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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: The Terrible Deaths of Russell and Shirley Dermond · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:08
Speaker 1: Bodybacks with Joseph Scott Morgan. You work your entire life
0:20
Speaker 1: trying to build something out of nothing. Hell, you even
0:24
Speaker 1: survived World War Two as a decorated veteran of the Navy.
0:29
Speaker 1: Come home, marry your sweetheart in nineteen fifty and stayed
0:33
Speaker 1: married for decades. And from the ground up you build
0:37
Speaker 1: restaurant franchises and you become quite successful. And after all
0:42
Speaker 1: that time, you've built something that you can look back
0:45
Speaker 1: on with pride. You've got a family to four kids,
0:48
Speaker 1: and then you decide to retire, and Boyd where you
0:51
Speaker 1: retire to is a beautiful place. But that location where
0:55
Speaker 1: Russell and Shirley Derman retired to has come a benchmark
1:00
Speaker 1: for absolute horror, and it ends up and one of
1:04
Speaker 1: the most notorious unsolved double homicides in the history of
1:09
Speaker 1: the state of Georgia. Today, we're going to talk about
1:13
Speaker 1: the Dermot Birds. I'm Joseph Scott Mourning and this is
1:20
Speaker 1: Body Backs. Well, Jackie Howard's back here with me today.
1:27
Speaker 1: She's the executive producer of Crime Stories Nancy Grace. Jackie,
1:32
Speaker 1: won't you to tell us about the Dermants? Eighty eight
1:34
Speaker 1: year old Russell Dermond and his wife, eighty seven year
1:37
Speaker 1: old Shirley Dermott, had been married for decades, as you said, Joe,
1:41
Speaker 1: sixty eight years. They lived in Reynolds Plantation in a
1:46
Speaker 1: three thousand scriftfoot house. That's a gated community on the
1:50
Speaker 1: banks of Lake o'coney in Georgia. It's about eighty miles
1:53
Speaker 1: southeast of Atlanta. As you said, Russell Dermand was in
1:57
Speaker 1: the restaurant business for years. This couple was very socially
2:02
Speaker 1: active in their community. In fact, they were supposed to
2:05
Speaker 1: attend a Kentucky Derby party and didn't show up. After
2:10
Speaker 1: several more days passed and neighbors and friends had not
2:13
Speaker 1: heard from the Dermans, they decided to conduct their own
2:17
Speaker 1: welfare check. They went to the home and entered through
2:20
Speaker 1: a screen porch where Russell Derman typically watched television. Everything
2:25
Speaker 1: seemed fine, Russell was not there. They decided to check
2:28
Speaker 1: out the garage to look for cars, and there they
2:31
Speaker 1: found a grisom site. They discovered Russell Derman's body slumped
2:34
Speaker 1: down behind one of the couple's corps. Shirley Derman was
2:38
Speaker 1: nowhere to be found. Cases like this have always just
2:41
Speaker 1: absolutely sent a chill up my spine. And the reason
2:44
Speaker 1: why is that as death investigators were always observing the
2:50
Speaker 1: abnormal in context of the normal. Can you imagine being
2:53
Speaker 1: a neighbor in this beautiful colic setting. I mean, these
2:56
Speaker 1: homes are worth just an astronomical amount of money, and
3:00
Speaker 1: you walk in and you find some kind of horror
3:02
Speaker 1: show like this, and that's what happened to this fellow
3:05
Speaker 1: that discovered Russell Derman's remains. And you know when you
3:10
Speaker 1: kind of set the stage when you see the Dermans home,
3:13
Speaker 1: it kind of sits up on a bluff or a
3:15
Speaker 1: knoll overlooking beautiful lake of Coney, which is very deep.
3:20
Speaker 1: It's actually a river that's been damned up and a
3:24
Speaker 1: lot of people fish their ski big recreation area, and
3:27
Speaker 1: you have all these multimillion dollar homes that kind of
3:30
Speaker 1: surround this place. And the interesting thing about it, you know,
3:34
Speaker 1: when wealthy people live in areas like this, they're getting
3:36
Speaker 1: something for their money. They don't just want maybe opulence,
3:40
Speaker 1: they don't security. And there's only one way by roads
3:43
Speaker 1: you can get into this place, and that's a central
3:45
Speaker 1: point of access, a guard shack, if you will. When
3:48
Speaker 1: the police were called, the first thing that they had
3:50
Speaker 1: to look at in trying to discover what happened to
3:53
Speaker 1: this family is point of the entry. This murder did
3:58
Speaker 1: not seem to be a raw gone wrong. There was
4:01
Speaker 1: no force to entry into the house. The house had
4:04
Speaker 1: not been ransacked, nothing had been stolen. So what's the
4:07
Speaker 1: first thing that you do. Well, You're you're gonna walk
4:10
Speaker 1: around the perimeter of the place. You want to see
4:12
Speaker 1: if anybody has knocked out windows. You know, if there's
4:15
Speaker 1: windows that are raised, for instance. You want to see
4:19
Speaker 1: if the doors the points of entry, you know, standard entry,
4:23
Speaker 1: not windows, but you know, any kind of door. If
4:25
Speaker 1: there's a ground level basement door that has access to
4:28
Speaker 1: the exterior, an upper main door, maybe a side door
4:33
Speaker 1: where the garage is. You want to account for those
4:36
Speaker 1: and see if the door locks have been jemmied in
4:39
Speaker 1: any way, or if someone has actually kicked the door in,
4:42
Speaker 1: you know, lots of times and forensics we look for
4:44
Speaker 1: things like tool marks on the door, on the door
4:47
Speaker 1: facings and that sort of thing, or compromises of the
4:50
Speaker 1: door knob, or maybe even footprints on the door where
4:53
Speaker 1: someone has pounded away with their foot. We look to
4:57
Speaker 1: see if the frame of the door is intact or
4:59
Speaker 1: is it Lendard and that happens with great frequency, but
5:03
Speaker 1: there was no indication of that at the scene, and
5:07
Speaker 1: you know, that kind of heightens the mystery here. Joe,
5:09
Speaker 1: you mentioned that there's only one way in to this
5:13
Speaker 1: gated community. Actually there's two. They could have come by water.
5:18
Speaker 1: So if no one was noted a stranger, someone that
5:22
Speaker 1: was out of place coming in the gated community, does
5:25
Speaker 1: that mean then that they came by water And how
5:28
Speaker 1: does that impact an investigation? Yeah, I think it's quite possible.
5:32
Speaker 1: A matter of fact, I think there's a high probability
5:35
Speaker 1: that that's how this home was accessed, because there's no indication,
5:40
Speaker 1: there's no investigative marks along the way where they say
5:45
Speaker 1: that there is a specific vehicle that drove up to
5:47
Speaker 1: this house. And think about coming in by boat. You
5:50
Speaker 1: can do it kind of stealthily. You know, maybe you're
5:52
Speaker 1: running your engine, for instance, out in the open water,
5:55
Speaker 1: but then you cut it and you begin to paddle in.
5:58
Speaker 1: If you've got a couple of people manning the boat,
6:00
Speaker 1: that's certainly easy to accomplish. So you're not going to
6:05
Speaker 1: necessarily leave as much evidence behind. There's obviously not going
6:08
Speaker 1: to be tire tracks left behind, you can get access
6:11
Speaker 1: to the dock. If it's dark outside, you can move
6:15
Speaker 1: with great stealth to gain access and listen. If you're
6:19
Speaker 1: inside the house and you don't hear a car pull up,
6:22
Speaker 1: you're completely taken unawares. No boat's not going to make
6:25
Speaker 1: a lot of noise if the engine is killed before
6:28
Speaker 1: you arrive at the dock and you just kind of
6:30
Speaker 1: glide in there, you secure the boat, you step off
6:33
Speaker 1: the boat, and you've got this evil intent in mind.
6:36
Speaker 1: But you know it's like the old adage, why do
6:39
Speaker 1: bank robbers rob the bank? Well, that's because that's where
6:42
Speaker 1: the money is. And when you see a home like
6:45
Speaker 1: this that you can easily see when you're driving down
6:48
Speaker 1: the main channel of this lake, you can actually look
6:51
Speaker 1: up there and see it, and wouldn't it be a
6:52
Speaker 1: plumb prize And they think, hey, I bet those people
6:56
Speaker 1: have money there or whatever the motivation was behind it.
7:00
Speaker 1: But I tell you this, just like we said, there
7:03
Speaker 1: was no signs of forced injury. Nothing's missing out of
7:06
Speaker 1: the home, and for me, that's a huge red flag.
7:10
Speaker 1: So unless there is evidence left at the dock, the
7:14
Speaker 1: dock was rammed, somebody was hurt, and there was blood
7:18
Speaker 1: because there is water and dirt. You know, you're gonna
7:20
Speaker 1: have mud, somebody may have stepped into the shoreline. So
7:24
Speaker 1: in absence of all of those things, Joe, it would
7:28
Speaker 1: seem that you are reliant then on either eyewitnesses or
7:33
Speaker 1: video witnesses. Yeah, and then even more peripheral to that,
7:38
Speaker 1: you know, you would be relying upon earwitnesses as well.
7:42
Speaker 1: And that's something that people don't think about a lot.
7:44
Speaker 1: You know, what did you hear you know, at that
7:46
Speaker 1: particular point in time? You know, because I mean how
7:50
Speaker 1: many how many times have we heard stories about people
7:52
Speaker 1: that are killed and someone that didn't actually see it.
7:55
Speaker 1: They'll say, hey, I heard gunshots, all right, or I
7:58
Speaker 1: heard somebody screaming, you know, or I heard a car
8:01
Speaker 1: pull up. So many times that's a that's a point
8:05
Speaker 1: that we can return to. But the most essential factor
8:10
Speaker 1: involved in this is that even if it's something that
8:13
Speaker 1: you see, or if it's something that you hear, at
8:17
Speaker 1: what point in time did you hear it? Because, as
8:19
Speaker 1: you know, the most valuable commodity that we have in
8:22
Speaker 1: forensic investigations is in fact minutes, seconds, hours, days, weeks, months.
8:31
Speaker 1: That time element is what we deal in that's our currency,
8:34
Speaker 1: if you will. So you have to be able to
8:36
Speaker 1: match it up. And to this point there's there's not
8:39
Speaker 1: You don't have either one of these things. You know.
8:42
Speaker 1: The first time that there's an indication that something is
8:46
Speaker 1: up other than the fact that they didn't attend this
8:49
Speaker 1: Kentucky Derby party is the fact that this gentleman walked
8:54
Speaker 1: in the house and he found Russell Durham there lying
8:57
Speaker 1: on the floor in his garage. I did that. The
9:00
Speaker 1: fact that earwitnesses as you call them, set the timeline,
9:06
Speaker 1: does it really give you anything else? Because if they
9:08
Speaker 1: did not hear anyone screaming, they can say, oh, I
9:12
Speaker 1: heard a boat, but you're on a lake. What does
9:14
Speaker 1: that really tell you? Yeah, it's like living next to
9:16
Speaker 1: the highway, you know, oh I heard a car. Really wow,
9:19
Speaker 1: that's really going to be useful. You know, it's I'm
9:21
Speaker 1: not trying to be snarky, but it's just it's just
9:23
Speaker 1: the fact that you know, you got as you put
9:27
Speaker 1: you know, you got boats running around all the time,
9:29
Speaker 1: people nightfish. You know, if this is when this event occurred,
9:32
Speaker 1: you know, it wouldn't be anything to hear, you know,
9:34
Speaker 1: some guy in a in a bass boat and running
9:37
Speaker 1: up and down the lake, you know, and those engines
9:39
Speaker 1: are quite loud. But if it was something smaller, say
9:42
Speaker 1: like a tiny skiff with a smaller boat motor, or
9:45
Speaker 1: they had an electric motor, that you're not going to
9:47
Speaker 1: hear at all. You know, that goes back to this
9:50
Speaker 1: issue of stealth. So you're really left at at you know,
9:55
Speaker 1: with this case, you're really left as an investigator scratching
9:58
Speaker 1: your head saying, I don't have any kind of whiitness
10:00
Speaker 1: at all to these events. The only thing that is
10:02
Speaker 1: really left behind are these forensics. You know, what are
10:08
Speaker 1: the bodies telling us? What is the scene telling us?
10:10
Speaker 1: And we've already you know, kind of talk about the scene.
10:12
Speaker 1: Now there's no signs or forced entry or struggle. You know,
10:15
Speaker 1: we say that all the time on the news and whatnot,
10:17
Speaker 1: and we say it in our reports as well, you know,
10:20
Speaker 1: because it's one of the things that we look for.
10:22
Speaker 1: If we have some kind of horrific crime that has
10:25
Speaker 1: taken place, we want to know, well, was there a
10:27
Speaker 1: fight that ensued, you got toppled furniture? Do you have
10:30
Speaker 1: anything here that really gives us an indication that there
10:33
Speaker 1: was some kind of problem that had happened where they
10:37
Speaker 1: taken unawares, for instance, where they compliant in this particular case.
10:43
Speaker 1: And you know, so the investigators don't really have a
10:47
Speaker 1: lot to work on it. And I think that that's
10:49
Speaker 1: the reason that this case is still unsolved to this day.
10:51
Speaker 1: Jackie and the things that we're talking about right now, Joe,
10:55
Speaker 1: the entry from the water, the lack of evidence, the earwitnesses,
10:59
Speaker 1: the video witness are so significant because Russell Derman is dead,
11:06
Speaker 1: but Shirley Derman is missing. Yeah, that's the case. And
11:11
Speaker 1: of course, if you're an investigator and look, they were
11:15
Speaker 1: able to size up pretty quickly from the neighbors and witnesses.
11:18
Speaker 1: You know, these two are a pair. You know, you
11:21
Speaker 1: generally don't see one without the other. They go around,
11:23
Speaker 1: he said, they're very social. They have friends that live
11:26
Speaker 1: in this community. I think that Shirley was involved in bridge.
11:29
Speaker 1: Russell used to play golf, but he had stopped doing
11:32
Speaker 1: that and he didn't really fish. They got rid of
11:34
Speaker 1: their boat, so he's in that home, she's in that
11:37
Speaker 1: home when they go out. You know, they're generally together.
11:41
Speaker 1: They are a couple. So that's that's indicative of the lifestyle.
11:46
Speaker 1: You know, that they had led and it gives you
11:47
Speaker 1: the ideas from a behavior standpoint of what you would
11:52
Speaker 1: expect in this kind of dynamic, in this environment, that
11:55
Speaker 1: they were probably there together whenever this horrific thing took place.
11:59
Speaker 1: But when the investigators showed up, they're working assumption at
12:03
Speaker 1: that moment time is yeah, we have we have mister
12:06
Speaker 1: Derman deceased here in the garage, but Shirley is nowhere
12:09
Speaker 1: to be found. And we go back to this theme.
12:12
Speaker 1: You know what I'd mentioned this, This house is big.
12:16
Speaker 1: It's three thousand square foot home that's occupied by two
12:18
Speaker 1: people in a very, very wealthy area. Your default position,
12:23
Speaker 1: all of a sudden is, well, maybe somebody snatched her.
12:26
Speaker 1: Maybe they've kidnapped her and taken off with her. And
12:30
Speaker 1: but if that's the case, there's nobody falling us. There's
12:33
Speaker 1: no letters, there's no note left behind to say that
12:37
Speaker 1: these are our ransom demands. That's not happening. All they
12:40
Speaker 1: know is that she is seemingly just vanished into thin air.
13:04
Speaker 1: When you have no witnesses, sometimes the dead have to
13:09
Speaker 1: be relied upon to bear witness and give testimony to
13:13
Speaker 1: all that remains. And in this case, all we had
13:15
Speaker 1: was Russell Dermant's body. We've talked about the complexities of
13:20
Speaker 1: this investigation already with no sign of struggle. But Joe,
13:24
Speaker 1: what we do have is a body in the garage,
13:27
Speaker 1: Russell Derman. Joe Russell was decapitated. His head has never
13:32
Speaker 1: been found. How do we do this investigation? It begs
13:36
Speaker 1: so many questions, Jackie. You know, when you begin to
13:39
Speaker 1: think about a body, apps and a head, you know,
13:42
Speaker 1: first off, what's the rationale? And I think that for
13:46
Speaker 1: many people, investigators included, when you look at a case
13:49
Speaker 1: like this, you think that you've got to some type
13:52
Speaker 1: of psychopathic madman that's running around the countryside. And that's
13:56
Speaker 1: kind of our default position because it's such a horrific act. However,
14:00
Speaker 1: that's not always the case when it comes to the
14:04
Speaker 1: dismemberment of remains or partial dismemberment in this case. Remember,
14:08
Speaker 1: his head is the only part of his body that
14:10
Speaker 1: is missing. Everything else is intact. And with Russell's remains,
14:16
Speaker 1: there was evidence, at least in my mind, after reading
14:20
Speaker 1: and reviewing the autopsy reports that his head was taken,
14:25
Speaker 1: I think that we need to check this box first.
14:27
Speaker 1: His head was taken postmortem. Of course, we have any
14:29
Speaker 1: mortum and postmortem post mortem means after death. And the
14:34
Speaker 1: reason I think that is that per the information that
14:39
Speaker 1: was relayed from the friends of pathologists, there or no
14:41
Speaker 1: what we refer to as focal areas of hemorrhage in
14:44
Speaker 1: the tissue of the neck. And also it's interesting to
14:48
Speaker 1: note that when the investigators got to the scene and
14:52
Speaker 1: they saw his body that at the scene it has
14:56
Speaker 1: been consistently described that there was only a ton bit
15:01
Speaker 1: of blood that was immediately adjacent to what was remaining
15:05
Speaker 1: of his neck. Now, if this had been say an
15:09
Speaker 1: event where they had taken a knife or some sharp
15:13
Speaker 1: object and cut Russell Derman's throat on the way to
15:18
Speaker 1: a decapitation, we do know this that there would have
15:22
Speaker 1: been blood everywhere. You say why, the reason is is
15:25
Speaker 1: that we've discussed before on body backs, how vascular the
15:29
Speaker 1: head is. It requires a tremendous amount of blood and
15:31
Speaker 1: you would have to go through You'd have to go
15:34
Speaker 1: through the juggler veins, you'd have to go through the
15:38
Speaker 1: carotid arteries, all the while the heart is pumping until
15:42
Speaker 1: of course life ceases. But all the while you're just
15:45
Speaker 1: you will have an area that's literally flooded with blood.
15:49
Speaker 1: That's not the case. So whoever did this, whoever did this,
15:54
Speaker 1: took time with his remains and took his head off.
15:59
Speaker 1: And if at home, will kind of consider their spine,
16:04
Speaker 1: their neck in particular the vertebral bodies that support our neck,
16:09
Speaker 1: if you will go from the base of your skull.
16:11
Speaker 1: That's C one, C two, C three, C four, C
16:14
Speaker 1: five count down. And his head was removed at the
16:20
Speaker 1: C five level, and the doctors described that they went
16:27
Speaker 1: all the way through all of the tissue, the soft
16:30
Speaker 1: tissue again with no hemorrhage. And they have apparently, and
16:34
Speaker 1: this is important, transsected the C five verebra. And when
16:38
Speaker 1: they say transected, that means that they didn't go through
16:41
Speaker 1: the disc, they actually cut through bone. And from an
16:44
Speaker 1: evidentially standpoint, that's very important, Jackie. Why so at autopsy,
16:50
Speaker 1: one of the things that's done when you have any
16:54
Speaker 1: kind of dismemberment case is that, as horrible as it
16:59
Speaker 1: is to be part of an investigation like this, you
17:04
Speaker 1: as a forensic scientist, you have a particular skill set
17:06
Speaker 1: that you can bring to bear that can actually identify
17:09
Speaker 1: what the instrument was that brought about this decapitation. And
17:13
Speaker 1: it's important because they said that the C five was
17:16
Speaker 1: actually transsected, so that means that you're going to have
17:19
Speaker 1: marks on the bone. So anybody that's listening to this,
17:24
Speaker 1: if you have a saw in your home, I want
17:25
Speaker 1: you to think about the way the teeth look on
17:27
Speaker 1: saw or even a serrated knife. You know, they have
17:29
Speaker 1: a very specific pattern. And even if a saw or
17:33
Speaker 1: serrated knife is made by the same manufacturer, that pattern
17:37
Speaker 1: is going to change over the course of the use
17:40
Speaker 1: of that instrument. It will slightly change and it will
17:43
Speaker 1: make the signature, the tool mark signature left behind unique
17:48
Speaker 1: to that particular instrument. So at autopsy I can almost
17:53
Speaker 1: guarantee what they had done is where that bone was transsected,
17:57
Speaker 1: that C five Keep that in mind, C five fifth
18:00
Speaker 1: cervical vertebra. They would have completely dissected out the remainder
18:06
Speaker 1: of that C five vertebra and then they took it
18:10
Speaker 1: and they placed it into a container with what we
18:14
Speaker 1: call formulan. A formuline is kind of like formaldehyde. It's
18:18
Speaker 1: a preservative, and they're going to hang on to that. Jackie.
18:21
Speaker 1: Let me tell you why, because at some point in time,
18:25
Speaker 1: if they're able to find out who perpetrated this crime
18:28
Speaker 1: or getting wind of it. If they can put their
18:31
Speaker 1: hands on that tool that they took his head off with,
18:38
Speaker 1: they can have a tool market examiner look at that
18:40
Speaker 1: remaining bone and compare that to the instrument that was
18:44
Speaker 1: used by these perpetrators to decapitate Russell Dermot. Okay, I
18:47
Speaker 1: got two very specific questions, were you, Joe, First, what
18:51
Speaker 1: is transsected? When you hear this term transsected, trans means
18:55
Speaker 1: going across, So they're actually cutting across the bone almost
19:01
Speaker 1: if you think about sawing a piece of wood, Okay,
19:04
Speaker 1: you're not going to cut it lengthwise, You're going to
19:06
Speaker 1: cut it across the grain, essentially. And if you'll just
19:09
Speaker 1: imagine that whoever was doing this, whoever was doing this,
19:14
Speaker 1: was essentially sawing more than likely on the back of
19:19
Speaker 1: the neck because you get you get quicker access to
19:22
Speaker 1: those bony prominences back there that support and hold it
19:26
Speaker 1: literally hold the head in place. So you want to
19:29
Speaker 1: be able to take the head off at that point
19:31
Speaker 1: because you can remove it and then do whatever it
19:34
Speaker 1: is that you plan on doing with Okay, my second
19:36
Speaker 1: question is, as you were talking about the C one two, three, four,
19:40
Speaker 1: and five, I'm reaching back to the back of my
19:42
Speaker 1: head in my neck trying to feel and figure out
19:46
Speaker 1: what you're talking about. What should I be feeling? How
19:48
Speaker 1: am I going to identify and know what you're talking about? Here?
19:51
Speaker 1: It walk me through knowing where that is. So our
19:54
Speaker 1: head is actually supported. And I think we've mentioned this
19:58
Speaker 1: before on other episodes, but our head is actually supported
20:00
Speaker 1: by c one otherwise known as the Atlas. And people
20:05
Speaker 1: that don't know what the Atlas is, it's it refers
20:08
Speaker 1: back to Greek mythology. I think one of the earliest
20:13
Speaker 1: entities within Greek mythology who was Atlas. And you see
20:16
Speaker 1: these images of this gigantic man holding up the earth
20:21
Speaker 1: on his back, and he's the Atlas, He's the supporter.
20:23
Speaker 1: So see one actually works as a support body. It
20:28
Speaker 1: supports our head. I'm not going to be able to
20:31
Speaker 1: feel see one correct. Now. Well, if you go up
20:35
Speaker 1: and you press tightly enough, you can go up to
20:38
Speaker 1: the base of your skull, the very base where your
20:41
Speaker 1: skull connects onto onto the spine, and if you press
20:45
Speaker 1: hard enough, you can actually feel it right there. But
20:48
Speaker 1: you need to count down essentially approximately every two inches.
20:52
Speaker 1: You're going to come to a new vertebral body. So
20:55
Speaker 1: and that's kind of a you know, I'm kind of
20:56
Speaker 1: a big guy, so I'm kind of moving down the
20:58
Speaker 1: back of my neck right now. I'm counting down one
21:01
Speaker 1: and a half to two inches every moment, and you
21:05
Speaker 1: can feel because there's a little depression that's where your
21:07
Speaker 1: disk actually sits. So you get down from one to two,
21:11
Speaker 1: two to three, three to four, four to five, you're
21:14
Speaker 1: right on top of it. So what the doctor is
21:16
Speaker 1: saying is that instead of going through that kind of
21:18
Speaker 1: depressed soft area where our disc is, people here about
21:21
Speaker 1: getting a slip disc. It's kind of cartilaginist. That's softer
21:24
Speaker 1: than the bone. This individual that cut through Russell Derman's
21:30
Speaker 1: neck actually went through a bony prominence, you know, actually
21:34
Speaker 1: transected or cut into the bone. And they made a
21:38
Speaker 1: big mistake when they did that because every time they
21:42
Speaker 1: would drag that saw across that specific area, the teeth
21:47
Speaker 1: of whatever this instrument is, and they've never been very
21:50
Speaker 1: specific about it, is leaving behind definitive markings on the
21:54
Speaker 1: surface of that molle so microscopically, if you can get
21:57
Speaker 1: your hands on whatever bladed was that generated this and
22:02
Speaker 1: compare it microscopically to those marks that are left on
22:05
Speaker 1: the bone. You can have a tie back. The question
22:08
Speaker 1: is can they put that instrument into the hands of
22:10
Speaker 1: an individual. And it's not just the specific instrument, but
22:15
Speaker 1: it's also it's also a class or family of instruments. Say,
22:20
Speaker 1: for instance, they can look at and say, well, this
22:22
Speaker 1: wasn't a limb saw, this was a carpenter saw, or
22:25
Speaker 1: this was a hack saw, or for all I know,
22:29
Speaker 1: it could be a circular saw. But with that, it's
22:33
Speaker 1: another question that's asked because even when you're sawing, even
22:36
Speaker 1: when you're doing this, this would have left behind quite
22:40
Speaker 1: a bit of blood just in this action, and not
22:42
Speaker 1: just that, but bone, dust, tissue, that sort of thing.
22:45
Speaker 1: So I really wonder if they hadn't placed him on
22:48
Speaker 1: something in order to facilitate this, like a piece of
22:50
Speaker 1: cloth or shirts or something like that, and then gathered
22:53
Speaker 1: things up and took that with them as well, because remember,
22:57
Speaker 1: his head's missing, Jackie, so is a bone joe regardless
23:02
Speaker 1: of where it is in the body. The bones in
23:04
Speaker 1: the neck, the C one, C two are smaller just
23:09
Speaker 1: in general from the size and we've talked about it
23:12
Speaker 1: linked dismemberment. About how really difficult it is to do that.
23:17
Speaker 1: Is it any different when you're trying to do it
23:19
Speaker 1: at the neck? You know, I would opine that it's
23:21
Speaker 1: probably a bit more simple because if you're doing it posteriorly,
23:25
Speaker 1: which we all know now because we've talked about this
23:27
Speaker 1: on body bags, anatomically posterior means from the rear, okay,
23:32
Speaker 1: the backside, and so the as I stated earlier, when
23:37
Speaker 1: you begin to kind of fill your cervical spine, it's
23:40
Speaker 1: very close to the surface. It's not like, say, for instance,
23:42
Speaker 1: if we went to the leg, to the upper leg
23:44
Speaker 1: where the femur is our big thigh bone. You gotta
23:48
Speaker 1: get through a lot of soft tissue to get down
23:50
Speaker 1: to the femur. I mean a lot, and it's a
23:53
Speaker 1: mess when you do that. But in the cervical region,
23:56
Speaker 1: those bony prominences are those those bony structures in there
24:00
Speaker 1: are very very close. Now I can tell you this.
24:03
Speaker 1: You were talking about differences in bone. There will be
24:06
Speaker 1: bone density issues because every bone has a structure in
24:11
Speaker 1: and of itself. But if you were to take a
24:14
Speaker 1: look at bone microscopically, bone is bone, you know you're
24:19
Speaker 1: going to see it. You can't necessarily pick a point
24:21
Speaker 1: of origin. I'm sure that there are some pathology types
24:24
Speaker 1: and anatomy types that would probably argue with me on that,
24:26
Speaker 1: But for our purposes here, bone is in fact bone,
24:31
Speaker 1: it's just can you get access to it? And this
24:33
Speaker 1: is more important. Do you have the tools and the
24:35
Speaker 1: knowledge to be able to pull this off? To facilitate it?
24:39
Speaker 1: What's your level of nerve here? Think about that, you know,
24:42
Speaker 1: I mean, how many people do we know that are
24:45
Speaker 1: wandering around the general population that have actually decapitated somebody?
24:49
Speaker 1: Just let that sink in just for a second. Now
24:52
Speaker 1: we get so numb to all the violence in our world,
24:54
Speaker 1: but just for a moment, pause and think about who
24:58
Speaker 1: out there would have the nerves of stick to take
25:02
Speaker 1: someone's life and then not flee, but stay around long
25:06
Speaker 1: enough to acquire instruments or have instruments to take a
25:12
Speaker 1: head off with. And I got one more interesting little
25:16
Speaker 1: aside that I don't know how many other people have
25:18
Speaker 1: really addressed in Russell Derman's death, and that is they
25:23
Speaker 1: don't really have a lot of injuries to his body.
25:25
Speaker 1: But there's one that really stands out to me that
25:28
Speaker 1: is actually not post mortem, not post mortem, it's anti mortum,
25:33
Speaker 1: and the doctor makes note of it. And if everybody
25:36
Speaker 1: will take their right hand and extend it out and
25:42
Speaker 1: consider your hand just for a moment, and look at
25:44
Speaker 1: your index finger. That's the finger that's right adjacent to
25:47
Speaker 1: your thumb, right there. Russell Derman sustained a crushing injury,
25:55
Speaker 1: a crushing injury Jackie, to his right index finger. The
26:00
Speaker 1: doctor says specifically that it is a him a ragic injury,
26:03
Speaker 1: and that means that this is an anti mortem injury.
26:07
Speaker 1: This can only occur in life, so that means that
26:10
Speaker 1: his heart was still pumping and it literally crushed his finger.
26:15
Speaker 1: Now to me, you begin to talk about things like
26:18
Speaker 1: this and why would his finger be crushed? Well, why
26:23
Speaker 1: would it? And I really wonder if people were not
26:27
Speaker 1: trying to exact information from him. Maybe it was information
26:32
Speaker 1: relative to money. Do you have money here? You're going
26:35
Speaker 1: to pay pay the price with pain here if you
26:38
Speaker 1: don't give us the information. And they crushed his finger
26:41
Speaker 1: in life. Imagine not painful that was. And maybe he
26:46
Speaker 1: told him something that they didn't want to hear. And
26:49
Speaker 1: it's at that moment that they took his life. So
26:51
Speaker 1: there's one other fascinating piece of evidence that came out
26:54
Speaker 1: in the police investigation into Russell Derman's death. Even though
26:59
Speaker 1: he was to capitated, they found gunshot residue on his collar. Yeah,
27:05
Speaker 1: they did. And how in the world are you going
27:09
Speaker 1: to have gunshot residue deposition arising on your collar and
27:15
Speaker 1: to say that it's on the collar? I guess, I
27:17
Speaker 1: guess you could say that it is. It could be
27:20
Speaker 1: any area in the collar. It could be posterior, anterior,
27:24
Speaker 1: it could be lateral. They just simply say on the
27:27
Speaker 1: surface of the collar. And that has led many people
27:30
Speaker 1: to think that the rationale behind decapitating Russell Dermot was
27:36
Speaker 1: that he had been executed, possibly with a single gunshot
27:39
Speaker 1: wound of the head. Now this raises another problem. You
27:44
Speaker 1: know that you have taken this guy's life, but potentially
27:48
Speaker 1: with gunfire. You have enough smarts about you to know
27:52
Speaker 1: if that bullet is recovered that they could in fact
27:56
Speaker 1: pair that up with a weapon out there. So what
27:59
Speaker 1: do you do? Well, your default position is, well, the
28:01
Speaker 1: simplest thing I can do is I can't. I certainly
28:04
Speaker 1: can't do some type of postmortem surgery on him and
28:07
Speaker 1: removed his bullet. We have to take his head, because
28:11
Speaker 1: in taking his head, I know that I'm going to
28:13
Speaker 1: take that projectile. Over the years that I've covered this case,
28:41
Speaker 1: I've often wondered what was going on with Shirley Derman
28:44
Speaker 1: and when the police first arrived there, she was nowhere
28:46
Speaker 1: to be found, And it has often really bothered me.
28:51
Speaker 1: I think about my own wife. You know, what state
28:53
Speaker 1: of mind would she had been in? What was going
28:55
Speaker 1: on with her? Where did they find her? Joe. Investigators
28:58
Speaker 1: trolled the lake to no avail. They did not find
29:01
Speaker 1: Shirley's body. They also searched the wooded area surrounding the
29:05
Speaker 1: home no body. But on the sixteenth of May, which
29:09
Speaker 1: was approximately a little over two weeks later, Shirley Derman's
29:14
Speaker 1: bloated body was discovered floating on Lake o Coney by
29:18
Speaker 1: two fishermen. It was about five miles away from the
29:22
Speaker 1: couple's home. There are several important points in the discovery
29:26
Speaker 1: of Shirley's body, Joe, so let's take them one by one.
29:30
Speaker 1: First is the fact that when Shirley Dermot's body was found,
29:34
Speaker 1: it was obvious that the intention was for her body
29:38
Speaker 1: to not be found. Two large cinder blocks had been
29:42
Speaker 1: tied to her body that weighed thirty pounds each. Wouldn't
29:48
Speaker 1: sixty pounds be enough to keep a body submerged. No, no,
29:54
Speaker 1: it would not, particularly as bodies begin to blow, which
29:59
Speaker 1: always happens. I mean, it happens. You know, people talk
30:03
Speaker 1: about this all the time. I can confirm for you.
30:05
Speaker 1: As decomposition develops, the body begins to swell with gas,
30:12
Speaker 1: and when bodies, when you have bodies that are found
30:15
Speaker 1: in water, the body essentially becomes almost like a buoy.
30:22
Speaker 1: It will float to the top. The air, you know,
30:25
Speaker 1: forces it up until the body in some way is
30:28
Speaker 1: punctured and the air is released. Then it can sometimes
30:32
Speaker 1: um re submerge at that point in time. But you know,
30:36
Speaker 1: you mentioned important part here, Jackie, is the fact that
30:40
Speaker 1: these blocks were with her body, and they weren't just
30:45
Speaker 1: with her body. And this is this is ghastly, It's
30:49
Speaker 1: absolutely ghastly. These blocks were actually secure to her ankles.
30:53
Speaker 1: So if you think of the way a balloon looks,
30:58
Speaker 1: where we hold a balloon byte string in our hand
31:00
Speaker 1: and then the balloon floats high above us, that's similar
31:05
Speaker 1: to this configuration. These blocks were actually secured to Shirley
31:10
Speaker 1: Derman's ankles with what's referred to as paracord, and paracord
31:16
Speaker 1: you see it in the military a lot. You also
31:18
Speaker 1: see people that do camping securing things. It's a woven
31:22
Speaker 1: nylon rope that has very specific pattern to it, and
31:26
Speaker 1: it's a multicolor grope that they used, and they all
31:29
Speaker 1: have different strengths, you know, the kind of weight that
31:31
Speaker 1: they can support in this sort of thing. But with her,
31:36
Speaker 1: it was bound or wrapped around her several times at
31:40
Speaker 1: her ankles. I mean, somebody really took the time to
31:43
Speaker 1: make sure that Buddy wasn't doing anywhere. That in itself
31:46
Speaker 1: is very significant, Joe, because we know that the body
31:51
Speaker 1: was found about five miles from the couple's home. The
31:56
Speaker 1: current in this lake, even though you talked about there's
31:59
Speaker 1: a channel in this lake that's deep, the current in
32:02
Speaker 1: this lake, given that it is a lake, there's not
32:05
Speaker 1: going to be a current really, So we're not talking
32:08
Speaker 1: about the body drifting five miles from the home. So
32:12
Speaker 1: it's very obvious that they moved her body, intending it
32:15
Speaker 1: at this distance to never be found. Yeah, you're right,
32:18
Speaker 1: and there's been several people that have talked about this
32:20
Speaker 1: from the perspective of dam releases, Now, for anybody that's
32:24
Speaker 1: never been on a lake where there's been a dam release,
32:26
Speaker 1: it's something powerful when the water is released out of
32:30
Speaker 1: the dam into the lower lake, which in this case
32:32
Speaker 1: is Lake Sinclair. It says below Lake o'coney. It's a
32:35
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of force, but it's still not enough to
32:39
Speaker 1: drag her body with this amount of weight on it
32:41
Speaker 1: through this channel and then deposit it where it was,
32:44
Speaker 1: because that's even more interesting here, Jackie. That's why I
32:49
Speaker 1: believe that whoever did this had a great familiarity with
32:52
Speaker 1: this area, because not only was she literally five miles
32:56
Speaker 1: down stream, but her body you had to make in
33:00
Speaker 1: order to get to the location when she was found,
33:02
Speaker 1: and she was found by fisherman, you had to make
33:04
Speaker 1: a sharp right hand turn off the main channel and
33:08
Speaker 1: go back up into a cove. Jackie. It's almost if
33:12
Speaker 1: people at home will just kind of envision what a
33:15
Speaker 1: fish hook looks like, and the long stem of the
33:18
Speaker 1: fish hook is the long axis. Pretend that's the channel,
33:22
Speaker 1: and then it goes down curves back up to the
33:24
Speaker 1: point that point on the fish hooks where the body
33:27
Speaker 1: would have been found. So it would, in my opinion,
33:31
Speaker 1: at least the people would have had to have transported
33:33
Speaker 1: her body to that location and pushed her off into
33:37
Speaker 1: this area. I think one of the things they didn't
33:39
Speaker 1: count on. Maybe they weren't so familiar with the depth
33:42
Speaker 1: in this area, because when you combine the depth of
33:48
Speaker 1: the water, maybe a damn release lack of rain. This
33:51
Speaker 1: is you know, it's in the warm months, maybe the
33:54
Speaker 1: water levels down just a wee bit, and then you
33:58
Speaker 1: think about decomposition the body. Right, that's how these fishermen
34:02
Speaker 1: noticed her in the water at that amount of time.
34:04
Speaker 1: Can you imagine can you actually imagine going out and
34:08
Speaker 1: you're just going fishing for the day. You're just going fishing,
34:11
Speaker 1: and suddenly you look down in the water and here
34:14
Speaker 1: is this poor woman's body. It's been sitting there for
34:17
Speaker 1: a protracted period of time. It's an absolute horror show.
34:22
Speaker 1: So then we get to the autopsy. Joe Shirley Dermond
34:26
Speaker 1: was killed by blunt force trauma and the pathologist suspect
34:34
Speaker 1: that it was caused by a hammer. What gave them
34:37
Speaker 1: those indications. That's a very significant finding that the pathologist
34:41
Speaker 1: came up with. I want to back up just a
34:43
Speaker 1: little bit just so that folks understand meantimes, when we're
34:46
Speaker 1: talking about homicides involving females, we always wonder if there's
34:52
Speaker 1: a sexual component, and one of the things we look
34:54
Speaker 1: for is to see the status of the clothing. That's
34:56
Speaker 1: actually how we refer to it. I want you to
34:58
Speaker 1: know that miss dr it Remains she was completely clothed.
35:02
Speaker 1: I mean she had on everything from a floral patterned shirt.
35:06
Speaker 1: She still had a brawn bright green pants. She had
35:10
Speaker 1: underpants on, even had her socks on with her shoes
35:14
Speaker 1: with orthopedic inserts. And this is kind of significant. She
35:16
Speaker 1: actually had two breastpads in place. Did you know that
35:20
Speaker 1: she had undergone a radical double misectomy, and so all
35:25
Speaker 1: of that was intact. There was nothing to indicate that
35:27
Speaker 1: this was anything of some kind of sexual nature, at
35:30
Speaker 1: least based upon the clothing status. So when the doctor
35:35
Speaker 1: received the body at the medical examiner's office, he did
35:38
Speaker 1: a very very thorough job of examining her. Looked at
35:41
Speaker 1: the knots actually her the rigging that came along with
35:47
Speaker 1: her body being submerged actually entered entered the morgue with her.
35:51
Speaker 1: And it's very interesting that when you begin to look
35:54
Speaker 1: at the knots This is what we referred to in
35:57
Speaker 1: forensics as complex not tying, which means that somebody probably
36:03
Speaker 1: had experienced tying nuts, working with rope and that sort
36:07
Speaker 1: of thing, and to secure because her these blocks were
36:12
Speaker 1: still secure to her body. And one little aside I
36:14
Speaker 1: don't think that people may be aware of. Did you
36:17
Speaker 1: know that these blocks had actually been painted or red.
36:20
Speaker 1: These weren't just like standard blocks that you would see
36:22
Speaker 1: at a construction site. These things were red and I
36:25
Speaker 1: found that absolutely fascinating, you know, So that's another big
36:28
Speaker 1: piece of evidence. And then talking about the fatal injuries
36:32
Speaker 1: that she had sustained, the way the doctor actually describes
36:38
Speaker 1: these there is her death is actually related to what's
36:43
Speaker 1: referred to specifically as blunt force trauma. But she was
36:47
Speaker 1: struck they think, at least twice, maybe three times, with
36:52
Speaker 1: something that had a rounded, flat leading edge. And we
36:59
Speaker 1: talked about this just previously in one of our other
37:02
Speaker 1: cases on bodybags. Referring to a claw hammer. You think
37:06
Speaker 1: about the end of a hammer. A hammer, you know,
37:10
Speaker 1: has essentially the dimensions on the business end of the
37:14
Speaker 1: hammer where it looks. It can be the size of
37:17
Speaker 1: save the face of a quarter. If a quarter's leaning flat.
37:19
Speaker 1: And so what happens is when a skull is struck
37:24
Speaker 1: with a hammer. Did you know that you can sustain
37:28
Speaker 1: a what's referred to as a pattern injury there that
37:33
Speaker 1: is actually a circular fracture underlying the pattern on the skin,
37:38
Speaker 1: and it mirrors, it mirrors the oncoming the oncoming hammers
37:43
Speaker 1: it strikes. This is referred to as a depressed skull fracture,
37:46
Speaker 1: where the table external table of the skull actually collapses
37:50
Speaker 1: and it drives in to the brain and of course
37:52
Speaker 1: this leads to huge hemorrhage within the brain, and of
37:58
Speaker 1: course the person winds up dying as a result. This particularly,
38:00
Speaker 1: you began to think about how many times she was struck.
38:04
Speaker 1: But this is a real act of violence. This is
38:07
Speaker 1: not like you know, even with mister Drman, we think
38:10
Speaker 1: about him being shot if that is in fact what
38:16
Speaker 1: had happened. Remember we still don't have his head at
38:18
Speaker 1: this point. That's kind of a quick way to die
38:21
Speaker 1: when you think about it. But no, not this Jackie.
38:25
Speaker 1: She was beaten multiple times with a hammer, her skull
38:30
Speaker 1: actually collapsed in on her brain, and then she was
38:34
Speaker 1: tied up post mortem. How do I know that it
38:35
Speaker 1: was a post mortem, because where those bindings were placed
38:39
Speaker 1: over her ankles and she was essentially anchored with this
38:44
Speaker 1: destructure that they had created, there was no underlying hemorrhage
38:48
Speaker 1: in those areas surrounding her her ankles. So it's not
38:51
Speaker 1: like she had been tied up before death and been
38:54
Speaker 1: questioned or anything like that. Her hands weren't bound, it's
38:57
Speaker 1: just her ankles. So this was that was done after death.
39:00
Speaker 1: They took their time in planning this, and then you
39:03
Speaker 1: begin to think about, well, they got in a boat
39:07
Speaker 1: and drove five mills with this poor woman's body. You know,
39:11
Speaker 1: where did all of this take place? Did they kill
39:14
Speaker 1: her in the yard because there was no blood in
39:16
Speaker 1: the house. They didn't find any blood that I know of,
39:19
Speaker 1: out in the yard. I wonder if they brought in
39:21
Speaker 1: dogs to sniff for it. And if you put her
39:25
Speaker 1: on a boat and you kill her on the boat,
39:29
Speaker 1: then dogs are not necessarily going to be able to
39:31
Speaker 1: track that area. You're not going to have any evidence
39:32
Speaker 1: of it. Did they take her out in the middle
39:34
Speaker 1: of the lake and beat her to death with a
39:35
Speaker 1: hammer and then drive the other the rest of the
39:38
Speaker 1: distance and deposit her body way down stream in this
39:42
Speaker 1: little cove where they thought that no one would ever
39:44
Speaker 1: find her. Of course they did, and to this day,
39:47
Speaker 1: we still don't have any further answers. They say, who
39:49
Speaker 1: did this? So, Joe, it's been seven years since the
39:52
Speaker 1: Germans were murdered twenty fourteen, we are still no closer
39:56
Speaker 1: to finding out who did this? Will we ever be?
40:00
Speaker 1: I think as time goes by, there's always a possibility.
40:03
Speaker 1: I have to always hold out hope in any case
40:06
Speaker 1: involving death. I mean, death is what I've always dealt
40:08
Speaker 1: in as an investigator. But you know, at this point,
40:13
Speaker 1: to this point, at least the forensics are done. What's
40:16
Speaker 1: going to have to happen here is that the public
40:19
Speaker 1: and the police are going to have to come together
40:21
Speaker 1: on this case, this unsolved case. This is going to
40:24
Speaker 1: be heavily reliant upon shoe leather, as they say, you know,
40:31
Speaker 1: still pressing every lead that you possibly can. And this
40:34
Speaker 1: is one other thing that's kind of troubling to me
40:37
Speaker 1: is that many of the people that lived near the
40:42
Speaker 1: Dermans were aged. And it's not like, you know, you're
40:47
Speaker 1: around a bunch of mid twenty somethings that are going
40:51
Speaker 1: to be around for a few years that can still
40:52
Speaker 1: offer up information. My fear, I think is that anybody
40:56
Speaker 1: that might have some kind of recollection as to what
40:59
Speaker 1: they remember back all these years looking in the rear
41:02
Speaker 1: view mirror, or they still gonna be around to give
41:04
Speaker 1: us further information or to highlight something, or to come
41:07
Speaker 1: up with a new nugget of data that's going to
41:09
Speaker 1: push this case forward. And that's the one troubling aspect
41:12
Speaker 1: with this. I'm just hoping that at some point in time,
41:16
Speaker 1: somebody is going to say something that they probably wish
41:20
Speaker 1: that they wouldn't have said in retrospect, but it winds
41:23
Speaker 1: up unlocking the answers on this kid. I'm Joseph Scott
41:30
Speaker 1: Morgan and this is Body Backs