter helmets, and they were old fashioned helmets,
3:14
Speaker 1: and you could get the deluxe model that had a
3:16
Speaker 1: radio that you could.
3:17
Speaker 2: Put out inside.
3:20
Speaker 1: My uncle, my uncle, who I regard in my life
3:23
Speaker 1: as the closest thing I really ever had to a father,
3:27
Speaker 1: he bought that from me, the most treasure gifts I
3:30
Speaker 1: ever had. And I always liked firefighters. I liked firefighters
3:33
Speaker 1: as a death investigator because firefighters are fascinating in the
3:39
Speaker 1: sense that they don't it doesn't matter to them if
3:42
Speaker 1: they get dirty, they don't care, and they've always got
3:45
Speaker 1: some new piece of equipment that they want to something
3:49
Speaker 1: like that. It's like, I could have the worst decomposed
3:52
Speaker 1: body in the world that is down a ravine and
3:56
Speaker 1: there's a whole group of them over there saying, dog,
3:59
Speaker 1: you don't have to go down on that hill. We've
4:01
Speaker 1: you know, we'll send Jim and Bob down there and
4:03
Speaker 1: we'll you know, we'll fashion this new kind of knot
4:06
Speaker 1: and we'll put them, you know, put them in the
4:07
Speaker 1: basket and we'll bring them up, or we'll dig out
4:10
Speaker 1: the hole around this area for you, you know. And
4:14
Speaker 1: it was always amazing, and you know, the I'd always
4:16
Speaker 1: have friends that were police officers out there, and they
4:19
Speaker 1: just be kind of standing back because you know, firefighters
4:21
Speaker 1: and cops have this interesting relationship. And the cops were like,
4:25
Speaker 1: I'm not going near that. I'm not doing it. You
4:27
Speaker 1: know firefighters, you know, of course, the old adage about
4:30
Speaker 1: them is you know they and when everybody else is
4:32
Speaker 1: running away, they're running in right. And so this world
4:35
Speaker 1: that around fire has always been terrifying me. You know,
4:40
Speaker 1: the only times I've ever been injured at crom scenes
4:44
Speaker 1: have been at fire scenes. I've had wow, uh okay,
4:48
Speaker 1: here's something cool, a little trivia about Morgan. I actually
4:52
Speaker 1: had a beam fall and strike me in the head
4:59
Speaker 1: and it was still on fire. It had at it
5:02
Speaker 1: had like a small flame on it, and the whole
5:04
Speaker 1: thing had burning embers on it. Wow, completely doused it.
5:09
Speaker 1: I had a nail go through my boot into my foot,
5:16
Speaker 1: really old pair of boots. By the way, I should
5:18
Speaker 1: have I should have thrown away. And I actually had
5:23
Speaker 1: electricity arc off of a puddle of water onto my
5:27
Speaker 1: foot and I'm not tingling in my leg and I
5:30
Speaker 1: fell backwards. It stunned me for a second. And that
5:34
Speaker 1: was because there was an electrical line and that hadn't
5:36
Speaker 1: cut the power yet and they pulled the line down.
5:41
Speaker 1: So that's as close to death as I've really come.
5:45
Speaker 1: I've had shots fired over my head, but it was not.
5:48
Speaker 1: There's something about being in that world, that world of
5:51
Speaker 1: all that remains of a building, a structure, a car.
5:58
Speaker 1: There's kind of this infamous bridge down in New Orleans
6:01
Speaker 1: called the Huey P. Long Bridge, named after the governor
6:04
Speaker 1: from back in the thirties and Dave. The scene was
6:07
Speaker 1: really narrow. It had two lanes on either side. And
6:09
Speaker 1: as a matter of fact, the bridge is this gigantic
6:13
Speaker 1: metal structure, steel structure, and their entire families that have
6:17
Speaker 1: made their living off of this bridge as sand blasters,
6:20
Speaker 1: because the thing always has to be referred And in
6:23
Speaker 1: the middle of this bridge, going across the river at
6:27
Speaker 1: one point in time, there is a train track, and
6:32
Speaker 1: the train track also consists of the world's longest train trestle,
6:38
Speaker 1: and it starts way on one side of Mississippi River
6:41
Speaker 1: and it continues onto what they call the West Bank.
6:44
Speaker 1: And I don't know if it's still the longest or not,
6:47
Speaker 1: but there was a guy that was in a corvette
6:50
Speaker 1: that was driving over the top of it racing somebody
6:52
Speaker 1: on the scene, and these lanes are really narrow, and Dave,
6:55
Speaker 1: he hit the curve on one side and this is
6:58
Speaker 1: hundreds of feet in the air above the Mississippi River
7:01
Speaker 1: down below. He hit the curb, rolled the thing over
7:04
Speaker 1: and it's when they had those they were like the
7:08
Speaker 1: new total fiberglass bodies on the scene. Well, I got
7:12
Speaker 1: there and the whole thing had been engulfed, and it's
7:15
Speaker 1: windy up there. It's like really windy, and I thought
7:18
Speaker 1: that I thought that everything was out. The fire was doused,
7:21
Speaker 1: and dude, I got adjacent to the scene and all
7:24
Speaker 1: the cops, I mean all the firefighters are wearing respirators, right,
7:28
Speaker 1: and they were like looking at me. And I walked
7:30
Speaker 1: up and I found out why they were wearing respirators,
7:34
Speaker 1: because this fiberglass was burning in there. And dude, they
7:37
Speaker 1: had to take me back and the EMTs had to
7:39
Speaker 1: put me on oxygen because I was innolating this scene
7:42
Speaker 1: or inhaling I'm sorry, inhaling this gas coming off of
7:46
Speaker 1: this or the product coming off of it. It's a
7:50
Speaker 1: weird world. You walk into any kind of home that
7:55
Speaker 1: has been destroyed. And I may have mentioned this before
7:58
Speaker 1: on body bags, but you walk in to it, and
8:01
Speaker 1: as a death investigator who knows a little bit about
8:05
Speaker 1: arson very little, I walk into that environment and everything
8:09
Speaker 1: looks black and charred. I can't make out detail. I've
8:14
Speaker 1: even lost bodies inside of houses because I can't tell
8:19
Speaker 1: where the ceiling that has caved in or the furniture
8:22
Speaker 1: that is burned down. I can't delineate between the body
8:27
Speaker 1: that is also charged that is in there. It's a
8:29
Speaker 1: weird kind of It's the most unique environment that you
8:33
Speaker 1: ever go into. And people often forget about arson investigators
8:38
Speaker 1: as being part of the forensic community. You know, they
8:41
Speaker 1: think I don't know what they think about arsen But
8:43
Speaker 1: to me, they are at the top of the heap
8:46
Speaker 1: because they have to know something about everything. Most of
8:50
Speaker 1: them are firefighters and cops. They testified. They are top
8:57
Speaker 1: end experts in their field. They understand chemistry, they understand physics,
9:04
Speaker 1: and they also understand how to run a homicide investigation,
9:09
Speaker 1: and so their skill set is something that most people
9:12
Speaker 1: don't understand, and they are amazed. I love talking to
9:15
Speaker 1: them because I learn. I just try to keep my
9:17
Speaker 1: mouth shut, which is hard for me, keep my eye
9:19
Speaker 1: and my ears open and just listen. But you know,
9:22
Speaker 1: one of the rudimentary things that you have to learn
9:24
Speaker 1: is kind of the nature of fire. And we don't normally,
9:30
Speaker 1: you don't give fire much consideration. You've seen pictures of
9:34
Speaker 1: me and my family. We go out even in the
9:36
Speaker 1: wintertime on our boat and there's an island not too
9:38
Speaker 1: far from where we keep our boat, and we take
9:41
Speaker 1: firewood out there and just build a big bonfire and
9:43
Speaker 1: sit around bonfire. Most people don't think about that. What
9:47
Speaker 1: is fire? What's the nature of it? You know, kind
9:49
Speaker 1: of how it works. So fire itself has four components
9:55
Speaker 1: to it, and so let me just kind of run
9:57
Speaker 1: these down to you. You have to have a fuel source, okay,
10:01
Speaker 1: and sometimes the fuel source can be rolled into what's
10:04
Speaker 1: also referred to as accelerants. That that's like if you
10:08
Speaker 1: let's just say you're using a charcoal grill. All right, Well,
10:13
Speaker 1: the charcoal in there is fuel, right, but in order
10:16
Speaker 1: to initiate that charcoal into a sustainable fire or have
10:20
Speaker 1: it burned, you have to put lighter fluid on it
10:22
Speaker 1: most of the time. All right. I know that there's
10:24
Speaker 1: the brands out there that say you don't need it,
10:27
Speaker 1: but that's how they yeah, they lie. So you get
10:31
Speaker 1: it started like that, and so the thing, the thing burns,
10:33
Speaker 1: But you also have to strike off a match or
10:36
Speaker 1: use a lighter to get the thing initiated. Well, you
10:39
Speaker 1: have to have fuel in order for that to happen. No,
10:42
Speaker 1: it seems simplistic. You have to have heat. And what
10:47
Speaker 1: I mean by that is heat is a product of
10:50
Speaker 1: an actual burning fire. So that's heat is one of
10:52
Speaker 1: the components. You have to have oxygen. Remember how many
10:57
Speaker 1: times have we heard about there being a fire in
11:00
Speaker 1: a location where the fire literally runs out of oxygen
11:07
Speaker 1: in the room and completely consumes it and so it dies.
11:10
Speaker 1: All right, that's the reason. For instance, like with if
11:14
Speaker 1: you've ever heard of a halon fire extinguisher that you
11:17
Speaker 1: use them on boats, you can't see it. It's it's invisible,
11:21
Speaker 1: actually really autoerotic case involving halon halon canister as a
11:26
Speaker 1: guy was inhaling this stuff, and what it does is
11:29
Speaker 1: it binds with the oxygen and it's an oxygen deprivant,
11:33
Speaker 1: and so it just knocks the oxygen down. So you
11:36
Speaker 1: have to have oxygen, all right, and then you have
11:40
Speaker 1: to have an uninhibited chemical reaction. And this chemical reaction
11:46
Speaker 1: has to be ongoing. If you think about going to
11:48
Speaker 1: chemistry class and you're demonstrating and you see this immediate
11:53
Speaker 1: reaction where something bubbles over, or you have this reactive
11:56
Speaker 1: change in color or whatever you're working on in the lab,
12:00
Speaker 1: that's kind of a one off kind of thing. But
12:02
Speaker 1: you think about fire, fire is truly an ongoing chemical
12:07
Speaker 1: experiment because it has to be sustained and if you're
12:10
Speaker 1: absent any of these components, it's going to go out.
12:14
Speaker 1: I mean, just think about it. Back to the idea
12:17
Speaker 1: of heat. If a fire dies out is there's an
12:23
Speaker 1: insufficient amount of heat being generated in order to burn
12:27
Speaker 1: the fuel that's existing there. So those are essentially the
12:30
Speaker 1: four main components of fire, and without that, you don't
12:36
Speaker 1: really have a fire per se. Now you might get
12:40
Speaker 1: like a flashover where an individual might be in a
12:46
Speaker 1: room and I've actually had this happen day where they
12:49
Speaker 1: come in and arsonist has come in and they spread
12:53
Speaker 1: gasoline all in a room. And this one particular future
12:58
Speaker 1: rocket scientist did this with a couple of gallons of gas.
13:02
Speaker 1: The windows and the doors were closed in the room,
13:05
Speaker 1: and this idiot strikes a match and of course it
13:09
Speaker 1: kills him. But after it burned off, you know, that
13:13
Speaker 1: gas that was on the floor and everything, it was
13:16
Speaker 1: non sustainable. First off, the room that he was in
13:20
Speaker 1: had a marble tile floor. Oh, my goodness's not going
13:23
Speaker 1: to burn. H Yeah, and the ceiling was it had asbestos.
13:30
Speaker 1: Uh So, I don't know where this guy did his
13:34
Speaker 1: research or whatever, but it didn't it didn't burn, you know,
13:37
Speaker 1: just it was not sustainable, but it killed him. So
13:40
Speaker 1: you know, you have to be in a uh this
13:43
Speaker 1: kind of sustainable environment for it to actually continue to
13:47
Speaker 1: thrive in this environment because absent that, you're you're not
13:52
Speaker 1: going to You're just not going to have the end
13:57
Speaker 1: product of a fire that is burning before you know where.
14:00
Speaker 1: You think about sitting around a campfire, and one of
14:03
Speaker 1: the some of the most fun you'll ever have at a
14:06
Speaker 1: campfire is actually taking a piece of wood when it's
14:09
Speaker 1: beginning to die down and placing the foot on and
14:11
Speaker 1: you're sustaining that, You're sustaining that uninhibited chemical reaction and
14:16
Speaker 1: it's burning up before you. The fuel is literally vaporizing
14:18
Speaker 1: in the air before you. You're receiving heat off of
14:21
Speaker 1: you're receiving comfort, You're roasting marshmallows, or weenies or whatever
14:25
Speaker 1: it is that you're doing.
14:26
Speaker 3: Were you a firebug as a kid? You ain't light
14:29
Speaker 3: matches in the bathroom. I mean, I'm thinking you're like
14:31
Speaker 3: Andrew was man.
14:33
Speaker 1: But I just yeah, well maybe Andrew and I your
14:36
Speaker 1: son have the commet. I don't know. But have you
14:39
Speaker 1: ever noticed that fire is a weird thing? And since
14:42
Speaker 1: that it has almost like a hypnotic effect on it.
14:45
Speaker 2: Yes, on some people it does.
14:47
Speaker 1: You sit there and you just have you ever seen
14:49
Speaker 1: anybody at a fireside and they'll just stare at the
14:51
Speaker 1: fire and they'll just kind of rock back and forth.
14:53
Speaker 1: There were you know, at Christmas time when they put
14:55
Speaker 1: the thing on the they run the thing with the
14:59
Speaker 1: fire burning, and you hear the popping and crackling. I
15:03
Speaker 1: don't ever, Dave, I promise you. I watched stuff on
15:06
Speaker 1: my phone. I rarely have ever turned and I've got
15:08
Speaker 1: a huge TV in my house. I rarely turned this
15:10
Speaker 1: thing on. But yet if that thing's on a Christmas time,
15:14
Speaker 1: I'll find myself like in a trance. Just listen to
15:17
Speaker 1: Perry Como's sing in the background.
15:20
Speaker 3: Those dag blasted chestnuts up and fire man.
15:25
Speaker 2: Wow.
15:25
Speaker 1: So yeah, so yeah, and it's it's an amazing thing.
15:29
Speaker 1: But here's the rub with fire. Fire does, in fact
15:35
Speaker 1: provide us with many of the essentials that we are
15:38
Speaker 1: depended upon in this life. We couldn't survive without it. Nowadays,
15:44
Speaker 1: in modern times, we always have access to it. I
15:48
Speaker 1: can't tell you how many spare matchbooks I have in
15:50
Speaker 1: my house, and lighters and all these sorts of things.
15:55
Speaker 1: And you know, if I had to, I could. You know,
15:59
Speaker 1: I could take a and I could strike it, and
16:01
Speaker 1: I could create a fire. But fire also has one
16:05
Speaker 1: other element to it. It is arguably the most, if
16:11
Speaker 1: not one of the most destructive forces in the world.
16:15
Speaker 1: All you got to do is take a look out
16:17
Speaker 1: west during wild fire season, take a look recently at
16:21
Speaker 1: the palisades out there around Malibu in that area, and
16:25
Speaker 1: it gives you an idea of what happens when fire
16:29
Speaker 1: fire inside of control. There are two images from the
16:49
Speaker 1: Vietnam Era that will always stay with me that I've
16:55
Speaker 1: seen in the news, and I know many of you
16:57
Speaker 1: guys have. And those images are the young child that's
17:01
Speaker 1: running down the road and she doesn't have her clothes on,
17:05
Speaker 1: and she was in a village where her village got
17:11
Speaker 1: hit with napalm, which is essentially gelaginous gasoline, and it
17:17
Speaker 1: doesn't matter what you do, you can't extinguish it as
17:21
Speaker 1: a matter of fact that that young girl became a
17:24
Speaker 1: grown woman and she survived. The other image is of
17:30
Speaker 1: the monk that we've seen images of from Southeast Asia
17:33
Speaker 1: and protests for peace. He goes into a lotus position
17:38
Speaker 1: and has poured apparently accelerant all of himself in his
17:42
Speaker 1: robes and has set himself ablaze and sat there and
17:47
Speaker 1: never moved and no pun intended. Those images are burned
17:54
Speaker 1: into my brain. I can't unsee that when we're in
18:01
Speaker 1: the world of fire investigation and viewing things from the
18:08
Speaker 1: perspective of what crime has been committed. Arson itself is
18:15
Speaker 1: a category that stands alone among all the others because
18:19
Speaker 1: it's used for a variety of reasons. And you know,
18:26
Speaker 1: when you know, obviously the girl in an a pomp
18:29
Speaker 1: strike that was a product of war, that's not arson.
18:33
Speaker 1: You have this monk that was doing this in protest,
18:37
Speaker 1: that's not arson. But it has a level of lethality
18:41
Speaker 1: and it has a level of destruction that criminals have
18:44
Speaker 1: come to appreciate for a long long time now because
18:48
Speaker 1: they believe that if they set something to blaze, that
18:52
Speaker 1: they're going to eradicate any opportunity for us to collect
18:56
Speaker 1: evidence at a scene. And I've often held that if
19:01
Speaker 1: in fact, you can go back and conduct your investigation thoroughly,
19:10
Speaker 1: they I believe that arsenists leave more evidence behind by
19:14
Speaker 1: starting fires. You know, they use particular types of accelerant,
19:19
Speaker 1: whether it be kerosene, gasoline, fuel oil. I've seen fires
19:25
Speaker 1: started with electricity, intentionally set phosphorus triggers, all these other
19:32
Speaker 1: things that are out there, and you're getting into high
19:35
Speaker 1: end things, you know, you start talking about electrical fires
19:38
Speaker 1: that are intentionally set, as opposed to somebody running down
19:41
Speaker 1: to the local, you know, stop and rob and getting
19:45
Speaker 1: a gallon gasoline and coming back home and dows in
19:47
Speaker 1: a place. It's a bit more sophistication involved in that.
19:51
Speaker 1: And so arsenists actually come in all shapes and sizes,
19:54
Speaker 1: but their motivations are really varied. I mean, you've got
20:01
Speaker 1: I think most popularly you think about people destroying things
20:05
Speaker 1: for money, insurance money. They set houses on fire, structures
20:08
Speaker 1: on fire, businesses on fire and try to collect off
20:11
Speaker 1: of that. Of course, you have in our area and
20:14
Speaker 1: depth investigation. You have an individual that is dead inside
20:17
Speaker 1: of a house. The house has been, you know, just
20:20
Speaker 1: engulfed with flames, and what they're trying to do is
20:24
Speaker 1: trying to render down that body so that there's nothing
20:27
Speaker 1: left that we can go back and examine.
20:31
Speaker 3: It's amazing to me how many times people do that.
20:34
Speaker 3: They burn a house down to cover up the murder
20:36
Speaker 3: of somebody they shot in the head and their recliner,
20:38
Speaker 3: and it's like, dude, you realize how long it takes
20:41
Speaker 3: to render a body down. Things I've learned from Joseph
20:43
Speaker 3: Scott Morgan by doing body Bags. It's like, it's not
20:47
Speaker 3: going to happen. If you're going to go to crime school,
20:49
Speaker 3: that should be like day three, don't do this.
20:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, But yet they persist, don't they. Dave I love
20:55
Speaker 1: about Yeah. I mean like you think about you remember
20:59
Speaker 1: the case Terra Green instead out of yeah idea of Georgia.
21:02
Speaker 1: We covered that for you and it's not just me names. Yeah,
21:06
Speaker 1: and you know when they and I remember, I think
21:09
Speaker 1: I did an episode of body Bags on that case
21:13
Speaker 1: because there was a lot of a lot of static
21:17
Speaker 1: about a couple of years ago. But those fellows were
21:19
Speaker 1: in court again but anyway, you know, she was found
21:22
Speaker 1: in an old pecan orchard, uh, down in in South Georgia.
21:28
Speaker 1: Something I learned about pecan wood at that particular time
21:32
Speaker 1: that I was fascinated by that I did not know.
21:35
Speaker 1: Uh did you know that next to hickory, pecan is
21:41
Speaker 1: the hottest burning wood that's out there. And the fact
21:47
Speaker 1: that they had scraped pecan wood out there, that I
21:51
Speaker 1: believed that they used as fuel source for her body.
21:54
Speaker 1: Because keep in mind, human bodies are not fuel sources,
21:58
Speaker 1: all right there, They're not. They make fuel sources. So
22:02
Speaker 1: it requires you to put the body with a fuel source,
22:06
Speaker 1: stack fuel source on top of the body, underlay the
22:09
Speaker 1: body with fuel source, put an accelerant on the body,
22:13
Speaker 1: and you begin that process of rendering down a body.
22:16
Speaker 1: And Dave, they burned that lady's body for so long
22:19
Speaker 1: that they were only able to find little bits of
22:22
Speaker 1: her left behind. That was almost a successful attempt at
22:26
Speaker 1: criminal arson there.
22:28
Speaker 3: That case, you know, Joe, that one case with Terry Grinstead.
22:31
Speaker 3: I'm glad you brought it up because that was one
22:33
Speaker 3: of those ones where I learned. When you were talking
22:35
Speaker 3: about the different I didn't I don't know that much
22:39
Speaker 3: about a lot of the things we end up talking
22:41
Speaker 3: about because I'm not learned in that area. But when
22:45
Speaker 3: you start studying a case and you start breaking it down,
22:48
Speaker 3: and you're going, why did this not work? And why
22:50
Speaker 3: did this work? And it's amazing to me how some
22:54
Speaker 3: of the stupidest people can come up with the best
22:56
Speaker 3: ways and some of the smartest people are so stupid
22:59
Speaker 3: when it comes to crime. But I will tell you, yeah,
23:02
Speaker 3: firing up something I used to think was a good
23:05
Speaker 3: idea until we started doing this show. I you know,
23:08
Speaker 3: I'm not a criminal. I'm not going to be burning
23:09
Speaker 3: stuff down. I would have thought, you know, hey, if
23:12
Speaker 3: you're going to ruin your prints and everything else, go
23:14
Speaker 3: ahead and light it on fire. But actually you're actually
23:18
Speaker 3: may as well pour super glue on it.
23:20
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And you're you are creating. That's why I
23:24
Speaker 1: will say, you're creating, uh, creating more evidence I believe,
23:28
Speaker 1: and evidence of And listen, if you go out here's
23:31
Speaker 1: another big one. And this is kind of a broad
23:34
Speaker 1: assertion here, but if you go if you go out
23:37
Speaker 1: and purchase a gallon of gasoline for this express purpose,
23:44
Speaker 1: that goes to intent, you know, which is kind of
23:46
Speaker 1: the body of a crime. You know you're thinking about
23:49
Speaker 1: did you intend intend to do this? It's really hard
23:51
Speaker 1: to explain away while we have you on CCTV taking
23:55
Speaker 1: a gallon jug or taking a gallon gas can or
23:58
Speaker 1: five gallon gas can fill it up with gas when
24:01
Speaker 1: you don't normally do that, and then suddenly there's a
24:04
Speaker 1: blaze in your backyard. You walk out there and there's
24:06
Speaker 1: human remains there. So it kind of you know, the
24:09
Speaker 1: act of actually doing that, even more so than going
24:13
Speaker 1: out and buying a gun, because there's a lot of
24:15
Speaker 1: reasons you can say, well, I went out and bought
24:17
Speaker 1: a gun. I wanted it for a home defense. Maybe
24:19
Speaker 1: I've had it laying around the house. But you know,
24:21
Speaker 1: you get a lot of people and I've covered these
24:23
Speaker 1: cases where individuals will show up and they'll have in
24:27
Speaker 1: the back of their pickup truck several cans that are empty,
24:31
Speaker 1: top them off, and go back and it's within just
24:34
Speaker 1: a short bit of time that they're burning a body.
24:39
Speaker 1: So you know, you've got this idea of eradication of evidence,
24:43
Speaker 1: and yeah, clothing burns away to a great degree, but
24:47
Speaker 1: did you know that like when we have bodies that
24:50
Speaker 1: have been burned, let's you say, just imagine in your mind,
24:55
Speaker 1: you've got somebody laying on their back, all right, and
25:00
Speaker 1: you pour gas all over the anterior or the front
25:03
Speaker 1: of their body, struck a match, and the antior portion
25:10
Speaker 1: of their body envelops in flame.
25:13
Speaker 2: Right.
25:15
Speaker 1: Well, do you know the clothing on the backside many
25:19
Speaker 1: times is intact. It doesn't just all burn out. I mean,
25:23
Speaker 1: just think about it. We talked about oxygen just a
25:25
Speaker 1: moment ago. Yeah, So if body is in contact with
25:28
Speaker 1: the floor or the ground, fire, fire is always going
25:33
Speaker 1: to seek oxygen, all right, and so it's not going
25:35
Speaker 1: to go It might burn for a second if you've
25:38
Speaker 1: got gas that has kind of leached into the around it,
25:41
Speaker 1: but it's not really sustainable. It's not away all of
25:44
Speaker 1: the clothing. Clothing is a big part of like getting
25:47
Speaker 1: bodies identified, learning where they come from. Also if there's
25:52
Speaker 1: any trauma, because you know, if you've got somebody who's
25:54
Speaker 1: been shot in the back or they've been beaten, you're
25:59
Speaker 1: not destroying that evidence, that physical evidence that exists there.
26:04
Speaker 1: So when you get these really sophisticated guys. And I
26:08
Speaker 1: know I've mentioned this book on air again, I'm going
26:10
Speaker 1: to do it again because I want everybody to read it.
26:12
Speaker 1: Murdering Cowita County. There was a guy that was murdered
26:16
Speaker 1: back in the thirties, I think, or the forties, I
26:19
Speaker 1: can't remember, in Georgia. And the guy that facilitated that
26:26
Speaker 1: had what he referred to as his hired men, which
26:29
Speaker 1: were these two African American fellows to tend the fire.
26:33
Speaker 1: And they constantly pumped wood into this fire pit with
26:37
Speaker 1: this guy's body in it, and they turned the coals.
26:41
Speaker 1: They turned his body in there almost like they're cooking. Wow,
26:44
Speaker 1: and the body begins to render down till there was
26:46
Speaker 1: nothing left but ash. And you know how they retrieved
26:50
Speaker 1: in that case, they retrieved what became known in that
26:54
Speaker 1: specific case, this is a concept in law. You hear
26:57
Speaker 1: the term the corpus delecti, which means the body daved.
27:02
Speaker 1: They found one little chip of bone that was called
27:04
Speaker 1: an eddy in a creek where they dumped these purlap sacks,
27:07
Speaker 1: because they even went to the trouble of taking shovels,
27:11
Speaker 1: digging out the hole and putting them into the sacks,
27:15
Speaker 1: going to the creek and dumping the sacks in the
27:18
Speaker 1: creek and then burning sacks. But that one little bit
27:22
Speaker 1: of bone was evidence. And this is before and that's
27:25
Speaker 1: kind of an assumption, scientific assumption because biologically, back during
27:29
Speaker 1: that time, they had no way to tie it back
27:31
Speaker 1: to that guy. All they knew is that they had
27:34
Speaker 1: a bone or a piece of a bone even but
27:36
Speaker 1: they used that, and you know, that was the only case.
27:39
Speaker 1: That was the first case I think maybe in American
27:43
Speaker 1: history where the testimony of an African American man was
27:48
Speaker 1: used to put a white man in the electric chair
27:52
Speaker 1: and he died. They fried his ass. So yeah, and
27:57
Speaker 1: it's kind of a seminal case. So Murton calwieda County.
28:00
Speaker 1: Ever get a chance read the book. There was a
28:01
Speaker 1: movie that was done with Andy Griffith and Johnny Cash
28:04
Speaker 1: back in the early eighties. But the book is fantastic
28:07
Speaker 1: and it talks about and Fire plays a big part
28:10
Speaker 1: of that. Then we've got another group that you've heard of, Pyromania,
28:16
Speaker 1: which is album. Yeah, yeah, it's not that but yeah, yeah,
28:22
Speaker 1: Fire Brigades you got it made or whatever it is.
28:26
Speaker 1: But yeah, Pyromania is a sexual affectation, you know, where
28:30
Speaker 1: they they have this idea that they get gratification from
28:35
Speaker 1: watching fire. I had mentioned before the show that I
28:39
Speaker 1: won't go into all of the details. I was talking
28:41
Speaker 1: and I was at a conference one time, and I
28:42
Speaker 1: was talking to these investigators and they had mentioned how
28:45
Speaker 1: this one fellow that they they had worked this case.
28:52
Speaker 1: Fire Battalion responds to a fully engulfed home and there's
28:57
Speaker 1: like a family of five burning death in the home.
29:00
Speaker 1: And I'll put to you delicately he's standing in the street,
29:04
Speaker 1: fully nude and fully aroused when they are fixated on
29:08
Speaker 1: the fire.
29:09
Speaker 2: So you know, did he set the fire, Joe? Do
29:12
Speaker 2: you know?
29:12
Speaker 1: I mean specifically for his own sexual And so I
29:19
Speaker 1: never case. That was just passed on to me from them,
29:23
Speaker 1: And I was thinking, you know, I talked about the
29:25
Speaker 1: there's no basement in the house. It's just the endless,
29:29
Speaker 1: it's bottomless. Uh. You think you've seen it all, and
29:32
Speaker 1: then you know, you get to that point where you
29:35
Speaker 1: know you haven't, and then other people burn for other reasons.
29:39
Speaker 1: You've got, uh, you've got these revenge burnings that take
29:45
Speaker 1: place where people and these are where you know, I'm
29:49
Speaker 1: going to destroy you. I'm going to eradicate everything. I
29:54
Speaker 1: reflect back, and I know that some of our listeners
29:56
Speaker 1: will remember, uh this uh, precious child back then that
30:02
Speaker 1: his dad and mom were in a we're in a
30:05
Speaker 1: custody battle and the dad set this kid on fire
30:08
Speaker 1: and scarred him for life. And that has happened many
30:13
Speaker 1: times over the years. There was the one movie, I
30:16
Speaker 1: can't remember which one it was where the lady I
30:19
Speaker 1: think it was Angela Bassett. People are going to remember
30:21
Speaker 1: this movie where you know, she her husband was you know,
30:25
Speaker 1: running around on her and she took all of his clothes,
30:27
Speaker 1: knocked the window out of his Mercedes, put his clothes
30:30
Speaker 1: in the car, poured gas in the car, and she
30:32
Speaker 1: strikes a match and sets the Mercedes and the clothes
30:34
Speaker 1: on fire, you know, in the driveway. So yeah, I
30:38
Speaker 1: mean you have you have this idea of revenge as well,
30:43
Speaker 1: so concealment of crime, revenge, personal monetary gain. You know
30:50
Speaker 1: you can have that. You have people that contract to
30:53
Speaker 1: do arson. There are people that are skilled at it,
30:56
Speaker 1: believe it or not.
30:57
Speaker 3: Well, in the movie Goodfellas, it showed you know, the
31:00
Speaker 3: guys over there burning the burning the club, remember, yeah,
31:04
Speaker 3: for insurance money.
31:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely it was. That was Joe Peshi and Henry
31:10
Speaker 1: Hill's character did that. I tell you one of the
31:12
Speaker 1: most chilling chilling depictions of an arsonist is actually Mickey Rourke.
31:18
Speaker 1: And people might not remember this. He played that role
31:20
Speaker 1: in the movie Body Heat. Oh wow, William Hurt and
31:24
Speaker 1: he gives one of the most chilling resertations on arson
31:29
Speaker 1: that you've ever heard, and he really you know, and
31:31
Speaker 1: he was depicted as a pro at doing this. And
31:33
Speaker 1: there are people that can do this, and they sell
31:37
Speaker 1: themselves as somebody that can cover up their crimes and
31:40
Speaker 1: not you know, not be caught by virtue of them.
31:43
Speaker 1: They essentially cover all of their bases. But a couple
31:47
Speaker 1: of things that you're looking for and that we look
31:49
Speaker 1: for at scenes most of the time with fire with arson,
31:56
Speaker 1: is that we'll have individuals that will take, say, for instance,
32:02
Speaker 1: and accelerate. And when I say accelerant, just think gasoline
32:05
Speaker 1: for instance. It can be any number of things. But
32:08
Speaker 1: arson investigators look for things like splash patterns. For instance,
32:11
Speaker 1: if you take a a bucket of gasoline, uh, and
32:17
Speaker 1: you toss it on a wall and uh, you know
32:21
Speaker 1: it's a sheet rock wall, gypsum, you strike a match
32:25
Speaker 1: and you you set it ablaze, Well, did you know
32:28
Speaker 1: that you can actually those arson investigators can actually follow
32:32
Speaker 1: the splash pattern on the wall that it'll burn into it.
32:35
Speaker 1: You can see it where if you you know, if
32:37
Speaker 1: you think about splashing a wall with something, striking a
32:40
Speaker 1: match and putting it to the wall, you'll see the
32:43
Speaker 1: pattern of splash kind of how it And most of
32:46
Speaker 1: the time another rule of thumb that we use wherever
32:51
Speaker 1: it doesn't happen every time, but wherever you see, particularly
32:54
Speaker 1: in a structure, the most damage has occurred, that is
32:58
Speaker 1: going to point you toward the point of origin of
33:01
Speaker 1: the fire because it's burned the longest. You know, unless
33:05
Speaker 1: you have like a store of gasoline in the house
33:08
Speaker 1: or something that's explosive that does more damage, most of
33:13
Speaker 1: the time you're going to have an area that has
33:16
Speaker 1: more damage than any other location. Those are just like
33:20
Speaker 1: a few of the things you know that you kind
33:22
Speaker 1: of look for at a fire scene if you're trying,
33:26
Speaker 1: if they're trying to determine exactly where the point of
33:31
Speaker 1: origin is. So source point of origin, what utility did
33:35
Speaker 1: they use to start this with? Did they just take
33:38
Speaker 1: like old newspapers and pile them up in a corner,
33:41
Speaker 1: anything else that's flammable and they set that ablaze. If
33:44
Speaker 1: you get in there and you've got furniture that's burned
33:47
Speaker 1: in place, but it's all askew, and maybe in one
33:50
Speaker 1: corner you get an idea when you walk in there that, okay,
33:54
Speaker 1: the furniture was actually intended to be the fuel source,
33:58
Speaker 1: because you know, you're not going to have like your
34:01
Speaker 1: lazy boy in a sofa stacked on top of one another.
34:04
Speaker 1: And it doesn't matter. I mean, if it catches on fire,
34:08
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily going to mean that the lazy boy
34:11
Speaker 1: is going to fall off of the sofa. It's going
34:13
Speaker 1: to burn in place. Most of the time. Now, the
34:16
Speaker 1: firefighters might pull it down, but you'll have it all
34:18
Speaker 1: kind of congregated in that area. You look for those
34:21
Speaker 1: little cues like that at a scene, and you also
34:25
Speaker 1: look for position of the body. You know, what is
34:29
Speaker 1: it that stands out about a body? If you're dealing
34:31
Speaker 1: with a body at a scene, what is it that's
34:34
Speaker 1: there that kind of stinks? And I don't mean that literally,
34:38
Speaker 1: I mean that in the sense of from an investigative,
34:40
Speaker 1: what is it that just doesn't seem right in this
34:43
Speaker 1: particular environment. You know, for us in death investigation, we
34:47
Speaker 1: see what remains of this, We see all that's left behind.
34:52
Speaker 1: The big question is who and what started this inferna.
35:13
Speaker 1: I still have a memory of the first time I
35:19
Speaker 1: was ever faced with a burned body in the morgue.
35:24
Speaker 1: There's actually two things I said correctly. I remember two
35:28
Speaker 1: things that I saw in the morgue related to fire.
35:34
Speaker 1: The first one's kind of standard stuff. It was still
35:37
Speaker 1: shocking for my young eyes to behold at that time,
35:41
Speaker 1: because I realized I was looking at a human being
35:47
Speaker 1: that had been burned, and it was a homicide and
35:53
Speaker 1: a subsequent arson where the structure that they were in
35:57
Speaker 1: was set on fire after the individual had been shot,
36:01
Speaker 1: and the fire had been really, really hot. And my
36:06
Speaker 1: first reaction was when I saw the body. And I
36:10
Speaker 1: mean no disrespect by this, but it looked to me,
36:13
Speaker 1: in my untrained eye, it looked like something that had
36:17
Speaker 1: fallen off of a grill into the truck overriquets below,
36:23
Speaker 1: and it was it was black. The body was black drawn.
36:28
Speaker 1: You could barely make out any clothing that remained, no
36:34
Speaker 1: facial features, hair was all gone, the hands were clawlike.
36:42
Speaker 1: And I remember looking at that body and it gave
36:45
Speaker 1: off be perfectly, honestly, it gave off the smell of
36:51
Speaker 1: burned meat. And I remember I couldn't and this is
36:55
Speaker 1: my personal recollection here again, for the longest time, I
37:01
Speaker 1: couldn't eat. I couldn't eat grilled meat. I have a
37:07
Speaker 1: distinct memory of that. And now I was, you know,
37:09
Speaker 1: this young virile, you know guy that I loved the steak,
37:13
Speaker 1: I loved hamburgers, all that stuff. Still do this day.
37:16
Speaker 1: But I got past that. But I remember being kind
37:18
Speaker 1: of repulsed by it. That was my first and then
37:21
Speaker 1: on top of it, I had to go into that
37:24
Speaker 1: body with a scalpel and open the body. And so
37:27
Speaker 1: because I was the autopsy assistant, and so you kind
37:30
Speaker 1: of get a double dose of it. Now, if you
37:33
Speaker 1: can imagine, Dave, even more horrific than that. Was the
37:38
Speaker 1: first time that I ever assisted in the autopsy on
37:45
Speaker 1: an individual that had been burned in a house fire
37:54
Speaker 1: and had I'm doing air quotes, had survived for a
37:59
Speaker 1: month on the burn unit at a hospital in New Orleans.
38:04
Speaker 1: And for any of you out there that have had
38:08
Speaker 1: family members that have been burned and been subjected to
38:11
Speaker 1: intense heat, you're going to understand what I'm saying. It's
38:17
Speaker 1: a real specialty in medicine to be able to deal
38:19
Speaker 1: with with burn patients, it's unlike anything else. It's I
38:25
Speaker 1: guess you get satisfaction from it because you know that
38:27
Speaker 1: you're trying to help them, trying to help them move on,
38:30
Speaker 1: trying to reconstruct their live if they can survive. Because
38:34
Speaker 1: it's once, particularly once a certain percentage of your body
38:39
Speaker 1: is burned, there's high probability you're no longer going to
38:42
Speaker 1: be able to fight off all the little nasties that
38:44
Speaker 1: are outside trying to attack you. Many folks die of
38:47
Speaker 1: sept semia, you know, there's a myriad of things that
38:50
Speaker 1: they die from. But Dave, I remember this one fellow,
38:55
Speaker 1: and he was massive. And when I say massive, he
39:01
Speaker 1: may at that point when I saw him, may have
39:03
Speaker 1: been the biggest body I had ever seen come into
39:06
Speaker 1: the autopsy room. So when we were observing him, I
39:13
Speaker 1: remember talking to the forensic pathologist and he was saying,
39:18
Speaker 1: this is what it looks like to be on a
39:20
Speaker 1: burn unit, be a patient on a burn unit. And
39:24
Speaker 1: we had the reports before us in life. This guy
39:28
Speaker 1: had been one hundred and eighty five pounds, so he
39:33
Speaker 1: had been in the burn unit for a month. And
39:39
Speaker 1: what happens is many times these people go into renal
39:42
Speaker 1: failure and they can't outprocess fluids and he was so swollen. Dave, well,
39:51
Speaker 1: along with the swelling, what has to happen because the
39:55
Speaker 1: skin on these individuals actually splits, so in advance of that,
40:03
Speaker 1: the surgeon will come in and they make these linear
40:08
Speaker 1: incisions in the body and they're all over the body.
40:11
Speaker 1: You've never seen the like of it. It is. It
40:15
Speaker 1: rivals anything I've ever seen in the autopsy room. And
40:18
Speaker 1: they will make these surgical incisions that are rather lengthy,
40:21
Speaker 1: all over the surface of the skin because if they
40:24
Speaker 1: don't the skin on its own because of the tension
40:27
Speaker 1: and the retention of water and fluid in the body,
40:31
Speaker 1: they will begin to split open. So they have to
40:35
Speaker 1: make incisions all over the body to try to stem that,
40:40
Speaker 1: and eventually the body just it cannot it cannot function
40:46
Speaker 1: to a point where it's a survival event. Survivable event,
40:50
Speaker 1: and they're going to be They're going to die. And
40:56
Speaker 1: many people I always have this question, and it doesn't
40:59
Speaker 1: necessarily revolve around fire related death, but you have these
41:05
Speaker 1: events where people will say, well, they were in the
41:10
Speaker 1: hospital for a long time, why did you have to
41:13
Speaker 1: do an autopsy? Well, yes, you're absolutely right. The injuries
41:18
Speaker 1: are documented. Everything has been X rayed and photographed, and
41:23
Speaker 1: you've got the treatment records, surgical records we've got in
41:27
Speaker 1: case of burn victims, we've got every time a skin
41:29
Speaker 1: graft has been attached. I mean, just it's voluminous. There's
41:33
Speaker 1: always charting going on. But we're still going to do
41:35
Speaker 1: the autopsy. The reason we're still going to do the
41:37
Speaker 1: autopsy is that this is a homicide. This is a homicide.
41:42
Speaker 1: And if you don't do the autopsy, even if a
41:46
Speaker 1: person's been in the hospital for a protracted period of time,
41:50
Speaker 1: when the thing goes to court, a defense attorney will
41:54
Speaker 1: look at this and say, well, how do we know
41:56
Speaker 1: what really killed this individual? You're se that just based
42:01
Speaker 1: on the doctor's notes here that it's a you know that,
42:04
Speaker 1: yeah they got burned, but yet you didn't do an autopsy.
42:07
Speaker 1: How can you prove that? And you kind of head
42:10
Speaker 1: that off at the past by having a forensic pathologist
42:13
Speaker 1: look at not just the records, but actually taking a
42:15
Speaker 1: look at the at the body, uh in total there
42:20
Speaker 1: in the autopsy room. And for me, for me, it
42:25
Speaker 1: was it. It stuck with me that first body that
42:29
Speaker 1: I saw a lot of them after that but that
42:31
Speaker 1: first body that I saw that came off of a
42:34
Speaker 1: burn unit that had been treated for a protracted period
42:37
Speaker 1: of time, it stuck with me, you know, it really
42:43
Speaker 1: it made me think it was It was one of
42:45
Speaker 1: those cases where when you look at the individual and
42:47
Speaker 1: I don't think about this a lot where I go
42:50
Speaker 1: around saying, I hope they didn't suffer. A lot of
42:53
Speaker 1: families say that, and you don't really know if people suffer.
42:57
Speaker 1: But I look at that and that's one of the
42:59
Speaker 1: cases where you think, I hope they I hope they
43:03
Speaker 1: weren't aware of this because it's so it was so
43:08
Speaker 1: grotesque and horrible, you know, when you see this, and
43:13
Speaker 1: I've that that part of me within me, and I
43:16
Speaker 1: don't think I'm I'm not being sadistic when I say this.
43:21
Speaker 1: That's one of the reasons I think that people that
43:24
Speaker 1: have murdered others need to be present for autopsies. And
43:28
Speaker 1: I know that it's not legally possible, you know, because
43:32
Speaker 1: people are presumed innocent until proven guilty, But you want
43:37
Speaker 1: people that have done great harm to individuals to understand
43:41
Speaker 1: what happens to subjects. And when you see somebody that's
43:44
Speaker 1: burned like this, subjected to severe heat, intense heat. It
43:50
Speaker 1: really gives you pause. It's like you want that individual
43:52
Speaker 1: to see what they have done because they're not going
43:56
Speaker 1: to go through this. Their family is not going to
43:57
Speaker 1: go through this. And it's really, you know, really throws
44:00
Speaker 1: up the stops on in your spirit. You know, it's
44:04
Speaker 1: so over the top. Dave.
44:06
Speaker 2: But Joe, what about the term burned to death.
44:10
Speaker 3: We've heard that said by people on you know, talk
44:15
Speaker 3: shows that you know, on crime that the body that
44:18
Speaker 3: the person burned to death.
44:19
Speaker 2: And that's not true, is it? In most cases?
44:22
Speaker 1: In most cases it's not. Now you have, like I
44:24
Speaker 1: just gave you the example. I gave everybody example of
44:27
Speaker 1: the person that's on the burn unit. They most of
44:31
Speaker 1: the time when you have a homicide or let's just
44:35
Speaker 1: say it's an accidental death, let's just don't let's don't
44:38
Speaker 1: necessarily say homicides. Let's just say an accidental death as
44:42
Speaker 1: related to to fire. Most people do not burn to
44:50
Speaker 1: a crisp and die like that. Okay, that's not how
44:55
Speaker 1: it necessarily works. It's not like the last scene in
44:57
Speaker 1: the original Raiders Lost arc, you know, where people are
45:01
Speaker 1: incinerating and that sort of thing. By the presence of
45:03
Speaker 1: God coming out of the ark of the Covenant.
45:06
Speaker 2: So that was not a documentary, Is that what you're
45:08
Speaker 2: telling me?
45:08
Speaker 1: That was not a documentary. Most people in our world
45:13
Speaker 1: that are subjected to a fire an environment involving fire,
45:20
Speaker 1: are going to die as a result of smoke inhalation
45:23
Speaker 1: almost I'd say probably ninety nine percent, maybe not that many,
45:28
Speaker 1: ninety five percent of those deaths. And it causes from
45:33
Speaker 1: inhaling those bits that are in the air and you're
45:37
Speaker 1: not it's not like you're just inhaling smoke. Most people
45:42
Speaker 1: don't understand the component smoke is a product of things
45:46
Speaker 1: burning up. It's actually this, it's actually one of the
45:50
Speaker 1: sub components of fire. You're talking about when fuel is vaporized. Okay,
45:55
Speaker 1: So when it's vaporized and extends out that if you're
45:59
Speaker 1: in that vironment, you're you know, you're trying to get
46:02
Speaker 1: your breath. What did they always tell us when we
46:03
Speaker 1: were kids, if there was a house fire, you're supposed
46:05
Speaker 1: to go. You're supposed to do what you're supposed to
46:07
Speaker 1: go to the floor and crawl along the floor because
46:11
Speaker 1: that's where the remaining oxygen is. All that stuff floating
46:13
Speaker 1: up in the air, and they're absolutely right, is toxic.
46:16
Speaker 1: So it's not and this is not if you're let's
46:19
Speaker 1: just say you're in a house, or you could be
46:21
Speaker 1: inside of a car. All of those elements within that
46:25
Speaker 1: car which are man made, really let that hang there
46:29
Speaker 1: in a second that our man made are going to
46:33
Speaker 1: in dwell that environment and they're going to burn. And
46:37
Speaker 1: remember how we said earlier on when I was talking
46:39
Speaker 1: about an uninhibited chemical reaction. Well, if if you've got
46:45
Speaker 1: like carpet, okay, you've got some kind of synthetic carpet
46:49
Speaker 1: in a house and it's burning, did you know that
46:51
Speaker 1: one of the major components of carpet is petroleum. It's
46:55
Speaker 1: petroleum based, and so how do you how does all
46:58
Speaker 1: that bound together? Well, it's very complex chemically, all right.
47:02
Speaker 1: So once you once heat is subjected to that, you
47:05
Speaker 1: kind of free all that stuff up that's in the
47:08
Speaker 1: carpet and all of a sudden it's floating around the air. Dave.
47:10
Speaker 1: You can find things like arsenic floating around, you know,
47:13
Speaker 1: in this environment. So when you get when you get
47:17
Speaker 1: you know, people breathing in and a fire, you'll see
47:22
Speaker 1: these components on their toxicology that are coming back and
47:26
Speaker 1: it's amazing. It's this litany, this list of stuff that's
47:29
Speaker 1: kind of free floating around in their blood that they've
47:31
Speaker 1: taken on. Not to mention the absence of actual breathable
47:36
Speaker 1: oxygen in the environment. One of the main components that
47:39
Speaker 1: we're looking for, though, you know that's going to lead
47:43
Speaker 1: to death, is going to be you know, carbon monoxide asphyxiation.
47:50
Speaker 1: It literally turns the body cherry pink. The skin is pink,
47:57
Speaker 1: nail beds are pink, the eyes are pink. You open
48:01
Speaker 1: up the body, the viscera, the organs have a pink hue.
48:05
Speaker 1: The blood when you draw it out, it looks like
48:09
Speaker 1: the only way I've been able to describe it to people,
48:11
Speaker 1: think about a manufactured piece of candy that's like this
48:19
Speaker 1: brilliant pink color that was created in a lab. The
48:23
Speaker 1: first candy that comes to me. I used to love
48:25
Speaker 1: these on us kids were not now laters or what
48:27
Speaker 1: they're called, and they're kind of hard taffy, and there
48:29
Speaker 1: was a pink one in there. That's what the viscera
48:32
Speaker 1: looks like. Throughout the body. The blood is even that color,
48:36
Speaker 1: and the carbon monoxide turns the blood absent the oxygen
48:40
Speaker 1: that color. So if we see that color manifesting itself
48:45
Speaker 1: just visually, we don't. We're going to run a test.
48:47
Speaker 1: It's called a carboxy hemoglobin level. But when you see
48:51
Speaker 1: that pink, automatically, the alarm bell goes off, and you
48:55
Speaker 1: know that this person has inhaled carbon monoxide along with
49:00
Speaker 1: this myriad of other things you know, in the environment,
49:02
Speaker 1: and it's noncompatible with life. The balance gets so out
49:06
Speaker 1: of whack because we require a certain amount of oxygen,
49:10
Speaker 1: and you know, we don't live in a pure oxygen
49:12
Speaker 1: environment anyway. You know, people talk about the oxygen air
49:15
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's there, but you're breathing in these other components.
49:19
Speaker 1: All you know, there's an ron out there, there's carbon
49:21
Speaker 1: dioxide that you're rebreathing sometimes, you know, plants take up
49:25
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide, they produce oxygen and that sort of thing,
49:28
Speaker 1: and so all these elements are kind of floating around.
49:30
Speaker 1: But it's sustainable with life when you get in that
49:32
Speaker 1: closed environment like a home and you're literally swimming in
49:37
Speaker 1: a chemical experiment at this point in time, and the
49:40
Speaker 1: fire that's in there is like the bunting burner you
49:42
Speaker 1: would have in a lab, only it's visible you're in
49:46
Speaker 1: the midst of it, and you're trying to gasp for
49:48
Speaker 1: air and there's nothing really left for you to grab
49:52
Speaker 1: hold of to breathe, that sort of thing, And as
49:58
Speaker 1: heat increases a around the body, most of the time
50:02
Speaker 1: the person is going to die within a few minutes,
50:06
Speaker 1: and there is an awareness if you don't, don't try
50:10
Speaker 1: to shade yourself into this idea that there's no awareness
50:14
Speaker 1: that you're dying. I mean, if anybody has ever struggled
50:17
Speaker 1: with breathe, if you've ever had pneumonia or anything like,
50:19
Speaker 1: you know what it's like to be shorter breath. If
50:21
Speaker 1: you ever had a heart event, you know what it's
50:23
Speaker 1: like to be shorter breath. Same principle here, there's an
50:26
Speaker 1: awareness it's a horrible way to die because your body
50:28
Speaker 1: is your brain is screaming, I need oxygen, I need oxygen.
50:32
Speaker 1: So when they finally die, then comes to heat. And
50:35
Speaker 1: I think that that's where this idea that people say, well,
50:38
Speaker 1: they burn to death, and it's kind of convenient to
50:40
Speaker 1: say that because you've got a fire, You've got this
50:45
Speaker 1: event that occurs where the house is caving in around them.
50:50
Speaker 1: They're surrounded by intense flames, and people think they burn
50:53
Speaker 1: to death. There are cases where people have literally been
50:58
Speaker 1: had gasoline thrown all over the Hey, there was just
51:01
Speaker 1: a case, remember day back in Virginia last week, that
51:03
Speaker 1: house and the representative in Virginia. The guy walks up
51:07
Speaker 1: with a bucket a gasoline, throws it on the sky
51:10
Speaker 1: and flips a match on him and strikes a lighter
51:12
Speaker 1: or whatever this nut job does and set this guy
51:15
Speaker 1: on blaze. This poor guy, I don't at this moment, Thomas,
51:19
Speaker 1: we're talking right now. I don't know what his status is.
51:21
Speaker 1: I pray for him and his family. I hope he's okay.
51:24
Speaker 1: But he was talking, you know, when he left. But
51:27
Speaker 1: you know, he's on the burn unit somewhere, and this
51:29
Speaker 1: is a this is gonna be a long uphill battle
51:31
Speaker 1: for him. But he But go ahead, David, I'm sorry.
51:35
Speaker 3: I was going to ask you about Mercedes Vega. Yeah,
51:37
Speaker 3: out in Arizona, Americopa County. It was one of the
51:40
Speaker 3: stories that you had sent and I thought, if we
51:43
Speaker 3: could just briefly if she's an exotic dancer, right, yeah,
51:49
Speaker 3: and they find her on the highway.
51:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, in the car. Yeah, a car in the car
51:56
Speaker 1: is a blaze at that point.
51:57
Speaker 3: Right now, if you find a car where the body inside, yeah,
52:03
Speaker 3: I'm going to assume that the person was not there
52:05
Speaker 3: of their own free will.
52:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, wrong assumption if you're an investigator.
52:09
Speaker 1: But I'm not.
52:09
Speaker 3: I'm a journalist, So I'm just thinking out loud. How
52:13
Speaker 3: do you go into that where as an investigator, you're
52:16
Speaker 3: looking at a dead body in a car murder, suicide,
52:20
Speaker 3: accidental death? I mean yeah, I mean, can you be
52:23
Speaker 3: overcome with smokes that you couldn't get yourself out of it?
52:25
Speaker 3: Can it happen that fast?
52:26
Speaker 1: I think that, Well, that's an excellent question. I think
52:30
Speaker 1: that the circumstances would have to be just right. Say,
52:32
Speaker 1: for instance, if you've got a fire that starts, let's
52:35
Speaker 1: just say it's an accidental fire. There are people that
52:37
Speaker 1: die in car accidents as a result of a fire
52:40
Speaker 1: catching a car, a vehicle car fire, and it's like,
52:45
Speaker 1: and this is really horrible. I didn't talk about these,
52:47
Speaker 1: but you have what are called entrapment fires where a
52:51
Speaker 1: person can't get free of the car. You've got like
52:54
Speaker 1: maybe engine block intrusion, the line, the fuel line gets clipped,
52:58
Speaker 1: it sparks off, and the is literally sitting there and
53:01
Speaker 1: now in those cases, there have been those cases where
53:04
Speaker 1: individuals literally do burn to death. But in her case,
53:08
Speaker 1: where you have a body that's found in a car
53:11
Speaker 1: and the car and the body are both burning, when
53:18
Speaker 1: I hear hoof beats, I'm not gonna think camel Okay,
53:21
Speaker 1: I'm pretty much gonna think that this individual has probably
53:26
Speaker 1: sustained some kind of lethal injury and the people that
53:29
Speaker 1: perpetrated this wanted to burn the car up in order
53:33
Speaker 1: to get away with it. So with her her case
53:38
Speaker 1: in particular, I think that it's important to understand that
53:42
Speaker 1: when they would do an examination, the ideal circumstances to
53:47
Speaker 1: do this examination would be not to remove her from
53:50
Speaker 1: the car. Not to remove from the car, you would
53:55
Speaker 1: the idea would be to take the car with her
53:58
Speaker 1: body in it, put it onto the back of a
54:02
Speaker 1: flatbed like a wreckord flatbed, tarp it up covered tarps,
54:07
Speaker 1: and take it to the crime lab and process the
54:09
Speaker 1: car with the body in it.
54:11
Speaker 3: Have yeah on side. Note, have you ever had a
54:13
Speaker 3: tarp fall off? Let's see, I heard about it.
54:17
Speaker 1: No, I have not had that happen. I've never had
54:20
Speaker 1: that happen. I have heard of cases non associated with
54:23
Speaker 1: offices that I that I'm aware of where the flap
54:27
Speaker 1: part of the flap came loose and it's like blowing
54:29
Speaker 1: in the wind as it's going down. You have to
54:31
Speaker 1: be very very careful because yeah, it would be There
54:35
Speaker 1: have been cases. There was a famous case that I'm
54:38
Speaker 1: aware of. I think it was in South Georgia where
54:41
Speaker 1: delivery service actually failed to secure the rear door and
54:45
Speaker 1: the body on the body gurney came out of the
54:50
Speaker 1: back of the car and came out of the back
54:53
Speaker 1: of it was a it was a hearse but it
54:54
Speaker 1: was a van, a van Hearst, you know that was
54:57
Speaker 1: operator as a private contractor, rolled out into the the
55:00
Speaker 1: highway in turned over and then a car ran over
55:02
Speaker 1: the body. It hit it. So you have to be
55:06
Speaker 1: very very You have to treat not just from an
55:08
Speaker 1: evidentiary standpoint, but for the dead and their family. You
55:13
Speaker 1: have to make sure that you're treating these bodies with
55:16
Speaker 1: the utmost respect. Particularly, I mean the body. The person
55:20
Speaker 1: that that body represents has gone through enough. The family
55:24
Speaker 1: will soon be going through enough once they're notified of this.
55:27
Speaker 1: But we do know this, We do know that the
55:30
Speaker 1: body holds a lot of evidence that you have to
55:33
Speaker 1: be able to assess you want to get the body
55:38
Speaker 1: into a prime, ideal set of circumstances. One of the
55:44
Speaker 1: interesting things that we see with fire deaths. Have folks
55:48
Speaker 1: asked me about this a lot. Had One lady tellm
55:52
Speaker 1: asked me, She said, how was that? She phrased it
55:55
Speaker 1: to me one time she said, what's boxing got to
56:00
Speaker 1: do with fire? And I didn't I didn't register with
56:04
Speaker 1: me what she was saying. And I was at a conference,
56:09
Speaker 1: like a true crime thing, and we talked about it,
56:13
Speaker 1: and she had said, I've heard that their bodies move
56:17
Speaker 1: in fire. I was like, oh, you're talking about the
56:19
Speaker 1: pugilistic position. And so as a body is subjected to fire,
56:25
Speaker 1: and you can't really draw any conclusions of scientific conclusions
56:30
Speaker 1: like were they alive versus dead when the fire started?
56:34
Speaker 1: All bodies are going to do this, But the bodies
56:38
Speaker 1: at the joints, even at the hip flexers, the knees,
56:42
Speaker 1: the feet, the elbows, the hands, it's all going to
56:45
Speaker 1: draw up and the back years ago when they began
56:50
Speaker 1: to see this, the powers that be looked at this
56:53
Speaker 1: and said, wow, that looks just like a pugilism. And
56:56
Speaker 1: of course pugilism is the old term for boxing. And
56:59
Speaker 1: so when you'll get these people that have their hands
57:02
Speaker 1: that will clinch, their hands will clinch and they'll draw up.
57:08
Speaker 1: I'm going to conclude this episode of body Bags with
57:11
Speaker 1: something I don't normally do. I'm going to tell a
57:13
Speaker 1: story real quick and you can actually see it. It's
57:18
Speaker 1: in the first chapter of my book Blood Beneath My Feet.
57:23
Speaker 1: And I was really at the end of my career.
57:25
Speaker 1: I had had enough and was really struggling with PTSD
57:31
Speaker 1: and these things that I was going through. And one
57:36
Speaker 1: night I was in the middle of Georgia four hundred
57:39
Speaker 1: and I worked a case of a young man that
57:41
Speaker 1: was in a Ford ranger. He slammed into a bridge
57:44
Speaker 1: abutment and it was pouring down rain. His car had
57:49
Speaker 1: caught on fire and he was entrapped. As I'm trying
57:54
Speaker 1: to work the case and examine his body, something happened
57:57
Speaker 1: to me that changed the course of my life and
58:00
Speaker 1: certainly my career that day. As the rain kind of
58:04
Speaker 1: dripped down off of my face and down my glasses,
58:07
Speaker 1: I couldn't see real well. I leaned into the cab
58:11
Speaker 1: and this young man was entrapped and he had burned
58:14
Speaker 1: to death. In his car, and as I reached over
58:19
Speaker 1: tried to detect if his seat belt was buckled, his
58:23
Speaker 1: left hand brushed my right cheek, and instinctively I reached up,
58:30
Speaker 1: grabbed the wrist of this clawed hand, and it snapped off.
58:34
Speaker 1: In mind, I stat there in the rain. No one
58:40
Speaker 1: else is with me, cops are off doing their thing,
58:42
Speaker 1: and I considered what I was holding in my hand,
58:45
Speaker 1: just for a second, this burned claw that was left behind.
58:48
Speaker 1: I walked off into the night. I sat beneath the
58:52
Speaker 1: bridge and I wept, shaking uncontrollably, asking myself what the world,
59:01
Speaker 1: what was I doing? Why was I here? That was
59:04
Speaker 1: after a twenty year career, and that night my life changed.
59:10
Speaker 1: It changed because I knew that I could no longer
59:13
Speaker 1: do this. And fire played a big role in that
59:16
Speaker 1: stop sign. We all have stop signs in our lives,
59:19
Speaker 1: don't we, Those warning signs that pop up in a
59:24
Speaker 1: case like this involving fire was my stop sign, and
59:28
Speaker 1: pretty soon thereafter I had to give it up. I
59:32
Speaker 1: had to hang it up. So fire will always be
59:35
Speaker 1: part of who I am. It will always be part
59:38
Speaker 1: of those things I talk about. It will always be
59:41
Speaker 1: part of the stories of the Dead. I'm Joseph Scott
59:48
Speaker 1: Morgan and this is body Backs.