Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan : The Smell of Death, Part Two

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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan : The Smell of Death, Part Two · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:01
Speaker 1: Quality times with Joseph Scott More Unlike notifying families, which
0:07
Speaker 1: I never got used to, the last one was just
0:10
Speaker 1: as bad as the first one. I can't say that
0:13
Speaker 1: about decomposition. It impacted me. It affected me, but I could,
0:20
Speaker 1: I could explain it to myself. And is not the
0:24
Speaker 1: key I think with anything in life, if you're if
0:27
Speaker 1: you're capable of being able to rationalize it and say, Okay,
0:32
Speaker 1: this is what nature does to all of us. It
0:36
Speaker 1: is those elements that are left behind. I think that
0:42
Speaker 1: the real piece to this that we have to hang
0:45
Speaker 1: on to and try to understand as practitioners and people
0:50
Speaker 1: that are into true crime are the practitioners that are
0:57
Speaker 1: working these cases. Have they paid attention to detail even
1:03
Speaker 1: in the most austere circumstances. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and
1:09
Speaker 1: this is body backs on a timeline when it comes
1:15
Speaker 1: to decomposition. Dave, You're you're really what we've discussed at
1:20
Speaker 1: this point. You're really only at this earlier stage. You
1:25
Speaker 1: know where we've got. You know, we talked about blebs,
1:28
Speaker 1: these pockets that appear on the skin. We've got skin
1:31
Speaker 1: sloughing that takes place. It's skin slippage and sloughing, so
1:35
Speaker 1: the skin will slough off, but it's easily just kind
1:39
Speaker 1: of peeled away as well.
1:41
Speaker 2: Let me ask you about that you said when you
1:43
Speaker 2: were talking about slippage, and you you were actually talking
1:47
Speaker 2: to me one time about how you had to actually
1:51
Speaker 2: to get fingerprints, yes from an individual, so you could
1:54
Speaker 2: identify them. That you actually had to use that skin
1:58
Speaker 2: slippage to your advance in trying to identify the person.
2:04
Speaker 2: How does that even have How can you actually get
2:06
Speaker 2: so loose on the top layer there this so then
2:10
Speaker 2: that you could actually utilize that in a way.
2:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of folks ask me about this, and
2:16
Speaker 1: I've done it. There's a lot of people have done
2:19
Speaker 1: I'm not some kind of original here, all right, So
2:22
Speaker 1: I'm not breaking new ground. This has been done for
2:25
Speaker 1: years and years. But people I think that people in
2:27
Speaker 1: the general public can't believe that we do this, but
2:31
Speaker 1: we do. And this is referred to specifically as you're
2:35
Speaker 1: talking about the hands, This is what we refer to
2:38
Speaker 1: as de gloving. Now you'll hear trauma surgeons, particularly with
2:43
Speaker 1: people that have been drug behind cars and roll over
2:47
Speaker 1: injuries and all that. You'll you'll they'll talk about the
2:49
Speaker 1: de gloving of the skin, that sort of thing, but
2:51
Speaker 1: degloving as it applies in this context with decomposition, the
2:58
Speaker 1: skin around the hand, even down to the dermous, will
3:01
Speaker 1: get so loose that we can actually, if you look
3:05
Speaker 1: at the heel of your hand, that where your wrist
3:11
Speaker 1: joins into the heel of your hand, and then on
3:14
Speaker 1: the the dorsum of your hand, the back side of
3:18
Speaker 1: your hand as well, you can actually take that glove
3:22
Speaker 1: of skin and gently peel the whole thing off, and
3:26
Speaker 1: it's going to come off inside out. Really creepy. About
3:31
Speaker 1: the creepy thing if that's not creepy enough for me.
3:34
Speaker 1: That I always had a real hard time with is
3:36
Speaker 1: that the fingernails come off with it. Okay, And so
3:40
Speaker 1: the first time you do it, it's one of these
3:42
Speaker 1: things that it's so difficult to get past. But the
3:47
Speaker 1: purpose of this is that that skin is so fragile,
3:50
Speaker 1: and you don't know who the person is you want
3:53
Speaker 1: to try to roll a print. So what we will
3:57
Speaker 1: do is we will put a surgical glove on our
3:59
Speaker 1: own hand. Okay, then we will take the de gloved,
4:03
Speaker 1: those degloved layers off of the decedent's hand and then
4:06
Speaker 1: place them over our hand, and so our hand is
4:10
Speaker 1: like in a latex glove. Then that latex glove containing
4:14
Speaker 1: our hand is inserted into the degloved hand of the decedent,
4:18
Speaker 1: and we can actually roll a print and be more
4:22
Speaker 1: gentle with it. Say, because you use what are called spoons,
4:26
Speaker 1: use post mortem spoons that are constructed specifically to get
4:33
Speaker 1: a print off of a dead body. But the skin
4:36
Speaker 1: is so fragile you have to be very very careful
4:39
Speaker 1: with it. A spoon would not normally work in this
4:42
Speaker 1: particular instance. So and you're also fighting dehydration with this,
4:47
Speaker 1: or what's referred to as desiccation, So you have to
4:50
Speaker 1: be very careful. And I've met every time i've done it,
4:56
Speaker 1: I've met with great success in rolling the print. And
4:59
Speaker 1: just imagine, you know, you see somebody going to the
5:02
Speaker 1: lock up and you have to roll, you know, or
5:04
Speaker 1: maybe if you've ever been fingerprinted for a job, you
5:07
Speaker 1: have to roll your print, all right, And so that's
5:10
Speaker 1: that's what we would do, and it's it's one of
5:14
Speaker 1: those things that has developed over the years in order
5:20
Speaker 1: for us to well. First off, when you're talking about
5:24
Speaker 1: decomposing body, the question you have to ask is why
5:27
Speaker 1: are they decomposing? Why hasn't nobody found this person? And
5:32
Speaker 1: many times with advanced decomposition, you're talking about somebody that
5:38
Speaker 1: they're un they're unknown, they're unidentified. And I was just
5:42
Speaker 1: literally lecturing about this today at Jacksonville State in my
5:47
Speaker 1: in my Clandestine Graves class that I teach. If you
5:50
Speaker 1: don't know the ID of a of a person, you
5:56
Speaker 1: can learn as much as you possibly can through examination
6:00
Speaker 1: about the trauma they've sustained and all these sort of things,
6:03
Speaker 1: and you can look at that person and say, yeah,
6:05
Speaker 1: they met the end. They met their end at the
6:07
Speaker 1: hand of another, which is the definition of homicide. But still,
6:13
Speaker 1: if you're working homicide, it's that knowledge is worth nothing
6:19
Speaker 1: if you don't know who the person is, because the
6:23
Speaker 1: genesis of an investigation is to find out who the
6:25
Speaker 1: person is, Who did they roll with, who did they
6:29
Speaker 1: associate with, who are their family members? Where were they
6:31
Speaker 1: last seen, when were they last contacted? And all of
6:35
Speaker 1: this plays into this big cycle. So it's so important
6:38
Speaker 1: for us to get these bodies identified. That's why you know,
6:40
Speaker 1: I say that, you know, with decomposed bodies, you have
6:45
Speaker 1: to be willing to you know, screw yourself to the floor,
6:49
Speaker 1: and as offensive as it is to you and as
6:51
Speaker 1: insulting as it is, you do your job. That's why
6:56
Speaker 1: I always find it laughable if I ever, like if
6:59
Speaker 1: Silence of Lamb is on TV, and there's the one
7:03
Speaker 1: scene in the movie where Jodie Foster and they're in
7:05
Speaker 1: the funeral home when they're putting fixed vapor rub beneath
7:08
Speaker 1: their nose, and these FBI agents are actually doing the
7:14
Speaker 1: work of forensic anth forensic pathologists, which is ridiculous us
7:21
Speaker 1: they do, yeah, right, And you know the problem with
7:25
Speaker 1: that is people ask, how do you get used to it? Well,
7:29
Speaker 1: you get used to it by intoelling the space. You
7:32
Speaker 1: don't fight against it. Did you know, Dave, When I
7:34
Speaker 1: was a very young investigator, there were still pardon me,
7:39
Speaker 1: there were still detectives that would show up at crime
7:44
Speaker 1: scenes that would have the biggest, nastiest, cheap cigars that
7:50
Speaker 1: they possibly could buy and just listen to this, and
7:54
Speaker 1: they would light these cigars on the scene and smoke
7:59
Speaker 1: on the scene of decomposing body. And so you know,
8:02
Speaker 1: you're sitting there and you know, I have an affinity
8:04
Speaker 1: for a good cigar. I like a good cigar It's
8:07
Speaker 1: something I don't do it every day, but it's something
8:10
Speaker 1: I derive great pleasure from when I have an opportunity.
8:13
Speaker 1: So not only are you showing the fact that you're
8:19
Speaker 1: completely uneducated when it comes to trace evidence I've seen
8:23
Speaker 1: because you're walking in with a lit cigar, you're displaying
8:26
Speaker 1: that you have horrible taste in cigars, and so you're
8:29
Speaker 1: subjecting us not only to DCOMP, but you're subjecting us
8:33
Speaker 1: to the smell of the cigar or in the case
8:35
Speaker 1: the silence of lambs thing where you're putting vix vapor
8:37
Speaker 1: rub up your nose. So now you have to smell
8:41
Speaker 1: DCOMP because you cannot defeat DCOMP. I don't care what
8:44
Speaker 1: you do, You're going to have to spell DCOMP compounded
8:49
Speaker 1: with vix vapor rub. I don't know from childhood. Vix
8:53
Speaker 1: vapor rub is a comforting thing, all right, but it's
8:56
Speaker 1: not two things I necessarily want associated. The idea is
8:59
Speaker 1: that you just have to adjust to it, you understand.
9:02
Speaker 1: That's why I always say that it's a natural process.
9:06
Speaker 1: So when we're doing these examinations on the body at
9:10
Speaker 1: the scene, we have to the best way we can continue,
9:16
Speaker 1: you know, down the road because it extends most of
9:19
Speaker 1: these cases that we get there, they're going to extend,
9:22
Speaker 1: you know, way past blebs and skin slippage and purging
9:27
Speaker 1: and all of that stuff. You know, we got into
9:29
Speaker 1: the woods and if you find a body out there,
9:32
Speaker 1: you're talking an individual that maybe laying out in the
9:37
Speaker 1: woods unclothed, and their skin now has gone from a
9:43
Speaker 1: greenish discoloration to almost a black to brown sometimes. And
9:51
Speaker 1: the only way I can really describe it is the
9:53
Speaker 1: skin has a leather like quality and this goes to
10:00
Speaker 1: hydration or desiccation of the skin. Now you'll get desiccation
10:04
Speaker 1: or the drying of the fingertips. That that occurs kind
10:07
Speaker 1: of early on, you know, maybe in the realm of
10:10
Speaker 1: I don't know, four to five days, and it's like
10:14
Speaker 1: you know, when you're little and mom, you know, is
10:17
Speaker 1: looking at your fingers. You've been in the pool too long.
10:19
Speaker 1: Your you know, your fingers are like prunes. It kind
10:22
Speaker 1: of looks like that, you know, they kind of prune
10:24
Speaker 1: up like that. But when you get the entirety of
10:26
Speaker 1: the body that has become dehydrated, now you're in to
10:31
Speaker 1: another realm at this point in time, and you can
10:34
Speaker 1: appreciate it because the skin and a lot of this
10:37
Speaker 1: is dependent upon where you are in the country, Like,
10:43
Speaker 1: for instance, if you're out in the desert Southwest, it
10:45
Speaker 1: has very vegas, that area of Phoenix very low humidity.
10:50
Speaker 1: Are you know, back in California, particularly the desert area
10:55
Speaker 1: very little humidity. So any water that is contained with
11:00
Speaker 1: I don't care if it's a human or if it's
11:03
Speaker 1: any other you know, item that might be that there
11:06
Speaker 1: can take. It's going to evaporate, it's going to go away.
11:09
Speaker 1: And sometimes you'll catch that here in the Deep South,
11:13
Speaker 1: you can catch it in cold temperatures. The cold leads
11:16
Speaker 1: to dehydration many times with human remains, and the skin
11:19
Speaker 1: almost takes on a leather like quality. And you're you're
11:22
Speaker 1: talking and again remember we're going down this linear timeline.
11:29
Speaker 1: We we cannot narrow it down anymore than say with
11:34
Speaker 1: desiccation days to weeks. You see, the further out you move,
11:39
Speaker 1: the broader this estimation becomes okay. So it's it becomes
11:46
Speaker 1: progressively more difficult. And that's one of the big big questions.
11:50
Speaker 1: Like I said earlier, that our friends in law enforcement,
11:53
Speaker 1: they're going to ask the people in forensics, specifically forensic pathology, medical, legal,
11:59
Speaker 1: death investigating? How long?
12:01
Speaker 2: Doc?
12:01
Speaker 1: How long? How long? Well? The best I can give
12:04
Speaker 1: you at this point, because the body is dehydrated laying
12:09
Speaker 1: out here in the open. Weeks maybe, wow, how many weeks?
12:17
Speaker 1: I have no idea. I know that it's longer than
12:20
Speaker 1: a week. It has been multiple weeks more than likely.
12:24
Speaker 1: Maybe we're looking at a couple of months with any
12:41
Speaker 1: other thing in life. You know, longer you you know,
12:43
Speaker 1: you wait, the less clear things are going to be.
12:47
Speaker 2: But now, how is this that you're talking about decomposition?
12:49
Speaker 2: But what happens when somebody dies and they go to
12:51
Speaker 2: the funeral home? Is it the embalming that prevents the
12:55
Speaker 2: body from going through all of these things?
12:57
Speaker 1: Again, we're talking about the yeah, yeah, I'm sorry, I
13:00
Speaker 1: mean step on you there. It's no, it's it uh
13:03
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, funeral workers do a fine job
13:06
Speaker 1: of preserving the body right when that can infuse the body.
13:11
Speaker 1: But here's the rub. And this is just a cold
13:15
Speaker 1: hard fact. If you're you know, people can have closed
13:19
Speaker 1: caskets because of trauma, but there are many times decomposition
13:24
Speaker 1: happens with greater frequency. Then people realize it's like everything
13:30
Speaker 1: and death investigation. People are not aware. You know. I
13:32
Speaker 1: told you the story about my wife when we went
13:36
Speaker 1: on our first date, and she's like, I never thought
13:38
Speaker 1: about death until I met you. Most people don't think
13:42
Speaker 1: about think about death like this, and they don't, you know,
13:48
Speaker 1: many times they have closed caskets because there's nothing. There's
13:53
Speaker 1: nothing that the funeral workers can do, because once you
13:57
Speaker 1: start down this road with decomposition, if it has hasn't
14:00
Speaker 1: been stopped, then there's no going back at that point
14:04
Speaker 1: in time. And some people prefer to have a close casket.
14:08
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I'm just saying this is one
14:10
Speaker 1: of the reasons that this might might occur. So for
14:16
Speaker 1: people that work in the mortuary science is they do
14:19
Speaker 1: a fantastic job considering what they're having to do, but
14:23
Speaker 1: they have to get these bodies early. This is not
14:26
Speaker 1: something if you're a month down the road, you can
14:29
Speaker 1: forget it. It's not going to work. There's no magic
14:32
Speaker 1: that they can really and I'm sure I'll get some
14:34
Speaker 1: pushback on that. I don't care, you know, It's just
14:39
Speaker 1: it's the reality of biological change, and so you know,
14:46
Speaker 1: you have a body that is in this state. The
14:50
Speaker 1: big question I have as an investigator always comes back
14:53
Speaker 1: and this always rings true in my ears with decomposing remains.
14:57
Speaker 1: Why is this person decomposing and and he said, well, Morgan,
15:01
Speaker 1: you just said it's because of science. Now that's not
15:03
Speaker 1: the question I'm asking. What about this person has left
15:08
Speaker 1: them in the state to where no one is aware
15:11
Speaker 1: of them, and they have been left alone this long.
15:14
Speaker 1: Now that is a salient question when it comes to
15:17
Speaker 1: an investigation, why are they missing? Or a bigger question
15:22
Speaker 1: is no one missing them? Okay? You know our working
15:26
Speaker 1: premise that we've talked about before and I talked to
15:29
Speaker 1: my students about is that every death is a homicide
15:33
Speaker 1: until proven otherwise. You have to live by that rule.
15:38
Speaker 1: So when you're looking at a body that is desiccated,
15:42
Speaker 1: once you begin to get past that point and they
15:46
Speaker 1: are under the right conditions, Dave, you will actually have
15:50
Speaker 1: a process of natural mummification that will take place with
15:54
Speaker 1: a body. People don't think about that most of the time,
15:58
Speaker 1: with bodies that are are in the state where they
16:04
Speaker 1: can naturally mummify. You know, we think about mummies from
16:09
Speaker 1: the perspective of ancient Egypt and even even those that
16:15
Speaker 1: lived in higher elevations, and I urge anybody out there
16:18
Speaker 1: that's fascinated by burial practices and this sort of thing,
16:21
Speaker 1: take a look at these at these cases that have
16:26
Speaker 1: taken place that they've recovered these bodies out in Peru
16:29
Speaker 1: at those high plateau elevations where there's literally no humidity
16:33
Speaker 1: and you've got bodies there that have been dead for
16:36
Speaker 1: hundreds and hundreds of years and they're perfectly preserved. It's
16:39
Speaker 1: an amazing thing. The environment dictated that. But we can
16:44
Speaker 1: actually have mumpification that takes place without a body being
16:50
Speaker 1: treated in a specific way, like you're not introducing chemicals,
16:54
Speaker 1: you know, like the ancients did. But once you get
16:58
Speaker 1: past this mum of care, if the and you're not
17:01
Speaker 1: always going to get it, you'll go from a wet
17:03
Speaker 1: decomposition to skeletonization. I was going to ask you, jump, Yeah.
17:10
Speaker 2: How do you miss that? How do you go from
17:12
Speaker 2: okay dead, I've gone through all the process and now yeah,
17:17
Speaker 2: somebody's going to be a mummy and another's going to
17:19
Speaker 2: be a skeleton. Yeah, how does that match up.
17:22
Speaker 1: Well with mumification that goes to relative humidity? You know,
17:26
Speaker 1: what kind of levels of humidity are you experiencing in
17:30
Speaker 1: that environment? And most of the time with a body
17:35
Speaker 1: that has quote unquote mummified. I really don't like that term,
17:39
Speaker 1: but it's the term that's commonly used. You're going to
17:44
Speaker 1: have ideal conditions, ideal environmental biological conditions where they're protected,
17:50
Speaker 1: they're in a protected space, they are in an environment
17:57
Speaker 1: generally in a house closed up, where you're not going
18:01
Speaker 1: to have access first off, to any scavengers that's that
18:05
Speaker 1: can't play into it. You'll see a progression many times
18:10
Speaker 1: of flying insects, particularly blowflies, that we'll set on the body.
18:17
Speaker 1: And you know, one of the things that entomologists do,
18:19
Speaker 1: those that study bugs, they'll go through several life cycles,
18:23
Speaker 1: you know, and then there's in insects are fascinating and
18:26
Speaker 1: we could do an entire episode, we could do an
18:28
Speaker 1: entire month of episodes on entomology. But they have a
18:34
Speaker 1: they have a natural order that they like, you have
18:36
Speaker 1: certain insects that will not be present and will not
18:39
Speaker 1: be present if there is another species present. They have
18:43
Speaker 1: an order that they go in like you're not going
18:45
Speaker 1: to find a blowfly in the presence of a dung
18:49
Speaker 1: beetle there, And it's just this order that occurs in nature,
18:55
Speaker 1: you know, and again that brings us back to bodies
18:57
Speaker 1: beginning to break down. You know, when we get to
19:00
Speaker 1: the point where we have bodies that are either totally
19:03
Speaker 1: skeletonized or partially skeletonized, you know, you're you're looking at
19:08
Speaker 1: a baseline of months at that point in time. And
19:11
Speaker 1: again that that factor of time that comes in here.
19:16
Speaker 1: How have they gone this long in this location? What
19:19
Speaker 1: is it? Did this person separate themselves from the rest
19:22
Speaker 1: of the population or did they live, you know, almost
19:26
Speaker 1: a hermit like life where they didn't have contact with
19:30
Speaker 1: anybody and they're just kind of locked up in their home.
19:33
Speaker 1: And suddenly, you know, somebody says, hey, I haven't seen
19:35
Speaker 1: this individual in a while, and they do a welfare checking.
19:38
Speaker 1: You walk into the house. It's got a foul odor,
19:40
Speaker 1: kind of musty. At this point, it's not quite as pungent,
19:44
Speaker 1: and you have skeletal remains that are there, and it's
19:47
Speaker 1: quite striking, you know, to see this and out in
19:50
Speaker 1: the woods. You know, we've covered on several shows where
19:56
Speaker 1: I talk about scavenger activity and you know, skeletal remains
19:59
Speaker 1: are scattered to the wind, you know, dependent upon what
20:02
Speaker 1: species are around. You know, you have raccoons, and possums
20:05
Speaker 1: that will you know, and dogs that will carry you know,
20:09
Speaker 1: various elements away, and bodies are not completely intact. It's
20:13
Speaker 1: it's a real rarity when you go out to and
20:18
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to be a clandestine burial. A matter
20:20
Speaker 1: of fact, you're a little bit protected if there is
20:22
Speaker 1: a burial. But if you just have a surface deposition
20:26
Speaker 1: of remains that are skeletonized, you're not going to find
20:29
Speaker 1: all the elements. I mean, you're not. It's not going
20:32
Speaker 1: to happen because you can't. You can't. You can't stem
20:39
Speaker 1: the tide of nature, you know, everything that revolves around this,
20:42
Speaker 1: whether it's it's you know, smaller animals or larger animals
20:47
Speaker 1: that are coming in or or you know, any domesticated
20:52
Speaker 1: animal that's in there, pigs rooting about or dogs you
20:55
Speaker 1: know that might have come from a neighbor's house over there.
20:59
Speaker 1: They you know, and isn't that interesting? You know that
21:02
Speaker 1: that smell that for us we find so repugnant for
21:07
Speaker 1: us as a species. I think this comes from higher
21:10
Speaker 1: level thinking. Perhaps we're not drawn to that. We might
21:14
Speaker 1: draw we might be drawn to it to inspect it,
21:16
Speaker 1: to see what it is, and then suddenly retract and
21:19
Speaker 1: run away from it or go call the authorities. That's
21:22
Speaker 1: not what animals do. They get a whiff of something
21:24
Speaker 1: like this and they're on it. I mean, they're heading
21:27
Speaker 1: in that direction and they are not leaving and and
21:32
Speaker 1: you know, but that's that's a natural course of things.
21:35
Speaker 2: So nasty environments come from you know.
21:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and and that's that's the nature you know,
21:40
Speaker 1: these sorts of things with when it comes to decomposing bodies.
21:45
Speaker 1: And that's that's essential, uh, for any of us that
21:49
Speaker 1: are out in the field. You have to do all
21:50
Speaker 1: of that in your calculations about what you're looking for, uh,
21:54
Speaker 1: what remnant, what remains, what is not there? You have
21:57
Speaker 1: to take stock essentially. That's why you have to have
22:01
Speaker 1: some baseline understanding in my field of you need to
22:04
Speaker 1: be pretty solid antomically, you know, you need to be
22:07
Speaker 1: able to understand what elements are missing from the body
22:10
Speaker 1: that have to be accounted for or you have to
22:13
Speaker 1: explain it or you have to you want to walk
22:16
Speaker 1: that perimeter and look and see if there are you know,
22:20
Speaker 1: maybe some of the elements of the hands or the ankles,
22:23
Speaker 1: or are ribs that are missing. Because animals will take
22:26
Speaker 1: away ribs. They'd love to do that and to get
22:29
Speaker 1: the protein out of So you're fighting this fight, and
22:48
Speaker 1: I guess for me it was as an investigator, it
22:56
Speaker 1: was very pug nut.
23:03
Speaker 2: How do these two relate, you know, where you're going
23:06
Speaker 2: from like a biohazard clean up, you know situation, and
23:11
Speaker 2: you we were just mentioning it about how like in
23:14
Speaker 2: a landfill where it's constantly breaking down, everything there is
23:18
Speaker 2: in a breakdown mode, right, which never occurred to me.
23:24
Speaker 2: You know, we've had a number of we've had a
23:28
Speaker 2: number of cases where men and women of law enforcement
23:32
Speaker 2: had to go to a trash dump to try to
23:35
Speaker 2: find a human being who had been thrown away like trash.
23:39
Speaker 2: It never occurred to me until you explained it how
23:42
Speaker 2: difficult that is. And well, we're talking about that breaking
23:48
Speaker 2: down to the individual when you get to you know,
23:51
Speaker 2: the active decay of stage three leading into stage four?
23:56
Speaker 2: How is it is it possible that bones skeleton actually
24:01
Speaker 2: does break down or yeah, what happens?
24:07
Speaker 1: Well, you know, over let's let's there's a couple of
24:10
Speaker 1: ways that that bone does in fact begin to structurally
24:16
Speaker 1: it's compromised as a matter of fact, just just to
24:19
Speaker 1: paint you the picture of first off bone. Obviously it
24:21
Speaker 1: is very resilient. You know, we have skeletal remains going
24:26
Speaker 1: back eons. You know that are Fla did the.
24:28
Speaker 2: Show about it, you know remember a couple of then
24:30
Speaker 2: it was like, I thought you were kidding with me
24:32
Speaker 2: when you told me we're going to do the show.
24:33
Speaker 2: And it's like the five three year old bones.
24:35
Speaker 1: The rich Yeah, and and and look it's still with
24:40
Speaker 1: Richard's King Richards uh remains. Uh, You're able to appreciate
24:45
Speaker 1: all you You're able to appreciate his fatal trauma. Yeah,
24:49
Speaker 1: going all that back, and a lot of it is
24:51
Speaker 1: heavily dependent upon the soil composition obviously, where they are
24:56
Speaker 1: found and what elements within the soil, and the soil
25:01
Speaker 1: is a soil more acidic or is it more base
25:05
Speaker 1: for instance, And over a period of time, then you
25:08
Speaker 1: have hydrology that plays into it, the flow of water
25:12
Speaker 1: impacting the bone. So you have to have literally the
25:17
Speaker 1: perfect the perfect set of circumstances for an entombement, perhaps
25:25
Speaker 1: where a body will be bony structures will still be
25:30
Speaker 1: resilient over period of time. I was actually involved in
25:35
Speaker 1: the recovery of a Confederate soldier's skeletal remains that had
25:41
Speaker 1: quickly been buried by his comrades following the Battle of
25:46
Speaker 1: Ringold Gap in Georgia, and this young man had died.
25:50
Speaker 1: We estimated he was probably about eighteen years old. He
25:53
Speaker 1: had been shot in the back of the head with
25:56
Speaker 1: what appeared to be consistent The defect in the back
25:59
Speaker 1: of this head would have been consistent with a fifty
26:01
Speaker 1: four caliber springfield, which is what the Union troops used.
26:05
Speaker 1: His buddies essentially put him in a depressed area in
26:08
Speaker 1: the ground and just pushed dirt over him. And we
26:12
Speaker 1: recovered his body. And interestingly enough, there was a tiny
26:16
Speaker 1: little when we found him, and this could have been catastrophic,
26:20
Speaker 1: but there was somehow an acorn had rolled into the
26:24
Speaker 1: bullet hole and a tiny little oak tree was sprouting up.
26:29
Speaker 1: Now this is let's see, this would have been let's
26:35
Speaker 1: see sixty It would have been well in excess of
26:41
Speaker 1: one hundred years after he had been dropped there the
26:44
Speaker 1: Battle of ringo Old Gap, I think was in eighteen
26:47
Speaker 1: sixty four. Dave's teeth were pristine, beautifully white. He didn't
26:55
Speaker 1: have like carry stentition or anything like you think of
26:58
Speaker 1: from back then with rotted teeth is very young. We estimated.
27:01
Speaker 1: I was with a forensic anthropologist. Now many of the
27:05
Speaker 1: bones were missing. We didn't have all the components, but
27:07
Speaker 1: the key one was there relative to his head. His
27:10
Speaker 1: teeth were all intact. But yet I've seen cases where
27:14
Speaker 1: particularly if bone is compromised to the point where it's
27:17
Speaker 1: broken down, maybe there was a dismemberment, and that core,
27:21
Speaker 1: the marrow of the bone has been so compromised that
27:24
Speaker 1: it's a shell of what it had been, and that
27:27
Speaker 1: you know, that would lead to the bone being compromised
27:31
Speaker 1: structurally where you know, it's just not it's not going
27:34
Speaker 1: to be as robust and it's not going to exist
27:40
Speaker 1: as long as say something that was encapsulated in an area.
27:44
Speaker 1: You take King Richard the Third's body and let's face it, Dave,
27:49
Speaker 1: he was buried inside of a church, an old church,
27:54
Speaker 1: an abandoned church, but still a church nonetheless adjacent to
27:58
Speaker 1: the choir loft, and it was an entunement, Okay, so
28:02
Speaker 1: he was partially protected and for you know, hundreds of
28:07
Speaker 1: years until the you know, Henry the Eighth, you know,
28:10
Speaker 1: had the church raised during the Protestant Reformation, and you know,
28:17
Speaker 1: as it turned out, That's why he's famously called the
28:20
Speaker 1: King in the car park because they literally assphalted over
28:24
Speaker 1: the top of the body and so it was kind
28:28
Speaker 1: of preserved in there. But you can have bodies that
28:30
Speaker 1: are surface burials or surface abandonments essentially that will go
28:34
Speaker 1: down to the skeleton and for a number of reasons,
28:38
Speaker 1: you won't find any elements at all. A lot of
28:41
Speaker 1: it is just going to go to just dumb blind
28:46
Speaker 1: luck as to whether or not you're going to find
28:48
Speaker 1: something under normal circumstances. And I used people can't see
28:52
Speaker 1: me right now, but I've got normal in air quotes,
28:55
Speaker 1: because in depth investigation, there is no normal or ideal circumstances.
29:00
Speaker 1: You're always dealing in the abnormal. If you have a
29:03
Speaker 1: body in a controlled environment, say for instance, like the
29:06
Speaker 1: body farm, where they can in case a body and
29:10
Speaker 1: they will start with a fully intact body that's fully
29:12
Speaker 1: fleshed out, and then they will watch this body decay
29:16
Speaker 1: over a period of time and they have a method
29:18
Speaker 1: to keep vermin away. Now you can't keep insects away.
29:20
Speaker 1: That's going to happen, but they're not going to impact
29:26
Speaker 1: the skeletal remains as much as a soft tissue you'll
29:30
Speaker 1: still have skeletal remains that will be there, and to
29:34
Speaker 1: kind of watch them go through this process. It's amazing
29:36
Speaker 1: when you watch like time laps on a decaying body.
29:41
Speaker 1: How long it takes, and it's going to be variable.
29:43
Speaker 1: I can't you know, if anyone's wondering, well, how long
29:46
Speaker 1: does it take? I can't tell you how long it's
29:49
Speaker 1: going to take because somebody's dependent upon the environment that
29:52
Speaker 1: you're in. My go skeletal after six months. But you
29:55
Speaker 1: can have others like where you have the bodies in
29:58
Speaker 1: the permafrosts that were buried uh in the I can't
30:03
Speaker 1: remember which expedition it was in the Arctic they recovered
30:07
Speaker 1: those remains, Dave. These were sailors in the British Navy.
30:12
Speaker 1: They had died, probably because of lead poisoning because they
30:15
Speaker 1: had just discovered canning and they had sealed the cans
30:19
Speaker 1: and lead and there was they found. They recovered journals
30:23
Speaker 1: from this abandoned ship where the guys were going nuts.
30:26
Speaker 1: I think it was like the Captain's lock where they
30:29
Speaker 1: were just going out of their mind. It was lead poisoning.
30:31
Speaker 1: But anyway, the two first the two first guys that died,
30:35
Speaker 1: they buried them. They dug a hole in the permafrost
30:38
Speaker 1: covered them up. And man, I'm not saying that, you know,
30:41
Speaker 1: you could take them ount and you know, and that
30:43
Speaker 1: they would be perfect to view. But you see this,
30:47
Speaker 1: and I encourage anybody to go take a look at
30:49
Speaker 1: these images. Their bodies are beautifully preserved, not skeletonized at all.
30:55
Speaker 1: They still have what the remnant of soft tissue that's
30:58
Speaker 1: left behind. All of their hair is intact. Their uniforms
31:00
Speaker 1: are intact. You can still appreciate that it is a
31:03
Speaker 1: classic pre eighteen fifties British sailor's uniforms. Oh, it is remarkable.
31:14
Speaker 1: And the uniforms are made out of wool and linen,
31:17
Speaker 1: and it's all perfectly preserved. So it all depends. It's
31:21
Speaker 1: heavily dependent upon where you are, where you are, and
31:25
Speaker 1: so it's you know, and many times, listen, I can't
31:29
Speaker 1: tell you how many times I've been out on scenes
31:33
Speaker 1: with colleagues and we have said, boy, we were really lucky,
31:36
Speaker 1: and gently that when as that refers to decomposition, we
31:42
Speaker 1: would say that in terms of we're really lucky that
31:45
Speaker 1: we have anything remaining. It's hard for us to truly
31:48
Speaker 1: understand how this could actually still be here after all
31:52
Speaker 1: of this time. But bone is very resilient. It's not
31:55
Speaker 1: as resilient of teeth. So what I tell my students
31:58
Speaker 1: at Jacksonville State is that if you're looking for a
32:03
Speaker 1: carrier for DNA, bone is a leather briefcase and teeth
32:08
Speaker 1: are a steel briefcase.
32:10
Speaker 2: Really that different?
32:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is, and teeth are so much more resilient.
32:15
Speaker 1: And I hold that if we ever do kind of
32:19
Speaker 1: reincarnate any of these animals that you know, mast dons
32:23
Speaker 1: and all that sort of stuff, I think that perhaps
32:29
Speaker 1: with future technology, maybe not the technology we have right now.
32:32
Speaker 1: Uh you know, you could probably clone clone, a clone
32:38
Speaker 1: a mammoth or I never know the difference.
32:40
Speaker 2: You're really not going to England. You're going to a
32:42
Speaker 2: deserted island somewhere off the coast of Florida. It's set up.
32:47
Speaker 1: Park. Yeah no, no, I'm not. I don't have that
32:50
Speaker 1: much time, no motivation, I had no, Yeah, that that's
32:54
Speaker 1: kind of That's kind of where I am. I think
32:56
Speaker 1: with this process of of decomposition. But listen, it is
33:02
Speaker 1: to get past the horror of it, if you, if
33:06
Speaker 1: you ever can. I love to talk about my students
33:10
Speaker 1: and their their view of the world and the world
33:12
Speaker 1: they're going to be entering into and forensics and I
33:15
Speaker 1: you know, I've often told them the prize awaits those
33:20
Speaker 1: who can bear through the horror of what you have
33:22
Speaker 1: to observe, and the prize is what the science is
33:26
Speaker 1: going to tell you. And there are not too many
33:28
Speaker 1: things more horrific. And I'm talking about you know, they
33:32
Speaker 1: are horrible things that we bear witness to in the
33:34
Speaker 1: immediate where we have you know, poor unfortunate little ones
33:38
Speaker 1: that are harmed, and we see those kind of traumatic events.
33:41
Speaker 1: But the horror of being present in a room where
33:45
Speaker 1: the decaying remain, or out in the woods where the
33:47
Speaker 1: decay and remain. If you can get past that initial
33:51
Speaker 1: shock to your system, the beauty that exist in the
33:57
Speaker 1: perfection of nature and what it tells us is beyond measure.
34:05
Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks