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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: ALIVE in a Funeral Home · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:08
Speaker 1: Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. I want to throw
0:18
Speaker 1: a question out there to you, what, in your estimation
0:24
Speaker 1: is your worst nightmare come true? Now you know this,
0:29
Speaker 1: That statement is so broad, I know, and it can
0:32
Speaker 1: be populated with all manner of horror. Now I think
0:38
Speaker 1: for me, I'm horribly claustrophobic, and that's something that has
0:44
Speaker 1: happened as a result of, you know, my work that
0:48
Speaker 1: I did for years and years. It's just kind of
0:51
Speaker 1: a one of those little adjunct adjunct things that comes
0:54
Speaker 1: along with PTSD. I couldn't bear the thought of it
1:03
Speaker 1: being locked down, closed in, surrounded by a bunch of
1:08
Speaker 1: people where I couldn't get out, not being able to breathe, panicked,
1:17
Speaker 1: searching for an exit. Can you imagine waking up in
1:21
Speaker 1: an environment that's not familiar to you, or perhaps you
1:28
Speaker 1: feel danger, you're panicked. Today we're going to talk about
1:36
Speaker 1: a case that, in my estimation, is going to be
1:43
Speaker 1: the stuff of absolute nightmare for many of us. We're
1:51
Speaker 1: going to talk about the death, the Resurrection and the
1:59
Speaker 1: day death of Constance Glance. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
2:08
Speaker 1: this is Bodybacks. Now we're past Resurrection Sunday, Dave so
2:19
Speaker 1: loath these many weeks, you know, Easter has ended, you know,
2:23
Speaker 1: and a great celebration something I look forward to at
2:27
Speaker 1: my church, you know, every year. However, there are those
2:33
Speaker 1: events involving death that I think that many of us
2:38
Speaker 1: are fearful of. Many people feel very uncomfortable. I've had
2:42
Speaker 1: people actually feel uncomfortable around me, and I'm pretty approachable guy,
2:46
Speaker 1: because just merely by virtue of the fact that I'm
2:49
Speaker 1: associated with death, as you know, I just my presence
2:52
Speaker 1: makes people, you know, uncomfortable. And I've never threatened number
2:58
Speaker 1: or anything like that. You know, they just they know
3:01
Speaker 1: that I've been around that and that sort of thing.
3:03
Speaker 1: But I'm thinking back, we were we were kind of
3:07
Speaker 1: talking about this earlier and it kind of gave me
3:09
Speaker 1: a chuckle about the the links, the links that folks
3:16
Speaker 1: used to go to our ancestors to avoid being buried alive.
3:24
Speaker 2: The term saved by the bell is part of that lore.
3:27
Speaker 1: You're right, and that's not just a teeny bopper TV
3:32
Speaker 1: show from the nineties. This is there's a reason they Yeah,
3:38
Speaker 1: they used to actually have a bell that was adjacent
3:43
Speaker 1: to a grave side and there would be a string
3:48
Speaker 1: that went through a hole in the ground down into
3:51
Speaker 1: the casket. So if the person who had been freshly buried,
3:56
Speaker 1: let's say it that way, were to suddenly awaken, yep,
4:00
Speaker 1: they could pull on the string and ring the bell.
4:06
Speaker 1: And there were actually also see how can I describe
4:10
Speaker 1: this other people, There were actually these horns that came
4:14
Speaker 1: up out of the ground. When I say horns, they're
4:16
Speaker 1: like megaphones, old megaphones that yeah, that had a cup
4:22
Speaker 1: that you would speak into and it would transmit the
4:25
Speaker 1: sound through the bell that was above ground and people
4:28
Speaker 1: could hear you.
4:29
Speaker 2: I hope somebody would hear it.
4:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, no kidding. And I think that they used to
4:33
Speaker 1: actually have a group of people that I don't know
4:36
Speaker 1: the specific name, other than maybe grave watchers, that would
4:40
Speaker 1: hang out for twenty four hours after burial in some circumstances,
4:44
Speaker 1: just to guarantee that the person that had been buried
4:47
Speaker 1: was in fact deceased again. And this goes back to
4:51
Speaker 1: Tom's when you know, prior to embalming, right, all right,
4:54
Speaker 1: Embalming is not something I know, we hear about it
4:56
Speaker 1: with the ancient Egyptians and all that sort of thing.
4:59
Speaker 1: It's not some thing that has been around forever and
5:01
Speaker 1: ever in Western society. Okay, So the fact that today
5:09
Speaker 1: we have a case of a lady who was declared
5:17
Speaker 1: dead and turned out not to be dead.
5:23
Speaker 2: Right, that's the name of wame right there.
5:26
Speaker 1: And and she doesn't really come to in the funeral home,
5:31
Speaker 1: but it was a funeral home worker that essentially saved
5:35
Speaker 1: her life at least for a very short space of time.
5:39
Speaker 2: Well, all right, Constance Glance seventy four years old. She
5:42
Speaker 2: was already in a nursing home, extended care, late care,
5:47
Speaker 2: whatever you want to call it, but in a nursing home,
5:50
Speaker 2: and they were she was on that that zone of
5:56
Speaker 2: life where yeah, your family has already said their goodbyes, and.
5:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, end of life care, refresh today.
6:02
Speaker 2: To go, thank you. That was always trying to come
6:04
Speaker 2: up with end of life care. Well, the staff at
6:06
Speaker 2: the nursing home, believe you know, the nurse goes into
6:09
Speaker 2: check on her and doesn't appear to be breathing, can't
6:12
Speaker 2: find a pulse, and calling the nurse practitioner who comes in,
6:16
Speaker 2: I guess and yep, she's dead. Now. I don't know
6:20
Speaker 2: if they got a mirror and put it up under
6:22
Speaker 2: her nose or anything like that, but she was believed
6:26
Speaker 2: to have passed away at nine four am. Because it's
6:31
Speaker 2: in a nursing home in Nebraska, they don't call the coroner,
6:36
Speaker 2: right because it's not a suspicious death. It's expected. Ye,
6:40
Speaker 2: So rather than a corner being called in to declare
6:43
Speaker 2: her dead, she is sent directly to the funeral home. Now,
6:49
Speaker 2: once she's at the funeral home, somebody, a worker preparing
6:57
Speaker 2: the funeral. I guess, man, it might not have been
6:58
Speaker 2: for her. You know, they'rering a funeral generic term there,
7:02
Speaker 2: realizes she's breathing. Now, I don't know if she burped, coughed.
7:06
Speaker 2: I don't know what happened. But this worker thankfully realized
7:10
Speaker 2: that this woman was breathing, she was still alive. And
7:15
Speaker 2: this is a couple hours after the fact. We're not
7:17
Speaker 2: talking minutes. We're talking a couple hours after she'd been
7:20
Speaker 2: nicclared dead. The funeral home worker. I don't know what
7:24
Speaker 2: happens after this, Joe. I mean, I don't know the process.
7:26
Speaker 2: When you're in there in the funeral home. You know
7:29
Speaker 2: there's several rooms in a funeral home. You know, there
7:32
Speaker 2: are living quarters. They're the areas where they display the
7:37
Speaker 2: deceased for visitation. There's usually a small casket room displaying
7:41
Speaker 2: other caskets that you could purchase. At some funeral homes,
7:44
Speaker 2: you have a kitchen area, and you have the embalming area. Yeah,
7:48
Speaker 2: the prep room, prep room. Yeah, so I don't know,
7:50
Speaker 2: I'm going to assume that she's in the prep room.
7:53
Speaker 1: Yes, that would be where.
7:55
Speaker 2: And they have actually somebody to put a dead body
7:57
Speaker 2: in a funeral home.
7:58
Speaker 1: Right exactly, and it has to be done, and it's
8:01
Speaker 1: generally done in a very tasteful sense. I got a tag.
8:04
Speaker 1: I got to make a confession to you here.
8:07
Speaker 2: Uneral home confessions. Here we go, new TV show.
8:11
Speaker 1: It's a million dollar idea, isn't it. Funeral homes creep
8:15
Speaker 1: me out. They always have, And even even in my world,
8:21
Speaker 1: which I've spent a lot of time in funeral homes,
8:23
Speaker 1: because I've actually had to go there after the fact
8:25
Speaker 1: to conduct examinations on bodies before we actually say, okay,
8:32
Speaker 1: we're going to go ahead and say you know, you
8:36
Speaker 1: can proceed with the preparation of the body. And of
8:40
Speaker 1: course I've been there unfortunately many times for people that
8:43
Speaker 1: I've known and loved that have passed away. But there's
8:46
Speaker 1: something about the the the artificial nature of it, the
8:53
Speaker 1: manufactured ambiance, if you will, the creepy lighting, the music,
8:58
Speaker 1: the power point, all that stuff, even the way the
9:02
Speaker 1: place smells. It's just it's not. It's not someplace that
9:07
Speaker 1: I look forward to going to at any point in time,
9:10
Speaker 1: even as a forensic scientist. And I've been to many
9:12
Speaker 1: prep rooms. I've been. I've been to prep rooms over
9:15
Speaker 1: the years where bodies are in various states of the prep,
9:22
Speaker 1: pre embalming and post embalming, and certainly in the midst
9:27
Speaker 1: of the embalming. You know, part of me was fascinated
9:30
Speaker 1: by that because I wouldn't see how the process worked,
9:32
Speaker 1: and I have many times, but I cannot even begin
9:36
Speaker 1: to imagine this worker who is there, who is getting ready.
9:42
Speaker 1: Just keep in mind that is getting ready to essentially
9:48
Speaker 1: profuse the body with embalming fluid, because that's the next
9:53
Speaker 1: step you have to do that. And what do they notice, Well,
9:59
Speaker 1: they notice that the chest is apparently rising and falling,
10:04
Speaker 1: that constance chest is apparently rising and falling, giving an
10:08
Speaker 1: indication that she still has life. And you talk about
10:14
Speaker 1: being in an odd space here you are you normally
10:19
Speaker 1: are taking care of individuals mortal remains, but I can
10:26
Speaker 1: and again I'm super imposing my thoughts upon this. They
10:30
Speaker 1: started CPR on her day, and while they were doing CPR,
10:37
Speaker 1: they were I can't even begin to imagine what was
10:44
Speaker 1: going through their minds at this moment. Tom and they
10:47
Speaker 1: had said that, you know that they started CPR, and
10:50
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, well, if she's breathing, if you notice she
10:54
Speaker 1: was breathing, why are you doing CPR. But they did
10:57
Speaker 1: call nine to eleven, and nine to eleven came to
11:00
Speaker 1: the facility. So that's that's kind of a weird bit
11:04
Speaker 1: there for me to try they do CPR, I have
11:08
Speaker 1: no idea. And you know, because if she if the
11:11
Speaker 1: chest is rising and falling, that's an indication that life
11:15
Speaker 1: is still in dwelling.
11:17
Speaker 2: So maybe maybe maybe she saw the breathing and then
11:22
Speaker 2: realized that she stopped breathing.
11:24
Speaker 1: And she may have, but you know, when you have people. Now,
11:28
Speaker 1: let's keep in mind Constance was in a nursing home,
11:30
Speaker 1: but she's also been identified as a hospice patient. Okay,
11:35
Speaker 1: Now you can have a whole wing of a nursing
11:42
Speaker 1: facility that is devoted to hospice care, and these patients
11:48
Speaker 1: are completely different than the rest of the population. Okay,
11:53
Speaker 1: that in dwells a facility, and these facilities sometimes can
11:57
Speaker 1: be massive, all right, So they're providing what is referred
12:01
Speaker 1: to as palliative care. Palliative care is you're making the
12:07
Speaker 1: individual comfortable in this in the last the final weeks
12:12
Speaker 1: or days, maybe months, I don't it's hard to say,
12:15
Speaker 1: leading toward their end. And it's called palliative care.
12:19
Speaker 2: I always thought that just meant that you were giving
12:21
Speaker 2: them friendly care. But I guess you are being a
12:23
Speaker 2: pal you know.
12:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, palliative Yeah, it has kind of a different Yeah,
12:27
Speaker 1: it kind of does, but it does have a different
12:29
Speaker 1: connotation here. And here's the thing you mentioned the corner
12:34
Speaker 1: And I want to get back to this, yeah very quickly,
12:37
Speaker 1: because I think that many folks assume that every time
12:43
Speaker 1: someone dies, the corner is is notified or corner slash
12:48
Speaker 1: medical examiner, and that is not the case. The law,
12:51
Speaker 1: dependent upon the state that you're in has a have
12:57
Speaker 1: have pretty pretty specific rules about when when the medical
13:02
Speaker 1: legal authorities are notified. But almost across the board, if
13:06
Speaker 1: you have an attended death with a with a care
13:12
Speaker 1: provider present or approximating the body, they've got a history
13:17
Speaker 1: of some kind of illness that is either terminal or
13:22
Speaker 1: could be a terminal leading up to a terminal event,
13:25
Speaker 1: and it can be documented. Sometimes those cases are not reportable,
13:29
Speaker 1: and taking another step with hospice hospice death, those are
13:35
Speaker 1: never reportable to the coroner, and so they they do
13:40
Speaker 1: fly beneath the radar many times. So there wouldn't be
13:44
Speaker 1: a need if someone passes away in a hospital, I
13:49
Speaker 1: mean in a in a hospice situation, there wouldn't be
13:53
Speaker 1: a need to contact us. And you never know, first off,
14:01
Speaker 1: what has brought the person to the nursing home facility
14:05
Speaker 1: to begin with. Now, maybe they sustained trauma many many
14:08
Speaker 1: years ago. Can I tell you a quick story that's
14:10
Speaker 1: kind of fascinating. I actually did an autopsy on a
14:14
Speaker 1: guy that went into a nursing facility. His first nursing
14:18
Speaker 1: facility that we could make a note of was I
14:22
Speaker 1: think in nineteen forty eight. I did his autopsy. I
14:29
Speaker 1: assisted in his autopsy in nineteen eighty nine, and he
14:34
Speaker 1: had come in paralyzed below the waist. Now you say, well,
14:41
Speaker 1: all the way back in the forties, why in the
14:42
Speaker 1: world would you do an autopsy on somebody like that
14:45
Speaker 1: you want to hear something really amazing. This young man
14:52
Speaker 1: had participated in the Battle of the Bulge. Oh wow,
14:56
Speaker 1: he sustained a rifle wound to his ab demen And
15:01
Speaker 1: I actually, I'm actually the person that went into his
15:07
Speaker 1: spine with striker saw and recovered that projectile. And did
15:14
Speaker 1: you know that after all of those years, the pathologists
15:19
Speaker 1: that I was working with, they ruled his manner of
15:22
Speaker 1: death as a homicide. And I'll never forget this. This
15:25
Speaker 1: stands out in my mind so much to parts of
15:27
Speaker 1: this the fact that when we removed that projectile, I
15:33
Speaker 1: was holding in my hand literally a piece of history,
15:39
Speaker 1: because this projectile had last been touched and loaded into
15:43
Speaker 1: the weapon of probably some young German soldier in the
15:47
Speaker 1: Wehrmat that was at the Battle of the Bulge and
15:51
Speaker 1: had fired that rifle and struck this equally young soldier
15:56
Speaker 1: in the abdomen and started this chain of events that
16:00
Speaker 1: led to his death decades later. And I held that
16:04
Speaker 1: project on mine and I'll never forget. It was like
16:05
Speaker 1: one of those moments where you're touching history, but the
16:10
Speaker 1: kind of have cause and effect there, and that they
16:13
Speaker 1: did report that death to us, and we wanted to
16:16
Speaker 1: examine him because they told us he still has a
16:18
Speaker 1: bullet in him. But wow, many times and I guess
16:22
Speaker 1: he could have gone on to hospice maybe, but in
16:25
Speaker 1: most states, when you have somebody that is in hospice care,
16:28
Speaker 1: those are not going to be reportable to the coroner.
16:32
Speaker 1: And in Constance case, she had they had diagnosed her.
16:39
Speaker 1: If she is on hospice, which we are discovering here,
16:43
Speaker 1: then she would be in kind of a terminal phase
16:47
Speaker 1: of her life where she's moving toward death. But how
16:54
Speaker 1: in the world are you going to do the assessment
16:59
Speaker 1: that facilitates you and your facility releasing her body to
17:07
Speaker 1: a funeral home where she's going to be prepared to
17:12
Speaker 1: be buried. You know, they say that if you see
17:33
Speaker 1: a cardinal in your yard, that's a visitation, that's a
17:39
Speaker 1: messenger sent by God, perhaps even to give an indication
17:44
Speaker 1: that you have a loved one.
17:45
Speaker 2: That's some of the red birds, right, the red birds. Yeah,
17:48
Speaker 2: I was thinking, because don't Catholics have cardinals And.
17:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's it's an ecclesiastical ecclesiastical post and it's
17:55
Speaker 1: a high ranking priest, the College of Cardinals. But those
17:59
Speaker 1: are nouns, aren't they. We have something in death investigation
18:04
Speaker 1: that is actually an adjective, and so it means for us,
18:10
Speaker 1: we have what are referred to DAVE as the cardinal
18:14
Speaker 1: the cardinal signs of death, and it's one of the
18:17
Speaker 1: little lists that we go down to assess deceased individuals.
18:21
Speaker 1: When you begin to look at subjects at the scene,
18:24
Speaker 1: the first thing you need to do is try to
18:26
Speaker 1: validate your presence at to see why am I here?
18:30
Speaker 1: You're calling me out because you have determined that this
18:33
Speaker 1: individual is dead. You might be saying they're dead, but
18:36
Speaker 1: let me tell you something. I'm going to prove to
18:39
Speaker 1: myself that they are in fact deceased, no longer existing
18:43
Speaker 1: in this realm.
18:44
Speaker 2: Have you ever called out to a dead body that
18:46
Speaker 2: wasn't dead?
18:47
Speaker 1: Not in me? Okay, not me. However, However, when I
18:51
Speaker 1: was in Atlanta, and this is going to blow you away,
18:56
Speaker 1: one of my colleagues was, and I'll give you the quick,
19:01
Speaker 1: quick thumbnail. Here this colleague of mine who was a
19:06
Speaker 1: really old death investigator, even he was much older at
19:11
Speaker 1: this period of time. And this guy was highly experienced.
19:13
Speaker 1: He had been a homicide detective in Atlanta, and he
19:17
Speaker 1: gets called out to what is the police are reporting
19:20
Speaker 1: as a suicide, and it is a gentleman that has
19:24
Speaker 1: killed himself in a bathtub by slashing his wrist. And
19:30
Speaker 1: the bathtub is full of warm water. It's up to
19:33
Speaker 1: the very top and it is tinged with red blood.
19:36
Speaker 1: You know, guy's knew in a bathtub and his hands
19:40
Speaker 1: are resting on the sides of the tub and is
19:43
Speaker 1: both of the wrist are slit. And this investigator with
19:49
Speaker 1: our office went over, walked over to the body and
19:54
Speaker 1: starts taking This is back in the days when we
19:55
Speaker 1: still did polaroid snapshots and thirty five milimeters. We'd also
19:59
Speaker 1: do polaroids for quick reference. This is before digital cameras,
20:04
Speaker 1: and so he's snapping polaroid photographs. And he had brought
20:08
Speaker 1: along a physician that was in training with him to
20:13
Speaker 1: become a forensic pathologist. This individual walked over, had their
20:18
Speaker 1: gloves on, knelt next to the tub, and when they
20:22
Speaker 1: went to reach for the body to do their examination,
20:28
Speaker 1: the dead guy's hand went up in the air like
20:31
Speaker 1: this at the wrist. It bent at the wrist and
20:33
Speaker 1: went up and this individual turned to the investigator and said,
20:39
Speaker 1: this guy's alive. Now, this is in a bloody bathtub. Now,
20:45
Speaker 1: this is a monumental failure on the part of the paramedics,
20:50
Speaker 1: to a lesser degree, the police, because the police are
20:53
Speaker 1: not really there to assess death. The empts had come out,
20:57
Speaker 1: and you know what we determined at that point in
20:59
Speaker 1: time was that because of the supersaturation that was surrounding
21:05
Speaker 1: the body, they and you know what they say about assume,
21:10
Speaker 1: they assumed that they were dead, but they didn't want
21:14
Speaker 1: to put their hands in the bloody water. Isn't that something? Well,
21:19
Speaker 1: the investigator whom I had mentioned was a foreign police officer.
21:23
Speaker 1: He goes outside of the apartment and there's a cop
21:26
Speaker 1: standing post at the door, and he starts, as we say,
21:31
Speaker 1: down in the South, he starts giving him down in
21:33
Speaker 1: the country. He's yelling and screaming at this cop. He's
21:36
Speaker 1: up in his face like a Marine Corps DI and
21:40
Speaker 1: he's saying, get the wagon back out here immediately. I
21:43
Speaker 1: want you to know, in that particular case, the wagon
21:46
Speaker 1: did roll back out. The ambulance did. It wasn't the
21:49
Speaker 1: same crew. They're probably hiding under a rock. They pulled
21:53
Speaker 1: that guy out of the water day. They saved that
21:55
Speaker 1: guy's life. Wow, they stitched him up transfused him, put
21:59
Speaker 1: him on a psych unit. He got he got healthy, Wow,
22:03
Speaker 1: and he was He went on with his life. I
22:05
Speaker 1: don't know whatever became of him, but those things do happen,
22:09
Speaker 1: and and and for us, we're looking for the cardinal
22:13
Speaker 1: signs of death and forensics. Let me run some of
22:15
Speaker 1: these down for you, and I want people to understand this.
22:18
Speaker 1: This is one of the things we do as death investigators,
22:20
Speaker 1: try to obsess and this was not done with constants.
22:25
Speaker 1: I don't think we look for. First off, is there
22:30
Speaker 1: a palpable pulse? You know, you can check the curate
22:32
Speaker 1: it in the neck, you can check the radial pulse,
22:37
Speaker 1: and the wrist you can check the brachial pulse, which
22:40
Speaker 1: is uh. If you stick your finger between your biceph
22:47
Speaker 1: on the the medial aspect of it and press in,
22:51
Speaker 1: you can actually feel very You can feel Paul stronger
22:53
Speaker 1: there below your bicep, on the inner portion of your bicep,
22:57
Speaker 1: much better than you can the radial pulse in your wrist.
22:59
Speaker 1: You know that would show people holding the wrist, you
23:02
Speaker 1: can feel it a lot better at the break deal.
23:04
Speaker 1: You can even do ephemeral palpitation. That's a bit born difficult.
23:08
Speaker 1: So you're looking for a pulse or an absence thereof
23:12
Speaker 1: you're also looking for absence of respiration, and so how
23:20
Speaker 1: do you do that. Well, if you don't have a
23:22
Speaker 1: stethoscope handy where you can hear breast sounds, you can
23:27
Speaker 1: actually get down to the level of the body so
23:30
Speaker 1: that you're even with their chest. They're in your eye
23:33
Speaker 1: line and you can look and see if the chest
23:35
Speaker 1: is rising and falling. Now you had mentioned a mirror earlier.
23:40
Speaker 1: There are some people that you know, fogging the mirror
23:43
Speaker 1: is what it's called. Do they fog the mirror. I've
23:45
Speaker 1: never come across anybody that assesses that way. I'm assuming
23:48
Speaker 1: that it has been done at some point in time.
23:51
Speaker 1: Another thing you look for is non responsiveness to what
23:55
Speaker 1: we refer to as painful stimuli. And if you've ever
23:59
Speaker 1: seen somebody it's in us that is passed out, uh,
24:04
Speaker 1: and you're around the e mts that are assessing them,
24:07
Speaker 1: you'll see them do a sternal rub. That's where they
24:10
Speaker 1: take their knuckles and it's it's very painful. They'll press
24:13
Speaker 1: down on the stern them and rub vigorously and you're
24:17
Speaker 1: going to wake up. Relative to that, you can even
24:22
Speaker 1: with gloved hands, you can even touch the eyeball, and
24:28
Speaker 1: there's there's a reflex that occurs in that that you're
24:32
Speaker 1: going to respond where the person will blink. From an
24:35
Speaker 1: evidentiary standpoint, it's not really a good idea. And of
24:39
Speaker 1: course we look for things like obvious signs of of
24:44
Speaker 1: of decomposition. We also look for, you know, if they've
24:48
Speaker 1: got a foul odor and skin is changing color, you know,
24:52
Speaker 1: you can pretty much say that the person's probably passed
24:54
Speaker 1: on to their reward at that at that possible at
24:57
Speaker 1: that time. And we also look for things in the immediate,
25:00
Speaker 1: you know, like a rigidity with rick or mortis and
25:04
Speaker 1: all those sorts of things post mortal avidity. But you know,
25:09
Speaker 1: just the part of the rising and following in the chest,
25:12
Speaker 1: the absence of a heartbeat, and non responsiveness to painful stimuli.
25:18
Speaker 1: Those are just three in the immediate that you could do. Now,
25:21
Speaker 1: there are people that are in such a state and
25:24
Speaker 1: they're in hospice care where they're kind of in that lingering,
25:27
Speaker 1: that kind of twilight zone, if you will, where they're
25:31
Speaker 1: almost comatose, and you might not be able to fully
25:34
Speaker 1: appreciate the status of the individual at that particular time,
25:38
Speaker 1: and that can be problematic, I would assume because the
25:43
Speaker 1: individual is not in fact demonstrating kind of life signs.
25:48
Speaker 1: But with constance rolled she rolled out of the door
25:52
Speaker 1: on a gurney. Now keep in mind, on a gurney,
25:56
Speaker 1: Dave that's either placed into a van or a hearse.
26:03
Speaker 1: I can't believe this, and carted off to the local
26:09
Speaker 1: funeral home and where they're going to prep her.
26:12
Speaker 2: That's a lot of people involved in her train. Oh
26:15
Speaker 2: my gosh, nobody taken a close look. Because she's at
26:18
Speaker 2: a nursing home. It's end of life care. They call us,
26:21
Speaker 2: she's passed away, and you go there and gently respectfully.
26:26
Speaker 2: I would just you know again that assume you're basing
26:29
Speaker 2: your activity on those that preceded you by calling and saying,
26:34
Speaker 2: we have an elderly woman who has passed away. No
26:37
Speaker 2: need to call the coroner. Just take her to you know,
26:39
Speaker 2: Mulberry funeral home or no, it's Mulberry nursing home is
26:42
Speaker 2: where she was. Take her to the funeral home. Now,
26:46
Speaker 2: they were very specific that she passed away. They declared
26:49
Speaker 2: her at nine four am. My first thought on this,
26:53
Speaker 2: Joe was Andy Griffith really yep. Andy Griffith passed away
27:00
Speaker 2: on the outer banks of North Carolina and he died
27:06
Speaker 2: at about seven thirty that morning, and they held his
27:10
Speaker 2: burial within five hours. It was part of his end
27:14
Speaker 2: of life plan. He was not embalmed. And I don't
27:18
Speaker 2: believe there is a state of the union that actually
27:20
Speaker 2: requires embalming, but in this particular case, he was not embalmed.
27:24
Speaker 2: He was having breakfast with his wife at seven fifteen,
27:29
Speaker 2: seven thirty. He's dead before lunch. He's in the ground.
27:32
Speaker 2: And my thought was this, what if he was just
27:37
Speaker 2: lightly breathing, you know, and anyway, so that was like
27:43
Speaker 2: again my thought was I hope he was really dead.
27:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know. Isn't that a horrifying thought? You know,
27:51
Speaker 1: because one of the things that you think that is
27:54
Speaker 1: conjured up in our minds and we hear this and
27:57
Speaker 1: you've seen it in movies before. As a matter of fact,
28:01
Speaker 1: I think in the original Brendan Fraser Mummy movie, they
28:08
Speaker 1: showed the interior of a sarcophagus and there were scratch
28:13
Speaker 1: marks on the interior of the sarcophagus, and so that
28:18
Speaker 1: generates a kind of this unease, if you will, And yeah, exactly,
28:26
Speaker 1: and you really wonder if this has in fact happened before.
28:30
Speaker 1: But we have to say that you never know what's
28:37
Speaker 1: waiting around the corner in any death investigation. It doesn't
28:41
Speaker 1: necessarily have to be some big trauma event, because I
28:46
Speaker 1: know from my experience surprises await us around every corner.
29:09
Speaker 1: Let me ask you a question, David, what do you think?
29:15
Speaker 1: What do you think? My biggest fear was when I
29:19
Speaker 1: was working in.
29:19
Speaker 3: The morgue, Oh, dead person waking up? Yeah, to a
29:28
Speaker 3: certain degree, my biggest fear was that. And I actually
29:32
Speaker 3: had this as a nightmare, a reoccurrent nightmare, and I
29:35
Speaker 3: think that it was because just maybe the mathematical probability
29:42
Speaker 3: had entered.
29:43
Speaker 1: Into my brain I had. I had an absolute terror
29:51
Speaker 1: of holding a number twenty two scalpel in my hand,
29:57
Speaker 1: which is generally what I did autopsies with, which is
30:02
Speaker 1: a blade size.
30:02
Speaker 2: By the way, I was going to ask you, because
30:04
Speaker 2: you say number twenty two, you may.
30:06
Speaker 1: Say they come in you know, they come in a
30:09
Speaker 1: variety of sizes. But anyway, it had the most utility
30:12
Speaker 1: from my purpose. And when I make that initial incision,
30:19
Speaker 1: which is the why incision, it starts at, you know,
30:21
Speaker 1: the apex of the shoulders. You know that it would
30:27
Speaker 1: not be blood that would come out of the incision
30:33
Speaker 1: in a seeping kind of way. It would be an
30:35
Speaker 1: arterial spray. I always had that that dream, that reoccurrent dream.
30:41
Speaker 1: And you know, you you hear all of these stories
30:44
Speaker 1: day because you know, our history is populated by these things.
30:47
Speaker 1: I mean, it really is. They don't happen with great
30:51
Speaker 1: frequency where somebody does in fact wake up in the morgue.
30:56
Speaker 1: But there are those cases out there. I think you'd
31:01
Speaker 1: mentioned there's one just in the past year.
31:05
Speaker 2: Out there three, they've been three in US nursing homes
31:08
Speaker 2: in the last year, and in one case, the nursing
31:12
Speaker 2: home was fined ten thousand dollars and it was in
31:16
Speaker 2: Iowa where it granted. Now, this was a woman who
31:22
Speaker 2: was an end of life care. She had dementia and
31:25
Speaker 2: was suffering from Alzheimer's. But she was only sixty six
31:28
Speaker 2: years old, Joe, and she was determined to be dead.
31:34
Speaker 2: And in this particular case, staff members at the Glen
31:40
Speaker 2: Oaks Alzheimer's Special Care Center reported that she had passed
31:44
Speaker 2: away about six am. As I mentioned, she had early
31:49
Speaker 2: onset dementia and anxiety and depression. She had a number
31:52
Speaker 2: of issues for being in this hospice care, and a
31:55
Speaker 2: staff member reported that she could no longer feel the
31:58
Speaker 2: woman's pulse and alerted. In this case Iowa, a nurse
32:01
Speaker 2: practitioner can declare make a death declaration, and it's different
32:07
Speaker 2: in every status who actually can do this And Iowa
32:11
Speaker 2: law allows nurses, physicians, assistants addition to doctors to declare
32:17
Speaker 2: a patient dead. In this case, it was a nurse
32:19
Speaker 2: practitioner who declared the woman dead about ninety minutes Joe.
32:23
Speaker 2: Ninety minutes after she was declared dead, she was taken
32:27
Speaker 2: to the funeral home and crematorium in a zipped body bag.
32:32
Speaker 2: In a zipped body bag. When she arrives at the
32:36
Speaker 2: funeral home, they unzipped her and somebody saw her chest
32:42
Speaker 2: was moving and she gasped for air.
32:45
Speaker 1: I bet she did.
32:46
Speaker 2: She was in a body bag, Joe. Yeah, oh my goodness.
32:51
Speaker 1: Yes, it's terrifying stuff. And they called nine one one. Yeah. Well,
32:56
Speaker 1: I'm glad they did because you know, and in constance case,
33:02
Speaker 1: you know, full reveal here she didn't make it through
33:06
Speaker 1: the day. No, you know, she she was transported to
33:10
Speaker 1: the hospital and she's fragile, to begin with. Obviously, if
33:15
Speaker 1: she's in hospice care and palliative care and so she
33:21
Speaker 1: I don't know that she mercifully ever regained conscious consciousness.
33:28
Speaker 1: But right now I think my thoughts kind of moved
33:35
Speaker 1: towards the family because you know, they're having to they're
33:39
Speaker 1: having to process all of this coming in, you know,
33:42
Speaker 1: because okay, so let's just say, and this is the
33:45
Speaker 1: way it would happen, she passes away at at this
33:51
Speaker 1: nursing home. As soon as she she passes away, there's
33:56
Speaker 1: a mechanism that goes into place. The family is notified. Now,
34:01
Speaker 1: as you said, if she's in hospice status, the family,
34:04
Speaker 1: this is not unexpected, right, So can you imagine this scenario.
34:09
Speaker 1: You're the family, You get the call that Constance has
34:14
Speaker 1: passed on. Okay, well, in hospice care what's mandated. And
34:21
Speaker 1: in any nursing home, many times they will have a
34:26
Speaker 1: designated funeral home that's already in your chart. Okay, So
34:30
Speaker 1: just so that you understand that, the family would have said, okay,
34:35
Speaker 1: well go ahead, call the funeral home. We have it
34:39
Speaker 1: listed down there. They call the funeral home. Funeral home
34:43
Speaker 1: comes and picks up, picks up constance. Okay, now we
34:48
Speaker 1: don't know how her body was prepped, because in certain
34:52
Speaker 1: hospitals and facilities, what they'll do is they'll use what's
34:55
Speaker 1: called a morgpack. A morkpack is not a body bag.
34:59
Speaker 1: It is a plastic wrapping that goes around the body
35:03
Speaker 1: and it has strings with it where you can tie
35:06
Speaker 1: the body off. It's tied around the neck, and it's
35:09
Speaker 1: tied around the waist, it's tied around the feet, and
35:11
Speaker 1: it almost looks like kite string that comes in this thing,
35:15
Speaker 1: and they'll be placed onto a gurney and they will
35:20
Speaker 1: be covered. Have you ever seen those coverings that funeral
35:23
Speaker 1: homes use. They're kind of they look like carpet. They're
35:25
Speaker 1: furry looking and in grand calligraphy, embroidery, calligraphy along the side,
35:33
Speaker 1: it'll have the logo of the funeral home on this thing,
35:36
Speaker 1: and they're pushing. You see it at crime scenes many
35:38
Speaker 1: times people that use contractors like this, they'll be pushing
35:41
Speaker 1: the body. So that's the way this would have gone down.
35:44
Speaker 1: And then they because most nursing home facilities don't have morgus,
35:49
Speaker 1: so they the funeral home literally comes to the room,
35:54
Speaker 1: removes the body off. Of the bed, places the body
35:58
Speaker 1: onto the gurney, covers it in this this thing that
36:02
Speaker 1: identifies the funeral home, goes down the hallway, places the
36:06
Speaker 1: body in the back of a hearse and it could
36:09
Speaker 1: be a van, and then they drive off. But then
36:15
Speaker 1: then there's.
36:16
Speaker 2: More to the story.
36:17
Speaker 1: But wait, there's more. The family has to now deal
36:21
Speaker 1: with a phone call. And where did this phone call
36:23
Speaker 1: come from? Does it come from the workers at the
36:25
Speaker 1: funeral home. Probably not, they're going to get a funeral.
36:29
Speaker 1: The family would then get a phone call from the
36:35
Speaker 1: local emergency room, perhaps the charged nurse, and they're calling
36:40
Speaker 1: to say, hey, look, this is so and so with
36:45
Speaker 1: you know, the local general hospital. Your loved one is here.
36:53
Speaker 1: We're trying to save her life. And the family's thinking,
36:57
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, well wait we wait, we were told
37:00
Speaker 1: she was dead. Yeah, and now why are you calling
37:04
Speaker 1: us you and so that's the kind of thing.
37:08
Speaker 2: That that would be just devastating it.
37:10
Speaker 1: Is, and that's you know, this brings us back to
37:13
Speaker 1: the cardinal sience of death, you know, with constance in
37:15
Speaker 1: this particular case, the fact that the level of attention
37:22
Speaker 1: that is actually required in something like this is not
37:26
Speaker 1: intended to perhaps and it's not the hospice staff that
37:33
Speaker 1: pays the price for it, because yeah, they're they're providing care.
37:37
Speaker 1: But I doubt that you know, anybody at the nursing
37:44
Speaker 1: home actually sat around and celebrated holidays with Constance over
37:49
Speaker 1: the entirety of her life, or laughed with her, or
37:54
Speaker 1: cried with her, or celebrated life with her. It's the
37:59
Speaker 1: family at the end of the day that where this
38:02
Speaker 1: really comes into play, and it's I think that it
38:06
Speaker 1: is a cautionary tale and I'm so sorry that the
38:11
Speaker 1: family went through this. But again, as we always say, uh,
38:16
Speaker 1: you know, the devil is in fact in the details,
38:19
Speaker 1: and particularly when it comes to a death investigation, it's
38:23
Speaker 1: important to remember never ever assume anything. I'm Joseph Scott
38:32
Speaker 1: Morgan and this is bodybacks