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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: The Gudino Enigma Dismantling a Drug Trafficker's Murderous Web · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:08
Speaker 1: Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. You take a trip,
0:20
Speaker 1: sometimes you get excited the anticipation of seeing a new
0:25
Speaker 1: place or going somewhere. For me, many times, that excitement
0:30
Speaker 1: soon turns to anxiety because I'm worried do I have
0:34
Speaker 1: everything I need? Lots of times I have to travel
0:37
Speaker 1: to do appearances and things like that, and I'm terrified
0:41
Speaker 1: of getting my luggage loss from one and thinking maybe
0:44
Speaker 1: I haven't brought certain items that I might need. You
0:48
Speaker 1: can always buy those things in another environment, but you know,
0:51
Speaker 1: you're familiar with those things that you like, those things
0:54
Speaker 1: that you use on a regular basis. When it comes
0:57
Speaker 1: to planning a homicide, how do you begin to formulate
1:03
Speaker 1: that in your brain? There are people that have engaged
1:07
Speaker 1: in the killing of others and they have a murder
1:11
Speaker 1: kit that they put together. How do you decide what
1:13
Speaker 1: to pack? How do you know what tool you want
1:16
Speaker 1: to bring? Today? On Bodybags, we're going to talk about
1:19
Speaker 1: a triple homicide. Three men that were found bound, gagged,
1:25
Speaker 1: and shot in the back of the head in two
1:28
Speaker 1: separate locations. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybags.
1:40
Speaker 1: Joining me today is my friend Dave Mack. He's a
1:45
Speaker 1: senior crime reporter for Crime Online. Dave, I don't know
1:50
Speaker 1: that you've ever contemplated something like this, but you know,
1:53
Speaker 1: you begin to think, Wow, what would it take? What
1:57
Speaker 1: you know? This is not this is a monumental hit
2:00
Speaker 1: to climb an exercise in conducting something like this, participating
2:04
Speaker 1: in it. What are you going to need? What are
2:06
Speaker 1: you going to need before you go out? And you
2:08
Speaker 1: seemingly perhaps maybe kidnap people. And then once you kidnap them,
2:15
Speaker 1: what are you going to do with them? How are
2:16
Speaker 1: you going to dispose of them? It's certainly something that
2:20
Speaker 1: would give you pause, to say the very least.
2:23
Speaker 2: It would require a lot of planning, and it would
2:27
Speaker 2: require time. It would probably require help to lay it
2:31
Speaker 2: out for you. It's a thirty in the morning and
2:34
Speaker 2: a guy is walking down the street. He looks over
2:38
Speaker 2: and sees what appears to be two bodies, one laying
2:43
Speaker 2: face up, the other laying face down. Point of that
2:46
Speaker 2: out right now, Joe, because I'm wondering if you can
2:48
Speaker 2: help us understand if that was an actual sign of something.
2:51
Speaker 2: But both the men had been bound and gagged, and
2:57
Speaker 2: both men have been shot in the head. This is
3:00
Speaker 2: a thirty in the morning. About twenty minutes later, police
3:05
Speaker 2: get a call of another person found about two miles
3:09
Speaker 2: from the first what they're referring to as the dump site.
3:12
Speaker 2: Two miles from that first dump site, they find another
3:15
Speaker 2: man and he has found the same way, bound, gagged,
3:19
Speaker 2: shot in the head. That's three that we actually can
3:22
Speaker 2: confirm or all dead. But we actually have a fourth
3:25
Speaker 2: victim as well. Somehow he escaped. Not sure how he
3:31
Speaker 2: was bound, gagged and shot in the head, but he survived.
3:34
Speaker 2: So we're unpacking three murders and an attempted murder and
3:39
Speaker 2: one man who apparently did it all. You started off
3:43
Speaker 2: talking about preparation, Joe Scott Morgan. You've been in this
3:46
Speaker 2: your entire adult life. Have you ever seen a case
3:51
Speaker 2: where one individual could pull off this type of spree?
3:57
Speaker 1: No, No, not where you had this many people that
4:03
Speaker 1: were and we're talking about grown men where they're being
4:09
Speaker 1: not found in one central location. Day Now, I've worked
4:12
Speaker 1: a lot of cases where I had multiple homicides, but
4:15
Speaker 1: guess what, they were all located in the same dwelling.
4:19
Speaker 1: Most of the time. You have this idea of containment
4:23
Speaker 1: where someone will walk into a residence and they'll begin
4:28
Speaker 1: to fire randomly. But you have containment yet four walls,
4:34
Speaker 1: there's only a couple of ways you can leave. I remember, many,
4:37
Speaker 1: many years ago, I worked a multiple homicide case that
4:40
Speaker 1: involved one guy where he climbed through the window in
4:44
Speaker 1: a home where a card game was going on. He
4:46
Speaker 1: killed everybody in the room, killed everybody, but you know
4:50
Speaker 1: he had them contained in one tight space. How do
4:53
Speaker 1: you corral three four? How do you corral them in
4:57
Speaker 1: one place without having another set of hands, another set
5:02
Speaker 1: of eyes to help you. If you're talking four adult males,
5:09
Speaker 1: how's one guy going to do this? And not just
5:12
Speaker 1: that you're having to bind them. That means you're restraining
5:16
Speaker 1: them in some way, restraining their hands, and you're having
5:20
Speaker 1: to put a gag in their mouth. So you're telling
5:22
Speaker 1: me one guy can make four grown men submit to this.
5:28
Speaker 1: You're going to tell all of them to get down
5:29
Speaker 1: on the floor, because I got to tell you, if
5:32
Speaker 1: you're holding them at gunpoint, where you put in the gun,
5:35
Speaker 1: where you put in the gun while you're tying their
5:36
Speaker 1: hands or placing a gag in their mouth, you think
5:39
Speaker 1: about that and it just seems an impossibility. And how
5:43
Speaker 1: are you going to transport them in the same vehicle perhaps,
5:47
Speaker 1: I don't know that would require I guess you could
5:50
Speaker 1: get four adult men in the backseat of sedan bound
5:53
Speaker 1: and gagged. You know, I'm thinking van because you need
5:56
Speaker 1: you need an ability. I would think to not just quester,
6:00
Speaker 1: but you know, kind of have hidden from view a
6:03
Speaker 1: windowless van perhaps, or you know, how are you going
6:07
Speaker 1: to get them to lay down on the floor of
6:09
Speaker 1: a vehicle as you're driving? What are you going to do?
6:12
Speaker 1: You're you're going to take the pistol and hold it
6:14
Speaker 1: over your shoulder while you're driving down the road.
6:16
Speaker 2: Well, it makes you wonder were they killed somewhere? I mean,
6:19
Speaker 2: obviously they were. The police say they were kidnapped. Okay,
6:21
Speaker 2: they're saying straight out. These men were kidnapped and then
6:25
Speaker 2: killed and then dumped. And as you mentioned, I mean,
6:28
Speaker 2: how do you control grown men and they're all young,
6:31
Speaker 2: they're between twenty five and thirty five, and you've got
6:34
Speaker 2: a suspect here who is fifty eight. Elias Goudino is
6:37
Speaker 2: the suspect, and he's able to control three grown men.
6:41
Speaker 2: Don't know if it was all at the same time.
6:42
Speaker 2: What we do know is that two were dumped in
6:44
Speaker 2: one location. I'm kind of curious as to why it
6:48
Speaker 2: took till eight thirty in the morning before a motorist
6:51
Speaker 2: was able to identify their bodies over here where they
6:54
Speaker 2: dumped in the middle of the night and people just
6:55
Speaker 2: didn't notice, or were they dumped minutes before where they
7:00
Speaker 2: were reported, because twenty minutes later police get a call
7:03
Speaker 2: from a couple of miles away saying, hey, we got
7:05
Speaker 2: a dump body over here.
7:06
Speaker 1: It makes a question as well, you know who call that?
7:08
Speaker 1: In the second one, right, you got the motorists that's
7:12
Speaker 1: going down the road and they visualize, if you will,
7:16
Speaker 1: the bodies. This is an important thing too that we
7:19
Speaker 1: do in investigation. We have human remains that are found
7:23
Speaker 1: in a location. You want to think about points of access.
7:28
Speaker 1: You're learning a lot about a case when you find
7:31
Speaker 1: bodies immediately adjacent to a roadway, because it gives you
7:34
Speaker 1: an indication that the subject that is conveying the individuals,
7:39
Speaker 1: whether they are alive or dead, did not go off
7:43
Speaker 1: the beaten path very far, all right, perhaps depend upon
7:47
Speaker 1: the type of roadway it is. We're thinking hard top
7:50
Speaker 1: black top road and then they're just going to drive
7:53
Speaker 1: to a location park on the side of the road.
7:55
Speaker 1: You're running the risk of being seen, so you would
7:57
Speaker 1: probably have to do this in the weipurs. You're going
8:00
Speaker 1: to open up a door, take them out of the vehicle,
8:03
Speaker 1: and then take them to a location. How do you
8:07
Speaker 1: And here's another point where they killed. At the same time,
8:12
Speaker 1: you've got these two guys that are found deposited. As
8:16
Speaker 1: you had mentioned, one was face up, which in our
8:19
Speaker 1: parlance and medical legal death investigation, we refer to that
8:22
Speaker 1: as souppine face up. I could go on forever and ever.
8:27
Speaker 1: Why we would not use the term face up in
8:30
Speaker 1: a crime report because I've seen bodies that are the
8:35
Speaker 1: chest is upward, but the head is turned around. And
8:40
Speaker 1: when you get into semantics with attorneys, and that's where
8:43
Speaker 1: they dance. So we use the term soup pine most
8:46
Speaker 1: of the time because you're not committing yourself or prone
8:50
Speaker 1: or recumbent. Can we learn anything about the way the
8:54
Speaker 1: deposition occurred. You've got one that is prone and one
8:58
Speaker 1: that is sue pine where they taken out individually and shot.
9:03
Speaker 1: Because I got to tell you, Dave, unless my legs
9:06
Speaker 1: are bound, I'm hopping to my feet and I'm sprinting
9:12
Speaker 1: as quickly as I possibly can. You might get me,
9:15
Speaker 1: but I'm not going to be immediately adjacent to the person.
9:18
Speaker 1: I guess everybody kind of says what they will and
9:20
Speaker 1: will not do under a set of circumstances like that.
9:23
Speaker 1: But what we're trying to explore here from a forensic
9:25
Speaker 1: standpoint is the dynamics of the event. Back to the roadway.
9:29
Speaker 1: I think that this is very important as well. You
9:31
Speaker 1: mentioned the key piece here where they killed somewhere else. Well, okay,
9:35
Speaker 1: let's think about the injuries that we know about at
9:38
Speaker 1: this point in time. We're talking about head injuries. Right.
9:42
Speaker 1: The head, the brain, all right, is arguably the most
9:48
Speaker 1: vascular area of the body. There is a tremendous amount
9:51
Speaker 1: of blood supply that goes to that one location of
9:54
Speaker 1: the body. If your kid and you fall and you
9:57
Speaker 1: split your head open, sometimes it looks a lot worse
10:01
Speaker 1: than it is because you're bleeding so profusely from that location,
10:06
Speaker 1: there's a lot of blood. If they were shot saying
10:09
Speaker 1: another location and taken from the car and placed out
10:13
Speaker 1: there in this location, was there any kind of detectable
10:17
Speaker 1: blood trail leading from that side of the road to
10:21
Speaker 1: the final place where they were deposited. Also, if you've
10:25
Speaker 1: killed both of them, do you have any kind of
10:29
Speaker 1: crossing of the blood trails where you've got type A
10:34
Speaker 1: that's leading away to the final deposition, and you've got
10:38
Speaker 1: type B blood that is leading out there, And at
10:41
Speaker 1: any point in time, do the lines of blood that
10:44
Speaker 1: are found on the ground do that converge and split off?
10:47
Speaker 1: Was there an attempt to clean up a blood trail,
10:50
Speaker 1: you know, did they drag soil around or is what
10:54
Speaker 1: you're seeing right there at that location the extent of
10:58
Speaker 1: the deposition of blood. If they're standing over them, the
11:02
Speaker 1: perpetrator in this particular case, and they shoot them in
11:05
Speaker 1: the head, there's a high probability they're going to drop
11:09
Speaker 1: right there, So you're not going to have blood trails
11:12
Speaker 1: leading off in any direction. That sort of thing. It's
11:15
Speaker 1: a curious, curious scene, that's for sure. I've never been
11:37
Speaker 1: accused of being the most coordinated person in the world,
11:41
Speaker 1: but when it comes to coordination, there are several different types.
11:46
Speaker 1: As an investigator, when you have multiple scenes that are
11:50
Speaker 1: probably involving the same event, it requires coordination. Any partner
11:57
Speaker 1: that you have in the investigative world all got to
12:00
Speaker 1: be seen from the same sheet of music, because the
12:03
Speaker 1: slightest little variance from anything can really bespoil the investigation
12:09
Speaker 1: moving forward. You need very carefully to assess both of
12:15
Speaker 1: the scenes because, Dave, one of the things you're looking
12:17
Speaker 1: for out there at these scenes are commonalities. You're looking
12:21
Speaker 1: for things that they have in common.
12:24
Speaker 2: In this particular case, the police were able to pick
12:27
Speaker 2: up a suspect fairly quickly. What we do know is
12:31
Speaker 2: the three individuals that are dead. Ema Rees is twenty five,
12:35
Speaker 2: Victor Virella Rodriguez is thirty one, and Domingo Castillo res
12:39
Speaker 2: is thirty five. Don't know anything about the fourth victim,
12:42
Speaker 2: So we're dealing with twenty five, thirty one, and thirty
12:45
Speaker 2: five year old men and a suspect, Elias Gudino, who
12:49
Speaker 2: is fifty eight. Joe, I have looked this case back
12:52
Speaker 2: and forth trying to figure out how do the police
12:54
Speaker 2: so quickly go to Elias Gudino. Well, there actually is
12:59
Speaker 2: a reason. When you peel the band aid off his life,
13:02
Speaker 2: you find out a lot of things about his past
13:04
Speaker 2: that might be part of what we're seeing here. Public
13:08
Speaker 2: records show that Gudino at one time owned a place
13:12
Speaker 2: called the I'm Going to destroy this word, and I apologize,
13:16
Speaker 2: but English is my first and only language. Anything other
13:19
Speaker 2: than that is just not going to be pronounced properly. Okay.
13:23
Speaker 2: But he owned a store La Micho, Ghana, takira and grocery.
13:29
Speaker 2: Born in Mexico, came to the US in the nineteen
13:31
Speaker 2: eighties and became an American citizen in two thousand and nine.
13:36
Speaker 2: Mister Gudino is living in Akron. He had at that
13:39
Speaker 2: time a business. I think it was a landscape business,
13:42
Speaker 2: but that was just a cover because, according to federal agents,
13:46
Speaker 2: was a drug trafficking organization. They had information showing that
13:49
Speaker 2: Goudino had been trafficking drugs since the nineteen nineties. He
13:53
Speaker 2: had an operation that was based in southern Mexico but
13:56
Speaker 2: reached across the United States in Ohio, Colorado, Oklahoma, and
13:59
Speaker 2: other states. Much of that investigation was focused on Akron, Ohio,
14:03
Speaker 2: where officials said he was actually supplying cocaine dealers and
14:07
Speaker 2: operating his business. Now, when investigators tapped Gudino's phone, they
14:12
Speaker 2: heard him talking to people in Mexico and other states
14:15
Speaker 2: about what he was moving through the trafficking organization. So
14:18
Speaker 2: we had an international drug smuggling ring all out of Akron, Ohio,
14:23
Speaker 2: headed by Elias Gudino. When investigators moved in, Gudino and
14:29
Speaker 2: another man were bringing a shipment of cocaine into Akron.
14:31
Speaker 2: Court records show that they stopped a vehicle and they
14:34
Speaker 2: found about eight kilas of cocaine hidden in a compartment
14:37
Speaker 2: near the radiator. So a few months later, Gudino pleads guilty.
14:42
Speaker 2: Obviously it was a negotiated thing, two federal charges involving
14:46
Speaker 2: drug trafficking. He was sentenced to twelve and a half
14:48
Speaker 2: years in prison, followed by five years of probation. He
14:51
Speaker 2: served his time. He was released in November of twenty seventeen.
14:54
Speaker 2: Court records say that he remained on probation until May
14:57
Speaker 2: of last year. So that brings us to now, okay,
15:01
Speaker 2: of the life of Elias Gudino. So one has to
15:06
Speaker 2: wonder these current murders are they part of a payback
15:11
Speaker 2: for what send him to prison in two thousand and nine.
15:14
Speaker 1: Possibly you have to try to understand relationships between people.
15:18
Speaker 1: You know, we were talking about mister Gaudino. He's fifty
15:20
Speaker 1: eight years old. Now, unless you're working for him, I
15:24
Speaker 1: got to say, I don't see a fifty eight year
15:26
Speaker 1: old cat hanging out with twenty somethings. From a perspective
15:31
Speaker 1: of behavior, you begin to think about, well, what kind
15:34
Speaker 1: of connection did they have? Well, it's probably not going
15:37
Speaker 1: to be kind of this casual, friendly, let's go play darts,
15:40
Speaker 1: have a couple of beers relationship. You generally are going
15:43
Speaker 1: to gravitate towards those people that are in your age group.
15:47
Speaker 1: So what is it? And this is another thing when
15:51
Speaker 1: you're talking about a violent crime like homicide. One of
15:54
Speaker 1: the many motivating factors behind homicide is passion, rage, those
16:00
Speaker 1: sort of things that are associated with kind of an intimacy.
16:03
Speaker 1: And it doesn't necessarily have to be sexual, but it
16:07
Speaker 1: has to be something so intimate it gins up that
16:10
Speaker 1: kind of rage in an individual to want to eradicate
16:13
Speaker 1: a person. So if we're thinking that that relationship doesn't
16:18
Speaker 1: exist on that plane, then perhaps the answer rests somewhere else.
16:23
Speaker 1: Are these in fact business associates? Is there something that
16:28
Speaker 1: got between Gudino and his money or Gadino and his
16:32
Speaker 1: freedom as you had mentioned, you know, that's a big
16:35
Speaker 1: piece to this. Think about messages having been sent. I
16:39
Speaker 1: think that that's certainly something because boy, you talk about
16:43
Speaker 1: on a grand scale to send a message. You're going
16:47
Speaker 1: to wipe out three lives like this, What kind of
16:51
Speaker 1: message are you sending?
16:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, you mentioned that they might not be direct relations
16:55
Speaker 2: because of their ages. He's fifty eight. These guys are
16:59
Speaker 2: between twenty thirty five. In two thousand and nine, when
17:02
Speaker 2: he was rested and dealt with all the charges, n
17:05
Speaker 2: ma Res was only eleven years old.
17:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, how could he have had anything to do with trafficking?
17:09
Speaker 2: Maybe a parent, brother, sister.
17:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're absolutely right. I'll show you. You know that
17:14
Speaker 1: sort of thing. You never know how these things can
17:17
Speaker 1: be networked together, and sometimes you uncover some of the
17:21
Speaker 1: most bizarre types of relationships when you have an individual
17:24
Speaker 1: that's attempting to message somebody by use of this level
17:29
Speaker 1: of violence. There's another thing too. I was just going
17:32
Speaker 1: back over the images from where these two individuals were
17:37
Speaker 1: found together. It's kind of a bucolic looking neighborhood. It
17:42
Speaker 1: is a two lane blacktop. The woods are immediately adjacent
17:47
Speaker 1: to several residences that look nice their new bills or
17:52
Speaker 1: newer bills. And then across from these homes is where
17:56
Speaker 1: the bodies were deposited in kind of a thinly wooded area.
18:00
Speaker 1: This is a location that someone would have had to
18:04
Speaker 1: have been familiar with. And what's quite striking here is
18:08
Speaker 1: you can see houses immediately adjacent to the road like
18:11
Speaker 1: that are just across the road, and then there are
18:14
Speaker 1: more houses that you can barely make out through the
18:17
Speaker 1: woodline where the bodies are found. You're going to go
18:20
Speaker 1: out there and shoot these guys, pop them in the
18:22
Speaker 1: back of the head where that sound could be heard,
18:26
Speaker 1: and not just one guy, You're going to do two
18:29
Speaker 1: guys out there. That suggests a certain level of comfort
18:32
Speaker 1: I think with a particular area when you're looking at
18:34
Speaker 1: suspect and you're trying to determine what kind of profile
18:38
Speaker 1: the individual might fit that would perpetrate something that is
18:41
Speaker 1: this heinous and would be done in an area that
18:46
Speaker 1: I don't know. Arguably, nothing like this has ever occurred
18:50
Speaker 1: in Well, we know where it ended. It ended in
19:14
Speaker 1: two separate wooded areas. But you know, I think the
19:18
Speaker 1: big question that just kind of hangs in the air
19:21
Speaker 1: at this moment relative to what we know about this
19:24
Speaker 1: case is where did it begin? You know, there are
19:28
Speaker 1: certain things that we can look to in forensics that
19:31
Speaker 1: can potentially give us those answers.
19:33
Speaker 2: I'm curious, Joseph Scott Morgan. It seems to me that
19:36
Speaker 2: we see things on TV where police immediately say, well,
19:38
Speaker 2: they're obviously shot over here and drug over here and
19:40
Speaker 2: blah blah blah. But when police come on a scene,
19:43
Speaker 2: they get a phone call at eight thirty in the morning,
19:45
Speaker 2: we had two bodies over here. Twenty minutes later, we
19:47
Speaker 2: got a body over here. When they start the investigation,
19:52
Speaker 2: they're looking at deceased individuals and their marking time as
19:56
Speaker 2: to how they're finding them. Can they that they were
20:01
Speaker 2: killed somewhere else and were placed here for a reason?
20:04
Speaker 2: Can they determine that based on the condition of the body.
20:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they certainly can. And one thing that's really
20:09
Speaker 1: nagging me in this case, Dave, is that, just given
20:14
Speaker 1: the imagery that we kind of see from the scene here,
20:17
Speaker 1: there are other locations that you could go that are
20:21
Speaker 1: far flong. You've got river beds, you've got gullies, you've
20:25
Speaker 1: got washes all over the place, places that would make
20:29
Speaker 1: it difficult for a regular person that's just going about
20:33
Speaker 1: their business to visualize a body. And of course, if
20:36
Speaker 1: you can obscure a body, that gives you time as
20:40
Speaker 1: a perpetrator to get as much distance between yourself and
20:43
Speaker 1: that body. That's not what happened here. These bodies were
20:47
Speaker 1: easily seen from the roadway. It would be no trouble Oncesoever,
20:52
Speaker 1: once the sun rose sufficiently and blasted light onto this area,
20:57
Speaker 1: you could see these individuals laying in you know, I
21:00
Speaker 1: would describe as a thinly wooded area. Why would this
21:05
Speaker 1: individual choose this area where they kill there? We talked
21:09
Speaker 1: about the sound you would have heard the sound I
21:13
Speaker 1: think out here, and how could we tell if they
21:17
Speaker 1: had been killed in another location and then brought to
21:21
Speaker 1: this location.
21:22
Speaker 2: You know.
21:23
Speaker 1: I talked about the evidence of any kind of blood
21:26
Speaker 1: trail that was leading out to the body. But also
21:28
Speaker 1: the longer we go down the post mortem interval timeline,
21:33
Speaker 1: that's PMI, post mortem interval, we'd look for changes in
21:38
Speaker 1: human remains. We look for things like riger mortis. If
21:42
Speaker 1: someone is say, seated in a chair, okay, and they
21:47
Speaker 1: are shot, they're shot in chest or the head, and
21:50
Speaker 1: they're left seated in that chair over a very short
21:53
Speaker 1: period of time, rigidity will begin to set in. If
21:57
Speaker 1: you get four hours down range, the body will not
22:01
Speaker 1: ruggamortars will not be fully fixed, but the body will
22:05
Speaker 1: be appreciably rigid. So if you were to take that
22:10
Speaker 1: body out of a chair, place it in a car,
22:13
Speaker 1: and then take it and deposit it somewhere, the body's
22:15
Speaker 1: going to have kind of a contracted look to it,
22:17
Speaker 1: where the knees are pulled up, maybe the arms are
22:20
Speaker 1: kind of angular. And this is something that would be
22:24
Speaker 1: associated with someone that had been seated in a chair
22:27
Speaker 1: long enough for them to begun stiffening. But the other
22:32
Speaker 1: thing that sets in a lot quicker than that is
22:35
Speaker 1: post mortem lividity or liver mortis liv R, which is
22:41
Speaker 1: the gravitational settling of blood. If you've ever when you
22:44
Speaker 1: were a kid, or maybe you have kids, you take
22:46
Speaker 1: them out of the playground, they hang upside down on
22:48
Speaker 1: monkey bars and the head starts to turn red and swell. Well,
22:52
Speaker 1: that's blood that's actually being it's gravitationally dependent. It's pulling
22:57
Speaker 1: down to that area. It's literally the same principle. Gravity
23:03
Speaker 1: is pulling blood, which is liquid. It's viscous liquid, but
23:07
Speaker 1: it's pulling it down to that lowest point of gravity.
23:10
Speaker 1: Think about your the basement in your house. One of
23:12
Speaker 1: the things your parents are always worried about, you know,
23:14
Speaker 1: is there water setting up in the basement. Though water's
23:17
Speaker 1: going to seek the lowest point. It's the same principle.
23:20
Speaker 1: So if you have postmonal lividity, which you can actually
23:23
Speaker 1: see presenting within twenty minutes of death, Dave, that takes
23:27
Speaker 1: a bit longer for it to fix. But if you
23:30
Speaker 1: have someone, say, for instance, where they're shot in the
23:33
Speaker 1: back of the head, they're left seated in a chair
23:35
Speaker 1: while prep is being made to transport the bodies, blood
23:38
Speaker 1: will settle to the ankles. You'll see it pronounced in
23:41
Speaker 1: the feet, You'll see it on the backs of the legs.
23:44
Speaker 1: Now where the buttocks was touching the chair, it'll be
23:47
Speaker 1: what we refer to as blanched out. It'll still be
23:50
Speaker 1: white kind of because the blood can't get into those
23:53
Speaker 1: areas because it's secluded by the pressure of the supporting
23:57
Speaker 1: area of the chair to the relative to the buttock
23:59
Speaker 1: where where it's touching. Also on the back there's pressure
24:02
Speaker 1: being applied to the back. You might see it around
24:05
Speaker 1: the shoulders or down at the base of the back
24:08
Speaker 1: where it has settled and modeled there. But you'll have
24:10
Speaker 1: these indicators. So when an investigator goes out to the
24:14
Speaker 1: scene and they begin to visualize the body. They're going
24:16
Speaker 1: to say, wow, look at this distribution of post mortem
24:19
Speaker 1: lividity here. This is really odd. It looks like they
24:23
Speaker 1: had been in a chair, or maybe if they were
24:25
Speaker 1: face up using that term, if they were face up supine,
24:31
Speaker 1: and you have lividity that is all on the anterior,
24:35
Speaker 1: that means on the front of the body. But yet
24:37
Speaker 1: they're laying on their back. Guess what you're going to know.
24:40
Speaker 1: At some point in time, this person had laid on
24:43
Speaker 1: their belly long enough for blood to settle to that area,
24:47
Speaker 1: and now they're being taken out of a vehicle and
24:49
Speaker 1: placed on the ground so that their back is supporting
24:52
Speaker 1: the body. That's going to give you a different presentation.
24:54
Speaker 2: Now, Joe, let me ask you this. When you're talking
24:56
Speaker 2: about rigger mortis. Okay, I've always heard it called rigor mortis,
25:00
Speaker 2: So I apologize in advance.
25:01
Speaker 1: No, no, no, I know it's two different pronunciations people say.
25:04
Speaker 1: Some people will say rigor yeah.
25:06
Speaker 2: So riger mortis. All right, you've got a body, body
25:10
Speaker 2: shot dead, boom. It takes a certain amount of time
25:13
Speaker 2: for rigor mortis to even set in. But then after
25:16
Speaker 2: an extended period of time, doesn't the body loosen.
25:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, But Dave, you're so far down range after that
25:22
Speaker 1: period of time, and that's that's called becoming flacid at
25:28
Speaker 1: that point in time. For folks that don't know with
25:31
Speaker 1: ryger rigor a rigidity, some people will use that term,
25:34
Speaker 1: what's happening well in the joints in particular, you have
25:38
Speaker 1: lactic acid that's beginning to build up. We have lactic
25:42
Speaker 1: acid that's naturally occurring in the remains in our in
25:45
Speaker 1: our body in life. But the thing about it is
25:49
Speaker 1: is that we're metabolizing that and so it doesn't set
25:52
Speaker 1: in the closest you will ever understand. The sensation of
25:56
Speaker 1: riger in life is if you haven't worked out in
25:59
Speaker 1: a while and you go to them, you wake up
26:00
Speaker 1: the next morning, you're stiff. You'll see a stiffening in
26:03
Speaker 1: the joints, and that's lactic acid. You can take things
26:07
Speaker 1: that will resolve the pain immediately are in time, but
26:11
Speaker 1: either way it's going to work its way out. The
26:13
Speaker 1: dead can't metabolize lactic acid, so for them, that body
26:18
Speaker 1: is not going to be free from that rigidity. For
26:21
Speaker 1: it's variable. It's very much environmentally dependent. Heat kind of
26:26
Speaker 1: speeds things up in the decompositional process. You might be
26:29
Speaker 1: looking at thirty six hours plus or minus before the
26:33
Speaker 1: individual becomes flaccid again, which means limbs are flexible. They're
26:38
Speaker 1: flexible at the knees, the hips. You can actually open
26:42
Speaker 1: the mouth. The mouth, believe it or not, is one
26:45
Speaker 1: of the most glaring examples. It's so rigid. Little piece
26:48
Speaker 1: of history here. If you've ever seen a Christmas Carol,
26:51
Speaker 1: you know Charles Dickens when Marley's ghost first appears in
26:56
Speaker 1: several iterations of the play and the teleplay and that
26:59
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Harly has a kerchief tied around his head. Well,
27:05
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that they used to do,
27:06
Speaker 1: because if you didn't, the body would develop what's referred
27:10
Speaker 1: to as the O sign. The mouth looks like an
27:13
Speaker 1: O okay, and that's because the jaw opens and then
27:17
Speaker 1: it freezes. And certainly during Victorian times, that was considered improper.
27:22
Speaker 1: Look like you could pitch pennies in a person's mouth
27:25
Speaker 1: if they're laying in state, So they would they would
27:27
Speaker 1: take a kerchief and tide around the head and that
27:29
Speaker 1: would lock the jaw into place, and then riger would
27:33
Speaker 1: set in and the mouth was kind of frozen that way,
27:36
Speaker 1: so you'll begin to see the flacidity, if you will,
27:40
Speaker 1: of the body after a period of time. If you
27:43
Speaker 1: get out to that point as a time marker, you're
27:47
Speaker 1: going to know that the individual has been out there
27:49
Speaker 1: for a while, or they had been retained in another
27:52
Speaker 1: location for a protracted period of time. You couple that
27:55
Speaker 1: with other findings like certainly live or mortis, which we mentioned,
27:59
Speaker 1: or post mortem lividity. So here's another term that I
28:02
Speaker 1: haven't thrown out there is called alger mortise, and this
28:06
Speaker 1: is the term that most people associate with post mortem interval,
28:10
Speaker 1: and that's temperature body temperature, which is arguably the most
28:13
Speaker 1: unreliable thing that you can use in order to determine
28:16
Speaker 1: post mortem interval. And then net autopsy, of course we
28:19
Speaker 1: use the gaster contents and kind of the process of
28:22
Speaker 1: food making it through the digestive track. But you couple
28:26
Speaker 1: all of that at the scene and you're trying to
28:28
Speaker 1: create a picture. At that moment time, you've got two
28:32
Speaker 1: dead guys in this one location that's easily seen from
28:35
Speaker 1: the road. You've got another person that has been deposited
28:38
Speaker 1: what two miles away are they in the same state
28:42
Speaker 1: at that moment time. And then you've got this one survivor,
28:45
Speaker 1: this guy that seemingly played dead. Can you imagine that
28:51
Speaker 1: being shot in the head and surviving a gunshot going
28:55
Speaker 1: to the head.
28:56
Speaker 2: How in the world we've got two men in a
29:01
Speaker 2: as you mentioned, a fairly public place that are dumped,
29:05
Speaker 2: one face up, one face down, and then twenty minutes
29:08
Speaker 2: later we get a call of another body dumped in
29:10
Speaker 2: a place where people could see. I can't get my
29:13
Speaker 2: head around this as to these three victims. Were they
29:17
Speaker 2: out there all night and they were just discovered at
29:20
Speaker 2: that time, or was this a case of they were
29:24
Speaker 2: dumped within minutes of the call coming in.
29:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a fascinating thing here. The one thing that
29:30
Speaker 1: you have out in this location is the cover of darkness, because,
29:34
Speaker 1: as you well know, Dave, we both kind of live
29:36
Speaker 1: in rural areas. Black as pitch, as they say at night,
29:42
Speaker 1: literally is if you're away from the city, you can't
29:45
Speaker 1: see your hand in front of your face on a
29:47
Speaker 1: moonless night, and on this particular evening it had been raining.
29:51
Speaker 1: It was raining out there. Dave, just looking at the
29:54
Speaker 1: imagery from from the crime scene, roadways are wet, the
29:59
Speaker 1: sky is overcast, so most probably there would not have
30:04
Speaker 1: been even ambient light from stars or the moon or whatever.
30:08
Speaker 1: The only chance you might have of illumination out there
30:12
Speaker 1: would obviously be headlights that might shine on the area,
30:16
Speaker 1: some type of floodlight. It would have been very very
30:20
Speaker 1: dark out in these locations, so it would seem the
30:24
Speaker 1: best time to have done this would be under the
30:27
Speaker 1: cover of darkness. Again, this brings us back to this
30:30
Speaker 1: idea of depositing of the bodies. I think another curious
30:36
Speaker 1: thing that we can discover from not just the scene
30:40
Speaker 1: but also from the bodies is what if we mentioned
30:42
Speaker 1: we've mentioned restraint, because they use this term bound, What
30:47
Speaker 1: were they bound with? Well, were all four subjects, including
30:51
Speaker 1: the one that escaped, were they bound with the same thing?
30:54
Speaker 1: Are we talking zip ties here, we're talking rope. Was
30:57
Speaker 1: it the same kind of rope or did they just
30:59
Speaker 1: willing grab rope from different locations and tie these individuals
31:04
Speaker 1: wrist up Where they tied in the front, where they
31:06
Speaker 1: tied in the back. What kind of knot was used?
31:08
Speaker 1: Because that's going to tell you a lot about the
31:10
Speaker 1: individual that is engaged in this. If it's a knot,
31:14
Speaker 1: There are people out there that will simply sit down
31:16
Speaker 1: and they will give you a profile on an individual
31:20
Speaker 1: based upon the kind of knot that they can tie.
31:22
Speaker 1: It tells you about what kind of background the person
31:24
Speaker 1: might have. You've got a person that has an old
31:26
Speaker 1: sailor for instance, they're very adept at tying complicated knots
31:31
Speaker 1: things that I could never figure out. Or you have
31:34
Speaker 1: somebody that just has basic rudimentary skills as to how
31:37
Speaker 1: to tie a knot. Or if it's a zip tie
31:40
Speaker 1: where they purchase from the same place, are these same
31:42
Speaker 1: type of zip ties? Because there's so many out there.
31:44
Speaker 1: And then the gag, what's it made out of? Is
31:46
Speaker 1: it a ballgag that you purchased at a store you
31:49
Speaker 1: know somebody would use in sex play that sort of thing.
31:53
Speaker 1: Is it a rag that they tied around somebody or
31:55
Speaker 1: did they stuff something in their mouth and then secure
31:58
Speaker 1: it with a rag? And then the big question here,
32:01
Speaker 1: I think is if we're talking about gunshot wounds, which
32:04
Speaker 1: we are, we've got at least a minimum four. Are
32:08
Speaker 1: there spent casings? Is there any evidence that at the
32:12
Speaker 1: scene they found spent brass laying around? And let me
32:16
Speaker 1: tell you what else they would have done out of
32:18
Speaker 1: the scene, Dave. After these bodies are removed. There's a
32:22
Speaker 1: high probability and they could do this before as well.
32:27
Speaker 1: But there's a high probability that if these gunshot wounds
32:31
Speaker 1: are through and through, they're going to bring a metal
32:33
Speaker 1: detector out there. If they find a projectile in the
32:37
Speaker 1: ground or maybe two, you have to ask the question,
32:42
Speaker 1: do these two projectiles marry up with the same weapon
32:47
Speaker 1: or the casings the spent casings. Do they have the
32:49
Speaker 1: same breech block mark on the back of them or
32:53
Speaker 1: pen strikes, you know, where the firing pin hits the
32:56
Speaker 1: primer cap or are the extraction marks the same the
32:59
Speaker 1: ejector marks. Are they the same or closely resemble that
33:04
Speaker 1: they could have originated from the same weapon. All of
33:08
Speaker 1: these questions are going to play in to this investigation
33:12
Speaker 1: and to ultimately how many people were involved, Was it
33:16
Speaker 1: a single perpetrator, where were these individuals killed, and where
33:21
Speaker 1: they all deposited at the same time. I'm Joseph Scott
33:28
Speaker 1: Morgan and this is bodybacks