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Body Bags: The Skull in the Swamp · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:00
Speaker 1: Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan, Death Investigator, Professor Forensics,
0:05
Speaker 1: Jacksonville State University. Scott Morgan has been on over ten
0:11
Speaker 1: thousand death scenes and now he takes a part in
0:15
Speaker 1: a way that only he can the homicides that we
0:20
Speaker 1: are all investigating. Whether you're in the thick of it
0:24
Speaker 1: with the police department or the FBI, or you're an
0:28
Speaker 1: arm chair sleuth, Joe Scott Morgan will give you answers
0:34
Speaker 1: Body Bags Joe Scott Morgan. Following Subscribe now on the
0:39
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you've listened to your podcast.
0:54
Speaker 1: Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. Dark Still Waters, Spanish moss,
1:21
Speaker 1: live oak trees. When I think of a swamp, I
1:25
Speaker 1: don't see something ugly. I see something beautiful. But there's
1:29
Speaker 1: one swamp in America that's hidden a secret, and finally
1:34
Speaker 1: that secret's been revealed. We're gonna talk about Brian Laundry today.
1:40
Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body Backs back
1:49
Speaker 1: with me again. Today is my friend Jackie Howard, Executive
1:53
Speaker 1: producer of Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Jackie, what's come
1:58
Speaker 1: to light now regarding the death of Brian Laundry. Joe,
2:02
Speaker 1: we now know that Brian Laundry committed suicide in the
2:05
Speaker 1: swamps there close to his home. Chris and ROBERTA. Laundry
2:09
Speaker 1: were informed that the cause of death was a gunshot
2:12
Speaker 1: wound to the head. Now, we never knew specifically that
2:16
Speaker 1: Brian Laundry had taken a gun from the home. That
2:19
Speaker 1: was not released until just a few days ago. Chris
2:23
Speaker 1: and Roberto Laundry had surrendered five or six guns that
2:26
Speaker 1: they stored in their home to the FBI when Brian
2:30
Speaker 1: went missing. That was not released to the public, nor
2:33
Speaker 1: was the fact that a gun was missing. According to
2:36
Speaker 1: their attorney, they did not want to cause a panic
2:39
Speaker 1: in the community. It was released to the public that
2:41
Speaker 1: a skull was found, a partial skull, I should be specific,
2:45
Speaker 1: But at that point we did not know how Brian died. Again,
2:48
Speaker 1: we do now know that he died of a gunshot
2:51
Speaker 1: wound to the head. Explain this all to me, Joe,
2:53
Speaker 1: because I have so many questions. Is the reason we
2:56
Speaker 1: found a partial skull because of the injury and the
2:58
Speaker 1: gunshot itself? Or is this due to animals? You know, Jackie,
3:02
Speaker 1: a lot of folks might not be aware of this,
3:04
Speaker 1: but you know, suicide it outpaces homicide in this country.
3:09
Speaker 1: You think that there's homesides going on all over the place,
3:12
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of homesides, but it's almost
3:15
Speaker 1: it gets beat almost three to one. All right, So
3:18
Speaker 1: we work a lot of suicides and medical legal death investigation,
3:22
Speaker 1: and the number one cause when we're talking about this,
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Speaker 1: it's going to be self inflicted gunshot ones. It's not
3:29
Speaker 1: surprising to me that when they finally did discover his
3:34
Speaker 1: body that they only had a partial skull at that
3:37
Speaker 1: point in time. And the reason is is that you
3:42
Speaker 1: have this remarkable dynamic that takes place with a firearm
3:49
Speaker 1: and somebody you know, placing this tightly to their head.
3:55
Speaker 1: This is what's commonly referred to as a press contact
3:59
Speaker 1: gunshot one. Sometimes you'll hear old timers refer to it
4:02
Speaker 1: as a hard contact, and that means that if you'll
4:06
Speaker 1: take your finger and kind of place it into the
4:08
Speaker 1: palm of your hand, your index finger, and press it
4:10
Speaker 1: as tightly as you can. Generally, this is what is
4:14
Speaker 1: occurring on the side of the head or in the forehead,
4:17
Speaker 1: you know, where we normally see self inflicted gunshot ones
4:20
Speaker 1: take place and when that seal is created and that
4:24
Speaker 1: individual is pressing so very tightly, there's a couple of
4:29
Speaker 1: things that come out of the muzzle. At weapon. You've
4:32
Speaker 1: got to projectile a bullet, if you will, and it's
4:35
Speaker 1: creating the whole. All right. I know this is very
4:38
Speaker 1: simplistic sounding, but it's creating the actual hole. But people
4:42
Speaker 1: don't understand what happens after that. It's not just the
4:46
Speaker 1: projectile that's disruptive. In this case, you have a tremendous
4:51
Speaker 1: amount superheated gas that comes out of the end of
4:55
Speaker 1: that muscle. As a matter of fact, at nighttime when
4:59
Speaker 1: people fireway, it looks like there's a ball of flame
5:03
Speaker 1: coming out of the end of that weapon, and there is,
5:05
Speaker 1: and there's rapidly expanding gas. Remember even when we were
5:09
Speaker 1: taking physical science classes back in the seventh eighth grade,
5:12
Speaker 1: what do they say about hot air? Hot air expands
5:14
Speaker 1: and guess what, it's destructive. So when you interject this
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Speaker 1: or inject this into a skull, it blows the skull apart.
5:26
Speaker 1: And that's what you have happening. That's that's why that
5:29
Speaker 1: when they came upon these partial remains, Remember they were
5:33
Speaker 1: talking about partial remains initially they only had a partial skull,
5:37
Speaker 1: and the reason is is that his head, his skull
5:43
Speaker 1: actually came apart at that moment time when he actuated
5:46
Speaker 1: that trigger on that firearm. So when you say that
5:51
Speaker 1: the gas, as you said, explodes or expands, you're not
5:55
Speaker 1: saying that the gas actually goes into the skull and
5:57
Speaker 1: goes from the inside out. You're just saying the pressure
6:00
Speaker 1: build up from the outside. Well, it's it's an internal
6:04
Speaker 1: event relative to when that primer is struck by the
6:09
Speaker 1: firing pen on that weapon. There's a little ignition that
6:12
Speaker 1: takes place. And this is kind of a brief little
6:16
Speaker 1: firearms tutorial. You've got a little primer cap in the
6:19
Speaker 1: base of that bullet and that initiates the actual firing
6:25
Speaker 1: sequence when it's struck. There, that's the first explosion. The
6:29
Speaker 1: second explosion takes place when that spark is transferred to
6:34
Speaker 1: what's called the propellant. There's another group of powder that's
6:38
Speaker 1: in there. And listen, when you've got a tight scale,
6:42
Speaker 1: when you have a tight seal, in this particular case,
6:46
Speaker 1: you've got this rapidly expanding hot air and it's got
6:50
Speaker 1: to go somewhere. Now, the individual that is pressing the
6:53
Speaker 1: weapon to their skulls has there's no way to ventilate
6:58
Speaker 1: it other than four word. And so when the bullet
7:01
Speaker 1: the projectile actually bores into the side of that skull
7:05
Speaker 1: through that that bony plate, which is what it's referred
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Speaker 1: to as that gas is going to seek that little
7:11
Speaker 1: hole that's being created by the bullet. And that's why
7:14
Speaker 1: in a lot of these cases you see this just
7:17
Speaker 1: mammoth trauma that takes place with these press contact gunshot wounds.
7:24
Speaker 1: And here's here's kind of another little fact that people
7:26
Speaker 1: don't understand about skulls when it comes to gunshot ones.
7:32
Speaker 1: When when we're being formed in the embryotic stage, you know,
7:38
Speaker 1: our skulls literally come together, all right. They they kind
7:41
Speaker 1: of seal, and you know, people have heard about things
7:44
Speaker 1: like with babies the soft spot fought now, all right,
7:47
Speaker 1: and that that hardens over over a period of time.
7:50
Speaker 1: It's called ossification. When the skull seals, it seals what
7:54
Speaker 1: are along lines that are referred to as suture lines,
7:57
Speaker 1: and it's it's a miracle of nature. When you see it,
8:00
Speaker 1: it looks like locking teeth and you've got these multiple
8:04
Speaker 1: plates of bone that kind of come together. Let's think
8:06
Speaker 1: of that's real simple. You got your frontal bone, which
8:09
Speaker 1: is where your forehead is. You got your temporal bone
8:11
Speaker 1: everybody's heard of their temple. It's kind of down low
8:13
Speaker 1: and forward of the forward of the ears. And then
8:17
Speaker 1: you've got the parietal or parieteal they call, and that
8:20
Speaker 1: makes up kind of the area above your ears. And
8:23
Speaker 1: then you have the occiput or the accipital area, which
8:26
Speaker 1: is that thick bony prominence on the back of you,
8:28
Speaker 1: and it's all sealed together. It almost looks like if
8:31
Speaker 1: you've ever seen fault lines, you know, when they talk
8:34
Speaker 1: about earthquakes, it's it's kind of along these little lines
8:37
Speaker 1: like this, and they're kind of wavy, but those are
8:40
Speaker 1: weak points at that point in time, so the gas
8:42
Speaker 1: is going to try to expand, and lots of times
8:45
Speaker 1: you'll I have literally seen skulls open up, almost like
8:47
Speaker 1: the petal of a flower, think of a tulip, kind
8:49
Speaker 1: of coming apart, you know, fracture many times along along
8:54
Speaker 1: these suiture lines, and it's it's quite fascinating to see.
8:57
Speaker 1: But you know, you generally only see this in self
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Speaker 1: inflicted gunshot ones because let's think about it, in order
9:04
Speaker 1: to form and this is key to this investigation, Jackie,
9:08
Speaker 1: because the people are going to say, they're going to
9:12
Speaker 1: say that, how do you know this in a homicide? Well,
9:15
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that one of the things we
9:17
Speaker 1: look for from a forensic standpoint is when you press
9:20
Speaker 1: that muzzle against the skull, you have to be in
9:24
Speaker 1: a position where you're willing to do that and you
9:28
Speaker 1: maintain that specific tension on that area. If he had
9:32
Speaker 1: a weapon that was being placed against his skull, you're
9:37
Speaker 1: not by someone else. You're not going to lean into it, Jackie,
9:40
Speaker 1: You're gonna shot pull your head away, right. So the tighter,
9:44
Speaker 1: the tighter you press it, the more damage that's going
9:47
Speaker 1: to happen, not necessarily from the projectile, but from this gas.
9:51
Speaker 1: Because look, the gas, just by virtue of physical science,
9:58
Speaker 1: it has to be released, it has to expand that's
10:01
Speaker 1: the nature of heated gas. And when it's injected into
10:04
Speaker 1: that little port, that little hole that is being created,
10:07
Speaker 1: that cavitation by the bullet, it's massive destruction at that
10:11
Speaker 1: point in time, which part actually kills you, Joe, the bullet,
10:17
Speaker 1: the destruction of the brain. I mean, is there a
10:21
Speaker 1: way at this point to tell or is it just
10:23
Speaker 1: kind of encapsulated in one action. There's two parts to
10:28
Speaker 1: it and the trauma. Listen, if you were just standing
10:33
Speaker 1: out in space and someone and when I say space,
10:35
Speaker 1: I don't mean like outer space. I'm just talking about
10:37
Speaker 1: in free roaming space. And someone aims a projectile or
10:43
Speaker 1: aims a weapon at an individual. Let's don't say you
10:47
Speaker 1: are right. Let's let's say yeah, Nancy. Nancy kills me often.
10:50
Speaker 1: And let's say you all right. An individual aims of
10:56
Speaker 1: firearm at another individual from a distance, and they hit you.
11:04
Speaker 1: They hit an individual center mass with that projectile inside
11:09
Speaker 1: of the skull. The projectile is going to kill you,
11:10
Speaker 1: all right. And I know people at home right now
11:13
Speaker 1: are rolling their eyes. They're saying, well, of course it's
11:15
Speaker 1: going to kill you. Got shot in the head. Well,
11:17
Speaker 1: not everybody dies. It gets shot in the head, but
11:20
Speaker 1: a penetrative injury with a high velocity bullet going into
11:24
Speaker 1: the brain, it's going to cavitate and destroy the brain
11:28
Speaker 1: to the point where it's not going to be able
11:30
Speaker 1: to function. So nine out of ten times, the individual
11:33
Speaker 1: with a GSW the head is probably going to pass on.
11:36
Speaker 1: So as you're telling me, is as that bullet penetrates
11:39
Speaker 1: the brain as well as all of that gas and force.
11:43
Speaker 1: It basically turns the brain into mush. Yes, you're absolutely right,
11:48
Speaker 1: it will turn the brain to mush. And it's not
11:50
Speaker 1: you know, it's not mush in the sense that I'm
11:53
Speaker 1: going to be kind of graphic here, but this is
11:55
Speaker 1: body phacks, right, It's not like a mass of mash potatus.
12:01
Speaker 1: All right, it doesn't look like that in the autopsy
12:04
Speaker 1: room when the brain is actually removed from the vault
12:09
Speaker 1: of the skull. All right, you can remove it in
12:13
Speaker 1: essentially one piece most of the time, but it's going
12:15
Speaker 1: to be greatly fragmented. You're gonna have a tremendous amount
12:18
Speaker 1: of hemorrhage that's in this area, and you'll see what
12:22
Speaker 1: actual forensic pathologists they refer to these as gas injuries.
12:26
Speaker 1: Where you have this kind of ripping apartment in. What
12:29
Speaker 1: will happen, and this is kind of fascinating, is that
12:33
Speaker 1: there will be gas injuries that will not be associated
12:38
Speaker 1: with the actual projectile injury. You know, like if an
12:42
Speaker 1: individual were to shoot themselves in the right temple and
12:46
Speaker 1: this is a press contact, you're going to see a
12:49
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of trauma. It goes without saying to that
12:53
Speaker 1: specific area, but you can actually see gas injuries because
12:58
Speaker 1: it kind of expands out. You can see gas injuries
13:01
Speaker 1: on the back side of the brain as well, where
13:03
Speaker 1: the bullet never even touches. Jackie. That's that's the kind
13:06
Speaker 1: of force that you're talking about here. It's a it's
13:08
Speaker 1: a ripping, it's more of a shredding kind of thing
13:11
Speaker 1: that takes place. And it's not just the what's called
13:15
Speaker 1: the gray matter and the white matter. What you're also
13:19
Speaker 1: going to see is all the little tiny vessels that
13:22
Speaker 1: are rising up out of the floor of the skull,
13:25
Speaker 1: the optic nerves, which are very there. You can appreciate
13:29
Speaker 1: them when you when you take the brain out there,
13:31
Speaker 1: they're glaring when you see them. All of that is
13:35
Speaker 1: going to be disrupted as well, and so you'll see
13:37
Speaker 1: these little tiny areas of hemorrhage all over the place
13:40
Speaker 1: and you say, well, what in the world could that be, Well,
13:42
Speaker 1: that's gas injury that you're seeing. So it does mass destruction.
13:46
Speaker 1: That's why when people sustain self inflicted gunshot wounds, it's
13:52
Speaker 1: it's very very difficult for them to survive these things,
13:56
Speaker 1: even even if they get them to the emergency room,
13:59
Speaker 1: even if they can get them into surgery, and hey,
14:01
Speaker 1: even beyond surgery, if they get them onto ICU and
14:05
Speaker 1: they put them in a coma, it's it's very, very
14:07
Speaker 1: difficult for people to make it through after they sustained
14:11
Speaker 1: one of these injuries. Do you see these same kind
14:14
Speaker 1: of injuries on let's say somebody was going to shoot
14:17
Speaker 1: themselves in the shoulder. Do you see these same kind
14:20
Speaker 1: of gas injuries on other parts of the body as well? Yeah,
14:23
Speaker 1: you can, but there's there's something about the skull. It's
14:27
Speaker 1: not it's not the same. Let's say, I love the
14:30
Speaker 1: example that's talked about relative to the shoulder. Let's take
14:33
Speaker 1: that for an instance. If you have an individual that's
14:36
Speaker 1: going to take the muzzle of a weapon and place
14:40
Speaker 1: it tightly against the surface of their of their skin
14:44
Speaker 1: overlying you know, their their chest there, and they pull
14:46
Speaker 1: the trigger, the gas in that particular instance is being
14:51
Speaker 1: dispersed into a lot of soft tissue you've got underlying.
14:55
Speaker 1: You know, if you're talking about your shoulder, you've got
14:56
Speaker 1: the top side of the pectoralis muscle, You've got all
15:00
Speaker 1: these muscle groups that are involving around the collar bone.
15:04
Speaker 1: In all these areas, and then you have this kind
15:06
Speaker 1: of network of bones that are through here. You know,
15:08
Speaker 1: you've got your your collar bone, Uh, that's there. You've
15:13
Speaker 1: got the connection with the scapula on the backside, which
15:18
Speaker 1: is of course your your shoulder blade, and uh, you're
15:22
Speaker 1: the upper portion of the humorous all these all these places.
15:25
Speaker 1: But what what they don't have that the skull does
15:27
Speaker 1: have is this kind of sealed environment. You know, it's
15:33
Speaker 1: it's almost as if the cranial vault is a separate
15:40
Speaker 1: it's kind of a separate entity in and of itself
15:44
Speaker 1: as it applies to the skeleton. There's no other bone
15:46
Speaker 1: like it. It's a network of bones that are tightly
15:49
Speaker 1: fused together. Remember we talked about those sure suture lines.
15:53
Speaker 1: It's tightly fused together, and it creates this kind of um,
15:57
Speaker 1: this kind of container for the brain, if you will.
16:00
Speaker 1: And it's tied, I mean, it's very well sealed. And
16:03
Speaker 1: so the gas as it expands into the shoulder. With
16:08
Speaker 1: the example that you gave, it's going to disperse through
16:10
Speaker 1: the soft tissue in the cranium. You don't have that.
16:14
Speaker 1: You've got your scalp that you'll see. But with the
16:17
Speaker 1: scalp it'll literally come away from the skull and then
16:22
Speaker 1: kind of settle back down. But you don't have anything
16:25
Speaker 1: else that's going to absorb that energy. It's going to
16:30
Speaker 1: be dispersed into the sealed environment, and that's the reason
16:33
Speaker 1: the head comes apart. And one of the really interesting
16:36
Speaker 1: things that we look for that is if we still
16:38
Speaker 1: have soft tissue, which in the case of Brian Laundry
16:41
Speaker 1: what it sounds like they might not have had, but
16:43
Speaker 1: I don't know that for a fact. You'll get these
16:46
Speaker 1: little injuries to the scalp now I'm talking about soft tissue.
16:51
Speaker 1: You get these little injuries to the scalp and jack
16:54
Speaker 1: you know what they're referred to as. They're called stell
16:56
Speaker 1: eate injuries. And the reason they're called stell eate injuries
17:01
Speaker 1: is think about every image you've ever seen of like
17:04
Speaker 1: at Christmas time when people do renderings of the Star
17:08
Speaker 1: of Bethlehem and it's kind of got that the long
17:11
Speaker 1: tail on it, and it's got the short little arms
17:13
Speaker 1: over to the left and the right, and it's got
17:15
Speaker 1: another short little arm that goes up. The injuries actually
17:18
Speaker 1: look like that their star shape. So forensic pathologists have
17:23
Speaker 1: adopted this term stellate, and you'll see that on the
17:26
Speaker 1: surface of the skull. And the stellate injuries only occur
17:30
Speaker 1: over the surface where you have tissue that's covering very
17:34
Speaker 1: closely over a flat, bony surface. The only other place
17:38
Speaker 1: that you might see it in the body is going
17:40
Speaker 1: to be over the sternum, which is, you know, a
17:43
Speaker 1: flat bone that we have in the center of the chest,
17:45
Speaker 1: you'll see a stellate injury. But again this only comes
17:49
Speaker 1: about as a result of pressing that muzzle, and the
17:51
Speaker 1: reason it forms this star shape, if you will, is
17:54
Speaker 1: that the skin with this injection of hot gas is
17:58
Speaker 1: also ripping and tearing. It just so happens that it
18:01
Speaker 1: has a distinctive pattern when you see it a stellate injury.
18:20
Speaker 1: Body Bags with Joe Scott Morgan. Yeah, we're talking about
18:25
Speaker 1: Brian Laundry and you know, one of the things that
18:28
Speaker 1: really strikes me about this case is the body is
18:31
Speaker 1: fascinating and what they found relative to his remains or
18:34
Speaker 1: what did actually remain of his body. But it's this
18:39
Speaker 1: hostile environment. You know, Jackie, he was found in a swamp.
18:42
Speaker 1: Well you would know about swamps, Joe. You know you
18:44
Speaker 1: started your death investigation career out in New Orleans, and
18:48
Speaker 1: there's lots of those kind of conditions in Louisiana, So
18:54
Speaker 1: everybody wants to know. They found some remains of Brian Laundry.
18:58
Speaker 1: They've not found a full skeleton, and they found his
19:01
Speaker 1: skull partial skull again, so we have partial remains, so
19:07
Speaker 1: we believe there's alligators there. Joe, how were we able
19:11
Speaker 1: to find anything? Shouldn't the skull have been gone to?
19:16
Speaker 1: That's the question, ain't it? Since the search for Brin
19:21
Speaker 1: Laundry started, you know, everybody was looking for him and whatnot,
19:24
Speaker 1: and they talked about all these hostile environments he was
19:26
Speaker 1: going to, and just on the side I have to say,
19:29
Speaker 1: you know, it turns out he was almost right in
19:33
Speaker 1: plain view. I guess, you know, out there in the swamps.
19:35
Speaker 1: But swamp can be a tricky thing. It changes day
19:39
Speaker 1: to day. You think that it's a static environment, it's not.
19:43
Speaker 1: Water levels change fully, it's changes all those sorts of things.
19:48
Speaker 1: With him being found out in this kind of semi aquatic,
19:54
Speaker 1: mucky kind of environment, it adds an entire different level
19:58
Speaker 1: to the dynamic. Remember what they were saying in press conferences.
20:02
Speaker 1: The police were coming out and they were talking about
20:05
Speaker 1: what they were encountering out there. You had all all
20:08
Speaker 1: manner of snakes. You know, you've got cotton mouths out there,
20:11
Speaker 1: You've got copper heads and rattlesnakes and everything else. But yeah,
20:14
Speaker 1: the apex predator in this environment, keep in mind, we
20:17
Speaker 1: are in Florida, is going to be an alligator. And
20:21
Speaker 1: you know, just like you know you had mentioned I
20:23
Speaker 1: started my career in South Louisiana. Well, you had to
20:25
Speaker 1: contend with the mississipp River and all the swamps and
20:29
Speaker 1: the marshes and Gulf of Mexico, and yeah, we had
20:31
Speaker 1: a lot of gators down in that area. And I've
20:34
Speaker 1: worked cases involved gators. But what set this case apart
20:37
Speaker 1: from me and the reason from Jump Street I suspected
20:41
Speaker 1: that a gator wasn't involved in this was the fact
20:46
Speaker 1: that when gators feast on a body, and it doesn't
20:50
Speaker 1: have to be a human body. When they you know,
20:53
Speaker 1: they can go up on a bank and you know,
20:55
Speaker 1: you've seen these these videos of them where they just
20:58
Speaker 1: kind of lay still in the water till like some
21:00
Speaker 1: little deer comes up to the side of the water,
21:02
Speaker 1: a raccoon or something. They'll just reach up and grab
21:04
Speaker 1: it and pull it under. But they also do a
21:06
Speaker 1: thing called a spin, and that actually kills the prey
21:11
Speaker 1: and people, you know, I think that they're under this
21:14
Speaker 1: impression that an alligator will just immediately eat whatever the
21:19
Speaker 1: victim is. That's not the way this operates. The nature
21:24
Speaker 1: of an alligator when they take a prey is they
21:31
Speaker 1: will spin it after they snatch it off the bank.
21:35
Speaker 1: And they're an aquatic animal. They love they loved being
21:38
Speaker 1: the water. They'll sun themselves, but they loved being the water.
21:40
Speaker 1: And then you know what they do before they ever
21:42
Speaker 1: catch the prey. Lots of times they'll they'll back up
21:45
Speaker 1: to a mud bank and they take that huge tail
21:48
Speaker 1: and they kind of swish it back and forth. They
21:50
Speaker 1: swish it back and forth. You know what they're doing.
21:53
Speaker 1: They're actually creating a meat locker, and it's fascinating. We
21:57
Speaker 1: would find these in South Louisiana many times. Friend that
22:00
Speaker 1: actually fell through one one time and he landed on
22:03
Speaker 1: top of dead deer carcasses. It's terrified he'd been fishing.
22:08
Speaker 1: And what they do with their victims is that after
22:12
Speaker 1: they kill the victim, they go back to these little
22:15
Speaker 1: lockers they have set up and they kind of push
22:17
Speaker 1: them under the bank into this meat locker, and people say, well,
22:21
Speaker 1: what the world they do that. I'll tell you why
22:24
Speaker 1: alligators can't chew. Might not know that they don't chew.
22:30
Speaker 1: They actually have to wait for remains to decompose so
22:36
Speaker 1: that they can actually rip them apart and swallow them.
22:40
Speaker 1: If you ever see the action of an alligator's mouth,
22:43
Speaker 1: it's not something that even like a dog. You know,
22:46
Speaker 1: dogs will chew on things. They alligators generally don't do that.
22:49
Speaker 1: They chomp. You know that that's associated with alligators. We
22:53
Speaker 1: hear that all the time. They chomp, they chomp, they grip,
22:57
Speaker 1: they rip, and they swallow. Now, you can take like
22:59
Speaker 1: a chicken carcass that you get at the grocery store,
23:03
Speaker 1: and I've seen this, you know, an alligator shows and
23:05
Speaker 1: whatnot in South Louisiana, and you can throw it to
23:07
Speaker 1: an alligator and they'll it'll go into their mouth and
23:11
Speaker 1: they'll just swallow the thing. They don't sit there chew
23:13
Speaker 1: on the thing. But when you're talking about the body
23:17
Speaker 1: of a large deer or even a small deer, or
23:20
Speaker 1: certainly a human being, they're not going to eat that
23:24
Speaker 1: individual immediately. And so when I began to hear that
23:27
Speaker 1: they had found Brian Laundry's body in a visible area. Now, granted,
23:33
Speaker 1: he was probably underwater, you know. They talked about the
23:35
Speaker 1: water level of dropped and everything, and I knew that
23:38
Speaker 1: they had remains. I knew that he wasn't buried beneath
23:40
Speaker 1: the bank, which is something that you would commonly see
23:43
Speaker 1: with a gator. He was out in a visible area
23:46
Speaker 1: at that point in time. Now, I have no idea
23:50
Speaker 1: why it is that a gator didn't just come up
23:52
Speaker 1: and grab his body and haul him away, you know,
23:54
Speaker 1: And let's you know, let's be real about this. He
23:57
Speaker 1: had been out there for a while, so he would
23:59
Speaker 1: he's going to be in at least probably a moderate
24:03
Speaker 1: to advanced state of decomposition. But for some reason, his
24:07
Speaker 1: body wasn't carted away by an alligator, and it wasn't
24:10
Speaker 1: stowed somewhere so that they could come back and feast
24:13
Speaker 1: on remains later. It was out there. It was out
24:15
Speaker 1: there to the point where they could appreciate that they
24:18
Speaker 1: had physical remains. They knew that they had a partial
24:22
Speaker 1: skull at this point in time, and when I heard
24:24
Speaker 1: partial skull, my immediate reaction to this was Okay, well,
24:30
Speaker 1: one or two things has happened. Either he was struck
24:35
Speaker 1: in the head by something like a heavy object and
24:39
Speaker 1: they said skull, they didn't say head. So I knew
24:42
Speaker 1: that there's probably no soft tissue, or this's gonna be
24:45
Speaker 1: a gunshot one, because I do know this. I've I've
24:48
Speaker 1: worked a lot of cases out in the woods where
24:50
Speaker 1: people have self inflicted gunshot ones. The bodies go into
24:53
Speaker 1: a skeletal or advanced state of decomposition, and the soft
24:57
Speaker 1: tissue is the first thing to go. It's going to
25:00
Speaker 1: to be gone, and so you'll just have partial bits
25:05
Speaker 1: of that bony plate or those bony plates that are
25:09
Speaker 1: left behind through the process of decomposition. And when his
25:14
Speaker 1: body finally made it to the forensic anthropologist, let's keep
25:17
Speaker 1: in mind the m turned his body over to the
25:21
Speaker 1: forensic anthropologists, they had very limited bits of human remain
25:27
Speaker 1: to work with. And I still, you know, I'm still
25:31
Speaker 1: wondering if they were able to recover everything Jackie, because
25:34
Speaker 1: if he's in the semi aquatic environment, he's down into
25:38
Speaker 1: the muck. Okay, this kind of muddy, mushy bottom, and
25:42
Speaker 1: it's it's really nasty. If you've never been out into
25:44
Speaker 1: a swamp. There's a lot of debris that comes off
25:48
Speaker 1: of trees. There's always a process and it's right in
25:51
Speaker 1: your face. The swamp has a particular odor too, and
25:54
Speaker 1: it's not a foul odor necessarily, but there's always this
25:58
Speaker 1: kind of interesting odor of plant decay that's out there.
26:02
Speaker 1: Because this is always happening. That's why everything's so green.
26:05
Speaker 1: You know, when you go into a swamp, it's it's green.
26:08
Speaker 1: There's a lot of vegetation, a lot in there. That's
26:11
Speaker 1: why you get a lot of these animals that will
26:13
Speaker 1: go into this environment and they'll they'll they'll have homes there.
26:16
Speaker 1: You see raccoons on the side of these water on
26:19
Speaker 1: sides of these waterways and they're living there in the
26:21
Speaker 1: swamp and they're taking fish and crawfish and everything out
26:25
Speaker 1: of the water. Possums live out there. So you've got
26:28
Speaker 1: this big ecosystem that's out there, and eventually, eventually it's
26:32
Speaker 1: going to consume everything. Body bags with Joe Scott Morgan, Jackie,
26:51
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, you know, as well as anybody
26:54
Speaker 1: you've been at this for a while now, there will
26:57
Speaker 1: always always be questioned about the death of Brian Laundry.
27:02
Speaker 1: Of course there will be in the biggest one is
27:04
Speaker 1: I think for most people, is will we ever recover
27:08
Speaker 1: a weapon? Joe, Yeah, you know, I can't sit here
27:11
Speaker 1: and actually say that they don't have a weapon. Remember,
27:14
Speaker 1: it was never even confirmed until just a few days
27:17
Speaker 1: ago that he had a weapon or even had access
27:20
Speaker 1: to weapons, you know, Jackie. What has been revealed is
27:24
Speaker 1: that the authorities recovered, and I say recovered, they were
27:28
Speaker 1: actually surrendered by the family five to six weapons in
27:33
Speaker 1: this home. And you know, we didn't know anything about
27:36
Speaker 1: that in the news reports initially. But what we do
27:38
Speaker 1: know is that one weapon is still unaccounted for. So
27:42
Speaker 1: we can only assume that that is, in fact the
27:45
Speaker 1: weapon that Laundry took into the swamp with him to
27:49
Speaker 1: end his life with. And we know that he you know, look,
27:52
Speaker 1: the authorities are saying now that this is a suicide,
27:54
Speaker 1: This is a self inflicted gunshot one. And I think
27:57
Speaker 1: the big question is is somebody going to walk up
28:00
Speaker 1: on this weapon one day? Have they actually recovered it?
28:03
Speaker 1: Remember that that mucky silty bottom that I was referring to, Uh,
28:10
Speaker 1: did it swallow up this weapon? And is there any
28:13
Speaker 1: chance that they can recover it. You know, as we
28:16
Speaker 1: you know, we're heading into winter now, and the one
28:19
Speaker 1: thing about this time of year as opposed to the summertime,
28:22
Speaker 1: we're going into kind of a dry season, so the
28:25
Speaker 1: waters in that area will begin to recede a bit.
28:28
Speaker 1: You're not going to be you know, there were there
28:31
Speaker 1: were certain instances. I remember one of the local law
28:34
Speaker 1: enforcement officers on one of the swamp buggies, Jack there
28:37
Speaker 1: were certain certain times they were six seven feet deep
28:41
Speaker 1: in water out there. You know, in these swamp buggies.
28:44
Speaker 1: You're not going to have that right now. So now,
28:46
Speaker 1: right now, as we're headed into the dry season, is
28:50
Speaker 1: a time that the local authorities, along with the FBI
28:55
Speaker 1: or whoever else has a vested investigative injury has a
28:59
Speaker 1: vest did investigative interest in this case, are going to
29:04
Speaker 1: need to go back out there with a crime scene team.
29:06
Speaker 1: If they haven't recovered this weapon yet, they're going to
29:08
Speaker 1: have to get multiple and I mean multiple metal detectors
29:14
Speaker 1: on hand and sweep that area. And kind of the
29:17
Speaker 1: way that they would do this is if you imagine
29:22
Speaker 1: four or five personnel lined up side by side with
29:26
Speaker 1: probably about three to four foot of space between each person.
29:30
Speaker 1: They each have a metal detector and they walk forward,
29:34
Speaker 1: if you will, covering this specific area where his body
29:37
Speaker 1: was found, and they begin to sweep back and forth
29:42
Speaker 1: with those metal detectors, they might get hit. You know.
29:45
Speaker 1: One of the things that's kind of interesting is that
29:48
Speaker 1: they specifically mentioned Jackie that the water had receded. Well,
29:51
Speaker 1: what do we know when water receives If you've ever
29:56
Speaker 1: you know, if you've ever been out outside of your
29:58
Speaker 1: home and there's been a huge rainfall that's taken place.
30:02
Speaker 1: You know, in the South, we call them gully washers.
30:05
Speaker 1: And if you as the water begins to recede and
30:09
Speaker 1: it goes down into the sewage lines along street, it'll
30:13
Speaker 1: begin to pull all kinds of debris with it. I
30:15
Speaker 1: wonder if that weapon didn't kind of migrate down this area,
30:19
Speaker 1: you know, maybe it moved away from where they actually
30:21
Speaker 1: found the body. And that's something they're going to have
30:23
Speaker 1: to take into account here to try to determine if
30:27
Speaker 1: that weapon is anywhere in that location. I can almost
30:30
Speaker 1: assure you they're going to be out there looking for
30:32
Speaker 1: it over these coming months, because now's the time to
30:36
Speaker 1: do it. And you know, certainly we don't we don't
30:39
Speaker 1: want some citizen, and trust me, there will be citizens
30:42
Speaker 1: they go out there because of the notorious nature of
30:45
Speaker 1: this location. Now, they're not going to want some private
30:49
Speaker 1: citizen walking out there and maybe they've got a kid
30:51
Speaker 1: with them and they pick up this weapon. For all
30:54
Speaker 1: we know, this is a weapon that still contains a
30:56
Speaker 1: live ammunition. Somebody could really get hurt. So if for
30:59
Speaker 1: no other reason they want to recover it for that purpose,
31:02
Speaker 1: you read my mind, Joe, because I was going to
31:04
Speaker 1: ask you, can't they just go out there with the
31:05
Speaker 1: metal detector and find it? Or if you've watched any
31:08
Speaker 1: viral videos these days, you see people who go out
31:12
Speaker 1: and do magnetic fishing. They take a really strong magnet,
31:15
Speaker 1: put it on a really long rope and throw it
31:17
Speaker 1: out in the water to see what they can find.
31:20
Speaker 1: So I would have to imagine, like you said, that
31:23
Speaker 1: the law enforcement is going to be on top of this. Yeah,
31:27
Speaker 1: I know that they are, Jackie. And can you imagine
31:31
Speaker 1: what horror would follow if someone got injured as a
31:36
Speaker 1: result of them not recovering this weapon. There are a
31:38
Speaker 1: lot of people that have an interest in finding this weapon,
31:42
Speaker 1: And for me, as a forensic scientist, yeah, I want
31:44
Speaker 1: to know what type of weapon this is. I want
31:47
Speaker 1: to know the specific caliber. I want to know if
31:51
Speaker 1: they recovered a projectile, and that's something else that they
31:53
Speaker 1: could be looking for. You know, with the metal detectors,
31:57
Speaker 1: you know this whether it's a semi jacket or or
32:00
Speaker 1: a jacketed ground that passed through his head and wound up,
32:04
Speaker 1: you know, lodged in a tree or on the ground somewhere,
32:07
Speaker 1: that can happen. And also if it's a semi automatic weapon,
32:11
Speaker 1: the little shell casing that comes out. Remember if this
32:13
Speaker 1: is a semi automatic handgun or a rifle, that spent casing,
32:18
Speaker 1: the spent brass as we call it, will be ejected
32:21
Speaker 1: out into the air. So that's another metallic element that
32:25
Speaker 1: you're looking for at the scene, and that's going to
32:28
Speaker 1: have and on the base of those on the base
32:30
Speaker 1: of the spent brass, it has a caliber stamp on it.
32:33
Speaker 1: So let's just say, for instance, it's a nine millimeter.
32:37
Speaker 1: If you look at the base of that spent casing,
32:41
Speaker 1: it will be stamped with the number nine, and then
32:44
Speaker 1: it'll have M M and then below it it'll have
32:48
Speaker 1: a manufacturer's mark. Okay, so that'll be a tie back
32:52
Speaker 1: and even if they don't recover the projectile. One of
32:54
Speaker 1: the cool things about this, again, if this is a
32:57
Speaker 1: semi automatic handgun, if they cover casing, they can actually
33:02
Speaker 1: match up the casing marks or the extraction they're called
33:06
Speaker 1: extraction marks on this weapon to the casing. You don't
33:11
Speaker 1: necessarily have to have the projectile itself. You can do
33:14
Speaker 1: a match where it's not as accurate, but you can
33:17
Speaker 1: do a match to say, yeah, this weapon generated these
33:20
Speaker 1: tiny little ejection marks on this projectile, therefore tying it
33:24
Speaker 1: back to that And if they can show that that
33:26
Speaker 1: weapon was owned by this family, then that should be
33:30
Speaker 1: case closed. Even if a weapon is recovered Joe, unless
33:34
Speaker 1: there is a visible serial number that can be tied
33:37
Speaker 1: back to the family. Given the damage on the skull,
33:41
Speaker 1: are they actually, if they don't have a serial number,
33:44
Speaker 1: going to be able to say definitively that this is
33:47
Speaker 1: the weapon they killed Ryan Laundry. I think that it
33:52
Speaker 1: is going to be within the realm of possibility that
33:57
Speaker 1: they can say that, because the term that they're going
33:59
Speaker 1: to use, they're not going to paint themselves into a corner,
34:02
Speaker 1: either legally or forensically by saying with absolute certainty okay,
34:07
Speaker 1: with absolute certainty. The term that we use in forensic science,
34:12
Speaker 1: and Nancy can address this is when we're in court,
34:16
Speaker 1: we say reasonable certainty. Okay, we say within a reasonable
34:21
Speaker 1: a reasonable amount of certain scientific certainty here, and that's
34:24
Speaker 1: what we're looking at because you have to take the
34:27
Speaker 1: circumstances in total. Here. It's you might not get a
34:31
Speaker 1: specific physical match, but is the wound that you're seeing
34:36
Speaker 1: generated on what's left of this skull consistent consistent with
34:43
Speaker 1: the weapon that they might recover it the scene? Could
34:45
Speaker 1: this weapon generate this injury that might be the best
34:50
Speaker 1: that it's ever going to get. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
34:55
Speaker 1: and this is body backs