Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: SHOCKING Celeb Deaths By Autoerotic Asphyxia , Epstein Hanging, and More

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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: SHOCKING Celeb Deaths By Autoerotic Asphyxia , Epstein Hanging, and More · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:01
Speaker 1: Quality times. But Joseph Scott More, if you've read my
0:08
Speaker 1: memoir Blood Beneath my Feet, there's a character, and I
0:13
Speaker 1: say character, real person, my grandmother Curl, who features quite
0:21
Speaker 1: prominently in Blood and because she did a lot of
0:28
Speaker 1: my raising, and still to this day, there's not a
0:32
Speaker 1: day that goes by I do not think about her.
0:34
Speaker 1: And I literally mean that, and I've got a photo
0:37
Speaker 1: of she and I on my mantle. But she had
0:41
Speaker 1: all of these kind of I guess you'd call them
0:44
Speaker 1: euphemistic terms that are I think they're kind of unique
0:48
Speaker 1: to the South and particularly to Southern women. And she'd
0:56
Speaker 1: say all kinds of things, you know that you would
0:59
Speaker 1: get the drift of it, you would understand it, but
1:04
Speaker 1: contextually it seemed out of place. And one of one
1:08
Speaker 1: of her sayings that she would always use, particularly in
1:13
Speaker 1: the Deep South. Remember, you know, my family's from Louisiana.
1:17
Speaker 1: We're Delta people. You know, it's always insufferably hot and
1:21
Speaker 1: you just learn to live with. But if she ever
1:25
Speaker 1: got too hot, and that was rare because she was
1:27
Speaker 1: used to heat, she'd always say, I feel like I'm
1:32
Speaker 1: smothering to death. Well, there's a lot to be taken
1:37
Speaker 1: away from that. Smothering for most people, you know, means
1:44
Speaker 1: that your airways being blocked and you can't breathe. In
1:48
Speaker 1: south it either means that you're really hot or you're
1:52
Speaker 1: about to cover something with gravy. But today I'm going
1:58
Speaker 1: to take you on a little and we're going to learn,
2:02
Speaker 1: hopefully I'll be up to the task about asphyxial deaths.
2:10
Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body batteries smothering.
2:17
Speaker 1: That's a big part of asphixial deaths, and they come
2:23
Speaker 1: in all shapes and size as Dave. When you know,
2:27
Speaker 1: you begin to think about how someone dies, and the
2:32
Speaker 1: main element to this is the idea of depriving the
2:38
Speaker 1: victim of oxygen at the end of the day, because
2:42
Speaker 1: it is our life source, you know, It's what feeds
2:44
Speaker 1: our bodies, it's what keeps our brain working. Certainly, our
2:48
Speaker 1: lungs process at our hearts pump out that oxygenated blood.
2:53
Speaker 1: Our bodies scream for it, and if that's disrupted in
2:57
Speaker 1: the slightest way, then it's catastrophic. That's one of the reasons, like,
3:02
Speaker 1: for instance, people that develop pneumonia, and we're talking about
3:05
Speaker 1: a natural disease here where their lungs get really heavy
3:08
Speaker 1: and they can't process oxygen the way they normally do.
3:13
Speaker 1: It's a real, real problem. I think back to COVID
3:18
Speaker 1: where they were so anxious. It seemed like every third
3:21
Speaker 1: person was being put on a vent that would show up,
3:25
Speaker 1: you know, with chess congestion, and of course that's almost
3:28
Speaker 1: a death sentence. Everybody uses this term DAVE nowadays nuanced
3:35
Speaker 1: out of all of the ways that people die from
3:40
Speaker 1: a traumatic situation, I'd have to say that that asphyxia
3:46
Speaker 1: or asphyxial deaths are nuanced because you can have them
3:49
Speaker 1: in a variety of categories, and you know, just to
3:53
Speaker 1: kind of give everybody an idea of some of these things,
3:58
Speaker 1: there's multiple modes of asphix it. We have everything from
4:01
Speaker 1: you've mentioned a couple of leaves. We have strangulation, and
4:04
Speaker 1: that can either be manual, which means you know, by
4:08
Speaker 1: the hands. You can have ligature as well, and interestingly enough,
4:16
Speaker 1: physicians many times will call that mechanical asphixiation because you're
4:21
Speaker 1: using a mechanism to do it. You talked about a
4:24
Speaker 1: garrot with John Wayne Gacy. Did you know that grotting
4:28
Speaker 1: was actually a form of capital punishment. The French used
4:32
Speaker 1: it extensively in their colonies, and they would tie a
4:37
Speaker 1: person to a chair and they had a big twist
4:40
Speaker 1: that went on the back of the chair. It was
4:42
Speaker 1: like a gigantic key that was hooked to ligature and
4:45
Speaker 1: they turned that thing around and around until and this
4:48
Speaker 1: is in public, until the person was asphyxiated. You have,
4:53
Speaker 1: you know, instances of judicial hanging, and of course we
4:57
Speaker 1: still you know, have people that hang themselves all the time.
5:02
Speaker 1: It's probably in my little slice of the Pies of
5:05
Speaker 1: Death Investigator. It was just behind self inflicted gunshot wounds
5:11
Speaker 1: as a method for people to end their own lives.
5:14
Speaker 1: I think one of the reasons is is that everybody
5:16
Speaker 1: owns a belt, everybody has pair of pants, everybody has
5:19
Speaker 1: a shirt or a towel. I've seen people commit suicide
5:23
Speaker 1: with a hair dryer before and not plugging it in
5:27
Speaker 1: and jumping in the bathtub. I'm talking about tying. And
5:30
Speaker 1: this was actually on an acute psychord. I got called
5:34
Speaker 1: into this thing and they had this lady was in
5:38
Speaker 1: acute distress. She was in a manic phase. They were
5:44
Speaker 1: giving her drugs to calm her down. Things like adavan
5:47
Speaker 1: and all that sort of stuff. And they left her
5:50
Speaker 1: with a hair dryer and she went on the other
5:52
Speaker 1: side of her hospital bed and tied the plug off
5:55
Speaker 1: onto the top rail, you know those rails that go
5:57
Speaker 1: up and down, and she wrapped that that hair dryer
6:01
Speaker 1: around her neck so that when I observed her, the
6:05
Speaker 1: hair darwer was hanging on the front of her body
6:08
Speaker 1: like a big pennant, and the cord was wrapped around
6:11
Speaker 1: her neck and she just sat down. And people don't
6:14
Speaker 1: realize you don't have to be standing hanging yourself. And
6:18
Speaker 1: that's a theme. That's a recurrent theme that you have.
6:20
Speaker 1: So you know, we have you know, strangulations, hangings, hangings
6:26
Speaker 1: can come about, and then you know, you can have
6:28
Speaker 1: accidental hangings. Have a couple of those. A young kid
6:32
Speaker 1: that was trying to entertain his younger siblings because his
6:36
Speaker 1: mother was working as a prostitute in Atlanta and he
6:40
Speaker 1: was left with him. He was I think he's this
6:43
Speaker 1: precious child, was only nine years old, and he sat
6:47
Speaker 1: his siblings in front of him, and he had a
6:50
Speaker 1: batman mask that someone had given him, and he had
6:55
Speaker 1: an old jump rope that he tied inside of a closet,
7:01
Speaker 1: and this house was really old, so he could hold
7:03
Speaker 1: on to the jump rope that was anchored on an
7:08
Speaker 1: old clothes bar in there and swing out of the closet,
7:15
Speaker 1: bounce off the wall, and swing back in. He kept
7:17
Speaker 1: telling the kids that he was he was Batman, and
7:21
Speaker 1: he got looped around that thing and he hung and
7:25
Speaker 1: six headed in front of his siblings. And the only
7:28
Speaker 1: reason somebody found out about it is this horrible neighborhood.
7:31
Speaker 1: There was a little old lady that lived down the
7:33
Speaker 1: street and she saw a three year old and it's cold,
7:36
Speaker 1: it's like in February. Saw a three year old walking
7:38
Speaker 1: down street only wearing a diaper and a t shirt
7:42
Speaker 1: and she was crying. And she heard this child crying,
7:44
Speaker 1: this in the middle of the night, and she just
7:46
Speaker 1: happened to pop out there. And all this little girl
7:51
Speaker 1: could say was, I can't remember the child's first name,
7:55
Speaker 1: but he's sleeping. He's sleeping. And so she goes to
7:58
Speaker 1: the house and kids still hanging, and other kids are
8:00
Speaker 1: crying in the house. And so you know, I've had
8:04
Speaker 1: kids on tire swings that have been hung by doing
8:08
Speaker 1: the cabbage patch on top of the tire where they're
8:10
Speaker 1: holding onto the rope. I think pendulums around their body,
8:14
Speaker 1: and that's a type of hanging. Have we drowning fits
8:18
Speaker 1: into the category of sphyxial death? Really, yes, Drowning is
8:22
Speaker 1: because you're replacing oxygen with liquid at that point in time.
8:27
Speaker 1: So that is, in and of itself an asphyxiation anything
8:31
Speaker 1: that replaces oxygen in the body, and you have substances
8:36
Speaker 1: out there or chemicals that are out there that are
8:39
Speaker 1: what are called oxygen deprivaants. I recall having a young
8:44
Speaker 1: man that was engaged in something we'll talk about in
8:47
Speaker 1: just a moment even further, he was engaged in autoeroticism,
8:52
Speaker 1: and he was he was a salesman and he is
8:57
Speaker 1: his first job. He was a salesman selling halon fire extinguishers,
9:02
Speaker 1: and they use halin on boats a lot, and it's
9:04
Speaker 1: odorless and it's colorless, but it grabs the oxygen out
9:08
Speaker 1: of the air, binds with it, and if there's a fire,
9:11
Speaker 1: it immediately knocks down the fire. So if you're on
9:14
Speaker 1: a ship, these things will be deployed and it jumps
9:18
Speaker 1: right down on the on the burning fire and extinguishes it.
9:23
Speaker 1: It's not like foam or anything else, and he was
9:25
Speaker 1: sniffing this stuff in order to get a rush as
9:28
Speaker 1: he's pleasuring himself, and he was found dead at his
9:31
Speaker 1: desk from halon. So you have that carbon monoxide. You know,
9:36
Speaker 1: there's a number of these agents, and then you have
9:39
Speaker 1: poison agents. There's classic image of some of the Kurdish
9:45
Speaker 1: Kurdish occupants in Northern Rock where you know Hussein had
9:53
Speaker 1: used seren gas, you know, an entire village and wiped
9:57
Speaker 1: them out. Picture of mother and and child, you know,
10:01
Speaker 1: hunched over. Then you have suffocation. Suffcation comes in a
10:05
Speaker 1: variety of different different ways. You can have suffocation where
10:13
Speaker 1: it's almost a positional asphyxia. The case that jumps to
10:17
Speaker 1: mind for me the most in my career as a
10:19
Speaker 1: little kid whose mother again was off with her boyfriend,
10:24
Speaker 1: left her two older children in charge of a ten
10:31
Speaker 1: month old I think the child was a child got
10:34
Speaker 1: wrapped up in it, rolled over, got wrapped up in
10:37
Speaker 1: an afghan, and the mother had not put the side
10:40
Speaker 1: rail up, had not even attached it, just pushed the
10:44
Speaker 1: crib to the wall and the child inverted head downward
10:49
Speaker 1: against the wall and the mattress wrapped in an afghan
10:53
Speaker 1: and couldn't break free. Well, that's a suffocation, it's positional asphyxia,
10:57
Speaker 1: and you'll get those. A lot have drug addicts that
11:00
Speaker 1: fix on the toilet, heroin addicts because it makes you
11:03
Speaker 1: so sleepy. I've had at least three of those where
11:05
Speaker 1: they fall off of the toilet and get in between
11:07
Speaker 1: the wall and the commode and again their chest can't
11:12
Speaker 1: rise and fall, and they're so debilitated by the drugs
11:15
Speaker 1: it's just not happening. You have compression asphixia, and that's
11:20
Speaker 1: anything that prevents your chest from rising and falling. And
11:26
Speaker 1: believe it or not, there are a lot of people
11:29
Speaker 1: DAVE that die in motor vehicle accidents. It will call
11:32
Speaker 1: them mvas die in motor vehicle accidents where yes they're traumatized,
11:38
Speaker 1: but you get people that are pinned in vehicles and
11:40
Speaker 1: their chests can't rise and fall, and they will they
11:43
Speaker 1: will die as a result of compression asphixia. I've had
11:47
Speaker 1: a number of those over the years. So there's to
11:52
Speaker 1: talk about asphixial deaths and kind of how they are
11:58
Speaker 1: examined and identified and that sort of thing is a
12:02
Speaker 1: big part of our job. And you might see evidence
12:06
Speaker 1: people always talk to me many times. One of the
12:10
Speaker 1: big questions they'll ask, particularly if I'm going on television
12:12
Speaker 1: to cover something, They'll want to know if there were petiki,
12:18
Speaker 1: And generally that's a that's something that's a common thing
12:22
Speaker 1: that you see, particularly in individuals being strangled, because the
12:28
Speaker 1: blood literally backs up into the head, gets into that
12:32
Speaker 1: soft tissue around the eyes and gorges that area and
12:34
Speaker 1: those little vessels pop. Do you know who else gets patiki?
12:38
Speaker 1: I dave that it's not associated with some kind of
12:44
Speaker 1: asphyxial death. You don't take no idea about it.
12:47
Speaker 2: No idea.
12:48
Speaker 1: People that are severely constipated, and that's no joke. It
12:51
Speaker 1: actually happens. They'll get petiki and women in labor, Okay,
12:56
Speaker 1: women in labor because of the strength. Yeah, And you know,
13:00
Speaker 1: I have a very distinct memory of Kimmy, you know,
13:04
Speaker 1: when she gave birth to Noah Loathies many years ago,
13:07
Speaker 1: and her head, you know, she's turning red as is
13:10
Speaker 1: going on.
13:11
Speaker 2: Does that last after you have the child?
13:13
Speaker 1: It dissipates pretty quickly. Kim had one, I remember, and
13:19
Speaker 1: that's horrible in that beautiful moment, but I remember wanting
13:22
Speaker 1: to wanting to look at her eyes because I had
13:26
Speaker 1: heard that for years and looked at her, looked at
13:30
Speaker 1: her eyes, and she had one tiny little PATIKII. I
13:34
Speaker 1: didn't mention it to her because I thought that it
13:36
Speaker 1: would rob the moment.
13:37
Speaker 2: All these years, Kim has told all of her friends,
13:39
Speaker 2: you know, right after I had Noah, Joe was just
13:42
Speaker 2: staring so lovingly in my eyes. It's like the moment
13:47
Speaker 2: that I treasured the most. And oh it's a beautiful moments.
13:57
Speaker 3: You just can't you just can't escape at many times, Dave.
14:13
Speaker 1: You know, with I've talked about all these kind of
14:16
Speaker 1: modes that are involved in asphyxia. It's such a massive
14:22
Speaker 1: category of death. I don't know that many people even
14:26
Speaker 1: think about it at all, certainly, and I don't want
14:29
Speaker 1: people to think about it. Let me think about it,
14:31
Speaker 1: you know. I don't want to burden people with I
14:35
Speaker 1: want to educate people. But you know, this is type
14:38
Speaker 1: of stuff that we think about, you know, in death investigation,
14:42
Speaker 1: and you know, you have all of these modalities that
14:48
Speaker 1: will occur where in essence, you're depriving an individual of
14:55
Speaker 1: oxygen and there's essentially m four categories where that will fit,
15:06
Speaker 1: you know, that fit into this idea of of of
15:11
Speaker 1: asphyxial death. So you've gotten multiple modes, but there's four categories.
15:16
Speaker 1: Number one is compression of the neck. Compression compression of
15:19
Speaker 1: the neck. It takes on a variety of presentations. So
15:25
Speaker 1: we've we've got hanging. Then you've got non suspended ligature strangulation.
15:32
Speaker 1: Most of the time that's going to come from a
15:34
Speaker 1: homicide where people are, you know, using a ligature to
15:39
Speaker 1: actually strangulate the person. You can have manual strangulation, and
15:48
Speaker 1: manual is different from ligature. Manual is actually wrapping your
15:54
Speaker 1: hands around somebody. Certain there's two types of man well,
15:57
Speaker 1: there's actually probably multiple, but let me just give you three.
16:01
Speaker 1: With compression of the neck, so if you think about
16:04
Speaker 1: like an old movie where a guy's got on a
16:06
Speaker 1: pair of black gloves and are approaching somebody with two
16:09
Speaker 1: hands and they're coming at their neck, that's called throttling.
16:14
Speaker 1: And you can either do that anteriorly on the front,
16:18
Speaker 1: or you can do it posteriorly from the rear. You know,
16:21
Speaker 1: think about all the creepy movies you've seen over the
16:23
Speaker 1: years where some dark stranger comes up behind somebody and
16:26
Speaker 1: grabs them by the neck and kind of chokes them
16:28
Speaker 1: out like that. Then you have what's called a sea
16:30
Speaker 1: clamp where an individual will come up and externally grab
16:35
Speaker 1: the trachia. Of course it's external, but they grab the
16:39
Speaker 1: trachia and they squeeze the trachia and that's where the
16:43
Speaker 1: thyroid cartilage is. And this area of this kind of
16:46
Speaker 1: cartilaginous body in the center where you know your tongue
16:50
Speaker 1: is attached to the hyoid. You've got an Adam's apple there,
16:55
Speaker 1: and they'll squeeze down on that particular area.
16:58
Speaker 2: It's different for men and women when you're talking about
17:01
Speaker 2: that specific area.
17:04
Speaker 1: Oh, because I said Adam's apple. No, it's not really.
17:09
Speaker 1: Women don't have as pronounced of the cartilaginous body that
17:14
Speaker 1: gives the appearance of quote unquote the atoms apple. And
17:17
Speaker 1: that's generally a pretty distinctive marker, you know, for men
17:23
Speaker 1: versus males versus females, something you look for. And then
17:30
Speaker 1: we have you know, what you may have seen on
17:35
Speaker 1: in wrestling and with cops where they'll use a choke hold.
17:40
Speaker 1: And the choke hold is where you know you actually
17:42
Speaker 1: if you binge your arm and it creates a v
17:45
Speaker 1: and you put the person's trache right in the crook
17:47
Speaker 1: of your arm, and you're squeezing, squeezing, squeezing them like that,
17:53
Speaker 1: and you're and it's not just the airway that's been compromised.
17:57
Speaker 1: It's also the vessels that are supplying the brain. So
18:01
Speaker 1: you've got this this double action that's going on relative
18:04
Speaker 1: to this, you know, the crushing of the airway or
18:07
Speaker 1: the occlusion of the airway from external pressure and also
18:11
Speaker 1: clamping down of the vessels.
18:13
Speaker 2: When we see that, you know, in movies or TV
18:15
Speaker 2: or professional wrestling. Yeah, is how long does it take?
18:19
Speaker 2: I mean, when you get somebody in that kind of
18:20
Speaker 2: sleeper hole, and is it reversible? I mean, if you
18:23
Speaker 2: hold it for just a few moments, the person goes out,
18:26
Speaker 2: you let them go and they return right. Yeah, but
18:31
Speaker 2: how long? I mean, I'm not trying to figure out
18:33
Speaker 2: how to kill somebody. I'm just curious. Is there a
18:35
Speaker 2: point of no return? Or is it like standard or
18:38
Speaker 2: different for everybody?
18:39
Speaker 1: Standard? It's not standard, it's it's different from everybody because
18:43
Speaker 1: a lot of people, let's say you, well, let's just
18:46
Speaker 1: take an obvious example. You've got a grown man, it's
18:48
Speaker 1: got a well muscled neck. Compare that to a small
18:52
Speaker 1: child or a dominiontive person. You know, it's it's more.
18:58
Speaker 1: And I'll give you a great example, and it says
19:00
Speaker 1: actually goes to hanging. But if you ever take the
19:03
Speaker 1: time to look at the conspirators that were all hung
19:09
Speaker 1: in the old Navy shipyard of relative to Abraham Lincoln,
19:15
Speaker 1: they hung them all at the same time. Okay, there's
19:20
Speaker 1: one guy that's hanging in the captured image and his
19:24
Speaker 1: name is Louis Payne, and all of them to a person,
19:30
Speaker 1: with the exception of Louis pain had their head turned
19:34
Speaker 1: to the side, which means that it snapped their neck.
19:37
Speaker 1: Louis Payne, if you see pictures of him in life,
19:41
Speaker 1: and some people say that he looks like a guest model,
19:43
Speaker 1: you'll see what I'm talking about. Just go back and
19:46
Speaker 1: google his name. Louis Payne. Okay, he's got a really
19:49
Speaker 1: he's very young. He's got a well muscled neck. When
19:52
Speaker 1: they dropped him off that scaffolding, his neck didn't break.
19:56
Speaker 1: He sat there and essentially it's fixated as a result
19:59
Speaker 1: of ligature around his neck because his neck was so robust.
20:03
Speaker 1: And you can see him standing or hanging fully erect
20:06
Speaker 1: you know, like this while everybody else their neck is
20:09
Speaker 1: snapped and leaned over to one side or forward, and
20:12
Speaker 1: they're all deceased. He ain't dead. And that really strikes me,
20:17
Speaker 1: you know when I see that, and we're talking about
20:19
Speaker 1: the atomical structures of the neck, how long can somebody last?
20:25
Speaker 1: First off, you don't try it. No one should ever
20:28
Speaker 1: try a sleep or hole quote unquote, because you're compromising
20:32
Speaker 1: not just the airway, but you're compromising the croatis which
20:36
Speaker 1: lead up to the brain. And any compromise of that
20:39
Speaker 1: oxygen flow to the brain is you're in an unrecoverable
20:44
Speaker 1: flat spin. You're going to wind up on a vent
20:46
Speaker 1: in an ICU because you're absent oxygen. Cops they've tried
20:54
Speaker 1: to keep cops from using it for years and years.
20:56
Speaker 1: They used to use a nightstick as well, they would,
20:59
Speaker 1: and they also an arm bar, and they got away
21:02
Speaker 1: from that a long time ago. Where the bar of
21:04
Speaker 1: the forearm, if you imagine your form is like a bar.
21:08
Speaker 1: It's placed against the anterior neck and it creates that
21:13
Speaker 1: that compression on the neck where oxygen is not you know,
21:17
Speaker 1: making it up to the brain. There was I think
21:21
Speaker 1: it was what was it where they called a p
21:23
Speaker 1: twenty four. I think p. Twenty four is the nightstick
21:25
Speaker 1: cops used to use, and they had a lot of utility.
21:28
Speaker 1: It had a separate handle on the side and they
21:30
Speaker 1: could take it and use it like this. One of
21:33
Speaker 1: the things they would do. It's kind of a natural reaction.
21:36
Speaker 1: They would take that old nightstick that had the handle
21:40
Speaker 1: coming out of the side and they'd hook somebody with
21:42
Speaker 1: it and then put their foot on the back of
21:45
Speaker 1: their neck and pull up to get them to comply.
21:49
Speaker 1: And of course that's you're asking for trouble, you know
21:52
Speaker 1: when that happens. The neck is very fragile, the airways
21:54
Speaker 1: very fragile. So you've got a variety of these, you know, everywhere,
22:00
Speaker 1: from compression the neck to obstruction of the airway. You know,
22:04
Speaker 1: it's why Mama tells you to chew your food. I've
22:07
Speaker 1: had kids that have choked to death, you know, on
22:09
Speaker 1: hot dogs. I know it sounds like a fantasy or
22:13
Speaker 1: you know, an old wives tale, but no, it does.
22:15
Speaker 2: Happen to dreams.
22:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right, and the airway is cleared
22:20
Speaker 1: in that particular case. So anything, and you know how
22:23
Speaker 1: many times Dave us a dad me as a dad
22:26
Speaker 1: me as a grandfather, you is a grandfather, have you
22:29
Speaker 1: said the following words? Get that out of your mouth?
22:36
Speaker 1: And then it's generally followed up by you don't know
22:38
Speaker 1: where that's been, you know, And but you know, kids
22:42
Speaker 1: will they explore the world through their senses and taste
22:46
Speaker 1: and tactile, and they'll put stuff in their mouth. I
22:49
Speaker 1: had a colleague of mine that worked a case involving
22:51
Speaker 1: a golf ball where a kid had stuck a golf
22:53
Speaker 1: ball and they couldn't clear the airway and they died.
22:56
Speaker 1: I had a kid that choked to death on a
22:58
Speaker 1: German cockroach in Atlanta, and when they tried to establish
23:04
Speaker 1: the airway, they were trying to intubate the child. I'll
23:09
Speaker 1: never forget this case as long as I lived. And
23:11
Speaker 1: that was in a fhixial death. The cockroach had crawled
23:14
Speaker 1: into the child's mouth, the house was infested with him.
23:18
Speaker 1: He had gotten in the child's airway and child began
23:20
Speaker 1: to choke. Child was I think like eighteen months old.
23:24
Speaker 1: And when the EMTs got there, they tried to intubate
23:26
Speaker 1: the kid, and they destroyed the cockroach but left it
23:30
Speaker 1: in place. And so when we dissected the neck, we
23:33
Speaker 1: found the thorax, the little intente the legs, and it
23:39
Speaker 1: was one of the most bizarre cases that I had
23:42
Speaker 1: worked because it was so horribly tragic.
23:47
Speaker 2: But that's actually an his fixial death.
23:49
Speaker 1: It is an asphixial death. And so you know, after
23:53
Speaker 1: you get through those two categories of obstruction and compression,
24:01
Speaker 1: you have compression of the chest, which I kind of mentioned.
24:04
Speaker 1: You know, if you have so much weight on top
24:08
Speaker 1: of the chest that the chest can't rise. And father
24:12
Speaker 1: there's actually a famous one of the famous executions from
24:18
Speaker 1: the Salem witch trial where the guy refused to admit
24:21
Speaker 1: that he was a witch because he wasn't he'd been
24:23
Speaker 1: found guilty, and classic line, ultimate hero line. They began,
24:31
Speaker 1: the men of the community. They tied him down and
24:33
Speaker 1: began to put stones on his chest, and the preacher
24:38
Speaker 1: that was standing there said, do you confess to being
24:40
Speaker 1: a witch? No, add more weight. They'd add more stones,
24:45
Speaker 1: and these these huge stones. It took like three guys
24:47
Speaker 1: to put them upon them. Imagine like a millstone, that's
24:50
Speaker 1: about how big it was. And they got to the
24:53
Speaker 1: last one and the guy that was running the show said,
24:58
Speaker 1: will you now confess to be in a witch? And
25:01
Speaker 1: he looked up and he said more weight, more weight,
25:08
Speaker 1: and that's compression of the chest. And you can find
25:12
Speaker 1: people that will get in all kinds of odd positions
25:14
Speaker 1: that lead to their death. That's a great example of it.
25:19
Speaker 1: I'd mentioned, you know, drug addicts that fall off of toilets,
25:22
Speaker 1: people in car accidents, this sort of thing. And I
25:24
Speaker 1: think finally, probably a very broad category is this idea.
25:29
Speaker 1: And you could say that all of them are this.
25:31
Speaker 1: But when we begin to talk about exclusion of oxygen,
25:35
Speaker 1: and that is the environment in which you normally dwell,
25:41
Speaker 1: something has happened within this environment to deprive you of oxygen.
25:46
Speaker 1: One of the things that one of to terrifying things
25:48
Speaker 1: is like grain silos. Grain silows are, first off, they're
25:52
Speaker 1: very volatile, they can explode because of the gas in there.
25:55
Speaker 1: But you also have individuals that, for a number of reasons,
25:59
Speaker 1: will asphyxiate grain silos absence of oxygen, also inhalation of
26:05
Speaker 1: the dust over a protracted period of time. I had
26:10
Speaker 1: a guy, We had guys in New Orleans. There were
26:12
Speaker 1: whole generations of families and this is not necessarily the
26:16
Speaker 1: same thing, but just giving you an idea, there were
26:18
Speaker 1: whole generations of families that worked as sand blasters Dave
26:21
Speaker 1: and they sand blasted the Huey P. Long Bridge. It's
26:24
Speaker 1: the longest road trestle in the world. And there's an
26:28
Speaker 1: adjacent bridge that goes over the Mississippi River and the
26:30
Speaker 1: thing is made out of steel and it's a constant,
26:34
Speaker 1: ongoing job because the environments so harsh, and they would
26:37
Speaker 1: always be sand blasted. Well, these guys, when we would
26:41
Speaker 1: get them and they would be relatively young men, would
26:43
Speaker 1: know their history. They developed something called silicosis, which is
26:49
Speaker 1: deposits of sand in their lungs, and so when you
26:54
Speaker 1: ran your hand over the surface of lungs, it feels
26:59
Speaker 1: very grand. And if you slice through that tissue, you
27:03
Speaker 1: can actually see the little grains of sand that hadn't embedded.
27:06
Speaker 1: So that's compromising the airway and it leads to an
27:10
Speaker 1: exclusion of oxygen. Probably the most striking thing though, is when,
27:18
Speaker 1: and we were mentioning this off air, you know, there
27:22
Speaker 1: was PSA back in the sixties, and I don't know
27:24
Speaker 1: if anybody remembers this, but they used to have these
27:27
Speaker 1: horrible PSAs that would come out just terrifying you and
27:32
Speaker 1: for good reason. And you hear children in the background
27:36
Speaker 1: saying three, two, one ready or not here I come,
27:40
Speaker 1: and it's the disembodied voices. And it was in some
27:44
Speaker 1: vacant lot where they'd film this in New York and
27:47
Speaker 1: it would simply say and I think it said don't.
27:51
Speaker 1: And there were refrigerators that were out there, and what
27:56
Speaker 1: would happen In the old days, these things didn't have
27:59
Speaker 1: magnetic locks. Still, go to restaurants and you'll see the
28:03
Speaker 1: big walking coolers that those handles that they pull on
28:06
Speaker 1: those things they lock from the outside. Okay, now, now
28:10
Speaker 1: they have an escape button that you can press inside
28:13
Speaker 1: and it'll disengage. But these old refrigerators, kids would get
28:17
Speaker 1: inside of them to hide. And the problem is is
28:22
Speaker 1: that while inside any oxygen that's in there, the child's
28:27
Speaker 1: body is displacing that oxygen in cubic inches and the interior.
28:32
Speaker 1: When you go to buy refrigerator, you look at whatever
28:35
Speaker 1: store you're going to and they'll give you the interior
28:38
Speaker 1: size and cubic inches that's how much air you have.
28:42
Speaker 1: And then once you've taken two or three breasts and
28:45
Speaker 1: you've expelled carbon dioxide into that environment, there's nothing left
28:52
Speaker 1: to breathe and of course, one of the worst things
28:56
Speaker 1: that I can certainly imagine is being locked in what
29:01
Speaker 1: would become you're coffin in life. I think we as
29:21
Speaker 1: a race, have, the human race, have tried to find
29:26
Speaker 1: for years and years the most efficient way of depriving
29:32
Speaker 1: someone of their life. We don't want it to be
29:36
Speaker 1: messy or nasty, and for years and still to this date,
29:42
Speaker 1: there are countries that still employ hanging as a means
29:47
Speaker 1: to killing people. I saw an image from I can't
29:53
Speaker 1: remember specifically which Middle Eastern country it was from a
29:58
Speaker 1: few years back, where they had people tied to a
30:01
Speaker 1: bridge with nooses and had them on top of a bus.
30:09
Speaker 1: It's one of the most horrific things I've ever seen.
30:12
Speaker 1: And these people are there with the ropes hanging loosely,
30:17
Speaker 1: They're looking around, their hands are tied behind their back,
30:21
Speaker 1: and the bus begins to slowly move and their legs
30:24
Speaker 1: are trying to stay up with the movement of the bus.
30:27
Speaker 1: And finally the bus pulls away and you've got multiple
30:31
Speaker 1: people that are suddenly hung in spot there where everybody
30:34
Speaker 1: can see. And of course there was a crowd that
30:36
Speaker 1: had had joined to watch the spectacle. You know, asphyxiation
30:43
Speaker 1: has been something that is on the menu. I think
30:47
Speaker 1: for us as people for years and years. People knew
30:51
Speaker 1: forever that if you can prevent oxygen uptake in a subject,
30:58
Speaker 1: that it's going to lead to death.
31:01
Speaker 2: Let me ask you about a couple of things that
31:02
Speaker 2: I have made note of over the last several years
31:06
Speaker 2: in the deaths of some celebrities. Joke sure with what
31:11
Speaker 2: has been called or is called autoerotic asphyxia.
31:15
Speaker 1: What is it?
31:17
Speaker 2: David Carriden comes to mind, and Michael Hudgens from an
31:19
Speaker 2: excess the group, But there are others I'm sure that
31:23
Speaker 2: have died from.
31:25
Speaker 1: What is it?
31:26
Speaker 2: And how do people die?
31:27
Speaker 1: Well, we have to first look at what the word
31:30
Speaker 1: auto means itself. Okay, So auto erotic having to do
31:38
Speaker 1: with sex, okay, and then asphyxia, and it's not meant
31:42
Speaker 1: to be The practice is not intended to in someone's life.
31:52
Speaker 1: It's there to enhance sexual pleasure and sensation. I think
31:57
Speaker 1: that by the time someone gets to that point, I
32:01
Speaker 1: don't know that many times people are afflicted by this.
32:05
Speaker 1: They can't receive sexual pleasure any other way. It's something
32:08
Speaker 1: that's done alone by themselves, you know, out of sight
32:17
Speaker 1: of everybody else. And what's fascinating is that the cases
32:22
Speaker 1: I've worked, and there's not a lot of them. A
32:25
Speaker 1: lot of people sold people in investigations a bill of
32:30
Speaker 1: goods when they started. There are seminars out there where
32:34
Speaker 1: you can go and learn about the investigation of autoroticism.
32:41
Speaker 1: And why I have no idea because it's not something
32:44
Speaker 1: that happens every day. You know, once you go over
32:47
Speaker 1: in a generalized course, you kind of get the drift
32:50
Speaker 1: of what's going on. And I always thought that it
32:52
Speaker 1: was just ridiculous, and it became to the point where
32:57
Speaker 1: it's very salacious. I think that, over the course of
32:59
Speaker 1: my career have actually genuinely handled four and that's over
33:05
Speaker 1: a twenty year career, and so it's not it's not
33:09
Speaker 1: as prevalent. I think that it's probably become more prevalent
33:13
Speaker 1: because people talk about it, and you've got you know,
33:20
Speaker 1: curiosity seekers out there that hear about it and they
33:22
Speaker 1: want to experience it. Please nobody, try to.
33:26
Speaker 2: Let me ask you something, Joe, because this kind of
33:27
Speaker 2: comes to mind, all right. I wonder how many times
33:33
Speaker 2: somebody was labeled as suicide when it was something other
33:39
Speaker 2: than a suicide. It was trying to achieve this type
33:43
Speaker 2: of joy and ended up in death. What brings that
33:47
Speaker 2: to mind is the death of Michael Hutchins, where some
33:49
Speaker 2: people said it was a suicide and it has been
33:51
Speaker 2: pointed out, no, it was autopia.
33:54
Speaker 1: And he's he's again. When Hutchins died, he was not
33:58
Speaker 1: a not a full suspension. Okay, he was actually kind
34:04
Speaker 1: of leaning forward on his knees with literature, you know,
34:06
Speaker 1: around his neck.
34:07
Speaker 2: Okay, wait a minute, now, is that a common because
34:10
Speaker 2: that's something that came up with Jeffrey Epstein.
34:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, mm hmmm is that common?
34:17
Speaker 2: Not not touching me? And what about wait a minute,
34:20
Speaker 2: I do not I don't mean to shotgun this, okay,
34:22
Speaker 2: and I apologize, but in my mind's I am thinking
34:28
Speaker 2: when I've thought of hanging, it's always been hanging right,
34:32
Speaker 2: suspended in the air. But Epstein, Hutchins, Robin Williams.
34:40
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, Robin actually on a door. Yeah yeah, he did.
34:45
Speaker 1: And you don't have to be that. That's why you know,
34:49
Speaker 1: we draw a line. Hanging is kind of a it's
34:52
Speaker 1: not a good term. I like suspension. If you if
34:58
Speaker 1: you're gonna DeLine it, if you're gonna use the word hang,
35:00
Speaker 1: suspension hanging versus supported hanging. And it kind of you
35:05
Speaker 1: begin to under it again there's that word as nuanced.
35:09
Speaker 1: You don't have to be, you know, someone that is
35:11
Speaker 1: suspended and hanging like a judicial hanging off of scaffolding.
35:15
Speaker 1: And the purpose of judicial hangings, if you will, back then,
35:19
Speaker 1: was to break the neck. And for some reason, you know,
35:22
Speaker 1: like the executioner always puts the nod on the left
35:26
Speaker 1: side of the neck. This is a practice that's done
35:28
Speaker 1: all around the world. It was done in the Old West,
35:31
Speaker 1: it was done in Great Britain. Great Britain made great
35:35
Speaker 1: use of hanging because they're the ones that were responsible
35:38
Speaker 1: for hanging all of the Nuremberg Trial people. And they
35:45
Speaker 1: had one guy and the guy was actually the executioner
35:48
Speaker 1: to the queen and it was a multi generation job.
35:51
Speaker 1: I think it went back three generations. They wrote a
35:53
Speaker 1: great book about it. He would fly back and forth
35:57
Speaker 1: to Germany and he gave detailed notes a three people today,
36:01
Speaker 1: you know, and he kept a diary of it. But
36:04
Speaker 1: that's that's meant to break the neck, Okay, Like at
36:07
Speaker 1: the C C one, C two level where you're you're there,
36:12
Speaker 1: you know, at the you know, there at the base
36:17
Speaker 1: of the brain where you're into the primal brain, where
36:20
Speaker 1: you're shutting down the autonomic nervous system. But many people
36:24
Speaker 1: that hang themselves and set out to hang themselves, most
36:29
Speaker 1: of the time they don't break their neck. That's what's
36:32
Speaker 1: so odd about Epstein, is it Epstein? Epstein's hyoid was broken,
36:38
Speaker 1: which is generally something you never see it, never see
36:43
Speaker 1: it in hangings, But you do in strangulation, Yes, you do,
36:47
Speaker 1: because it's so high up in the neck. It's superior
36:52
Speaker 1: to the leading edge of the of the noose that
36:55
Speaker 1: has been fashioned. And not to mention that he had
36:59
Speaker 1: other fractures in in his uh, the cartilage of his
37:03
Speaker 1: neck as well the adjacent cartilage, and that that requires
37:06
Speaker 1: quite a minute force. And even if you were to
37:08
Speaker 1: tie off on that bed, the second tier, you know,
37:12
Speaker 1: because there were bunk beds in there, even if you
37:15
Speaker 1: were to tie off on the top, you couldn't generate
37:18
Speaker 1: sufficient energy to create that kind of trauma with ripped
37:22
Speaker 1: up bed sheets or clothing. You know, I don't think
37:27
Speaker 1: I don't think you could. Michael Biden didn't think you could.
37:30
Speaker 1: He was present for the autopsy. He said that he
37:32
Speaker 1: didn't believe. But yet, you know, you've got these people
37:36
Speaker 1: now with the FBI. I think Bungino and Cash Patel
37:41
Speaker 1: claimed that they have seen the video and that they've
37:44
Speaker 1: they've said that this is a that this is a suicide.
37:47
Speaker 1: I'm not going to believe it until until that video,
37:50
Speaker 1: which will never be released, would be released. I'm just
37:53
Speaker 1: not buying it. But yeah, you look at those cases,
37:57
Speaker 1: compare that to autoroticism. I kind of went for the field.
38:01
Speaker 1: But with autoroticism, the rush comes about. The way it's
38:06
Speaker 1: been explained is by the deprivation of oxygen to the brain,
38:10
Speaker 1: so they will be stimulated many times. In the old days,
38:14
Speaker 1: when you go out on these cases, Dave, there would
38:16
Speaker 1: be open pornography, like laying all over the floor and
38:21
Speaker 1: so that it's in an observable position, so that they're
38:25
Speaker 1: super stimulated sexually as they're looking at images. And then
38:30
Speaker 1: to complete the act, they will suspend themselves by the
38:36
Speaker 1: neck to deprive themselves of oxygen and then touch themselves
38:43
Speaker 1: at the same time. You actually have people that have
38:47
Speaker 1: it down to an art where they had one guy
38:49
Speaker 1: that used velcrow cuffs velcrow bindings between his legs where
38:55
Speaker 1: he bound himself between his legs, used a dog chain
38:58
Speaker 1: to tie off on to a door hinge in a
39:01
Speaker 1: hotel room, and he could move his hands back and
39:07
Speaker 1: forth between his legs and stimulate himself, and he had
39:11
Speaker 1: poorn everywhere. The real tragedy in that case, I think
39:15
Speaker 1: was the poor little housekeeper that had found his body
39:21
Speaker 1: and daved This lady, God bless her. She was from Guatemala.
39:24
Speaker 1: She stood maybe five to one. I'll never forget this,
39:27
Speaker 1: and is actually on Sunday morning, and the bat it
39:31
Speaker 1: was a micro tail, if you've ever heard of those,
39:34
Speaker 1: kind of an extended state kind of place. When you
39:36
Speaker 1: open the door to the hotel room, the first thing
39:40
Speaker 1: to see on the left is the bathroom like many rooms,
39:44
Speaker 1: and he's hanging from that hinge and he's nude. And
39:48
Speaker 1: this poor woman, who could not speak a lick of English,
39:53
Speaker 1: was terrified. She had her rosary beads with her. And
39:55
Speaker 1: the reason I know this is that when I got
39:59
Speaker 1: to the scene, she was huddled on the floor. She
40:02
Speaker 1: wouldn't sit in a chair. She was just holding her
40:04
Speaker 1: rosary beads. She was praying, and she was rocking back
40:07
Speaker 1: and forth. She was like saying, hell, Mary's in Spanish
40:11
Speaker 1: and rocking back and forth is so terrified her. And
40:14
Speaker 1: that's actually a response that you get because this is
40:18
Speaker 1: predominantly a male practice. There's only been a few female
40:24
Speaker 1: instances of this. One of the first was this case
40:28
Speaker 1: case out of Germany. It's generally male dependent, and you
40:37
Speaker 1: will have spouses that have no idea that their better
40:41
Speaker 1: half is engaged in this behavior, and they come home
40:44
Speaker 1: and they find an individual suspended and dead worse, and
40:51
Speaker 1: I did have a case of this. They have a
40:53
Speaker 1: hidden area that they'll go into. And this one gentleman
40:56
Speaker 1: that I had was in a garage area where he
40:59
Speaker 1: had a cubby hole behind the garage where it attached
41:03
Speaker 1: to the house, and he had, you know, like BTK
41:08
Speaker 1: had a rat hole where he kept all of his memorabilia. Well,
41:13
Speaker 1: people that practice autoroticism, they have certain things that really
41:17
Speaker 1: stimulate them. This guy went into the space and they
41:21
Speaker 1: couldn't find him. She thought that he had left, and
41:24
Speaker 1: then they had a bad smell in the house and
41:25
Speaker 1: they were able to go in and they found him
41:27
Speaker 1: suspended in there. He's wearing he's wearing fishnet stockings. He's
41:34
Speaker 1: got a silk plouse on and he's wearing a wig
41:37
Speaker 1: and he's got this rope around his neck and he
41:41
Speaker 1: had hung himself in there and there was pouring everywhere,
41:44
Speaker 1: and this is something that had been ongoing. Another thing
41:46
Speaker 1: that you find is they love to document to they'll
41:51
Speaker 1: you know, do videography of himself and go back and
41:53
Speaker 1: watch it and fantasize. So yeah, that's you know, but
41:57
Speaker 1: those cases are so rare. They don't happened with great frequency.
42:01
Speaker 1: You have far more suicides that occur with asphyxiation and
42:08
Speaker 1: that with a ligature asphyxiation like that. And then of course, Dave,
42:14
Speaker 1: you know, as you'd mentioned, I can't remember which one
42:16
Speaker 1: it was, but you had mentioned particularly one serial killer
42:21
Speaker 1: that had which one John Wayne Gacy? Yeah? Yeah, But
42:25
Speaker 1: what about you.
42:26
Speaker 2: Know something that you and I had talked of because
42:27
Speaker 2: I made a note, but oxygen deprivation in serial killings?
42:32
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, what is is it?
42:35
Speaker 2: Because it's like a you don't have to have a weapon, Well.
42:40
Speaker 1: Your hands are your weapon. I don't mean I'm not
42:43
Speaker 1: being flippant by saying that. I know, but I think
42:46
Speaker 1: that these people that are involved in serialized homicide like that,
42:51
Speaker 1: it's a very primal connection that they have to the
42:54
Speaker 1: victim because they you know, if you stab somebody, there's
43:00
Speaker 1: chance they're not going to die. All right. But just imagine,
43:03
Speaker 1: if you view yourself as God almighty, which many of
43:06
Speaker 1: the serial killers do, you have the power over life
43:10
Speaker 1: and death, and they can literally chook someone to death
43:15
Speaker 1: like this. I'll give you a great example. I had
43:18
Speaker 1: a guy that only could say only he wasn't in
43:20
Speaker 1: the pantheon of serial killers where you've had, you know,
43:25
Speaker 1: some people, you know they talk about Bundy, how there's
43:27
Speaker 1: hundreds and all this. This guy killed six women, certainly
43:32
Speaker 1: enough to be qualified as a serial killer. But he
43:36
Speaker 1: used a garrot and he would he would rape these
43:42
Speaker 1: women and sodomize them. And he used a wire grot,
43:51
Speaker 1: and so what he would do, talking about the power
43:54
Speaker 1: of life and death, he would tighten it down on
43:57
Speaker 1: the back of their neck, and when they were starting
43:59
Speaker 1: to con he would loosen it and they would start
44:01
Speaker 1: to breathe again. And he went through this, so you
44:03
Speaker 1: would see multiple furrows on the neck where he would
44:06
Speaker 1: readjust the garade while he was doing this. And I
44:09
Speaker 1: think that a lot of that pathology that you see
44:13
Speaker 1: with with serial perpetrators has to do with that idea
44:19
Speaker 1: that they're God's or perceived themselves to be that way.
44:24
Speaker 1: And you know, I think I shared this maybe on
44:26
Speaker 1: an earlier episode. Out of all the series of serial
44:29
Speaker 1: homicides that I worked is four, maybe five I can't
44:32
Speaker 1: recall now, you know, Dave, I never had a shooter.
44:36
Speaker 1: I never had a stabber, a cutter. Every single one
44:40
Speaker 1: of them were as fixial deaths and they were either
44:42
Speaker 1: with ligature or manual strangulation. These are all individuals that
44:48
Speaker 1: you know that did this. So it's I think from
44:55
Speaker 1: a serial standpoint, asphyxiation is something where they gain great
45:00
Speaker 1: power with it, Dave.
45:02
Speaker 2: You know, it didn't occur to me until you were
45:05
Speaker 2: talking about that of them sending it down person thinks
45:09
Speaker 2: it's over, and then bringing them back and the terror
45:12
Speaker 2: that would be struck in the victim all the time.
45:16
Speaker 2: It just boggles the mind of what people will do
45:19
Speaker 2: to one another. Yeah, yeah, there's another Yeah, there's another
45:23
Speaker 2: part of this too, about being exposed to noxious gas.
45:29
Speaker 2: Is this how does that come into play here?
45:33
Speaker 1: Well, Yeah, anything where you're dealing with the replacement of oxygen,
45:38
Speaker 1: probably what would jump to mind for most people would
45:43
Speaker 1: be carbon monoxide. Association. And that's as a death investigator,
45:48
Speaker 1: that's what you're going to run into the most. And
45:50
Speaker 1: it can happen in I've never seen and I'm not
45:54
Speaker 1: saying it hasn't happened in my life. In my practice,
45:57
Speaker 1: it's never happened. I guess you could have homicide application
46:01
Speaker 1: of noxious gases. I'm sure that that's something that has happened.
46:04
Speaker 1: I never personally worked one that I was aware of.
46:07
Speaker 1: Every time I've worked them, they've either been a suicide,
46:13
Speaker 1: which I've had many generally it involves the car in
46:17
Speaker 1: the garage with the windows now, or it has been
46:23
Speaker 1: an accidental death where you know, I had one guy
46:28
Speaker 1: in particularly that reversed the fan, a family member reversed
46:33
Speaker 1: the fan on the wall heater so that it actually
46:37
Speaker 1: blew blew the waste gas into the house and it
46:45
Speaker 1: killed I think there were six six people in the
46:48
Speaker 1: house that died, you know, which is you know, beyond
46:55
Speaker 1: anything that you can imagine. But you know, Dave, probably
46:58
Speaker 1: the saddest case that I've worked of carbon monoxide. I
47:01
Speaker 1: had a guy that lived in an old, old home
47:06
Speaker 1: in New Orleans and it was one of these beautiful
47:10
Speaker 1: old homes on the outside it didn't look like much,
47:12
Speaker 1: but the interior was gorgeous. And the folks that have
47:15
Speaker 1: been to New Orleans have seen some of these homes,
47:17
Speaker 1: you're going to know precisely what I mean. It's got
47:18
Speaker 1: this ancient crown molding that goes all the way around
47:22
Speaker 1: the interior, and the ceilings are all thirteen feet high.
47:26
Speaker 1: He lived in his house all alone, and he had
47:30
Speaker 1: a driveway immediately outside of his bedroom, and he had
47:36
Speaker 1: an old truck that sat out there, and it was
47:38
Speaker 1: up on blocks, didn't have any tires on it, but
47:42
Speaker 1: the engine ran. And Dave he had taken an old
47:45
Speaker 1: fashioned glass cutter, cut a perfect hole in his bedroom
47:50
Speaker 1: window from the outside, put a pipe into the tailpipe
47:56
Speaker 1: of this truck, hooked a dryer dryer vent, you know,
48:02
Speaker 1: one of those expandable hoses that comes off the back
48:05
Speaker 1: of the dryer to push the exhaust out. Had taped
48:07
Speaker 1: it down, put it into the window, sealed it with
48:10
Speaker 1: duct tape, and went and laid down on the bed.
48:16
Speaker 1: And after he had cranked up the truck and he
48:19
Speaker 1: had gone into his bedroom and had these huge that
48:21
Speaker 1: you can imagine. The doors in this room were huge.
48:23
Speaker 1: There were two and they had gaps, you know, the
48:25
Speaker 1: old houses always have gaps under the doors, and he'd
48:28
Speaker 1: taken wet towels and placed them at the base of
48:31
Speaker 1: the door. And I remember this so vividly going out
48:37
Speaker 1: to the scene. You know, suicides are always very tragic,
48:39
Speaker 1: but this one in particular stuck with me. He let
48:42
Speaker 1: that truck run and it wouldn't take too long because
48:46
Speaker 1: all that has to happen you cannot have a flow
48:49
Speaker 1: of air. He knew that the oxygen in the room
48:53
Speaker 1: has to be replaced with carbon monoxide. And when we
49:02
Speaker 1: got the scene cleared and I came out and the
49:04
Speaker 1: guy was laying there, and he had been down for
49:08
Speaker 1: several days, so he was in the early stages of decomposition. Dave.
49:12
Speaker 1: There were two black boxes that were laying next to
49:14
Speaker 1: his body on the bed, one of us left, one
49:20
Speaker 1: was right, and they were the cremaines of his wife
49:27
Speaker 1: and daughter who had been killed in a car accident.
49:31
Speaker 1: And he couldn't bear life any longer without them. And
49:34
Speaker 1: he told all of his friends about this, you know,
49:37
Speaker 1: and he had been just as you can imagine. It's
49:40
Speaker 1: just crushing to him. And he wasn't a very old
49:42
Speaker 1: fellow and right there on that old bed, he associated
49:47
Speaker 1: himself with carbon monoxide, the exhaust from an old truck.
49:54
Speaker 1: It struck a chord with me, as do many of
49:57
Speaker 1: these cases involved in asphyxia, because there's something so for
50:01
Speaker 1: some reason, something so very intimate, something so very personal,
50:07
Speaker 1: about each and every one of them. Sometimes you're just
50:12
Speaker 1: absent to words to really describe what you've seen. But
50:16
Speaker 1: we do know this in the world of medical legal
50:19
Speaker 1: debt investigation, you need to be primed at all times
50:23
Speaker 1: to be prepared to work these kinds of cases because
50:27
Speaker 1: they come in all shapes and forms. That's why I
50:30
Speaker 1: recommend that we stay in the morgue as much as
50:34
Speaker 1: we can, we learn as much as we can, and
50:37
Speaker 1: we continue to search out these cases to see where
50:39
Speaker 1: we can improve as forensic scientists. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
50:46
Speaker 1: and this is Body Backs