Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: The Life and Loss of Connie Cuesta, A Wine Bottle's Fatal Blow

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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: The Life and Loss of Connie Cuesta, A Wine Bottle's Fatal Blow · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan in Vino Veritas. In
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: wine there's truth. I don't necessarily know if there's truth,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: but I think that consumption of a nice bottle of
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: wine may loosen you up to speak of things that
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: otherwise might not be said in any other circumstance. And
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: as a vessel, there are not too many other things
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: out there that function that are quite as exquisite as
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: a nice wine bottle. And there's all kinds now that
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: are out there in different colors and shapes. Certainly they
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: all retain kind of a basic they're on basic anatomy.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: But today I want to talk about a case that
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: you're not going to believe, where a wine bottle actually
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: is used as a weapon to take the life of
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: an elderly woman. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Body Bags talk about the Grapes of Wrath, Dave. This
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: case that we've got today is I'm really not trying
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: to be funny, but it is quite striking. It's something
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: that I haven't come across. I've worked a number of
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: bludgeonings over the course of my career with heavy objects
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: and this sort of thing, but you generally don't think
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: of a wine bottle as being resilient enough to impact
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: someone to bring about a death. And it's not just
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: a single blow, and it is not just a single injury,
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: it is multiple injuries. In today's case.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: I wanted to add one more thing too, Joe. The
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: idea is that the wine bottles are empty. I don't
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: know if that means anything to you, but it makes
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: a difference to me because I thought if you were
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: hitting somebody with a bottle, if it had something in it,
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: it would be more deadly than it would be if
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: it was empty. It seems like it would be more
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: app to crack and be useless if it was empty,
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: just a shattered glass. But that's the TV and movie
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: person watching that the breakaway glass. In real life glass
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: doesn't break away and go on to people. It's kind
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: of if you've ever been hit in the head in
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: a fight, you don't get up and take three more.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: If you get a good hit to the face, I'm
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: telling you the fight's pretty much over.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Particularly with a head strike and with an object in particular,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: it'll take you to your knees. I mean, you might
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: get back up, but you're not going to be the
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: same person as when you went down, or at least
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: for that moment. Tom.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Now, in this particular case, we have a thirty six
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: year old man, Sean Questa, and we have his sixty
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: four year old mother, Connie Questa, And according to a neighbor,
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: there had been arguments and loud arguments in the past,
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: so much so that a couple of weeks prior to
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: the we're talking about, this same neighbor went next door
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: and actually stopped the two of them from arguing. So
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: it hadn't gotten violent yet, but it had gotten loud
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: enough and enough noises being made that the neighbor was worried.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: But when it got really bad this time Sean Questa,
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: the thirty six year old son of Connie Questa. According
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: to police and according to the neighbor, there was at
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: first a verbal argument. That verbal argument became physical and
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: at first it was throwing objects. There are several different
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: objects that were apparently thrown. It was when they got
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: they Obviously it's a fight, it's not just one sided.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: It's not just the son throwing things at the mother
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: who's dodging them. She actually was fighting back. She had to.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: When the son got to the wine bottles. That's when
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: he decided this is the weapon. According to a neighbor,
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: it sounded like they were tearing the building down by
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: the time the neighbor got there. And you and I
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: were talking about this before, because there's been some mention
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: of Connie Questa's spouse not naming him, and I don't
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: know why that is, but they've named the son who's
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: been arrested, but they haven't named the spouse. They call
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: him the spouse anyway. When he got he wasn't home
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: when all this is going on. A neighbor told him, hey, man,
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: this is it's bad. That's when they went in and
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: found Connie Questa on the floor in the master bedroom.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: When they found her shirt was off and her panties
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: were down to her knees, and the police found blood
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: in the living room, substantial blood in the living room,
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: and of course in the master bedroom where they found
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: her body faced down.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: A lot of dynamics here. Let's go back to the
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: bottles real quick, because this is significant when you're talking
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: about kind of this impassioned and you see it a
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: lot with familial cases. People are always terrified of stranger
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: on stranger crime that's not what terrifies me. And it
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: is scary. You know, if you're walking down a darkened street,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: you come across an alley, the hair on the back
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: of your neck stands up. You don't know what's down
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: the alley. Who's down the alley in more danger with
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: the people that are in your intimate circle then you
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: ever will be out on the street in most cases.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: And when you're talking about an intimate environment, when something
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: as odd as a wine bottle is retrieved and is
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: used as a weapon in investigations, that's something that we
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: call a weapon of opportunity.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: We know the arguing started early in the day, around
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: ten am and continued all day long, enough so that
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: the neighbor was bothered by it. And when the victim's
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: spouse came home, the neighbor went out and got him
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: and said, there's something bad that's been going on all
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: day now. According to police, the investigation reveals that apparently
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: Sean Questa was throwing stuff at Connie, first his stepmother
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: or mother, and then started beating her in the head
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: with the wine bottles. I'm going to use plural because
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: I gotta assume a bottle is going to break Joe,
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: the head is not soft tissue, is it. Have you
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: ever dealt with this, Joe, a wine bottle?
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: I have had No. I have not had a wine bottle.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: I have had a whiskey bottle, several whiskey bottles, one
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: in particular, where it was in fact broken and the
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: remainder of the bottle was used to cut with and
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: that was a very brutal case. But where you're talking
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: about someone utilizing a wine bottle, which I have to say,
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: you were talking about kind of the robust nature of glass.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: It seems to me, at least wine bottles tend to
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: be again, and I know that it's going to be
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: heavily depended upon manufacturer, they tend to be a bit
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: more robust than say a standard whiskey bottle. For me,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: they do. Now you can have decorative whiskey bottles that
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: sort of thing. I'm sure they are more robust, but
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: on the whole they are. All of these bottles have
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: a very specific anatomy. You have the mouth or the opening,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: and then the neck, which is generally used if you're
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: going to use it as something that weaponize it. It's
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: going to be used as a handle to grip it with.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: But as the neck descends down into the bottle itself,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: it turns into what's referred to as the shoulders, and
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: then you have this kind of cylindrical area that makes
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: up what's referred to as the label field on these things.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: As it curves down the base of it is called
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: the heel, and around the heel, if you'll notice there
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: are these little many times these little ridges. And when
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: we talk about pattern injuries, we talk about pattern injuries,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: you can actually with something like this, particularly if it's
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: used on the long end, you can see a pattern.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: And here's a little unknown factoid. The indented part at
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: the base of the bottle is actually referred to as
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: the punt punt, and it's the glass appears to be thicker.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: I think that that probably in the manufacture of the
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: thing is that's probably where they close it off. More
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: than likely. So the bottle itself has a very unique
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: form to it, and it's certainly in wine circles it
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: has a very unique function to it. They talk about
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: things about like the poor and all these sorts of things.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: These people that are wine fishionados, not casting dispersions. It's
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: just it's all part and parcel of what they do
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: in this world when it's weaponized. If we look at
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: the design of a bottle like this, it's not too dissimilar,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: I think in certain forms, as the form of a
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: baseball bat, how the tapering kind of increases. It expands
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: out as you move away from the handle, so you
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: can probably leverage it in the same manner and deliver
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: the same amount of injury. But I do know this, Dave.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: In this particular case, a woman's life ended because of
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: an impact from a wine bottle when ms Quest's husband
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: found her. It's often hard for me, even though I've
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: seen so many of these cases, to try to put
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: myself into what we refer to in depth investigation as
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: the finder's position. On a little asside, I still remember
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: the first time I ever found a body. I was
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: never the finder. I was always the person that would
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: come out to the scene because someone else was the finder.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: And I actually discovered a body in a house subsequent
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: to an ongoing investigation into another death. And I entered
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: a bedroom and found a guy wrapped in a carpet
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: that had been beaten to death with a crowbar. And
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: what a way to start off with the first one
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: you ever find is a guy that, interestingly enough, was
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: bludgeoned death. So it's really hard for me to put
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: myself in the position of the finder to think about
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: what they're experiencing in their mind. When you walk into
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: the home in which you've occupied with your wife and
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: your family all these years, and you look around and
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: you know that there's a lot of destruction in here.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: We're talking about a fight. And the reason I know
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: this is that police have said that you've got blood
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: that is essentially in the living room, and we know
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: her body was found in the master bedroom, so you've
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: got a fight that initiated somewhere and continued on. That's
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: one of the reasons when you hear us talk on
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: television in particular, and reporters talk to people like me
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: or police officers, they'll say, well, was there any sign
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: of a struggle? Our standard format is, well, there was
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: no signs of forced entry and struggle, And it's almost
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: boiler plate we say that all the time. It either
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: is or it isn't. In this particular case, there was
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: a sign of a struggle here day.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: Right, and oddly enough, we have a backup just a
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: little bit to the neighbor, the neighbor who he's feeling
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: a lot of guilt. I saw an interview that he did,
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: and because he's the neighbor who actually broke up an
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: argument between the mother and the son weeks before this happened,
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: and was aware there was an ongoing stressor here the
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: sons that he had lived with the mom on and
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: off of the last several years. Now in this particular case,
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: the neighbor told police that they heard arguing and noises
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: all throughout the day, starting here about ten o'clock that
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: morning until early in the evening. By the time police
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: were there, it was nine o'clock at night. So you've
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: got a fight that began an argument at ten am
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: roughly and continued all the way and kept escalating to
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: the point where we know it went from verbal to
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: physical where the wine bottles came into play, and we
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: know that it was actually finished off. The day was
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: not finished off with a wine bottle. It was finished
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: off with something else. But before we get to that,
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: according to the neighbor, they hard arguments from ten o'clock
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: in the morning. They heard loud banging and yelling coming
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: from the apartment. When the victims spouse arrived at the scene,
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: the concerned neighbor informed him about the commotion. The commotion
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: had been going on for some time and immediately called
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: nine to one one. Then now that spouse then goes
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: into the apartment where he finds his wife on the
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: floor of the master bedroom, face down and she's cold
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: to the touch. Then called nine one one, sends the fireman, paramedics,
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: whoever else shows up, and they declared her dead on
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: the scene. Is that a situation where the coroner somebody
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: in your position would then come out to the scene
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: because you do have a death scene here. They're not
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: taking her to the hospital to see if they can
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: save her life. They've tried, they know she's gone, and
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: that way you can get a look at the whole
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: scene to try to figure out where these injuries came from.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is in most jurisdictions. Here's a little unknown
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: fact that people might not be aware of the corner
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: where you still have corner systems in place. Florida is
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: not one of those states. They have district medical examiners
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: down there well, and even in city in Miami Day
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: they have their own medical examiner. But where you have
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: a corner do you know that if there is a
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: body on the scene, the corner is actually in charge
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: of the scene until that body leaves.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: Didn't know that.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the presence of a body trumps everything else that's
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: going on. Now, look, you can take that kind of
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: power and you can be a real jerk about it.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: That's not good. You need to play nice with everybody.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: And generally the corner will acquiesce and say, yeah, you guys,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: do what you need to do, but let me know
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: what you're going to do, because I have to still
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: take this body back and have it examined, and I
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: need it. I need all of the context of the
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: body there.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: Now that makes sense. That's the whole thing about to
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: whom much is given, much is required. And yeah, you've
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: got all this power, but you better darnwell know exactly
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: what happened.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, precisely, And so you have to have kind of
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: an understanding of that. You have to sit back and
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: just kind of understand how the rattling hum of a
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: scene goes. But in this case, the corner or the
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: medical examiner down there, it would have been an emmy
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: investigator more than likely that had shown up at the scene.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: Here's something else I know, and this is quite critical
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: when her body was observed at the scene. One of
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: the key things that stood out to me about this
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: case is the fact that they stated her body was
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: cold to the touch. And when somebody says the body
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: is cold to the touch, first off, that's not vernacular
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: that the public generally uses. Again, that goes back to
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: boiler plate. When we in the medical legal field make
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: an assessment of the body, we're not going to give
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: an actual body temperature. We'll say the body is cold
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: or cool to the touch, and it's just something that
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: it sounds like that. Whoever wrote that for the news
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: media got that information from the police more than likely
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: and that was the origin of that. And so you
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: would have to work the scene bit by bit. And
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: because there's so much what I would think, at least
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: what I would refer to as particulate evidence here, we've
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: probably understated this. This isn't just one wine bottle. There
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: were multiple wine bottles that were found at the scene
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: and utilized. And I'm with you, Dave. When I hear
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: about an empty wine bottle, I'm thinking, well, why would
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: you have empty wine bottles? Well, let's consider the probability
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: here because this plays into the investigation. Had there been
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: a big party, you had mentioned a critical piece of information.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: This fight had been going on for some time well,
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: where the parties involved drinking with one another, because as
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: you know, and I know, liquor many times as devil's fuel,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: and so the more you consume, the more dicey things
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: can get. And then it comes to this horrible crescendo
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: at the end of the day. Or did somebody like
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: to collect wine bottles? And some of these wine bottles
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: look like art. You see lights made out of them,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff, and they have beautiful labels. And
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: I've got friends that collect one. Do they just have
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: a collection of wand bottles? Because to the eye aesthetically
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: they're pleasing. So you think about all of these things.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: And when the sun is looking for something to utilize
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: as a weapon, this is the first thing he's seen
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: after he's allegedly being assaulted. In all of this, they're
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: throwing something. That's the whole point is it went from
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: a verbal altercation. The verbal was loud enough that neighbors
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: heard it. The neighbors heard the arguing at ten in
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: the morning. Then it escalated to the throwing of things,
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: and that's where I wonder if there were other things
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: thrown first, and if it was mom and son. Now,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: you and I both have noted there have been a
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: couple of reports here saying that this was that Connie
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Questa is the stepmother. It was reported that in the headline, Now, Joe,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: when you have a victim who is found without a
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: shirt and with panties pulled down to her knees, does
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: that immediately tell you there was a sexual assault? Or
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: do you look at it as maybe she was down
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: in the living room and the suspect drug her into
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: the master bedroom and in the process of dragging her
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: the shirt pulled up and the panties pulled down. That
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: is a possibility. But from an investigative perspective, I'm treating
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: this like a sexual assault anytime I see a female
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: while male for that matter, with their pants down around
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: their knees and their genitalia is exposed, and with women
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: in particular, where a shirt is pulled up and their
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: breasts are exposed. Look, if I don't treat this as
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: a sexual assault, I'm falling down the job as an
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: investigator because I'm going to lose fragile evidence. If I
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: have like seminal deposition on a body and I just
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: go ahead and just kind of treat the body carelessly
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: when I'm moving it and all those sorts of things,
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: there's a probability that I can lose evidence. Also, if
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: it's a sexual assault, there could be very intimate transfer
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: to that's going on here with touch DNA from the
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: perpetrator onto the victim's body. And conversely, in addition to that,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: you can have hair transfer. And think about this, what
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: kind of surface was she found on? What she found
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: on a carpeted surface. Let's say that she's got carpet
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: fibers on the front the anterior aspect of her legs,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: and then she's found in the bedroom and she's got
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: carpet fibers on the posterior surface of the legs. And
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: there's a different carpet in the living room than there
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: is in the Mastard bedroom. So you get an idea
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: maybe she's being assaulted all over the place. Maybe it's
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: an ongoing thing. We're talking about hours that ellapse here day,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: so you've got a big gap in information here and
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: you're kind of trying to understand what the body is
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: going to reveal to you in this period of time.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: When they did finally track him down, they found this knife.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: That weapon in particular, will tell a tale. At the
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: end of the day, when you examine that knife in
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: the crime lab, you will find all that remains of
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: this poor victim. So, come to find out this knife
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: which is eventually found on the alleged perpetrator's person in
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: his backpack, nonetheless, and it's going to be covered in
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: blood and I think to a certain degree probably bone.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: Once this thing's taken back to the state crime lab,
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: you're in the circumstance. You know that you've just beaten
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: and stabbed in the skull. Nonetheless, these injuries were in
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: her temple, the knife wounds. What do you do? Where
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: do you go? Where does your mind go at this
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: point where you're going to say, Okay, I'm going to leave.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: I've got my backpack and I'm taking it on the road.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: And before he did that, he tried to clean up.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: He actually did try to clean up the bloody scene.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: They actually said that he used a towel and a
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: green rag to try to clean up the scene and
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: then gave up through the right down at her next
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: to his mother, and he left with his backpack. And
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: this is before they recovered the knife or anything else.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: He took off, Sean Questa took off and went to
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: his aunt's house in Hialiah. It was there that he
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: allegedly admitted I killed my mom and was acting really weird.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: He was acting weird enough that the family, even though
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: they couldn't confirm what he was saying, they called police.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: They were worried, so they called police. The police show
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: up and they did what they call a Baker Act.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: What's the Baker Act?
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: It is, bottom line, a seventy two hour mental health hold.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: Okay cycled, Yeah, it's a cycle. And when they say
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: the Baker acted him, that means that they can hold
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: him for up to seventy two hours about any charges.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: And that's what they did, and then they were able
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: to find the knife in the backpack and go back
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: to the crime scene and figure everything out.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: I came across something in this case that I don't
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: know that I have ever heard the police or medical
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: examiner state before. Now, I gotta tell you that's saying
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: something you never hear everything. But when I heard this
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: first off, I knew that this victim had not been
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: in a car accident. I knew that this was a
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: person on person attack. I knew that there were wine
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: bottles that were being used to strike her multiple times
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: blunt force trauma. But Dave, according to the reports this victim,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: they said not some, they said every Now I wasn't there.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: I can't verify it, but they said that every organ
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: in this woman's body sustained a laceration. Now, we've talked
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: about lacerations, I think recently on an episode, the difference
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: between in sized wounds and lacerations. Here is a perfect example,
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: because you know, with lacerations, that's something that only arises
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: from blunt force trauma. And let's consider very briefly. Let's
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: just consider the organs that we're talking about. When you
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: say organs now, and you say every organ, all internal organs,
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: so we're talking, we're probably are they saying the bowel,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: the small bowel, and the large bowel, I don't know,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: and all organs were lacerated. We do know that we
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: have a liver is the largest organ in the body.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: And if you'll feel just beneath the base of your
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: right ribcage, it's right there. You slide on over on
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: the other side, and you've got your pancreas and your
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: spleen right down there. Spleens sustain. And there's a lot
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: of people that have splenectomies over the year, in years,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: and many times those arise from motivehicle accidents. They're very fragile,
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: and they sit on the left aspect of the abdomen,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: the upper abdomen. I can understand that. But then you
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: have the pancreas that stems off of the spleen. I'm thinking,
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: was the pancreas also? Last ray, you're saying all organs now,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: and yeah, I've seen lacerated pancreases, but again, most of
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: the time it comes from a fall from a great
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: height or comes from a motiveicle accent. Then we go
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: superior to the diaphragm. We've got both lungs. Are we
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: talking about both lungs are lacerated? Then we go to
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: the heart. Has the heart been last? You're talking about
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: all organs?
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: All right, all internal organs.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: And then it brings us to the brain. I think
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: that we can probably explain the brain pretty easily, and
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: yet blunt force trauma will in fact a lacrate of brain.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: It has to be pretty significant. Most of the time,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: you're going to get evidence of what's called coup or
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: concert coup injuries, where you'll get these big hemorrhagic areas
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: where the brain kind of slashes back and forth. I'm
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: taking it at face value when they're saying all, I'm
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: including the brain in this as well. To have this
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: level of trauma on a body where every organ is
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: in fact impacted, it would take first off time. Then
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: you would have to have an instrument that is so
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: very resilient. You'd have to be able to put it
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: into the hands of someone that could wield it with
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: the appropriate amount of force or the needed force in
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: order to direct that energy at that specific organ system,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: and you would in the case of utilizing a bottle,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: you're going to have to have more than one.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: Dave Well, you mentioned the other day when we were
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: talking about this, and I didn't know the laceration term
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: and blunt force trauma. That was all new to me.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: And this actually says, I'm reading the report says the
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: victim died of internal bleeding resulting from all internal organs
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: being lacerated from blunt force trauma. Now, if the victim
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: had one lump force injury that caused an internal organ
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: to be lacerated. Wouldn't that pretty much debilitate a sixty
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: four year old woman just one?
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, any one of those organs would be sufficient to
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: bring about death. And here's another thing. We go back
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: to what we had said in an earlier segment where
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: her body was cold to the touch. I really have
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: to think here that when they're doing the examination on her,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: how many of these lacerations took place anti mortem and
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: how many took place post mortem. You've got two things
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: that are going on here if this was in fact
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: a sexual assault. Because when you have a body demonstrated
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: with no shirt on, pants pulled down, for any investigator
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: worth their salt out there, they're going to that's the
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: first thing they're going to think of, that this is
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: some kind of sexually motivated assault that has occurred, and
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: is that something that took place post mortem? And then
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: on top of that, you begin to think about a knife. Now,
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: this knife was not driven once, not twice, not three times,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: but four times into her temporal bone, actually the left
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: temple bone. So if you take your left hand and
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: put it up just posterior to your left eye. That's
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: going to be your temporal bone, and it's one of
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: the thinner bones of the skull. It's not impossible to
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: have a knife driven through there. And as a matter
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: of fact, even though it is, and we've talked about
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: sharp force injury versus blunt force depended upon the knife
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: that was utilized in this case, and it's passing through bone.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: You could make an argument that if he buries the
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: scene down to the hilt of the knife or the
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: hilt guard, or if it's like a flip knife, like
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: a buck style knife, to the body of the knife,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: that the body of the knife or the hilt and
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: the hand protector can actually work as a blunt instrument,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: so you can get underlining fracture there. But either way,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: you would be looking for hemorrhage in that area, and
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: if it's absent hemorrhage day, this means that this was
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: done post mortem. So they've got so many injuries to
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: kind of analyze and assess throughout this saying they're trying
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: to determine order, and order is you can't determine actual
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: order like ABCD like that. The order I'm talking about
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: is post mortem versus anti mortem and our perry mortem,
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: which means in the throes of death. It's kind of
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: that middle milky ground. So that's the order that you're
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: looking at here. And then they're going to have to
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: and I can tell you for a fact that they
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: will have done a rape kit on this lady as well.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: We haven't heard anything about that, but we are just
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: now hearing all of the details. But Joe to stab
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: somebody in the temple with a knife four times, what
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: are we talking about? In terms of force? You have
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: to be closed up the other ones. You could be
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: a little bit far away. I mean, you can strike
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: somebody with the bottle at arm's length, but I'm thinking
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: to actually put a knife into the temple of somebody
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: you love.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very personal. And again you're you know, you're
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: getting into that area where a person's identity is tied
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: up in their appearance and it goes to a tremendous
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: amount of anger. I'm fascinated by the fact that the
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: father was not present in the house when this had occurred.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: And also in order to shore the head up to
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: the point where you could drive a knife through it,
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: you would literally have to be on top of this
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: person in order to do it with let me get
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: my orientation right here with the head or the face,
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: if you imagine the face turned to the right, so
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: that the underside or the right cheek is actually shored
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: what they call shoring against the surface, the harder surface
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: underlying that, so that you can position yourself over the body,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: and you're driving this knife down into the temple multiple tips,
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: not just one time, but over and over and over
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: and over again until you're done. Now, obviously that in
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: and of itself would have been enough to have killed somebody.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: It sounds like there's a lot I have to police
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: propose the thought that there was a lot of anger
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: that was being taken out on this woman's body, perhaps
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: in a post mortem state. But I also think that
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: it's important that we remember that to this date, Sean
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: Questa is innocent. He has not been taken to trial,
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: but he has been charged with second degree homicide. I'm
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is bodybags