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Body Bags: Dead in Carlton Reserve · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:09
Speaker 1: Body Backs with Joseph Scott Morgan. You know a thing
0:19
Speaker 1: about swamps is that they reclaim everything. It doesn't matter
0:24
Speaker 1: if it's a plant or an animal, in case we're
0:28
Speaker 1: gonna talk about today a human. I was born and
0:32
Speaker 1: raised in Louisiana. I've been around swamps my entire life.
0:35
Speaker 1: I started out my career as a medical evil death
0:38
Speaker 1: investigator in New Orleans. And just when you think you've
0:42
Speaker 1: seen it all, you never know what's going to show up.
0:46
Speaker 1: Day We've found Brian Laundry. I'm Joe Scott Morgan and
0:52
Speaker 1: this is body Backs back with me again today is
0:59
Speaker 1: my friend Jackie Howard, executive producer of Crime Stories with
1:04
Speaker 1: Nancy Grace. Jackie, have you ever seen anything like this?
1:07
Speaker 1: They have Brian Laundry. What do we know up to
1:11
Speaker 1: this point? Well, Joe, we know the remains found in
1:13
Speaker 1: the Carlton Reserve do belong to fugitive Brian Laundry. The
1:18
Speaker 1: FBI made that announcement today. This all began when Chris
1:22
Speaker 1: and ROBERTA. Laundry, Brian's parents, headed to Carlton Reserve to
1:26
Speaker 1: search for their son. About thirty minutes into their search,
1:29
Speaker 1: they came upon a white dry bag and a backpack
1:33
Speaker 1: that contained items that reportedly belonged to Brian laundry. As
1:38
Speaker 1: they turned those articles over to law enforcement. As they
1:41
Speaker 1: turned those articles over to law enforcement, they were informed
1:44
Speaker 1: that partial remains had been found. Jackie, I gotta tell you,
1:49
Speaker 1: one of the most striking things about this whole case
1:51
Speaker 1: is that the parents were out there. I don't know
1:54
Speaker 1: that I ever recall a case where, you know, maybe
1:58
Speaker 1: I've had cases in the past where the the family
2:00
Speaker 1: actually found a person, but the dad walks up on
2:05
Speaker 1: all of these so called items, And that's something I
2:07
Speaker 1: want to address. That term items items can be defined
2:11
Speaker 1: very very broadly. And as soon as I heard the
2:15
Speaker 1: term item, it was quickly followed thereafter by saying the
2:19
Speaker 1: medical examiner was on the way, and then the van
2:22
Speaker 1: rolled up. Let me tell you some about medical examiners
2:25
Speaker 1: and corners. Medical examiners and corners do not, and I repeat,
2:30
Speaker 1: do not show up at a scene unless they are
2:36
Speaker 1: specifically invited. And let me tell you why. They serve
2:39
Speaker 1: no purpose out there unless there is a body. So
2:43
Speaker 1: that means that these items that they found, and I
2:46
Speaker 1: think that's kind of a broad way of saying that
2:49
Speaker 1: not only had they found the backpack and the waterproof bag,
2:53
Speaker 1: but they had also found at least part of a body.
2:58
Speaker 1: Now we don't know how much because their own it
3:00
Speaker 1: came out that it's partial remain. That means that it's incomplete.
3:06
Speaker 1: But you know, with the m out there, the first
3:08
Speaker 1: thing we saw occurred as soon as they showed up.
3:10
Speaker 1: They started throwing this tent up out there. And at first,
3:14
Speaker 1: you know, I think a lot of folks were looking
3:15
Speaker 1: at this thinking, no, hell, you know what, maybe the
3:18
Speaker 1: tent is on top of where the body was. No,
3:20
Speaker 1: it wasn't. It wasn't. That was like a control area
3:24
Speaker 1: where they could bring these items back to an examine them,
3:27
Speaker 1: because you could see tables in there. Trust me, you're
3:29
Speaker 1: not going to put tables on top of a deceased person.
3:33
Speaker 1: You're just not going to do that. So they were
3:35
Speaker 1: actually leaving the tent and going out to the exact
3:38
Speaker 1: location where the body was found. Now, this is a problem,
3:43
Speaker 1: it's a major problem because they say partial human remain.
3:47
Speaker 1: What does that mean. Well, they're seeing something out there
3:52
Speaker 1: that is indicative of the fact that this body has
3:56
Speaker 1: become somehow. And I'm going to throw a word out
3:58
Speaker 1: here that some of you may not have heard. The
4:01
Speaker 1: body might be disarticulated. And when bodies begin to decompose,
4:08
Speaker 1: they actually become much easier, essentially at the joints, to
4:12
Speaker 1: pull apart. That's why when scavengers show up, you know,
4:15
Speaker 1: like dogs and possums and raccoons and this sort of
4:18
Speaker 1: thing codes, they can literally grab hold of an ankle
4:22
Speaker 1: and begin to tug, and that leg at the knee
4:26
Speaker 1: will actually become disarticulated. Sometimes the foot becomes disarticulated, the arms,
4:30
Speaker 1: so forth and so on. And that's problem in that
4:35
Speaker 1: these remains could very well be scattered. Now, any number
4:38
Speaker 1: of times I've been out on scenes where you walk
4:40
Speaker 1: up and there is the core of the body, if
4:44
Speaker 1: you will, that's a real popular term nowadays. I'm going
4:46
Speaker 1: to work on my core. But think about your chest
4:49
Speaker 1: and your aptom and that central part. It's called the axilla,
4:53
Speaker 1: the axilla skeleton that is where your spine is, your
4:56
Speaker 1: rib cage, pell this these sorts of things. Sometimes I
4:59
Speaker 1: will main intact, but the limbs, the feet, the hands,
5:05
Speaker 1: the humorous you know, these longer bones, sometimes they're gone.
5:09
Speaker 1: Sometimes they're still intact, but there'll be scattered. There will
5:12
Speaker 1: be scattered about, and if this is scavenger activity, generally
5:18
Speaker 1: animals don't go too far away with it. It's interesting
5:21
Speaker 1: that you say that, Joe, because what was found in
5:24
Speaker 1: the Carlton Reserve or skeletal remains bones? What does that
5:29
Speaker 1: tell you? Yeah, well that doesn't surprise me at all,
5:32
Speaker 1: because you know why you have skeletal remains. I know
5:35
Speaker 1: a lot of people are gonna think. You know, I've
5:37
Speaker 1: heard people talk about alligators. I've heard people talk about
5:39
Speaker 1: other things. Let me tell you why this is basic biology.
5:44
Speaker 1: That area is so hot, it is so human, so
5:47
Speaker 1: very wet, that the tissue that's rest on our bones
5:54
Speaker 1: in life, as you begin to decompose, it has a
5:57
Speaker 1: process that it goes through and it's environ It's what
6:00
Speaker 1: we call environmentally dependent. So the rate at which a
6:04
Speaker 1: body actually decomposes is dictated by environmental conditions and in
6:09
Speaker 1: this case, specifically heat. You think about any experiment that
6:13
Speaker 1: you conducted when you were a kid in school. It
6:16
Speaker 1: all started with heat, didn't It had a bunch and burner,
6:19
Speaker 1: alcohol burner. You had to fire that thing up, and
6:22
Speaker 1: you know, it speeds this process up. So the hotter
6:25
Speaker 1: things are, the body begins to come apart. So what
6:29
Speaker 1: that tells me is that they're dealing with skeletal remains
6:34
Speaker 1: and they don't have a complete skeleton. When they talk
6:36
Speaker 1: about partial remains, is that a quantitative phrase at all?
6:41
Speaker 1: I mean, are we talking about if you had a hand,
6:45
Speaker 1: a finger as opposed to ninety percent of a body,
6:49
Speaker 1: no matter what it is, is still going to be
6:51
Speaker 1: called partial remains. I think that that's an excellent question,
6:55
Speaker 1: and I'm glad you asked that because I think that
6:58
Speaker 1: if they're saying partial remains, it's not simply going to
7:01
Speaker 1: be that maybe one hand has been compromised, or maybe
7:04
Speaker 1: you're missing the foot up to the ankle. Now that's
7:07
Speaker 1: not what we're talking about. They're talking about that there
7:10
Speaker 1: is a significant portion of this body that is absent
7:13
Speaker 1: from the central portion that they have recovered. And again
7:16
Speaker 1: I go back to spine, ribs, pelvis, perhaps a skull.
7:22
Speaker 1: You folks might be surprised to learn that many times
7:26
Speaker 1: a skull is hard to recover because if animals do
7:29
Speaker 1: come along, particularly dogs, dogs love skulls. I've had any
7:34
Speaker 1: number of cases over my career where dogs have drug
7:37
Speaker 1: skulls up into the backyards of folks. Can you imagine
7:40
Speaker 1: walking down in your backyard and your dog is out
7:42
Speaker 1: there playing with a human skull. It's happened. It's happening
7:45
Speaker 1: a number of times. And so that in and of
7:49
Speaker 1: itself is troubling because if you think that you're dealing
7:52
Speaker 1: with an incomplete set of remains, all kinds of other
7:56
Speaker 1: problems begin to arise from that because you can't you
8:01
Speaker 1: cannot evaluate the body or the skeletonized remains in their totality.
8:07
Speaker 1: And that's what we do in forensic pathology and medical
8:11
Speaker 1: legal death investigation. We look at the body in its totality.
8:15
Speaker 1: That is, all systems are impacted, all systems are affected,
8:19
Speaker 1: and it begins to paint the picture. They have brin laundry,
8:45
Speaker 1: at least part of a body. You know, when that
8:47
Speaker 1: first came up in the news, an area where the
8:50
Speaker 1: police had intensely been searching for a protracted period of time.
8:53
Speaker 1: We're talking about weeks and days, hours and hours of
8:58
Speaker 1: man time that have been spent out in this marsh.
9:02
Speaker 1: I want to continue to discuss, you know, how how
9:05
Speaker 1: exactly do you go about examining a skeleton versus say,
9:10
Speaker 1: a partially intact body. And when I say partially intact.
9:14
Speaker 1: Just understand this. What I'm what I mean is that
9:16
Speaker 1: we're talking about soft tissue. I'm talking about skin, I'm
9:20
Speaker 1: talking about muscle, I'm talking about the organs, all right.
9:23
Speaker 1: And if you have a totally skeletonized body, then that
9:32
Speaker 1: creates a myriad of problems because you don't have points
9:34
Speaker 1: of reference, all points of reference relative to things like well,
9:38
Speaker 1: I'll give you a good one, hemorrhage. Let's say somebody
9:42
Speaker 1: has has sustained an injury to their neck. I don't know,
9:45
Speaker 1: I'm just speculating here. Let's say that they've been choked
9:49
Speaker 1: in some way, maybe you know, throttled like we remember
9:54
Speaker 1: with Gabby, or they've had a ligature around their neck.
9:58
Speaker 1: Guess what, if body skeletonized, there's not gonna be the
10:02
Speaker 1: evidence of that. You're not going to see hemorrhage in
10:05
Speaker 1: that particular case. And so it makes makes a real
10:09
Speaker 1: daunting challenge for the forensic pathologists that is going to
10:13
Speaker 1: begin to examine this body and try to determine exactly
10:17
Speaker 1: what brought about the cause of death. Okay, wait a minute, Joe,
10:20
Speaker 1: you're talking about the cause of death right there. How
10:24
Speaker 1: is this difference between whether it's bones or soft tissue.
10:29
Speaker 1: How is that going to play into the identification of
10:32
Speaker 1: the body. Well, you know, that's that's a good point,
10:35
Speaker 1: because let's just say that you do have a body
10:38
Speaker 1: that is partially decomposed. And we do know this. We
10:42
Speaker 1: do know that Brian Laundry had some tattoos on his body. Now,
10:47
Speaker 1: something that our listeners might not understand is that as
10:52
Speaker 1: skin begins to deteriorate, it takes on this kind of
10:56
Speaker 1: tanned appearance. It almost has the appearance of leather in
11:01
Speaker 1: many in many circumstances, and that's right on target. And
11:05
Speaker 1: I'll tell you why, because the skin becomes dehydrated, but
11:08
Speaker 1: it also gets kind of murky. It's hard to appreciate
11:10
Speaker 1: special features with tattoos. Specifically, we do something that's called
11:15
Speaker 1: skin scraping at autopsy, where we actually take the leting
11:20
Speaker 1: edge of a scalpel blade and we don't slice. We
11:23
Speaker 1: actually kind of scrape down the surface of the skin
11:25
Speaker 1: and knock off that top layer of epidermist that has
11:28
Speaker 1: begun to deteriorate and decompose, and down at the dermist,
11:33
Speaker 1: down at the dermal level, you actually begin to appreciate
11:37
Speaker 1: once again the manifest image of a tattoo that's beneath
11:42
Speaker 1: that is that amazing and you can photographic and it
11:45
Speaker 1: can be used as a specific identifier. So that's the
11:50
Speaker 1: difference between having skin tissue on the body as opposed
11:55
Speaker 1: to having a skeletonized body. And again, you know you're
11:57
Speaker 1: not going to have signs of him or anywhere if
12:01
Speaker 1: the body is absent the tissue to appreciate it. All
12:05
Speaker 1: you're left with are these kind of bony prominences and
12:08
Speaker 1: skeletal features that are left behind. Now you know, with
12:13
Speaker 1: a skeleton itself, you know what kind of trauma could
12:16
Speaker 1: we be looking at. Well, we could if there's a
12:18
Speaker 1: depressed skull fracture. If you do in fact have a skull,
12:21
Speaker 1: remember we're talking about they're saying partial remain. If you
12:25
Speaker 1: do have a skull, you can look for things like defects.
12:28
Speaker 1: And defects is again another one ten dollar words that
12:31
Speaker 1: doctors like to use, and it means whole. It means
12:34
Speaker 1: something that's not supposed to be there, all right, So
12:37
Speaker 1: you can have a defect in the skull that might
12:40
Speaker 1: be indicative is say, for instance, a gunshot woman or
12:43
Speaker 1: maybe someone has taken a blunt instrument and driven it
12:49
Speaker 1: into the skull, and that creates as what's referred to
12:52
Speaker 1: as a depressed skull fracture. Now you can have evidence
12:56
Speaker 1: of that, and you can kind of, you know, I
12:59
Speaker 1: don't know, you can kind of evaluate that in its
13:01
Speaker 1: context and say, Okay, I think within a reasonable certainty
13:05
Speaker 1: that this very well might be what brought about the
13:08
Speaker 1: cause of death. But again you're not going to have
13:11
Speaker 1: the associated hemorrhage with it. And here's the question, here's
13:15
Speaker 1: the big question. Did the injuries that you're seeing on
13:19
Speaker 1: that skeleton did they occur anti mortem, which means before death,
13:26
Speaker 1: or did they occur post mortem? Because all kinds of
13:29
Speaker 1: things can happen to a body after it's been out there,
13:32
Speaker 1: particularly for this long animal activity. Whether I've actually had
13:38
Speaker 1: cases where branches have fallen off of trees and crushed
13:41
Speaker 1: underlying deceased persons that were decomposing. So you have to
13:46
Speaker 1: factor in all of these elements. And that's what makes
13:49
Speaker 1: this so complicated. You know, we begin to think about
13:53
Speaker 1: poor little Gabby that was found out there in the tetons.
13:57
Speaker 1: Her body, as horrible as this was, her body is
14:01
Speaker 1: going to have been relatively intact compared to what we're
14:05
Speaker 1: talking about right now, because that environment out in Titons
14:09
Speaker 1: as wild and rugged as it is, as you know,
14:12
Speaker 1: all the predators everybody was talking about and ain't got
14:16
Speaker 1: nothing on South Florida swamp because it's not just the animals,
14:21
Speaker 1: it is the weather and that is the biggest fight,
14:24
Speaker 1: the environmental conditions, and it can compromise any evaluation that's
14:29
Speaker 1: going to go forward. Relative to the forensic cathologist and
14:32
Speaker 1: the one other person I haven't mentioned, and that's the
14:35
Speaker 1: forensic anthropologist, because trust me, they will have an individual
14:39
Speaker 1: out there that specializes in the examination of human skeletal remains.
14:45
Speaker 1: They're going to be out there and you know, folks
14:47
Speaker 1: will say, well, why do you need an anthropologist at
14:50
Speaker 1: the scene. I thought they were only in the lab.
14:52
Speaker 1: Look being in a lab as a forensic anthropologist is
14:54
Speaker 1: only part of the job. And talking about the conditions
14:58
Speaker 1: they're in the swamp. What is that going to mean
15:02
Speaker 1: for the possibility of finding any of the remains. We
15:07
Speaker 1: know the medical examiner was there the day that the
15:10
Speaker 1: remains were found, back again the next day. We know
15:15
Speaker 1: that they're looking for more remains. Given what you just describe,
15:19
Speaker 1: what's the possibility. There's a good possibility because if the
15:23
Speaker 1: remains are scattered and this happens as a result of
15:26
Speaker 1: scavenger activity, which I would probably suspect, they're going to
15:31
Speaker 1: be out in kind of a perimeter around the body.
15:35
Speaker 1: You know. I always use the analogy of a wagon
15:37
Speaker 1: wheel with a hub and the spokes going out. Just
15:41
Speaker 1: imagine that with the body there, and these scavengers walk
15:44
Speaker 1: out with these remains. They don't carry them very far
15:47
Speaker 1: because most of the animals that would scavenge a body
15:50
Speaker 1: have burrows nearby, so they'll try to carry them back
15:53
Speaker 1: to their burrows, or they're drop them right outside of it. Now,
15:56
Speaker 1: this is what you're going to see. More than likely,
15:58
Speaker 1: they would probably bring a cadaver dog back out there,
16:02
Speaker 1: So don't be shocked if you see that on the news.
16:04
Speaker 1: There bring a cadaver dog back out there, and they
16:07
Speaker 1: will go back to that central location where the primary
16:09
Speaker 1: portion of those remains were found, and they will kind
16:12
Speaker 1: of go out in a radiating pattern from that central
16:15
Speaker 1: point and continue to work those dogs out to look
16:19
Speaker 1: for anything. And I'm talking about even the smallest bones
16:22
Speaker 1: of the hand. Those dogs have the ability to pick
16:25
Speaker 1: up on that and they'll pick up on a scent. Now, look,
16:29
Speaker 1: come on, let's face it, there's no way and God's
16:32
Speaker 1: green earth. They're going to recover every single bit of
16:35
Speaker 1: these remains, particularly if animals have been at it, because
16:38
Speaker 1: some things they'll just vanished, and it'll be quite blunt
16:41
Speaker 1: with you. Some of these are actually consumed by these animals,
16:44
Speaker 1: so you're not going to get the full picture. Okay,
16:46
Speaker 1: So then at what point do they say enough is
16:50
Speaker 1: enough and stop the search? You know, there's only so
16:53
Speaker 1: far that you can go working these animals and also
16:55
Speaker 1: working the personnel that you have out there. They'll break
17:01
Speaker 1: off into teams and again radiating out. They'll walk off,
17:05
Speaker 1: generally in two pair, and they'll begin to kind of
17:08
Speaker 1: go shoulders shoulder and walk in straight lines where they
17:12
Speaker 1: begin to search the soil. And they'll be very very careful,
17:16
Speaker 1: very careful, because you're getting into a season now where
17:19
Speaker 1: you're losing some leaves on those trees down there. Things
17:22
Speaker 1: could be covered up, so they'll have to turn over
17:25
Speaker 1: objects on the ground to see if there's anything beneath them,
17:28
Speaker 1: and they don't automatically pick it up. What they do
17:31
Speaker 1: is they flag it. They'll put a little orange flag
17:33
Speaker 1: right next to it, and then the photographer will come out,
17:36
Speaker 1: they'll take photographs of it, and you know what else
17:39
Speaker 1: they're going to do. They'll measure it. They'll actually go
17:41
Speaker 1: back to that central location where the body was initially
17:44
Speaker 1: found and they'll take a tape measure and they'll go
17:47
Speaker 1: out and they will measure the distance from that actual
17:49
Speaker 1: central location out to where that remain is found. And
17:53
Speaker 1: at the end of the day you can actually take
17:56
Speaker 1: this and plot it on the computer and give you
17:59
Speaker 1: an idea of how far out these remains are distributed.
18:01
Speaker 1: You're not going to recover everything. That's that's almost an
18:04
Speaker 1: empirical impossibility, you know, unless something odd has happened where
18:08
Speaker 1: you're talking about a dismembered body, which I don't think
18:11
Speaker 1: that we're dealing with right here. You're dealing with a
18:13
Speaker 1: body that has been subject to the environment which it
18:16
Speaker 1: has been found. So back to the skeleton versus partial remains.
18:22
Speaker 1: If you don't have soft tissue to pull DNA from,
18:26
Speaker 1: if you only have bone, and if it's been out
18:29
Speaker 1: in the elements for a while and animals have been
18:32
Speaker 1: able to get to it, more than likely there will
18:34
Speaker 1: not be any bone marrow left. Am I correct? And
18:38
Speaker 1: can you still get DNA? Yeah, of course you can.
18:41
Speaker 1: You can still get DNA, and yeah you can. You
18:46
Speaker 1: can bore down into the bones and recover DNA many
18:49
Speaker 1: times if there's still viable marrow. You said, you said
18:53
Speaker 1: a lot. Not all of these bones are going to
18:55
Speaker 1: be compromise, Jackie, not every single one of them. Some
18:57
Speaker 1: almis still be intact, so you're not going to have
19:00
Speaker 1: the DNA that is completely compromised that's out there still
19:03
Speaker 1: containing the bones. And one thing we're forgetting about. One
19:05
Speaker 1: of the most viable sources of DNA are going to
19:11
Speaker 1: be the teeth. And there's dentition in dwelling and what
19:14
Speaker 1: that means or the teeth are still present. It's fancy
19:18
Speaker 1: talk that doctors use if the dentition is still present,
19:21
Speaker 1: and that's the way they phrase that. If the teeth
19:22
Speaker 1: are still present, they can actually extract one of the teeth.
19:27
Speaker 1: Generally it's going to be a mole or something that's
19:28
Speaker 1: kind of robust, and they will bore down into it.
19:31
Speaker 1: When they have these little tiny drills that they go
19:33
Speaker 1: into the tooth, and you know, the tooth has multiple
19:36
Speaker 1: layers anatomically, the way it's set up. What you want
19:39
Speaker 1: to get down to is the pulp of the tooth,
19:42
Speaker 1: and they're in. They're in. That pulp is actually contained
19:46
Speaker 1: the DNA. And I've described it many times. Bones are
19:51
Speaker 1: kind of like a leather briefcase that you store information in.
19:55
Speaker 1: A tooth is almost like a titanium briefcase that store
20:00
Speaker 1: information in. They're very resilient. You can go back to
20:03
Speaker 1: the to the Egyptians and still find teeth there that
20:06
Speaker 1: we're mummified. So it's a valuable source. And one of
20:10
Speaker 1: the thing you know, I kind of wanted to point
20:12
Speaker 1: out many times, and these skeletal remains, you will still
20:14
Speaker 1: find actual hair attached to the skull. Again, if in
20:20
Speaker 1: fact it is there, and sometimes it's not necessarily on
20:23
Speaker 1: the scalp, it's underlying a skull on the ground in
20:26
Speaker 1: the dirt, so you have to be very careful when
20:28
Speaker 1: you recover it. But you can certainly get partial DNA,
20:33
Speaker 1: maybe from a hair chaft, but you can go in
20:34
Speaker 1: if there is a root, a viable root that's still there,
20:37
Speaker 1: maybe you can go in there and collect it. They're
20:38
Speaker 1: gonna look, they're gonna put a full court press on this.
20:41
Speaker 1: I can tell you where they're not going to get DNA.
20:43
Speaker 1: They're not going to get it from blood because it's
20:45
Speaker 1: not going to be available. I mean, that's that's logic.
20:48
Speaker 1: And all the soft tissues you point it out, Jackie,
20:51
Speaker 1: soft tissue is gone. You're not going to go into muscle.
20:54
Speaker 1: You're not going to go into the muscle to glean
20:57
Speaker 1: to glean any kind of DNA sample because more than
20:59
Speaker 1: likely it's not there. No soft tissue is there. I
21:22
Speaker 1: really want to continue this conversation regarding what are the
21:25
Speaker 1: next steps, you know, relative to this partial skelet will
21:30
Speaker 1: remain that's been found. What are we looking at relative
21:34
Speaker 1: to all of this? What are we looking at Joe?
21:37
Speaker 1: Because we do now know that the remains found in
21:40
Speaker 1: the Carlton Reserve belong to Brian Laundry. They used a
21:44
Speaker 1: dental comparison between the skull that was recovered and dental
21:48
Speaker 1: records of Brian Laundry to confirm identity. Now we just
21:53
Speaker 1: need to find out why he died. Because of death,
21:58
Speaker 1: It's going to be the big question. That's what everybody's
22:00
Speaker 1: be scratching their head over, and they're going to be
22:01
Speaker 1: turning these scientists and asking that question. There will be
22:04
Speaker 1: some really hard questions asking folks that aren't used to
22:07
Speaker 1: asking these kind of questions, or they're going to get
22:10
Speaker 1: an education, because I got to tell you, if you
22:13
Speaker 1: have nothing and I'm talking about tissue sample to base
22:16
Speaker 1: these findings on, you're going to be really hard because
22:18
Speaker 1: right now it's going to be very, very difficult to
22:21
Speaker 1: make this determination. If you're talking about bone, you are
22:28
Speaker 1: you are reliant upon the hope that you're going to
22:33
Speaker 1: be able to find some kind of trauma to the
22:35
Speaker 1: bone that is prior to death, anti mortem, that is
22:39
Speaker 1: gunshot wounds, knife wounds, those sorts of things that might
22:42
Speaker 1: leave marks on the bone that are going to point
22:44
Speaker 1: back to a specific, specific direction. And you know, the
22:48
Speaker 1: skull in my opinion, and my opinion is the key
22:51
Speaker 1: to all of this, because let's face it, most people
22:54
Speaker 1: that die, particularly young people that die in sudden events
23:00
Speaker 1: like this, many times the head and the neck are involved.
23:04
Speaker 1: So that's important. If you don't have tissue surrounding that area,
23:08
Speaker 1: then you're relying on the bony underlying surfaces. Well, what
23:11
Speaker 1: are we looking for. We're looking for gunshot once, we're
23:13
Speaker 1: looking for fractured skulls or fractured necks to give us
23:17
Speaker 1: some kind of indication. And I know folks are going
23:20
Speaker 1: to ask this question. It seems like it always keeps
23:22
Speaker 1: cropping up in this bizarre set of circumstances. What about
23:26
Speaker 1: the highoid? What about the highoid? You know what, I
23:28
Speaker 1: don't know that in my entire career, I ever came
23:31
Speaker 1: across a set of skeletal remains where highoid was actually recovered.
23:35
Speaker 1: You know why, because the sky the highoid. You know why,
23:40
Speaker 1: because the highoid is actually surrounded by soft tissue. I
23:44
Speaker 1: go back to what I've said before, it's only non
23:47
Speaker 1: articulated bone in the body. So if scavengers get to
23:52
Speaker 1: the area in the neck, when they you know, they
23:54
Speaker 1: take the throat out, for instance, they're going to haul
23:57
Speaker 1: that highoid off with them. It vanishes, It disappears years.
24:00
Speaker 1: It's a very fragile puncer. You're not even going to
24:02
Speaker 1: have an opportunity to examine it. And that's just possibility.
24:05
Speaker 1: For all. I know, it's sitting there. But if I
24:08
Speaker 1: were a betting man, I'd say that it probably isn't,
24:11
Speaker 1: particularly given this harsh environment that they're out there in.
24:15
Speaker 1: Talking about circumstantial evidence, another big piece through this is
24:19
Speaker 1: There are a lot of cases out there where people
24:21
Speaker 1: come across bodies in the woods, and it's quite chilling
24:26
Speaker 1: when you think about it. Can you imagine coming upon
24:28
Speaker 1: a skeleton or skeletonized remains and looking down adjacent to
24:32
Speaker 1: the body laying on the ground, there is a rusty handgun.
24:38
Speaker 1: And many times people will go out into the woods
24:42
Speaker 1: and they'll take their lives, and that weapon is laying there. Now,
24:45
Speaker 1: that would be maybe one of the grandest pieces of
24:48
Speaker 1: evidence that you could find from a circumstantial perspective that
24:54
Speaker 1: you could actually have a forensic tie back with that weapon,
24:57
Speaker 1: because it'll have a serial number on it, could ide
25:00
Speaker 1: who possess that weapon, where the individual would have acquired
25:04
Speaker 1: that weapon from. And you also begin to look for
25:06
Speaker 1: evidence that the weapon has been fired. If it's a
25:09
Speaker 1: semi automatic pistol, how many rounds are still existent in
25:12
Speaker 1: the magazine? Is there a live round still in the chamber?
25:15
Speaker 1: Is there an ejected shell case in laying around there.
25:18
Speaker 1: I got to tell you one of the things that
25:20
Speaker 1: that FBI Evidence Response team is doing out there, in
25:23
Speaker 1: addition to looking for skeletal remains, there's somebody right now
25:28
Speaker 1: that is absolutely sweating to death. I can guarantee you
25:31
Speaker 1: walking through those woods and they've got a set of
25:34
Speaker 1: headphones on, and they have got a metal detector walking
25:38
Speaker 1: before them or moving before them, sweeping and forth and
25:41
Speaker 1: back and forth, waiting for any kind of little hit
25:44
Speaker 1: on a metallic body that might be adjacent to that
25:46
Speaker 1: body that will tie back to perhaps giving you answers
25:52
Speaker 1: from a circumstantial perspective. Of course, So if we can't
25:55
Speaker 1: use what you can physically see on bones or soft
25:59
Speaker 1: tissue as in a bullet wound or ligature marks, what
26:03
Speaker 1: about the talk screens? You talk about hot screens a lot. Now,
26:07
Speaker 1: how much do you have to have to get a
26:09
Speaker 1: tox screen? Do you have to have blood? Can you
26:11
Speaker 1: get it from the tissue? What? Yeah, well that's that's
26:16
Speaker 1: the million dollar question. I'll go ahead and reveal you
26:18
Speaker 1: a little inside secret here. And typically if we don't
26:21
Speaker 1: have blood or vitreous which is the fluid and the eye,
26:25
Speaker 1: or urine with decomposed bodies, many times you know, they'll
26:30
Speaker 1: take the liver. They'll take a sample of the liver
26:32
Speaker 1: and put it in a centrifuge, which is one of
26:34
Speaker 1: these devices that spins around and liquefies things. And they
26:39
Speaker 1: liquefy it down to the point where they can draw
26:41
Speaker 1: it up and they'll run a tox screen on it. Remember,
26:43
Speaker 1: the liver is one of the most toxic organs in
26:44
Speaker 1: a body. It's like a gigantic filter, so it retains
26:47
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff. But in this case, Jackie, they're
26:50
Speaker 1: talking about skeletal remains, so you're not gonna be able
26:52
Speaker 1: to turn to that. So that leaves us with what's
26:56
Speaker 1: remaining the circumstantial evidence. You know, if if if this is, say,
27:01
Speaker 1: for instance, a drug od all right, then maybe there'll
27:06
Speaker 1: be a pill vial thereby, maybe there'll be a hypodermic
27:10
Speaker 1: needle that's still existent there that you could take a
27:13
Speaker 1: look at and kind of ascertain now that this is
27:18
Speaker 1: something that was utilized to bring about an individual's death.
27:21
Speaker 1: And of course you're going to have to backtrack with this.
27:23
Speaker 1: You know, if you've got a pill, vill you have
27:25
Speaker 1: to go back and talk to the doctor that prescribed it.
27:29
Speaker 1: If it's some kind of elicit drug, good luck with that. Now,
27:33
Speaker 1: if the syringe is there, you can actually analyze it
27:36
Speaker 1: syringe Sometimes they're kind of protective of the content. Maybe
27:40
Speaker 1: you can get a you know, some semblance of something
27:43
Speaker 1: that's contained therein and I'm thinking, of course, the first
27:45
Speaker 1: thing comes to mind is heroin, but I don't know
27:48
Speaker 1: of any involvement with that. And then other circumstantial evidence
27:52
Speaker 1: that we look for for causal factors, particularly someone that's
27:57
Speaker 1: out alone in the woods like this. One of the
28:00
Speaker 1: things I'd be looking for is perhaps a length of
28:04
Speaker 1: rope tied to a tree. You say, well, why would
28:08
Speaker 1: you say that? Well, here's why, because many times, and
28:11
Speaker 1: I want you to listen very very carefully what I'm
28:13
Speaker 1: about to say, because most people can't believe this actually happens.
28:17
Speaker 1: Do you know that many times people will hang themselves
28:20
Speaker 1: in trees and they're not found for a protracted period
28:24
Speaker 1: of time. Guess what happens to the body. The body,
28:28
Speaker 1: by virtue of gravity, remember gravity's constant force in our world.
28:32
Speaker 1: Gravity pulls on that body that's hanging from that noose.
28:35
Speaker 1: And guess what happens. The head literally comes off, It
28:39
Speaker 1: comes off, and the body crashes to the ground below
28:41
Speaker 1: the noose. And so that automatically gives you a circumstance where, say,
28:48
Speaker 1: for instance, a disarticulated head can be taken off by scavenger.
28:51
Speaker 1: The rest of the body can be scavenged. And if
28:54
Speaker 1: the investigators are not looking up, if they're only looking down,
29:00
Speaker 1: and that's a piece of evidence that they could potentially miss.
29:02
Speaker 1: So are you telling me then that if it is
29:05
Speaker 1: only skeletal remains, that it's not possible to do a
29:10
Speaker 1: tox screen. Yeah, if it is only skeletal remains, it would.
29:15
Speaker 1: I cannot imagine any circumstance where you would be able
29:19
Speaker 1: to draw up any kind of viable sample for toxicological analysis.
29:26
Speaker 1: I just I don't see how that would be possible,
29:29
Speaker 1: because there's not going to be any evidence unless it's
29:32
Speaker 1: some kind of Unless it's some kind of peripheral test
29:38
Speaker 1: that someone else is aware of, and I am not
29:40
Speaker 1: on bone, You're not going to be able to find
29:43
Speaker 1: any evidence of those. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this
29:50
Speaker 1: is bodybacks