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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Sisters Missing 45 Years SOLVED! · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:01
Speaker 1: Body Bus with Joseph's Gotten More. I think there's just
0:06
Speaker 1: something liberating about traveling through the night in a car.
0:18
Speaker 1: It's got a lot of power. It's at your back
0:21
Speaker 1: and call underneath your foot she pressed down, And it's
0:27
Speaker 1: particularly thrilling if you're riding where the wind is down.
0:32
Speaker 1: You don't care what your hair looks like, you don't
0:35
Speaker 1: care what else is going on in front of you.
0:39
Speaker 1: And if you've got the radio cranked up with your
0:44
Speaker 1: favorite tunes on there, and it's transporting you back, perhaps
0:54
Speaker 1: to someplace that you love and remember. I often think
0:59
Speaker 1: we're where I live has got one particularly stretched road
1:04
Speaker 1: that winds over the top of the mountain that's literally
1:07
Speaker 1: right behind my home. And I remember, even as a
1:11
Speaker 1: young kid coming over that mountain to get to Jack State.
1:16
Speaker 1: I used to have a nineteen seventy forest Green Tudor
1:20
Speaker 1: Monte Carlo. I love that car tunes playing cutting through
1:27
Speaker 1: the night. But you know the thing about being behind
1:35
Speaker 1: the wheel and having all of the stimulation going on,
1:41
Speaker 1: all these good things, suddenly that can change in the
1:45
Speaker 1: twinkling of an eye. It can take us to an
1:50
Speaker 1: absolute place of terror. Today on body backs, I want
1:57
Speaker 1: to talk about a case involved in three people in
2:02
Speaker 1: a beautiful green nineteen sixty seven for fair lane that
2:10
Speaker 1: couldn't quite stay on the road. As a matter of fact,
2:14
Speaker 1: it launched off of a bridge and created one of
2:17
Speaker 1: the biggest mysteries in the history but the state of Kentucky.
2:24
Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body bags, Dave.
2:31
Speaker 1: I'm going to start this conversation off by giving you
2:35
Speaker 1: a great, big, old fat thank you. This case, our
2:40
Speaker 1: case is that you dropped on me, brother, is unlike
2:46
Speaker 1: anything else that I think today that we have done
2:50
Speaker 1: on body bags. And I'll go ahead and tell everybody
2:55
Speaker 1: out there that this is not a homicide, all right,
3:00
Speaker 1: but it's every bit the mystery. As a matter of fact,
3:04
Speaker 1: we're talking about decades, man, decades, a forty.
3:09
Speaker 2: Five year old missing person's case, Joe, that included a
3:13
Speaker 2: World War One war hero.
3:16
Speaker 1: Yeah. When you dropped that knowledge only I was thinking,
3:19
Speaker 1: you know, did let me ask you something in your
3:22
Speaker 1: young age, do you recall ever meeting a World War
3:28
Speaker 1: One veteran.
3:29
Speaker 2: Joe when we used to go to parades when I
3:31
Speaker 2: was a little kid. Yeah, there would be the Spanish
3:35
Speaker 2: American war guys would lead the pack, you know, on
3:37
Speaker 2: the parade for back then it was called Armistice Day,
3:40
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, yeah, it was always in it was
3:42
Speaker 2: you know, now it's a not Veterans Day. It's in November.
3:47
Speaker 2: No November anyway, that Veterans Day. Yeah, wait, November in
3:52
Speaker 2: Veterans Day. They've changed that, Okay, just to be really
3:55
Speaker 2: historically correct here, Yeah, it was Armistice Day for a
3:58
Speaker 2: long time because it was the end of World War One,
4:01
Speaker 2: you know, the eleventh month, the eleventh day, the eleventh
4:05
Speaker 2: hour hour, and that's what all that meant, and that's
4:08
Speaker 2: why we do Veterans Day on November eleventh, and going
4:11
Speaker 2: to those parades as a kid when I was very young,
4:14
Speaker 2: and I think about this every now and then, you're
4:16
Speaker 2: talking about like nineteen seventy, you know, I'm a little kid,
4:19
Speaker 2: and we would see there were still men who were
4:23
Speaker 2: alive then they were granted they were ninety, but they
4:27
Speaker 2: were in these before World twenty you know, fifteen years
4:31
Speaker 2: before World War One, you know. And I learned to
4:34
Speaker 2: shoot pool from a guy who actually was too old
4:37
Speaker 2: to serve in World War Two. You know, when you
4:41
Speaker 2: get to that point in life, you look back at
4:43
Speaker 2: this and go, yeah, this guy, this man that we're
4:46
Speaker 2: going to talk about today, is one of three people
4:48
Speaker 2: that he had a heroic adventure in World War One
4:51
Speaker 2: as a young man, and he came home without a
4:56
Speaker 2: leg and without emotional strength. He was a shell shocked
5:02
Speaker 2: veteran and was declared incompetent by nineteen thirty two.
5:06
Speaker 1: Isn't that I got a pause you just for a second,
5:09
Speaker 1: because this is something This is a theme that we
5:11
Speaker 1: have hit on before on body bags. Isn't it amazing
5:16
Speaker 1: how maybe this is kind of obvious, but isn't it
5:21
Speaker 1: amazing how one event that occurs in a person's life
5:28
Speaker 1: decades and decades before cannot only impact that individual but
5:38
Speaker 1: that was in the middle of it, but it spreads out.
5:41
Speaker 1: You know. I always talk about throwing throwing a stone
5:44
Speaker 1: into a Placid lake and you see the waves go
5:48
Speaker 1: out that from that moment, and it is like that,
5:51
Speaker 1: And I got to tell you, I think this is
5:53
Speaker 1: this is one of those cases, you know, those events
5:57
Speaker 1: that happened all the way back, know in probably nineteen eighteen,
6:02
Speaker 1: which is when I think our guys showed up or
6:04
Speaker 1: nineteen I'm probably getting nailed by historians in the audience
6:07
Speaker 1: approximating that time. You know that all those decades back, right,
6:13
Speaker 1: it impacts what happened on that August night in nineteen
6:16
Speaker 1: seventy three.
6:17
Speaker 2: And here we are in twenty twenty four talking about
6:20
Speaker 2: how yesterday this story is in the news. Yesterday, the
6:24
Speaker 2: story that we're talking about today is because a term
6:28
Speaker 2: is being used that Joe and I don't like. It's
6:30
Speaker 2: called closure for family. Yeah, and it may be in
6:34
Speaker 2: one of these things because this did happen a long
6:37
Speaker 2: time ago before any of these individuals had really a
6:41
Speaker 2: personal contact on their living relatives now, but they've been
6:44
Speaker 2: part of history. Think about it. If you have a
6:46
Speaker 2: family member, an aunt and uncle's cousin, what have you,
6:49
Speaker 2: that went missing in nineteen seventy three, would you be
6:53
Speaker 2: talking about them all these years? Like whatever happened to John?
6:57
Speaker 2: You know what, what ever happened to him? I mean, yeah,
6:59
Speaker 2: he was a little crazy, the one legged guy. I
7:01
Speaker 2: mean he was, But where is what happened?
7:05
Speaker 1: I think about it. The adults from back then that
7:08
Speaker 1: would remember this individual, they're actually they're they're leaving us now. Yes,
7:15
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things I lament this is
7:17
Speaker 1: my grandparents' generation. I miss I missed the greatest generation
7:21
Speaker 1: right now. I miss those people from that generation. There
7:24
Speaker 1: are very few World War Two veterans, and you know
7:27
Speaker 1: the people that that built you know, built us out,
7:32
Speaker 1: you know, going into the fifties, we're losing all of
7:34
Speaker 1: those people in our history along with them. But you know,
7:37
Speaker 1: you said a mouthful, you know about how and you
7:41
Speaker 1: know you have this this event that there are still
7:46
Speaker 1: people that are around that remember these individuals, and that
7:51
Speaker 1: memory has continued on, you know now all these years later,
7:55
Speaker 1: and how that kind of it's almost like a I
7:58
Speaker 1: don't want to use the ghosts, but it's imprinted onto
8:02
Speaker 1: that family.
8:03
Speaker 2: How do you get past it? When you have this
8:05
Speaker 2: open end there is now this might be the one
8:08
Speaker 2: time the closure fits because there's not closed. This is
8:12
Speaker 2: an open circle. It is not full circle yet. Now
8:15
Speaker 2: we're going to give it to you today and tell
8:17
Speaker 2: you why the family and the extended family why they
8:20
Speaker 2: are excited about finding out what really happened, because, as
8:24
Speaker 2: we mentioned, you don't quick history lesson World War One.
8:29
Speaker 2: For the United States, we didn't get into the war
8:32
Speaker 2: until the end. It was nineteen seventeen before the United
8:35
Speaker 2: States got into the war. The war ended November eleventh,
8:39
Speaker 2: nineteen eighteen. Okay, but that year and a half we
8:43
Speaker 2: were in it. Yeah, it destroyed a lot of lives.
8:46
Speaker 2: That's why, that's why we were not as aggressive against
8:49
Speaker 2: Hitler in the thirties, because it was like, we saw
8:54
Speaker 2: what happened to the generation that came home, and they
8:57
Speaker 2: they were unwilling to do that again. But you know what,
9:00
Speaker 2: overcoming it and World War two happened, and it lasted
9:04
Speaker 2: longer for us. Think about it. You know, from December seventh,
9:06
Speaker 2: nineteen forty one until August of nineteen forty five. That's
9:10
Speaker 2: a long time compared to a year and a half.
9:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, those guys. Those guys didn't do short tours either.
9:16
Speaker 1: Right when you when you were drafted in, it's like
9:20
Speaker 1: you're going to come home, but this is how you'll
9:22
Speaker 1: come home either deceased, grievously injured, or victory. Right, that's it.
9:29
Speaker 1: That's that's the only choice that you have. Points.
9:32
Speaker 2: They would tell yeah, they had this game. You know,
9:35
Speaker 2: they would get a number of points that they would
9:36
Speaker 2: earn if they did certain things. And they're like, yeah,
9:38
Speaker 2: when you have twenty three points, you go home. And
9:40
Speaker 2: they're like, and that was the joke. Hey, you know,
9:43
Speaker 2: they'd get a new guy, and so I only got
9:44
Speaker 2: to do four more of these and I go home like, yeah,
9:46
Speaker 2: I got that two years ago.
9:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you know that that goes to this gentleman
9:52
Speaker 1: that's that's operating this vehicle, this fort Fair Lane. You know,
9:56
Speaker 1: you think about you know, obviously it was a young man.
10:00
Speaker 1: You know when he went in, he was fighting age.
10:04
Speaker 1: Think about how hopeless that would be to go and
10:09
Speaker 1: they didn't fly over there. He went over in a
10:11
Speaker 1: boat with a bunch of other guys packed in like
10:15
Speaker 1: sardines and the yeah yeah, and then to get your
10:20
Speaker 1: leg blown off over there. Yeah, I'd say he's wrecked.
10:25
Speaker 1: He's wrecked. And back then we had talked about it.
10:27
Speaker 1: They didn't use the term. They didn't even use the
10:29
Speaker 1: term battle fatigue, which became kind of popularized World War
10:33
Speaker 1: II Korea, that sort of thing. They used term shell shocked.
10:38
Speaker 1: And that's and if you've never seen, and I urge everybody,
10:44
Speaker 1: if you have never seen these video clips of these
10:51
Speaker 1: guys after World War One that they were studying, where
10:56
Speaker 1: these men are habitually shaking and they crawl under tables
11:01
Speaker 1: and they have video of them just sitting there and
11:03
Speaker 1: they have this wild I'd look and how do you
11:07
Speaker 1: treat that? You know, how do you treat these guys?
11:10
Speaker 1: And that's what they were faced with. And this guy
11:12
Speaker 1: comes home. Not only is he damaged mentally, but he's
11:15
Speaker 1: damaged physically. I'm wondering, how in the world would he
11:18
Speaker 1: even be capable of operating a motor vehicle if he's
11:23
Speaker 1: so damaged mentally and he's he's damaged physically, How does
11:28
Speaker 1: that happen?
11:29
Speaker 2: It didn't work out really well for him driving a car. Joe,
11:33
Speaker 2: You and I both were looking at this, and he
11:35
Speaker 2: was not known as a skillful driver. He had had
11:38
Speaker 2: his license taken away. He'd been in a wreck in
11:40
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy three. The guy had so many wrecks they
11:43
Speaker 2: took his license from him, but he kept driving. The
11:46
Speaker 2: guy was he's a war hero. He's incompetent, and he's illiterate.
11:50
Speaker 2: You're not going to tell him what to do. And
11:53
Speaker 2: so he decides he's going to this family reunion and
11:57
Speaker 2: he took it. The sister that were with him that day,
12:01
Speaker 2: Martha and Flora. Martha and Flora Helmic both went with him,
12:07
Speaker 2: and they were both domestics. I guess is the best
12:09
Speaker 2: way to put it. That was their career. And I
12:12
Speaker 2: have one of them took care of John, mister Kenyon
12:17
Speaker 2: or Keaton rather sorry anyway, they're on their way to
12:21
Speaker 2: a family reunion for mister Kennon, and the battle is
12:25
Speaker 2: did Keaton drive? Was he driving the car or it
12:27
Speaker 2: was one of the women We know that he drove
12:32
Speaker 2: even though he didn't have a license yet. And I'm
12:33
Speaker 2: thinking that you told me about the Ford Fairlane before
12:36
Speaker 2: we started, about it being a man's man kind of car,
12:39
Speaker 2: not an early car. No, I'm thinking of the World
12:42
Speaker 2: War One veteran with an attitude. He's going to be
12:44
Speaker 2: driving that car?
12:45
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah. And you know the thing. The thing
12:47
Speaker 1: about the fair Lane is that it came in It
12:52
Speaker 1: came in varying degrees of beefiness, if you will, you know,
12:56
Speaker 1: because for Ford back then did not make what we
12:59
Speaker 1: think of as muscle cars so much. He had the Mustang,
13:04
Speaker 1: but you know, when it came to muscle, you're thinking
13:07
Speaker 1: a GM product like a Pontiac, you know, or Chevy
13:11
Speaker 1: or even with Chrysler. You know, how could you not
13:14
Speaker 1: think about like the road Runner, you know, those cars
13:17
Speaker 1: like that.
13:19
Speaker 2: Or we could do a whole show, you know, we
13:23
Speaker 2: could create a whole new thing of people who created
13:26
Speaker 2: a body bag out of their muscle car from the sixties.
13:29
Speaker 1: That's what we could do. Yeah, we could, But you
13:31
Speaker 1: know I would digress because I just I'm an admire
13:34
Speaker 1: I don't know enough about them, But boy am I
13:36
Speaker 1: admiring this is this is a this was the It
13:40
Speaker 1: was the standout car for Ford. So you're talking about
13:44
Speaker 1: a car with a lot of power with a guy
13:46
Speaker 1: that it was his car if he had been driving.
13:50
Speaker 1: He's severely handicapped. I don't know. We don't know if
13:54
Speaker 1: he had a prosthesis. I'm thinking that he did not,
13:59
Speaker 1: and so if he is disabled to this point, and
14:02
Speaker 1: he is disabled mentally to this great degree suffering from
14:08
Speaker 1: what would we would call now pete severe PTSD, you
14:14
Speaker 1: really have to wonder on that dark night when they're
14:18
Speaker 1: heading out from Virginia to drive all the way to Kentucky,
14:24
Speaker 1: what did the night hold for them? They never made
14:27
Speaker 1: it to the family reunion, and for decades later, people
14:32
Speaker 1: wondered and families cried. Every now and then, you will
14:49
Speaker 1: have an event in your life. Sometimes it can be
14:53
Speaker 1: something tiny, like Dave have you ever pulled out a
14:57
Speaker 1: pair of old jeans, you put them on, you stick
15:00
Speaker 1: your hand in the pocket, you find twenty dollars bill
15:02
Speaker 1: and it's like, oh, my gosh, It's like it's like
15:06
Speaker 1: the heavens open up and it's like this grand day.
15:08
Speaker 1: You know, I got to know if how did this
15:15
Speaker 1: go down? Where they're missing since August of nineteen seventy three,
15:22
Speaker 1: how does this happen? They've been missing all this time.
15:26
Speaker 1: You know, you think, well, one person can disappear and
15:30
Speaker 1: people will doggedly try to track them down. But oh,
15:34
Speaker 1: my lord, if you have three people that go missing,
15:37
Speaker 1: and you're sitting here and we're talking about one of
15:40
Speaker 1: the more isolated rural areas in America that stretch from
15:44
Speaker 1: western Virginia, not West Virginia, but western Virginia all the
15:47
Speaker 1: way through eastern Kentucky. You're talking about driving through the
15:51
Speaker 1: heart of the Appalachian Mountains. How in the world do
15:55
Speaker 1: you make sense of this?
15:56
Speaker 2: The first week of August and we were talking about
15:59
Speaker 2: whether or not they were driving at the air conditioning,
16:00
Speaker 2: if they even had air conditioning, because the thing is
16:04
Speaker 2: is that they did go missing, and I don't know
16:08
Speaker 2: of what type of search took place. We know that
16:13
Speaker 2: they were expected and they're you know, they were they
16:15
Speaker 2: were on their way to a family reunion, so people
16:17
Speaker 2: expected them to be there. When they didn't arrive, calls
16:19
Speaker 2: were made. There was a lot of assumptions being made
16:22
Speaker 2: that maybe John was driving, maybe they did have an accident,
16:25
Speaker 2: but they couldn't find him anywhere. They tried to retrace
16:28
Speaker 2: the steps that they had been on. But you know what,
16:30
Speaker 2: when nothing was found, people it's not that people lose interest, okay,
16:34
Speaker 2: but they they just have to have a reason to continue.
16:40
Speaker 2: And after a certain period of time of being gone,
16:44
Speaker 2: you don't think they've been kidnapped for money, you know,
16:47
Speaker 2: you don't think there's something. You just think something happened
16:50
Speaker 2: and we can't find them now, and eventually people just
16:53
Speaker 2: tire of talking about it. To be honest with you,
16:56
Speaker 2: I don't know how long that lasted, but I do
16:58
Speaker 2: know this. In twenty sixteen, Lexington, Kentucky Fire Department is
17:06
Speaker 2: doing a training exercise on the Kentucky River. Now, they
17:09
Speaker 2: had used some sonar to find that there were some
17:14
Speaker 2: cars in the river, and instead of just pulling them
17:18
Speaker 2: out or leaving there there to you know, deteriorate. They
17:22
Speaker 2: decided to turn it into an exercise to help teach
17:25
Speaker 2: their fire department how to do water rescues and things
17:28
Speaker 2: like that. So taking there were several cars, most of
17:31
Speaker 2: them were stolen, Joe, and that to this day, I
17:34
Speaker 2: don't understand why people would steal a car only to
17:37
Speaker 2: toss it in the river.
17:38
Speaker 1: You know, well, no, no, no, no, just let me
17:40
Speaker 1: because I had friends of mine that worked for the
17:42
Speaker 1: FBI Task Force Relative Stolen Vehicles and also state police
17:47
Speaker 1: friends of mine. What they do is they strip everything
17:50
Speaker 1: out of a vehicle, okay, and then that shell that's
17:53
Speaker 1: left by the discard that they discard it and so,
17:57
Speaker 1: and it's a legitimate question. Yeah, that's a great answer.
18:01
Speaker 1: One of the things that happens. And you'll find it's amazing.
18:03
Speaker 1: What if you've ever seen these people on YouTube that
18:08
Speaker 1: are doing magnet fishing where they go to the bridge. Yeah,
18:11
Speaker 1: I'm fast stopped.
18:12
Speaker 2: I'll got stuck on them for hours when we stopped
18:14
Speaker 2: taping today. That's my grandson and I will sit there
18:17
Speaker 2: and do that for course. What'd you do all day, Dave?
18:20
Speaker 2: I was working, That's what I was doing, magnet fishing anyway,
18:24
Speaker 2: So there's all these there's these cars and things they
18:26
Speaker 2: found using sonar. They decided to make it a training
18:28
Speaker 2: exercise and they're out there training and they're done. The
18:31
Speaker 2: different fire departments are packed up, they're ready to leave again.
18:34
Speaker 2: It's October of twenty sixteen. And they did find this
18:38
Speaker 2: ford fair Lane in the river, but it was so
18:42
Speaker 2: old and is so rusted, in such bad condition they
18:45
Speaker 2: couldn't even get certain numbers they needed, so they weren't
18:48
Speaker 2: really stressing over it as a vehicle. However, as they
18:52
Speaker 2: were packing up, one of the firemen looks back and
18:56
Speaker 2: sees something and it was obviously not a stick. And
19:04
Speaker 2: I think for those of you in this field, you
19:08
Speaker 2: know what a bone is. You know when you see
19:11
Speaker 2: something that is a bone. It might not be human,
19:13
Speaker 2: could be any number of things, but you know the
19:15
Speaker 2: difference between a stick and a bone. To me, I
19:18
Speaker 2: might not know the difference, but this fireman did. And
19:21
Speaker 2: they went and got it. They knew this was something
19:23
Speaker 2: that they might have disturbed while they were in the river.
19:25
Speaker 2: They find this and they get it and they go, okay,
19:28
Speaker 2: this is obviously a bone. They call in the County
19:32
Speaker 2: corner and this is actually what caught my attention about
19:35
Speaker 2: this story.
19:35
Speaker 1: Joe.
19:37
Speaker 2: They bring in the corner and ask him to take
19:41
Speaker 2: a look at this. Okay, he says it is a bone,
19:46
Speaker 2: but he can't determine if it's human or animal.
19:49
Speaker 1: Yeah.
19:49
Speaker 2: So my first question to you, Joseph Scott Morgan, how
19:54
Speaker 2: is that even an issue? I thought that would be
19:56
Speaker 2: an easy one.
19:57
Speaker 1: No, not necessarily. I think that people would be amazed
20:03
Speaker 1: at the confusion that exists out there, and it's legitimate
20:09
Speaker 1: and you should pay attention. There are certain times when
20:13
Speaker 1: you need to pay attention to confusion and to try
20:16
Speaker 1: to sort things out. I hate making assumptions, particularly when
20:20
Speaker 1: it comes to investigations, and it's very very normal. You
20:27
Speaker 1: talk about the corner that came out after the fire
20:31
Speaker 1: department found the single bone. There have been people I've
20:37
Speaker 1: been on duty when this happens. I will get a
20:40
Speaker 1: call from the front desk and they'll say, yeah, we
20:43
Speaker 1: need somebody in investigations. There's someone in the lobby with
20:45
Speaker 1: a bone. And that happens with great frequency. They're out
20:49
Speaker 1: in their backyard, they're digging, or they're wandering walking down
20:53
Speaker 1: the road, or they're out in the woods on a
20:54
Speaker 1: hike and they find a bone and look, I encourage
20:58
Speaker 1: if you find a bone, you don't know what it is,
21:00
Speaker 1: get it to somebody. There's no shame in it. The
21:03
Speaker 1: lieon's share of the time when they would bring a
21:06
Speaker 1: bone to us, it would be one of two bones.
21:09
Speaker 1: Itoul are one of two species of bones, cow or hog,
21:14
Speaker 1: and it's generally as a result of barbecuing, people cooking
21:19
Speaker 1: and then they'll discard bones. Really, yes, that's funny. I
21:23
Speaker 1: would never have guessed that, and you know, the historian
21:26
Speaker 1: inside of me. One of the things that always held
21:29
Speaker 1: out hope for is that during the Civil War, the
21:33
Speaker 1: Battle of Atlanta, the Confederacy had trench lines that literally
21:38
Speaker 1: ran right by the Medical Examiner's office, the southern perimeter
21:42
Speaker 1: around the city. And I always held out hope that
21:47
Speaker 1: somebody would be digging in their backyard and recover, you know,
21:50
Speaker 1: historic remains like that, because for me, that's intellectually stimulating.
21:54
Speaker 1: Never happened, unfortunately, But you have to look at the
22:00
Speaker 1: bone and try to understand. That's why when people go
22:04
Speaker 1: through like when they go to the Body Farm in
22:07
Speaker 1: places like that, or to the Maple Center down at
22:09
Speaker 1: the University of Florida, or out to University of Arizona,
22:13
Speaker 1: where they've got a fine program as well. They spend
22:17
Speaker 1: the anthropologists will spend a goodly portion of their time
22:20
Speaker 1: examining the skeletons of a variety of different types of animals,
22:24
Speaker 1: and that's so they can delineate between human versus non human.
22:29
Speaker 2: Now I feel so much better about this.
22:31
Speaker 1: Oh.
22:32
Speaker 2: I really did think it was just to because I
22:35
Speaker 2: don't know. I thought, how difficult can it be?
22:37
Speaker 1: So it really is.
22:38
Speaker 2: That's why this guy Gary gin the Fayette County Corner
22:42
Speaker 2: and he could not determine exactly what it was. He
22:45
Speaker 2: called in a retired anthropologist, doctor Emily Craig. Yeah, and
22:50
Speaker 2: she gets a look at it and says, not only
22:52
Speaker 2: is he human? I can tell you this is female.
22:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, isn't that something? Yeah? How is this? One?
22:58
Speaker 2: Guy can't even tell you if it's human? And she's like, oh, yeah,
23:01
Speaker 2: so as a matter of fact, you think it's Aunt Martha,
23:03
Speaker 2: you know.
23:04
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, listen to the Corner's great credit.
23:09
Speaker 1: I am more impressed with people that admit that they
23:14
Speaker 1: don't know than those that walk around saying that they do.
23:17
Speaker 1: I've learned so much more by saying I don't know
23:19
Speaker 1: something in life, and when you can call in an expert,
23:23
Speaker 1: you have the phone number of a physical anthropologist or
23:26
Speaker 1: a forensic anthropologist that's nearby. Utilize it, man, utilize it.
23:31
Speaker 1: I always tell when I'm teaching classes, for instance, I
23:35
Speaker 1: reach out. I tell police officers. You don't you do
23:39
Speaker 1: not want to wait until the day that you have
23:42
Speaker 1: a catastrophic event in your jurisdiction to build a relationship
23:47
Speaker 1: with a forensic dentist or forensic anthropologist that should have
23:51
Speaker 1: been done years prior to Okay, you don't want to
23:54
Speaker 1: wait to end. So the corner obviously had this person,
23:58
Speaker 1: maybe on speed dial, I don't know. But the fact
24:00
Speaker 1: that they were able to look at the single bone
24:04
Speaker 1: and not only say that not only is it human,
24:08
Speaker 1: it's female. It goes into the discussion that we recently
24:11
Speaker 1: had with the Melissa Wolfenberger where when we examine human
24:21
Speaker 1: remains skeletal human remains, there are two terms that are
24:25
Speaker 1: used pretty frequently, and that is, as it applies to
24:29
Speaker 1: male skeletons, we will refer to them many times their
24:32
Speaker 1: features as being robust, but with female skeletons we use
24:40
Speaker 1: the term grassole, which means fine it's finer, more dainty,
24:44
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. And also some of the features
24:46
Speaker 1: are a little bit different. But you know, so even myself,
24:50
Speaker 1: as you know, as much experience as I've had around
24:53
Speaker 1: the dead, I'm not going to rely on my own
24:55
Speaker 1: judgment relative to a skeleton remain. I'm going to try
24:59
Speaker 1: to find the closest expert that I can, specifically a
25:02
Speaker 1: physical anthropologist that has experienced not just in examining skeletal remains,
25:09
Speaker 1: but Dave, there's another element to this that is quite striking.
25:16
Speaker 1: This remain, the single remain, had been in an aquatic
25:23
Speaker 1: environment for years and years and years, therefore even further
25:31
Speaker 1: increasing the degree of difficulty in assessing who this belonged to.
25:49
Speaker 1: I would wager that if you're trying to measure a
25:55
Speaker 1: degree of difficulty when it comes to crime scenes, when
26:02
Speaker 1: you get into an aquatic environment, it can either be
26:07
Speaker 1: one hundred feet deep or knee deep. There is a
26:11
Speaker 1: level of difficulty that comes into play where all evidence
26:15
Speaker 1: is impacted. I know that, and I urge anybody that
26:20
Speaker 1: is listening to please seek out my good buddy Bobby Chacone,
26:25
Speaker 1: and he's a retired FBI agent, and he headed up
26:30
Speaker 1: the dive team for the FBI and became quite famous
26:33
Speaker 1: as an underwater crime scene investigator. He is fascinating individual.
26:38
Speaker 1: I was actually appeared with him on Doctor Phil's show,
26:43
Speaker 1: I think two years ago, and he is just remarkably
26:47
Speaker 1: bright and has great insight things I don't normally think about.
26:51
Speaker 1: And Dave, when we're talking about this bone that was recovered,
26:55
Speaker 1: there's all kinds of things that can happen to bone underwater.
26:58
Speaker 1: A lot of it has to do with the chemistry
27:01
Speaker 1: of the water. For instance, you can have kind of
27:03
Speaker 1: a decalcification that takes place with the bone depended upon
27:09
Speaker 1: you know, what type of it. You know, if you're
27:11
Speaker 1: for instance, if you're downstream from some factory, for instance,
27:15
Speaker 1: the water's not as necessarily pure in pristine as a
27:19
Speaker 1: rocky mountain stream. You never know, and not to mention
27:24
Speaker 1: things are going to be mud covered. Most rivers in
27:27
Speaker 1: the South have a lot of silt on the bottom
27:29
Speaker 1: of them and sometimes it's hard to make heads or tails.
27:33
Speaker 1: Did I got to ask in this case, did they
27:35
Speaker 1: only find this single bone?
27:38
Speaker 2: You know, it's so funny, Joe, when they found the
27:40
Speaker 2: one bone that started all of this, you know, I
27:42
Speaker 2: mentioned it was in October. It was a couple of
27:44
Speaker 2: weeks before they identified it, first of all as human
27:47
Speaker 2: and female. That they were able to arrange going back
27:51
Speaker 2: to the site to pull that Ford fair Lane out
27:55
Speaker 2: of the river. Oh and when they got it out
27:59
Speaker 2: of the river, they found more bones in the car. Now,
28:02
Speaker 2: remember we already kind of we didn't bury the lead
28:05
Speaker 2: by telling you there were three people in the car.
28:07
Speaker 2: It's just there were three people in the car because
28:09
Speaker 2: we had to tell you that to tell you why
28:11
Speaker 2: they found it in the river to start with. But
28:14
Speaker 2: when they're pulling the car out, they don't have the
28:16
Speaker 2: information we already have given you. They're blind to this.
28:20
Speaker 2: They just know they found one bone belongs to a female.
28:22
Speaker 2: Pull the car out and find more. Now here's what
28:25
Speaker 2: they found. They found the vehicle identified Martha helmet. Okay,
28:35
Speaker 2: they found information. Now Martha they found and this is
28:39
Speaker 2: what really got me, Joe, they were able they found
28:42
Speaker 2: bones of a foot in pantyhose. Wow, they found an
28:49
Speaker 2: elevated shoe, a shoe that has like a big heel
28:52
Speaker 2: on it. Yes, Now, I remember how we mentioned that
28:56
Speaker 2: John the older man, that he didn't have a leg. Well,
29:02
Speaker 2: we're talking about a woman's shoe that was elevated, and
29:07
Speaker 2: then they found a coin purse that identified other family members.
29:10
Speaker 2: So they started figuring out they've got somebody here that
29:14
Speaker 2: they can identify by certain aspects of knowing her family background.
29:19
Speaker 2: And then they find a fractured tibbia bone, Yes, that
29:25
Speaker 2: had never healed properly, never healed correctly. Now it was
29:30
Speaker 2: so bad Joe that it caused her leg to be
29:33
Speaker 2: shorter than the other. And all I'm thinking is did
29:37
Speaker 2: she break that bone as a child and it was
29:40
Speaker 2: never set properly. They didn't take her to the doctor,
29:42
Speaker 2: and it caused her to have a permanent lifetime of.
29:47
Speaker 1: Pain.
29:47
Speaker 2: I mean it could if it doesn't heal, right, that's
29:50
Speaker 2: got to cause serious pain.
29:51
Speaker 1: Yeah. And bones. Bones are fascinating, aren't they because they're
29:54
Speaker 1: going to mend. Yeah. And when you see, like at autopsy,
29:58
Speaker 1: when I've seen some of the most striking findings when
30:04
Speaker 1: it comes to when we dissect out areas, Say, if
30:06
Speaker 1: we've got an anomaly like a misshapen arm, many times
30:11
Speaker 1: we'll do a dissection on the arm just to see, well,
30:13
Speaker 1: why is it misshapen or to verify it. And many times,
30:16
Speaker 1: for instance, the humorous, which is the large bone, the
30:20
Speaker 1: upper bone in the arm. I've seen where when bones
30:25
Speaker 1: kind of naturally mend, you'll see this kind of calcified
30:30
Speaker 1: area turns into many times like a big knot and
30:33
Speaker 1: the bone is trying to fuse back together. And it does,
30:37
Speaker 1: but the problem is this, you won't have the same
30:40
Speaker 1: length to it, and many times you won't have the
30:43
Speaker 1: same range of motion because it's all everything impacts everything else,
30:49
Speaker 1: the biomechanics that are involved in it. And so when
30:54
Speaker 1: in forensics, there's a term that we use called individualization,
30:58
Speaker 1: and boys got all all of the trademarks, if you will,
31:06
Speaker 1: of somebody that is specifically we pray for cases like
31:09
Speaker 1: this of the unidentified. The fact that she's got a
31:16
Speaker 1: tibia that has been incorrectly fused. There's evidence that it
31:20
Speaker 1: has been previously broken and this could have happened. It
31:23
Speaker 1: could have happened in childhood, or it could have happened
31:26
Speaker 1: in adulthood. And you know, we know that she doesn't
31:29
Speaker 1: come from a lot of money. And there are people
31:32
Speaker 1: that walk around on broken bones. I've met them and
31:35
Speaker 1: it's excruciatingly painful. Maybe it was never set properly, but
31:41
Speaker 1: this is the one thing that we would know if
31:42
Speaker 1: we were investigators going back to ask her history. If
31:46
Speaker 1: we didn't know about the shoe for instance, all right,
31:48
Speaker 1: and we had this bone, we could go back and
31:52
Speaker 1: those that are still living that remember Martha, did she
31:55
Speaker 1: walk with a limp? Did she favor one side? And
31:59
Speaker 1: here's the other thing. That bone in her leg. Yes,
32:05
Speaker 1: it's shorter, and yes it would have caused her Did
32:07
Speaker 1: you know that that impacts also now that you have
32:11
Speaker 1: the tib fib which are the two lower bones in
32:14
Speaker 1: the leg. That impacts the knee. It impacts the femur,
32:20
Speaker 1: which is the largest bone. It's the largest long bone
32:23
Speaker 1: in the body that's from knee to hip. It impacts
32:27
Speaker 1: the hip. So like where the ball of the head
32:32
Speaker 1: of the femur fits into the pelvis, you would have
32:36
Speaker 1: there would be markings on the interior of that pelvis
32:40
Speaker 1: because it's atypical because of the shape of her leg
32:44
Speaker 1: and the legs are asymmetrical, so you know she'd be
32:46
Speaker 1: dragging a leg behind her. It's going to impact her
32:49
Speaker 1: entire body. So if all you have are skeletal remains remaining,
32:54
Speaker 1: you can look for those little markers. If we're absent
32:57
Speaker 1: the shoe. But boy, I'm a dude. I'm amazed by
33:01
Speaker 1: two things. First Off, they found panty hose nylon, which
33:05
Speaker 1: is a synthetic, and that contained a bag of bones.
33:09
Speaker 1: You know that when we go out to recover skeletal remains,
33:15
Speaker 1: some of the first things that disappear are the bones
33:18
Speaker 1: of the feet and the bones of the hands, and
33:19
Speaker 1: that's because they're so small and there's so many of them.
33:21
Speaker 1: The fact that they recovered multiple bones of the foot
33:25
Speaker 1: and it's all contained in this what remains of this pantyhose,
33:30
Speaker 1: and you know that they're made out of a synthetic.
33:33
Speaker 1: More than likely it's probably a synthetic blend of something,
33:37
Speaker 1: because it's not just pure nylon, it's probably something else.
33:41
Speaker 1: It gives you an idea, I think when you really
33:45
Speaker 1: scratch your head over how resilient these materials are. And
33:48
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken, they found her skirt or a dress.
33:53
Speaker 2: It was a great dress that she wore. And just
33:57
Speaker 2: so it can be clear here, she was kind of
33:59
Speaker 2: a large lady. And oftentimes, when we're in our mid
34:03
Speaker 2: to late fifties, if we're not people of means and
34:06
Speaker 2: we're large, we don't have a big wardrobe, and Martha
34:10
Speaker 2: was a person who didn't have much of a wardrobe,
34:12
Speaker 2: and so people knew her by her great, great dress,
34:15
Speaker 2: and they found it. They found enough of the gray
34:18
Speaker 2: dress that they were able to use that as part
34:21
Speaker 2: of the identific not the actual identification of it. But
34:25
Speaker 2: like backing up, they were talking about how everything they
34:27
Speaker 2: found in the car of hers it just reinforced the
34:31
Speaker 2: fact that it was her because.
34:33
Speaker 1: A, yeah, it's a confirmatory piece of that. Yeah, you're
34:35
Speaker 1: absolutely right, man.
34:36
Speaker 2: But they didn't find anything from Flora or from John.
34:41
Speaker 2: What are that?
34:42
Speaker 1: Well, I gotta tell you, I've never been to the
34:47
Speaker 1: Kentucky River all right. Now. My understanding is where the
34:50
Speaker 1: car went in is near an old ferry site, and
34:54
Speaker 1: I think the fairy still actually exists.
34:57
Speaker 2: This Wait a minute, This is what you were talking
34:58
Speaker 2: to me about off air, that it would have been
35:00
Speaker 2: deeper there.
35:02
Speaker 1: Well yeah, yeah, because it didn't go off it's hard
35:06
Speaker 1: to understand. But let's say, for instance, it went off
35:09
Speaker 1: of a bridge, all right, went off of a bridge.
35:13
Speaker 1: Generally around the pilings of a bridge, you're gonna have
35:17
Speaker 1: a lot more depth perhaps, And depending upon depth, First off,
35:25
Speaker 1: things are going to sink to the bottom. You're talking
35:29
Speaker 1: about a car. Car is not going to float here.
35:34
Speaker 1: Here's what's kind of fascinating. I think if we believe
35:40
Speaker 1: that that car did not have air conditioning, Dude, it's
35:46
Speaker 1: August in the South. Guess what. The fair Lane is
35:52
Speaker 1: a two door car, so they would have had both
35:55
Speaker 1: of those windows down. I think it had vent windows
35:57
Speaker 1: in the back. Remember vent windows. They would roll down
35:59
Speaker 1: their kind of triangle shaped, so you've got this big,
36:02
Speaker 1: wide open space. For some reason, Martha is perhaps she
36:06
Speaker 1: may have been in the back seat, so that would
36:09
Speaker 1: facilitate her being wedged in the back seat. The other
36:12
Speaker 1: two if they're not belted, which most people were not belted,
36:17
Speaker 1: and even if you were, I think most OF's cars
36:19
Speaker 1: came with only lap belts. Dude, with the flow and
36:23
Speaker 1: the volume of water in there, they're going to float out.
36:26
Speaker 1: And Lord only knows where they wound up. You know,
36:28
Speaker 1: those those bodies wound up downstream somewhere, I think. Okay,
36:33
Speaker 1: but the fact that she was even found, or what
36:37
Speaker 1: remained of her body was found inside of that vehicle
36:43
Speaker 1: is pretty fascinating. I even think this was I don't know,
36:46
Speaker 1: there's something that it was kind of creepy chilling to me.
36:50
Speaker 1: They actually found her coin purse as well, I believe,
36:53
Speaker 1: didn't they date and it still had coins in it.
36:55
Speaker 1: But you had mentioned something else that was kind of significant.
37:00
Speaker 2: Actually had a key for a trailer, and you and
37:02
Speaker 2: I looked this up because the key was for a trailer,
37:06
Speaker 2: like we were wondering, is it like a camper trailer
37:09
Speaker 2: or a house trailer, no matter what it was, it
37:12
Speaker 2: was identified as this camper trailer or this trailer rather
37:17
Speaker 2: that she used to live in. It was a very
37:19
Speaker 2: significant fine because everything they found just confirmed who they
37:22
Speaker 2: had found, all the way, from the shoe to the nihil.
37:26
Speaker 2: You know, the bone. The bone is what got me.
37:29
Speaker 2: The bone fracture that didn't heal, the shoe that has
37:31
Speaker 2: to have a bigger heel. That little coin purse, I mean,
37:35
Speaker 2: how do you find that in a river after forty years?
37:39
Speaker 2: You know?
37:39
Speaker 1: It just I'm wondering if when this is a fascinating
37:44
Speaker 1: thing to me when they because you got to take
37:46
Speaker 1: great care of Dave. You know, you had already said
37:48
Speaker 1: that this car is fragile. Yeah, there's a picture of
37:51
Speaker 1: it that exists, and when you said it's rusted out, brother,
37:54
Speaker 1: it is rusted out. You would have to take This
37:58
Speaker 1: is not something you're not just lifting law side of
38:00
Speaker 1: a river that a beaver dam or stones that are
38:05
Speaker 1: You're talking about the totality of that vehicle is evidence
38:09
Speaker 1: and you would have to take such care with it's
38:11
Speaker 1: so very fragile. This is an artifact almost to get
38:16
Speaker 1: it over to shore and set down carefully so that
38:18
Speaker 1: you could examine everything. And just so folks understand, when
38:22
Speaker 1: you pull something out of a river like this, your
38:26
Speaker 1: biggest your biggest obstacle, one of the biggest obstacles you're
38:31
Speaker 1: going to have is going to be mud and silt.
38:34
Speaker 1: It is going to be jam packed with this stuff.
38:38
Speaker 1: So you would have to go in and I can
38:40
Speaker 1: only imagine depending upon the attitude of the vehicle, the
38:45
Speaker 1: physical attitude of the vehicle in the water, over all
38:48
Speaker 1: these years with water floods, You can imagine all the
38:51
Speaker 1: years that river's flooded since that fateful night in nineteen
38:56
Speaker 1: seventy three, things being washed in, washed out, maybe trees
39:00
Speaker 1: and hung up on it, all of this other stuff.
39:02
Speaker 1: It's all settling to the bottom. And maybe, just maybe
39:06
Speaker 1: that's why they found the remnant of the foot and
39:10
Speaker 1: the nihl On maybe it was buried beneath the silt
39:13
Speaker 1: contained within the car, all that deposition of stuff that
39:18
Speaker 1: was in there for years and years. But they can't
39:21
Speaker 1: find hiding the hair of these other two occupants. They've
39:25
Speaker 1: they're gone, I mean gone, as in gone gone. You'll
39:29
Speaker 1: never see them again because the Lord only knows where
39:32
Speaker 1: those bodies wound up. But you know, Martha was there
39:35
Speaker 1: to tell the tale, Dave, and the tragedy of this,
39:38
Speaker 1: I think, and I'm not trying to diminish the World
39:40
Speaker 1: War One veteran, but you've got sisters here, and the
39:48
Speaker 1: impact that that's going to have is far reaching. It's generational.
39:52
Speaker 1: That's that's a sorrow that never goes away. It's something
39:55
Speaker 1: that people will remember. It becomes the stuff of lore
39:59
Speaker 1: and family, you know, for for younger and younger generations.
40:02
Speaker 1: But the fact that this firefighter, this deputy chief, would
40:08
Speaker 1: be willing to engage in this and he's becoming you know,
40:11
Speaker 1: he's you don't normally think of firefighters as investigators. Now
40:16
Speaker 1: you think of arson investigators. But you know, he begins
40:19
Speaker 1: on his own to do Google searches and you know
40:22
Speaker 1: they wind up. Actually, I think that he connected through
40:27
Speaker 1: a blog that turned out, you know, where where they
40:31
Speaker 1: found this family in Virginia from all these years ago,
40:34
Speaker 1: where these loved ones are missing. And you know, can
40:38
Speaker 1: you imagine getting this thunderbolt out out of nowhere of people,
40:44
Speaker 1: you know, saying, look, we might have information about this
40:47
Speaker 1: missing family member of yours. But you know, the beauty
40:50
Speaker 1: of this is that as a result, and this is
40:55
Speaker 1: quite amazing to me scientifically, that these skeletal elements that
41:01
Speaker 1: they took such care with the recovery of actually yielded
41:07
Speaker 1: viable DNA. And now these things had been submerged all
41:11
Speaker 1: of this time. Dave, he was able to go out
41:15
Speaker 1: or they were able to go out and get a
41:18
Speaker 1: third generation DNA sample from a descendant of this family,
41:27
Speaker 1: and David was a spot on match, spot on match
41:30
Speaker 1: to Martha's family. Can you imagine this just out of nowhere? Now,
41:35
Speaker 1: you know, we'll probably never know what actually happened to
41:41
Speaker 1: John Keaton and unfortunately Flora, but we have established that
41:47
Speaker 1: they were all there together that night when that car
41:53
Speaker 1: went in to that river in Kentucky in that black
42:00
Speaker 1: driven off and began to sink to the bottom. But
42:05
Speaker 1: one witness remained and that was the mortal remains of
42:11
Speaker 1: Martha Helmet. She bore testimony that they were there, and
42:17
Speaker 1: that in some ways she was still there, and only
42:22
Speaker 1: all that remains told the final tale. I'm Joseph Scott
42:28
Speaker 1: Morgan and this is Body Backs