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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: The Smell Of Death · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:01
Speaker 1: Quody dots with Joseph Scott more. What do you think
0:07
Speaker 1: is the most common question that I have been asked
0:13
Speaker 1: over the course of my career as a death investigator. Well,
0:19
Speaker 1: my benchmark for that has been the most common question
0:28
Speaker 1: is what's the worst thing you've ever seen? And you know,
0:37
Speaker 1: worse comes in degrees, and what might be really offensive
0:43
Speaker 1: and bad to you in the realm of death might
0:48
Speaker 1: not even register on my meter. It's not that I'm
0:52
Speaker 1: some great guru or something like that. It's just that
0:55
Speaker 1: after a period of time, you're exposed to so much
0:58
Speaker 1: and you could say that I I bet you could
1:00
Speaker 1: say that about any occupation out there. But the other
1:04
Speaker 1: statement that is made is not a question. It generally
1:11
Speaker 1: goes like this, I don't see how in the world
1:19
Speaker 1: you can do what you do? That is the question.
1:24
Speaker 1: It's more of a statement. But I've asked myself that
1:27
Speaker 1: question because I would be around things that most people
1:31
Speaker 1: cannot even begin to imagine in their workaday lives, and
1:38
Speaker 1: I would ask that question to myself, how do I
1:41
Speaker 1: do these things? The things that you see? But you
1:45
Speaker 1: know what it comes down to, it's all in how
1:49
Speaker 1: you frame it. Today we're going to talk about human
1:56
Speaker 1: decomposition from the investigator perspective. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
2:04
Speaker 1: this is Bodybacks, Brother, Dave. Let me tell you another
2:12
Speaker 1: question that I am asked many times, or statements that
2:18
Speaker 1: people make, there's two of them. When it comes to
2:22
Speaker 1: the dead. People will say that human decay, a decaying
2:29
Speaker 1: human remain has a very particular smell. And then they
2:36
Speaker 1: will also say that bodies that have burned have a
2:42
Speaker 1: very particular smell. How can these two things be because
2:48
Speaker 1: first off, there's no scientific validation for those two statements.
2:52
Speaker 1: There's no way that you can even qualify those you know,
2:58
Speaker 1: what are you measuring against? Because I got to tell you,
3:00
Speaker 1: I've been around decomposing hogs. They really don't smell any
3:06
Speaker 1: different than human decaying remains. And I've been to barbecues, Dave.
3:15
Speaker 1: I've been to barbecues, and I've got to tell you,
3:18
Speaker 1: I've smelled very familiar smells at gatherings that only exist
3:24
Speaker 1: in some people's nightmares. And I hate it when those
3:27
Speaker 1: thoughts enter into my mind because I've paid a price
3:30
Speaker 1: for it over the years, just those remembrances, and I
3:34
Speaker 1: think that any human being is like that, that you
3:37
Speaker 1: have these. I hate the term trigger. I despise that term.
3:42
Speaker 1: It's such a generalized term and you never know really
3:45
Speaker 1: what anybody means by that. But there's something in our
3:48
Speaker 1: mind that conjures up these familiar smells. I remember the
3:54
Speaker 1: smell of my grandmother's fried chicken, which is probably as
3:58
Speaker 1: close to the ambrosia of the Guy Odds as you
4:00
Speaker 1: can possibly get in my mond, you know, thinking about right,
4:03
Speaker 1: and that's a very pleasant thing.
4:04
Speaker 2: Now we have the sensory memories, you know, of certain
4:07
Speaker 2: times of the day and certain times of the night,
4:10
Speaker 2: especially if you have a special time of the year
4:13
Speaker 2: that you prefer over others, you know. Yeah, and you
4:16
Speaker 2: have that early morning drive that reminds you of at
4:20
Speaker 2: a certain time in college when you had to run
4:22
Speaker 2: the USA today you know route around town to pay
4:26
Speaker 2: your college tuition and stuff like that. You know. Yeah,
4:29
Speaker 2: But I wondered about you mentioned being at a barbecue
4:32
Speaker 2: and smelling something very similar to that you smelled. I
4:35
Speaker 2: don't a scene, and I had to remember a story
4:38
Speaker 2: we did on Crime Stories with Nancy Grace where a
4:41
Speaker 2: woman cooked up her husband and served her at a
4:44
Speaker 2: neighborhood barbecue and nobody recognized it, you know, and it
4:48
Speaker 2: was my first thought. I thought it would smell different.
4:51
Speaker 2: I thought human remains would smell different than a cattle.
4:56
Speaker 2: I just assumed that. But I don't remember smelling the
4:59
Speaker 2: difference between chicken and you.
5:00
Speaker 1: Be well, I got to tell you, you know, I
5:03
Speaker 1: can't speak for everybody's experiences out there. I just know
5:07
Speaker 1: that I've I've other than people that are directly involved
5:12
Speaker 1: in my field, I've got a much larger statistical sampling,
5:18
Speaker 1: so I've had it happen over and over again. And yeah,
5:23
Speaker 1: that that smell that you get with both of these
5:27
Speaker 1: that were you know that we're currently discussing whether it
5:30
Speaker 1: is burned human remains or whether it is decomposing human remains.
5:35
Speaker 1: And don't get me started on burned remains that are decomposing,
5:40
Speaker 1: because that's an entirely different level. If I if I
5:43
Speaker 1: had to rely on my olfactory census in order to
5:47
Speaker 1: be an effective investigator, I don't know how much of
5:51
Speaker 1: a success I would be because look, I don't even
5:54
Speaker 1: believe my site most of the time.
5:56
Speaker 2: You know, I have to go aheack and me you're
5:58
Speaker 2: lying on your.
6:00
Speaker 1: Line eyes, yeah, and so uh, but you know decomposition
6:05
Speaker 1: is a big it's a big part of what we
6:10
Speaker 1: have to analyze. And I have to take our friends
6:13
Speaker 1: back to a very recent episode that we did, and
6:17
Speaker 1: this is kind of how I want to frame this.
6:19
Speaker 1: This episode out we talked about post mortem change right
6:24
Speaker 1: and what I think was a really good episode. I
6:27
Speaker 1: urge anybody to go back and listen to this. It
6:29
Speaker 1: was just a couple of weeks ago, and we talked
6:31
Speaker 1: about it in a micro sense, and that's generally like
6:35
Speaker 1: when you're talking to investigators out at the scene. One
6:38
Speaker 1: of the first questions they will ask an investigator is
6:42
Speaker 1: they always say, hey, doc, how long how long do
6:45
Speaker 1: you think that it's been? You know, how long do
6:47
Speaker 1: you think it's been? Oh? Yeah, yeah, that's one of
6:49
Speaker 1: the big things. Yeah, well once you've once you've started
6:53
Speaker 1: an exam and yeah, because they they think that you're
6:56
Speaker 1: like this scientific genius you know that, and I'm not.
7:00
Speaker 1: You show up at a scene and you begin to
7:02
Speaker 1: do all of these high end calculations and you're looking
7:06
Speaker 1: at the body, and you know, you can look at
7:08
Speaker 1: the body and say, well, she whiz, Jim, this guy's
7:12
Speaker 1: been dead for you know, I don't know, three hours
7:15
Speaker 1: and thirty three minutes, that's you can't do that. No, Lord, no,
7:20
Speaker 1: nobody can do that. And if they tell you they
7:22
Speaker 1: can do it, don't walk run away from that person
7:25
Speaker 1: because they're a liar. It's an empirical impossibility.
7:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, ask you something you brought up that I've got
7:31
Speaker 2: to ask. Yeah, because you've mentioned the smell of a
7:37
Speaker 2: dead body, and you did mention that there's a difference
7:41
Speaker 2: between the smell of a dead body and a decomposing body.
7:46
Speaker 2: When yeah, people talk about the smell a unique smell
7:50
Speaker 2: of decomposition. Most of us are not around decomposition in
7:55
Speaker 2: any part of our life. We know when we do
7:58
Speaker 2: smell it, it is going to be rare and it
8:00
Speaker 2: is going to be a unique smell to us. When
8:05
Speaker 2: I reminded of Cindy Anthony, Casey Anthony's mother, when oh, yeah,
8:10
Speaker 2: she called police because Casey Anthony had taken off with
8:15
Speaker 2: their car and hadn't returned it. And she called to report,
8:19
Speaker 2: come arrest my daughter for stealing my car. And they
8:22
Speaker 2: found out it had been towed, and she went to
8:24
Speaker 2: the place to get it back and when they opened
8:27
Speaker 2: the trunk, it stunk, and she said it smells like
8:31
Speaker 2: a dead body's been in there. Now, that was said
8:36
Speaker 2: in the first moments that we knew of Kaylee Anthony.
8:40
Speaker 2: It smells like a dead body has been in there.
8:43
Speaker 2: And the comparison was, it doesn't smell like trash. We
8:48
Speaker 2: all know how bad trash can smell, and this took
8:51
Speaker 2: her was different and stronger and just not trash.
8:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, with trash you'll get this kind
8:59
Speaker 1: of Of course, this is all heavily depended upon the
9:03
Speaker 1: mixture that you're talking about. With everyday household trash, sometimes
9:08
Speaker 1: you can have this kind of sickening, sickly sweet smell
9:11
Speaker 1: is the way I describe it many times. If you're
9:13
Speaker 1: talking about refuse, refuse that we generate, okay, well, that
9:17
Speaker 1: smells different than say, solid human waste or even manure
9:23
Speaker 1: from you know, from hogs or cattle. You know. Look
9:26
Speaker 1: where we live, Dave. It's a big agricultural area, isn't
9:30
Speaker 1: it lovely? When the farmers go out and spread manure
9:32
Speaker 1: on the fields and it's liquefied and it's going everywhere.
9:35
Speaker 1: Lord help you if you live adjacent to this and listen,
9:38
Speaker 1: I know why they have to do it, but that
9:40
Speaker 1: is a very particular smell and.
9:43
Speaker 2: If you have a five or six year old boy
9:44
Speaker 2: with you, that you can make a lot of unique sound.
9:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know that.
9:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, time it's worthwhile. Really, other than that, the windows
9:51
Speaker 2: and pray the air right doesn't give out?
9:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, And look, you're looking toward the cotton crop. You
9:57
Speaker 1: know that it's going to be harvested or corn or
9:59
Speaker 1: whatever it is. And there's a method to that. But
10:02
Speaker 1: when we begin to talk about human decomposition, I've had
10:05
Speaker 1: people ask me that, and this is a legitimate question.
10:09
Speaker 1: They'll say, I've never been around a decomposing body. What
10:12
Speaker 1: does it smell like? And when you begin to think
10:16
Speaker 1: about it. The only way I've been able and again
10:18
Speaker 1: this is my own perspective, my little slice of the
10:21
Speaker 1: pie here, from what I have observed consistently, the only
10:26
Speaker 1: way I have really been able to describe it from me,
10:30
Speaker 1: and it comes in varying degrees. It smells to me
10:35
Speaker 1: like burning tires, which is a disgusting odor to me.
10:39
Speaker 1: If you've ever smelled a tire that has been set
10:42
Speaker 1: on fire. I know, people in service. I think back
10:46
Speaker 1: to what happened in Somalia. You know there were burning
10:50
Speaker 1: tires there. If you've ever been around a runaway fire
10:55
Speaker 1: that happens at a tire factory, which I actually experienced
10:59
Speaker 1: as a child. There was a tire company near us,
11:04
Speaker 1: and the whole thing caught on fire burned for six months,
11:07
Speaker 1: and so that smell was always in the air, and
11:09
Speaker 1: it always hung with It's like kind of like burning rubber.
11:13
Speaker 1: I guess is really how it smells. That's the way
11:15
Speaker 1: I've always interpreted it. And everybody will come away with
11:18
Speaker 1: their own their own take on it, and it's curious,
11:22
Speaker 1: you know. I've encountered individuals, witnesses, finders, you know, over
11:28
Speaker 1: the years, and they'll make these kind of passive comments, like,
11:33
Speaker 1: you know, we we had smelled something, but we didn't
11:38
Speaker 1: really know what it was. Sometimes it would be stronger
11:42
Speaker 1: than other times. And a lot of that has to
11:45
Speaker 1: do with something that we talked about in our first episode,
11:50
Speaker 1: relative to post mortem interval in the immediate in the
11:54
Speaker 1: micro sense, now we're talking macro in a broader sense.
11:58
Speaker 1: A lot of that has to do with ambient ambient temperature.
12:03
Speaker 1: As the heat in a location rises, you'll it the
12:08
Speaker 1: smell becomes more profound at that moment in time, and
12:12
Speaker 1: then as it cools you know, the smell will slightly
12:16
Speaker 1: be knocked down, It'll still be there, but it's not
12:18
Speaker 1: as quite as pervasive, if you will, So it's really
12:22
Speaker 1: hard for the average person that's never been around it
12:26
Speaker 1: to kind of comprehend it. I can tell you this.
12:29
Speaker 1: Most people know. It's almost a primal instinct. They know
12:33
Speaker 1: that they don't want to be around it. And that's why,
12:36
Speaker 1: you know, people ask me questions and they're living vicariously.
12:40
Speaker 1: I know that they are. They want to be entertained.
12:42
Speaker 1: That's why people ask me the question what's the worst
12:45
Speaker 1: thing you've ever seen, which, in a way is kind
12:50
Speaker 1: of disrespectful because that's like me coming to somebody saying, Okay,
12:55
Speaker 1: what's the worst day you've ever had at work? Tell
12:58
Speaker 1: me about it. Somebody will say, well, what's the worst thing,
13:03
Speaker 1: And many in my colleagues included, when people ask us
13:07
Speaker 1: that question, some people will just not answer it. And
13:14
Speaker 1: I have one friend in particular that will say, it's
13:17
Speaker 1: none of your damn business. That's how they feel about it,
13:20
Speaker 1: because you're asking somebody to relive an event that is
13:25
Speaker 1: so shocking and so over the top. They're not saying, well,
13:28
Speaker 1: what was it like to work to work a death,
13:30
Speaker 1: they will say, what's the worst thing you've ever seen?
13:34
Speaker 1: Because I got to tell you, my scale of worst
13:36
Speaker 1: is a lot different in a lot of my colleagues,
13:38
Speaker 1: is a lot different than the average person. So and
13:42
Speaker 1: many times, particularly for those of us that have been
13:44
Speaker 1: affected by PTSD and the things that we have to
13:46
Speaker 1: struggle with and the wake of doing a job that
13:49
Speaker 1: most people don't even think about. Sometimes you'll be lulled
13:54
Speaker 1: into a sense of security with people when they say, well,
13:57
Speaker 1: what's the worst thing you've ever seen? You think that
13:59
Speaker 1: they're asking you a therapeutic question. Well, once you unburden yourself,
14:03
Speaker 1: that's not what they're doing. They're saying, dance for me,
14:07
Speaker 1: entertain me, And so you know, you can get kind
14:12
Speaker 1: of riled up about it. Sometimes I've developed a callous
14:16
Speaker 1: to it now, I think at this point in my life.
14:18
Speaker 1: But for a long time, particularly in the wake of
14:20
Speaker 1: everything that I went through through therapy and all that
14:24
Speaker 1: sort of said before that I would get really angry
14:26
Speaker 1: when people would ask me that question. But I got
14:29
Speaker 1: to tell you, just because something has impacted you doesn't
14:34
Speaker 1: mean that there's not value in it. And I think
14:36
Speaker 1: that that's important for us to understand when we're talking
14:39
Speaker 1: about decompositional changes, because a lot can be learned from it,
14:43
Speaker 1: and not just in the sense that it's something that
14:49
Speaker 1: is connected with a death. It's actually, when you think
14:53
Speaker 1: about it, just like birth, it's a natural biological process.
15:12
Speaker 1: Death does in fact come to us. All that's not
15:15
Speaker 1: just some kind of passive comment. And certainly, Dave, as
15:19
Speaker 1: I've gotten let's say, more chronologically mature, right, I've realized
15:29
Speaker 1: that I've got less life to live than I have lived,
15:33
Speaker 1: and so you begin to think about these things. Death
15:36
Speaker 1: does in fact come to us. But listen, it's it.
15:39
Speaker 1: It's a natural process. It's just like birth. And I
15:43
Speaker 1: remember the birth of my kids. I remember the birth
15:46
Speaker 1: of my grandbabies and what a celebratory event that was.
15:49
Speaker 1: And people don't look at death that same way. They
15:53
Speaker 1: don't they don't view it as a celebration. Some people
15:56
Speaker 1: will try to say, well, it's a celebration of life
15:58
Speaker 1: when we go to a funeral. It can be. It
16:01
Speaker 1: can be, but you're still talking about the dead. And
16:06
Speaker 1: one of the one of the things we do in
16:08
Speaker 1: our field is, you know, we try to understand when
16:12
Speaker 1: you get out beyond that kind of micro sensibility where
16:15
Speaker 1: you're you're talking about hours. You're in a much broader
16:19
Speaker 1: area here. When you talk about the decomposition of human remains.
16:25
Speaker 1: It's a It's an incredible process when you think about it,
16:32
Speaker 1: the changes that take place, and there is a measurement
16:36
Speaker 1: to it, just like there is in the micro sense.
16:39
Speaker 1: There's actually a measurement to it in a macro sense.
16:41
Speaker 1: The only downside is we can't put that final point
16:44
Speaker 1: on it. Dave.
16:45
Speaker 2: When you were talking a minute ago about people asking
16:48
Speaker 2: your worst you know, tell me your best story, which
16:51
Speaker 2: means the worst moment of your life at work, Well
16:54
Speaker 2: was it? And explain I want all the glory detail,
16:57
Speaker 2: just like in the movies. And I have to think
16:59
Speaker 2: of about that and realizing that there was a first
17:03
Speaker 2: time for everything. And I can't imagine that that was
17:06
Speaker 2: a real treat either. That has to be one of
17:09
Speaker 2: those markers in your life.
17:12
Speaker 1: It was, and it happened. It happened in the reverse
17:15
Speaker 1: for me. I did not. I was not around a
17:19
Speaker 1: profoundly decomposed body in the field the first time I
17:24
Speaker 1: was around a profoundly decomposed body where you had these
17:28
Speaker 1: massive changes post mortem changes that had taken place, was
17:33
Speaker 1: actually in the morgue, and I was the person to
17:36
Speaker 1: open the back on the table, and I remember and
17:39
Speaker 1: I'd done. I'd done what we refer to as fresh
17:42
Speaker 1: dead cases, you know, cases that had died within the
17:46
Speaker 1: last day or two, you know, that had come in
17:50
Speaker 1: from the field. And of course I started my career
17:52
Speaker 1: in New Orleans. And let me tell you something, there
17:58
Speaker 1: are a lot of decomposed bodies in South Louisiana and
18:00
Speaker 1: it all has to do with the environmental factors because heat,
18:05
Speaker 1: as we know, speeds everything up. So we actually use
18:09
Speaker 1: the term dcomp season down there because when you hit
18:13
Speaker 1: down there, when you hit April, your last cool day
18:17
Speaker 1: of the year is if you're lucky, it's going to
18:19
Speaker 1: be marching South Louisiana. And so starting in April, you know,
18:23
Speaker 1: we're ahead of the curb. When it comes to like
18:26
Speaker 1: Alabama or moving north, bodies go really really quick. And
18:31
Speaker 1: so I got to tell you, Dave, I had I
18:34
Speaker 1: remember opening that bag and when I look down on
18:37
Speaker 1: those remains and they were blown, We're.
18:38
Speaker 2: Going to have to come back there. And I didn't
18:40
Speaker 2: know that.
18:41
Speaker 1: In color the lips were the lips were protruding. Yeah,
18:47
Speaker 1: the tongue was protruding from the mouth swollen, and you
18:52
Speaker 1: have to fix yourself, but sets your face like flint,
18:56
Speaker 1: and you know, move forward because you have to understand.
18:59
Speaker 1: And this is what I had to get passed. I
19:03
Speaker 1: had to rely or lean into the science because I
19:07
Speaker 1: knew that what I was looking at. I had to
19:10
Speaker 1: try to unravel the mystery from a scientific standpoint, or
19:13
Speaker 1: at least assist in this, and to try to collect
19:16
Speaker 1: every bit of data I could. And I kind of
19:20
Speaker 1: knew that this was going to happen, but I didn't
19:23
Speaker 1: expect it to be as impactful for me. And so
19:27
Speaker 1: when I got out to a scene where I had
19:29
Speaker 1: my first decomposing body and it was a natural death,
19:32
Speaker 1: it was I still remember it. It was an elderly
19:35
Speaker 1: grandmother who had not been seen in three weeks probably,
19:41
Speaker 1: and the grandchildren came to the house and they had
19:44
Speaker 1: smelled something before they ever opened the door, and I
19:48
Speaker 1: remember distinctly talking to them. They were saying, we couldn't
19:51
Speaker 1: open the door. We knew it was going to be bad,
19:53
Speaker 1: and so the police obviously took the keys from them,
19:56
Speaker 1: entered the house with their permission, and then they called
19:58
Speaker 1: me out and when you see this decomposing body laying
20:02
Speaker 1: in a bed and these changes are taking place, it's
20:06
Speaker 1: very profound because again I go back to what I've
20:09
Speaker 1: said before, observing the abnormal and context of the normal.
20:14
Speaker 1: If you've got a grandmother, you've been in her bedroom,
20:16
Speaker 1: you know it looks a particular way. This lady's bedroom
20:20
Speaker 1: looked a particular way, kind of reminiscent of my grandmother.
20:24
Speaker 1: You can't help but drag your own personal views into
20:27
Speaker 1: these things. But then you see everything that's going on,
20:32
Speaker 1: everything from the changes in the body to larval development with flies,
20:40
Speaker 1: to you know, just everything that's going on in this environment,
20:43
Speaker 1: and you can't escape it. I've described it in my
20:49
Speaker 1: writings as kind of the essence of death that leeches
20:52
Speaker 1: onto you, and I've got a great story about that
20:56
Speaker 1: that I can get into. But it's one of these
20:58
Speaker 1: things that when you're around it, you you bear witness
21:05
Speaker 1: to it with your eyes, but you carry a remnant
21:07
Speaker 1: of it with you when you leave the scene. And
21:13
Speaker 1: that's something that I you know that I I had
21:16
Speaker 1: to work through. My family had to work there. My
21:18
Speaker 1: wife used to make.
21:21
Speaker 2: The scene stayed on your clothing, your hair, all of that.
21:28
Speaker 1: Mm hmm my mustache. Yeah, everything. I worked A years ago.
21:36
Speaker 1: I worked a what's called a jacket barge. People are
21:42
Speaker 1: generally not familiar with it if you don't live near
21:45
Speaker 1: the Gulf of Mexico where there's ore fineries and uh,
21:48
Speaker 1: you know offshore rigs and jacket bar just got these
21:52
Speaker 1: huge posts on it where they can actually take this
21:55
Speaker 1: barge out to imagine one of these huge world uh
22:00
Speaker 1: you know, oil wells out you know, a derek out there,
22:03
Speaker 1: and they can set this thing next to it, and
22:05
Speaker 1: it's got like an old fashioned carjack. Those legs go
22:09
Speaker 1: down to the ocean floor and they can work on
22:12
Speaker 1: the deck of this thing and Jason to the oil
22:17
Speaker 1: rig and do all kinds of Well, the guys that
22:19
Speaker 1: were on this rig, there was a tropical storm that
22:22
Speaker 1: came in the Gulf of Mexico and they were trying
22:23
Speaker 1: to beat at home and this thing is real awkward,
22:25
Speaker 1: you know, when it doesn't have the same physical characteristics
22:30
Speaker 1: of like a crew boat or something like that. And
22:32
Speaker 1: it capsized and all sixteen of those guys died and
22:34
Speaker 1: we got them not at one time. They were fetched
22:38
Speaker 1: out of the water of a period of time, and
22:40
Speaker 1: I was of all things inside of a I'll never
22:45
Speaker 1: forget this, a pigly wiggly refrigerated eighteen wheeler that I
22:55
Speaker 1: don't know how the parish got it, but we got it.
22:57
Speaker 1: We didn't have enough room to store all these bodies.
23:00
Speaker 1: Day in and day out. I was going into this
23:02
Speaker 1: environment to do everything that we had to do to
23:04
Speaker 1: get them id'd. And it was a long process and
23:08
Speaker 1: it was tedious. I spent a lot of hours in there,
23:10
Speaker 1: and I remember from that instance in particular, when I
23:17
Speaker 1: went home. I was single back then, and I remember,
23:23
Speaker 1: we'll see, it was two days after the last body
23:26
Speaker 1: I'd worked, and I'm I am a fool for showers.
23:30
Speaker 1: I love showers. I'll take to a day if I can.
23:34
Speaker 1: And a buddy of mine that worked with me that
23:39
Speaker 1: had not worked in there, he said, did you work
23:41
Speaker 1: at d COMP today? And I said no, I said
23:44
Speaker 1: not for two days we finished up the guys off
23:47
Speaker 1: the He says, you smell bad, and I'm thinking, what
23:54
Speaker 1: what's going on? You know? And after a while you
23:58
Speaker 1: can't you kind of get I don't know, he hits
24:00
Speaker 1: self conscious of it. I'm like lifting my mustache up
24:04
Speaker 1: to my nose. I had this big, thick like Tom
24:06
Speaker 1: Selleck mustache back in the eighties, and I caught a
24:10
Speaker 1: whiff of it in my mustache, and I remember going home,
24:16
Speaker 1: and I write about this in my memoir Blood Beneath
24:19
Speaker 1: my Feet and not since basic training had I had
24:24
Speaker 1: my head shaved and in the Army I I went
24:27
Speaker 1: to my barber, had them shave my head, and I
24:29
Speaker 1: shaved off my mustache, plucked all of my nose hairs
24:34
Speaker 1: because it got into my mind so much, and I
24:37
Speaker 1: threw away all of the clubs. I was using a
24:39
Speaker 1: particular set of clothes, I was using a particular set
24:42
Speaker 1: of scrubs for that that I would wash. But they
24:44
Speaker 1: still it just reminded me of it, and you can't
24:47
Speaker 1: get away from that essence. Now. I don't know how
24:49
Speaker 1: much of that was real, or how much of it
24:52
Speaker 1: was something that had happened in my brain. I've had
24:57
Speaker 1: other people tell me that. And you know, it's weird
25:01
Speaker 1: that the culture of a medical examiner or corner's office,
25:05
Speaker 1: where almost we almost have they ought to study us
25:09
Speaker 1: like they study you know, animals in the wild, like
25:11
Speaker 1: in the jungles, if you see, like the great apes
25:14
Speaker 1: that are out there, kind of picking knits out of
25:17
Speaker 1: each other's hair. We we would do things, as bizarre
25:21
Speaker 1: as that is, we would how how what rational person
25:26
Speaker 1: would walk up to another person? And as a favor,
25:29
Speaker 1: if your buddy says, do us, do I smell bad?
25:32
Speaker 1: And it's not like you have bo It's like they
25:35
Speaker 1: know what you've just gone through. Do you have any
25:38
Speaker 1: essence of you of what you've come from? Because you've
25:41
Speaker 1: been asked to go out to lunch, and let that
25:43
Speaker 1: sink in just for a second. You can't avoid people,
25:47
Speaker 1: and so as a courtesy, you know, we would, we
25:49
Speaker 1: would do that for And I remember distinctly many occasions,
25:52
Speaker 1: you know, smelling or sniffing my colleagues. As weird as
25:56
Speaker 1: that sounds, you would, you know, you would smell, you'd
25:59
Speaker 1: smell their hair or there. You know, you'd lean in
26:01
Speaker 1: and smell the shirt collar. No, I don't smell anything. Now,
26:05
Speaker 1: I think you're good to go. And that was just
26:07
Speaker 1: kind of common when you think about decomposition. It's a
26:24
Speaker 1: norm for those in our world, but it's so it's
26:28
Speaker 1: so abnormal for anybody that's not near it, and it's striking.
26:33
Speaker 2: This goes back to the original thing that you said
26:36
Speaker 2: about people asking about the worst thing you've ever seen.
26:39
Speaker 2: It's nothing I'm ever going to be near. It's not
26:41
Speaker 2: my life. I'm not going to be. The closest I'll
26:43
Speaker 2: be to a dead body is if a loved one,
26:46
Speaker 2: a very old loved one is in bed and I'm
26:49
Speaker 2: there around them, and this is somebody that is not
26:53
Speaker 2: they're dying. I'm not going to be around this in
26:56
Speaker 2: my life, which is why that question. But I've got
26:58
Speaker 2: to ask you. You mentioned the first body you unzipped
27:02
Speaker 2: in the morgue, and you mentioned the body was green tongue.
27:06
Speaker 2: You gave a brief description. Can you compare the decomposition
27:10
Speaker 2: of a body like that versus the grandma that they
27:14
Speaker 2: hadn't seen in three weeks? What difference is what changes
27:17
Speaker 2: take place in that period of time. You don't you're
27:21
Speaker 2: not three days in when you come in green swelled
27:23
Speaker 2: up in your tongue sticking out, but you're also not
27:26
Speaker 2: soiled into a mattress where you're only three inches left
27:30
Speaker 2: of body.
27:32
Speaker 1: So now I've had that happen.
27:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, we did a story about a woman who
27:36
Speaker 2: actually melted into the furniture.
27:38
Speaker 1: She died, and that does happen, and you know, I guess,
27:43
Speaker 1: you know, we would use the term melting melting implause,
27:46
Speaker 1: you know, being exposed to extreme heat. But just so
27:48
Speaker 1: that you understand and all of our friends understand, it's
27:52
Speaker 1: just it's a matter of the process of decomposition. You're
27:56
Speaker 1: not going to see this immediately. But again, I cannot
27:59
Speaker 1: stress to peece people how what a huge factor temperature
28:04
Speaker 1: is on these events as you as you move through
28:08
Speaker 1: the process of assessing how long they have been down.
28:12
Speaker 1: So if you, you know, if you take someone that's
28:16
Speaker 1: kind of outside the window of the micro sense, where
28:21
Speaker 1: we're looking at hours, maybe a couple of days, and
28:24
Speaker 1: we're trying to pin it down. We're looking at at
28:27
Speaker 1: Roger Mortis and we're looking at postmortal lividity, and all
28:31
Speaker 1: those things are the you know, are the limbs flaccid?
28:34
Speaker 1: Now has has the rigidity broken? Is you know it's
28:39
Speaker 1: a lividity And we've talked about all this in previous episode.
28:42
Speaker 1: Is it blanchable versus non blankable? All those things and
28:45
Speaker 1: what's the body temp? Well, now you're going to a
28:47
Speaker 1: different level because you begin to look at elements out
28:53
Speaker 1: at a scene where you're thinking, well, I'm seeing this
28:58
Speaker 1: presentation at the scene. Can I can I tie this
29:03
Speaker 1: back to a time a marker in toime if I
29:08
Speaker 1: if I'm looking at a body. One of the first
29:14
Speaker 1: things that begins to occur from when you're heading down
29:18
Speaker 1: the road toward you know, we have degrees. We'll talk
29:20
Speaker 1: about minimal, moderate, to advance decomposition in the macro sense,
29:27
Speaker 1: in the broad sense. So if you're talking about minimal,
29:30
Speaker 1: here's an interesting little factoid. One of the things that
29:32
Speaker 1: you encounter, one of the first like observable changes, I
29:37
Speaker 1: think is there's a greenish discoloration that appears on the
29:43
Speaker 1: abdomen and I don't explain, I can't explain why. I
29:48
Speaker 1: think it has something to do with gaseous build up,
29:52
Speaker 1: probably you know, within the bowel, but most of the
29:54
Speaker 1: time it's in the right lower quadrant adjacent to like
29:59
Speaker 1: where your appendix be. You'll see kind of a green patch.
30:02
Speaker 1: I've seen this repeated over and over again, and that's
30:06
Speaker 1: that's in the area where you're starting to get into
30:08
Speaker 1: a macro examination of decomposition. And then it begins to spread.
30:12
Speaker 1: And I think that one of the reasons you see
30:15
Speaker 1: this greenish discoloration, you know, kind of begin to take
30:20
Speaker 1: form over the abdomen where you know the bowel is concerned.
30:25
Speaker 1: Is that there's a lot of going on. There's a
30:27
Speaker 1: lot going on here internally with the body because the
30:31
Speaker 1: body has literally begun to eat itself. And this is
30:36
Speaker 1: what we refer to as autolsis and as auto means self, right,
30:41
Speaker 1: and so the body literally begins to break its or
30:46
Speaker 1: digest its on self, you know, through enzymic changes and
30:49
Speaker 1: this sort of thing, and any little nasties that are
30:51
Speaker 1: in dwelling in there, and of course our gut is
30:55
Speaker 1: loaded with with these elements. It's that begin to break down.
31:02
Speaker 1: And you think about this kind of expansion and the
31:06
Speaker 1: bloating of the body, and the body bloats in a
31:09
Speaker 1: in a variety of different ways. You get this kind
31:11
Speaker 1: of abdominal bloating that takes place. And you'll and some
31:15
Speaker 1: people will hear of this as decompositional distincsion, and the
31:20
Speaker 1: abdomen will be very very rigid. As a matter of fact,
31:25
Speaker 1: it will feel in certain cases it almost feels like
31:29
Speaker 1: the surface of overinflated basketball. It's not going to have
31:33
Speaker 1: the same texture, obviously, but it has that you know
31:36
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about, that level of rigidity.
31:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I've heard people talk about how they get
31:43
Speaker 2: bloated like that and it can they pop like a balloom?
31:47
Speaker 2: Can a person be so bloated?
31:49
Speaker 1: Joe?
31:50
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm just we've heard jokes in movies about it, right, push,
31:54
Speaker 2: don't push them out to see, but don't poke him
31:56
Speaker 2: because you don't want him to explode.
31:58
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and you know people have and I take
32:02
Speaker 1: exception to people that say explode because I've never had
32:05
Speaker 1: a body, literally an entire body explode, all right. A
32:11
Speaker 1: lot of old timer's will say that, particularly cops. They'll say, yeah,
32:15
Speaker 1: I saw the body. They're not seeing the body explode. Actually,
32:18
Speaker 1: what they're seeing is and this is one of the
32:20
Speaker 1: first things that happens in the stage. You get what's
32:24
Speaker 1: referred to as skin slippage. And if folks will just
32:28
Speaker 1: kind of look at your hands and you know you
32:31
Speaker 1: have this epidermal epidermis, which is that thin outer coating
32:36
Speaker 1: of skin on our body. Well, what begins to happen
32:40
Speaker 1: is that gas is actually beginning to build up within
32:46
Speaker 1: that space between the epidermis and the dermis, and you
32:52
Speaker 1: developed these things that we refer to as and it's
32:54
Speaker 1: generally associated with emphysema COPD practice doctors that deal with
33:00
Speaker 1: COPD emphasma, you know, they talk about this with emphasma.
33:05
Speaker 1: You get these little bumps on the surface of the
33:07
Speaker 1: lungs and they refer to as blebs b l e
33:10
Speaker 1: b S blebs. We refer to these as decompositional blabs
33:15
Speaker 1: because they look like little balloons that begin to present
33:19
Speaker 1: on the skin are this gaseous expansion has taken place.
33:26
Speaker 1: And many times these blabs will be really big, I
33:31
Speaker 1: mean the size of like a party balloon, and they're
33:35
Speaker 1: filled with probably one of the most disgusting substances on
33:39
Speaker 1: the face of the planet, this decompositional fluid. It's and
33:43
Speaker 1: it's a it's a mix of a variety of things
33:47
Speaker 1: cellular decomposition. You've got in some cases, you've got elements
33:54
Speaker 1: of various elements of blood RBC's and white blood cells
34:00
Speaker 1: and plasma and everything serum and everything else that's in there,
34:03
Speaker 1: and it's all kind of combining. And uh, I can't
34:07
Speaker 1: tell you how many times I've had one of those
34:10
Speaker 1: erupt and it it'll it splashes everywhere. You'll get these
34:16
Speaker 1: large wet spots beneath bodies that sort of thing.
34:19
Speaker 2: And that's this is what you're getting. That's what that is.
34:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you'll get that. You'll see that present many
34:25
Speaker 1: times and sometimes they'll be very small. But the skin
34:29
Speaker 1: we call it skin slippage, and it's a marker in time,
34:33
Speaker 1: you know, for how long this is this this person
34:36
Speaker 1: has been deceased, you know, because they're moving into this
34:39
Speaker 1: phase and it's it's uh, it's something that when we
34:46
Speaker 1: when we see it, we can actually get an idea
34:51
Speaker 1: of how long someone has been down where they've advanced
34:56
Speaker 1: past the micro sense and they're headed into the macro sense.
35:01
Speaker 1: There's other associated things that kind of come along with this,
35:06
Speaker 1: you know, and that's within a window of and again
35:09
Speaker 1: it's heavily depended upon environmental temperature, but when you begin
35:13
Speaker 1: to think about heat, it's going to speed this process up.
35:22
Speaker 1: If you begin to look outside of that like seventy
35:25
Speaker 1: two hour window, you'll see these changes that'll that will
35:28
Speaker 1: take place. There will also be a greenish this coloration
35:31
Speaker 1: that's taking place. And the body also does something else
35:33
Speaker 1: that's quite interesting. You'll see issue with what's referred to
35:38
Speaker 1: as marbling and marbling, you know, we hear that commonly
35:43
Speaker 1: associated with you know, you look at the marbling of
35:46
Speaker 1: a cut, a beef or something, and that's generally referring to,
35:52
Speaker 1: you know, these kind of lines of fat, and you
35:54
Speaker 1: know they grade these sort of things. But marbling in
35:58
Speaker 1: human remains is fascinating because when you see it, it looks
36:03
Speaker 1: like a spider web and it really is striking. It's
36:07
Speaker 1: kind of a deep, deep purple color. And what is
36:13
Speaker 1: occurring is that the blood that is still contained in
36:17
Speaker 1: those vessels is decay and so it is presenting. It's
36:23
Speaker 1: leeching out, but it's also presenting and approximating the layout
36:28
Speaker 1: of blood vessels in the body. And you'll see it
36:31
Speaker 1: in the face a lot. You'll see it. It presents
36:33
Speaker 1: because those vessels are so close to the surface, like
36:37
Speaker 1: you know, in the cheeks, forehead, that sort of thing.
36:40
Speaker 1: And people when they see this, and I'm talking about
36:44
Speaker 1: civilians that walk in and find someone, it's one of
36:47
Speaker 1: the most ghastly things that they can begin to imagine
36:52
Speaker 1: in their mind. And it's so horrible. I hate it
36:55
Speaker 1: for families that walk in, you know, and find their
36:58
Speaker 1: loved ones in these conditions. We have to go in
37:00
Speaker 1: and document that and observe it. One of the you know,
37:05
Speaker 1: I remember very distinctly. I had a young man that
37:08
Speaker 1: was a rookie police officer and he had contacted me
37:13
Speaker 1: from the scene of a death of a gentleman that
37:15
Speaker 1: had been found in a rocking chair. And he was
37:18
Speaker 1: still dressed. He was a guy, was like a laborer
37:24
Speaker 1: and he worked construction sites. He was still wearing his
37:26
Speaker 1: work boots on it and his blue jeans. They've still
37:28
Speaker 1: had red clay mud on it. I'll never forget. But
37:31
Speaker 1: he had probably been down for I don't know, maybe
37:34
Speaker 1: six days, and the young police officer, and it was
37:38
Speaker 1: in summertime. The young police officer called me up and said,
37:41
Speaker 1: mister Morgan, you have to get out here immediately, says,
37:43
Speaker 1: I think we've got a homicide. It looks like this
37:46
Speaker 1: might be some kind of attack with an axe or something. Please,
37:50
Speaker 1: you know, I've got c ID in route, I've got
37:52
Speaker 1: IDAN route, so priminin the detectives and the forensic technicians.
37:57
Speaker 1: You need to get out. I said, okay, I'm heading
37:59
Speaker 1: now that way. And what it turned out to be,
38:02
Speaker 1: and he was right to call us because he's a
38:04
Speaker 1: beat cop. He doesn't know any different. But there was
38:08
Speaker 1: what appeared to be blood just surrounding the body. The
38:11
Speaker 1: guy was in a rocking chair. It had leached down
38:13
Speaker 1: onto his shirt. It looked like blood. Head was swollen,
38:17
Speaker 1: it looked like there was a dima like even And
38:20
Speaker 1: that's not what had happened. The fellow had been decomposing
38:24
Speaker 1: in this position and was presenting as if he had
38:27
Speaker 1: been you know, he had been beaten to helen back.
38:30
Speaker 1: That wasn't the case. It was his face had begun
38:33
Speaker 1: to swell and bloat and these sorts of things, and
38:36
Speaker 1: he was beginning to purge, which is another another level
38:41
Speaker 1: that you get to with decomposition, and that means through
38:44
Speaker 1: any orifice that you have, the nose, the mouth, you'll
38:47
Speaker 1: actually present with this purge fluid. And again this is
38:51
Speaker 1: a combination. It's kind of a mixture of all of
38:54
Speaker 1: this cellular waste that's occurring in the bodies. The cells
38:58
Speaker 1: begin to break down and they literally drip out of
39:01
Speaker 1: the nose and out of the mouth and these sorts
39:03
Speaker 1: of things, and it will stain the adjacent surfaces. So
39:06
Speaker 1: you can imagine this young man when he is there
39:09
Speaker 1: and he's observing this, and the poor victim had on
39:14
Speaker 1: a white T shirt. Dave and you can imagine the
39:16
Speaker 1: contrast here, and so he's looking at a guy who
39:19
Speaker 1: is very dark, looks like he's you know, he's been beaten, bruised, contusions,
39:24
Speaker 1: this sort of thing, and he's seeing his contrast against
39:29
Speaker 1: the white T shirt. And this has all taken place now,
39:33
Speaker 1: in this particular case, within only about six days. So
39:38
Speaker 1: when you have an unattended death that occurs like this
39:42
Speaker 1: and the subject is has been down and no one
39:47
Speaker 1: has come around to check on them, it's you have
39:52
Speaker 1: to as an as a forensic scientist, you have to
39:55
Speaker 1: look and understand that decomposition is going going on, but
40:01
Speaker 1: is it obscuring an injury? And that's tough, that's particularly
40:06
Speaker 1: tough to do at the scene. And here's the other thing.
40:10
Speaker 1: You know, there's like that little person within you that
40:13
Speaker 1: is screaming, get me out of here. I don't want
40:15
Speaker 1: to be in this environment. I'm smelling this, I'm sensing it.
40:18
Speaker 1: I'm even having flies come off of the body and
40:21
Speaker 1: land on me. And that does happen. But yet you're
40:27
Speaker 1: having to look at these cases because of the level
40:32
Speaker 1: of decomposition, even more closely because things now are obscured,
40:36
Speaker 1: So you're having to match yourself intellectually, you know, to
40:39
Speaker 1: try to understand this is the science, it's a natural process.
40:42
Speaker 1: Decomposition of body is breaking down. But I've got so
40:46
Speaker 1: much change that's taking place in the body as I'm
40:49
Speaker 1: looking at this, is it obscuring something? And am I missing?
40:53
Speaker 1: And this is one of the reasons on body backs
40:56
Speaker 1: we you know, will we will hear these cases where
41:00
Speaker 1: forensic pathologist even will say the body was so far
41:04
Speaker 1: gone we couldn't appreciate if there was any trauma in
41:06
Speaker 1: the neck. Well, what they're saying about that is that
41:09
Speaker 1: there's so much decomposition going around the head and the
41:12
Speaker 1: neck that upon initial observation, they couldn't appreciate any kind
41:16
Speaker 1: of focal areas of hemorrhage, like where somebody had grabbed
41:19
Speaker 1: somebody by the neck or use the ligature, or the
41:22
Speaker 1: person been struck in the head. You really, and it's
41:26
Speaker 1: counterintuitive because it's like the cases that as you know,
41:31
Speaker 1: your own personal humanity is screaming to put as much
41:35
Speaker 1: distance between yourself and this offensive remain that is in
41:40
Speaker 1: front of you. You have to anchor yourself. You have
41:43
Speaker 1: to screw yourself to the floor and stand there because
41:45
Speaker 1: you have to pay more attention, Dave. You have to
41:47
Speaker 1: pay more attention in this context, at the scene and
41:50
Speaker 1: at the morgue, because I got to tell you something.
41:53
Speaker 1: If you can't get past the horror, if you can't
41:56
Speaker 1: get past these natural biological changes, you are missing something.
42:04
Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is bodybags.