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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Bodies in the Medical School Basement · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Body dies, but Joseph scotten More. Since I was a
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: small child, I have attended church. Now, I've been a
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: member of many different denominations, as I'm sure some of
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: you have out there. It's been. To say that it's
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: a journey is probably an understatement. However, in my experience,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: there was something that was consistent all the way through,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: and that is that I was always taught that on
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: the third Day Christ arose from the grave, and the
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: term that is always applied to that event is the resurrection.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: I think that we could all agree that that's a
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: seminal event in human history. However, today I want to
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: apply that term to another individual term that he actually
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: went by. And as a matter of fact, many of
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: the people from around the world that were in the
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: same field as a gentleman were referred to as these
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: by these titles. The term is resurrectionists. Isn't that an
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: odd term? Does that mean that this individual himself was resurrected?
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Oh no, that's not what it meant. For this individual
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: actually went out and opened graves, and he didn't actually
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: resurrect the dead, but he did in fact remove them
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: from their eternal resting spots. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: this is Body Backs. I'm back together with my buddy
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Dave mac and I'm telling you I got to tell
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: you my friends. Listen. If it wasn't for Dave, I
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: would not be doing this episode because he has been
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: really jazzed about this about this topic, because it is
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: kind of like Dave day day. You don't really know Dave.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Dave's bit quirky, you know, which is cool? You know.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: That's that's why I digg it.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: Kirky's a nice way of saying somebody's really weird.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, it's it's fantastic. Actually, you are a
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: typical Dave. That's why we love you, man. There's never
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: a boring moment with you. And this, these cases that
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: we're going to talk about today are kind of right
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: in my wheelhouse. I didn't I didn't know that there
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: would necessarily be an interest in this, per se h.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: But if I'm to use you as my barometer, I'd
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: say that there probably is an interest in this. And
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: and uh, I'll go ahead and say it. We're we're
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: going to talk a little bit about grave robbing and
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: the first you know who I first thought of Frankenstein.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: I did, I did. I thought about Marty Feldlin Frankenstein,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: and I found out a bit of trope trivia the
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: other day. And I don't know if you've heard this.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna throw I'm gonna throw out a little a
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: little Young Frankenstein, Young Frankenstein trivia to you. Uh, thank you?
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: Doctor?
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Did you know that? And I know that you're going
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: to know this. I just know it that Aerosmith got
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: the title for their famous song, the original version, Walked
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: this Way, because they all went to Young Frankenstein and
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: saw the movie and that scene where where I Gore
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: played by Marty Feltman, hands the cane back to Gene
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Wildern's you know, after he tells him walk this way
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: and he has to kind of hunch over and stumble
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: down the staircase. But you know, I gore that character.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: In the movie, there's interaction between him and Frankenstein, Doctor Frankenstein, Frankenstein.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: There's a grave robbing episode, and of course that's where
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: they get the parts for the creature. The creature was
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: not Frankenstein. It was Frankenstein's monster originally when the book
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: was written by Shelley and so you know.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: But you're saying, did you give me abby somebody?
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and so parts is parts man as they used
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: to say. Wow, of course we're talking about robbing graves
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: of the how do we say this, the newly buried
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: or the fresh dead.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: But it's not for the sake of building Frankenstein's monster.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: It's actually for educational purposes, kind of like Granny's medicinal whiskey.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're finding they're actually finding poor people, you know,
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: those who are indigent and those who have been you know,
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: put to death, although oftentimes I don't know what happens,
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: but looking in history that you know, they would were
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: going to kill these guys and you can have them
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: for science, but they never seem to make it. It's
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: like something would happen to the dead on the way.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's weird stuff that used to happen Joe.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, there really are instances. And of course down
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: here in the South, I think you know, the where
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: the lineage of this, you know, kind of arises from
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: is an event that took place back in nineteen eighty
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: nine at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, Georgia,
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: which by the way, is one of the older medical
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: colleges in the US, and to give you a little insight,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: it's actually the first location that a hysterectomy was performed,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: which is kind of fascinating, I think because there are
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: many members in our audience that have had to undergo
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: that procedure. There's been history that has been made there
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: over the years. I don't know that what happened in
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine was necessarily something they wanted to be
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: known for, but yet it happened. Workers were working on
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: one of the oldest buildings on campus at the Medical
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: College of Georgia in Augusta, and they happened to stumble
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: upon a large collection of human remains. Of course, skeletal
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: remains is what I'm referring to, and they could see
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: even with the unaided eye. It didn't take a forensic
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: anthropologist to determine this that these remains had been in
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: many cases dismembered or they showed signs of having been dismembered.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: So when you have a skeletal recovery, particularly if you're
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: talking about a clandestine grave, one of the things that
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: you expect to find is not like, let me see,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: how can I say this it's not necessarily like a
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: grave that you would come across where that would look
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: like a Halloween skeleton where everything is intact. You know,
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: the elements of skeleton will have come apart and depended
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: upon the ground in which it's settling into. There's a
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: process that's referred to its turbation, and you don't really
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: see it, but the earth actually moves beneath the surface
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: and it's always changing, but the top end kind of
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: stays static, and that's the appearance you get, so and
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: it can be measured probably in millimeters, and it happens
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: over a long period of time. And those slight adjustments
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: beneath the surface can of impact burials that can impact
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: bodies that are down there, and so things shift around.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: But skeletons don't necessarily are intact, you know, like you
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: have something from Halloween that's hanging out in your yard,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: it's not going to look like that. But what they
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: were seeing were first off comingled remains, which meant that
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: these remains were from a variety of different bodies. The
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: bodies were in many instances male and female, and they
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: had a great deal of post wartem trauma to the bone,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: and one of the ways people always ask, you know,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: how can you tell that a skeletal remain has been
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: traumatized in death when you have no tissue to see
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: hemorrhage and that sort of thing. There's a reactive event
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: that takes place within the bone that you can actually see,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: you know, even if it's approximates death on the living
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: side as opposed to the you know, those events that
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: occur after death. But anyway, that's the story for another day.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: But when those workers saw this in nineteen eighty nine,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: you can imagine it was a head scratcher. And going
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: back to the dismemberment Dave, that adds another layer of
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: horror to this.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: Right, you're seeing bones. This is like going through a
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: really bad Halloween haunted house, you got it. Yeah, I
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: would think they're fake. I would think Joe, you know what,
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: Joe and those guys in friends that are messing with us,
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: that's what they're doing. These are all That's what I'd
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: be telling people, you know.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but there's something clinically. I think it's because of
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: the location day when, because even these workers have an
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: awareness that there's people walking all over this campus and
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: I've been to this campus. They're walking all over the
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: place in white lab coats and scrubs, and you know
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: what they're studying here, They're studying medicine. And when you
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: get into this area, you know, I'm really wondering. I'd
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: love to be able to interview like some of the
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: workers that were there discovered this, you know, the first
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: person to lay eyes on this, because you know, for me,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: having interviewed many people that find bodies, which are some
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: of the most fascinating stories. You know, how they come
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: across bodies, it's always that one person that says, I
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: really didn't believe what I was seeing. When I first
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: saw it, I thought that, you know, like you said,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: I thought that it was a fake. I thought that
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: it was something that was just there to scare people.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: But then I approached and I noticed. You know, they'll
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: say things like then the smell hit me, or I
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: saw what I could have sworn was blood. Are in
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: the case of a bone, they their default position with
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: most people that I've encountered that find skeletal remains, Dave,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: you know what they always say, I thought I thought
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: it was a deer. I thought it was a dog,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: you know, because I think in the human brain, most
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: of us don't want to come to grips with well,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: you know what, man, Every now and then you're going
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: to come across a human remain that's exposed out there,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: and and so this is you know, it's quite a
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: fascinating dynamic here, Dave.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: I'm just, as you say, fascinated by the people who
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: discovered it and what kind of damage it did to
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: their psyche. You know, that's not we could actually probably get.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: We need to get Bethany Marshall and a couple of
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: the other psychs from Nancy Gracie Show and just line
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: a couple of these cats up and say what happened
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: that day and what have you seen since then? Like
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: did you watch, you know, any of the old Halloween
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: movies and had skeletons? Do you freak out at that now?
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: Because I still haven't quite got past that's the idea
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: that we as a people didn't have a way to
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: actually study the human body firsthand without breaking the law
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: to do it. That's something that just amazes me, Joe,
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: And that's what we're doing the show about. Because when
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: Joe sends me this article, okay about this huge find.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: From Atless Obscura, is my favorite sources. By the way,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: if you've never read Atlas obscura's pretty fascinating stuff.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the like it's the OSQ of of Medicine
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: Obscure Sports Quarterly. But on ESPN a the O show,
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: they had bones throwing contest. You know, that's the kind
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: of stuff I expect to see when you have a
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: bunch of bones that just show up in a building.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: But after you get past all the ideas of why
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: and okay, it's a medical building, but still don't the
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: dead deserve to be buried, don't they don't they deserve
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: to be better than this? These are real bones? Is
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: this only how we and if they have been used
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: in some kind of a medical learning experience, shouldn't they
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: be given a nicer send off than just thrown into
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: the bottom of a well or a building or you know,
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: just tossed away like trash.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you would think so that that would be the case.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: But you have to understand, here's that word again. This
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: is a clandestine event because it was against the law,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: and it had been against the law for forever as
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: far as people could remember. And this is something that
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: kind of it was the law in Europe, not to
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: do this. And so when the US was settled, like
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: a lot of things, it transferred over and in Georgia
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: in particular, you know, they the school in Augusta opened
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: like in the mid eighteen twenties. All right, we're really
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: pre pre Civil War. We're talking Andrew Jackson era time.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: That's when this thing was established. And Dave, it was
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: that law prohibiting people from using human cadavers for dissection
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: did not come off the books until the mid eighteen eighties.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: And so you've got doctors that are being trained at
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: this location and dude, they've never done a dissection. They've
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: never done a dissection on a human remain, and so
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: it's it's startling. You know, how how is it that,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: you know, you think about somebody that's called a surgeon
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: can actually try to facilitate the healing of somebody without
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: actually knowing what the anatomy is. Now you you have
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: detailed drawings that have occurred over the year, even years,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: even Da Vinci had rendered, you know, beautiful anatomical drawings
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: of human human remains. But it's just the fact that
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: you're going to go into this environment, open the environment,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: opened the body up on a living patient and you
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: don't know what you're going to be looking for. Interestingly enough,
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: just down the road from Augusta Crawford Long back in
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: the eighteen forties. He's the first guy that ever used anesthesia.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: He's the guy that first to play. And literally this
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: is in like a little tiny town in Georgia. They've
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: got the Crawford Long Museum there. I urge anybody that
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: they have an opportunity to go and check this place out.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: And he used ether on a guy to remove a tumor. Now,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: ether is very unstable, it's not something we would use today.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: But before that, you know, people had to endure surgery
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: without any kind of anesthesia whatsoever. So we're in a
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: real there's a real learning curve here. But what physicians
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: are medical students knew back then was that they needed
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: they needed someone that could facilitate getting bodies for them,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: and they might have to do it by oil lamp,
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: a whale oil lamp or a candle to do these
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: dissections in the middle of the night, and so that
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: they could understand anatomy and listen, I'll tell you this,
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: everybody knew what was going on because the medical students
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: had all been through the program. The faculty were there.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: It's like the old Monty pythonline, wink, wink, nod, nod,
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: A nod is just as good as a wink. Dave.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you something right now that I
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: don't know that I've ever told anyone else. I was
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: actually involved when I was at the Medical Examiner's office
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: in Atlanta of having to go back and retrieve human
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: remains from a former employee. This guy had been dismissed
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: from the office and we were missing two human skulls,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: and myself and another investigator showed up at his house
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: and said, look, we don't want to involve anybody else
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: in this, but we believe that you're in possession of
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: two skulls that we had that were unknown individuals that
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: we had in boxes that were back in an area
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: where we keep box skeletal remains. And sure enough, he
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: produced them. Of course, it was under thread of arrest
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: and being tried and all those sorts of things, but
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: he gave them back to us. This was in days,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: within days of him being fired for other issues. And
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: it's not like that sort of thing doesn't happen. As
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: a matter of fact, Dave, if you remember I think
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: it was. Yeah, it was in maybe late twenty two
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: or early twenty three. Remember we covered a case out
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: of Colorado here on body Bags about a funeral home
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: proprietor in Colorado who had been dissecting Hess was the
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: last name. She had been dissecting human remains and selling
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: body parts to whoever would buy them. And it was
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: a chilling story, you know, because you've got family members
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: there that I think are expecting if I remember qrrectly,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: they were expecting cremains. But yet she was taking off
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: body parts and selling those body parts to individuals who
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: out there. Yeah, she would sell them internationally as well.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: And we had a couple of different stories about that
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: same time. If you remember a couple of years ago,
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: where we had different members of the funeral director's community
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: that were not doing away with They were not doing
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: cremations or they weren't burying. There were bodies just piling
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: up in all sorts of areas. And that's a horrible
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: thing that takes place even now, But at least then
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: the bones were talking about in this particular story today,
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: they actually there was a reason for them being there.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: There was a purpose, and there was an entire industry
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: built around these medical colleges that it's a shame, it's
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: a stain. But I don't know who should take responsibility
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: for it because with I Joe, I'm thinking as soon
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: as you had the first medical school, you had the
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: first cadaver we could look at, you had the first
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: set of bones, you know, you would have somebody who
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: was into the medical fraternity would say, when I die,
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: you guys can take a look at what's inside. Cut
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: me open.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, And the people.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: That sounded really graphic and bad, but I don't mean
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: that way.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, this is this is body backs. Yeah,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: I mean that's what we talk about.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: It just seems like they would do that though, right.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah you would think so. And there are people
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: that donate their bodies to you. You might not know this.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: There are people that actually donate their bodies to the
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: body farm at UT. Now you want to talk about
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: something that's I guess it's needed, but it's really gruesome
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: because you know these bodies will be taken up there
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: and use for decay studies. Now you're laying out in
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: the or not you, but you know, the people that
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: donate their bodies are laid out in an open area
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: and exposed to the elements. This does I've actually had
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: people contact me to wanting I was like, I don't
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: work for ut you know, you need to reach out
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: to them, and it's like they're curious about it, you know,
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: could this be done? But all the way back in
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: prior to the Civil War, there was a gentleman by
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: the name of Gradison Harris and he was a slave.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: And here's an interesting little factoid. He was a Gulla person.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: And I know that you've got family members that live
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: off of off of Ocracoke. Well, he's a Gulla person,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: which is kind of in the coastal area of South Carolina.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: They speak a very yeah, they speak a very distinctive
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: uh language.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: There the dialect that you don't find anywhere else, you know.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: It is, it's very unique. It's kind of like my
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: ancestors in South Louisiana. I got a whole portion of
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: my family that speaks Cajun fringe and so. But he
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: came from that environment. And here's what's really interesting when
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: he and I hate saying this about anybody, but when
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: he was purchased, he was not purchased by a single
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: individual day. He was actually purchased by the medical college.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: He was owned, and this is the way it's written.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: He was owned by the faculty, and he developed quite
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: the reputation. He became what was known as a resurrectionist.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: Now resurrectionist, it's not like this is an isolated event
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: relative to Georgia. Okay, they were everywhere, but he made
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: quite the name for himself and he would appear in
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: group photos at graduation for the students. They knew that
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: he was the person that could go out and acquire remains.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: He primarily focused on slave burials because no one was
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: watching slave graves and there was a huge mortality issue
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: there where people would die very young, and you know
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: cadavers now many times are people that are much older. Well,
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: back then, people didn't live to what we now consider
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: a ripe old age. Back then, you'd have people that
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: would pass way their mid forties and you'd have children
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: that would a good life.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he didn't mids the old man.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: Mid forties, yeah, mid forties man. And so he would
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: go out at the behest of the medical college. And
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: let me just give you an idea. Did you know
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: that it was illegal to teach a slave or enslaved
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: person to read and write, but there was an exception
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: made for Gratison because he would have to read the
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: obituaries and just lock into that just for a second.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: So he would read the obituaries in the paper so
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: that he could he could stay up to date on
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: newly buried remains, and that at night he would go out.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: I'm sure that he had assistance that would help him
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: dig these freshly buried people up, pop the graves open,
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: and the slave population back during that time is not
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: going to say anything about it, and they're not going
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: to complain because they know what's going to happen to
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: them if they do. He would remove these bodies and
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: then take them back to the medical school where they
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: would under the cover of darkness be dissected in the
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: middle of the night when no one else was around,
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: and these students are there over this cadaver, attempting to learn,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: and Gratison is probably assisting them with these dissections. Gratison
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: is probably having to clean up after them and then
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: dispose of the bodies. And so there was just an
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: area collective area where it's unclear how they wound up. There.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: Would he because this was in the basement of the building.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Were they doing the dissections in the basement, you know,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: and then they would just kind of take the cadavers
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: and put them in a big pile, and you know,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: over a period of time it would render down. The
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: one thing that strikes me here is how would you
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: get past the smell? You know? And I know they
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: have lime back then and that sort of thing, but lime,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: the presence of lime is not necessarily going to retard
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: or knock down that smell of decomposition to the point
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: where you're not going to appreciate it at all. You're
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: walking by a building and you know, people catch a
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: whiff there and they're wondering, you know, what in the
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: world is going on? And you know, but everybody that
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: was in the know, wink wink, not not knew that
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: these dissections were going or taking place down there. And
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: so yeah, he became known as a resurrectionist and was
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: eventually became a freedman after the Civil War, but continue
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: to work at the university for decades afterwards. And actually
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: about his.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: Job is a grave robber. You're not going to be
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: able to do that outside of working for the school,
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: you know, your occupation unless you become a grave digger,
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you're you're right, unless you're a grave digger,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: you know, but you're a resurrectionist. Interestingly enough, during reconstruction,
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: of course, reconstruction failed, he had moved to across the
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: Augusta River actually into South Carolina and became a judge
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: in South Carolina. And when reconstruction failed, they had race
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: riots and I think it was Hamburg, I can't remember
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: the actual name of the town in South Carolina, and
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: it got so bad he left and came back to
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: the university, and the students actually kind of reminded him
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: that he needed to keep his place, his proper place,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: because they saw him trying to ascend into the professional class,
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: and so they referred to him as judge for years
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: and years after that, you know, just as a reminder,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: this is who you are. You're a resurrectionist and you're
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: working for us. So it's kind of an interesting story.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: But Dave, I think, if I remember correctly, this is
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: not the only location that this was occurring.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: No, but let me before we move on. Yeah, yeah,
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: you've got a resurrectionist to actually, Okay, if you look
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: at it from the standpoint of continuing education and learning
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: and helping the living through you examining the dead. I
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: get all that, but you would think they would have
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: a better plan. Okay, once we got the body, you know,
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: and we've done what we're gonna do, you would think
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: somebody there at the college level would have a suggestion
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: as to what to do with these bones that you
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: now cannot legally have you should have never had to
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: start with. So not one of these educated people had
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: any common sense. So the best plan they could come
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: up with was, when we're done, we're going to throw
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: them on the floor in the basement and we'll cover
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: them with some lime and dirt and just leave them there.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, isn't that something that Yeah? And listen, I lay
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: the you know who, I laid the fault fault to
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: at this and this is nationwide. I lay the fault
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: at the propriety of society and the church because they
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: viewed using bodies like this as desecration of the dead,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: and that seems to run contrary to spiritual beliefs actually,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: because if we believe that human body is a vessel,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: and after you've passed on to the other side, then
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: what kind of utility does the body have? For you
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: at that point in time. And what better utility might
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: exist than to learn from the dead and to learn
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: from their the anatomical specimens that they could render. How
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: many I wonder, Here's here's an interesting question. I wonder
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: how many people died. How many people died as a
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: direct result of some doctor who had never had any
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: kind of anatomical training, and they went in and clipped
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: a vessel that if they had and the person bled
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: out there was no way to stop the bleeding during
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: some kind of surgery. How many of these people died
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: as a result of not having any kind of direct
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: anatomical training, gross anatomical training. I think that that's a
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: worthy question. Yeah, and there's no way to take the
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: measure of it.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: Now that you get the guy. Look, don't you have
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: a kid that cuts steaks just perfect down at the
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: get him and we're going to make him the town
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: surgeon because the old one died. He at least knows
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: something about cutting beef. Maybe he can help it, you know, right, Well,
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: what you're going to do.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you know that that's like the origin of
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: the barber pole, right, barber's cut hair and they did surgery,
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: you know, when you see the red, blue and white
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: spinning bark, that was an indication of a surgeon. And
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: so they, you know, all things to all people. I guess,
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know, but it's an interesting I think that
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: it's very interesting, you know, kind of following this threat
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: through history, how how this evolved as a practice. What's
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: amazing is that they still held onto this law in
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: the wake of the Civil War, Dave. I've seen pictures
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: and I don't know if you've ever seen them of it.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: There's one in particular, Matthew Brady, that Matthew Brady took
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: at a battlefield I think adjacent to a hospital, and
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: it was stacks of limbs and these these limbs had
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: been amputated, you know, as a result of you know,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: battle injuries that you know, there was no way to
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: salvage the leg. And it seems as though that people
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: would have been screaming out at this point in time,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: well literally, but screaming out that we need proper training
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: for our physicians. Now. Listen. A lot of these guys,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: I'm sure, became fantastic surgeons that had to work in
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: those field hospitals just with you know, a pair of scissors,
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: a scalpel, and of course the infamous saw that you
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: can see in any of these old medical kits. It's
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: one of the most gruesome you'll ever see. And they
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: were doing this on many cases with people that had
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: no nasty They didn't have ether on board, particularly in
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: the South, they didn't have anything to apply anesthesia with. So,
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: you know, in the wake of arguably the most terrific
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: human tragedy in our country's history, they're still they still
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: have this prohibitive law that's on the books that didn't
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: come off the books until like the eighteen eighties in
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: Georgia at least. Now you know up in you know,
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: like up in Massachusetts, of laws were a bit more
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: liberal up there. So prior to this they had they
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: had they had made allowances for this. You know, you
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: go to places like Harvard for instance, probably Yale, those
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: areas up there, and Penn which interestingly enough, is Crawford
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: Long actually spent time at Penn University of Pennsylvania. They
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: had access to bodies up in those areas and they
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: could do these dissections. So I don't know, it's a
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: curious thing, you know when I think about it, and
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: you know, I take many times. I take for granted
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: the time I spent in the morgue, you know, dissecting
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: all of his bodies for so many years, and looking
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: back through time, I think how many of those physicians,
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: young physicians or want to be physicians back then, would
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: have died just to have an opportunity that I had,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: you know, opening you know, close to seven thousand bodies
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: over the course of my career. They would have loved
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: to have had access to that. You see all manner
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: of things in the morgue, things that most people, particularly
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: years ago, it's not quite as morbid as it used
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: to be. Probably. I worked with a guy for a
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: number of years that was also an autopsy assistant. He
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: had been there for years and years, and he had
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: a collection that he kept on a shelf in a
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: glass mason jar. As a matter of fact, he had
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: several of these jars, and when you looked at him,
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: when you looked at him, they looked like large marbles.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: Some were small marbles, but they're all black or green
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: in color. And then for those that didn't know what
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: they were, they would approach it would catch the eye
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: as they'd walk up to the shelf, and they would
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: look and they discovered after, of course, with a grin,
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: he explained to them, those are gallstones. And every autopsy
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: that he performed where he found a gallstone in dwelling
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: the gallbladder, he would retrieve it, wash it, and keep it.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: It always fascinated me, this idea of retaining things I've
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: been in. I think probably the thing that used to
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: unnerve me the most. It was an anatomy lab that
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: I visited as an undergraduate, and I'd go in there
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: regularly and there were babies and glass jars that went
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: back decades and decades and decades, and there was something
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: about that that just sent a chill up my spine.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: But we have to understand that specimens many times reveal
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: things that might not otherwise be revealed. They therein rest
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: scientific truth, and sometimes the truth can be actually quite horrific. Dave.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: You know, somebody gets a body, and it doesn't matter
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: if you had the backing of the school or not,
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: or if you're some person that kills somebody nowadays and decides, well, yeah,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: let me say, let me get out the jigsaw, right.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: You know, what are you going to do with the body? Now?
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: What are you going to do? Where where is it
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: that you're going to take a body and dump it
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: somewhere where no one is going to find it. But
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: I got to tell you, to uh Chris's credit, they
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: didn't find it for a while. I mean, you know
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: they it was years later, you know, after all this
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: had passed and they've got the limb pit, which they've
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: also I saw it also described I think as a well,
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: I'm not really sure, and yeah, the well of souls,
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm thinking lost raders, lost arc But
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: you know, you think about that, you think, what are
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: you going to what are you going to do with
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: the body? This bloody mess that has been torn too
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: and literally they are torn a bit. You you ought
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: to see a medical cadaver after the kids are done
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: with it after a year, and it is after a year. Yeah, yeah,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: they might have it. It depended upon the curriculum. They
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: might have it beginning in the fall and it will
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: go all the way through spring term, or it could
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: just be a single term and you're going to have
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: multiple kids on one body. It's not like every kid
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: gets a body.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: In medical, you see the worst kid in the classes
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: in the very back and he's getting that foot he's
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: the last guy in the class with the foot and
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: he gets it and it's like hundred and sixty eight
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: bones in the foot. I got four. Excuse me, which
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: one is the pinky dough?
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, they're they're they're doing the dissection and
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: concert with one another. And that's that's one of the
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: things that you learn in medical school. You're kind of helping,
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: you know, helping one another along through in you know,
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: gross anatomy is one of those gateway classes too that
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: you take. It's the first class to take in medical school,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: and so it's but it is fascinating, you know, those
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: bodies that are anatomical specimens like that, they are properly
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: disposed of. They generally go back to their point of
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: origin and then they are either returned to the families,
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: or they have a burial area that is already preconceived
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: at that point time, or the bodies are cremated. But
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: not in this case in Virginia, Dave.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: I was looking at when they found the limp. It yeah,
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: and it cleared it out. Below it was another capped Well,
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: they didn't uncap that one.
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: They just let us sit.
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: So you and I want to go up and have
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: some fun and scare some kids and may nowhere.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: To go jas. I'll pass, I'll pass. I have no
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: interest in going there whatsoever. Richmond, I'm sure is a
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: fine city, but particularly on that little tour let a
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: little jaunt, I have no interest in doing it. But
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: you know, it's interesting. I think that a lot of
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: this physicians, and we have to understand this in an
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: academic setting. Academics are many times are intellectual vagabonds. They
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: travel all over the place, and it's no different in
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: the medical community. You think about doctors, physicians that are
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: out there practicing day to day. But you know, there
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: has to be somebody that educates the physicians, and generally
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: they are physicians. And you'll have other people with PhDs
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: that are there, you know, teaching pharmacology. You have PhD
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: anatomist that are there as well. But for the most part,
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: you've got doctors that are crisscrossing the country taking different
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: academic positions. They just don't want to practice medicine and
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: traditional sense, they want to teach others. And so with
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: that said, this knowledge of these resurrectionists would travel everywhere.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: So everywhere that you had a medical school, there was
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: probably some form of resurrectionists that was there, and there
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: were always be these stories that would come along with it.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: You know, the new faculty member would be there, Oh
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: where'd you come from? Well, this guy's at Harvard now
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: and he had been he had been trained at Medical
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: College of Georgia. And he says, yeah, I was trained
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: the Medical College of Georgia. And people are leaning in
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: and saying, wait, didn't you guys have this like really wild,
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: you know, really wild resurrection is down there? Oh? Yeah, man,
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: we had all the bodies we could take at one time.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: We did the dissections. Boy did I ever learn anatomy? Well,
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: how do we get our hands on this? And what
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: do we have to do? Well that knowledge travels, doesn't it, Dave?
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: And you know. The peace to this is this kind
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: of unique situation at Harvard, which is arguably, if not
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: the oldest, one of the oldest institutions in the United States.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: And they have forever and ever a men had a
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: medical school at that location, and they had a similar
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: finding up there, didn't they They were they covered a little
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: same thing.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: It didn't even shock By the time I got to Harvard.
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: It just was like, you know, you're numb to it, yeah,
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: because this one. But this here's the weird part about Harvard.
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: They have like a it'd be even time to go
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: into all of what Harvard has, but they have like
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: a special name, you know that they give their little
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: club back in the day. Because where the other guys use,
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: you know, a former slaver, a janitor, Harvard actually has
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: a little team and they have certain rules that apply
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: to them when they're going into you know, they actually
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: the actually have the rules for when they go in
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: to steal a body, you know, and they're going to
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: do grave robbing, and they make fun and great the
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: others who don't do it as good as them, and
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: they mock them. And it became a whole thing at
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: Harvard among these students to form a club to become
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: really good grave robbers. And I'm not knocking Harvard by
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: any stretch of the imagination. It's just it's so funny
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: they could take something there that in every other school
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: they kind of winking an odd as you said earlier,
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: and try to avoid and they're they're like broadcast. They
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: probably have a newsletter going out every other month, you know,
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: and there were recent meetings, but they found a place
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: it was that the Harvard's Holding Chapel. This one pops
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: up in nineteen ninety nine and a worker is operating
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: a mini dozer. All I can tell you can you
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: imagine this guy. Yeah, he's recently recovered alcoholic, he's sixty
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: days sober. He's moving the little mini dozer and hit something.
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: It's like, what is that? And he moves up a
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: lott closer and all of a sudden, the bones are coming.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: I know, holy smokes. Yeah, yeah, show me the way
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: to go home at that point, you know, because I
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: got to tell you I'm heading down to the local pub.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: But even for me, because you know, you think about
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: and these are average people, right, you know, with average lives.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: They're moving dirt and then all of a sudden, this
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: guy recovers these remains that are Look, when a forensic
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: anthropologist gets their hands on this, just like they did
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: at Georgia Medical College, they know that these are not
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: recent burials because there is a certain patina which is
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: kind of that coloration and time markers that have been
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: left behind on the bone just by virtue of the
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: fact of their exposure and not being treated. You know,
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: they're not these remains are not what are referred to
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: as casketed remains. They're not protected. Not that casketed remains
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: are completely protected, but the difference between being in a
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: box that's inside of a vault, that's in the ground
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: and has a lid on it is there's a world
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: of difference between that and finding remains that are essentially
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: just kind of buried beneath the surface, are hidden or
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: obscured in this manner. The fact that he found anything
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: is quite amazing, because you know, you can go to
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: the sites of major battlefields where you know, a couple
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: of hundred years ago, you're not in the dead were left.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: You're not gonna necessarily find any kind of skeletor it makes.
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: You might find a metal button or a buckle or
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: something like that. You're generally not gonna find bone charts
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: that are left behind unless you really really look. This
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: guy is driving a skid steer and he comes across
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: I guess it's like a skid steer, and he comes
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: across these remains, Dave.
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: And the thing is is that I was noticing, you know,
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: when we were looking at the other stories, and which
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: kind of gives you an idea because these we're talking
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: about it from eight nineteen eighty nine to nineteen ninety nine,
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: when these three different things took place. Georgia in eighty nine,
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: you had Virginia in ninety four, five years later, and
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: then here we go ninety nine at Harvard. At Harvard
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: the third place to find cash of bones, and instead
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: of getting them out, studying them and doing you know,
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: anything like that, they basically looked at it and went, yeah,
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: we knew they were there somewhere. Go ahead, and let's
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: just let's move this. Go ahead and put the dirt
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: back over there, and let's dig someplace else. Meanwhile, right
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: at the other clay, in nineteen ninety eight, the bones
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: from the Medical College of Georgia were reinterred in a
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: mass grave.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they did what I thought we should do. Look,
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: I can joke around about stuff, but at the end,
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: there's got to be something here. And that showed me
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: a little respect.
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah it did. And you know, interestingly enough that that
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: grave in which they buried those people, they have no
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: idea who they are, and they you know, they put
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: you know, we we started off talking about the resurrection,
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: and it's fitting that, you know, we kind of draw
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: the curtain here that there's you know, a forward term
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: that they put there known but to god, you know
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: that that gives you an idea, you know, of the
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: number of remains that they found which were significant and
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: they were all commingled. And after the forensic anthropologists who
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: I actually met at one point in time, that was
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: a state anthropologist at the time that was called in
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: on this case after her examinations were done, and she
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: became quite famous as a result of this case because
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: she wrote several academic papers based upon It's one of
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: those things as a practitioner, as a forensic anthropologist. I
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: don't want to be too flippid about this, but it's
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: one of those things that as a professional, it's a
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: once in a lifetime event. You're not going to find
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: like a cachet of bones somewhere. It's generally going to
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: be like a single bone. They're going in there and
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: they're finding huge collection of elements of skeletons, and this
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: is like, you could do research on this for years
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: and years and years to come from all kinds of
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: different perspectives. But back to what came of Grandison. When
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: Grandison died and he did in fact pass away way
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: back in nineteen eleven. And remember he had entered Georgia
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: Medical College as a slave that was actually owned by
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: the institution and the faculty. He became a freedman and
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: continued to work for them for years and years to come. Well,
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: you know, he he had robbed so many graves, but
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: they were all essentially in what was the Cedar Grove Cemetery.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: And these were African American individuals primarily that had been
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: buried there. They were all poor. There were a few
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: poor whites that were there as well. In an interesting
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: turn of events, Gratison, when he passed, was buried in
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: Cedar Grove Cemetery as well. And just a few years
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: later a great flood took place. The Augusta River breached
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: the banks and Cedar Grove Cemetery was no more. And
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: to this day they have no idea whatever happened to
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: Gratison's remains. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: bags