Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Mayhem in the Morgue | Alcohol, Meth, or Showing Off for Women?

Transcript

Mayhem in the Morgue | Alcohol, Meth, or Showing Off for Women? · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This episode discusses the death of an individual in their
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: subsequent autopsy. If things like this upset you, this is
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: not the episode for you. Welcome to Mayhem in the
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: World with their host Doctor Kendall Crowns. My wife once
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: asked me we're the most common things associated with people's deaths,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: and my response to her was alcohol, methamphetamine use, and
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: showing off for women. So today we're going to play
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: a little quiz called is it alcohol, meth or women.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: So this case occurred on a July fourth evening. This
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: scene was a thirty year old male. He was out
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: on a lake with friends. They were firing off fireworks
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: and having a good time. At some point in the evening,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: this scene decided to pick up a fireworks mortar and
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: launch it off his chest. So let's stop right there.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: For those of you unfamiliar with fireworks, a fireworks mortar
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: is a consumer firework that uses launch topes, which are
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: commonly called mortars. These are fiberglass, pressed wood, or cardboard
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: or plastic. They are a long tube with a flat
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: base at the bottom. What the mortars are used for
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: is to launch the mortar shells, which can be spherical
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: or cylindrical and they can be almost two inches in length.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: They have a lift charge that launches the firework into
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: the air and also lights a time delay fuse which
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: after a period of time, lights what is called the break,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: which is a bursting charge in stars and the stars
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: are the colorful things that fall from the sky. The
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: ones that the deceiton was using were sixty gram mortar shells,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: which means sixty grams of chemical composition, which includes gunpowder.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Just for reference, a shotgun shell has about twenty eight
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: grams of gunpowder. So these aren't fireworks you want to
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: fool around with or do something crazy. So let's get
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: back to the story. So he launches his fireworks off
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: his chest. The fireworks shoots out across the lake and explodes,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: and everybody's like, oh, that was crazy, And they turn
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: around and the scenees laying on the ground unresponsive. Emergency
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: medical services is called and when they arrived, he did
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: not have a pulse and he was declared dead at
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: the scene. He was brought to the medical Examiner's office
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: and I performed an autopsy on him. He is a
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: well developed all Nurshmail. He looked his age of thirty
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: years old. He had a large abrasion on his chest
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: on the left side, overlying his heart as a surrounding bruise. Internally,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: underlying this abrasion, there was a fracture of the sternum,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: which is the mid portion of new chest play and
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: fractures of the left ribs, a laceration of the heart,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: contusions of the lungs, and bleeding in the sac surrounding
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: the heart, which is called the para cardium. So he
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: had a hemo pear cardium and bleeding in the chess
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: cavity which is achemothorax. He had no other evidence of
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: injury and no other natural disease processes. So his cause
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: of death was blonde force injuries and his manner of
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: death was accident. His toxicology findings will discuss shortly. So
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: I had the cause of death, I had the manner
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: of death, but I didn't understand how did this fireworks
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: mortar cause his death. I wanted to find out what
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: kind of force was involved? So how could I do that?
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: So what I thought was I would approach the local
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: university where I work and go to their physics department.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: I met with one of the physics professors and He
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: told me that he could help me out and figure
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: out what this recoil force was, and I bought some
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: more fireworks mortars. He and I met at a police
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: training center that had a large open field. When he
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: showed up on that day and got out of his car,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: he walked over and the equipment he brought with him
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: was a luggage scale, and I said to him what
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: is that. He goes, well, this is a scientific instrument.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: I go, well, it looks like a luggage scale, and
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: he said, well, it might be a luggage scale, but
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: it'll be able to measure the force. It'll be able
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: to do what we needed to do. This luggage scale
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: looked like a fancy weight scale. It was made out
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: of metal and it had a dial where you could
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: see the amount of weight that was on it. But
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: there was no way of calculating that weight unless we
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: were looking right at it. And there was no way
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: I was going to stand next to it when those
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: fireworks launched. So first thing I said to him was, well,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: how are we going to document how much force there was?
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: And he said, well, let's just set up a camera
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: right next to it. We had two cameras at the time,
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: so okay, we could set one up, but I was
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: a little concerned about it getting damaged, and how were
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: we going to slow it down enough to be able
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: to see this dial move. We set it up, We
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: launched the first mortarshell, and the explosion happened. The mortarshell
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: shot into the air, and the mortar itself shot off
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: the scale and fell on the ground. When the physicists
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: and I walked over, the scale was severely dented and broken,
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: and he became very angry and said, well, that stupid
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: firework just broke my scale. I can't believe this. And
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: I said to him, I go, well, are we going
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: to even be able to measure anything? He goes, I
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: don't know. I'm done. This is ridiculous. He picked up
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: his broken scale and left. We looked at the video
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: from that one firework launch. It was so fast there
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: was no way you can even read the dial even
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: when we slowed it down. So I had to find
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: someone else to help me. I went back to that
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: university and I approached a mechanical engineering professor. He told
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: me that he could help, and that I shouldn't have
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: used a physicist because the physicist wouldn't have been able
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: to figure that out anyway, and engineers were better for
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: the job, so he assigned to work with me a
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: PhD student by the name of Bonnie, and Bonnie and
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: I had a meeting and we discussed how we could
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: measure this recoil force and what she came up with
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: is she could make a force plate which was made
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: from metal, had sensors put in it, and then had
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: the sensors connected to a computer which had very long
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: wires so you didn't have to be next to the
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: firework when it launched. So it was incredibly safe and
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: it was well constructed. So with Bonnie's help and her
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: force plate, I purchased more fireworks, and this time we
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: asked the fire Marshal if we could use an area
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: to fire off the fireworks. He said that we could
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: use a fireman's training station which had a nice large
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: open field, but his one request was that he could
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: watch the fireworks be launched as well and invite whomever
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: he wanted, which I had no problem with. So at
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: noon on a nice sunny day, we went to go
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: launch these fireworks. The fire Marshal and his five friends
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: showed up complaining that we were launching fireworks in the
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: middle of the day, and there wasn't going to be
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: any fancy show, and that was kind of dumb. I
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: explained to him we weren't there for the fireworks. We
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: were there to collect data, which he understood, of course,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: but he was still disappointed. Bonnie set up her force plate,
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: hooked it up to a computer. We were about ten
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: yards away from the mortar and the force plate, so
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: we were in a nice safety zone. So I began
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: launching the fireworks and Bonnie began collecting the data. We
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: launched off so many fireworks that day. I actually had
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: a blister on my finger from using a lighter over
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: and over and over. And after about three hours of
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: launching fireworks, we had collected the data that we needed.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Bonnie processed the data and came up with the following findings.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: The recoil force of the fireworks mortar was equivalent to
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: being hit in the chest by a baseball thrown at
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: ninety miles per hour, which is a significant amount of force.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: So I had my answer. When the firework launched, the
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: recoil force went back into the decedent's chest, fracturing his
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: sternamin ribs and pushed the broken bones into his heart,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: lacerating his heart which caused bleeding. So with that information,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: I was satisfied with what happened. Case closed. So it's
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: time for everybody to check their answers. And what was
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: your answer? Was it alcohol, meth or was it women? Well,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: it's a trick answer. It's to the above. It was
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: alcohol and women. His alcohol level was zero point two
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: two percent in the blood, which means he roughly drank
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: about eleven beers within the hour before his death. The
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: other thing is is there was women at the lake too.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: He was trying to impress them by showing them how
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: hard he was by launching this firework off his chest,
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: and in his attempt to show off to women and
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: being intoxicated, he ended up dead. And closing. Remember always
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: use fireworks appropriately because they aren't very dangerous. And for
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: your men out there listening to the show, most women
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: aren't very impressed by you doing dumb things, so just
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: don't do it. Well. That brings us to the end
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: of the episode. I hope you learned something and I
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: hope you were entertained. Next time,