Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Staging a Murder-Suicide -The Familial Murder of Pamela and Helen Hargan

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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Staging a Murder-Suicide -The Familial Murder of Pamela and Helen Hargan · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:08
Speaker 1: Body Backs with Joseph Scott Morgan. Your parent that works hard,
0:22
Speaker 1: I mean weary to the bone hard day after day
0:27
Speaker 1: to try to make a life for yourself. You finally
0:31
Speaker 1: reached that point in your life where you're rolling through
0:34
Speaker 1: your sixties and you think that all is right with
0:38
Speaker 1: the world. You've provided a home, You've got your kids
0:42
Speaker 1: kind of in a position where they can take care
0:44
Speaker 1: of themselves, and you want to enjoy life. But one
0:49
Speaker 1: of the oldest motives in the world begins to kind
0:53
Speaker 1: of sneak in to your family circle. They used to
0:58
Speaker 1: refer to it as the green eyed monk. It's the
1:01
Speaker 1: idea of greed and jealousy, wanting to possess those things
1:06
Speaker 1: that you haven't worked for throughout your life, but you
1:09
Speaker 1: want them given to you, and you want them given
1:11
Speaker 1: to you now, even at the expense of the ones
1:15
Speaker 1: that you supposedly love. Today, we're going to talk about
1:19
Speaker 1: a staged murder suicide in McLean, Virginia. I'm Joseph Scott
1:26
Speaker 1: Morgan and this is Bodybacks. Jackie Howard, executive producer for
1:35
Speaker 1: Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, is joining me. Jackie, I
1:40
Speaker 1: gotta tell you when you walk onto a scene. When
1:44
Speaker 1: you've got more than one body, there's always this little
1:48
Speaker 1: voice in the back of your head as an investigator
1:51
Speaker 1: where you're thinking, you know, I gotta make sure that
1:54
Speaker 1: I get this right. Because as bad as homicide is
1:59
Speaker 1: in its singular or form, when you've got two people
2:05
Speaker 1: that have died, you know that you're walking into an
2:08
Speaker 1: environment that has just been occupied by fear and total
2:11
Speaker 1: violence that someone would bring about the deaths of two individuals,
2:17
Speaker 1: and you begin to think about all kinds of things.
2:19
Speaker 1: This is suicide, Is this a homicide? Is this a
2:23
Speaker 1: double homicide? Do you have a madman running around out
2:27
Speaker 1: in neighborhood somewhere? Because you know, the public, they hear this,
2:31
Speaker 1: it gets out there. They want to know that they
2:32
Speaker 1: feel safe. And in McLean, Virginia, you know, you it's
2:37
Speaker 1: not known for a huge crime right there. Now, people
2:40
Speaker 1: want to feel safe. And when the police rolled up
2:43
Speaker 1: to this one point three million dollar home, I have
2:47
Speaker 1: to imagine they were kind of scratching their head. Pamela Hargan,
2:51
Speaker 1: as you said, Joe was a very successful woman. She
2:54
Speaker 1: and her three daughters lived in a one point three
2:57
Speaker 1: million dollars mansion. Now she was a single mom, as
3:00
Speaker 1: her daughters grew up, Megan, Ashley and Helen. There was
3:06
Speaker 1: a fifteen year difference between Helen and Meghan, the oldest
3:09
Speaker 1: and the youngest. When police arrived on the scene, they
3:14
Speaker 1: found Pamela Hargan sixty three, dead in the laundry room,
3:20
Speaker 1: and then they found Helen again, twenty three, the youngest,
3:24
Speaker 1: in her bedroom, also deceased. When police arrived on the scene, Joe,
3:30
Speaker 1: they immediately knew and recognized that this was a staged scene.
3:37
Speaker 1: How well you begin to try to assess the environment
3:41
Speaker 1: in which the bodies are found in. Is everything appeared
3:43
Speaker 1: to be consistent with what is being portrayed before you.
3:49
Speaker 1: There was an old forensic pathologist that I used to
3:52
Speaker 1: work with, and he had this kind of saying that
3:56
Speaker 1: he would say, it comes off of Madison Avenue. He
4:00
Speaker 1: would say, we would be in the Morgan. He would
4:02
Speaker 1: you know, we'd be standing over body to do the examination.
4:06
Speaker 1: He says, we need to make sure that everything is
4:08
Speaker 1: as advertised. And I've always kind of kept that in
4:12
Speaker 1: the back of my mind, one of those little phrases
4:15
Speaker 1: that helps me stay focused. You know, when I was
4:18
Speaker 1: certainly conducting an investigation as a collection of investigators. We're
4:23
Speaker 1: a bunch of doubting Thomas's. You have to prove it
4:25
Speaker 1: to us in order for us to buy it, and
4:27
Speaker 1: I think that that's probably what the police were thinking.
4:31
Speaker 1: It's kind of an interesting thing when you begin to
4:34
Speaker 1: think that mom is found in one area of the
4:38
Speaker 1: house and she has been shot in the head. There's
4:42
Speaker 1: multiple casings spent casings, which are twenty two caliber, and
4:46
Speaker 1: twenty two caliber are one of the very smallest calibers
4:50
Speaker 1: that you can acquire that are in common usage. There's
4:52
Speaker 1: other things that are out there, and we've talked about
4:54
Speaker 1: that before on bodybacks, but it's one of the smaller
4:56
Speaker 1: calibers that's out there. However, it is lethal and it
5:00
Speaker 1: is highly effective. And as it turned out, these rounds
5:04
Speaker 1: had been fired from a rifle and not handgun, you know,
5:08
Speaker 1: which you know, there are people that certainly do take
5:12
Speaker 1: their own lives with rifles. I've seen it over and
5:14
Speaker 1: over again because when many homes are going to find that,
5:16
Speaker 1: people will have a small caliber rifle like this for
5:19
Speaker 1: what they call varmint hunting or just you know, in
5:22
Speaker 1: home protection. It's easy to wield, it doesn't take a
5:26
Speaker 1: lot of strength, but you know, back to the bodies,
5:31
Speaker 1: Mom was found in one area of the house and
5:34
Speaker 1: then the daughter, Helen, was found in another location. In
5:38
Speaker 1: my experience with murder suicides, and this is not always
5:41
Speaker 1: the case, all right, but just hear me out. In
5:44
Speaker 1: many cases with murder suicides, you will find individuals that
5:50
Speaker 1: when they commit the murder, they immediately take the weapon
5:55
Speaker 1: and turn it on themselves and then shoot themselves. And
6:00
Speaker 1: in this particular case, that's not what they were seeing.
6:04
Speaker 1: So automatically you're going to think that something is wrong here.
6:09
Speaker 1: Why would she be in another location of the home,
6:12
Speaker 1: And so that begins the wheels to begin to spend,
6:16
Speaker 1: and I think that probably what they were looking at
6:19
Speaker 1: also were the injuries. She was found in her bedroom
6:23
Speaker 1: with the butt of the weapon wedged, as a police say,
6:26
Speaker 1: between her feet and the muzzle of the weapon resting
6:31
Speaker 1: against her abdomen. And for them this seemed rather atypical,
6:37
Speaker 1: you know, as they begin to dig deeper into this case,
6:40
Speaker 1: a big clue would have to be the location of
6:43
Speaker 1: that rifle in Helen's bedroom, As you said, it was
6:47
Speaker 1: wedged between her legs. First thing I wanted to know
6:51
Speaker 1: I'm learning from you, Joe, is where the wound is
6:55
Speaker 1: in the abdomen, because that's where the muzzle of the
6:57
Speaker 1: gun was. And then we find out that her wound
7:00
Speaker 1: was not in the abdomen, And what's she wearing her shoes?
7:03
Speaker 1: Because if she had done this, more than likely, considering
7:08
Speaker 1: where the gun ended up, she would have had to
7:11
Speaker 1: use her feet. That's one of the things that you
7:14
Speaker 1: want to look for, and I know what you're going
7:16
Speaker 1: for here was the trigger mechanism of the weapon actually
7:21
Speaker 1: actuated by utilizing a toe. Because when you think about
7:27
Speaker 1: if somebody is going to inflict a self inflicted wound
7:31
Speaker 1: with a long arm, which our shoulder fired arm, which
7:34
Speaker 1: this rifle is, you have to place the butt of
7:37
Speaker 1: the stock into your shoulder and pull the trigger with
7:42
Speaker 1: your hand being clasped adjacent to forward of the butt
7:46
Speaker 1: and actuating the trigger with your finger. That's going to
7:49
Speaker 1: be hard to do for certain people, depending upon their
7:53
Speaker 1: arm length. That's one of the reasons at autopsy it's
7:55
Speaker 1: a good idea to always measure the arms. Will do
7:58
Speaker 1: it from shoulder to the tips of the fingers and
8:01
Speaker 1: from the elbow or what's called the ACF, the anticubital fossil,
8:07
Speaker 1: which is essentially just a fancy term for the bend
8:10
Speaker 1: in your arm, to the tips of the fingers, and
8:12
Speaker 1: also to the thumb, you know, because you can manipulate
8:15
Speaker 1: a weapon with the thumb as well. But what kind
8:18
Speaker 1: of turns this whole thing around is that when the
8:23
Speaker 1: police began to examine Helen's body, and I would imagine
8:29
Speaker 1: the emmy that was at the scene, they noticed something
8:31
Speaker 1: odd about her wound. Her wound was not in the abdomen,
8:36
Speaker 1: The muzzle was merely resting against her abdomen. The police
8:42
Speaker 1: had stated that the actual gunshot wound was to the
8:47
Speaker 1: top of her head. Now, that's very difficult to do,
8:52
Speaker 1: particularly given the stature of an individual, particularly a female
8:57
Speaker 1: whose arms tend to be a bit shorter than a male.
9:00
Speaker 1: Do they have the arm strength, upper body strength in
9:02
Speaker 1: order to hold the weapon in order to facilitate that,
9:06
Speaker 1: and then you have to account for overall length in
9:09
Speaker 1: order to pull the trigger. Can you actually imagine? Can
9:12
Speaker 1: anyone actually imagine what kind of contortion is you would
9:14
Speaker 1: have to be in order to place the muzzle of
9:18
Speaker 1: a rifle adjacent to the top of your head and
9:21
Speaker 1: then in some way attempt to pull the trigger with
9:26
Speaker 1: even your toe or your thumb, or maybe an index finger.
9:30
Speaker 1: I think that it would be very difficult. Now, there
9:32
Speaker 1: have been cases where people have used items such as paintsticks.
9:38
Speaker 1: I've had a couple of cases, well, one case involving
9:40
Speaker 1: paintstick where the paintstick is actually used to press the
9:46
Speaker 1: trigger in order to actuate the weapon, but there's no
9:49
Speaker 1: evidence of that in this case. I've also had cases
9:51
Speaker 1: where individuals have rigged triggers with strings and ropes and
9:56
Speaker 1: those sorts of things in order to pull it. But
9:58
Speaker 1: there has to be a lot of thought goes into
10:00
Speaker 1: that in order to facilitate that and make that happen,
10:03
Speaker 1: And in this case, there was no evidence of that.
10:05
Speaker 1: And let's be realistic, Joe, just the dynamics of gravity
10:12
Speaker 1: in itself, it would have had to have been a
10:15
Speaker 1: one in a million even if you had tried to
10:20
Speaker 1: kill yourself holding the gun. I mean, just let's walk
10:24
Speaker 1: through this, and you're laying on the bed. You're going
10:26
Speaker 1: to shoot yourself in the top of the head with
10:28
Speaker 1: a rifle, so you're trying to figure out how to
10:32
Speaker 1: hold it to get it done, and when you actually
10:36
Speaker 1: activate the trigger, it's a one in a million shot.
10:39
Speaker 1: That that gun is actually going to fall directly between
10:42
Speaker 1: your legs laying on the bed. Gravity just doesn't work
10:46
Speaker 1: that way most of the time. That constant force in nature,
10:49
Speaker 1: which we're all subject to and plays a big part
10:52
Speaker 1: in death investigation, is in fact gravity that's going to
10:55
Speaker 1: dictate everything that occurs. You know, because at the close
10:59
Speaker 1: of the death, when you're deceased, you are your body.
11:04
Speaker 1: Let me be very careful in saying that your body
11:08
Speaker 1: is now completely subject to all of the forces of
11:14
Speaker 1: nature that are impacting every other inanimate object in your environment.
11:22
Speaker 1: You know, whether it's a chair or a shoe, or
11:26
Speaker 1: you know, a weapon, or your body. You become literally
11:29
Speaker 1: you know, that's where that you know, that term that
11:32
Speaker 1: is used in our vernacular over and over again called
11:34
Speaker 1: dead weight. If no one has ever attempted to carry
11:38
Speaker 1: a deceased individual, to move a deceased individual, you can't
11:41
Speaker 1: fully appreciate that term, because people, when they're alive, when
11:44
Speaker 1: you're carrying them, they kind of help you, they kind
11:46
Speaker 1: of give you an assist. But with deadweight, you've got
11:50
Speaker 1: the human body is so oddly distributed with where weight
11:54
Speaker 1: is distributed throughout the body, that gravity is going to
11:58
Speaker 1: dictate where the body comes to rest, and certainly it's
12:02
Speaker 1: going to impact where the weapon it's going to come
12:04
Speaker 1: to rest. So the fact that she was in this position,
12:10
Speaker 1: given the evidence that you have initially is that the
12:16
Speaker 1: gunshot wound the GSW is in the top of the head,
12:19
Speaker 1: you know, it gives you pause as an investigator. And
12:22
Speaker 1: one other things that's kind of very telling here, I
12:25
Speaker 1: think is, you know, when the police initially released information
12:32
Speaker 1: from the scene about this case, they used the term
12:37
Speaker 1: murder suicide, okay, and then you know, as you know,
12:41
Speaker 1: time goes by, you can see them saying in press
12:45
Speaker 1: releases that, well, the investigation is ongoing, they're taking a
12:49
Speaker 1: longer look at this, and they've got other information coming
12:52
Speaker 1: in and whatnot. But you know, who never said that
12:56
Speaker 1: was the theme, had stated that Hammle's manner of death
13:02
Speaker 1: was a homicide. But here's what's key. The m did
13:09
Speaker 1: not say did not say that Helen's manner of death
13:14
Speaker 1: or suicide. They initially left the thing as undetermined. So
13:18
Speaker 1: that tells me that when they received these bodies at
13:22
Speaker 1: the morgue and they began to do the examination, began
13:27
Speaker 1: to do a very close look or give Helen's body
13:31
Speaker 1: a very close look. They were able to determine that
13:34
Speaker 1: gunshot wound that has been alleged to have been self inflicted.
13:39
Speaker 1: It didn't marry up with the things that we look for,
13:41
Speaker 1: and I would imagine that there is going to be
13:44
Speaker 1: evidence relative to the distribution of powder. Perhaps that is
13:49
Speaker 1: the unburned powder that is emanating from the end of
13:52
Speaker 1: that muzzle when the weapon inspired. And my suspicion is
13:56
Speaker 1: that they saw something that gave them an indication that
14:00
Speaker 1: there was some range of distance between the end of
14:03
Speaker 1: the muzzle and the top of the head. Because here's
14:07
Speaker 1: the fact that it's really hard to escape if you
14:10
Speaker 1: investigate suicides. And I'd like to just kind of stop
14:13
Speaker 1: here and tell people that in the medical legal world,
14:17
Speaker 1: we investigate more suicides than we do homicides. If you
14:20
Speaker 1: watch the media, think that everything's a homicide, homicides are
14:24
Speaker 1: kind of they're on the low end as far as
14:26
Speaker 1: the number of those that we actually look at. Suicides
14:30
Speaker 1: generally are going to outpace homicides two to one in
14:33
Speaker 1: some cases depend upon where you are, three to one.
14:35
Speaker 1: So you're looking at a lot more suicides and you
14:38
Speaker 1: begin to get kind of a feel form and the
14:40
Speaker 1: things that you're looking for is as tells if you will.
14:44
Speaker 1: And with a long arm like this, when you take
14:48
Speaker 1: a weapon and you place it in a specific location,
14:54
Speaker 1: it's going to be tightly pressed. Most suicide self inflicted
14:57
Speaker 1: gunshot wounds people are not wanting to miss. Okay, so
15:02
Speaker 1: you will have like a hard what some people refer
15:04
Speaker 1: to as a hard contact gunshot, one where you have
15:08
Speaker 1: the muzzle the end of the muscle weapon where it's
15:10
Speaker 1: tightly pressed against the surface and the weapon is discharged
15:13
Speaker 1: into the body. The more distance you get, remember what
15:17
Speaker 1: we talked about length of arms and being a shoulder
15:20
Speaker 1: fired arm, you're having now if you've got a gap
15:24
Speaker 1: in between the target area and in the muzzle, you're
15:27
Speaker 1: again extending out the distance that's involved here. And the
15:31
Speaker 1: probability for this happening you talked about one in a million.
15:35
Speaker 1: It goes up astronomically because we know that it's almost
15:38
Speaker 1: a physical impossibility for this to have been a self
15:41
Speaker 1: inflicted I think the m E saw that. Do you
15:44
Speaker 1: have the same kind of gunshot residue on your hands,
15:50
Speaker 1: whether it's a long gun or a handgun. Yeah, you know,
15:54
Speaker 1: gunshot residue is an interesting thing. First off, for these tests,
15:58
Speaker 1: they're not always you get what are called fall positives
16:00
Speaker 1: lots of times, and they're not always absolute. I think
16:04
Speaker 1: that everybody looks that and says, oh, there is no
16:08
Speaker 1: GSR gunshot rosidue, so that's definitive, or you know, we
16:12
Speaker 1: have this gunshot rosidue and that is definitive, and it's not.
16:18
Speaker 1: There's no guarantee you're going to get a positive hit
16:21
Speaker 1: every time. They did an interesting study many years ago,
16:23
Speaker 1: I think, where there was a gentleman that they had
16:28
Speaker 1: used as kind of a test subject for some of
16:31
Speaker 1: these GSR tests. Early on when people had begun to
16:34
Speaker 1: use these, remember years and years ago, they used to
16:37
Speaker 1: use what's called a paraffin test. If you can't imagine this,
16:40
Speaker 1: You'd put your hand down into warm wax and they
16:44
Speaker 1: would peel that off. In the wax would contain any
16:46
Speaker 1: kind of particulate matter that was still in the hands,
16:49
Speaker 1: and then they began to come up with a chemical
16:51
Speaker 1: test for this. And this one fellow, I think, if
16:55
Speaker 1: I'm recalling this correctly, worked in a munitions factory and
16:58
Speaker 1: they would get negative hits on him and some of
17:00
Speaker 1: the other workers there and that's kind of an anecdotal story,
17:04
Speaker 1: just to try to drive home the point that you're
17:06
Speaker 1: not always going to find it, but it is something
17:09
Speaker 1: that is swapped for at autopsy. One of the reasons
17:13
Speaker 1: when you see bodies many times you'll see images of
17:17
Speaker 1: bodies and morgues and that sort of thing, or maybe
17:20
Speaker 1: even it seems if you happen to catch a glimpse
17:22
Speaker 1: of these, the hands will be backed, they'll be in paperbacks.
17:26
Speaker 1: You don't put them in plastic because they begin to sweat,
17:28
Speaker 1: and of course that spoils things. But you'll see them
17:31
Speaker 1: wrapped in brown paper backs. And we do the gunshot
17:35
Speaker 1: residue at the morgue, and you're looking for two things,
17:39
Speaker 1: looking for primer residue, and primer is the little cap
17:44
Speaker 1: that's in the base of the bullet. If you'll think
17:46
Speaker 1: about how the base of a bullet looks, it kind
17:50
Speaker 1: of looks like a like a bull's eye. However, this
17:53
Speaker 1: is a twenty two caliber weapon. There's not a primer cap.
17:57
Speaker 1: It's a rim fire, so that means that the prime
18:00
Speaker 1: is going to be around the edge. So you're going
18:04
Speaker 1: to look for primer, which is more unstable chemically, but
18:08
Speaker 1: it creates this kind of ferocious blast and that ignites
18:13
Speaker 1: the other substance, which is propellant, and they both have
18:17
Speaker 1: very distinctive chemical signature. So it's important to understand that
18:22
Speaker 1: when the weapon is discharged, you're holding it in your
18:25
Speaker 1: hand as opposed to being on the receiving end of
18:28
Speaker 1: the discharge of the weapon. If you're holding it in
18:31
Speaker 1: the crook of your hand, you can get primer residue,
18:35
Speaker 1: say in between your thumb and your index finger, and
18:39
Speaker 1: then coming out of the other end, you're going to
18:42
Speaker 1: get propellant, which is, you know, the gunpowder that's propelling
18:45
Speaker 1: the projectile out of the end of the muzzle. So
18:48
Speaker 1: there's a couple of different things you look for, and
18:50
Speaker 1: at autopsy we take a lot of time to try
18:53
Speaker 1: to be as careful as we possibly can be. To
18:56
Speaker 1: swab the hands, and you swab all over. You swab
18:58
Speaker 1: the back of the hand, in the palm, and in
19:01
Speaker 1: between the webs of each one of the fingers. You
19:03
Speaker 1: try to capture each one of those areas and you
19:05
Speaker 1: do each hand separately, and that way you kind of
19:08
Speaker 1: got this control at this point, and you submit this
19:11
Speaker 1: test at State Crime Lab and they'll come back and
19:14
Speaker 1: tell you if it's yea or nay, if it's there
19:16
Speaker 1: or not. It's not a what's called a quantitative test.
19:19
Speaker 1: It's not you know where you apply number two. It
19:21
Speaker 1: you just say thumbs up, thumbs down. You know that
19:24
Speaker 1: it's there or isn't there, and then they can tell
19:26
Speaker 1: you if it's primer or propell it. And then you
19:29
Speaker 1: have the blood spatter pattern, because if you look at
19:35
Speaker 1: killing yourself, at committing suicide on a bed, then you
19:41
Speaker 1: would expect the majority of the blood to be pulling
19:46
Speaker 1: underneath you and soaked into the pill or the mattress. Yeah,
19:49
Speaker 1: to a certain degree. And again there's not a one
19:51
Speaker 1: off for each one of these things. A lot of
19:53
Speaker 1: it's going to have to do with, first off, where
19:58
Speaker 1: the round strikes the body. Okay, so let's just say,
20:02
Speaker 1: and that's not the case in this case, but with
20:05
Speaker 1: lots of self inflicted gunshot wounds, you'll have an oral
20:09
Speaker 1: gunshot wound where people will place the muzzle into their
20:12
Speaker 1: into their mouth and pull the trigger and if the
20:16
Speaker 1: round has sufficient energy, it will burst out of the
20:21
Speaker 1: back of the head, Okay, And that creates a different
20:25
Speaker 1: type of dynamic relative to the blood stained pattern. That
20:28
Speaker 1: you're going to have and you can find you know,
20:31
Speaker 1: if say someone is seated upright, which you get lots
20:33
Speaker 1: of times with the self inflicted oral gunshot wounds. If
20:36
Speaker 1: they're up against a wall, for instance, which is very
20:41
Speaker 1: convenient for the investigator, you can kind of see this
20:43
Speaker 1: high velocity kind of staining that's going on behind the wall,
20:46
Speaker 1: and sometimes it'll have almost a fan like pattern to it,
20:49
Speaker 1: if you can imagine that, and the droplets will be
20:52
Speaker 1: I like to refer to them as almost histamine like
20:54
Speaker 1: you know, like if you think about spraying an aerosol
20:57
Speaker 1: canister on a mirror and it gives you this tiny,
21:00
Speaker 1: tiny little droplets because of the velocity, you only achieve
21:03
Speaker 1: that high velocity from gunshot, won'ts Okay? We rate these
21:08
Speaker 1: things relative to their velocity high velocity, medium velocity, low velocity.
21:13
Speaker 1: And one of the things that you're looking for is
21:17
Speaker 1: that blast that you'll get it has enough power that
21:20
Speaker 1: is going to generate that fine little particulate spray, and
21:23
Speaker 1: then you know you have these other things that will happen.
21:27
Speaker 1: There's an infamous videotape of Bud Dwire that has floated
21:31
Speaker 1: around for years and years, and he was the Secretary
21:35
Speaker 1: of Treasury for the State of Pennsylvania, and he took
21:37
Speaker 1: his life live on air, and people are it's a
21:41
Speaker 1: ghastly thing to watch. But one of the interesting takeaways
21:45
Speaker 1: that you have is the blood dynamic in that event.
21:48
Speaker 1: Because he uses a high caliber weapon and it's in
21:50
Speaker 1: his mouth and you'll have this initial blast, we have
21:54
Speaker 1: this kind of fine particular spray. But afterwards, because it's
21:58
Speaker 1: an oral gunshot, WoT, he's disrupted all of the structures
22:04
Speaker 1: within the hard pallette, which is the upper portion of
22:08
Speaker 1: the mouth, that bony floor that we have in the
22:11
Speaker 1: skull up there, all that's been fractured. You've got blood
22:15
Speaker 1: gushing out of his mouth and out of his nose. Well,
22:17
Speaker 1: that blood pattern will look completely different because it's a
22:21
Speaker 1: different dynamic. You've got this kind of gravitational flow of
22:24
Speaker 1: blood that's pouring out of his mouth and his nose.
22:27
Speaker 1: And what happens in the instance when the thing is discharged,
22:31
Speaker 1: you get that kind of it's almost like a bloody
22:34
Speaker 1: flashbulb going off where it just kind of imparts the
22:37
Speaker 1: spine histeman behind his head. And you can see those
22:39
Speaker 1: two things played out on camera, and that's what you
22:42
Speaker 1: get any self inflicted gunshot ones many times a lot
22:46
Speaker 1: of it is pended upon where the weapon is placed anatomically,
22:50
Speaker 1: the load, the type of ammunition that is being used,
22:53
Speaker 1: the angle at which this thing is being discharged, because
22:56
Speaker 1: when you think about that projectile passing through the ructures
23:00
Speaker 1: of the skull, there are some areas of the skull
23:04
Speaker 1: that are more robust. Okay, if you think about, for instance,
23:07
Speaker 1: if people will just kind of touch the back of
23:09
Speaker 1: their head, and you've got that knot on the back
23:11
Speaker 1: of your head literally in your skull right there. That's
23:14
Speaker 1: called the accipital protuberance, and it's one of the thicker areas.
23:18
Speaker 1: You also have it in the frontal bone, you know
23:21
Speaker 1: where your eyebrows are, But if you go around to
23:24
Speaker 1: the temporal area, you know, just kind of forward and
23:26
Speaker 1: above your ear, that bony area is very thin. So
23:29
Speaker 1: that will give way much easier when you have the
23:32
Speaker 1: power of this weapon as opposed to something that's going
23:35
Speaker 1: to strike in the back of the head. In the
23:37
Speaker 1: case of Helen though, if you've got a gunshot wound
23:41
Speaker 1: whose entrance has been identified at the top of the head,
23:44
Speaker 1: that trajectory is going downward, so I would think that
23:47
Speaker 1: there will be less blood staining when you begin to
23:50
Speaker 1: think about the dynamic of that, and it will remain
23:52
Speaker 1: kind of self contained in that environment as opposed to
23:55
Speaker 1: where it was going up and out. This case, Jackie,
24:18
Speaker 1: is so very complex because of what had happened in
24:23
Speaker 1: this environment and the family dynamic where you've got three kids,
24:28
Speaker 1: you've got a mom that's at home in this beautiful,
24:32
Speaker 1: you know, million dollars residence, and the fact that the
24:36
Speaker 1: bodies are found in these kind of desperate locations within
24:39
Speaker 1: the structure. In my reading, and I found this quite fascinating.
24:44
Speaker 1: Did you note that actually Fairfax County contacted a separate
24:52
Speaker 1: agency to come in and actually do the crime scene
24:55
Speaker 1: reconstruction because the data that was at the scene was
24:59
Speaker 1: so very dents When it came to reconstructing this thing,
25:03
Speaker 1: they didn't have enough manpower apparently to put their agency
25:08
Speaker 1: to work on this. They had to give it to
25:09
Speaker 1: an outside contractor in order to bring all of the
25:12
Speaker 1: pieces together just to try to figure it out and
25:14
Speaker 1: of course eventually present it in court. As these specialists
25:18
Speaker 1: begin to recreate the scene that you're talking about, what
25:22
Speaker 1: did they discover with the mom Pamela's death. She was
25:26
Speaker 1: found in the laundry room, shot multiple times in the head.
25:32
Speaker 1: When you're in this environment, you know, we can think
25:35
Speaker 1: about what our own laundry rooms might look like. There's
25:38
Speaker 1: many people that keep them needs a pen. There's other
25:41
Speaker 1: folks that you know that might have dirty laundry that's
25:44
Speaker 1: laying around for all I know. In my case, I
25:46
Speaker 1: might have clean laundry that's laying around that I haven't
25:48
Speaker 1: folded yet. When you're working inside of an environment like
25:52
Speaker 1: a laundry room, if it's common in appearance to others,
25:56
Speaker 1: it's kind of very tight spaces with little nooks and
25:59
Speaker 1: crannies where you begin to think about, well, where do
26:03
Speaker 1: I need to look for evidence, and the evidence that
26:06
Speaker 1: I'm seeing does it actually marry up with the evidence
26:11
Speaker 1: that I have on the bodies? Okay, the wounds, perhaps
26:14
Speaker 1: the number of spent casings, all of those, and am
26:17
Speaker 1: I going to be able to piece this back together?
26:20
Speaker 1: And it's a very tight space. I've worked in environments
26:23
Speaker 1: like this where you know you're in there with one
26:26
Speaker 1: other person in a very tight location and you're trying
26:30
Speaker 1: to document everything, and many times what happens is you
26:35
Speaker 1: document position of the body, you document spent shell casings,
26:38
Speaker 1: which there were and they've never actually said how many,
26:42
Speaker 1: but there were spent shell casings at the scene surrounding Pamela,
26:47
Speaker 1: the mother, her body. And then of course you've got
26:52
Speaker 1: no weapon in there, so automatically, you know, you're thinking, well,
26:56
Speaker 1: she's been the victim of a homicide at this point,
26:59
Speaker 1: because we don't have a weapon to indicate that this
27:02
Speaker 1: is a suicide, that it's somewhere else. There's any number
27:06
Speaker 1: of scenarios that they have to consider in this tight space.
27:10
Speaker 1: First off, can someone actually access the interior of the
27:14
Speaker 1: home through the laundry room what they're calling the laundry room.
27:18
Speaker 1: Is it a point where people would egress into and
27:21
Speaker 1: out of. You know, many times people will have a
27:23
Speaker 1: laundry room and a mudroom together. That is the place
27:26
Speaker 1: where you're gonna take off your dirty shoes and do
27:27
Speaker 1: all that sort of thing. Is it a place where
27:30
Speaker 1: somebody could have laid in wait and hidden and taking
27:33
Speaker 1: the individual by surprise, they step out, they shoot the
27:38
Speaker 1: individual one time, they go down to the ground, and
27:40
Speaker 1: then they're going to have to readjust that is the perpetrator,
27:44
Speaker 1: so that after the individual, Remember we talked about gravity earlier.
27:47
Speaker 1: After the individual has fallen to the ground, perpetrator stands
27:50
Speaker 1: over them with a long arm and fires another round
27:54
Speaker 1: into the body. And that means that the trajectories of
27:57
Speaker 1: these rounds are going to change. So you're firing on
28:01
Speaker 1: a flat plane maybe initially where you initially hit them,
28:05
Speaker 1: they go down to the ground, and then you move
28:07
Speaker 1: to a position of dominance over them and fired down
28:10
Speaker 1: into the body another round, and all of that has
28:13
Speaker 1: to be taken into consideration at that point of time.
28:17
Speaker 1: That's when you see you crimsing. Reconstructionists who actually took
28:21
Speaker 1: over this case, we'll bring out laser markers, you'll see it.
28:25
Speaker 1: Some agencies still use string in order to pull what
28:28
Speaker 1: we call pulling trajectories, where you go from the point
28:32
Speaker 1: where the round entered the body and go back, pull
28:36
Speaker 1: the string back or shoot the laser back to a
28:38
Speaker 1: point of origin if you will. And again it's very
28:42
Speaker 1: difficult because it is keep using its term, but that's
28:46
Speaker 1: the case. It's so very dynamic jack in this environment
28:49
Speaker 1: where you've got a lot of movement. It's not like
28:51
Speaker 1: you've got a rifle that's being fired into a static
28:56
Speaker 1: target and nothing is moving. You've got all kinds of
29:00
Speaker 1: motion and movement that's going on in this environment. If
29:03
Speaker 1: somebody is initially shot, they're not going to instantaneously die
29:08
Speaker 1: per se. You might have an individual that begins to
29:10
Speaker 1: seize or they're falling to the floor, and you can't
29:12
Speaker 1: anticipate what position they're going to fall in, and then
29:15
Speaker 1: you have to get into a position of dominance. And
29:17
Speaker 1: the other thing that you have to begin to think about,
29:20
Speaker 1: what if the individual has never killed anybody before. The
29:22
Speaker 1: line share of perpetrators out there have not engaged in
29:25
Speaker 1: homicide before, So you've got that factor into You've got
29:29
Speaker 1: nerves at work, you've got anxiety at work, you've got
29:32
Speaker 1: rage at work. So you throw all of this into
29:36
Speaker 1: the mix and you try to take a snapshot. If
29:38
Speaker 1: you're the crime scene reconstructionist, that is going to at
29:43
Speaker 1: best give you some kind of scientific point of origin
29:46
Speaker 1: for a lot of these rounds, but sometimes it's a
29:49
Speaker 1: guess at best. We've brought up gravity several times today.
29:54
Speaker 1: I need to bring it up one more time. When
29:56
Speaker 1: you are shot in the head. Most people, you know,
30:00
Speaker 1: we rely on television, we you know, we thankfully don't
30:04
Speaker 1: have a lot of experience with getting shot in real life.
30:08
Speaker 1: So when you get shot in the head, are you
30:11
Speaker 1: propelled backwards by the momentum of the shot? Do you
30:15
Speaker 1: just drop where you are when your body is no
30:18
Speaker 1: longer able to function? What happens? A lot of that
30:22
Speaker 1: is going to be depended upon the position of the
30:26
Speaker 1: victim relative to the end of the muzzle of the
30:29
Speaker 1: weapon and kind of the orientation of the weapon. It's
30:33
Speaker 1: not going to be something so grand and over the
30:36
Speaker 1: top like you'll see. You know, I'm always picking on
30:39
Speaker 1: Hollywood on bodybacks, but you know, they you see people
30:43
Speaker 1: blown back in these you know, things that are staged
30:47
Speaker 1: in the entertainment world, and that's that's for the purpose
30:51
Speaker 1: of making something appear very dramatic. And there are many
30:54
Speaker 1: accounts out there where people are shot and they're not
30:56
Speaker 1: aware that they've been shot. If somebody takes a shotgun
30:59
Speaker 1: blast to the chest at close range, just the energy
31:02
Speaker 1: transfer that you have alone is going to blow them
31:05
Speaker 1: back a bit. But they're not going to do somersaults,
31:07
Speaker 1: all right. And contrary to what you see on television
31:10
Speaker 1: with around like this, where you're kind of taking unaware
31:14
Speaker 1: if an individual is shot from behind, so they're shot
31:17
Speaker 1: in the back of the head. They're going to take
31:20
Speaker 1: that round and drop like deadweight at that moment time
31:24
Speaker 1: to the ground. It doesn't mean that they die instantaneously.
31:28
Speaker 1: If the brainstem is not clipped, you're still going to
31:31
Speaker 1: have you know, things like agonal respirations and the heart
31:34
Speaker 1: will still be pumping for a little bit until you
31:36
Speaker 1: bleed out. But I don't know that in the conscious
31:39
Speaker 1: mind that they actually have an awareness that this has happened.
31:42
Speaker 1: So you're not going to have an individual that is
31:45
Speaker 1: blown out of the room just because they're shot. The
31:48
Speaker 1: ideas to transfer the energy from that projectile into the body,
31:53
Speaker 1: and that energy disperses into the body and it does
31:57
Speaker 1: massive destruction, okay, And a lot of that is upon
32:00
Speaker 1: the size of the AMMO that's being used and the
32:02
Speaker 1: type of MMO that's being used. You know, you hear
32:04
Speaker 1: a lot about people talking about ball round ammunition, which
32:07
Speaker 1: is you know, a ball around. It's just kind of
32:10
Speaker 1: a catch all term that people use relative to a
32:13
Speaker 1: lead core projectile that's not modified necessarily any way. But
32:17
Speaker 1: then you talk about hollow point so called hollow point
32:21
Speaker 1: ammunition that it let's say you're firing a forty caliber
32:25
Speaker 1: bullet that is hollow point, and when it strikes the
32:28
Speaker 1: target area, it expands out, and it might expand out
32:33
Speaker 1: from say forty caliber, which is point four z, it
32:37
Speaker 1: might expand out to say point four eight. So you
32:41
Speaker 1: get this expansion transfer of energy. The round stops in
32:44
Speaker 1: the body and they drop. But with twenty two caliber ammunition,
32:47
Speaker 1: most of the time it's going to be standard ball ammunition,
32:50
Speaker 1: where you've got this little bit of lead that's transferring
32:53
Speaker 1: into the body and it's going to transfer that amount
32:56
Speaker 1: of energy that is being generated from the muzzle blast.
33:19
Speaker 1: It goes without saying. As a death investigator, and I
33:22
Speaker 1: know I can speak for myself, I can't necessarily speak
33:24
Speaker 1: for my colleagues, but as a death investigator, I got
33:27
Speaker 1: quite jaded. Particularly towards the end of my career. I
33:30
Speaker 1: stopped trying to figure out, necessarily in a broader sense,
33:34
Speaker 1: what had happened, you know, what the motivations were. One
33:38
Speaker 1: of the issues that has always kind of left me
33:41
Speaker 1: scratching my head many times, you know me, I hate
33:45
Speaker 1: to ask the question why because there's generally not a
33:50
Speaker 1: solid answer. No one will ever be satisfied with why.
33:54
Speaker 1: But when you walk into an environment where a goodly
33:57
Speaker 1: portion of a family. And in this case we're talking
34:00
Speaker 1: about Pamela and Helen are dead. Their lives have been
34:07
Speaker 1: snuffed out. I don't know if there is any other
34:10
Speaker 1: question to ask, why would you end their lives in
34:15
Speaker 1: this environment where seemingly at least from a material since
34:20
Speaker 1: they had everything, and that may have been part of
34:23
Speaker 1: the problem here. Joe Ultimately police charged the eldest daughter, Megan,
34:31
Speaker 1: and what was revealed was a jealousy with the younger
34:36
Speaker 1: daughter over money. She felt like the younger daughter was
34:41
Speaker 1: being favored. We know that the youngest daughter, Helen, had
34:44
Speaker 1: just graduated from college and Pamela had paid for a house.
34:50
Speaker 1: Megan also wanted a new home. Megan and her daughter
34:55
Speaker 1: had been living with Pamela for several years, even though
34:59
Speaker 1: Megan was married and her husband lived in another state.
35:03
Speaker 1: With the recognition when police came onto the scene that
35:07
Speaker 1: this was staged, how did they start to look at
35:11
Speaker 1: Megan and what were the clues? The first clue came
35:16
Speaker 1: from the nine one one call, which came from Helen's boyfriend.
35:21
Speaker 1: She called him and told him that Megan had killed
35:26
Speaker 1: their mother. So that was the first clue, even before
35:29
Speaker 1: they got to the scene and could recognize it. That
35:33
Speaker 1: was a big red flag. You kidn't. You're absolutely right.
35:37
Speaker 1: Much of the time you're going to be speaking with
35:40
Speaker 1: the principles in the case, that is, the individuals that
35:43
Speaker 1: have direct involvement. That kind of will give you an
35:46
Speaker 1: idea as an investigators to what is happening at a scene.
35:50
Speaker 1: You've already processed the scene to a certain degree, and
35:53
Speaker 1: then things don't necessarily make sense. Remember what we had
35:56
Speaker 1: said earlier on that the police had thought from the
36:00
Speaker 1: beginning that this was a murder suicide. But you know,
36:06
Speaker 1: they walk in and things don't seem to add up,
36:09
Speaker 1: you know, to what you would normally think about the
36:12
Speaker 1: physical evidence that you're going to be finding that would
36:15
Speaker 1: make it consistent with a murder suicide. You document the scene,
36:19
Speaker 1: you go through everything that you have to go through,
36:21
Speaker 1: and then after you've left the scene and you begin
36:25
Speaker 1: to do follow up investigation, you're canvassing one of the
36:28
Speaker 1: things that you know, you canvass neighborhoods and all that
36:30
Speaker 1: sort of thing, and then you look through, say, for instance,
36:34
Speaker 1: phone contacts for victims, and you see that Helen has
36:38
Speaker 1: been in contact with her boyfriend and of course, he's
36:42
Speaker 1: one that actually drew the police's attention to this. When
36:46
Speaker 1: you sit down and you begin to question him. Can
36:50
Speaker 1: you imagine their shock when he reveals to them that,
36:57
Speaker 1: you know, I've got my girlfriend on the phone, couldn't
37:00
Speaker 1: get her back on. And this is after she tells
37:03
Speaker 1: me that her sister had had killed her mother. And
37:08
Speaker 1: I can't imagine that the horror that kind of ran
37:11
Speaker 1: through you know, that ran through him when the phone
37:15
Speaker 1: went dead. I mean, that does sound like something that
37:17
Speaker 1: Hollywood would create. You know, it's bone chilling, you know
37:20
Speaker 1: when you begin to think about it and you think
37:22
Speaker 1: about where does this information lead us? And they have
37:25
Speaker 1: to be very very careful at this point because they
37:27
Speaker 1: don't want to show their hand. You know, they've got
37:29
Speaker 1: some kind of some kind of circumstantial comment that the
37:35
Speaker 1: boyfriend has made, because you know, he's kind of an
37:38
Speaker 1: ear witness, if you will, to this information that's coming
37:40
Speaker 1: in from you know, his girlfriend who's now deceased. You
37:44
Speaker 1: don't want to do anything as an investigator that's going
37:48
Speaker 1: to frighten away a potential suspect, so you continue to
37:51
Speaker 1: play your hand out as if it is in fact
37:54
Speaker 1: I murder suicide just so that you can get information
37:57
Speaker 1: from them. And of course, when they begin to dig
38:00
Speaker 1: into the relationship that you know that the daughter actually
38:08
Speaker 1: had with her mother, and you begin to understand that
38:11
Speaker 1: there's this issue of jealousy that's going on, that she's
38:14
Speaker 1: wanting money, that she wants to buy her own house,
38:18
Speaker 1: and these sorts of things, and none of that is
38:20
Speaker 1: happening for her. You know, pieces begin to fall into
38:22
Speaker 1: place at that point. As usual, I'm going to back
38:25
Speaker 1: up on your little When the boyfriend called police, he
38:29
Speaker 1: told police, and during the course of the name on
38:32
Speaker 1: one called, we find that he had several conversations with
38:35
Speaker 1: his girlfriend, Helen, trying to convince her to get out
38:38
Speaker 1: of the house. But he mentioned that while Helen did
38:43
Speaker 1: not see the mother's body through the cracked door, he
38:47
Speaker 1: could hear the mother gasping for breath. What does that
38:51
Speaker 1: tell you, Well, that means that we were talking about
38:54
Speaker 1: the power of the gunshot wound that she had sustained earlier.
38:58
Speaker 1: And I'd mentioned an respiration, which is it's almost you know,
39:03
Speaker 1: some people will term it as a death rattle, where
39:06
Speaker 1: you know, people are right on the edge of succumbing
39:09
Speaker 1: to a disease or an injury that they have sustained.
39:12
Speaker 1: It's this gasp where they're still breathing, the heart is
39:17
Speaker 1: still pumping, but there's been so much destruction, particularly in
39:22
Speaker 1: this case to the head where you're you know, the
39:27
Speaker 1: circumstances making incompatible with life at that moment, and life
39:31
Speaker 1: is literally ebbing away from the victim. And the fact
39:35
Speaker 1: that he was in fact an ear witness to this
39:39
Speaker 1: again chills you to the bone because that's something that
39:42
Speaker 1: you know he'll certainly never forget and it's something he'll
39:44
Speaker 1: live with for all of his days. So, combining all
39:48
Speaker 1: of this information, when police arrive at the scene again
39:50
Speaker 1: they recognize that it is not an actual murder suicide.
39:54
Speaker 1: They recognize that it is staged. Then they have to
39:57
Speaker 1: go about trying to figure out who did it. We
40:02
Speaker 1: know that the boyfriend said, according to Helen, that Megan
40:06
Speaker 1: had killed their mother. Police began to piece together the who, what, when? Where?
40:12
Speaker 1: Whiian how how do they do that? Where did they start?
40:16
Speaker 1: I mean, we ultimately find out that Megan was caught
40:22
Speaker 1: or heard, I guess you would say, trying to impersonate
40:25
Speaker 1: the mother on the phone at the bank to transfer
40:28
Speaker 1: money to buy her own home. There was a text
40:33
Speaker 1: sent to the boyfriend on Helen's phone which said everything
40:37
Speaker 1: is fine, I'm not mad at Megan, which the boyfriend
40:40
Speaker 1: said he never thought that that actually came from his girlfriend.
40:44
Speaker 1: And then there's other evidence from the day before where
40:48
Speaker 1: we know now that Megan was trying to get money
40:52
Speaker 1: from the mother because she would not pay for this
40:55
Speaker 1: home that she wanted. So what's the starting point? And mean,
41:00
Speaker 1: do you just started to say, Okay, let's check the phones,
41:02
Speaker 1: let's check the computer. I mean, what do you do?
41:06
Speaker 1: This is one of these interesting points in time where
41:09
Speaker 1: I think that the medical examiner really comes into play here,
41:12
Speaker 1: particularly when you begin to attempt to calculate post mortal manerabal.
41:16
Speaker 1: You know, you were talking about this text that went out.
41:19
Speaker 1: Did the medical legal authorities, through their due diligence at
41:22
Speaker 1: seen when they begin to do body temperatures in the
41:25
Speaker 1: state of rigor mortis and all those things relative to
41:28
Speaker 1: the bodies and compare that, say, for instance, that data
41:32
Speaker 1: would be given over to the police because they have
41:36
Speaker 1: a marker in time when this text that allegedly originated
41:40
Speaker 1: from Helen came out. So that's a static marker and time,
41:43
Speaker 1: and one of the things you're trying to establish scientifically
41:45
Speaker 1: with the body, is it possible, given the timeframe of
41:49
Speaker 1: the changes post mortem, for her to have sent this text.
41:53
Speaker 1: And that's one of the basic places you're going to start.
41:55
Speaker 1: And then there's time signatures relative to everything you do
41:59
Speaker 1: in the digital world. And in this case, you had
42:02
Speaker 1: this daughter going in and attempting to fake her mother
42:07
Speaker 1: or pretend that she was her mother, at least over
42:10
Speaker 1: the phone. And then secondly, there's a wire transfer that's
42:14
Speaker 1: taking place that's actually sending moneies to a title holding
42:18
Speaker 1: company for the daughter's home and it's coming out of
42:22
Speaker 1: the mother's account and this is upwards of four hundred
42:25
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. So you know, the police are beginning to
42:28
Speaker 1: piece all of this together. You know what's the motivation
42:32
Speaker 1: behind all of this? And your fallback position is as
42:36
Speaker 1: an investigator, you begin to kind of look at these
42:39
Speaker 1: tried and true points along a continuum that we always
42:43
Speaker 1: default to, and that's you know, motive, the means, the opportunity,
42:48
Speaker 1: and who would have this within the circle Because you
42:50
Speaker 1: begin to look and you think, well, did some random
42:53
Speaker 1: stranger actually come in and bring about the deaths of
42:57
Speaker 1: these individuals. We've already kind of eliminated at this point
43:00
Speaker 1: that it is a murder suicide. The police are looking
43:02
Speaker 1: at this as this is they're working this now is
43:04
Speaker 1: at double homicide based upon the information that's coming in
43:07
Speaker 1: from the m E. And then you think about, well,
43:10
Speaker 1: where did they get a weapon from? Who does the
43:12
Speaker 1: weapon tie back to? Does a family have a history
43:15
Speaker 1: of having weapons? Is this a weapon that belongs to
43:17
Speaker 1: the family, who had access to the weapon, who had
43:20
Speaker 1: experience with a weapon, who would have known where it was. So,
43:24
Speaker 1: you know, once you establish the fact that your field
43:28
Speaker 1: begins to kind of narrow as to who the suspects
43:30
Speaker 1: could be in this environment, who would be motivated in
43:36
Speaker 1: order to do this. You know, I think that it's
43:38
Speaker 1: at that point that you're going to focus in on
43:40
Speaker 1: the daughter in this particular case, because you know that
43:44
Speaker 1: this is not a randomized act of violence. You begin
43:47
Speaker 1: to look at the scene. You know that it's again
43:49
Speaker 1: our old adage about enough signs of forced entry or struggle.
43:53
Speaker 1: There's no evidence of that at the scene. There's no
43:56
Speaker 1: indication that this is what happened. There was a force
44:00
Speaker 1: centery in a struggle, and that you've got these two
44:02
Speaker 1: individuals that have been killed in this manner, you've got
44:07
Speaker 1: kind of a controlled environment where everything's kind of self
44:09
Speaker 1: contained in there, and you have to ask you who
44:12
Speaker 1: would have had this ability began. Hargan was brought in
44:17
Speaker 1: for questioning five days after the murders, but she was
44:20
Speaker 1: not arrested and charged for a year. So, if I
44:26
Speaker 1: understand this correctly, it took that amount of time for
44:29
Speaker 1: police to do their due diligence and investigation to find
44:34
Speaker 1: and connect the dots for the suspect. In this case,
44:39
Speaker 1: it did, and you know, this is it's kind of
44:42
Speaker 1: a complex case because not only do you have the
44:44
Speaker 1: physical evidence at the scene, but you have all of
44:46
Speaker 1: this digital evidence and certainly the financial evidence. And it's
44:51
Speaker 1: actually a multi jurisdictional case as well, which is kind
44:55
Speaker 1: of fascinating because they had partners and I think both
44:58
Speaker 1: West Virginia and and I think probably to a certain
45:02
Speaker 1: extent that they called on resources from the FEDS as well.
45:05
Speaker 1: So anytime you get that many people, if you will
45:09
Speaker 1: pardon the term, but you know, kind of dancing together
45:12
Speaker 1: in this environment, then you'll have varied interest and you
45:17
Speaker 1: have to make sure. That's why it's so important that
45:19
Speaker 1: you have a strong leader relative to the lead investigator
45:23
Speaker 1: on the case, because they're kind of the conductor, if
45:25
Speaker 1: you will, and I mean that from a conductor of
45:28
Speaker 1: an orchestra. They have to make sure that everybody is
45:31
Speaker 1: playing on the same sheet of music, and then to
45:34
Speaker 1: get the courts involved as well, relative to all of
45:37
Speaker 1: the search warrants that have to take place. I can
45:40
Speaker 1: only imagine that when you begin to look at the
45:43
Speaker 1: case file on not just this case, but the multiple
45:49
Speaker 1: cases that resulted from it. There's multiple charges involved in
45:52
Speaker 1: this and all of these various issues, it would look
45:56
Speaker 1: rather voluminous. You're going to have volume upon upon volume
46:01
Speaker 1: of data that's going to be analyzed and scrutinized in court.
46:05
Speaker 1: So yeah, it would take some time to put this together.
46:08
Speaker 1: And in plus, you know, this is a very high
46:10
Speaker 1: profile case where you've got multiple deaths in a very
46:13
Speaker 1: affluent area. I mean, let's just face it, it is,
46:17
Speaker 1: and they wanted to make sure that they had everything
46:19
Speaker 1: just right before they charged her. A jury found Megan
46:22
Speaker 1: Hargan guilty on all counts, including first degree murder in
46:26
Speaker 1: the depths of her sister Helen and her mother Pamela.
46:34
Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is bodybacks.