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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: The Heroin Homicide of Anjelica “AJ” Hadsell · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:08
Speaker 1: Bodybacks with Joseph Scott Morgan. When you're young and you
0:19
Speaker 1: have goals of going to college. First off, the first
0:22
Speaker 1: thing you want to do is just get out of
0:24
Speaker 1: high school. But then the future is so bright because
0:27
Speaker 1: you think of about where you're going to go path
0:30
Speaker 1: because it's unknown, but there's a level of excitement to it.
0:34
Speaker 1: You go down that path and you kind of enter
0:39
Speaker 1: into a new world that has a family. At a university,
0:44
Speaker 1: you're seeking out those things that are gonna define you
0:50
Speaker 1: as a person as you continue to grow. But what
0:55
Speaker 1: you don't expect is that when you come home on
0:59
Speaker 1: your break from college that you'll be brutally murdered and
1:05
Speaker 1: your body left to decompose. Today, we're going to talk
1:11
Speaker 1: about the death of a young lady named aj Aj Hatsell.
1:19
Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags. Jackie
1:31
Speaker 1: aj was home from college. She was Joe Angelica aj
1:36
Speaker 1: Hedzel was back home in Norfolk, Virginia for spring break
1:39
Speaker 1: March of twenty fifteen. She was a freshman at Longwood University.
1:44
Speaker 1: J disappeared on March second, and her body was not
1:48
Speaker 1: found until five weeks later near the North Carolina border.
1:52
Speaker 1: Let's put off for just a moment Joe discussing what
1:55
Speaker 1: aj actually died from and talk about how she was found,
2:00
Speaker 1: the condition her body was going to be in, and
2:02
Speaker 1: how that relates to the bruises that they've found across
2:06
Speaker 1: her chin and chest. She was not found until five
2:09
Speaker 1: weeks later. She was partially buried in a drainage ditch.
2:13
Speaker 1: That implies that there would have been water there. Right,
2:16
Speaker 1: you are, Here's here's the problem. She's out exposed to
2:21
Speaker 1: the elements. And you know, one of the biggest problems
2:24
Speaker 1: that you encounter, you know, out in the field as
2:27
Speaker 1: a death investigator, you have to overcome not just what
2:30
Speaker 1: the perpetrator has done and try to make your way
2:34
Speaker 1: through all of that science, but you're competing with the
2:37
Speaker 1: environment in which a body is found, and in this case,
2:41
Speaker 1: you don't have a body that's in a protected space.
2:44
Speaker 1: And you know, we kind of break these things down,
2:46
Speaker 1: and interestingly enough, we refer to them very simplistically as
2:50
Speaker 1: indoor scenes versus outdoor scenes. And when you begin to
2:54
Speaker 1: think about the dynamic and that's going on in the
2:56
Speaker 1: surrounding environment as it pertains to human remains, they're impacted
3:02
Speaker 1: in so many ways. What's kind of intriguing is that
3:06
Speaker 1: you have this environment in which individuals, the remains are
3:11
Speaker 1: actually impacted by ambient temperature, that is, the environmental temperature
3:17
Speaker 1: which surrounds the remain that they're impacted by, even things
3:21
Speaker 1: like wind. You imagine that, you know, the wind blowing
3:24
Speaker 1: over the bodies are going to cool the surface or
3:26
Speaker 1: warm the surface of the body. Barometric pressure, humidity, all
3:30
Speaker 1: of these things come into place, and then you throw
3:32
Speaker 1: on top of it, you have a body that is
3:35
Speaker 1: lying in a wet environment and that has furthermore complications
3:42
Speaker 1: that occur and in this wet environment and bodies may
3:45
Speaker 1: very well tend to break down a bit quicker. You know,
3:48
Speaker 1: we're talking about a case in which a body has
3:50
Speaker 1: found five weeks essentially after she went and missing, and
3:55
Speaker 1: so that's going to greatly compromise your ability to assess
3:58
Speaker 1: what you're seeing at the scene and tell you you know,
4:02
Speaker 1: one of the things that we look at, and I've
4:05
Speaker 1: talked about this before on body bags, is the honoring
4:08
Speaker 1: of the dead. And I know that sounds kind of odd.
4:11
Speaker 1: You know, you begin to think about funeral practices and
4:14
Speaker 1: those things that we do with the dead to honor
4:16
Speaker 1: the dead. Memorialization of the dead is what's actually called.
4:20
Speaker 1: When you see somebody that has been left outside, how
4:24
Speaker 1: was the body treated in those moments, you know after death.
4:30
Speaker 1: Was there a hole that was dug? Did somebody actually
4:34
Speaker 1: put shovel to dirt, turnsold, do the work that's required
4:38
Speaker 1: to bury a body. Did they cover the body in rocks?
4:43
Speaker 1: Did they cover it in tree limbs, those sorts of things.
4:48
Speaker 1: In AJ's case, you have a body, her body that
4:53
Speaker 1: is essentially discarded, and there wasn't a lot of work
4:57
Speaker 1: that went into this because what we understand is that
5:00
Speaker 1: the only attempt to obscure her body was a piece
5:05
Speaker 1: of plywood debris, if you will, that was laid across
5:09
Speaker 1: the top of her body. So I think that we
5:11
Speaker 1: can learn a lot about the person that was responsible
5:16
Speaker 1: for this, you know, because you know, let's face it,
5:19
Speaker 1: you know, when you see something like this, you find
5:21
Speaker 1: a body that's partially obscured, you're not thinking, well, this
5:24
Speaker 1: person that deceased did not wind up in this position
5:28
Speaker 1: of their own volition. This had to have occurred at
5:31
Speaker 1: the hand of another and as an investigator, that's the
5:34
Speaker 1: way you're thinking. So how much time did they spend
5:37
Speaker 1: with the body. And this is kind of an isolated
5:40
Speaker 1: spot where she was found because this is behind an
5:44
Speaker 1: abandoned house. You begin to think, well, if it's behind
5:47
Speaker 1: an abandoned house, is this a location that the perpetrator
5:52
Speaker 1: actually had knowledge of? Is it in proximity to anything else?
5:56
Speaker 1: A roadway, those sorts of things. What type of vehicles
5:59
Speaker 1: travel up and down on this road? Who would have
6:01
Speaker 1: the kind of awareness that it would require to know
6:04
Speaker 1: that if I'm going to deposit a body, this is
6:07
Speaker 1: where I'm going to go, and then not use the
6:10
Speaker 1: home or the structure, but to go behind it, into
6:13
Speaker 1: this wet environment and just use whatever is at they're
6:17
Speaker 1: ready in order to cover the body up. Because it
6:20
Speaker 1: sounds to me like the piece of plywood that was
6:23
Speaker 1: covering AJ's remains was essentially an item of convenience. It
6:28
Speaker 1: was found there. She was found lying face down in
6:32
Speaker 1: her prom position, and then the body covered. You were
6:35
Speaker 1: saying that it was pretty obvious that this was the
6:38
Speaker 1: death that was caused by someone else. She was not bludgeoned,
6:42
Speaker 1: but they saw bruises across her chest and on her face.
6:48
Speaker 1: Number one for those to still be visible after so
6:52
Speaker 1: many days of decomposition and across the chest shows us
6:57
Speaker 1: that these are very party deep bruises. And what kind
7:02
Speaker 1: of an injury does this indicate to you, Joe, Well,
7:07
Speaker 1: let me just kind of lay the groundwork for you
7:08
Speaker 1: here when you're talking about a body that's going through
7:11
Speaker 1: the process of decomposition. First off, the body, as I'm
7:15
Speaker 1: sure that many people understand, is going to change colors.
7:18
Speaker 1: And one of the color phases that a body will
7:21
Speaker 1: go through during this period of time is it will
7:25
Speaker 1: and a lot of this is environmentally dependent, so that
7:28
Speaker 1: kind of caveat, but the body will darken essentially, you'll
7:31
Speaker 1: have the body turn a deep brown and then it'll
7:34
Speaker 1: kind of go to black. So the fact that they
7:37
Speaker 1: were able to discern what we refer to as some
7:41
Speaker 1: kind of insult and insult is just a fancy way
7:44
Speaker 1: that forensic pathologists use is kind of a generalized catch
7:47
Speaker 1: all phrase. And when they say insult, you know, how
7:50
Speaker 1: was the body insulted? They use that term without being
7:55
Speaker 1: real specific. But in this case, they would have had
7:59
Speaker 1: to have seen what are referred to as margins, and
8:02
Speaker 1: that is something that is distinguishable. It has some kind
8:06
Speaker 1: of pattern to it that varies that varies from the
8:11
Speaker 1: normal order that takes place relative to decomposition, and so
8:16
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here are contusions. You know, we
8:19
Speaker 1: use the word bruises, and it's the same thing essentially.
8:23
Speaker 1: You know, what's fascinating about the process of decomposition is
8:26
Speaker 1: that you know, the bodies are going to change colors.
8:29
Speaker 1: That's just that just happens. And as bodies continue to decompose,
8:35
Speaker 1: there's a progression that takes place and a color change
8:38
Speaker 1: will will be affected. You'll see bodies that will turn
8:42
Speaker 1: kind of a greenish to black color, there's a brown shade.
8:46
Speaker 1: A lot of this is heavily depended upon environmental considerations.
8:51
Speaker 1: But what's fascinating about ags cases that they were able
8:55
Speaker 1: to appreciate what they're referring to is contusions on her
8:59
Speaker 1: chest and which is again fancy terms for bruises, and
9:05
Speaker 1: they were able to single those out when compared to
9:09
Speaker 1: the natural state of decomposition. That process, and the way
9:15
Speaker 1: it has been presented is that there was apparently severe
9:21
Speaker 1: pressure that was applied, maybe impact trauma where and I'm
9:25
Speaker 1: imagining somebody pinning somebody down constantly or striking them across
9:30
Speaker 1: the chest and gain control of them. Now, how do
9:33
Speaker 1: we discern between decompositional changes and say, for instance, anti
9:39
Speaker 1: mortem which means before death anti mortem trauma. In this
9:44
Speaker 1: case we're talking about hemorrhage. Well, when the pathologist does
9:49
Speaker 1: the dissection and they'll take samples of those areas of
9:53
Speaker 1: contused areas at autopsy end, there's never an area that
9:58
Speaker 1: is more heavily dependent upon histological examination, that is, the
10:02
Speaker 1: microscopic examination of the tissues when it comes to decomposition,
10:06
Speaker 1: So you really have to be heavily dependent upon what
10:10
Speaker 1: you're seeing in the microscope. Was their hemorrhage existing in
10:14
Speaker 1: that area prior to death or in the perimortem state
10:17
Speaker 1: where they're kind of you know, that milky period of
10:20
Speaker 1: time where people are going from the anti mortem state
10:23
Speaker 1: to the post mortem state or after death, and that
10:26
Speaker 1: can be picked up on microscopically. But that pathologist, at
10:30
Speaker 1: that moment time they saw something. There was a pattern
10:33
Speaker 1: there that looked completely different than the normal progression of decomposition.
10:57
Speaker 1: I don't know of any any circumstance that an investigator,
11:02
Speaker 1: a death investigator hates to face more than a decomposing body.
11:06
Speaker 1: And it has nothing to do hear me, right, it
11:09
Speaker 1: has nothing to do would smell in sight and all
11:12
Speaker 1: those things. It's just that everything gets so jumbled up
11:16
Speaker 1: in that world because it's hard to understand and delineate
11:20
Speaker 1: between trauma that may have occurred to the body and
11:23
Speaker 1: the environmental decompositional factors that are going on. With what
11:27
Speaker 1: you just said, the investigators and the m e the
11:31
Speaker 1: pathologists found a very distinct pattern of bruising on a
11:38
Speaker 1: face and showed the prints of someone's hand as if
11:44
Speaker 1: they were holding squeezing a face very hard. What can
11:50
Speaker 1: you tell me about that? Yeah, you know, when you're
11:53
Speaker 1: you can actually see patterns and you listen in the
11:57
Speaker 1: morgue and even out at the scene, you have to
11:59
Speaker 1: be very very careful about what you're what you're opining
12:03
Speaker 1: at that point. You know, who are you going to
12:06
Speaker 1: actually tell us too, because you have to go through
12:09
Speaker 1: the process of scientific verification if what you're actually seeing
12:13
Speaker 1: is true? All right, scientifically verifiable, if you will, because
12:18
Speaker 1: I remember, you know, in any kind of homicide you're
12:20
Speaker 1: going to go to court with that, and so will
12:23
Speaker 1: it stand up? Will it hold up scientifically? Will will
12:27
Speaker 1: it stand up to muster? You know, at that point
12:28
Speaker 1: in time, as these things are being judged in court.
12:31
Speaker 1: So when we see patterns on a body, we can suggest,
12:35
Speaker 1: at least in our own mind, that yet that kind
12:37
Speaker 1: of resembles what might be a hand print. And I
12:42
Speaker 1: hate to use the term handprint because that implies that
12:46
Speaker 1: you're leaving behind evidence of friction ridges, you know, like
12:50
Speaker 1: with fingerprints, and that's sort of that's not that's not
12:53
Speaker 1: what we're talking about. We're talking about direct applied pressure.
12:57
Speaker 1: And sometimes when you have have this applied pressure on
13:01
Speaker 1: a specific surface, like the throat, the neck. You know,
13:04
Speaker 1: if you will jawline face anybody, that's everyone's struck in
13:08
Speaker 1: the face by slap, you know, you can appreciate sometimes
13:10
Speaker 1: you can make out those little areas of fingers, you know,
13:13
Speaker 1: where that has occurred. But just imagine a slap that
13:17
Speaker 1: goes on forever and ever well as you continue to
13:20
Speaker 1: apply pressure, As you continue to apply pressure in that
13:24
Speaker 1: specific area, the greater the pressure, the higher the likelihood
13:29
Speaker 1: that the little capillary beds that are in what's referred
13:32
Speaker 1: to as the interstitial tissue, that is the tissue that
13:35
Speaker 1: is in between blood vessels, there are capillary beds in there,
13:39
Speaker 1: they're going to rupture and at that point of rupturing.
13:43
Speaker 1: They will kind of follow a pattern that gives you
13:45
Speaker 1: an indication that something was there, like you know, fingers,
13:49
Speaker 1: a palm, the heel of a hand, that sort of thing,
13:52
Speaker 1: and so that's what they're looking at. What does this
13:55
Speaker 1: most closely resemble? This is something that's key in our
14:00
Speaker 1: world of forensics. You cannot and I repeat, there is
14:05
Speaker 1: no forensic scientists out there that can quantify this and
14:11
Speaker 1: what I mean by that, and you cannot numerically state,
14:16
Speaker 1: you know, like we can with toxicology and DNA and
14:18
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. You can't quantify this. You can
14:22
Speaker 1: qualify it's qualified opinion that that is more than likely
14:27
Speaker 1: caused by direct pressure of a hand, and it will
14:30
Speaker 1: look very distinct. But here's again back to this problem
14:34
Speaker 1: that you encounter with decomposition is that you have to
14:39
Speaker 1: be very careful. And it's counterintuitive, you know, when you're
14:42
Speaker 1: in this environment because you're around human remains. Let's face it,
14:46
Speaker 1: that are very unpleasant to be around in the first place,
14:50
Speaker 1: because of decomposition, the smells, all of these things that
14:53
Speaker 1: are going on. But it is actually in that environment
14:57
Speaker 1: that you have to spend a longer amount of time
14:59
Speaker 1: because more stuff is obscured. Isn't that kind of interesting?
15:02
Speaker 1: You have to take more time because things can be
15:05
Speaker 1: kind of blocked out by the decompositional process, and that's
15:10
Speaker 1: one of the things that is kind of striking, I
15:13
Speaker 1: think to a lot of people that have never been
15:14
Speaker 1: inside of a morger, have ever been around an autopsy,
15:18
Speaker 1: those things that we might recoil from in a normal
15:22
Speaker 1: and a normal environment, you're drawn to it. As a
15:25
Speaker 1: death investigator, You're drawn to it to stay there longer
15:29
Speaker 1: because there are these big questions that have to be asked.
15:31
Speaker 1: And let me tell you something, if they're not asked
15:34
Speaker 1: and answered at that moment of time, when that person
15:38
Speaker 1: within you is saying, I don't want to be in
15:39
Speaker 1: this environment. I don't want to be around a body
15:41
Speaker 1: that is in this condition. Your feet are telling you
15:45
Speaker 1: to flee, but you have to stay planned. You have
15:47
Speaker 1: to look at this evidence very, very carefully, because you
15:50
Speaker 1: get one shot at it. Joe, you mentioned toxicology, and
15:54
Speaker 1: that is where investigators have to turn to find out
15:58
Speaker 1: AJ's cause of death. Yeah. Aj did not use drugs.
16:03
Speaker 1: There were no needle marks found on her body. She
16:06
Speaker 1: did not have a history. According to her family, of
16:09
Speaker 1: drug use. How does that happen then, Joe? And how
16:12
Speaker 1: does it connect with those bruises on her face? We
16:17
Speaker 1: come across a lot of modes. And when I say modes,
16:20
Speaker 1: I'm talking about a mode. Is is that thing that
16:25
Speaker 1: brings about a fatal event? So what mode is someone
16:32
Speaker 1: killed by? What is being put forward in AJ's case
16:37
Speaker 1: is that her death was directly related to a heroin overdose.
16:43
Speaker 1: Heroin overdose just you know, let's dwell on that just
16:46
Speaker 1: for a second. Well, what are some things we look
16:48
Speaker 1: for in a heroin overdose? Well, in that population of
16:52
Speaker 1: people that use heroin, there are certain physical characteristics that
16:57
Speaker 1: we look for. Wasting a way because you know, you're
17:00
Speaker 1: life is spent in this kind of cycle of seeking
17:02
Speaker 1: the drug and using the drug and then kind of
17:04
Speaker 1: cycling through that event over and over and over and
17:07
Speaker 1: over again. It's a personal hell I can only imagine.
17:11
Speaker 1: But in Ajs case, that's kind of difficult to assess,
17:14
Speaker 1: isn't it. You know, because again we're back to this
17:17
Speaker 1: factor of decomposition and that impacts everything in this particular case.
17:23
Speaker 1: Now here's something that folks might not understand that when
17:28
Speaker 1: we work drug od cases, That is deaths that are
17:32
Speaker 1: related to a specific drug, in this case heroin. One
17:35
Speaker 1: of the things that we look for some of the
17:36
Speaker 1: physical manifestations that you see as far as evidence of
17:40
Speaker 1: direct injection, and that's commonly how how heroin is administered
17:46
Speaker 1: is you know, classically we look for what are referred
17:48
Speaker 1: to for years and years as railroad tracks, and those
17:52
Speaker 1: are specific injection sites. Many times they're located in the
17:56
Speaker 1: crook of the arm and in you know, from an
17:58
Speaker 1: anatomical standpoint, that's to the anticubal fossa. And but you know,
18:03
Speaker 1: just crook of the arm is fine, and it's on
18:06
Speaker 1: it's on that surface of the forearm where an individual
18:09
Speaker 1: can tie off with a tourniquet, they raise a vein
18:12
Speaker 1: or a vessel or other and they inject directly in there. Well,
18:15
Speaker 1: in her case that would not have been visible. But
18:18
Speaker 1: some of the things that we will do is we
18:20
Speaker 1: will actually go into those hardened areas because they are hardened.
18:24
Speaker 1: It forms almost what's referred to as a granuloma, if
18:28
Speaker 1: you will, and that arises from what heroine is cut with.
18:32
Speaker 1: You know, you can have quinine. You know, they'll cut
18:35
Speaker 1: it with talcum powder. There's all baby formula or baby powder.
18:39
Speaker 1: You know formula that she used to create baby formula.
18:42
Speaker 1: There's any number of things that it's cut with and
18:46
Speaker 1: those those elements will get hung up and create these
18:50
Speaker 1: little kind of hardened it's not really assist but it's
18:53
Speaker 1: just a hardened area that's referred to as a granulom
18:55
Speaker 1: and you can run your thumb or your index finger
18:58
Speaker 1: over that area and feel them beneath skin, and at
19:01
Speaker 1: autopsy will go into those track marks and kind of
19:04
Speaker 1: dissect those out and retrieve those and look at them
19:07
Speaker 1: and those sorts of things. That's a big thing. And
19:10
Speaker 1: then when we have individuals that have that are found
19:13
Speaker 1: immediately after death, if we're considering that it might be
19:18
Speaker 1: an injection of heroin overdose, it's quite fascinating to see
19:23
Speaker 1: the arms of the dead many times that have died
19:26
Speaker 1: as a result of an OD. You start above at exam,
19:29
Speaker 1: you start above or superior to the elbow, and you
19:33
Speaker 1: tightly squeeze the arm and you move your hand down
19:39
Speaker 1: down the axis of the arm squeezing. You know what
19:42
Speaker 1: happens if there's an injection site there. You'll see a
19:45
Speaker 1: little dot, a little dot of blood that will appear
19:51
Speaker 1: at what we refer to as a needle puncture site.
19:54
Speaker 1: We call them npws. The medical community uses that term
19:58
Speaker 1: needle puncture wound. You'll see that little bit of blood
20:01
Speaker 1: that will erupt from that site. Again, back to AJ's case,
20:06
Speaker 1: you don't have that advantage, but I do know this
20:09
Speaker 1: that at autopsy or following autopsy, when they finally got
20:14
Speaker 1: her toxicological sample examined, and that is no easy feat
20:19
Speaker 1: in a case like hers, it was three times three
20:24
Speaker 1: times the lethal limit. What would that amount of heroin
20:30
Speaker 1: do to a person who's never used the drug? I
20:34
Speaker 1: can't imagine that that would have been considered the pleasure trip,
20:38
Speaker 1: for lack of a better phrase. You're talking about if
20:42
Speaker 1: someone has just come into this cold and has never
20:46
Speaker 1: used heroin before, death is going to come upon them
20:52
Speaker 1: very very quickly, and it is not going to be
20:54
Speaker 1: a pleasant, a pleasant event. There's not going to be
20:57
Speaker 1: like some kind of warm, swimmy feeling that you get it.
21:00
Speaker 1: You know, like if you're you know people that out
21:03
Speaker 1: there in our audience that think about anesthesia, you know,
21:05
Speaker 1: where they give you a pre drug and you're kind
21:08
Speaker 1: of loopy if you will, and then they say, I
21:10
Speaker 1: would you start counting backwards from a hundred and you
21:13
Speaker 1: start and you make it to like ninety eight and
21:14
Speaker 1: you just simply go to sleep. It's not going to
21:17
Speaker 1: be like that, and depend upon how it's administered. And
21:20
Speaker 1: you're talking about what could potentially have been her season
21:24
Speaker 1: overwhelming nausea, perhaps just for at least in the short period,
21:29
Speaker 1: and where she's getting very short of breath. Remember, heroin
21:33
Speaker 1: depresses the respiratory system. It's just it's it's like you know,
21:39
Speaker 1: a boat anchor that's tied to your ability to breathe.
21:42
Speaker 1: You're gasping for air. It would have been a horrific
21:45
Speaker 1: I mean absolutely horrific. It's a death that that on
21:50
Speaker 1: the part of the individual that administers is drug to someone,
21:53
Speaker 1: it shows very little mercy, very little mercy at all.
21:57
Speaker 1: So then would J's hart had just stopped? Yeah, And
22:02
Speaker 1: that's you know that that's the case in an event
22:05
Speaker 1: like this, because again you're and it's a combination of
22:09
Speaker 1: systemically of everything. When we are essentially uptaking oxygen, you know,
22:15
Speaker 1: when we're breathing in this environment, the normal cyclists, we
22:18
Speaker 1: take in oxygen oxygen as processed by our body. We
22:22
Speaker 1: have the red blood cells that transfer, the you know,
22:25
Speaker 1: the oxygen ata blood through throughout our system, this sort
22:28
Speaker 1: of thing, you interfere with that process, and just at
22:31
Speaker 1: one level, it has to do with, you know, insufficient
22:35
Speaker 1: oxygen uptake in this particular case, and there are a
22:38
Speaker 1: lot of other factors that play into this. But yeah,
22:41
Speaker 1: her heart would have she would have gone into cardiac arrest.
22:44
Speaker 1: But this would have been a case also involving what's
22:48
Speaker 1: of her two simply as respiratory failure. And it's part
22:51
Speaker 1: and parcel of a heroin od many times with and
22:54
Speaker 1: they're countless in my experience because of many the many
22:58
Speaker 1: drug cases that I work. One of the things that
23:01
Speaker 1: you see with with drug overdoses and particularly things like
23:05
Speaker 1: heroine and even oxies and those sorts of things that
23:08
Speaker 1: are synthetics out there, you see what's presenting on the
23:12
Speaker 1: faces referred to as a frothy idemitius cone. It issues
23:16
Speaker 1: forth from the nose and the mouth. It has kind
23:19
Speaker 1: of a pink discoloration, and you see it in drowning.
23:23
Speaker 1: It's amazingly as well, and it's indicative of a respiratory
23:27
Speaker 1: failure event where your lungs are becoming very weighted and heavy,
23:33
Speaker 1: and those sorts of things and you produce this froth.
23:36
Speaker 1: It's kind of blood tinged. Essentially, it's almost like drowning
24:03
Speaker 1: heroin overdoes if heroin is being used as a mode
24:10
Speaker 1: in order to take somebody's life, my big question as
24:14
Speaker 1: an investigator is who in the world would actually have
24:21
Speaker 1: ready access, ready access to an illegal substance like heroin. Yes,
24:28
Speaker 1: the search is on Joe for the person that administered
24:33
Speaker 1: heroin to AJ. And what we found, or what investigators found,
24:39
Speaker 1: is that aj stepfather had been kicked out of the
24:43
Speaker 1: home by a J's mother for heroin use. Wesley hadseel
24:49
Speaker 1: how did they do it? Well, I think that you
24:52
Speaker 1: know the fact that when you have a young lady's
24:56
Speaker 1: body that is in such advance state of decomposition because
25:01
Speaker 1: it was advanced you know listen, you know, animals had
25:06
Speaker 1: actually made their way to her remain. So this is
25:09
Speaker 1: not an easy an easy lift, as they say, this
25:13
Speaker 1: is something that you have to do a very careful
25:15
Speaker 1: close examination on. One of the One of the first
25:18
Speaker 1: things that they did at autopsy was they took a
25:22
Speaker 1: hair sample from AJ's body and you think, well, what
25:27
Speaker 1: in the world they need a hair sample for? Well,
25:29
Speaker 1: you know, we think about hair samples relative to DNA
25:31
Speaker 1: and matching hairs up in trace evidence that we find
25:37
Speaker 1: it scenes. We can find broken shafts of hair, you know,
25:40
Speaker 1: when we look at them, we can see, you know,
25:42
Speaker 1: people that have colored their hair. We can see that
25:44
Speaker 1: staining on this. All those sorts of things that you know,
25:48
Speaker 1: try to determine if a hair is actually fur or
25:52
Speaker 1: versus human hair, those sorts of things. In her case, though,
25:55
Speaker 1: they employed a very interesting method all to learn something
26:01
Speaker 1: about the body that they had at that time, and
26:04
Speaker 1: that is they acquired a follicle of her hair and
26:09
Speaker 1: did drug testing on it. How in the world did
26:12
Speaker 1: they do that well? With product drug abusers. One of
26:18
Speaker 1: the things that you will see is that as heroine,
26:23
Speaker 1: for instance in this case, is injected into the system,
26:27
Speaker 1: it gets into the bloodstream right well, what feeds the hair, well,
26:30
Speaker 1: it's red blood cells. And think about the hair follicle
26:34
Speaker 1: is almost like the rings of a tree. You know
26:36
Speaker 1: how if you cut a tree in half, you can
26:39
Speaker 1: kind of tell the history of it, you know, drought
26:41
Speaker 1: ears versus wet ears, and all these sorts of things
26:45
Speaker 1: that botanists look at in the short term. When you
26:48
Speaker 1: look at a hair follicle, though, you can actually test
26:52
Speaker 1: that hair follicle to see if there's heroine or some
26:57
Speaker 1: types of drugs contained within that hair follicle. And for
27:00
Speaker 1: us as investigators, particularly when you're dealing with a decomposed body,
27:04
Speaker 1: you need as much data as you possibly can have
27:07
Speaker 1: because you know, we talked about the term quantitative, which
27:11
Speaker 1: means numbers. You're not going to be able to get
27:13
Speaker 1: a quantitative amount or a level of heroin, but you
27:17
Speaker 1: can qualify. You can say, yeah, there is in fact
27:21
Speaker 1: heroin present or there's evidence of heroin being present in
27:25
Speaker 1: this follicle of hair. And depended upon how far, how
27:31
Speaker 1: far up the hair follicle that heroin is and there
27:35
Speaker 1: are markers along the way you can see that the
27:37
Speaker 1: individual has taken heroin and maybe here here, here, So
27:40
Speaker 1: you're talking about linear tom as the hair is beginning
27:43
Speaker 1: to grow out, it gives you an indication of history
27:47
Speaker 1: of this person's involvement with drugs. Well, in a just case,
27:51
Speaker 1: they took the hair sample and it was actually negative.
27:54
Speaker 1: It was negative because in order to get heroin into
27:58
Speaker 1: the hair follicle, it it's gonna take. It's not something
28:01
Speaker 1: that immediately happens, it's going to be something that's going
28:04
Speaker 1: to take four to five days. You know, as the
28:07
Speaker 1: hair wine is metabolized with the body, it finally makes
28:09
Speaker 1: it to the hair follicle and begins its gross outward. So,
28:14
Speaker 1: you know, you find a young lady who is in
28:17
Speaker 1: this position, you're trying to determine what exactly happened to her,
28:21
Speaker 1: and one of the things you're going to go to
28:23
Speaker 1: is did she have anything on board? You know, that
28:27
Speaker 1: came to the conclusion that it was, in fact a
28:29
Speaker 1: hair wine overdosed with her. Remember, it wasn't present in
28:33
Speaker 1: her hair. So where else do you go? Where you
28:35
Speaker 1: got a body is decomposed, so you're not going to
28:37
Speaker 1: necessarily be able to draw blood. And in those cases
28:40
Speaker 1: one of the things that we will do at autopsy
28:43
Speaker 1: is take organ samples. Generally the liver is kind of
28:47
Speaker 1: one of the best areas. You can do this from
28:49
Speaker 1: liver and braining, and it'll be a sample of the
28:54
Speaker 1: tissue will actually be placed into a test tube, if
28:57
Speaker 1: you will, and then placed into a center few and
29:01
Speaker 1: spun at a very high rate, and it the sample
29:06
Speaker 1: actually liquefies and it's at that point you can draw
29:09
Speaker 1: this up much like you do blood and submit that
29:12
Speaker 1: for toxicological sample. Now, it's a bit rougher as far
29:16
Speaker 1: as the as those quantitative numbers go, you know, when
29:20
Speaker 1: you're thinking about urine and blood and all those sorts
29:23
Speaker 1: of things, but it will still get you pretty close.
29:26
Speaker 1: And in AJ's case, she had three times three times
29:34
Speaker 1: a lethal limit in her system. So that that's a
29:38
Speaker 1: huge bolus, which is an individual administration of a drug.
29:42
Speaker 1: For her to have to have never been a round
29:44
Speaker 1: hair one, to have never used hair when she had
29:46
Speaker 1: no prior history of drug abuse, those sorts of things,
29:50
Speaker 1: and you know you're you're thinking as an investigator, well
29:52
Speaker 1: how did she get this much on board? And then
29:56
Speaker 1: you couple that with looking at her stepfather drug history.
30:01
Speaker 1: Remember he had just been kicked out of the house. Well,
30:03
Speaker 1: who in that family? Who in her immediate circle? I remember,
30:06
Speaker 1: she's home from school. It's not like they found her
30:08
Speaker 1: in a dorm room. Okay, who in that little circle
30:12
Speaker 1: within her home, within her environment, first off, would have
30:16
Speaker 1: access to her and secondly could easily make her disappear,
30:21
Speaker 1: and thirdly that would also have access to this drug. Well,
30:26
Speaker 1: all signs are gonna point toward the stepfather in this
30:30
Speaker 1: particular case because he kind of fits the bill, and
30:32
Speaker 1: that's how you build a case like this. As police investigated,
30:37
Speaker 1: the stepfather a long history of violence against women. They
30:41
Speaker 1: also had information from Wesley Hadsel's drug dealer that he
30:46
Speaker 1: had purchased heroin the day after AJ's disappearance. And again,
30:52
Speaker 1: AJ did not have a history of drug abuse, no
30:55
Speaker 1: needle marks found on her body. Wesley Hadsel, who's still
31:00
Speaker 1: to this day, maintains that he did not kill his stepdaughter.
31:03
Speaker 1: He always claimed innocence. The evidence that came in that
31:07
Speaker 1: the investigators used came from his van. Yeah, that's just it.
31:13
Speaker 1: He's riding around in this van. Well. First off, here
31:15
Speaker 1: are some of the items that are contained in there.
31:17
Speaker 1: First off, AJ's headmand. You know that this young lady
31:20
Speaker 1: would have used to, you know, pull back that lovely
31:24
Speaker 1: brown hair that she had, and it was long, it
31:27
Speaker 1: was like longer than her shoulders. Found shovel in there,
31:33
Speaker 1: found duct tape in there. And in addition to that,
31:37
Speaker 1: you know, and look, you know, there's nothing wrong with
31:41
Speaker 1: riding around with the picture of your child in the vehicle.
31:45
Speaker 1: Lord knows, I do. I got pictures everywhere. But there
31:48
Speaker 1: was a picture of her, no one else. And I
31:53
Speaker 1: think this kicks it up to another level of horror here,
31:57
Speaker 1: because this is a young lady who he came into
32:01
Speaker 1: her life. He's not her biological father, and he adopted her.
32:06
Speaker 1: She carried his surname, he had access to her. And
32:12
Speaker 1: there was one part I forgot to mention, relative to
32:16
Speaker 1: what they saw at the scene. J still had sweatpants on,
32:23
Speaker 1: but the sweatpants were in a position. Now she's found
32:29
Speaker 1: faced down at the scene what we referred to as
32:32
Speaker 1: prone facedown at the scene, and the sweatpants are pulled
32:37
Speaker 1: down below the level of her buttocks. The horror here
32:45
Speaker 1: is incredible because you have this young lady that has
32:51
Speaker 1: heroin that has been administered to her. She's in apparently
32:56
Speaker 1: in the hands of someone that she trusted, remembered. This
32:59
Speaker 1: is her dad. Now she carries his name, and you've
33:05
Speaker 1: got this event that would appear consistent with a forcible
33:12
Speaker 1: administration of heroin. I can't even fathom plumb the depths,
33:17
Speaker 1: if you will, of the horror when she felt that
33:20
Speaker 1: that little penprick. I'm sure it wasn't that she was
33:26
Speaker 1: tied off, you know, like heroin addicts do. Where they're
33:30
Speaker 1: seeking a vein with a tourniquet. This would have gone
33:34
Speaker 1: directly into what's referred to as her subqu fat. That
33:38
Speaker 1: means that the needle was applied directly to her skin.
33:43
Speaker 1: She would have sensed that that, you know what, what's
33:46
Speaker 1: happening to me? And then to be found in this
33:50
Speaker 1: position it implies at least, and I think in the
33:54
Speaker 1: minds of the investigators and certainly the prosecutors, that this
33:58
Speaker 1: was perhaps a sexual assault event that was going on.
34:02
Speaker 1: That he took this young woman out there in this
34:05
Speaker 1: isolated area behind an abandoned house. He had just been
34:09
Speaker 1: kicked out of his home by his wife because of
34:13
Speaker 1: drug abuse, and he targeted her. He was exacting punishment.
34:19
Speaker 1: I think on her. This is not about love on
34:23
Speaker 1: any level. This is this is horror that I don't
34:27
Speaker 1: know that any of us can really kind of calculate
34:30
Speaker 1: when you consider house she was found one other aside
34:33
Speaker 1: to this, her body was in such a state of decomposition,
34:37
Speaker 1: and we talked about these hand markings that are found,
34:40
Speaker 1: these these contusions. They could not in the friends of
34:44
Speaker 1: pathologist actually stated they could not actually rule out the
34:48
Speaker 1: possibility that she had been manually strangled at some point
34:53
Speaker 1: in time. Again, you know, decomposition playing a role. It's
34:57
Speaker 1: very tough to ascertain. But what we do know is
35:01
Speaker 1: that she had this lethal agent in her body that
35:04
Speaker 1: was administered at the hand of somebody that she trusted,
35:08
Speaker 1: somebody that she I don't know, I don't know what
35:10
Speaker 1: their relationship was like, but may have called him father. Okay, Joe,
35:14
Speaker 1: I'm a little confused. I made an assumption that with
35:21
Speaker 1: the bruises on her face, that it was the possibility
35:26
Speaker 1: that AJ was administered this. Orally, can you take heroin? Orally?
35:32
Speaker 1: I have no idea. Or you saying she still had
35:35
Speaker 1: to be injected somewhere. It's hard to say, But I
35:38
Speaker 1: have to imagine if an individual has access to a needle,
35:44
Speaker 1: which in this particular case you got a haro on abuser.
35:47
Speaker 1: So yeah, he's going to have what they call his works,
35:50
Speaker 1: which is a needle of spoon, all those sorts of
35:52
Speaker 1: things that tourniquet, he's got ready access to it. And again,
35:55
Speaker 1: this is something that can only you can only assume. Look,
35:59
Speaker 1: people take heroin in a couple of interesting ways. It
36:03
Speaker 1: has been taken over the years where there are people
36:06
Speaker 1: that snort heroin. You know, there are people that will
36:09
Speaker 1: ingest heroin, and you know, I've actually worked cases where
36:15
Speaker 1: I've had drug mules that have had dosages of heroin
36:18
Speaker 1: inserted into their backside and the capsule's erupt and it
36:24
Speaker 1: can be administered there. There are people that have taken
36:26
Speaker 1: heroin rectally, so that does happen. There's any number of
36:30
Speaker 1: means in which this can occur. But you know, when
36:34
Speaker 1: we're thinking about aj in the position she was found in.
36:36
Speaker 1: Anytime we find, particularly a female subject that is deceased
36:41
Speaker 1: and her clothing is disrupted in any way, the first
36:44
Speaker 1: thing I'm thinking about is that this is this has
36:47
Speaker 1: the potential. I've got strong evidence now that this might
36:51
Speaker 1: very well be a sexual assault case. However, you're faced
36:57
Speaker 1: with this great obstacle in her where when you do
37:01
Speaker 1: a traditional rape kit. We hear a lot about rape
37:03
Speaker 1: kits nowadays, the ability to assess what may have been
37:09
Speaker 1: left behind by biological sample, whether it's semen or blood
37:12
Speaker 1: or hair or those it becomes greatly compromised. So I
37:16
Speaker 1: don't know that there's any way that you can actually
37:19
Speaker 1: determine that. Some of the other things that we look
37:21
Speaker 1: for are physical signs of sexual assault and that doesn't
37:23
Speaker 1: always happen, you know, where you're thinking about tearing and
37:26
Speaker 1: those sorts of things, and again you're faced with the
37:30
Speaker 1: obstacle of decomposition. So it was a real tough uphill
37:34
Speaker 1: climb for the investigators. Not just the investigators, but I'm
37:37
Speaker 1: sure the forensic pathologists as well that did the examination well.
37:41
Speaker 1: Wesley Hedzel was convicted in the murder of aj Dsel
37:46
Speaker 1: and sentenced to life in prison. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
37:54
Speaker 1: and this is Bodybags