Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / MEDICAL-EXAMINER'S NIGHTMARE: WOMAN IN THE FREEZER

Transcript

MEDICAL-EXAMINER'S NIGHTMARE: WOMAN IN THE FREEZER · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories with
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Nancy Grace. I'm executive producer Jackie Howard. Thirty two year
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: old Elizabeth Sullivan was last seen October thirteenth near her
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: home in San Diego, California. She met with an attorney
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: that day, arranging to visit the lawyer's office the next day.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: That night, Elizabeth Sullivan called a friend in Virginia, then
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: never used her cell phone again. She also did not
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: show up at the attorney's office the next day. Two
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: years later, the police get a phone call listened to
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: NBC seven Big Mystery. Tonight in the waters of San
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Diego Bay, Alice found a woman's body on the shore
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: of the Liberty Station Channel. NBC seven's Dave Summers is
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: there with what might make this investigation quite challenging? Dave Yeah, well,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: and the channel runs along NTC park Mark and Katherine's
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: popular spot to walk your dog, cycle, play soccer, just
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: about anything outdoors. But San Diego police were called here
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: on a grizzly errand a woman's body was found in
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: the water behind me. Elizabeth Sullivan's decomposing body was found
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: just half a mile from her home, floating in the
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: San Diego Bay. She had been missing for two years,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: but a former San Diego County Deputy medical examiner who
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: helped conduct the autopsy says decomposition made it difficult to
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: narrow down her time of death. It also led to
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: another conclusion. The medical examiner did not believe that Elizabeth
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Sullivan had been in the bay for the two years
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: she was missing. He said the decomposition would have been
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: more advanced. The autopsy showed that Elizabeth's body was decomposing
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: in a way that indicated that she had lain for
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: some time. On one side, Elizabeth was identified through dental records.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Joining me right now, Joe Scott Morgan, Professor of Forensics
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: at Jacksonville State University, and all of blood beneath my feet, Joe.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: There is so much going on in this case. But
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: before we get to her actual cause of death, let's
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: talk a little bit about what's going on right here.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth's body is found in the water. So number one,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: she is dead. Number two, her body has been in
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: the water, and number three, she has been missing for
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: two years. Where do you start. Well, I can tell
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: you this Jackie in an aquatic world or an aquatic environment,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: where her body was actually found. This is a saltwater environment. Okay,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: this is not like a freshwater pond or something like that.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: This is a saltwater body. So you're going to have
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: all kinds of different marine life that are there. Most notably,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: particularly in cases like this, you're going to have crustaceans,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: particularly crabs. To be very specific, and folks don't want
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: to hear this, but crabs have a proclivity for feasting
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: on human remains. That's what they do. I worked for
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: a long time in New Orleans, and one of the
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: fights that we had down there when we were trying
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: to get bodies identified and trying to frame a time
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: of death, was the fact that we would always recover
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: these bodies and there would be crustaceans all over them.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: We'd have crawfish, we'd have crabs, this sort of thing.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: And in this particular case, I would imagine that when
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: the medical examiner found her body, and the body, though decomposed,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: was so relatively intact, they could surmise just based on
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: the fact that you didn't have some kind of postmortem
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: feasting by crustaceans, and that the body was relatively intact,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: she had not been in there for that protracted period
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: of time. After two years, just the sea life itself
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: would have essentially made her body disappear. She would have
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: been ingested and then dispersed throughout the waterway. But then,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: you know, we think about this environment. This is a
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: very harsh environment. Remember it's a salt water environment. You've
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: got bodies, particularly with the rising and falling the tides,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: they're banged up against rocks, all these sorts of things.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: There's no evidence that that had occurred, and her body
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: was not actually out in the middle of the bay
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: but on an adjacent canal. And interestingly enough, if you
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: go back and you take a look at some of
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: the crime scene images they have, you can tell that
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: the tide was actually down. I suspect that that's how
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: they were able to notice, first off, that there was
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: a body down there. If the water has slipped down,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: she's just kind of caught up in this eddy along
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: this canal. She never made it out into the open water.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: So if Elizabeth Sullivan's body had been in the water
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: for two years, would it have been skeletonized and what
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: would we have actually expected to see. Yeah, in answer
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: to your question, Jackie, there is a high probability that
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: her body would at minimum have been skeletonized. In my opinion,
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: you would have had a completely dis articulated body. That
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: means that at all of the joints the body would
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: have essentially fallen apart by this time. And that doesn't
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: necessarily have anything to do with the marine life that
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: you're encountering. It has to do with the intense environmental
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: conditions like heat, that the body is exposed to over
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: a period of time. It's almost like, and I hate
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: to be this graphic, but it's almost like the body
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: is in a slow heating crock pot over this period
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: of time and the body literally falls apart, particularly at
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: the joints, and then it will just kind of disperse out.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: And you don't have to have a marine life in
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: order to affect that. So and also one other thing,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: when you're talking about sea life that feast on human remains,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: something that they go for in particular are the appendages
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: You're it's not like a wild animal that's going to
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: go for the throat or something like that. Mammals say,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: for instance that we have on dry land, they love
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: to get after the appendages. Many times we would have
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: bodies that I have work cases on out of salt
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: water where the nose is gone, the lips are gone,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: the ears are gone. Certainly the fingers are almost completely gone,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: and these animals kind of work their way up the
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: marine life that is up to the torso. So in
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: this particular case, you're not seeing that. So for us
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: in the forensics world, that's a big clue that something's
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: not right here. Can you imagine showing up at the
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: scene and you might have an indication that it might
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: be a particular person, you know, they've been missing for
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: two years perhaps, But yet the body is intact. It's
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: intact and within a couple of miles of where she
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: formerly resided. So if I understood what you were telling
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: me just then, Joe, you were saying that the body
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: would have been dispersed. Are you telling me that basically
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: the body would have been dismembered, not dismembered in the
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: classic sense when we think about someone taking say, for instance,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: saw or some type of power tool and literally dismembering
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: the body, taking it apart piece by piece. This happens
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: over a period of time where bodies actually just kind
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: of come loose and fall apart, particularly at the joints
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: you'll have. And this is without interaction with sea life.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: This is just simply something that heat and time play
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: a factor in. When you have bodies that are decomposing
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: and there's something else that's going on too. There's also
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: an internal, an internal event that's going on, which we
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: refer to in forensics as autolysis. And to make it
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: very simple to get past all the scientific mumbo jumbo,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: think of it in this terms, bodies actually begin to
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: digest themselves. The cells break down, and the body almost
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: begins to consume itself. The tissue becomes very soft and
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: rendered and literally falls apart over a period of time.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: So when you're talking about a force as powerful as
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: the Pacific Ocean, keep in mind this is not too
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: far away from where the Navy Seals train in Coronado.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: They have to deal with these tides that are remarkable
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: in this area. They want they want those guys that
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: are going through that training to be subjected to this.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: We know their strong tidds. She's held in this particular area.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: You would think that if she had had been deposited
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: there for say a couple of years, her body would
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: have long been swept out to sea, but that just
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: wasn't the case. Time stories with Nancy Grace. We now
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: know that Elizabeth's husband has been arrested and convicted, Matthew Solomon.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: He's now serving sixteen years to life in prison for
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: the second degree murderer of his wife. But as the
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: forensic technolians were making their investigation, especially in the home,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: they found a significant amount of blood. What does that
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: tell you, Well, I tell you, Jackie. One of the
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: most fascinating things about that that they uncovered about the perpetrator,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: now he can be named as Matthew Scott Sullivan, her husband,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: is the fact that he actually went out and bought
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: a carpet cleaner. Now, you know, we would think that
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: if you buy a carpet cleaner, it superheats water and
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: then the detergent that she used and it literally sucks
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: everything up. He had allegedly purchased one within short order
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: of her disappearing. Can you imagine using this thing and
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: not getting up the blood that was left behind. And
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: my hats off to these technicians because this area that
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: you're talking about, it actually it actually was found in
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: the carpet. So just think about this. There's a lot
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: of things that if a perpetrator, I guess anybody is
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: went around cleaning up. You're clean up, and you think
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: you've done a fantastic job. When you begin to apply
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: the chemical test that are applied, you know, things like
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: blue star and lumin all and all these sorts of
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: tools that they have, all of a sudden, that area
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: luminesces doesn't it. It means that you haven't gotten anything up.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: He did not do the amount of work and certainly
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: apply the amount of elbow grease that would have been
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: necessary in order to kind of lift that stain out.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Probably retrospectively, he would have been much better served had
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: he essentially gone and taken up that carpet and replace
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: the carpet, and probably at the end of the day,
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: no one would have been any of the wiser, at
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: least from looking for trace evidence, that blood evidence that
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: was left behind in the carpet. But still, after all
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: those years, those forensic technicians who did a bang up
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: job on this case actually went out even after this
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: guy tried to clean it up with superheated liquid, and
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: they still discovered and like you said, Jackie, they identified
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: a large pool of blood, very specific and they were
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: able to actually tie that blood back to the victim.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: The coroner's report laid out a pretty grim death for
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth Sullivan. The corner discovered that she had been stabbed
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: to death, and he found five different ribs on the
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: left side or her back that had knicks or cuts
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: to them. That tells us that this was a pretty
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: violent episode, wasn't it. Yeah, it would have been. And
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: the language in this is very curious when you look
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: at it, Jackie, because you're thinking about, well, they're saying
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: that most probably these were consistent with stab wounds. That
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: gives us an indication of how decomposed her body was
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: at this particular time. And we're talking about nicks. If
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: people will just think about, if you'll envision in your
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: mind the letter V. Okay, the letter V, and when
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: a knife actually passes between the soft tissue which is
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: called the intercostal space between our ribs that's where the
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: actual muscle is and the bone itself, the blade, the
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: blade actually nixed that bone, and microscopically, when we look
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: at that bone under magnification, it looks like the letter V.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: It's this kind of carved out area where you can
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: see the knife has passed through there. What's really kind
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: of gruesome about this is that many times you can
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: appreciate even in the bone, you can appreciate if there
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: is a focal area what we call focal area of hemorrhage,
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: even into the bone. This gives us an indication that what, well, simply,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: if you have blood within the bone, you know that
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: the individual was still alive while they were being staffed. However,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: if you had a dismemberment case, for instance, you're not
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: going to see any kind of indwelling blood that's left
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: behind on that bone, So that gives them an indication that, yeah,
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: these were probably fatal injuries that she sustained. Not only
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: that she had sustained pretty significant fractures to both her
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: jaw and her nose, which means that she was pummeled.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: She was beaten by this individual as well, and maybe
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: not just beaten, she may have been stomped, because let's
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: keep in mind, in order to kind of knock her
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: down and keep her in this position, you would have
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: a perpetrator that's dominant over her. If he's stomping on
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: her face, if he's using it takes a tremendous amount
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: of force with a fist to break a nose and
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: break a jaw. No, we think that in the movies
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: that it's really easy to do. It's really not. But
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: to the jawbone is very resilient. I would lean actually
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: in a case like this of somebody stomping on them.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: And one of the reasons is is because they're identifying
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: all of these stab wounds, it seems to me that
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: this might be a case of impassion to overkill. So, Joe,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: there's one more component to this that is probably the
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: crux of the entire case. Where was Elizabeth Sullivan's body
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: for the two years she was missing? So when the
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: forensic technicians and investigators came into their home, they also
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: brought a cadaver dog. That cadaver dog hit on a
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: location where a freezer had been in the home for
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: a very long time. So we now know that Sullivan's
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: body had been in the freezer for two years. Matthew
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: Sullivan had only moved the body because he himself was
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: moving to a new town with his new fiance and
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: their new baby and his children, his two children with
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth Sullivan. So the freezer, what does that do to
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: a body? How does that affect the investigation doesn't change
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: the investigation. One of the most compelling things and one
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: of the big mysteries that always surround cases involving bodies
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: that have been placed in freezers. I think one of
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: the cases that comes to mind to me is the
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: case that made the movie Bernie quite popular with Jack
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: Black and I think Matthew McConaughey was in it, and
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: it was based on a true story of a woman
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: in Texas who had been shot multiple times and then
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: stuffed down into a deep freezer. That's a true story,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: and that's not the only time that's happened. My Lord
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Jeffrey Dahmer did it, and there's been any number of
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: cases over the years where this has been facilitated. One
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: of the big problems that you run up against are
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: actually one of the clues that you can look for
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: is not something that you're going to see with what
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: we refer to in forensics as the unaided eye. This
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: is something that you have to look for microscopically, and
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: keep in mind, we already know that the corner and
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: the forensics technicians are already onto something here. They're already
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: suspect she could not have been in that body of
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: water for that period of time. So it's going to
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: give them an investigative direction to go in. They're going
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: to look at her slides very carefully. What are they
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: looking for. Well, there will be changes, particularly in what
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: we refer to as the gut, and I'm talking about
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: like the stomach, and particularly in the intestines. When you
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: take sections to those, and that's one of the things
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: that we do at autopsy, we take big sections of
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: tissue and store them. You can actually see where in
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: the first stage of decomposition, at a cellular level, the
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: cells begin to break down. Remember what I talked about
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: autolesis earlier. That just means that the body is just
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: kind of visa the enzymes and all of these cells.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: They're beginning to break down, and you'll have this kind
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: of cellular debris that kind of leaches out. Okay, now,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: that's something that you would expect to happen in a
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: body that was perhaps decomposed founded in the woods, you
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: would find it. But in the case of deep freeze
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: in a body for a moment in time, you actually
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: retard that process and you freeze that moment in time.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: So there's evidence of that microscopically and that's one of
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: the big things that they look for. These cases are
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: not solved by looking for frost on the eyebrows or
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: on the tip of the nose. They're actually solved by
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: looking actually through the lens of a microscope to see
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: what has happened to this tissue, and the tissue will
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: tell the truth in these cases consistently throughout. When decomposition
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: is essentially frozen in time, you'll get this kind of
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: abrupt ending to this cycle of atolysis that has begun
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden it stops. So that's
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: what they're looking for microscopically, and that's where they'll make
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: that diagnosis. Thanks to Joe scob Morgan, professor of forensics
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: at Jacksonville State University, you can check out his book
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon. For more information on
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: this case. You can go to crime online dot com
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: for crime stories with Nancy Grace. I'm Jackie Howard.