Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Something Strange Afoot - The Exceptional Case of Kleanthis Konstantinidis

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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Something Strange Afoot - The Exceptional Case of Kleanthis Konstantinidis · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Bodybacks with Joseph Scott Morgan. I don't clean up my
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: house necessarily the way I probably should, particularly out in
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: the yard. I've got an old shit and tools and
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: what not playing around. I don't keep them in the
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: best order, probably by some people's standards. And I've often
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: wondered if I suddenly passed away, what would happen to
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: everything I own? What kind of impression would that leave?
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Would the folks that have to come up and kind
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: of clean up after me? I know it's kind of morbid,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: but it happens. It happens on a regular basis. But
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: I want to tell you about a case where the
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: gentleman passed away naturally and the police when they were
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: at his house found something that I think that they
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: will never ever forget. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: is Bodybacks. Jackie Howard, executive producer of Crime Stories with
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Nancy Grace, is with me. Jackie. I gotta tell you,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: I don't know about you. I'm sure your house is
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: in great order, maybe you've got a toolshed. But for me,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, it really does bother me. I
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: think about I guess it's because I've been out to
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: so many death scenes, and I think there, but for
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: the grace of God, go ahi kind of look around
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: and man, when you die, it's just it's the way
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: it is. You know, if you didn't clean up before
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: you died, it's just gonna stay that way. And I
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: guess it leaves an impression on the people that come
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: out and find you and the people that have to
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: clean up after you. Salutely. And in this case, as
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: in many others we've talked about it did I've told
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: you before, Joe, if I run across something and I
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: don't know what it is, I'm not opening in it.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: And this is another one of those cases. This gentleman
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: died of natural causes. Yet, as with any death, the
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: police came out. They're looking around to make sure that
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: it is indeed natural causes, and they find in a
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: bucket a severed foot. I can only imagine the condition
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: of this foot. We don't know how long it's been there.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: We don't know where it came from, we don't know
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: how it was stored. All we know is that it
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: was in a bucket. What did the police find? I
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: just wish I could have been kind of an independent
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: observer knowing what was coming, just to see the expression
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: on their faces, because that's one of those old my
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: god moments. Just imagine. And this is in Biloxi, Mississippi,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: and it's the busy jurisdiction, and these guys are just
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: going out and look, my hat's off to them because
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: are working to some is in any kind of death investigation.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: As forensic investigators, certainly, you know, we say our supposition
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: is that every death, not some death, but every death
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: is a homicide until we can prove otherwise. So these
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: guys were doing their job out there, you know, they
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: were just checking to take everything into consideration to try
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: to understand what was going on and what exactly do
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: you do when you find a foot? How in the
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: world are you going to try to make sense of this?
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: You got a guy that's died of natural causes. I
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: think my first inclination would be, well, let's go examine
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: this guy's body one more time to make sure he's
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: got both of his feet, and in this case he did. So.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Then you have to ask yourself, from an investigative standpoint,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: why would a man, first off, have a foot that
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: has obviously been dissected away from another person, and it's
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: in a bucket. It's in an advanced state of decomposition,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: which to me is kind of fascinating. But it was
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: in such a state it was not as far gone
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: as maybe we might think, because the police were instantly
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: able to still understand that they were staring at a
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: foot that belonged to some person out there. So it
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: wasn't just like a collection of bones where they had
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: to kind of go through it and say, well, this
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: might be a bone that originated from a hand, or
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: maybe this is a bone that originated from a foot. No,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: they said that this is a severed human foot. So automatically,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: you know, you're thinking, well, I got a foot, where's
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: the rest of the body, because you have to answer
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: that question. It's not one of these findings from an
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: investigative standpoint that you can just kind of gloss over
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: and say, well, yeah, he had a human foot and
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: we'll just move on to the next thing. Let's close
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: this case. Now that begs more questions. The first thing
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: that would have to be done is retrieval of the foot, obviously,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: but as you said, the question is where's the rest
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: of the body. What would investigators have done on the
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: scene to determine if there was more remains on that property. Well,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: first off, you're going to look if you've got a
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: if you have an element of a body. In this
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: case of foot. Essentially, a way it's been presented is
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: that it's in a bucket beneath the house. You're going
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: to treat this as if there might be the rest
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: of the remains. When you say that the bucket was
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: underneath the house, you don't mean that it was buried. No, no, no,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: it's just underneath this right. Yeah, this would have been
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: in plain view for the police. It would have been
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: enough so that there there's searching beneath this guy's home
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: and they look, there is a bucket. Well, let's look
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: in the bucket. They pull the bucket out and they
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: see the foot there. So you have to think, well,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: if there's a dismembered foot here, this entire area surrounding
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: the foot and the placement of it is a potential
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: that has to be a zamined, maybe even excavated at
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: that point in time, because you're going to go through
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: here and see if maybe the rest of the remains
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: had been dismembered and buried beneath the house. So that's
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: something just from Jump Street that you would have to
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: consider to see if you can find anything that's going
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: to match up with the dismembered foot. Do you find
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: a legma and for instance, that has actually got saw
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: marks on it where dismemberment may have taken place, then
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: you have to go into the house because if you
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: have a person that is storing okay for lack of
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: a better term, or retaining a severed foot, you have
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: to think, well, are they retaining other parts? Are there
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: other items inside the house that might be associated some
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: mortal remains of someone you know as this person. Have
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: they taken a body apart and preserved organs for instance?
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: There have been cases of that where people have done this.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: You have people that obviously that have taken bodies apart,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: preserved individual parts, say, for instance, like organs, hearts, lungs,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: these sorts of things and put them in jars and
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: put preservative in there. Yeah, people that retain heads. Jeffrey
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: Dahmer famously did that, and there have been other people
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: that like to do this sort of thing. Are that
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: are compelled to do it for whatever reason? There are
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: people that you have been caught ordering human body parts
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: through the mail or over the internet over the years,
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: and of course they try to stem that US Customs does,
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: but you know, there have been cases where things have
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: come into this country. So you know, I guess the
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: big thing here is you're trying to find a point
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: of origin and where's the rest of the body. So
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: as an investigator, you would go from stem to stern
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: in this villa's house, looking through the house, trying to
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: determine what's there, is anything odd out of place? You
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: would have to really begin to pick apart this guy's life.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: And keep in mind, at this point in time, he's dead.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: He's dead. It's not like you can take him downtown
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: and sit him in a table and begin to question him.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: You know, where were you on this date? What had
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: you been doing on this date? How did you come
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: into possession of a severed human foot? You don't have
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: that person to ask us questions of. And to my
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: way of thinking, if he's got close friends or relatives,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: unless he is really out of his mind, this is
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: not something he's going to disclose to anybody else. So
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: his family might not even be aware that he had there,
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: His friends might not be aware that he had this there.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: This is some kind of secret that he has taken
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: with him to his grave. So then the investigation turns
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: to trying to discover the identity of this foot. Who
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: does this foot belong to and how did it end
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: up in a bucket? DNA is your friend? Is it not?
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Of course it is. There's not a lot you can
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: do from an anthropological standpoint. Kind of let me put
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: a finer point on that. When you look at a foot,
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: unlike a skull, for instance, where we can do kind
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: of a typology where you know, you think about you
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: can look for certain racial characteristics. You can look for
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: indications of whether or not this is a male versus
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: female skull. There's terms that we use, for instance, with
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: a male skull versus a female skull, Like the features
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: of a male skull tend to be what are called robust.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: You think about your brow line, kind of run your
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: finger across your brow there. Males tend to have kind
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: of a what's called a protuberant brow line, very pronounced,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: whereas with female skulls you'll have a use of term grassile.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: I love that term, by the way. It means kind
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: of fine and it's less robust. And that would be
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: but you don't have that with a foot. How are
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: you going to actually begin to narrow this down? Right?
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: You are Jackie and saying that DNA would be your friend.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: I think the key is are you going to be
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: able to recover any kind of viable DNA from this foot?
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: How well preserved is it? Because you know, we talk
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: about this all time, where you have a sample, and
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: the term that we use is degradation. It becomes degraded
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: where the sample will be no longer viable. What your
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: source would be is so decomposed to the point where
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: you're not going to be able to find viable DNA.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: But I think in this particular case, that's what they
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: were relying on. So they were able to actually retrieve
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: a DNA sample from the foot, and I think that
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: that's when the story actually takes a turn here. So
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: let me throw another scenario into the mix. This foot
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: was found in twenty nineteen. What if you had another
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: body part found, say three years earlier, twenty sixteen, in
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: another state. How do we see if there's a connection.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: Excellent question, and it's kind of simple. All it's going
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: to require on the part of the investigators over in
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Biloxi is to begin to search news stories. Okay, are
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: there any stories that are out there involving dismembered bodies
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: where they were actually missing part of the body. They
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: found two legs, or they found a torso, or they
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: found an arm, or they found a head, but yet
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: the feet are missing. In this particular case, that's actually
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: where you start from an investigative standpoint. And then I
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: think that some of the tools that we now have
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: at our disposal, these repositories that exist for individuals you
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: know that are currently unidentified, like name us, in those
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: types of places where they have a repository of DNA
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: sample from unknown bodies. If you can retrieve a DNA
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: sample from that item that you have and submitted, are
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: you going to get a DNA match? That kind of
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: intensifies the investigation. And of course if you come up
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: with zero, then you have to kind of rethink your
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: approach to the case. In this particular case, they were
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: able to find I think a match. In this case,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: it does actually go back to a case that originated
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen. I've never been one for puzzles. I've
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: never particularly liked jigsaw puzzles. I lose my patience with them.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: When I was a kid, i'd be compelled to have
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: to participate in that activity. It's just something i'd lose
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: my patients with really quickly. In this particular case, we've
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: got kind of a human jigsaw puzzle at this point
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: in time. How are we going to match up a
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: foot that's found in Biloxi, Mississippi with any other dismembered
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: body that might be found. I would assume in a
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: kind of a regional context, because you got to think
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: that whoever took the foot off of this body didn't
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: go too far with it perhaps, and I think that
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: that's what the police were looking at here. What happened
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: in this case? A body was found along the side
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: of US ninety in Louisiana, in Saint Tammany Parish. And
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: it was also not intact body. It was just a torso.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: The man's arm was missing and one leg had been
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: severed just below the knee. Now, again, this was in
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: a different state. It obviously took three years to put
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: these body parts together. How did they do it? What
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: is the connection here? Well, the connection is the fact
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: that in twenty sixteen, when this dismembered remain was found
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: the corner at that particular time in Saint Tammany Parish.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: The corner at that time made the determination of the
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: cause of death. He knew that he was dealing with
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: a body that was missing both arms, but the head
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: was intact, most of the torso was intact, and you know,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: like you said, one of the feet or missing, and
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: there was also some other trauma that would have been
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: what's called superior to where the foot was dissected off.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: It's almost like somebody got into the knee. They were
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: going to attempt to also dissect that knee. They had
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: taken the foot off, and they had moved up the
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: leg to the knee, and they kind of stopped midway
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: through this, And that gives you an idea that there
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: was an attempt perhaps to take apart the entire body.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: Maybe they just lost energy, Maybe they were scared, thought
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: that they were going to be found out, and they
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: essentially put the body into a vehicle and then dumped
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: it along US Highway ninety, which runs along the Gulf Coast.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: Ninety is actually the old road US Federal Highway that
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: people would go back and forth on now I ten,
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: which is just to the north of it has taken
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: the place of that, but US Highway nineties still exists.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, where the foot was found was over in Biloxi.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: Where the body was found back in twenty sixteen, was
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: roughly about only sixty miles away, you know, And that's
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: that's what that's like a fifty five minute car drive.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: Maybe if you're just staying within a speed limit, say
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: you're driving sixty five miles per hour, fifty five to
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: an hour and five minutes depend upon how fast you're going,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: it's not that far away. So the question I think
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: for me is, well, why is it that an individual
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: would take apart this body to a certain degree, dump
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: it in Louisiana and then travel down the road to
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: their home and retain the foot. Why in the world
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: would you retain the foot, because you would think that
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: body itself would be the biggest obstacle to overcome. You're
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: trying to dispose of it. You just throw it out
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: alongside the road. There's no indication that there was an
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: attempt to really hide it or anything like that. It's
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: almost like it was a dump, if you will, just
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: alongside the road, a thoroughfare where somebody is traveling so
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: conveniently they just kind of take it and lay it
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: out alongside the road. But yet they retain the foot
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: and take it home with them. That's super bizarre. I'm
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: like you, though, Joe, I'm beginning to question why. I
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: guess the better question would be what was the purpose?
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: As opposed to why would they do it? What purposed
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: them to engage in this? Are they attempting to hold
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: onto the foot as a trophy item? Are they forgetful
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: and say, well, yeah, I got the foot in a bucket,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to stick it under the house and
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: I'll get to it eventually. What's your purpose for retaining
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: the foot if you're the perpetrator, I have no idea.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: Maybe there's some kind of psychological attachment to it, but
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: the fact that he did have it is what led
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: to the break in the case because the corner over
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: in Saint Tammany, when obviously they've got this this horrible
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: remain that they've recovered off of Highway ninety. In addition
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: to their assessment the physical assessment of the body, they
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: did take a DNA sample and so that DNA sample
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: was sent to a repository where you have these individuals
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: that are unknown, and hopefully at some point in time
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: in the future they would be able to get a hit,
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: maybe a familial hit on a family member, where they
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: could say, yeah, well we have a human remain that
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: is more than likely related to this living person. I
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: don't know that in their wildest fantasies they would have
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: thought that the connection would have been made between the
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: dismembered foot and the body that they had found three
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: years earlier. What was the cause of death? The body
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: was found discarded on the side of the road, not
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: sure how long it had been there. What was the
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: cause of death and how was that determined? Considering that
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: there were body parts missing. Well, let's get to the
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: cause of death. I like that, and then I really
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: want to talk about the missing arms. The cause of
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: death in this case, it's going to be blunt force trauma.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: And what that means is that somebody had taken this
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: fellow and literally beaten him to death, because the way
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: the corner terms it, he had sustained massive skull fractures.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: There was massive skull trauma, a multiple fracture. So for
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: every if you just imagine cracking of an egg, and
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: that represents the skull. Every time you kind of strike
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: an egg, saying hard boiled egg, that's a better example
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: than an unboiled egg. A hard boiled egg. Every time
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: you strike the exterior, that external table of that shell,
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: you're going to create a fracture and kind have like
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: a spider web appearance. I think that most people can
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: kind of appreciate that. So for every one of those
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: little spider webs that you see, imagine that it's a
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: wagon wheel with a hub. For every one of those,
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: that represents an individual impact. Okay, So when you hear
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: a corner and medical examiner say, well, we've got multiple
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: blunt force trauma to the head, what they're saying is
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: they can appreciate, first off, what's called a focal area
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: of hemorrhage if you have soft tissue remaining that is
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: the scalp, and then underlying, perhaps there's this kind of
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: egg like fracture that has taken place, and you'll have
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: multiple of these. So for every say, for instance, you
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: have this skull fracture that is radiating out like the
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: spokes on a wagon wheel, every time this fellow is struck,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: it's leaving behind this evidence of individual strikes. All the
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: way around it. And in addition to that, not only
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: was he struck about his cranium okay, but he's also
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: got multiple fractures over his face as well. So whoever
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: did this to him intended to bring about his death
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: as a result of literally beating him to death. So
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: you've got these fractures that are existent, and one of
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: the difficult things in the morgue when you have multiple
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: fractures like this, you'll have these kind of interrelated, communicating fractures, okay,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: And what that means is that where an individual is struck,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: it radiates out like the spiderweb, and then from an
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: adjacent fracture point of impact, you'll have those radiating lines
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: that will come out in the kind of overlap many times,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: and if you've got a lot of them, it takes
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: some time for the pathologists to sit there and say, Okay,
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: this little line of fractures is related to this impact.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: This one is related to this impact. And you say, moran,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: why is that even important? Well, it's important because you
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: get an idea as to perhaps the sequencing of the injuries.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: You know, in what order did they her If there's
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: any evidence of for instance, this is very important where
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: we have no hemorrhage. That indicates that this is a
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: post mortem injury, that somebody continue to beat this guy
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: after he is dead. So you have to kind of
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: assess all of that as you go along, and it
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: puts a fine point on what brought about this guy's
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: cause of death. For my money, you learn more about
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: the dead from the life that they led, those things
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: that they were associated with, family friends, all those sorts
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: of things. You learn more from their identification many times
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: than you do about their cause of death. And with
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: this victim that was partially dismembered, we know specifically what
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: brought about his death. He was pummeled to death. He
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: was beaten to death with multiple skull fractures, facial fractures.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: But if you really want to get it to the
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: heart of the story, you have to find out who
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: he is. And for the police in both Mississippi and
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: in Louisiana, it was a headscratcher for him. They had
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: no idea trying to identify this person who's been left
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: on the side of the road and identifying and matching
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: this foot How is that done? Obviously we know they
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: made the DNA match. That's how they were able to
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: connect the two different body parts, but this gentleman was
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: still not identified. The arms were missing, which meant they
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: couldn't do fingerprints. How did they make the identification? I
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: actually had a case in my distant past where I
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: found a body in a creek and both of the
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: hands were missing off of the body. And it wasn't
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: the smartest person that had done this, because they left
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: guy's wallet in his back pocket, but they had cut
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: the hands off of this individual. And immediately you begin
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: to think, well, they cut the hands off because they
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: wanted to impede the ability of us to get him
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: identified their fingerprints. But in this case, you've got both
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: arms missing, which is odd in itself, and what do
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: you accomplish by that? A lot of this is supposition
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: on our part as an investigator. You have to kind
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: of think, what's the purpose behind removing not just the hands,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: but also the arms. And this is my thought nowadays
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: with proliferation of tattoos, tattoos or specific identifiers that we
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: look at. So if anybody has tattoos on their arms,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: you can look at it and say that appears to
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: be the same tattoo that my brother had or my
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: dad had or whatever the case might be. When you're
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: trying to get a body visually identified removing the arms,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: it can mean that maybe the individual had tattoos and
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: you're trying to impede the investigation by doing that. And oh,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: by the way, at the end of the arms, you've
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: also got hands which you can roll a print off of.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: And if the person has a record anywhere, and not
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: necessarily just a record, but you know, for those of
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: us that have been in the armed forces, for instance,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: if you've never been printed before in your life, you're
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: going to get printed in the Armed forces. And today
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: they do DNA swabs, but you're going to get printed.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: And so you've got a print card on file somewhere
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: out there. Certain employers keep print cards. And then not
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: to mention criminal population, anybody's been booked at any point
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: in time, you've got a print card somewhere. So that's
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: something else from an investigative standpoint that's going to hamper you.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: You're trying to make an ID. You have to begin
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: to think. You look at it and you think, well,
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: it was the purpose of taking the arms off? Was
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: it just part and parcel of dismembering a body to
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: try to make it compact so that it would make
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: for easier disposal, or are you trying to hamper the
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: authority's ability to roll a print or make a visual
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: id with the tattoos. What's fascinating about this case, and
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: I can't get past this, having grown up in this area,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: you have got possibly two of the apex predators in
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: the world that inhabit this area. You've got alligators because
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: the body was actually found immediately adjacent to an area
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: that's called the Rigglies, And the Rigglies is a pass
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: essentially a pass in the water where it goes from
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: Lake Pontchatrain into what another body water is called Lake
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: Borne and then that opens out into the Gulf of Mexico.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: So you've got alligators that are in twelve this area.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: Out there, there's there's actually swamp tours in this particular area.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: People got on boats and they see alligators. They're everywhere
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: down there, and then out in the Gulf of Mexico
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: you've got sharks. So why just take the body and
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: kind of dump it right there on the side of
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: the road when it could have been more easily facilitated
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: where you nobody'd ever find the remains potentially if you
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: play out there, and the fact that they went to
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: these laborious links of trying to dissect out a body
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: and then just kind of suddenly dump it as kind
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: of fascinating to me. I think it's almost like it
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: was an incomplete attempt at getting rid of a body.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: But thankfully, because they were able to retain and capture DNA,
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: they were able to get a positive id on this individual.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: You mentioned a couple of times in their Joe about
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: being able to identify tattoos. How is that? Are you
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: talking about recognizing the pattern the kind of inks? How
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: do you do that? Depended upon the artists that actually
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: and look we can let's just say plainly, tattoos are
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: far more common than they used to be. In the
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: early days, there were specific people that were highly skilled
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: at identifying the work of specific tattoo artist. I don't
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: know if people understand this. You would sit the people
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: that would learn to kind of perform tattoo artistry would
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: sit at the feet of a master essentially, and they
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: would kind of learn how to do this, and they
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: all kind of had this family tree that they would
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: descend out of. Well, this looks like so and so's
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: work okay, so you could almost regionalize it. There was
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: like several famous tattoo artists. I think there was one
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: in particular Baltimore that was very, very popular and he
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: was well known, and you could see people that had
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: kind of copied his work or learned from him. So
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: that's kind of a tie back. But nowadays you've got
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: people that have shops everywhere. There's been a real proliferation,
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: so it kind of waters down your ability as an investigator,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: kind of narrowed down what the actual origin of that is. Now,
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: if you've got an older gentleman that's had a tattoo
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: for a protracted period of time. It used to be
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: that you would have people that were in service, particularly
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: people that had traveled overseas to like the Philippines, that
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: would get tattoos, say around Subic Bay and those areas
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: like that that were in the Navy, those were specifically identifiable.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: Then you have more rough hewn tattoos, which actually kind
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: of make it easier to identify an individual. And I'm
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: thinking things like homemade tattoos and gailhouse tattoos, because you
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: can certain tattoos, you look at it and you can
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: say well that, yeah, that kind of looks like a
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: gelhouse tattoo that somebody had this done in prison. It
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: doesn't have the same precision to it, it doesn't have
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: a variety of inks, and so those are little indicators
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: to us as to the origin of the tattoo. Well,
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: if you've got a geelhouse tattoo, guess what as that's
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: invaluable when it comes to an investigation because you can say, well,
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: this person has done time in the joint perhaps, and
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: depend upon the type of tattoo, it might lead back
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: to a specific point of origin and where they had
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: done time. It leads you have a place to start.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: That's the important thing about getting IDs done in forensics
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: and death investigation. You know, we kind of have this
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: this old idea that doesn't really exist anymore of visual ID.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: Visual idea is the worst kind of ID that you
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: can do, where you kind of have this drupeo morgue
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: attend and you think about from the movies years ago
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: where a weeping family member comes into the morgue and
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: they pull the sheet back and they say, yes, that's
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: my brother or whatever. Doesn't really happen like that anymore,
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: And if it does. It shouldn't happen that way because
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: we have so many tools at hand to get people identified.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: So there's three levels of identification that we have. We
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: have unidentified, which means we have no idea who this
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: person is, which in this case certainly happened. You know,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: we had a foot and then we had a partially
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: dissected remain that was in another state. Had no idea
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: who they were, so that's unidentified. Then we have something
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: that's called presumptive ID. Presumptive idea is kind of that
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: mushy middle ground that you have. And I've had cases
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: where I had no DNA to necessarily work with, or
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: the individual had no family members to compare the identity to.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: I had a case in particular where a woman was
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: locked in her house with her dogs for about five months,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: and the dogs had consumed a goodly portion of her body,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: and so the house was locked from the inside. Her
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: keys were there, her wallet was there, her car was there,
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: but there was nothing of her that remained from her
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: waist up. Okay, I had no fingerprints to go and
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: she had no living relatives, so that would be a
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: presumptive ID. That body was a female body. She was
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: African American and she resided there. We knew that that
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: was her home, and then we had nothing else to
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: hang our hat on. Okay, so that's a presumptive ID,
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: and then we have a positive ID where scientifically we've
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: been able to verify their DNA, fingerprints, dental that sort
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: of thing that definitively is that person. The least reliable
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: probably is a visual ID because you can have there
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: are too many things that can happen with a visual ID.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: First off, people are terrified when they show up to
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: the MOREK to see a body. They're so emotional many
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: times that they're wrecked. I've had multiple bodies misidentified over
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: the years through visual ID. I never rely on government id's.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: It's something that it's a starting place, you know. If
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: somebody has a driver's license on them, it's a starting place.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: But I have to be able to verify that to say, okay,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: I think that this is who I have. If I've
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: got a body that is just torn to shreds, I
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: can't look at a driver's license and actually say, well, yeah,
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: this is the same person. It kind of looks like them.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: How are you going to do that when a person's
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: face is horribly disfigured. It's a starting place, Okay. I
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: don't trust any kind of ID because it can be
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: forged a year from now after I've stated that definitively,
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: that I got that body ID through a driver's license
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: and it turns out not to be them. Why, I've
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: just put myself in a heck of a position not
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: to mention the horror that descends upon the family at
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: that point in time because I assume something, I assume
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: something and it turns out not to be their loved
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: when that has happened as well. So you have to
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: be very definitive about these things. And one of the
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: most definitive things you can do nowadays, and there's no
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: excuse not to use it, is DNA. There's another component here,
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: and that is phenotyping. What is that and how does
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: it come into play? Well? With phenotyping, you're taking a
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: sample of DNA, okay, and based upon the markers within
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: that DNA as it is examined, you can come up
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: with certain traits or characteristics that are unique to that
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: DNA strand. And what that means is that they can
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: and listen, listen, It's not one hundred percent okay, it's not,
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: but it's it's really quite amazing technology because then they
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: can hazard an educated guests. They can say that with phenotyping,
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: based upon the markers that we see on this strand
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: of DNA, we can offer an opinion that this individual,
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: say for instance, is Middle Eastern in origin. Okay, so
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: therefore they're going to be more dark complexed, maybe olive complexed.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: There's a high likelihood they'll either have brown or green eyes.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: Their hair might be black and straight, brown and straight,
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: maybe slightly wavy. We can get an idea for height
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: in many of these cases, they can also get an
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: idea for the build of the person. And if they
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: really dig deep with this, they can see certain markers
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: that might be indicative of the type of health the
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: subject may have had. There might be some kind of
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: DNA predispositions to certain types of health issues they might
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: have in their life. And when you do that, you
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: begin to kind of bring this picture together of who
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: this person might be. And you know, amazingly, with these
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: types of cases, they can create create a composite of
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: these individuals DNA snapshot, and these DNA snapshots are absolutely amazing.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: They can create and rate an image of a person. Now,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: like I said, imagery went back to driver's licenses. Imagery
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: itself is not necessarily enough to confirm an identification. This
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: is merely a place to start. So just because you
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: have a phenotype that gives you an outline of what
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: the person or who the person might be, what their
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: point of origin is, it doesn't mean that you have
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: a specific identification on the body, Okay, And I gotta
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: I gotta mention this as well. In this particular case,
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: the LSU Faces Lab got involved with this case. The
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: LSU Faces Lab was the first lab in the United States,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: located at Louisiana State University. They were the first lab
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: where they actually digitized a human skull and were able
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: to model a skull to great effect. And they also
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: do clay modeling, and they did. They generated a clay
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: model on this gentleman that they found in Saint Tammany
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: Parish back in twenty sixteen and were able to get
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: an idea of what he may have looked like in
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: life in a three D sense like that. So you
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: coupled that along with a phenotyping, and now an image
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: begins to appear. The key, though, The key is to
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: find specific connectivity linkage, if you will, through DNA to
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: a family member. Ultimately, this gentleman was identified. His name
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: is Cleanthus constantines they were able to through the DNA
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: match to a family member of North and not surprisingly,
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: the phenotype sketches of what they thought this man would
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: look like matched Joe. Isn't that amazing? DNA is the
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: It's a modern wonder From a forensic standpoint, clay modeling
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: is fine, and we've done that for a number of years,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: and that was kind of the first step, I think
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: for many of us. But when we see what they're
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: doing with these so called phenotyping snapshots, if you will,
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: it's absolutely amazing how you can take those base elements
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: that we are, that we kind of spring from, and
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: capture a picture, capture a picture of a real person
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: and kind of conjure them up out of this DNA
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: phenotyping and the similarities are absolutely just striking. I'm Joseph
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: Scott Morgan and this is bodybacks