Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Double Murderer Executed by Firing Squad. Why?

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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Double Murderer Executed by Firing Squad. Why? · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:01
Speaker 1: Quody batters, but Joseph's gotten more. As of right now,
0:07
Speaker 1: I'll go ahead and give this to you because I
0:09
Speaker 1: need to have a chronological time frame so you can
0:14
Speaker 1: appreciate what I'm saying here. It's March ninth, so all
0:24
Speaker 1: Major League Baseball teams have reported and what that means
0:28
Speaker 1: for those of us that are baseball fans. You know,
0:30
Speaker 1: the pitchers and the catchers show up early, the rest
0:32
Speaker 1: of the team shows up, and I think they've already
0:34
Speaker 1: started playing playing games to this point. You know, Opening
0:39
Speaker 1: day is in April. And you know, one of the
0:43
Speaker 1: things that is I think is most difficult in baseball
0:48
Speaker 1: is not so much what the pitchers have to do,
0:53
Speaker 1: but it's the timing that the batters have to reprepare
1:00
Speaker 1: themselves for now. A lot of them play in other
1:02
Speaker 1: leagues during the off season, but some of them, I
1:05
Speaker 1: would imagine, many of the really wealthy ones just walk
1:08
Speaker 1: away and say I'll do it in spring. Timing is
1:11
Speaker 1: in fact everything. Just imagine, if you will, though, that
1:17
Speaker 1: a bat, a baseball bat, is a weapon, and it
1:22
Speaker 1: has a certain amount of utility to it. You know,
1:27
Speaker 1: we have all manner of weapons out there, things that
1:32
Speaker 1: might not necessarily normally be weapons, but are used as
1:37
Speaker 1: weapons of convenience. Today, I want to talk about a
1:43
Speaker 1: brutal double homicide that involves a baseball bat and also
1:50
Speaker 1: the death of the person that perpetrated that double homicide
1:56
Speaker 1: at the end of a three h eight rifle. I'm
2:01
Speaker 1: Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Bodybacks with today's case. Dave,
2:09
Speaker 1: We've got I don't know that you and I have
2:13
Speaker 1: covered in my memory at least a double homicide involving
2:18
Speaker 1: a baseball bat. Now I got it. Let me back
2:20
Speaker 1: off just for a second, because I got a story
2:22
Speaker 1: to tell you, and you're not going to You're not
2:25
Speaker 1: going to believe this. Because I was sitting here I
2:27
Speaker 1: kind of meditated on this case earlier today because it's
2:30
Speaker 1: important to talk about. Did you know that the very
2:35
Speaker 1: first homicide case I was involved in when I was
2:41
Speaker 1: twenty or twenty one years old in New Orleans, I
2:43
Speaker 1: was an autopsy assistant. It was a homicide involved in
2:47
Speaker 1: a baseball bat and it was a guy that beat
2:52
Speaker 1: his brother to death in the front yard with this thing.
2:56
Speaker 1: And I remember a guy that wound up being a
3:00
Speaker 1: really good friend of mine. He was a detective and
3:02
Speaker 1: he showed up for the for the autopsy, and this
3:05
Speaker 1: guy was in the tray right in the morgue and
3:10
Speaker 1: we had yet to get him out. And I pull
3:12
Speaker 1: the tray out, and it's not like a it's not
3:15
Speaker 1: like a typical tray that pushes into the wall from
3:18
Speaker 1: going from feet to head. This is the kind of
3:21
Speaker 1: tray where this door lets down on this gigantic stainless
3:26
Speaker 1: steel box and you pull the entire tray out towards
3:29
Speaker 1: your waist and the person is sitting there or lying there,
3:33
Speaker 1: and you can just kind of pull them over onto
3:34
Speaker 1: a gurney and then get him on. And I remember
3:41
Speaker 1: unwrapping this guy because he was not in a body bag.
3:45
Speaker 1: He had been brought into the emergency room. And for
3:48
Speaker 1: those that don't know, emergency rooms and hospitals use something
3:51
Speaker 1: called a mortpack, and years and years ago and they
3:57
Speaker 1: literally used to wrap bodies and plastic and then send
4:01
Speaker 1: them down to the morgan and it didn't matter what
4:04
Speaker 1: the case was. You know, hospitals didn't necessarily back then,
4:07
Speaker 1: in particular, they didn't really their goal was not to
4:12
Speaker 1: preserve evidence. I'm not saying that out of spite or meanness.
4:15
Speaker 1: It's just they've got to go into the next case,
4:18
Speaker 1: particularly in the emergency room. So they wrap the body up,
4:20
Speaker 1: taking the Morgan, and you know, it shows up there.
4:23
Speaker 1: And I remembered this detective that I was talking about,
4:27
Speaker 1: and he looked at me we were standing there because
4:29
Speaker 1: he wanted to get up a polaroid. That's how far
4:31
Speaker 1: back this goes of this guy's face. And I said, man,
4:37
Speaker 1: this guy, he just looks evil. He looks evil. And
4:42
Speaker 1: I remember distinctly him saying this. He actually crosses himself
4:50
Speaker 1: by the crypt and says, please don't say that. You're
4:53
Speaker 1: going to curse this case. And I'll never be able
4:56
Speaker 1: to fully investigate this thing, even though it was a
4:59
Speaker 1: just fiable homicide because his brother was attacking him, and
5:04
Speaker 1: brother picked up a baseball bat and dispatched his brother
5:08
Speaker 1: in the front yard, and he had I'll never forget
5:11
Speaker 1: this guy had these kind of spider webbing lacerations all
5:16
Speaker 1: over his skull, Dave, and they were if you imagine
5:19
Speaker 1: what a spider web looks like, where you've kind of
5:21
Speaker 1: got a bull's eye right in the second right forget me,
5:24
Speaker 1: right in the center and the little support lines and
5:27
Speaker 1: a spider web kind of extend outward to the outer fringes.
5:31
Speaker 1: It almost looks like fractured glass only skin. He had
5:35
Speaker 1: multiple of these lying over his scalp. And then when
5:39
Speaker 1: we got the scalp reflected, which means to insize the
5:43
Speaker 1: scalp and pull it forward over the eyes and then
5:46
Speaker 1: pull it backwards so that the skull. Did you know
5:49
Speaker 1: that those lacerations and you don't see this every single time,
5:52
Speaker 1: but those lacerations, which there was probably about five of
5:55
Speaker 1: these spider webbing, there were concurrent spider webbing fractures to
6:00
Speaker 1: the external table the skull that matched up almost perfectly.
6:03
Speaker 1: So my thought was, and I think the pathologist came
6:07
Speaker 1: the same conclusion. The first strike was to the temple
6:11
Speaker 1: and the guy goes down to his knees. Now he
6:13
Speaker 1: had hit his brother in the face multiple times and
6:17
Speaker 1: the brother had raccoon eyes. He'd broken his nose, and
6:21
Speaker 1: the brother was furious. He didn't just lay there. He
6:26
Speaker 1: ran in the house, got this baseball bat and begins
6:31
Speaker 1: to attack his brother and beat him to death with
6:34
Speaker 1: this thing. And these injuries are fascinating because it's really
6:39
Speaker 1: that's really the only one, and that came from his statement.
6:43
Speaker 1: That's really the only one that we could sequence, you know,
6:45
Speaker 1: because he said I struck my brother or hit my
6:47
Speaker 1: brother on the side of his head. And then as
6:50
Speaker 1: he is down on his knees, he's on top of him,
6:55
Speaker 1: striking downward. And we believe that he actually took that
7:00
Speaker 1: had baseball bat almost like as kind of the pis
7:03
Speaker 1: to resistance, stood over his brother's body and almost like
7:08
Speaker 1: the sword and the stone, and only the reverse drove
7:11
Speaker 1: the the long axis of the barrel with the blunt
7:16
Speaker 1: ind right down into the other temple of his brother's head.
7:20
Speaker 1: It was. It was absolutely brutal. So that was kind
7:22
Speaker 1: of my That was first off, it was the first
7:26
Speaker 1: case that I ever worked as a new medical legal
7:32
Speaker 1: person of a baseball pat. I had others afterwards, but
7:37
Speaker 1: it's also my very first case I ever worked a
7:40
Speaker 1: blunt force trauma. So when we came across this case cases,
7:48
Speaker 1: I was intrigued by this day because it made me,
7:50
Speaker 1: you know, go back in time, begin to think about,
7:52
Speaker 1: you know, kind of kind of what happened here you fashed.
7:55
Speaker 2: Before, about how when when the murderer, Winnie killer uses
7:59
Speaker 2: something like strangling you killing somebody with your bare hands
8:03
Speaker 2: kind of thing, A knife, that those are more personal
8:05
Speaker 2: than you using a gun. And in this case where
8:09
Speaker 2: you're using a bat, would you equate that with the
8:12
Speaker 2: kind of personal contact they may have with the individual
8:15
Speaker 2: as strangling or using a knife, or would you put
8:18
Speaker 2: it in the gun side of things? Yeah, because in
8:20
Speaker 2: both of these cases, you're talking about brothers here, we're
8:22
Speaker 2: talking about you know, in laws here.
8:25
Speaker 1: Right. I'm not trying to be a smartle like a
8:26
Speaker 1: by saying this. It's certainly a lot more personal than
8:30
Speaker 1: shooting them at a great disc right, And anything that
8:35
Speaker 1: puts the This is why I look at anything that
8:38
Speaker 1: puts the see how can I phrase this? Anything that
8:41
Speaker 1: puts the perpetrator at a greater risk of bodily harm?
8:46
Speaker 1: To me, that kind of fits within those parameters because
8:50
Speaker 1: let me tell you something, It's just like with a knife.
8:54
Speaker 1: If you show up with a knife or a bludgeon
8:57
Speaker 1: and there's actually a weapon out there. I think goes
9:00
Speaker 1: back to the days of the Nights that they refer
9:03
Speaker 1: to as a bludgeon. It's a specific, but that's where
9:06
Speaker 1: the term comes from. But if you use a bludgeon,
9:11
Speaker 1: you're in great danger of having that thing taken away
9:17
Speaker 1: from you and you're going to be beat to death
9:19
Speaker 1: with it, or have your throat cut or whatever the
9:22
Speaker 1: case might be. But in this case, this was so personal.
9:26
Speaker 1: You know, you're talking about brothers here, and there's a
9:28
Speaker 1: lot brothers love one another. But boy, when you talk
9:32
Speaker 1: about getting into another territory where hate kind of takes root.
9:38
Speaker 1: You know, when it comes to brothers, there's a lot
9:41
Speaker 1: of passion, and boy, those fights can be something to behold.
9:46
Speaker 1: But when you're an individual who has been cast aside
9:54
Speaker 1: by your girlfriend and you think perhaps her parents had
9:59
Speaker 1: something to do with it, remember this. No one likes
10:05
Speaker 1: rejection and in this case, Brad Sigmund could be the
10:11
Speaker 1: poster child Joe.
10:27
Speaker 2: As we get into this story today, we were talking
10:29
Speaker 2: about executions and a lot of it has to do
10:31
Speaker 2: with the nationwide discussion because of the chance of Brian
10:36
Speaker 2: Coberger's trial. Yes, the case has been huge and Coburger
10:40
Speaker 2: has already they've already talked about the type of sentence,
10:43
Speaker 2: if it was a death sentence, how to be carried out.
10:46
Speaker 2: You and I have done stories about the carrying out
10:49
Speaker 2: of death sentences, you know, through lethal injection and other means.
10:52
Speaker 2: And now they've actually worked on getting legislation passed in
10:57
Speaker 2: Idaho that firing squad would be the primary method for
11:03
Speaker 2: execution yep and everything else after that, not making it
11:07
Speaker 2: a secondary option, making it the primary option. And in
11:11
Speaker 2: this case today where Brad Sigmund is accused of dating
11:18
Speaker 2: Barbara and being boyfriend girlfriend for a significant enough time
11:23
Speaker 2: that they had been together for a while that when
11:25
Speaker 2: she broke up with him, he was mortified, horrified, terrified
11:32
Speaker 2: of himself, and he took it out on her and
11:36
Speaker 2: her family. His goal wasn't just to kill her parents.
11:41
Speaker 2: His goal was to kill all of them, but what
11:44
Speaker 2: he really wanted to do. So he says, okay, and
11:46
Speaker 2: we got to I always wonder about this, Joe. You've
11:49
Speaker 2: been on this side of things for a long time
11:51
Speaker 2: as an investigator and seeing the aftermath of Hainus crimes.
11:55
Speaker 2: When somebody tells you, even though they didn't do it,
11:57
Speaker 2: that my idea was, I was going to kill her
12:00
Speaker 2: then kill myself. Do you believe them or is it
12:03
Speaker 2: because they're alive they're able to tell that. Did they
12:05
Speaker 2: not have the guts to go through with it?
12:07
Speaker 1: Yeah? I'd refer to that as a lack of commitment
12:10
Speaker 1: to the task. In my opinion at least in.
12:13
Speaker 2: That not that we're encouraging people to commit suicide, but
12:16
Speaker 2: don't you kill everybody?
12:17
Speaker 1: No, they they'll sit around and they'll talk about this
12:19
Speaker 1: sort of thing, you know, and I think many of that,
12:21
Speaker 1: many times that's a sympathy grab. It's also something that
12:26
Speaker 1: they use in order to try to leverage the court
12:30
Speaker 1: to bestow mercy. Perhaps from the perspective of that, I'm
12:36
Speaker 1: mentally ill. And with Sigmund, you know, there was a
12:39
Speaker 1: lot there was a lot of Hay made over his
12:44
Speaker 1: mental illness quote unquote you know, in the wake of
12:47
Speaker 1: all of that, what he did, Joe, Yeah.
12:50
Speaker 2: He actually goes to their house with a baseball bat.
12:54
Speaker 1: Yeah.
12:54
Speaker 2: He finds the victims here, mister and missus Lark. Okay, there,
13:00
Speaker 2: Barbara's mom and dad ex his girlfriend of her is
13:04
Speaker 2: now ex girlfriend for a week, okay. But he finds
13:08
Speaker 2: David Lark in a room in the house, and he
13:12
Speaker 2: finds Gladys Lark. He finds David in the kitchen and
13:16
Speaker 2: Gladys in the living room. Now we know this because
13:21
Speaker 2: he beat them to death with a baseball bat. Separately,
13:24
Speaker 2: he attacks David in the living room and beats him
13:27
Speaker 2: with a bat, gets him down, then runs into the
13:29
Speaker 2: kitchen where he beats Gladys. He then comes back to
13:32
Speaker 2: David and beats him some more, then goes back to
13:34
Speaker 2: glad He's going, have you ever in your life of
13:37
Speaker 2: investigating murders, Joe, ever come up with somebody going back
13:40
Speaker 2: and forth?
13:41
Speaker 1: I don't think I was trying to do my recall
13:44
Speaker 1: on that, and how much effort I'm thinking, you know,
13:49
Speaker 1: and this kind of thought passed through my mind, just
13:51
Speaker 1: to go, how absent of mercy do you have to be?
13:54
Speaker 1: Because you know, every time you remove yourself, say from
14:00
Speaker 1: the kitchen, to go back into the other room, and
14:04
Speaker 1: you bear witness to what you have done the time before,
14:08
Speaker 1: you're not stemmed in any way. You're still all in.
14:13
Speaker 1: And here's an interesting little little side fact here, Dave,
14:18
Speaker 1: did you know that he struck each victim precisely nine
14:27
Speaker 1: times each? So let's just think about this, Just think
14:31
Speaker 1: about it. Let's go back to baseball. If you're in
14:34
Speaker 1: the cage and you swing the bat eighteen times, I
14:38
Speaker 1: don't know if in a regular practice that's a lot
14:42
Speaker 1: of swings that you're taking up at you know, at
14:47
Speaker 1: pitching or whatever they call it. Hitting practice. I would
14:50
Speaker 1: think you'd be exhausted. And this guy ain't a pro
14:53
Speaker 1: baseball player. His tongue's will be dragging. But you know,
14:56
Speaker 1: he's pumped full of adrenaline and hatred at this point
15:01
Speaker 1: in time, and perhaps panicked as well. I can only imagine.
15:06
Speaker 1: Because here's the thing. If he had and we'll get
15:12
Speaker 1: to this in just a moment, if he had used
15:15
Speaker 1: a pistol to kill both of these people, he would
15:21
Speaker 1: not have borne witness to the volume of blood that
15:24
Speaker 1: he saw. This scene is going to be something that
15:28
Speaker 1: would be very difficult to work, particularly if you're trying
15:34
Speaker 1: to assess blood patterned deposition. You know, you think about
15:38
Speaker 1: the one victim in the kitchen, and this kind of
15:41
Speaker 1: comes to mind because I've had cases like this where
15:45
Speaker 1: if you got the adjacent cabinry, cabin and tree right there,
15:50
Speaker 1: you're going to have when that bat strikes downward, it's
15:55
Speaker 1: almost like, and I'm not trying to be flip here,
15:57
Speaker 1: but it's something that many people can'tcessarily identify with. Think
16:01
Speaker 1: about Gallagher the old watermelon, you know, uh yeah, the
16:07
Speaker 1: sledgematic routine and every time, you know, and people would
16:11
Speaker 1: have to literally they would come to the audience and
16:13
Speaker 1: hold up a hold up a sheet of plastic. I
16:16
Speaker 1: mean they paid for this. I mean, you know, God
16:19
Speaker 1: bless you go in peace is what you do. But
16:23
Speaker 1: every time he would strike that watermelon with the sledge
16:26
Speaker 1: of Mattic, which was this gigantic oversized mallet, it would
16:31
Speaker 1: spray outward and deposit on all of those people. And
16:36
Speaker 1: so if once you get that, and remember when Gallagher
16:40
Speaker 1: would do that as one strike, that was one strike
16:45
Speaker 1: per watermelon, does that frame it for you? This guy
16:49
Speaker 1: is striking the husband and the wife nine times individually,
16:54
Speaker 1: and he is traveling between the two. I can only imagine.
17:01
Speaker 1: I can only imagine when they're documenting this thing, because
17:05
Speaker 1: the DA is probably not at the scene, all right.
17:09
Speaker 1: I can only imagine when the DA gets this case
17:12
Speaker 1: file from the police Dave, and he's got the forensics
17:15
Speaker 1: people explaining this to them, and you've got these overlapping
17:19
Speaker 1: fan patterns like this, and the blood guy is like saying, yeah,
17:24
Speaker 1: see these convergent lines right here from this particular pattern.
17:29
Speaker 1: That's one strike, that's two strikes, that's three, that's four,
17:32
Speaker 1: that's six, that's seven, And all the while, all the
17:36
Speaker 1: while the DA is thinking, Okay, yeah, this might be
17:41
Speaker 1: the most horrible thing I've ever seen, and when I
17:43
Speaker 1: go to grand jury, I'm going to nail this guy
17:46
Speaker 1: to the wall. As a matter of fact, we're going
17:47
Speaker 1: full on on those all.
17:50
Speaker 2: Right, Well, let me ask you. We've talked about how
17:52
Speaker 2: Nancy Gray says that you can in the blink of
17:56
Speaker 2: an eye you can form intent. In this case, we've
17:59
Speaker 2: got a man who the way it sounded, the way
18:03
Speaker 2: it was described, taking turns, hitting the husband and hitting
18:06
Speaker 2: the wife, then coming, you know, going from room to room.
18:09
Speaker 2: Is that something that is argued by the prosecution to
18:12
Speaker 2: make it seem worse than it. I mean, it's horrible
18:14
Speaker 2: as it is, but I mean I'm trying to figure
18:17
Speaker 2: out because they each had exactly the same number of hits,
18:20
Speaker 2: and they're in different rooms of the house. So it
18:22
Speaker 2: didn't happen bat like a cartoon. It actually happened where
18:26
Speaker 2: they were both down, and he had to have had
18:28
Speaker 2: them both down with injuries at some point. But taking
18:32
Speaker 2: turns or you know, I hit Gladys one time, hit
18:35
Speaker 2: David one time. They're both on the ground. Now I
18:37
Speaker 2: sit here and pound David eight more times than I
18:39
Speaker 2: go in and pound Gladys eight more times. I'm not
18:41
Speaker 2: trying to be flipping, as you mentioned a minute ago.
18:43
Speaker 2: I'm just trying to get down to how does one
18:45
Speaker 2: actually go about using the same weapon and they can
18:49
Speaker 2: determine that that was the same baseball bat used on
18:51
Speaker 2: both individuals?
18:52
Speaker 1: Correct? Well, oh yeah, no, And what you're going to
18:55
Speaker 1: have that's an excellent question. Let's just say that we've
19:01
Speaker 1: got two buckets of paint. We got a blue bucket
19:03
Speaker 1: and we've got a red bucket. Okay, see, if you
19:06
Speaker 1: take the analogy of dipping the bat in red paint
19:13
Speaker 1: and then in blue paint, you're going to have a
19:15
Speaker 1: commingling of blood in that particular case. I know that's
19:19
Speaker 1: rather elementary, but it's the same principle. And if you think, okay, well,
19:24
Speaker 1: for the second argument, one individual a has opaused, the
19:29
Speaker 1: other one has oneg Well, those blood types which they
19:33
Speaker 1: would have gotten their blood type perhaps at the morgue
19:36
Speaker 1: they didn't know it already from the dot from their
19:39
Speaker 1: attending physition, then you've got a big tell there. Scientifically. Now,
19:44
Speaker 1: this was back in two thousand and one, Dave, and
19:50
Speaker 1: we use DNA back then. But I really wonder if
19:54
Speaker 1: they use DNA in this case because they've got a
19:59
Speaker 1: suspect at that time. He's no longer a suspect. He's
20:03
Speaker 1: been convicted and sentenced and we'll find out what actually
20:07
Speaker 1: happened to him. But you've got a guy that's trying
20:11
Speaker 1: to paint this impression that he's sicken of mind. Well, Dave,
20:15
Speaker 1: this is where we get the information from about what
20:18
Speaker 1: specifically happened, you know, because if you're if you're trying
20:23
Speaker 1: to paint the story, I often drift back to Kenneth
20:27
Speaker 1: Bianki from the Hillside Stranglers, where he was feigning multiple
20:31
Speaker 1: personality disorder, and it's one of the most fascinating interviews
20:34
Speaker 1: you've ever seen of somebody feigning psychopathology. It's a black
20:39
Speaker 1: and white CCTV interview that he does, that they do
20:44
Speaker 1: with this guy, and suddenly this other person appears. You've
20:48
Speaker 1: got Kenneth, who was very sweet and mild manner, and
20:50
Speaker 1: you got this other guy. I can't remember what the
20:52
Speaker 1: name of the guy was, and he's referring to women
20:55
Speaker 1: as broad's and all these sorts of things. Yeah, I
20:57
Speaker 1: killed her, we raped her, you know, so forth and
20:59
Speaker 1: so on. He's trying to sell a Bill Goods here.
21:02
Speaker 1: It's no different with this. This guy's trying to sell
21:05
Speaker 1: them on the fact that he has some kind of psychopathology.
21:09
Speaker 1: It's not just simply well, you're a murderer, and you
21:14
Speaker 1: took a bat like a petulant child, and you threw
21:17
Speaker 1: a temper tantrum and you beat these poor people to
21:22
Speaker 1: helen back who you know, they had probably fed him
21:25
Speaker 1: over the years. They probably celebrated the holidays with this guy.
21:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, Joe, He and Barbara have been together for three years.
21:30
Speaker 2: They have been living together. When she gets done with Okay,
21:34
Speaker 2: she didn't just walk out of a wonderful relationship, obviously, Okay,
21:37
Speaker 2: think about the end result. And this is only a week.
21:40
Speaker 2: In the week that she breaks up with him, she
21:42
Speaker 2: moves back in with her parents. He then, for that
21:45
Speaker 2: next week apparently stalks her terrorized. They're trying to figure
21:48
Speaker 2: out if she's seeing somebody else doing all those crazy
21:51
Speaker 2: things that men do when they're possessive like this, and
21:55
Speaker 2: he goes and kills her parents. His goal is to
21:57
Speaker 2: then lie in wait to kill her, to kill Barbara.
22:00
Speaker 2: I don't know what his other plan was, to go
22:02
Speaker 2: from room to room waiting for them to be dead.
22:05
Speaker 2: You know, he made sure they were both dead. Then
22:08
Speaker 2: he laid in wait for his ex girlfriend to arrive,
22:11
Speaker 2: and then he does something different with her, Joe. He
22:14
Speaker 2: actually steals David's gun. He knows David has a gun, yep,
22:19
Speaker 2: and so he steals his gun and when Barbara gets home,
22:22
Speaker 2: he kidnaps her at gunpoint, puts her in the car. Now,
22:26
Speaker 2: Barbara is an interesting, unique, strong woman. I don't know
22:32
Speaker 2: what kind of guts it took for her boy, but
22:35
Speaker 2: he's driving down the road. She knew if I don't,
22:39
Speaker 2: if I don't get away from him right now, I'm dead.
22:42
Speaker 2: She jumped out of a moving car and ran through
22:46
Speaker 2: a field for her life. And that person of Brad
22:51
Speaker 2: Sigmund tried shooting or tried following her, he couldn't. She
22:55
Speaker 2: got away from him. I'm pure, just I'm getting away.
22:58
Speaker 2: She is the hero of her own life story in
23:01
Speaker 2: that moment, and I pray that she has recovered from
23:04
Speaker 2: what took place that night.
23:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, he did actually hit the target one time,
23:08
Speaker 1: because she wound up having to get surgery. He popped
23:11
Speaker 1: off a single round or multiple rounds, but popped off
23:14
Speaker 1: around and she got shot in the foot. Can you imagine, well,
23:19
Speaker 1: first off, the pain of that. If you've ever broken
23:22
Speaker 1: your ankle, twisted your ankle, and now you've got a
23:24
Speaker 1: lead core projectile slamming into your foot, It's one of
23:28
Speaker 1: the most painful things. But yet you're pumped with adrenaline.
23:31
Speaker 1: You know that there's a homicidal maniac behind you, and
23:34
Speaker 1: you're trying to get as much distance between yourself and
23:36
Speaker 1: that individual. And thankfully you know she did get away.
23:40
Speaker 1: But can you imagine what she's had to live with
23:44
Speaker 1: all of these years because she's had to look back.
23:47
Speaker 1: I would imagine many times in those still quiet hours
23:51
Speaker 1: of the night and think only if only if her
23:56
Speaker 1: path had never crossed with Sigmund all those many years
24:00
Speaker 1: years ago. But here we are. It did, and as
24:05
Speaker 1: it's turned out, his case in particular, and I'll go
24:09
Speaker 1: ahead and give you a peek, his death has made
24:14
Speaker 1: national news. I'm a fan of Stanley Kubrick. I think
24:33
Speaker 1: I've actually mentioned him before on Bodybags, and I think
24:40
Speaker 1: the reason I'm a fan is that he's a detailed
24:45
Speaker 1: person and I'm not. And I know this sounds weird,
24:47
Speaker 1: since I'm in forensic science and you know, I'm supposed
24:51
Speaker 1: to be looking for evidence. But with him, every thing,
24:56
Speaker 1: every frame that he shot was planned everything. And with
25:01
Speaker 1: that said, there is a movie that came out that
25:05
Speaker 1: starred Kirk Douglas and you know, I like Kirk Douglas
25:08
Speaker 1: as much as the next person. But and he was
25:11
Speaker 1: front and center. You know, that's how you get, as
25:13
Speaker 1: they say, butts in the seats to buy tickets. But
25:16
Speaker 1: he was not really the star of that movie day.
25:20
Speaker 1: The movie is actually Passed of Glory and it takes
25:23
Speaker 1: place in World War One, France, and it is about
25:30
Speaker 1: three soldiers in the French army and it is one
25:35
Speaker 1: of the most gut wretching movies you have ever seen.
25:39
Speaker 1: I mean, it is so so powerful. These guys because
25:45
Speaker 1: of the failure of their commander. You know, they did
25:48
Speaker 1: the trench warfare, you know, going over the top, and
25:51
Speaker 1: these guys were brave. I think a couple of the
25:53
Speaker 1: characters have been awarded medals. The commander was forced to
25:58
Speaker 1: select three guys as examples, and all three of them
26:05
Speaker 1: were shot by firing squad And the scene where they're
26:10
Speaker 1: walking down it looks like they're at Versailles. The scene
26:12
Speaker 1: where they're walking down this long avenue and the soldiers.
26:17
Speaker 1: There are long lines of soldiers. Every time they pass
26:20
Speaker 1: a group of soldiers, they do in about face and
26:22
Speaker 1: turn their backs to these guys. There's a priest, you know,
26:27
Speaker 1: speaking to each one of the men as they're walking along.
26:31
Speaker 1: One guy is just out of his mind. Another guy
26:36
Speaker 1: is got his chest poked out, he's going to his
26:39
Speaker 1: end bravely. And the other guy is on a stretcher
26:44
Speaker 1: and unconscious, and they strapped him to a post and
26:48
Speaker 1: shot him. They shot all three of these guys. I
26:50
Speaker 1: don't want to spoil it for you, but for me,
26:53
Speaker 1: when I see that movie, I think about Firing Squad,
26:56
Speaker 1: and it really got my attention. Reasons it's so powerful,
27:01
Speaker 1: is that, out of all execution methods that are out
27:07
Speaker 1: there that are still being used in Western countries, I
27:12
Speaker 1: guess the Finding Squad, in my opinion, is the quickest.
27:21
Speaker 1: I mean, is in fact the quickest. You know. One
27:23
Speaker 1: of the big things that has gone on and on
27:25
Speaker 1: for years is this debate over lethal injection, because you know,
27:31
Speaker 1: the drug cocktail that has to be administered to people loath.
27:36
Speaker 1: These many years, they never can quite seem to get
27:41
Speaker 1: it right, and then the thing goes to court and
27:43
Speaker 1: they have to adjust it. Then pharmaceutical companies, you know,
27:48
Speaker 1: they don't want to they don't want to be part
27:52
Speaker 1: of it, so it's hard. They claim that it's hard
27:54
Speaker 1: to get the meds and that sort of thing. And
27:56
Speaker 1: then there have been some some horror stories that people
28:00
Speaker 1: have written about labored breathing. Takes a long time to die,
28:03
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily effective in every case. Then you go
28:06
Speaker 1: back to the electric chair before that, and you think
28:10
Speaker 1: about just the images if you ever get a chance,
28:13
Speaker 1: by the way, if you ever get a chance to
28:15
Speaker 1: look at the images of Ted Bundy's body done in
28:18
Speaker 1: Florida after they've removed him from the death chamber, you'll
28:22
Speaker 1: see what I'm talking about, because his head is shaved
28:25
Speaker 1: and he sustained second third degree burns to the top
28:28
Speaker 1: of his head. And I know what many of you
28:29
Speaker 1: are saying, he deserved every bit of it. I'm not
28:32
Speaker 1: going to debate that with you. However, when you see electrocution,
28:38
Speaker 1: it's kind of you can tell that it takes for
28:44
Speaker 1: some takes a bit because what they'll do is they'll
28:47
Speaker 1: bump it. They'll bump the person hit them initially, and
28:50
Speaker 1: you'll see the body tense up. Then they'll relax, doctor
28:55
Speaker 1: will come out check for a heartbeat and to say
28:59
Speaker 1: still breathing, and then they hit it again. Okay. And
29:02
Speaker 1: there are any number of stories where they actually have
29:04
Speaker 1: fires to start in the skull cap. You can smell
29:08
Speaker 1: the flesh burning, all these sorts of things. It's very,
29:11
Speaker 1: very unpleasant. But you know, Dave, with firing squad, it's
29:16
Speaker 1: something completely different, and we've wound up in this position.
29:20
Speaker 1: It's one of the reasons I want to talk about
29:22
Speaker 1: this case. We've wound up in this position because Sigmund
29:28
Speaker 1: protested so much about the barbarity of lethal injection and
29:37
Speaker 1: then the barbarity of the ancient the ancient electric chair,
29:42
Speaker 1: which this is in South Carolina, where they'd had a
29:46
Speaker 1: lot of these cases that went sideways, that he talked
29:50
Speaker 1: himself into a firing squad, and the state, I think
29:54
Speaker 1: it was a few years ago, they went ahead and
29:57
Speaker 1: mocked one up and then built it. It's a heck
30:00
Speaker 1: of a thing I think that they are now. South
30:03
Speaker 1: Carolina is one of I hope I get this right.
30:06
Speaker 1: Five states now that have it. All the books. Most
30:11
Speaker 1: most of America's experiences with firing squads go to the military,
30:19
Speaker 1: and many of them worl War two. I think we
30:23
Speaker 1: had let me get this straight. We had we had
30:28
Speaker 1: many that were in theater, you know, like over in Europe,
30:33
Speaker 1: there were a few in Southeast Asia. There was one
30:36
Speaker 1: in New Zealand that our guys did, and this variety
30:41
Speaker 1: that's out there. You know. There was a movie that
30:45
Speaker 1: was famously made about Eddie Slovak or Slovak, I can't remember.
30:50
Speaker 1: Martin Sheen played a character and he's the only person
30:54
Speaker 1: in US history or in World War two rather that
30:58
Speaker 1: was executed by firing squad for desertion. Everybody else that
31:02
Speaker 1: was executed by firing squad was it was rapeer murder.
31:08
Speaker 1: So he was kind of this outlier. But you know,
31:11
Speaker 1: firing squads are something we've been familiar with the first settlers.
31:14
Speaker 1: There's in the early sixteen hundreds, there was a captain
31:18
Speaker 1: in Her Majesty's military when they settled I think it
31:22
Speaker 1: was Virginia, and he was in violation of some law
31:26
Speaker 1: and they found they think his remains buried in one
31:28
Speaker 1: of the walls at Jamestown and it's got multiple gunshot
31:32
Speaker 1: wounds and he had been sentenced to death by firing squad,
31:34
Speaker 1: so it goes all the way back as sixteen hundreds
31:36
Speaker 1: for US. I don't know about the Brits, you know,
31:40
Speaker 1: if they've ever used firing squads. I'm sure that they
31:43
Speaker 1: probably did. They really they really like hanging are used
31:48
Speaker 1: to in Great Britain. That was their thing. Great book
31:51
Speaker 1: that's out there about the Queen's Executioner. I mentioned that
31:54
Speaker 1: before too, But with Sigmund you know, he was like
32:00
Speaker 1: one of I think five, is that right, Dave, in
32:04
Speaker 1: the last maybe last fifteen years. Yeah, well, there maybe
32:09
Speaker 1: one of three. I can't remember it.
32:11
Speaker 2: Until I started looking into this, I wasn't even sure
32:14
Speaker 2: of how many because I was thinking Gary Gilmore, that's
32:16
Speaker 2: the name that came to mind.
32:18
Speaker 1: You know.
32:18
Speaker 2: He was convicted of two murders and demanded it be
32:21
Speaker 2: carried out and that it be by firing squad, you know,
32:25
Speaker 2: and they made what was the movie, The Executioner's Song
32:28
Speaker 2: with Tommy Lee Jones, and it was a TV movie
32:31
Speaker 2: and got a lot of attention. But since nineteen seventy seven,
32:35
Speaker 2: there's only been three other prisoners in the US that
32:40
Speaker 2: have been executed by firing squad. Now there is another
32:42
Speaker 2: one out and by the way, I think two of
32:44
Speaker 2: those were Utah. One was a guy named Ronnie Lee
32:47
Speaker 2: Gardner in twenty ten, and I didn't, you know, I
32:50
Speaker 2: remembered him being put to death.
32:51
Speaker 1: I did not remember it being firing squad squad. I know,
32:54
Speaker 1: it's just so off of our radar.
32:56
Speaker 2: Because we keep arguing over whether or not lethal injection
32:59
Speaker 2: is the heinous crime committed on somebody who's been sentenced
33:03
Speaker 2: to death. I'm gonna be honest with you, I think
33:04
Speaker 2: waiting is the real crime. When you tell somebody you're
33:08
Speaker 2: sentenced to death for your crimes and then you make
33:11
Speaker 2: them wait, I think it's I think you're adding further
33:13
Speaker 2: punishment to the victims as well, because you're making them wait.
33:17
Speaker 2: This man, they were digmunt or Oh grief, Sigmund. You know,
33:23
Speaker 2: the guy was forty three years old when he committed
33:26
Speaker 2: this crime in two thousand and one, when he beat
33:28
Speaker 2: two people to death with a baseball bat. He was
33:33
Speaker 2: a forty three year old man. Well, now you know
33:37
Speaker 2: we're talking twenty four years later, Joe, twenty four years later.
33:42
Speaker 2: For twenty four years, everybody that knows what happened is
33:46
Speaker 2: having to suffer through. Why are we feeding this guy
33:50
Speaker 2: you know, why do we have and this is another show,
33:53
Speaker 2: another debate, But when he gets right down to it,
33:56
Speaker 2: the victims here had no choice that they were going
33:58
Speaker 2: to get their heads bashed in by a base ball bat.
34:01
Speaker 2: They didn't have any choice. They didn't know when their
34:03
Speaker 2: time was coming. But he's had time to fight for
34:05
Speaker 2: his life even after admitting this haintus crime. So I
34:10
Speaker 2: think that we need to put a cap on it
34:11
Speaker 2: before we discuss lethal injection or firing squad or guillotine.
34:15
Speaker 1: You know, I listen and listen. We've famously covered Dave
34:20
Speaker 1: and boy. We got a lot of a lot of
34:22
Speaker 1: responses from that episode here in Alabama. You know, we
34:26
Speaker 1: have the nitrogen case, the first one. Now they've had
34:28
Speaker 1: a couple of other ones that are used in various
34:30
Speaker 1: places with the you know, the exposure to nitrogen not
34:35
Speaker 1: nitrous oxide, but nitrogen gas in the death chamber, in
34:39
Speaker 1: the death chamber, you know which. Now, Yeah, we have.
34:43
Speaker 2: A solution, a good one. Here's what we do. We
34:46
Speaker 2: have a doctor used propofol to put you to sleep.
34:48
Speaker 2: It's a very gentle way to go to sleep. You
34:50
Speaker 2: start counting at one hundred once they start the propofle
34:54
Speaker 2: the little white milk. The milk starts coming down, and
34:56
Speaker 2: they'll say, okay, Dave, start counting back from one hundred,
34:59
Speaker 2: and you're like, why do you have that blanket on
35:01
Speaker 2: your shoulder because you're going to be on my shoulder
35:02
Speaker 2: by it before you get to ninety six. And okay,
35:05
Speaker 2: one pam, They're out. They're out, They're asleep, chopped their
35:11
Speaker 2: head off.
35:11
Speaker 1: What do we care?
35:12
Speaker 2: What do we care the means of the day, you know,
35:14
Speaker 2: the way of doing it, our were, if our or
35:16
Speaker 2: if we're really really worried about putting them to sleep
35:21
Speaker 2: and causing problems, Okay, let's put them to sleep and
35:24
Speaker 2: chop the head off. We're done.
35:27
Speaker 1: Well, it would be the bug. Yeah, it would be sufficient.
35:31
Speaker 1: And again I don't know that going to the guillotine,
35:36
Speaker 1: for instance, as France had, I think they had their
35:38
Speaker 1: last guillotining, you know, obviously in the last century there
35:43
Speaker 1: was one public one. I think in the nineteen twenties
35:48
Speaker 1: there was a thief you know that that they guillotine
35:51
Speaker 1: back then, and they had become quite exquisite at doing this,
35:55
Speaker 1: you know, And this all goes back to, you know,
35:58
Speaker 1: to the French Revolution, because this is a death machine.
36:01
Speaker 1: You know that they that they've used and there's any
36:03
Speaker 1: number of ways, you know, methodologies that are out there,
36:09
Speaker 1: and this I think, I think for me what's going
36:13
Speaker 1: to be very interesting, particularly in Enlightened. You know, you
36:17
Speaker 1: had mentioned Coburger, which is brilliant because this is something
36:21
Speaker 1: that's on the table right now. You know that they've
36:23
Speaker 1: been talking about extensively. You talk about coburger with a
36:27
Speaker 1: firing squad, I think that given the reaction and I'll
36:33
Speaker 1: talk about this a little bit by the press at
36:37
Speaker 1: Sigmund's execution just a few days ago, they talked about
36:42
Speaker 1: how quick and sudden it was, and so just kind
36:46
Speaker 1: of let me lay the picture out for you. They
36:49
Speaker 1: you know, the first thing you have to do. I'm
36:53
Speaker 1: talking about all these methodologies, the first thing you have
36:55
Speaker 1: to do if you're going to do it. If you're
36:57
Speaker 1: going to build a house, there are a few tools
36:58
Speaker 1: that you need, right so you have to decide on
37:00
Speaker 1: the tools that are going to be sufficient to the task. Well,
37:03
Speaker 1: South Carolina actually settled on a three to oh eight
37:09
Speaker 1: cartridge zero point three zero eight, which is a cartridge
37:15
Speaker 1: that has been in use forever and ever. Well threeh
37:19
Speaker 1: eight was used and what's referred to as the M fourteen,
37:22
Speaker 1: which was kind of this gap weapon. Not many people
37:26
Speaker 1: like it. Some special operations people still use it before
37:31
Speaker 1: we start using the M sixteen, and they evolved into
37:35
Speaker 1: the M four which we've used for years and years. Anyway,
37:39
Speaker 1: they had to have a specific type of ammunition for this,
37:41
Speaker 1: and I really want you to grab hold of this.
37:45
Speaker 1: They're using what's referred to as a flangible round. And
37:53
Speaker 1: this is a round. It's a Winchester round and my
37:57
Speaker 1: suspicion is it's probably made by the Hornity Company, which
38:00
Speaker 1: is famous for tactical rounds. They're great hunting rounds as
38:06
Speaker 1: well for taking big game or medium sized game in
38:09
Speaker 1: Big Game two. And so this flangible round, what happens, Dave,
38:15
Speaker 1: is that when it is fired, instead of a standard
38:19
Speaker 1: ball round like where you have a chunk of lead
38:23
Speaker 1: that has a bof end design on it, which means
38:26
Speaker 1: it comes to a point, it's kind of curved off
38:28
Speaker 1: the back when it strikes the breastplate or the rib
38:34
Speaker 1: cage of the intended target. This round and police snipers
38:40
Speaker 1: use this so they don't kill anybody else in the
38:42
Speaker 1: house or at a location. That round splinters it showers
38:49
Speaker 1: the target with these little fragmented flesh sheets almost where
38:54
Speaker 1: it kind of shatters. So when they took Sigmund and
38:59
Speaker 1: they wrapped him to a chair, put a hood over him,
39:02
Speaker 1: and their sandbags behind him. They have him seated. They've
39:08
Speaker 1: got him strapped down, and you've got the audience there,
39:13
Speaker 1: you know, in the death chamber, and they can't they
39:18
Speaker 1: the audience cannot see the shooters. They're behind a partition,
39:23
Speaker 1: but the barrel is poking out. So the order is
39:27
Speaker 1: given and these guys it's a three man team. And
39:31
Speaker 1: there's an old people have done this for years where
39:35
Speaker 1: they talk about there are you know, if you had
39:37
Speaker 1: a five man firing squad, one person will get a
39:39
Speaker 1: blank and you didn't know the weapons were loaded by
39:44
Speaker 1: somebody other than the shooter. Okay, that is, if this
39:47
Speaker 1: starts going through in somebody's mind, they can say, well,
39:51
Speaker 1: it wasn't me, I had the blank round. Okay, they
39:53
Speaker 1: didn't say anything about this. And think about it is
39:56
Speaker 1: there were only three shooters, and all through these guys volunteered, Dave.
40:00
Speaker 1: They were all members of the South Carolina Corrections Department.
40:05
Speaker 1: And the assumption is is that they're all really good shots.
40:10
Speaker 1: So what they did is they had a white a
40:14
Speaker 1: white target on Sigmund's chest. Okay, now he's not going
40:20
Speaker 1: to be seeing this. He's got a hood over his
40:22
Speaker 1: head and he's strapped to a chair, and there's a
40:26
Speaker 1: red mark in the center of this target, and allegedly
40:31
Speaker 1: this red mark is directly over the heart. So actually
40:36
Speaker 1: it would seem as though that he died instantaneously because
40:41
Speaker 1: you know, there is no more blood coursing through his body.
40:45
Speaker 1: The heart has essentially become mincemeat, no longer functioning, and
40:53
Speaker 1: he slips off into I don't know whatever is the
40:58
Speaker 1: next life for him, but I do know this. There
41:02
Speaker 1: were two people and a third as well, that had
41:07
Speaker 1: expectations of their life that were never ever fully fulfilled
41:13
Speaker 1: because of that one evening in two thousand and one
41:19
Speaker 1: where he took a baseball bat and beat to death
41:25
Speaker 1: the parents of the person that he said he loved.
41:31
Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is body backs