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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Frozen in Time, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Bodybacks with Joseph Scott Morgan. When most people think about
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: going to school, will they they think of its kind
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: of a safe haven, a harbor, if you will, from
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: the rest of the world. It's a place where you go,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: hopefully to develop and learn, to begin to prepare yourself
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: for the world outside of that environment. Back on Valentine's
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Day twenty eighteen, at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, it
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: became a killing ground. Today we're going to talk about
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: a place frozen in time, the scene of a mass murder.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Bodybacks Jackie Howard,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Executive producer of Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. I got
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: to tell you, I think, in all of my years,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: all the cases that I've covered, I've never heard, at
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: least in my recent memory, of a crime scene that
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: has been locked down and literally frozen in time like
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: this particular scene has been. Over all of these years.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: I sit there and I think, you know, what's the
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: purpose of this? And it's quite fascinating when you begin
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: to think about a crime scene that has not been
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: touched by anyone since those moments when it was processed
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: and then Essentially, locks were put on the door and
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: the waiting began. This scene, Joe, as you say, has
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: not been touched in nearly five years. And that is
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: a great discussion and I can't wait to talk to
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: you about that. But let's go back and look at
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: what happened and discussed the forensics there first. In twenty eighteen,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: as you said, nineteen year old Nicholas Crews opened fire
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: on the students and staff of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: School in Parkland, Florida. Seventeen people were killed, seventeen people
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: were injured, and Crews was a former student at the school.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: He arrived surprisingly by uber. He was dressed in an
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: unassuming way when he arrived. Yet his destruction is massive.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: In fact, it was bigger and surpassed the Columbine High
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: School massacre. Fifteen people were killed in that Colorado mass shooting.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: So when Nicholas Cruz opened fire, he really set it up.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: He knew what he was doing. Show he entered the
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: school dressed in a certain way, carrying a backpack, and
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: then he set off a fire alarm and at that
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: point everybody's going to head out into the hallways. He
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: knew what he was doing when crews entered this school,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: he was purposed to do this mass shooting, and it
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: appears to be almost as if he was chameleon like.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: He blended in with the environment. It was an environment
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: that he was familiar with because he had attended school there.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: He knew where all the points of access were. He
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: knew where stairwells were, for instance, And when he entered
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Building twelve, they referred to it also as Building twelve hundred.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: You can actually hear that in the police transmissions over
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: the radio. When he showed up, he showed up with
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: what they referred to as a weapon bag. It's like
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: a gunbag. And he is first witnessed getting access to
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: the building by kind of a safety patrol person that's
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: part of the staff. And I don't know at that
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: moment time they really thought too much of it, but
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: he entered through one of the access doors that's immediately
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: adjacent to an internal stairwell. The first point along this
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: storyline is that he met a student that is entering
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: the stairwell right after he does, and in a chilling remark,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: he looks at this kid because it was a kid,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: a teenager looks at him and says, you better get
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: out of here. Things are about to getting messy. And
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: it's at that moment time he unzips his back and
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: he takes out a Smith and Wesson M and P
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: a R fifteen style rifle, and he begins to assemble it.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: So he's got this thing disassembled. It's kind of broken
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: down into to its component parts at that moment time.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: But before he goes out the door and begins to shoot,
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: he takes out what could be termed as a tactical vest,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: but it doesn't have like plates in it, like ballistic
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: plates that prevents you from being shot or being injured
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: as a result of being shot. It's a vest, however,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: that contains multiple pockets where you can put magazines in
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: These magazines that feed into the weapon. These are not
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: contrary to what you hear people always use the term clip.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: There are very few weapons in the world that actually
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: use clips. Famously them one grand from World War Two
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: that used a clip. These are not clips. These are
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: magazines and they hold multiple rounds. He had a variety
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: of these. Some had thirty round capacity. I think there
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: were a couple that may have been a forty round
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: capacity and it's a semi automatic weapon, so that means
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: that every time you pull the trigger, and you have
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: to pull it, it's not fully automatic. You have to
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: engage that trigger in order for it to fire. It
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: automatically ejects around and then seeds a new round into
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: the chamber. So he assembles this thing and then exits
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: in another kind of moment in time that you see,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: it's this frozen segment. That door opens and he goes
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: into what would be termed as a tactical stance where
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: he's kind of leaned forward into the weapon and he
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: is now moving down the hallway, and it's at that
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: point in time he begins to fire rounds. And that's
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: like within i don't know, probably a minute after he
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: has arrived through those doors. Now this has happened very quickly.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: Can you imagine engaging with somebody, talking to them, warning them,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: then assembling a weapon, putting on a tactical vest and
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: egg sitting out the door, and all of a sudden
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: you're popping off rounds. And some people have stated that
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: he had pulled the fire alarm and then started firing.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: That's not what happened. He started firing and then after
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: about forty five seconds, the fire alarm is engaged, and
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: people believe the investigators believed that this was kind of
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: like drawing the students out because we can all identify
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: with this, can't we, You know, like fire drills that
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: we went through in school. What do they do? They
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: tell you to line up at the door. We're gonna
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: march you out of the building and we're going to
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: go out onto the playground or the adjacent grounds. Said
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: that we're clear of the building. That's actually, I think
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: probably what his purpose was. And when you get people
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: contained in this small space in the hallways, there's not
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: too many places you can go. Do we know, Joe,
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: whether or not Cruis actually pulled the fire alarm or
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: if the suppression system was triggered by the smoke that
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: would have come from these rounds being fired. The authorities
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: have stated on several occasions that they believed that he
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: initiated a fire alarm. It was at that point in
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: time that these children were drawn out into the hallway
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: and these rounds are continuing to be fired. Now this
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: creates a panic at this point in time because you've
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: got the fire alarm going off and many people can
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: identify with that sound. I mean, it just rings in
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: your ears. It's meant to do that because it's trying
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: to get your attention that there's danger, and it was
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: initiated and the people flood the hallway and then the
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: rounds are being popped off and suddenly they have an
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: awareness that there's gunfire and they fled back into the classrooms.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: So you've got this kind of panicked environment that's going on,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: and it kind of from a psychological standpoint, it's kind
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: of fascinating because you know, if you get people in
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: fear many times like this, they're easily controlled. Think about gunfire.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: People are terrified at that moment time, so they're going
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: to you know, kind of clutch together, if you will.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: And one of the first rooms that crews fired into,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: no one was actually hit, but he fired through the
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: glass window of the door. It was at that point
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: in time that people knew that there was something horrible afoot.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: I think the size of the building would make for
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: a forensic nightmare on top of the already nightmarish scene
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: of seeing bodies and blood and dispelled brass and so
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: many things. This was a three story building which normally
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: contained about nine hundred students thirty classrooms, what of a
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: scene would have greeted them? What would they have seen.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: Over the course of my career, I work several mass
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: fatality events. And there's a way that you go about this,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: and you have to purpose yourself in it. It's not
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: like a single investigator goes out to the scene and
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: directs maybe a crime scene photographer, maybe a crime scene
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: investigator that would collect physical evidence at the scene and
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: document it and pull measurements and all that. No, that's
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: not the way it happens. You have to call in
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: when you have all of these elements to the crime scene,
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: which the building itself is going to be the primary scene,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: and then for that building, you will have individual spots
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: that have to be focused on, and the only way
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: you can accomplish that is to form up into teams,
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: and generally they're three person teams or maybe four person teams,
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: and you'll have a primary lead detective, you'll have a
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: crime scene investigator as I mentioned, and you'll have a photographer,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: and then you might have what's referred to as a scribe,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: which is an individual that is literally taking notes. They'll
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: take measurements many times along with the crime scene investigator
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: who is separate from the detective, so that all of
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: this data can be compiled, because, as you mentioned, it's overwhelming.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: I remember on any number of cases where I've walked
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: in and I've gotten multiple deaths at a scene where
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: somebody has just gone in and just wiped out. I
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: remember one case in particular where I had a family
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: of nine that were completely decimated, and it was a
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: very tiny, tiny house maybe a thousand, two eleven hundred
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: square feet, had three bedrooms in it, and there were
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: dead bodies everywhere. There was blood everywhere. You have to
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: be very aware of your surroundings. You have to be
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: very familiar with the people that you're working with. It's
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: not a good idea to pair or group individuals that
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: have never worked together before at all, because everybody, like
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: in every area of life, have their own tendencies that
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: are on strengths, they're own weaknesses. So you have to
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: be really solid when you go into this environment so
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: that everything is documented. Keep in mind, one of the
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: ways that I like to describe crime scene investigators and detectives,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: I describe them as historians and people kind of scoff
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: at that. Sometimes I'll mention that to my students, but
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: you are a historian because there's no one else in
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: this environment that is going to go back and specifically
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: document these events that occurred on that date, that February day,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: and that it will be studied for years and years
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: and years to come. Okay, And you look back in
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: the historical record and you can see this, and there's
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: been an actually kind of a neat evolution with crime
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: scene investigation over the years relative to this. In the
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: early years, you could see, you know, how vague and
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: non specific many crime scene reports are. I remember years
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: ago I was given the report that was generated from
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: Bodying Clyde's deaths in North Louisiana. Actually they were handed
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: to me by the corner of that particular parish at
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: that time, and I remember reading over that and thinking, well,
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: it's really neat reading the clothing descriptions and some of
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: the injuries that were documented, but it lacked a lot
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: of specificity. That's not the case today. There are a
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: lot of specifics that go into this, and I think
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: that when you look back at this historically, it's something
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: that is fantastic that it has been documented. But also
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: the most important thing is that it memorializes the death
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: and what occurred that day, and it's not something that's
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: just you know, they just kind of died and then
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: vanished and there's no record of it. It's something solid
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: that you can kind of look at scientifically and analytically
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: and go back and begin to understand the measure of
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: a good report, the measure of a great documentation on
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: any case like this, is that with measurements and photographs,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: I want to be able to take a case file
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: and go back out to the scene, and when I
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: begin to read that and look at the environment, I
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: can go back in time to that day and I
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: can see precisely where everything is. And there have been
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: many cases where we've had to go out and reconstruct
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: crime scenes, and it's those reconstructions are completely dependent upon
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: what you did at that one moment in tom as
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: an investigator. Well, that is certainly going to come in
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: handy with what we're going to talk about in just
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: a minute, Joe. But there's one more point that I
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: want to bring up about this case. Investigators tell us
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: and what we see from the surveillance video from the
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: school and other things, this attack only lasted six minutes,
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, and that is, from the beginning when he
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: walks in the school till he exits. The actual shootings
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: themselves were done in less than four minutes. When you
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: think about the horror that befell the staff and these children,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: these lives that had been lived up to this point
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: are completely changed and altered in almost the twinkling of
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: an eye. That these kids are gone or these kids
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: are so damaged now, not just physically but emotionally that
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: the course of their lives have been changed. And then
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: you kind of extend that out filly to everybody they're
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: connected to in their circle. That's a moment time that
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: will last forever and ever. And the fact that he
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: was able to perpetrate this crime, and he I mean
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: Nicholas Cruz, he was able to perpetrate this This goes
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: to a big issue. When you begin to kind of
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: put together the facts around location, you think about how
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: much thought went into this. How much time would it
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: take to execute this? Now, I might say any walk
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: around with stop watch, but the efficiency and that short
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: amount of time goes to efficiency. The efficiency that he
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: executed this with is quite striking that it could all
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: occur and then not just that, but the fact that
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: he was able to almost literally dump everything that he had.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Remember we talked about early on that that gun bag
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: and the tack vest that he had, and of course
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: the weapon. You dump that and you eggs it out
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: away from where the police are congregating, and you make
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: your way out into the children that are now just
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: absolutely fleeing for their lives, and you begin to blend in.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: At that moment time he's like a fanom he can't
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: be seen. One of the more striking things about this,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: you know, we talked about the fire alarm and all
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: of this. He went to I think it was the
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: third floor teacher's lounge that was up there. You know,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: we're talking about Florida, so they've got hurricane proof glass
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: in these buildings. That is the external wind. Is the
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: way he had the setup that he had for this
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: rifle that he was using. He actually had what's called
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: a deployable bipod, which are two little legs that can
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: drop down and extend on the front of this weapon,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: and it gives you stability. You think about an old
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: fashioned machine gun, you know, like you see in World
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: War two pictures, where you know it takes a team
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: of guys to put the thing up on a tripod. Well,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: this is a bipod, and it gives you the ability
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: to steady the weapon. He tried to fire through the
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: glass with his high velocity rounds, and he would have
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: been targeting the police officers. These defects in the window
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: were actually pointed toward where the cops were egressing on
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: the building. He was going to mow down everybody that
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: was going to approach, so he's drawing them in again.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: This is I think it goes to kind of this
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: idea that he had form and function right, that I'm
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: going to take as many people as I can't. It
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: was only the fact that that glass was made the
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: way it was, that it was resistant at least to
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: a certain point ballistically, that saved more people's lives. It's
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: at that point that he fled out another stairwell and
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: made his way into the crowd and disappeared. You have
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: to think a little bit about Nicholas Cruz's home environment,
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: because you know, he's got all of this gear at
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: his house. He's living with people that have essentially adopted him.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: He's got a gun bag, he's got a rifle, he's
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: got on a solvest and all of the magazines and
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: ammunition that goes along with it. Joe, you said that
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: Nicholas Cruise intended and planned and did in fact blend
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: in with the students to make his escape, which again
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: sets up planning. But actually, how dedy because we all
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: we all know what teenager's dress like. They wear hoodies
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: and T shirts and jeans. Is that what he did?
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: One interesting little side note about Nicholas Cruise was that
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: he was had been at least involved in the junior
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: RTC program at the high school. He was part of
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: the rifle team that you called the rifle team, but
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: they used pellet guns and they would do practice and
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: they'd be in competitions and all those sorts of things.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: So he actually had clothing that married up with the
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: clothing that you see the kids wear that are in RTC.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: And it's not a common military uniform that you might
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: think of like camos or anything like that. It was
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: actually kind of a maroon pullover that had a crest
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: on it and just a pair of kind of nondescript
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: slacks and laceup shoes. He did actually blend in very well.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: So after crews left the building, he went to a
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: couple of fast food restaurants. Was on his way to
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: the mall, and that's where police arrested him. They stopped
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: him in a neighborhood of the Wyndham Lakes neighborhood of
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: Coral Springs, and that's where he was arrested. Did he
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: have with him at the time the backpack that he
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: took into the school caring the guns? Were police able
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: to recover that? Yeah, they were able to recover everything,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: you know, including the weapon. Where was it? Did he
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: hide it? Did he drop everything? I mean, I guess
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: if I had shot a lot of people, I wouldn't
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: want my weapon to be recovered, so I would have
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: tried to hide it. No, he just he dropped it
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: right there because he knew, you know, after he had
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: attempted to fire through that window. He knew the game
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: was up at that point in time. Okay, he had
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: already been spotted going into the school. People could easily
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: identify him. I think he was lucid enough to understand that.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: And I also think that, you know, if he has
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: seen outside the grounds of that school carrying that weapon
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: and being dressed like he set up to go and
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: assault a position in the military he's going to have
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: eyes on him, and he didn't. He just literally dropped
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: it right there and in its pristine state, and pristine
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: meaning from an investigative standpoint, from a forensic standpoint, it
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: tracks his movement. Okay, we know where he dropped it,
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: we know where he dropped the vest, and you go
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: back and you can analyze that and that goes back
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: to the movement. And they've spent a lot of time,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: the investigators have over the years going back and kind
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: of tracking his movement with every single shot that he took.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: I cannot imagine, thankfully, but I cannot imagine that as
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: these nine hundred odd students and teachers poured out into
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: the hallway, the image of seeing this guy holding a
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: gun coming towards you, pointing it at you. How frightening
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: that would have been. Yeah, it would have been terrifying.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: I think for a moment, and many of us can
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: identify on a certain level where you're thinking, you have
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: an event that occurs in your life and you're sitting
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: and thinking, this can't really be happening. I'm having a
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: visual hallucination here or something. This can't be accurate, and
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: then all of a sudden maybe you see a muzzle flash,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: which is the little flame that shoots out of the weapon.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: You hear the report because you see the flash before
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: you hear the report. Remember we're talking about something that
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: is going faster than speed of sound. And then you
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: hear the crack of the weapon and you look next
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: to you and somebody that maybe you started off school
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: with an elementary school is lying dead on the floor
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: next to you, or is bleeding out, or is moaning
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: in pain because they've been showing a leg and suddenly
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: it becomes real and that's when the adrenaline starts to
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: flow and panic sets in. It would have absolutely been horrendous.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: In going back we were talking about the fire alarms
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: and systems and all that sort of thing. There would
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: have been smoke, that smoke that is actually initiated and
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: generated from that weapon being fired, and it has a
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: very distinctive odor to it for those that have never
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: smelt gun smoke, literally the burning of that powder has
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: a very distinctive smell. So that would have filled the
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: environment as well. So you're being impacted by sight, by smell,
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: by sound, everything. You're being assaulted by screams as well,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: and it would have been just a complete horror show.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: You mentioned to me before we started our conversation off
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: air something called the big Black Gun theory, and as
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: long as I have been doing this, it is something
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: that I had never heard of before. It made perfect
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: sense when you explained it to me, but I had
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: never heard of it. What is the big Black Gun theory,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: the BBG Big Black Gun theory. It's been something that's
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: kind of been kicked around for years, and this idea
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: that when you see a platform like this weapon, it
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: immediately draws the eye and people understand it. They look
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: at it and they say, well, that's a weapon that
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: I've seen in movies or I've seen on the news,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: and it's scary, all right. The reason that comes into
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: play in this particular case is we've talked about it
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: before with Nicholas Cruz, how he's kind of a chameleon
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: that he blended in in this environment and he knew
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: probably that if he presents with this weapon when he
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: initially makes his way, you know, think about that first
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: person that saw him, the safety monitor that's kind of
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: riding around in this golf cart. If that person at
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: that moment time saw him as the military says, I'll
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: hit it out. That means with the tact best on
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: and the weapon, you know, worn on his chest, that
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: would have raised the alarm at that moment time, you know,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: oh my god, we've got an active shooter before he
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: ever pops off around. But in this case, I think
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: he had an awareness of that. But yet he wanted
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: the power of that weapon because it is powerful weapon.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's used you know, by our military or
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: a platform similar to that, not that specific weapon, but
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: it's firing ammunition that's very similar to what our military uses.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: And he knew what he was going to descend on
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: all of these students with and the faculty with at
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: that moment time. So he had to keep it hidden
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: because with the big black gun theory, if people see
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: you with that, you're going to scare the hell out
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: of them, you know, when they see it, And so
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: he had to keep it I don't think so. No,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: the purpose is not to scare people, Jackie. Not to
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: scare people. He wanted to eradicate people. That's what this
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: was all about. And he wanted to make sure that
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: he could insert himself into that environment as passively as possible,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: go into that stairwell where he would be concealed and
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: get all of this equipment together, and then he'll followed
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: actor on all the crime scenes. I've ever been on
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: death scenes. With a few exceptions, there's been a few
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: that we have kind of held for I don't know,
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: I can think of maybe one or two for a
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: two week period, Okay. Never, Never, in my experience, my
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: individual a little slice of the pie. Have I been
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: a party two or heard of a scene like this
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: that is this large being frozen in time for below
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: these many years and no one, and I mean no
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: one has been through there. It really creates an environment
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: that I think, in this particular case, where juror members
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: can actually go back and begin to experience and get
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: a taste for what actually occurred on that date. The
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: idea of going back to this scene five years later
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: and things are, as you said, frozen in time. But Joe,
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: we know the importance of forensics being unchanged. As forensic
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: evidence is collected, now it is placed inside a bag
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: of some kind. Usually depending on the investigator, A lot
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: say they like paper because it doesn't leave any other
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: kind of residue at all, to say plastic because it
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: preserves it better. I'm not an investigator, I don't know,
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: but I do know that the evidence that has collected
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: as is sealed. How do you seal a building. I've
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: got to be a little clear about this, because in
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: the immediate when the teams went into this high school
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: and began to work this scene, evidence was collected, you know,
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: like the spent casings that would have been ejecting out
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: of the port and striking the ground and bouncing all
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: over the place. If there were projectiles that could be recovered,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: they were recovered. Okay, that's important for everybody to understand.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: But you know, there's a there's a bigger thing at
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: play here. When you have, like, for instance, large pools
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: of blood, there's nothing you can do, okay, to collect
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: a large pool of blood. The blood is going to
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: be there, unless, of course, you have staff that comes in,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: you know, afterwards, and begins to clean this and this
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: does happen. That's, you know, where this whole industry is
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: kind of rising up crime scene clean up companies and whatnot.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: But I find it compelling in this particular case that
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: it was at that moment time that after that initial
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: processing of the scene with the photographs and measurements and
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: the collecting of the spent brass. The authorities, and probably
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: at the behest of the DA, made this increa ridable
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: decision that we're gonna lock this thing down. We're gonna
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: lock it down, we're gonna put up a fence around
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: this place, we're gonna seal it up. There's only going
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: to be one person or maybe a couple of people
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: that actually have keys to this place where folks can
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: actually go in and have access to it. And that's
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: that's quite interesting, you know, because there's still evidence there,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: but it's not evidence in the classic sense like we
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: think of where we're collecting. You know, first off, we're
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: collecting remains. We're collecting tufts of hair, which is kind
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: of fascinating because one of the people that was out
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: at the scene actually saw a tuft of hair that
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: was still on the floor adjacent to a large pool
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: of blood that some items are still left behind. And
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: I think that when you begin to think this out
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: and you think, well, why in the world would they
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: want to do though you read my mind, I was
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: just waiting for a great to jump in and say,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: I don't understand why, why would you want to do
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: this because they had a suspect that they caught that day,
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: the day of the event, that had survived. Many times
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: when you have events that occur like this, you'll have
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: a shooter that will take their own life, or we'll
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: be taken out by the police. Not in this case,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: Nicholas Cruz was arrested, I mean, and they processed him,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: and it was so well documented in the media, and
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: you know, we had first court appearances images from that,
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: We had all manner of things that kind of we
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: saw where this was going. To their credit, the prosecutors
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: and you know, probably the state ag and all of
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: the investigators that were involved, they came to conclusion, we
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: need to lock this thing down because at some point
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: in time, unless something odd happens, this is going to
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: go to trial. And it turned out that it did.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: It did go to trial. They had this thing sealed
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: up to the point where you were going to be
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: able to witness the triers of fact. You know, those
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: individuals that are sitting in that jury box, they were
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: going to be able to go back and look at
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: this from an evidentiary standpoint, from an event standpoint, and
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: maybe I don't know, maybe from a history standpoint, maybe
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: some of these people on the jury didn't really have
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: a full awareness of what had happened because they were
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: selected for the jury. Maybe maybe they didn't know the extent.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: But when those jury members are eventually taken back out there,
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: I can tell you this, it hit them full force
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: in their chest. Okay, So I've got to go back
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: to my original question, how did they do this? We're
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: not talking something being you know, hermetically sealed. They didn't
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: seal every crack and lock every door. They locked access
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: from the outside. Is that all they did? They locked
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: access from the outside. You know, obviously the doors and
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: everything we're sealed, But then you've got this fencing that
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: goes up around it. My suspicion is my suspicion is,
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: and I can't necessarily confirm this right now, but is
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: that there were probably cameras trained on this as well
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: to document all the comings and goings over all these years.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: Anybody that might have access and I can tell you
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: that probably defense would want to know that information. They
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: would want to be able to And what's really interesting
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: is that one of the things we talk about in
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: forensics is chain of custody. You talked about the bagging
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: of evidence, and all these sorts of things. When evidence
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: is handed off, you have to be able to account
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: for it and track it because if you don't, if
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: anything enters that chain and breaks that chain at any
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: point in time. Not in every case, but in many cases,
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: that evidence becomes invalidated because you can't attest to the
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: security of that evidence. Well, it's one thing to have
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: bagged evidence that goes from detective to the evidence custodian
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: at the state crime lab and it's passed onto the
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: scientists who tested. That's one thing. Right now, we're talking
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: about the security of a structure. Just imagine that, if
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: you will, the security of a structure where it has
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: to be accounted for from beginning to end. Because this
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: is this building. The structure actually is a big part
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: of the case itself, the case in total, because you're
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: using this environment, which in a weird way, the whole
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: building becomes a piece of evidence. It's kind of odd
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: when you think about it, that you're going to walk
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: through a piece of evidence. Isn't that interesting? You know,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: when you think about it from the perspective of the courts,
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: You're going to walk through a piece of evidence that
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: has already essentially been processed and documented. Now we're going
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: to go back and enter this environment that has been
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: sealed for all of this period of time, and we're
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: going to give you the timeline that we have put
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: forward as to how this thing went down. And it's
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: really hard for the defense, I think, in this case,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: to deny that it happened in any other manner. They
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: have to go through and see marked by Tom. And
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: they have this thing marked by Tom of his movements
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: all the way from when he first got out of
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: that uber to the moment he exited out of the structure.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: I'm still trying to wrap my mind around this a
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: little bit so that I understand the point of sealing
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: the building keeping everyone out is not necessarily to one
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: hundred percent preserve whatever evidence there is, as you talked
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: about the blood was going to be remaining, the tuft
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: of hair. It's not necessarily to preserve that evidence for
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: future collection because after this period of time, it's gonna
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: degrade and be contaminated by dust, by settling from the building,
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: by rodents, by insects that may have been able to
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: get inside the building. So the preservation is for an
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: entirely different reason. Yeah, it is. It tells a story.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: Let's go to blood specifically, blood is not a standalone substance.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: It has multiple components. One of the chief components is
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: that it's got water in it. There is water that
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: is in dwelling in the components of blood. And once
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: that blood is outside of the body and it's on
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: an open surface like this, and we're talking about it,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: I don't want to use it. I love Florida. I
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: don't want to use the word hostile necessarily. But let's
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: face it. Environmentally, it's very very hot, right, and we
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: all know that he causes things to degrade significantly. So
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: the pools of blood that would have been left behind,
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: for instance, are not there necessarily to be tested. What
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: remained of the blood, those components are simply there as
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: an illustration of what heard at that environment. And it
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: can be implied at least as the jurors and the
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: court members of the cord are walking through, they can
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: see these spots and how would they have looked? Well,
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: since the water essentially is all gone, the other substances contained,
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: you know, we have serum, and we have red blood
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: cells and whatnot. Those components now have become dried, and
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: many people can identify with dried blood. If you've injured
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: yourself at some point in time, you know that it
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: has and maybe you didn't clean up the blood afterwards.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: You can see that it changes color. It doesn't look
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: like that vibrant red you know from an immediate injury.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: And in this particular case and what people have reported,
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: I urge anybody that's within the sound of my voice
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: to go and listen to what these reporters had to
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: say that walk through this environment. The blood is essentially
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: brown now and has begun to flake. And that's very
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: common and we see this a lot at crime scenes,
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: particularly where there has been a homicide and the body
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: has been taken off from that location and disposed of
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: in another location. We go back and we find blood
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: that gives us an indication that's something violent happened. Well,
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: there was a lot of violence here, there was a
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: lot of blood, But all of that collection of blood
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: is going to be brown, cracked, flaked, it'll be peeling up.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: It almost looks like old dried paint and it's very
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: very fragile. There's another component to this as well. You
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: got bullet strikes where you have these areas, say for instance,
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: in the floor, that are notched out, and you can
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: see those. You can see where the bullet's actually struck
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: and maybe ricocheted off of the floor. You can see
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: a defect in a wall or a door where a
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: projectile actually either embedded itself or passed through it. That's
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: not something that you wouldn't normally see in a school
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: when you walk through, but it marks that moment in
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: time when all of this happened, and you begin to
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: get an appreciation. I think if you're the person that's
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: task with judging all of this, because that's what the
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: jurors do, right, you're given a sense of that time
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: and place when this occurred. You know that there's been
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: a certain level of violence here. And for me, one
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: thing that really tugs at your heart strings in this
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: not that there's not so much other but this occurred
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: on Valentine's Day. One of the stories that is kind of,
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: you know, put out there is that one of the
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: things that one of these reporters, a pool reporter I
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: think it is with a ap actually noticed is that
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: he saw a teddy bear laying on the floor and
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: it had a heart, and you know, you can imagine
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: a youngster that receives some little token of love and
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: affection from somebody that's interested in I'm on Valentine's Day,
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: and now they're fleeting for their life and suddenly that
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: Teddy Bear is not as important. They drop it. They
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: leave it there, and the investigators didn't remove that. They
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: talk about how they're unopened Valentine's cards, lying about one
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: of the things are of the flowers. There were roses
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: in a lot of these places, and they're wilted and
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: kind of you know, drooping down and dried petals are
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: falling off and this sort of thing. It's quite amazing
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: that they were able to lock this down and keep
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: it sealed up so that you know that the jurors
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: could go back and revisit the horror that took place
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: that Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body backs