Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Sex, Deception, and Murder The Chilling Story of Shaye Groves and the Brutal Dea

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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Sex, Deception, and Murder The Chilling Story of Shaye Groves and the Brutal Dea · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:08
Speaker 1: Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. My wife likes to
0:21
Speaker 1: say that she loves love. Now. I think that all
0:23
Speaker 1: of us have this kind of romanticized view of what
0:27
Speaker 1: it means to love somebody. But for some, I guess
0:31
Speaker 1: their perception of love or the way love is expressed,
0:35
Speaker 1: is in a different atmosphere from many of us. I've
0:40
Speaker 1: never thought of integrating the term knife play into an
0:45
Speaker 1: expression that even remotely resembles romantic love. But the case
0:52
Speaker 1: I'm going to lay on you today is beyond anything
0:56
Speaker 1: I've covered. Really, it doesn't occur here in the It's
1:00
Speaker 1: actually in Great Britain, England specifically, which I've traveled too
1:05
Speaker 1: many times and that I have an incredible affection for.
1:09
Speaker 1: But what happened in this little town, in this space
1:14
Speaker 1: is absolutely beyond the pale. Today I'm going to talk
1:17
Speaker 1: about the murder of Frankie Fitzgerald and his girlfriend that
1:22
Speaker 1: perpetrated this crime, Shake Robes. I am Joseph Scott Morgan,
1:27
Speaker 1: and this is Body Bags. Dave mac my good buddy
1:35
Speaker 1: who's a senior crime reporter for Crime Online. I want
1:38
Speaker 1: to apologize to you in advance for springing this case
1:41
Speaker 1: on you. There's no saying. In the South, some people
1:44
Speaker 1: say you get something in your mind that's so horrible
1:47
Speaker 1: they'll actually say, well, thanks, I'm going to have to
1:49
Speaker 1: slaughter a hog get that image out of my mind.
1:52
Speaker 1: And in this particular case, I got to tell you
1:55
Speaker 1: it ranks right up there all the stuff that we
1:57
Speaker 1: cover on body bags. I need some more reorientation here.
2:01
Speaker 1: Perhaps maybe you can offer that up, Dave. I don't know.
2:04
Speaker 2: I don't think I have a degree in psychology or
2:06
Speaker 2: sociology that could help break this down, Joe. But I
2:10
Speaker 2: will tell you this. There's an old saying pretty is
2:12
Speaker 2: as pretty does, and this twenty seven year old Shay
2:16
Speaker 2: Groves is physically attractive on the outside. When you get
2:20
Speaker 2: down to the nitty gritty of who that individual is
2:22
Speaker 2: not very pretty. Matter of fact, it's pretty disgusting. And
2:27
Speaker 2: Shay Groves is kind of the definition of that. When
2:30
Speaker 2: we were looking at this story, big big story in
2:33
Speaker 2: Great Britain, not so much here. He did get some
2:35
Speaker 2: play in the US, but huge in Great Britain. And
2:38
Speaker 2: it goes back to the all the photos. Young people
2:40
Speaker 2: now live their lives online and that means a lot
2:43
Speaker 2: of pictures, a lot of stories and things like that.
2:46
Speaker 2: Oftentimes we can see somebody over the years either devolve
2:50
Speaker 2: or evolve in their thinking and how they look at
2:53
Speaker 2: themselves in the world. But in her case, just just
2:56
Speaker 2: throw it out there. Shay Groves, even buy our best
3:00
Speaker 2: estimation from her friends, was always a bit of a
3:02
Speaker 2: weirdo even as a child. Shay Groves when she was younger,
3:06
Speaker 2: how little girls dress up in colorful outfits and things.
3:09
Speaker 2: She didn't go full on goth look at five years old,
3:12
Speaker 2: but she was bending that way. But the thing that
3:16
Speaker 2: really catches the attention for this case in particular is
3:20
Speaker 2: the fact that she is quote unquote obsessed with serial killers.
3:27
Speaker 2: I don't know how you go past it when somebody
3:29
Speaker 2: is obsessed with serial killers and has pictures of them
3:32
Speaker 2: framed in their home. I'm going to tell you what, Joe,
3:34
Speaker 2: If you're that person and somebody in your world dies
3:38
Speaker 2: a violent death, who do you think the cops you're
3:40
Speaker 2: looking at?
3:40
Speaker 1: First? There's this fine line that is easy to cross,
3:44
Speaker 1: perhaps where there's this fascination with the morbid, and certainly
3:50
Speaker 1: we explore many of these horrible events that have occurred
3:55
Speaker 1: and try to put some sense to it, if you will.
3:57
Speaker 1: From a scientific standpoint. I don't know that there's necessarily
4:00
Speaker 1: way you can take the measure of it day in
4:03
Speaker 1: and day out. And what is it in your life
4:05
Speaker 1: to get you to the point where you're going to
4:08
Speaker 1: frame a picture of Ted Bundy and hang it on
4:12
Speaker 1: your wall so that every day when you get up
4:18
Speaker 1: to start your day, maybe to have a cup of
4:20
Speaker 1: coffee or as the Brits say, have a cup of
4:23
Speaker 1: tea to get the day rolling. There you are eye
4:26
Speaker 1: to eye with a person that's arguably a monster. I've
4:30
Speaker 1: seen the pictures of her apartment. If you're looking at Ted,
4:33
Speaker 1: you look to the left, Oh my gosh, there's Richard Ramirez,
4:37
Speaker 1: the nightstalker who does this. There's even a charcoal of
4:42
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Dahmer hanging on the wall of this home. Say
4:47
Speaker 1: what you will about the Impressionists went about reproductions, But
4:51
Speaker 1: if I had a choice, I think I'd much rather
4:53
Speaker 1: look at lily pads by Monette. You know, to be
4:56
Speaker 1: greeted with, to sip, to sip my morning my morning
5:00
Speaker 1: coffee with, and meditate on things. So this is what
5:02
Speaker 1: you're filling your mind with day in and day out.
5:05
Speaker 1: And people make light of this. There's any number of
5:08
Speaker 1: memes out there, little clips that are floating about on
5:11
Speaker 1: social media, you know, where they'll say what my husband
5:14
Speaker 1: thinks I'm listening to as opposed to what I'm actually
5:17
Speaker 1: listening to. And then you hear this narrator's voice that says,
5:20
Speaker 1: this person murdered her husband or whatever it is. And
5:23
Speaker 1: it's quite comical. But now you kind of have a
5:26
Speaker 1: touch of reality with this when you enter the space.
5:30
Speaker 1: This is her private space, this is her home, and
5:33
Speaker 1: yet it is festooned with all manner of these images
5:38
Speaker 1: that are quite chilling. And if you take the totality
5:41
Speaker 1: of what each one of these monsters has done, and
5:47
Speaker 1: you were to kind of calculate that and pilot up
5:50
Speaker 1: and you think about all of the sorrow and the
5:53
Speaker 1: misery and the horror that's associated with each one of
5:56
Speaker 1: these people that hangs on her wall. Staggering to think
6:01
Speaker 1: that an individual could in fact become this obsessed with
6:06
Speaker 1: these individuals who are arguably some of the most evil
6:10
Speaker 1: people that have ever entered Armand's eye.
6:13
Speaker 2: You know, I'm glad you pointed out what these pictures
6:16
Speaker 2: represented inside the home. You actually alluded to Monette and
6:19
Speaker 2: Lily's other fields which is a beautiful painting. It has
6:23
Speaker 2: sold many times over from multiple millions of dollars. So
6:26
Speaker 2: you've got your choice. Do I get a reproduction of that?
6:28
Speaker 2: Or do I frame photos of the nice stocker, Ted
6:31
Speaker 2: Bundy and others? On top of all that, remember this
6:35
Speaker 2: just Scott Morgan. Shae Groves has a daughter. So as
6:40
Speaker 2: you're trying to raise a child, do you think it's
6:43
Speaker 2: in the child's best interest for you to surround that
6:45
Speaker 2: child with happy, wonderful, colorful pictures of beautiful things and
6:49
Speaker 2: love or of the most evil, darkest things you can find.
6:53
Speaker 2: Because what we're seeing in the life of Shad Groves
6:56
Speaker 2: is that after having her daughter, her life did not
7:00
Speaker 2: turn around and start becoming more focused on happy thoughts
7:04
Speaker 2: and a happy place, but actually continued to go deeper
7:08
Speaker 2: and deeper and darker and darker. To set this table
7:12
Speaker 2: very quickly, Shae Groves and Frankie Fitzgerald were in a
7:16
Speaker 2: romantic relationship for about six months on and off, is
7:19
Speaker 2: what it says. But in six months time to have
7:22
Speaker 2: a relationship, there are going to be a few ups
7:24
Speaker 2: and downs, but that's really the limit here. I thought
7:27
Speaker 2: they'd been together much longer, According to her friend. Shay
7:30
Speaker 2: Groves was a very controlling person. She had very few friends,
7:33
Speaker 2: but the friends she did have, she was able to
7:36
Speaker 2: control them, manipulate them. She had power over them. And
7:39
Speaker 2: one of the things that did come up about Shay
7:41
Speaker 2: Groves is even as a little girl, she loved the
7:44
Speaker 2: Chucky doll, that crazy redheaded killer Chucky that spawned a
7:48
Speaker 2: number of movies. She loved Chucky. Look, it's one thing
7:52
Speaker 2: for a doll to be kind of funny. You know,
7:54
Speaker 2: a horror movie with a doll named Chucky. Yeah, it's funny. Fine,
7:59
Speaker 2: but she starts referring to some of her friends as Chucky.
8:02
Speaker 2: That was like her thing. She was always limited to
8:06
Speaker 2: a small group of friends, although she was close to them,
8:08
Speaker 2: and she would manipulate them and their situations. And she
8:11
Speaker 2: and Frankie Fitzgerald for about six months, on and off,
8:14
Speaker 2: they had a very sexual relationship. I say that because
8:18
Speaker 2: everything about what we found out in this case it
8:21
Speaker 2: seemed to be centered on their sex life. She was
8:25
Speaker 2: obsessed with her sex life with Frankie Fitzgerald and even
8:29
Speaker 2: used his prowess in the bedroom against him later on
8:34
Speaker 2: as the police were zeroing in. Because one has to Remember,
8:38
Speaker 2: if somebody you're close too dies and the police come
8:41
Speaker 2: to talk to you and they find pretty much a
8:44
Speaker 2: museum for the worst criminal killers of all time in
8:47
Speaker 2: your house, you're going to be a suspect. Here we
8:50
Speaker 2: go back to back. The Shae Grove story starts with
8:53
Speaker 2: her and Frankie Fitzgerald in a very active sexual relationship.
8:59
Speaker 2: She has videos that she is sending to friends to
9:02
Speaker 2: try to set it up that she's a victim Joe
9:05
Speaker 2: actually saying that he was raping her, he was abusing her.
9:10
Speaker 2: But even her best friend at the time saw these
9:12
Speaker 2: videos she was using to try to manipulate her friends
9:15
Speaker 2: and said, this is a really bad editing job. She
9:18
Speaker 2: tried to edit it to make it look like he
9:20
Speaker 2: was raping her, when in fact it was all a stage.
9:22
Speaker 2: The whole thing was a big setup.
9:26
Speaker 1: If you're an investigator and you walk into this environment
9:30
Speaker 1: and you're trying to take the measure of it relative
9:32
Speaker 1: to what's going on, Because as investigators, we walk in
9:35
Speaker 1: to a location where a death has occurred, and we
9:39
Speaker 1: come in cold. There's a high probability that you've never
9:44
Speaker 1: met the person that you're about to look into their life,
9:47
Speaker 1: unless you're in a very small location, you're not going
9:50
Speaker 1: to know the victim. Most of the time, you're not
9:52
Speaker 1: going to know the perpetrator. Every now and then, you'll
9:55
Speaker 1: have police that have particularly uniform police officers that will
9:58
Speaker 1: have gone out to a scene where there is domestic
10:01
Speaker 1: instability and they'll have to calm things down. I've had
10:05
Speaker 1: this happen a number of times where I'll arrive at
10:08
Speaker 1: a homicide scene and There'll be a young patrol officer
10:11
Speaker 1: there and I'll go up and talk to them. Do
10:14
Speaker 1: you come to this address very frequent? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
10:17
Speaker 1: I've been here several times. They love to break glass
10:21
Speaker 1: and bust furniture and yell at one another. There's been
10:24
Speaker 1: a couple of punches thrown over the years, but we
10:26
Speaker 1: could get them settled down. Or there's a domestic violence
10:29
Speaker 1: issue that has come up. They've both gone to chord
10:32
Speaker 1: on it once had restraining orders, but yet the other
10:35
Speaker 1: one chose to move back with the individual, and you'll
10:37
Speaker 1: get this kind of long serial history that goes along
10:40
Speaker 1: with it. But for investigators, when you show up and scene,
10:43
Speaker 1: there's a high probability you're not going to know either one.
10:46
Speaker 1: So first impressions right, you walk in to a location,
10:50
Speaker 1: and trust me, if you're an investigator, you've been to
10:52
Speaker 1: enough seminars over the years, Even if you don't follow
10:54
Speaker 1: a true crime, the stuff that we learn about, the
10:59
Speaker 1: things that we reach, the old cases that we review
11:02
Speaker 1: to try to understand how an earlier generation of investigators
11:05
Speaker 1: worked a case. You're gonna be familiar with some of
11:07
Speaker 1: these images hanging on the wall, and I hate to
11:10
Speaker 1: use the word iconic, but you begin to think about
11:13
Speaker 1: you can't go anywhere without seeing a picture of Dahmer
11:16
Speaker 1: or John way Gacy or Hillside Stranglers or even the
11:21
Speaker 1: night Stalker. They're gonna be there. In your mind, you're
11:24
Speaker 1: gonna see that. But then when you walk into this
11:27
Speaker 1: kind of domestic situation and you've got these images hanging
11:31
Speaker 1: all about, and you're thinking, what what does this say
11:34
Speaker 1: about the individual that lives in this environment, that exist
11:38
Speaker 1: within this environment? It kind of denotes that their mind
11:43
Speaker 1: is focused in one particular area. And then when it
11:46
Speaker 1: comes to these two you had mentioned the manipulation of
11:51
Speaker 1: the video, Well, how do you do that? Well? She
11:53
Speaker 1: had a camera that was set up in her bedroom
11:56
Speaker 1: where she would tape all of her sex acts. With
12:00
Speaker 1: mister Fitzgerald, and for whatever reason, she'd go back and
12:03
Speaker 1: review them. The sex life that they had had a
12:06
Speaker 1: level of violence to it. They were into bondage, they
12:10
Speaker 1: were into sado masochism, and maybe retrospectively, they would go
12:14
Speaker 1: back take a look at the videos and it would
12:18
Speaker 1: sexually excite them or arouse them, or whatever the case
12:20
Speaker 1: might be. So she apparently had whole catalog. You'd mentioned
12:25
Speaker 1: a relationship that had taken place over six month period.
12:29
Speaker 1: Just think about this for a second. You're with someone,
12:33
Speaker 1: for let's face it, a very short period of time,
12:37
Speaker 1: six months, and your situation has evolved or devolved to
12:43
Speaker 1: the point where you're engaged in dangerous behavior in the bedroom.
12:50
Speaker 1: I'd mentioned earlier she was famously into knife play. Now
12:54
Speaker 1: what does that mean. Well, knife play generally is where
12:59
Speaker 1: individuals will tie an individual up, and after they've tied
13:04
Speaker 1: them up, they'll take out an edged weapon, perhaps, and
13:09
Speaker 1: while they're in the midst of having sex, the blade
13:14
Speaker 1: is placed against the throat, or maybe it's placed just
13:17
Speaker 1: adjacent to the eye in a threatening manner, and this
13:22
Speaker 1: causes arousal. So this is being taped over and over
13:26
Speaker 1: and over again, and you really wonder, Dave, You really
13:29
Speaker 1: wonder what was it that, of all the times, out
13:34
Speaker 1: of all the times that they've engaged in this behavior
13:37
Speaker 1: over a six month period, what actually led her to
13:42
Speaker 1: cut his throat? Dave? When I smell bleach, I guess
14:03
Speaker 1: I could think of our laundry room here at home.
14:05
Speaker 1: But one of the things I always think of is
14:08
Speaker 1: the time that I spent working in the morgue. For
14:11
Speaker 1: all of those years. Bleach was central to what I
14:15
Speaker 1: would use in order to clean with. And that's after
14:19
Speaker 1: I'd applied detergent to the surrounding area to scrub things down,
14:24
Speaker 1: and then as a final kind of exclamation point on
14:28
Speaker 1: the morgue and kind of the finishing touches, I would
14:31
Speaker 1: wipe everything down with bleach. And that smell lingers, doesn't it.
14:36
Speaker 1: Can you imagine when the police show up at a
14:39
Speaker 1: scene and you have someone that is deceased, that smell
14:43
Speaker 1: of bleach hits you full force in the face. I
14:47
Speaker 1: would think that you would begin to wonder what has
14:50
Speaker 1: occurred in here.
14:51
Speaker 2: I'm telling you this is a freaky story that I've
14:54
Speaker 2: had trouble just getting past. But you said something a
14:57
Speaker 2: minute ago, and it kind of caught my attention and
15:00
Speaker 2: I'm throwing this out here for you because it is
15:02
Speaker 2: body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. I wonder if Shay
15:08
Speaker 2: Groves actually determined she was going to commit this murder
15:13
Speaker 2: before she ever met Frankie Fitzgerald. And the reason I
15:18
Speaker 2: say that is in six months time, she went from
15:20
Speaker 2: meeting in a pub to putting him in the ground.
15:23
Speaker 2: And we have her best friend saying that Shay Groves
15:29
Speaker 2: used these videotapes of sex in previous relationships. She used
15:34
Speaker 2: these videos of her having sex with boyfriends as a
15:37
Speaker 2: way to manipulate them. She used it for blackmail of
15:40
Speaker 2: previous boyfriends. So she was actively filming her sex acts
15:44
Speaker 2: for many months, maybe years, before she ever met Frankie Fitzgerald.
15:48
Speaker 2: Then brings him in and immediately they're down the sadomasochism
15:52
Speaker 2: path that included in writing that he Frankie was allowed
15:58
Speaker 2: to wake Shay up with violent sex. This is in
16:06
Speaker 2: writing in their contract. Okay, the pre planning that went
16:10
Speaker 2: in it was to actually be able to videotape this
16:13
Speaker 2: act taking place and then use it against him later
16:16
Speaker 2: on saying it was rape again. And I'm going back
16:18
Speaker 2: to this pre planning here did she actually find her
16:22
Speaker 2: victim after she decided I need these things, because again
16:25
Speaker 2: we've got a woman obsessed with serial killers, obsessed with murder,
16:29
Speaker 2: obsessed with the idea of killing somebody than she did.
16:34
Speaker 2: So you mentioned bleach that cover up as much a
16:38
Speaker 2: part of the murder as any part of the crime,
16:41
Speaker 2: because she knew she would be the suspect.
16:43
Speaker 1: Maybe you're right, Dave. Maybe she had thought about these
16:47
Speaker 1: things for so long where she had contemplated doing this,
16:52
Speaker 1: had kind of toyed around with it. As it turns out,
16:56
Speaker 1: she was thinking about how to get away with crimes
16:59
Speaker 1: based upon things that she had seen in true crime
17:03
Speaker 1: that she could certainly have videography, and as you'd mentioned,
17:07
Speaker 1: the fact that she presented as a piece of evidence
17:10
Speaker 1: if you will. There's no shame here, by the way, either.
17:14
Speaker 1: See look at this video that I've created, and you
17:17
Speaker 1: can see him clearly here being aggressive towards me sexually.
17:21
Speaker 1: He's attempting to rape me. I was in fear of
17:23
Speaker 1: my life and all of this sort of thing. So
17:25
Speaker 1: that takes some bit of planning to do, and not
17:28
Speaker 1: just the planning, but the execution of just that bit. There.
17:33
Speaker 1: She had also considered the idea that maybe after she
17:36
Speaker 1: perpetrates this horrible crime against mister Fitzgerald, that she's going
17:42
Speaker 1: to need bleach to clean up afterwards. You think about that,
17:45
Speaker 1: just for a second. What did she absorb from watching
17:49
Speaker 1: true crime documentaries perhaps or reading about the exploits of
17:54
Speaker 1: serial killers that, by the way, many of these individuals
17:58
Speaker 1: had gotten away with crimes for protracted period of time
18:02
Speaker 1: before they were ever caught. And here's one more I'll
18:06
Speaker 1: throw at you if you like that one. What if
18:08
Speaker 1: this was just going to be an attempt at killing
18:12
Speaker 1: for the first time, with maybe thoughts extending out into
18:16
Speaker 1: the future. If I can do it one time, maybe
18:19
Speaker 1: I can do it again. And she's got a child
18:22
Speaker 1: living in the house with her. Think about that. When
18:25
Speaker 1: you consider what this place is populated with, it's absolutely
18:31
Speaker 1: in totally pure evil. Day investigators walk into an environments
18:54
Speaker 1: that I've often made comments about we're always having to
19:01
Speaker 1: understand the abnormal in the context of the normal. And
19:07
Speaker 1: when I say this, this is not a battlefield, this
19:10
Speaker 1: is not a slaughterhouse. This is a home. Think about
19:14
Speaker 1: what home means, and then you look at what has
19:18
Speaker 1: occurred in this home and what occurs in so many
19:22
Speaker 1: other places that you're having to take the measure of
19:24
Speaker 1: as an investigator and trying to make sense of it all.
19:29
Speaker 1: When you see a young man whose life has just
19:33
Speaker 1: been drained out of him, literally, and you think about
19:38
Speaker 1: what has to occur? What was it that brought them
19:41
Speaker 1: to this point that such violence would be exacted upon
19:46
Speaker 1: someone like Frankie Fitzgerald.
19:49
Speaker 2: You mentioned a couple of things during the course of
19:51
Speaker 2: the program today, and one of those was knife play.
19:55
Speaker 2: We know that Jay Grose was obsessed with serial killers murder.
20:00
Speaker 2: She had gone down a path of darkness on the outside.
20:04
Speaker 2: The image she projected to the outside world was of
20:07
Speaker 2: a tatted up young woman with a lot of piercings,
20:11
Speaker 2: and they were not happy hollygo lightly type of piercings
20:15
Speaker 2: and tattoos. These were really dark. I'm really curious here
20:18
Speaker 2: because you mentioned knife play and the fact that Shay
20:23
Speaker 2: Groves actually killed Frankie Fitzgerald, her boyfriend air quotes in
20:29
Speaker 2: bed and everything I'm seeing is that she sliced his
20:33
Speaker 2: throat and stabbed him multiple times, like what twenty five
20:38
Speaker 2: to forty times? But there are multiple different knives here
20:42
Speaker 2: at play, four specific types of knives, but one was
20:45
Speaker 2: referred to as a dagger. Others were referred to as
20:48
Speaker 2: bladed cutlery. I'm looking at this going okay, help me understand,
20:53
Speaker 2: Joseph Scott Morgan, what we're actually dealing with here in
20:57
Speaker 2: terms of the knives and the actual act of slicing
21:01
Speaker 2: or punging.
21:02
Speaker 1: When you throw up the word dagger, it has a
21:05
Speaker 1: very Shakespearean ring to it because daggers were carried by
21:09
Speaker 1: people for their utility. It wasn't just merely an implement
21:14
Speaker 1: that was used to protect yourself with. The Romans used
21:19
Speaker 1: them famously to open oysters. They loved oysters, and they
21:23
Speaker 1: were used through time for any number of things. You
21:26
Speaker 1: could carve a meal with them. But what sets a
21:28
Speaker 1: dagger apart from say, other edged weapons, is that it's
21:33
Speaker 1: a double edged weapon. So it's not like you have
21:36
Speaker 1: this blunt spine. Think of any kind of knife that
21:40
Speaker 1: you take out of your drawer at home. Most knives
21:42
Speaker 1: that you have in a home are going to have
21:45
Speaker 1: this kind of blunt spine that runs away from the
21:47
Speaker 1: hilt and goes out to the tip and then tip
21:50
Speaker 1: curves back down onto the bladed surface. So you've got
21:53
Speaker 1: a sharp surface and you've got kind of a blunted surface.
21:56
Speaker 1: When you look at a single edged knife wound compared
22:04
Speaker 1: to a double edged wound, it is completely different. Some
22:10
Speaker 1: people refer to it as the winking eye. A single
22:14
Speaker 1: edged weapon, when you take a look at it at first,
22:18
Speaker 1: it has a sharp edge or point. It comes to
22:22
Speaker 1: a very acute point on one side, and then the
22:24
Speaker 1: other side is kind of blunted looking. When you look
22:27
Speaker 1: at it close enough, you begin to see an eye. Conversely,
22:31
Speaker 1: when you take a look at a double edged weapon,
22:34
Speaker 1: such as a dagger, it's going to have two distinct
22:37
Speaker 1: acute points on either side of it. How these things
22:41
Speaker 1: are going to appear is going to be dependent upon
22:45
Speaker 1: where you are stabbed. We have contour lines that run
22:49
Speaker 1: all over the course of our skin throughout our body.
22:52
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, when physicians learn how to
22:55
Speaker 1: conduct even minor surgery, they're taught about something called the
22:59
Speaker 1: lines of languor. And lines of Langer are these contour
23:02
Speaker 1: lines that run throughout our body, and they have to
23:05
Speaker 1: do with the tension of the skin and how we're
23:07
Speaker 1: kind of constructed. And if you go opposing to the
23:12
Speaker 1: lines of Langer, you get these really nasty looking cuts
23:16
Speaker 1: that are open and gaping. It doesn't mean the weapon
23:19
Speaker 1: was any larger than say, where they're not as gaping.
23:23
Speaker 1: It's just that you've gone across the grain, if you will,
23:26
Speaker 1: and so it opens up. So with surgeons, when they
23:29
Speaker 1: make an incision into someone, they follow the line of langer,
23:33
Speaker 1: and if they do this, then you're not going to
23:36
Speaker 1: have as nasty a scar. If they go against the grain,
23:40
Speaker 1: that opens up in this very horrific kind of way.
23:44
Speaker 1: When you're reading these wounds, you have to be very
23:46
Speaker 1: very careful. Actually in the more One of the things
23:48
Speaker 1: that we'll do sometimes is you've heard of us doing
23:50
Speaker 1: tape lifts, where we're lifting fragile evidence, trace evidence, this
23:54
Speaker 1: sort of thing. What we will do many times is
23:58
Speaker 1: we've got one of these big gaping wounds, we'll actually
24:00
Speaker 1: take scotch tape after we've cleaned the wound, and will
24:04
Speaker 1: place the scotch tape over both sides of the wound
24:09
Speaker 1: and draw it together so that we can get an
24:11
Speaker 1: idea of the orientation of the wound, because if it's
24:14
Speaker 1: gone across the grain, you might not be able to
24:17
Speaker 1: appreciate it as it had insulted the body. Initially, so
24:21
Speaker 1: you have to be mindful of that. When you're in
24:23
Speaker 1: the morgue, you take a look at all of these
24:25
Speaker 1: things and it gives you ideas to the orientation. Now,
24:28
Speaker 1: what we have here in this case with Frankie Fitzgerald
24:31
Speaker 1: is that his throat was in fact cut. And I
24:35
Speaker 1: find it interesting their language is a bit different than ours.
24:39
Speaker 1: In the court documents when you begin to read about
24:41
Speaker 1: this case, they state that he had a catastrophic loss
24:44
Speaker 1: of blood. That's such a very British thing to say.
24:47
Speaker 1: Here in the US we would say, well, he bled
24:49
Speaker 1: to death. They're saying it was a catastrophic loss of blood,
24:53
Speaker 1: and in medical terminology we would say that he exanguinated,
24:58
Speaker 1: which means the volume of blood that he lost was
25:00
Speaker 1: incompatible with life. That's what it came down to, is.
25:03
Speaker 2: That because of the throat slash, meaning the other stab wounds.
25:07
Speaker 1: Perhaps that's a good point. It is a cataclysmic event
25:12
Speaker 1: from a physiological standpoint, when you've got this knife being
25:16
Speaker 1: plunged into him. Now he's obviously in a very submissive
25:21
Speaker 1: position when this has occurred. You have to imagine that
25:24
Speaker 1: she's on top of him. The question you would want
25:27
Speaker 1: to ask is how do you perpetrate this many insults
25:30
Speaker 1: to his body? Was he restrained in some way or
25:33
Speaker 1: was he drugged? Or how did he get into this
25:35
Speaker 1: position where he could not fend her off? That's an
25:39
Speaker 1: important question here, I think, and it goes to the
25:42
Speaker 1: lifestyle that they were engaging in. You have submissives and
25:46
Speaker 1: you have dominance. They lived by this ethos of bondage
25:51
Speaker 1: and sado masochism and these sorts of things. So was
25:55
Speaker 1: he in a submissive position? Did he see this on
25:57
Speaker 1: his horizon? Was he submitting to her when this happened.
26:01
Speaker 1: When you go back and you look at the injuries,
26:04
Speaker 1: in order to assess these injuries, you would have to
26:08
Speaker 1: take each one one by one and consider the location anatomically.
26:13
Speaker 1: Are they in the middle line of the chest or
26:15
Speaker 1: in the side of the chest? Also, are any of
26:18
Speaker 1: these post mortem? And that's a big factor here, Dave,
26:23
Speaker 1: because if she's into knife play and she's into serial killers.
26:28
Speaker 1: Some of the hallmarks of serial killers, not every one
26:31
Speaker 1: of them, obviously, but many of them is what will
26:35
Speaker 1: they do with bodies after they're deceased. Well, sometimes there's
26:41
Speaker 1: a further attempt to disfigure the body or to abuse
26:44
Speaker 1: a body, So you would want to take the measure
26:46
Speaker 1: of that to try to understand is there hemorrhage in
26:50
Speaker 1: all of these wounds? Are all of these in the
26:54
Speaker 1: throes of death what we refer to the Perry mortem state.
26:58
Speaker 1: You have this initial area where he was attacked. How
27:00
Speaker 1: much blood was associated with this? We'd mentioned the throat
27:04
Speaker 1: being cut, So if you're bleeding out through this insult
27:07
Speaker 1: to the throat, which most of these that you see
27:10
Speaker 1: are wide and gaping, and again that goes to these
27:13
Speaker 1: contour lines that I'd mentioned in the body. If you're
27:16
Speaker 1: cutting across the grain, the throat will open up significantly,
27:19
Speaker 1: because people can have their throat cut without it being fatal.
27:22
Speaker 1: But if you get into the area where you're down
27:25
Speaker 1: into these vessels where you're thinking about, particularly the carotids,
27:30
Speaker 1: you're down that deep, which is a couple of centimeters
27:33
Speaker 1: below the surface of the skin, and then you go
27:35
Speaker 1: across the trachea, which, for lack of a better term,
27:38
Speaker 1: is the wind pipe. There's things that we can look for, say,
27:41
Speaker 1: for instance, in the lungs, well, if the throat is cut,
27:44
Speaker 1: you're still breathing, perhaps or attempting to breathe you're gasping.
27:49
Speaker 1: Guess what you're gonna find down in the airway. You're
27:51
Speaker 1: gonna find blood, And sometimes you will find blood within
27:56
Speaker 1: the lungs, depending upon how long the individual. And I'm
27:59
Speaker 1: not talking about where we have what's referred to as
28:01
Speaker 1: plural effusion, where the chest cavity is filled with blood
28:05
Speaker 1: and the lungs are floating in it. That's not what
28:07
Speaker 1: I'm saying. I'm talking about when there's an insult to
28:10
Speaker 1: the airway and people actually aspirate blood where they draw
28:15
Speaker 1: it in when they're taking in their breath, and it
28:17
Speaker 1: just kind of goes back into the lungs and you
28:19
Speaker 1: can find it when the lungs are dissected. That's kind
28:22
Speaker 1: of fascinating too. And all of this goes to time,
28:24
Speaker 1: doesn't it. You begin to think about how much time
28:27
Speaker 1: did this take? How much time did she spend with him?
28:31
Speaker 1: Was it a torture event? Because knives have been used
28:35
Speaker 1: over the ages to torment and to terrorize people. Think
28:39
Speaker 1: back to what our initial premise was with her, where
28:42
Speaker 1: she has stated openly that they engaged in quote unquote
28:45
Speaker 1: knife play. Was she ultimately living out a fantasy here
28:50
Speaker 1: that of course wound up in the death of Frankie Fitzgerald.
28:58
Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body Backs