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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: A Tale of Two Sisters - No Good Deed · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:01
Speaker 1: Quodydas, but Joseph's gotten more.
0:06
Speaker 2: The best gardener that I have ever known, hands down,
0:12
Speaker 2: is my mama. She can make things grow where other
0:17
Speaker 2: people other people would pale. It's amazing what she can
0:21
Speaker 2: do in a garden. And her gardens are lovely. Now
0:24
Speaker 2: don't get me wrong, I'm not saying, you know, when
0:27
Speaker 2: you go into her backyard it looks like Versailles or anything, right,
0:31
Speaker 2: But it's amazing what she can do just with a clipping.
0:34
Speaker 2: For instance, I gave her, I don't know, I guess
0:37
Speaker 2: as a gift. I gave her this like specialized fern
0:41
Speaker 2: many years ago, and just out of the clippings that
0:45
Speaker 2: she saved from this thing, she has got baskets to
0:49
Speaker 2: this day that she gives away of these things. And
0:53
Speaker 2: you could say that about a lot of her let's
0:57
Speaker 2: just say Flora. But today we're going to talk about
1:04
Speaker 2: another beautiful garden, a garden that was tended to with
1:11
Speaker 2: loving care by a lady who spent it would seem
1:16
Speaker 2: most of her time in it. And of course it's
1:20
Speaker 2: in Florida, so kind of year round. Her name was Karen.
1:26
Speaker 2: Karen spent a lot of time tending to her garden.
1:31
Speaker 2: But what people didn't realize is that Karen would wind
1:35
Speaker 2: up buried in it as well. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
1:42
Speaker 2: and this is body bags, David. I don't know that
1:48
Speaker 2: I've ever asked you this question. Do you have a
1:49
Speaker 2: green thumb?
1:51
Speaker 1: Oh?
1:53
Speaker 3: You know, Joe asking me a question like that, you
1:58
Speaker 3: gotta know better. I'm not the gardener, I'm the goather
2:01
Speaker 3: tips the.
2:01
Speaker 2: Gardener today with this case, this lady, she seems as
2:08
Speaker 2: though that she spent the majority of her tom outside
2:12
Speaker 2: just working in the yard. And you know, back to
2:15
Speaker 2: my mother, it's very therapeutic for people. You can get
2:18
Speaker 2: lost out there.
2:19
Speaker 3: And that's what Karen Pieas did. She worked in the yard,
2:23
Speaker 3: not just the flowers, but the yard, I mean the grass,
2:26
Speaker 3: the you know, the edging, every aspect of the guard
2:30
Speaker 3: of her yard was important to her. And living in Florida,
2:34
Speaker 3: she spent a lot of time working in the yard.
2:37
Speaker 3: But let me give you a little background on Karen Joe.
2:39
Speaker 3: Because Karen Pieas was known by neighbors as very friendly, loving,
2:45
Speaker 3: just a wonderful nice person. They knew her as the
2:49
Speaker 3: person working in the yard. When they didn't see her
2:51
Speaker 3: in the yard for a couple of days and couldn't
2:54
Speaker 3: get her on the phone. They knew something was wrong,
2:57
Speaker 3: so they called their friends called used to do a
3:00
Speaker 3: welfare check. Hey man, just go check on our friend.
3:03
Speaker 3: Now when police shop up, I'm gonna give you the
3:05
Speaker 3: backstory in just a minute, okay, because there's so much
3:09
Speaker 3: There is so much more to this. The friends didn't
3:11
Speaker 3: just make one phone call, okay, but to cut to
3:14
Speaker 3: the nitty gritty, police show up to do a welfare check.
3:19
Speaker 3: Karen is not in the house. They can't find her
3:21
Speaker 3: and her sister, Deborah Patton, who lives with Karen. They
3:25
Speaker 3: live in this house together in Florida, and she's giving
3:30
Speaker 3: answers Joe to the questions police are asking and they're
3:34
Speaker 3: not right. They're not right, and the police know she's lying.
3:38
Speaker 3: They know that the person talking into them is lying
3:41
Speaker 3: to them, and so they started looking around and one
3:45
Speaker 3: thing leads to another, and they notice that there's like
3:50
Speaker 3: a hole that's been dug in the backyard. You know
3:52
Speaker 3: how when you dig a hole and you put the
3:54
Speaker 3: dirt back in, it never levels out, you know. So
3:58
Speaker 3: while one of the deputy he's just standing there, you know, watching,
4:02
Speaker 3: they went ahead and got a warrant to do a
4:04
Speaker 3: search and to make sure nothing else could go on.
4:08
Speaker 3: And sure enough, Karen Paie is was found buried in
4:12
Speaker 3: the backyard in about a two foot hole, and her
4:19
Speaker 3: sister was arrested. Karen Patten was arrested in charge. Now,
4:22
Speaker 3: by the way, I was looking at their ages, Joe
4:25
Speaker 3: seventy two years old, sixty seven at the time. They're
4:29
Speaker 3: not twins. The girls, the sisters were born thirteen months apart,
4:34
Speaker 3: so kind of keep that in mind. These are sisters
4:39
Speaker 3: who really are close in age, were raised very close
4:42
Speaker 3: in age, but their adult lives total opposites. Joe and
4:47
Speaker 3: I mean total opposites. So if you can imagine where
4:53
Speaker 3: Karen Paie has stayed near the family home, she cared
4:56
Speaker 3: for her adult parents as they got older. Karen maintained
5:00
Speaker 3: a career on her own. She saved money. She was
5:03
Speaker 3: known as a penny pincher. Okay, she was very concerned
5:06
Speaker 3: about financial stability, and she took care of her parents
5:11
Speaker 3: as they slipped into Alzheimer's dementia into Alzheimer's, and she
5:15
Speaker 3: was there caring for their parents.
5:18
Speaker 2: Well.
5:18
Speaker 3: Deborah Patten meanwhile had married and was gone. She was
5:21
Speaker 3: living in Louisiana with her husband for twenty eight years.
5:25
Speaker 3: Never came back to help care for the elder adult parents.
5:29
Speaker 3: That was Karen's job. But once the parents died, Deborah
5:35
Speaker 3: shows up and moves in with Karen. Now I mentioned
5:42
Speaker 3: Karen Pius has taken care of this house. She took
5:45
Speaker 3: care of the parents. Everything is owned by her. She
5:48
Speaker 3: owns this. Deborah shows up having done nothing and moves in.
5:55
Speaker 3: Neighbors are like, you know, Debra's not really nice to you.
5:57
Speaker 3: They heard arguments, They knew Deborah just pushed Karen every
6:01
Speaker 3: which way. Joe, to give you an example, I mentioned
6:05
Speaker 3: Karen stays home to take care of mom and dad
6:08
Speaker 3: as they go through. I don't know how many of
6:10
Speaker 3: y'all understand how bad Alzheimer's is. It's really really rough.
6:15
Speaker 3: On my hat's off to you if you've heard for
6:18
Speaker 3: an adult, it's just rough. But Karen stayed, took care
6:22
Speaker 3: of both mom and dad. Deborah didn't have anything to
6:25
Speaker 3: do with them. She shows up after they're gone and
6:29
Speaker 3: she's left her husband of twenty eight years. Deborah has
6:33
Speaker 3: and moves in with Karen. They don't get along. Now,
6:37
Speaker 3: when I say they don't get along, Joe. I'm thinking,
6:40
Speaker 3: if Karen has been living in this community her whole
6:43
Speaker 3: adult life and taking care of the house and the
6:45
Speaker 3: family and all that, and then somebody else moved, that
6:49
Speaker 3: new person coming into the mix is the one causing
6:51
Speaker 3: the problems, not the person that's been there the whole time.
6:53
Speaker 3: So when I say they didn't get along on something
6:55
Speaker 3: of no, Deborah did not get along with Karen. She
6:58
Speaker 3: wanted what Karen had. Deborah had nothing, no money, no nothing.
7:02
Speaker 3: She never kept a job for very long, did not
7:04
Speaker 3: proceed very long. She couldn't, you know. So here's Karen,
7:09
Speaker 3: who has taken care of everything, had her own career
7:11
Speaker 3: and took care of mom and dad. Now she owns
7:13
Speaker 3: her own house, she proud of her yard, and here
7:17
Speaker 3: comes her sister with nothing. Debrah has nothing, but Karen
7:22
Speaker 3: puts her up.
7:23
Speaker 2: Well, you know this dynamic started. Uh, you know, it's
7:27
Speaker 2: amazing as a death investigator when I always tell I
7:33
Speaker 2: always tell students, I've given interviews where they say, well,
7:36
Speaker 2: what's the most interesting interesting thing about being a death
7:41
Speaker 2: investigator aside from being around the dead. And this is
7:48
Speaker 2: going to be really this is going to sound really,
7:49
Speaker 2: really creepy, but I'm going to go ahead and go
7:52
Speaker 2: ahead and say it. What's really cool about it is
7:56
Speaker 2: that you literally get to peek in people's closets, and
8:02
Speaker 2: if you want a good story, suddenly, because of the
8:09
Speaker 2: intimate access that you have behind the scenes kind of
8:13
Speaker 2: seeing the way things develop in that world, you have
8:17
Speaker 2: this narrative that's laid out, you know, and suddenly, and
8:20
Speaker 2: many times it'll burst on the scene. You'll have this
8:22
Speaker 2: kind of moment of clarity when you're working a case
8:25
Speaker 2: and you begin to understand interpersonal dynamics. And let me
8:29
Speaker 2: tell you something, when you're dealing with uh, with sick parents,
8:36
Speaker 2: when you're dealing with the death of a parent, there
8:39
Speaker 2: is nothing like the stimulus that that is interjected into
8:46
Speaker 2: the relationship between siblings, because if there is something ugly there,
8:51
Speaker 2: it's going to pop up. But you know, I submit
8:55
Speaker 2: to you that this ugliness has it far. It extends
9:00
Speaker 2: way way back into the past. It wasn't just the
9:03
Speaker 2: moment she shows up on the doorstep here, and there's
9:07
Speaker 2: probably been ongoing tension over the years. There's probably been resentment,
9:13
Speaker 2: you know, from the perspective of this sister that just
9:18
Speaker 2: you know, kind of floats in from Louisiana, incredible jealousy.
9:24
Speaker 2: You know, parents always preferred you over me.
9:29
Speaker 1: All the while.
9:30
Speaker 2: You know she's not doing anything to lift her finger
9:34
Speaker 2: to help, And you're right, it's a There are people, Dave,
9:39
Speaker 2: I don't see how they keep from cracking under the burden.
9:43
Speaker 2: And if you've got two parents that are affected by
9:48
Speaker 2: any kind of dementia, it is exhausting. I don't see
9:53
Speaker 2: how people do it. And you're having to bear that
9:56
Speaker 2: burden day in and day out, shifting from one to
10:00
Speaker 2: the other to try to keep control over it, try
10:02
Speaker 2: to manage it. Just the finances alone. I can see
10:06
Speaker 2: why she would retreat to a garden day. I really can.
10:10
Speaker 2: For those few precious moments she might be able to
10:13
Speaker 2: go out there and retrieve some bit of sanity, some
10:18
Speaker 2: bit of solemnity, some bit of peace, maybe hoping that
10:24
Speaker 2: she would walk back into that house where her parents
10:28
Speaker 2: had been, in the state that they were in, and
10:31
Speaker 2: something magical would have happened. But I got to tell you,
10:36
Speaker 2: in the case of Karen, after her sister shows up,
10:41
Speaker 2: it was anything but magical. Because when the sister showed up,
10:48
Speaker 2: Hell followed with her. It amazes me, Brother, Dave, that
11:07
Speaker 2: we've had this conversation before about deposited remains. The dynamic
11:14
Speaker 2: that interests me the most from a forensic well, it's
11:18
Speaker 2: behavioral and it's also forensics as well as kind of
11:22
Speaker 2: this interesting blend because I could I could sit there
11:26
Speaker 2: and look at a depressed area in the ground, do
11:31
Speaker 2: do a retrieval of remains and excavation if you will,
11:36
Speaker 2: of remains. But I always always think, why do people
11:41
Speaker 2: why do people take not just bodies but evidence and
11:45
Speaker 2: hang on to them in there in their environment. And
11:50
Speaker 2: that's that's always been a very fascinating dynamic. I think
11:53
Speaker 2: it has something to do I've always thought this. I
11:57
Speaker 2: think it has something to do with potential perpetrator wanting
12:03
Speaker 2: to have constant control and watchcare over what they've done.
12:09
Speaker 2: You know, isn't it interesting, Dave? How many cases that
12:12
Speaker 2: you and I have covered over the years now where
12:15
Speaker 2: you will have a perpetrator that will take a human remain,
12:20
Speaker 2: for instance, and just discarded like it's rubbish, you know,
12:23
Speaker 2: out in some horrible area. But yet we have these
12:27
Speaker 2: others that kind of latch on to these and literally
12:33
Speaker 2: hang on to them and continue to exist, perhaps in
12:36
Speaker 2: the same environment where just out your front door or
12:41
Speaker 2: your kitchen window. You pull the curtains aside, and there's
12:45
Speaker 2: active decomposition going on in your backyard. Think about that
12:49
Speaker 2: just for a second. I mean, that's a real I think.
12:52
Speaker 2: I think that there could be an academic study actually
12:57
Speaker 2: that could be applied to this. You begin to look
13:00
Speaker 2: at depositive remains and kind of the relationship between the
13:05
Speaker 2: perpetrators and remains, and to see kind of how they
13:09
Speaker 2: you know, how how did all this come together? What
13:11
Speaker 2: was your rationale for hanging on us.
13:15
Speaker 3: I have a theory, well, pretty much the same thing
13:17
Speaker 3: of what you were saying about control. I think that
13:20
Speaker 3: when you have somebody that commits a murder and they
13:23
Speaker 3: just discard the body to get away from it because
13:25
Speaker 3: they have no connection to it, it is just an it.
13:28
Speaker 3: They don't have a connection to that person. They might
13:30
Speaker 3: even know the name, you know, They just they did
13:33
Speaker 3: their thing, they killed them whatever, and now I'm getting
13:35
Speaker 3: rid of the body. But when it comes to this
13:37
Speaker 3: type of a situation where his sister has killed a
13:40
Speaker 3: sister and put her remains in the backyard in a
13:43
Speaker 3: hole two foot hole, and she's right there, I think
13:47
Speaker 3: it's because that way her body is there in the backyard.
13:52
Speaker 3: And in this case, I think Debra had control over,
13:55
Speaker 3: you know, anybody that wants to see. She knows nobody's
13:58
Speaker 3: discovered the body. Yet if no who he discovers the body,
14:01
Speaker 3: I'm free and clear, you know, and that way, and
14:03
Speaker 3: I think that's the case with others who keep somebody
14:06
Speaker 3: close to them where they can watch over the remains,
14:09
Speaker 3: because it's like, if somebody goes near it, I can
14:12
Speaker 3: go out there and I can get them looking someplace else.
14:15
Speaker 3: I control the remains, I can keep somebody from finding it.
14:18
Speaker 3: But if I don't see them, if I bury it
14:20
Speaker 3: out in the middle of nowhere, I don't know.
14:22
Speaker 1: One hunter might fall over it or something.
14:24
Speaker 3: But Joe, my question for about this, Okay, you get
14:27
Speaker 3: the cops in the backyard, they get a warrant, they
14:29
Speaker 3: see that there has been there's disturbed ground in the backyard.
14:34
Speaker 3: Not unique, and that is kind of unique. When you
14:37
Speaker 3: have two elderly women at the time, both they're sixty
14:40
Speaker 3: seven years old, You're not going to see them out
14:42
Speaker 3: there digging a hole for no reason. So there had
14:44
Speaker 3: to be a reason for it. And they want to look,
14:48
Speaker 3: how do law enforcement because they're going to be the
14:51
Speaker 3: first ones to look at something like this. How did
14:54
Speaker 3: they go about digging what they believe? You know, hey,
14:57
Speaker 3: we got to find out what's in this area before
15:00
Speaker 3: we call because it could be nothing, you know, But
15:03
Speaker 3: do you have to like dig up and see if
15:04
Speaker 3: there's something in there?
15:05
Speaker 2: What?
15:05
Speaker 1: How does that start?
15:07
Speaker 3: Do I have as a cop with a gun and
15:09
Speaker 3: a badge writing tickets?
15:10
Speaker 1: One minute? Am I in the backyard digging this with
15:12
Speaker 1: a tantraw?
15:14
Speaker 2: Okay, excellent question, and kind of let me break it
15:16
Speaker 2: down to you this way. I know people use use
15:21
Speaker 2: motorized augers now too to put in post dig post
15:27
Speaker 2: holes with. Okay, but let's go back in time and
15:30
Speaker 2: think about a and lord knows I've had to use
15:33
Speaker 2: these over the years. I used to work on a
15:34
Speaker 2: fencing crew when I was in college, one of the
15:37
Speaker 2: toughest jobs I ever had. Think about an old uh
15:44
Speaker 2: uh posthold digger. You know it's got the two you
15:48
Speaker 2: know it's got the the the two spoons. They look
15:52
Speaker 2: like gigantic spoon driving it into the round, into the ground.
15:55
Speaker 2: You're pinching it bringing it out. So if you're if
16:00
Speaker 2: you're trying to analyze this from a forensic standpoint, and
16:03
Speaker 2: you're looking at a defect in the ground, you look at,
16:08
Speaker 2: say the space, and think about kind of the cylindrical
16:12
Speaker 2: hole that you would generate with a posthole digger or
16:14
Speaker 2: even an augur Anythink, now, if I'm going to search
16:18
Speaker 2: that area and I'm looking for somebody that is missing,
16:23
Speaker 2: what's the potential that they could be in a hole
16:28
Speaker 2: with a caliber the size of a coffee can probably
16:35
Speaker 2: probably not much. Now, could you discard evidence in there?
16:37
Speaker 1: Yeah?
16:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, you could put a weapon in there, or you
16:40
Speaker 2: could just be planting trees for all I know. But
16:43
Speaker 2: if I see some kind of irregularity, and this is
16:46
Speaker 2: one of the things that in what's referred to as
16:50
Speaker 2: forensic tafonomy, which is a study of the ground, you
16:55
Speaker 2: look at the ground from the perspective of the potential
17:01
Speaker 2: of what you could harvest out of it from an
17:03
Speaker 2: evidentiary standpoint, and also are the dimensions of this thing?
17:09
Speaker 2: Are they very uniformed? Are they irregular? Because when you
17:14
Speaker 2: start to look at uniformity. Okay, and let's say you
17:17
Speaker 2: want to you want to dig a hole. I keep
17:20
Speaker 2: using hole. Everybody thinks that it's you know, you're talking
17:23
Speaker 2: about a circle but let's just say you're pulling the
17:26
Speaker 2: earth out of it. Do you have definitive margins here
17:31
Speaker 2: where you can say, okay, yeah, ge way, is that
17:33
Speaker 2: looks like a rectangle? It looks like a square, But
17:36
Speaker 2: you've kind of got this randomized thing. And if you're
17:39
Speaker 2: using kind of like a spade spade shaped shovel, this
17:44
Speaker 2: comes to a point at the bottom. You've got square
17:47
Speaker 2: bottom shovels, you've got spade shaped shovels, and it's got
17:50
Speaker 2: these kind of curved edges around. Not a lot of
17:53
Speaker 2: care has been given to that. This is just one
17:56
Speaker 2: thing that we look for. What is the potential that,
18:01
Speaker 2: first off, this was dug for some other purpose, or
18:05
Speaker 2: does it have the potential the dimensions here for discarding
18:10
Speaker 2: human remains or covering up human remains. One of the
18:14
Speaker 2: things that's fascinating to me about this is that when
18:20
Speaker 2: you think about the size and the only dimension that
18:24
Speaker 2: they are giving us, Dave is two feet Well, it's
18:28
Speaker 2: two feet two feet wide, two feet long. Is it
18:31
Speaker 2: two feet deep? I'm going with two feet deep. Okay,
18:34
Speaker 2: so we don't really know what the outer perimeter is.
18:38
Speaker 2: Two feet deep is insufficient to the task. I'll put
18:42
Speaker 2: it to you that way, and let me flip this
18:44
Speaker 2: around and let me throw this out to you. Okay,
18:51
Speaker 2: that hole in and of itself is accusatory. It's accusatory
18:57
Speaker 2: to let's just say it's the sister and she's looking
19:01
Speaker 2: out the window at it. It's accused tory in the
19:04
Speaker 2: sense that Karen the gardener had a real sense of
19:08
Speaker 2: the yard, of the esthetic that whole screams at a
19:14
Speaker 2: potential perpetrator and says, even in digging a hole, you're insufficient.
19:19
Speaker 2: And everything you've done in life, and this is a
19:22
Speaker 2: great example of it. You're talking about a two foot
19:25
Speaker 2: hole to get rid of your sister's body. He's such
19:30
Speaker 2: a loser because the sister would not have done this.
19:34
Speaker 2: You know what she would have done. She probably would
19:37
Speaker 2: have got steaks, and I mean that you can drive
19:40
Speaker 2: in the ground. She would have gotten kite string, she
19:44
Speaker 2: would have tied it off, she would have carefully measured
19:46
Speaker 2: it because of the aesthetic of it, because she saw beauty.
19:49
Speaker 2: But you know, you have to plan beauty. And what
19:52
Speaker 2: it comes down to with this is this is pure horror.
19:56
Speaker 2: I think, Dave that once they begin to look at this,
20:02
Speaker 2: and I've actually had this happen. People think that you
20:06
Speaker 2: can take dirt and shovel it over human remains and
20:12
Speaker 2: you're not gonna smell anything. That is not the case.
20:18
Speaker 2: That's one of the many reasons. There are other there
20:21
Speaker 2: are other reasons. But you know, in funerary practices in
20:26
Speaker 2: America and worldwide, you go deep. Okay, so and six
20:32
Speaker 2: feet is kind of you know, it's kind of the
20:34
Speaker 2: standard measurement, six feet deep, and then you cover it, right,
20:39
Speaker 2: you have to cover it and you're not going to
20:42
Speaker 2: have some kind of smell emanated. And I know people
20:45
Speaker 2: are saying, well, Morgan, what about in balm bodies. We're
20:47
Speaker 2: not talking about in BALMD bodies. We're just talking about
20:49
Speaker 2: because not everybody's inbalm. Embalming is one of the things
20:52
Speaker 2: that is it's very unique to Western culture. There's a
20:56
Speaker 2: whole other world out there. There are people that bury
21:00
Speaker 2: non embalmed bodies.
21:03
Speaker 1: You know, Griffith wasn't involved.
21:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there you go.
21:06
Speaker 3: I mean seven thirty that morning, ten thirty that morning
21:09
Speaker 3: they were burying him.
21:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you know, my wife and I
21:13
Speaker 2: are talking about, you know, into the ground. We're talking
21:16
Speaker 2: about natural burial here with no preservation. You know what,
21:21
Speaker 2: you know, what's kind of what's the point?
21:22
Speaker 3: You know what you would I always thought you would
21:25
Speaker 3: like dedicate your body to your skills and let them.
21:27
Speaker 2: Know that's not going to happen.
21:30
Speaker 1: Okay, let me go back to this real quick, Joe.
21:32
Speaker 3: You've got the two cops and they're looking for Karen.
21:37
Speaker 3: They talked to her sister, and they know sister Deborah
21:40
Speaker 3: is lying to them that she doesn't know where her
21:43
Speaker 3: sister is. Her sister's car is in the garage, her
21:46
Speaker 3: sister's phone, her sister's while it's all still here, Karen's
21:49
Speaker 3: stuff is here, and the woman who lives with her,
21:53
Speaker 3: her sister says, I don't know where she is, and
21:55
Speaker 3: the cops know she's lying. They see this disturbed ground
21:58
Speaker 3: in the backyard. They decide they, being the police, they
22:03
Speaker 3: want to look at it. They get a warrant. Now
22:05
Speaker 3: do the police do the officers do this on their own?
22:08
Speaker 3: Do they go out there and just you know, with
22:09
Speaker 3: their hands, start, you know, scrubbing away. Let's see what
22:12
Speaker 3: we got here, because you're only going to be we
22:15
Speaker 3: know postfact, we know after the fact that it's only
22:17
Speaker 3: two feet deep. That's what we're told, But Karen's body
22:22
Speaker 3: was placed in trash bags, in a black trash bag
22:27
Speaker 3: with bungee cords wrapped around it and duct tape.
22:30
Speaker 1: So if her.
22:31
Speaker 3: Body is placed in there, are the police going to
22:36
Speaker 3: be able to smell, you know, the body and realize
22:40
Speaker 3: we got something here we need to explore. Are they
22:42
Speaker 3: going to get on their hands and knees and start
22:43
Speaker 3: pulling dirt?
22:44
Speaker 1: No?
22:45
Speaker 2: Okay, No, If if they were, if I were whispering
22:50
Speaker 2: in their ear as an advisor, I'd say freeze, okay,
22:54
Speaker 2: because okay, so this is kind of interesting. I gotta,
22:58
Speaker 2: I gotta, I gotta tell you this, this is kind
22:59
Speaker 2: of cool. Well, I'm so glad you brought this up.
23:02
Speaker 2: Does smell equal probable cause? Kind of fascinating, right, I
23:07
Speaker 2: mean when you think, yeah, because you know, we think
23:09
Speaker 2: many times if we see blood coming Okay, let's just
23:13
Speaker 2: say we've got a closed door in a closet and
23:15
Speaker 2: we see blood coming out from beneath in a house,
23:20
Speaker 2: I would think that if I'm a police officer and
23:24
Speaker 2: I'm clearing the house and I see blood what appears
23:26
Speaker 2: to be blood, right, I can't fall into that trap. Forensically,
23:29
Speaker 2: you're going to nail me. So if I if I
23:32
Speaker 2: look down and I see what appears to be blood
23:36
Speaker 2: coming from beneath a door, first off, I'm going to
23:40
Speaker 2: have my weapon out, and secondly, I'm going to carefully
23:42
Speaker 2: open the door and I see a body in there,
23:46
Speaker 2: after I check them to see if they have any vitals.
23:49
Speaker 2: I'm not pulling the body out, Okay, I'm backing out
23:53
Speaker 2: because that's a matter of public safety with a body
23:58
Speaker 2: or let's just say, we don't know it's a body yet.
24:00
Speaker 2: All we all we have is smell. We have a dimension.
24:04
Speaker 2: Remember we got to go back to the dimensional aspect
24:07
Speaker 2: of this. Could it contain a body? Yeah, potentially if
24:12
Speaker 2: they smell it, which I submit to you that you
24:15
Speaker 2: could through trashbacks. Just think about this. How many times
24:19
Speaker 2: have you ever walked to your garbage can outside, okay,
24:24
Speaker 2: and you've got your kitchen garbage bagged up, and you
24:28
Speaker 2: lift the lid on that puppy and all of a sudden,
24:30
Speaker 2: it's like, what was it the thriller song The funk
24:34
Speaker 2: of forty thousand years rushes out, you know, instraction in
24:37
Speaker 2: the face. Yeah, dude, yeah, it's foul. But here's here's
24:42
Speaker 2: the slippery slope because we know lawyers are watching everything
24:46
Speaker 2: we do. Right, if I don't secure a warrant before
24:51
Speaker 2: I start moving earth on this thing, anything that I
24:54
Speaker 2: uncover relative to this has the potential of being thrown
24:59
Speaker 2: out out so and it has gotten to the point
25:03
Speaker 2: now in the world that we exist in that if
25:06
Speaker 2: you do not secure a warrant before you get your
25:11
Speaker 2: trial out, you get your brushes out, You've literally got
25:15
Speaker 2: you know. Now, they were kind of like people that
25:18
Speaker 2: you've seen guys that do ceramic tiles, that wearing those
25:22
Speaker 2: knee pads. You know, you've got all your equipment out.
25:26
Speaker 2: Before you do that, you better have a magistrate or
25:29
Speaker 2: judge sign off on this thing. Because here's the thing,
25:33
Speaker 2: just because it smells bad doesn't necessarily mean that there
25:37
Speaker 2: is something there. But what they found when they finally
25:42
Speaker 2: excavated the spot was quite shocking. Thing about criminals is
26:04
Speaker 2: they don't think things through and when it comes to
26:10
Speaker 2: buried remains, the last thing on their mind is vegetation.
26:19
Speaker 2: And it has been it's been one of those things
26:22
Speaker 2: that has caught people in the past. When I'm thinking
26:26
Speaker 2: about digging a hole in the yard, Dave, I'm you know,
26:32
Speaker 2: if I'm just going out in my backyard to dig
26:33
Speaker 2: a hole. I know that I have to refill the
26:35
Speaker 2: hole or pack the dirt around a tree I'm planning,
26:38
Speaker 2: or whatever it is I'm doing. From an excavation standpoint,
26:44
Speaker 2: crooks don't do that. Did you know that. Let's say
26:48
Speaker 2: they will dig a hole and bury, say like a
26:51
Speaker 2: body in an area, and they'll put the same dirt
26:53
Speaker 2: back in. They don't take time to pull the grass out,
26:58
Speaker 2: shake the grass off grass because you can actually look
27:01
Speaker 2: down and I've seen this happen and you've got roots
27:05
Speaker 2: staring back up at your face. And as you well know,
27:08
Speaker 2: we were talking about things that the cops would have
27:10
Speaker 2: seen out there. I think that that's something that's significant.
27:14
Speaker 2: If you've got roots, if you're looking at roots, you
27:16
Speaker 2: should not be looking at roots. Okay, you've got Saint
27:19
Speaker 2: Augustine grass. We're talking about Florida. Saint Augustine grass is everywhere,
27:24
Speaker 2: a thick lush, you know, really green, loves that tropical environment.
27:28
Speaker 2: Those roots are staring you in the face. You know,
27:31
Speaker 2: when did grass start growing inverted? You know? So you're thinking,
27:37
Speaker 2: you're thinking, okay, this is just not the case. So
27:40
Speaker 2: you have to be very careful because it's not just
27:44
Speaker 2: if somebody is doing this in a frenzy. You might
27:47
Speaker 2: see something on the surface that should not be there
27:50
Speaker 2: like it can be. You know, I had a couple
27:52
Speaker 2: of guys that we caught in New Orleans that killed
27:56
Speaker 2: a photographer out of the French court. They had escaped
28:00
Speaker 2: from Florida State pen. Actually everybody winds up in the
28:03
Speaker 2: French French Quarter or Vegas, right, And so they took
28:07
Speaker 2: this guy out that was a cameraman and beat him
28:10
Speaker 2: to death with his camera tripod and buried him out
28:13
Speaker 2: in the marsh. And I caught this case. And you know,
28:17
Speaker 2: we caught that guy. We caught those guys because they
28:20
Speaker 2: flicked a cigarette butt down into the hole. Wow yeah yeah,
28:24
Speaker 2: And it had DNA deposition on it. So you know,
28:29
Speaker 2: you have to look for those tiny little things like that,
28:33
Speaker 2: and you really as an investigator, you have to adjust
28:36
Speaker 2: your lens because it's really easy to kind of take
28:42
Speaker 2: a bulldozer approach here when you should be doing surgery
28:47
Speaker 2: to observe and to document an area. You begin to
28:51
Speaker 2: look at this and you think, Okay, what is it
28:54
Speaker 2: that I need to see? And you have to be patient.
28:57
Speaker 2: You have to be so patient out here because it's
28:59
Speaker 2: so tempting, and just think about it. It's like a god.
29:03
Speaker 2: This is a bad example, but I'll go ahead and
29:05
Speaker 2: say it. It's like a kid on Christmas morning that's
29:08
Speaker 2: unwrapping a present. That same part of your brain is
29:12
Speaker 2: stimulated out seen. I know that sounds grotesque, but it
29:14
Speaker 2: really is. You're thinking, Okay, I know in my heart
29:18
Speaker 2: of hearts that there's probably a body down here. Okay,
29:22
Speaker 2: you have to resist the urge. You have to resist
29:25
Speaker 2: the urge. This is why I always recommend that you
29:28
Speaker 2: have a forensic anthropologist on site with you because they
29:33
Speaker 2: can kind of throw the brakes on there. You leave
29:36
Speaker 2: them to be in charge. This is what they do
29:39
Speaker 2: because if you don't, well, if you don't, I mean,
29:43
Speaker 2: like me, I'm going to go in, you know, with
29:46
Speaker 2: no breaks on. I will, but not to the degree
29:50
Speaker 2: prints of anthropologists, because they start off in like one
29:53
Speaker 2: inch squares brushing things away, and it can get really tedious.
29:57
Speaker 2: But there's a lot of importance here because they don't
30:00
Speaker 2: want to miss a single thing. Dave. And in this case,
30:03
Speaker 2: I think that I think that that that was it was.
30:08
Speaker 2: I'll put it through this way they aired on the
30:12
Speaker 2: cautious side here as opposed to just going in like
30:14
Speaker 2: a bull in a china shop.
30:16
Speaker 3: And you know, interesting, as I was digging into this,
30:20
Speaker 3: digging digging into this story and found out, you know,
30:22
Speaker 3: the neighbors called for the because they weren't getting responses
30:26
Speaker 3: on the phone, they weren't getting answers from Devon Patten,
30:29
Speaker 3: and they called police to do the welfare check, and
30:31
Speaker 3: that's what led to the finding of the disturbed ground
30:34
Speaker 3: in the backyard that leads to Karen being found in
30:38
Speaker 3: these garbage bags, black garbage bags with the bungee cords
30:42
Speaker 3: and duct tape. But I just give you an idea.
30:46
Speaker 3: When all of this is going on, you know, as
30:49
Speaker 3: they're working the investigation, neighbors are saying, hey, man, they
30:53
Speaker 3: didn't get along. Karen had been here for years. We've
30:56
Speaker 3: known her for a long time, and she told us
30:58
Speaker 3: if she ever went missing or that her sister probably
31:01
Speaker 3: did it, because her sister said had told her to
31:04
Speaker 3: her face. She's like, Karen is telling friends, Deborah said
31:06
Speaker 3: she's gonna kill me. Deborah's got a gun. Deborah is
31:09
Speaker 3: gonna And so as police are getting this information and
31:14
Speaker 3: they're looking at the lives of the sisters. Karen consistent
31:19
Speaker 3: with mom and Dad their whole lives, you know, took
31:20
Speaker 3: care of them and she owns this house. Deborah in
31:24
Speaker 3: a twenty eight year marriage, couldn't keep a job and
31:26
Speaker 3: walks away from her husband in New Orleans or Louisiana,
31:29
Speaker 3: pardon me, Louisiana, and comes to Florida to crash in
31:32
Speaker 3: her sister's house, you know, something, Joe, to make her
31:35
Speaker 3: sister happy. And Karen owned this home outright, it was
31:39
Speaker 3: her home. She built Deborah a luxury chef's kitchen inside
31:46
Speaker 3: that home, just a beautiful, a gourmet kitchen. This is
31:51
Speaker 3: what Karen did for her sister, to make her sister happy.
31:55
Speaker 3: And Karen, who owns the home, she actually has a
31:59
Speaker 3: small little kitchen that type thing set up for herself
32:01
Speaker 3: in the garage. That's what Karen did, bending over backwards
32:05
Speaker 3: to make Deborah happy. And eventually, you know, Karen ends
32:09
Speaker 3: up in the hole in the backyard. But as they
32:12
Speaker 3: as they being the investigators, Joe, all right, we have
32:15
Speaker 3: found Karen's body in the backyard. What do we do now?
32:20
Speaker 3: We see that we have a body in the garbage bags, yep,
32:27
Speaker 3: and the bungee cords are wrapped around her body and
32:30
Speaker 3: then the bags are secure with a duct tape. So
32:32
Speaker 3: tell me about this. How are you going to unroll all?
32:34
Speaker 3: Are you going to take this whole thing out of
32:37
Speaker 3: the ground with dirt back to the lab?
32:40
Speaker 2: Yes? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. I can't guarantee that
32:44
Speaker 2: they did that. This is one of the things that
32:48
Speaker 2: is really hard to get across to crom scene investigators.
32:54
Speaker 2: You do not, under any circumstances want to practice bag open.
33:01
Speaker 2: And here's the thing. You remember JJ and Tylely rights yet, Yeah,
33:10
Speaker 2: I had to bring that up right. So with JJ,
33:14
Speaker 2: one of the problems I had with that case is
33:17
Speaker 2: that you know, you remember he was cocooned in bags
33:19
Speaker 2: and he was buried adjacent to that empty pond. Yes,
33:23
Speaker 2: and I remember the investigators it seems like it was
33:26
Speaker 2: during the trial and it was like one of these
33:29
Speaker 2: cringe moments for me. They said, we opened the bag
33:33
Speaker 2: and could see his head or see his hair, And
33:36
Speaker 2: I'm thinking, why the hell you opened in the bag?
33:38
Speaker 1: Yeah?
33:39
Speaker 2: Why? I mean, you know that the subject that's inside
33:43
Speaker 2: the bag is to cease. Now, you know that something
33:46
Speaker 2: horrible has happened. Where are you going to risk everything
33:51
Speaker 2: by not taking the remains to a controlled environment. Okay,
33:57
Speaker 2: you have to be able to restrain yourself to the point,
34:01
Speaker 2: because anything you do out there, it's like I was
34:03
Speaker 2: just saying a second about the you know, I know
34:06
Speaker 2: it's not necessarily the same thing, but with a cigarette butt, Okay,
34:09
Speaker 2: if you just kind of blast through this thing, there's
34:13
Speaker 2: no confirmatory thing here going on. You know that you've
34:16
Speaker 2: got somebody that's deceased for my money. Okay. And how
34:21
Speaker 2: I would instruct people is, ye know, we can kind
34:25
Speaker 2: of palpate the outside of this bag very very carefully.
34:28
Speaker 2: It feels like human form. I think we're going to
34:30
Speaker 2: go to the medical Examiner's office and which they have there.
34:36
Speaker 2: The state of Florida is broken down into medical examiner districts,
34:41
Speaker 2: and they're pretty dark on good at what they do.
34:43
Speaker 2: They're used to this sort of thing. You roll in
34:45
Speaker 2: there with that bag and you don't try to listen.
34:49
Speaker 2: You try to do everything you can to not brush
34:53
Speaker 2: away dirt. Period end of paragraph. I don't care how
34:58
Speaker 2: dirty it is. I don't care if they're mag it's
35:00
Speaker 2: crawling all over the place. You take everything to the lab,
35:06
Speaker 2: specifically the Medical Examiner's office, and you put it in
35:09
Speaker 2: that controlled environment because just by okay, just by splitting
35:14
Speaker 2: the bag open, Let's say that there were points of
35:17
Speaker 2: contact there relative to Layton prints. You say, Morgan, it's
35:21
Speaker 2: been buried in the earth. It rains in Florida. I
35:23
Speaker 2: don't care, because you don't know what layton prints might
35:30
Speaker 2: might have been preserved on the outside. You don't know
35:33
Speaker 2: what's under under the surface. I mean, how many let
35:37
Speaker 2: me ask you this, my friends, how many times have
35:39
Speaker 2: you taken a garbage bag and I know you're thinking,
35:43
Speaker 2: I'm gonna pop it like this, I'm gonna get it open. Okay,
35:48
Speaker 2: guess what you do that you don't think about? You
35:51
Speaker 2: readjust your hands many times and put them on the
35:54
Speaker 2: inside of the bag. Well, that's a point of contact.
35:56
Speaker 2: And guess what else? If you like that one, I
35:58
Speaker 2: got another one for you. You leave behind latent, Prince,
36:02
Speaker 2: and particularly in this day and age, you leave behind
36:06
Speaker 2: DNA deposition as well, just by touching the inside. So
36:12
Speaker 2: if you're going to cowboy it up as an investigator
36:15
Speaker 2: and go in there and you begin to at the scene,
36:18
Speaker 2: and you begin to manipulate the bag in some way,
36:21
Speaker 2: you know, you pull out your buck knife that you
36:24
Speaker 2: got on the side, or your spider coat knife out
36:26
Speaker 2: of your pocket. You flick it open dramatically and you
36:29
Speaker 2: begin to slice open the bag like you're in some
36:31
Speaker 2: episode of some ridiculous television show. Well, it's not controlled.
36:38
Speaker 2: You have got to remain maintain control. And that's why
36:42
Speaker 2: it's you cannot go into this haphazardly. You don't want
36:47
Speaker 2: to cut through the tape. You don't want to dislodge
36:51
Speaker 2: any of the bungee cords. And sometimes, you know, bungee
36:53
Speaker 2: cords failed, they become unattached. Lord knows, I've had I've
36:57
Speaker 2: had them pop me in the face when I'm trying
36:58
Speaker 2: to tie things down my truck. No pain like it
37:01
Speaker 2: in the world.
37:02
Speaker 1: My brother lost an eye to a bunket ye. Lord Yeah.
37:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're so dangerous man, and and and they're un
37:11
Speaker 2: there's they're not predictable. Don't touch them. Don't touch them
37:16
Speaker 2: in any way again until you get back to the
37:18
Speaker 2: controlled area. Now, I am sure that the authorities down
37:21
Speaker 2: in Florida they do enough of these. They would have.
37:25
Speaker 2: They're not in some rural location.
37:28
Speaker 1: It's just outside of Tampa Bay.
37:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're there.
37:31
Speaker 1: I have.
37:32
Speaker 2: I would bet money on these people that they took
37:36
Speaker 2: due care with this, and we're trying to be very,
37:39
Speaker 2: very careful because there's all kinds of things you can
37:41
Speaker 2: get off of plastic bags. And at this point, all
37:44
Speaker 2: you know, after you've served a warrant on this property,
37:48
Speaker 2: all you know is that you've got a body that's
37:52
Speaker 2: wrapped in a bag. You haven't hooked anybody up on
37:54
Speaker 2: charges at so you have to collect. You're trying to
37:56
Speaker 2: build a case and build it out. But daved I
37:59
Speaker 2: got tell you when they finally got those bags off
38:04
Speaker 2: of this poor woman's body, who, by the way, I
38:07
Speaker 2: haven't said this. You know she was a retired engineer
38:10
Speaker 2: for Verizon.
38:11
Speaker 1: I know that.
38:12
Speaker 2: And she's nobody's fool.
38:16
Speaker 1: No, that is think.
38:17
Speaker 3: She was such a nice She's nice, brilliant, took care
38:21
Speaker 3: of herself, took care of her parents, took care of
38:23
Speaker 3: her money. And then here comes her thirteen month old
38:26
Speaker 3: you know the difference in age thirteen months yeah, yeah,
38:29
Speaker 3: and Deborah was thirteen months older than Karen. Karen was
38:33
Speaker 3: professional and was just wonderful and everybody loved her and
38:36
Speaker 3: then never do well, Deborah shows up and it all
38:40
Speaker 3: goes to hell in a handbasket.
38:42
Speaker 2: You're right, Dave, it does. It goes downhill really quickly.
38:45
Speaker 2: When this I don't know. I don't know how to
38:47
Speaker 2: put it. This human leech shows up, because that's kind
38:52
Speaker 2: of the way it feels at this point in Tom.
38:54
Speaker 2: You know when you can tell that. I think anytime
39:00
Speaker 2: you can learn a lot about a person that perpetrates
39:07
Speaker 2: a homicide by the way they treat remains. This seems
39:13
Speaker 2: to be rather frenzied. I would think maybe spontaneous. It
39:19
Speaker 2: happened in a flash. And you know when she when
39:23
Speaker 2: she was killed, Karen still had a necklace around her
39:28
Speaker 2: neck with the name Karen on it. So in the
39:35
Speaker 2: course of this crime and the cocooning of her body,
39:40
Speaker 2: there was no effort to try to take eyes off
39:44
Speaker 2: of who this was. Because granted, listen, I know that
39:49
Speaker 2: many people think that when you see a necklace that
39:53
Speaker 2: says Karen on it, that's a positive idea. I don't
39:57
Speaker 2: trust things like that. I have to have it scientifically
40:00
Speaker 2: verified because too many times I've personally been burned. There
40:04
Speaker 2: are other people that have been burned, and you have
40:07
Speaker 2: to take doe care with all of this. That's very
40:10
Speaker 2: important and in this particular case, when they finally got
40:15
Speaker 2: Karen's body out of this these bags got the tape detached.
40:24
Speaker 2: She sustained a single gsw to the chest. And you know,
40:29
Speaker 2: just think about this woman's lovely woman that has and
40:33
Speaker 2: she shot like an animal, yep, and then her remains
40:36
Speaker 2: are treated like she's an animal and buried literally adjacent
40:41
Speaker 2: to this place that she loves. I guess that you know,
40:44
Speaker 2: there's nothing ironic about it, but you have to look
40:47
Speaker 2: at it and you think, you know, all of this
40:49
Speaker 2: love and care that she's put into this home, she's created,
40:52
Speaker 2: the care that she gave to her parents, the beautiful
40:55
Speaker 2: garden that she had, she worked in daily, she worked
40:58
Speaker 2: toward retirement. Anybody that gets to retirement, God bless everybody
41:03
Speaker 2: out there. You know what a labor this is. And
41:07
Speaker 2: to have it all just taken from her in a
41:11
Speaker 2: flash because somebody is jealous of her, somebody has got
41:16
Speaker 2: issues with her that cannot live their own life on
41:20
Speaker 2: their own.
41:21
Speaker 3: Dave, I'm you know you you actually laid it all
41:25
Speaker 3: out perfectly. Joe and I did look at something on
41:28
Speaker 3: this because they never found they being investigators, never found
41:32
Speaker 3: the murder weapon. They were never able to determine, you know,
41:36
Speaker 3: what gun was used, what type of gun. But I'm
41:41
Speaker 3: gonna read you something here. While the specific murder weapon
41:44
Speaker 3: was not explicitly identified, evidence included DNA from Deborah Patten
41:51
Speaker 3: on blood covered latex gloves found with the body, and
41:56
Speaker 3: surveillance footage showing Deborah Patten the shovel. Now, this surveillance
42:02
Speaker 3: footage was from a next door neighbor, Joe, we should
42:05
Speaker 3: all have this type of individual as our next door neighbor.
42:09
Speaker 3: I made a note when I sent this because the
42:12
Speaker 3: surveillance video from the neighbor was a Hillsboro County deputy
42:19
Speaker 3: who has this surveillance video showing the victim, Karen, entering
42:26
Speaker 3: her home on May twenty fourth, twenty twenty one, last
42:30
Speaker 3: time she is seen alive. The video also depicts Deborah
42:34
Speaker 3: Patten throwing several large trash bags into the garbage and
42:42
Speaker 3: shows Deborah Patten walking with a shovel. After everything was
42:48
Speaker 3: said and done, Joe, Deborah Patton is charged with murder.
42:53
Speaker 3: But the reason it took so long, and the reason
42:57
Speaker 3: we're talking about this today, because this just got adjudicated.
43:03
Speaker 3: It's gone on this long because you cannot you cannot
43:10
Speaker 3: try somebody who is incompetent stand trial, And over the years,
43:16
Speaker 3: Devora Patten was deemed incompetent to stand trial. She remained
43:22
Speaker 3: in the state mental hospital for treatment for a couple
43:26
Speaker 3: of years. It wasn't until February last year that a
43:31
Speaker 3: judge ruled Devora Patent competent to stand trial. And when
43:36
Speaker 3: she finally went to trial last month, the jury did
43:43
Speaker 3: not have to deliberate long. I think it was an hour,
43:46
Speaker 3: and they judged her guilty of second degree murder of
43:51
Speaker 3: her own little sister, little sister who took care of
43:56
Speaker 3: her when she had nothing, fed her when she had
43:59
Speaker 3: no food, gave her a place to stay when she
44:03
Speaker 3: had nowhere to stay.
44:04
Speaker 2: Joe.
44:05
Speaker 3: And by the way, you know what police found, Well,
44:08
Speaker 3: they found a note written by Deborah Paton describing how
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Speaker 3: she was going to kill her ex husband in Louisiana,
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Speaker 3: how she was going to drive there and kill him
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Speaker 3: and then she was going to kill herself.
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Speaker 1: Actually took everybody out.
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Speaker 2: But yeah, you know, Dave, what was really horrific about this?
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Speaker 2: I think during the period of time, first off, she
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Speaker 2: stated to the court that that she was blameless here, Yeah,
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Speaker 2: blame completely blameless. If that's not bad enough. She smiled
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Speaker 2: and laughed during this period of tom in court, saying
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Speaker 2: that she's not blameless, and she offered up some kind
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Speaker 2: of half hearted prayer that was directed toward the judge,
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Speaker 2: talked about how the world is populated with evil people,
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Speaker 2: this sort of thing. Well, on that count, she's right,
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Speaker 2: because I got to tell you at the end of
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Speaker 2: the day, Deborah Patten is a glaring example of pure,
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Speaker 2: unadulterated evil. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is bodybags.