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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Unraveling the Mystery of 40 Skulls, A Grim Revelation · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:08
Speaker 1: Bodybags with Joseph Scott Morgan as a former death investigator.
0:22
Speaker 1: There's any number of names I've been called over the years.
0:26
Speaker 1: I think that people have a real discomfort with death.
0:30
Speaker 1: They have a real discomfort around things involving the dead,
0:34
Speaker 1: and it's almost comical many times. I guess the first
0:38
Speaker 1: one I remember is, Hey, you're just like Quincy. And
0:41
Speaker 1: to bring it up to more modern times, probably Dexter.
0:46
Speaker 1: People will refer to me as Dexter. Hey, you're just
0:49
Speaker 1: like Dexter, And of course I always say no, I'm not.
0:53
Speaker 1: I'm not a serial killer. But traditionally, I guess the
0:57
Speaker 1: one thing that people have me with, because it's that
1:02
Speaker 1: imagery that comes to mind, is the grim Reaper. That's
1:05
Speaker 1: pretty horrible in and of itself you think about it. Today,
1:10
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about a man that actually rode
1:14
Speaker 1: around in a car and he worked for very prestigious institution.
1:21
Speaker 1: And the car that he wrote around in it had
1:23
Speaker 1: a vanity plate. And on that vanity plate where the
1:27
Speaker 1: letters g R I M DASH are. Now, I don't
1:34
Speaker 1: know what that means to you, but it sounds suspiciously
1:38
Speaker 1: like the Reaper himself. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
1:43
Speaker 1: is Bodybacks. Dave. We were talking about names just a
1:49
Speaker 1: while ago, and isn't it interesting when you get involved
1:54
Speaker 1: in whatever your career track is, there are some monikers
1:58
Speaker 1: I guess that are hung on you. Maybe people forget
2:01
Speaker 1: your name. I don't know. Did people ever refer to
2:04
Speaker 1: you as the radio guy? Oh buddy?
2:07
Speaker 2: Still you get called all kinds of things. And I've
2:09
Speaker 2: wondered that about you, because when I explain who you are,
2:13
Speaker 2: most of them already know who you are because they've
2:16
Speaker 2: seen you on TV over the last ten to fifteen years,
2:20
Speaker 2: so they know you do something with criminal stuff. And
2:23
Speaker 2: then when I try to explain he's a professor, try
2:26
Speaker 2: to lay it all out there, and ultimately it comes
2:28
Speaker 2: back to the dude deals with bones in DNA, and
2:31
Speaker 2: I don't really know how to explain it. But these
2:33
Speaker 2: people that we're going to be talking about today, and
2:35
Speaker 2: I see people because we've got to start with one.
2:38
Speaker 2: But boy, what is it? Scratch a liar? Find a thief?
2:42
Speaker 1: You know, I've never heard that before. Really, I've heard
2:45
Speaker 1: about pulling the thread on the sweater and the whole
2:47
Speaker 1: thing comes unraveled. But scratch, give it to him again.
2:50
Speaker 2: Scratch a liar, Find a thief.
2:52
Speaker 1: Scratch a liar, Find a thief. Wow, okay, I'm following
2:55
Speaker 1: that one away. I hope you don't have that copyright.
2:57
Speaker 2: I got it from Ray, the movie about Ray Charles.
3:01
Speaker 1: Oh, holy smokes. Okay, well there you go.
3:04
Speaker 2: But bottom lining it, this goes to the heart and
3:06
Speaker 2: soul of human beings and how we treat people when
3:10
Speaker 2: they're alive and when they're dead, and the efforts we
3:13
Speaker 2: go to be respectful. What we're going to be talking
3:16
Speaker 2: about today, if nothing else, is the most disrespectful thing
3:20
Speaker 2: I can think of happening to somebody without their family
3:23
Speaker 2: knowing or anybody else. It's a story I didn't think
3:26
Speaker 2: I would ever see, Joe. I'm going to be honest
3:28
Speaker 2: with you. I know, crazy stuff happens. But when you
3:30
Speaker 2: start mentioning Harvard, I tend to on the level goes up.
3:34
Speaker 1: How do you measure respect for the dead? On an
3:37
Speaker 1: interesting little side, there was a story that came out
3:41
Speaker 1: many years ago, and if you remember, I don't know
3:44
Speaker 1: if you remember, the old newspaper insert magazine that would
3:47
Speaker 1: come out in the Sunday papers called Parade. When you
3:49
Speaker 1: open the Sunday paper, the coupons fallout and parade falls out,
3:52
Speaker 1: And there was a feature article in there about a
3:55
Speaker 1: mortician that lived in miss I think it was Mississippi,
3:59
Speaker 1: and her family had owned this mortuary for years and years.
4:03
Speaker 1: But there was this old gentleman that she regarded in
4:07
Speaker 1: a fatherly way, and he had no family members and
4:11
Speaker 1: he worked around the funeral home. Her family was apparently
4:14
Speaker 1: gone her dad and genuinely loved this man, really loved him.
4:19
Speaker 1: It was really creepy because what she had done is
4:24
Speaker 1: that when this guy died, she had him embalmed there
4:28
Speaker 1: in the facility that she owned, and dave she took
4:32
Speaker 1: his body and stood him up in the corner of
4:35
Speaker 1: her home and left him there if aestuoned in his
4:39
Speaker 1: son to go to meeting. The article talked about how
4:41
Speaker 1: she would have to touch up his makeup every now
4:44
Speaker 1: and then. But there was this image of her sitting
4:46
Speaker 1: on you know how they take those fish eye lens
4:50
Speaker 1: images on these magazines, and she was seated on her
4:53
Speaker 1: sofa and over her left or right shoulder is this
4:56
Speaker 1: guy's corpse in the background. And people had allowed this
4:59
Speaker 1: to go go on. Now I can't say that that's
5:01
Speaker 1: necessarily disrespectful. But certain people when you begin to think
5:06
Speaker 1: about how you honor the dead, how you take care
5:08
Speaker 1: of them, because let's face it, we can get off
5:11
Speaker 1: into a spiritual realm here and say that the dead
5:14
Speaker 1: are no longer people. I think their families would argue
5:18
Speaker 1: that they still are because that body, that shell that
5:22
Speaker 1: remains is still representative of that individual and a life
5:26
Speaker 1: that they lived, and how you treat those remains. Arguably,
5:30
Speaker 1: if you want to think about the dead or the
5:32
Speaker 1: most defenseless, right, I mean, there's nothing they can do
5:35
Speaker 1: if you try to violate them in any way. And
5:38
Speaker 1: so there's this built in trust that people that work
5:42
Speaker 1: in the mortuary industry and those that are in the
5:46
Speaker 1: anatomical gift industry. It's kind of unspoken. You know that
5:50
Speaker 1: you're supposed to honor the dead, and in this case
5:53
Speaker 1: it would seem at least that wasn't the case.
5:56
Speaker 2: In this particular case. This is where the the FBI.
6:01
Speaker 2: When the FBI does a raid, oftentimes the search warrant
6:05
Speaker 2: is always very specific as to what they're after. In particular,
6:09
Speaker 2: the man of James not living in Kentucky, FBI comes
6:13
Speaker 2: to raid his place. Now he is a man who
6:15
Speaker 2: has a little bit of a record. I don't want
6:18
Speaker 2: to dismiss it, but he did have past history with
6:21
Speaker 2: crime and he was not allowed to own a gun.
6:25
Speaker 2: When the FBI or local authorities think you are a
6:28
Speaker 2: convicted felon who is not allowed to have a gun
6:31
Speaker 2: and something pops up on their radar, they're going to
6:33
Speaker 2: go look. And so the FBI raids this home of
6:37
Speaker 2: mister James not in Bullock County, Kentucky, and what they
6:41
Speaker 2: find forty human skulls. But that's not all. They find
6:47
Speaker 2: spinal cords that are being used as decorations. They find
6:53
Speaker 2: femurs and hip bones. And I don't know because I've
6:57
Speaker 2: never handled these, but Joe Scott Morgan, I'm going to
6:59
Speaker 2: be willing to bet that femurs from a bone standpoint
7:03
Speaker 2: are pretty thick and big. When it comes to human beings.
7:05
Speaker 1: Oh boy, you've got the pelvis and the hip So
7:10
Speaker 1: if you're thinking about those, they're very robust. They're spinal cords.
7:16
Speaker 1: But my suspicion is here that we're talking about vertebra.
7:22
Speaker 1: You know, they're saying this guy had spinal cords, and
7:24
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that he couldn't. As a matter of fact,
7:27
Speaker 1: I've got to say probably in the morgue when we
7:30
Speaker 1: do detailed dissections on bodies, and it will do it
7:34
Speaker 1: for any number of reasons, any kind of trauma that
7:37
Speaker 1: an individual may have sustained as a result of a
7:39
Speaker 1: motor vehicle accent, certainly with gunshot ones, certain diseases. One
7:44
Speaker 1: of the most difficult procedures that you can do in
7:48
Speaker 1: the morgue is the removal of the brain and the
7:53
Speaker 1: spinal cord and get this leave it intact, and you
7:58
Speaker 1: have to go in anderily. So what that means is
8:01
Speaker 1: that once you have removed the organs out of the body,
8:06
Speaker 1: you go down the mid line of the anterior aspect
8:10
Speaker 1: or the front of the spine. Okay, so you're only
8:13
Speaker 1: going to see the front of the spine if you're
8:15
Speaker 1: obviously looking at the interier the of the body. And
8:20
Speaker 1: to do that dissection with a bone saw, it's very difficult,
8:26
Speaker 1: and so you can actually take out a spinal cord intact.
8:31
Speaker 1: It's a very very tedious process in order to do this,
8:36
Speaker 1: and they will be retained many times in a jar
8:39
Speaker 1: for instance, and they'll be preserved and what's really kind
8:42
Speaker 1: of creepy about it when you see it is that
8:45
Speaker 1: with the spinal cord itself, it's attached to the brain stem.
8:53
Speaker 1: And if you've ever seen a brain with a spinal
8:56
Speaker 1: cord attached, David looks like something from outer space because
9:01
Speaker 1: it's like the brain has this long, long tail attached
9:05
Speaker 1: to it. And I've seen these in jars. For instance.
9:08
Speaker 1: I've actually removed a few and put them into jars,
9:12
Speaker 1: completely intact, and as they age and they're there in
9:16
Speaker 1: that glass and kind of floating, it looks like some
9:20
Speaker 1: type of snake, some alien type of snake, just kind
9:24
Speaker 1: of wrapped and coiled in that environment, and it sits
9:28
Speaker 1: there and you're waiting for it to reveal its secrets.
9:49
Speaker 1: Make no mistake. I love to travel, truly do I
9:52
Speaker 1: value it more than just about anything else. I mean,
9:55
Speaker 1: money's great, you gotta have money in order to travel.
9:57
Speaker 1: But if you're talking about a big, fancy house and
9:59
Speaker 1: a big fancy car, I'm going to take travel day
10:02
Speaker 1: in and day out because you just learned so much.
10:05
Speaker 1: And there's a couple of places I've always want to
10:07
Speaker 1: go and it's part of who I am, it's what
10:09
Speaker 1: I do. But there's two places one is in Portugal
10:13
Speaker 1: and the other is in Milan, Italy. And I'm not
10:16
Speaker 1: going to Milan to see fashion. I've always wanted to
10:20
Speaker 1: go and see what's referred to as an austuary, and
10:25
Speaker 1: it's actually referred to as the San Berndino Asa in Milan.
10:30
Speaker 1: And there is another one, this oshuary that is in
10:36
Speaker 1: Portugal in Ivora, and it's called the Chapel of Bones.
10:39
Speaker 1: And what has happened over the centuries is that the
10:43
Speaker 1: monks that take care of the remains which are buried
10:47
Speaker 1: underground that create oshuaries. And oshuaries are these little areas
10:51
Speaker 1: that have nothing but stack skeletal remains. And the one
10:55
Speaker 1: in Portugal is quite beautiful. It's actually a chapel with
10:58
Speaker 1: an altar that has been created for worship underground, and
11:02
Speaker 1: it's quite striking when you see it. I've always wanted
11:05
Speaker 1: to enter this place and just see what it's like.
11:09
Speaker 1: But here's what I can't imagine. Dave. You're a FBI
11:14
Speaker 1: agent and you're sent out to execute a warrant and
11:17
Speaker 1: the guy that comes to the door has wild hair,
11:21
Speaker 1: wild eyes. He answers the door and you ask him, Hey,
11:26
Speaker 1: who's here in the house with you, and his response
11:30
Speaker 1: is only my dead friends. And that's the response that
11:34
Speaker 1: the FBI agent's got from James Not.
11:37
Speaker 2: I'm thinking they were just glad that he didn't look
11:41
Speaker 2: at them and say you're next. The whole thing about
11:44
Speaker 2: the FBI doing a search warrant and being surprised. I
11:48
Speaker 2: don't necessarily know that. I believe that. I know they
11:50
Speaker 2: were there as part of a gun investigation, But as
11:53
Speaker 2: we started peeling this onion, there's so much more to this,
11:57
Speaker 2: and all I could think of he is it legal?
12:00
Speaker 2: And b if it's not illegal.
12:03
Speaker 1: Why listen? No offense to Bullock County, Kentucky. I'm sure
12:08
Speaker 1: it's a lovely place. I would I'd go visit Bullock County, Kentucky.
12:12
Speaker 1: But you're talking about one man in this location, this
12:16
Speaker 1: James Knot, that has been identified by the FBI, and
12:20
Speaker 1: he's got all of these remains that are inside of
12:24
Speaker 1: his home. I mean, you've got remains that has a
12:28
Speaker 1: scarf wrapped around the circumference of the skull. He's got
12:32
Speaker 1: another skull that is apparently immediately adjacent either on or
12:36
Speaker 1: in his bed dave where he slept. The question is,
12:40
Speaker 1: is this is this guy a necro file. Does he
12:44
Speaker 1: rob Graves or is it something darker than that? If
12:48
Speaker 1: you can imagine, is he a serial killer or is
12:51
Speaker 1: he trafficking in human remains? I don't know. It seems
12:55
Speaker 1: like he took a lot of pride in this, but yeah,
12:57
Speaker 1: they found a lot of weapons in there. But what's
12:59
Speaker 1: interesting and charge him with anything related to the human remains?
13:04
Speaker 2: Day you mentioned one of the skulls being on or
13:07
Speaker 2: near the bed. I actually spent some time on this
13:10
Speaker 2: because my first thought was, if this skull is attached
13:14
Speaker 2: to something else and is laying there on the pillow
13:17
Speaker 2: under the covers, we might just not do this show.
13:19
Speaker 2: I don't think I could handle it. But what they
13:22
Speaker 2: did find, and you mentioned the decorations and things like that,
13:25
Speaker 2: the reality of this is I don't think their first
13:29
Speaker 2: thought the FBI was we've got a massive serial killer
13:33
Speaker 2: on our hands. Who is crazy? That passed Dahmer and Bundy.
13:38
Speaker 2: I don't think they thought that because as part of
13:40
Speaker 2: a bigger investigation, the FBI was not just aware of
13:45
Speaker 2: the trafficking in human remains or is that what you
13:50
Speaker 2: call the bones I mean in this particular case.
13:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, that's what they're referred to US.
13:54
Speaker 2: And Harvard in particular, has been in the news in
13:57
Speaker 2: the last couple of months over some scannds. So as
14:02
Speaker 2: we move forward here, I wanted to give you an
14:04
Speaker 2: idea of what the FBI found. The man had AK
14:08
Speaker 2: forty seven with loaded magazines, dummy grenades, two plates of
14:12
Speaker 2: body armor, loaded thirty eight special revolver, black powder primers,
14:16
Speaker 2: elastic blasting caps, a detonation cord, inert grenade components, and
14:23
Speaker 2: you have to ask, well, was there anything else in
14:26
Speaker 2: the mix of all this the bones, the skulls, the
14:29
Speaker 2: spinal cords, and the weapons. A Harvard Medical School bag.
14:35
Speaker 1: You talk about putting two and two together, you begin
14:38
Speaker 1: to think, first off, I don't know, maybe there are
14:40
Speaker 1: Harvard trained physicians in Bullock County, Kentucky. Maybe there are,
14:44
Speaker 1: Maybe there's former faculty members, maybe there's people that donate.
14:48
Speaker 1: I think one of the first questions that I would
14:51
Speaker 1: ask this fella is how did you come into possession
14:54
Speaker 1: of this back? And why is it here? Because when
14:57
Speaker 1: you start to see all of these an at comical specimens,
15:01
Speaker 1: and that's really what they are, they are atomical specimens,
15:05
Speaker 1: each and every single item there, whether it's one of
15:09
Speaker 1: the skulls, the spinal column, slash chords, the femurs, the
15:14
Speaker 1: hip bones, all of these sorts of things. You begin
15:17
Speaker 1: to think, well, you've got these specimens. Here, is this
15:21
Speaker 1: in some way affiliated with Harvard Medical School? And how
15:24
Speaker 1: did you come into possession this? Back? I mean, the
15:26
Speaker 1: AK forty seven's are really intriguing. Your previously convicted felon.
15:31
Speaker 1: You're not supposed to have any of this stuff. But dude,
15:33
Speaker 1: we've got to talk about the human remains. How did
15:36
Speaker 1: you come into possession of them? And I think that
15:38
Speaker 1: that's when this takes a turn.
15:40
Speaker 2: Dave, and I wanted to know from you, Joe, when
15:42
Speaker 2: one gets human remains like this where he's able to
15:46
Speaker 2: use them as decorations. They had to have been scrubbed, cleaned.
15:51
Speaker 2: I don't know where they came from right now, so
15:53
Speaker 2: I'm just assuming that they've been cleaned up, because I
15:57
Speaker 2: don't know what a non cleaned up skull would look like.
16:00
Speaker 2: I'm really out of my depth here, Joe. What are
16:02
Speaker 2: we talking about? Are we talking about bones that have
16:05
Speaker 2: gone through somebody's dishwasher? Have they come out of a lab?
16:09
Speaker 2: How did they use these at Harvard? What is the
16:11
Speaker 2: purpose of having skeletal remains, where this guy could have forty.
16:16
Speaker 1: Skulls with skulls in particular, when you're talking about a
16:20
Speaker 1: gross anatomy lab. Previous institution was at We had a
16:23
Speaker 1: gross anatomy lab and I spent a lot of time
16:25
Speaker 1: in there with my students and we'd have generally I
16:29
Speaker 1: don't know five, six, sometimes eight bodies that were in
16:33
Speaker 1: there that the students from several different departments within the
16:37
Speaker 1: university would utilize to do gross anatomy with. Trust me
16:41
Speaker 1: when I say the dissections are extensive, and you want
16:46
Speaker 1: them to be extensive, Dave, because these people are going
16:49
Speaker 1: to go into the medical arts and you want them
16:52
Speaker 1: to understand just I mean as my detail as possible,
16:58
Speaker 1: every nuance of an anatomy and how everything works. It's
17:02
Speaker 1: not just the anatomy, it's the physiology and understanding how
17:05
Speaker 1: all of that works together in order to make us
17:08
Speaker 1: who we are and how you're going to treat these
17:09
Speaker 1: people in the future. So with that said, the fact
17:13
Speaker 1: that he had in tax skulls is kind of interesting
17:15
Speaker 1: because many times, if they were in fact intact, we
17:19
Speaker 1: don't have all of those details. You will not find
17:22
Speaker 1: a fully intact skull out of a medical school, because
17:26
Speaker 1: what do you have to do, Well, you have to
17:28
Speaker 1: open the head, take the brain out, and you cannot
17:31
Speaker 1: appreciate neuro anatomy as it applies specifically to the brain
17:36
Speaker 1: without eviscerrating the brain from the skull. So, if that's
17:40
Speaker 1: the case where these skulls completely intact, did they have
17:44
Speaker 1: a solid incision which is referred to the incision is
17:47
Speaker 1: actually referred to as a circumferential incision, which is a
17:51
Speaker 1: fancy way of saying the incision goes all the way
17:54
Speaker 1: around the skull. So if he's got in tax skulls,
17:57
Speaker 1: that's one of the ways. You know, somebody asked me
17:59
Speaker 1: if is this a real human skull? If I see
18:03
Speaker 1: the skull cap is still on there, or what's referred
18:05
Speaker 1: to as the calvarium, it becomes the calvarium when you
18:08
Speaker 1: pop the off of the skull. If I see something
18:12
Speaker 1: that is intact and somebody's got it up on a
18:14
Speaker 1: shelf or something like that, I'm going to look at
18:16
Speaker 1: it and I'm going to say, well, if that's intact,
18:20
Speaker 1: why would you have an intact skull? Because you know
18:23
Speaker 1: that it probably is not part of a gross anatomy class,
18:27
Speaker 1: there's a higher likelihood unless you're collecting human remains, there's
18:32
Speaker 1: a higher likelihood that it's probably a mock up that
18:35
Speaker 1: just looks like bone because most of the time these
18:37
Speaker 1: students have to pop the caps, these calvariums off of
18:40
Speaker 1: them to take the brain out in order to examine it.
18:43
Speaker 1: There's no other way to get the brain out, Okay,
18:45
Speaker 1: is what it comes down to. When it is said
18:48
Speaker 1: by the FBI that he had forty human skulls, you
18:52
Speaker 1: begin to think, well, my word, how did you get
18:55
Speaker 1: these and what state were they in? It's an interesting thing.
18:59
Speaker 1: Unless the people in Bullet County, Kentucky had went out
19:03
Speaker 1: to the local cemetery and looked around, they had a
19:05
Speaker 1: bunch of holes in the ground. There's got to be
19:08
Speaker 1: some other explanation for this guy being in possession of
19:11
Speaker 1: these skulls, forty of them. This guy's only thirty nine
19:13
Speaker 1: years old. How do you collect that many skulls in
19:15
Speaker 1: that period of time in your life? And what's the
19:18
Speaker 1: purpose for you have in them? And back to your
19:21
Speaker 1: point about how do you get these bones clean? There's
19:24
Speaker 1: any number of ways that you get them clean. People
19:27
Speaker 1: have used bleach over the years, forensic anthropologists actually use
19:31
Speaker 1: a technique that is not for the squeamish. If we have, say,
19:35
Speaker 1: for instance, bones that come to us out of the field,
19:38
Speaker 1: and the tissue there might be some decomposing tissue that's
19:42
Speaker 1: still on there, they will essentially slowly heat that bone
19:46
Speaker 1: inside of a pot with water or chemical mixture inside
19:52
Speaker 1: of it, and the soft tissue will fall away, and
19:55
Speaker 1: so that what you're left with is raw bone, just
19:59
Speaker 1: pure bone. If you've gotten medical students that are utilizing
20:04
Speaker 1: bone as a tool for understanding anatomy, they're not very
20:09
Speaker 1: skilled with tools at this point, and you're going to
20:11
Speaker 1: get a lot of tool marks on these bones. You'll
20:13
Speaker 1: see scalpel scraping, for instance. You'll see where they've used
20:17
Speaker 1: scissors to cut away tendons and those sorts of things,
20:20
Speaker 1: and if you closely examine it, you can see that
20:23
Speaker 1: somebody has done something to these bones.
20:25
Speaker 2: I know that as we move forward, I don't want
20:27
Speaker 2: to make a light of this by Joe. I don't
20:29
Speaker 2: know any other way. When you've got a man who's
20:31
Speaker 2: got forty skulls on his property and he's made decorations
20:34
Speaker 2: out of them, I would think, and I mean this
20:37
Speaker 2: if that's your thing, that you like this type of
20:40
Speaker 2: imagery and around you, that you just by plastic that
20:43
Speaker 2: it would hold up longer. And this seems to be
20:45
Speaker 2: more from a shock value standpoint of And when I
20:48
Speaker 2: saw the guy's mugshot, my first, second, and third thought was, hey, man,
20:52
Speaker 2: don't rule out the possibility that he is a serial killer.
20:56
Speaker 1: Well here's the thing, Dave, there's a certain level of
20:58
Speaker 1: comfort than visual has develops with this. There's almost a
21:04
Speaker 1: callous that develops, I think psychologically to being around human remains.
21:08
Speaker 1: I 'argue you. For instance, when I spent hours and
21:11
Speaker 1: hours in the Morgue and it was my daily routine,
21:13
Speaker 1: I'd go in, I'd have a cup coffee or soda
21:16
Speaker 1: or something like that, and I'd be standing at the counter,
21:19
Speaker 1: you know, writing there'd be bodies laid out in there.
21:22
Speaker 1: If I just grabbed John Q Public and said, hey,
21:25
Speaker 1: I want you to come to work with me, I'll
21:27
Speaker 1: go through the drive through by you a cup coffee
21:29
Speaker 1: and you can come and talk to me at the counter.
21:31
Speaker 1: And I've got bodies laid out in there. You think
21:34
Speaker 1: that person's going to listen to anything I have to say.
21:36
Speaker 1: They're not going to sit there and calmly drink their coffee.
21:38
Speaker 1: And for me, it goes to this idea that you've
21:41
Speaker 1: become very comfortable in this environment. You don't give it
21:44
Speaker 1: a second thought because it's part of the world that
21:46
Speaker 1: you occupy. So when you're talking about this gentleman from
21:50
Speaker 1: up in Kentucky, you begin to think, how in the
21:52
Speaker 1: world do you get to this level of comfort at
21:56
Speaker 1: this point in your life where you are actually sleeping
22:02
Speaker 1: with a human skull in your bed. I'm gonna throw
22:24
Speaker 1: out a couple of names to you, Dave. The names
22:26
Speaker 1: actually come from a few years back. William Burke and
22:30
Speaker 1: William Hare, and these guys were from Scotland and they
22:34
Speaker 1: were a pair of serial killers and they kind of
22:39
Speaker 1: had an interesting, let's say, modus operandi. They were killing
22:45
Speaker 1: people in order to create a market for anatomical gifts,
22:52
Speaker 1: and these gifts of these bodies of these people that
22:56
Speaker 1: they were killing. We're going to a gentleman that was
23:00
Speaker 1: highly respected and highly regarded by the name of doctor
23:03
Speaker 1: Robert Knox. But the problem was this, when you worked
23:07
Speaker 1: in medical schools back during that period of time, there
23:10
Speaker 1: was a prohibition against doing human dissections, and so there
23:14
Speaker 1: was a real market, and this happened a lot. There
23:16
Speaker 1: were several cases. There's even a very infamous case that
23:19
Speaker 1: occurred in Georgia where they went in under many years ago,
23:24
Speaker 1: went under one of the old buildings at the Medical
23:27
Speaker 1: College of Georgia it's no longer call that now, where
23:29
Speaker 1: they found an area where bones had been dumped. Medical
23:33
Speaker 1: students pre Civil War were doing dissections on human remains
23:38
Speaker 1: that were provided to them by grave robbers. They would
23:41
Speaker 1: do them by candle light, just so that they could
23:43
Speaker 1: understand human anatomy. But the reason I bring this up
23:46
Speaker 1: is that actually one of the center points of this
23:49
Speaker 1: investigation that the FBI is conducting involves a man and Dave.
23:54
Speaker 1: His email handle that he actually used was William.
24:00
Speaker 2: Burke James Knott, the Kentucky man that had the forty skulls.
24:04
Speaker 2: He was the one using William Burke as a Facebook
24:07
Speaker 2: Messenger name, and he was the one, according to the
24:11
Speaker 2: FBI and their paperwork, that's who actually was using that name,
24:14
Speaker 2: and his contact was Jeremy Pauley, Jeremy Paully being from Pennsylvania.
24:19
Speaker 2: As you start looking at these things, these people are
24:21
Speaker 2: all using Facebook Messenger. Joe You've got James Not with
24:24
Speaker 2: the forty skulls in Kentucky and his contact Jeremy in Pennsylvania.
24:30
Speaker 2: That's where that investigation begins to really open up to
24:34
Speaker 2: because ultimately who had that Harvard Medical School bag and
24:37
Speaker 2: how to end up in Kentucky at the home of
24:40
Speaker 2: James Knot.
24:41
Speaker 1: That's an excellent question because you know, now you're getting
24:43
Speaker 1: into the area of anatomical gifts. Who in the world
24:47
Speaker 1: is going to have access to human remains? Well, it's
24:53
Speaker 1: the people that put their hands on the human remain.
24:56
Speaker 1: What's the quickest way to facilitate that if you're looking
25:00
Speaker 1: to actually distribute these among people, Well, if you sign
25:05
Speaker 1: a will and you say, okay, I want my body
25:07
Speaker 1: to go to X, Okay, I want it to go
25:10
Speaker 1: to I don't know there's people that actually donate their
25:13
Speaker 1: bodies to the body Farm in Tennessee. I've had people
25:16
Speaker 1: ask me about that, something I would want to do,
25:19
Speaker 1: but people do that. But there are a large number
25:22
Speaker 1: of people that say, for instance, they want their body
25:25
Speaker 1: donated from medical science. And it's certainly admirable, I think
25:30
Speaker 1: because the body is going to be used in order
25:33
Speaker 1: to teach people so that they can go out and
25:35
Speaker 1: become future practitioners in the medical arts. And you begin
25:39
Speaker 1: to think about this, there's a certain level of trust
25:42
Speaker 1: that comes along with these donations. And it would appear
25:46
Speaker 1: that how Harvard kind of weaves its way into this
25:50
Speaker 1: whole drama. There was a fellow by the name of
25:53
Speaker 1: Cecil Lodge who's formerly he headed up the Harvard Medical
25:57
Speaker 1: School Anatomical Gift program. So there's your point of contact.
26:01
Speaker 1: And what was happening apparently was Lodge has been allegedly
26:08
Speaker 1: using I don't want to say Facebook marketplace, but he's
26:11
Speaker 1: been utilizing Facebook as a way to broker human remains
26:17
Speaker 1: and individuals that are tied into here. You've got this
26:20
Speaker 1: fellow in Pennsylvania that's brokering or that the remains are
26:25
Speaker 1: coming to them. There's an individual in Arkansas that is
26:29
Speaker 1: a funeral director. They're acquiring things. They're acquiring things like
26:33
Speaker 1: skin dissected out, hands, feet, all these sorts of things
26:38
Speaker 1: that you normally use so that people can do detailed dissections.
26:43
Speaker 1: Let me kind of explain to you how this works,
26:45
Speaker 1: because I think a lot of folks might believe that
26:48
Speaker 1: when a body is used by medical school to teach
26:54
Speaker 1: gross anatomy. They're going to take that body and keep
26:57
Speaker 1: it stored forever and ever. Amen, That's not what happens.
27:01
Speaker 1: Here's how the process goes. So let's just say the
27:04
Speaker 1: Cecil Lodge fellow has a body that is donated to
27:08
Speaker 1: Harvard Medical School. And I'm sure that there are many
27:10
Speaker 1: alumni that have donated their body, particularly those that came
27:14
Speaker 1: through the medical school. And let's face it, Dave, those
27:17
Speaker 1: are very powerful people. Can you imagine. So an individual says, Okay,
27:22
Speaker 1: I want my dad's body, my mom's body to go
27:24
Speaker 1: to Harvard Medical School. It was their wish. Maybe the
27:28
Speaker 1: individual before they passed on signed an agreement making their
27:31
Speaker 1: body an anatomical gift. Well, Lodge takes the body. It
27:35
Speaker 1: will actually pass before the medical school students, the incoming freshmen,
27:40
Speaker 1: well I say incoming freshmen, and they're not referred to
27:43
Speaker 1: as freshmen, they refer to as first years. And that's
27:45
Speaker 1: when you take gross anatomy in medical school. That first
27:49
Speaker 1: year you got started the baseline here and they do
27:52
Speaker 1: their dissection. There might be two or three of these
27:54
Speaker 1: students on one body, working as a team, and they'll
27:58
Speaker 1: work with this body, perhaps through an entire semester and
28:00
Speaker 1: in some cases through an entire year. Well, what happens
28:03
Speaker 1: to the body after that? Do they go and have
28:06
Speaker 1: a funeral service? No. Most of the time those bodies
28:10
Speaker 1: are then taken to a facility where there's a standing
28:14
Speaker 1: agreement where those bodies will then be cremated. That's not
28:18
Speaker 1: what happened. So after these bodies would have gone through
28:22
Speaker 1: these detailed dissections at Harvard, apparently things changed. They weren't
28:27
Speaker 1: going out to be cremated. These bodies were being retained,
28:31
Speaker 1: and allegedly what has happened is that parts of these
28:34
Speaker 1: bodies were being broken to individuals that Lodge has allegedly
28:40
Speaker 1: been networked with throughout the country. It goes out to
28:43
Speaker 1: these individuals, and then these individuals have people that are
28:46
Speaker 1: interested in purchasing interesting souvenirs body parts, skulls, spinal columns,
28:53
Speaker 1: a pelvis, a thigh bone, or femur, anything that just
28:58
Speaker 1: kind of peaks their interest. There are people that will
29:00
Speaker 1: take the small elements of a hand, for instance, say
29:04
Speaker 1: the digits off of a finger, and make necklaces out
29:07
Speaker 1: of these things. There are people that make human teeth
29:10
Speaker 1: necklaces out of these things. Most of the time it
29:12
Speaker 1: doesn't happen here in the US. But if that's where
29:16
Speaker 1: your imagination runs to, it's being fueled by these individuals
29:21
Speaker 1: that participate in this kind of behavior.
29:23
Speaker 2: We have people that we trust with the last vet.
29:28
Speaker 2: This is my mom, you know, this is my dad,
29:30
Speaker 2: this is my wife, and you're at the funeral home
29:34
Speaker 2: at my emotionally weakest moment. Maybe we have decided to
29:38
Speaker 2: do cremation. I expect this to be all of my
29:42
Speaker 2: loved one. I don't expect for you. You're already charging
29:47
Speaker 2: me a bundle to do this job, and now you're
29:51
Speaker 2: gonna take my mom's skull and sell it to some
29:55
Speaker 2: guy so he can make a vase out of it
29:57
Speaker 2: in Kentucky. No, here's what we actually have. We have
30:01
Speaker 2: James Knot at the forty Skullman. We have the Pennsylvania guy,
30:06
Speaker 2: Jeremy Pauley. We have the head of the Harvard, the
30:10
Speaker 2: former More guy at Harvard, this whole and Candace Chapman
30:14
Speaker 2: out of Little Rock. All of these people playing a
30:17
Speaker 2: role in taking body parts that were not intended to
30:22
Speaker 2: be a lamp and they're moving them around the country.
30:24
Speaker 2: And it's not just small, It's not just Joe Scott
30:27
Speaker 2: and Dave needing a femur for a lucky stick. This
30:31
Speaker 2: is a whole big thing using social media to reach
30:35
Speaker 2: other like minded individuals, to create these trophies, these things,
30:40
Speaker 2: and to move them around the country. It's a big group.
30:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is. And to this day there are essentially
30:50
Speaker 1: mister Lodge along with his wife Denise, who is also
30:54
Speaker 1: involved in this. There are five other people that you've named.
30:57
Speaker 1: They have only been charged at this point Tom and
31:00
Speaker 1: not convicted. And right now we're going to wait and
31:04
Speaker 1: see what happens with this case because it's going to
31:07
Speaker 1: impact i think Dave in the long run, it's going
31:10
Speaker 1: to impact policy as it applies to all of these
31:14
Speaker 1: other groups, all of these people that you allow into
31:18
Speaker 1: that circle within the anatomical gift environment and within mortuaries
31:24
Speaker 1: that are trusted with taking care of the dead, but
31:27
Speaker 1: more importantly taking care of their memories and their families.
31:35
Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks