Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Hot Sauce Bread Dinners, Ice Bath Punishments - The Shocking Life and Death of Timmy Ferguson

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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Hot Sauce Bread Dinners, Ice Bath Punishments - The Shocking Life and Death of Timmy Ferguson · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Buddy Backs with Joseph Scott Morgan. The most precious memories.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: That I have.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Probably involved my grandmother's kitchen. I can still see it
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: in my mind's eye. My grandmother and grandfather were not
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: wealthy people. As a matter of fact, they would probably
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: be classified as lower middle class today. They lived in
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: a little, old ramshackled house.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: It was.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Windy in the house. You could hear the wind coming in.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: It was hot in the summertime, cold in the wintertime.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: But the one thing that my grandmother had was a
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: fabulous kitchen. For a house like this, big stove, big oven.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: There was always something being prepared in that house. And
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: you know, even when it was cold in the wintertime,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: you could always seek out warmth and comfort in that kitchen.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: There were even times I remember she would leave the
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: oven door open with the oven going and you could
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: feel the heat off of it. I still have visions
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: of my grandfather lighting his camel cigarettes off of the stovetop.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: But there was a certain amount of joy the smells
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: that came out of that kitchen. The food was incredible.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Nobody will ever cook like my grandmother. I'll argue that
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: point till the day I die. But so much of
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: our life is tied up in food, in nourishment, in
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: the comfort that comes along not just from the taking
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: on of the food, but I think also those that
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: love us, their love is transmitted through that food the
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: care that goes into it. And today on body Bags,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: we're going to talk about a young man who was
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: totally and completely dependent upon a love that did not exist,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: and nourishment that existed but was denied. We're going to
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: talk about the starvation death of a fifteen year old boy.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags. Don't
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: know about you, Dave, but I think for me, my
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: grandma's recipe for fried chicken was probably the best I've
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: ever encountered. I still have memories of seeing her place
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: chicken parts into brown paper bags with gold metal flour
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: with the right combination of Louisiana spices and shaking this
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: bag up every day it seemed like we had fried
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: chicken or something like that, and smell that came from
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: it and the tape. It was never dry, it was
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: always moist and juicy, and the crust was perfect. I
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: don't know if you have a memory like that from childhood,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: I certainly do.
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: Even I have no memories of anything right now, I'm starving, salivating.
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: That's you've done Pole Love's Dog. You mentioned food, I salivate.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: I take me to a buffet and I will eat
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: until they have to roll me to the juicing room
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: at Wonka's factory.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. Yeah, I can identify with that.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: So it's like a huge deal, and.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: It certainly is. And we get comfort from it, don't we.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: I mean I think we do. Yeah, I think we do.
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: You and I could see here and share good fun
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: memories of growing up and food and things like that
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: to avoid talking about this horrible story. What happened to
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: fifteen year old Timothy Ferguson. Fifteen year old Timothy Ferguson
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: was murdered by his mother by starving him, and by
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: the way, not just starving hypothermia. She would take her
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: own flesh and blood Timothy Ferguson. The boy weighed sixty
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: five pounds at fifteen years old, and the only thing
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: he had to eat was a piece of bread and
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: hot sauce, and then she would stick them in an
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: ice bath. Now, if that's not the type of torture,
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: that deserves the worst punishment we can come up with.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: I don't know what it is.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: Let me add one element to that, because you mentioned
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: being denied food, which is all part and parcel first
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: off of malnutrition that ultimately starvation. There's a difference between
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: those two things, and we'll explore them. But you know, Dave,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: there was another element to it. Can we imagine food
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: being used as in many times and this is really
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: unhealthy as a reward and we get comfort from it,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: many of us, we take it to an extreme. I
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: know I have. But can you imagine food being used
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: actively as a punishment? And what I mean by that
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: is taking an element of something that is marketed as
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: being ingestible, but yet you an individual, would derive so
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: much pain from that. And what I'm talking about is
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: the torture of not just an ice bath or deprivation
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: of access to food. I'm talking about actually using the
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: ultimate hot sauce in order to subject him to in
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: order to elicit pain from him. So you've got this
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: weird thing that's working here in this environment where you've
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: got a kid who, by the way, has some developmental issues.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: What do we know about that disability?
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Well, what we do know is that he was apparently
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: completely and totally dependent upon her kindness. And I'm always
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: fascinated by cases.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: Of abuse like this kindness.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, well, whether or not she's going to choose
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: to give him kindness, and isn't that entry that's an
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: interesting thing to consider, the degree to which she is.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: It's ill vinegar and sugar principle, where you fit you
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: feed somebody a steady diet of vinegar, and when they
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: just get a little taste of sugar, you think that
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: it's the entire world, you know, And that happens with
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: abusers lots of times, because they can do great harm
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: to individuals, and suddenly when an act of kindness is extended,
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: it seems like the individuals won the lottery. Suddenly they've
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: got the approval of this monster that they're having to
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: share a home with. And that's really what I mean
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: by kindness in this circumstance, because it's you have this
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: precious life that has been given to you that you
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: have charge over, but yet you're going to deny them
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: access to things that are basic. You know, we learned this,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: I don't know what was it in freshman sociology class.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: You know where you learn Maslow's hierarchy, you know, just
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: the basic you know, those basic things. I see you
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: smiling right now.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I suffered those classes well too.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: I did two. I think that that's really the one
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: thing that I retained out of there was Maslow's hierarchy
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: of needs. With this being said about the choices that
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: have been made in regards to Shanda vander Ark, those
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: choices that she made relative to her son, this fifteen
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: year old, it gave me pause from a mechanism standpoint
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: as a forensic scientist, to begin to think about. You know,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: we talked about homicide all the time on the show.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: You know, we talk about homicide more so than any
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: other manner of death, and there are two types out there.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: I think that you can have people that commit homicide,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: which merely by definition is nothing more than it's different
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: than saying murder. It is death at the hand of another.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: You're not assigning blame. That's the idea of the clinical
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: nature of that term homicide, but death at the hand
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: of another. When you think about the types of homicides
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: that there are, I think, in a big category here
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: you have things that are it's almost like the old
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: idea of sense of omission versus sins of comission. When
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: you have a homicide, you can have an actual passive
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: type of homicide, which I think we're dealing with here.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: You know, the mechanism that's being utilized is deprivation of
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: basic needs, and or you can have this active, this
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: active track that an individual can go down, and that's
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: any kind of trauma that may lead to someone's death,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: like bludgeoning, stabbing. And that's not what happened here. When
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: Shanda vander Arc decided to keep her fifteen year old
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: son sequestered, locked away and literally in a house of horrors.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: That term gets thrown around a lot in media, but
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: this was for this child, this fifteen year old child,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: a house of horrors. When you begin to think about this,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: this was probably the single most unmerciful way to bring
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: about another human being's death. You have an expectation when
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: you have kids, when you see them through their normal
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: auration through life. You know, from the moment that they're
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: an infant till the time that you know no longer
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: your responsibility. You see this physical development that happens in them.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: And I was looking back and doing a little research
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: and you know, with a fifteen year old boy, you
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: have an expectation that that kid is probably on the
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: low end going to be and a lot of its
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: heights dependent nutritional issues. But under quote unquote normal circumstances,
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: you're going to have a child that the average weight
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: for a sixteen year old, fifteen year old, it's going
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: to be about one hundred and thirty three pounds. That
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: was certainly not the case with this kid. Timothy weighed
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: sixty one pounds at at his autopsy. That's how little
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: he weighed. And it's really fascinating to me that this
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: was allowed to go on for so long and that
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: she flew under the radar. And I think a lot
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: of it had to do with her legal background. She
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: fled from Oklahoma, wound up in Michigan, and she knew,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: you know, how to kind of shuck and job with
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: the system and stay below the radar. And boy did
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: she ever. She really facilitated this home that they were in,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: dwelling to meet her to meet her ends, which were
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: completely and totally evil.
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: I'm glad you pointed out that she knew how to
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: fly into the radar. If you've never been through the
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: homeschooling process. You don't know what it takes. It's not
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: as simple as sending a letter to the elementary or
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: high school or whatever and say I've decided to teach
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: my children at home. Leave me alone. That doesn't cut it,
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: because there are rules and regulations in every state is
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: a little bit different. She knew enough to fly under
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: the radar to keep her child in homeschool. I'm curious
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: as to her older son, Paul. He was nineteen when
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: this came to an end. But was he homeschool also
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: or did he actually attend school. Timothy was fifteen when
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: he died. I mean, Paul is only four years older
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: than older. Yeah, so you've got a child who has
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: been abused for many years. He's not being abused by
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: just his mother. Paul is involved in this as well.
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: Whether he's doing it at the direction of his mother
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: for fear for his life, or whether he enjoyed it
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: and was piling on don't know.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: I think that once an individual is in a sequestered environment,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: it's rife for abuse to take place. Look, I got
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: to tell you all my kids were homeschool quite successfully.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, with my son, we had
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: to be adherent, and he went and was co taught
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: with a group of other homeschoolers and had exposure to many,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: many things that we facilitated. But to the degree that
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: whoever driving the ship, it can be a glorious thing
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: or it can be an absolute horror show, which in
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: Timothy circumstances it turned out to be because you can
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: control what is going to occur. Listen, if you're if
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: you're in an environment, and this happens with abusers a lot.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: It happens in many ways. If you're going to abuse
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: a child, the idea is that you want to keep
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: them out of sight because any physical changes that might
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: occur over the course of a year or maybe day
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: to day, if they're if they're being suffering from impact injuries.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: For instance, what do you mean by impact injuries, Well,
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: if they're if they're being slapped around, punched, kicked. You
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: see this with people that are trying to essentially keep
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: the kids away from the rest of the public. They'll
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: even keep them away from immediate family members. That's one
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: of the reasons that abusers many times hospital shop as well,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: which means that if a child is injured, they will
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: not go to the same treatment facility in order to
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: seek care for a child. Because if you put two
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: and two together, Uh, then by seeing the same clinician
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: every time, they're going to say, hey, there's something up here,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: and they're going to report it. But this is a
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: completely different thing that we're dynamic.
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: Is it different that only one of the three children
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: seems to be the victim of his mother?
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: No, that happens with great frequency. Yeah, yeah, out one,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: picking out one and using the others to help facilitate
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: these circumstances. Wow, And that's that's one of the things that.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: That makes it worse.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it does, because you're you're looking for mercy hopefully
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: if you're the victim, they're they're holding out hope that
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: maybe one of their siblings will you know, ride in
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: and be the hero and help maybe give them some relief,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: maybe get them some food. And here's the problem with
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Timothy's case is that unlike you know, say, for instance,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: he was sustaining impact injuries and he was still out
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: in public going that's something that you can kind of
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: guide the child along if you're the abuser, to keep
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: them under the radar with this. Once you start them
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: down this road. Of malnutrition and starvation day. There's no
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: hiding in this because suddenly you have a face that's
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: the cheeks are sunken, the eyes are sunken, they have
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: a pallor the color to their skin almost becomes ashen.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: The skin actually changes in its texture. It becomes almost
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: like parchment paper. Many times it's easily torn and insulted
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: just by bumping into things. That's one of the consequences
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: of malnutrition, because with malnutrition comes dehydration, and so you've
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: got that working as well.
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: Can you tell what this has been going on for
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: a number of years or I'm just curious because Timothy
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: was fifty years old when he died. Was this something
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: that can was active in his life from birth or
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: was this something that just happened in the last two
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: or three years. We know she got in trouble in Oklahoma,
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: But was he living a normal life? I guess is
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: what I'm up to until he's ten and then from
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: the last five years of his life it went bad.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: Is there any way to determine when the abuse began?
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, I think that there is. And here's the
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: big component to this. It's a problem. It's something we
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: have to do in forensics a lot. These are called
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: retroactive investigations, where we go back with a child in particular,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: we will subpoena all of their medical records, even from
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: a very young age. And do you remember when your
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: kids were young, Dave, and you would go to the pediatrician.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: I know that I got a lot of moms in
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: the audience right now and you remember this going to
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: the pediatrician. And even from the time that they're babies,
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: they begin to take measurements on the chouldren They'll do
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: what's referred to as a crown diameter, they'll do the
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: crown what's called the crown rump length, they'll do the
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: crown heal length. They'll measure the abdomen. This is when
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: they're little babies, just to see the developmental distribution of
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: the child, how the child is presenting. And as the
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: child goes matures, they get weighed, their height is taken.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: So one of the keys here and one of the
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: things that can happen with malnutrition over a protracted period
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: of time with a development with a child that's developing,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: is if you deny basic needs like food in particular,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: you're going to and this seems like something that comes
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: from another generation. But it's true. Their growth will be stunted. Okay,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: you're going to stunt your growth if you don't eat.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: You know, that's something that you would hear from my
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: grandmother's generation. They will not be on par with the
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: others in their group relative to how tall they are,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: for instance. And you know weight can vary from person
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: to person, but when you're talking about a child that
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: weighs sixty one pounds when he died, I think that
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: our big takeaway here is that this is something that
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: had been going on for a protracted period of time.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: I don't think that this child had ever been in
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: a healthy environment. Starvation is not something that just occurs overnight.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: It's something that is a long term event where the
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: individual that is perpetrating this and trust me, this was
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: perpetrated on Timothy. This is something that the perpetrator has
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: to take an active view of and they have to
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: actively engage in it. And what they're engaging in is
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: denial of those basic means that he had as human being.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: It's a tough thing when you have kids that have
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: special needs and they require a bit more care. Perhaps
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: certainly if you're the caretaker. You have to extend a
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: lot of mercy in those circumstances, and it can be very,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: very frustrating.
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: The defense trying to come up with a reason for
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: why Shanda vander Art did these things to her, and
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: she claims to have no memory of most of it,
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: by the way, which is so convenient for her. But
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: they claim that it really got bad for her when
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: her husband suffered a stroke. He was already a wheelchair
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: bound and then he had a stroke. He the husband
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: ended up moving in with his parents. Now, when I
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: was first looking at this, it made it sound like
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: the whole family moved in with her with his parents.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: That's not it.
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: She didn't have to take care of her husband in
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: a wheelchair with his other issues.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: His parents did. Jesus.
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: That is the defense. Oh, I was just overburdened with
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: my husband. She claimed PTSD from him having a stroke.
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: They gave her the full mental exam and came back
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: with she knew exactly what she was doing when she
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: did it. When it happened, she was in control of
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: her thoughts and ideas. She's not crazy. Put her on trial,
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: you know, just to clear it up, so to finish
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: up Timothy Ferguson autistic with some speech and motor impairment.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well crimea river is what I would have to
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: say to her and to her defense team. The whole
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: idea of blocking memories and all this sort of stuff. Well,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: how much do you have blocked out? Because this is
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: a daily exercise, Dave, Let me just say this, this
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: process that Timothy is going through, there's a term that
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: we use. If you ever hear the word or the
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: prefix auto, auto means self. And so in Timothy's case,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: he was going through a condition which is and autophogy
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: is I'll just put it to you this way. It
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: is the digestion, the digestion of your own tissues by
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: your body. Because what had happened any fat stores that
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: this child may have had on board. We carry around
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: a healthy amount of fat in our body. There's an
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: obsession with people wanting to get down to low percentages.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: With body weight.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: Fat is actually good for us because it is an
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: energy store. And when you are not replenishing that energy
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: store that goes to long term, long term fuel for
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: your body, then your body is craving to feed itself.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: And what happens is if this child Timothy was already
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: compromised from the perspective of his motor impairment that he had,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: which means that he could probably not amulate real well,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: couldn't move perhaps very well, couldn't take care of basic
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: necessities like go to the bathroom, those sorts of things.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: And you put this autophogy in the mix. He's already
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: compromised where his muscles themselves are already weakened, greatly weakened
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: by virtue of this condition that he has, and then
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: you have his body's need to try to survive, so
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: it starts eating. It's on tissue. My god, this is
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: a perfect storm for this child to literally waste away.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: When the images of Timothy are so striking that the
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: court was exposed to in this case because one of
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: the things that you really notice, and I urge anybody
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: that has not seen these images if you go back
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: to you can see them to a certain degree with
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: Holocaust survivors. But Matthew Brady, from a Civil War era
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: took these incredible images of these guys that escaped the
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: Andersonville prison camp outside of America's Georgia and Dave. One
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: of the things that really stands out regarding these guys
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: is how pronounced their knee joints, are, their pelvises, their ribs,
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: and you can he took these images nude. They have
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: cloth over their private area, but they took these images
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: and it's so striking you can you can almost visualize death.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: And I find it really interesting that, you know, death,
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: death is commonly portrayed in literature as grim reaper, right,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: you know, skeleton, and it's almost like death is sitting
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: on the shoulder of these people, uh, the entire time.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: And that's what was going on with Timothy.
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: Well, tell me about what he was eating. What kind
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: of food was he getting?
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: Joe, have you.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: Heard the old term the only thing you're going to
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: get is bread and water. Yeah, he would occasionally get
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: water and then he would get bread. And the problem
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: with with bread is bread is loaded carbohydrates, and it
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: is a short term solution to nutrition, all right, you
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: burn those those carbs up really really quickly. But for
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: long term sustainability, and what we're talking about is the
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: proper functioning of your organs. One of the major problems
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: that you have with malnourishment is that people will develop
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: severe cardiac problems and a lot of that goes back to, well,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: everything goes back to the absence of sustainability, whether it
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: be vitamin uptake or whether it be something that has
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: more fat in it that is going to give you
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: long term sustainability. If you give somebody a slice of bread,
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: and that is a real thing where you see see
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: these examples of people that have lived on bread and
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: water alone, and they just they're completely diminished. That's what
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: he was being subjected to. But Dave, here's the thing.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: This child, this handicapped child who was at the mercy
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: of his mother and his brother. By the way, not
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: only was he denied anything of real substance to sustain
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: himself on, he was also if you can imagine this
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: being tortured with hot sauce. Now just let that sink
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: in just for a second. So your body is screaming,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: feed me, feed me, feed me. And everything you see
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: before you that is edible in some things that aren't.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: I've had I've had children that were living off of
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: dirty diapers in cases before eating mop strings. Anything looks good,
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: all right, it looks like it will sustain you. Imagine
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: for that moment in time. I don't care how compromised
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: he might be if he's autistic, like they're saying, he
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: still has a need for nutrients and his body is
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: screaming out for this and you're handing him this piece
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: of bread. But what you've done with the bread is
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: that you have you have saturated this bread and hot sauce.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: And David, it's not just any hot sauce. It's Carolina
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: Reaper hot sauce. And if anybody within the sound of
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: my voice has ever been to a mall somewhere and
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: they have the hot sauce shops where you can go
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: in and you can be brave enough to take a
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: chip and they'll put these different hot sauces on there
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: and you taste it and they'll take it up the scale,
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: you know, and it's based on what are called Scoville
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: units relative to the heat. Get you, for instance, if
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: you have ever had a Tabasco pepper, cayenne or Hilipino pepper,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: they're at what it's measured on the Scoville scale. They're
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: measured at about thirty thousand on the Scoville scale. So
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: get that in your mind. Just think about what hot
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: sauce might taste like. Okay, Carolina Reapers are at one
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: point five million to two million on the Scoville scale.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: So it wasn't that she kicked it up a degree
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: from Kilipinos that would be bad enough to feed somebody
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: that's malnourished. It's that she went to the extreme. This
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: is arguably, and I know that there are officionados out
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: there that will probably tangle with me over, but this
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: is arguably the hottest substance that you can go out
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: and purchase and then place on something to eat. So
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: here he is. If you can imagine your body screaming,
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: it's digesting itself, probably developed bed sores as well. Because
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: anytime and this is kind of a little aside, anytime
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: you have somebody that has malnourished, fat also has energy
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: stores for us. But you know it acts as a
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: cushion too for our bodies if you have no barrier
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: other than just this thin skin and atrophied muscle between
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: you and bone, and you stay in one position, which
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: he was held under the staircase in a little room
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: and locked away under their dave.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: Was he in there for days or do they let
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: him out periodically?
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: They would let him out and then when and because
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: he had to be in an adult diaper. Matter of fact,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: the last image that they saw, and she had the
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: house wired with CCTV dave and so there is actually
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: an image of her dragging him along on the floor
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: and he is still breathing, but he's out of it.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: And it is claimed in court that you bear witness
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: to that last moment when his chest rises and falls
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: he literally dies on camera.
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: There was one thing that was actually shown too, where
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: he was breathing through his mouth, and you've as I
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: was looking over the case, you've explained the things that
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: we do in our final stages as we're dying, those
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: breaths that aren't really breath it's just something your body
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: is doing. But he was breathing through his mouth and
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: they were short the way, it was explaining court, like
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: a fish out of water trying to get air right.
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: And his mother, if you can call her that, she
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: sees this on the camera and goes in there to
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: his little hovel which you mentioned under the stairs. It's
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: a small closet like place that is underneath the staircase,
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: and she grabs his mouth and all the time talking
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: down to him and closes his mouth shut and tells
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: him breathe through your nose. See, you can do that,
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: you dummy. The reason that's one of the reasons I
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: kind of questioned the claim of his autistic whatever issues
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: they claim he had, because the way she talked to him,
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: she talked to him is somebody who understood things at
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: a different level than what it appears. But anyway, she
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: held his mouth closed mak him breathe through his nose
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: as he was dying.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that image that's conjured up of a fish
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: laying up on a dock and the mouth and the
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: gills are opening and you can't breathe. It would have
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: been a struggle for him to breathe. Every breath would
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: have been a labor for him, because, yeah, we have
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: the autonomic nervous system that controls our breathing and our heartbeat,
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: but it's so labor, Dave. The lungs would be heavy,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: probably to a great degree, because they would be so
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: highly congested for him struggling in this environment. And to
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: make matters, if this could get and I don't see
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: how it could, but it can, I'm going to go there.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: As part of punishment for Timothy, he was also subjected
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: to ice baths. Now, so we go back to fat stores, right,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: you know you fat.
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: When you say ice bath, you're talking about a bathtub, yes,
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: of cold water with ice.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: Ice in it? Yeah? Yeah, And you know that that's
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: right up there with like World War two torture mechanisms
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: that our service people would have been subjected to to
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: elicit information from them. You know what could be your
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: motivation behind doing that. You've got a kid that is
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: already greatly physically compromised. He's certainly emotionally compromised and scarred
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: at this point by virtue of what you've subjected him
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: to totally depended upon you. And then because he doesn't
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: do something right in your eyes, because you can totally
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: dominate him, you're going to run the bathtub. Now you
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: talk about engaging in an active event. This is not
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: something accidental. You have to go run the bath. And
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: his brother was part of this as well. Would run
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: the bath and place ice in it and submerge this
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: kid in it and have him in there.
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: When they gave his cause of death, you know they
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: listed malnutrition in hypothermia. The bath that he took was
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: the day before he died. His body temperature never rose
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: above healthy again after that last ice bath.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: I think that this was probably the coup de gras
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: for him, that that final finally, that final time when
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: he was subjected to this, because this is not the
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: only time that this happened. I think that that's what
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: was going to push him over the edge relative to
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: his system, finally just giving up and shutting down. For
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: a normal person, I think that if you're submerged in
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: say icy waters, and healthy, you're a healthy person. Let's
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: say you're a healthy way, You've got fat stores on board,
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: you don't already have heart problems and this sort of thing.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: I think that if you got into an environment where
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: you could wrap up, have a heat source, probably within
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: a few hours your body temperature would get back up
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: into a normal range. I'm not saying it's going to
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: be at ninety eight point six, because most of us,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: first off, don't walk around at ninety eight point six.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: I don't.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: I'm in like ninety seven, so that number varies. But
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: just to get over that threshold into what would be
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: considered to be sustainable would take a couple of hours.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: That's where a healthy person day. For this kid, he
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: had no shot relative to this.
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: All right, That explains it. That was what I was
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: curious about because they used listed it as cause of
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: death as one of the causes.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: And that's I think that that's probably a chronic, a
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: chronic thing. And when we look at causes of death,
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: it's not just going to be the one thing that's
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: going to lead to our deaths. In many cases, it's
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: a combination. Particularly if you're talking about like natural disease
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: process if you have somebody that's got diabetes, high pretension,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: those sort of things, all of those are contributing factors,
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: okay to maybe heart failure. In this particular case, it's
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: like you've got this fatal mix that's going on with him,
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: with all of these metabolic problems he's having as a
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: result of absence of food. It's a combination of everything.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: And then on top of it, you throw in being
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: subjected to an ice bath. Yeah, it's going to be
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: resk before disaster.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: I want to ask you some about the food because
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: his mother claimed that he actually got a bag of
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: frozen chicken out of the freezer and was going to
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: eat it, which was her reason for locking things down.
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: The cabin is the refrigerator, freezer and all that, and
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: I'm not buying her argument at all. But she did
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: actually change the refrigerator and keep it where he could
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: not get Yeah.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it wasn't just the fridge. I saw the
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: images from the seeing Dave, and this person had locked
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: the cabinets, had locked everything, And I have this image
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: of if he could get out and he had the
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: available energy to do it, the idea that this craving
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: is starving that he would have on board that would
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: just be gnawing at him. He would have to drag
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: himself across the floor, he couldn't ambulate into the kitchen.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: Maybe at some point in time he had done this.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: And it's interesting with abusers, they'll do stuff symbolically like
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: this many times. Do you see what you've done to
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: all of us? Now, because we can't trust you around food,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: we're gonna lock everything and so now, me, your brother,
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: everybody in this house is going to be subjected to
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: your disobedience and it's all your fault. And that's the
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: kind of thing that abusers do, and that's what she
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: would have done with him. It's more of a demonstration.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: It's not that she's discouraging, you know, trying to discourage
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: the theft of food. It's that she flips it around.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: And to make matters even worse, you've got this fragile
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: child who is totally deepened upon her His body is
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: screaming for nutrition. And what you're going to subject them
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: to visually is the fact that you're going to be
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: denied no matter what you do. And oh, by the way,
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: if you look over your shoulder right here.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: I've got cameras here everywhere.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: And the cameras are going to tell the tale. But
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: thankfully at the end, Shander thunder Arc we'll never see
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: the light of day because she was convicted of first
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: ory murder in Michigan, and her son Paul, who helped
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: torture Timothy, was also convicted of childs I'm Joseph Scott
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: Morgan and this is body backs mean