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Body Bags: The Chris Watts Murders · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:09
Speaker 1: Body backs with Joseph Scott Morgan. One of the greatest
0:20
Speaker 1: gifts any man can be given, as a beautiful wife, too,
0:26
Speaker 1: adoring daughters, and a child he had unborn. For years now,
0:33
Speaker 1: the case of Chris Watts has puzzled many of us,
0:36
Speaker 1: wondering what his motivation was to literally go in and
0:40
Speaker 1: destroy this beautiful gift he had been given. My name
0:44
Speaker 1: is Joseph Scott Morgan and this his body backs. Joining
0:53
Speaker 1: me right now is my good friend Jackie Howard, producer
0:57
Speaker 1: of Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Jackie, what can you
1:00
Speaker 1: tell us about this case? As you said Joe, Chris
1:03
Speaker 1: Wats and his wife, Shanane had two daughters, four year
1:06
Speaker 1: old Mella and three year old Celeste, and Chanane was
1:09
Speaker 1: expecting a baby boy. Shanan had been out of town
1:13
Speaker 1: and came home and that's where things go sideways. Chanan
1:17
Speaker 1: misses a doctor's appointment and when a friend goes over
1:20
Speaker 1: to check on them, NaN's car is still in the
1:23
Speaker 1: driveway with the car seats in it, and Chris Watts
1:26
Speaker 1: tells her that Chanane had taken the kids on a playdate.
1:29
Speaker 1: At that point, the friend knew there was exactly a
1:31
Speaker 1: problem because the car seats were still in the car
1:34
Speaker 1: in the driveway. Police are called. We know now, Joe,
1:38
Speaker 1: that Chris Wats strangled his wife in their bed after sex,
1:42
Speaker 1: which leads us to wonder how was he able? Yes,
1:46
Speaker 1: she was pregnant, but how was he able to so
1:48
Speaker 1: easily overpower his wife. We know that she traveled, so
1:52
Speaker 1: she was tired, she had just gotten home, she is pregnant,
1:55
Speaker 1: and we also find out later on that over the
1:58
Speaker 1: weeks before her murder had been dosing her with oxycodone.
2:03
Speaker 1: Any of these things alone would have taken her strength away.
2:07
Speaker 1: What happens when you've got all of these things going
2:09
Speaker 1: on together, Jackie, I think the thing comes to mind
2:12
Speaker 1: for me in regards to Shenan in this case is
2:15
Speaker 1: a term that you hear many times, bone weary. Can
2:20
Speaker 1: you imagine she is in the advanced months of pregnancy,
2:26
Speaker 1: She's been carrying her and born son Nko for all
2:29
Speaker 1: this time, and she's still on the road going to
2:34
Speaker 1: sales meetings and this sort of thing, and that even
2:36
Speaker 1: and she had in fact return from a sales meeting
2:39
Speaker 1: her friend to drop her off. Can you imagine how
2:42
Speaker 1: weary she was and then to come home into this
2:45
Speaker 1: environment with a husband who she was troubled with. They
2:50
Speaker 1: didn't have a solid marriage anymore. There were dark storm
2:54
Speaker 1: clouds on the front. And then just think about this
2:58
Speaker 1: for a second, because we really couldn't get real good
3:01
Speaker 1: toxicology off of Snan's body. But if in fact he
3:05
Speaker 1: had been dosing her with oxycon along the way, perhaps
3:10
Speaker 1: maybe to induce a premature birth at some point in time,
3:16
Speaker 1: but tonight plan was different. He was going to dose
3:19
Speaker 1: her with this and then she was going to drift
3:21
Speaker 1: off into a very very deep sleep. And you know
3:25
Speaker 1: from the reports that we have heard, they may have
3:28
Speaker 1: had intercourse just prior to this. And this goes to
3:31
Speaker 1: this idea that he's kind of drawing her in the
3:34
Speaker 1: entire time, trying to make her feel safe and secure,
3:38
Speaker 1: maybe one last time. Maybe she thinks that everything's going
3:41
Speaker 1: to be okay, but she's not going to have the
3:43
Speaker 1: will or the physical ability to fight back. So when
3:48
Speaker 1: he wrapped his hands around her throat, and there is
3:52
Speaker 1: evidence that she was choked on the right side, there
3:56
Speaker 1: was some hemorrhage of her neck, she couldn't fight a
4:00
Speaker 1: matter of fact, it took so little pressure in order
4:03
Speaker 1: to squeeze the life out of this pregnant mama. That
4:07
Speaker 1: we didn't even see any evidence of particular hemorrhages in
4:11
Speaker 1: her eyes, which normally come about within a fixial death.
4:14
Speaker 1: You know, this increased pressure, so that gives you an
4:17
Speaker 1: indication perhaps of how a little pressure it took to
4:20
Speaker 1: subdue her and eventually in her life, Joe. We actually
4:25
Speaker 1: do not know specifically whether or not Chris Watts dosed
4:29
Speaker 1: his wife with oxycodon that day. It has been suspected
4:32
Speaker 1: he told someone, a pimpal that he had been writing to,
4:35
Speaker 1: that he had been trying to poison her. But with
4:39
Speaker 1: the tissues that remained when Shenanne's body was found, but
4:43
Speaker 1: they proved that our body was in such a stated
4:47
Speaker 1: decomposition that it's actually an unprovable point. When you recovered
4:53
Speaker 1: decomposed tissue, it's a real uphill battle to retrieve sufficient
4:59
Speaker 1: sam one in order to conduct toxicology examination. Just think
5:04
Speaker 1: about it. The more compromised the body is by natural
5:08
Speaker 1: decay that's occurring out in the elements, and she was,
5:12
Speaker 1: in fact in the elements buried in a very shallow grave.
5:16
Speaker 1: Those elements that we would normally examine after death are
5:22
Speaker 1: compromised to the point where you can't you can't really
5:25
Speaker 1: appreciate if, in fact, there was a lethal level of
5:29
Speaker 1: any kind of substance in her system. Now you might
5:33
Speaker 1: be able to find out, and these are two terms
5:35
Speaker 1: we use in forensics and forensic toxicology. You can you
5:39
Speaker 1: might perhaps can qualify a substance in the body and say, yes,
5:44
Speaker 1: we have an opiate in the system, okay, But because
5:48
Speaker 1: a tissue is so compromised, you're not necessarily going to
5:51
Speaker 1: be able to quantify that, and that means apply a
5:55
Speaker 1: specific number to that agent in the body. Well, why
5:59
Speaker 1: is that important? And it's important because there are what
6:02
Speaker 1: are called therapeutic doses. That is, if you go to
6:05
Speaker 1: the doctor and they give you medicine for a hurt
6:08
Speaker 1: back or maybe a busted knee, there's a certain amount
6:13
Speaker 1: that's acceptable to be taken into the body that is
6:16
Speaker 1: not going to put you into a lethal range. But
6:19
Speaker 1: you can't achieve that would decompose tissue. More than likely,
6:23
Speaker 1: there is no blood left where you can draw it
6:26
Speaker 1: up and examine it in its normal state post mortem,
6:30
Speaker 1: that is a non decomposed status, and then the tissue
6:33
Speaker 1: that's left behind you can't really examine it for it
6:36
Speaker 1: at least to put a fine point on it. With
6:38
Speaker 1: those numbers, Is it a lethal level, is at a
6:41
Speaker 1: non therapeutical level, Those things that would give us an
6:44
Speaker 1: indication that maybe this was an intentional overdose. When you're
6:47
Speaker 1: looking at a body that has been buried in a
6:50
Speaker 1: shallow grave versus six or eight feet deep. When we
6:54
Speaker 1: think about how people are normally buried, although yes they're
6:57
Speaker 1: normally in a coffin, but a body that's been buried
7:00
Speaker 1: in a shallow grave versus someone that was much deeper,
7:05
Speaker 1: what is the difference that you are going to be
7:07
Speaker 1: able to see forensically? Is there going to be a
7:10
Speaker 1: difference between a shallow grave and a deep grave? You know,
7:13
Speaker 1: the fact that that Nan was buried in a shallow
7:15
Speaker 1: grave brings all kinds of problems along with it, as
7:18
Speaker 1: opposed to somebody digging down traditionally, which you think about,
7:21
Speaker 1: you know, six feet deep, we've heard that term before.
7:24
Speaker 1: When you get down into that kind of substrata what
7:27
Speaker 1: they call substrata, you're just barely on the surface here there.
7:32
Speaker 1: It doesn't afford a lot of protection for the body.
7:34
Speaker 1: So any kind of insect life that's out there, the
7:38
Speaker 1: body may as well be on top of the ground
7:41
Speaker 1: because for a fly that's coming by, it's nothing for
7:45
Speaker 1: the fly since this body buried under a very thin
7:48
Speaker 1: layer of soil. So you're going to still have, for instance,
7:53
Speaker 1: larval development that turns into to maggot. For instance, you're
7:57
Speaker 1: going to have burrowing animals that might not be quite
8:01
Speaker 1: as prone to get down to six feet would you know,
8:07
Speaker 1: just a very shallow area, they can dig down very easily.
8:11
Speaker 1: And then you know, out in this area you've got
8:13
Speaker 1: things like coyotes and they've got this tremendous sense of smell,
8:16
Speaker 1: so it's not really going to inhibit their ability to
8:19
Speaker 1: sense this body. And with that comes the fact that
8:23
Speaker 1: the body will be further compromised. It's just kind of logic,
8:27
Speaker 1: you know that earth. The deeper in the earth that
8:30
Speaker 1: you go, the body becomes more and more protected from
8:33
Speaker 1: what's going out on the surface and what's happening. And
8:36
Speaker 1: then you still have the environmental factors. If the body
8:39
Speaker 1: is in a shallow grave, the body is not going
8:41
Speaker 1: to be very well protected from heat either, maybe not
8:44
Speaker 1: to the degree that you would appreciate if the body
8:47
Speaker 1: was laying out on bare earth, but still heat is
8:49
Speaker 1: going to impact the body and it's going to speed
8:51
Speaker 1: up the process of decomposition. As you said earlier, joke,
8:54
Speaker 1: there is cough and birth. Talk to me about what
8:57
Speaker 1: that is, how that happens and this date's body when
9:01
Speaker 1: she has discovered here's here's what this scene would have
9:06
Speaker 1: looked like. And you know, I had an opportunity to
9:08
Speaker 1: hear some of the comments were made by many of
9:11
Speaker 1: the investigators that were out there and they're still to
9:14
Speaker 1: this day. Jackie just troubled down to to their soul
9:18
Speaker 1: over what they saw and we're just talking about Chanane's grave. Chanan,
9:23
Speaker 1: according to them, was essentially buried in a very very
9:29
Speaker 1: shallow grave. It wasn't There was not great effort that
9:34
Speaker 1: was taken in this. And we can learn a lot
9:36
Speaker 1: about an individual based upon this preparation, if you will.
9:41
Speaker 1: They have described her body as essentially being dumped in
9:45
Speaker 1: there like a pile of garbage. We do know that
9:48
Speaker 1: she was wrapping a sheet in the line on one
9:51
Speaker 1: side of her body. It's it's not you know, when
9:53
Speaker 1: we think about burial in a modern context, we think
9:57
Speaker 1: about people being on or don't we We think about people,
10:01
Speaker 1: say perhaps being laid on their back, maybe their hands crossed,
10:05
Speaker 1: not thrown away like rubbish. And according to the investigators,
10:09
Speaker 1: that's what they saw. It was hurried, it was frenzied,
10:14
Speaker 1: it was disordered. And as they began to kind of
10:19
Speaker 1: peel away these levels of dirt. As they kind of
10:22
Speaker 1: began to peel away these layers of dirt that have
10:26
Speaker 1: been quickly placed over her body, and they began to
10:29
Speaker 1: pull back the sheet that she was wrapped in, one
10:32
Speaker 1: of the things they saw was the body of a
10:38
Speaker 1: little nico that she had been pregnant with. And this
10:43
Speaker 1: gives you an indication as to how decomposed her body was.
10:47
Speaker 1: When humans are in a normal state, there's a certain
10:50
Speaker 1: amount of muscle tension that's in the body, and just
10:53
Speaker 1: thinking about that relative to a pregnancy, there's a certain
10:57
Speaker 1: amount of elasticity in tension that is occurring, say for instance,
11:03
Speaker 1: in the womb, in the uterus, that retains a child
11:07
Speaker 1: in place. But as decomposition begins to set in, that
11:12
Speaker 1: tension is released because the muscles they no longer have
11:15
Speaker 1: the same continuity. And as they release, as the body
11:20
Speaker 1: of the mother begins to decompose, this tension that endwells
11:24
Speaker 1: a body naturally releases, the muscles are no longer as
11:29
Speaker 1: resilient as they once were, and suddenly we have what
11:33
Speaker 1: it's called a coffin birth. So the baby is literally
11:38
Speaker 1: born in a post mortem state. That means that the
11:42
Speaker 1: mother's decomposing body has the child's body issued forth from her.
11:48
Speaker 1: It's no longer contained in And when the investigators pulled
11:51
Speaker 1: back that sheet, they found little Nico laying there, and
11:54
Speaker 1: they describe his body as being in a state of
11:59
Speaker 1: decomposition as well, you know, no longer protected by his
12:04
Speaker 1: mother's body. Now that little fetus, that little now born
12:09
Speaker 1: child in death is exposed to the same elemental factors,
12:14
Speaker 1: the same decompositional factors as his mother's body. And there
12:19
Speaker 1: he lay in that dirt next to his mama's body,
12:22
Speaker 1: knowing that nan had been dead probably about twelve hours
12:26
Speaker 1: at this point, Nico would not have been born alive. Correct,
12:30
Speaker 1: That's not possible for that baby to have been born alive.
12:35
Speaker 1: This was something that occurred postmortal. Man, keep in mind,
12:39
Speaker 1: and this really kind of drives drives a point home here,
12:43
Speaker 1: and this is why this is just one of the
12:47
Speaker 1: points along this that makes this so gut wretched, is
12:51
Speaker 1: the fact that when Chris Watts wrapped his hands around
12:57
Speaker 1: Channan Watts's throat and he called is that hemorrhage in
13:02
Speaker 1: the muscles around her neck? As he squeezed the life
13:05
Speaker 1: out of her, he was in effect squeezing the life
13:10
Speaker 1: out of this unborn child. And it is a sad said,
13:14
Speaker 1: ending to this life, Jackie. We've talked a little bit
13:40
Speaker 1: about Chanan and little Nico. What do we know about
13:45
Speaker 1: Celeste and Bella? Chris Watts took his children with him
13:50
Speaker 1: in the vehicle on the way to bury Chanan Watts,
13:54
Speaker 1: but what happened once they got to the oil field
13:57
Speaker 1: is certainly disturbing. We know the girls, we're asking what
14:01
Speaker 1: was wrong with their mother? And then he smothered his
14:04
Speaker 1: girls one at a time. What is the difference job
14:07
Speaker 1: between smothering a child and strangling an adult or is
14:13
Speaker 1: there any difference? That's a good question, Jackie. And forensics
14:17
Speaker 1: we actually refer to both of these kinds of deaths,
14:21
Speaker 1: whether it's a strangulation or a suffocation as an asphyxial death.
14:26
Speaker 1: And what that means is it's a deprivation of oxygen.
14:31
Speaker 1: As we say in the South, things got cut off
14:33
Speaker 1: you know, you're cutting off the air, the air supply,
14:37
Speaker 1: and so that's what's actually happening here. So you're depriving
14:41
Speaker 1: these little bodies, both Celeste and Bella, of their source
14:46
Speaker 1: of oxygen. And you know they're they're believing, at least
14:51
Speaker 1: the m is believing that this in fact was a smothering.
14:56
Speaker 1: And you know it's floated around for years and years.
14:58
Speaker 1: It's smothering is one of the most difficult things to detect.
15:02
Speaker 1: And you'd be absolutely right because you know, you think about, well,
15:06
Speaker 1: how would you go about smothering smothering these children. Well,
15:11
Speaker 1: in the case of say, for instance, we've got Celeste,
15:16
Speaker 1: who's tiny. You know, she's only three years old, you
15:22
Speaker 1: could very simply if you're a grown man, particularly the
15:25
Speaker 1: size of their daddy. Remember he worked out all the time.
15:27
Speaker 1: He took a lot of pride in displaying how what
15:30
Speaker 1: a fantastic physique he has. They would be no match
15:34
Speaker 1: for this man. With Celeste, there was very little evidence
15:38
Speaker 1: of trauma on her little body, so it would be
15:42
Speaker 1: very simple for him to take, say, for instance, the
15:45
Speaker 1: palm of his hand or even a pillow and place
15:49
Speaker 1: it over her mouth. I think that probably in these
15:51
Speaker 1: circumstances out there. Remember that the investigators believe these two
15:57
Speaker 1: children were actually alive. In his vehicle as he is
16:02
Speaker 1: transporting the body of his deceased wife out to her
16:06
Speaker 1: burial spot. He could have easily placed his hand over
16:10
Speaker 1: celesque face, over her nose, in her mouth and deprived
16:14
Speaker 1: her of oxygen and she would have essentially just kind
16:17
Speaker 1: of gone to sleep. And this is what's referred to
16:20
Speaker 1: as an anoxic death, which means that you're literally depriving
16:25
Speaker 1: the brain of oxygen. The brain requires oxygen in order
16:29
Speaker 1: to do all of its functions and including keeping our
16:33
Speaker 1: heart beating. Now, Bella is a completely different story, and
16:39
Speaker 1: I'll tell you why. There's something that's very very significant
16:42
Speaker 1: here from a forensic standpoint that gives us an indication
16:46
Speaker 1: of what may have happened to her and what he
16:48
Speaker 1: actually did to her. She had no evidence of BATIKUII,
16:54
Speaker 1: and that is those little vessels that are bursting in
16:57
Speaker 1: her eyes due to pressure. However, there is something significant,
17:02
Speaker 1: and it has to do with her mouth. Investigator's report
17:06
Speaker 1: and theme reports that she had some trauma to her tongue.
17:13
Speaker 1: You know, how else would she get trauma to her tongue?
17:15
Speaker 1: Unless she's probably resisting, and not only in her tongue,
17:20
Speaker 1: but there's a little piece of tissue that attaches our
17:24
Speaker 1: upper lip and our lower lip to the gums, respectively,
17:27
Speaker 1: and that's referred to as frenulum, and it's a classic
17:31
Speaker 1: thing that you look for in suffocation or smothering. Her
17:36
Speaker 1: upper frenulum was actually lacerated or torn. And if people
17:40
Speaker 1: at home will just kind of take the tip of
17:42
Speaker 1: your tongue, put it outside your gum and in between
17:45
Speaker 1: your lip, and you can actually feel that little piece
17:47
Speaker 1: of connective tissue if there is pressure directly applied to
17:52
Speaker 1: the mouth with a hand, for instance, and you're fighting,
17:55
Speaker 1: you're resisting, you're trying to save your own life, you're trying,
18:00
Speaker 1: you're struggling to get a breath. That can actually tear.
18:04
Speaker 1: And I find it very interesting that out of the
18:09
Speaker 1: essentially four lives that he ended, little Bella fought the most.
18:14
Speaker 1: She was only four years old. Just let that sink in.
18:16
Speaker 1: We you know, we were all four years old at
18:19
Speaker 1: one point in time. Maybe we have children or grandchildren
18:21
Speaker 1: that are four. You can think about the size of
18:24
Speaker 1: a child, a little girl like this, But she fought,
18:28
Speaker 1: and you know what, the one thing that they found
18:31
Speaker 1: on Chris Watts at night when they interviewed him, the
18:34
Speaker 1: one bit of evidence when they talked to him the
18:37
Speaker 1: next day. He had a small mark on his neck,
18:40
Speaker 1: and I've often wondered if that was not Bella in
18:43
Speaker 1: just a last gasp, a desperate gasp, but try to
18:47
Speaker 1: reach up and fend her daddy off, her father, her father,
18:52
Speaker 1: the man that was there to protect her and love
18:54
Speaker 1: on her and watch after her as she grew up.
18:58
Speaker 1: She's trying to fight him off, perhaps, and she scratched
19:01
Speaker 1: him on his neck, and they have evidence of this.
19:03
Speaker 1: They took pictures of that. They've never actually linked the two,
19:06
Speaker 1: but I've often thought about that, because she did fight back.
19:09
Speaker 1: She fought back to the point where this tissue in
19:13
Speaker 1: her mouth was essentially lacerated and there were little areas
19:17
Speaker 1: of hemorrhage, which means it happened in life. Joe, you
19:20
Speaker 1: just confused me by saying that there was no particular
19:23
Speaker 1: hemorrhage in her eyes. How is that possible? And you're
19:26
Speaker 1: gonna have to explain that to me because you've repeatedly
19:29
Speaker 1: said that when people are smothered, that's one of the
19:32
Speaker 1: first things that forensic experts look for. So how was
19:37
Speaker 1: it possible if she was smothered that there's not any
19:41
Speaker 1: I'll tell you why, Jackie. I'm a simple guy and
19:44
Speaker 1: I kind of like word pictures, and so the way
19:46
Speaker 1: I always try to explain particular hemorrhaging is ill you
19:51
Speaker 1: think about a water hose that's attached to your house,
19:55
Speaker 1: and you've got a nozzle on one end, and it's closed,
19:58
Speaker 1: and you turn up the water pressure on this faucet
20:04
Speaker 1: outside of your house, and the hose might begin to expand,
20:07
Speaker 1: but yet you turn it off and suddenly the water
20:10
Speaker 1: that's trapped in there you can release it if you
20:13
Speaker 1: if you squeeze the nozzle. There has to be sufficient
20:17
Speaker 1: amount of time that goes by where this internal pressure
20:21
Speaker 1: is placed on these tiny little vessels. These vessels are
20:24
Speaker 1: actually located and what's referred to as our capillary beds,
20:28
Speaker 1: which are these tiny, tiny little vessels. You've got what
20:32
Speaker 1: are called arterials and you've got what are called venules.
20:36
Speaker 1: And what happens is that most of the time with
20:38
Speaker 1: particular hemorrhagy, if you put enough pressure on them, they're
20:42
Speaker 1: going to literally burst and in the little areas of
20:45
Speaker 1: tissue that surround these vessels, that blood seeps out, It
20:49
Speaker 1: seeps out into what's called interstitial tissue, and it presents
20:53
Speaker 1: You can't you can't make it go away. It's not
20:55
Speaker 1: like a crime scene that you go back and you
20:57
Speaker 1: try to clean it up. That doesn't happen. With these
21:00
Speaker 1: little pen prick hemorrhages. It's going to be there forever
21:03
Speaker 1: and ever. Amen. The trick here, though, is that in
21:07
Speaker 1: all three of these cases where Chris Watts put his
21:12
Speaker 1: hands on these two children, these two little precious baby
21:16
Speaker 1: girls and his precious wife it's lading their sleep, is
21:21
Speaker 1: that he didn't render enough pressure for long enough time,
21:26
Speaker 1: for long enough time for these vessels to burst in
21:30
Speaker 1: their eyes so that they could appreciate. You're not always
21:33
Speaker 1: going to get these little focal areas of hemorrhage like that.
21:36
Speaker 1: It is not necessarily going to happen. So what you're
21:39
Speaker 1: telling me, Joe, is that the difference in the two
21:43
Speaker 1: is that it took less pressure and less time to
21:48
Speaker 1: kill a child as opposed to an adult. Yeah, and
21:52
Speaker 1: you're absolutely right, Jackie. It did take less pressure and
21:56
Speaker 1: less time because they're weaker and so it only takes
22:00
Speaker 1: a smaller amount of time to compromise their airway, their
22:03
Speaker 1: ability to uptake oxygen so that their brain can still
22:08
Speaker 1: function as opposed to someone that might be more robust,
22:12
Speaker 1: like a full grown man, an adult, if you will.
22:16
Speaker 1: And you know, Nan is not too far removed from
22:20
Speaker 1: this category because we reflect back and think about what
22:22
Speaker 1: we think may have been her status. We know that
22:25
Speaker 1: she was tired, we know that she was advanced in
22:28
Speaker 1: her month's relative to pregnancy, and also there's that specter
22:32
Speaker 1: that she may have had some type of drug on
22:35
Speaker 1: board that would cause her to be in a weakened state,
22:38
Speaker 1: cause her to be I don't know, just probably barely
22:41
Speaker 1: semi conscious. So yeah, it's not going to take too
22:44
Speaker 1: much in their lives. It's such a tragedy when you
23:08
Speaker 1: begin to think about these two little girls whose lives
23:11
Speaker 1: were snuffed out by their daddy. But one of the
23:14
Speaker 1: really puzzling and most horrific parts to this whole story
23:18
Speaker 1: is what he did with the bodies afterwards. You're absolutely right, Joe.
23:22
Speaker 1: Let's start at the beginning. We know that once the
23:25
Speaker 1: little girls were dead, that he first stuffed at their
23:28
Speaker 1: little bodies through an eight inch hatch into an oil tank.
23:35
Speaker 1: Let's just start there. How do the bodies of two
23:39
Speaker 1: little girls four and three years old fit through an
23:45
Speaker 1: eight inch hole? Think about it. That's about the size
23:50
Speaker 1: of a dinner plate. It's horrific, you know. And it
23:54
Speaker 1: was the Anna Darco wall fields out there, and it's
23:58
Speaker 1: a desolate area. I mean it is you talk about
24:01
Speaker 1: being removed. It was removed from breast of civilization and
24:05
Speaker 1: just kind of sits out there. It kind of rises
24:07
Speaker 1: up out of this prairie out there. Why there, Well,
24:10
Speaker 1: he knew that it would be isolated. This guy was
24:12
Speaker 1: familiar with this area. He had a full awareness of
24:16
Speaker 1: what went out there. And these tanks are essentially storage
24:20
Speaker 1: tanks for raw petroleum. He takes these two children out there,
24:26
Speaker 1: and he's got a problem. What am I going to
24:29
Speaker 1: do with him? Well, he had already dug a very
24:31
Speaker 1: shallow grave for his wife not too far away from
24:34
Speaker 1: the base of these tanks, and quickly deposited her body
24:38
Speaker 1: in that area. Now, what do you do with these
24:41
Speaker 1: two children where there's two tanks. Now, these things are
24:44
Speaker 1: made very specifically. They're kind of high. They're probably approximating
24:48
Speaker 1: maybe twenty feet in height there, so and on top
24:52
Speaker 1: they have these little hatches and they've got a very
24:55
Speaker 1: interesting name. They're called thief hatches. And he popped the
24:58
Speaker 1: latch on the thief hatch on each one of these tanks.
25:05
Speaker 1: And with Bella in particular. She's four years old, so
25:10
Speaker 1: her body is certainly larger and more robust than her
25:14
Speaker 1: three year old sister Celeste. How do you get her
25:17
Speaker 1: into this hole? Well, the only way I can really
25:21
Speaker 1: describe it is the fact that she was actually jammed
25:26
Speaker 1: down into that hole. And how do I know that?
25:28
Speaker 1: You know, the investigators reported that one of the first
25:30
Speaker 1: things that they noticed when they got out there to
25:34
Speaker 1: that site, and they had been given the information that
25:37
Speaker 1: this is where these two little angels were, they looked
25:41
Speaker 1: at the thief hatch where Bella's body had been deposited,
25:45
Speaker 1: and a right along the rim there, some of her
25:48
Speaker 1: hair was caught in that. And it wasn't just like
25:52
Speaker 1: a strand I don't think it was like a clump
25:54
Speaker 1: of hair. Now, how's that accomplished? Well, her body is
25:59
Speaker 1: obviously you just think about how big eight inches is
26:02
Speaker 1: that's the diameter on this thing. How in fact do
26:05
Speaker 1: you drive the body of a four year old through
26:09
Speaker 1: this tiny opening? Well, it was hard and The evidence
26:13
Speaker 1: of that is the fact that her hair was left
26:17
Speaker 1: behind in the edge, which means that it was torn away.
26:20
Speaker 1: It was ripped away as he's jamming her down through
26:22
Speaker 1: this hole. And another thing this demonstrates when they finally
26:26
Speaker 1: do examine Bella's body, She's got scrapes where the edge,
26:33
Speaker 1: the metal edge of that thief hatch caught hold and
26:37
Speaker 1: it left these marks on her body. There have been
26:40
Speaker 1: broken bones. Joe, we think about what he would have
26:43
Speaker 1: had to have done to get Bella through that thief hatch.
26:46
Speaker 1: Isn't that inappropriate appropriate term? Considering this guy stole the
26:50
Speaker 1: life of these two little, precious girls. He would have
26:54
Speaker 1: had to have taken Bella probably would not have needed
26:58
Speaker 1: to break bone, but he would have at her shoulders
27:01
Speaker 1: kind of folded her in toward the center in order
27:05
Speaker 1: to facilitate getting her down. She probably would have went
27:08
Speaker 1: in head first. And as he's pressing her down through
27:12
Speaker 1: this opening, through this thief hatch, the metal edges of
27:15
Speaker 1: this thing called hold of the tissue the skin, and
27:19
Speaker 1: it raked it away, and it left these scratches on
27:22
Speaker 1: her body as she fell through this thing. Finally, I'm
27:25
Speaker 1: sure that it took a tremendous amount of force on
27:27
Speaker 1: his part to get her down there. And looking at
27:30
Speaker 1: the drop from this thief hatch that you're talking about, Joe,
27:33
Speaker 1: as he stepped the bodies down, you said that most
27:35
Speaker 1: likely he would not have had the broken bones to
27:37
Speaker 1: get the children inside those catches. But what about the drop.
27:42
Speaker 1: We don't necessarily know how far they fell if they
27:45
Speaker 1: went right into the contents of the oil tank, so
27:49
Speaker 1: would there have been broken bones from the drop itself.
27:52
Speaker 1: I think that the fact that they're falling, though it
27:55
Speaker 1: is a kind of a height. You know, we're looking
27:58
Speaker 1: at maybe fifteen to eighteen feet and height that they're
28:01
Speaker 1: falling from the opening of the seashatch. They're splashing down
28:06
Speaker 1: into a fluid environment. So that's actually going to break
28:11
Speaker 1: the fall to a certain degree, provided that they don't
28:14
Speaker 1: strike the bottom of this tank, you know, the bare bottom,
28:17
Speaker 1: you know. I think that there's enough of a layer
28:19
Speaker 1: of fluid there that kind of cradle the bodies when
28:22
Speaker 1: they hit. So you're not going to see any kind
28:25
Speaker 1: of fracturing or impact injuries necessarily related to this. And
28:28
Speaker 1: one other thing you have to keep in mind, there's
28:31
Speaker 1: not going to be any hemorrhage related to the fall either,
28:34
Speaker 1: you know, because this is a postmorn event, he had
28:37
Speaker 1: killed these girls before he put them in there, So
28:39
Speaker 1: I don't know that we would ever really know, and
28:43
Speaker 1: you know, not to mention the bodies were greatly compromised,
28:47
Speaker 1: Their status was greatly compromised when it came to the
28:51
Speaker 1: medical examiner or the corner being able to examine these
28:54
Speaker 1: bodies once they got them back to the morgue. That
28:56
Speaker 1: leads us to the next point in our discussion, Joe,
28:59
Speaker 1: is what happened to the bodies of those two little
29:01
Speaker 1: girls once they were inside those oil tanks. How caustic
29:07
Speaker 1: is oil and what is it going to do to
29:10
Speaker 1: human tissue that is left in there for any period
29:14
Speaker 1: of time. The horrific part to this is that, first off,
29:18
Speaker 1: when you go into this environment, and this is raw petroleum,
29:22
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of stuff that comes off of
29:23
Speaker 1: raw petroleum that we create in this world that we use.
29:27
Speaker 1: It's not just gasoline, and it's not just lubricantness all
29:30
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff that it's used for. But something that's
29:34
Speaker 1: naturally occurring is what's for two, is aromatic hydrocarbons, and
29:41
Speaker 1: in this environment, in this environment, two substances stick out.
29:46
Speaker 1: One's called taluween and another's called benzene. And if you've
29:49
Speaker 1: ever heard of benzene, you know that it can be
29:51
Speaker 1: used to polish things with. It is very lethal taluween
29:58
Speaker 1: as well, and it causes things to break down very quickly.
30:02
Speaker 1: It eats into tissue, not to the same degree as
30:05
Speaker 1: certain assets do, but it causes a tissue to become
30:10
Speaker 1: greatly compromised. It softens things, it begins to promote this
30:16
Speaker 1: kind of coming apart, and then you marry that up
30:19
Speaker 1: with natural decompositional process, and these bodies are going to
30:24
Speaker 1: wind up and what's referred to as kind of a
30:27
Speaker 1: macerated state, which means that the decomposition has gotten to
30:30
Speaker 1: the point, this chemical effect that has gotten to the
30:32
Speaker 1: point where the structural integrity of the body, it's really hard.
30:39
Speaker 1: The structural integrity of the body is so compromised that
30:43
Speaker 1: assessing the body at the autopsy is going to be
30:48
Speaker 1: quite the chore. So are you telling me, then, Joe,
30:52
Speaker 1: that their bones would have impliable. I don't know that
30:56
Speaker 1: the bones would have necessarily been pliable in this I
31:00
Speaker 1: know that the soft tissue surrounding them though, just imagine,
31:04
Speaker 1: if you will, the worst sunburn that you've ever seen
31:07
Speaker 1: in your life, where tissue is beginning to peel away.
31:11
Speaker 1: It's almost like a chemical burn that's taking taking place,
31:14
Speaker 1: and you would have seen the layers and layers of
31:16
Speaker 1: tissue that would have been coming off just by touching it. Now,
31:20
Speaker 1: it's not going to necessarily appear that way initially, but
31:24
Speaker 1: when you begin to move these bodies around, the bodies
31:28
Speaker 1: are very fragile, so tissue will begin to fall off
31:31
Speaker 1: of the bone, if you will. In certain cases deepended
31:34
Speaker 1: upon the length of exposure, they have to these horrible
31:37
Speaker 1: chemicals there that they're found in. You know, they had
31:41
Speaker 1: to drain both of these tanks when this occurred. They
31:45
Speaker 1: had to call the EPA out because this is such
31:48
Speaker 1: a dangerous situation. So not only did this guy murder
31:54
Speaker 1: his children and his wife, but where he placed Belle
32:00
Speaker 1: and Celeste is such a volatile environment that all of
32:05
Speaker 1: the workers, all of the investigators, the people that work
32:08
Speaker 1: out there that have control over these tanks, because they
32:12
Speaker 1: had to be drained, all these people were exposed to
32:15
Speaker 1: these chemicals. And just think about that just for a second.
32:19
Speaker 1: This is the ultimate in a selfish act, you know,
32:21
Speaker 1: and nobody really talks about this. These investigators that are
32:25
Speaker 1: out there and the workers that are out there are
32:28
Speaker 1: traumatized to the fact that they're having to extricate these
32:31
Speaker 1: little girls out of these tanks, after they know they've
32:33
Speaker 1: been sitting out there all night long, after the tanks
32:36
Speaker 1: have been drained, and they got to go out in
32:38
Speaker 1: there and do that. But they've got to put on
32:40
Speaker 1: hazmat suits in order to facilitate this. It was a
32:44
Speaker 1: monumental undertaking and I can tell you these investigators and workers,
32:49
Speaker 1: they're going to be scarred by this for the rest
32:50
Speaker 1: of their life. Joe, I've heard you talk about this
32:53
Speaker 1: case before, and one of the things that always rings
32:56
Speaker 1: out for me is the phrase, the term degloved. I've
33:02
Speaker 1: heard you reference that word in regards to these girls.
33:07
Speaker 1: Explain that to me. We've got two layers of skin
33:10
Speaker 1: we commonly think about. We think about the epidermist, which
33:15
Speaker 1: means tops, the top layer. You know. It's like when
33:17
Speaker 1: you get a blister on your hand. That's the top
33:20
Speaker 1: layer of the skin that's rising ups, filled with fluid.
33:23
Speaker 1: And then you've got the dermist, which is that underlying surface.
33:25
Speaker 1: Beneath the epidermist. It's a bit more robust, it's thicker
33:30
Speaker 1: with deep clubbing. It can happen in a couple of ways.
33:33
Speaker 1: You find it a lot in water environments where you
33:35
Speaker 1: have a body that's found out in a lake or
33:38
Speaker 1: a river and maybe the ocean, and that skin begins
33:41
Speaker 1: to come away, that dermist begins to come away from
33:45
Speaker 1: the underlying connected tissue that you can actually peel a
33:49
Speaker 1: an entire hands. You can actually peel the surface of
33:57
Speaker 1: tissue off of a human hand, and that's where we
34:01
Speaker 1: get this term de glove, and it's like you're peeling
34:03
Speaker 1: a glove off of a hand. And this can happen
34:07
Speaker 1: over the entire body. When you're talking about exposing them
34:10
Speaker 1: to things like benzene and taluweene and this sort of thing.
34:14
Speaker 1: The whole body can become degloves so that the tissue,
34:17
Speaker 1: that outer lay of tissue becomes peeled away. And you
34:22
Speaker 1: can actually appreciate this. It's almost like the skin it's
34:27
Speaker 1: just being kind of rolled off, if you will. And
34:31
Speaker 1: you know, I've seen this in environments when you bring
34:33
Speaker 1: bodies into the mark that have been exposed to chemicals
34:37
Speaker 1: like this, you have to be very very careful because
34:40
Speaker 1: it's all very fragile. It'll come off in an instant.
34:43
Speaker 1: You can actually take your gloved hand you have a
34:45
Speaker 1: rubber glove on in the morgue and touch it to
34:48
Speaker 1: the surface of these bodies, and sometimes when you pull
34:51
Speaker 1: your hand away or that tissue comes off on your
34:53
Speaker 1: gloved hands and it's it really magnifies this in that
34:58
Speaker 1: sense that and they got these bodies back to the morgue.
35:02
Speaker 1: This is something that we're having to deal with. There's
35:05
Speaker 1: a horrible smell that comes along with this. You would
35:08
Speaker 1: probably have to wear some type of not just regular mask,
35:11
Speaker 1: probably a respirator if you're going to do this examination.
35:15
Speaker 1: And the evidence that you're talking about here is so fine, Jackie.
35:18
Speaker 1: I mean we're talking about you know, we talked about
35:20
Speaker 1: petiquii or the eyes even preserved well enough that tissue
35:24
Speaker 1: around the eyes so that you can see if there
35:26
Speaker 1: are any particular hemorrhages. Are you able to appreciate the
35:30
Speaker 1: neck to the degree you need to see if there
35:33
Speaker 1: was any kind of hemorrhage relative to manual strangulation in
35:37
Speaker 1: of course, in Bella's case, they were able to see
35:40
Speaker 1: this trauma to the tongue and that little piece of tissue,
35:42
Speaker 1: the fregulum in her lip. They were able to appreciate that,
35:45
Speaker 1: but a lot of other evidence is gone. I'm Joseph
35:52
Speaker 1: Scott Morgan and this is Body Backs