Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: The Gruesome Dismemberment of Margaret Craig

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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: The Gruesome Dismemberment of Margaret Craig · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:08
Speaker 1: Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. The toughest job I
0:22
Speaker 1: ever had, I guess physically was when I was growing up.
0:26
Speaker 1: I fancied myself a football player, and in order to
0:29
Speaker 1: stay in shape during the off season, I will cut wood.
0:34
Speaker 1: This ranged from felling trees to also splitting the wood
0:40
Speaker 1: with generally a sledgehammer, a wedge, a mall, and an
0:44
Speaker 1: axe and stacking it up. Hardest job physically that I've
0:50
Speaker 1: ever had in my life. But what comes into play
0:52
Speaker 1: is the fact that I would have to use a chainsaw,
0:55
Speaker 1: and I learned to use one at an early age,
0:58
Speaker 1: and it is a tool to be respected. Today, I'm
1:04
Speaker 1: going to talk a little bit about a case that's
1:07
Speaker 1: come to my attention involving a chainsaw. But this chainsaw
1:11
Speaker 1: was used and purposed in a way that not many
1:16
Speaker 1: people would think of. Today, we're going to talk about
1:21
Speaker 1: the death and dismemberment of Margaret Craig. I'm Joseph Scott
1:27
Speaker 1: Morgan and this is bodybacks. At this point in my life,
1:37
Speaker 1: my grandparents have long since been deceased, and with the
1:41
Speaker 1: passing of each one, I aggrieved immensely. I loved my
1:44
Speaker 1: grandparents dearly on both sides, and many people can identify
1:48
Speaker 1: with that. But never in my wildest dreams did I
1:52
Speaker 1: ever imagine that I would be having a discussion with you,
1:57
Speaker 1: Dave Mack, about a death involving grandmother who was apparently
2:02
Speaker 1: at some point in time really loved by the two
2:04
Speaker 1: alleged perpetrators, and in that discussion we would talk about
2:09
Speaker 1: chainsaw dismemberment and disposal of a body using a barbecue grill.
2:14
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of anything like this before?
2:17
Speaker 2: No, this is a whole new level of discussed depravity.
2:23
Speaker 2: I don't know when. I don't know when things changed,
2:26
Speaker 2: and maybe they didn't. Maybe this has always gone on
2:29
Speaker 2: and we just never heard about it. But at no
2:31
Speaker 2: point in time in my life did it ever occur
2:34
Speaker 2: to me that we might have a story about loved ones.
2:38
Speaker 2: And you mentioned how much you care about your grandparents.
2:40
Speaker 2: This is three generations where the victim is at the top,
2:44
Speaker 2: she's a beloved grandmother and her own daughter and granddaughter
2:50
Speaker 2: used the chainsaw and the grill. You can figure out
2:53
Speaker 2: the rest. And we're not talking about you and I
2:55
Speaker 2: out camping teaching our grandchildren how to live off the
2:58
Speaker 2: land during a camping weekend.
3:00
Speaker 1: Or not you begin to think about, well, how do
3:02
Speaker 1: you go about disposing of human remains? There a multitude
3:08
Speaker 1: of ways this is done. Are you thinking in the
3:10
Speaker 1: context of, well, how do we do it respectfully? Well,
3:13
Speaker 1: most people, their default position is always simply prepping the
3:17
Speaker 1: body to a certain degree and burying the body right, right.
3:20
Speaker 1: But it does seem and I've made this comment both
3:22
Speaker 1: on body bags and I'll continue to make it on
3:25
Speaker 1: media platforms. I don't know if there is some kind
3:29
Speaker 1: of desensitization that's taking place. I do not recall having
3:35
Speaker 1: talked about so many dismemberment cases, and it's not just
3:39
Speaker 1: this one, it is all across the country. I mean,
3:42
Speaker 1: it seems like if people will go back and kind
3:44
Speaker 1: of look at our catalog on body bags, you'll see
3:47
Speaker 1: that there's a number of these cases there that have
3:50
Speaker 1: occurred in recent history, certainly in true crime. It just
3:54
Speaker 1: seems like that it's coming about. And what's troubling about
3:58
Speaker 1: it is that there is I think think I use
4:00
Speaker 1: the term a callous and I mean that in a
4:03
Speaker 1: physical sense. We think about we developed callouses on our hands,
4:07
Speaker 1: and how appropriate since we're mentioned in my opening about
4:10
Speaker 1: taking down trees and splitting them and that sort of thing,
4:13
Speaker 1: and I had these huge calluses on my hands. You
4:16
Speaker 1: developed these hands in this kind of work, but there's
4:18
Speaker 1: a callous It seems as though that people that might
4:22
Speaker 1: have thought about this in the past are now crossing
4:26
Speaker 1: over that boundary and going into this very dark area
4:30
Speaker 1: where they have a comfort. In many of these cases
4:32
Speaker 1: we've discussed with applying an instrument to a body and
4:37
Speaker 1: taking it apart piece by piece, and we've covered all methodologies,
4:41
Speaker 1: everythings from hack saws to just kitchen knives, cutlery, those
4:46
Speaker 1: sorts of things. We begin to break it down categories.
4:49
Speaker 1: I think to this point in our library, this is
4:51
Speaker 1: the first chainsaw case that we've covered. But it just
4:55
Speaker 1: seems as though that people have a comfort with this.
4:57
Speaker 1: Now it's not just about killing, it's now how do
5:01
Speaker 1: we go about taking apart the body. That's why when
5:04
Speaker 1: you said that it's at a whole other level, it
5:07
Speaker 1: truly is. And it's demonstrated through this. Because you think
5:11
Speaker 1: about a perpetrator that kill somebody and then they want
5:15
Speaker 1: to put as much distance between their person and the
5:20
Speaker 1: remains of the deceased as they possibly can. How many
5:23
Speaker 1: times over the years that we cover cases where people
5:26
Speaker 1: will just kill somebody in their runaway right, and even
5:29
Speaker 1: in familial homicides where you've got family members, which we
5:32
Speaker 1: do in Ms Craig's case, you have people that kill
5:37
Speaker 1: a family member and they'll try to get out of
5:39
Speaker 1: there as quickly as possible. This goes to another level
5:42
Speaker 1: because now you're thinking, not only are you killing an individual,
5:47
Speaker 1: but you're going to spend time with them, and not
5:49
Speaker 1: just a short period of time day. You're going to
5:52
Speaker 1: spend time with this individual with their remains in order
5:56
Speaker 1: to dispose of them. And what the process was here
6:01
Speaker 1: in kind of the timeline and how everything worked out,
6:05
Speaker 1: It was amazing to me because these two women that
6:09
Speaker 1: are allegedly associated with this homicide and dismemberment and attempted
6:15
Speaker 1: destruction of these remains, it was a tedious process. A
6:39
Speaker 1: chainsaw and a grill. That's two things that leave a
6:43
Speaker 1: remnant behind. With a chainsaw, you're talking about if you've
6:47
Speaker 1: never used one. And the thing that happens with a
6:50
Speaker 1: chainsaw when you're applying it to a big piece of
6:52
Speaker 1: wood is that you'll get sawdust all over you. Now
6:56
Speaker 1: you can't avoid it. It's going to happen. You're gonna
6:59
Speaker 1: have it in your hair, You're gonna have on your arms,
7:00
Speaker 1: you're gonna have any clothing. It'll be everywhere. And of course,
7:04
Speaker 1: with a grill, all of us have pleasant memories. I
7:06
Speaker 1: would think of cooking out. And that smell kind of
7:09
Speaker 1: permeates the air, doesn't it. You get in your nostrils.
7:12
Speaker 1: Maybe it's in your hair particularly, it's this thing that
7:15
Speaker 1: reminds you of seasons. Summer comes to mind. But in
7:19
Speaker 1: this case, Lord have mercy. I can't imagine was going
7:23
Speaker 1: through their minds, the perpetrators in this particular case, when
7:28
Speaker 1: they allegedly did this deed.
7:30
Speaker 2: You've got a seventy one year old Margaret Craig. She
7:33
Speaker 2: has a daughter, Candace Craig, who is forty four. And
7:37
Speaker 2: Margaret Craig has a granddaughter, the daughter of Candace Craig,
7:41
Speaker 2: nineteen year old Celia Hardy. So we have a woman
7:46
Speaker 2: who is beloved by her neighbors. When a neighbor had
7:49
Speaker 2: realized that he hadn't spoken to her in several days,
7:52
Speaker 2: he called police. Now I'm guessing here that he probably
7:57
Speaker 2: went next door because the mother rather or Candace Craig
8:01
Speaker 2: and her daughter, Celia. They were both there at the home,
8:03
Speaker 2: and I'm guessing that this neighbor probably knocked on the door, Hey,
8:07
Speaker 2: what's going on? Hadn't seen your mom in a while?
8:08
Speaker 2: As you Okay, I kind of imagine that. I'm not
8:11
Speaker 2: saying it happen. I'm just thinking because I can't imagine
8:15
Speaker 2: when you know people in the house next door that
8:17
Speaker 2: are there, but you don't see the one person you
8:20
Speaker 2: know you expect to see there, that your first call
8:23
Speaker 2: is not going to be to the police. You would
8:24
Speaker 2: go next door and see, hey, what's going on. Apparently,
8:27
Speaker 2: for whatever reason, he calls police. Haven't talked to my
8:30
Speaker 2: neighbor in several days? Would you mind doing a welfare check?
8:34
Speaker 2: So I think that the neighbor knew something was up.
8:37
Speaker 1: All of us have had experience with good and bad neighbors.
8:41
Speaker 1: I bet everybody that is within the sound of my
8:44
Speaker 1: voice can identify with that. And sometimes you have the
8:47
Speaker 1: good neighbors, right. We always think about the negative, But
8:49
Speaker 1: there are those people that you live adjacent to that
8:51
Speaker 1: you have a warm greeting for. You know, the old
8:54
Speaker 1: idea of leaning on the fence and talking to your
8:56
Speaker 1: neighbor and just but and you learn a lot about
8:59
Speaker 1: people too, what their health conditions are. You understand if
9:03
Speaker 1: they're debilitated in any way, if people are regularly coming
9:06
Speaker 1: to visit them or their habits. She's always going out
9:08
Speaker 1: to get her mail, maybe she cuts her own grass,
9:11
Speaker 1: maybe she works in her garden. And when you don't
9:14
Speaker 1: see that sends up a red flag for you.
9:17
Speaker 2: And I'm guessing because of the fact that he picked
9:19
Speaker 2: up a phone and called nine to one one, that
9:22
Speaker 2: there was enough there to make him worried. So and
9:25
Speaker 2: by the way, I'm blessed to live in a neighborhood
9:27
Speaker 2: where we know our neighbors, and we have an elderly
9:30
Speaker 2: neighbor that we've lived near for twenty something years, and
9:34
Speaker 2: so we do keep up with her. She's wonderful, but
9:37
Speaker 2: when we don't see her for a couple of days,
9:39
Speaker 2: we do reach out to make sure everything's okay. So
9:42
Speaker 2: here we are. It's Friday afternoon, one point thirty in
9:44
Speaker 2: the day and officers show up at the house of
9:48
Speaker 2: Margaret Craig, knock on the door. Margaret Craig's daughter greets
9:52
Speaker 2: them at the front door. Candice Craig and the police say, hey,
9:56
Speaker 2: neighbor called hasn't seen your mom for a while. Would
9:58
Speaker 2: you mind if we come in and take a lok
10:00
Speaker 2: look around? Got nothing to hide here? Come on in. Now,
10:03
Speaker 2: what kind of mindset do you have when you know
10:07
Speaker 2: what's in the basement, You know what's in there, But sure,
10:10
Speaker 2: come on in. Police, she's fine. Look around, you know
10:13
Speaker 2: she's not fine. You think they could come up with
10:15
Speaker 2: some other story of she went to visit a relative,
10:20
Speaker 2: you know, any number of things other than well, come
10:23
Speaker 2: on in. But that's what she said. So police come in,
10:25
Speaker 2: They look around a little bit, and they go downstairs.
10:28
Speaker 2: Police say that as they went downstairs towards the basement,
10:32
Speaker 2: they smelled the odor of decomposition and simultaneously see blood
10:41
Speaker 2: near three trash bags. How quickly does the odor of
10:46
Speaker 2: decomposition arrive after the death of someone.
10:49
Speaker 1: Well, the fact that you're talking about plastic trash bags,
10:53
Speaker 1: I don't think that people really realize how plastic impacts
10:57
Speaker 1: biological substances. Talk about this actually quite a bit in
11:02
Speaker 1: crime scene investigation. How we try very hard not to
11:07
Speaker 1: package things in plastic. We prefer paper. Think about when
11:11
Speaker 1: we were kids and you went to the grocery store
11:13
Speaker 1: and there were nothing but paper bags, and they have
11:15
Speaker 1: a particular smell to them, don't they. I still remember that,
11:18
Speaker 1: but yeah, you know, and nowadays everything is plastic.
11:21
Speaker 2: Right used to wrap me in paper?
11:23
Speaker 1: They actually did as a matter of fact, And this
11:25
Speaker 1: is kind of a ghoulish aside. When I first started
11:29
Speaker 1: working in the morgue, we had butcher paper in the more.
11:34
Speaker 1: That's how we would prepare bodies after we had done autopsy.
11:39
Speaker 1: We had huge, massive rolls of butcher paper and we
11:43
Speaker 1: would wrap the bodies in butcher paper. Body bags were
11:47
Speaker 1: considered to be a luxury, so you'd wrap them in
11:50
Speaker 1: the butcher paper in the funeral home would come by,
11:52
Speaker 1: picked them up and place them in there. And the
11:55
Speaker 1: thing about plastic is, you know you're talking about plastic bags,
11:58
Speaker 1: is that it's almost like putting a biological specimen in
12:02
Speaker 1: a hothouse because you think about the bag sweating heat
12:06
Speaker 1: and that moisture speed up the process. Actually when body
12:10
Speaker 1: parts are placed into a plastic bag, and so it
12:14
Speaker 1: promotes decomposition, and with decomposition, what do you get? You
12:19
Speaker 1: get a foul odor. Can you imagine being this police
12:22
Speaker 1: officer or officers that show up at this scene and
12:25
Speaker 1: they walk down there, they see the bags, they see
12:27
Speaker 1: what they believe is blood. But they here's another little nugget.
12:30
Speaker 1: They looked down on the floor and they saw they
12:34
Speaker 1: probably didn't actually recognize it, but they thought that it
12:38
Speaker 1: might be brain matter. And so you're looking at that
12:41
Speaker 1: element in addition to that. So back to the initial
12:44
Speaker 1: question first. With bodies, many times you're first alert. And
12:49
Speaker 1: this is used as a literary device in movies. People
12:52
Speaker 1: will say, what's that smell? But that's the truth. It's
12:55
Speaker 1: actually one of those things you see in entertainment that
12:58
Speaker 1: is reality smell decomposing bodies many times long before you
13:03
Speaker 1: ever put eyes on them. I remember being under a
13:06
Speaker 1: house in particular, where a grandson had killed his grandmother
13:10
Speaker 1: and buried her underneath the house, and we were under
13:13
Speaker 1: this thing trying to excavate the body, and we didn't
13:16
Speaker 1: see the body. It took us hours to excavate this area,
13:21
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm in the stoopid position the entire time.
13:23
Speaker 1: It's really hot, it's down here in the Deep South.
13:26
Speaker 1: I smelled her the remains rather for a couple of
13:30
Speaker 1: hours before I ever laid eyes on her. That's how
13:32
Speaker 1: powerful this is.
13:34
Speaker 2: Yeah. John Wayne Gacy buried bodies under his house.
13:37
Speaker 1: I know. And what did he have under his house?
13:40
Speaker 1: It remember the sump pump or I can't remember. It
13:44
Speaker 1: backed up. And so when those investigators, when they pulled
13:47
Speaker 1: us floorboards up in that environment, they were essentially in
13:51
Speaker 1: this muck with these floating remains where he was trying
13:54
Speaker 1: to bury everything. So you see the plastic, and I
13:57
Speaker 1: think about that, and I think about probably what they
13:59
Speaker 1: were sensing. Now, I'm not saying that you would not
14:02
Speaker 1: have smelled decomposing body without plastic. You still would have.
14:06
Speaker 1: But when you begin to place things into plastics like this,
14:10
Speaker 1: it prompts breaking down. And the fact that this individual
14:14
Speaker 1: that answered the door allegedly felt comfortable enough to say, yeah,
14:18
Speaker 1: come on in, Yeah, come on in, Yeah, Yeah, we've
14:21
Speaker 1: got nothing to hide here. Yeah.
14:22
Speaker 2: And to back up, all right, when police arrive and
14:25
Speaker 2: I said, the daughter allegedly here. Because this has not
14:29
Speaker 2: been adjudicated, we have seventy one year old Margaret Craig
14:32
Speaker 2: is the deceased. We do know that we know her daughter,
14:35
Speaker 2: Candace Craig, is forty four and she was there. And
14:37
Speaker 2: we know that Celia Hardy, nineteen year old victim's granddaughter,
14:40
Speaker 2: of Candace Craig. Now the police arrive, they go downstairs.
14:44
Speaker 2: They say they smell the odor of decomposition. They see
14:48
Speaker 2: blood near trash bags. Now, they had one of the
14:50
Speaker 2: bags that wasn't sealed and they were able to look
14:53
Speaker 2: in that without you know, it was obvious, without touching,
14:56
Speaker 2: moving or anything. And they noticed things that appeared to
14:58
Speaker 2: them to be the brain matter and things like that
15:01
Speaker 2: of a body. So they start going back up the stairs.
15:05
Speaker 2: They know they've got to call in forensics. They got
15:07
Speaker 2: to call a team in here. And as they're going
15:10
Speaker 2: up the stairs, well to back up. When they were
15:12
Speaker 2: going down the stairs, one of the police officers noted, hey,
15:15
Speaker 2: there's a knife ray here. It was just on the stairs,
15:18
Speaker 2: and on the way back up the stairs the knife
15:21
Speaker 2: was gone. To most people, you would think going down
15:25
Speaker 2: you see a knife and coming up it's gone. And
15:27
Speaker 2: the only person here is the woman who allowed you
15:29
Speaker 2: in the house. She's got something to hide. So now
15:32
Speaker 2: they begin the process of figuring out what took place.
15:36
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, this is where everything falls apart or
15:39
Speaker 2: comes together, depending on your point of view. So Joe,
15:42
Speaker 2: when this happens and police call for I don't know
15:46
Speaker 2: if you call for backup or whatever. But you've got
15:48
Speaker 2: police officers who were there to do a welfare check.
15:51
Speaker 2: Within a matter of minutes, they're faced with a gruesome
15:53
Speaker 2: smell in sight. Who do they call? Do they call
15:56
Speaker 2: forensics right away?
15:57
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah they would. And the person that actually made
16:00
Speaker 1: the determination that they were dealing with human remains, they're
16:03
Speaker 1: framing them as a forensic investigator. I'm imagining that this
16:08
Speaker 1: is probably somebody from the m's office up in Maryland.
16:11
Speaker 1: They don't have corner system. They have medical examiners system.
16:16
Speaker 1: And I've actually done training up in Baltimore with some
16:19
Speaker 1: of these folks.
16:20
Speaker 2: Is there a big difference between a medical examiner and
16:22
Speaker 2: a corner.
16:23
Speaker 1: There are corners are lay lay people most of the time,
16:27
Speaker 1: and they're mighty fine corners that are out there that
16:30
Speaker 1: are highly trained and very professional what they do. But
16:33
Speaker 1: they're elected officials and depend upon the state. You know,
16:36
Speaker 1: they'll come from all walks of life. But with medical
16:38
Speaker 1: examiners and medical examiner systems, you're going to have obviously
16:41
Speaker 1: a physician that's the boss, a forensic pathologist, but you're investigators.
16:46
Speaker 1: You go places like New York, believe it or not,
16:48
Speaker 1: people don't realize this. You go like New York for instance,
16:52
Speaker 1: and other jurisdictions, the investigators that they have will actually
16:55
Speaker 1: be physician assistants or nurse practitioners. So these people are
16:59
Speaker 1: highly trained from a medical perspective and from a pathology perspective.
17:04
Speaker 1: I want to back up a little bit. One of
17:05
Speaker 1: the most terrifying issues with this. You mentioned that knife
17:08
Speaker 1: that had been on the stairs, and when I teach
17:11
Speaker 1: crime scene investigation to my students at university, I try
17:15
Speaker 1: to let them know, particularly those that are going to
17:18
Speaker 1: be police officers that are just coming into the field
17:21
Speaker 1: or think they're going to be, you never allow anybody
17:24
Speaker 1: to follow you into a location that you're searching that
17:27
Speaker 1: is not part of your team or this is not
17:29
Speaker 1: a police officer. For all we know, the individual could
17:31
Speaker 1: have picked up that knife and buried it in the
17:34
Speaker 1: cobs neck, right.
17:35
Speaker 2: I wondered the same thing. Did they freak out when
17:38
Speaker 2: they realized the knife was gone or did they tie
17:40
Speaker 2: or main calum to figure out what happened? We don't know.
17:43
Speaker 2: They didn't really say yeah.
17:45
Speaker 1: And we don't know at this point, Tom, And it's
17:47
Speaker 1: speculative on our part. But here's the problem. They're going
17:51
Speaker 1: on a welfare chech Who in the world would ever
17:56
Speaker 1: expect to find a grandmother that has been dismembered and,
18:02
Speaker 1: as we'll find out, partially consumed by fire in the
18:06
Speaker 1: basement of this home. That's why our working philosophy is
18:11
Speaker 1: that every death is a homicide until we can prove otherwise.
18:36
Speaker 1: My kids make fun of me for this. I've never
18:38
Speaker 1: been a fan of doing puzzles. Everybody thinks that. I
18:41
Speaker 1: guess for some reason, because I was a forensic investigator.
18:43
Speaker 1: I enjoyed doing things like puzzles. Did you also know
18:47
Speaker 1: I got to tell you this, Dave, and people will
18:48
Speaker 1: find this kind of interesting. Did you know that I
18:50
Speaker 1: have played Clue since I was nine? I think? Did
18:56
Speaker 1: you know? I have never won a game of Clue?
18:58
Speaker 1: I never have. It's just it's one of those things
19:01
Speaker 1: and I find it tedious. I don't know why it is,
19:04
Speaker 1: but when we're talking about this case with miss Craig,
19:10
Speaker 1: this is a puzzle in both a literal and a
19:14
Speaker 1: figurative way.
19:15
Speaker 2: We know when police got there for their welfare check
19:18
Speaker 2: and fairly quickly on figured out something Haines had taken
19:23
Speaker 2: place and made the call for experts to come in.
19:27
Speaker 2: They separated the mother, Candace Craig, who's forty four, and
19:31
Speaker 2: her daughter, Sealia Hardy, nineteen, and while Candace Craig didn't
19:36
Speaker 2: volunteer a lot of information to police, they read them
19:40
Speaker 2: their rights. You have the right to remain silent, but
19:43
Speaker 2: Celia Hardy said, fine, I want to talk. And it
19:47
Speaker 2: was nineteen year old Salia Hardy, the granddaughter of the victim,
19:51
Speaker 2: daughter of the alleged perpetrator of the crime, who actually
19:55
Speaker 2: gave us all the information we know of what took place.
19:58
Speaker 2: And what she told police is that she heard an
20:02
Speaker 2: argument taking place between her mother and her grandmother, and
20:07
Speaker 2: her grandmother was telling Margaret Craig, the victim, was telling
20:13
Speaker 2: Candace Craig, suspect that she was going to call police
20:17
Speaker 2: because her credit card had been used by Salia Hardy,
20:21
Speaker 2: the nineteen year old granddaughter of the victim, and she
20:24
Speaker 2: was mad it was done without her approval and mother
20:27
Speaker 2: and daughter were having a big argument about it. And
20:30
Speaker 2: it was when Candace Craig, forty four years old, tells
20:34
Speaker 2: her mother she ain't calling the cops about this, that
20:37
Speaker 2: Celia Hardy claimed she went to sleep and when she
20:41
Speaker 2: woke up the next morning she knew they had been
20:44
Speaker 2: they had been fighting. Next morning, she wakes up and
20:46
Speaker 2: there's a blue tub in her room containing the now
20:49
Speaker 2: deceased seventy one year old Margaret Craig, Meaning she can't
20:53
Speaker 2: tell us what took place during or after the fight.
20:57
Speaker 2: She can only tell us that when she woke up,
20:59
Speaker 2: Grandma was dead and in a tub. And then she
21:03
Speaker 2: begins the story of the chainsaw, the knives, and the
21:07
Speaker 2: barbecue grill. So when police get it down to this
21:10
Speaker 2: point where they now know that they have their victim
21:13
Speaker 2: and alleged suspect, how did they dig into this to
21:16
Speaker 2: determine what was used first, the chainsaw the knife? Because
21:21
Speaker 2: that seems to me like it would matter. And again
21:23
Speaker 2: it goes back to what you said at the very beginning.
21:25
Speaker 2: Why do we seem to have more of these types
21:27
Speaker 2: of dismemberment stories. The woman was already dead.
21:30
Speaker 1: I have no idea. At some point in Tom, you
21:32
Speaker 1: and I are going to sit down, We're going to
21:33
Speaker 1: begin to log these because there's a pattern here. I
21:36
Speaker 1: see it. I'm referring to dismemberment cases. But first off,
21:39
Speaker 1: this seems highly disorganized. And when I say that, I
21:43
Speaker 1: mean like when they talk about these kind of organized
21:46
Speaker 1: and disorganized kinds of crimes, it seems like something that
21:49
Speaker 1: would be This is not a methodically planned kind of
21:53
Speaker 1: thing where you've got everything laid out, you know how
21:57
Speaker 1: you're going to do it. Some grand plan has gone
21:59
Speaker 1: into action. Here, you lure a person in, you take
22:02
Speaker 1: their life. Still, to this point, they have not released
22:05
Speaker 1: actually what the cause of death is. And I don't
22:09
Speaker 1: know if that goes to their desire not to release
22:13
Speaker 1: that information or if it goes to how much confusion
22:16
Speaker 1: might exist. I know this. I know that when police
22:20
Speaker 1: did this initial walk through at the scene, one of
22:22
Speaker 1: the things that was kind of ominous that they noticed
22:25
Speaker 1: there you had a case, a chainsaw case, then you
22:28
Speaker 1: had a chainsaw. How exactly do you determine in the morgue,
22:34
Speaker 1: for instance, when you're examining these remains, what came first.
22:38
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to weasel out of this question, but
22:40
Speaker 1: that's very difficult to answer without more data. I will
22:43
Speaker 1: tell you this, the ferocity of a chainsaw, and just
22:48
Speaker 1: for people that are not necessarily up to speed, no
22:53
Speaker 1: pun intended, what speed a chainsaw actually works at or
22:58
Speaker 1: functions at? A chainsaw roughly moves at about eighty to
23:03
Speaker 1: ninety feet per second. That is the chain itself going
23:08
Speaker 1: around the saw bar, which is what they call the
23:12
Speaker 1: saw bar, is what the chain is actually hooked to,
23:15
Speaker 1: and that translates roughly into about fifty five miles per hour.
23:19
Speaker 1: All right, just envision that just for a second. So
23:21
Speaker 1: if you think about your tire spinning on the road
23:24
Speaker 1: as it's conveying you down the road, that is the rate.
23:27
Speaker 1: Now that can increase because they have variable speed. You
23:30
Speaker 1: can pull a trigger on it. You know, it'll speed up,
23:32
Speaker 1: it'll slow down, that sort of thing. And it has
23:34
Speaker 1: to because it has to generate enough speed in order
23:38
Speaker 1: to cut through these surfaces. And you think about primarily
23:41
Speaker 1: with chainsaws, you think about going through wood. Here's another
23:45
Speaker 1: interesting kind of side about chainsaws is that the blade,
23:50
Speaker 1: if you want to call it a blade, it's actually
23:52
Speaker 1: multiple blades or teeth that a chainsaw has. When they
23:57
Speaker 1: hit the surface of a solid object, they begin to
24:01
Speaker 1: kind of chew through it. And it's not precision, man,
24:05
Speaker 1: I'm just telling you. When you look at this, you
24:08
Speaker 1: can kind of see, particularly when you're going through these
24:11
Speaker 1: fleshy sides like this, you're going through soft tissue. Then
24:14
Speaker 1: you hit bone. It literally tears. It tears the skin
24:18
Speaker 1: as it's going through, but it goes at such an
24:20
Speaker 1: incredible rate it slices through it like butter. One of
24:24
Speaker 1: my big questions is, as the chainsaw is being used
24:28
Speaker 1: on this Craig's remains, I'm thinking, did the perpetrators, the
24:32
Speaker 1: alleged perpetrators in this case, did they suddenly have this
24:36
Speaker 1: idea that the remains of or the particular remains of
24:43
Speaker 1: their loved one are being deposited on them? Because as
24:47
Speaker 1: I said earlier, you know my experience were using chainsaws.
24:50
Speaker 1: You can't escape sawdust. How much more so with a
24:55
Speaker 1: chainsaw where it's going through multiple layers of tissue. You're
25:00
Speaker 1: talking about skin, you're talking about muscle, you're talking about sinew, bone,
25:07
Speaker 1: the bone dust. Oh and by the way, we've got blood.
25:10
Speaker 2: There's got to be blood everywhere. The human body has
25:13
Speaker 2: a lot of blood.
25:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it would be you know, we talk about
25:16
Speaker 1: this idea of cast off, and most people think about
25:18
Speaker 1: cast off where And I always describe it when I'm
25:22
Speaker 1: teaching as dipping a taking up paintbrush and dipping it
25:26
Speaker 1: into a pail of paint, right and kind of slinging
25:29
Speaker 1: it over your head. You know, you get it on
25:31
Speaker 1: the ceiling or on the wall. I've seen perpetrators that
25:34
Speaker 1: actually have it down their back in a diagonal pattern.
25:37
Speaker 1: But with the speed at which a chainsaw moves, you're
25:41
Speaker 1: going to see this almost fine histamine like deposition. And
25:46
Speaker 1: one of the ways we measure velocity on blood stains
25:49
Speaker 1: is we categorize it rather we have low velocity, we
25:53
Speaker 1: have medium velocity, then we have high velocity. I would
25:56
Speaker 1: think that with chainsaws you're going to see some high
26:00
Speaker 1: velocity deposition, and most of the time high velocity deposition
26:06
Speaker 1: is associated with gunfire. So just so people understand and
26:11
Speaker 1: kind of get an idea as to what it looks like,
26:14
Speaker 1: the lower the velocity, the bigger the droplet, And that's
26:17
Speaker 1: kind of how we figure this out. It's not rocket science.
26:19
Speaker 1: That's kind of how we figure this out. So if
26:21
Speaker 1: you have high velocity blood staining that's going on or deposition,
26:27
Speaker 1: it will look very tiny. It almost looks many times
26:32
Speaker 1: like sprayed tomato juice or sprayed grape juice, where you
26:36
Speaker 1: get these fine little droplets. If you put a magnifying
26:39
Speaker 1: glass over it, you'll see that they are actually individual
26:41
Speaker 1: little droplets, but they're coming off at such a high
26:47
Speaker 1: rate of speed that the droplets themselves are very tiny,
26:52
Speaker 1: very very tiny. And that's kind of how we delineate
26:55
Speaker 1: in this world of interpretation of blood staining about what
26:59
Speaker 1: went on and in this environment. When you're talking about
27:02
Speaker 1: the dismemberment of human remains using a chainsaw, David's going
27:06
Speaker 1: to be everywhere. It would be everywhere, so the more
27:09
Speaker 1: like when you change your position, this is one of
27:12
Speaker 1: the things that happens with chainsaws. As you change positions
27:16
Speaker 1: with the chainsaw relative to the target, you're going to
27:20
Speaker 1: get another pattern that will develop. So you can have
27:23
Speaker 1: these street patterns that are kind of interlacing on all
27:27
Speaker 1: of these surfaces where just imagine you've got big x's everywhere,
27:32
Speaker 1: or almost like these aster ses. They're very linear, but
27:36
Speaker 1: you might have them overlapping depending upon how much you're
27:39
Speaker 1: moving that chainsaw blade around, and it can be quite confusing.
27:43
Speaker 1: You'll come up with a very unique pattern.
27:45
Speaker 2: Investigators did say, you know, they found human remains on
27:48
Speaker 2: the chainsaw when they seized it. But I was thinking, Joe,
27:51
Speaker 2: I'm trying to picture the order. Okay, we know about
27:55
Speaker 2: the welfare check. We know, police show up, all right,
27:57
Speaker 2: Candice Craig allows police in. They look around, the smell
28:00
Speaker 2: the odor of decomposition. They see blood around trash bags,
28:03
Speaker 2: glancing into a trash bag. Hey, I think we see
28:06
Speaker 2: brain matter in here. They calling the experts who identify
28:09
Speaker 2: the body parts in the bag are in fact human,
28:12
Speaker 2: and they talk to the nineteen year old daughter, so
28:14
Speaker 2: Leah Hardy, who then explains what took place leading them
28:18
Speaker 2: to this moment in time. But what we don't have
28:20
Speaker 2: is the order in which it took place. And I
28:22
Speaker 2: was thinking that based on the fact there was a knife.
28:25
Speaker 2: I'm thinking that being I'm assuming that these suspects here
28:29
Speaker 2: are amateurs at this, that they don't regularly dismember bodies.
28:33
Speaker 2: We don't have any proof of that, but I'm assuming
28:35
Speaker 2: that we have a body. We got to get rid
28:37
Speaker 2: of this. And in that panic you mentioned, panic chaos
28:41
Speaker 2: that they grab a knife. We'll just cut her up
28:43
Speaker 2: and we'll dispose of her. And then they realize one,
28:46
Speaker 2: there's blood everywhere too. This knife really isn't cutting through.
28:50
Speaker 2: This is a lot tougher than we thought. Hey, there's
28:53
Speaker 2: a chainsaw over here, and I'm putting all this together
28:57
Speaker 2: in my head, and I'm thinking only because the job
29:00
Speaker 2: that I do in reporting and that I've talked to
29:02
Speaker 2: you about, do I know what really is taking place there?
29:06
Speaker 2: What these two women are finding out about a deceased body,
29:10
Speaker 2: and what is coming out and what Because they said
29:13
Speaker 2: they found cleaning supplies downstairs, meaning they had a plan
29:17
Speaker 2: We're going to dismember, clean up and get rid. They
29:19
Speaker 2: had the trash bags, but it was a much bigger
29:22
Speaker 2: task than they anticipated. Allegedly, it seems.
29:26
Speaker 1: There's really no methodology here where, you know, if you
29:29
Speaker 1: think about how you would go about it scientifically, you know,
29:32
Speaker 1: if we were in the Morguean we were having to
29:34
Speaker 1: dismember a remain, which we have done and which still
29:38
Speaker 1: goes on. There's certain times when that's required, you have
29:41
Speaker 1: to take parts of bodies off. There's a methodology to it,
29:44
Speaker 1: and certainly there's the appropriate tools for the task that
29:49
Speaker 1: are constructed for this. So you're faced with this idea
29:53
Speaker 1: and I love what you said about the knife. This
29:55
Speaker 1: is not getting it here because it's insufficient to the task. Okay,
30:00
Speaker 1: let's leap from here and let's go to chainsaw. Well,
30:03
Speaker 1: now you're going to the opposite end of the spectrum,
30:05
Speaker 1: because if you think you had trouble wielding the knife,
30:09
Speaker 1: now you've got this mechanical device that is going to
30:15
Speaker 1: wreak utter havoc on the target. And now you've really
30:19
Speaker 1: got a mess. And so, oh my gosh, what do
30:21
Speaker 1: we do now? And you're faced with this, You're faced
30:24
Speaker 1: with this if you are a perpetrator, and I mean
30:26
Speaker 1: that in a blanket statement over any kind of case
30:29
Speaker 1: like this of dismemberment, What am I going to do
30:32
Speaker 1: with these remains? If this case couldn't be any more ghastly,
30:36
Speaker 1: I think the fact that there was an attempt somewhere
30:40
Speaker 1: along the way to render down the body using heat,
30:46
Speaker 1: according to the authorities and the solicitor, the prosecutor in particular,
30:52
Speaker 1: up there, a grill came into play, Dave. Where like
30:55
Speaker 1: a grill that we would use to barbecue with or
30:58
Speaker 1: to cook with outdoors, you know, with our family. I
31:01
Speaker 1: think about that with this, how many times had that
31:03
Speaker 1: grill been used over the years, perhaps for celebrations, you know,
31:07
Speaker 1: to have a meal with a family. You're cooking hot
31:09
Speaker 1: dogs and hamburgers. They're going to use a grill to
31:12
Speaker 1: get rid of Missus Craig's remains, And there was also
31:17
Speaker 1: a brushfire that according to a couple of witnesses apparently
31:23
Speaker 1: they thought that they saw human remains being placed into
31:26
Speaker 1: the brushfire, and it was just inside the there's like
31:29
Speaker 1: a big wooded area back behind this home. So allegedly
31:33
Speaker 1: you've got these two elements that are involved as well.
31:37
Speaker 1: So it's not just a matter of trying to take
31:40
Speaker 1: apart the body which is all over the board here,
31:44
Speaker 1: because I got to back up again. Brain matter. How
31:47
Speaker 1: in the world did you get brain matter? Did you
31:50
Speaker 1: apply the chainsaw to the head in order to take
31:54
Speaker 1: it apart?
31:55
Speaker 2: Would you be tasked with trying to determine why the
31:57
Speaker 2: brain matter was on the floor, because I think that
31:59
Speaker 2: would have a lot to do with the crime that
32:02
Speaker 2: the people are alleged to have committed.
32:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, and because you have brain matter, you have a
32:07
Speaker 1: specific anatomical element that you're going to want to examine
32:11
Speaker 1: very very carefully in this case, Dave, and that is
32:13
Speaker 1: obviously the skull. One discipline that would come into this
32:17
Speaker 1: case that seems as though it is probably being visited
32:21
Speaker 1: far more frequently than any other time in the past,
32:25
Speaker 1: is going to be your tool mark expert, because the
32:27
Speaker 1: tool mark expert will actually be able to examine any
32:32
Speaker 1: of these markings on the bone in particular relative to
32:37
Speaker 1: this type of chainsaw. Okay, and the knife too as well,
32:42
Speaker 1: but with the chainsaw in particular. And when you go
32:44
Speaker 1: to places like say, for instance, the FBI is you know,
32:47
Speaker 1: the FBI, in their forensic lab, they will have access
32:51
Speaker 1: to probably just about every kind of chainsaw that there
32:55
Speaker 1: is out there, and that's their tool mark section. And
32:58
Speaker 1: what they will do is or they'll will go purchase
33:00
Speaker 1: one that's similar to the one that was recovered at
33:02
Speaker 1: the scene, and they will probably get wood. They will
33:05
Speaker 1: do a test on wood to see what kind of
33:10
Speaker 1: tool markets left behind by said chainsaw that is of
33:13
Speaker 1: the same manufacturer and same type on the wood, and
33:17
Speaker 1: does it compare up to what they're seeing on the bone.
33:20
Speaker 2: That's just mine numbing. I had no idea, Joe, no idea.
33:24
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, when you're going to move forward with a
33:26
Speaker 1: case like this and you try to figure it out,
33:29
Speaker 1: the one thing that is left behind that ultimately is
33:33
Speaker 1: going to have to speak to this jury is going
33:37
Speaker 1: to be the science.
33:38
Speaker 2: As it stands right now. The charges in this case.
33:42
Speaker 2: Candace Craig, forty four year old daughter of the victim
33:47
Speaker 2: and mother of the other suspect. Candace Craig is charged
33:51
Speaker 2: with first and second degree murder. Her daughter, Celia Hardy,
33:56
Speaker 2: is charged with accessory after the fact, and both are
33:59
Speaker 2: in the custody of the Department of Corrections.
34:05
Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks