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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: The Murder of Tammy Jo Blanton · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:08
Speaker 1: Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. As time goes by you,
0:20
Speaker 1: if you're all alone, you long for companionship. Many of
0:24
Speaker 1: us do, I think, And it's tough. It's tough to
0:29
Speaker 1: try to discern who you're gonna let into your little bubble.
0:33
Speaker 1: You don't know, you know, particularly in the world that
0:35
Speaker 1: we live in nowadays, you don't know who's gonna show
0:38
Speaker 1: up at your door. You don't know who's on the
0:39
Speaker 1: motherland line, you don't know who you're texting with. Today
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Speaker 1: on body Bags, I want to talk about a young
0:46
Speaker 1: lady Hammy Joe Blant. I want to talk about her murder.
0:51
Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags joining
0:59
Speaker 1: me Jackie Howard, executive producer of Crime Stories. Would Nancy
1:05
Speaker 1: Grace scary world out there, Jackie? When it comes to dating,
1:11
Speaker 1: wouldn't you agree? Oh? Absolutely, Joe Tammy. Joe Blanton was
1:15
Speaker 1: dating forty one year old Joseph ober Hansley and it
1:20
Speaker 1: was a very volatile relationship and she broke up with him.
1:24
Speaker 1: She was so afraid of ober Hansley that she had
1:27
Speaker 1: the locks changed on her home. And here is an
1:30
Speaker 1: example of why. The day before Tammy Joe Blanton was
1:34
Speaker 1: found murdered. She had made a call to nine one
1:37
Speaker 1: at two fifty two a m. She made the call
1:41
Speaker 1: reporting that her ex boyfriend Joseph ober Hansley was outside
1:44
Speaker 1: her home and wouldn't leave. When officers arrived, Joseph was
1:48
Speaker 1: still outside. He said that his key would not work.
1:51
Speaker 1: When police asked to see ober Hensley's identification, it listed
1:56
Speaker 1: a different address than Tammy Joe Blanton's home. Tammy Joe
2:00
Speaker 1: Blunton explained to police that she had ended her relationship
2:03
Speaker 1: with ober Hensley, had her locks changed again, and that
2:06
Speaker 1: she wanted him to leave. He did, but the next morning,
2:10
Speaker 1: officers came back to Tammy Joe Blanton's house. That's because
2:14
Speaker 1: her friend and colleague, Sabrina Hall, had called police to
2:18
Speaker 1: ask them to do a welfare check on Tammy Joe Blanton.
2:21
Speaker 1: Tammy worked with Sabrina and was supposed to work that day,
2:24
Speaker 1: but when she didn't arrive to the office, Sabrina called
2:27
Speaker 1: her phone and a man answered. The man told Sabrina
2:30
Speaker 1: that he was Tammy's brother and that she was caring
2:33
Speaker 1: for their ill father. Sabrina Hall did not believe the
2:36
Speaker 1: man and made the phone call for police to check
2:39
Speaker 1: on Tammy. At that point, when the officers showed up
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Speaker 1: at Blanton's home and knocked on the door, ober Hansley
2:46
Speaker 1: answered the door. The detectives noticed a cut on ober
2:49
Speaker 1: Hensley's hand and they searched him and at that point
2:52
Speaker 1: they found a brass knuckle knife in his pocket that
2:56
Speaker 1: appeared to have hair and blood on it. At that point,
2:59
Speaker 1: instigators obtained a warrant for the home and inside it's
3:04
Speaker 1: where they found the body of Tammy Joe Blanton in
3:09
Speaker 1: the bathroom, and police at that point described it this
3:14
Speaker 1: is their words, not mine, A big bloody mound of
3:17
Speaker 1: something in the bathtub. That phrase right there tells me
3:23
Speaker 1: that this poor woman's body has just been mutilated terribly. Yeah,
3:28
Speaker 1: that's a big indication there, because you know you should
3:31
Speaker 1: not just if you're a young police officer that shows up.
3:34
Speaker 1: And these are what we refer to as beat cops.
3:37
Speaker 1: They're the folks that are out riding around their car,
3:38
Speaker 1: they're patrolling, they're responding to a call. It's always amazed
3:42
Speaker 1: me with these cases that I've worked and I've covered
3:46
Speaker 1: now in the media for a number of years, where
3:48
Speaker 1: you're a beat cop, and you've maybe you've you've gone
3:51
Speaker 1: out to a noise disturbance or police officers. My friends
3:55
Speaker 1: that are police officers, one of the biggest annoyances that
3:57
Speaker 1: they have are responding to alarm on buildings. You hear
4:01
Speaker 1: it all the time on police radios and it turns
4:03
Speaker 1: out to be nothing most of the time. The winds
4:04
Speaker 1: blowing the door. You imagine coming off of a call
4:07
Speaker 1: like that, and you're summoned to this location and you've
4:12
Speaker 1: just been doing something that seems so innocuous in your
4:16
Speaker 1: standard workaday world. And we're not talking about a place
4:20
Speaker 1: that's we're not talking about a place that's huge urban
4:24
Speaker 1: center here. We're just talking about suburban America. And you'll
4:29
Speaker 1: walk in to an environment that is bathed in blood
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Speaker 1: and you're thinking, what planet am I own? All of
4:38
Speaker 1: a sudden, And that's the world that cops live in,
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Speaker 1: where they just kind of have to throw the brakes
4:43
Speaker 1: on and readjust very quickly, and they begin to assist.
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Speaker 1: When they showed up at the door and he wouldn't
4:47
Speaker 1: show the hands, that's that's a big indication for them.
4:50
Speaker 1: They call it putting the bracelets on. Bracelets are going
4:52
Speaker 1: to come out the handcuffs and you're going into custody
4:56
Speaker 1: at that moment time. You're going to be arrested at
4:58
Speaker 1: that moment time because you're compliant with a lawful order.
5:02
Speaker 1: And I gotta tell you thank God that they did,
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Speaker 1: because as was mentioned, he had these I've heard people
5:08
Speaker 1: refer to them as a knucklebuster knife, which is it's
5:12
Speaker 1: kind of a if you think of what a brass
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Speaker 1: knuckle looks like, it's something you can have your fingers
5:18
Speaker 1: going through, and there's a contact edge where you can
5:20
Speaker 1: strike an individual with his metallic surface. But in addition
5:24
Speaker 1: to the brass knuckle, you've actually got a sharp edged
5:29
Speaker 1: instrument on the other end of it. And this is
5:34
Speaker 1: a highly lethal weapon. He could have at that moment
5:37
Speaker 1: time with these police officers. He could have attacked them.
5:41
Speaker 1: He could have ripped them to shreds or done great
5:43
Speaker 1: bodily harm and thank God that they weren't hurt. I
5:46
Speaker 1: can't say the same Tammy Joe Blant. As investigators are
5:50
Speaker 1: starting to look at what had happened to Tammy Joe Blanton,
5:54
Speaker 1: they discovered that she had been stabbed repeatedly. So is
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Speaker 1: this her cause of death? Absolutely? Her cause of death
6:02
Speaker 1: is sharp force injuries. That is this knife being driven
6:08
Speaker 1: into her body. Not just once or twice three times.
6:11
Speaker 1: I'm talking multiple times. She had multiple stab wounds all
6:14
Speaker 1: over her body. And it is absolutely horrific. And I've
6:17
Speaker 1: said this over and over again and I'll never tire
6:20
Speaker 1: of saying it, But out of all of the causes
6:24
Speaker 1: of death that are out there, sharp force injuries, when
6:27
Speaker 1: you take that in a homicide, in the context of
6:30
Speaker 1: a homicide, is the manner of death. It is the
6:34
Speaker 1: most personal. It is the most personal thing that can happen,
6:38
Speaker 1: with maybe the exception of strangulation, but there's there's a
6:41
Speaker 1: level of violence that goes in to sharp force injury,
6:45
Speaker 1: particularly stab wounds, because you're it's an action where and
6:50
Speaker 1: particularly in this case, and you begin to think about
6:52
Speaker 1: the how this weapon is set up where your fingers
6:56
Speaker 1: are threaded through this thing and you've got this blade,
7:00
Speaker 1: so you've created a fist where you're you're gripping this
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Speaker 1: blade with this brass knuckle handle and you're driving it
7:08
Speaker 1: over and over and over. There's a tremendous amount of force.
7:11
Speaker 1: Here's here's the key though. With stab wounds, it's not
7:15
Speaker 1: like you're one and done in many of these cases,
7:17
Speaker 1: this is a frenzied event. You're withdrawing the blade and
7:22
Speaker 1: then you make a conscious effort. That's important to emphasize
7:26
Speaker 1: you you're making a conscious effort to now reinsert this
7:30
Speaker 1: weapon into someone's body. It's not like you strike them
7:34
Speaker 1: a single time on the head with a club or
7:36
Speaker 1: something like that. It's not like you shoot them a
7:39
Speaker 1: single time. This is withdrawing an edged weapon and then
7:44
Speaker 1: reinserting it, withdrawing, reinserting it, and there's a pain response.
7:49
Speaker 1: If you're face to face with this victim, that is
7:53
Speaker 1: should should potentially register with you. You're witnessing their life
7:59
Speaker 1: just kind of face eating away before you. Maybe they're gasping,
8:02
Speaker 1: maybe they're fighting you, because in a normal primal response,
8:07
Speaker 1: you're going to try to fend this person off. But
8:10
Speaker 1: yet that knife is being plunged into this individual every
8:13
Speaker 1: single time, and lots of times with sharp force injury victims.
8:17
Speaker 1: We examine the palms of their hands very carefully, and
8:21
Speaker 1: this is absolutely horrific, but it's reality. The individual, in
8:25
Speaker 1: order to fend off the subject, will grasp the blade
8:29
Speaker 1: and the perpetrator again will withdraw the blade from the
8:32
Speaker 1: individual's hand. And you'll have these large slice marks that
8:36
Speaker 1: you can appreciate on the palms of the hands in
8:38
Speaker 1: between the fingers. Particularly, one of the biggest area is
8:42
Speaker 1: the webbing between the thumb and the index finger. You'll
8:46
Speaker 1: see that slice down to the bone many times, and
8:48
Speaker 1: that's the individual trying in at that primal level to
8:53
Speaker 1: try to fend off this attacker. I've seen blades actually
8:56
Speaker 1: pass through hands, all the way through hands and then
8:59
Speaker 1: into bodies because the person is putting their hand up
9:02
Speaker 1: in response. But this amount of force, and it's I
9:06
Speaker 1: think that it's interesting in this case because of the
9:10
Speaker 1: structure of this weapon that he could generate a lot
9:13
Speaker 1: of force. As he's driving this into her body, he's
9:16
Speaker 1: in a dominant position over her. My assumption is that
9:21
Speaker 1: she would be essentially in a supine position, which means
9:25
Speaker 1: face up. He's face to face with her. He's on
9:27
Speaker 1: top of her all right, and straddling her perhaps, and
9:30
Speaker 1: he's plunging this knife over and over and over again.
9:33
Speaker 1: There's nothing she can do to escape this event. But
9:38
Speaker 1: from a forensic standpoint, every time this occurs, this event
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Speaker 1: there's a transference of evidence. You have her bodily fluids,
9:46
Speaker 1: the blood transferring onto him, perhaps her hair we talked
9:50
Speaker 1: about there was actually hair that was found on the
9:52
Speaker 1: surface of the knife. And many times the perpetrators will
9:56
Speaker 1: in fact cut themselves. This is not like shooting where
9:59
Speaker 1: you're at a distance, you pop off around at somebody.
10:02
Speaker 1: Now you're up close and personal, and as they're fighting,
10:04
Speaker 1: you're fighting, and many times the perpetrator will cut themselves
10:10
Speaker 1: and so that blood leaches onto the body of the
10:13
Speaker 1: victim and also all of the surrounding area, on the floor,
10:17
Speaker 1: the surfaces of any kind of furniture that happens to
10:20
Speaker 1: be there, seek a toilet or a sofa, even you'll
10:23
Speaker 1: find what's referred to, and this is an important word,
10:26
Speaker 1: a co mingling. A co mingling, a blood that occurs.
10:30
Speaker 1: And so we have to kind of separate that out.
10:32
Speaker 1: And you begin to look at that, and suddenly a
10:35
Speaker 1: narrative develops scientifically, at least because we're not there to
10:39
Speaker 1: witness this event, but we can understand this narrative as
10:42
Speaker 1: it's being played out of what the dynamics of this
10:45
Speaker 1: event were. The dynamics I want to talk about that
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Speaker 1: a little bit, Joe, because I don't understand and you
10:51
Speaker 1: and I have talked about blood force sharp force injuries often,
10:57
Speaker 1: but when you are stabbed like this so many times,
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Speaker 1: is it a process of you bleeding out over time
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Speaker 1: or did they actually hit the heart in your heart
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Speaker 1: stopped immediately? I mean, is there ever a way to
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Speaker 1: know which incident actually caused the death? Knoll? I absolutely
11:15
Speaker 1: love this question, and this is why when and I
11:20
Speaker 1: urge anybody that's truly interested in medical legal death investigation,
11:23
Speaker 1: find an autopsy report that involves multiple stab wounds. And
11:29
Speaker 1: one of the little caveats that is always contained in
11:33
Speaker 1: these autopsy reports is that the pathologists will say something like,
11:38
Speaker 1: even though these injuries are enumerated, you know one through
11:43
Speaker 1: I don't know twenty six or one through one hundred,
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Speaker 1: this does not imply sequencing. There's no way to tell.
11:53
Speaker 1: The only dividing line that you have and these kind
11:57
Speaker 1: of cases is is there hemorrhage associated with this injury
12:05
Speaker 1: or is there no hemorrhage? And again that's our big
12:07
Speaker 1: demarcation there between life and death. That means that if
12:10
Speaker 1: there is hemorrhage present, we know that the individual was
12:13
Speaker 1: insulted prior to death. That means their heart is still
12:16
Speaker 1: beating and you've got blood coursing through the body, and
12:20
Speaker 1: you have this kind of hemorrhage that's into the soft tissues.
12:23
Speaker 1: And then we look at it from the other perspective,
12:27
Speaker 1: where we have injuries where there is no hemorrhage whatsoever,
12:31
Speaker 1: And so you have to divide way. Wait, so how
12:35
Speaker 1: can that be? How can you have an injury and
12:38
Speaker 1: there not be a hemorrhage. Well, you can have a
12:41
Speaker 1: post mortem injury. You can have post mortem injury. You
12:44
Speaker 1: made a good point just a second ago when you
12:46
Speaker 1: talk about you plunge the knife into the heart and suddenly,
12:50
Speaker 1: because there's mechanical damage to the heart at that point
12:53
Speaker 1: in time, the individual is going to go into arrest.
12:55
Speaker 1: They're going to die, all right, and it will be
12:58
Speaker 1: immediate in that case anything that might follow after that.
13:02
Speaker 1: And I know some people will argue with this because
13:04
Speaker 1: there's this kind of agonal thing that goes on. But
13:08
Speaker 1: if the heart mechanically is damaged to the point where
13:10
Speaker 1: the individual goes into rest, the logical assumption is is
13:14
Speaker 1: that there's no longer blood coursing through the body. So
13:17
Speaker 1: you're not necessarily going to present with hemorrhage in any
13:21
Speaker 1: kind of post mortem wound. Because you're not going to
13:24
Speaker 1: have no longer the physical facility to hemorrhage into that
13:27
Speaker 1: specific area. And that's very important because it goes into
13:33
Speaker 1: when you begin to look at this from the perspective
13:36
Speaker 1: of not just the forensics, but also kind of the
13:40
Speaker 1: mindset of the individual that was perpetrating this crime, because
13:43
Speaker 1: these are going to be questions that you're going to
13:46
Speaker 1: be asked on the stand if you're forensic pathologist or
13:49
Speaker 1: forensic specialist, they're going to ask you, well, you know,
13:51
Speaker 1: in your opinion, how many of these injuries were anti
13:56
Speaker 1: mortem before death and how many were after Well, if
13:59
Speaker 1: you've got an anti mortem, which means before death, you're
14:02
Speaker 1: talking about bringing about the death. But then from a
14:05
Speaker 1: lawyer's perspective, if they can demonstrate a prosecratorial perspective, they
14:09
Speaker 1: can demonstrate that there's all these post mortem injuries. Suddenly,
14:13
Speaker 1: suddenly the accused becomes such a bigger monster at that
14:19
Speaker 1: point in time, because now you weren't you weren't satisfied
14:23
Speaker 1: with killing or ending this person's life. You went to ribalm,
14:27
Speaker 1: to shreds and destroy what was left of their body.
14:50
Speaker 1: When you walk onto a scene involving sharp force injuries,
14:53
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, out of all the cases I've worked,
14:56
Speaker 1: when you're in this environment where there's so much blood,
15:01
Speaker 1: it's very perplexing. It's a daunting task because you're sitting
15:05
Speaker 1: there and you're saying, oh, my Lord, where do I begin?
15:10
Speaker 1: Where do I begin? Because everything is literally and I
15:14
Speaker 1: mean this in the literal sense. Our friends in Great
15:17
Speaker 1: Britain use this term all the time, but in the
15:19
Speaker 1: literal sense, everything is a bloody mess. I don't even
15:23
Speaker 1: think that begins to cover what went on in this case. Joe,
15:26
Speaker 1: this is going to be so disturbing, and I want
15:29
Speaker 1: to warn people now what we're going to talk about
15:32
Speaker 1: is truly disturbing. If you have children in the room.
15:35
Speaker 1: I can't imagine anybody would listen to us with children
15:37
Speaker 1: in the room, But if there are children in the room,
15:40
Speaker 1: you might want to put on some headphones because this
15:43
Speaker 1: is truly disturbing. Tammy, Joe Blanton's body had been heavily mutilated.
15:48
Speaker 1: Not only was she stabbed in the head, chest, and neck,
15:53
Speaker 1: the front portion of her skull had been opened, a
15:57
Speaker 1: portion of her brain, lung, and most of her heart
16:01
Speaker 1: had been damaged or removed. Joe, I really don't even
16:08
Speaker 1: know what kind of a question to ask you about this,
16:10
Speaker 1: because how can somebody do that? And what kind of
16:14
Speaker 1: force would it take to crack open somebody's skull to
16:17
Speaker 1: remove the brain. It's important that you and it's easy.
16:22
Speaker 1: This is easier said than done. Trust me, we're not
16:25
Speaker 1: the people that go out on these scenes. We're not
16:27
Speaker 1: super people, all right, We're not We're not immune to
16:30
Speaker 1: the things that we're seeing, all right, because that's at
16:34
Speaker 1: that point in time. You've checked your humanity out a
16:36
Speaker 1: long time ago. We're still impacted by this. But you
16:39
Speaker 1: have to be focused on the scientifically and to try
16:42
Speaker 1: to understand what you're seeing relative to the findings, the
16:48
Speaker 1: physical findings that's seen. Okay, you can't just check out
16:52
Speaker 1: and say I'm not going to do this. I mean,
16:53
Speaker 1: you have to do this. You have to to understand
16:55
Speaker 1: what's going on. You mentioned that, yes, the frontal portion
16:59
Speaker 1: of her or skull is missing at this point in
17:02
Speaker 1: time when they observed her, but also we have to
17:06
Speaker 1: explain that her chest was open to the point where
17:11
Speaker 1: the majority of her heart was absent, as well as
17:15
Speaker 1: a segment of her long I believe it's probably the
17:19
Speaker 1: left lung probably the upper lobe of the left lung,
17:22
Speaker 1: because it's immediately adjacent to the heart, and so you
17:27
Speaker 1: have a large gaping area there. Because it's not easy
17:30
Speaker 1: to get to. I mean, it's you might think that
17:32
Speaker 1: it would be. You see movies and all that stuff.
17:35
Speaker 1: Forget all that nonsense. It's not an easy undertaking. This
17:39
Speaker 1: takes work. It takes a determined person in order to
17:44
Speaker 1: do this, particularly if you're not equipped with the tools, say,
17:49
Speaker 1: for instance, that you know you might find in surgery
17:52
Speaker 1: or in the autopsy suite. Remember when when they're doing surgery,
17:58
Speaker 1: they actually have an instrument that's referred to as a
18:01
Speaker 1: rib spreader, all right, And these things have been developed
18:05
Speaker 1: for this particular type of event as it applies to
18:09
Speaker 1: therapeutic surgeries that take place. Not in this sense, though,
18:13
Speaker 1: this is this is a mutilation. I'm hesitant to refer
18:18
Speaker 1: to this as a dismemberment, where the body is taken
18:23
Speaker 1: apart in segments. Necessarily, this is an attempt to remove
18:29
Speaker 1: specific parts of the body, all right. And when I
18:32
Speaker 1: think of dismemberment, I think about essentially taking apart at
18:35
Speaker 1: the joints, the risks, the elbows, shoulders, those sorts of
18:38
Speaker 1: that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about
18:42
Speaker 1: a mutilation at this point. We're talking about a mutilation.
18:45
Speaker 1: And to your point, it's you would have to sit
18:50
Speaker 1: there and think, well, what in the world am I
18:52
Speaker 1: looking at here? Because you know, with a dismemberment, for instance,
18:57
Speaker 1: you're thinking, if there is obviously i'm side that's been committed, well,
19:01
Speaker 1: why would somebody dismember somebody? Most of the time, people
19:04
Speaker 1: dismember bodies in order to make it easier to transport
19:08
Speaker 1: individual pieces so that they can dispose of them in
19:11
Speaker 1: a manner in which they put as much distance between
19:14
Speaker 1: themselves and the bodies they can make it easily transportable
19:18
Speaker 1: those sorts of things. You've entered into a different sphere
19:22
Speaker 1: here when you begin to think about mutilation and you're
19:26
Speaker 1: facilitating this to get someone's skull open. And when I
19:32
Speaker 1: use the term daunting task, it's something that I worked
19:35
Speaker 1: for many years as an autopsy assistant path assistant and
19:41
Speaker 1: participated in roughly seven thousand autopsies during that period of time.
19:45
Speaker 1: And if you do a complete autopsy, you open them
19:47
Speaker 1: would be very frankly, you open the skull. That's what
19:50
Speaker 1: you do. But we have a very specific instrument that
19:53
Speaker 1: we use for that. It's called a bone saw, and
19:55
Speaker 1: it's an agitating saw. So you hear in the movies
19:58
Speaker 1: they use this high pitched buzzing sound that'll simulate one
20:02
Speaker 1: of these saws being used on bodies and that sort
20:04
Speaker 1: of thing, and it agitates. It's if people have ever
20:07
Speaker 1: had a cast removed. Okay, if you've ever had a
20:10
Speaker 1: cast remove, you had a broken bone, that's very very
20:12
Speaker 1: similar to this agitating saw. So just think about that
20:14
Speaker 1: for a second. That's not what was utilized here. Got
20:19
Speaker 1: kind of a reveal here is the fact that they
20:21
Speaker 1: found a jigsaw a jigsaw president scene, and this is
20:24
Speaker 1: not something with a big, robust blade, and it's something
20:28
Speaker 1: that's normally placed on a flat surface. You think about
20:31
Speaker 1: the shape of the skull, and the shape of the
20:33
Speaker 1: skull is around it. So if you're using a jigsaw,
20:38
Speaker 1: say to cut a piece of plywood or something like that,
20:40
Speaker 1: you place it on the edge and you move forward
20:42
Speaker 1: with it and you can cut out that sort of thing.
20:44
Speaker 1: But you've got that under control to utilize a jigsaw
20:48
Speaker 1: in this particular case in order to open save this
20:51
Speaker 1: frontal bone, which is arguably the most robust bone in
20:55
Speaker 1: the human skull. You just tap your forehead that sort
20:58
Speaker 1: of area, very thick, very hard to get an edge
21:01
Speaker 1: on it. You've got this this saw blade that is
21:04
Speaker 1: going up and down kind of like the only thing
21:07
Speaker 1: I can really equate it to is almost like the
21:08
Speaker 1: needle on a sewing machine that's going up and down
21:11
Speaker 1: like that, as opposed to the agitating saw that you
21:14
Speaker 1: used to remove a cast or a bone. Saw it
21:16
Speaker 1: kind of goes backwards and forth like that, and then
21:19
Speaker 1: the blades are round it. It's easy to use. In
21:22
Speaker 1: this case, this would have taken so much time. I mean,
21:25
Speaker 1: it would have taken a protracted period of time. And
21:28
Speaker 1: again there's a certain amount of soft tissue dissection that
21:32
Speaker 1: would probably have to go on. That means you have
21:33
Speaker 1: to remove most of the time any kind of soft
21:36
Speaker 1: tissue that would impede that blade's ability to cut through
21:39
Speaker 1: that bony surface. And then once you have at least
21:44
Speaker 1: made a single entrance into that bony surface, how how
21:48
Speaker 1: exactly what direction are you going to go? Now? Are
21:51
Speaker 1: you going to take the tip of this You know,
21:53
Speaker 1: remember it's acting like a sewing machine, going up and down,
21:57
Speaker 1: up and down, up and down, do you insert it
22:00
Speaker 1: into this little defect that you've created and then kind
22:03
Speaker 1: of buzz it out along that area. If this is
22:06
Speaker 1: something that you have no experience within less face it,
22:09
Speaker 1: I can't imagine there's a lot of people out there
22:11
Speaker 1: that have experience with mutilation of human remains. What do
22:15
Speaker 1: you do as you're sitting there in this world that
22:19
Speaker 1: you have painted with another human being's blood and you're
22:25
Speaker 1: holding this individual's head in your lap as you're doing this,
22:29
Speaker 1: do you have it braced in some way? When she
22:32
Speaker 1: was found, she was actually found in the tub covered
22:35
Speaker 1: with what turned up to be a tarp, and so
22:38
Speaker 1: the workings of the scene are going to be very
22:41
Speaker 1: complicated from a forensic standpoint to understand what was physically
22:45
Speaker 1: done there, what the position of her body was at
22:47
Speaker 1: that particular time, what the position of the perpetrator's body
22:52
Speaker 1: was relative to her body, and the rest of the environment.
22:55
Speaker 1: You're going to have a lot of transfer of blood
22:57
Speaker 1: evidence and trace evidence and everything else. It would be
23:00
Speaker 1: an absolute nightmare to figure yourself in my wild streams.
23:23
Speaker 1: I can't even begin to kind of understand how you
23:27
Speaker 1: prepare yourself if you're the perpetrator of a of the mutilation.
23:32
Speaker 1: How do you prepare yourself? But you know, how do
23:35
Speaker 1: you determine what tools to show up with? How do
23:37
Speaker 1: you how do you figure out the logistics of it?
23:39
Speaker 1: Is this just something that is done at the spur
23:42
Speaker 1: of the moment and you grab whatever is handy or
23:45
Speaker 1: is this something that you're pre prepared to do at
23:49
Speaker 1: that given time. I don't know. It boggles the mind,
23:53
Speaker 1: it does, and I think the jury and the judge
23:56
Speaker 1: when Oberhansley was charged in Dammy job Letton's death, it
24:00
Speaker 1: was something they truly had to consider because ober Hansley
24:04
Speaker 1: claimed to be incompetent, and in fact was deemed incompetent
24:09
Speaker 1: to stand trial. So there were claims that ober Hansley
24:12
Speaker 1: was schizophrenic. He had in the past, Joe, you can
24:16
Speaker 1: kind of wig in on this here in just a second.
24:18
Speaker 1: He had been accused and convicted of shooting his high
24:23
Speaker 1: school girlfriend. She died. He had also shot his mother,
24:27
Speaker 1: so he had been convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to
24:31
Speaker 1: twelve years where he had killed the mother of his child.
24:34
Speaker 1: He said he was in a meth rage. He also
24:37
Speaker 1: shot his mother and ultimately, though ober Hansley was deemed
24:44
Speaker 1: sane at the time of Tammy Joe Blnton's murder. But
24:49
Speaker 1: here's the truly horrendous As if we have not talked
24:53
Speaker 1: about a terrible crime here, Joe Joseph Oberhandsley was a cannibal.
25:03
Speaker 1: He ate Jimmy Joe Blanton's brain, parts of her heart,
25:08
Speaker 1: and parts of her lung. I'm really truly at a
25:12
Speaker 1: loss for words. Joe, Yeah, talk about plumbing the depths
25:15
Speaker 1: of depravity. You begin to think about this and you say, well,
25:19
Speaker 1: you've got a mutilation. Now we've got an individual that
25:21
Speaker 1: has taken organs from somebody that they were involved in
25:27
Speaker 1: a relationship with. And not only had he eviscerated her,
25:32
Speaker 1: which means removal of organs, but he had prepared to organs.
25:37
Speaker 1: He essentially prepared them on stove and then he ingested again.
25:44
Speaker 1: I think our default position here has to be the
25:47
Speaker 1: science behind this, because I don't know that it is
25:50
Speaker 1: even possible to explain the rationale for having done this.
25:55
Speaker 1: But what we do know is that these elements were
25:58
Speaker 1: in fact consumed. And there's one part of this is
26:03
Speaker 1: kind of kind of fascinating to me. I guess as
26:05
Speaker 1: fascinating as it could possibly be, was the fact that
26:08
Speaker 1: he had claimed at one point in time that the
26:12
Speaker 1: removal of the brain essentially was his attempt to find
26:19
Speaker 1: her third eye. And this is a very metaphysical thing,
26:23
Speaker 1: and it's not something I fully grasp, but the at
26:26
Speaker 1: a base level, the third eye is this metaphysical presence
26:30
Speaker 1: that's within the brain and can see things on a
26:33
Speaker 1: different plane in these sorts of things. I do know
26:36
Speaker 1: that some of the items that were found at the
26:41
Speaker 1: scene included tongs and they were covered with blood, and
26:45
Speaker 1: I think these are tongs very similar to maybe salad
26:48
Speaker 1: tongs or tongs that you would use when preparing a
26:50
Speaker 1: meal on a grill, this sort of thing. And if
26:54
Speaker 1: you have to understand with human anatomy, if you're opening
26:57
Speaker 1: up just one portion of the skull and removing that
27:00
Speaker 1: and then going into that, there is an attempt on
27:03
Speaker 1: the part of the person because you can't remove it
27:05
Speaker 1: the way we do at autopsy. There is a process
27:09
Speaker 1: where you would literally have to dig out the brain
27:12
Speaker 1: or scoop out the brain in order to make this happen,
27:15
Speaker 1: and then purpose to prepare the brain so that you
27:19
Speaker 1: can ingest it. One point that we need to go
27:24
Speaker 1: back to here is that at a very early age,
27:29
Speaker 1: when he was still in Utah, he had demonstrated a
27:34
Speaker 1: very violent behavior. If you're to the point where you
27:38
Speaker 1: can shoot the mother of your own child and she's
27:43
Speaker 1: just a teenager, and she's just a teenager, he cold
27:47
Speaker 1: bloodedly shot her and then shot his own mother. And
27:52
Speaker 1: then I guess when he began to assess that at
27:56
Speaker 1: that particular time, decided that he was going to take
27:59
Speaker 1: his own life and shot himself as well. So that
28:02
Speaker 1: gives you an indication as to mindset, you know, because
28:04
Speaker 1: people I hate the word why it's don't I don't
28:08
Speaker 1: particularly like it because it's not very scientific most of
28:11
Speaker 1: the time, because you know, why is there are many
28:15
Speaker 1: degrees to why. We'll just say that it's hard to
28:18
Speaker 1: quantify why. But you sit there and you begin to think,
28:26
Speaker 1: well why. I think that we have to fall back
28:28
Speaker 1: to how how was this done? Or how could he
28:31
Speaker 1: have done this? And we have indications that he was
28:34
Speaker 1: very violent in the past, But yet here he is,
28:38
Speaker 1: he's out, he's out of incarceration, he's made his way
28:42
Speaker 1: to Indiana, and when his trial was going on, and
28:46
Speaker 1: when he was initially charged, there was some indication that
28:50
Speaker 1: he was perfectly lucid. He had attempted to have a
28:53
Speaker 1: spontaneous news conference at one point in time as he's
28:57
Speaker 1: shackled walking around. I can only think, can you image
29:00
Speaker 1: being the deputies that are having to escort this guy around?
29:04
Speaker 1: You think he's in shackles there and what he's perpetrated,
29:08
Speaker 1: and you're conveying this guy from one area to another.
29:11
Speaker 1: And again it goes back to the people that initially
29:14
Speaker 1: showed up at the scene of Tammy Joe's homicide. I
29:20
Speaker 1: think that that would transfer over to these individuals too
29:22
Speaker 1: that are having to deal with him on a regular basis.
29:25
Speaker 1: And he seemed perfectly lucid. He's saying that he is
29:29
Speaker 1: not in fact in saying that there are other people
29:31
Speaker 1: to blame. He even stated that he gave them an
29:34
Speaker 1: alternative reason for what happened, that he was knocked out
29:37
Speaker 1: at the scene, and there were two people that entered
29:40
Speaker 1: her home and did this horrible deed to Tammy Joe,
29:44
Speaker 1: but yet they let him survive. Okay, so you're going
29:47
Speaker 1: to have to teach me here, Joe, because I'm hearing
29:51
Speaker 1: everything that you're saying, but I can't get past the
29:54
Speaker 1: part of the word eat Okay, he ate her organs,
30:02
Speaker 1: So hannibalism? Why I get Well, I can't ask you
30:08
Speaker 1: why because you don't like the word. Why tell me
30:10
Speaker 1: about cannibalism? Is it just you? People who do this
30:15
Speaker 1: have a desire to taste the flesh? Do they have
30:19
Speaker 1: a desire to know? I understand in some other cultures
30:24
Speaker 1: in ancient times, the idea was if you killed someone
30:27
Speaker 1: a warrior and you ate their organs, that it gave
30:31
Speaker 1: you power. I mean, what is it with cannibalism? Yeah,
30:36
Speaker 1: it's from an anthropological standpoint, when these people are studied,
30:40
Speaker 1: you have what's referred to as kind of a ritualized cannibalism,
30:43
Speaker 1: like you had mentioned, you know where you're gonna eat
30:46
Speaker 1: a portion of your enemy's body and gives you strength
30:49
Speaker 1: and all the sorts of things. I think, if I'm
30:51
Speaker 1: not mistaken, I think that there's one tribe that still
30:55
Speaker 1: participates in cannibalism in New Guinea, a very isolated group
30:59
Speaker 1: of people. And again it's a form of ritualized ingestion
31:02
Speaker 1: of human remains. You have a separate section that is survival.
31:07
Speaker 1: You have people that are depended upon another human being's
31:11
Speaker 1: body as sustenance. We think back to the dinner party.
31:15
Speaker 1: That's many people for them, that's their their default position.
31:19
Speaker 1: Back in the eighteen hundreds, when they were trying to
31:20
Speaker 1: get across the pass and they were frozen in and
31:23
Speaker 1: they had they had nothing to nourish themselves with. There's
31:26
Speaker 1: a number of people that have been at sea. I
31:29
Speaker 1: think that had to resort to cannibalism. And of course
31:32
Speaker 1: famously we've we've got the athletic team that crash in
31:35
Speaker 1: the andies back in the seventies. The book was written
31:38
Speaker 1: about them alive, I think. But that's where survival All right,
31:42
Speaker 1: what's the really curious group? Here are these homicidal cannibals,
31:47
Speaker 1: And how do you study this? Because yeah, there are
31:50
Speaker 1: there are stories of this. There are certainly cases, you know,
31:53
Speaker 1: I guess famously the most obvious one is Damer that
31:58
Speaker 1: comes to mind, you know, in the last forty years,
32:01
Speaker 1: and he again he was the reason he made the
32:05
Speaker 1: news like he did, I think is because it was
32:08
Speaker 1: it was so shocking, so and the public couldn't get
32:12
Speaker 1: enough of it. They were watching this day after day.
32:14
Speaker 1: I had friends that were involved in the investigation up
32:17
Speaker 1: in Milwaukee in in this case, and yeah, it was
32:21
Speaker 1: absolutely horrific, and but he was very systematic about this.
32:25
Speaker 1: He would choose victims and this sort of thing, and
32:27
Speaker 1: there's all kinds of psychopathology that went on with him.
32:30
Speaker 1: But still he was deemed sane. He was deemed sane.
32:35
Speaker 1: He wasn't he wasn't a raving maniac. He was very
32:38
Speaker 1: much in control. It's very difficult, I think for us
32:42
Speaker 1: to get past this as well, it should be past
32:45
Speaker 1: this idea of consumption of another person's body. Again, back
32:51
Speaker 1: to the why question. I don't know that we will
32:53
Speaker 1: ever have an answer to why. That is purely definitive.
32:58
Speaker 1: I would think at least there's some kind of power
33:02
Speaker 1: thing that's going on. Not only am I going to
33:05
Speaker 1: stab you to death? Not only am I going to
33:07
Speaker 1: sexually assault you? And again that's another piece to Tammy
33:11
Speaker 1: Joe's case. There's also evidence that he sexually assaulted her.
33:14
Speaker 1: And again we don't know if that was anti mortem
33:17
Speaker 1: before death or if it was post mortem where you
33:20
Speaker 1: have a necrophiliac event that's going on, and again that's
33:23
Speaker 1: something that Dahmer did. He was a necrophile, which means
33:27
Speaker 1: he had a sexual orientation toward the dead. We don't
33:30
Speaker 1: know what the status was. With that again, power control
33:34
Speaker 1: and then total dominance. Maybe in these individuals' minds is
33:40
Speaker 1: the consumption of the remains. They've dominated this individual in
33:44
Speaker 1: every other way possible, and I'll show you. I'll even
33:47
Speaker 1: bring it down to the point where I'm going to
33:49
Speaker 1: ingest your mortal remains. I don't know that there's any
33:54
Speaker 1: any kind of peace anybody could have over this, but
33:57
Speaker 1: just know this, Joseph Overhandsley was convicted. He was convicted,
34:02
Speaker 1: and he's been sentenced to life in prison without the
34:06
Speaker 1: possibility of parole. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is
34:14
Speaker 1: Bodybacks