Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / JJ and Tylee's remains found in pet cemetery on ‘CULT MOM’ Lori Vallow husband Chad Daybell property

Transcript

JJ and Tylee's remains found in pet cemetery on ‘CULT MOM’ Lori Vallow husband Chad Daybell property · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:05
Speaker 1: JJ Valo and Tyley Ryan are dead. We may have
0:14
Speaker 1: thought so all along, but now we know. We know
0:18
Speaker 1: that their remains were destroyed and buried in the backyard
0:23
Speaker 1: of COULTMM Laurie Valo's new husband's home. What now Crime
0:37
Speaker 1: Stories with Nancy Grace Me now a very special guest,
0:46
Speaker 1: Joseph Scott Morgan, so called death investigator, Professor Forensics, Jacksonville
0:51
Speaker 1: State University, and author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon.
0:57
Speaker 1: Jo Scott, thank you for being with us. We need
1:00
Speaker 1: and expert regarding the discovery of the bodies of seven
1:04
Speaker 1: year old JJ and teen girl Tylely. Let's just start
1:10
Speaker 1: at the beginning. We know that the bodies of these
1:13
Speaker 1: two children have been buried for some time. Tyle's body
1:19
Speaker 1: has been dismembered and burned. Tell me what you believe
1:25
Speaker 1: the condition of the bodies are right now. Tyley's body specifically,
1:29
Speaker 1: would be in a condition of at least moderate to
1:32
Speaker 1: advanced stage stages of decomposition. I'd have to probably lean
1:36
Speaker 1: more to an advanced stage. That means you've already got
1:39
Speaker 1: things like skeletonization going on. If her body was burned,
1:43
Speaker 1: would't we would be beyond skeletonization. Remember, one of the
1:47
Speaker 1: things that's contained in this document that was put forward
1:50
Speaker 1: is the fact that they did, in fact fine tissue.
1:53
Speaker 1: They allude to tissue in there. As a matter of fact,
1:56
Speaker 1: some of that tissue itself is charred along with the bond.
1:59
Speaker 1: So you're kind of in this odd position at this
2:01
Speaker 1: point in time, this many months downrange we're talking about
2:04
Speaker 1: back in September, where we have still some soft tissue
2:08
Speaker 1: and this happens regularly, and we have skeletonized remains. So
2:11
Speaker 1: it's this odd combination and what is really key here
2:15
Speaker 1: and we have to understand patience is important here because
2:18
Speaker 1: it's going to take time to determine Tyley's cause of debt.
2:24
Speaker 1: How hard is it to burn a human body? It's
2:28
Speaker 1: markedly difficult, Nancy, And let me explain to you why.
2:31
Speaker 1: Let's just think just for a second about you know,
2:34
Speaker 1: we have crematories all across America. What do they require. Well,
2:37
Speaker 1: you have to place a body into this enclosed area
2:41
Speaker 1: and it has a constant fuel source. Mostly things are
2:44
Speaker 1: fueled by natural gas. If you're talking about burning a
2:47
Speaker 1: body in a fire pit or a fire ring, you
2:50
Speaker 1: have to provide a constant source of fuel. And what's
2:54
Speaker 1: the most obvious thing. Well, most people think gas. It's
2:57
Speaker 1: not gas. Gas is an accelerant, so it kind of
3:00
Speaker 1: blazes up, which we see many times. You know, people
3:02
Speaker 1: will throw gas or lighter fluid on something, you know,
3:05
Speaker 1: kind of you know, kind of explode for a moment
3:07
Speaker 1: and then it burns off. That's an initient for fire.
3:10
Speaker 1: What you need is sustainable fuel. So we're talking about
3:13
Speaker 1: applying wood in this case to a fire pit where
3:17
Speaker 1: you can keep that heat up. The difference is is
3:20
Speaker 1: that when you have an open fire pit, the heat itself,
3:25
Speaker 1: it kind of disperses into the air, okay, and a
3:27
Speaker 1: crematory it doesn't. It stays contained in that location and
3:31
Speaker 1: literally the body renders down. My suspicion is is that
3:35
Speaker 1: they got about halfway down the road in trying to
3:40
Speaker 1: dispose of her body and they couldn't make it the
3:44
Speaker 1: rest of the way. It requires a tremendous amount of
3:47
Speaker 1: fuel over a protracted period of time, and the heat
3:51
Speaker 1: has to be tremendous, you know, in crematories we're talking
3:54
Speaker 1: about sometimes up to a thousand, maybe even above a
3:57
Speaker 1: thousand degrees in order to sustain this. And this is
4:00
Speaker 1: hours and hours. Can you imagine out in a pit
4:02
Speaker 1: and it's exposed to everything. You know, you can actually
4:05
Speaker 1: see this fire pit from the road, Nancy, it's within
4:08
Speaker 1: it's a viewable distance, a line of sight distance. And
4:12
Speaker 1: this is problematic for the perpetrators because they have to
4:15
Speaker 1: have constant sources of fuel would to apply to the body.
4:20
Speaker 1: And then you're standing over the body. Let's not forget
4:22
Speaker 1: of somebody that you knew, this precious little child, and
4:26
Speaker 1: you're having to literally render them down with fire. You know,
4:30
Speaker 1: a half too, as you say, render them down with fire,
4:36
Speaker 1: you know, half to do anything. When I believe Alex
4:41
Speaker 1: Cox showed up with dead bodies, right then Chad day
4:45
Speaker 1: Belle had the opportunity to say no. And where was
4:49
Speaker 1: the mother Cultmu Laurie Valo during all of this. But
4:53
Speaker 1: that's for a jury to design. I want to talk
4:55
Speaker 1: about the bodies and what clues, what evidence, if anything,
4:59
Speaker 1: can be gain from them to dismember a body. You
5:03
Speaker 1: know a lot of people think about shows like programs
5:06
Speaker 1: like um what was his name? I loved him so much?
5:11
Speaker 1: Crime scene analyst that goes on any search dexter of course,
5:16
Speaker 1: and that's one of the only things that got me
5:18
Speaker 1: through my pregnancy is binging on dexter. But it's not
5:24
Speaker 1: like that. It's not an easily contained and cleanable scene.
5:29
Speaker 1: You know, I'm finish in an hour, in a sixty
5:31
Speaker 1: minute program, I can tell you that much. How difficult
5:34
Speaker 1: is it to dismember a human body? Well, it's very difficult, Nancy,
5:38
Speaker 1: And let me explain to you why. First off, you
5:40
Speaker 1: have to have a private area, a sequestered area, if
5:44
Speaker 1: you will, in order to accomplish this task. You know,
5:48
Speaker 1: you have to go somewhere where you have privacy. And
5:50
Speaker 1: then when you get there, you got to show up
5:52
Speaker 1: with the right tools. You know, you and I have
5:53
Speaker 1: covered a lot of cases over the years, and we've
5:56
Speaker 1: covered some dismemberment cases. You know, we talk about bodies
5:59
Speaker 1: that have been dis ubered in bathtubs, out in sheds
6:02
Speaker 1: and this sort of thing. Well, in order to accomplish that,
6:04
Speaker 1: you can't be disturbed while you're doing this, and then
6:07
Speaker 1: you put in the human factor to this that you know,
6:10
Speaker 1: we talk a lot about the psychology behind a lot
6:12
Speaker 1: of these murders that go on. How difficult is it
6:16
Speaker 1: to stand over the remains of this precious little girl
6:18
Speaker 1: that you have known, at least peripherally, and you begin
6:22
Speaker 1: to take her body apart with some type of sharp instrument.
6:26
Speaker 1: And most of the time when I talk about sharp instruments,
6:29
Speaker 1: I'm talking about first off, you just don't take a
6:31
Speaker 1: saw and apply it to skin and muscle. You have
6:34
Speaker 1: to cut through that with an edged weapon like a
6:37
Speaker 1: butcher knife or a filet knife and that sort of thing,
6:41
Speaker 1: just to get down to the bone. Once you've made
6:43
Speaker 1: it to that location, then you have to saw. Now
6:46
Speaker 1: a lot of people use various methodologies. I've work cases
6:49
Speaker 1: involving chainsaws, band saws, circular saws, and even old fashioned
6:55
Speaker 1: carpentry saws. But the reality is you have to get
6:58
Speaker 1: to that point. You have to know what you're gonna do.
7:00
Speaker 1: This isn't like going I hate to say this, but
7:03
Speaker 1: it's not like going to a butcher shop. You know,
7:04
Speaker 1: a butcher actually has a method to their madness. They
7:09
Speaker 1: they're highly trained and skilled people like this that have
7:14
Speaker 1: potentially never done this on a regular basis. We can
7:17
Speaker 1: only hope and certainly involving another fellow human being, they're
7:21
Speaker 1: going to give this a lot of pause and they're
7:23
Speaker 1: going to try to have to figure this out. You
7:25
Speaker 1: got a lot of blood, you got a lot of tissue,
7:28
Speaker 1: and it's it's actually getting onto you. If the perpetrator
7:32
Speaker 1: from an evidentially standpoint, that's very significant. If we can
7:36
Speaker 1: get those clothes that the individual had on. Also, this
7:39
Speaker 1: is key, Nancy, whatever kind of instrument that was used.
7:43
Speaker 1: And let's kind of go down this path just for
7:45
Speaker 1: a second. If we talk about like an edged weapon, okay,
7:49
Speaker 1: or an edged device like a knife, every time that
7:53
Speaker 1: knife makes contact with the surface, it's going to leave
7:57
Speaker 1: behind a specific signature that only correlates to that blade. Now,
8:03
Speaker 1: if we can get that knife, that's going to be key,
8:05
Speaker 1: because once you get through the soft tissue with a knife,
8:09
Speaker 1: you might strike the bone. That's going to leave an impression. Now,
8:12
Speaker 1: once you use the saw to literally dismember the body,
8:16
Speaker 1: at that point in time where you're cutting across bone,
8:18
Speaker 1: shafts and this sort of thing, the saw marks itself.
8:21
Speaker 1: Like the teeth on the saw, they leave their own
8:24
Speaker 1: unique identifying print as that saw goes across that bone.
8:28
Speaker 1: So these teeth literally lead behind almost an impression in
8:32
Speaker 1: the bone. The key here for the investigators is to
8:35
Speaker 1: get their hands on those instruments married up to the
8:40
Speaker 1: marks on the bone. And I can tell you right
8:43
Speaker 1: now in Idaho and at the FBI Crime Lab, what
8:46
Speaker 1: they're doing is that they are analyzing this bone very
8:49
Speaker 1: very carefully. You're going to have what referred to as
8:52
Speaker 1: tool mark experts that deal in this sort of thing
8:54
Speaker 1: all the time. They will take these and do both
8:58
Speaker 1: gross examinations with which is where they're looking at it
9:01
Speaker 1: with the unaided eye. They're taking photographs of it, all
9:04
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, and then they're going to look
9:06
Speaker 1: at it microscopically. And when you get down microscopically on
9:10
Speaker 1: the surface of one of these bones, it opens up
9:12
Speaker 1: an entirely different world because most people look at a
9:15
Speaker 1: mark on a piece of wood or a bone, or
9:18
Speaker 1: you know, a piece of furniture, and they'll say, well,
9:20
Speaker 1: it's just a mark. No, when you get down to
9:22
Speaker 1: it microscopically, that is a unique identifier that is unique
9:28
Speaker 1: to a particular tool. The key is can they get
9:31
Speaker 1: that tool, can they put it in the perpetrator's hand,
9:34
Speaker 1: and can they make it match up with the marks
9:37
Speaker 1: that they have on that bone. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace,
9:57
Speaker 1: I want to start with you as a death investigator,
10:02
Speaker 1: forensics expert, we know that the location was triangulated or
10:10
Speaker 1: identified by cell phone, if not triangulated by the brother
10:15
Speaker 1: occult mon Laurie Valo Alex Cox visiting husband number five,
10:21
Speaker 1: Chad Dave Bell's home. Cops, then go out there. I
10:28
Speaker 1: want you, Joseph Scott Morgan, to put yourself in their shoes.
10:33
Speaker 1: You know, general area. You walk into Chad day Bell's backyard.
10:39
Speaker 1: What do you see? What do you do? Start? Just imagine,
10:45
Speaker 1: if you will, you are the investigator that has showed
10:48
Speaker 1: up at the scene, and you've got this peing that
10:50
Speaker 1: you mentioned, and this is key that is that it
10:53
Speaker 1: puts that cell phone at that location. So you have
10:56
Speaker 1: to ask yourself the question, if you're an investigator, why
10:59
Speaker 1: are you there? Is his phone there? You know, obviously
11:02
Speaker 1: we can't say that an individual specifically there, but we
11:05
Speaker 1: can say that phone is there, and that's going to
11:07
Speaker 1: be key to this. Can they put that hand that
11:10
Speaker 1: hold on? Can they put on? Yeah, je Scott. We
11:13
Speaker 1: also know that the brother, who had only visited Chad
11:16
Speaker 1: day Belle's place four times in his life that we
11:19
Speaker 1: know of, he also stopped after going there that day,
11:25
Speaker 1: ostensibly dropping off the dead bodies, and had a meal
11:28
Speaker 1: at Del Taco. So you know, we can place in
11:32
Speaker 1: there in a number of ways through GPS tracking, through
11:36
Speaker 1: possibly any tracking in his navigational guide or tool in
11:41
Speaker 1: his vehicle is Del Taco receipt, I mean, a lot
11:44
Speaker 1: of ways other than his cell phone. But when you
11:48
Speaker 1: look out at this acre, would you consider, of course
11:52
Speaker 1: looking with the naked eye for disturbed ground, or you
11:56
Speaker 1: could use ground disturbing radar that's pretty easy. Or even
12:01
Speaker 1: a dog can hit on disturbed ground, you know, so
12:06
Speaker 1: you can once you're at the scene. There are a
12:08
Speaker 1: lot of techniques you can use to find exactly where
12:11
Speaker 1: the graves are. Yeah, there are. And you know, the
12:14
Speaker 1: first thing that came to mind where the cadaver dogs.
12:17
Speaker 1: They work on a spectrum that we can't even fathom
12:19
Speaker 1: as human beings. That is that they are uniquely trained
12:23
Speaker 1: to clue in on decomposing human remains. This is completely
12:27
Speaker 1: different than drug dogs or you know, dogs that are
12:31
Speaker 1: used to look for exotic animals, you know, through the
12:34
Speaker 1: customs departments, all that sort of thing. We're talking about
12:37
Speaker 1: cadaver dogs. These dogs are specifically trained for this purpose
12:40
Speaker 1: and I'm glad that we have them and they have
12:43
Speaker 1: this spectrum, you know, like we have a spectrum of vision,
12:45
Speaker 1: they have a spectrum of smell and all factory sense
12:48
Speaker 1: that leads them. They can literally narrow this down to
12:52
Speaker 1: a particular area. And of course, in this case, if
12:55
Speaker 1: we're talking about that, dogs were used just to get
12:58
Speaker 1: an idea where they are. Can you imagine where these
13:00
Speaker 1: dogs they're going nuts. They've got two separate locations. Remember
13:03
Speaker 1: these bodies are found in two separate locations. But the
13:06
Speaker 1: dogs are not the ones that are going to excavate this.
13:09
Speaker 1: They simply are there in order to kind of narrow
13:13
Speaker 1: the spectrum down, narrow the possibilities down. It's at that
13:17
Speaker 1: point that you have to survey the surface of the
13:20
Speaker 1: ground before you as an investigator. They've got a forensic
13:23
Speaker 1: anthropologist out there that is good at reading what's referred
13:27
Speaker 1: to as the topography of the ground. You know how
13:30
Speaker 1: it's kind of shape because for you and I, you know,
13:32
Speaker 1: when I go out in my backyard, I don't I
13:34
Speaker 1: don't look at the ground, say like a geologist or
13:38
Speaker 1: forensic anthropologist would I just look at it. I see
13:40
Speaker 1: upturned dirt maybe where I worked in a flower bed
13:43
Speaker 1: many many months ago. It's not like that for them.
13:46
Speaker 1: They can recognize just by sight where soil has been disturbed.
13:50
Speaker 1: They can look at vegetation that say, it's not equal
13:53
Speaker 1: in height to everything else. That means that it's new
13:55
Speaker 1: growth as opposed to everything else. You know, it looks
13:58
Speaker 1: like it's been there for a while. So there are
14:01
Speaker 1: the certain little clues that they kind of go on. Now,
14:04
Speaker 1: once they get there, they'll bring out you'd mentioned ground
14:06
Speaker 1: penny in a minute. You're making it sound very technical,
14:09
Speaker 1: But when you go out there, just as any untrained
14:13
Speaker 1: person can, you can go out and see where there's
14:16
Speaker 1: disturbed ground or where there's been digging unless somebody concealed
14:20
Speaker 1: it very well. So what's the next thing you do.
14:23
Speaker 1: Whether you use ground disturbing radar, which will tell you
14:27
Speaker 1: whether ground has been disturbed even you know, many feet
14:31
Speaker 1: below the surface, cadaver dog, or just a visual examination
14:37
Speaker 1: with your naked eye, you can see her somebody's dug
14:39
Speaker 1: up dirt. Yeah, you can also see the others of
14:42
Speaker 1: the fire pit and look through that, right you can.
14:45
Speaker 1: And you can also use say metal metal probes to
14:49
Speaker 1: literally go into a suspected area. And as you place
14:53
Speaker 1: these metal probes into the ground, the sense of actually
14:57
Speaker 1: placing the rod into the ground and what's what it's
15:00
Speaker 1: touching beneath. You can see if there's resistance or non resistance.
15:04
Speaker 1: Remember what soil that's undisturbed, it's very tightly packed. Everybody
15:08
Speaker 1: can identify with this. If you've ever had a shovel
15:10
Speaker 1: in your hand and you try to dig up dirt
15:12
Speaker 1: that's been there for years and years and years, very difficult. However,
15:16
Speaker 1: if you got into an area that has been turned recently,
15:19
Speaker 1: you can take one of these metal sticks and slowly
15:21
Speaker 1: pass it in through the ground the subsurface of the ground,
15:24
Speaker 1: and it's very loose. It's easy to kind of understand
15:27
Speaker 1: there's something below there. If you can verify it with
15:30
Speaker 1: ground penetrating radar, it'll literally give you a photo of
15:34
Speaker 1: what's beneath the ground. And in many of these instances
15:38
Speaker 1: you can actually pick up on things like human bodies.
15:41
Speaker 1: You can make out a shape of the body beneath
15:43
Speaker 1: the ground. You can see skeletal remains, this sort of thing.
15:46
Speaker 1: And so this is very important and you have to
15:49
Speaker 1: specifically mark this area, Nancy, because once you set, once
15:53
Speaker 1: you set the parameters for this thing, you don't want
15:56
Speaker 1: to go too far filled with it. You want to
15:58
Speaker 1: zero in on this location and then very very and
16:02
Speaker 1: I mean very carefully begin to take those layers of
16:05
Speaker 1: soil off of the top of the ground so that
16:08
Speaker 1: you can get to what lies beneath. Let me ask
16:11
Speaker 1: you this, in the very careful dig process, what is
16:18
Speaker 1: your understanding of how the children were found the condition
16:23
Speaker 1: of their remains? Well? With Tyley, you know, the interesting
16:28
Speaker 1: thing is that they're talking about that her body had
16:32
Speaker 1: been dismembered in some manner. I'm not really sure to
16:36
Speaker 1: what extent at this point, but I do know that
16:39
Speaker 1: if they're talking about dismembering, then that means that her
16:43
Speaker 1: body was essentially in multiple pieces, all right, possibly, And
16:48
Speaker 1: so you're going to have to be very careful in
16:50
Speaker 1: moving the soil away from this area because you know,
16:53
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier you talked about the burning. Well, when
16:57
Speaker 1: you get down below this kind of substrata that's right there,
17:00
Speaker 1: the lower levels, you know, when you're getting down to
17:02
Speaker 1: where the body is actually kind of nested down in there,
17:06
Speaker 1: you're going to have to look for things like high
17:09
Speaker 1: deposits of carbon, which is, you know, like burned wood.
17:12
Speaker 1: You know, these areas and you get a sense of
17:15
Speaker 1: when the soil was kind of turned over onto the
17:18
Speaker 1: body once they dug it out. Now they might be
17:21
Speaker 1: scrapping out the fire pit to put everything in there.
17:23
Speaker 1: You have to look for bits of evidence and collect
17:26
Speaker 1: everything that's around there. And most of the time when
17:29
Speaker 1: they do this on a kind of a microscale, they'll
17:33
Speaker 1: grid off the area. You know, if people will just
17:35
Speaker 1: keep in mind this idea of like a multipoint grid
17:39
Speaker 1: and they will assign numbers to this, and they'll say, well,
17:41
Speaker 1: I found a button in grid one, a kind of
17:44
Speaker 1: like playing battleship. I found a zipper in you know,
17:47
Speaker 1: three c or I found two so human tooth in
17:51
Speaker 1: this particular location, or charter remains here. And in that
17:55
Speaker 1: sense you get an idea of how the body was distributed,
17:59
Speaker 1: and then what was placed on top of the body,
18:01
Speaker 1: where there's stones on top of the body, for instance,
18:03
Speaker 1: And we're kind of getting reports that there may have
18:05
Speaker 1: been actually multiple layers of things to conceal the bodies
18:10
Speaker 1: that lie underneath, almost like somebody took a lot of
18:14
Speaker 1: time with them. We talk about JJ, who you know,
18:17
Speaker 1: JJ was not found in the same location as Tilly,
18:21
Speaker 1: and one of the things that struck me Nancy. When
18:22
Speaker 1: I took a look at these aerial photographs, it really
18:25
Speaker 1: and I urge everyone to go back and take a look.
18:27
Speaker 1: It's really striking. In those early iterations of these photos,
18:31
Speaker 1: you could see this gigantic pit. And I'm not talking
18:33
Speaker 1: about the fire pit. I'm talking about what looks like
18:35
Speaker 1: a really large circular pit that turns out to be
18:39
Speaker 1: a dry pond that had been drained some time ago.
18:42
Speaker 1: Apparently JJ's body was found immediately adjacent to that. But
18:47
Speaker 1: what makes his so different, and what makes the discovery
18:50
Speaker 1: of his remains so unique, is that whoever did this
18:54
Speaker 1: with him took a lot of time and a lot
18:56
Speaker 1: of care with him. We understand that the body was
18:59
Speaker 1: a sin wrapped in black plastic. It was secured with
19:04
Speaker 1: duct tape, but even within that, his head was wrapped
19:09
Speaker 1: in a separate back, so that gives us some indications
19:13
Speaker 1: about how the body was treated. After the body was cocooned,
19:16
Speaker 1: and I refer to this as cocooning. The body was
19:20
Speaker 1: laid in the ground and then multiple layers of dirt
19:23
Speaker 1: brick stone were placed over the top and then sawed.
19:27
Speaker 1: So you have these multiple layers that are going on.
19:30
Speaker 1: This is not somebody Nancy that went out and kind
19:33
Speaker 1: of haphazardly dug a hole, placed this child in the
19:37
Speaker 1: hole or the child's remains. This actually gives you an
19:41
Speaker 1: idea that this had planning involved. They showed up with
19:45
Speaker 1: the tools, they showed up with what they needed to
19:48
Speaker 1: accomplish it, all the supplies. And that goes deeper here
19:51
Speaker 1: as far as motive motive in this case, Time Stories
20:08
Speaker 1: with Nancy Grace with me now a very special guest,
20:13
Speaker 1: Joseph Scott Morgan, so called Death Investigated, Professor Forensics, Jacksonville
20:18
Speaker 1: State University and author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon.
20:24
Speaker 1: J Scott describe when you say the burial spots were
20:29
Speaker 1: in two different two different locations on the same property.
20:34
Speaker 1: Describe what you observe from the aerial view. You know,
20:38
Speaker 1: when I first saw the saw the images, I didn't
20:41
Speaker 1: think too much of the fire pit. But then I
20:44
Speaker 1: started to kind of put two and two together. They
20:46
Speaker 1: were the authorities at the time were digging almost immediately
20:49
Speaker 1: adjacent to the fire pit. I would say it was
20:51
Speaker 1: within you know, I was saying earlier, maybe within twenty yards.
20:55
Speaker 1: I don't want to I don't want to pin myself
20:57
Speaker 1: down on that. But it was a very close distance,
21:00
Speaker 1: certainly close enough to facilitate burning something and then taking
21:04
Speaker 1: it over to a hole that you've dug and placing
21:06
Speaker 1: it in there. So you get this relationship between the
21:10
Speaker 1: fire pit and the hole. It's like it's something that
21:12
Speaker 1: was done hastily. It's something that was not a lot
21:16
Speaker 1: of thought went into it, other than we're going to
21:18
Speaker 1: try to dismember a body. We did an ineffective job
21:21
Speaker 1: at that. We're going to try to burn a body.
21:24
Speaker 1: We've done an ineffective job at that. Let's dig a
21:27
Speaker 1: hole in place what we have done here in there
21:30
Speaker 1: to hide all of the evidence. So when you had
21:33
Speaker 1: this drained pond that I talked about earlier, you can
21:38
Speaker 1: still see it in the aerial photography. You have the
21:41
Speaker 1: fire pit and then at some distance you have this
21:44
Speaker 1: drained pond area over there. The area is much more pristine.
21:50
Speaker 1: There's no burning that's taken place over there. It's in
21:53
Speaker 1: an area that is on the lip or on the
21:56
Speaker 1: cusp of this pond. It's not like something was kind
21:59
Speaker 1: of cast stuff in there. So this tells us a lot,
22:02
Speaker 1: I think as an investigator about the dynamic that was
22:05
Speaker 1: going on with these children. Specifically, I think that JJ
22:08
Speaker 1: was treated in a manner in which Tyley was not
22:12
Speaker 1: ty They literally after death Nancy. With Tyley, they literally
22:16
Speaker 1: tried to destroy her. The difference in the way that
22:21
Speaker 1: children's bodies were treated, to me, is psychologically a very
22:26
Speaker 1: important clue, because I believe that Chad day Bell convinced
22:34
Speaker 1: Laurie Valoe that her children were dark spirits, that they
22:38
Speaker 1: were zombies and they had to be destroyed. And at
22:41
Speaker 1: first she identified Tyley as being a quote dark spirit,
22:46
Speaker 1: and then only later JJ. So it seems to me
22:50
Speaker 1: that they treated Tyley, even after death, much more badly
22:55
Speaker 1: than they did JJ. But when you look at it,
23:01
Speaker 1: I see what you're saying. Regarding the locations of these
23:03
Speaker 1: so called burial sites. I'm just wondering how likely it
23:08
Speaker 1: is that they will ever be able to discover a
23:11
Speaker 1: cod cause of death. And also, we've talked about Tyley's
23:16
Speaker 1: body allegedly dismembered and burned, but JJ was practically hermetically sealed,
23:25
Speaker 1: bound in duct tape and bags. What can you tell
23:28
Speaker 1: me about the discovery of JJ just seven years old body,
23:31
Speaker 1: the body, his body, you know, he had a bag
23:35
Speaker 1: over his hid Nancy, And so for me where Tyley,
23:38
Speaker 1: her body has been really destroyed essentially. I hate to
23:43
Speaker 1: say that, but you know, burned and maybe dismembered and
23:47
Speaker 1: these sorts of things. But with JJ a bag over
23:50
Speaker 1: his head, maybe he was suffocated. I don't know. But
23:53
Speaker 1: one of the things we're going to be looking for,
23:55
Speaker 1: that they are going to be looking for at autopsy
23:57
Speaker 1: is certainly the signs that maybe this was some kind
24:00
Speaker 1: of esphyxial death. Maybe he had a bag placed over
24:03
Speaker 1: his head and he was deprived of oxygen. Maybe they
24:06
Speaker 1: drugged him prior to this and then placed the bag
24:09
Speaker 1: over his head, And that's going to be key. I
24:12
Speaker 1: think about Joe Scott, if they did drug him in
24:16
Speaker 1: any way, would that still be in his system now? Yeah, Yeah,
24:19
Speaker 1: that's that's going to be difficult. I think that probably
24:23
Speaker 1: one of the things they're going to have to do
24:26
Speaker 1: is take their time with the tissue that they have.
24:29
Speaker 1: The blood itself. People don't realize this, but you know,
24:32
Speaker 1: the blood itself gets kind of compromised through through the
24:36
Speaker 1: process of decomposition. Sometimes there'll be some urine left and
24:42
Speaker 1: maybe vitrious fluid from the eyes. But it's going to
24:44
Speaker 1: be very difficult to kind of key in. You know,
24:47
Speaker 1: any kind of agent that's applied to a body, any
24:50
Speaker 1: kind of chemical drug, that sort of thing, it has
24:53
Speaker 1: what's referred to as a lethal level, and the lethal
24:58
Speaker 1: level if you're looking for toxicology, it's going to be very,
25:01
Speaker 1: very difficult to determine in this case because we're so
25:04
Speaker 1: far down range from when he actually died, So that's
25:08
Speaker 1: going to be key. I think one of the things
25:11
Speaker 1: they're going to be very careful about though, is looking
25:13
Speaker 1: for physical evidence of trauma. Was it a head strike,
25:16
Speaker 1: was that a gunshot wound, Was it a stabbing? And
25:19
Speaker 1: some of this stuff is going to be difficult to
25:21
Speaker 1: discern just simply because of the state of the soft
25:24
Speaker 1: tissue of JJ's body, even though he's cocooned. It's going
25:28
Speaker 1: to make it much more difficult. The reality is, even
25:31
Speaker 1: if we never discover cause of death, the case can
25:35
Speaker 1: still go forward. Killers don't get a gold star just
25:39
Speaker 1: because they managed to hide the cause of death by
25:43
Speaker 1: destroying the body. Of course, we've got a lot better
25:46
Speaker 1: chance to determine cod with JJ because his body, we
25:50
Speaker 1: think is still intact. Not true for Tyley, who was dismembered,
25:54
Speaker 1: and burned based on what we've been told. Now, when
25:58
Speaker 1: a body starts decomposing, it it's a lot more difficult
26:01
Speaker 1: to determine cause of death. You lose toxicology, maybe you
26:06
Speaker 1: lose soft tissue damage such as an asphyxiation, because the
26:12
Speaker 1: PARTICULARI in the eye, which rupture typically upon strangulation, smothering, hanging,
26:20
Speaker 1: that all goes away, It decomposes to a point you
26:23
Speaker 1: don't have it anymore. So if we're trying to look
26:25
Speaker 1: for cod On JJ, whose body is kind of still intact,
26:31
Speaker 1: you're going to have to be looking for a gunshot wound,
26:33
Speaker 1: a mortal blow that crushed his skull, maybe a nick
26:38
Speaker 1: from a knife on one of his ribs. If it's
26:42
Speaker 1: anything other than that, we may never know cause of death.
26:46
Speaker 1: Now we very well may not. However, I have hope
26:49
Speaker 1: in this case. And if and this is why, And
26:53
Speaker 1: let me just kind of briefly mention this. When the
26:56
Speaker 1: FBI agent they stayed in the documents that were released,
27:01
Speaker 1: when the FBI agent essentially cut open that bag, they said,
27:05
Speaker 1: we see a human head with hair, and that gives
27:08
Speaker 1: us an indication that maybe maybe the soft tissue to
27:12
Speaker 1: a certain degree is still intact. Now, if we're talking
27:15
Speaker 1: about things like, yeah, gunshot wounds, that's going to be
27:17
Speaker 1: kind of straightforward, and it shouldn't be that compromised knife wounds. Yeah,
27:22
Speaker 1: you'd be able to see it. But also when you
27:24
Speaker 1: get down into the muscles, save the muscles around the neck,
27:28
Speaker 1: even though they're in a stated decomposition, are really keen.
27:32
Speaker 1: Forensic pathologists will be able to literally dissect the tissue
27:36
Speaker 1: way on the neck and look at the muscles. We
27:39
Speaker 1: look at what are called the strap muscles around the
27:41
Speaker 1: neck to see if there's stringulation involved. And we've got
27:44
Speaker 1: layer upon layer of plastic and listen, we've also got
27:48
Speaker 1: duct tape. What this means is that whoever applied these
27:52
Speaker 1: bags to JJ's body, there is a high likelihood that
27:58
Speaker 1: there will be latent prints on the surface of these bags. Now,
28:01
Speaker 1: they will have sweated some, but even internally, you might
28:05
Speaker 1: be able to find prints on the inner portion of
28:08
Speaker 1: the bag, the outer side of the outside. I don't
28:10
Speaker 1: know so much. But when we take a look at
28:13
Speaker 1: that duct tape, the cool thing about it, Nancy, is
28:16
Speaker 1: that it has an adherent adhesive side, and that leaves
28:21
Speaker 1: behind what's referred to as a plastic print. So that
28:24
Speaker 1: means that if you touch the surface of that tape,
28:27
Speaker 1: if they collect that tape properly, which I'm sure that
28:30
Speaker 1: they have, they can actually raise a print from the
28:33
Speaker 1: underside of that tape. And it's a marvelous thing. They
28:36
Speaker 1: might can do superglue fuming, for instance, where they'll fume
28:40
Speaker 1: the entire contents of the bag. I've even been present
28:44
Speaker 1: when they superglue bodies. They fume an entire body looking
28:47
Speaker 1: for latent princes. Could you explain to everybody what you
28:49
Speaker 1: mean by the superglue? Yeah, what will happen with superglue, Nancy,
28:53
Speaker 1: Is that superglue just like you see at any hardware
28:56
Speaker 1: store that you pick up at any store. It's actually
28:59
Speaker 1: placed into a little metal container and it's heated up
29:02
Speaker 1: and as a result of the contents or the makeup
29:05
Speaker 1: of the superglue itself, it turns into a gaseous state.
29:09
Speaker 1: And as it turns into a gaseous state, as it's heated,
29:12
Speaker 1: it has to fall right and when it falls, these
29:15
Speaker 1: fatty lipid oils. Remember if we touch your face, you
29:18
Speaker 1: get kind of oily fingers, and that's sort of thing.
29:21
Speaker 1: You have oil on your fingers, when you leave these
29:24
Speaker 1: latent or unseen prints behind on a body, as those
29:27
Speaker 1: fumes fall, they adhere to those oily surfaces and you
29:31
Speaker 1: can actually make out a print. And once it's there
29:33
Speaker 1: and it's locked in with the superglobe, it's not going anywhere.
29:36
Speaker 1: It'll be there for years and years. So they can
29:38
Speaker 1: study this very very carefully. If they can do that, Nancy,
29:42
Speaker 1: then there'll be a tie back to the individual that
29:44
Speaker 1: may have cocooned the body. One of the things that
29:47
Speaker 1: we can think about, if the body is preserved in
29:49
Speaker 1: the manner in which I think that it is, we
29:52
Speaker 1: might have left behind touch DNA. Now, if this was
29:55
Speaker 1: in fact Alex that was involved in this, hopefully we
29:59
Speaker 1: still have some sample of his left behind, so we
30:02
Speaker 1: can go back and compare his DNA versus maybe an
30:06
Speaker 1: unknown that's found on the bag. You know, would also
30:08
Speaker 1: be interesting, Jo Scott is to look for fingerprints or
30:12
Speaker 1: DNA on the duct tape and the plastic bags and
30:16
Speaker 1: anything else used in the burials, but then also id
30:21
Speaker 1: the bag because as we now know, trash bags can
30:26
Speaker 1: be identified by a lot a parcel right down to
30:31
Speaker 1: the store where the bags were sold. And what if
30:36
Speaker 1: that walmoret Mark or that Lows or home depot, or
30:40
Speaker 1: that target has surveillance video of Alex Cox or Chad
30:44
Speaker 1: day Belle or even cult mom Laurie Valo buying the
30:49
Speaker 1: trash bags. There's so many forensic avenues to travel down
30:55
Speaker 1: on this case in identifying all of the evidence, even
31:00
Speaker 1: down to the duct tape, because somebody had to buy
31:04
Speaker 1: the supplies. And I'm also wondering about the excavation of
31:08
Speaker 1: the fire pit itself, what that's going to reveal time
31:25
Speaker 1: stories with Nancy Grace just got how likely is it
31:32
Speaker 1: that we will ever get a cod if you're if
31:37
Speaker 1: you're asking me if I'm a betting man, relij I
31:41
Speaker 1: think j yeah, I think that we will off JJ.
31:45
Speaker 1: I just I just don't know about Tyley Nancy at
31:48
Speaker 1: this point, and I'm holding out hope. But the fact
31:52
Speaker 1: that she has been down and that her body has
31:55
Speaker 1: been manipulated so much in the post mortem state they did,
32:00
Speaker 1: they went to such great links to just rip her
32:03
Speaker 1: to shreds. I don't know if we're going to have
32:07
Speaker 1: as much luck with her as we will with JJ.
32:11
Speaker 1: Once you have these bodies, Okay, it is just incumbent
32:16
Speaker 1: upon the authorities to search every possible lead that they can.
32:22
Speaker 1: They have the opportunity to really explore all of the
32:25
Speaker 1: evidence that may be left behind on these bodies. Nancy.
32:29
Speaker 1: We're talking about everything from the tool marks that I
32:32
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier than to possible DNA studies, to microscopic examinations
32:38
Speaker 1: of the bones themselves relative to the skulls to see
32:42
Speaker 1: if there was any trauma there that was before death.
32:46
Speaker 1: And it's essentially that we do everything. I'm thinking right now,
32:49
Speaker 1: I'm thinking right now about another person, and that's Tammy Davel.
32:54
Speaker 1: You know, we begin to think about what a horrible
32:57
Speaker 1: job was done in that case, and they just allowed
33:01
Speaker 1: her body to be removed from the scene without ever
33:04
Speaker 1: really doing her an effective examination. And that's what's got
33:08
Speaker 1: us in this point right now, because this is struggle.
33:11
Speaker 1: One thing about Tammy day Bell. At least she wasn't
33:14
Speaker 1: cremated like an earlier husband of Laurie Valos, so you know,
33:22
Speaker 1: at least we have a body to examine. So my
33:26
Speaker 1: question is at this juncture, if we don't have fingerprints,
33:30
Speaker 1: which I think we will have fingerprints in some way
33:34
Speaker 1: some touch DNA, be it a hair, a piece of fiber, anything,
33:39
Speaker 1: off JJ or Tyley's body. We still have the circumstantial
33:44
Speaker 1: evidence that it's in day Belle's backyard. He had the
33:50
Speaker 1: fire pit going, the neighbors saw it, as you pointed out,
33:54
Speaker 1: and then we find Tyley's body on his property burned,
33:59
Speaker 1: and I get it will be something in that fire
34:01
Speaker 1: pit that relates back to Tiley's body. So that's very
34:06
Speaker 1: strong circumstantial evidence. Would you agree or disagree? And what
34:11
Speaker 1: other circumstantial evidence do you believe will be found? Hey, listen, yeah,
34:16
Speaker 1: I agree completely. It is strong. You know, how do
34:19
Speaker 1: you how can you explain it away? It is the
34:21
Speaker 1: physical evidence, you know, it is essential to this case
34:27
Speaker 1: because that puts her remains in that specific location. If
34:32
Speaker 1: they attempted to burn her body in that fire pit,
34:35
Speaker 1: which I gotta tell you I think that they did,
34:38
Speaker 1: what other identifying factors could be there? Well, you can
34:41
Speaker 1: find you can find clothing, bits of clothing, button zippers,
34:45
Speaker 1: all these other things that would be tie backs, labels
34:48
Speaker 1: to clothing that wasn't consumed, a tiny bit of bone,
34:52
Speaker 1: a tooth, anything can relate back to Tiley. And that
34:56
Speaker 1: shows that the fire, the mode of concealment happened on
35:00
Speaker 1: his property and he was standing right there stirring the
35:03
Speaker 1: fire pit. Not only that, Jessica Morgan, Oh, we understand
35:07
Speaker 1: that while police were executing their search warrant and ultimately
35:11
Speaker 1: dug up the two bodies, Davelle was sitting across the
35:14
Speaker 1: street watching and as soon as they got to the
35:18
Speaker 1: spot and started digging, he took off and they apprehended him.
35:22
Speaker 1: So he was there watching, if he didn't know what
35:24
Speaker 1: was there, why take off? You cannot get past that
35:29
Speaker 1: this is his property. You know. These bodies just didn't
35:34
Speaker 1: miracle themselves there. They're there purposefully, all right, And that's
35:39
Speaker 1: the issue here. How can defense, any defense, explain this away.
35:44
Speaker 1: It's going to be very, very difficult to get away
35:47
Speaker 1: from this, Nancy. This is the corpus delecti here. This
35:51
Speaker 1: is the body, okay, that we're talking about, and we're
35:54
Speaker 1: placing it. We're placing both of these bodies there. And specifically,
35:58
Speaker 1: the most egregious of this is this idea of her
36:01
Speaker 1: body being burned in his fire pit, on his property,
36:05
Speaker 1: and any kind of relevant evidence that's there. You mentioned
36:09
Speaker 1: the tooth teeth themselves, you know, will far outlast any
36:13
Speaker 1: other element of human form by a long shot. Because
36:17
Speaker 1: they're so resilient. They're not bone, contrary to what people think,
36:22
Speaker 1: they can withstand a tremendous amount of heat. Let's just say,
36:25
Speaker 1: for instance, you do find her tooth in there, and
36:27
Speaker 1: we know that in life she had beautiful, intact teeth.
36:30
Speaker 1: We've even got dental records, perhaps anti boredom prior to death,
36:35
Speaker 1: dental records. How do you explain that the tooth of
36:38
Speaker 1: a normally healthy child, the seventeen year old girl, was
36:42
Speaker 1: actually found in a fire pit. You cannot get past that.
36:46
Speaker 1: That is going to be the proverbial elephant in the
36:48
Speaker 1: room in that courthouse. I just wish I could be
36:52
Speaker 1: a fly on the wall on July twenty second, when
36:58
Speaker 1: Laurie Vali cult mom is sitting behind bars and the
37:04
Speaker 1: world just keeps spinning and it's not the end of
37:08
Speaker 1: the world. Will it ever hit her? She's gonna sit
37:13
Speaker 1: there tick tick talk, watching that clock and it is
37:19
Speaker 1: not the end of the world. You think he'll ever
37:22
Speaker 1: hit her? That all this was just a way to
37:26
Speaker 1: have sex with her and get her children out of
37:29
Speaker 1: the way. The whole cult thing, the end of the
37:33
Speaker 1: world in New Jerusalem was all b s. I got
37:38
Speaker 1: a feeling cult Mom will never reconcile it because the
37:42
Speaker 1: truth will be too awful. She'll think, oh, we calculated
37:47
Speaker 1: the wrong day of the end of the world or
37:49
Speaker 1: some other bs so she can still justify the murder
37:54
Speaker 1: of her children. But I can tell you this much,
37:56
Speaker 1: it's not gonna work with a jury. Joseph Morgan, Professor
38:01
Speaker 1: of Forensics, jacksonvill State University and author, Thank you for
38:05
Speaker 1: being with us. We wait as justice and false