Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Eliza Fletcher Mother, Teacher, Heiress, and Victim

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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Eliza Fletcher Mother, Teacher, Heiress, and Victim · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:08
Speaker 1: Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. Well, we've been waiting.
0:25
Speaker 1: We've been waiting to try to find out what actually
0:29
Speaker 1: happened to Eliza Fletcher. Now we've got those answers. I'm
0:42
Speaker 1: Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags with Me.
0:52
Speaker 1: Is my friend Jackie Howard, executive producer for Crime Stories
0:57
Speaker 1: with Nancy Grace. Jackie, we've been waiting at way. We've
1:00
Speaker 1: been waiting to finally get some detailed answers relative to
1:06
Speaker 1: what happened to Eliza Fletcher, what brought about her death specifically,
1:12
Speaker 1: We've heard a lot out there. Now we finally have
1:15
Speaker 1: some details, don't we We do. Eliza Fletcher, a thirty
1:19
Speaker 1: four year old teacher from Memphis, went missing during a
1:23
Speaker 1: pre dawn run and she was killed. Her body was
1:25
Speaker 1: found four days later. What we know now is that
1:30
Speaker 1: she died a very violent death. We already had intimations
1:35
Speaker 1: of that from the fact that her body was found decomposed.
1:38
Speaker 1: Her clothing was in a separate location from her body,
1:41
Speaker 1: so we did know that she had a very violent death.
1:45
Speaker 1: The information that's coming out with the release of the
1:48
Speaker 1: autopsy shows us just how violent that was. But before
1:52
Speaker 1: we get into the details. Joe, I went to look
1:55
Speaker 1: at the autopsy and there was so much information. So
1:59
Speaker 1: many times. Can you explain to me what it is
2:03
Speaker 1: an autopsy shows us and how it shows I mean,
2:07
Speaker 1: how do you read these things? Well, you have to
2:10
Speaker 1: you have to think of it first off as a map.
2:12
Speaker 1: I think that allows us to determine the direction in
2:15
Speaker 1: which we're going. You can go very broadly, or you
2:19
Speaker 1: can go put a fine point on it. And that's
2:22
Speaker 1: that's kind of the way an autopsy report works. When
2:25
Speaker 1: you're you're starting off on a journey and you tell
2:28
Speaker 1: it in very broad strokes from the opening, and it's
2:32
Speaker 1: kind of it almost is set up like a play,
2:34
Speaker 1: if you will, with multiple acts, because every component of
2:38
Speaker 1: the body that is detailed in this document plays a
2:42
Speaker 1: part in the totality of the story. And it's even
2:46
Speaker 1: got an introduction and then in most autopsies they will
2:50
Speaker 1: have a conclusion and this one does. And look, it's
2:53
Speaker 1: all over the internet now, I mean people can can
2:55
Speaker 1: kind of take a look at it. I've been reading
2:57
Speaker 1: autopsy reports for I don't know forty years is and
3:00
Speaker 1: so I wanted to take this opportunity to take Eliza's
3:04
Speaker 1: autopsy report, kind of break it down, find out what
3:07
Speaker 1: happened to her specifically, and maybe it'll be an opportunity
3:11
Speaker 1: for our listeners to begin to understand it a little
3:14
Speaker 1: bit more in context, because listen, you know, when the
3:19
Speaker 1: story of Eliza's death broke, to say that it was
3:24
Speaker 1: chaotic is an understatement, I think. And the thing about
3:28
Speaker 1: having something in black and white before you. This report
3:31
Speaker 1: that's been put out, it adds some level of I think,
3:36
Speaker 1: stability and control. It's measured because it is a scientific
3:40
Speaker 1: report moving forward and kind of what the police and
3:43
Speaker 1: investigators have in the DA in particular, it's going to
3:47
Speaker 1: have moving forward with this case to prosecute this case.
3:49
Speaker 1: And there's certainly certainly a ton here that we can
3:53
Speaker 1: kind of dig into. I've heard you describe before an
3:56
Speaker 1: autopsy as a roadmap. Okay, now, let's be realistic. When
4:01
Speaker 1: we had old time roadmaps and not using GPS on
4:04
Speaker 1: our phones, most people couldn't read a roadmap, So how
4:08
Speaker 1: are we going to be able to read and understand
4:11
Speaker 1: what's on an autopsy? Well, listen, listen, it is literally
4:15
Speaker 1: common sense. And if you've got a dictionary, particularly a
4:18
Speaker 1: medical dictionary, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to sit
4:22
Speaker 1: down and read an autopsy report. There's little subtleties in there,
4:25
Speaker 1: but if you take your time, I mean really take
4:28
Speaker 1: your time, sit there, analyze it, break it down you
4:30
Speaker 1: if you find it. And this is how I literally
4:32
Speaker 1: learned medical terminology. This way was through reading autopsy reports
4:37
Speaker 1: and having two or three dependable medical dictionaries at my disposal.
4:42
Speaker 1: Anytime I didn't understand a word, I would go look
4:44
Speaker 1: it up and I'd read it and I'd try to
4:46
Speaker 1: absorb it and understand the root of that word. You know,
4:48
Speaker 1: is it a Greek root or is it a Latin root?
4:51
Speaker 1: And how is it applied? And the beauty of this
4:55
Speaker 1: is that you've got this tragic case. But you know,
5:01
Speaker 1: to a certain degree, I guess you know, every autopsy
5:04
Speaker 1: that is performed has some level of tragedy to it,
5:07
Speaker 1: particularly for those that are family members and loved ones.
5:11
Speaker 1: But you can learn from these things. You can extract
5:13
Speaker 1: bits of information, and as you carefully read it, carefully,
5:16
Speaker 1: you can This isn't one of these things you just
5:18
Speaker 1: kind of closs over all. Right. You take your time
5:21
Speaker 1: and you read it, and you begin to break it down,
5:23
Speaker 1: and you begin to understand it at least perhaps through
5:27
Speaker 1: the pathologist eyes and the other scientists that worked on
5:30
Speaker 1: this case, and it brings everything together. They're trying to
5:34
Speaker 1: bring you to a location, and it's not that they're
5:37
Speaker 1: necessarily forming the narrative themselves. And this is key because
5:42
Speaker 1: this is something we're always talking about in medical legal community.
5:46
Speaker 1: And you're gonna know what I'm going to say, and
5:48
Speaker 1: that that is we speak for those that can no
5:51
Speaker 1: longer speak for themselves. Well, this this for the dead.
5:56
Speaker 1: The autopsy report is the codex. It's it's the Rosetta
6:01
Speaker 1: stone for them, for the dead. They're giving up their
6:04
Speaker 1: secrets here per the examination, and if you read it carefully,
6:08
Speaker 1: you'll begin to kind of understand what happened. And it
6:12
Speaker 1: breaks it down very logically. It gives you the initial
6:15
Speaker 1: diagnosis to begin with, right in the very front, the
6:18
Speaker 1: front end of this thing, and then it breaks it
6:21
Speaker 1: down per each system, whether it's the cardiovascular system, the
6:24
Speaker 1: gastric digestive system, you know, skeletal system, and it breaks
6:28
Speaker 1: it down in each one of those components and then
6:30
Speaker 1: it finally brings it home at the end. And that's
6:33
Speaker 1: the beauty of an autopsy report. It's not like you're
6:35
Speaker 1: at a press conference and everybody's shouting questions and they
6:38
Speaker 1: try to get a response from the person up at
6:40
Speaker 1: the podium. It's not like that. The cool thing about
6:43
Speaker 1: an autopsy report is you can quietly sit there and
6:45
Speaker 1: read it and get it in kind of a meditative state,
6:48
Speaker 1: if you will, to begin to make this come to life,
6:51
Speaker 1: so that you see this picture developing before you. And
6:55
Speaker 1: that's happened for me at least time and time again. Okay,
6:58
Speaker 1: So and autopicy when you're looking at it. At first,
7:02
Speaker 1: it's going to tell you the details of how the
7:06
Speaker 1: body was found, correct, Yeah, yeah. And then from that
7:10
Speaker 1: does it go on and extrapolate on what the medical
7:14
Speaker 1: examiner sees during his autopsy. I mean it's laid out
7:17
Speaker 1: in detail. Yeah it is. And again I say this,
7:21
Speaker 1: I've said it for years. You know, people have been
7:24
Speaker 1: so influenced by television. They assume that there's a friends
7:26
Speaker 1: of pathologist that goes out to the scene on cases
7:30
Speaker 1: like this, on all of the cases, every homicide. Oh yeah,
7:33
Speaker 1: we've got a friends of pathologist that comes out. No,
7:35
Speaker 1: you don't. There's not enough of them. There's just not.
7:39
Speaker 1: So you're relied upon what the investigators at the scene saw.
7:44
Speaker 1: And to that end, the pathologist needs to know what
7:48
Speaker 1: the investigators saw at the scene, and they need to
7:51
Speaker 1: have somebody that can actually communicate those findings to them,
7:55
Speaker 1: because the pathologist might very well be back at the
7:59
Speaker 1: medical examiner's office doing two and three, maybe four other autopsies.
8:03
Speaker 1: They're not going to have time to drop everything they're
8:05
Speaker 1: doing on those cases and go out to a scene
8:08
Speaker 1: and do their own observation. So you have to have
8:11
Speaker 1: a staff that you trust. And that's where a medical
8:14
Speaker 1: legal death investigator comes in, someone that does for a
8:17
Speaker 1: living what I did for so many years. You're the
8:19
Speaker 1: eyes and the ears of pathologists and seeing you bring
8:22
Speaker 1: that data into the medical Examiner's office or corner's office
8:27
Speaker 1: for this purpose so that they can contextualize the death
8:31
Speaker 1: at the scene. And because there's certain things that you're
8:35
Speaker 1: looking for, for instance, externally, that were influenced by the
8:38
Speaker 1: environment in which the body is found. And in Eliza's case,
8:44
Speaker 1: she was actually found in this like thick kind of
8:48
Speaker 1: high grass area immediately adjacent to this old house in
8:53
Speaker 1: the back of it. You know, if you just stone
8:57
Speaker 1: cold get a body that shows up and you have
9:01
Speaker 1: no frame or reference for it. You're not going to understand, Well,
9:04
Speaker 1: she was laying in thick vegetation. That might explain some
9:08
Speaker 1: of the animal activity or lack thereof. She was obscured
9:10
Speaker 1: from view, you know, for instance, how how did she
9:13
Speaker 1: come to be in this state of decomposition. She's at
9:16
Speaker 1: a house. Well, you don't understand, doc, she was at
9:20
Speaker 1: a house, she was in the yard, but it was
9:22
Speaker 1: obscured from view. You know, you had no points of
9:24
Speaker 1: view from this. Oh okay, I understand now. She says
9:26
Speaker 1: she's in the back, she's in grass, she's obscured. That's
9:29
Speaker 1: why we have this level of decomposition, for instance. And
9:32
Speaker 1: so it's those little areas that you have to have
9:36
Speaker 1: that data that comes in from the field, and that
9:38
Speaker 1: way the forensic mythologists begins to integrate that into their examination, okay,
9:44
Speaker 1: and begin to understand it. But for the purposes of
9:47
Speaker 1: the autopsy report, the way most of the time they're
9:52
Speaker 1: handled is that when the physician begins to do their examination,
9:57
Speaker 1: they obviously do and external examination and they'll annotate everything.
10:02
Speaker 1: They'll go through clothing, they'll do weight, they'll do height,
10:06
Speaker 1: they'll look for things externally, as far as injuries go,
10:09
Speaker 1: they'll look for, say, identifiers on an individual, say maybe
10:13
Speaker 1: they'll be looking for tattoos, anything externally that is going
10:18
Speaker 1: to bring to life the person that you have before
10:21
Speaker 1: you on the table. And these elements are referred to
10:24
Speaker 1: their components of what's referred to as individualization when it
10:28
Speaker 1: comes to identification, and that's a big part of this because,
10:32
Speaker 1: particularly when you have a body that has been down
10:35
Speaker 1: for a protracted period of time, you want to make sure,
10:38
Speaker 1: i mean dead, ensure that this individual is in fact
10:44
Speaker 1: who you believe them to be, and you have to
10:46
Speaker 1: do that through scientific verification, and of course that'll be
10:49
Speaker 1: annotated in the autopsy report as well. So what else
10:53
Speaker 1: is included in an autopsy, Joe we hear, Often this
10:57
Speaker 1: is a preliminary autopsy pending toxicology. So what other things
11:03
Speaker 1: go into a final autopsy report. Let's address this issue
11:07
Speaker 1: of it being a preliminary finding. If you have someone
11:11
Speaker 1: that has, say, for instance, died of a gunshot wound,
11:15
Speaker 1: a preliminary finding, the pathologists will actually say, okay, the
11:19
Speaker 1: cause of death is, you know, a gunshot wound to
11:22
Speaker 1: the head, all right, but for our purposes they're not
11:27
Speaker 1: we're not going to go into the great detail now
11:29
Speaker 1: as far as like the bullet trajectory, range of fire,
11:32
Speaker 1: all those sorts of things. And in some cases they'll say,
11:35
Speaker 1: well it's pending toxicology. They will give you a preliminary finding,
11:39
Speaker 1: and that paints it rather broad strokes, doesn't it. People always,
11:43
Speaker 1: particularly in the world of true crime, they want to
11:46
Speaker 1: have those answers because people are curious by nature. However,
11:53
Speaker 1: science doesn't work that way. It's not a drive through.
11:56
Speaker 1: It takes time to get these tests run and to
11:59
Speaker 1: do everything that has to be done, because you want
12:02
Speaker 1: to make sure that all of your bases are covered
12:05
Speaker 1: before you come out with that final report. And this
12:08
Speaker 1: is this is critical because you know, we can talk
12:11
Speaker 1: about all the science that you want to and the
12:13
Speaker 1: details that are on the autopsy report, but one of
12:16
Speaker 1: the most binding things that is on autopsy report is
12:22
Speaker 1: in fact the forensic pathologists signature, and they're not going
12:24
Speaker 1: to sign anything until they know that they have all
12:28
Speaker 1: of the data that they need to come to a
12:30
Speaker 1: reasonable scientific conclusion. So with that said, there's a lot
12:35
Speaker 1: of components to the autopsy report. You can literally break
12:39
Speaker 1: it down. It kind of in the first round regarding
12:43
Speaker 1: the pathological diagnosis, and that'll be set up front, such
12:45
Speaker 1: as an Eliza's case, and we do have a pathological
12:48
Speaker 1: diagnosis in her case, and that is what were you
12:51
Speaker 1: what were your findings, you know, to begin with, and
12:54
Speaker 1: then after that is established, you would essentially go through
12:58
Speaker 1: the report at first off externally talk about what the
13:02
Speaker 1: body looked like at the time of presentation, when you
13:05
Speaker 1: receive the body, and then you'll go into a broad
13:07
Speaker 1: area that's literally called evidence of injury, where you kind
13:11
Speaker 1: of make your way through every type of injury that
13:14
Speaker 1: you annotated at the autopsy. And when you get to
13:19
Speaker 1: let's just say you have head trauma in a particular case,
13:22
Speaker 1: you'll talk about it the tuma, the specific trauma. But
13:26
Speaker 1: when you get to, say, the section that covers the
13:29
Speaker 1: brain in the autopsy report, you'll go into great detail
13:33
Speaker 1: about how this evidence of injury that you made note
13:36
Speaker 1: of earlier, how that injury actually impacted that organ or
13:40
Speaker 1: that organ system. And so it will break it down
13:43
Speaker 1: section by section and sometimes you'll come across let's say,
13:46
Speaker 1: for instance, you get to the section that is the
13:48
Speaker 1: respiratory system, okay, which is going to talk about things
13:51
Speaker 1: like the lung and the cavity that the lung sit in,
13:56
Speaker 1: and sometimes it's kind of boiler place. That means that
14:01
Speaker 1: they'll say that the lungs present in a normal anatomical
14:06
Speaker 1: presentation and there is no evidence of trauma, there's no
14:09
Speaker 1: evidence of any kind of disease, that everything is normal,
14:13
Speaker 1: but they have to make note of that to state
14:15
Speaker 1: that they did, in fact do the examination on the lungs,
14:18
Speaker 1: because you have to be able to rule things out
14:20
Speaker 1: all the way along. It's not just it's not just
14:23
Speaker 1: a diagnosis of inclusion, you know, where it's some of
14:27
Speaker 1: things have to be excluded. Well, you say that this
14:30
Speaker 1: individual died as a result of head trauma, or are
14:33
Speaker 1: there any other contributing factors? You know, maybe they didn't
14:36
Speaker 1: have the ability to breathe well, real well, and they
14:38
Speaker 1: had some kind of unknown lesion on their lung compromise
14:41
Speaker 1: their ability to breathing, so they collapse instruct their head,
14:43
Speaker 1: and so you look at the lungs and say, well,
14:46
Speaker 1: there's nothing there that would have obstructed their ability to
14:49
Speaker 1: uptake oxygen. That has to be noted as well. So
14:52
Speaker 1: you got through its system by system, and then you
14:54
Speaker 1: know after you've gone through the anatomical issues, you get
14:58
Speaker 1: off into it, well, what's going on board relative at
15:03
Speaker 1: a chemical level. You look for the toxicology report and
15:05
Speaker 1: they run a standard panel standard things, you know, cocaine,
15:09
Speaker 1: any kind of opiate, benzo's built through two HC. The
15:13
Speaker 1: list goes on and on, but there's a standard panel
15:15
Speaker 1: they look for, and again it's a diagnosis of exclusion
15:20
Speaker 1: and inclusion. So if there's something there, you say, well,
15:23
Speaker 1: this was a positive finding, and then they'll give you
15:25
Speaker 1: the quantitative amount that means that yes, we found drug X,
15:31
Speaker 1: and this is how much was in it. And then
15:33
Speaker 1: you reference that and say, well is this a lethal level?
15:37
Speaker 1: And then if they have multiple drugs in there, you say, well,
15:40
Speaker 1: you know, is this a deadly combination? You know, one
15:43
Speaker 1: of these drugs by themselves would not do harm to
15:45
Speaker 1: an individual, but you combine it with something else like
15:48
Speaker 1: opiates and alcohol for instance, then that can be a
15:51
Speaker 1: deadly combination. Okay, So you have this list that's going
15:55
Speaker 1: on toxicologically, and of course, if you have a case
15:57
Speaker 1: where it requires some kind of specialty science that's involved,
16:03
Speaker 1: such as in amazingly in Eliza's case, an anthropologist was
16:07
Speaker 1: brought in and they will actually render their own report
16:11
Speaker 1: for their own individual examination. That's in addition to what
16:14
Speaker 1: the forensic pathologists does. They'll render their own independent report
16:18
Speaker 1: and that will actually be placed together with the autopsy report,
16:21
Speaker 1: and it paints it paints a very detailed picture of
16:27
Speaker 1: of all that remained of Aliza in this case. I
16:49
Speaker 1: think we were all hoping for detail. And you know,
16:53
Speaker 1: they always say the devil is in the details, and
16:57
Speaker 1: certainly I think that's evidenced in a lots of Fletcher's case.
17:01
Speaker 1: We can see laid out before us in black and white,
17:06
Speaker 1: specifically what happened to this poor woman and what brought
17:11
Speaker 1: about her death. The folks up in Memphis that did
17:15
Speaker 1: her examination did a highly detailed job, fantastic and finally
17:20
Speaker 1: we do have some answers. Jackie Eliza Fletcher. Her cause
17:25
Speaker 1: of death is a gunshot wound. I think that surprised everybody.
17:32
Speaker 1: There were these issues of you know, disheveled clothing, she
17:36
Speaker 1: was back in an obscured area, you know. As I
17:40
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, I think it had been stated a couple
17:44
Speaker 1: of times that people, you know, thought that this was
17:46
Speaker 1: very intimate sexual kind of event that may have happened,
17:51
Speaker 1: and I think first blush for many folks as you
17:55
Speaker 1: think that with something like this, it's going to be
17:57
Speaker 1: an asphyxial death, maybe a choking or something like this,
18:00
Speaker 1: or maybe even up bludgeoning. And in some cases, of course,
18:03
Speaker 1: you have stabbing that's very intimate, but in this case
18:06
Speaker 1: it was a gunshot wound, and you can actually begin
18:10
Speaker 1: to kind of learn a lot about her position, I
18:15
Speaker 1: think at the time of death when this gunshot wound
18:19
Speaker 1: was essentially perpetrated upon her body. In anatomy you talk
18:25
Speaker 1: about posterior and anterior, posterior being back, anteria being the front.
18:30
Speaker 1: So she's got a gunshot wound that is with the
18:34
Speaker 1: entrance being in the right parietal area. And if folks
18:40
Speaker 1: at home will go to the top of your ear, okay,
18:43
Speaker 1: on either side, it doesn't matter, but go the right
18:46
Speaker 1: the top of your ear and essentially diagonally from the
18:51
Speaker 1: top aspect of your ear, draw line diagonally about two
18:54
Speaker 1: to three inches, and that's going to put you right
18:57
Speaker 1: in the area of your parietal bone. And it's a
19:00
Speaker 1: plate that's fused together with your temporal bone and the
19:03
Speaker 1: frontal bone and all these other bones, and so it's
19:06
Speaker 1: going to be posterior, which means it's going to be
19:08
Speaker 1: to the rear. And the way this wound apparently tracks
19:14
Speaker 1: is from the right parietal some people say parietial the
19:19
Speaker 1: parietal area, and it tracks from essentially above to below.
19:27
Speaker 1: That's going to be the trajectory, and it's going to
19:29
Speaker 1: exit out of the left frontal area and the left
19:34
Speaker 1: frontal just you know, kind of think about your forehead,
19:37
Speaker 1: if you will, And it tracks across through the calvarium
19:41
Speaker 1: and you'll see that that word in the autypes of
19:44
Speaker 1: report calvarium. And when you see that, it's not something
19:47
Speaker 1: that most people see on a regular basis relative to anatomy,
19:51
Speaker 1: and the calvarium. Calvarium is essentially the skull cap, if
19:55
Speaker 1: you will. So the totality of the skull cap, that's
19:58
Speaker 1: what we actually remove at autopsy. And so it goes
20:02
Speaker 1: through her calvarium, through the cranial vault, and it exits
20:06
Speaker 1: out of the frontal bone adjacent through her forehead, and
20:08
Speaker 1: it's on the left aspect, and you begin to think
20:13
Speaker 1: about the nature of this wound. Now, it's not going
20:16
Speaker 1: to be like this huge kind of ropping trajectory where
20:20
Speaker 1: it's going to go. Say, for instance, if you had
20:22
Speaker 1: a gunshot wound to the right parietal area and it
20:25
Speaker 1: came out through say the left jaw or something. It's
20:28
Speaker 1: not that acute the angle, it's not that acute, but
20:30
Speaker 1: it is slightly downward in trajectory. And the reason you
20:33
Speaker 1: want to know that is because it gives you not
20:37
Speaker 1: just what position Eliza was in, but perhaps what the
20:40
Speaker 1: perpetrator was in when they discharge this weapon into her skull.
20:44
Speaker 1: And you know, I've got to say something that is
20:49
Speaker 1: very definitive in this case. And it also goes to
20:52
Speaker 1: how long she had been down. Her body, particularly her
20:56
Speaker 1: head was in a modern state of decomposition. It was
21:00
Speaker 1: to the point where there was very little soft tissue remaining,
21:06
Speaker 1: and that can be trouble for us at autopsy because
21:09
Speaker 1: on the surface of the skin and also the hair.
21:13
Speaker 1: If we're talking about we're trying to determine what the
21:15
Speaker 1: range of fire is, many times, if we have skin
21:19
Speaker 1: left behind, you will have powder deposition, which means powder
21:24
Speaker 1: deposits on the skin. And that is if it's in
21:28
Speaker 1: an intermediate range, which is essentially going to be about
21:32
Speaker 1: six inches away, okay, to a close range, to maybe
21:35
Speaker 1: a contact range, and the skin will give you an
21:38
Speaker 1: understanding of how close this was because it's being distributed.
21:42
Speaker 1: And our friend Nancy always says, I love this analogy.
21:45
Speaker 1: She always draws with gunshot wound determination of distance, and
21:49
Speaker 1: she talks about spraying the fire hose that the more
21:51
Speaker 1: you open it up, the bigger kind of spread. So
21:55
Speaker 1: you figure the tighter the deposition of the powder or
21:58
Speaker 1: the remnant of the powder that's left behind, the closer
22:01
Speaker 1: the individual is. It's just kind of common sense. Further
22:05
Speaker 1: way you move, the less deposition there's going to be,
22:08
Speaker 1: it'll be more sporadic. In this case, skin is essentially gone.
22:12
Speaker 1: But they were able to say that this apparently that
22:16
Speaker 1: this was an intermediate range, which means on the surface
22:19
Speaker 1: of the skull you're going to have some kind of
22:22
Speaker 1: deposition there that would have entered through the skin and
22:26
Speaker 1: deposit on the exterior of the skull and giving you
22:29
Speaker 1: an indication that the person was not a great distance
22:31
Speaker 1: away when they shot, and so they're right on top
22:34
Speaker 1: of her. So there is no true contact wound as
22:39
Speaker 1: in where we've talked about before, where the gun is
22:42
Speaker 1: placed directly against the skull or anybody part. But directly
22:47
Speaker 1: in this case, against the skull and pulled. Yet the
22:51
Speaker 1: distribution of the powder burn means that the shooter was
22:56
Speaker 1: not very far away. So if the sub position is there,
23:00
Speaker 1: that would it make you think that she is already
23:04
Speaker 1: down on the ground and it's kind of fired that way. Yeah,
23:08
Speaker 1: I think so, Yeah, I think so. And autopsy they
23:11
Speaker 1: make it pretty clear that they didn't recover projectile from
23:14
Speaker 1: her skull. What does that mean? So, well, they didn't
23:17
Speaker 1: recover like okay, so you've got an exit essentially, So
23:21
Speaker 1: that means that the round passed from back to front,
23:24
Speaker 1: from right to left, okay, and probably slightly downward. They
23:29
Speaker 1: don't go into great detail about their trajectory, but that's
23:32
Speaker 1: kind of the field that you get for it. But
23:34
Speaker 1: we do know the projectile exit out of the left
23:37
Speaker 1: frontal bone, which if everybody will essentially go above your
23:41
Speaker 1: left eyebrow slightly up and touch that area that's your
23:45
Speaker 1: frontal bone. Okay, So the round would have exited through there.
23:48
Speaker 1: Now she's laying on the ground, which you know, there's
23:52
Speaker 1: a high probability and that round passed through her skull,
23:56
Speaker 1: it would have been in the earth underlying her body.
24:00
Speaker 1: Now hear me right, the autopsy report is not the
24:06
Speaker 1: police report. So to find out more about the projectile,
24:10
Speaker 1: perhaps that would be detailed in the crime scene report.
24:13
Speaker 1: All right, that's not part of the autopsy report, so
24:16
Speaker 1: they would have gone out and in my experience, what
24:18
Speaker 1: happens is you got well metal detectors and you sweep
24:21
Speaker 1: that specific area, paying very close attention to where first off,
24:25
Speaker 1: where the body is found and observed, you don't find
24:28
Speaker 1: anything there, then you kind of just imagine you're going
24:33
Speaker 1: kind of in a spiral motion with the head of
24:36
Speaker 1: the body being concentric that means in the middle, and
24:40
Speaker 1: then you kind of go eccentrically with a spiraling with
24:44
Speaker 1: a metal detector, seeing if you're going to pick up
24:46
Speaker 1: any metallic bodies underlining. Then you have to excavate that,
24:50
Speaker 1: you know, where you kind of brush the dirt away,
24:53
Speaker 1: you take photos, measurements, and then you extricate that from
24:57
Speaker 1: its resting place and take it in. Now, don't have
25:00
Speaker 1: that information on autopsy report, so that would be something
25:02
Speaker 1: you look for in the police report. Now, what can
25:06
Speaker 1: be done though at autopsy and what is done regularly,
25:09
Speaker 1: particularly in place like Memphis that's this size and deals
25:13
Speaker 1: in this volume. And it's key is that you do
25:17
Speaker 1: X rays of the body before you ever do an
25:21
Speaker 1: internal examination. A matter of fact, before you ever do
25:24
Speaker 1: the external examination, the X ray the body first because
25:27
Speaker 1: you want the body in as pristine condition as possible.
25:30
Speaker 1: And when you do the head x rays, one of
25:32
Speaker 1: the things that kind of jumps to life is many
25:36
Speaker 1: times bullets will fragment, even though the exit you'll have
25:40
Speaker 1: little bits of them that will kind of peel off,
25:43
Speaker 1: if you will, and you will see this kind of
25:47
Speaker 1: tiny Sometimes it's more extensive than other times, but you'll
25:50
Speaker 1: see this tiny little lead storm that's contained in there,
25:54
Speaker 1: and as it has passed through on this trajectory that
25:57
Speaker 1: we talked about just a moment ago, you'll see these
26:00
Speaker 1: little dots that are radio opaque, you'll see them in there.
26:03
Speaker 1: And it's a great way to document things because when
26:06
Speaker 1: you go to court, many times attorneys and judges are
26:09
Speaker 1: not a big fan of showing like overly grotesque images. Well,
26:13
Speaker 1: there's nothing grotesque about it. An X ray, Okay, you
26:17
Speaker 1: just throw it up there, you say, well, this is
26:19
Speaker 1: where all the lead is. You can see it demonstrated
26:21
Speaker 1: right here. And it's a beautiful way to illustrate things,
26:24
Speaker 1: and you can illustrate trajectory. Sometimes whether too depend upon
26:27
Speaker 1: how good the X ray is. So another fascinating thing
26:33
Speaker 1: about this that if you're reading Allies's autopsy report, it
26:37
Speaker 1: talks about internal and external beveling. What does that mean? Yeah,
26:43
Speaker 1: I know, isn't that fascinating. It's an interesting term because
26:45
Speaker 1: you think about beveled wood. For instance, like if you've
26:49
Speaker 1: got border on your floor adjacent to a carpet surface
26:52
Speaker 1: or whatever, that's you have that piece of wood down
26:56
Speaker 1: there and it'll be beveled. That means it has a
26:59
Speaker 1: curved to it. Well, say, for instance, let's let's talk
27:03
Speaker 1: about an entrance wound. Okay, if you have an entrance wound,
27:08
Speaker 1: the projectile passes through following now passes through the exterior
27:13
Speaker 1: of the skull, and as that bullet is going through
27:17
Speaker 1: that little defect that it has made, the internal table
27:21
Speaker 1: skull will literally blow out that bone fractures, and when
27:24
Speaker 1: it does, the interior of the wound will be beveled.
27:28
Speaker 1: It'll have a curvature to it around there. And this
27:31
Speaker 1: is kind of fascinating because it's one of the ways
27:33
Speaker 1: if we just find a free standing skull or free
27:35
Speaker 1: line skull if you will, and we have holes in
27:38
Speaker 1: the skull. If we have beveling on either aspect, we
27:43
Speaker 1: can determine what is the entrance and what is the exit.
27:46
Speaker 1: And that's how we do that with the skull. So
27:48
Speaker 1: with the entrance wound, you'll have internal bevling where it
27:51
Speaker 1: blows out, goes into the brain. You know, you'll get
27:54
Speaker 1: those little bits of bone that'll track along that trajectory.
27:57
Speaker 1: And then as the bullet exits, as it exits, another
28:02
Speaker 1: fascinating point here, you get external bevling. So in Eliza's case,
28:08
Speaker 1: when this projectile exited out of her frontal bone, it
28:13
Speaker 1: blew out that part of the skull and it left
28:15
Speaker 1: external bevling around that area, and that tells us that
28:19
Speaker 1: this was in fact the exit. Want another interesting point
28:23
Speaker 1: that came out in the autopsy, and again we know
28:27
Speaker 1: this poor woman suffered a very violent, brutal death, is
28:33
Speaker 1: the actual physical injuries to her body. We know that
28:37
Speaker 1: the car when she was forced into the vehicle, it
28:41
Speaker 1: sat in the same position for about four minutes. We
28:44
Speaker 1: saw that on the surveillance video, and I guess you
28:49
Speaker 1: would have to imagine what was going on at that time.
28:54
Speaker 1: And as the autopsy shows, she had blunt forced injuries
28:58
Speaker 1: to her thighs, to her head, and her jaw was
29:03
Speaker 1: broken in several places. I think, and you know, my
29:08
Speaker 1: opinion in dollar nine sense gets cup coffee some places.
29:12
Speaker 1: But my opinion, what really stands out to me is
29:16
Speaker 1: this maxillo fracture. And our maxilla is not the lower jawbone.
29:21
Speaker 1: It's actually where the hard pallett is seated, you know,
29:23
Speaker 1: our upper teeth, well, the area below the nose. She
29:27
Speaker 1: had what was diagnosed as as actually a la fort
29:31
Speaker 1: to fort to fracture. And just imagine, okay, I'm sorry,
29:38
Speaker 1: I'm going to You've got to explain that that word.
29:42
Speaker 1: Where did it come from? What is it? What does
29:44
Speaker 1: it mean? Well, that la fort is just a he's
29:48
Speaker 1: it's a person in the distant past that made this
29:50
Speaker 1: initial finding. Okay, Yeah, And this is sometimes called a
29:55
Speaker 1: pyramidal fracture. And if you imagine the shape of a
29:58
Speaker 1: pyramid and being struck in your hard pallette okay, in
30:03
Speaker 1: your well, in your maxilla, which is the upper portion
30:07
Speaker 1: of you know, your jaw if you will, it's not
30:09
Speaker 1: you know, the jaw is actually the mandible mandibles lower
30:12
Speaker 1: than upper maxilla max above. Struck in that area and
30:18
Speaker 1: head along, okay, multiple times, probably then the bones in
30:24
Speaker 1: your face that make up this maxillary area are acting
30:29
Speaker 1: a fracture developmentally, starting all the way back in the wound.
30:34
Speaker 1: Your body began to kind of fuse together. You skull died,
30:36
Speaker 1: and many times you'll have these fracture lines along these
30:38
Speaker 1: weaker areas, and if you're struck in the face multiple times,
30:43
Speaker 1: that area, in the shape of a pyramid, will begin
30:46
Speaker 1: a fracture. Now, this fracture itself wasn't complete, but most
30:51
Speaker 1: of the time, if somebody sustains this Laford fracture, there's
30:56
Speaker 1: a level one, you get up to level two. Most
30:58
Speaker 1: of the time they arrive they arrived at the hospital unconscious.
31:01
Speaker 1: It's that powerful. It takes a tremendous amount of force
31:04
Speaker 1: to facilitate this. And so she sustained that injury, and
31:08
Speaker 1: it wasn't completely fractured into but it was fractured enough
31:12
Speaker 1: so that you know it had begun to separate, and
31:16
Speaker 1: you know, when they began to examine it allies it remains,
31:20
Speaker 1: they were able to, you know, make that assessment that
31:24
Speaker 1: that was in fact the tough fracture that she had
31:26
Speaker 1: sustained and that she had and that's in addition to
31:29
Speaker 1: other things. And again I have to make note of this.
31:32
Speaker 1: Her body has been down in the West Tendessee heat
31:39
Speaker 1: for protracted period of time. Protracted in a sense that
31:43
Speaker 1: as those of us that lived in the South, things
31:45
Speaker 1: don't last a long time outside though. The environment just
31:50
Speaker 1: absolutely attacks you and death. And that's unfortunately what happened
31:53
Speaker 1: to her. So some of the things that you might
31:55
Speaker 1: normally find, say, you know, areas of hemorrhage and that
31:58
Speaker 1: sort of thing, are slightly opromised as a result of
32:01
Speaker 1: decompositional changes. I think that it would be real difficult
32:05
Speaker 1: to say, well, she was struck here here and here
32:07
Speaker 1: by virtue of some kind of contusions she might have
32:09
Speaker 1: had on her face. This type of injury would have
32:12
Speaker 1: to come from being beaten. This type of injury comes
32:16
Speaker 1: as a result of bl enforced trauma. This is not
32:18
Speaker 1: something that just kind of spontaneously happens. And this is
32:20
Speaker 1: not this is not a fracture in this area that
32:26
Speaker 1: would be associated, to say, with the firem's blast. This
32:30
Speaker 1: is something that would have probably probably happened anti mortem,
32:34
Speaker 1: and we all know, you know, listening to bodybags. Any
32:37
Speaker 1: mortal means before death, and it's I think at least
32:40
Speaker 1: you know you had mentioned that there was time spent
32:44
Speaker 1: in this vehicle. This is a submission kind of thing.
32:48
Speaker 1: Let me think about it. You're trying to get an
32:50
Speaker 1: individual to submit to you. You've snatched this poor woman
32:56
Speaker 1: off of the street and brought her into this vehicle
32:59
Speaker 1: where you can troller wall. She doesn't want to be
33:01
Speaker 1: in a vehicle with you, and so how are you
33:04
Speaker 1: going to get her to submit? Well, you're going to
33:06
Speaker 1: pop her in the face. And then you know, she's
33:09
Speaker 1: got this horrible contusion lateral aspect of a right thigh,
33:15
Speaker 1: and lateral means the outside, you know, the medial is
33:18
Speaker 1: like in the middle, you know, so like in her thought,
33:21
Speaker 1: this is lateral. So for some reason she has this
33:26
Speaker 1: really nasty contusion to bruise and it existed long enough
33:32
Speaker 1: so that it it was in the subcutaneous tissue, which
33:36
Speaker 1: means below the skin. This isn't just something that's kind
33:39
Speaker 1: of a surface event. This is something that has leached,
33:42
Speaker 1: the hemorrhages leeched down into the underlying tissue. And you
33:47
Speaker 1: begin to think about that. So she's getting struck in
33:51
Speaker 1: multiple locations. I think at least probably to try to
33:55
Speaker 1: get her to submit the injury that she has, you know,
33:58
Speaker 1: to her face, that that injury that's related to that fracture,
34:02
Speaker 1: that's you know, that's that's the kind of thing that
34:04
Speaker 1: you'd see with somebody, you know, being unbuckled in a
34:08
Speaker 1: car accident and slamming their face into a dashboard or
34:13
Speaker 1: steering wheel or something, you know, or getting hit with
34:17
Speaker 1: a heavy object in the face. It takes that kind
34:20
Speaker 1: of energy. The perpetrator in this case was attempting to
34:24
Speaker 1: get her to submit to his wants. I think, probably
34:47
Speaker 1: for me, the most shocking thing about this examination and
34:52
Speaker 1: what the medical examiner found was the fact that Eliza
34:59
Speaker 1: had fent in her system. And I am just blown
35:03
Speaker 1: away by that. I can't, you know, kind of wrap
35:06
Speaker 1: my mind around that. Why in the world would this
35:10
Speaker 1: mother this, why have this drug in her system? To
35:15
Speaker 1: explain that comment, show, you're going to have to explain
35:18
Speaker 1: to us what fentnyl is and what it does to
35:20
Speaker 1: a body, and why this active runner who ran, if
35:26
Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken eight point two miles a day, this
35:30
Speaker 1: is not something that she would be using. Lord knows.
35:33
Speaker 1: I can't even begin to imagine somebody that is performing
35:39
Speaker 1: physically at her level would ever have fentnyl in their
35:42
Speaker 1: system for anything. I can't imagine fentnyl itself. It's a narcotic,
35:51
Speaker 1: all right. It's been used over the years to control
35:54
Speaker 1: pain with essentially, and of course now it's it is
35:59
Speaker 1: absolutely positively the scourge of our society at this point.
36:05
Speaker 1: We've got people dying of the stuff left and right
36:08
Speaker 1: out on the streets. There are tales of police officers
36:11
Speaker 1: going to and this is how deadly it is. Police
36:14
Speaker 1: officers pulling over cars that have fentnel inside of them,
36:17
Speaker 1: that open up a bag and just merely inhalation, slight
36:21
Speaker 1: inhalation of the dust that comes up out of the
36:23
Speaker 1: bag is enough to put grown men in the hospital.
36:27
Speaker 1: It is. It's a nasty, nasty drug, and the stuff
36:30
Speaker 1: is being manufactured out there, and for some reason Eliza
36:34
Speaker 1: had this, this agent in her system. And I can't
36:40
Speaker 1: begin to imagine that this is something that she's going
36:43
Speaker 1: out and buying on the street that I don't think
36:46
Speaker 1: that that's even within the realm of possibility in this case.
36:50
Speaker 1: It seems to me that this is something that the
36:54
Speaker 1: perpetrator applied to her in some way. The autopsy report
36:59
Speaker 1: really doesn't get of us an indication as to the application.
37:03
Speaker 1: If you will, it can be taken in a pill form,
37:07
Speaker 1: and certainly there are any number of cases out there
37:11
Speaker 1: that we're finding on the streets where people are suddenly
37:14
Speaker 1: dying of fentol related deaths because it's mixed with other
37:18
Speaker 1: drugs that you might encounter out on the street, almost
37:21
Speaker 1: as like backfilling drugs with this other drug, and it
37:27
Speaker 1: makes for a lethal cocktail. And in this particular case,
37:31
Speaker 1: she had it on board. What's fascinating about it is
37:36
Speaker 1: the fact that she had it on board to the
37:40
Speaker 1: point where it wasn't just like they had found. And
37:46
Speaker 1: you can look in the autopsy report to read this through.
37:50
Speaker 1: There was not a remnant of what they referred to
37:52
Speaker 1: as particulate pill matter in her gastric content. She had food,
37:57
Speaker 1: you know, in her stomach and this sort of thing,
38:00
Speaker 1: but she had it to the point in her system
38:04
Speaker 1: where it had begun to metabolize. So, taking that thought,
38:11
Speaker 1: and let's kind of expand on that a bit. Taking
38:15
Speaker 1: that thought, she would have had to have been administered
38:17
Speaker 1: this drug, which would arguably put her in, if not
38:22
Speaker 1: a comatose state, certainly a dream like state that, again
38:25
Speaker 1: going back to this idea of compliance, would make her
38:28
Speaker 1: totally incompletely compliant to whatever the wishes of this perpetrator
38:35
Speaker 1: would have been. It had begun to break down. So
38:38
Speaker 1: not only did you have the finnyl, you had north
38:42
Speaker 1: fennyl that was in there, and the north finnyl is
38:45
Speaker 1: actually a metabolite. This is evidence that the drug had
38:48
Speaker 1: begun to break down and be metabolized into the system.
38:52
Speaker 1: What made this doubly difficult for the medical examiner is that,
38:57
Speaker 1: and this is a practice that we do would severely
39:00
Speaker 1: decomposed bodies. You're not always going to be able to
39:03
Speaker 1: take a blood sample that's going to be effective in
39:07
Speaker 1: running toxicology. So when it comes to Aliza in her
39:12
Speaker 1: particular case, they had to draw up once referred to
39:15
Speaker 1: as decompositional fluid, and this is fluid that will be
39:19
Speaker 1: mixed with blood, but you'll also have remnant of the
39:25
Speaker 1: cells beginning to degrade and they begin to liquify. It's
39:29
Speaker 1: very tough to break decompositional fluid down into components so
39:35
Speaker 1: that you can begin to kind of study what's in there.
39:38
Speaker 1: But it's something that people at our forensics labs do
39:41
Speaker 1: and they do regularly, and they did in fact, fine
39:45
Speaker 1: phenyl and nor fenyl in her system, along with caffeine
39:49
Speaker 1: and another component that's consistent with probably eating chocolate more
39:53
Speaker 1: than likely. But they One of the things that we
39:57
Speaker 1: do in cases of not having access to blood or
40:01
Speaker 1: maybe urine in order to facilitate a drug test is
40:04
Speaker 1: that we will take samples of the liver spin it down.
40:07
Speaker 1: So essentially a slice of the liver, decomposing liver will
40:11
Speaker 1: be placed into a centrifuge and it will be spun
40:14
Speaker 1: down till it can be liquefied and that'll be drawn
40:19
Speaker 1: up and then you run that for toxicology. And what's
40:23
Speaker 1: interesting about fentnyl is that for all practical purpose, that
40:26
Speaker 1: spentyl is essentially processed through the liver, and so you
40:30
Speaker 1: would have you would have a concentration of it. There
40:34
Speaker 1: we give you an indication. And this is where history
40:38
Speaker 1: comes in. You begin to speak to her family. First off,
40:42
Speaker 1: who's her treating physician. Is there any history that this
40:46
Speaker 1: treating physician at any point in time has prescribed her fentnyl.
40:51
Speaker 1: The remaining finding in this autopsy that has many people
40:55
Speaker 1: confused is that the assumption had been made that Eliza
41:00
Speaker 1: Fletcher had been raped. Her clothing was found her shorts
41:05
Speaker 1: specifically was found off her body in another location, Yet
41:11
Speaker 1: the autopsy does not confirm or deny that Eliza Fletcher
41:16
Speaker 1: was raped. To say that someone is raped at an
41:19
Speaker 1: autopsy is not necessarily something that you can solely confirm
41:24
Speaker 1: with the autopsy results. The physician, per their examination will
41:28
Speaker 1: note any kind of trauma that might have existed, and
41:31
Speaker 1: if you've got a person that is essentially compliant, if
41:35
Speaker 1: there's you know, if they've been knocked unconscious with either
41:37
Speaker 1: through physical violence, which you know, we've got some evidence
41:41
Speaker 1: that there was physical violence, you know, with a bruising
41:44
Speaker 1: on the thigh, and then we've got this horrible facial
41:47
Speaker 1: fracture that's taken place. And then at a chemical level,
41:51
Speaker 1: you've got a drug that would certainly make somebody compliant.
41:55
Speaker 1: You're not necessarily going to have evidence of a forced
41:58
Speaker 1: event when it comes to sexual salt, Okay, So it's
42:03
Speaker 1: at that point that you're still going to do a
42:05
Speaker 1: rape kit, and in her case, they did. They were
42:08
Speaker 1: able to do the swabs that are normally done in
42:11
Speaker 1: a rape kit. The purpose for the swabs is to
42:16
Speaker 1: first off, see if there is any ejaculate at all
42:20
Speaker 1: where you would expect to find it in the case
42:22
Speaker 1: of a rape, all right, and these swabs are immediately removed.
42:27
Speaker 1: The swabs are actually you take and you do a
42:30
Speaker 1: smear which goes on to a slide, and of course
42:34
Speaker 1: you know they're going to pop that under a microscope
42:36
Speaker 1: per the examination and see if there's any sperm that
42:40
Speaker 1: might be there. And in cases where you have an
42:43
Speaker 1: acute event, where you have somebody that comes in the
42:46
Speaker 1: hospital they say they've been raped, they do a rape exam,
42:48
Speaker 1: and you have in dwelling semen and they take that sample,
42:52
Speaker 1: you know the semen might still be viable at that
42:55
Speaker 1: point in time, because sometimes you can tell a lot
42:57
Speaker 1: about the perpetrator based upon that. So if you've got
43:00
Speaker 1: an acute event and somebody, you know, the sperm or
43:05
Speaker 1: the lack thereof, there might be an indication of impotence,
43:10
Speaker 1: and you know, you can certainly do a DNA profile
43:12
Speaker 1: in a case like that. In this case, Liza's body
43:15
Speaker 1: was greatly decomposed. I don't know how much success you
43:19
Speaker 1: would have with that and also the other factor you
43:21
Speaker 1: have to think is did a perpetrator use a condom
43:25
Speaker 1: when they were assaulting her? And that means that any
43:28
Speaker 1: kind of seamen that may have been left behind would
43:31
Speaker 1: have been captured in the condom and that would have
43:33
Speaker 1: been removed and taken taken away. That all has to
43:37
Speaker 1: factor into your into your thoughts. I know that they
43:40
Speaker 1: did neil clippings and neil scraping, so we're looking at autopsy.
43:46
Speaker 1: We're trying to find any kind of trace evidence that
43:48
Speaker 1: might be beneath the fingernails, you know, like in an
43:52
Speaker 1: attempt to fight a perpetrator off, to get them off
43:56
Speaker 1: of you. And in Liza's case, was she you know,
43:59
Speaker 1: you have to ask a question and was she capable
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Speaker 1: at this point if a sexual assault was in fact
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Speaker 1: perpetrated against her, and was she conscious enough in order
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Speaker 1: to be able to facilitate fending awesome one? And certainly
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Speaker 1: that's a question they will have to be asked and answered.
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Speaker 1: A suspect again has been charged in Eliza Fletcher's murdered
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Speaker 1: that case has not yet gone to trial. I'm Joseph
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Speaker 1: Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks