Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: The Hollywood Hills Homicide of Amie Harwick
Transcript
- 0:08Speaker 1: Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. I've been out to
- 0:20Speaker 1: LA a few times in my in my career, I've
- 0:23Speaker 1: had to film different things out there and interact with
- 0:26Speaker 1: folks out in Hollywood. And one of the odd little
- 0:29Speaker 1: asides about LA is this location there called the Hollywood Hills.
- 0:36Speaker 1: It's strange for somebody like me that lives down here
- 0:39Speaker 1: in the Deep South, but you go there and the
- 0:42Speaker 1: roads just kind of snake around you. You never know
- 0:46Speaker 1: where you're gonna wind up. But I got to tell you,
- 0:49Speaker 1: you know, when you begin to take it all in
- 0:52Speaker 1: and you look down and you can see the city
- 0:54Speaker 1: kind of laying out there before you, it's quite breathtaking.
- 0:58Speaker 1: It almost as though it's not real. It almost does,
- 1:04Speaker 1: in fact, seem like in that setting that the city
- 1:09Speaker 1: is a movie set. The views are fantastic. Today, we're
- 1:15Speaker 1: going to talk about a lady that lived there, that
- 1:18Speaker 1: was part and parcel of that community that people knew,
- 1:22Speaker 1: people in very high echelns out in Hollywood. We're going
- 1:27Speaker 1: to talk about the death of Amy Harwick. I'm Joseph
- 1:32Speaker 1: Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks. Some of the toughest
- 1:41Speaker 1: scenes that I've had to work have taken place as
- 1:46Speaker 1: a result of falls from great height because I don't know,
- 1:50Speaker 1: you you look at it and you try to make
- 1:53Speaker 1: heads or tails out of what actually happened, because sometimes
- 1:57Speaker 1: that traumas just so extensive it's very hard to kind
- 2:00Speaker 1: of make your way through everything that you have to analyze.
- 2:05Speaker 1: Jackie Howard, executive producer of Crown Stories with Nancy Grace. Jackie,
- 2:10Speaker 1: I gotta tell you this case is one of those cases.
- 2:13Speaker 1: For me, I can only imagine the trouble that the
- 2:15Speaker 1: corner had kind of deciphering what they were seeing before them.
- 2:18Speaker 1: I have so many questions for you, Joe about this
- 2:21Speaker 1: case related to that fall. But let's look a little
- 2:24Speaker 1: bit at the life of Amy Harwick. She was a
- 2:26Speaker 1: well known sex therapist in Hollywood. She was the ex
- 2:30Speaker 1: fiance of Drew Carey, actor and host of The Prices
- 2:35Speaker 1: Right And the night Amy Harwick died, she had gone
- 2:39Speaker 1: with friends to see a burlesque show and she had
- 2:43Speaker 1: got home around one o'clock in the morning, and at
- 2:46Speaker 1: that time she texted a friend that said, send me
- 2:49Speaker 1: pictures on the green couch. And the location where they
- 2:53Speaker 1: had gone there is a green couch, and I guess
- 2:56Speaker 1: she wanted to see that her friend got there and
- 2:57Speaker 1: she was having a good time. Amy decided to go home.
- 3:01Speaker 1: So as Amy went to her third floor apartment, she
- 3:07Speaker 1: was attacked. Police theorized that the assailant had been waiting
- 3:12Speaker 1: on her for hours. We'll talk a little more in
- 3:15Speaker 1: depth in a minute about the scene and what was found.
- 3:19Speaker 1: But Joe Amy Harwick was thrown off of the balcony
- 3:23Speaker 1: of her third floor apartment. That's about a twenty feet fall.
- 3:28Speaker 1: But we also know that she was assaulted and attacked
- 3:32Speaker 1: in her apartment. How can, how does? How will this
- 3:39Speaker 1: type of investigation be conducted? Because an has to distinguish
- 3:44Speaker 1: between the injuries caused by the assault and the injuries
- 3:49Speaker 1: caused by the fall. Where do you start? The first
- 3:53Speaker 1: place you start is at the scene. You want to
- 3:55Speaker 1: see if there's any kind of evidence, you know, at
- 3:58Speaker 1: the scene that would give you an indication of, you know,
- 4:00Speaker 1: any kind of struggle that had happened there and that
- 4:03Speaker 1: certainly you know was the case. There was disruption at
- 4:07Speaker 1: the scene, There was evidence that a door had been
- 4:09Speaker 1: breached and broken through. There was even blood on the door.
- 4:13Speaker 1: They haven't released a lot of information in regards to
- 4:16Speaker 1: that blood as to actually who the blood belonged to,
- 4:19Speaker 1: but that is significant. It's a significant bit of information.
- 4:23Speaker 1: That's something that is totally atypical. You don't expect to
- 4:25Speaker 1: walk into a well maintained living area. And from the
- 4:30Speaker 1: accounts that are friends have put forward, this apartment is
- 4:34Speaker 1: absolutely gorgeous. I mean, it's it's beautiful. If you could
- 4:37Speaker 1: see this building, it's it's kind of got a tutor
- 4:40Speaker 1: appearance to it, you know, a high pitched roof. It's
- 4:43Speaker 1: very well maintained and I'm sure very high end. We
- 4:47Speaker 1: talked about the Hollywood Hills people have talked about. Even
- 4:49Speaker 1: her bedroom was very striking. You know, she's a sex therapist.
- 4:53Speaker 1: I'm sure that it's, you know, very luxurious in all
- 4:56Speaker 1: those things. She's putting forth an image in this environment,
- 5:00Speaker 1: and you look for things there that are going to
- 5:02Speaker 1: give you clues as to what happened. Obviously we know
- 5:06Speaker 1: where she wound up. You know, she struck a hard surface,
- 5:10Speaker 1: you know, after a twenty foot fall. But how did
- 5:13Speaker 1: she come to wind up there? And it's interesting you
- 5:17Speaker 1: use the term throne off of the balcony. That's not
- 5:21Speaker 1: something that we just you know, conjured up out of
- 5:23Speaker 1: the air. That's something that apparently the corner had actually
- 5:27Speaker 1: reported to the local media. Thrown, you know, that's that's
- 5:31Speaker 1: an active word. That's that's different than fell. You know,
- 5:35Speaker 1: he began to think about thrown. That means that someone
- 5:38Speaker 1: in fact has to enter into the equation and propel
- 5:42Speaker 1: that individual through the air and over the balcony. And
- 5:45Speaker 1: that's not something that's easily accomplished. That's something that takes strength.
- 5:49Speaker 1: It's something that takes force of will in order to do,
- 5:53Speaker 1: and it's something that you have to be purposed at.
- 5:55Speaker 1: I would think, you know, there's any number of other
- 5:57Speaker 1: places that she could have been thrown, thrown through the floor,
- 6:00Speaker 1: through a window, thrown onto the bed, thrown into the
- 6:03Speaker 1: baths of I don't know, but thrown over a balcony railing.
- 6:07Speaker 1: And when you see the balcony, for folks that haven't
- 6:10Speaker 1: seen it, I'll kind of paint a picture for you.
- 6:12Speaker 1: It gives you the distinct impression of kind of a
- 6:15Speaker 1: larger form of what's referred to as a Juliette balcony,
- 6:20Speaker 1: that classic image that we think of Romeo and Juliet
- 6:23Speaker 1: highly romanticized. It's not a place you would go out
- 6:27Speaker 1: and take coffee and toast in the morning. And there's
- 6:29Speaker 1: not a lot of space to it, but it does
- 6:31Speaker 1: open into her bedroom and so it's a feature of
- 6:35Speaker 1: this home. And so you've got to make it through
- 6:38Speaker 1: several levels here, you know, because it's on the third floor,
- 6:43Speaker 1: her bedrooms up there on the third floor. You're not
- 6:46Speaker 1: going to access it, you know, from the top floor.
- 6:49Speaker 1: You have to access it down below. So whoever did
- 6:54Speaker 1: this would have had specific knowledge about that area and
- 6:58Speaker 1: where she lived. I think that's that's quite fascinating, in
- 7:03Speaker 1: a very interesting piece of evidence and evidence of a
- 7:07Speaker 1: life that has been lived, that an individual would have
- 7:10Speaker 1: to have familiarity with it where to find her in
- 7:13Speaker 1: this particular location, and not a lot of people would
- 7:18Speaker 1: have been out and about. This happened in the wee hours.
- 7:22Speaker 1: It's after midnight at two am. Yeah, it's at two am.
- 7:25Speaker 1: And I think one little aside here that's very very
- 7:28Speaker 1: important that we can certainly address, has happened on the
- 7:32Speaker 1: fifteenth of February. Jackie. She had been out celebrating with
- 7:36Speaker 1: these friends at the burlesque show on Valentine's Night. Well,
- 7:40Speaker 1: you were talking about how the m E announced to
- 7:43Speaker 1: the press that she was thrown off of the balcony.
- 7:46Speaker 1: Before we get back to the body and talk about
- 7:49Speaker 1: the injuries, how would he have known that? I know
- 7:52Speaker 1: it has to do with the angle of where the
- 7:54Speaker 1: body is found, the distance from the building. It's good
- 8:00Speaker 1: old geometry, trigonometry, all those elmetries that I am really
- 8:04Speaker 1: no good at. Yeah, you would think that, well, first off,
- 8:08Speaker 1: did you have a witness to it? You know, if
- 8:10Speaker 1: that is the font or the wellspring from where that
- 8:13Speaker 1: data is coming from. From an investigative standpoint, did somebody
- 8:17Speaker 1: physically witness her be projected off of the balcony, then
- 8:23Speaker 1: you have to think about, well, at what point did
- 8:26Speaker 1: she pitch off of the balcony? Did she make contact
- 8:30Speaker 1: with the rail? Is there any evidence that there was
- 8:32Speaker 1: any kind of blood transfer on the rail? Is there
- 8:35Speaker 1: any evidence that maybe someone had put their hands on
- 8:38Speaker 1: the rail, put their hands on her maybe if she's
- 8:41Speaker 1: wearing clothing, was the back of her collar clutched with
- 8:45Speaker 1: a bloody handprint, or maybe her backside or maybe her ankles.
- 8:49Speaker 1: Where you get this idea that maybe she was pitched out.
- 8:53Speaker 1: A person that is just falling will not generally have
- 8:57Speaker 1: the ability to project themselves. And another thing that you
- 9:01Speaker 1: have to factor in here, and you had mentioned this earlier,
- 9:04Speaker 1: is that the corner actually stated that she had sustained
- 9:09Speaker 1: two types of trauma. She not only sustained blunt force trauma,
- 9:13Speaker 1: which is generally associated with the fall and impact injury. Okay,
- 9:17Speaker 1: and we can dig into that, but also there was
- 9:20Speaker 1: evidence in the soft tissue of her neck that she
- 9:23Speaker 1: had been strangled or manually throttled in some way, that
- 9:28Speaker 1: there was deep tissue hemorrhage there a significant enough so
- 9:32Speaker 1: that the corner made note of it and thought that
- 9:35Speaker 1: it was a genuine finding, something that's not associated with
- 9:39Speaker 1: the fall. When we look at these types of injuries
- 9:43Speaker 1: like this, and people that have listened to bodybags now
- 9:46Speaker 1: they know that we talk about things like anti mortem injuries.
- 9:50Speaker 1: Before death, we talked about perimortem injuries, and then we
- 9:54Speaker 1: talk about post mortem injuries, and you know, just to
- 9:57Speaker 1: kind of break that down, if you have an anti
- 10:00Speaker 1: mortem injury, that gives you some kind of indication that
- 10:05Speaker 1: when the person sustained the injury, which is obviously prior
- 10:08Speaker 1: to death, that there's been time for that to begin,
- 10:11Speaker 1: at least even at a cellular level. For healing to start, okay,
- 10:15Speaker 1: where the traumatized area gives evidence that you know, there's
- 10:18Speaker 1: some type of work being done at a cellular level.
- 10:21Speaker 1: With perimortem injury, what you'll have and this distinguishes it
- 10:25Speaker 1: from post mortem perimortem. You have focal areas of hemorrhage, okay,
- 10:32Speaker 1: but there's no evidence of healing. So you know the
- 10:35Speaker 1: moment time, that time when the person lost their life,
- 10:39Speaker 1: you think about you know, there's probably a lot of
- 10:41Speaker 1: fracturing that's associated with this, and then you've got to
- 10:44Speaker 1: soft tissue hemorrhage. You begin to look at the sing
- 10:47Speaker 1: as logically as you possibly can, think, well, would somebody
- 10:49Speaker 1: hurt their neck, particularly like their anterior neck, and when
- 10:53Speaker 1: I say anterior, I mean front okay, below the chin.
- 10:57Speaker 1: Would they have injured that area in a fall? Well,
- 11:01Speaker 1: there's not a likelihood of that. Okay, you can strike
- 11:03Speaker 1: something and leave a linear mark. But I think what
- 11:08Speaker 1: the emmy saw relative to her neck is possibly and
- 11:12Speaker 1: I have no way to prove this at this moment time,
- 11:15Speaker 1: but that m may have seen a contused area, a
- 11:21Speaker 1: bruised area that may very well may have matched up
- 11:25Speaker 1: with a shape that appeared consistent with a human hand.
- 11:30Speaker 1: I need to back up on you for just a
- 11:31Speaker 1: second job because we are going to talk very in
- 11:33Speaker 1: depth about the injuries to the body, but I got
- 11:36Speaker 1: to talk about this idea of her being thrown again.
- 11:40Speaker 1: The Emmy's going to measure where the body fell, the
- 11:43Speaker 1: distance from the building, because usually if it's an accidental fall,
- 11:49Speaker 1: if I'm understanding things as I've learned from you and
- 11:52Speaker 1: Nancy through the years and her panel of experts, usually
- 11:56Speaker 1: if you fall, then you are going to appel yourself
- 12:01Speaker 1: is pretty much straight down. It's not going to be
- 12:05Speaker 1: ten or fifteen feet or I'm sorry, I'm distance challenged.
- 12:10Speaker 1: It's not, you know, but it's not going to be
- 12:12Speaker 1: at an angle from the building and at a distance, right, Yeah, yeah,
- 12:18Speaker 1: you're absolutely right when an individual free falls, essentially, particularly
- 12:22Speaker 1: from the short of a height. And don't get me wrong,
- 12:25Speaker 1: I'm not diminishing the trauma that was inflicted upon Amy's body,
- 12:31Speaker 1: but when you think about you know, twenty feet is
- 12:35Speaker 1: a lot different than two hundred feet. Okay, so it's
- 12:38Speaker 1: easier to kind of size this up, if you will.
- 12:42Speaker 1: When you begin to fall, you were doing the greatest
- 12:44Speaker 1: battle in the world, from a physics standpoint, with one
- 12:48Speaker 1: of the most overwhelming forces in nature, and that's gravity.
- 12:51Speaker 1: Remember gravity, it's not like you know, when we talk
- 12:53Speaker 1: about other elements that factor into death investigation, we're not
- 12:56Speaker 1: talking about things like heat and environmental changes. We're talking
- 12:59Speaker 1: about a con that's in your universe. Gravity is going
- 13:01Speaker 1: to impact us all no pun intended. We know what
- 13:04Speaker 1: it's like to fall down. Generally, when we fall our
- 13:07Speaker 1: people pass out for instance, say if you're deprived of
- 13:10Speaker 1: oxygen and you just kind of fall over, you're going
- 13:14Speaker 1: to fall essentially straight down. But when you get this
- 13:17Speaker 1: kind of projected event, you have to begin to think about, well,
- 13:24Speaker 1: how far away from that leading edge of the balcony
- 13:28Speaker 1: would you have had to have kind of been propelled
- 13:31Speaker 1: out from in order to wind up this particular distance
- 13:36Speaker 1: away or forward of the edge the leading edge of
- 13:40Speaker 1: that balcony. And I think that that's probably what they're
- 13:42Speaker 1: looking at. It's going to be variable. None of these
- 13:45Speaker 1: numbers are static because there's too many variables to factor into.
- 13:48Speaker 1: But I think that you can kind of classify by
- 13:50Speaker 1: looking at it and think, well, if she was pitched
- 13:54Speaker 1: and we don't know what position or body was in
- 13:56Speaker 1: that's you know, one of the reasons I was saying earlier,
- 13:59Speaker 1: you know, is their evidence she was grabbed by a
- 14:00Speaker 1: collar by her backside and just kind of thrown up
- 14:03Speaker 1: in the air like a you know, like a bail
- 14:05Speaker 1: of hay, or she pitched outward or maybe three to
- 14:09Speaker 1: five feet. And how much strength would it take to
- 14:11Speaker 1: propel a woman who probably weighed roughly about one and
- 14:15Speaker 1: twenty one hundred and twenty five pounds. How far can
- 14:18Speaker 1: you toss someone like that? And apparently it was significant
- 14:23Speaker 1: enough to get the idea that she was out away
- 14:27Speaker 1: from the balcony, that she didn't just simply tip over
- 14:30Speaker 1: the edge and fall straight down, you know, with gravity
- 14:33Speaker 1: having the totality of the effect relative to her death,
- 14:36Speaker 1: this is something where she would have had to have
- 14:39Speaker 1: been propelled out from the edge and she fell through
- 14:43Speaker 1: the air perhaps I don't know, three to four feet
- 14:46Speaker 1: away from the balcony. And that's one of the things
- 14:49Speaker 1: that the emmy struggles with. The key here though, and
- 14:52Speaker 1: I find this quite interesting, is again back to this
- 14:55Speaker 1: idea that they released this information, Jackie. How were they
- 14:59Speaker 1: able to draw these conclusions because guess what, when folks
- 15:04Speaker 1: first arrived at the scene relative to Amy, and they
- 15:08Speaker 1: did the initial assessment. She's still alive. They extricated her
- 15:15Speaker 1: from that scene, They extricated her from the ground beneath
- 15:18Speaker 1: that balcony and removed her from her home to Cedar
- 15:22Speaker 1: SI And I speculatively, how do you make that? Because
- 15:27Speaker 1: it is numbers. You know, you'd mentioned trigonometry. It is numbers.
- 15:31Speaker 1: When you begin to think about this, how exactly do
- 15:33Speaker 1: you come up with a formula when you're absent a body,
- 15:37Speaker 1: just as kind of an outside observer. It makes you
- 15:39Speaker 1: think that, well, maybe maybe the police had more information,
- 15:43Speaker 1: or maybe the m E has more information and we're
- 15:45Speaker 1: fully aware of Is there a difference in the injuries
- 15:50Speaker 1: from whether you are thrown at this height or fall
- 15:54Speaker 1: from this height? Does the force that propelled you had
- 16:00Speaker 1: any difference in the impact and the damage it makes
- 16:03Speaker 1: to the body. I think that perhaps you have what's
- 16:07Speaker 1: referred to as kind of aertial energy that you know,
- 16:10Speaker 1: given the mass of your body, when you tip over
- 16:12Speaker 1: and fall, you generate a certain a certain velocity, okay,
- 16:16Speaker 1: and maybe that could be sped up to a certain
- 16:19Speaker 1: degree if you're cast And when I say cast, pitched,
- 16:24Speaker 1: thrown propelled, but it's going to be negligible. What's really
- 16:29Speaker 1: going to dictate most injuries, and I talk about this
- 16:33Speaker 1: with people that I teach my classes, What really dictates
- 16:37Speaker 1: the type of injury that you're going to have is
- 16:40Speaker 1: the surface that you strike. You think about anybody that
- 16:43Speaker 1: falls and they strike, say a pile of leaves, all right,
- 16:48Speaker 1: a lot of that energy is going to be absorbed
- 16:50Speaker 1: by that soft surface. But if you strike say a
- 16:53Speaker 1: poured concrete area and asphalt area, that energy is not
- 16:57Speaker 1: going to dissipate as red. It's not going to kind
- 17:01Speaker 1: of range out away from the body, is going to
- 17:03Speaker 1: be self contained and kind of focal to wherever you
- 17:06Speaker 1: make these points of impact. That's one of the ways
- 17:09Speaker 1: that we tell many times when people will come up
- 17:12Speaker 1: with these stories about, yeah, well my kid he fell
- 17:15Speaker 1: and he broke his leg. Okay, You've got some person
- 17:19Speaker 1: that comes in an emergency room and they make that
- 17:20Speaker 1: comment about, you know, a broken leg on a child
- 17:24Speaker 1: or a shoulder or something like that, and well, okay,
- 17:28Speaker 1: it's pretty nasty injury. They've got a compound common ute fracture,
- 17:31Speaker 1: you've got a bone protruding. Okay, I see that. Maybe
- 17:36Speaker 1: they fell and they struck that one location, But how
- 17:39Speaker 1: do you get all these other non associated bruises, these
- 17:43Speaker 1: points of impact. That means that something else has been
- 17:46Speaker 1: going on. So if it's a one off event where
- 17:50Speaker 1: say she falls, Amy falls and strikes, say the point
- 17:54Speaker 1: of contact, and I don't know this for a fact,
- 17:56Speaker 1: but the point of contact is, say the top of
- 17:59Speaker 1: her head head, All right, Well, then you will have
- 18:03Speaker 1: a focal area of hemorrhage. It'll be probably an underlying
- 18:07Speaker 1: fracture that's going to center on the top of her
- 18:09Speaker 1: head and it'll kind of extend out. That fracture will
- 18:13Speaker 1: extend out. You might even have what's referred to as
- 18:15Speaker 1: a depressed skull fracture at that point in time, and
- 18:19Speaker 1: it's extending out almost like a cracked eggshell. You wouldn't
- 18:23Speaker 1: expect to see multiple fractures that are from multiple strikes.
- 18:27Speaker 1: It's a single strike, all right, And according to what
- 18:31Speaker 1: the corner is saying, at least at this point in time,
- 18:34Speaker 1: she had trauma to both her head and her up
- 18:37Speaker 1: her body. So maybe just maybe we're not talking about
- 18:41Speaker 1: a single strike to the top of the head. Maybe
- 18:43Speaker 1: when she impacted, not only did she impact the side
- 18:46Speaker 1: of her head, perhaps, but she also impacted her shoulder,
- 18:50Speaker 1: and so these things are going to be kind of
- 18:52Speaker 1: married up as the single event, those two single points
- 18:55Speaker 1: of contact, and she fell with such ferocity that she
- 18:59Speaker 1: sustained fractures, and certainly it was enough to bring about
- 19:02Speaker 1: her death. I don't think that the public at large
- 19:24Speaker 1: understands that one of the leading causes of death in
- 19:26Speaker 1: our country is blunt force trauma when it comes down
- 19:29Speaker 1: to traumatic events, because you know, there are more people
- 19:33Speaker 1: that are involved in fatal car accidents than just about
- 19:36Speaker 1: any other kind of trauma related event that's out there,
- 19:40Speaker 1: and so we deal a lot in the medical legal
- 19:43Speaker 1: world with blunt force trauma in car accidents in particular.
- 19:47Speaker 1: Blunt force trauma is in fact the leading cause of death,
- 19:50Speaker 1: but it can be very confusing because the injuries that
- 19:55Speaker 1: are sustained with blunt forced trauma are so extensive, and
- 19:59Speaker 1: you know, you'll hear people describe them as being massive.
- 20:03Speaker 1: I don't know at this point in time, Jackie, if
- 20:06Speaker 1: I can say that her injuries are massive, because what
- 20:09Speaker 1: we do understand is that when the authorities arrived at
- 20:12Speaker 1: the scene, she at least had what's referred to as
- 20:15Speaker 1: an agonal respiration. She had some sign of life enough
- 20:19Speaker 1: that they tried to resuscitate her and took her to
- 20:22Speaker 1: the hospital, and of course she eventually died there at
- 20:24Speaker 1: Cedar Sina. Let's look closer at Harwick's injuries. She had
- 20:30Speaker 1: injuries to her brain, to her liver, and to her
- 20:34Speaker 1: pelvis from her fall. The apartment balcony to the ground
- 20:39Speaker 1: was about twenty feet. She also had severe injuries and
- 20:42Speaker 1: deep marks on her neck, indicating, as you mentioned earlier,
- 20:47Speaker 1: that she had been strangled before she fell. Then you have,
- 20:51Speaker 1: as you were talking about before the break, all of
- 20:55Speaker 1: these injuries from the fall itself. How does an emmy
- 21:01Speaker 1: go about laying those out? I think that one of
- 21:05Speaker 1: the things that you have to consider because one of
- 21:07Speaker 1: the questions that will come up is, you know, we're
- 21:11Speaker 1: talking about these locations of injuries. We talked about the head,
- 21:15Speaker 1: when we talked about the liver. You mentioned the liver,
- 21:17Speaker 1: and certainly talked about the pelvis. So that gives you
- 21:20Speaker 1: an indication as to perhaps how she impacted. If it's
- 21:26Speaker 1: a single, one off fall, Let's say that they were
- 21:28Speaker 1: able to rule out that she had been You mentioned
- 21:32Speaker 1: the liver for instance, liver is a particular area that
- 21:37Speaker 1: you can see when somebody has been beaten in the abdomen.
- 21:41Speaker 1: If our listeners will essentially find the bottom of your
- 21:44Speaker 1: rib cage on the right side of your body kind
- 21:47Speaker 1: of snugged up in that area is your liver, all right,
- 21:51Speaker 1: and it's not completely protected by the rib cage. It's there,
- 21:54Speaker 1: it's exposed, so it's real easy to get to. And
- 21:56Speaker 1: I've had cases where people have been kicked to death
- 21:59Speaker 1: in liver. Liver can be very fragile. People find this
- 22:02Speaker 1: kind of odd. One of the things that we talk
- 22:04Speaker 1: about in forensic pathology a medical legal death investigation is
- 22:08Speaker 1: that you'll hear pathologists or reed pathologists do an examination
- 22:14Speaker 1: of the organs of the body and the liver in particular.
- 22:17Speaker 1: They'll refer to as these injuries of the liver as
- 22:22Speaker 1: a laceration, but they'll also call it a hepatic fracture.
- 22:27Speaker 1: Hepatic having to do with a liver. And when you
- 22:29Speaker 1: see the liver and the surface of it after it's
- 22:31Speaker 1: sustained an impact injury, it actually has the appearance Jackie
- 22:35Speaker 1: of a fracture. It kind of radiates out, it'll be
- 22:38Speaker 1: very jagged, and the gut itself will begin to fill
- 22:41Speaker 1: up with blood and people will die very very quickly
- 22:44Speaker 1: as a result of this, because you know, the liver
- 22:48Speaker 1: has a tremendous amount of blood supply, so you begin
- 22:52Speaker 1: to clip those little vessels in there, and if you
- 22:53Speaker 1: don't get treated, you'll essentially lose blood and you'll die
- 22:57Speaker 1: of internal bleeding. But let's think about if this is
- 23:00Speaker 1: a one off fall where she's got head injury, she's
- 23:05Speaker 1: got a liver injury, and she's got a pelvic injury. Well,
- 23:09Speaker 1: how would you sustain that in a single fall? Well,
- 23:12Speaker 1: the only thing I can really think about is that
- 23:15Speaker 1: if you are falling through the air, you're not tipped
- 23:20Speaker 1: toward the top of your head or to the soles
- 23:23Speaker 1: of your feet. You're essentially pancaking in at this moment time.
- 23:27Speaker 1: So one of two things. You will either essentially imagine
- 23:31Speaker 1: somebody doing a belly flop off of a diving board,
- 23:35Speaker 1: and we know what kind of impact that creates, And
- 23:37Speaker 1: certainly the surface that Amy fell onto was not forgiving
- 23:40Speaker 1: that energy as a result of that impact would transfer
- 23:43Speaker 1: to these points of contact. You know where she struck
- 23:46Speaker 1: the ground with her head and the hepatic region of
- 23:49Speaker 1: her abdomen and certainly her pelvic region, so it would
- 23:53Speaker 1: have to come about simultaneously. Some people say, well, could
- 23:56Speaker 1: she have landed on her back flat and had this happened. Yeah,
- 24:00Speaker 1: I suppose that she could have. But you know, the
- 24:02Speaker 1: way we're kind of designed with our spine is that
- 24:06Speaker 1: often equated to you know, when we curl up, you know,
- 24:09Speaker 1: we kind of almost take on a tortoise like appearance.
- 24:12Speaker 1: You know, our spine creates this kind of shell like
- 24:15Speaker 1: position for us. It would be very difficult, I think,
- 24:17Speaker 1: to generate that kind of injury to the liver. My
- 24:20Speaker 1: money would either be she would strike face down or
- 24:24Speaker 1: perhaps on her right side, so that you've got involvement
- 24:28Speaker 1: with the pelvis, the hepatic region, and of course the
- 24:32Speaker 1: head injury in all of these these specific areas. You know,
- 24:36Speaker 1: I talked about how vascular the liver is, and you've
- 24:39Speaker 1: got tons of tiny vessels in there that cause you
- 24:42Speaker 1: to blete out into the gut. What do you have
- 24:43Speaker 1: in the pelvis? Oh my gosh, Well, there's all kinds
- 24:46Speaker 1: of vessels in there. And the pelvis is an odd bone.
- 24:51Speaker 1: When you break it, it's oddly shaved, it's an irregular bone.
- 24:55Speaker 1: And so it fractures in these odd kind of ways,
- 24:58Speaker 1: and there's a lot of les in there, and most
- 25:02Speaker 1: obvious you have the femoral artery is rooted up in
- 25:06Speaker 1: there and it kind of passes through what you call
- 25:08Speaker 1: a fram and a framan is a ten dollar word
- 25:11Speaker 1: that physicians and anatomus to use for a hole in
- 25:14Speaker 1: the bone, and it passes through these areas through there,
- 25:18Speaker 1: and so the fmoral artery can be clipped, and if
- 25:22Speaker 1: that happens, that's deadly. And then not to mention what's
- 25:26Speaker 1: going on in the skull with a closed head injury,
- 25:29Speaker 1: again very vascular region, you begin to bleed out. Essentially,
- 25:33Speaker 1: seepage is taking place and blood will kind of leech
- 25:37Speaker 1: out into those soft tissues around the brain within the brain,
- 25:41Speaker 1: and the brain begins to swell and the person eventually dies.
- 25:46Speaker 1: So you take all of those injuries that we have
- 25:49Speaker 1: just enumerated the possibility of, and then when you finally
- 25:56Speaker 1: receive Amy's remains to take a look at them, they've
- 25:59Speaker 1: got a devil of a job on their hands because
- 26:01Speaker 1: they begin to look at this extensive trauma that she
- 26:04Speaker 1: sustained to her torso, but yet you still have the
- 26:07Speaker 1: neck hang on, Joe, I got another question about the liver.
- 26:11Speaker 1: Is it likely or possible that she was beaten and
- 26:17Speaker 1: that is part of what gave her these injuries to
- 26:20Speaker 1: her liver, or is it likely those injuries were just
- 26:23Speaker 1: caused from the fall. That's an excellent question in that
- 26:27Speaker 1: you know, I talked about blunt force trauma and car
- 26:30Speaker 1: accidents a little while ago, and I'd say, I know
- 26:34Speaker 1: that there'll be debate about this if people hear this,
- 26:36Speaker 1: but one of the organs that's really impacted by blunt
- 26:40Speaker 1: force trauma in cars many times is the liver. It's
- 26:44Speaker 1: so close to the surface and again, if you find
- 26:48Speaker 1: the bottom of your ribcage on the right hand side,
- 26:50Speaker 1: it's just tucked right there. And it's essentially the largest
- 26:53Speaker 1: organ in the body. It's massive, and it's got a
- 26:56Speaker 1: lot of surface area and again a lot of vessel
- 27:00Speaker 1: running passing through it. When you have a traumatized liver,
- 27:05Speaker 1: the surgeons that can get to the liver that begin
- 27:08Speaker 1: to repair it have got a devil of the time
- 27:10Speaker 1: because there are all these little microfractures that you get
- 27:13Speaker 1: in there. You've got these little beaty vessels that have
- 27:15Speaker 1: been ruptured many times. The surgeons will go back and say, well,
- 27:18Speaker 1: we're still leaking blood into the gut. We've got to
- 27:20Speaker 1: figure out what the origin of this is. I could
- 27:22Speaker 1: do it, it's my pay grade. I'm not bright enough
- 27:25Speaker 1: to do that. So my hats off to trauma surgeons
- 27:27Speaker 1: that are able to do that to assess it. To
- 27:31Speaker 1: your point, though, I have seen people that have been
- 27:34Speaker 1: kicked to death in the abdomen, and that point of
- 27:37Speaker 1: impact many times has been the liver. It's an interesting
- 27:42Speaker 1: proposition when you begin to think about this that you've
- 27:46Speaker 1: already got a young lady that, according to the corner,
- 27:49Speaker 1: has got trauma to her neck. You begin to think, well, gee,
- 27:54Speaker 1: you know what other kind of trauma did she sustain?
- 27:58Speaker 1: Because there is an ear witness to this event that
- 28:02Speaker 1: actually heard what they described as bodies, not singular, but
- 28:07Speaker 1: by these falling to the ground. There's a struggle going on,
- 28:12Speaker 1: and it's within earshot of a roommate and they've heard this,
- 28:17Speaker 1: and you begin to think, okay, well you're saying there's
- 28:20Speaker 1: a struggle, there's apparently an associated scream that apparently emanated
- 28:27Speaker 1: from amy. Well what else going on here? You know?
- 28:30Speaker 1: How many how many layers are we going to have
- 28:32Speaker 1: to peel back here to try to understand. Many times, though,
- 28:36Speaker 1: when you see abdominal trauma, the abdomen is not necessarily
- 28:42Speaker 1: going to be opened up. It's not like a gunshot
- 28:44Speaker 1: woman where you've got an open wound, but overlying the
- 28:48Speaker 1: hepatic region, you know, that area that I talked about,
- 28:51Speaker 1: this arrival of the right rib cage at the base.
- 28:54Speaker 1: Many times you'll see an overlying contusion. Okay, you'll see
- 28:58Speaker 1: an area that is read and irritated, are possibly even bruised.
- 29:03Speaker 1: And you can track this when we open at autopsy
- 29:08Speaker 1: and reflect back that tissue that's overlying the liver. You'll
- 29:12Speaker 1: see on the backside of the wall of the abdomen
- 29:15Speaker 1: there'll be a big area of hemorrhage right there overlying
- 29:19Speaker 1: that area. And then of course it'll be lying right
- 29:21Speaker 1: on top of a liver that's been traumatized. And there's
- 29:25Speaker 1: a term that we use for this when the liver
- 29:27Speaker 1: is like, are the spling too? You hear this a
- 29:30Speaker 1: lot is a term called maceration, and it just it's
- 29:34Speaker 1: a fancy term for saying that the organ has been
- 29:37Speaker 1: beaten to bits. It's been almost pulpified, you know, I
- 29:41Speaker 1: don't know that that's necessarily the case in n Amy's case,
- 29:43Speaker 1: but she apparently sustained significant abdominal trauma. We know that.
- 29:48Speaker 1: The trick here, though, I think for the pathologist is
- 29:51Speaker 1: going to be able to delineate the order at which
- 29:54Speaker 1: this occurred and when it occurred, because that this person
- 29:56Speaker 1: is going to be asked these questions if this case
- 29:59Speaker 1: goes to trial, they will be asked, what order, doctor,
- 30:03Speaker 1: did these injuries take place in? You know, you're saying
- 30:06Speaker 1: you've got trauma to the neck. It looks like there's
- 30:09Speaker 1: a strangulation that's going on. Are you sure that this
- 30:11Speaker 1: happened before she went over the balcony or did going
- 30:14Speaker 1: over the balcony cause this injury? Or was this something
- 30:17Speaker 1: that happened before she went over the balcony? Keep going, Joe,
- 30:22Speaker 1: how are they going to do do? It's like reading a
- 30:24Speaker 1: mystery novel. Don't leave me, ay, And how are they
- 30:26Speaker 1: going to know this? It's going to be very difficult
- 30:30Speaker 1: to know it because you've got two traumatic events that,
- 30:35Speaker 1: by their own admission, the corner saying that happened in
- 30:38Speaker 1: a perimortem state. Okay, that it happened during the throes
- 30:42Speaker 1: of death. And that's what's going to make this case
- 30:44Speaker 1: so difficult. I think for them to try to describe
- 30:49Speaker 1: the forensic pathologists that has to sit on the stand,
- 30:52Speaker 1: are they going to be able to say definitively? You know.
- 30:55Speaker 1: One of the things that we talked about with Nancy
- 30:57Speaker 1: he began to have forensic experts that come up on
- 31:00Speaker 1: the stand. You never talk in absolutes when you're on
- 31:03Speaker 1: the stand, you say absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt,
- 31:06Speaker 1: you know this is what happened, because that's how you
- 31:09Speaker 1: get into big trouble. You have to make comments like
- 31:13Speaker 1: within a degree of scientific certainty. And so I don't
- 31:17Speaker 1: know that they'll be able to say definitively that they
- 31:22Speaker 1: can give you the order in which these occurred, unless
- 31:26Speaker 1: they're seeing something microscopically, you know. Again, I go back
- 31:29Speaker 1: to anti mortem injuries and the perimortem injuries. Remember, we've
- 31:34Speaker 1: got an earwitness to this. It's going to be real key.
- 31:37Speaker 1: I think at least that when they have this ear
- 31:42Speaker 1: witness to this event, can they measure out the time
- 31:47Speaker 1: What was the amount of time that we're talking about
- 31:49Speaker 1: in linear time? You know, from you know this moment
- 31:52Speaker 1: time to the last sound that you heard, how long
- 31:55Speaker 1: did that take to happen? And then it based upon
- 31:59Speaker 1: that because you've got a baseline at that point. Scientifically,
- 32:01Speaker 1: you go back to the pathologist and say, okay, doc,
- 32:04Speaker 1: are these injuries consistent with what you're seeing here? You know,
- 32:08Speaker 1: demonstrate it on the autopsy table, and it's going to
- 32:11Speaker 1: be I think at least it's going to be a
- 32:13Speaker 1: point of contention if this thing comes to trial. Amy
- 32:17Speaker 1: Harwick's cause of death was listed as blunt force trauma.
- 32:22Speaker 1: If you have a fall like this, and I'm not
- 32:26Speaker 1: talking about being thrown, I'm just talking about a fall,
- 32:29Speaker 1: would it still be listed as blunt force trauma. There's
- 32:33Speaker 1: the old joke that people make about the fall. That's
- 32:37Speaker 1: not what kills you. It's a sudden stop, And this
- 32:40Speaker 1: is actually true. There's truth in that bit of morbid humor.
- 32:43Speaker 1: And many times, particularly with motor vehicle accidents, there's a
- 32:48Speaker 1: kind of a way that in medical legal death investigation
- 32:50Speaker 1: we frame these things that are called rapid deceleration injuries,
- 32:54Speaker 1: and sometimes that's associated with things like striking a fixed
- 32:57Speaker 1: object as you're moving through space, like in a car.
- 33:01Speaker 1: If you're not belted in a car, and you slam
- 33:04Speaker 1: into a bridge abutment. Okay, well the car stopped moving.
- 33:10Speaker 1: Your body essentially stopped moving when you struck the steering
- 33:13Speaker 1: wheel or the windshield. But guess what, your organs are
- 33:17Speaker 1: still moving. People don't think about that for a middlesecond.
- 33:20Speaker 1: Your organs are still moving in your body and they
- 33:22Speaker 1: get ripped to shreds as this weird event that takes place.
- 33:26Speaker 1: And I think that you can have this kind of
- 33:28Speaker 1: event occur with a fall as well. The trick is
- 33:33Speaker 1: being able to explain this in terms that a layman
- 33:37Speaker 1: will be able to understand it, particularly in a chord,
- 33:39Speaker 1: because that's where this really matters. How do you frame
- 33:42Speaker 1: this so that people understand that it was in fact
- 33:45Speaker 1: the fall that killed her as opposed to this manual
- 33:49Speaker 1: stringulation event, because there are going to be questions that
- 33:51Speaker 1: are going to arise relative to that. And it seems
- 33:54Speaker 1: like you've got all of the information here, but sometimes
- 33:56Speaker 1: in cases you get so it's such a glut of
- 33:59Speaker 1: information that it can be confusing, particularly for the layman
- 34:02Speaker 1: that occupied the jury box. You know they're going to
- 34:05Speaker 1: have to be able to make good decision based on
- 34:07Speaker 1: this information that's coming to them from the medical examining
- 34:10Speaker 1: the investigators in cases involving someone like Amy Hardwick, she
- 34:35Speaker 1: led a very interesting life and came in contact with
- 34:38Speaker 1: a lot of people that brought her into the lens
- 34:41Speaker 1: of the public. She was strikingly beautiful and it was
- 34:45Speaker 1: a sex therapist. And so when you see her life
- 34:50Speaker 1: coming to an end in such a violent way, you
- 34:54Speaker 1: begin to think about things, Well, who would be on
- 34:56Speaker 1: your short list as far as suspects. You know, who
- 35:00Speaker 1: who is she come in contact with? Is there a
- 35:01Speaker 1: history of somebody that's out there that's lurking about in
- 35:05Speaker 1: her life, that's harassing her, that's making her life pure health,
- 35:09Speaker 1: that has left her in fear or the restraining orders,
- 35:13Speaker 1: And as investigators, that's one of the first places you're
- 35:15Speaker 1: going to go to because where she died is not
- 35:18Speaker 1: a place prone to this kind of violence. It almost
- 35:22Speaker 1: appears like she was targeted in some way. Jackie Well,
- 35:26Speaker 1: that is exactly what investigators suspect happen. In fact, Joe
- 35:31Speaker 1: Amy Harwick told family and friends at one point, if
- 35:35Speaker 1: anything ever happens to me, it's him, and that him
- 35:40Speaker 1: is an ex boyfriend. His name is Gareth purse House.
- 35:46Speaker 1: He has now been charged with murder and residential burglary
- 35:50Speaker 1: with special circumstance allegations of lying in wait, and that
- 35:54Speaker 1: comes from the fact that police believe that he was
- 35:58Speaker 1: waiting for Harwick for hours. Now when police were called,
- 36:04Speaker 1: they were called by her downstairs roommate. He tells police
- 36:10Speaker 1: that he woke up and heard something, not really sure
- 36:14Speaker 1: what he heard, He just assumed that it was Harwick
- 36:16Speaker 1: coming home from her evening out. Then, he says, he
- 36:20Speaker 1: goes back to sleep and then is woken up by
- 36:23Speaker 1: a woman's screams and he was able to tell that
- 36:28Speaker 1: the screams were coming from above him and that it
- 36:31Speaker 1: was Amy. He tried to find his phone but couldn't,
- 36:34Speaker 1: so he couldn't call the police. He tried to get
- 36:35Speaker 1: upstairs and couldn't and he ended up having to climb
- 36:38Speaker 1: a fence to get to a neighbor to be able
- 36:41Speaker 1: to get her some help. And when the police came,
- 36:44Speaker 1: that's when they found her Amy Harwick, on the ground
- 36:49Speaker 1: after being tossed from her balcony. Now in the apartment,
- 36:54Speaker 1: there were several things that were found. She had a
- 36:57Speaker 1: rosary and it was bro and the beads were scattered
- 37:01Speaker 1: in multiple rooms of her apartment, which tells us that
- 37:05Speaker 1: this assault happened basically all over the apartment. And then
- 37:10Speaker 1: there was another very potent piece of evidence that was found,
- 37:16Speaker 1: and that was a syringe full of nicotine. How do
- 37:21Speaker 1: you get a syringeful of nicotine when we know that
- 37:26Speaker 1: Harrowick did not do drugs, did not smoke. This obviously
- 37:31Speaker 1: was not hers, but brought allegedly, police say, by hers house. Yeah,
- 37:37Speaker 1: you know, a few years ago, we would have been
- 37:39Speaker 1: scratching our head a lot more over this. You know,
- 37:41Speaker 1: the presence of this nicotine filled syringe is what the
- 37:45Speaker 1: police have kind of identified this as. But nowadays, where
- 37:50Speaker 1: you have people that are vaping, they're vaping liquids, and
- 37:53Speaker 1: you know, nicotine is a component, it's not that difficult
- 37:56Speaker 1: to get. The question is how was it acquired from
- 38:01Speaker 1: where was it acquired and how was it drawn up?
- 38:04Speaker 1: Because they specifically say syringe, which means that more than
- 38:08Speaker 1: likely that there is a needle that's associated with this.
- 38:11Speaker 1: And one of the things it's quite fascinating with this
- 38:14Speaker 1: is that the syringe was actually located out on the balcony.
- 38:19Speaker 1: You know, the balcony that we've mentioned now several times.
- 38:23Speaker 1: That she went over the side on why would it
- 38:26Speaker 1: be there was the perpetrator attempting to administer this to her,
- 38:31Speaker 1: and Jackie, you've mentioned the broken rosary beads. The beads
- 38:36Speaker 1: led from what are being called her TV room, through
- 38:39Speaker 1: her bedroom and again out onto the balcony. So you've
- 38:43Speaker 1: almost got this trail of breadcrumbs, if you will, evidentiary
- 38:47Speaker 1: breadcrumbs that are giving you an indication of what may
- 38:50Speaker 1: have happened. But let's get back to that nicotine syringe
- 38:53Speaker 1: of your purpose to use nicotine in order to do
- 38:57Speaker 1: harm to an individual. I think that you're going to
- 39:00Speaker 1: need an injection of about sixty milligrams for an adult
- 39:04Speaker 1: that you know might weigh about one hundred and twenty pounds.
- 39:07Speaker 1: And you know what kind of effect Well, first off,
- 39:10Speaker 1: it's with a concentration of nicotine. It's going to blow
- 39:13Speaker 1: your your blood pressure up through through the roof and
- 39:17Speaker 1: it will cause you to have a cardiac potentially a
- 39:20Speaker 1: cardiac event. You know, it's kind of certainly to my
- 39:23Speaker 1: way of thinking, this is certainly kind of an interesting
- 39:26Speaker 1: way of going about taking somebody's life. Nicotine is something
- 39:30Speaker 1: that we do in fact screen for it's in a
- 39:32Speaker 1: standard panel. You hear a lot, you know how many
- 39:35Speaker 1: times if we talked about on Nancy Show, where they'll say, well,
- 39:37Speaker 1: it's pending toxicology. Well, nicotine is one of the things
- 39:41Speaker 1: that some offices actually screened for in their standard panel.
- 39:45Speaker 1: And you say, why do you need to know nicotine, Well,
- 39:47Speaker 1: it gets to the lifestyle of the individual. What are
- 39:49Speaker 1: they engaged in, you know, what are they taking into
- 39:51Speaker 1: their body? And Amy had no history of cigarette use,
- 39:55Speaker 1: didn't have any history of vaping. She was not a druggie,
- 40:00Speaker 1: didn't use drugs, and she's also a teetotaler as well.
- 40:02Speaker 1: I don't know if that's been mentioned, but she didn't
- 40:05Speaker 1: imbibe with alcohol. So apparently she led a pretty clean
- 40:09Speaker 1: lifestyle was relative to what she was going to be
- 40:12Speaker 1: putting into her body. To that point, the corner has
- 40:15Speaker 1: not indicated at all that there was any nicotine found
- 40:20Speaker 1: in her post examination, certainly in her toxicology, but it
- 40:24Speaker 1: does go to a bigger issue here. That means for
- 40:27Speaker 1: me at least that whoever this perpetrator is, they should
- 40:31Speaker 1: up prepared. They showed up to do harm. And if
- 40:35Speaker 1: you're aiming to do harm and you want to use nicotine,
- 40:41Speaker 1: which I'm not going to say it's something it's an
- 40:43Speaker 1: exotic toxin, you know, some exotic fish that you've drawn
- 40:49Speaker 1: some kind of toxic substance from to inject somebody where
- 40:52Speaker 1: it's not exotic like that, but it's atypical. That indicates
- 40:57Speaker 1: to me that you've done some study about this, that
- 41:01Speaker 1: you've kind of planned this out. Well, Joe, hang on,
- 41:04Speaker 1: you wouldn't if you brought a syringe with you filled
- 41:07Speaker 1: with nicotine. You're not intending to use that to get
- 41:12Speaker 1: high or experience some kind of euphoria. That's not what
- 41:16Speaker 1: that would do to your body, right lord, No, No, No,
- 41:21Speaker 1: with lethal concentration of nicotine is deadly. I mean it's
- 41:25Speaker 1: it's deadly. I don't know for whatever purpose you would
- 41:27Speaker 1: use liquified nicotine for drawn up in a syringe. Now, obviously,
- 41:32Speaker 1: you know we've talked about vaping where people want that
- 41:35Speaker 1: boost of nicotine. Because of nicotine, one of the addictive
- 41:37Speaker 1: factors in is it kind of gives you that euphoric
- 41:40Speaker 1: feeling when you take it on in your system, but
- 41:42Speaker 1: that's in smaller dosages. When you're talking to a bump
- 41:47Speaker 1: of something like sixty milligrams and again, they haven't really
- 41:50Speaker 1: released how much was found. But when you start to
- 41:54Speaker 1: talk about, you know, an injection of that amount of
- 41:57Speaker 1: bolus that size, I think that it would give a
- 42:00Speaker 1: reasonable person pause to think, why in the world would
- 42:03Speaker 1: the syringe be in Amy's home And she doesn't have
- 42:07Speaker 1: a nicotine habit. It's not like I don't think she's
- 42:10Speaker 1: juicing up her nonexistent vapes that she doesn't possess, So
- 42:15Speaker 1: how did it miraculously appear there? And that's a huge question. Well,
- 42:20Speaker 1: when you begin to think about pure nicotine, the only
- 42:23Speaker 1: thing I can think of is that you're either trying
- 42:25Speaker 1: to incapacitate them some way to the point where they
- 42:29Speaker 1: can't fend you off, which would be an odd selection,
- 42:34Speaker 1: I would think, or you're trying to kill them. We
- 42:37Speaker 1: know that Amy Harwick and Gareth purse House dated for
- 42:41Speaker 1: quite some time. We also know that when they broke up,
- 42:46Speaker 1: he began to stalk her. He began to harass her.
- 42:52Speaker 1: Reviews of her business and her practice began showing up
- 42:58Speaker 1: online very detrimental, and she was worried about that. And
- 43:04Speaker 1: again I mentioned earlier she'd had told people, She had
- 43:07Speaker 1: told friends and family that if something happened to her
- 43:11Speaker 1: it was him, And in fact, investigators saw that mister
- 43:16Speaker 1: Pearce House had similar scratches and bruises on him, and
- 43:22Speaker 1: his DNA was found at Amy Hardwick's home. Now, of
- 43:27Speaker 1: course they had been dating for quite some time. Still,
- 43:31Speaker 1: how long it had been since he had been at
- 43:34Speaker 1: the home. So how is that going to play in? Joe?
- 43:37Speaker 1: I think that it would like to stay down south.
- 43:39Speaker 1: That dog won't hunt, I think is what that comes
- 43:42Speaker 1: down to, because you know there's been separation. My god,
- 43:44Speaker 1: she had a restraining or on this guy. I'm not
- 43:47Speaker 1: saying that there could not be residual DNA in her dwelling.
- 43:51Speaker 1: But if you've got kind of a robust deposits of
- 43:55Speaker 1: his DNA in that environment, and he's got a restraining
- 43:58Speaker 1: order and she is stating unequivocally that she's afraid of him,
- 44:04Speaker 1: you know, how did it wind up in the apartment.
- 44:07Speaker 1: You talked about how they had charged him with this
- 44:10Speaker 1: idea of laying in weight. If he's laying in weight
- 44:13Speaker 1: at that moment in time, has he been visiting her
- 44:16Speaker 1: at other times? You know? To are there depositions there
- 44:21Speaker 1: within that apartment of his DNA that would give an
- 44:25Speaker 1: investigator pause to think, well, maybe he's been in this
- 44:29Speaker 1: dwelling when she's not here and kind of wandering around,
- 44:32Speaker 1: if you will. But yeah, I think that that would
- 44:35Speaker 1: be very difficult because that relationship has been ended for
- 44:41Speaker 1: some time and there was a lot of violent acting
- 44:44Speaker 1: out with this. I think that there's even a couple
- 44:46Speaker 1: of accounts where he may have pushed drive a vehicle
- 44:49Speaker 1: and all these other things and menacing and threatening and
- 44:53Speaker 1: you know, all that sort of stalking behavior that goes
- 44:56Speaker 1: on many times with these kinds of cases. So from me,
- 45:00Speaker 1: I think that that would be very, very difficult to
- 45:03Speaker 1: try to say, well, yeah, his DNA. I mean, you
- 45:06Speaker 1: can say it, you know, but that doesn't mean that,
- 45:08Speaker 1: you know, you're going to get a jury to buy
- 45:10Speaker 1: into that line of logic. Gareth purse House has been
- 45:14Speaker 1: charged with murder and first degree residential burglary. Additionally, he
- 45:19Speaker 1: has been charged with special circumstance allegation of lying in wait.
- 45:24Speaker 1: A judge has ruled that this case can go forward again,
- 45:28Speaker 1: this case has not been adjudicated. Purse House is innocent
- 45:33Speaker 1: until proven guilty by court of law. If he has
- 45:36Speaker 1: found guilty however, of these charges he could be sentenced
- 45:39Speaker 1: to life in prison without the possibility of role. I'm
- 45:46Speaker 1: Joseph Scott Morgan and this is bodybags