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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Reasonable Doubt For Bryan Kohberger? · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Quality diamonds, but Joseph's gotten more. I don't know about y'all,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: but I think about temperature every day, and generally it
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: has to do with determining how much money I'll have
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: at the end of the month to pay for my
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: air conditioning bill, because I hate being an old I
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: don't even like I'm not even gonna say hot. I
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: hate being in a warm house. I like being in
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: a cool house. And unfortunately my desire for physical comfort
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: is noncompatible with summertime in the Deep South. I'm gonna
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: wind up having a huge electric bill at the end
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: of every month, guaranteed. I think about temp in that sense.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: But you know, I thought about temp for a long
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: time as a death investigator, because we use temperature in
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: order to determine how long it's been since someone has
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: I don't know, been cast off this mortal coil in
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: the words of the Bard, and there are a lot
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: of indicators that we look for, and today on bodybags,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: we're going to have a discussion about PMI post mortem interval,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: and in particular, we're going to have a discussion that
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: ties back to a case that it's currently in the
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: news and will be for months and months to come
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: the murder of the four students in Idaho. I'm Joseph
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Scott Morgan and this is bodybacks, David. I don't know
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: if you recall this, but have you have you ever
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: been around and it's generally a grandparent. It doesn't matter
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: if it is as hot as the surface of the
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: sun outside, they're going to run the heat. They're going
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: to put a shawl around them or a blanket. Yeah,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: they're going to have like woolen socks on. And a
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: part of that is getting old, you know, you lose
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: muscle mass.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: You you funny bit about old people being cold? Why
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: is this so cold in feezing?
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: It's so cold in it? Thought about that in years. Yeah,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: what a great stand up that was. Uh yeah, it's
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: so cold in heal baby.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: But why is that? Because I had these two women
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: that were they were sisters and they were like the
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: Snoop sisters back in the day on the Waltons. Yeah yeah,
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: I think they're combined age with three hundred and fifty seven.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: But I remember my mother in law was afraid something
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: had happened to one of them and asked me to
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: take were over there because they wouldn't answer the phone,
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: and as we got to the house, Joe, it was
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: August and Alabama, so it was probably in the upper nineties,
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: late afternoon. We were already sweating from the humidity, and
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: I could hear their TV as we got to the door.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: They had it turned up very loud. And when my
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: mother in law opened the door, just you know, was
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: knocking on it and the door cracked open, I felt
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: the heat hit me. I actually backed up the heat
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: from the house and I thought, oh, they're dead. Yeah,
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: And they were in there and they were bundled up,
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: both of them, both of them bundled up with the
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: heat going. And it's ninety eight degrees outside. That was
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: freaky to me.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's probably equally as hot in that house,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: yeahsty Yeah, And it's terrifying on one level. Do you remember,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: I know, I know that you do. The summer God,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: it was I know, well over a decade. You remember
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: that summer of horror they had in Chicago. Oh yeah,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: where it was so hot. Yep, the old people were
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: dying in their homes. And I knew the chief and
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: me at the time for Cook County, which is Chicago,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: Ed what's his name, doctor Ed Donahue, I think, great
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: forensic pathologies and a heck of a nice guy. I mean,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: just a really really cool cat. And anyway, it was,
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: and this happened right before, this happened right before he
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: retired from Cook County. I can see why this would
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: be something that will push you over this because they
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: had people that were dying left and right, and you know,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: that's that's kind of a story for another day, but
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: it's you know, it's deaths related to hypothermia, uher hyper thermia, Yeah,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: as opposed to hypo.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: So I had me to run with that. But I'm
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: just curious, man, that you mentioned the old people and heat.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: Do they really I mean, do as we age, do
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: we feel colder?
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I think I think the perception is right.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: I'm not a geriatric specialist, but.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: I'm becoming a geriatric. You'll have to, you're qualified. I
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: think that one of the things that occurs. First off,
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: you're losing you're losing mass in your body. You know,
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: your insulation is kind of dwindling away, fat layer, muscle layer,
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: And in addition to that, you don't have the same
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: robust circulatory system that you once had. And so therefore
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: you're gonna feel cooler or you'll feel like, you know,
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: I know, my grandmother always said she feel like she
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: had a chill on her, you know, And that's that's
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: kind of a common theme, you know, that kind of
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: runs through it as you get older.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: It hadn't hit me yet. I mean, I can tell you.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: I'll sit around and I'll be sweating, and I'll look
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: at him and I'll say, hey, what's the air conditioning on?
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: She'll say sixty eight. I'll say, wow, it's really hot
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: in here, and she'll say, turn the fan up her.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: And that's another thing. We can't sleep without a fan on.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: I'm addicted to it. I even use a fan. I
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: use a fan app on my phone when I'm traveling.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: That's how addicted to fans I am. And it lasts
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: for it lasts literally for ten hours.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: So on meeting one day, my name's Dave. That's it.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: I'm addicted of.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: Hey, all right, so pos yeah, yeah, yeah, post warum
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: interval I it's it's you know, you hear this term
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: is thrown around. I'm guilty of using it. I can't
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: say guilty because it's an abbreviation, but uh, you know,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: so it's it's p M. I you'll hear use that
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: term constantly, but it is postmar interval and the the
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: four big categories that we look at when we're trying
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: to assess the dead, and that is going to be
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: riger mortise or rigor it's pronounced both ways.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: We have post mortem lividity, which is also uh the
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: term uh live or mortise. Then we have alger mortise,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: not to be confused with a former vice president and
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: it and and then we have then we have gastric content.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: So you have four areas that are really kind of
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: exploited by us in in circles of death investigation to
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: give us, you know, to try to do. And really
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: what it is, Dave, it's a it's a snapshot of time. Okay,
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: and we go out and we try to do these assessments.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Let me tell you this, and I'll say this right
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: up front. This is kind of my you know, word
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: of warning here. None of the stuff is accurate to
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: the point where you could bet your life on it. Okay,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: It's not like it's not a true quantitative measurement where
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: you can say with precision. I'm talking about like Swiss
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: watch precision where you can say this is the exact
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: moment in time when they took their last breath. That's
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: mathematically it's impossible to do that. You cannot do that.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: I actually went to I'll never forget it. I was
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: at a conference one time. By the way, I recommend
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: highly that if you're interested in becoming a medical legal
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: death investigator. The mother church of all medical legal death
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: investigation is Saint Louis University in Saint Louis, Missouri, School
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: of Medicine, Department of Forensic Pathology. There are four classes
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: that are offered every year in intro to medical legal
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: death Investigation. I went through the class in I finally
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: got a spot in nineteen eighty seven. I've been working
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: looking for over two years by that time. And it
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: is a rigorous program. You go for five days, it's
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: eight hours a day, and it is they don't knowledge
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: into your brain in this place, like you can't imagine.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: There's no really no breaks in here. So you're you're
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: learning among the finest. You're learning from the finest at
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: the medical school. And it was there that I first got,
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: you know, really my intro in a class sense. At
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Saint Louis University to how do we how do we determine,
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: you know, how somebody how long someone has been dead.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: And there's a program called the Master's program that's only
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: offered like every other summer, and you have to have
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: attended the basic course first. And I went to this thing.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: They had this guy from Germany and Dave. This is
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: in the days. It wasn't a chalkboard, but he had
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: a whiteboard up on the stage and it wasn't one,
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: it was three. And he had created a formula that
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: extended over the surfaces of three whiteboards. And he claimed
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: that he had the magic bullet to determining time of death.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: And I remember there were a bunch of us sitting
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: there and we just we're just kind of rolling our eyes.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: First off, no one has this much time. This is
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: only something a university professor could do. When you're in
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: tempo and you're out in the field and you're you've
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: got a homicide that you're working, and you might have
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: a suicide holding, a motor vehicle accident holding. You're going
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: to glean as much information at the homicide as you
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: possibly can. You got to move on to the next case.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: He had taken years to compile this data in a
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: perfect world, you know, maybe it had some utility maybe,
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: but still to this day, they can't give you a
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: specific time of death. So that's kind of my warning
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: before we get into all of this. So if you
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: ever come across someone that actually tells you that they
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: can do it, that they can give you an exact time, run,
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: don't walk out away.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: For years, I really did think you could come within
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: fifteen minutes of knowing. I really did until I talk
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: to you about it, because I didn't know. I mean,
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: you watch TV. Oh I see he had a corn
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: in his diarrhea. That means you know.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the best we can do. And I'd say
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: the best I've ever been able to do just looking
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: at the numbers alone that we collect and the examination
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: that we do at the scene. Maybe maybe four hours,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: maybe four to five.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: And now can you take this in with the other timeline, right, I.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Mean right, you have to. That's that's to the exclusion
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: of circumstantial you know, I last saw him at this time. Okay,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: I'm just talking about pure science now, as pure as
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: it can be in that kind of environment. So it's
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: a not controlled, a non controlled environment and everything, and
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: I mean just about everything we're going to discuss right
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: now is environmentally dependent. So I think that it's really
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: important that we keep our wits about us and just
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: understand that.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: So it's fascinating. It's amazing that you have to truly
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: know investigation beyond just the like you mentioned the guy
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: uses three whiteboards to write a formula down to put
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: this to get it, and yet it actually does. There's
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: more to it than just the nuts and bolts. You
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: have to actually investigate the person's life to know about
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: their death.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that lecture lasted for it was like two
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: hours and forty five minutes, and I wish I had
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: that time back. It did demonstrate to me. It did
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: demonstrate to me, however, that nobody really knows. I mean,
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: nobody really knows. And you know, I guess you could say, well,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: somebody's sitting in front of a clock, and this is
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: an old example people have used before. I've heard it stated.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: And they're shot and it's a thurn through wound and
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: it hits the clock and the clock stops. And so
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: you marry that up with it if you get to
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: the body at you know, what is it? They say?
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: A broken A broken clock is right twice a day,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: so even that has a caveat to it. But for me,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: for me, I think starting off with rigidity otherwise known
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: as riger mortis.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: When does that happen?
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Jim, Well, it begins, you know, you first begin to
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: appreciate it pretty It's not immediate, and this is kind
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: of how it works. So if you think about the
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: muscle groupings in your body, and I'm talking about like
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: the tiny muscles that you even have, like that surrounds
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: your eyelids, it happens everywhere. Okay, it happens simultaneously where
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: you have this rigidity that begins to set in throughout
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: the body. And a lot of people will say it
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: starts in the small muscles of the body and extends
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: out to larger ones. That's a fallacy. That's inaccurate. It
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: starts everywhere, everywhere simultaneously. However, it's most appreciated in the
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: small muscles, and then the larger muscle groups are slower,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: you know, to kind of come around. So I'll give
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: you a great example of this. You might not have rigidity,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: say in the elbows, the wrist, maybe the shoulders, and
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: certainly in the knees. But if you and this is
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: one of the things. This is the first area I
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: always go to to check a body for rigidity, and
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: that's the mouth. If I press down on the chin
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: in order to try to open the mouth and I'm
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: struggling with it. This is what I know. That muscle
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: grouping that is adjacent to where your jaw fits in
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: de mandible actually fits in to that joint like the
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: TMJ when it goes in there, those muscle groups are
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: most affected. They're tiny, Okay, So you get this rigidity
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: that sets and the jaw. And yet people say you
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: can appreciate it in the eyelids. I've never really seen that.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: I guess clinically they say you can. But for me
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: as a practitioner on the field, the jaw would be
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: where I would go to first, and then it kind
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: of extends out from there. You know, the smaller, smaller
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: muscle groups, you'll see it, you know, like in the fingers,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: you know, or in the toes before you're going to
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: see it in the ankles or the knees, are certainly
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: in the hips. But what's what has occurred is that
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: we are dependent. We are dependent in life on what's
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: called cellular respiration. And so those cells are living, breathing
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: all right. When they begin to shut down. When they
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: begin to shut down, cellular respiration has ceased, and so
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: the body, the body generally you I'm not going to
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: go into great detail, but there's crib cycle and it
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: throws off these little balls of energy. Okay, ATP, Well
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: that ceases, then you begin to produce ADP. And one
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: of the products of ADP is actually lactic acid. So
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: if you have ever worked out, if you've ever worked
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: out in your life, and you hadn't done it in
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: a while, and you wake up the next morning and
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: you're stiff as a board, Look, you can go take
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: all the motrin and tile and all and aspirin and
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: everything else you want to take, but sooner or later,
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: that rigidity is going to leave your body. That's actually
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: a lactic acid build up that you're having, you're experiencing
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: and your joints. The reality is, because we're upright and
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: still breathing, our body metabolizes that. Okay, the dead can't,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: the can't. The can't, they can't do it at the
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: same rate that we do in life. Now after a
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: period of time, and this is one of important things
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: about rigidity. After a period of time, time that lactic
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: acid build up in the dead begins to back out
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: and it leaves all right. So there's I think that
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: there's a common common thought where people believe that, hey,
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: you know what, once you're here, here's and we've heard
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: this before, once you're cold and stiff, man, you're cold
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: and stiff. Well, no you'll be you'll be cold, but
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: you ain't gonna be stiff because that your your arms,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: your legs, your hips, your jaw, everything becomes flacid. Once again,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: you revert back. So you have to you have to
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: be there like Johnny on the spot. So what are
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: you looking at relative to this, Well, it's first noticeable.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: The rigidity, the ryger mortis is first noticeable. It's going
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: to take about one to three hours. A lot of
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: it's going to be, first off, dependent upon the physiology
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: of the person, and then it's also going to be
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: dependent upon the ambient environmental temperature. And we always have
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: to remember that anything that involves heat speeds things up.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: So it's going to take about ten to twelve hours
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: for it to be complete. So why is that important
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: if we're death investigators. Well, it's very important because if
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: I show up at a scene, Dave, and the body
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: is completely rigid, like you can't move it, then I'm
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: going to hazard guests. Based on ryger morts loan, that
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: person's been dead for ten to twelve hours perhaps, So
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: my question is going back to Idaho. I'm not being
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: disrespectful here. It's a legitimate question. We have such a
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: delay and when those students were last known alleged to
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: have been alive. Okay, the big number that everybody talks
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: about is slightly after four am, roughly, okay, give or
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: take all, right, going down until you know about half
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: past the hour. That nine one one call doesn't originate
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: until like eleven something am almost so yeah, almost twelve,
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: So you know you're looking at seven seven hours, I
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: guess roughly, and you'd have to bracket that very carefully.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm curious. This is dangerous ground here. I'm curious
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: as to what the coroner saw because she said in
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: one report, Dave, that huh that these kids were obviously
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: asleep when this happened. So my question based upon on
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: that statement that she made in an interview, like within
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: like two days, two or three days after this happened.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: So talk to me about rigidity. Did you measure rigidity?
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Because I don't know, you're telling me that everybody was
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: obviously asleep, all right, Well, according to what we're hearing now,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: particularly based upon the dateline dump that came out, these
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: bodies were not in the position that we were led
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: to believe. They certainly weren't tucked into beds, you know,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: all snug in the bed. So for the medical legal authority,
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: I would have to ask what was the extent of
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: your examination at the scene. Did you check for rigidity
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: in the bodies? You know, was there stiffness in the jaw,
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: stiffness in the limbs? You know, where the bodies flaccid? Still?
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: Could were they movable? And that's that's just on the
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: point of Roger Mortis alone. I think that that's a
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: legitimate question that's going to come out. Of course, if
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: the case goes off in August, which you know we're
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: thinking it might. I don't know. I sit back and
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: I think about that data and how it was collected
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: that's scene. Was rigidity measured? Because you know, my friends,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: I got to tell you, you can't measure the stuff at
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: the morgue. The forensic pathologist if you ever read an
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: autopsy report, they'll say that when I received the body,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: the body was cool to the touch, rocking mortis was
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: present in the jaw and the extremities. That's their boilerplate,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: and they'll talk about post warmal avidity, we'll get into
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: that in a second. But you can't that assessment at
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: the morgue by the forensic pathologist be honestly, you ain't
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: worth a gunpowder to blow at hell because that data
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: really doesn't mean anything. The body has been taken out
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: of context by that time, David. It's a three hour
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: drive a Moscow to Aida County where these autopsies were done,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: and once the bodies are removed, they're going to go
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: into a cooler, so that's going to affect the data.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: You can't and then if there was air conditioning or
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: no air conditioning running in the van, that's going to
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: impact once you take those bodies out of that environment.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: If you don't do that assessment right then and there
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: at that moment, it's not worth doing. So that's I
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: think that's a legitimate question. The stiffness that you encounter
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: with the human remain it's shocking, you know, when you
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: and even for me, as you know, a guy that
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: was involved in this field for a long time. It
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: was shocking for me. You know, when I would you
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: still have an expectation when you're around the dead. I mean,
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: obviously they're human. You still have an expectation they're going
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: to respond to you like any other human. But the
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: dead don't respond that way. There is a stiffness that
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: they have that you don't encounter in any other context.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: You can even think about, say, for instance, if there's
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: somebody resisting you and they're holding their arm like you've
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: grabbed them by their arm, and that resistance, they are
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: still not the strength of riger It's quite striking. But
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: here's another thing. You think about the changes in bodies
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: relative to temperature. If any of you have ever lost
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: a loved one, and in those last moments when you're
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: at a funeral home or wherever it is, maybe you're
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: sitting with a loved one and they pass on, there's
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: something about the coolness of death. It's it's like no
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: other type of sensory perception on your part like the
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: coolness of death. It's like you can, like if you
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: go outside in the wintertime and your fingers are cold,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: or your nose is cold. You've got you've always got
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: the friend that walks up to you and says, hey,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: feel this, and they put their hands on your face,
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: you know, and you retract. There's something about the coolness
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: of death, and that's one of the reasons. Even in
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: literature you'll hear terms like the icy fingers of death.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: And it's a real thing. I mean, if you've ever
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: been next to an open casket and you touch someone
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: in there, there's something. It's the absence of of any
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: kind of life, I think, And when you're attempting to
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: assess the dead based simply upon temperature, this is something
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: that most people, I think out there believe that this
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: is our go to and for me, it's probably some
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: of the most worthless data that exists. The reason is
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: is that there are too many variables involved, and no
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: one can quite seem to come up with a methodology
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: where they want to measure the temperature of a body.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: And let me give you an example. So you've got
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: a real baseline here when you're talking about how cool
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: or cold body is, and you touch the body and
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: people will either say, well, the body is warm to
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: the touch or cool to the touch. That's very baseline,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: very base right. Then you have other methodologies that are employed,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: like using a thermometer. Well, you run into a lot
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: of problems using a thermometer, and here are a few
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: many people will try to do what's called an axillary temperature,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: and that means that you take a glass thermometer and
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: you place it in the armpit externally and you place
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: the arm against the armpit, holding the thermometer in place
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: for about five minutes so you can get an accurate reading,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: and all the while you have another thermometer hanging in
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: the air, suspending the air, taking the ambient environmental temperature. Now,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: you can either do that with an analog thermometer like
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: an old glass thermometer mercury thermometer, or you can do
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: a temperature reader in a room which exists widely. Now,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: and you have to do this like every I think
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: it's like every You do it in twenty men in
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: at intervals while you're at a scene to try to get
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: an idea if you can get an idea of how
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: the temperare is dropping off on a body, but it's
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: still wildly inaccurate. Now there's a whole group of people
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: out there in medical legal debt investigation. Now I'm about
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: to blow your mind with what I'm going to tell you.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: They believe that it is good practice to take a
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: human body at a scene. Remember, we have to do
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: everything that's seen. You can't do it, the more it's
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: worthless data. And you take scalpel and you take a
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: digital Turkey thermometer. You make an incision beneath the last
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: rib on the right side, which is that overlays your liver,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: which is the most dense organ in the body. And
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: so you're looking for what's called and you guys have
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: heard this before, core body temperature. So once you make
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: that incision, you take the thermometer and insert it into
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: deliver and it gives you a pretty instantaneous reading. But
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: here's the problem with it. If that's your methodology you're
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: going to employ, it doesn't matter what the case is.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: If you try to go to court with that, you
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: better be doing it every damn time. So that means
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: that did you get a core temperature on the multiple
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: stablind victim? Just think about just for a second, let
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: that seep into your ground water. So you've got a
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: body at a scene, a homicide that's got multiple stab wounds.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Now you're going to take a scalpel and make another
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: incision into the body and then insert the thermometer. Oh
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: and by the way, this is what they tell you
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: to do. After you've done this, man marks a lot
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: and make a circle around your incision and put your
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: initials on it. Now. I remember the first time I
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: was taught this, I was thinking, okay, so let me
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: get this straight. You want me to open a body
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: at a scene where I'm surrounded by not just police officers,
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: but if I'm outside, which I have been before, surrounded
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: by angry group of people and they see me whip
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: out the cold steel and I'm kneeling over somebody's son.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: In this environment, I'm to make an incision in front
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: of this group of people and insert a digital thermometer.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: That's what you're asking me to do. Got it? Good idea?
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: So you know the problem is is that your adopted practice.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: You have to do that every single time. You know,
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: you can't say, well, I'm going to do it on
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: some cases, I'm not going to do it on the others.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: Because if you take that in that your office adopted
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: policy and you go into court with it. Defense attorneys
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: can potentially eat you up. They'll say, well, you did
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: it on all these other cases, what do you do
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: in this case? In your data kind of invalid at
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: this point, and you see how this can become a
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: real problem. And plus, I don't know, I'm just not
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: a fan of making incisions in dead bodies at the
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: scene in an uncontrolled environment. And look, maybe that is
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: very accurate, but I have to ask this question, and
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: I don't know, is the data that you're going to
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: glean from that one procedure is it worth compromising a case.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: It's kind of like, you know, for years there were
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: people that said, oh, well we need to do a
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: rectal temperature at a scene on a dead body. Well,
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: if that's going to be your office policy, what about
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: rape cases? Are you going to take a foreign object
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: at a suspected rape homicide case and do a rectal
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: temperature at the scene because you're getting close to the
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: core kind of And maybe the data is valid, but
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: I think there's more important evidence that can be gleaned
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: from I don't know, directum.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: Than be destroying evidence. You're ready to get the temperature.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, so is the data actually worth it? Now? Let
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: me run this down to you. So with about the
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: first hour after death, you're going to lose about a
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: degree and a half to two degrees of temp that's
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: been generated in life. You're going to lose that temperature
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: off the body after the first hour. Then for the
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: next next twelve hours up to the twelfth hour, you're
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: losing one degree. Okay, So if you start off at
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: ninety eight point six, you can do the math from there.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: So when you get to that twelfth hour after death,
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: you've heard people say, well, you've assumed room temperature. That's
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: kind of what it means. That means that you're and
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: I teach my classes at Jacksonville State this and it's
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: kind of gruesome, I know, but it's reality. You're just
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: like any other inanimate object that dwells that same space,
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: so a piece of furniture, a desk, you know, a
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: book bag, whatever it is. Because the life that once
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: existed within that shell of a person, you're no longer
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: going back cellul or the respiration. Your body's not producing
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: anything at that point, Okay, you are truly dead at
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: that point, and so there's nothing coming off of the
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: body as far as ratiing heat or anything like that.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: So that can be it can be a real problem.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: That's why my default position, I think pretty much throughout
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: my career was always either warm to the touch or
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: cool to the touch. But beyond that, what am I
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: going to glean by? You know, what they're saying nowadays
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: is kind of the industry standard of making an incision
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: and embodying and inserting. And this is happening. You know,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: people think, oh, come on morning, now it happens. It
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: happens out there, there are people engaging in this practice.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: I think it's foolhardy, it's reckless. It truly is, because
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: I think that the data that is obtained from that
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: that particular procedure, it's not worth the risk of ruining
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: an entire investigation. So at the risk of being crass,
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: if you've ever had a stomach virus at any point
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: in time and you've had to go in to make
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: an offering to the porcelain God, you have seen your
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: stomach contents, okay, and it's not a lot different from
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: what we see in the morgue. The only thing is
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: is that when you're kneeling before the porcelain God, you're
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: not studying it as a matter of fact, you're holding
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: your head and you're thinking, God, please stop the room
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: from spending. Please, I promise I'll do whatever. I guess
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about being drunk now, I guess I promise
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: I'll never do this again. You know, you're making all
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: these promises to God that I won't do this again.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: And if you've got a bug, it's it's horrible as well.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: You know, you're you're not thinking about necessarily what's coming
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: out of you. You just know that it's coming out of you.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: And for us in medical legal death investigation, Dave, that's
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: something that, as disgusting and gross as it sounds, that's
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: something that we actually take our time trying to understand.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: You know, I told you this before we started. When
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: Loadanna's nephew was murdered, there was a question he was
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: giving a friend a ride home and you know, attacked
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: the victim kind of thing. He was in the wrong
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: place at the wrong time. Talk about your innocent victim.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: He really was. But because he was in his early
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: twenties and he was out late. It was two thirty
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: in the morning, they want to know alcohol, drugs, and
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: stomach contents. Were their pills in there? What was going on,
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: And what they found out was that there was no alcohol,
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: there was no drug, there was no pills. They actually
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: had the food that he had when he drove through
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: Hearty's late at night and got a traditional meal because
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: he was hungry, and that was one of as weird
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: as it sounds, it was very comforting for the family
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: because they had been put through all of this idea
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: that somehow their dead nephew, their dead grandson deserved it,
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: you know, And it was like he was giving a
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: guy a ride home and talk about your innocent victim.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: But that was one thing, and we actually they asked
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: me about that. The family did later on about a
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: number of things with the case, And is something I
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: told you too many times people go through an entire
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: case with a loved one who dies in a way
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: other than natural, and there is so much going on,
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: they don't get answers that years later mean something. You know,
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: why did this happen? Or what does this mean? And
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: I'm thankful I was able to answer those questions. So
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: I had to look up a lot of them I knew,
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: but still I got them those answers, and it really
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: did help. There was a grieving process that had continued
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: for fifteen years, and I was able to help with
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: that in the end. And I did want to ask
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: you to mention something about Kathy maybut that was the
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: corner in Idaho. Yeah, you mentioned a few minutes ago,
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: and I went back and I pulled up my notes
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: from what did we learn in the first three days?
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: Because she remember, she was all over the place.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which I gotta let me interject real quick, and
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: I'll shut my mouth.
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: No.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: The thing, no, no, no, The thing about it is
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: that's foreboden in my world. Yes, you're a corner or
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: medical examiner, you know, to keep your mouth shut. You're
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: inside the investigative bubble. You take your cues from the police. Now, look,
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: if you're an elected corner, godspeed. I mean, you can
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: do what you want to do, all right.
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: And that's what this was, correct.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, she's and she's a nurse and an attorney, right,
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: and she got elected to the office of corner, which
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: is cool. I have no problem with that. However, if
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: you're inside the investigative bubble, there's just certain things that
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: we know that we don't because you still have killer
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: on the loose at this point, in tom.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: Right, we're talking two days after Yeah, Yeah, and Joe,
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: this is what this is a summary. This is what
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: I've got from it. I was shocked, and I remember
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: when we had this information of double checking because I thought,
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: this has got to be wrong. This has got to
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: be internet rumor. You know, it can't be right, because
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: I've never heard this coming out of somebody's mouth this
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: close to an investigation. Multiple stab wounds. She stated that
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: each victim suffered multiple stab wounds, pretty extensive wounds. Actually,
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: she described the wounds as pretty extensive, set a large knife.
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: Victims were likely attacked with a large knife, according to
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: preliminary autopsy, some defensive wounds. At least one victim showed
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: signs of defensive wounds, suggesting they may have woken up
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: during the attack, because if you remember, they were all
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: attacked while they were sleeping. Yeah, she said some defensive
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: wounds tears or tears rather tears and big open gouges.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: Not a term I would use, but.
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: This is what kayligan Zava's father said. Kathy maybe shared
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: with him, described those wounds on his daughter as big
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: open gouges and tears. Now. She also said that based
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: on that the murderer was pretty angry. It was a
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: pretty angry attacker. They were killed in their beds. Now
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: we have actually heard a little bit different on this.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: But yeah, we have. Yeah, there's you know, there's a
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: number of things floating around right now. And again it
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: comes comes back from of the day Line, the dump
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: that happened with date Line, which we're still waiting to
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: find out who leaked that information. It doesn't surprise me
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: in the news media ran with it, but it's just
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: the fact that it was that it's out there. And
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: again going back to the corner's assessment, you know, you
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: can talk about I guess if you want to tears
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: and goalges, which is.
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: I want to ask you something that you could say
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: other that I've got to ask you if what it means?
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: What's that she said there were no significant bruising. Now
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: we know that there is a seven hour interval at
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: least between the times of the murders and the time
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: that ninem On one was called. At least seven hours.
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: Kathy may but at the time said she thought that
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: might have been killed around two am. Now they now
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: have moved that time to after four am, before four
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: thirty am, before four to twenty actually, but no significant bruising.
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: But there was a little bit of bruising, but nothing significant.
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: Is that not an uncommon occurrence in a You're seeing
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: bodies at least seven and by the time she got
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: out there, it had to be even more than just seven.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: It had to have been closer to ten hours by
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: the time she got out there. She didn't get out
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: there in the first thirty minutes or so.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: No, I can't imagine they would have locked They would
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: have locked the scene down. Police would have had had
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: a what's over? But if you remember as well, the
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: DA showed up out there too, I'll never forget, you know,
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: And apparently he had walked the guy with a big
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: beard he'd walked through as well at some point in time.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: So I guess what it comes down to as far
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: as the duties of the corner and the assessment of
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: these kids, is how much data was collected at the
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: scene relative to you know, we had talked about rigidity,
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: we had talked about we had talked about body temperature.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: Do we even have an understanding as to whether or
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: not the bodies were cool or worn to the touch?
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: I think that's important. And then you know, bringing it
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: back to Zanta. What what's the one thing here, and
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: this isn't a trick question, what's the one thing that
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: we know that Xana was doing that was she was
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: one of the last things that she was reportedly doing
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: relative to food, door Dash she was in door Dash
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: showed up and you know, one of my questions is
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: what kind of food was it?
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: Was?
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: Any of it consumed? And going back to earlier in
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: the evening when Maddie and Kaylee had one for you know,
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: they went to the grub truck, right, so they're going
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: to have food on board as well.
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: And would that would that be in their stomach contents?
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: I mean I don't know enough. Yeah. Yeah.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: So so with generally, generally we as humans and this
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: this is this is heavily depended upon whether or not
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: we have we have some kind of gastrointestinal problem. You know,
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: is our stomach and digestive system functioning normally? Okay, So
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: that's the caveat to this. So it takes it takes
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: about four to six hours four to six hours for
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: the stomach to empty. So where is it empty? It
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: empties into the small intestine. The small intestine is slower.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: You know small intestine. You know you heard these wild
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: stories about how long the small intestine is. Well it
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: the small intestine takes about twelve hours to eliminate. Okay,
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: it's going to be So if you block that and
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: you say, well, what happened, you know during this period
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: of time, there's not a lot you know, you can
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: there's some appreciable evidence in the small intestine. But if
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: you go back to the stomach and you have you
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: have food remnant in the stomach, gastric content as it
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: referred to. When you open that stomach, and when we
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: take out the stomach at autopsy, you clip it at
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: where essentially I won't go into all the specific anatomical terms,
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: but just think about where the esophka is coming down,
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: descending out of the mouth, descends right before it gets
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: his stomach. You tie it off and you clip it. Okay,
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: Then you clip the end of the stomach after tying
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: it off, where it's about to dump into the small intestine,
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: so you can remove the stomach completely intact without spilling
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: the contents. It's messy business and most of the time
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: we will take the stomach away from the body over
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: to a sink and we've got a pan. If you've
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: ever seen you know, when you go to a grocery
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: store and you're going to put produce in a scale,
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: that pan that you put produce in the scale with,
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: that's what it looks like. We have those in the morgue.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: So we will have the stainless steel pan. We'll open
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: the stomach in the pan and dump out the contents
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: in there, and that way we don't lose anything. Because
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: I've worked with forendsic pathologists in the morgue before that
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: would literally open the stomach inside the cavity. Well, that's
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: that's dangerous business because if you don't, if you don't
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: dissect out the stomach and per the evisceration and you
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: remove the stomach, if you just try to do it
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: in there the interior of the body or the cavity, okay,
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: it's very bloody stuff. You've got standing blood that's in there.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: So now you're going to commingle the stomach contents. Everything
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: gets very confused, so it's best to take it out.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: And so if you have stomach content, you know that
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: this person had eaten four to six hours roughly, because
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: it takes that time for the stomach to clear. All right.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: Another thing that's dependent is if you drink. If you
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: drink a sports shake, okay, that ain't the same as
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: going and eating a Porterhouse steak and a baked potato.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: It's going to take a lot, a lot longer for
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: that pass through your system. Okay, so you have to
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: take that into account. But here's what's kind of interesting.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: Day you had talked about this loved one of yours
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: that had died, and he had gone I think you
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: said he'd gone to Hearty's, which serves these giganic hamburgers.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: All right, Well, you know when you get when you
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: open up the stomach, you can actually appreciate. People think
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: they chew their food really well, they really don't. You
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: can actually look. You can see ground beef. Pasta is
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: one of the worst things. You can see spaghetti. You
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: can make out what kind of noodles there are. Hot
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: Dogs are probably at the top of list because they're encased,
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: so you either have a natural casing, which is like
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: an intestine, or you have one of the disgusting I'm
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: a big Nathan's hot dog fan. I love Nathan's because
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: there they have a natural casing. All right, I'm not
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: a fan of like things that have I won't name
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: a brand, things that have synthetic casingtona. And so even
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: with that, hot dogs will remain in place. You'll see
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: that anything like grains, corn rice, vegetables, broccoli for instance,
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: Lettuce doesn't. It's not like you chew it up and
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: it's gone. Generally, things like soups, those sorts of things
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: where the vegetables that are contained in there are cooked down.
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: But there's a lot that you can recognize. And the
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: reason I'm not saying this in order to discuss listeners
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: what I'm The reason I'm saying this is because there's
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: valuable information contained in the stomach, particularly if you're talking
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: about a drug good. Maybe somebody has ingested something that
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: was toxic. That's why that from that, when we remove
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: the stomach, will actually get a very large plastic test
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: tube and will collect the stomach contents and put a
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: lift on it. We actually submit that to the state
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: crime lab because you can run you can run test
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: on that, you can actually do toxicology off of that.
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: That's I was going to ask you, how does alcohol
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: play a factor in what is in your stomach? Like
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: is wine different than beer? And is whiskey different than
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: what yeah, well.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well. The thing about it is, this is kind
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: of an interesting little side. If you've ever been around
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: somebody that had been as my granddaddy, you say, pulling
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: a cork the night before, the next the next morning,
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: I don't care if they brush your teeth, showered, shaved,
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: put on Aqua velva, high karate, English leather, pick your
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: poison or Georgio. You can still smell the alcohol coming
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: off their body. If you think that's intense around a
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: living person. If you've got somebody that has been drinking
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: the night before and they died, like in a car crash,
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: or maybe they got no fight and they were hammered,
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: you know when they when you open the body, and
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about not even opening some I'm just talking
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: about the initial opening of the body, it like rushes
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: out like a big gasse at fist and punches you
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: right in the nose. You have that smell that like
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: permeates everything. It's everywhere, and so you can It's the
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: only way I can really describe it is that it's
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: sickly sweet. It's got this sickly sweet odor to it,
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: much like you know the smell that comes off of
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: somebody's body that's been drunk. They have that kind of
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: sickly sweet smell. It's even more pronounced in the dead
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: when you open the body. I used to work with
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: forensic pathologists. Guy's dead now. He was really, really old
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: and very listen. To say that forensic pathologists are eccentric
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: is an insult to eccentric people, because they are so
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: so eccentric. This guy used to claim, and he was.
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: He he fancied himself a wine connoisseur. He was in
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: New Orleans, so you'd go to all of these beautiful
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: creole restaurants and he would always sample wise. He used
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: to claim that just by the odor, he could claim
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: he could state what type of wine they had been drinking.
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking, you're so full of it's you're so full
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: of it, you can't do that. But for us, you know,
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: in the morgue, the gastric content tells a lot about
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: the activity of an individual. You know, we don't think
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: about like passively. If we're if we're eating, if we're
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: eating either for nutrition or we're eating because of stress
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: or whatever. We might pick up a handful of something
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: we're gonna pop it in our mouth or we just
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: grab a quick something to eat. Well, you don't know
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: if that ingestion of that thing is going to be
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: the last thing you ever consume and that's going to
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: travel with you. So that's one of the reasons. And
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: I from a scientific standpoint, I value the information that
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: I gleaned from gast content. But probably out of all
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: of the postmarm interval elements, it has to be postmarmal
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: avidity or live mortis for me. And here's why all
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: of these other things are so and particularly riger mortis
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: and an alger mortise, which is body temperature, they're so
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: heavily environmentally dependent, Dave liver mortis is not so. Just
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: imagine if you've got someone that dies sitting like the
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: guy you know, I showed you the image the other
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: day when we did the first segment of this teaching
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: series about decomposition. The guy that was seated in the chair, well,
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: the guy that was seated in the chair that died
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: of an m I just a natural death, had a
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: heart attack based upon how he seated. The blood because
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: it's no longer pumping through the body, it's going to
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: settle to the gravitationally dependent areas of his body. Gravity
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: is like the one constant universe that kind of never changes. Now,
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: if I had I've got an old friend that's an astrophysicist,
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: probably one of the brightest people I've ever met in
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: my life. As you can imagine Country's butter too, you
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: wouldn't you wouldn't suspect this guy's got PhD In astrophysics
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: from Clemson. I used to eat lunch with him. I
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: just sit there amazed by this guy. He would dispute
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: this with me because you know, I'd say gravity is
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: the one constant, it doesn't vary. He say, oh, well,
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: if you go to the poles, it's different. You know,
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: if you're on the equator, it's different. We understand what
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: we're saying here. It's not as it's not as variable
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: as temperature. All right. So if you're seated in a
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: chairing and you have somebody that passes away, the blood
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: is going to settle well to the ankles, the feet.
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: We'll actually see the feet swell, they'll turn purple. That's
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: why it's called how many times have you ever heard
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: somebody say they didn't have another adjut to describe how
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: angry they were, and they said, I was livid like that. Well,
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: that's where we get this term live or mortis, it's
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: or post mortem lividity. It's that kind of purple coloration
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: that comes on the body. And it's not a decompositional change,
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: you know where you'll see bodies that will go kind
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: of purple and black and that sort of thing. It's
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: not like that. This is the blood pooling. It goes
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: first to the vessels, the capillary beds. They're not meant
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: for storing blood. They're meant for moving blood. And those
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: little beds burst and when they burst, it leaches out
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: into what's called the interstitial tissue, the kind of the
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: fatty tissue that surrounds all the vessels and it stains it.
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: And dude, once it's gotten in there, you can't change it.
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: So if you like, for instance, we have cases where
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: people will be killed in one location, the person might
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: think about whether they're going to do with the body.
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: They'll crumple up the body after it's been laying on
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: the floor for about an hour or two hours, and
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: they'll put them in a trunk. Well, the first time
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: they lay them on their left side, they've been laying
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: on the left side where they were killed, they place
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: them on the trunk laying on the right side. So
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: you might have two presentations of post mortal avidity. And
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: before it gets fixed, it can actually migrate around. And
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: that's a real problem, you know, if you're trying to
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: do an assessment. So it takes a measured point in
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: time for post mortal avidity to fix, and once it's
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: fixed and it stains the skin, it's not going to move.
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: And so if you've got a body. If we come
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: to a scene and we've got an individual that is
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: lying in a prone position, which means their chest is
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: in contact with the ground, and I show up at
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: the scene and they're laying like that, but yet they've
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: got post mortal avidity between their shoulder blades, I'm going
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: to know that before I arrived, somebody moved that body.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: At one point in time, they were face up and
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, someone got the grand idea
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: to either flip them or move them, you know. And
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: this goes to scene staging as well. Well. Going back
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: to our four unfortunate students in Idaho, based upon the
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: timeframe of postmartal lividity, I can tell you this post
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: wal avidity is close to being completely fixed by the
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: time the corner shows up at the scene. That's how
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: much of a lag time you've had. And the way
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: we test it in the way I would hope that
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: she had tested it at the scene, is if you
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: get one of these big purple, vivacious areas, if you
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: take your thumb on a gloved hand and you depress
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: that area that's purple and it doesn't blanch, it still stays.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: That means it's fixed. That means that those little appt
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: their beds have erupted and it's still you know, it's
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: no longer blanchable, whereas you can get that staining.
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: But if you.
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: Press it and it blanches, that's called blanchable avidity. That
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: means that it hasn't fixed yet. And so for both
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: of those, both those instances, there's a measured amount of
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: time that you know, it takes for this to occur.
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: So when we're looking it'll be a parent. You can
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: see it kind of pop up on the radar within
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: twenty to thirty minutes after death. It's kind of like
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: the kid that you saw when you I wasn't one
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: of these kids that could do that that you go
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: to playground with and they can hang upside down the
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: monkey bars and their head turns the red and it
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: kind of swells. Less blood set now it still moving,
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: but you know what I'm saying. So if within twenty
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: to thirty minutes, you'll see the blood kind of pooling
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: in these areas and it's going to take and intensity
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: is going to increase up until about the seventh or
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: eight hour, and then it's there. It's not moving. So
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: wouldn't that be an interesting set of data to have
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: about the cases in Idaho? Was a lividity fixed where
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: there are multiple presentations of lividity. And I hope, I
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: certainly hope that coming up in August that all of
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: these questions there are many, but all of these questions
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: that can be answered, and that can be answered through
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: science and that assessment that hopefully took place on that
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: day back in twenty twenty two in November, I hope
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: it will thorough and I hope that we learn more
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: about what happened that night. I'm Joseph got Morgan and
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: this is bodybags.
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: H