Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: DEATH OF INNOCENCE - MOM STUFFED IN TUB, BABIES IN TRUNK

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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: DEATH OF INNOCENCE - MOM STUFFED IN TUB, BABIES IN TRUNK · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:01
Speaker 1: Body Dogs with Joseph Scott more China, Girl, Dance, Fever, Friend, Goodfellas,
0:16
Speaker 1: Great Bear, Tango, and Cash Jackpot. Seemingly innocuous words and
0:28
Speaker 1: their words that, perhaps, in any other circumstance might give
0:34
Speaker 1: you the warm fuzzies. But did you know that those
0:38
Speaker 1: names are tied to arguably one of the most insidious
0:45
Speaker 1: drugs that's out there, fentanyl. And daily we see reports
0:56
Speaker 1: of individuals that die as a result of overdosing on fennel.
1:03
Speaker 1: But today we're going to talk about this drug and
1:10
Speaker 1: how it was actually weaponized to commit a triple murder.
1:20
Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Bodybacks. It's hard
1:28
Speaker 1: to imagine, Dave, how an individual can be so disconnected
1:41
Speaker 1: from their own humanity that they not only murder their
1:57
Speaker 1: loved one, their love interest, if you will, but take
2:02
Speaker 1: it so far that they would murder two very young
2:09
Speaker 1: children as well. How is it that this happens? I
2:14
Speaker 1: know that you know, and that's that question is kind
2:16
Speaker 1: of rhetorical. People have used it for years and years. I,
2:20
Speaker 1: you know, work at the Medical Examiner's office, Dave. I
2:23
Speaker 1: would I had to be very careful about asking myself
2:28
Speaker 1: that question. And do you know why, Dave, do you
2:31
Speaker 1: know why? I would have to be careful about asking
2:34
Speaker 1: myself that question why, because to try to process that
2:42
Speaker 1: is so incredibly crippling for an investigator that if you
2:46
Speaker 1: go out and you begin to view every homicide that
2:51
Speaker 1: you work in that sense where and it's this, it's
2:56
Speaker 1: this weird instance where you try to remain as humane
3:01
Speaker 1: as you can while you're observing all of these horrible
3:04
Speaker 1: things set before you. But if you don't, if you
3:08
Speaker 1: don't have on your clinical hat as you are processing
3:11
Speaker 1: a scene and trying to investigate things, and you're seeing
3:14
Speaker 1: things that other people can't even begin to imagine, it
3:16
Speaker 1: will literally drive you to madness. And I think that
3:20
Speaker 1: that's what happens for many people in the general public
3:24
Speaker 1: when they hear about the horrific cases such as the
3:28
Speaker 1: ones we're going to talk about in this episode today.
3:32
Speaker 1: I think that it drives us all collectively to a numbness,
3:42
Speaker 1: perhaps because you know, we will move on to another
3:51
Speaker 1: horrible case that will be equally as tragic as this,
3:56
Speaker 1: and unfortunately, these precious lives that were lost will as
4:01
Speaker 1: far as the media is concerned, they'll be forgotten. You know,
4:04
Speaker 1: after a period of time, we move on to the
4:05
Speaker 1: next case or cases. It's hard though, it's hard to
4:09
Speaker 1: make sense of it. I'm glad that I still have
4:13
Speaker 1: the ability to grieve, I think, and when it comes
4:19
Speaker 1: to these cases out of Charlotte, North Carolina today, I
4:24
Speaker 1: got to tell you, it makes my stomach churned, absolutely
4:28
Speaker 1: turn that someone is out there like this that could
4:31
Speaker 1: perpetrate this kind of crimes.
4:33
Speaker 2: You know, Joe, We're talking about a horrific story that
4:38
Speaker 2: started off pretty nice. Markela Johnson is twenty two years old.
4:40
Speaker 2: She has two children. She has a seven month old
4:43
Speaker 2: little boy named Messiah Johnson and a four year old
4:46
Speaker 2: little girl named Miracle Johnson. She meets Ben Taylor and
4:49
Speaker 2: they decide to date for a while and things are
4:53
Speaker 2: going good and Ben talks her into moving in with
4:55
Speaker 2: him in Charlotte, North Carolina. Now, mark Kela lives in
4:59
Speaker 2: Myrtle Beach, Carolina. That's a good distance, a good drive
5:02
Speaker 2: from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina to Charlotte, North Carolina. But
5:05
Speaker 2: Markayla me she's smitten, so she decides to do it.
5:08
Speaker 2: She moves in with Ben Taylor. Now that happened in
5:11
Speaker 2: the fall of last year. By January, communication with Markela
5:16
Speaker 2: started slowing down, and after January twentieth, nobody in the
5:19
Speaker 2: family remembers talking to her or seeing her. And in
5:23
Speaker 2: February they all started getting really nervous because the only
5:25
Speaker 2: thing that we're getting from Markayla were text messages from
5:28
Speaker 2: her phone. Now, it's enough to kind of make you go, hey, Markayla,
5:32
Speaker 2: but then you read the text and you go, that's
5:34
Speaker 2: not something she would say, I don't think this is her.
5:37
Speaker 2: And that's what was happening. They were all getting these
5:39
Speaker 2: kind of messages Joe that they were from her phone,
5:42
Speaker 2: but they didn't think it was her.
5:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to ask you about that because
5:46
Speaker 1: I have a there's a tone. Isn't it weird to
5:49
Speaker 1: talk about text text messages relative to a tone? But
5:54
Speaker 1: there are certain things that when Kim and I go
5:57
Speaker 1: back and forth with text, there's just a particular way
6:02
Speaker 1: that we have of speaking to one another piece of
6:05
Speaker 1: e text. And if you're close with your family, which
6:10
Speaker 1: Markayla was. She was, they were vested in her. They
6:15
Speaker 1: were looking out for her well being. But when you
6:18
Speaker 1: receive a text, there's certain things that you look for
6:22
Speaker 1: as far as clues go and how things are even
6:26
Speaker 1: sentence structure itself where you can pick up on it.
6:29
Speaker 1: And isn't that interesting the world that we live in now?
6:32
Speaker 1: It doesn't you know? We think back to say a
6:35
Speaker 1: voicemail for instance, that people and people still do, but
6:39
Speaker 1: you know, the way you talk to people this sort
6:40
Speaker 1: of thing now, text actually has a tonality to it
6:44
Speaker 1: where you can begin to pick up like they wouldn't
6:48
Speaker 1: say that.
6:48
Speaker 2: I know how you and I communicate be a text,
6:50
Speaker 2: so I would know if I would know if your
6:52
Speaker 2: wife wrote me, I would know if Kim wrote me
6:54
Speaker 2: a text versus you, because I know how you and
6:56
Speaker 2: I communicate.
6:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and we're very we have kind of a
7:00
Speaker 1: it's a shorthand, I guess that we have, you know,
7:03
Speaker 1: and we kind of go back and forth like that.
7:06
Speaker 1: And I think this applause, and I think that anybody
7:09
Speaker 1: that's hearing our comments right now would agree with that,
7:12
Speaker 1: that that you have a way that you speak with
7:15
Speaker 1: certain people in your life. And can you imagine being
7:19
Speaker 1: a family member that you haven't talked to this loved
7:23
Speaker 1: one in some time, You haven't physically seen them presenting
7:27
Speaker 1: themselves before your eyes, and these precious babies as well,
7:31
Speaker 1: and you want to talk to them, but yet the
7:34
Speaker 1: text that you're getting back and forth, it's just it's
7:37
Speaker 1: not the way this person.
7:38
Speaker 2: If you remember gab you Patito's case, remember how that's
7:41
Speaker 2: how we targeted when she actually reed because of the
7:44
Speaker 2: text messages that they were getting. Anyway, the same thing
7:47
Speaker 2: happened here and the family finally had their fill Throughout
7:49
Speaker 2: the month of February, they looked and couldn't find anything.
7:52
Speaker 2: They were getting weird taxes, so that on March third,
7:54
Speaker 2: they go to the police. They file a missing person's
7:57
Speaker 2: work for twenty two year old mar Kayla and her
8:00
Speaker 2: two children, four year old and three and seven months old.
8:04
Speaker 2: That's got to be a shocking day. I cannot imagine
8:07
Speaker 2: having to do that. But they file the report and
8:10
Speaker 2: police they hop on it. Joe, they don't wait. On
8:13
Speaker 2: March fifth, police go with the family to Benjamin Taylor's
8:18
Speaker 2: apartment where Mark Kla was living, and detectives are there
8:22
Speaker 2: with them. Now they don't have a search order, they
8:24
Speaker 2: don't have any way to get in, they don't have
8:25
Speaker 2: a search warrant. They knock on the door. It's a
8:27
Speaker 2: welfare trip and nobody answers the door, the security guys
8:33
Speaker 2: from around the building. They actually can open the door.
8:35
Speaker 2: They've got a key master key opens it, but there's
8:38
Speaker 2: a chain on the door and it's changed, so they
8:40
Speaker 2: can't open the door. So they back out, and it
8:45
Speaker 2: was one of those times where they're frustrated because they
8:47
Speaker 2: know something's going on, and they tell the family, we
8:50
Speaker 2: have to do this the right way. We can't bust
8:53
Speaker 2: the door down because nobody's answering our calls here, So
8:56
Speaker 2: they back up. March six detectives do obtain they start looking,
9:00
Speaker 2: just so you know, they went to work, they filed paperwork,
9:03
Speaker 2: they wanted to get a search warrant, so they were
9:05
Speaker 2: trying to put their stuff together to be able to
9:07
Speaker 2: get into that apartment. And so March sixth, they actually
9:11
Speaker 2: obtained surveillance video showing Benjamin Taylor leaving the stake on
9:17
Speaker 2: a bus. Surveillance video on March six So now they
9:23
Speaker 2: are there March third, banging on the reporting a missing.
9:26
Speaker 2: March fifth, they're banging on the door. On March sixth,
9:29
Speaker 2: they'd find the video of Benjamin Taylor leaving, and now
9:33
Speaker 2: March eighth, the cops issue the full on missing persons alert,
9:37
Speaker 2: big problem here. March fifteenth. A week later, they obtained
9:42
Speaker 2: a search warrant for the apartment. Joe, have you ever
9:45
Speaker 2: gone on a search warrant? We're doing a beyond the
9:48
Speaker 2: welfare check where you think there might be somebody in there.
9:51
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I have. And it was as a result
9:57
Speaker 1: of a search warrant that was being executed. I got
10:03
Speaker 1: one of the biggest surprises of my life. It was
10:05
Speaker 1: the only time during my career, out of all the
10:07
Speaker 1: thousands of bodies that I'd been around, that I was
10:10
Speaker 1: actually a person that discovered a body. Really that had
10:13
Speaker 1: never happened to me. Yeah. Yeah, I found another person,
10:16
Speaker 1: another victim in the house. There was a decendent that
10:20
Speaker 1: we had that was decomposing in one room. And to
10:26
Speaker 1: be perfectly honest with you, and I know this is horrible,
10:29
Speaker 1: but there was another smell in the house. And I
10:32
Speaker 1: remember going about the house looking through the house, and
10:35
Speaker 1: I found a carpet rolled up and there was a
10:38
Speaker 1: grown man rolled up in the carpet as well. And
10:41
Speaker 1: I found it and that had never happened to me.
10:43
Speaker 1: And understand my position as a medical legal death investigator.
10:47
Speaker 1: We do find bodies. It does happen, but most of
10:52
Speaker 1: the time it's in the wake of police having found
10:56
Speaker 1: the bodies or family members having found the bodies. That
10:58
Speaker 1: was the one time where I actually found a body,
11:01
Speaker 1: and so it Yes, I have been on cases like
11:05
Speaker 1: this where this occurs, but I want to I want
11:09
Speaker 1: to go back just for a second, because I think
11:12
Speaker 1: that as a result of the investigation all the way
11:15
Speaker 1: back on March third, the police had determined that Markayla's
11:22
Speaker 1: phone had actually been turned off. You know, we were
11:25
Speaker 1: talking about the text her phone had been turned off
11:28
Speaker 1: at that moment time and why, you know, why would
11:32
Speaker 1: that be you know, that she would turn off her phone,
11:35
Speaker 1: and then you couple that with this information going back
11:38
Speaker 1: where these texts that don't sound like her, you know,
11:42
Speaker 1: and suddenly she just kind of drops off of the
11:45
Speaker 1: face of the planet. Dave. You know, Dave, coming from
12:03
Speaker 1: the combined years of experience that you and I have
12:06
Speaker 1: at one singular occupation, and that is being a daddy
12:12
Speaker 1: and grandpa's as well, think about this just for a second.
12:20
Speaker 1: Let's go down the list. If we are in an
12:24
Speaker 1: environment where we are taking care of our kids, our grandkids,
12:28
Speaker 1: there will be evidence of that we're not talking about
12:30
Speaker 1: adult behavior. We will have evidence of our efforts with
12:34
Speaker 1: our children or our grandchildren. There will be something around
12:39
Speaker 1: that will indicate And let me give you a clue here,
12:42
Speaker 1: I'll throw that. I'll make this an easy one, all right. So,
12:45
Speaker 1: if you're looking in a car, for instance, and you
12:50
Speaker 1: know that there are little kids in a family, what's
12:53
Speaker 1: the first thing you're going to look for in a car?
12:55
Speaker 1: We are dealing with little kids.
12:56
Speaker 2: Car seats, blankets, and sippy cups.
13:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Cheerio' is also all over the floorways always.
13:04
Speaker 2: Yeah.
13:04
Speaker 1: And guess what Markayla's car is actually in the parking
13:10
Speaker 1: lot at the apartment complex. Guess what ain't there? There's
13:15
Speaker 1: nothing in that car to indicate that this car was
13:19
Speaker 1: transporting children. And I think that that's a big red
13:22
Speaker 1: flag for the police, right when you've gotten in the family,
13:24
Speaker 1: You've got a family.
13:25
Speaker 2: Now that's they're helping to search because nobody knew Markayla
13:29
Speaker 2: and her children were not in the apartment. That's the
13:32
Speaker 2: kick here. This is Benjamin Taylor's apartment. You got to
13:34
Speaker 2: remember that this was not mark Kayla's apartment. It was his.
13:37
Speaker 2: She had moved in with her boyfriend. She's from South Carolina.
13:41
Speaker 2: This was his place. So immediately saying, her car's in
13:45
Speaker 2: the parking lot and there's nothing in it indicating there
13:48
Speaker 2: were children. You have her phone has now been turned
13:52
Speaker 2: off and there's no sign of anybody inside the apartment.
13:57
Speaker 2: Even on a welfare check. The police can't just bash
14:01
Speaker 2: down the door. They have to go and follow the
14:04
Speaker 2: steps because, hey, man, what if somebody is sound asleep?
14:07
Speaker 2: You know, we had that during the Kansas City Chiefs
14:09
Speaker 2: this past fans. Yeah, they died outside, but they couldn't
14:13
Speaker 2: go barging in for no reason. They had the guy
14:15
Speaker 2: who said he was asleep didn't hear anything. So here
14:18
Speaker 2: we have police that are doing work. I think I
14:22
Speaker 2: don't want to go too over the top on this,
14:24
Speaker 2: but Joe, I'm thinking about the police knew something bad
14:29
Speaker 2: had gone on and they immediately started looking for it.
14:31
Speaker 2: They didn't to sit back and wait, because they actually
14:34
Speaker 2: found on March sixth, they found proof that Benjamin Taylor
14:38
Speaker 2: was not in town. And that to me was meaning
14:42
Speaker 2: the cops are on this. And once they got into
14:46
Speaker 2: that place, Once they got into that apartment, Joe, you're
14:50
Speaker 2: in a place that the air conditioning's kicked on, at
14:52
Speaker 2: sixty two degrees and there's air fresheners all over the
14:56
Speaker 2: place and candles that have been burned. What does that
15:00
Speaker 2: hell you, mister investigator, walking into the apartment of a
15:03
Speaker 2: man who has his girlfriend and two small children living
15:06
Speaker 2: with him.
15:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you and taking another step, You've got a
15:11
Speaker 1: fellow whose name is on the lease of this property.
15:15
Speaker 1: And he Look, when you're a man and you have
15:18
Speaker 1: a property, and you invite this young mother, she's twenty
15:21
Speaker 1: two years old and she's got two babies, You're there saying, okay,
15:25
Speaker 1: I'm going to provide a home for you. All right. Now,
15:30
Speaker 1: he's nowhere to be found. They have evidence that he's,
15:35
Speaker 1: you know, taken a bus across taking a bus across
15:39
Speaker 1: the state, across these states. We'll get to that in
15:42
Speaker 1: a second. But and she's nowhere to be found. You
15:48
Speaker 1: walk into an environment where there are air fresheners everywhere.
15:51
Speaker 1: It reminds me again Hollywood reference here for those that
15:56
Speaker 1: have ever seen the movie seven. There's that Isaac shot
16:00
Speaker 1: in there where there are those little pine tree air
16:03
Speaker 1: fresheners hanging all in an apartment, and that was to
16:06
Speaker 1: mask obviously a smell. And let me tell you something
16:12
Speaker 1: you can't. People think that you can. You cannot mask
16:17
Speaker 1: the odor of decomposition no matter how hard you try it.
16:22
Speaker 1: It defeats everything in its way. That's it's always been comical.
16:27
Speaker 1: And I hate to use the term comical, but when
16:32
Speaker 1: you see the movie Silence of the Lambs and they
16:34
Speaker 1: take the vix vapor rub and put it beneath their nose,
16:38
Speaker 1: going to yeah, it doesn't help because you have to
16:41
Speaker 1: smell decomp along with vix vapor rub. Nothing will defeat
16:45
Speaker 1: the smell of decomposing bodies.
16:47
Speaker 2: It's on your clothes, it.
16:51
Speaker 1: Does, yeah, and it gets in your hair. I wrote
16:54
Speaker 1: about that in my memoir you Know where. I was
16:58
Speaker 1: in a in a cooler or working the deaths of
17:02
Speaker 1: a boat that had capsized and we were slowly bringing
17:05
Speaker 1: in bodies. We had sixteen people that died, and I
17:08
Speaker 1: literally wound up having to shave my head and my mustache,
17:11
Speaker 1: shaved it off and threw away my clothes after days
17:15
Speaker 1: and days of being in the same environment over and
17:17
Speaker 1: over again. It's amazing. It's I've always felt as though
17:22
Speaker 1: that the smell of death is almost emblematic of death itself,
17:26
Speaker 1: and it kind of it hangs on you, you know, and
17:29
Speaker 1: it's there and it's representative of broader things, and we
17:32
Speaker 1: can have a deeper discussion about that later. People.
17:35
Speaker 2: I know, we have the smell of decomposition, but yes,
17:38
Speaker 2: are there subtle differences between what my body decomposing would
17:42
Speaker 2: be like versus yours?
17:44
Speaker 1: No? No, not really. And maybe someday there will be
17:49
Speaker 1: some kind of spectrum that could be actualized relative to that,
17:54
Speaker 1: but no, for me, the dead or the dead, and
17:59
Speaker 1: the smell is equally offensive. Now, different environments can dictate
18:04
Speaker 1: how the person at the rate at which they decompose,
18:08
Speaker 1: and of course further advancement of that is going to
18:11
Speaker 1: be worse. And listen, the further down it goes, actually,
18:14
Speaker 1: believe it or not, it begins to diminish at some
18:17
Speaker 1: point in time, you know. And I've gone into environments
18:21
Speaker 1: where we have bodies that have skeletonized, where there's not
18:28
Speaker 1: that much of an odor that remains. It's kind of
18:31
Speaker 1: a musky odor. But when you're at this height like this,
18:35
Speaker 1: when bodies are discovered within a few weeks, it assaults
18:40
Speaker 1: everything in the environment, everybody that's there. And I've worked
18:44
Speaker 1: with colleagues that just cannot remain indoors with the dead
18:48
Speaker 1: and a decomposing environment. You have to kind of you
18:52
Speaker 1: have to sally forth with it because you're the only
18:55
Speaker 1: person that's there to do the work that has to
18:58
Speaker 1: be done. And listen, when when her body is actually
19:06
Speaker 1: discovered in this environment, Dave, if I'm not mistaken, she's
19:11
Speaker 1: found in a big plastic bin.
19:15
Speaker 2: As That's what I was going to tell you that
19:16
Speaker 2: in this particular case, we know there's candles that have
19:21
Speaker 2: been burning, there's air fresheners, and the air conditioner has
19:23
Speaker 2: been set down to sixty two degrees. They can't find
19:26
Speaker 2: anybody that you know. You got to remember they know
19:29
Speaker 2: Benjamin Taylor's not in the state, but they're looking for
19:33
Speaker 2: Markaala Johnson and her two children. Usually, when you find
19:36
Speaker 2: the mother, you find the children. You find the children,
19:38
Speaker 2: you find the mother. Not in this case, they did
19:41
Speaker 2: not find the children, Joe. They found Mark Kayla Johnson's body.
19:45
Speaker 2: She had been dead and put into a plastic tub
19:51
Speaker 2: and there were diapers placed around her head. She had
20:00
Speaker 2: cords tied around her body as well. And I'm trying
20:06
Speaker 2: to think when you talk about plastic bags, I'm sorry
20:09
Speaker 2: I should have mentioned that already, but plastic bags over
20:12
Speaker 2: her head with cords around her neck, and the diapers
20:15
Speaker 2: over her face as well. I don't know what the
20:17
Speaker 2: point of with that. I'm trying to figure that part out.
20:20
Speaker 2: The diaper over the head, I can't figure that out.
20:23
Speaker 1: Well, it's I think that first off, I think that
20:26
Speaker 1: we have to go to this idea of face covering.
20:28
Speaker 1: And anytime you have face covering, and this is nothing,
20:34
Speaker 1: This is not new data for anybody that's out there
20:37
Speaker 1: that's heard this. Anytime, as investigators we see a victim
20:40
Speaker 1: with their face cover we know that there's an intimate
20:42
Speaker 1: probably involved in this because psychologists have opine for years
20:47
Speaker 1: and years that the perpetrator cannot bear to look into
20:52
Speaker 1: the eyes of the dead because they have an intimate
20:55
Speaker 1: relationship with them. They can't stand to look at the
20:57
Speaker 1: face of the dead if they are in relationship with
21:01
Speaker 1: this person. And if you're talking about the intensity of
21:07
Speaker 1: a relationship where you have two people that are cohabitating together,
21:11
Speaker 1: how much more so you would And then to layer
21:15
Speaker 1: it because you know, you think about a plastic bag
21:17
Speaker 1: these sorts of things. I think that the utility of
21:20
Speaker 1: a plastic bag here and the restraint goes to I
21:24
Speaker 1: would think that police would have thought at that moment
21:27
Speaker 1: time that she may have been suffocated because plastic bags
21:31
Speaker 1: have been used as a methodology of suffocation with a
21:36
Speaker 1: restrained person. That's something that has been perpetrated in the past,
21:42
Speaker 1: and it's something that is known. But you know that
21:46
Speaker 1: that's not that's not all they found in her particular case,
21:51
Speaker 1: and we can get into her autopsy in a moment.
21:55
Speaker 1: I think that it's important to understand that those children
21:57
Speaker 1: were not found in that apartment. And additionally, you know,
22:02
Speaker 1: we talked about the car seats in the car, there
22:04
Speaker 1: were no toys around either. There was no sign. How
22:07
Speaker 1: many legos have you stepped on you?
22:09
Speaker 2: There's something I walked in the hallway earlier in my hallway, Yeah, yeah,
22:13
Speaker 2: anybody who has children of any age under twelve, you've
22:16
Speaker 2: got toys in the hall You've got them scattered somewhere.
22:19
Speaker 2: You're going to hurt your foot if you walk barefoot,
22:20
Speaker 2: which I don't anymore, And there's nothing, there's no sign
22:24
Speaker 2: of that. Joe. All you've got to sign up in
22:25
Speaker 2: this apartment is a sign that nobody lives there, that
22:29
Speaker 2: nobody has been there for a while now. Remember the
22:32
Speaker 2: last time anybody remembers even talking, really talking to Markala
22:37
Speaker 2: is January twentieth. Where now two months later, we're in
22:40
Speaker 2: the middle of March, March fifteenth, and where are the kids?
22:45
Speaker 2: Where are Where is her four year old and seven
22:48
Speaker 2: month old? They're not able to take care of themselves,
22:52
Speaker 2: and they're not with their mother. Where are they?
22:56
Speaker 1: We have to go back to this car that's out
22:59
Speaker 1: in the parking lot, and as it turns out, it's
23:03
Speaker 1: actually his car that's out there, and there's no evidence
23:07
Speaker 1: that he's been conveying kids in this car. We talked
23:11
Speaker 1: about the absence of the car seats, for instance, and
23:14
Speaker 1: that's something that's an investigator you're going to look for.
23:17
Speaker 1: But they opened the trunk of this car Dave out
23:22
Speaker 1: in the parking lot at this apartment complex, and both
23:26
Speaker 1: of those babies are found wrapped in blankets out there
23:30
Speaker 1: in the parking lot in that guy's car.
23:35
Speaker 2: They're wrapped in plastic bags and then placed in gym bags.
23:40
Speaker 2: A four year old and a seven month old. Okay,
23:44
Speaker 2: with names like Miracle and Messiah, you've got a twenty
23:47
Speaker 2: two year old mother who had some forethought into naming
23:50
Speaker 2: her children because she was young, she was a young
23:53
Speaker 2: mother at her first child. When she's eighteen, twenty two years,
23:56
Speaker 2: eighteen years old, she's got a twenty year old and
23:58
Speaker 2: seven month old that she's taken care of, and she
24:00
Speaker 2: goes all in with Benjamin Taylor. She moves from her
24:03
Speaker 2: home in South Carolina and moves in with him around Christmas,
24:06
Speaker 2: and before the new year even gets through its first
24:09
Speaker 2: full month, nobody can find her. And now we know
24:12
Speaker 2: Markayla is dead in the house. She's got to wrap
24:15
Speaker 2: in her bag and stuff in a plastic trunk with
24:17
Speaker 2: a diaper over head. Now we find the two children
24:20
Speaker 2: in the trunk of Benjamin Taylor's car. Now they know
24:22
Speaker 2: Benjamin Taylor has left town in a bus. They know
24:25
Speaker 2: he's nowhere to be found. When they don't know how
24:27
Speaker 2: long the children have been there, they still are trying
24:30
Speaker 2: to figure all that out. But Joe, how do you
24:31
Speaker 2: figure out how they dined, but you don't know how
24:33
Speaker 2: long they've been there, how long decomposition has been going.
24:36
Speaker 2: How do you figure all of those things out?
24:40
Speaker 1: Well, you know, one of the problems that you encounter
24:42
Speaker 1: too with this is going to be whether we're talking
24:45
Speaker 1: about Charlotte North Carolina. We're in the colder months now.
24:48
Speaker 1: You know, last time they're spoken with is back in January,
24:56
Speaker 1: and now you have this cooling that takes place region
25:00
Speaker 1: of the country. It's not going to decomposition is not
25:04
Speaker 1: going to be at the same rate it would be
25:05
Speaker 1: in the summertime, but still decomposition is going on. I'm
25:08
Speaker 1: really wondering because you know the wrapping of the of
25:13
Speaker 1: the bodies where you have them in these plastic bags,
25:16
Speaker 1: there's blankets that are there as well. I'm thinking, did
25:22
Speaker 1: was the odor of decomposition knocked down to such a
25:25
Speaker 1: point that if someone parks adjacent to the car they
25:29
Speaker 1: can't smell it. Because I have been adjacent to a
25:31
Speaker 1: car with a body in the trunk and you can
25:35
Speaker 1: smell the body in the trunk before the trunk is opened. Again,
25:40
Speaker 1: that goes back to a case where we had to
25:42
Speaker 1: get a warrant for the car and the trunk is
25:45
Speaker 1: popped and we could we could verify what we were
25:48
Speaker 1: smelling once the trunk opened up. So I really wonder
25:51
Speaker 1: how many people had walked past that car. Did they
25:55
Speaker 1: not smell it, did they ignore it, or was there
25:57
Speaker 1: just no odor at all? I can guarantee you that
26:00
Speaker 1: when they did finally open the trunk, there would have
26:03
Speaker 1: been a furious odor that would have come out. At
26:06
Speaker 1: that point in time, you would have known what you
26:08
Speaker 1: were dealing with them. Can you imagine the horror of
26:11
Speaker 1: the police, because you know, no one wants an ending
26:18
Speaker 1: like this, there is still hope that these babies could
26:22
Speaker 1: be alive. I would think that maybe even in some way,
26:27
Speaker 1: the investigators may have thought that maybe these kids were
26:30
Speaker 1: dropped off with somebody that could provide care for them,
26:33
Speaker 1: that maybe some way they didn't see him on video
26:37
Speaker 1: with the kids, maybe he had kids with him when
26:39
Speaker 1: he took off. But I can tell you all their
26:41
Speaker 1: worst nightmares came true when that trunk was finally opened.
26:57
Speaker 1: These precious babies, Dave. We begin to think about what
27:03
Speaker 1: they maybe have had to endure allegedly at the hands
27:11
Speaker 1: of this man, who, Let's face it, if you're a
27:15
Speaker 1: man and you take on the responsibility of providing a
27:18
Speaker 1: roof over somebody's head and they have kids, you're responsible
27:23
Speaker 1: for those kids. I mean, I've got to say it
27:25
Speaker 1: plainly right here, and that trust has been to say
27:32
Speaker 1: that it's been violated as a gross understatement.
27:35
Speaker 2: Benjamin Taylor has a history of domestic violence show against
27:39
Speaker 2: women that live with him, love him, care for him.
27:42
Speaker 2: He has a history so much though that he had
27:46
Speaker 2: he knew he's not getting out of jail again. That's
27:48
Speaker 2: how bad his back record is with women beating them.
27:51
Speaker 2: I guess I can say that right. He's been convicted
27:54
Speaker 2: of domestic violence. So Benjamin Taylor expected because of death
28:01
Speaker 2: and how the three died. You know, Mom and I
28:06
Speaker 2: look Joe. Whenever we're talking about men and women, people fight,
28:11
Speaker 2: They do stupid things to one another. What can a
28:16
Speaker 2: seven month old do to anybody? What can a four
28:18
Speaker 2: year old do to anybody?
28:22
Speaker 1: It's I don't understand it. It's almost like these children
28:28
Speaker 1: and their mother, by the way, are just disposable. But
28:32
Speaker 1: when you consider when they were able to get their
28:36
Speaker 1: bodies back to the medical Examiner's office there in Charlotte,
28:45
Speaker 1: when you have bodies that are first off, they're hidden away,
28:48
Speaker 1: they're out of view, and they're obscured in some way,
28:53
Speaker 1: they're wrapped in something. It was one of the most
28:56
Speaker 1: chilling things for me, because when you bring a body
29:01
Speaker 1: in you're trying to be as clinical and squared away
29:06
Speaker 1: in your mind as you possibly can be, because every
29:08
Speaker 1: time you unfold a layer relative to some kind of
29:13
Speaker 1: covering like a blanket or a plastic bag, you don't
29:18
Speaker 1: know what's going to be hiding underneath it. And there's
29:22
Speaker 1: almost you can, at least I could. I could feel
29:26
Speaker 1: the tension rise in my stomach every time I did this,
29:28
Speaker 1: and I wouldn't know the people. You know, it's just
29:31
Speaker 1: a case that I happen to be working at that
29:33
Speaker 1: point in time. But you never know what each layer
29:36
Speaker 1: is going to reveal when you get there. And I
29:39
Speaker 1: most of the time, when you have a case involving
29:41
Speaker 1: a triple homicide, you think about, was it done in
29:48
Speaker 1: an expeditious manner? Okay? That with somebody executed shot in
29:53
Speaker 1: the back of the head. Okay, Dave, there's there's no
29:57
Speaker 1: evidence of that. There's no evidence a stabbing here. So
30:03
Speaker 1: you're seeing the bodies where they have face coverings on.
30:06
Speaker 1: I think with Mom, she's restrained and tied and she
30:12
Speaker 1: has a bag over her head. Maybe you're going to
30:14
Speaker 1: think that this is a suffocation. Perhaps, and maybe it was,
30:21
Speaker 1: but this is what they discovered with her when they
30:26
Speaker 1: were able to examine her body. They didn't note any trauma,
30:34
Speaker 1: but the toxicology revealed everything for them. They were able
30:38
Speaker 1: to find a heavy concentration of fentanyl actually in her liver,
30:43
Speaker 1: and that's one of the central areas that where this
30:47
Speaker 1: drug is processed. And you're so far down the line
30:51
Speaker 1: here relative to decompositional changes, that one of the things
30:55
Speaker 1: that we will do in the morgue with say an
30:58
Speaker 1: organ like the liver, we will take it and we'll
31:01
Speaker 1: spin it down and liquefy it, and it will be
31:05
Speaker 1: literally drawn up and it'll be analyzed and you can
31:09
Speaker 1: find a substance like fentanyl. You can find cocaine as
31:12
Speaker 1: well and these other things in the liver, and that's
31:16
Speaker 1: what they would have had to have done at this
31:17
Speaker 1: point due to decompositional changes. They found that in her
31:21
Speaker 1: system as well as well as narcan, which is fascinating
31:26
Speaker 1: to me because I don't it's almost like the kitchen
31:29
Speaker 1: sink is being thrown at her perhaps in a poisoning
31:33
Speaker 1: like this.
31:33
Speaker 2: It sounded to me like it was an overdose. He
31:35
Speaker 2: tried to save her and he couldn't bring her back
31:37
Speaker 2: like they were using drugs. He tried to use narcanda
31:39
Speaker 2: bring her back from an overdose. And when she died,
31:41
Speaker 2: he being whatever, he took the path of the leaves
31:45
Speaker 2: for resistance and wrapped her up, left her in the bag,
31:49
Speaker 2: set everything so nobody could find it right away, so
31:51
Speaker 2: you'd have plenty of time to get away. And then
31:54
Speaker 2: you've got him putting the babies in the trunk of
31:57
Speaker 2: his car. And how did they die, Joe, So that's
32:00
Speaker 2: if we know how they died, then that might help
32:03
Speaker 2: understand a little bit. Because she's dead. The narcan makes
32:06
Speaker 2: me think maybe he didn't kill her on purpose, But
32:10
Speaker 2: the two children are dead, and I don't picture a
32:13
Speaker 2: four year old and a seven month old using drugs
32:16
Speaker 2: and needing narcan, you know from an overdose.
32:19
Speaker 1: No, And I think that you've really hit on something here.
32:22
Speaker 1: And look, we don't know yet. We're going to find
32:27
Speaker 1: out as this process works its way through the system
32:31
Speaker 1: with her, if this is ever going to be alluded to,
32:34
Speaker 1: and I'm hoping that in look, the defense will do
32:39
Speaker 1: what the defense will do in this case. You know,
32:43
Speaker 1: I see an attack on the horizon relative to her
32:46
Speaker 1: and her character. Perhaps maybe that is what happened. But
32:50
Speaker 1: you know, these babies, you know, we worked or we
32:56
Speaker 1: covered rather you remember this case out of New York.
33:00
Speaker 1: I guess it was last year where these kids were
33:02
Speaker 1: in a daycare and they were exposed to fentanyl. Do
33:05
Speaker 1: you recall I remember that?
33:07
Speaker 2: Naw, God, they were on the mat naps, there was
33:10
Speaker 2: the fundation underneath the flooring.
33:13
Speaker 1: And it was being processed in this location. So you
33:18
Speaker 1: begin to think about that, but how do you But
33:22
Speaker 1: we do have a clue here, Dave, because when miracles body,
33:28
Speaker 1: who's four, When Miracle Johnson's body was examined, the medical
33:34
Speaker 1: examiner found small bruises around her mouth and her jaw,
33:41
Speaker 1: and oh, my gosh, this is so horrific. I'm thinking
33:48
Speaker 1: that this child may have been force fed fentanyl, Dave,
33:53
Speaker 1: and given an od of this drug. And it wouldn't
33:57
Speaker 1: take much, you know, I mean just a few grains
34:00
Speaker 1: of this stuff can certainly kill an adult, how much
34:04
Speaker 1: more so you know, a small child, and this child,
34:07
Speaker 1: this baby takes this on board, and in order to
34:12
Speaker 1: ensure that this child ingested it, perhaps just perhaps her
34:17
Speaker 1: mouth was held closed because of what they did find
34:21
Speaker 1: were small bruises around the mouth and the jaw, and
34:25
Speaker 1: it's almost in the medical examiner opined that it was
34:29
Speaker 1: as if an adult had squeezed the mouth shut. We
34:33
Speaker 1: get this in child abuse cases as well, with where
34:38
Speaker 1: children are suffocated. Many times the frenulum, which is a
34:44
Speaker 1: little connective tissue between the upper and the lower lips,
34:49
Speaker 1: between those structures and the gum, and you'll get these
34:53
Speaker 1: little braided areas there where the tissue is actually torn.
34:57
Speaker 1: I'm wondering what they found relative to those insults as well.
35:01
Speaker 1: Did those exist? But there's some evidence apparently that the
35:05
Speaker 1: child's mouth had been held closed. And then we go
35:09
Speaker 1: to and this is again they found fentanyl in the system.
35:12
Speaker 1: I'm sure that they probably had to render down the
35:14
Speaker 1: liver in that case as well to find.
35:17
Speaker 2: The sassia in the seven month old.
35:20
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, yeah, well yeah, because with with Messiah, what's
35:26
Speaker 1: fascinating about this is that they're saying that this seven
35:31
Speaker 1: month old actually had not just fentanyl, but the seven
35:36
Speaker 1: month old had cocaine in their system.
35:39
Speaker 2: And Okay, now, Joe, they have yet to release miracles
35:46
Speaker 2: autopsy report yet, Yes, and I'm wondering why that is.
35:52
Speaker 2: You mentioned that Miracle had other signs, you know, on
35:56
Speaker 2: her face and what have you, in her arm, her
35:58
Speaker 2: hands were tired. But with the case of Messiah again,
36:01
Speaker 2: a seven month o little boy and the autopsy says
36:06
Speaker 2: he has ventanyl and cocaine. How would a child? Yeah,
36:13
Speaker 2: I mean seven months old, they're crawling and rolling. I
36:16
Speaker 2: mean they how do they get that? I mean unless
36:18
Speaker 2: it's injected. Can they find out if it was injected?
36:21
Speaker 2: Are these bodies going to be too?
36:24
Speaker 1: Yeah?
36:24
Speaker 2: I feel like I'm not yet.
36:25
Speaker 1: That's okay, It's it's one of the realities that we
36:28
Speaker 1: deal with. You would you would look for that we
36:32
Speaker 1: abbreviated I call it npws. Those are needle puncture wounds
36:36
Speaker 1: is actually what's used. Uh, but that's more difficult to
36:40
Speaker 1: detect as decomposition continues on.
36:43
Speaker 2: Now, can they figure out when they've died? Can they?
36:45
Speaker 2: Can they get it to me?
36:46
Speaker 1: Not not not an absolute pinpoint time at which they died.
36:51
Speaker 1: You can look at the degree of decomposition and kind
36:56
Speaker 1: of pick up on the idea that they have been down.
37:00
Speaker 1: You can brack at the time, and I would imagine
37:03
Speaker 1: that the closest they would be able to come is
37:06
Speaker 1: probably weeks. That's going to be about his narrow So
37:10
Speaker 1: if someone is going back chronologically and looking at a
37:15
Speaker 1: specific date, no, no, unless you had videography of him
37:19
Speaker 1: actually perpetrating the crime. That's time stamp. There's no way
37:23
Speaker 1: to do that. I think that they give us far
37:26
Speaker 1: too much credit and forensics for being able to narrow
37:28
Speaker 1: it down. Times we can't narrow it down that far.
37:33
Speaker 1: But with the youngest child, it's almost like they had
37:36
Speaker 1: a cocktail on board because it wasn't just fentanyl. There
37:41
Speaker 1: was also cocaine, which is stimulant, the polar opposite of fentanyl.
37:48
Speaker 1: And you know, we've talked about the death of John
37:51
Speaker 1: Belushi would speedball and that's a combination. That was a
37:55
Speaker 1: combination of heroin and cocaine. Fentanyl is is a synthetic
38:03
Speaker 1: opioid and it's I don't know, it's one hundred times
38:06
Speaker 1: more powerful than morphine. To give to frame that for
38:10
Speaker 1: you, you combine that with cocaine, and that is a recipe
38:14
Speaker 1: for a disaster. And not only that, the child had
38:17
Speaker 1: diphenhodromine in their system, which is the ingredient in benadrill
38:22
Speaker 1: that makes you sleepy, and they had melatonin. His child
38:26
Speaker 1: had melatonin in their system as well. So you've got
38:30
Speaker 1: all of these forces that are at work in this tiny,
38:33
Speaker 1: tiny little body. Dave I don't mind that have resulted
38:36
Speaker 1: in a death here. So now you guys have to
38:40
Speaker 1: figure out. We know last time anybody talked to mark
38:45
Speaker 1: Ela it was January twentieth. We know there was communication
38:50
Speaker 1: from her phone for some time after that, but they
38:52
Speaker 1: do not believe it was from her.
38:55
Speaker 2: They. By the way, when we mentioned earlier that police
38:58
Speaker 2: were able to find out March sixth that Benjamin Taylor
39:02
Speaker 2: had left town, I want to be crystal clear. They're
39:04
Speaker 2: not saying he left town March sixth. What they're saying
39:07
Speaker 2: is on that date they were able to find surveillance
39:11
Speaker 2: video of him leaving on a bus leaving the state.
39:15
Speaker 2: Don't know when that was. It could have been January
39:17
Speaker 2: twenty first. Okay, we don't know. They haven't put that
39:20
Speaker 2: out there yet. I spent half the day looking for that,
39:22
Speaker 2: going come on, you got to tell me something here.
39:25
Speaker 2: So we don't know what day they turned that up.
39:27
Speaker 2: We'll find out he was found. Benjamin Taylor was tracked
39:30
Speaker 2: down after the Markla was found. By the way, they
39:34
Speaker 2: found Markla's body and did not find the children right away,
39:40
Speaker 2: Think about that for just a minute, Joe, what do
39:42
Speaker 2: you do as an investigator? You've got the mother. You know,
39:46
Speaker 2: there's two children around here. You have to go home
39:51
Speaker 2: not knowing because they did not find them that day,
39:54
Speaker 2: they had to come back the next day and look again.
39:58
Speaker 2: Do you put police? So are investigators at the scenes
40:01
Speaker 2: and nobody messes with the apartment or the car? Does
40:04
Speaker 2: the car get taken to the police station. Do they
40:06
Speaker 2: leave it in the parking lot? What goes on to
40:08
Speaker 2: secure the scenes when you've got two people missing and
40:11
Speaker 2: the one person you were looking for now is dead.
40:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, in the immediate you would lock down that apartment
40:17
Speaker 1: and in an ideal a situation, you would have an
40:21
Speaker 1: officer at that site, securing that location as long as
40:27
Speaker 1: you possibly could, particularly with these missing kits, because you
40:31
Speaker 1: don't know what else is going to be revealed. If
40:33
Speaker 1: there's an indication, for instance, that you believe just you
40:37
Speaker 1: know from your senses, okay, that maybe you smell decomposition
40:42
Speaker 1: from the car. Remember if you go into that trunk
40:47
Speaker 1: of the car when you think about a warrant, you're
40:50
Speaker 1: going because that's considered be like a hidden space. Okay,
40:53
Speaker 1: So if there's an acute event where you can hear
40:58
Speaker 1: somebody you know inside the try banging around the trunk.
41:02
Speaker 1: You can pop that thing open, because that's an emergent issue.
41:05
Speaker 1: But if you have to go into like a hidden
41:07
Speaker 1: space into a car, you're going to have to get
41:08
Speaker 1: a warrant in order to do that. And I'm really
41:11
Speaker 1: wondering if that's not what took place, and particularly if
41:15
Speaker 1: you suspect that those children's bodies might be in there,
41:19
Speaker 1: you want to treat that car as delicately as you
41:23
Speaker 1: possibly can, because understand this, that car is a pivot
41:29
Speaker 1: point in this case, because you can put the babies
41:33
Speaker 1: in there. Obviously, you have this car that he owned,
41:37
Speaker 1: and you can put him adjacent to that car. You
41:40
Speaker 1: suspect that he may have had something to do with
41:44
Speaker 1: them being placed inside that car, So there might be
41:47
Speaker 1: any different types of evidence that are contained in there.
41:51
Speaker 1: So what would you do. You would flatbed that car
41:54
Speaker 1: into an evidence garage, probably there in Charlotte. You would
42:00
Speaker 1: process that car completely all the way through. You would
42:04
Speaker 1: expect to find evidence of DNA of all members of
42:10
Speaker 1: this family. They're living together, so it would be expected
42:14
Speaker 1: you would find some essence of the children within the car,
42:18
Speaker 1: say in the back seats, maybe on the front seat.
42:22
Speaker 1: Mom's DNA there and certainly his the owners. But then
42:26
Speaker 1: you would take great care to open up the trunk
42:28
Speaker 1: because for all you know, you might have latent prints
42:32
Speaker 1: that are still there, particularly on the underside where it
42:36
Speaker 1: is protected from the elements. And also you had mentioned
42:41
Speaker 1: plastic dave with these babies. Plastic is a non poor surface.
42:46
Speaker 1: So if in fact you have these plastic coverings on
42:52
Speaker 1: the bodies and you can lift a print off of
42:56
Speaker 1: those plastic coverings that are covering those bodies, that's why
42:59
Speaker 1: you have to be so delicate with this. You can
43:01
Speaker 1: put him handling those bodies that are wrapped in bags.
43:06
Speaker 1: That's why you have to take such great care with this.
43:11
Speaker 2: Now that we have the results from the autopsy, we
43:15
Speaker 2: know that Benjamin Taylor has been extradited back. He was caught,
43:20
Speaker 2: by the way, and he was caught, believe it or not,
43:24
Speaker 2: in southern California right there at the border with Mexico.
43:28
Speaker 2: They suspected that he had the means to get across
43:30
Speaker 2: the border and go away. He didn't make it. He
43:34
Speaker 2: already has been back in Charlotte in Mecklenburg County Jail.
43:38
Speaker 2: He's being held without bond due to his previous track
43:41
Speaker 2: record of domestic violence and his laundry list of crimes
43:45
Speaker 2: that go back to two thousand and seven. This is
43:47
Speaker 2: a thirty four year old man. Again, remember Mark Kayla
43:50
Speaker 2: was twenty two years old. Her children were four years
43:53
Speaker 2: old and seven months old. Joe, so what do we
43:56
Speaker 2: wait for now? They're not giving him bond.
44:00
Speaker 1: No, he's going to be held without bond. He's back
44:03
Speaker 1: in custody. He was extradited actually from Imperial County, California,
44:10
Speaker 1: which does in fact border as you mentioned, Mexico, and
44:14
Speaker 1: he's now back in Charlotte, North Carolina, where there'll be
44:17
Speaker 1: a series of hearings that will take place, and he
44:20
Speaker 1: is in fact being held without bond. It's a horrible case. Absolutely,
44:28
Speaker 1: It makes everything else pale when you think about the
44:32
Speaker 1: lives that have been diminished here and lost as a
44:36
Speaker 1: result of this, and not just the lives of these
44:40
Speaker 1: precious babies and this mother, but also Michaela's family that
44:44
Speaker 1: are grieving their loss. We're going to stay on top
44:47
Speaker 1: of this case and we'll probably do a follow up
44:51
Speaker 1: as time goes by. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
44:57
Speaker 1: is Body Backs