Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Stabbed, Set on Fire as They Slept - The Bermudez Family Murders
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: Body bags, but Joseph's gotten more. You know, most people
- 0:07Speaker 1: don't think about chewing. I'm one of those people that does.
- 0:15Speaker 1: As I was growing up. I've got a tooth that's
- 0:18Speaker 1: actually recessed that sits back. It's actually the left upper incisor.
- 0:29Speaker 1: And the reason it bothers me that I do think
- 0:31Speaker 1: about chewing many times is that the tooth is so
- 0:35Speaker 1: far set back that I have lacerated my tongue a
- 0:39Speaker 1: couple of times. So, you know, you kind of have
- 0:42Speaker 1: every now and then you'll kind of have this hyper awareness,
- 0:46Speaker 1: you know, except when it comes to my wife's cherry cobbler,
- 0:49Speaker 1: I don't think about it too much. Then. The whole
- 0:54Speaker 1: mechanism of digestion is something that most of us never consider.
- 1:01Speaker 1: But for those of you that don't know digestion actually
- 1:04Speaker 1: begins in the mouth, you say, well, more than that's
- 1:09Speaker 1: kind of obvious. Yeah, it kind of is. But I'm
- 1:12Speaker 1: talking about at a molecular level, because there is a
- 1:18Speaker 1: substance contained in the mouth that is a component of
- 1:21Speaker 1: saliva that is called amlas, and it's at that moment
- 1:27Speaker 1: in time where we ingest food and that breakdown begins
- 1:36Speaker 1: to occur, particularly as it applies to carbohydrates. But you
- 1:40Speaker 1: know what else, anytime a bit of saliva is left
- 1:48Speaker 1: behind there in rest amalas and amlase is distinctive. It's
- 1:56Speaker 1: distinctive and can be tied back to an individual. The
- 2:01Speaker 1: case we're going to talk about today, or should I
- 2:04Speaker 1: say cases, because there are four deaths involved in this episode,
- 2:12Speaker 1: amilies comes into play because I got to tell you something.
- 2:19Speaker 1: If it weren't for the anales, we might not have
- 2:23Speaker 1: answers to brutally murdered and set on fire a family
- 2:30Speaker 1: of four. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Packs. Dave.
- 2:38Speaker 1: You and I have broken bread together quite a few times,
- 2:42Speaker 1: and I think probably our shameless plug here. I think
- 2:49Speaker 1: we've been to Dad's barbecue a couple of times, which
- 2:53Speaker 1: is one of our favorite places to go. We can
- 2:56Speaker 1: kind of sit around and hang out and laugh and
- 2:58Speaker 1: do those things that we do. Not that we don't
- 3:00Speaker 1: already do those things when we're taping body bags. But
- 3:05Speaker 1: you know, most people don't think about eating and the
- 3:09Speaker 1: process of digestion, now do they. You just go and
- 3:12Speaker 1: you eat, and it's just the nature of what we
- 3:15Speaker 1: do as humans. But yet we leave bits and traces
- 3:22Speaker 1: behind even with our saliva. And in today's cases, as
- 3:27Speaker 1: I mentioned, there are four. This might be one of
- 3:32Speaker 1: the more horrific cases we've covered in recent memory, and
- 3:38Speaker 1: it involves a grown woman and three children that were
- 3:45Speaker 1: found all gathered together in a home having been set
- 3:50Speaker 1: on fire. And you know, we came across this case
- 3:55Speaker 1: or cases, and I didn't know if I could truly
- 3:58Speaker 1: take in the scope of what I was reading here.
- 4:01Speaker 2: I was shocked by the entire story because we actually
- 4:06Speaker 2: have blood relatives here too. We have Sarah Bermudez, thirty
- 4:12Speaker 2: eight years old and her three children, Madison, James, and Michael,
- 4:17Speaker 2: their ages eight, six, and two. And Dad is not home.
- 4:24Speaker 2: He's actually out on the West Coast for work. In
- 4:27Speaker 2: the middle of the night, somebody, somebody in the middle
- 4:31Speaker 2: of the night breaks into the home and murders the
- 4:38Speaker 2: entire family. Sarah the mom, Madison the daughter take a
- 4:46Speaker 2: particularly harsh beating and death. They were actually stabbed violently
- 4:55Speaker 2: in their private areas. And that's where the amalays, as
- 4:59Speaker 2: you may comes in. I didn't even know how to
- 5:01Speaker 2: pronounce that word when I saw it in the report, Joe,
- 5:04Speaker 2: but my first thought was, how does this play into
- 5:08Speaker 2: identifying a possible suspect, because these people were found but
- 5:13Speaker 2: not in what would even be called a pristine state
- 5:16Speaker 2: in terms of the bodies, because after they were stabbed,
- 5:20Speaker 2: after they were murdered in the master bedroom, which by
- 5:23Speaker 2: the way, very quickly, why would a mom and three
- 5:26Speaker 2: children all be in one bedroom in sleeping And that's
- 5:30Speaker 2: why because dad was away and a lot of people
- 5:32Speaker 2: do this, I know we did in my family. You know,
- 5:36Speaker 2: when I was away, Mom would have the kids, hud
- 5:40Speaker 2: if they'd have a tent kind of a camp out
- 5:42Speaker 2: in the master bedroom, I mean, right, And that's what
- 5:44Speaker 2: they were doing. They were not I.
- 5:46Speaker 1: Think lots of times I think it, Uh, when mom's
- 5:49Speaker 1: alone and she's in the house, she wants the comfort
- 5:51Speaker 1: of having her kids around her, you know, DA's not there. Uh,
- 5:57Speaker 1: you know kind of uh, you know, protecting the fort
- 5:59Speaker 1: if you will. And isn't it you know, rifle irony
- 6:03Speaker 1: here here we have them, you know. And one of
- 6:07Speaker 1: the other things I've kind of thought about in this
- 6:09Speaker 1: case is were they actually all reposed in this area
- 6:16Speaker 1: in a natural state, or had their the remains been
- 6:21Speaker 1: lined up and posed.
- 6:23Speaker 2: I'm wondering that's actually why I was going to ask you,
- 6:25Speaker 2: because I could actually understand why they were all in
- 6:27Speaker 2: the room.
- 6:28Speaker 1: Joe.
- 6:28Speaker 2: Yeah, but this is what the not the ending of
- 6:32Speaker 2: the story, but after they were murdered, after they were
- 6:34Speaker 2: stabbed to death, and after thirty eight year old mother
- 6:38Speaker 2: and eight year old daughter are actually violated with a
- 6:41Speaker 2: knife in their private areas, that the killer then lit
- 6:47Speaker 2: them all on fire. Actually poured and they think it
- 6:50Speaker 2: was diesel, but poured some type of fuel and lit
- 6:54Speaker 2: them on fire. Now, the fire was isolated to just
- 6:57Speaker 2: the master bedroom. It did not go through the entire house.
- 7:00Speaker 2: But Joe, it was all over the victims here. They
- 7:04Speaker 2: were burned. The room was burned, and that also comes
- 7:09Speaker 2: into play in this investigation. So as we pull back
- 7:13Speaker 2: the sheet on this case, you've got four victims that
- 7:17Speaker 2: have been stabbed to death. The girls, the females have
- 7:20Speaker 2: been killed differently or to a greater degree than the
- 7:27Speaker 2: two males.
- 7:29Speaker 1: Yeah, they've been attacked differently.
- 7:30Speaker 2: Yeah, and then they've all been lit on fire. How
- 7:32Speaker 2: do you solve that one, Joe?
- 7:34Speaker 1: It's a nightmare. Firecases always are. But you know, just
- 7:39Speaker 1: like so many other things in life, and particularly in
- 7:43Speaker 1: the world of chemistry, when you begin to think about
- 7:50Speaker 1: something like an accelerant that's being used. If this was
- 7:56Speaker 1: in fact diesel, and it sounds like it was. It's
- 8:00Speaker 1: the nature and the composition of diesel is so divergent
- 8:05Speaker 1: from what you think about standard gasoline or kerosene. Even
- 8:10Speaker 1: to a certain degree. Diesel is a very first off,
- 8:16Speaker 1: it's very difficult to light. I don't know if you
- 8:18Speaker 1: knew that. You know if you have if you have
- 8:22Speaker 1: a gasoline, a dab of gasoline here, and a dab
- 8:27Speaker 1: of diesel, if you just merely strike a match over
- 8:32Speaker 1: an open container of gasoline, first off, it's going to
- 8:36Speaker 1: flash over, yeah, because those those fumes are igniting. But
- 8:41Speaker 1: if you take a match, the same type of match,
- 8:44Speaker 1: same type of container, and you strike it and please
- 8:50Speaker 1: please no one try this at home now, okay, just
- 8:52Speaker 1: trust trust our experience. Here, you strike the match with diesel,
- 8:59Speaker 1: did you know that you you can keep your hand adjacent.
- 9:03Speaker 1: You can still hold onto that match and hold it
- 9:06Speaker 1: right over the top, just hovering over that collection of diesel,
- 9:11Speaker 1: and it will not ignite. It has to rise to
- 9:16Speaker 1: a certain temperature before ignition actually starts with it. So
- 9:20Speaker 1: it's very slow burning. That's why people talk about Let
- 9:25Speaker 1: me ask you this question, because I haven't. I think
- 9:28Speaker 1: my wife Kim has early many years ago, I've never
- 9:33Speaker 1: owned a diesel vehicle. Now, I have lusted after a
- 9:37Speaker 1: few of these big trucks every now and then because
- 9:39Speaker 1: they're really cool looking and very powerful, and diesel does,
- 9:45Speaker 1: in fact get better gas milage, and it's more expensive.
- 9:50Speaker 1: You see the difference when you go fill up between
- 9:52Speaker 1: I look at people and I think, how in the
- 9:54Speaker 1: world can you afford to fill this beast up that
- 9:58Speaker 1: you're adjacent to me in, you know, at gas station,
- 10:02Speaker 1: because it is so freaking expensive.
- 10:04Speaker 2: Two quick things I had. There was a sales manager
- 10:06Speaker 2: at one of the radio stations I worked for in
- 10:08Speaker 2: eastern North Carolina back many years ago, and he had
- 10:11Speaker 2: a Mercedes four fifty SL convertible that was diesel, right,
- 10:15Speaker 2: And I didn't know anything about diesel until I was
- 10:19Speaker 2: in the car with him for a morning meeting and
- 10:21Speaker 2: he actually had to hit a button first to heat
- 10:24Speaker 2: the gas. He heat the diesel before the car could
- 10:27Speaker 2: be started. I'm like, you have to heat it before
- 10:30Speaker 2: you can start the car. And then, yeah, there.
- 10:33Speaker 1: Are no diesel vehicles in horror movies.
- 10:36Speaker 2: No none. And the other part of it was, if
- 10:40Speaker 2: you remember back in the mid seventies when we had
- 10:43Speaker 2: the first oil oil thing in the US, you know,
- 10:46Speaker 2: went through the we're paying fifty cents a gallon then,
- 10:49Speaker 2: and there were lines stretching for miles to hoping to
- 10:51Speaker 2: get a couple of gallons. And diesel prices were about
- 10:54Speaker 2: half of what gas costed then, and all as soon
- 10:57Speaker 2: when they started using diesel engines in regular cars for
- 11:02Speaker 2: the rest of us, well, and behold, diesel prices went up.
- 11:05Speaker 2: Diesel is the fuel that is not nearly as good
- 11:09Speaker 2: as the gas we burn in our car, but it
- 11:12Speaker 2: has to be heated to burn. And so they were
- 11:15Speaker 2: able to turn they being the companies that actually control
- 11:18Speaker 2: such things, to take this fuel that used to be
- 11:23Speaker 2: half the price of gas we put in our car
- 11:26Speaker 2: now and for the last forty years, costs more.
- 11:30Speaker 1: Yeah, and you have to think about this relative to
- 11:34Speaker 1: first off, when you begin to think about someone that
- 11:38Speaker 1: would use a flammable and it is flammable, don't get
- 11:42Speaker 1: me wrong, it's just the level of flammability is it
- 11:47Speaker 1: differs greatly than say, for instance, gasoline. Who first off,
- 11:55Speaker 1: who has access to putting their hands on diesel because
- 11:59Speaker 1: it's distinctive. Most people, when you think about it, they're
- 12:02Speaker 1: going to have access to gasoline or it's going to
- 12:05Speaker 1: be their first point along the way, you know, because
- 12:08Speaker 1: we use gasoline for so many things just around the house.
- 12:11Speaker 1: If you've you know, if you've got a lawnmower, or
- 12:13Speaker 1: if you've got like some kind of blower or even
- 12:17Speaker 1: a weed whacker, you have to blend a gas with
- 12:22Speaker 1: with oil, you know, do a mix. But most of
- 12:25Speaker 1: the time you're just using regular gasoline. Who who purchases
- 12:30Speaker 1: a diesel? Was it somebody that operates heavy equipment for
- 12:33Speaker 1: instance that might burn it in and for instance a
- 12:36Speaker 1: bulldozer or front end loader or something like or do
- 12:40Speaker 1: they own a diesel vehicle like a pickup truck, or
- 12:42Speaker 1: it is a edan I think Kim's Kim's I think
- 12:46Speaker 1: her car was actually a four door Mercedes and it
- 12:49Speaker 1: was used. But she, you know, she'd always talk about
- 12:53Speaker 1: how in order to get up a hill, you know,
- 12:55Speaker 1: she'd have to turn off the air conditioner, you know,
- 12:57Speaker 1: in the summertime. But and they do get better gas milage. Okay,
- 13:02Speaker 1: that the life on these things is is uh is
- 13:06Speaker 1: more and more so as uh when relative to fuel consumption.
- 13:11Speaker 1: But who has the wherewithal? And and here's another thing
- 13:15Speaker 1: about this case, Dave, going back to the salivary anlase,
- 13:21Speaker 1: I would and I think you might agree with me
- 13:24Speaker 1: on this, and certainly I'm friends with too. When things
- 13:29Speaker 1: are burned, things are burned at a crime scene. The
- 13:35Speaker 1: intention of burning something is to destroy that object, that item,
- 13:42Speaker 1: that evidence, maybe even that person, but to not understand
- 13:48Speaker 1: the utility of it and understand the functionality of it.
- 13:53Speaker 1: It gives us pause as investigators to wonder, does your
- 13:58Speaker 1: mind work? One of the more disturbing elements to this case,
- 14:16Speaker 1: not that we're really loaded with disturbing aspects. Salivery amalaes
- 14:24Speaker 1: was detected on both the bodies of the mother and
- 14:31Speaker 1: the daughter. And just a quick reminder here, the daughter
- 14:37Speaker 1: was eight, Dave, and her mother, Sarah Madison was eight
- 14:44Speaker 1: and mother Sarah was thirty eight. Salivary amilies was actually
- 14:51Speaker 1: detected in their private area as well. And that means
- 14:58Speaker 1: that in order to to achieve that, unless you have
- 15:02Speaker 1: someone who is spitting from, you know, from a distance,
- 15:07Speaker 1: onto these specific areas, that means you've got oral contact
- 15:12Speaker 1: going on, and you can you know, take that how
- 15:16Speaker 1: you wish it does go to this idea of a
- 15:19Speaker 1: sexual assault. But I think and what's very interesting about this, Dave,
- 15:25Speaker 1: and you had pointed this out to me, and I'd
- 15:28Speaker 1: love to kind of hold forth on this a little bit.
- 15:30Speaker 1: There's one one subject that showed up at the scene,
- 15:35Speaker 1: that is a public official who was noted to have
- 15:40Speaker 1: been spitting while they were there. And I think that
- 15:44Speaker 1: as this case, you know, evolved, the defense found out
- 15:48Speaker 1: about this in this particular case and and made quite
- 15:51Speaker 1: a bit of hayover, didn't they.
- 15:52Speaker 2: They did because there was out of scene and you've
- 15:57Speaker 2: pointed this out on a couple of different occasions show
- 16:00Speaker 2: of locking down a scene and making sure that people
- 16:04Speaker 2: that are going into the scene have a reason to
- 16:07Speaker 2: be there and be you limited, you know, to not
- 16:10Speaker 2: mess with the crime scene. And so there was an
- 16:13Speaker 2: officer was stationed at the front door to be that guard.
- 16:20Speaker 2: And while he was there, because he had been inside
- 16:24Speaker 2: of the master bedroom where this took place, and there
- 16:27Speaker 2: was soot and the fire burned itself out, but what
- 16:31Speaker 2: was left behind was just if you can imagine what
- 16:35Speaker 2: that had to have been like in the air with
- 16:37Speaker 2: particles and all these other things in the air, and
- 16:43Speaker 2: it got in his mouth, and he was standing at
- 16:46Speaker 2: the front door as people were coming in and not
- 16:48Speaker 2: really thinking it's just a natural reaction. I got garbage
- 16:51Speaker 2: in my mouth, I'm spitting it out, which is exactly
- 16:54Speaker 2: what he was doing. And this became a real issue
- 16:58Speaker 2: because he he now is introducing something onto the ground outside.
- 17:04Speaker 2: Granted this is outside of the crime scene, it's on
- 17:07Speaker 2: the ground, but yet it is still a big issue.
- 17:11Speaker 2: And they were like, why would you do that? What
- 17:14Speaker 2: were you thinking? And he said, look, you know, he
- 17:18Speaker 2: described the area as a horror scene already, and he
- 17:22Speaker 2: actually said he was spitting particles that were floating in
- 17:26Speaker 2: the air. And when he was challenged on why would
- 17:30Speaker 2: you do this while you're standing guarded the door, and
- 17:32Speaker 2: he actually said human air and a lack of experience. Right, basically,
- 17:38Speaker 2: I wasn't thinking about it. I just did what normal
- 17:41Speaker 2: people would do. Granted it's the wrong thing to do
- 17:43Speaker 2: at a crime scene. It's the wrong thing to do
- 17:45Speaker 2: in that situation, but human air and a lack of experience.
- 17:51Speaker 1: Well, here's the thing. You know, Yes, the bodies are
- 17:56Speaker 1: inside of the home, but guess what the is inside
- 18:01Speaker 1: of a temporary barrier that is created by tape. The police,
- 18:06Speaker 1: you know, when we go out to a scene as
- 18:09Speaker 1: forensic personnel emy detectives, when a young officer creates this
- 18:17Speaker 1: artificial boundary, if you will, with cromscene tape. We think
- 18:20Speaker 1: about crom scene tape is it's kind of benign thing,
- 18:22Speaker 1: but it's very distinctive because you're you're setting up a
- 18:26Speaker 1: boundary where you're saying to the public, that side of
- 18:30Speaker 1: the tape is yours, this side of the tape is ours,
- 18:32Speaker 1: and you're declaring the inside of that tape as off
- 18:36Speaker 1: limits to everybody else. So it has to be treated
- 18:39Speaker 1: as such. Look, I got to give this guy the
- 18:42Speaker 1: benefit of the doubt to a certain degree here. He
- 18:44Speaker 1: should have known better, obviously, But I have been on
- 18:48Speaker 1: scenes before, and when you once the fire is doused
- 18:53Speaker 1: and is out, it's still smolders, all right, and you've
- 18:57Speaker 1: got all this crap floating in the air. We're not
- 19:00Speaker 1: out there wearing respirators, you know, like a firefighter is,
- 19:06Speaker 1: you know, with the all encompassing face shield and you're
- 19:08Speaker 1: breathing pure oxygen or you know, a certain percentage of it.
- 19:14Speaker 1: Your airway becomes clogged. Many times you sense it and
- 19:22Speaker 1: here's something interesting. As a matter of fact, it's and
- 19:26Speaker 1: you can identify with this if you've ever been to
- 19:28Speaker 1: a bonfire. You might show it back home and you say, God,
- 19:32Speaker 1: leave it. I smell like smoke. Okay, well right you are.
- 19:36Speaker 1: You would smell like smoke because it's going to leach
- 19:38Speaker 1: on to you all that debris that's being kicked up
- 19:42Speaker 1: and that particulate matter that's been given off within that environment.
- 19:48Speaker 1: You think about the interior of a house. Did you
- 19:51Speaker 1: know that, like in a carpeted area, when fire touches
- 19:59Speaker 1: like carpeted area, that sort of thing, you start a
- 20:02Speaker 1: chemical reaction that produces all kinds of noxious fumes. It's
- 20:08Speaker 1: not just merely smoke. You can you can actually when
- 20:14Speaker 1: you do do toxicology on people that have been in fires.
- 20:22Speaker 1: First off, you're going to find most of the time
- 20:24Speaker 1: you're going to find a very distinctive level of carbon monoxide.
- 20:28Speaker 1: But in addition to that, you're going to find elements
- 20:31Speaker 1: in the air like arsenic that'll be contained in there
- 20:35Speaker 1: that are essentially vaporized, and it's because of component materials
- 20:39Speaker 1: that are breaking down. And this is a chemical You know,
- 20:42Speaker 1: when you see a fire. I A fire is kind
- 20:45Speaker 1: of defined as an uninhibited chemical chain reaction. You have
- 20:49Speaker 1: to have these multiple things that are in place, heat source, fuel, source, ignition, source,
- 20:55Speaker 1: all these things, and it has to it's kind of
- 20:56Speaker 1: a cycle that runs through and so it's it's it's
- 21:02Speaker 1: burning everything up, but it's creating these elements in the air.
- 21:06Speaker 1: And when these elements are created, you're going to breathe
- 21:09Speaker 1: them in. So this young police officer that is, you know,
- 21:14Speaker 1: standing guard outside of the home, he's going to be
- 21:18Speaker 1: experiencing this, particularly if he's already gone in, if he's
- 21:21Speaker 1: not used to it. How much more so, you know,
- 21:24Speaker 1: for an old you know, an old guy like me
- 21:27Speaker 1: that's been out on a bunch of fire scenes, I
- 21:31Speaker 1: expect that I'm going to smell the stuff. I expect
- 21:33Speaker 1: that that I'm going to be exposed to it. Am
- 21:39Speaker 1: I going to hack and spit and do all that
- 21:41Speaker 1: sort of thing? Well, if my airway is blocked, I
- 21:43Speaker 1: very well might. But you have to use good judgment,
- 21:46Speaker 1: particularly within the parameters of an established boundary for a
- 21:50Speaker 1: crime scene. Dave.
- 21:51Speaker 2: And when I was seeing this show, my first thought
- 21:53Speaker 2: was what you have said on this show about protecting
- 21:57Speaker 2: the crime scene. It really was, And I thought, if
- 21:59Speaker 2: I know that at and how much more should an
- 22:03Speaker 2: officer of the law know something like this. I understand
- 22:09Speaker 2: chalking it up. Hey, you made a mistake, but this
- 22:11Speaker 2: is a big mistake because you're talking about in this
- 22:14Speaker 2: day and age where every bit of anything from our
- 22:19Speaker 2: bodies we got touched DNA cases. Now, I mean, this
- 22:22Speaker 2: is something that goes beyond what we can even imagine.
- 22:26Speaker 2: And in this particular case, you started off at the
- 22:28Speaker 2: very beginning talking about a part of DNA, a part
- 22:32Speaker 2: of our fluid, a part of something that I'd never
- 22:35Speaker 2: even heard of until today.
- 22:36Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and so yeah, and it's a distinct component
- 22:41Speaker 1: within saliva. Here's the really fascinating thing about this, though,
- 22:45Speaker 1: is that the perpetrator in this case attempted to use
- 22:50Speaker 1: a heat source in order to destroy evidence and did
- 22:54Speaker 1: such a poor job with the selection of the accelerant
- 23:00Speaker 1: was not sufficient to the task, right, Because you think
- 23:04Speaker 1: you would think that if there was evidence of a
- 23:07Speaker 1: sexual assault, which by the bye there was, that you
- 23:12Speaker 1: would have perhaps thought this out more clearly as to
- 23:17Speaker 1: eradication of any kind of evidence. And there is an
- 23:22Speaker 1: indication here that this fire did not burn over a
- 23:28Speaker 1: sustained period to a sufficient level to destroy all of this,
- 23:33Speaker 1: particularly when you can still appreciate the fact that the
- 23:37Speaker 1: bodies are posed and arranged in a particular manner. They
- 23:44Speaker 1: are their legs Jesus, I hate to say this, but
- 23:48Speaker 1: their legs are spread apart.
- 23:50Speaker 2: It's just the girls though.
- 23:51Speaker 1: It's not the boys. It's not the boys. It's just
- 23:53Speaker 1: the girls. And I've had a couple of other cases
- 23:55Speaker 1: like this one that we're going to cover, I'm sure
- 23:59Speaker 1: in a few months that occurred back in a suburb
- 24:04Speaker 1: of Atlanta, And not to go down a rabbit hole,
- 24:08Speaker 1: but uh, we had female members of a very large
- 24:13Speaker 1: family and all all of the female members in the
- 24:17Speaker 1: family were brutally, brutally beaten to death and cut. There
- 24:26Speaker 1: were males that were equally brutalized, but they both survived,
- 24:32Speaker 1: one with a permanent brain injury. And this attack was
- 24:37Speaker 1: focused on on these two females. And you get you
- 24:44Speaker 1: start going down this road. You know that you know,
- 24:47Speaker 1: my friend Karen Stark, a forensic psychologist, you know, would
- 24:50Speaker 1: go down and you can read a lot into this
- 24:54Speaker 1: when you begin to think about, well, why would you
- 24:57Speaker 1: focus on the females, and it wasn't just it wasn't
- 25:00Speaker 1: just merely burning the females. It was the sexual assault
- 25:04Speaker 1: of these of these two uh well, this young girl
- 25:10Speaker 1: and her mother. It's also distabbing and cutting, where you
- 25:19Speaker 1: have the genitalia that are assaulted with a sharp force weapon,
- 25:25Speaker 1: where there's a disfigurement that's going on, and it's it's
- 25:28Speaker 1: primarily below the waist, you know, when you think about that,
- 25:32Speaker 1: that's that's very specific. Dave.
- 25:34Speaker 2: I looked at this case from the very beginning as
- 25:38Speaker 2: odd because we're dealing with a relative being accused of
- 25:43Speaker 2: this murder, the murder of a family wild dad's away.
- 25:46Speaker 2: It just seemed like there's something more at play and mentioning.
- 25:53Speaker 2: At first, I thought, you've got a chronically broke drug
- 25:56Speaker 2: user who knows that he has family members where the
- 26:01Speaker 2: man is not home, where they probably have money or
- 26:06Speaker 2: he can get money from them, And that's what I
- 26:10Speaker 2: was thinking at first. But then when we found out
- 26:13Speaker 2: that there was more to the murders than just a
- 26:18Speaker 2: killing everybody and lighting the place on fire to cover
- 26:20Speaker 2: your tracks, and that the attack was sexual in nature
- 26:24Speaker 2: on the females, that changed everything from the way I
- 26:27Speaker 2: looked at it, Joe, and it brought about more questions
- 26:31Speaker 2: I had for you about motive, because motive. I know,
- 26:35Speaker 2: they don't have to prove motive to prove anything, but
- 26:39Speaker 2: from our standpoint looking at a case, you kind of
- 26:41Speaker 2: have to know why, or maybe don't have to feel
- 26:44Speaker 2: like I ought to know why something took place. Why
- 26:47Speaker 2: did this suspect target these victims? And what I thought
- 26:52Speaker 2: was the beginning of the case, killing people because he
- 26:55Speaker 2: knew they might have money for drugs, ends up being
- 26:57Speaker 2: something totally different. I mean, this is an actual targeted
- 27:00Speaker 2: attack of a sexual nature on the girls. And it
- 27:03Speaker 2: looks like the boys were just kind of killed because
- 27:05Speaker 2: they were witnesses.
- 27:07Speaker 1: Yeah, they just happened to be there. And you know,
- 27:10Speaker 1: I think all of us hate to use the term
- 27:12Speaker 1: I know I do because it leaves a bad taste
- 27:14Speaker 1: in the back of my mouth of collateral damage, because
- 27:22Speaker 1: it's the term collateral damage is dismissive of the value
- 27:26Speaker 1: that each individual human has, including these these you know,
- 27:32Speaker 1: these these young boys that were also and they're young, Dave,
- 27:35Speaker 1: I mean, they're very young. What would be the purpose
- 27:37Speaker 1: of doing this to totally eradicate But on even if
- 27:43Speaker 1: it could not get more chilling. I think that it's
- 27:47Speaker 1: very important to understand that the so called sexual assault
- 27:54Speaker 1: that took place was not perpetrated with the male sexual organ,
- 28:03Speaker 1: but the sexual assault so called was perpetrated, according to
- 28:08Speaker 1: the medical examiner, with a knife. So there's certain things
- 28:26Speaker 1: that we look for at crime scene stay with sharp
- 28:31Speaker 1: horse injuries. Uh, first off, they're very bloody affairs most
- 28:36Speaker 1: of the time. Yeah, I'd say that most of the
- 28:42Speaker 1: time they are. And it's almost and when you get
- 28:45Speaker 1: more than uh one victim, obviously, uh percentage wise, that's
- 28:53Speaker 1: going to increase the volume of blood that you have there. Uh,
- 28:57Speaker 1: it's not. It's not even like a gunshot one day,
- 29:00Speaker 1: because every time the act of stabbing occurs, you're puncturing
- 29:09Speaker 1: another defect into a body. And it is rare that
- 29:14Speaker 1: you go out on it on a sharp forced injury
- 29:17Speaker 1: death involving stabbings as opposed to you know, like an
- 29:22Speaker 1: incized one, which is a cut. Do you just have
- 29:27Speaker 1: one insult to the body, It's going to be multiple
- 29:29Speaker 1: And Dave, something that is quite striking about this is that, actually,
- 29:39Speaker 1: Lord have mercy. Sarah, thirty eight year old mother Dave.
- 29:44Speaker 1: She had over forty stab ones forty. Just let that
- 29:49Speaker 1: number sink in for a moment.
- 29:51Speaker 2: That's stab in slice, right, that's that is what you
- 29:54Speaker 2: mentioned is insized is a slice?
- 29:57Speaker 1: Yeah, so inside if you here's a good way to
- 30:00Speaker 1: remember it. And I love you using this descriptor. Our
- 30:04Speaker 1: teeth have very specific names. So your two primary teeth,
- 30:09Speaker 1: well not primary primary is actually when it comes to
- 30:14Speaker 1: dentistry as something that's alluded to relative to children. But
- 30:18Speaker 1: the central incisors okay, well they're incisors. To incize means
- 30:23Speaker 1: to cut, and that's the purpose if you think about
- 30:26Speaker 1: like bodying a sandwich. If you think about bodying a sandwich,
- 30:31Speaker 1: you're incizing the sandwich with your incisors and then you rip. Well,
- 30:35Speaker 1: an incised injury with a knife or a machete or hey,
- 30:40Speaker 1: even an axe. That means that it's a cut or
- 30:44Speaker 1: slice as opposed to a stab, which many times you're
- 30:48Speaker 1: not using the full length of the knife to enter
- 30:51Speaker 1: the body, but you're puncturing the body. So it's a
- 30:54Speaker 1: thrust and you can you can actually stab people obviously
- 30:59Speaker 1: with things other hand a knife. You can use a
- 31:01Speaker 1: pencil if you've got one, or a pin or a
- 31:03Speaker 1: spike or an ice pick. An ice pick. Yeah, the
- 31:06Speaker 1: old guys used to carry ice picks in their shoes
- 31:09Speaker 1: for years and years. I think, bad, bad, Lee Roy Brown.
- 31:12Speaker 1: I know that was a razor. That was a razor,
- 31:14Speaker 1: that'd be an insize, but old guys, old guys that
- 31:18Speaker 1: ran the streets, they'd carry ice picks with them many times.
- 31:22Speaker 1: And those are in fact staves, but they can also
- 31:25Speaker 1: be interpreted as punctures as well. It's a bit different.
- 31:29Speaker 1: But yeah, so for what we're understanding, you've got these
- 31:33Speaker 1: multiple sharp force injuries, Dave, this is a lot of work,
- 31:37Speaker 1: this is a lot of anger, and you have these
- 31:40Speaker 1: insults that are occurring to all of these bodies. But
- 31:44Speaker 1: it appears that Sarah, the mama, she took the brunt
- 31:49Speaker 1: of this.
- 31:51Speaker 2: Well, and you point out that she had forty wounds,
- 31:55Speaker 2: some defensive. But when they were investigating this, and this
- 31:58Speaker 2: is kind of where there comes into play, there was
- 32:01Speaker 2: something I wanted to ask you about because they mentioned,
- 32:04Speaker 2: they being law enforcement, that the fire did not burn
- 32:08Speaker 2: through and it actually burned itself out. But they had
- 32:12Speaker 2: the state forensic expert, her name is Kelly King, and
- 32:17Speaker 2: she said that the fire again they think it was
- 32:21Speaker 2: diesel fuel was what was used, and that as they
- 32:28Speaker 2: were going through this scene, they found blood stains on
- 32:32Speaker 2: the walls, they found blood stains on the carpet, and
- 32:36Speaker 2: they found blood stains on a lamp and some other items.
- 32:41Speaker 2: And they found this even though there was fire going on,
- 32:46Speaker 2: And that to me was something my brain could not
- 32:49Speaker 2: quite wrap itself around that they were able to pull
- 32:52Speaker 2: this out after a fire.
- 32:55Speaker 1: Yeah, that goes to the ineffectiveness of the accelerant that's
- 32:58Speaker 1: being used in the amount of heat that was generated.
- 33:01Speaker 1: Remember what I said earlier on Dave. You can literally
- 33:03Speaker 1: take a match, strike it and hold it in, you know,
- 33:07Speaker 1: like a saucer. If you just think of a saucer,
- 33:09Speaker 1: that might be I don't know, less than a curve
- 33:11Speaker 1: of an inch in depth of diesel that's been poured
- 33:17Speaker 1: in there. Even with that, the heat that's being generated
- 33:23Speaker 1: by the match is not sufficient to raise the temperature
- 33:27Speaker 1: that is required in order to ignite that diesel. Okay,
- 33:32Speaker 1: so it has to be it's a long process in
- 33:35Speaker 1: order to actually ignite diesel. It's it's very impractical if
- 33:39Speaker 1: you're trying to start a fire with it. Even if
- 33:42Speaker 1: you if you think about lighter fluid like charcoal, lighter fluid,
- 33:47Speaker 1: that's more. That's even that's it's not as unstable as gas,
- 33:52Speaker 1: but it's still unstable. It's certainly more unstable than diesel.
- 33:56Speaker 1: So its ignition point is much lower. With diesel, it's
- 34:01Speaker 1: much higher. So what has to happen? You know, That's
- 34:05Speaker 1: why we talk about accelerants. An accelerant is that component
- 34:14Speaker 1: that is placed on an item in order to initiate
- 34:18Speaker 1: a fire. It's not there to sustain the fire. So
- 34:23Speaker 1: what does that mean if you're just looking at it
- 34:25Speaker 1: from a chemistry standpoint, Well, whatever, you're dumping it on
- 34:31Speaker 1: a human body, which don't They don't burn very well.
- 34:35Speaker 1: They're not a good fuel source because fuel source and
- 34:38Speaker 1: accelerant are two different things. The accelerant initiates the fire
- 34:43Speaker 1: once it's been ignited, and you want it to burn
- 34:47Speaker 1: hot enough so that let's say, for instance, you throw it.
- 34:51Speaker 1: Let's say you've got synthetic drapes that are hanging, you know,
- 34:56Speaker 1: over a window, okay, and you just choose the blend polyester,
- 35:01Speaker 1: I don't know, you choose it. Maybe it's a wool
- 35:03Speaker 1: polyester blend or whatever. The curtains are made out of
- 35:07Speaker 1: You doubt that with gasoline, and you set you better,
- 35:10Speaker 1: stand back, you strike a match, you throw it at it.
- 35:13Speaker 1: That thing's going to go up like a tinder box.
- 35:16Speaker 1: And it's because the heat, the heat required is much lower,
- 35:21Speaker 1: and it will, it will burn up. It will. It
- 35:24Speaker 1: will cause the temperature in the curtains or the drapes
- 35:28Speaker 1: to rise, so that the fire is self sustaining. At
- 35:31Speaker 1: that point you no longer need the accelerant, and the
- 35:32Speaker 1: accelerant will burn off this certain degree. Diesel is different.
- 35:38Speaker 1: It takes a lot just to get it going and
- 35:42Speaker 1: then the item. Then you're reliant on the fuel source,
- 35:46Speaker 1: which would be the drapes of the curtains, in order
- 35:48Speaker 1: to sustain that. So the fact that they found these
- 35:52Speaker 1: blood patterns out there is not necessarily surprising if they're
- 35:56Speaker 1: looking at diesel, because it's not going to be enough,
- 35:59Speaker 1: you know, if they you know, one comment is that
- 36:01Speaker 1: they found these blood stains on a wall. Well, if
- 36:06Speaker 1: they are sheet rock walls, which are made out of gypsum,
- 36:10Speaker 1: it's not a good fuel source. It's just not. It's
- 36:14Speaker 1: better than human flesh, but it's not a good fuel source.
- 36:18Speaker 1: So the fact that the fire didn't reach up there
- 36:21Speaker 1: to destroy it. The lamp shade is kind of interesting though.
- 36:24Speaker 1: You would think that a lamp shade would just you know,
- 36:28Speaker 1: catch fire and everything, but they found blood deposition on
- 36:31Speaker 1: the lamp shade as well. There's a lot of violence
- 36:34Speaker 1: that's going on here, so you've got this deposition. I'm
- 36:37Speaker 1: sure it's very dynamic with this kind of cast off
- 36:40Speaker 1: patterns because every time that knife is essentially, you know,
- 36:45Speaker 1: just dug into these people's bodies, it's withdrawn, it's soaking wet,
- 36:49Speaker 1: the surface is soaking wet, and as it's kind of
- 36:52Speaker 1: thrown back in order to generate the power that it
- 36:55Speaker 1: takes to thrust it forward again, that blood is traveling
- 36:58Speaker 1: through the air and it's gonna grab is going to
- 37:00Speaker 1: take charge, and it's going to fall and deposit itself
- 37:03Speaker 1: in these very specific patterns. So it's fascinating. In a
- 37:07Speaker 1: house fire like this, I think that they would actually
- 37:11Speaker 1: find blood pattern that they could analyze. The trick is
- 37:16Speaker 1: whose blood is it? Are you able to type the blood? Well?
- 37:20Speaker 1: Percentages would indicate because Sarah was so very traumatized, you
- 37:23Speaker 1: would think that the majority of it would be hers.
- 37:27Speaker 1: If you're using the same instrument, much like I have
- 37:30Speaker 1: talked about in the Idaho case. Now keep that in mind.
- 37:33Speaker 1: You have commingling of blood perhaps where you're using the
- 37:37Speaker 1: same knife and you're moving about from victim to victims,
- 37:40Speaker 1: So you can have this kind of commingling of all
- 37:43Speaker 1: of these different blood sources that are very going to
- 37:46Speaker 1: be very distinctive from a DNA standpoint. It's hard to know.
- 37:51Speaker 1: Sequencing though, very very difficult. But Dave, my understanding is
- 37:56Speaker 1: is that THEME found evidence Lord that a lot of
- 38:02Speaker 1: these wounds, many of these wounds were inflicted upon her
- 38:06Speaker 1: while she was still alive.
- 38:09Speaker 2: I was looking this over and saw that and thought, okay,
- 38:14Speaker 2: you have children that are eight, six and two, Yeah,
- 38:17Speaker 2: and you have mom as thirty eight. Well, was this
- 38:22Speaker 2: individual accused of this murder of murdering them? Did he
- 38:27Speaker 2: kill the children first and then fought mom she you know,
- 38:30Speaker 2: or based on the fact they're all in that one bedroom,
- 38:37Speaker 2: did he attack the mother and keep the children somehow
- 38:45Speaker 2: in the room while did they watch their mother die
- 38:48Speaker 2: is kind of what I'm after, and then he killed them?
- 38:52Speaker 2: Or I'm trying to figure out when you mentioned sequencing,
- 38:54Speaker 2: we don't know how it happened, but in the end,
- 38:57Speaker 2: we know that she had defensive wounds on her hands,
- 39:00Speaker 2: We know that she had sliced, insized and stab wounds,
- 39:07Speaker 2: and we know that in the end of things that
- 39:12Speaker 2: they were able. And this goes to what you started
- 39:14Speaker 2: with the amalaise in the testimony, that there was body
- 39:24Speaker 2: fluid bound on and in the females.
- 39:28Speaker 1: Right. I it's hard to know the sequence. I think
- 39:34Speaker 1: that probably we don't want to think about, you know
- 39:41Speaker 1: what this children bore witness to. Nobody in their right
- 39:45Speaker 1: mind would want to, you know, try to envision that. However,
- 39:50Speaker 1: from the perspective of an investigator, you kind of have
- 39:53Speaker 1: to tease that out and try to understand it and
- 39:56Speaker 1: try to understand what the status of the children were
- 40:00Speaker 1: while it was going. I think we would hope that
- 40:05Speaker 1: they were deceased, you know, that they didn't in their
- 40:08Speaker 1: you know, in their little mind's eyes, that they didn't
- 40:12Speaker 1: have to bear witness to this horror show. And it
- 40:16Speaker 1: has been described as a horror show at the scene
- 40:19Speaker 1: of you know what Michael, who was two and James
- 40:22Speaker 1: who was six, might have seen, and you know, certainly
- 40:28Speaker 1: Madison as well, remember she was eight. You have a
- 40:33Speaker 1: you have a mother yeah, and also sexually assaulted. You
- 40:36Speaker 1: have a mother though, that's fighting back, and I think
- 40:40Speaker 1: that just about any mother in the world, she's trying
- 40:43Speaker 1: to protect her children. She knows that there is evil
- 40:47Speaker 1: that has entered this home where her husband is not.
- 40:51Speaker 1: And we look at this and we think, well, who
- 40:55Speaker 1: in the world would want to perpetrate such a horrible
- 40:59Speaker 1: acton upon this family? Well, Dave, you said a lot
- 41:04Speaker 1: when you said, you know, the individual would have probably
- 41:08Speaker 1: have had to have an awareness. Do you think he
- 41:10Speaker 1: would have tried to do this if Dad had been
- 41:12Speaker 1: at home? I think that the odds are very very
- 41:15Speaker 1: low on that end. And you know, because dad, You
- 41:20Speaker 1: know that Dad is going to fight if he has
- 41:23Speaker 1: an awareness of this, and he might be able to
- 41:24Speaker 1: match strength or strength with the perpetrator. In this case,
- 41:28Speaker 1: the dad's name, by the way, is Moses. And they
- 41:33Speaker 1: may have had a chance to escape this home with
- 41:36Speaker 1: this wild person inside home with them. But now you've
- 41:39Speaker 1: got a mama in there that's trying to defend these
- 41:42Speaker 1: three babies of eight, six and two. She's going to
- 41:45Speaker 1: fight like hellcat and the fact that she's got defensive
- 41:50Speaker 1: wounds is not surprising. In this case. I think the
- 41:53Speaker 1: most troubling thing, and to try to understand it is
- 41:57Speaker 1: when what was the sequence of the assaults relative to
- 42:01Speaker 1: the sexual assault? Is this some perverted monster that is
- 42:07Speaker 1: also a necro file as well, in addition to being
- 42:13Speaker 1: a killer of children and women? Is that something else
- 42:17Speaker 1: that we're going to pile on top here because I
- 42:19Speaker 1: think that that possibility might exist. And here's here's something else.
- 42:26Speaker 1: I've got two indications of preparation here, actually three. He's
- 42:30Speaker 1: shown up armed. Okay, he's shown up at a time
- 42:35Speaker 1: when Dad is not there, when Moses is working out
- 42:39Speaker 1: on the west coast, and in addition to that, he's
- 42:42Speaker 1: brought what he thinks at least is a proper accelerant
- 42:48Speaker 1: to eradicate evidence. David, when you begin to think about
- 42:51Speaker 1: a perpetrator, thinking about eradicating evidence, this is not some
- 42:57Speaker 1: wild guy that's running down the street seeing pink eleph here.
- 43:00Speaker 1: This is a guy that has purposed. He's got what
- 43:03Speaker 1: we refer to as menace ray, which you know we'll
- 43:07Speaker 1: have talked Nancy about that, but that's a guilty mind.
- 43:10Speaker 1: You've got the actus ray, which is the guilty act,
- 43:13Speaker 1: and then the menace ray, which is the guilty. Mind,
- 43:16Speaker 1: he knows that he has to burn this burn any
- 43:20Speaker 1: kind of evidence that he may have left behind. But boy,
- 43:24Speaker 1: he was really insufficient to the task. Dave.
- 43:29Speaker 2: This has been a shocking case, and it has gone
- 43:32Speaker 2: on for a number of years.
- 43:33Speaker 1: Jo.
- 43:34Speaker 2: This actually occurred in twenty eighteen, and we're now taping
- 43:40Speaker 2: this in twenty twenty four and the case is in
- 43:43Speaker 2: trial right now.
- 43:44Speaker 1: We'll have a decision in this case sooner than later.
- 43:48Speaker 1: As you had stated, we're right in the middle of it.
- 43:50Speaker 1: And it's the nature of this and this case is
- 43:54Speaker 1: not really one of the reasons I was interested in
- 43:58Speaker 1: discussing this case is well, first off, it's absolutely horrific,
- 44:04Speaker 1: but that horror goes to another indicator here. I cannot
- 44:08Speaker 1: understand why the thing has not gotten more coverage nationwide,
- 44:12Speaker 1: because you know, out of all the cases that we cover,
- 44:16Speaker 1: something like this, which by the way, is, like you said,
- 44:20Speaker 1: up in the northeast, it's up in the Massachusetts area,
- 44:25Speaker 1: you would think that certainly it would have hit the
- 44:28Speaker 1: news cycle and we would have heard about it all
- 44:31Speaker 1: over the place, but we really haven't. But you know,
- 44:34Speaker 1: I think that it is important that we tell the tale,
- 44:38Speaker 1: particularly for Sarah, for James, for Michael, and for Madison,
- 44:48Speaker 1: because no one, and I mean no one deserves to
- 44:54Speaker 1: go through this and end up in a horror show.
- 45:00Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybucks.