Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Human Foot Found on Beach in Shoe IDENTIFIED

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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Human Foot Found on Beach in Shoe IDENTIFIED · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:01
Speaker 1: Body dives. But Joseph's gotten.
0:03
Speaker 2: More because many of my friends know I love the beach.
0:10
Speaker 2: That has not always been the case though. As a
0:14
Speaker 2: matter of fact, for many years, I did not want
0:17
Speaker 2: to go to the beach. I couldn't stand it. I'd
0:20
Speaker 2: prefer always to go to the mountains, particularly the Blue Ridge.
0:24
Speaker 2: But something changed in me. I took an academic appointment
0:29
Speaker 2: in the Blue Ridge Mountains for a decade, and you
0:35
Speaker 2: get up every morning and it's like, yep, there's the
0:40
Speaker 2: Blue Ridge Mountains. And then you drive in the ice
0:44
Speaker 2: and the snow. For a while, you get blocked out
0:48
Speaker 2: in your driveway. You can't get in. It takes forever
0:51
Speaker 2: to get somewhere, and that's with no traffic. And one
0:57
Speaker 2: day we decided to as a family that we would
1:01
Speaker 2: start going to the beach. And now I can't get enough.
1:04
Speaker 2: I always tell Kimmy and my wife. I always say,
1:07
Speaker 2: someday I want to be that old guy with a
1:11
Speaker 2: brown leathered skin, with the long white hair and the
1:15
Speaker 2: long white beard, riding a three wheel bicycle which I
1:21
Speaker 2: guess is a tricycle with a basket on the back,
1:24
Speaker 2: and have people drive by and say, hey guy, I
1:28
Speaker 2: bet he's got a story. But you know, sometimes when
1:32
Speaker 2: you go to the beach, you can find peace there.
1:37
Speaker 2: You can listen to the wind blow and you can
1:42
Speaker 2: feel like kiss your skin along with the sunshine. I
1:46
Speaker 2: don't even mind the sand too much anymore. And what
1:51
Speaker 2: I really enjoy is walking on the beach endlessly because
1:56
Speaker 2: you never know what you're gonna find. But sometimes, just
2:01
Speaker 2: sometimes you come across something that you can't quite make
2:06
Speaker 2: heads or tails of. Something like that happened a few
2:11
Speaker 2: years back, and as it turns out, has happened several
2:15
Speaker 2: times since. A person wandering down the beach they see
2:21
Speaker 2: a shoe with a sock in it, and contained within
2:25
Speaker 2: that sock or the skeletal remains of a human foot. Today,
2:32
Speaker 2: we finally have an identification, thanks to our friends at
2:36
Speaker 2: author on a case that has been dragging out for.
2:39
Speaker 1: Years and years. We're going to talk about that case today.
2:43
Speaker 2: I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks.
2:49
Speaker 1: Dave.
2:49
Speaker 2: You want to know something I don't know that I've
2:52
Speaker 2: ever told you this.
2:54
Speaker 3: Am I going to have to take an oath?
2:56
Speaker 2: And no, no, no, it's rather benign and sure that
3:00
Speaker 2: people on earth.
3:00
Speaker 3: Is such a nice guy that people, people in.
3:07
Speaker 2: The sound of our voice right now are probably going
3:08
Speaker 2: to giggle about this, This old gray haired man admitting
3:12
Speaker 2: to this as many times now as I've been to
3:15
Speaker 2: the beach and walked up and down that beach with
3:17
Speaker 2: my precious grandchildren, particularly Harper, my four year old granddaughter,
3:23
Speaker 2: who just she she can't hurry up along the beach.
3:28
Speaker 2: She always pauses to look at everything. And I would
3:31
Speaker 2: have thought that I would have found one by Do
3:33
Speaker 2: you know that I have never found an intact sand dollar,
3:37
Speaker 2: And it's one of those goals that I have in life.
3:40
Speaker 2: I want to find a sand dollar. The ones I
3:43
Speaker 2: always find are like busted up and fractured and you know,
3:47
Speaker 2: particulated all over the place. And it's like I came
3:51
Speaker 2: across one one day that was literally cut into I
3:55
Speaker 2: swear it's like it's like the fates were laughing at me.
4:00
Speaker 2: It's like I came across the thing and it was
4:01
Speaker 2: cracked into like eight pieces, and each piece was pie shaped.
4:06
Speaker 2: What's what's the odds of that kind of symmetry in nature?
4:10
Speaker 2: The randomness of that? How are the waves going to
4:12
Speaker 2: strike it? You know, literally breaking break into little triangles
4:16
Speaker 2: like that? It's like the fates were shaking their fist
4:19
Speaker 2: at me. I've never found one of those. Oh and
4:21
Speaker 2: another thing I've never found is actually a four leaf clover.
4:23
Speaker 2: I've always wanted to I don't have the patience for that, though,
4:27
Speaker 2: sand Dollar. I think that that's an achievable feat. Now
4:29
Speaker 2: hopefully someday I will. That wasn't a joke, by the way.
4:33
Speaker 2: I didn't mean to say feet there, but well that's
4:36
Speaker 2: f e a t and not fee t.
4:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, kind of correct spelling for you. But all right.
4:42
Speaker 3: One thing I do know is I know where you
4:44
Speaker 3: like to go, Yeah, to the beach, and you're the
4:47
Speaker 3: chances of you finding a sand dollar on the beach
4:50
Speaker 3: where you go minimum slim and nun. Yeah, but I
4:54
Speaker 3: can show you where to go get them in the
4:56
Speaker 3: Gulf yeah of America now yeah, Yeah, you got to
4:58
Speaker 3: go off Sterre a little bit.
4:59
Speaker 2: Yeah.
5:00
Speaker 3: And the thing is they're alive. They'll they'll you'll burn
5:02
Speaker 3: your fingers or to feel like they're burned when you
5:04
Speaker 3: and you'll get on as many as you want, no kid, serious, really, Yeah,
5:07
Speaker 3: and you bring up back and dry them out. This
5:08
Speaker 3: was one of those scary stories. If you remember where
5:11
Speaker 3: there were all the stories about shoes floodst on the coast.
5:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, plan on talking about it. Yeah, And listen, I
5:17
Speaker 2: got to tell you something. This is not this is
5:21
Speaker 2: not my first time doing this. I actually did when
5:26
Speaker 2: HLN for those that remember HLN was still a thing. Yeah,
5:32
Speaker 2: I covered this there. I covered the story two or
5:39
Speaker 2: three days in a row because there was like a
5:43
Speaker 2: surge in this. And I'll go ahead. And this is
5:48
Speaker 2: in the Pacific Northwest. It is surrounding, and this is
5:52
Speaker 2: kind of interesting. It's right on the border of Washington
5:58
Speaker 2: State and Vancouver, British Columbia. And there's a large island,
6:06
Speaker 2: Vancouver Island. And forgive me, I don't mean to talk
6:08
Speaker 2: down to anybody, but some people have never been there.
6:10
Speaker 2: Some people have never been up in that region. And
6:12
Speaker 2: and so yeah.
6:14
Speaker 3: And lives in Seattle and is begging me to come.
6:17
Speaker 2: You need to. It's it's it's breathtaking. The beaches are breathtaking.
6:22
Speaker 2: It's it's it's something otherworldly when you get there. Compare
6:26
Speaker 2: to us going to the Gulf for all these years,
6:28
Speaker 2: or to the Atlantic. You get out there, and particularly
6:31
Speaker 2: in the Northwest, you know, I'm kind of like you
6:34
Speaker 2: go to California, like southern California. I'm like, you know whatever,
6:39
Speaker 2: But you get up there in these huge rock formations,
6:42
Speaker 2: the beautiful forests that run right up to the edge
6:44
Speaker 2: of the ocean. It is a it's an otherworldly kind
6:48
Speaker 2: of place. And so just so folks understand, there's a
6:54
Speaker 2: large island called Vancouver Island, and it is an island, Okay,
7:01
Speaker 2: it's not connected by land, there's not like a land bridge,
7:04
Speaker 2: but it is immediately adjacent to Vancouver, BC. And it
7:09
Speaker 2: is surrounded inland by a body of water called the
7:15
Speaker 2: Saleless Sea. And so it's kind of shaped like a
7:19
Speaker 2: fish hook. And there's rivers that feed out of Washington
7:23
Speaker 2: State and out of out of Canada into this sea
7:30
Speaker 2: in addition to the Pacific you know, rolling through there,
7:34
Speaker 2: and so there's gigantic salmon runs that go through there.
7:37
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's beautiful. It's breathtaking. These homes that
7:41
Speaker 2: for people that can afford them, that live on the
7:43
Speaker 2: edge up there, and these you know, three story tall
7:46
Speaker 2: mansion log cabin types places and things like it's it'll
7:50
Speaker 2: take your breath away. But they do have beaches, Dave,
7:54
Speaker 2: and over the years, I think and I want to
7:58
Speaker 2: make sure that I get this right if I'm not mistaken.
8:03
Speaker 2: From two thousand and seven until the present day, between
8:09
Speaker 2: British Columbia and Washington State, Dave, there have been twenty
8:13
Speaker 2: one cases twenty one cases of human feet floating and found.
8:24
Speaker 2: Those are just the ones that are found, my friend.
8:28
Speaker 2: And as you can imagine, it catches somebody's attention, you know,
8:32
Speaker 2: because you're thinking, and it's that specific element of the
8:37
Speaker 2: human remain And there's some explanation for this. I think
8:43
Speaker 2: it's thousands and thousands of miles of shoreline, Okay, So
8:48
Speaker 2: it's populated by tribal peoples that still live in that area.
8:53
Speaker 2: It's populated by you know, recent by newcomers that have
8:58
Speaker 2: settled up there. There's probably some old money, you know
9:01
Speaker 2: type people that are up there as well, that have
9:03
Speaker 2: been there for several generations. There is a population there,
9:07
Speaker 2: and so what is it about that population contained in
9:12
Speaker 2: that one geographic locale that this this feet thing, the
9:18
Speaker 2: shoe thing has been promulgated. It doesn't hit out of
9:22
Speaker 2: every story I've covered, And like I said, I did
9:25
Speaker 2: three three days worth of this on h l N.
9:29
Speaker 2: I'd never heard of it, and there was like two
9:32
Speaker 2: or three of these cases that kind of popped on
9:35
Speaker 2: the radar at the same time. And it was it
9:37
Speaker 2: was when Susan Hendricks was still there, because it was
9:39
Speaker 2: she and I that were covering this thing. And I
9:43
Speaker 2: was like, because in my mind, I'm thinking, you know,
9:47
Speaker 2: from a forensics perspective in dissecting of human remains, I'm thinking, Okay,
9:52
Speaker 2: how is this facilitated? How is this facilitated? How is
9:56
Speaker 2: it that out of all of this area that finding feet. Well,
10:03
Speaker 2: I'll go ahead and kind of lay this out very quickly.
10:08
Speaker 2: I think that it has something to do with buoyancy
10:15
Speaker 2: and a particular weak spot in human anatomy. And what
10:22
Speaker 2: that adds up to is not only an ongoing mystery,
10:29
Speaker 2: but it also ends up leading to an identification of
10:34
Speaker 2: a young man that has been missing since two thousand
10:38
Speaker 2: and seven. Look y'all, I'm not trying to make light, okay,
10:56
Speaker 2: of these tragedies, because there's a tragedy associated with every
11:01
Speaker 2: one of these feet, all right, But it does give
11:06
Speaker 2: you pause. You would think that there has to be
11:14
Speaker 2: connective tissue in these stories. And I got to tell you, Dave,
11:19
Speaker 2: it's actually the connective tissue that comes into play here
11:22
Speaker 2: in the literal anatomic sense, I think super bizarre.
11:27
Speaker 3: Are we going to go out on Vancouver Island and
11:30
Speaker 3: find some ancient tribe out there that has people that
11:35
Speaker 3: don't have feet they just walk around on stumps all
11:37
Speaker 3: day long? Because I'm still trying to figure out we've
11:41
Speaker 3: got feet inside shoes? Okay, And I'm a beach guy.
11:46
Speaker 3: If I'm walking and I see a pair of nikes,
11:48
Speaker 3: I'm going to look at them. Until I started reading
11:51
Speaker 3: these stories and I'm thinking, I'm not going to grab
11:53
Speaker 3: that because I know there's a foot inside of it,
11:55
Speaker 3: and I don't know who what happened to the rest
11:57
Speaker 3: of the person. Why is there only a foot in
11:59
Speaker 3: a shoe?
12:00
Speaker 1: Joe?
12:00
Speaker 2: You know what's really you know what's really creepy about this, brother?
12:04
Speaker 1: Is it's not.
12:07
Speaker 2: I know there's a lot that's creepy. However, the creepiest
12:11
Speaker 2: element to this is not the foot, and it's not
12:15
Speaker 2: the shoe. I think to me, one of the creepier
12:20
Speaker 2: elements is the sock that's hanging out, because you know, it's.
12:24
Speaker 3: Not that creepy element.
12:26
Speaker 4: Yea, it is, no, No, no, it is, it's it's no,
12:31
Speaker 4: It's just what I'm saying is it's kind of foreboding,
12:34
Speaker 4: all right, because look, how many times in my career
12:39
Speaker 4: as a death investigator have I driven in some of
12:41
Speaker 4: the worst parts of Atlanta and in New Orleans, and
12:43
Speaker 4: I've looked up on power line and I've seen tennis
12:47
Speaker 4: shoes thrown up over a power line, which is indicative
12:49
Speaker 4: of many different things.
12:51
Speaker 2: All right, generally drug dealing in this word, and gang activity,
12:54
Speaker 2: all of that. You see shoes laying on the ground randomly,
12:57
Speaker 2: you know, it's nothing to see a pair of shoes
12:59
Speaker 2: just laying on the side of the road, Okay, But
13:02
Speaker 2: when most of the time when you see a shoe,
13:06
Speaker 2: you do not see a sock hanging out of it.
13:09
Speaker 2: And so when you think about that, you think, Okay,
13:13
Speaker 2: I understand the shoe, maybe somebody had just slipped off
13:16
Speaker 2: the foot, whatever the case might be. But how did
13:20
Speaker 2: the sock stay with the shoe? Well, there's got to
13:22
Speaker 2: be something waiting or anchoring that sock inside of the shoe.
13:27
Speaker 2: And as it turns out, in most of these cases,
13:31
Speaker 2: just like with Jeff Sertel, the seventeen year old kid,
13:36
Speaker 2: I gotta be honest with you, Dave, it was the
13:38
Speaker 2: skeletal remains of his feet. Now I think more broadly
13:43
Speaker 2: when we think about the Salish Sea, there's so much
13:50
Speaker 2: let's see, how can I it's a very hydro dynamic
13:54
Speaker 2: environment because you've got rivers that are flowing in, you've
13:58
Speaker 2: got tides that are rising and falling, and of course
14:01
Speaker 2: that area up there, and you had said that you've
14:05
Speaker 2: never been up there. Some of the most brutal storms
14:09
Speaker 2: that roll in off of sea, Like you know, we
14:11
Speaker 2: think about brutal storms that happen in the Gulf, most
14:15
Speaker 2: of those are associated with hurricanes. They really brutal ones.
14:19
Speaker 2: You can have these storms that kind of sweep in
14:23
Speaker 2: off of the Atlantic, but most of the time the
14:26
Speaker 2: winds are blowing out to the east off of there.
14:29
Speaker 2: So generally if the Atlantic gets slammed, it's going to
14:32
Speaker 2: be something like a tropical depression. Up there. You can
14:35
Speaker 2: have these huge storms that just come out of nowhere
14:39
Speaker 2: and there's really no circulation to them. They're not cyclonic,
14:42
Speaker 2: I guess, but they push so much water. And one
14:49
Speaker 2: of the things that happens is that if there are
14:52
Speaker 2: human remains that either fall overboard or fall into a river,
14:57
Speaker 2: come off of a bridge, or I guess maybe you
15:02
Speaker 2: could say if they're a homicide victim or they committed suicide.
15:06
Speaker 2: I thought a lot of these might have been suicides.
15:12
Speaker 2: As the body begins to break down and they have
15:17
Speaker 2: shoes on. Those shoes, particularly athletic shoes, have a certain
15:24
Speaker 2: level of buoyancy to them that you know, causes them
15:30
Speaker 2: to float, and so as they're floating along, you know
15:35
Speaker 2: they'll wash up on shore and they can support that
15:38
Speaker 2: weight of those skeletal remains because you know, the the
15:43
Speaker 2: softer tissues have been greatly diminished. I heard one report
15:48
Speaker 2: and one I think it was from a forensic anthropologist,
15:52
Speaker 2: and they wrote this article several years ago, and they
15:54
Speaker 2: they talked about lazy eaters, and that is in reference
16:01
Speaker 2: to marine mammal or marine animals, not just mammals but
16:11
Speaker 2: also fish that eat very lazily and they will get
16:17
Speaker 2: down to the shaft of a bone and they can't
16:20
Speaker 2: get past the shoe, and they will feast on that part,
16:24
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, the structural integrity of the
16:27
Speaker 2: body begins to break down. Then you have decomposition that's
16:30
Speaker 2: gone along with it. The shoe detaches containing the skelet remains,
16:35
Speaker 2: and it starts this journey where it's kind of floating.
16:38
Speaker 2: You know, you think about, you know, one of my
16:40
Speaker 2: favorite police songs from years and years ago, message in
16:43
Speaker 2: a bottle. You know, you often think about messages in
16:45
Speaker 2: a bottle where you write a note, somebody writes a
16:47
Speaker 2: note and they put a cork in it and throw
16:49
Speaker 2: it out to sea. You never know where this thing's
16:51
Speaker 2: going to come up. It's the same principle. It's at
16:55
Speaker 2: the mercy of these prevailing winds that are driven in
16:57
Speaker 2: by these really powerful storms, the currents, tides rising and falling.
17:02
Speaker 2: And I think that if and I urge everybody that's listening,
17:06
Speaker 2: if you get a chance, go to your map and
17:08
Speaker 2: look at this area they refer to as the Salish Sea.
17:13
Speaker 2: It's also part of the Salish Sea. Is also what's
17:16
Speaker 2: called the I think it's the Georgian Strait is on
17:19
Speaker 2: the northern part of it, and so it is in
17:23
Speaker 2: fact shaped like a fish hook. So once something gets
17:26
Speaker 2: in there, it's hard for it to get back out,
17:29
Speaker 2: and so it just kind of bounces around. There's all
17:31
Speaker 2: these little islands that kind of populate that area. And
17:35
Speaker 2: if it runs into a beach, which in the case
17:38
Speaker 2: of Jeff ster Tel it did. It actually landed on
17:43
Speaker 2: a beach that was adjacent to a town called Port Angeles, Washington.
17:50
Speaker 2: And it's kind of on the southern the southern end
17:52
Speaker 2: of this thing of the Salish Sea, and the beach
17:56
Speaker 2: is very broad down there. It's kind of your kind
17:59
Speaker 2: of heading down toward the Seattle area. Well not really,
18:03
Speaker 2: Seattle's much more further inland, but you're getting down into
18:06
Speaker 2: a more populated area. This beach is kind of wide
18:09
Speaker 2: in there, and someone was walking along and they discovered
18:13
Speaker 2: this foot and they had no idea who it was.
18:17
Speaker 2: The corner service has no idea who it is. You know,
18:20
Speaker 2: that was one of the big problems with these Canadian cases.
18:22
Speaker 2: You know, they would have them come in in Canada
18:25
Speaker 2: and they turned these things over to their corner service
18:28
Speaker 2: up in BC, and they had no way of tracking these.
18:32
Speaker 2: But you know, I got to tell you, Dave, thanks
18:35
Speaker 2: to you know, our friends at at Athram, this story
18:42
Speaker 2: has got a very positive outcome. And that's how I
18:44
Speaker 2: found out about this, because this did not You covered
18:47
Speaker 2: news more than I do, relative to having daily the
18:52
Speaker 2: grind that you do. It's amazing, folks. You don't understand
18:55
Speaker 2: what Dave does, uh, he has to read everything. What
19:00
Speaker 2: I do is it's chicken feet compared to what Dave does.
19:05
Speaker 2: This didn't, This case did not enter into the national discourse.
19:10
Speaker 2: It was actually David Middleman, the president and CEO of Authorm.
19:16
Speaker 2: He actually sent me a text Dave and said, Joe,
19:20
Speaker 2: I think that you'd be really excited about maybe covering
19:23
Speaker 2: this case on body backs. And he was right, because
19:25
Speaker 2: I knew that it plugged right back into the great
19:28
Speaker 2: foot shoe mystery.
19:32
Speaker 3: That is a big mystery, though, Joe, think about it
19:34
Speaker 3: for just a minute. Here you've got twenty twenty one
19:37
Speaker 3: feet not matching pairs, by.
19:39
Speaker 2: The way, you know, no no, no, no, no no.
19:42
Speaker 3: And so you've got twenty people dead, give or take,
19:46
Speaker 3: and all that shows up on the shore is a
19:50
Speaker 3: foot inside of a shoe. Now, look, finding one or two,
19:54
Speaker 3: maybe even three, I would go with, yeah, I mean
19:57
Speaker 3: people die out of sea. People die all the time,
20:00
Speaker 3: it happens, and in that area I could see exactly
20:04
Speaker 3: what you're explaining for twenty twenty one.
20:08
Speaker 2: Now, listen, that's all. That's only the ones that have
20:11
Speaker 2: shown up.
20:12
Speaker 3: Right now, you have to think, what if we've got
20:15
Speaker 3: you know what there might be a whole new species
20:17
Speaker 3: of you know, flounder, and they got shoes down there.
20:22
Speaker 3: I don't know.
20:22
Speaker 2: It's so it's so bizarre to think about it because
20:24
Speaker 2: if in this area, say and listen, you know Jeff
20:28
Speaker 2: Sirtel is not from America and he's Canadian. This case
20:32
Speaker 2: he went missing in BC.
20:34
Speaker 3: I've got kids.
20:35
Speaker 1: His age.
20:35
Speaker 3: This is what gets me about him. Okay, yeah, think
20:38
Speaker 3: he goes missing in two thousand and seven. Just give
20:40
Speaker 3: you the idea and the reason we're talking about this
20:42
Speaker 3: one guy in particular, Jeff Cirtel, he goes missing. He's
20:45
Speaker 3: seventeen years old. And for anybody who's had a teenager
20:49
Speaker 3: of that age, that's like, this really odd age in
20:52
Speaker 3: a young person, because you know they've already gone past.
20:56
Speaker 3: Sixteen is the year you drive. You're still a child,
20:58
Speaker 3: you've learned to drive. Seventeen, you're you know, getting out
21:01
Speaker 3: of high school. You're thinking about the future, but you're
21:04
Speaker 3: still not an adult. But if you feel like you are,
21:07
Speaker 3: so for Jeffstertel to leave his house on his bike
21:10
Speaker 3: around midnight, which is what he did, and leaves his
21:14
Speaker 3: stuff at home, he leaves his belongings at home, it's
21:18
Speaker 3: not like he rolled it all up, hopped on his
21:20
Speaker 3: bike and yeah, joined the circus. Okay, he disappears out
21:25
Speaker 3: of character for him. They look for him, can't find
21:28
Speaker 3: him anywhere, friends, family, police, they search, can't find him.
21:34
Speaker 3: But then flash forward, and the reason we're giving this
21:36
Speaker 3: to you now is that you know that on April
21:38
Speaker 3: twenty ninth, two thousand and seven, at midnight, he leaves
21:40
Speaker 3: his house. On August fifth, two thousand and nine, we
21:44
Speaker 3: have the finder of a foot. Now we've already kind
21:48
Speaker 3: of buried the lead. You know whose foot he found.
21:50
Speaker 3: But the key is if you've got twenty or twenty
21:52
Speaker 3: one feet washing up on shore and that's all you've
21:56
Speaker 3: got is a foot inside of a sock and his shoe,
22:00
Speaker 3: how do you identify that foot back to a person,
22:05
Speaker 3: Because not everybody's DNA is in the system, Not everybody
22:08
Speaker 3: has any you know, not every fingerprints in the system.
22:11
Speaker 3: For crying out loud, lord, Now, all you have is
22:14
Speaker 3: a foot inside a sock, inside of his shoe that
22:17
Speaker 3: landed on a beach. And hey, what if the finder
22:20
Speaker 3: is some crazy crackpot you know that's chopping off feet
22:23
Speaker 3: and doing his thing with them. There are a lot
22:26
Speaker 3: of things to consider here, Joe. So where do you start.
22:29
Speaker 2: There is Well, when you're you take it, I like
22:35
Speaker 2: to describe it as the inverted funnel method, and that's
22:39
Speaker 2: my coin phrase I use with my students, and it's
22:43
Speaker 2: a simplistic way for a simple man to explain these
22:46
Speaker 2: things to students. And the idea is is that you
22:52
Speaker 2: want to gather as much information as you possibly can
22:55
Speaker 2: on the front end of an investigation, particularly a death
22:58
Speaker 2: investigation involving in an unidentify body or a human an
23:03
Speaker 2: element of a human remain in this particular case. And
23:06
Speaker 2: so you start off veryy broadly inverted funnel, okay, and
23:10
Speaker 2: then you kind of draw it in and narrow that
23:13
Speaker 2: up till you know, to the top of the smokestack
23:16
Speaker 2: of the of the funnel, the opening, and very broadly. Really,
23:22
Speaker 2: the first person you have to get involved in this
23:25
Speaker 2: case is going to be an anthropologist. And here's another
23:28
Speaker 2: thing that they might have working in their favor. The
23:33
Speaker 2: foot itself. The human foot and the ankle are very complex.
23:37
Speaker 2: As you well know, you're an athlete, Dave, and so
23:40
Speaker 2: any injury, you know how complex it is, any kind
23:44
Speaker 2: of injury, you have to your foot or your ankle,
23:48
Speaker 2: those structures in there. It's so fragile and so delicate,
23:52
Speaker 2: but there are a lot of skeletal elements that are
23:55
Speaker 2: contained in the foot, in the ankle. The sock might
24:00
Speaker 2: be the answer here because it's almost like having it
24:03
Speaker 2: in a protected sack, if you will, almost literally and
24:08
Speaker 2: then contained within the shoe itself, so it's kind of protected.
24:12
Speaker 2: You would hope that you would be able to hold
24:14
Speaker 2: on to all of that. The first person you're going
24:17
Speaker 2: to want to get involved in this investigation, it's going
24:19
Speaker 2: to be a forensic anthropologist. As a matter of fact,
24:24
Speaker 2: this is how careful I would be with this. If
24:29
Speaker 2: this came into my office and I didn't know what
24:32
Speaker 2: I had. I just had some person, well, I had
24:36
Speaker 2: an emmy investigator went out to the scene. They said
24:38
Speaker 2: they looked into the shoe and or looked into the
24:42
Speaker 2: sock which was in the shoe, and I saw bony
24:46
Speaker 2: elements in there. I'd look at everybody and I'd say, Okay,
24:50
Speaker 2: we're storing this away, we're not touching it. We're getting
24:53
Speaker 2: on the phone to the university, which most of the
24:55
Speaker 2: time is where forensic anthropologists work. Every now and then,
25:00
Speaker 2: you'll find one that's directly employed by a medical examiner's office.
25:04
Speaker 1: But there's.
25:06
Speaker 2: Most of the time there's not enough work for them
25:08
Speaker 2: to work full time. Okay, it's not like we have
25:10
Speaker 2: skeletons every single day, all right, And I know people
25:15
Speaker 2: think that we do, and so many of them work
25:20
Speaker 2: out of universities. But the time to developer always tell
25:24
Speaker 2: people police in particular, the time to develop a relationship
25:28
Speaker 2: with a forensic anthropologist is not the day that you
25:30
Speaker 2: need them. You have to develop that relationship years in advance.
25:36
Speaker 2: Involve them in things that going around the office, so
25:38
Speaker 2: you can pick up the phone and say, hey, look, Doc,
25:40
Speaker 2: we've got something here that might be of interest, please
25:43
Speaker 2: come on down, or do you want one of us
25:45
Speaker 2: to bring it to your lab? And I've had to
25:46
Speaker 2: do both. I've had to take human remains, skeletal remains
25:52
Speaker 2: to you well to LSU in the early days of
25:57
Speaker 2: my career, because we had a great forensic anthropology. By
26:00
Speaker 2: the way, shout out to Mary Manhunt if you get
26:03
Speaker 2: a chance. She's known as the Bone Lady and has
26:05
Speaker 2: written a series of books. He's one of my oldest
26:07
Speaker 2: and dearest friends and she founder the Faces Lab. At
26:12
Speaker 2: LSU that were the first group of people to digitize
26:15
Speaker 2: a human skull at any rate. I would go to
26:19
Speaker 2: her lab many times and take specimens there, and we've
26:22
Speaker 2: been on digs together. But the reason this is so
26:25
Speaker 2: important is that they have a method to examination that
26:32
Speaker 2: is different than what a forensic anthropologist does. Okay, they
26:36
Speaker 2: can look at bones in a way that you and
26:39
Speaker 2: I cannot even begin to consider them. They're going to
26:43
Speaker 2: look at them from the perspective of where. And when
26:46
Speaker 2: I say where, there's two types of where. We've got
26:52
Speaker 2: where that is post mortem, like weathered bone or bone
26:56
Speaker 2: that and here's a very specific thing. Bone that comes
26:59
Speaker 2: out of an aquatic environment looks completely different. If you
27:03
Speaker 2: had two feet in this case, that one was floating
27:08
Speaker 2: in a saltwater environment. Let that sink in and no
27:14
Speaker 2: pun intended, and you have an equally sized you know,
27:20
Speaker 2: structure of a foot, skeletal remains of foot, and you
27:24
Speaker 2: left it on dry land. Okay, those two, those two
27:29
Speaker 2: collections of skeletal elements are going to look completely different.
27:33
Speaker 2: You say, Morgan's kind of obvious. You're damn right, it's obvious.
27:37
Speaker 2: Because salt water. Saltwater impacts bone differently. So the big
27:43
Speaker 2: thing about it is when you when you show up
27:45
Speaker 2: and you have a foot of all things that appears,
27:49
Speaker 2: you know, just kind of manifest itself out of nowhere.
27:53
Speaker 2: You're going to want the best set of eyes on
27:55
Speaker 2: this thing. So you call in a forensic anthropologist and
27:58
Speaker 2: you carefully, carefully extricate everything from the inside the shoe
28:05
Speaker 2: as they are witnessing it, or you allow them to
28:08
Speaker 2: do it. Now you have the forensic pathologists stand by.
28:11
Speaker 2: But I don't know what a forensic forensic pathologist could
28:16
Speaker 2: add to the discussion, because even let's just let's just
28:21
Speaker 2: go go out on a limb here and say that
28:25
Speaker 2: this is an over the top case of dismemberment, all right, Well,
28:33
Speaker 2: a forensic pathologist and their knowledge is not going to
28:37
Speaker 2: trump a forensic anthropologist with saw marks on bone. They
28:41
Speaker 2: can't do it. There are people, they're forensic anthropologists that
28:44
Speaker 2: actually specialize I know two of them off the top
28:47
Speaker 2: of my head, that specialize in nothing but tool marks
28:51
Speaker 2: on human bones. That's all they've studied for all lo
28:55
Speaker 2: these many years and their esteemed careers. That's all that
28:58
Speaker 2: they've done. And they've even used different types of saws
29:02
Speaker 2: on bone and so to get the full picture and
29:06
Speaker 2: try to understand what it takes to take a part
29:08
Speaker 2: of body. So what I'm the reason I'm saying this
29:11
Speaker 2: is that you want somebody that is geographically literate to
29:20
Speaker 2: that area in the Northwest. We've already established that it's
29:23
Speaker 2: a completely different world. That's why I said otherworldly. It's
29:27
Speaker 2: an aquatic, saltwater environment. You want somebody that's been around
29:30
Speaker 2: that with human skeleton remains. You know, as I'm sure
29:36
Speaker 2: that there are fine forensic anthropologists maybe in Kansas somewhere,
29:40
Speaker 2: I'm not going to reach out to them as opposed
29:43
Speaker 2: to the person that works at I don't know, the
29:46
Speaker 2: University of Western Washington or the University of of you know,
29:50
Speaker 2: at the University of Washington or you know Vancouver, you know,
29:54
Speaker 2: one of those universities up there. I'm going to want
29:57
Speaker 2: somebody's familiar with that area so they can go in
30:00
Speaker 2: and then you know, the next big part to this
30:04
Speaker 2: is trying to understand something about the footwear, because after
30:12
Speaker 2: you have looked at all of the elements of the
30:14
Speaker 2: bone that are contained therein you have to be able
30:17
Speaker 2: to determine, well, how old was this person? Is that
30:19
Speaker 2: possible with a foot well to a certain degree, it is.
30:23
Speaker 2: It's possible. Given let's say, if a foot belongs to
30:30
Speaker 2: somebody that is just post adolescent, maybe they have a
30:38
Speaker 2: few areas in their bony structures in there that are
30:41
Speaker 2: not completely fused to the degree that you would say
30:46
Speaker 2: with a twenty four year old as opposed to a
30:49
Speaker 2: seventeen year old. You can age them that way. You
30:54
Speaker 2: can also age them by where. And the other thing
30:59
Speaker 2: you can look for is there been any previous anti
31:01
Speaker 2: mortem trauma, like have they ever fracture their ankle? So
31:04
Speaker 2: you would lay all these bones out and X ray
31:07
Speaker 2: every one of them, and the forensic anthropology is amazing
31:12
Speaker 2: because they'll x ray the shoe with a bone inside
31:16
Speaker 2: of it, with the feet, the elements of the skeletal
31:22
Speaker 2: elements of the foot. They'll completely x ray that contained
31:26
Speaker 2: within the shoe. Then they'll take it out and x
31:29
Speaker 2: ray each individual bit and they'll spread it out. They're
31:33
Speaker 2: not going to do an X ray for each one,
31:35
Speaker 2: and then they will take the feet the elements and
31:40
Speaker 2: put them all back together and look at them. And
31:43
Speaker 2: that'll give you an idea of, well, the foot that
31:48
Speaker 2: I have that's in here, does it approximate the size
31:51
Speaker 2: of the shoe, Like, is this a person with the
31:53
Speaker 2: size of eight foot that's wearing a ten and a
31:56
Speaker 2: half shoe, Then you know something's really a foot.
32:01
Speaker 1: At that point, who are they?
32:18
Speaker 2: Well, that's the big thing, isn't it? When it comes
32:23
Speaker 2: to just or tell, I can't even begin to fathom
32:30
Speaker 2: the depth of sorrow and the stages of sorrow and
32:33
Speaker 2: grief that his parents have gone through all of these years,
32:37
Speaker 2: since two thousand and seven. I can't even seventeen years, man,
32:42
Speaker 2: I mean, I can't even begin to think about the grief.
32:48
Speaker 3: He's gone, and he's been gone since then. He was
32:52
Speaker 3: seventeen when he left. He'll be forever seventeen. But yes,
32:56
Speaker 3: his foot is there. But how I mean identifying the foot? No, Look,
33:02
Speaker 3: I think I understand now. I made a note on
33:05
Speaker 3: this because the King County Medical Examiner, when the foot
33:08
Speaker 3: was found, the human foot, they said that the uh,
33:12
Speaker 3: they say that there the shoe, the black athletic shoe
33:16
Speaker 3: found on the county beach contained human remains. Why don't
33:19
Speaker 3: they say foot? And the second part of that is
33:23
Speaker 3: he actually said that we found a shoe on the
33:26
Speaker 3: beach that still had a foot with a sock on
33:29
Speaker 3: it and it detached from the body naturally. Yeah, how
33:34
Speaker 3: can you say that to him? First of all, that
33:37
Speaker 3: it did naturally, that it wasn't chopped off, right, And
33:41
Speaker 3: I think you broke that down pretty good with the
33:42
Speaker 3: explaining that one. I had a big question about that.
33:44
Speaker 3: But the other part is we still don't know how
33:46
Speaker 3: he's dead. I've identified it, but we don't know anything else.
33:49
Speaker 2: Really, And here's a cold cup of coffee for you
33:52
Speaker 2: and everybody else.
33:53
Speaker 1: We never will know.
33:54
Speaker 3: Oh, come on, Joe, I really didn't think you had
33:56
Speaker 3: something of your sleep.
33:57
Speaker 2: No, I have no magic that that lee heads to
34:00
Speaker 2: a cause of death. And that's the tragedy with this.
34:04
Speaker 2: I mean, it's all very tragic.
34:06
Speaker 3: It's truly identifying knowing that your child is, you know, gone.
34:10
Speaker 2: Well, well we know they can know, not we. I
34:14
Speaker 2: don't have a mouse in my pocket. They the parents,
34:17
Speaker 2: Who's who are the two most important people in this
34:21
Speaker 2: entire investigation. Okay, they know that he he is deceased,
34:29
Speaker 2: because you know, it's not like this is some kind
34:32
Speaker 2: of traumatic event where his foot was traumatically amputated and
34:37
Speaker 2: he could be out there somewhere. They're talking about this
34:40
Speaker 2: as a for lack of a better term, a natural occurrence.
34:45
Speaker 2: It's it's a it's a natural biological outcome, okay, relative
34:50
Speaker 2: to decomposition. And what they're saying by this is that
34:53
Speaker 2: they saw no trauma like either fractures or tool marks
34:58
Speaker 2: on the bone, so as his body would have been
35:02
Speaker 2: out there in the Salish sea. That tissue it's really
35:11
Speaker 2: hard to kind of describe to anybody what it is
35:16
Speaker 2: like or what the tissue is like. I'll try to
35:19
Speaker 2: give it to you as best I can. If you like,
35:22
Speaker 2: if you touch any element of your body, your limbs,
35:25
Speaker 2: one of your limbs, okay, near your elbow, or you know,
35:29
Speaker 2: your knee or even your ankle, there's a certain tension
35:34
Speaker 2: that you have in skin. And as we get older,
35:37
Speaker 2: you know, our skin becomes less tense. You know, you
35:39
Speaker 2: don't have as much collagen in there, but you can
35:42
Speaker 2: feel kind of those muscular structures that are beneath the
35:47
Speaker 2: skin there. It has a tension to it. I have
35:52
Speaker 2: been around decomposing bodies to the point where and these
35:57
Speaker 2: happen for me when I pull bodies out of bodies
36:00
Speaker 2: of water, and particularly people that had died in bathtubs
36:03
Speaker 2: that had decomposed in bathtubs. I've had a number of
36:06
Speaker 2: those over my career. I have literally gone to remove
36:11
Speaker 2: a body out of that environment and their skin just
36:15
Speaker 2: literally pulls off on you know, just it de gloves.
36:21
Speaker 2: There's a degloving that takes place. But you can also
36:26
Speaker 2: tear the skin to the point where you can see
36:28
Speaker 2: the bony structures because it's so soft. And to say
36:34
Speaker 2: that it's spongy is not accurate, because sponges bounce back.
36:39
Speaker 2: This does not bounce back. It just whatever trauma. And
36:44
Speaker 2: I don't mean that like in a negative way, but
36:46
Speaker 2: just the pressure of you touching it traumatizes those remains
36:51
Speaker 2: to the point where you compromise them, and they will
36:56
Speaker 2: after a period of time just kind of pull apart
36:59
Speaker 2: at the weak is at the weakest spot, okay, and
37:01
Speaker 2: the weakest spot is generally going to be the joint.
37:04
Speaker 1: Okay.
37:04
Speaker 2: I think that's one of the reasons his you know,
37:06
Speaker 2: not just his, but these feet come disarticulated, you know,
37:11
Speaker 2: at those points, and so the fact that it comes
37:15
Speaker 2: apart like that. The saving grace here is that he
37:22
Speaker 2: still had an athletic shoe on and it's described as
37:24
Speaker 2: black and there's a buoyancy two shoes. You know, I've
37:32
Speaker 2: got I don't know, a whole closet full of athletic shoes.
37:35
Speaker 2: I never throw them away. I use them to work
37:37
Speaker 2: in the yard and those sorts of things that I have.
37:38
Speaker 2: Some that I just absolutely love to go on my
37:40
Speaker 2: boat with, you know, I just slip them on and go.
37:42
Speaker 2: The one thing about it is, and I have done this,
37:45
Speaker 2: I can lose my shoe off the side of my
37:48
Speaker 2: boat for whatever reason. My grandson actually threw one in
37:51
Speaker 2: one time and it actually floats on top of the water. Well,
37:55
Speaker 2: it has that buoyancy to them. And they're so lightweight
37:57
Speaker 2: now too. Okay, it's not like an old canvas pair
38:01
Speaker 2: of you know of Converse tennis shoes or kids tennis
38:04
Speaker 2: shoes we had to wear when we were kids. You know,
38:06
Speaker 2: that are going to go right to the bottom. It's
38:08
Speaker 2: like a slab of rubber with canvas. They're not like
38:12
Speaker 2: that anymore. And so that lends itself to the buoyancy.
38:15
Speaker 2: So you would want to check the size of the shoe.
38:18
Speaker 2: You know, what size is the shoe, the brand, if
38:23
Speaker 2: you can still make that out, you know, maybe a
38:27
Speaker 2: shoe that has a logo, the Nike swoosh or the
38:33
Speaker 2: fact hibidis.
38:35
Speaker 3: If you used all that, Joe, we started off the
38:37
Speaker 3: top of this with authrom because you're talking about a foot, yeah,
38:43
Speaker 3: inside of a sock, inside of a shoe washed on
38:45
Speaker 3: shore at a beach. And you can't even say it's
38:48
Speaker 3: a rare occurrence. It's happened twenty times at least that
38:52
Speaker 3: we know of. Yes, that means there are people who
38:56
Speaker 3: are waiting for an answer to a loved one and
38:58
Speaker 3: this is the closest you're going to to get. And
39:00
Speaker 3: to be honest with you, if it's the size eleven
39:03
Speaker 3: you know foot, how many of us have a size
39:06
Speaker 3: eleven eleven and a half foot? I mean, where are
39:08
Speaker 3: you going to start? How does author identify it? How
39:10
Speaker 3: do you get it down to the point where they
39:12
Speaker 3: can pick up the phone and say, with one hundred
39:15
Speaker 3: percent of certainty, we have identified your son and he's gone,
39:21
Speaker 3: here's we You know, I don't know that call, but
39:24
Speaker 3: you know what I mean? How does that know?
39:26
Speaker 2: No, you're no, No, You're absolutely right. What has to
39:30
Speaker 2: have Well, first off, you know the King the King
39:33
Speaker 2: County Medical Examiner would have to request assistance in a
39:39
Speaker 2: case like this, and it gives me pause too when
39:41
Speaker 2: I think about this, I think about all these other
39:44
Speaker 2: feet are we are we right on the cusp of
39:49
Speaker 2: getting some of these people identified. You know, we talked
39:52
Speaker 2: about twenty one, right or twenty twenty one? How many?
39:56
Speaker 2: How many other of these feet are intact to the
40:01
Speaker 2: point where you can have bony elements that you can
40:05
Speaker 2: still go into into the core of that bone and
40:14
Speaker 2: extract DNA from it, viable DNA where you can take
40:17
Speaker 2: it and run it against open source DNA files that
40:22
Speaker 2: are out there, which of course is what authorm did
40:27
Speaker 2: in the.
40:27
Speaker 1: Case of Jeff. That to me is.
40:33
Speaker 2: Really I think as sad as Jeff's case is. That's
40:37
Speaker 2: one of the things here that is very exciting when
40:41
Speaker 2: you begin to think about that they can create an
40:44
Speaker 2: entire DNA profile from those elements of Jeff's remains that
40:52
Speaker 2: are still there. And of course, you know, with with
40:58
Speaker 2: this caseular like so many others at authorm, the when
41:08
Speaker 2: the remains were discovered, they really didn't know what to
41:12
Speaker 2: do with them. There's you know, what, what are you
41:15
Speaker 2: going to hang your hat on here? Well, it all
41:18
Speaker 2: comes down to crowdfunding, because you know, authorm uses techniques
41:26
Speaker 2: that I cannot even sit here and begin to explain
41:30
Speaker 2: to you in the unlimited amount of time that I
41:32
Speaker 2: have for one episode. It's stuff that would make Captain
41:37
Speaker 2: Kirk blush. All right, They are on the cutting edge,
41:41
Speaker 2: but that requires money. It requires money, and for and
41:46
Speaker 2: I'll say this, now, say it again, I'll say it
41:49
Speaker 2: and until I don't say it anymore. You say out
41:54
Speaker 2: there that you're citizen detectives. You say that you want
41:58
Speaker 2: to contribute in some way. This requires nothing more than
42:03
Speaker 2: you going to visit dnasolves dot com and you can contribute.
42:12
Speaker 2: You can find a case that's on there. There are
42:14
Speaker 2: a plethora of these cases that are listed. You select one.
42:19
Speaker 2: Maybe it's based on geography, maybe you know it's your
42:22
Speaker 2: state that has a case, or maybe it's somebody that
42:27
Speaker 2: reminds you of maybe one of your loved ones. Maybe
42:30
Speaker 2: they're the same age or approximate approximately the same age,
42:34
Speaker 2: and you want to try to help solve this, this
42:36
Speaker 2: tragic mystery that exists. And they're not asking for tons
42:41
Speaker 2: and tons of money, just a couple of bucks. Just
42:44
Speaker 2: a couple of bucks, it's all it would take. And
42:47
Speaker 2: you can contribute to this. And they have ceiling that
42:49
Speaker 2: they have a minimum that they have to hit, which
42:52
Speaker 2: I think is like seven thousand or seven hundred seventy
42:56
Speaker 2: five hundred bucks, And that way they can get the
42:59
Speaker 2: wheels rolling on this thing, and they can go into
43:02
Speaker 2: open source DNA databases that are out there and they
43:06
Speaker 2: can begin to build this thing out along with their
43:09
Speaker 2: forensic genetic genealogists that are there on staff that they hire.
43:13
Speaker 2: I've met these people, I've been to the lab, I've
43:15
Speaker 2: seen the work that they do. And you never know,
43:20
Speaker 2: you you might be. You might be that answer to
43:26
Speaker 2: a prayer that's been sent up for years and years
43:29
Speaker 2: and years. You know, just like the questions that you know,
43:35
Speaker 2: Jeff's parents had, what happened to our baby? What happened
43:40
Speaker 2: to him? Well, they might not know exactly what happened
43:43
Speaker 2: to him, but now they do know that he has
43:49
Speaker 2: passed on, and for whatever that's worth, they can shut
43:53
Speaker 2: the door on that part of their life and maybe
43:56
Speaker 2: begin to move on with that peace in mind. And
43:58
Speaker 2: that's what you Ultimate and Lee would be offering. So again,
44:02
Speaker 2: that's dnasolves dot com. I urge each and every one
44:07
Speaker 2: of you to go to their website, review it, see
44:11
Speaker 2: what you can do anything will help. I'm Joseph Scott
44:17
Speaker 2: Morgan and this is body Backs.