Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: The Monster Is Real Dad's New Girlfriend Kills Baby With Nail Polish Remover
Transcript
- 0:08Speaker 1: Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. There's a period of
- 0:20Speaker 1: time when young kids stop being babies necessarily and they
- 0:31Speaker 1: become something that resembles a toddler. It's kind of that
- 0:35Speaker 1: weird age, you know, and it's so precious. It's precious
- 0:38Speaker 1: to see that development of a child as you're watching
- 0:41Speaker 1: them grow, you know, your own child, and you know
- 0:44Speaker 1: they're they're pulling up on things, and they're what they
- 0:47Speaker 1: call it cruising, you know, they're holding onto things and
- 0:50Speaker 1: walk around and finally some of them take those early
- 0:52Speaker 1: steps in there and it's precious to watch, but oh
- 0:56Speaker 1: my gosh, it's terrifying too. I mean, it's it's probably
- 0:59Speaker 1: if you never had a small child and you don't
- 1:03Speaker 1: know what it's like. There are a few things and
- 1:06Speaker 1: it's amazing. You're going to think that I'm crazier than
- 1:09Speaker 1: you already think that I am. But sometimes you look
- 1:12Speaker 1: around and you say, where's my child because you don't know,
- 1:17Speaker 1: you don't know where they've wandered off to in your house,
- 1:19Speaker 1: you know, and so you have to watch them every
- 1:22Speaker 1: single moment because you're afraid that something is going to
- 1:26Speaker 1: befall them. It brings to mind a case that I've
- 1:31Speaker 1: been interested in now for a couple of weeks. I
- 1:35Speaker 1: guess it's a case involving an eighteen month old child,
- 1:41Speaker 1: an eighteen month old child who was so beautiful and
- 1:48Speaker 1: so precious, a gift from Heaven, as all children are,
- 1:53Speaker 1: but something entered into her space that I don't know.
- 1:58Speaker 1: I guess the only way I could really describe it
- 2:03Speaker 1: is malevolent. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is body
- 2:16Speaker 1: David sit here, and I'm thinking about my grandchildren right now,
- 2:20Speaker 1: and even further back, I'm thinking about my kids when
- 2:22Speaker 1: they were babies, and I'm thinking about how fragile and
- 2:27Speaker 1: dangerous that age is, and how you're you're you know,
- 2:31Speaker 1: you're just trying to keep them alive, particularly when you're
- 2:33Speaker 1: a young parent. You know, you get older and you
- 2:35Speaker 1: have grand babies. That's another thing. You know, you're careful
- 2:38Speaker 1: with them, but you know that they're not necessarily going
- 2:41Speaker 1: to break, but you're always you're always worried because they're
- 2:44Speaker 1: so dependent upon you and they're so they're so vulnerable
- 2:48Speaker 1: to the world.
- 2:49Speaker 2: A great explanation about missing them in your own homes
- 2:52Speaker 2: eighteen months.
- 2:53Speaker 1: They are fast. They are fast, you know, it in
- 2:56Speaker 1: a closet or under.
- 2:58Speaker 2: The thing is when they're in the they're usually standing
- 3:01Speaker 2: on an old dresser on top of a TV. You
- 3:04Speaker 2: hit in there, next to a dresser that has only
- 3:06Speaker 2: three legs, and they're standing on top saying hi. Yeah,
- 3:09Speaker 2: that's an eighteen month old right there.
- 3:11Speaker 1: It's it's terrifying. But they're so darn cute. I mean
- 3:14Speaker 1: they are, they're they're just so it's such a sweet age,
- 3:18Speaker 1: you know, because they they still have that amount of
- 3:21Speaker 1: baby in them where they want to crawl up in
- 3:24Speaker 1: your lap and you can rock them, you can soothe them.
- 3:28Speaker 1: You know, they're gonna cry, they're gonna they have these
- 3:30Speaker 1: needs and you can meet them and all those sort
- 3:32Speaker 1: of things such as such a precious time.
- 3:35Speaker 2: Uh you know that's why this story has the way.
- 3:38Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it really has. I I you know, I've
- 3:44Speaker 1: often thought about this, you know, when we cover cases
- 3:47Speaker 1: involving small children. Just bring them, bring them to me,
- 3:52Speaker 1: don't destroy them.
- 3:53Speaker 2: Think about this story actually began four months before it ended, Yeah,
- 3:58Speaker 2: four months before and obviously we're talking about the death
- 4:01Speaker 2: of an eighteen month old child named iris Rita Alfara.
- 4:05Speaker 2: She was eighteen months old four months before she died,
- 4:09Speaker 2: she had spent the weekend with her her biological father.
- 4:12Speaker 1: He had hit.
- 4:13Speaker 2: The biological mother and father were not together as a
- 4:15Speaker 2: married couple. They both had moved on. They shared custody
- 4:20Speaker 2: shared custody, meaning the mom had custody all the time
- 4:23Speaker 2: and the dad had visitation about every other weekend, and
- 4:26Speaker 2: she did that. They tended to work out for them.
- 4:29Speaker 2: After one of her weekends, After one of Iris's weekends
- 4:33Speaker 2: with her dad, her mom noticed when she was changing
- 4:36Speaker 2: a diaper, some water beads were in her diaper. These
- 4:41Speaker 2: are the water beads that are like in a bathtub,
- 4:44Speaker 2: you know, the bathing beads some people call them. But anyway,
- 4:48Speaker 2: she was scared, frightened, what are these beads doing in
- 4:51Speaker 2: my child's diaper? And she takes her to the hospital.
- 4:54Speaker 2: They thought the same thing, What in the world has
- 4:56Speaker 2: she done? What is she eaten? And at the hospital
- 5:01Speaker 2: they watched not just beads pass through her system, a
- 5:07Speaker 2: couple of small batteries, the little batteries you like a
- 5:13Speaker 2: watch battery, all right, and a screw like a wood
- 5:16Speaker 2: screw also passed through her system into her diaper. Now,
- 5:20Speaker 2: when it first happened that these passed. That was a warning. Certainly, hey,
- 5:24Speaker 2: something's up. Somebody's either not watching her careful enough. You know,
- 5:29Speaker 2: they weren't thinking anything heinous. They weren't thinking this child
- 5:32Speaker 2: is having to fight a monster. They were actually thinking, Wow,
- 5:35Speaker 2: you know, this child thankfully did not suffer any long
- 5:38Speaker 2: term effects from this. So when she did start suffering
- 5:43Speaker 2: effects and the she was at her dad's place for
- 5:47Speaker 2: the weekend, Dad goes to the grocery store. While he's
- 5:50Speaker 2: there at getting ready to pay for his groceries, his
- 5:52Speaker 2: girlfriend calls and says, Hey, something's wrong with the baby,
- 5:55Speaker 2: and he's like, well, call nine one one, I'm on
- 5:57Speaker 2: my way. By the time the rescuers got there with
- 6:00Speaker 2: lethargic iris was not really her eyes were fixed. And
- 6:04Speaker 2: I've got questions about the way they described her, Joe,
- 6:07Speaker 2: because I'm not sure. I'm not knowing the medical terms
- 6:10Speaker 2: what it all means. But the bottom line is she
- 6:13Speaker 2: died from things that she didn't find on her own.
- 6:17Speaker 2: She was fed and in this particular case, now, polish remover, Yeah,
- 6:23Speaker 2: that would be the best thing to explain it. Now,
- 6:25Speaker 2: polish remover acetone, is that what.
- 6:28Speaker 1: It's called yone. Yeah it is.
- 6:30Speaker 2: That's what killed eighteen month old Iris Alfari.
- 6:35Speaker 1: Yeah, it's horrible stuff. Let me back up just for
- 6:38Speaker 1: a second to give you know, to give our friends
- 6:43Speaker 1: here kind of an understanding of First off, that first
- 6:47Speaker 1: part that we were describing. I don't many people might
- 6:52Speaker 1: not be aware of this, but there is actually a
- 6:54Speaker 1: condition that adults suffer from, and it's actually referred to
- 7:02Speaker 1: as pika and pika p I c A. It's actually
- 7:06Speaker 1: a condition where people get fixated on consuming non food items.
- 7:12Speaker 1: And I think probably one of the most ghastly examples
- 7:16Speaker 1: of this is probably Albert Fish, who was a serial
- 7:19Speaker 1: killer back I don't know, the turn of the last century,
- 7:23Speaker 1: I think, and he he would ingest metallic objects like needles, nails,
- 7:34Speaker 1: all manner things that and but he was he had
- 7:38Speaker 1: pika in the sense that it was a sato masochistic thing.
- 7:42Speaker 1: He enjoyed the pain in his bowel. And that's the
- 7:45Speaker 1: thing I got to thinking about this when you had mentioned,
- 7:48Speaker 1: you know, the batteries are one thing that's kind of
- 7:49Speaker 1: a smooth external surface if they're not broken, Yeah, that
- 7:54Speaker 1: could be easily passed. The water beads sometimes if those
- 7:59Speaker 1: rupture they've got a dehydrating quality to them that could
- 8:02Speaker 1: be quite dangerous. But primarily you're worrying about blockages. But
- 8:07Speaker 1: the screw in particular troubled me because if you swallow
- 8:12Speaker 1: a metal object like that, and as it's kind of
- 8:15Speaker 1: passing through, well, obviously it has to make its way
- 8:18Speaker 1: to the stomach, and then where the stomach dumps into
- 8:21Speaker 1: the small intestine. You know, it has to travel some distance,
- 8:27Speaker 1: and you're really wondering along the way. If you just
- 8:31Speaker 1: imagine you'd mentioned that this was like a woodscrew, Well,
- 8:35Speaker 1: this is going to be something that has got it's
- 8:40Speaker 1: got a very sharp point on it, and it's got
- 8:43Speaker 1: despiraling pattern that runs up the side that literally can
- 8:49Speaker 1: hang on the mucosal surface of the bowel. Just imagine
- 8:55Speaker 1: that just for a second. If it gets in there
- 8:57Speaker 1: and it gets twisted, then that means that the bowl
- 9:00Speaker 1: rupture perhaps, and all kinds of bad things can happen
- 9:04Speaker 1: at that point, and the child has no way of
- 9:07Speaker 1: communicating this. I think one of the questions I would
- 9:09Speaker 1: have if this was an attempt to take this child's
- 9:14Speaker 1: life in some kind of passive way. You know what
- 9:17Speaker 1: I'm saying, It's not like, it's not like the child
- 9:19Speaker 1: is being beaten to death, but you try to it's
- 9:22Speaker 1: almost staging. It is staging. You want to make it
- 9:24Speaker 1: look like the kid pick something up, stuffed it in
- 9:27Speaker 1: their mouth, and oops, it was an accident and they died.
- 9:31Speaker 1: I don't think that you can take the full measure
- 9:33Speaker 1: of thinking about providing objects for a child to swallow it,
- 9:38Speaker 1: and how do you get them to swallow it. Did
- 9:40Speaker 1: you take a woodscrew and place it into a banana, say,
- 9:45Speaker 1: for instance, and give the banana to the child, say,
- 9:49Speaker 1: cut up bits of banana, or maybe maybe you're talking
- 9:52Speaker 1: about it's not a finger food. Maybe maybe you're taking
- 9:56Speaker 1: something out of a jar, you know, like I don't know,
- 9:59Speaker 1: like care it's you know, like puadan carrots, or you know,
- 10:02Speaker 1: one of these peas or one of these things that's
- 10:05Speaker 1: real tacky, and you you place that item in there,
- 10:07Speaker 1: and then you can you imagine taking that spoon and
- 10:10Speaker 1: dipping that out, and you.
- 10:11Speaker 2: Know, your first thought would be if you're a medical
- 10:14Speaker 2: person and you see this, your first thought isn't going
- 10:17Speaker 2: to be somebody got this baby to eat his screw.
- 10:19Speaker 2: It's going to be she found some things on the
- 10:21Speaker 2: floor and was oh yeah, and just grabbed them and
- 10:24Speaker 2: you know, fingers to mouth, right.
- 10:26Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. And I have to say,
- 10:29Speaker 1: you know, if you if this is the issue and
- 10:31Speaker 1: you're taking the child to the emergency room to be assessed,
- 10:35Speaker 1: first off, you're going to do X rays on the
- 10:37Speaker 1: child thoroughly. You know, you want to be able to
- 10:40Speaker 1: look through get a really good image of the bowel,
- 10:43Speaker 1: every bit and the stomach to see if there's anything
- 10:46Speaker 1: but refer to that's radio opaque in there, because if
- 10:48Speaker 1: there's another item in there, and you can find another item,
- 10:52Speaker 1: I don't most people. You know, there's a lot of
- 10:54Speaker 1: talk out there about how and you've probably heard this
- 10:57Speaker 1: over the years, about how long the human intestine is. Yeah,
- 11:01Speaker 1: the small intestine, in particular, large intestine. It sounds counter too.
- 11:05Speaker 1: Large intestine is not as as long as the small intestine.
- 11:10Speaker 1: Small intestine is really compact. It compacted upon itself. It's
- 11:15Speaker 1: in loops. We refer to it as loops, and it
- 11:17Speaker 1: goes it's feet, I mean just feet and feet and feet.
- 11:20Speaker 1: So anything that is passing through there, all these little turns,
- 11:25Speaker 1: all these little awkward positions that it can get in
- 11:28Speaker 1: if you've got a foreign object in there, it can
- 11:30Speaker 1: get hung up in that gastric mucosa. The surgeon that's
- 11:34Speaker 1: tasked with clearing that area out really has hell to pay,
- 11:38Speaker 1: you know, when you're going by the image, and of
- 11:40Speaker 1: course they're going to scope these kids in order to
- 11:42Speaker 1: look for it. But it's a very delicate thing because
- 11:45Speaker 1: if that tissue is harmed in a particular way, you
- 11:49Speaker 1: can actually have something like sepsis that might set in
- 11:53Speaker 1: in that area because you don't know if it's if
- 11:55Speaker 1: the surface of that bowel is ruptured and then it
- 11:58Speaker 1: kind of begins to spill out into that surrounding area,
- 12:02Speaker 1: you can have all kinds of nasties that set in.
- 12:05Speaker 1: And you really wonder had somebody actually weaponized food and
- 12:10Speaker 1: a little to kill a sharp.
- 12:27Speaker 2: Hey, Dave, I got a question for you.
- 12:29Speaker 1: You ever been messing around with super glue and you
- 12:36Speaker 1: get some of it on the surface of like one
- 12:38Speaker 1: of your fingers, and then you put your other finger
- 12:41Speaker 1: on the surface of the finger that has super clue,
- 12:43Speaker 1: and you're sitting there and you're trying to saying, oh
- 12:46Speaker 1: my gosh, you know what am I going to do?
- 12:49Speaker 1: You know, and there's all kinds of stories of people
- 12:51Speaker 1: that have super glue, toilet lids down, and all kinds
- 12:54Speaker 1: of stuff. You know from that. Do you know, do
- 12:58Speaker 1: you know what substance can be used to free up
- 13:04Speaker 1: super glue? I do? Yeah, Actually astone. It's an astone base.
- 13:12Speaker 2: You know how I knew it?
- 13:13Speaker 1: How's that?
- 13:15Speaker 2: Several months ago there was a story about a woman
- 13:18Speaker 2: who used gorilla glue on her hair getting ready for
- 13:22Speaker 2: a big date. Ran out of hairspray when used grilla glue, Yeah,
- 13:28Speaker 2: and her hands, her hair all got glued together. And
- 13:34Speaker 2: so I found out that they used astone. That's how
- 13:36Speaker 2: they were able to undo her fingers and hair and
- 13:38Speaker 2: everything else. And she wasn't the first one.
- 13:41Speaker 1: Isn't it an amazing stuff we'd come across? I mean,
- 13:43Speaker 1: it really is.
- 13:45Speaker 2: But now polish remover works at getting rid of glue.
- 13:48Speaker 1: It does. I mean, it's it's a solvent, you know,
- 13:50Speaker 1: and it can you know, you begin to think, well,
- 13:54Speaker 1: what does that involve? If you've ever been around superglue
- 13:57Speaker 1: and you've glued something down and or you've gotten the
- 14:01Speaker 1: residue left behind, how are you going to get that up? Well?
- 14:03Speaker 1: Acetone is one of the ways that you do it,
- 14:05Speaker 1: and astone is also used is also used UH to
- 14:09Speaker 1: remove fingernail polish and if you've ever been around fingernail polish.
- 14:14Speaker 1: My wife uses it UH and has used it over
- 14:19Speaker 1: the years. It's one of I don't like the smell
- 14:22Speaker 1: of either one. I don't like the smell of nail polish.
- 14:24Speaker 1: It makes my head hurt. Acetone is not as heavy
- 14:30Speaker 1: in the odor, but it's still you can pick up
- 14:33Speaker 1: on the on the on the smell of it UH.
- 14:35Speaker 1: And as it's being used and generally you're in close
- 14:38Speaker 1: proximity to your spouse that they're taking.
- 14:41Speaker 2: It is strong enough of a smell. You're right that
- 14:42Speaker 2: it's not something you would immediately think, Hey, let me
- 14:45Speaker 2: taste this.
- 14:47Speaker 1: No, it's not. But it's much like you know, we've
- 14:51Speaker 1: we've had several cases over the years where we've talked
- 14:54Speaker 1: about we've talked about antifreeze. Yeah, and you know anti
- 14:58Speaker 1: freeze U. One of the dangers of it is that
- 15:01Speaker 1: it's actually got a sweet taste to it. You know,
- 15:03Speaker 1: astone has a sweet taste to it. So if you're yeah, so,
- 15:07Speaker 1: if you're if you're going to use it in well,
- 15:12Speaker 1: use the word malevolence but in a malevolent way if
- 15:15Speaker 1: you're going to use it to perpetrate a crime like this.
- 15:19Speaker 1: It's not like you're you're taking hydrochlic acid and pouring
- 15:24Speaker 1: it down somebody. Sort you're giving them something that has
- 15:26Speaker 1: a sweet taste. And what do kids love? Kids love
- 15:29Speaker 1: things that are sweet, so to if you can just
- 15:33Speaker 1: imagine what would it take to motivate somebody to say,
- 15:38Speaker 1: you know what I think I want to do. I
- 15:40Speaker 1: want to take an eighteen month old little girl, a
- 15:43Speaker 1: little precious baby like this. I'm going to apply her
- 15:48Speaker 1: with fingernail polish remover. Gee. I wonder what'll happen well
- 15:53Speaker 1: in this particular case. I think, Dave, we have an indication,
- 15:56Speaker 1: at least at this point that some research might have
- 15:59Speaker 1: been done well in regardless to what would be effective
- 16:04Speaker 1: in doing harm to someone.
- 16:05Speaker 2: That's why I wanted to set up the inter relationships
- 16:08Speaker 2: here with the parents of iris Rita Alfara, the eighteen
- 16:13Speaker 2: month old victim. Here, I wanted you to be aware
- 16:17Speaker 2: very early on that she was not living with her
- 16:19Speaker 2: biological parents. She lived with her mom full time and
- 16:22Speaker 2: they lived with her grandparents. Her dad had already moved
- 16:25Speaker 2: on to another woman that he was living with a
- 16:27Speaker 2: twenty year old woman named Alicia Lenee Owens. Alicia LINEE
- 16:32Speaker 2: Owens was there with her the weekend she ended up
- 16:36Speaker 2: with all the waterbeads, the three button bat shape batteries,
- 16:40Speaker 2: and the metal screw. She was there that weekend that
- 16:43Speaker 2: these were ingested and when police were investigating, because you've
- 16:47Speaker 2: got an eighteen month old girl who is seemingly imperfect health,
- 16:52Speaker 2: and her dad is at the grocery store and she's
- 16:55Speaker 2: at home with her dad's girlfriend, and they get a
- 16:58Speaker 2: call that she is has taken ill. And when the
- 17:03Speaker 2: emergency crews arrived, Joe, she is awake, she's lethargic, her
- 17:07Speaker 2: eyes are fixed, and she's This girlfriend claims that she's
- 17:14Speaker 2: a nursing student and has tried to perform chess compressions
- 17:17Speaker 2: to help iris because.
- 17:20Speaker 1: She was not.
- 17:21Speaker 2: Her story was that she was feeding the baby on
- 17:23Speaker 2: the bed. The baby cramped and fell off the bed
- 17:26Speaker 2: and hit her head and that's when she started acting
- 17:29Speaker 2: bad physically ill. That's when the girlfriend calls the dad.
- 17:32Speaker 2: The dad says call nine one one, he comes home.
- 17:35Speaker 2: He gets there by the same time the rescue squad arrives.
- 17:37Speaker 2: They look at her and they take her to the hospital.
- 17:39Speaker 2: Now at the hospital, the doctors are like, no way,
- 17:41Speaker 2: this just happened. There's something else going on here. This
- 17:45Speaker 2: is when they air flight her to at another hospital.
- 17:47Speaker 2: She dies four days later, eighteen months old, and goes
- 17:51Speaker 2: from being a perfectly healthy girl when dad leaves her
- 17:53Speaker 2: to go to the grocery store and four days later
- 17:55Speaker 2: she's dead, and doctors are saying, there's something more to this,
- 17:58Speaker 2: so they begin investigations. The investigation two fold because one
- 18:03Speaker 2: she had physical signs of trauma. She did have a
- 18:05Speaker 2: hit on her head. She had signs that the doctor
- 18:07Speaker 2: said appeared to be inflicted by an adult. It looked
- 18:11Speaker 2: like abuse. During the investigation, they found out that Linne
- 18:14Speaker 2: Owens had been researching on her phone things that could
- 18:18Speaker 2: hurt a child every day, Household items that could hurt
- 18:22Speaker 2: a child everyday, household items that could hurt Who looks
- 18:26Speaker 2: for that, Joe? Who uses their phone to look up
- 18:29Speaker 2: ways that things that would hurt a child in the home.
- 18:32Speaker 2: Not from a safety standpoint.
- 18:34Speaker 1: No kidding, David, I mean, if you're you know, if
- 18:36Speaker 1: you're entertaining a child, say for instance, you've never I
- 18:39Speaker 1: don't know, I can't understand what circumstances you would search
- 18:41Speaker 1: that out. But let's just say you're going to keep
- 18:43Speaker 1: somebody's kids. You whiz, I've never kept a kid before.
- 18:46Speaker 1: What how can I safeguard my house? I'm looking for
- 18:48Speaker 1: things that could do harm to them. But when you
- 18:51Speaker 1: get this specific and you begin to look for things
- 18:54Speaker 1: that actually might wind up in a fatal event, that's
- 19:00Speaker 1: that is a red flag for investigators, and particularly if
- 19:03Speaker 1: you do these searches over a long period of time.
- 19:06Speaker 1: It almost goes from a circumstantial standpoint. You're seeing somebody
- 19:11Speaker 1: beginning to put puzzle pieces together toward a goal which
- 19:15Speaker 1: they're looking to accomplish here and of course the goal,
- 19:18Speaker 1: seemingly at this point in tom is the death of
- 19:20Speaker 1: this child, the removal of this child from you know,
- 19:24Speaker 1: this family environment, from you know, her dad. And and
- 19:30Speaker 1: because you know, many times in this blended situation like this,
- 19:34Speaker 1: children can become let's see, how can I put this,
- 19:41Speaker 1: it's almost children many times become almost like an accessory
- 19:46Speaker 1: on a vehicle that the new owner doesn't want, but
- 19:49Speaker 1: yet the vehicle can't operate without them. And that's unfortunate.
- 19:53Speaker 1: But that's really kind of the world that many of
- 19:56Speaker 1: us have inhabited throughout our lives. There's a lot of
- 19:59Speaker 1: unwanted older out there, and there are people that will
- 20:01Speaker 1: do harm to children if given an opportunity, if they
- 20:05Speaker 1: can be removed from the equation in an environment. So
- 20:09Speaker 1: you have to think, uh, you know, you you kind
- 20:11Speaker 1: of let off this conversation by stating, I think, what
- 20:15Speaker 1: what is it? There's monsters among us. I think that's
- 20:18Speaker 1: what you said. And you know it was.
- 20:20Speaker 2: The Newsweek Newsweek articles. The headline about this story was
- 20:24Speaker 2: Monsters do exist.
- 20:26Speaker 1: Yeah, monsters, and they do truly exist, and they will
- 20:28Speaker 1: go to whatever links possible to uh, to remove whatever
- 20:36Speaker 1: an impediment the child might be, or whatever the circumstances
- 20:39Speaker 1: to rearrange it so it works through their advantage.
- 20:41Speaker 2: And that's what you're trying to do. Yeah, you're trying
- 20:44Speaker 2: to get rid of the baby, to get out of
- 20:45Speaker 2: her boyfriend's life so he wouldn't have anything to do
- 20:47Speaker 2: with his ex. That was what it amounted to, or
- 20:49Speaker 2: that's my opinion, that's what it did. Put it this way, Joe,
- 20:52Speaker 2: I had to ask you this, okay, because the doctors
- 20:54Speaker 2: now the way she explained it to the medical professionals.
- 20:58Speaker 2: They show up that the baby was eating on the bed,
- 21:02Speaker 2: she had a cramp, fell off the bed and hit
- 21:05Speaker 2: her head. Doctors at the children's at the children's center
- 21:10Speaker 2: that reported this to the police, it's the UPMC's Children's
- 21:14Speaker 2: Child Advocacy Center. They reported the police that Iris suffered
- 21:18Speaker 2: subdural hematoma and bilateral retinal hemorrhages.
- 21:23Speaker 1: What is that? Okay, Well, you've got when we're talking
- 21:28Speaker 1: about a subdural hematoma. Uh, you have got a uh
- 21:34Speaker 1: your brain sits inside of a sack. Okay, it's uh,
- 21:40Speaker 1: it's it's called the dura, the dura sack, and your
- 21:44Speaker 1: brain is a wash with cerebral spinal fluid. Okay, so
- 21:49Speaker 1: your your brain kind of floats in this substance, all right,
- 21:53Speaker 1: contained within a sack. The sack along with the fluid,
- 21:57Speaker 1: acts as almost a shock like a shock absorber or
- 22:00Speaker 1: the brain. If you're talking about a subdural hematoma, that
- 22:04Speaker 1: means sub obviously meaning below. So if you've got a
- 22:09Speaker 1: subdural hematoma, that means that the hemorrhage itself is in
- 22:14Speaker 1: between the dura sac and the brain. And what does
- 22:17Speaker 1: that do? Will it creates pressure? And if you're talking
- 22:20Speaker 1: about this kind of bilateral retinal event, Dave. That's something
- 22:26Speaker 1: that we commonly see with shaking baby syndrome, because if
- 22:31Speaker 1: you're talking about shaking a child to that point where
- 22:37Speaker 1: you're going to inflict not only brain trauma, but also
- 22:42Speaker 1: this kind of ocular trauma as well, you've got to
- 22:46Speaker 1: have an origin for these points of hemorrhage and that
- 22:49Speaker 1: kind of violence shaking that takes place. Now, there's some
- 22:52Speaker 1: people out there there's actually been a long running debate
- 22:56Speaker 1: about is making baby syndrome a real thing? Because one
- 23:02Speaker 1: of the diagnoses that people would make many times is
- 23:06Speaker 1: that you would have these children be bilaterally blinded many
- 23:11Speaker 1: times because of the rigorous shaking of the child. And
- 23:16Speaker 1: when you've got say these optic nerves that are in
- 23:19Speaker 1: the back of the eye that lead into the brain,
- 23:23Speaker 1: sometimes they can be traumatized. The surface of the floor
- 23:27Speaker 1: of the skull is very rough, all right, and if
- 23:31Speaker 1: it's fractured any way, or the kids are jostled in
- 23:33Speaker 1: any particular way, particularly over protracted period of time, you
- 23:36Speaker 1: did great harm to the eyes in that area. Not
- 23:39Speaker 1: to mention the brain. So you've got the brain with
- 23:43Speaker 1: a subdural hematoma where you know that that child, that
- 23:46Speaker 1: head is being bounced back and forth all over the place,
- 23:50Speaker 1: So the little vessels are going to rupture on the
- 23:53Speaker 1: surface of the brain and you're going to have this
- 23:56Speaker 1: pressure that's going to begin to build up as that
- 23:59Speaker 1: blood that focal area of hemorrhage, that clot kind of
- 24:03Speaker 1: sets in, and that's going to be problematic. And yeah,
- 24:06Speaker 1: it would be. It would be glaring, you know, particularly
- 24:09Speaker 1: for us at autopsy when her head is actually opened.
- 24:14Speaker 1: If you have not seen this on X ray, you
- 24:16Speaker 1: don't know that it's coming. I've actually had these cases
- 24:19Speaker 1: day where we've been in the autopsy room. There's not
- 24:22Speaker 1: necessarily any kind of external trauma. Like you're looking at
- 24:25Speaker 1: the head, you don't see anything, and then all of
- 24:28Speaker 1: a sudden you open up the head and you're taking
- 24:32Speaker 1: back the dura and there is a big, big hymorrhage
- 24:35Speaker 1: right there, and you're thinking, oh my lord, what's happening here.
- 24:56Speaker 1: So we've got we've got trauma obviously to the head
- 25:06Speaker 1: that is just in and of itself, Dave, that in
- 25:09Speaker 1: and of itself is enough to give investigators pause. You've
- 25:15Speaker 1: really got a lot sink your teeth into there. But
- 25:18Speaker 1: now you've got you've got a child that is not
- 25:27Speaker 1: only lethargic, which that can be associated with a head injury,
- 25:31Speaker 1: but they're not responding. And when they do the lab studies,
- 25:38Speaker 1: they discovered that the child is going into ketosis, which
- 25:42Speaker 1: your body produces ketones naturally. We actually we actually process
- 25:48Speaker 1: astone every day in our system. It's kind of this.
- 25:52Speaker 1: It's it's something that's naturally occurring. It's a byproduct, and
- 25:55Speaker 1: we process it. One of the things that aston does
- 25:59Speaker 1: is that it creates keytnes, and keytnes are produced I
- 26:04Speaker 1: think they're produced in the liver, and so your body
- 26:07Speaker 1: is equipped to kind of flush these key tones. You
- 26:12Speaker 1: have a spike in keytnes many times with diabetic patients
- 26:16Speaker 1: and and they can get in real serious trouble with ketosis.
- 26:21Speaker 1: And so with her, she's kind of in, you know,
- 26:25Speaker 1: as pilots like to say, they were in what's it
- 26:28Speaker 1: referred to as an unrecoverable flat spin. You've got this
- 26:31Speaker 1: kid that is in great diminished physical condition. The staff
- 26:39Speaker 1: is scratching their heads. They're looking at this and they're thinking, oh,
- 26:43Speaker 1: my lord, what can we do to save this child's life?
- 26:46Speaker 1: And then, as you said, the admission time was what
- 26:49Speaker 1: two to three days in length there trying, they're they're
- 26:53Speaker 1: four days. They're trying, valiantly, fighting to try to save
- 26:56Speaker 1: this child, and no matter what you throw, no matter
- 26:59Speaker 1: what you think at this situation, you're not going to
- 27:03Speaker 1: you're not going to save her. And so it's it's
- 27:06Speaker 1: really it would be very frustrating, I would think for
- 27:10Speaker 1: a clinical physician and certainly those brave nurses that work
- 27:15Speaker 1: with these children day in and day out, to sit
- 27:18Speaker 1: there and you've got all of this medical science at
- 27:20Speaker 1: your disposal, You've got all of these treatments, you've got
- 27:24Speaker 1: all of this history and everything, and nothing that you
- 27:26Speaker 1: do is going to save this child's life, and you
- 27:29Speaker 1: literally just kind of watch them there as they dwindle
- 27:32Speaker 1: and dwindle and dwindle until finally they're dead and there's
- 27:35Speaker 1: nothing you can go back and do about it.
- 27:38Speaker 2: In this case, one of the doctors said that based
- 27:43Speaker 2: on her condition, that there's no way her dad didn't
- 27:49Speaker 2: recognize that something was not recognizable in this child before
- 27:53Speaker 2: they called nine to one one because the story was
- 27:56Speaker 2: that dad went to the grocery store and while girl
- 28:00Speaker 2: friend was watching the baby. Veteran that's when all of
- 28:04Speaker 2: this happened, and the doctor was saying it could it
- 28:06Speaker 2: had to, there had to be more noticeable stuff going on.
- 28:10Speaker 2: But when they get her to the hospital, and as
- 28:12Speaker 2: you mentioned, they're treating what they see. They're treating what
- 28:15Speaker 2: is obvious, but they don't know until after they do
- 28:18Speaker 2: the autopsy about the acetone. Is there a test that
- 28:22Speaker 2: one would give a baby that they would look would
- 28:26Speaker 2: you look for acetone or some type of thing like
- 28:28Speaker 2: that that could cause organ failure? Is that is that
- 28:31Speaker 2: on the chart of things to look for?
- 28:33Speaker 1: Yeah, and I guess you're talking about when they're in
- 28:35Speaker 1: the clinical phase, uh, in the hospital.
- 28:38Speaker 2: Yeah, she's in the hospital and she's dying. Her organs
- 28:40Speaker 2: are failing, and you know, they've got the subdrillhematoma, you
- 28:43Speaker 2: got the problem with the retinal era, You've got that.
- 28:46Speaker 2: But she's not responding to treatment, as you mentioned, And.
- 28:50Speaker 1: So I think that I would think that probably they're
- 28:52Speaker 1: gonna they're gonna suss out this idea of the katosis
- 28:56Speaker 1: pretty quickly, uh, and try to determine what the origin
- 29:02Speaker 1: is with it, and maybe by the time they get
- 29:06Speaker 1: this thing figured out, it's just it's too late. At
- 29:13Speaker 1: that point in time, they can't. There's nothing that they
- 29:16Speaker 1: can do to stem it. And so you know, for
- 29:19Speaker 1: us at the Medical Examiner's office, you know, we have
- 29:22Speaker 1: a luxury. You know, in medical legal death investigation. We're
- 29:25Speaker 1: not trying to save anybody's life. We're trying to solve
- 29:28Speaker 1: a mystery at this point in time. So it takes
- 29:33Speaker 1: some head scratching, and it also takes a review of
- 29:37Speaker 1: all of the charted material. Everything from the moment that
- 29:42Speaker 1: this baby would roll through the door in the emergency room,
- 29:47Speaker 1: then up to the floor and then she was transported
- 29:51Speaker 1: to another location. All of that data would be gone.
- 29:55Speaker 1: Over All the nursing notes, all the doctor's notes, anything
- 29:58Speaker 1: any that they would have taken to try to stem
- 30:05Speaker 1: this condition. That's all going to be considered at autopsy,
- 30:09Speaker 1: and then that's going to lead the forensic pathologist at
- 30:12Speaker 1: the end of the day, after they balance all of
- 30:14Speaker 1: this and they take a look at her tissues certainly
- 30:18Speaker 1: post mortem, look at everything microscopically, take all the history
- 30:23Speaker 1: and consideration, that's when they're finally going to make this diagnosis.
- 30:25Speaker 1: And I think that the forensic pathologist finally had a
- 30:28Speaker 1: Eureka moment, you know, where they said, yeah, this is
- 30:32Speaker 1: this is acetone poisoning. And look, this doesn't happen a lot, okay,
- 30:39Speaker 1: And I don't want to reduce this down to the
- 30:43Speaker 1: death of this little angel, down to some kind of
- 30:46Speaker 1: academic exercise. But it happens with such rarity that this
- 30:53Speaker 1: would this methodology would be something that a forensic pathologist
- 30:57Speaker 1: would probably study and actually publish a paper on. That's
- 31:02Speaker 1: how you know, infrequently it happens they would discuss this
- 31:05Speaker 1: at a meeting with other physicians to say or other
- 31:08Speaker 1: pathologists to say, look, I had this case. This is
- 31:10Speaker 1: something you need to watch out for. It's not like,
- 31:13Speaker 1: you know, if we deal with all manner of trauma.
- 31:16Speaker 1: We mentioned the head trauma, that's something that we see regularly.
- 31:20Speaker 1: But you know, we see gunshot wounds and bludgeonings and
- 31:23Speaker 1: stabbings and all that stuff, certainly motor vehicle accidents. But this,
- 31:27Speaker 1: this is something it's not it's not absolutely positivity has
- 31:32Speaker 1: never happened. It has happened. We've got a lot of
- 31:35Speaker 1: literature on it, but it's not something that you're going
- 31:37Speaker 1: to see every single month. Maybe you won't even see
- 31:40Speaker 1: one a year. Okay, So when it happens, it's significant
- 31:43Speaker 1: and that way.
- 31:44Speaker 2: Once that did happen, her death was ruled a homicide
- 31:49Speaker 2: and the investigation began. And that's when the four months
- 31:54Speaker 2: previous that we told you about at the very beginning.
- 31:56Speaker 2: That's why it was so important to know that. I
- 31:59Speaker 2: think that that was like trial run four months earlier
- 32:02Speaker 2: of the button, the batteries that were like buttons, the
- 32:04Speaker 2: water beads, and the screw. And as they were investigating,
- 32:09Speaker 2: they said, well, okay, not uncommon for an eighteen month
- 32:12Speaker 2: old to swallow things. Look, I don't know a parent
- 32:15Speaker 2: that hasn't found something in a diaper and went, please
- 32:18Speaker 2: tell me that was after no, that did not pass. Please. Yeah,
- 32:22Speaker 2: And thankfully kids do stick stuff in their diaper. You know,
- 32:25Speaker 2: it doesn't all come through their system first, because right, boy,
- 32:28Speaker 2: I got two kids that would have not survived. But
- 32:31Speaker 2: but in this particular case, they started that and went, okay,
- 32:34Speaker 2: that's explainable. But as they started looking into that happened
- 32:39Speaker 2: when the child was at her dad's house with this girlfriend,
- 32:42Speaker 2: and so they start examining dad's phone, girlfriend's phone, and
- 32:46Speaker 2: they find out that girlfriend has been researching for nine months. Joe,
- 32:52Speaker 2: this child is eighteen months old and for half of
- 32:54Speaker 2: her life, this twenty year old girlfriend was looking up
- 32:59Speaker 2: if you're child drinks a lot of nail polish remover,
- 33:02Speaker 2: what happens? That was one of the topics that Miss
- 33:06Speaker 2: Owen's researched. What happens if a baby eats nail polish
- 33:11Speaker 2: another of her search and she know's on her cell
- 33:13Speaker 2: phone in how many cases have kids died from eating
- 33:17Speaker 2: water beads? Think about that for a minute. Is what
- 33:20Speaker 2: happened four months earlier? Water beads. So the police had
- 33:24Speaker 2: this investigation pretty much from the very beginning, zeroed in.
- 33:29Speaker 2: Now it was a matter of going to Joe Scott
- 33:31Speaker 2: Morgan saying, how do we put all this together? You know,
- 33:34Speaker 2: I'm going to put it together on my police detective
- 33:36Speaker 2: hat here and I see how these how do we
- 33:38Speaker 2: connect them all medically?
- 33:39Speaker 1: Joe, Well, I think that again it's going to be
- 33:43Speaker 1: the preponderance of the evidence relative to her clinical treatment.
- 33:47Speaker 1: But then you take this and here's the really ominous
- 33:51Speaker 1: piece to this, not that all of this isn't ominous,
- 33:53Speaker 1: but when you begin to talk about a nine month period.
- 34:00Speaker 1: First off, if if I were a prosecutor and I
- 34:03Speaker 1: was I was working in a location, which this case
- 34:10Speaker 1: is out of Pennsylvania, and I was working in that location.
- 34:16Speaker 1: Does the word premeditation mean anything here? You know, because
- 34:20Speaker 1: you know, we talk, you know people, and our friend
- 34:22Speaker 1: Nancy Grace always says, I'll let me see if I
- 34:24Speaker 1: can do my best imitation. She says, just got premeditation
- 34:29Speaker 1: can be formed in the twinkling of an eye. And
- 34:31Speaker 1: you're right, I mean it can be formed in a
- 34:33Speaker 1: twinkling of eye, Dave. Nine months. Ain't a twinkling of
- 34:37Speaker 1: an eye. You're talking about a record. Just just frame this.
- 34:44Speaker 1: You're talking about allegedly a record that they have now
- 34:49Speaker 1: of her activities stretching back nine months, nine months, Dave.
- 34:55Speaker 1: Where the prosecution is going to present this case because
- 34:59Speaker 1: it hasn't don't trial yet? Right? Oh?
- 35:01Speaker 2: And by the way, Joe, Yeah, During the four days
- 35:05Speaker 2: that this baby was in the hospital before she died,
- 35:11Speaker 2: Alicia Owen's cell phone researched numerous times how to pass
- 35:18Speaker 2: a polygraph test.
- 35:22Speaker 1: And let me guess, how did that work out?
- 35:25Speaker 2: She actually was charged with murder. This has not been
- 35:29Speaker 2: adjudicated yet. This is an ongoing case because of the
- 35:33Speaker 2: homicide charges. She was denied bail, and we will follow
- 35:37Speaker 2: it up and will update this particular podcast and probably
- 35:40Speaker 2: do an update because there will be more information on
- 35:44Speaker 2: what Alicia Lana Owens is accused of doing and why
- 35:48Speaker 2: Bailey Jacobi, the father, was not charged and still has
- 35:52Speaker 2: not been charged with any wrongdoing in the death of
- 35:54Speaker 2: his daughter. We'll have to get an update on that
- 35:56Speaker 2: as well.
- 35:56Speaker 1: Joe, you're right, and I think looking at this this
- 36:03Speaker 1: doesn't require a polygraph to be able to understand and
- 36:08Speaker 1: to interpret that something that was absolutely pure evil was
- 36:16Speaker 1: perpetrated on this gift sent straight down from Heaven. I'm
- 36:22Speaker 1: Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Bodybags