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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: The Exhumation of Gloria Satterfield · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:08
Speaker 1: Bodybacks with Joseph Scott Morgan. We spend time thinking about
0:21
Speaker 1: those that we honor that have passed on to the
0:25
Speaker 1: other side. One of the ways we do that as
0:29
Speaker 1: a people is to memorializing, and I guess probably from
0:34
Speaker 1: most of us, that involves a burial, that is setting
0:39
Speaker 1: up a location perhaps where we can go and visit
0:42
Speaker 1: time to time, remember the people that surrounded us, people
0:49
Speaker 1: that impacted our lives. But when it comes to death,
0:55
Speaker 1: many times some things are hidden. We've heard that old phrase,
1:01
Speaker 1: They're going to take it to the grave with him.
1:05
Speaker 1: That's where the practice of exhimation comes in. And today
1:09
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about Gloria Satterfield. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
1:14
Speaker 1: and this is Bodybacks. Joining me today is Jackie Howard,
1:23
Speaker 1: executive producer Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Jackiet, I think
1:30
Speaker 1: one of the things I'd like to explore with you
1:32
Speaker 1: today is Gloria Sadderfield and her apparent pending exhimation. The
1:37
Speaker 1: Glorious Sadderfield exhimation is coming about because of the investigation
1:41
Speaker 1: into Alec Murdock. So many deaths surrounding this prominent family
1:46
Speaker 1: in South Carolina since the death of Maggie and Paul
1:49
Speaker 1: Murdock both were murdered outside their family home, discovered by
1:55
Speaker 1: the father, Alex Murdock. Since then, he is in jail
1:58
Speaker 1: charged with setting up a murder for hire on himself
2:03
Speaker 1: to ensure that his remaining son would get millions in
2:06
Speaker 1: life insurance policies that hit failed. Murdoch survived. He has
2:12
Speaker 1: also been charged with stealing millions of dollars from his
2:17
Speaker 1: law firm, and that included a four point three million
2:21
Speaker 1: dollar ruling award for Glorious Sadderfield's children. Gloria Saderfield she
2:28
Speaker 1: was the Murdoch housekeeper for over twenty years. She died
2:32
Speaker 1: during a trip and fall accident in the Murdoch family home. Reportedly,
2:36
Speaker 1: Glorious Saderfield fell over dogs on the outside brick stairs
2:42
Speaker 1: of the home and hit her head. Paul and Maggie
2:46
Speaker 1: Murdoch called nine to one and tell the operator that
2:50
Speaker 1: while she is breathing, she is setting up she is mumbling,
2:53
Speaker 1: she's not making much sense. E MTS arrived. They take
2:57
Speaker 1: Gloria Saderfield to the hospital. She is in ICU for
2:59
Speaker 1: a lengthy period of time and ultimately died as a
3:03
Speaker 1: result of a stroke. Her cause of death listed on
3:07
Speaker 1: the death certificate is natural. That's the first thing that
3:11
Speaker 1: I want to talk about, Joe, How does that happen?
3:14
Speaker 1: But now sled officials have asked for permission which has
3:18
Speaker 1: been given by the Sadderfield next to Keen, to exhume
3:22
Speaker 1: her body. So many deaths centered on the Murdoch family
3:26
Speaker 1: and now police want to review this death. No autopsy
3:31
Speaker 1: was done on Gloria Sadderfield at the time of her death,
3:34
Speaker 1: and as I just mentioned, her cause of death was
3:37
Speaker 1: listed as natural. I can't imagine that a trip and
3:42
Speaker 1: fall is a natural death. But let's talk about exhimation first,
3:46
Speaker 1: and then we'll talk about how it relates to Gloria.
3:49
Speaker 1: What happens when you exume a body. It's an interesting
3:53
Speaker 1: world to enter into, and for me, as a medical
3:56
Speaker 1: legal death investigator, it's one of the most fascinating because
3:59
Speaker 1: you're you're actually burying witness to those things that have
4:03
Speaker 1: long since been buried. And of course that's variable depending
4:06
Speaker 1: upon the type of case you're talking about. I've been
4:09
Speaker 1: involved in cases that go back sixty years many times
4:13
Speaker 1: where bodies have been exhumed. And let's think about the
4:16
Speaker 1: root of that word. The root. Actually it comes from
4:18
Speaker 1: the Latin, which means x you know, out of and
4:21
Speaker 1: then pumas, which actually means ground, so you're removing the
4:25
Speaker 1: body from the ground. There's other terms that are used
4:27
Speaker 1: that people here, disinter but that's kind of separate to this.
4:32
Speaker 1: But it's a it's a tough thing to do. I
4:35
Speaker 1: think that many people in general public think that you
4:38
Speaker 1: can just you know, run out, maybe grab an attorney
4:41
Speaker 1: and say, look, I want my loved one disinterred or exhumed,
4:45
Speaker 1: or the court investigators even say we want this body exumed.
4:50
Speaker 1: The problem is is that there is kind of a
4:52
Speaker 1: gatekeeper here, and that is a judiciary. There is a
4:56
Speaker 1: judge that actually has to approve this or what is
5:00
Speaker 1: referred to literally as an order of exhumation. It's not
5:04
Speaker 1: something you know, judges don't want to be tied to
5:08
Speaker 1: this idea that folks can just kind of willy nearly
5:10
Speaker 1: run around and crack open graves and bring out the
5:14
Speaker 1: dead because first off, you know, it's as I said
5:16
Speaker 1: in my opening, you know, we talk about honoring the dead,
5:19
Speaker 1: and they have a sense of that. The judiciary always
5:22
Speaker 1: has because you know, when you have people that will
5:25
Speaker 1: come along and they'll say, you know, while I have
5:27
Speaker 1: this question or that question, the body needs to be exhumed. Well,
5:31
Speaker 1: you can't just essentially throw that out there without logical
5:37
Speaker 1: purpose in what you're doing, and that has to be presented.
5:40
Speaker 1: It has to be presented by an attorney before the
5:43
Speaker 1: judge where there is kind of this linear logic that
5:46
Speaker 1: takes place where it can be explained very exactingly. Because
5:51
Speaker 1: keep this in mind, every person that is buried at
5:57
Speaker 1: some point in time has kind of passed through this
5:59
Speaker 1: memorane of government approval on some level where they have
6:03
Speaker 1: decided either by the coroner, the medical examiner, or the
6:06
Speaker 1: police that this body is good to go. We can
6:10
Speaker 1: have this individual embombed and then placed into their grave,
6:14
Speaker 1: and so that can be problematic. It's really hard to
6:17
Speaker 1: go into a graveyard and essentially put shovel to soil.
6:22
Speaker 1: Some of those regulations that you're talking about, Joe, have
6:24
Speaker 1: to do with embalming. You can in some jurisdictions request
6:29
Speaker 1: for religious reasons or by explaining your reasons for wanting
6:33
Speaker 1: this not be embalmed. So how does that affect the exhimation, Joe,
6:38
Speaker 1: whether you're embalmed or not significantly? Because the process of
6:44
Speaker 1: body prep of embalming and preparing the body, even clothing
6:49
Speaker 1: the body. All these sorts of things in casketing the
6:53
Speaker 1: body all play an integral role in preservation and absent, say,
6:58
Speaker 1: for instance, embalming, the body is going to take a
7:02
Speaker 1: normal course of decomposition and will begin to break down.
7:05
Speaker 1: You know, people don't realize that when we die, and
7:08
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter where we are, the process of decomposition
7:13
Speaker 1: actually begins in that moment. Once all cellular respiration has ceased,
7:19
Speaker 1: we begin to break down. Now that might be at
7:21
Speaker 1: a molecular level, you might not can appreciate it. So
7:24
Speaker 1: time is of the essence. If there is some type
7:27
Speaker 1: of religious prohibition against embalming, for instance, then those involved
7:34
Speaker 1: in this will have the body buried in a very
7:36
Speaker 1: short order. And of course, you know, right now I'm
7:39
Speaker 1: reflecting back to Tammy Day Bell that probably in recent memory,
7:43
Speaker 1: that's one of the most famous disinterments or exhimations that
7:47
Speaker 1: has taken place. In that case is still pending. She
7:50
Speaker 1: had been buried for some time, but the key to
7:54
Speaker 1: her case was the fact that she went from Idaho
7:57
Speaker 1: to Utah. In order to cross state lines, she had
8:00
Speaker 1: to be embalmed. So in that sense, the investigators were
8:04
Speaker 1: very fortunate if there was any kind of physical findings.
8:07
Speaker 1: But when you place a body into the ground unembalmed,
8:11
Speaker 1: and then there's problem because all of that evidentry, anything
8:15
Speaker 1: that contains evident value, begins to kind of wither away
8:19
Speaker 1: and nature just essentially consumes it. So you're hoping that
8:25
Speaker 1: the body has been involved and not just embalmed, but
8:28
Speaker 1: also to a high professional standard. I've worked many cases
8:34
Speaker 1: of exhamation where we've retrieved the body from the ground,
8:38
Speaker 1: taking the body out of the casket, placed the body
8:40
Speaker 1: onto the ittypsing table, and because the embalming was so poor,
8:46
Speaker 1: you sit there and you kind of scratch your head
8:47
Speaker 1: and say, well, why'd you even bother in the first place,
8:50
Speaker 1: why'd you even charge the family for this? Because you've
8:52
Speaker 1: done a very bad job. But there are other cases
8:56
Speaker 1: out there where the preservation is so remarkable that when
9:02
Speaker 1: you open that casket up and removed body, it literally
9:05
Speaker 1: looks like this individual just passed away within the last
9:09
Speaker 1: few days. An image comes to mind for me. I
9:13
Speaker 1: had a gentleman that was a pastor that was alleged
9:17
Speaker 1: to have been beaten by someone and the family got
9:21
Speaker 1: an order of eximation. And you know, he was dressed
9:24
Speaker 1: all in white. He had a white jacket, white pants,
9:27
Speaker 1: white shirt, even a white tie, white socks, and white
9:31
Speaker 1: shoes on. And he had a single carnation that a
9:34
Speaker 1: red carnation that had been placed in his lapel, and
9:37
Speaker 1: everything on his body was perfectly intact. The only thing
9:41
Speaker 1: that had changed was the status of the carnation and
9:45
Speaker 1: it had kind of melded into the fabric where it
9:49
Speaker 1: left this kind of dark, deep red stain. But she
9:51
Speaker 1: could still appreciate the stem. So preservation is key here.
9:56
Speaker 1: So what do you mean by it's gone wrong that
9:59
Speaker 1: it was not well? What does that mean exactly? Just
10:03
Speaker 1: like you know in any kind of professional practice, there
10:06
Speaker 1: are people that are really at the top of their
10:08
Speaker 1: game when they're doing anything, and there are those that
10:11
Speaker 1: might not pay a closive attention. Was the body sufficiently preserved?
10:16
Speaker 1: And that means were the incisions made correctly where the
10:21
Speaker 1: profusion items were placed into the body. And then there
10:25
Speaker 1: was a successful embalming where you're seeing that all of
10:30
Speaker 1: the tissues have been touched, if you will, by the
10:34
Speaker 1: embalming fluid. And sometimes there's not the best job that
10:40
Speaker 1: is done under those circumstances. And so any area, let's
10:43
Speaker 1: say you have one portion of the body that has
10:45
Speaker 1: been pretty sufficiently involved and then another area where the
10:49
Speaker 1: embalming fluid, say, did not reach that particular area, that
10:53
Speaker 1: area will be markedly decomposed and compared to the rest
10:57
Speaker 1: of the body, and so that generates a problem if
11:00
Speaker 1: you're looking at this exhumed body from a forensic standpoint,
11:05
Speaker 1: in that area that has been touched by decomposition is
11:09
Speaker 1: key to your investigation, then all is lost at that point.
11:14
Speaker 1: But again, you have groups of individuals that do and
11:17
Speaker 1: for the most part, do fine work. You know, it
11:19
Speaker 1: only comes to light during exhamations relative to the quality
11:24
Speaker 1: of the preservation that's left behind, because as we know,
11:27
Speaker 1: most bodies don't get exhumed. Most people do not expect
11:31
Speaker 1: their body or the bodies of their loved ones to
11:34
Speaker 1: be exhumed, and so that can be problematic that when
11:37
Speaker 1: you're faced with that. The other issue here that you're
11:41
Speaker 1: faced with in burials is when the body is placed
11:46
Speaker 1: in the ground. Remember, when a casket is placed in
11:49
Speaker 1: the ground, you don't simply just dig a hole and
11:52
Speaker 1: then drop the casket in there, there's an entire process
11:55
Speaker 1: that takes place. They actually put a crypt in the ground.
11:59
Speaker 1: And when I say crypt, and I'm talking about a vault,
12:01
Speaker 1: it's a large concrete box. And so the casket is
12:06
Speaker 1: not just set into bare earth, because the earth consumes everything,
12:10
Speaker 1: it's not these caskets contrary to what you might have heard,
12:14
Speaker 1: or not as resilient sometimes as advertised. So the casket
12:19
Speaker 1: is actually lowered into this vault, this concrete vault that
12:23
Speaker 1: has been placed in the hole prior to the casket
12:27
Speaker 1: going in, and then a concrete lid is placed on
12:30
Speaker 1: top of the vault after the casket has been placed inside.
12:33
Speaker 1: So you've got this kind of double level of protection.
12:36
Speaker 1: But one of the things that folks don't necessarily count on,
12:39
Speaker 1: and I don't know that any of us do, is
12:42
Speaker 1: the impact, say for instance, of groundwater, flooding, all these
12:45
Speaker 1: sorts of things, and you can't it's really hard if
12:48
Speaker 1: you will, to defeat nature. Many times these vaults actually
12:52
Speaker 1: fill up with water, and even if a body has
12:54
Speaker 1: been sufficiently embalmed, then water is an another factor that
13:01
Speaker 1: can impact the status of the body because with water
13:05
Speaker 1: comes in all kinds of microbial life and those sorts
13:07
Speaker 1: of things that embalming is not necessarily going to defeat,
13:11
Speaker 1: and it will just kind of spur this decomposition on.
13:15
Speaker 1: It'll just appear slightly different. And then you know, you
13:19
Speaker 1: begin to think about, you know, the structure, the structure
13:22
Speaker 1: of the quality of say a vault. Has it been
13:26
Speaker 1: placed in there appropriately? Does it cave in on itself?
13:29
Speaker 1: There are any number of cases where the vault itself
13:33
Speaker 1: was a poor quality and the earth begins to kind
13:35
Speaker 1: of cave in around the thing, crushing the casket. And
13:38
Speaker 1: of course when that happens, you're creating these huge defects
13:42
Speaker 1: in this environment. So anything that's on the outside is
13:45
Speaker 1: going to seek out those points of entry relative to
13:49
Speaker 1: so any remains that are contained in there can be
13:52
Speaker 1: compromised greatly as well. You think about burials and our
14:15
Speaker 1: efforts to try to preserve are dead, and it's kind
14:19
Speaker 1: of understandable that you've got a lot of elements working
14:23
Speaker 1: against you. I mean, everything from weather to poor mortuary practices,
14:28
Speaker 1: to the wishes of families not warning bodies involved, and
14:31
Speaker 1: even something I didn't mention earlier, you began to think
14:34
Speaker 1: that there's actually tiny little insects called coffin flies that
14:39
Speaker 1: can you can't defeat them, they will actually make their
14:41
Speaker 1: way into the coffin. So there's a lot running against
14:44
Speaker 1: you at this period of time if you're a forensic
14:46
Speaker 1: scientist and you're trying to seek out information about someone
14:49
Speaker 1: that has long since been dead and buried. You were
14:52
Speaker 1: talking about the exhimation process, and once the body is
14:56
Speaker 1: exhumed and moved into the morgue for further autopsy investigation,
15:00
Speaker 1: about what the investigators the EMMY would see, obviously, continuing
15:06
Speaker 1: your discussion on quality versus ineffectual embalming practices, what are
15:13
Speaker 1: the investigators going to see? And I would have to
15:15
Speaker 1: imagine that because of the embalming, that any toxicological findings
15:23
Speaker 1: are basically moot because there's no blood and the body
15:27
Speaker 1: is filled with artificial fluids. Yeah, and that does certainly
15:32
Speaker 1: present a problem. And let's keep in mind that these investigators,
15:37
Speaker 1: relative to Glorious Sadderfield, are going into this case armed
15:41
Speaker 1: with a knowledge, and keep in mind this is a
15:44
Speaker 1: physician that has made this determination that they're dealing with
15:49
Speaker 1: a natural death. And I got to go back just
15:52
Speaker 1: for a second kind of correct something that you said, Jackie.
15:54
Speaker 1: You talked about that the cause of death was natural.
15:57
Speaker 1: Well natural, it's one of the five components of actual
16:01
Speaker 1: manners of death. And this is kind of fascinating in
16:04
Speaker 1: this particular case because in Glorious Sadderfield's case, they ruled
16:08
Speaker 1: her death as the manner as natural, but they listed
16:16
Speaker 1: the cause as head trauma, and those two things don't
16:19
Speaker 1: marry up. You don't naturally sustain head trauma. Logic has
16:25
Speaker 1: to be applied to this. You know, my first stop
16:27
Speaker 1: along the continuum here as an investigator, it's certainly going
16:32
Speaker 1: to be the medical records department where Glory unfortunately passed away.
16:37
Speaker 1: I'm gonna want to see every thing they have, and
16:41
Speaker 1: she's been in the hospital for a couple of days
16:44
Speaker 1: by the time she finally succumbs, I'm gonna want to
16:47
Speaker 1: see any kind of imaging that means X ray, CT scans,
16:51
Speaker 1: MRI's PET scans, it doesn't matter. I want to see it.
16:53
Speaker 1: I want to see all of her toxicology because remember anything,
16:58
Speaker 1: any blood that was drawn at that particular time and
17:01
Speaker 1: they ran hospital test on her, that blood's gone. Now,
17:04
Speaker 1: you know, we got to think about this. In the
17:06
Speaker 1: process of embalming, you're going from high to low. There's
17:09
Speaker 1: a gravitational you know, element to this. When an individual
17:12
Speaker 1: is placed onto an embalming table, the head is pitched
17:15
Speaker 1: up feet or lower than the head and when this
17:18
Speaker 1: process starts of drawing out the blood out of the body,
17:22
Speaker 1: it's being pushed out of the body through the pressure
17:25
Speaker 1: of the embalming fluid coming in. And you know, once
17:29
Speaker 1: the body is embombed, all of that blood that would
17:31
Speaker 1: tell the tale if you if you, if you will
17:35
Speaker 1: is now gone. You can't use it. So in miss
17:37
Speaker 1: Sadderfield's case, the issue here is what types of samples
17:42
Speaker 1: did they draw from her when they finally got her
17:45
Speaker 1: to the hospital, and did they run appropriate testing at
17:49
Speaker 1: that point in time, you know, looking for anything any
17:51
Speaker 1: kind of toxicological issues relative to drugs that were on board,
17:56
Speaker 1: any kind of things like cardiac enzymes, what they call
17:59
Speaker 1: a CBC handle, all those things that you standardly do
18:02
Speaker 1: in the hospital. What was that telling us? Because now
18:04
Speaker 1: it's all gone at this point in time, and so
18:07
Speaker 1: that creates a problem for the investigators. And if they
18:09
Speaker 1: have an opportunity to review all of that prior to
18:12
Speaker 1: doing the examination on the examed body, they're going to
18:16
Speaker 1: be much better armed. So when investigators start there, I
18:20
Speaker 1: guess new autopsy, for lack of a better way to
18:23
Speaker 1: say it, they're going to see the injuries, the cleaned
18:27
Speaker 1: up injuries that Glorious Sadderfield has. How is the preparation
18:34
Speaker 1: of the body for burial going to impact that, because
18:37
Speaker 1: we do know they do body putty, they do make up.
18:41
Speaker 1: Depending on where her injuries are, these may or may
18:44
Speaker 1: not have had to be done. So how do they
18:47
Speaker 1: go about removing what they can to get to the
18:51
Speaker 1: actual wounds. That's an excellent question, and here's what will happen.
18:56
Speaker 1: First off, let's go back to that nine one one
18:59
Speaker 1: call that Paul and his mother were involved in. And
19:02
Speaker 1: one of the things that Paul stated, of course he's
19:05
Speaker 1: now deceased, that he stated in that nine one one
19:07
Speaker 1: call was that she was bleeding from her head and
19:11
Speaker 1: where else her ear. So when you're looking at this year,
19:15
Speaker 1: you know, for me, if you have blood coming out
19:18
Speaker 1: of your ear, you're you're talking about kind of a
19:21
Speaker 1: fracture potentially of the floor of the skull. It's not
19:25
Speaker 1: just simply going to be the top of the head.
19:27
Speaker 1: So she's got perhaps multiple fractures are what they refer
19:32
Speaker 1: to as communicating fracture. That means that the blow that
19:35
Speaker 1: was sustained creates such a fracture that the initial point
19:40
Speaker 1: of impact creates this kind of cracking that goes all
19:44
Speaker 1: the way through to the floor of the skull. So
19:46
Speaker 1: that's going to be very important. But here's the problem.
19:50
Speaker 1: She wasn't autopsied at the time you'd said new autopsy.
19:53
Speaker 1: There hasn't been an original autopsy. Can you imagine this,
19:56
Speaker 1: that they're taking this woman who is sustained this kind
19:58
Speaker 1: of trauma and in essentially burying her. And it's by
20:02
Speaker 1: no fault of the family. You know, the families don't
20:05
Speaker 1: do this every single day. Who is to be held
20:07
Speaker 1: in account here, held responsible for this is the hospital
20:12
Speaker 1: because it wasn't reported to the corner. The corner can
20:15
Speaker 1: investigated death unless they have been summoned, unless they've been notified.
20:19
Speaker 1: And to me, that's that's a very very critical issue
20:24
Speaker 1: here that you have this multitude of a learned medical
20:28
Speaker 1: individuals that know that this is a trauma related death
20:32
Speaker 1: and they didn't think to call the corner because these
20:36
Speaker 1: kinds of cases are mandatory that they be reported. In
20:40
Speaker 1: her case, it was not so. Now when she's going
20:43
Speaker 1: to come in after they have exhumed her body and
20:47
Speaker 1: they bring her back to the medical examiner's office for
20:50
Speaker 1: the examination, and trust me, you're gonna have all eyes
20:53
Speaker 1: on her body. That that room will be filled with
20:56
Speaker 1: all manner of people. You'll have forensic scientists there, you
20:59
Speaker 1: might be and have a couple of forensic pathologies there,
21:01
Speaker 1: and of course the police are going to have a
21:04
Speaker 1: tremendous presence there and they're going to go through everything
21:07
Speaker 1: that they can as they remove her body and try
21:10
Speaker 1: to appreciate these injuries. And one of the things that
21:12
Speaker 1: you have to cut through the veil with here is
21:16
Speaker 1: the fact that not only was their funeral or mortuary
21:20
Speaker 1: preparation of her body, but there was also medical intervention
21:25
Speaker 1: that took place prior to that. And let me give
21:27
Speaker 1: you kind of a lowdown on this. If you're talking
21:31
Speaker 1: about blunt force trauma, which we are, that means that
21:37
Speaker 1: you're looking at a potential laceration to the scalt well.
21:41
Speaker 1: If there's a laceration, the medical team will essentially either
21:45
Speaker 1: staple or suiture that up well. That has to be
21:48
Speaker 1: factored in to her treatment course. And then if the
21:53
Speaker 1: funeral home did anything to that particular area. You know,
21:56
Speaker 1: as you mentioned applying any kind of makeup, the putty
22:00
Speaker 1: that you had mentioned, those sorts of things to make
22:02
Speaker 1: her viewable, then that's also going to have to That
22:05
Speaker 1: layer is also going to have to remove. So you know,
22:09
Speaker 1: in my experience of working on exhoomed bodies and doing
22:12
Speaker 1: their autopsies, I don't know of any other any other
22:17
Speaker 1: cases that take as much time as exoomed bodies do.
22:22
Speaker 1: I can recall spending up to eight to nine hours
22:25
Speaker 1: on a single body once you have it. Because listen,
22:28
Speaker 1: once that body is out of the ground, everybody's interested.
22:31
Speaker 1: You've got a lot of eyes on you at that
22:33
Speaker 1: point in time, and so there'll be a lot of
22:35
Speaker 1: postmortal X rays that will be taken. In this particular case,
22:39
Speaker 1: All kinds of imaging will go on. It would not
22:42
Speaker 1: surprise me if maybe they had access to a cat scan,
22:46
Speaker 1: that they would run the body through the cat scan
22:48
Speaker 1: while they had the body and all of these little
22:50
Speaker 1: nuanced areas that they're going to have to dig into,
22:53
Speaker 1: because once they're complete with this, the judge is going
22:57
Speaker 1: to require that they reinter the body. At that time.
23:00
Speaker 1: They're not just going to leave her there. So they're
23:03
Speaker 1: going to have to put her back into her casket
23:05
Speaker 1: and back into her burial space, and so they have
23:09
Speaker 1: to capture as much information as they possibly can at
23:11
Speaker 1: that moment in time. You said that the wounds would
23:15
Speaker 1: have been sutured closed at the hospital after her death.
23:20
Speaker 1: Isn't that going to degrade the wound area? I mean,
23:24
Speaker 1: isn't that going to change the topography of the head
23:27
Speaker 1: of what actually happened. How does that impact you being
23:29
Speaker 1: able to tell what happened? Yeah, it does. And this
23:34
Speaker 1: is you've got a couple of elements working here. First off,
23:36
Speaker 1: you have medical intervention, which I'd mentioned. And when these edges,
23:42
Speaker 1: which are going to be very jagged, Remember we're talking
23:44
Speaker 1: about blunt force trauma. This is not a sharp force event.
23:46
Speaker 1: They're going to be very jagged. And so you're going
23:48
Speaker 1: to have and people can you think back to their
23:51
Speaker 1: own personal experiences where they've had some kind of impact
23:54
Speaker 1: injury on their body that required suturing. They're not clean
23:57
Speaker 1: and neat, and so it's going to take this kind
23:59
Speaker 1: of what we refer to as a curvilinear. And yeah,
24:02
Speaker 1: that's a real word that's used in forensic science. A
24:04
Speaker 1: curvilinear pattern many times, and if she's been struck multiple times,
24:09
Speaker 1: which I don't know if she was or not, you
24:11
Speaker 1: might have multiple lacerations along the way, and all of
24:14
Speaker 1: those are going to have to be suited up, because
24:16
Speaker 1: remember before this became a forensics case, this is a
24:19
Speaker 1: medical case. You're trying to save her life. So they're
24:21
Speaker 1: going to go to any means they can possibly. I
24:24
Speaker 1: think all of us would want them to to try
24:26
Speaker 1: to make sure that she is going to survive, and
24:29
Speaker 1: unfortunately she didn't, So it's going to change the initial appearance.
24:34
Speaker 1: As opposed to if we had a body of some
24:37
Speaker 1: unfortunate person that had beaten to death out on the street,
24:41
Speaker 1: you could appreciate that readily. You know where that body
24:44
Speaker 1: is taken directly to the Mulligan examined. But now, not
24:47
Speaker 1: only do you have the suit train that's taking place,
24:49
Speaker 1: you potentially have some healing that may have taken place
24:53
Speaker 1: as well. And what does that mean for us, Because
24:55
Speaker 1: one of the key things we're going to be looking
24:57
Speaker 1: for here are going to be evidence of hemorrhage in
25:01
Speaker 1: the soft tissues of the skull and also overlying what
25:04
Speaker 1: we call the external table of the skull and any
25:08
Speaker 1: kind of pattern that may have been there. Let's say,
25:11
Speaker 1: you know, they're saying that when Missaderfield fell that and
25:16
Speaker 1: it's kind of nonspecific at this point, but when she fell,
25:19
Speaker 1: she was on a set of stairs and they were
25:21
Speaker 1: external stairs, So we can kind of put forth our
25:24
Speaker 1: supposition is that they're either brick or they're either concrete.
25:27
Speaker 1: Either way, it's a hard surface that you're going to strike.
25:30
Speaker 1: If there are edges there, you could appreciate a pattern
25:33
Speaker 1: of an edge, for instance, if it's blunted, say like
25:36
Speaker 1: kind of a curved concrete step, that's going to have
25:39
Speaker 1: a completely different appearance, and it's going to be very rich,
25:42
Speaker 1: and say an abraided or an abrasion that might be
25:45
Speaker 1: there where that point of impact is. All of that's
25:47
Speaker 1: going to be compromised at this point in time. So
25:50
Speaker 1: they're going to be heavily reliant upon all of the
25:54
Speaker 1: anti mordant records, that is, those records that were generated
25:57
Speaker 1: prior to her death, and then they have to factor
26:02
Speaker 1: in the treatment course along with they're going to they
26:07
Speaker 1: would literally, and I have to say this, they're going
26:10
Speaker 1: to have to bring in probably the mortuary science person
26:14
Speaker 1: that tended to her body and question them at length.
26:18
Speaker 1: You have to tell us specifically what you did to
26:20
Speaker 1: her remains when you received them from the hospital, because
26:24
Speaker 1: we have to know what you saw at that point
26:26
Speaker 1: in time, did you change anything at all? And they
26:29
Speaker 1: should have a record of their preparation at that point
26:33
Speaker 1: in time. And then what you're left with essentially is
26:37
Speaker 1: what comes up out of the burial. You know, what
26:39
Speaker 1: can you observe that can be tied back to a
26:42
Speaker 1: specific point of origin relative to this impact injury that
26:47
Speaker 1: she has sustained. This is going to be a very,
26:50
Speaker 1: very involved examination. And granted, exclamations don't don't take place
27:17
Speaker 1: every single day, but there have been enough of them
27:20
Speaker 1: over the years that have actually changed the course of
27:23
Speaker 1: cases that have gotten people off the streets, that committed
27:27
Speaker 1: horrible crimes that they thought that they had gotten away with.
27:31
Speaker 1: And you know, Glorious Sadderfield's case is an example of
27:35
Speaker 1: having to go back in and take a look. And
27:37
Speaker 1: they're right on the edge of this right now. But
27:39
Speaker 1: there's a few of the cases that I think that
27:41
Speaker 1: we can examine, wouldn't you agree, Jackie? I would in
27:44
Speaker 1: those cases obviously, Tammy Day Bell which we still don't
27:48
Speaker 1: have the resolution of this yet. You mentioned that earlier.
27:51
Speaker 1: Let's also talk about Kathleen Savio and Shelley Danishevsky. But
27:56
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you first, Joe, who does the
27:59
Speaker 1: apop see un an exhumed body, obviously performing an autopsy?
28:04
Speaker 1: Is a pathologist? Are there pathologists who specialize in just exhumations?
28:09
Speaker 1: You know, I can't imagine if you're just looking at
28:12
Speaker 1: from a practical standpoint, there's they're not forensic pathologists out
28:16
Speaker 1: there that essentially make their living doing exhimations. You probably
28:19
Speaker 1: start to death that was the case. However, I think
28:22
Speaker 1: that they're depended upon how how skilled the pathologist is.
28:27
Speaker 1: People have advanced skill sets in this area. And you know,
28:30
Speaker 1: obviously the more autopsies you're involved in, the higher the
28:33
Speaker 1: likelihood is that you're going to come across an opportunity
28:36
Speaker 1: to do an exhimation case. What I do know, and
28:39
Speaker 1: this is quite fascinating, is that the medical legal community
28:44
Speaker 1: in South Carolina and just let's sink your teeth into
28:48
Speaker 1: this just for a second, has been left completely out,
28:54
Speaker 1: completely out of the glorious adder Field case period. Now
28:58
Speaker 1: they've been involved in all these their desks that kind
29:00
Speaker 1: of swirl around the Murdoch family, but her case in
29:05
Speaker 1: particular was not even on the radar of the medical
29:11
Speaker 1: legal community. I'm talking about the corners, the medical examiners,
29:14
Speaker 1: the forensic pathologists in state of South Carolina. So I
29:16
Speaker 1: can tell you this about this particular case. First off,
29:21
Speaker 1: the corner for this particular county is going to be
29:24
Speaker 1: friend and center in this They're going to request that
29:27
Speaker 1: the forensic pathologists that they normally work with do this examination,
29:32
Speaker 1: and it would not surprise me at all if they
29:35
Speaker 1: bring in consulting forensic pathologist as well, so that they've
29:39
Speaker 1: got another set of eyes on this particular case, because
29:43
Speaker 1: this thing is so very complex that you need as
29:46
Speaker 1: many professionals on this case to take a look at
29:49
Speaker 1: it with. Of course, the primary medical examiner is going
29:51
Speaker 1: to be the one that is in charge, the primary
29:54
Speaker 1: forensic pathologist, but they very well might have others that
29:58
Speaker 1: are in the room just to make sure that they
30:00
Speaker 1: get everything. Because time is of the essence. Let's look
30:03
Speaker 1: at what might actually come out of this and any
30:08
Speaker 1: other exhimation. We know in the Tammy Day Bell case,
30:11
Speaker 1: they were looking for evidence that she had been killed
30:14
Speaker 1: or poisoned by her then husband. This investigation into Gloria
30:20
Speaker 1: Sadderfield because the manner of death was considered natural, but
30:24
Speaker 1: she had head trauma as a cause in relationshi to
30:29
Speaker 1: all the other deaths that seemed to be circling around
30:31
Speaker 1: the Murdoch family. Now, in the Kathleen Savio case, she
30:36
Speaker 1: was the third wife of Chicago police officer Drew Peterson.
30:42
Speaker 1: The investigation into Kathleen Savio's death started when Drew Peterson's
30:47
Speaker 1: fourth wife disappear. Now, Kathleen Savio died in her bathtub
30:54
Speaker 1: of a head wound. She had, I believe a one
30:57
Speaker 1: inch dash in her head and it was surmised that
31:03
Speaker 1: she hit her head, fell into the bathtub and drowned.
31:06
Speaker 1: But the problem was the bathtub was dry. Investigator's surmise
31:10
Speaker 1: that well, okay, the water drained out, but we find
31:13
Speaker 1: that wasn't the case. Jokes. So investigators exhumed Kathleen Savio's body.
31:19
Speaker 1: What did they find. Yeah, well, when they know they
31:23
Speaker 1: didn't think that this kind of met and must if
31:25
Speaker 1: you will. And these dry drowning cases are real headscratchers
31:29
Speaker 1: to begin with. One of the first things you're going
31:30
Speaker 1: to look for at autopsy on somebody that you are
31:33
Speaker 1: actually opining had drowned, is that the water might be
31:38
Speaker 1: out of the tub, But guess what doesn't change. That's
31:40
Speaker 1: the weight of the lungs. If an individual has essentially
31:44
Speaker 1: inhalated water into their lungs, the lungs will be heavy
31:48
Speaker 1: and congested more so than normal. So I think that
31:50
Speaker 1: that would be my first question. Yeah, she might have
31:52
Speaker 1: had a head injury that you're listing as the fatal event,
31:56
Speaker 1: but how did you arrive at this drowning proposition that
31:59
Speaker 1: you put? But when they finally did exhumes Savio's body,
32:05
Speaker 1: one of the things that they determined was the fact
32:07
Speaker 1: that she didn't just have one one blow to the
32:10
Speaker 1: back of her head. There was one, you know, significant
32:13
Speaker 1: lacerated area that initial point of contact, and I'm sure
32:17
Speaker 1: that it stood out, but you know, as they were
32:19
Speaker 1: going through this case, they they suddenly determined that they
32:23
Speaker 1: had at least six or maybe even seven other points
32:27
Speaker 1: of impact on her head that were not that were
32:31
Speaker 1: not lacerated, but they had these deep bruises that were there.
32:34
Speaker 1: So you know, you can understand, I think, and certainly
32:37
Speaker 1: our listeners can that if you fall one time, you
32:40
Speaker 1: strike your head. That's understandable, but you're not going to
32:43
Speaker 1: fall six to seven times, generating each individual bruising, you know.
32:49
Speaker 1: And in conclusion, that's that's how they wound up determining
32:53
Speaker 1: that this was not as advertised, this is not an
32:56
Speaker 1: accidental death. They knew just simply based upon these injuries
33:02
Speaker 1: that they discovered at the autopsy per the eximation that
33:06
Speaker 1: she had been struck multiple times. And this is a
33:08
Speaker 1: fine example of what can be left behind even after
33:11
Speaker 1: she had been embalmed and buried. The one thing about
33:15
Speaker 1: the particularly hemorrhage that you can never get past in
33:18
Speaker 1: a case like this is it it doesn't disappear. Do
33:21
Speaker 1: you know why? Well, because when you know, we were
33:24
Speaker 1: talking about how when the embalming fluid is traversing through
33:27
Speaker 1: the body, right, it's it's it's essentially going through our
33:31
Speaker 1: vascular system, it's going through the veins and arteries and
33:34
Speaker 1: all these sorts of things. But when blunt force takes
33:37
Speaker 1: place and you generate a hemorrhage, a point of hemorrhage
33:41
Speaker 1: or bruise, if you will, the reason it bruises is
33:45
Speaker 1: because that little capillary bed area, that specific area has
33:48
Speaker 1: been compromised it's been ruptured, and so now it's out
33:51
Speaker 1: into what's referred to I'm going to say this very slowly.
33:55
Speaker 1: It's called the interstitial tissue. You're literally bleeding out into
34:00
Speaker 1: the soft tissue surrounding that point of impact. So the
34:05
Speaker 1: embalming fluid is not going to eradicate that it will
34:08
Speaker 1: still be there. And didn't that fascinating with Saba's case
34:11
Speaker 1: because they still saw evidence of this after she had
34:14
Speaker 1: been dead and buried for some time. Shelley Denishevsky's case
34:19
Speaker 1: is very similar in that Denishevsky was found by her
34:23
Speaker 1: daughter in the bathtub and it was thought that she
34:27
Speaker 1: had slipped, fallen and hit her head. Denishevsky was not
34:31
Speaker 1: autopsied either, because she and her family are Orthodox Jews.
34:37
Speaker 1: So as this case progressed, investigators requested the exhimation of
34:44
Speaker 1: Denishevsky's body and they found something totally different that it
34:48
Speaker 1: was not caused by hitting her head and drowning. Shelley's
34:52
Speaker 1: death was caused by a net compression, meaning what well,
34:57
Speaker 1: that there was direct pressure apply to her neck and therefore,
35:02
Speaker 1: you know this is going to be consistent with the say,
35:05
Speaker 1: for instance, someone pinning her to the floor and pressing
35:08
Speaker 1: down on her neck, perhaps a strangulation of some type
35:12
Speaker 1: where you're actually applying pressure directly by the palm of
35:16
Speaker 1: the hand. You any number of things can create a
35:19
Speaker 1: net compression. But we do know this. Again, you're back
35:22
Speaker 1: to this issue someone slipping and falling in the bathtub,
35:26
Speaker 1: and you want to try to honor the family's wishes
35:31
Speaker 1: as best you possibly can. But this again goes to
35:35
Speaker 1: show if someone has sustained trauma, it needs to be
35:39
Speaker 1: further investigated because if you cannot validate the origin of
35:43
Speaker 1: that trauma specifically, I mean really scientifically validated, it's going
35:48
Speaker 1: to wind up in a problem going down the road,
35:51
Speaker 1: just like it did in this case. I've actually been
35:54
Speaker 1: involved in another case similar to this that involved our
35:59
Speaker 1: Orthodox community in the New Orleans area when I was there,
36:01
Speaker 1: and again that case slipped under the radar and it
36:04
Speaker 1: turned out later to be a hamsa. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan,
36:11
Speaker 1: and this is bodybacks