Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Home Invasion Hoax -The Death of Thomas Waddell

Transcript

Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Home Invasion Hoax -The Death of Thomas Waddell · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:08
Speaker 1: Body backs with Joseph Scott Morgan over the course of
0:21
Speaker 1: many years of talking to police officers, not so much detectives,
0:27
Speaker 1: but from people that have been on the beat, as
0:32
Speaker 1: they say, patrolman, people that work a specific zone. They're
0:38
Speaker 1: called different things and different jurisdictions. You always hear them
0:45
Speaker 1: say every single rollout, every single location they're summoned to.
0:57
Speaker 1: Though some of the cases might appear you're to be
1:00
Speaker 1: the same on the surface that they go out to work.
1:04
Speaker 1: There's nothing out there that is the same over and
1:08
Speaker 1: over and over again. Everything has some little nuance, some
1:13
Speaker 1: little change. And most of the time, when you show
1:16
Speaker 1: up at a scene and you hear a lady screaming
1:19
Speaker 1: and you see blood pouring out of her leg, and
1:23
Speaker 1: you walk on through the house and you see an
1:26
Speaker 1: individual that has been restrained and executed, you can't take
1:34
Speaker 1: the measure of it.
1:35
Speaker 2: Initially.
1:37
Speaker 1: First off, you're afraid. If you're the police officer, you're afraid.
1:41
Speaker 1: You're afraid. There might be other dangers that lurk around
1:44
Speaker 1: every corner, but you have to get her out of
1:46
Speaker 1: there to make sure that she gets a medical attention
1:50
Speaker 1: that she needs. But when you begin your assessment of
1:56
Speaker 1: the scene. Sometimes things just don't add up. Today we're
2:03
Speaker 1: going to talk about a lady named Deborah Fraser and
2:08
Speaker 1: a tale that she told the patrolman that at the
2:13
Speaker 1: end of the day took them down a path that
2:16
Speaker 1: I can assure you when their watch started, they had
2:19
Speaker 1: not anticipated being upon. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
2:26
Speaker 1: is body Bags. I've gotten to the point my life, Dave,
2:34
Speaker 1: where I realized that the phrase I didn't come down
2:37
Speaker 1: with the last drop of rain means more and more.
2:41
Speaker 1: It's really hard for someone to defeat my so called
2:45
Speaker 1: BS meter. That comes with age, it comes with experience.
2:49
Speaker 1: You don't have it. And I can tell you and
2:51
Speaker 1: I have had conversations off Mike for a long time
2:55
Speaker 1: now where we've talked about this that we're not as naive.
3:01
Speaker 1: Our muscle twitch might not be like it used to
3:03
Speaker 1: be when we were kids, might not can run up
3:05
Speaker 1: a hill as well as we once could. But there's
3:08
Speaker 1: something about your senses that sharpen, and you see enough
3:12
Speaker 1: BS come across your decks, your meeter becomes acutely attuned
3:17
Speaker 1: to that. And I think that this case today is
3:20
Speaker 1: certainly first off, it's filled with forensics, but it's also
3:24
Speaker 1: filled with stuff that you fertilize the garden with too.
3:27
Speaker 3: I think it was an interesting plan that Deborah Frasier
3:31
Speaker 3: came up with. It really was think about it. She
3:34
Speaker 3: meets this man while she's working at Kroger, and I
3:39
Speaker 3: think about Thomas Waddell. He's sixty six years old, she's
3:43
Speaker 3: thirty six, and they've been in an on and off
3:46
Speaker 3: in relationship for a number of years, even though there's
3:48
Speaker 3: a thirty year age difference. I mentioned they were working
3:51
Speaker 3: together at Kroger because I always wonder how does somebody
3:54
Speaker 3: get into a romantic relationship with that big of a
3:56
Speaker 3: difference of age. Yeah, and it really comes down to
4:00
Speaker 3: to him for many other things, you know. And he
4:02
Speaker 3: apparently liked helping people that were kind of down and
4:04
Speaker 3: out on their luck. And anyway, Donna Fraser and Thomas
4:09
Speaker 3: Waddell were in a relationship of sorts, and Dona Fraser
4:13
Speaker 3: also had another person she was involved with as well romantically.
4:17
Speaker 3: I'm so glad you pointed me into the direction of
4:20
Speaker 3: the statement of facts, because I'm going to give you
4:22
Speaker 3: the end of the story. This is the Paul Harvey
4:24
Speaker 3: instead of the rest of the story the end of
4:27
Speaker 3: the story, because here it is. After days of planning,
4:30
Speaker 3: on the evening of August ninth, twenty twenty three, Deborah
4:34
Speaker 3: Fraser stood behind Thomas Waddell as he sat in his recliner.
4:40
Speaker 3: She raised his twenty two caliber pistol, aimed it at
4:44
Speaker 3: the back of his head, and executed him in his
4:48
Speaker 3: living room. Those are the facts of the case.
4:51
Speaker 1: Those are the facts of the case.
4:53
Speaker 3: Yes, but the story that she told. She calls nine
4:57
Speaker 3: to one one. There's a burglar he had happening right
5:01
Speaker 3: now at my boyfriend's house. Send help right away. Oh
5:04
Speaker 3: wait a minute, pop, Yeah, gunshot in the background.
5:09
Speaker 2: I've been shot in the hope.
5:12
Speaker 3: In a small town. The entire police force, on and
5:16
Speaker 3: off duty, showed up. But thankfully the chief of police
5:22
Speaker 3: got there first, so the most experienced guy, at least
5:26
Speaker 3: the most responsible. I don't know how chief works, but
5:29
Speaker 3: I would think if the chief shows up and take's
5:32
Speaker 3: command of the zine, you've got a good investigation going on.
5:36
Speaker 3: That's what I'm thinking.
5:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, he can throw, he can throw whatever resource. You
5:40
Speaker 1: don't have to wait around for the resources to show up.
5:43
Speaker 1: Your primary resource is there. And if the chief understands
5:48
Speaker 1: that he's out of his depth or his department rather
5:51
Speaker 1: is out of their depth. It's not an insult to
5:53
Speaker 1: their intelligence in any way. It's literally comes down to resources.
5:57
Speaker 1: In a smaller jurisdiction, you want to get in this
6:00
Speaker 1: case happened in Ohio, so you want to get what's
6:04
Speaker 1: referred to as BCI involved, which is the Bureau of
6:07
Speaker 1: Criminal Investigations, that's the state, and they eventually do become
6:11
Speaker 1: involved in this because I'm sure that, look, this is
6:14
Speaker 1: one of those cases that when you're old and retired
6:18
Speaker 1: from the police force, this will be one of the
6:20
Speaker 1: cases like if somebody comes up to you and finds
6:23
Speaker 1: out you are a cop and they'll say, what's the
6:25
Speaker 1: most bizarre case you ever? Yeah, exactly a small town.
6:29
Speaker 1: I guarantee hands are going to go up and people
6:31
Speaker 1: will say, hey, I got one for you, you know,
6:34
Speaker 1: because it is it is that bizarre. But Dave, you
6:37
Speaker 1: know the thing about it is this, this man, mister Waddell,
6:41
Speaker 1: was found in his apartment and he's he's essentially been
6:46
Speaker 1: kind of wrapped and contained. He's got duct tape that's
6:51
Speaker 1: wrapping him up. He's been executed, and here's look you know,
6:56
Speaker 1: we always say this in in uh, when we're teaching
7:00
Speaker 1: or or when we're writing reports, there's and it's wrote.
7:04
Speaker 1: It's like you could take it and just kind of
7:07
Speaker 1: boilerplate stamp every report with this, or conversely, say you
7:12
Speaker 1: did see something, but most reports are going to say
7:15
Speaker 1: we saw no signs of forced entry or struggle. They
7:19
Speaker 1: they didn't, they didn't. To try to marry up with
7:24
Speaker 1: what miss Fraser was putting forth here that there were
7:27
Speaker 1: two assailants, she actually named them as white males, so
7:31
Speaker 1: she's getting more more specific with her descriptor. It's not
7:36
Speaker 1: just two random dudes, two white males. They are burglarizing
7:41
Speaker 1: the place and oops, I've been shot. Right.
7:44
Speaker 3: I was going to ask you about the bushy haired
7:46
Speaker 3: stranger and very quickly the story you're laying out that
7:50
Speaker 3: Donna Fraser told them. I wonder sometimes how quickly do you?
7:55
Speaker 3: I mean, you're I put you as part of the
7:57
Speaker 3: investigation and know you're the forensic person baker right right. Ultimately,
8:00
Speaker 3: you know you do have a lot of forensics here
8:02
Speaker 3: because according to Donna Frasier's story, when she calls nine
8:05
Speaker 3: to one one, she claims to have been shot in
8:07
Speaker 3: the leg she claims that there were two other burglars
8:10
Speaker 3: in the house that left her boyfriend. As you mentioned,
8:13
Speaker 3: he's found in a back room of his own apartment,
8:17
Speaker 3: wrapped in a blanket and a garbage bag, and it's
8:19
Speaker 3: all secured with duct tape. And they hear the gunshot
8:22
Speaker 3: on the nine to one one call. This is what
8:24
Speaker 3: they're walking into. And I'm thinking, how did they uncover
8:28
Speaker 3: it to find out that she stood behind mister freu
8:31
Speaker 3: Waddell and shot him in the head.
8:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, here's here's the other piece to this is that
8:38
Speaker 1: these perpetrators apparently left their weapon behind, because there's a
8:42
Speaker 1: twenty two caliber revolver lying on the floor adjacent to
8:46
Speaker 1: her as she's bleeding out on the floor having been
8:48
Speaker 1: shot in the shot in the leg. One of the
8:51
Speaker 1: things always fascinates me with these staged events like this
8:55
Speaker 1: where people will self inflict injuries. You know, you see
8:58
Speaker 1: old movies and stuff where people try to make themselves
9:01
Speaker 1: look beat up, where they'll throw theirselves down the set
9:03
Speaker 1: of steps or something like that to bruise themselves all
9:07
Speaker 1: up and everything, but with gunshot wounds in particular. And
9:11
Speaker 1: I know I'll get some blowback from this and say
9:13
Speaker 1: that leg shots are not fatal. They are fatal. I've
9:15
Speaker 1: worked them. You know, if you're shot in the leg,
9:18
Speaker 1: if you clip a femeral artery, there's a there's a
9:21
Speaker 1: good chance you could bleed out. But let's just it's
9:25
Speaker 1: not like being shot center mass in the chest. It's
9:31
Speaker 1: you see a lot of these stage crimes where people
9:33
Speaker 1: will shoot themselves in the periphery, you know, they shoot
9:36
Speaker 1: themselves in the hand. In a case in Georgia famously,
9:40
Speaker 1: where where a deputy sheriff had shot himself in the
9:46
Speaker 1: palm of the hand in order to make it look
9:49
Speaker 1: like he was fighting with an assailant, it just so
9:52
Speaker 1: happens that the weapon turned out to be his own weapon.
9:55
Speaker 1: That and he was a drug seeker. And isn't it amazing.
9:59
Speaker 1: They don't get shot in the chest or the abdomen.
10:02
Speaker 1: It's always like in the leg or the arm or
10:04
Speaker 1: maybe the shoulder, you know, to kind of cover these
10:07
Speaker 1: things up. They certainly don't shoot themselves in the head.
10:10
Speaker 3: If somebody shoots themselves in the leg and they're trying
10:13
Speaker 3: to claim that the shot was from somebody else, can
10:16
Speaker 3: you tell how close they were?
10:18
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, because look, your arms have a if it's
10:24
Speaker 1: self inflicted, your arms have a terminal distance. You know,
10:27
Speaker 1: you can't you can't extend beyond that. I guess you
10:31
Speaker 1: could if you set up some kind of apparatus. And
10:33
Speaker 1: I've had people, I've actually had suicides. I've worked where
10:36
Speaker 1: people have set up a weapon that has a rather
10:40
Speaker 1: complex mechanism. When another individual opens the door, it actually
10:46
Speaker 1: initiates the firing sequence and shoots the person that's sitting
10:50
Speaker 1: there in the chair in anticipation of the person arriving.
10:53
Speaker 1: And yes, that does happen, but that requires try quite
10:58
Speaker 1: a bit of planning and let's face it, precision.
11:03
Speaker 3: Mostly behind a lot of evidence too.
11:05
Speaker 1: Yes you do. You know you've got this contraption, and
11:08
Speaker 1: so I don't know that that's necessarily set up to
11:11
Speaker 1: stage as much as it is in the case of suicide,
11:15
Speaker 1: to punish the other person that's opening the door. So
11:18
Speaker 1: that's a completely separate set of facts.
11:20
Speaker 3: So you talk this wounded leg and say, yeah, that
11:23
Speaker 3: didn't come from across the room.
11:25
Speaker 1: No it didn't. Because let's just say, now we're dealing
11:29
Speaker 1: with what's referred to as a twenty two caliber revolver,
11:31
Speaker 1: and we can get into that more in just a moment.
11:34
Speaker 1: But let's just say she's got something with an exceedingly
11:39
Speaker 1: long barrel length. And there's not a lot of them
11:42
Speaker 1: out there that are on market that you're going to purchase.
11:45
Speaker 1: But I suppose there's something with a really But even
11:48
Speaker 1: if it's got a long barrel length, that powder along
11:53
Speaker 1: with the projectile, of course, but the powder itself is
11:56
Speaker 1: what I'm interested in. It's going to be contained and
11:59
Speaker 1: it'll come to a full point that delivers on target.
12:02
Speaker 1: So let's just say if she's able to extend the
12:07
Speaker 1: muzzle length even out to eighteen inches twenty inches away
12:10
Speaker 1: from her body when she initiates that firing sequence, probably
12:14
Speaker 1: pulling it, well, I guess she could take it. If
12:16
Speaker 1: it all depends on where she shot in the leg
12:19
Speaker 1: on the inner thigh. She could certainly hold it normally
12:22
Speaker 1: and fire into her thigh. That way, you're going to
12:25
Speaker 1: have something that's left behind. Now, defense can argue in
12:28
Speaker 1: a case like that, we don't you understand my client
12:31
Speaker 1: was struggling, Well, Dave, you mentioned just a moment ago
12:36
Speaker 1: that the report of the weapon could be heard by
12:41
Speaker 1: the nine to eleven operator. That's not like a struggle
12:44
Speaker 1: ensued a protracted it. You know, the nine to eleven
12:47
Speaker 1: operators saying yeah, I heard furniture being broken, and people
12:51
Speaker 1: say no, no, no, no. What they heard was oh wait, pain,
12:56
Speaker 1: you know, like this, And so that means that this
13:00
Speaker 1: thing is shot pretty immediately once this call is initiated.
13:04
Speaker 1: So that's very fascinating this case. Yeah, and we can
13:07
Speaker 1: do range of fire, and I can guarantee you in
13:10
Speaker 1: this case, they certainly did, and what they found out
13:14
Speaker 1: just didn't quite job with what Miss Brent Fraser.
13:17
Speaker 2: Was laying down.
13:34
Speaker 1: To this point, Dave, we've talked about the potential of
13:37
Speaker 1: self inflicted gunshop when with a twenty two caliber revolver,
13:41
Speaker 1: that is as it applies to Miss Fraser. But you know,
13:45
Speaker 1: we're kind of dancing around this topic of this poor man,
13:49
Speaker 1: mister Waddell, who, by the way, I think had recently retired.
13:54
Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken.
13:55
Speaker 3: That was the saddest part of all of this, Joe, is.
13:58
Speaker 1: You live, you live your life, and you get to
14:02
Speaker 1: this point.
14:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you've got a woman in your life that
14:06
Speaker 3: on again, off again relationship, but she's considerably younger. But ultimately,
14:09
Speaker 3: in his head, you know, this man was one of
14:12
Speaker 3: those people that liked to help people. That was the
14:14
Speaker 3: one thing that was consistent. It said, mister Wadell just
14:18
Speaker 3: liked helping people that needed help. But one of the
14:22
Speaker 3: things that did catch me here, Joe and I'm curious.
14:25
Speaker 3: Officers are on the scene and they immediately cleared the scene. Okay,
14:29
Speaker 3: we know that there's no arm burglars in the house anymore.
14:31
Speaker 3: We do have a wounded victim right now. We believe
14:34
Speaker 3: she is the victim and she's hurt. But there's also
14:37
Speaker 3: the body of a guy in the back of the house,
14:40
Speaker 3: back of the apartment, and he's been wrapped up. As
14:42
Speaker 3: we mentioned, he was wrapped in a blanket, a big
14:46
Speaker 3: garbage bag, and duct tape. Now it's possible that he
14:50
Speaker 3: might not be dead. He's wrapped up in all of that.
14:53
Speaker 3: But do the police unwrap him right there and determined
14:56
Speaker 3: what's going on with his body or do they look
14:58
Speaker 3: at him and go, okay, there's some there's a body
15:01
Speaker 3: in here. They're not alive. I mean, how how does
15:03
Speaker 3: that take place? I'm curious because they got to determine
15:06
Speaker 3: if he's alive or dead.
15:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, they have to, and they have to. It all
15:11
Speaker 1: depends on what their comfort level is really with this.
15:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not anop on that.
15:16
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well for me, if I'm coming across a wrapped
15:21
Speaker 1: body like this, I'm going to air more toward it.
15:26
Speaker 1: We at least need to assess externally if we can
15:28
Speaker 1: hear through this. The EMTs need to if you can
15:31
Speaker 1: find his chest, see if you can listen for a pulse,
15:34
Speaker 1: make sure you got your gloves are here for you know,
15:37
Speaker 1: the heart sounds or maybe respirations. But to the e MTS,
15:42
Speaker 1: I would say keep your gloves on because if he's
15:46
Speaker 1: wrapped in plastic, all right, that's a non poor surface.
15:51
Speaker 1: So that means that any kind of fingerprint latent print
15:55
Speaker 1: can be transferred onto that bag. And it's not so
16:00
Speaker 1: something you would necessarily want to cut through, because it's
16:04
Speaker 1: so fine and so very fragile that you can take
16:07
Speaker 1: those bags and if you take them off very carefully
16:11
Speaker 1: in a controlled environment where everybody's gloved up, they're paying
16:14
Speaker 1: attention to precisely what they're doing, you can retrieve prints
16:19
Speaker 1: off of those bags very easily. And you've also got
16:22
Speaker 1: this thing involving tape, and the exterior of the tape
16:26
Speaker 1: is very important as well, because again it kind of
16:30
Speaker 1: has a plastic coating on the outside of it. You
16:34
Speaker 1: can lift a print there. But you know what's even
16:37
Speaker 1: more important is the adhesive side. And if you'll think
16:43
Speaker 1: of the adhesive on the sticky side of duct tape,
16:47
Speaker 1: it's a lot like messing around with putty when you're
16:53
Speaker 1: a kid, any kind of you know, play do o
16:55
Speaker 1: or silly putty or whatever you're going to leave behind.
16:59
Speaker 1: It's almost what we're to is a plastic print where
17:01
Speaker 1: you can if you hold it just right, you can
17:04
Speaker 1: actually make out the friction ridge lines the details of
17:07
Speaker 1: the print itself in that And so you can if
17:10
Speaker 1: you use something like iodine fuming in that particular sensuation.
17:14
Speaker 3: Explain what that is.
17:15
Speaker 1: Well, it's you apply I dying or something similar to it.
17:20
Speaker 1: I think you can use ninhydrone as well as one
17:23
Speaker 1: of the other things that fingerprint people use, and it
17:25
Speaker 1: will literally freeze that fingerprint in that position. It won't
17:29
Speaker 1: go anywhere, and it has kind of a brown appearance
17:32
Speaker 1: to it after they do that. If the print examiner
17:37
Speaker 1: is really good, they'll be able to pick up on
17:39
Speaker 1: what we refer to as the minutia and the print,
17:41
Speaker 1: which are like the little details in the friction ridge
17:46
Speaker 1: lines that are left behind. You have things like pores, crossovers, deltas,
17:52
Speaker 1: ending ridges. I could go on and on and on.
17:55
Speaker 1: There's all these bits of ANUSI and you do a
17:57
Speaker 1: general classification on the print. You know, people hear whirls
18:01
Speaker 1: and loops and all these sorts of things, and then
18:04
Speaker 1: you tighten that down as you go through your assessment
18:06
Speaker 1: of it so you can recover that stuff off this
18:11
Speaker 1: guy's body. And what's fascinating about this is that they
18:16
Speaker 1: had a deputy corner out at the scene. Oh wow,
18:20
Speaker 1: and that individual is speaking with the forensic pathologists, and
18:25
Speaker 1: the forensic pathologist tells them, look, don't unwrap the body.
18:31
Speaker 1: Bring the body into the morgue in its pristine state.
18:35
Speaker 1: The other thing that we like to do in these cases,
18:39
Speaker 1: particularly if somebody has been down, and this is one
18:42
Speaker 1: other thing I fail to mention. I think that it's important.
18:45
Speaker 1: You're talking about after death assessment. One of the things
18:47
Speaker 1: that we have these seven cardinal signs of death that
18:51
Speaker 1: we look for. In one of those cardinal signs, well,
18:54
Speaker 1: one is lack of respiration, all right, that's one of
18:56
Speaker 1: the cardinal signs. But another thing that we look for
18:59
Speaker 1: are mortem changes. Now you can't necessarily see through a
19:04
Speaker 1: plastic bag and blood is settled on a body, but
19:06
Speaker 1: what you can appreciate is rigidity in the body. If
19:09
Speaker 1: the body is stiff, you can feel that through a
19:12
Speaker 1: plastic bag and you can say, yeah, this person's gone
19:15
Speaker 1: on to their reward. But the forensic pathologist, they requested
19:20
Speaker 1: that the body be brought to the morgue in its
19:24
Speaker 1: pristine shape, unwrapped totally. And when you get that body
19:31
Speaker 1: into a controlled environment where you have perfect lighting, and
19:36
Speaker 1: they have in most autopsy suites there'll be surgical style lighting,
19:41
Speaker 1: so it blasts out all of the shadows that are possible, Okay,
19:46
Speaker 1: that they can possibly do because you know with surgical
19:49
Speaker 1: lighting you need you need perfect clarity so that you
19:53
Speaker 1: can see every little detail, and you bring a photographer
19:56
Speaker 1: that's in there and you can capture everything on there.
19:59
Speaker 1: You can pick up on some little nuances you might
20:01
Speaker 1: not otherwise see at the scene, and the forensic pathologist
20:04
Speaker 1: is aware of that. But probably most fascinating of all
20:10
Speaker 1: relative to the decision that this forensic pathologist made, and
20:14
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily something I would normally agree with, but
20:18
Speaker 1: I understand it that forensic pathologist felt as though that
20:24
Speaker 1: if they could receive that body still wrapped up and
20:29
Speaker 1: in its pristine state, he could get an estimation of
20:35
Speaker 1: post mortem interval, that is, how long had mister Whitell
20:40
Speaker 1: been deceased. And we all know that one of the
20:43
Speaker 1: most important points along this entire case is this interesting
20:48
Speaker 1: nine to eleven call in her statements, that is Miss
20:51
Speaker 1: Frasier's statements from the scene. And as it turned out,
20:55
Speaker 1: the forensic pathologist was right. Twelve hours. That's half a day.
21:19
Speaker 1: For those of you counting math hard, I know it's
21:22
Speaker 1: hard for me, man, it really is. I was never
21:24
Speaker 1: a great math student, but I do know that twelve
21:27
Speaker 1: hours is half a day. What can you do with
21:32
Speaker 1: twelve hours? If you had twelve hours of what could
21:34
Speaker 1: you do with it? Well, if you're a scheming murderer,
21:38
Speaker 1: I suppose that you could try to get your story straight.
21:42
Speaker 1: I suppose you could kill someone maybe on the front
21:45
Speaker 1: end of that twelve hours, and then contemplate how in
21:48
Speaker 1: the world are you going to handle this moving forward,
21:52
Speaker 1: because you're left with a body that someone is going
21:58
Speaker 1: to have to answer for. In this case, I think
22:01
Speaker 1: that the forensic pathologists made the right choice here.
22:04
Speaker 3: You know, it's amazing to me how many things have
22:07
Speaker 3: to go right in an investigation to lead you down
22:11
Speaker 3: a path. This was not something that the suspect here,
22:15
Speaker 3: Deborah Fraser thought of in the space of thirty minutes
22:18
Speaker 3: and said, I'm done with this guy. You know, this
22:20
Speaker 3: was a long game here. Yeah. She During the investigation,
22:25
Speaker 3: police uncovered a number of things, because the first thing
22:27
Speaker 3: they do nowadays is start looking at your cell phone,
22:31
Speaker 3: your computers, things like that to find out what your
22:34
Speaker 3: history is, your search history, what have you been looking at,
22:36
Speaker 3: what have you been reading online? What are some of
22:39
Speaker 3: the things that are happening. And in this case, I
22:41
Speaker 3: mentioned at the very beginning that while she had an
22:44
Speaker 3: on again, off again relationship with mister Waddell, with Thomas Waddell,
22:49
Speaker 3: she also had another boyfriend, and the other boyfriend was
22:54
Speaker 3: not aware of mister Waddell. Mister Waddell don't think he
22:58
Speaker 3: was aware of the other guy either. So Deborah Fraser
23:02
Speaker 3: was able to play things in such a way that
23:05
Speaker 3: she was able to convince her boyfriend to pose as
23:12
Speaker 3: a bank fraud investigator and started calling Thomas Waddell. Now,
23:19
Speaker 3: remember Deborah Fraser is thirty six years old. Mister Waddell.
23:24
Speaker 3: Her boyfriend is sixty six and recently retired, and now
23:29
Speaker 3: he's getting calls from a guy about fraud regarding his account.
23:34
Speaker 3: And the man making the calls doesn't realize he is
23:37
Speaker 3: calling Deborah Fraser's sometime boyfriend. He doesn't really know why
23:42
Speaker 3: he's doing it, the second boyfriend, So there are now
23:45
Speaker 3: three people involved in this. Deborah Fraser playing her second
23:51
Speaker 3: boyfriend into doing things to terrorize her first boyfriend to
23:55
Speaker 3: get information, obviously about a bank account. And we find
24:00
Speaker 3: out that Deborah Fraser created a fake fraud email account
24:05
Speaker 3: where she posed as a fraud claims representative who was
24:09
Speaker 3: reaching out to Thomas Waddell, the victim. Here, investigators ended
24:14
Speaker 3: up concluding that the motive for the murder is financial gain.
24:19
Speaker 3: The second boyfriend gave Deborah Fraser rides the night of
24:24
Speaker 3: the killing. The second boyfriend did not know Fraser was
24:28
Speaker 3: in a relationship with mister Waddell, and the second boyfriend
24:31
Speaker 3: was manipulated by Fraser into making the calls to Thomas Waddell.
24:36
Speaker 3: So we have Deborah Fraser with a current new boyfriend
24:41
Speaker 3: terrorizing her current old boyfriend into a financial ploy that
24:47
Speaker 3: required her to get all this information and then kill
24:52
Speaker 3: Thomas Waddell. But they found out something else, Jessein Scott
24:56
Speaker 3: Morgan and in their online research they call it the
25:00
Speaker 3: forensic search of Fraser's phone. Yeah, they found that she
25:05
Speaker 3: researched how to load a revolver and how to uncock
25:11
Speaker 3: the hammer on a revolver. They also found that she
25:16
Speaker 3: researched how long does GSR stay on the skin Joe?
25:22
Speaker 3: That was searched at eight sixteen am on August tenth,
25:27
Speaker 3: about five hours before she called nine to one one. Yeah,
25:33
Speaker 3: what is GSR for those of us who don't know
25:36
Speaker 3: the technical issues here.
25:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's actually a test that we run to
25:42
Speaker 1: see if someone has not necessarily fired a weapon, but
25:46
Speaker 1: has been in proximity close enough to a weapon so
25:50
Speaker 1: that the gunshot residue. The GSR essentially comes in lights
25:56
Speaker 1: on these exposed areas of the body most of the time.
25:59
Speaker 1: What you're to be looking for if someone has held
26:01
Speaker 1: a weapon in their hand. If you think about the
26:04
Speaker 1: kind of U shape that you that your handmakes with
26:08
Speaker 1: the thumb and the index finger, if you placed a
26:11
Speaker 1: weapon in there, pistol, perhaps that when you initiate the
26:15
Speaker 1: firing sequence that there's going to be this cloud that
26:17
Speaker 1: kind of rises up and settles down, and so this
26:21
Speaker 1: agent that they're applying to the hand, what they're looking
26:25
Speaker 1: to do is to try to find the presence of barium, antimony,
26:31
Speaker 1: and lead, and all of those are components of propellant,
26:35
Speaker 1: which is what you know sends the projectile down range.
26:40
Speaker 1: And it's really hard to explain away the presence of
26:44
Speaker 1: those three elements of the package as it applies to
26:49
Speaker 1: gunshot residue. It's hard to you know. You can say, well,
26:53
Speaker 1: I don't know. I was using a lead pencil and
26:55
Speaker 1: I was sharpening a lead pencil and I got a
26:57
Speaker 1: lead on my hand. All right, how do you account
26:59
Speaker 1: for the bearing in the antimony? Well, they all go
27:02
Speaker 1: into the process of manufacturing, you know, the propellant, and
27:05
Speaker 1: so you believe that it's going to be there. Now
27:08
Speaker 1: this is superficial. Okay, this is superficial. So it's fragile.
27:14
Speaker 1: One of the things we try to do at scenes
27:17
Speaker 1: is if we have a suspect, you know, we we
27:22
Speaker 1: try to keep them away from water and prevent them
27:25
Speaker 1: from washing their hands just until they can get that
27:30
Speaker 1: GSR test. And as a matter of fact, she was
27:32
Speaker 1: so acutely aware of it, Dave that that she kind
27:37
Speaker 1: of flipped her story around here. She tried to state that, oh, yeah, well,
27:42
Speaker 1: the reason I would have just you know, if you're
27:45
Speaker 1: going to do the test on me, the reason that
27:48
Speaker 1: you would find it on me is that I had
27:50
Speaker 1: my hands down trying to protect myself when I was
27:53
Speaker 1: shot in the leg, and that the shower of powder
27:57
Speaker 1: came down on me and it contained the bury him
27:59
Speaker 1: in the antimony and the lead, and you know, that's
28:03
Speaker 1: one of the things we try to try to understand,
28:05
Speaker 1: you know, is the position. That's why it's so important
28:08
Speaker 1: to try to understand the deposition of say any kind
28:11
Speaker 1: of powder deposition that's on the that's visible, you know,
28:15
Speaker 1: where you get unburned grains of powder, gunpowder that's embedded
28:22
Speaker 1: in the skin, you can determine a range of fire.
28:24
Speaker 1: But she's trying to account for all of this stuff
28:27
Speaker 1: as she's moving down the road in her mind. But
28:30
Speaker 1: one of things she didn't count on was the fact
28:33
Speaker 1: that it go back to the forensic pathologist, is that he
28:37
Speaker 1: was able to determine because they did not unwrap that body.
28:41
Speaker 1: So it's not perfect calculus, but he was able to
28:45
Speaker 1: determine that this individual had been dead for at least
28:48
Speaker 1: twelve hours okay when this nine one one call was
28:52
Speaker 1: was initiated, And so that that bit of science skews
28:56
Speaker 1: the entire timeline, and he would have been assessing, well,
29:01
Speaker 1: he would have done a body temperature more than likely
29:04
Speaker 1: to try to assess that, to try to understand if
29:07
Speaker 1: the person had essentially assumed room temperature, because a lot if.
29:11
Speaker 3: They're wrapped in a blanket and a bag and duct
29:14
Speaker 3: table with that not hold some of the body.
29:16
Speaker 1: Would contain some of the heat. And so you're going
29:18
Speaker 1: to have to when you're doing that formula and you're
29:20
Speaker 1: trying to understand that, you're going to have to do
29:22
Speaker 1: that calculation within it, and it's going to skew the data.
29:25
Speaker 1: I think it will, because if the body was just
29:27
Speaker 1: laying out, say exposed, doesn't have to be nude, but
29:30
Speaker 1: just exposed. You know what does mama tell you when
29:33
Speaker 1: you're little. You got to put a hat on your
29:34
Speaker 1: head because you're gonna lose heat. You got to put
29:37
Speaker 1: mittens on your hands because you're gonna lose heat. You
29:39
Speaker 1: got to put shoes, socks and shoes on. You're gonna
29:41
Speaker 1: lose heat. We lose it out of our extremities. You
29:43
Speaker 1: retain it in your core for the longest period of time.
29:47
Speaker 1: But theoretically what's held forth is that we retain the
29:54
Speaker 1: longest time that we retain the heat that is generated
29:58
Speaker 1: by the energy that our body produced is in life
30:01
Speaker 1: maximum is twelve hours. Day. After that, your body essentially
30:06
Speaker 1: becomes inanimate. It becomes like a desk or a chair
30:09
Speaker 1: or anything else that occupies it space. It's impacted by
30:13
Speaker 1: the environment in which it rest at that point in time.
30:17
Speaker 1: And so that bit of valuable information went into the
30:22
Speaker 1: police when they're examining her. When I say examining her,
30:25
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about her physical person, but when they're
30:28
Speaker 1: doing their investigation and they're trying to marry up her alibi.
30:32
Speaker 1: That's one of the reasons I emphasized to my students
30:34
Speaker 1: all the time. It's so important for PMI post mortem
30:37
Speaker 1: interval that you glean that information because somebody's going to
30:41
Speaker 1: try to alibi themselves at some point toime. And when
30:43
Speaker 1: you look at a body and you see that body
30:45
Speaker 1: is at full rigidity or lividity is fixed or the
30:48
Speaker 1: core body temperature is skewed based upon the timeline they're
30:53
Speaker 1: giving you. You can look to the science and say,
30:56
Speaker 1: this is the ultimate light detector right here. This is
30:58
Speaker 1: not a polygraph, this is a science. Tell them that
31:00
Speaker 1: what you're saying doesn't compute with what the body is
31:03
Speaker 1: telling me.
31:03
Speaker 3: But don't investigators Still they look at what they're seeing
31:07
Speaker 3: in front of them, but they still have to investigate
31:09
Speaker 3: the story. They're told. They have witness and they still
31:12
Speaker 3: have to. Okay, she said there were two burglars in
31:15
Speaker 3: here and that she came in. They have to investigate
31:17
Speaker 3: it based on this is what she said happened. Now, granted,
31:21
Speaker 3: nothing in here looks legit to her story, but we
31:25
Speaker 3: still have to investigate, which means as they're going to
31:30
Speaker 3: research everything, they're pulling anything that costs could possibly have
31:34
Speaker 3: been touched by one of the two alleged burglars that
31:37
Speaker 3: were in the house. It all happened bam, bam bam,
31:39
Speaker 3: according to her story. So there was a lot going
31:42
Speaker 3: in in this apartment before the police arrived, and in
31:46
Speaker 3: minutes actually, because again on the nine to one one call,
31:50
Speaker 3: well what did we hear? We heard the gunshot? We've
31:52
Speaker 3: got all police on the scene very quickly, including the
31:55
Speaker 3: chief of police who arrived first. And you've got a
31:59
Speaker 3: body back there now that is wrapped up, you know,
32:02
Speaker 3: the blanket, the garbage bag, duct tape. There's a lot
32:06
Speaker 3: happening in this apartment in a very short period of time. So, yeah,
32:11
Speaker 3: what did you do? I mean, you're the forensic guy.
32:13
Speaker 3: What do you do when you walk into that.
32:15
Speaker 1: First Off, you're going to be very careful in this environment.
32:17
Speaker 1: You're going to get her out of there, which they did.
32:19
Speaker 1: They essentially evacuated her out to the to the extractor
32:23
Speaker 1: and took her to the hospital to treat her for
32:25
Speaker 1: this this gunshot one.
32:27
Speaker 3: How bad was the gunshot wound in her leg?
32:29
Speaker 1: It was bad enough so that she was pooling blood
32:32
Speaker 1: around her. But that's it's it's almost an elementary procedure
32:36
Speaker 1: when you go into an emergency room. Particularly if you
32:40
Speaker 1: can rule out that she hasn't severely broken a bone
32:44
Speaker 1: and she hasn't clipped an artery, they can patch her
32:48
Speaker 1: up pretty quickly, so it's not as ghastly as it sounds.
32:51
Speaker 1: It's not going to be like her leg's been blown
32:55
Speaker 1: off or something like this. That's not what happened. And
32:58
Speaker 1: the weapon that's used is very it's as far as
33:02
Speaker 1: calibers of weapon, it's on the low end. It's a
33:05
Speaker 1: twenty two caliber on it's a small repellt gun from
33:08
Speaker 1: a pellet Yeah, from a pellet gun, and which is
33:11
Speaker 1: zero point one seven seven there. And look that don't
33:14
Speaker 1: come at me with all the numbers because there's a
33:16
Speaker 1: lot of stuff that's in between there. But the most
33:19
Speaker 1: common uh so, the the point two two is very
33:26
Speaker 1: small and looks small, small as deadly as well. You
33:30
Speaker 1: can't think that it's not. But it was sufficient to
33:33
Speaker 1: the task for mister Waddell that when he.
33:38
Speaker 3: Was fined with him when they actually unwrapped him, Joe,
33:41
Speaker 3: I mean, now he's in the morgue right about the
33:45
Speaker 3: Emmy's office. I don't know the right term, but when
33:48
Speaker 3: they started wrapping him, there's going to have to be
33:52
Speaker 3: a lot of documentation, right.
33:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, there would be, and you know how how he
33:59
Speaker 1: was packing. And also I'm very curious, which they've never
34:03
Speaker 1: truly revealed in this case that if you look at
34:11
Speaker 1: someone that has first off, I've never heard of someone
34:14
Speaker 1: being wrapped up that is a victim of a burglary.
34:18
Speaker 1: It sounds I've heard of people I've had.
34:20
Speaker 2: I didn't think about that at all.
34:22
Speaker 3: I did not think about that.
34:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's just it's not like this is
34:25
Speaker 1: a kidnapping or a body dump I have now, I
34:29
Speaker 1: have worked cases, some of the most brutal cases where
34:31
Speaker 1: a homeowner came home and they surprised a burglar and
34:35
Speaker 1: they were beaten to death. But the burglar doesn't go
34:38
Speaker 1: to the trouble of wrapping and let's face it, packaging
34:41
Speaker 1: the body. So one of the most important things is
34:44
Speaker 1: did that round because he was shot in the back
34:46
Speaker 1: of the head. You famously said at the beginning of
34:50
Speaker 1: this episode, Dave, that they talked about how she stood
34:53
Speaker 1: behind him with his that's the possessive his weapon and
34:57
Speaker 1: shot him in the back of the head. Did the
35:00
Speaker 1: round pass thro any of the so called wrapping or packaging,
35:04
Speaker 1: because if that's the case, then you would have a
35:06
Speaker 1: grown man that was wrapped up in a comforter trash
35:10
Speaker 1: backs with tape all around it, and he is then
35:14
Speaker 1: shot through the bag or was he shot first and
35:18
Speaker 1: then wrapped in the bags and was anything cleaned up afterwards?
35:22
Speaker 1: Because it doesn't matter. Look, even if you're shot in
35:26
Speaker 1: the head with a we'll go back to the pellet rifle.
35:29
Speaker 1: If you're shot in the head with a pellet rifle,
35:30
Speaker 1: you're going to bleed. It's probably not going to break
35:33
Speaker 1: the skull, but it's going to break the scalp. And
35:36
Speaker 1: we go back to the thing I always talked about,
35:38
Speaker 1: how vascular the head is, You're going to bleed some.
35:42
Speaker 1: So where did this actually happen in the home? Was
35:46
Speaker 1: he contained in the bathtub and had it been rented down?
35:50
Speaker 1: Where was there evidence of bloody claws around? And who
35:53
Speaker 1: facilitated this? Because again, if you're a burglar, which you
35:57
Speaker 1: know by this time, the police are thinking that this
36:00
Speaker 1: is a load of bull crap, Because with burglaries, unless
36:05
Speaker 1: you're going in to look for something specific and you
36:08
Speaker 1: know where it's located, they're going to participate in something
36:11
Speaker 1: called rifling. That means that they'll rifle through the desk drawers,
36:14
Speaker 1: that'll throw them all aside, kitchen cabinets, everything, because nothing
36:18
Speaker 1: in that house has any value to them other than
36:20
Speaker 1: those things that they're looking for, money, jewelry, drugs, anything
36:25
Speaker 1: like that. Other than that, they don't care about the
36:29
Speaker 1: pennant that your mama passed down to you. They don't
36:31
Speaker 1: care about that unless it's entrusted with diamonds.
36:35
Speaker 3: And so I'm not kidding. I don't please, I'm not
36:40
Speaker 3: trying to offend anyone. But I missed it, okay when
36:45
Speaker 3: in doing this story, Yeah, I missed the entire idea
36:49
Speaker 3: that in order to believe her story, you have to
36:51
Speaker 3: believe that two burglars came in there, shot a guy
36:55
Speaker 3: in the head and then wrapped him up in a quill,
36:58
Speaker 3: wrapped him up in a garbage bag, you tape took
37:01
Speaker 3: him to the very back of the house because they
37:03
Speaker 3: were not in any kind of hurry at all to
37:05
Speaker 3: steal everything and get out of there. I mean, that's
37:07
Speaker 3: what you actually have to believe to believe her story. Yeah,
37:10
Speaker 3: where if you're gonna kill somebody in a robbery, you're
37:13
Speaker 3: gonna kill them. They're gonna die where they sit, and
37:16
Speaker 3: you're gonna grab stuff and run and run.
37:18
Speaker 1: You know why, why are you going to go to
37:19
Speaker 1: all this trouble? That's why this makes this so absurd.
37:23
Speaker 1: The police would have to so buy in to this narrative,
37:28
Speaker 1: hook line and sinker that they're going to throw all
37:32
Speaker 1: common sense and reasoning out out the door. When it
37:36
Speaker 1: comes to what miss Frasier is laying down. And of
37:38
Speaker 1: course in this case, they determined that this is not
37:42
Speaker 1: only was she fraudulent in trying to steal this old
37:46
Speaker 1: man's money, you know from you know, from a life
37:50
Speaker 1: that was spent that got him too retirement. Might I
37:53
Speaker 1: might I add, but she, she, the whole the whole
37:58
Speaker 1: scenario was fraudulent everything before them. And this is truly
38:02
Speaker 1: in the pure sense, what we refer to as a
38:04
Speaker 1: staged as a stage to death. This is something other
38:08
Speaker 1: than the way it appears. And isn't it interesting You
38:12
Speaker 1: can have a staged homicide that's actually a result of
38:15
Speaker 1: the homicide. Most of the time when we're talking about staging,
38:18
Speaker 1: we'll talk about suicide homicides that are made to look
38:22
Speaker 1: like suicides. That's the most common thing. But here you
38:25
Speaker 1: have a staged homicide that was actually a homicide, and
38:29
Speaker 1: she tried to make it look like someone else committed
38:32
Speaker 1: the homicide. And she went to such a great length
38:35
Speaker 1: that she decided to shoot herself with the same weapon,
38:38
Speaker 1: by the way, that was owned by this man. And
38:41
Speaker 1: he had many weapons in his house, had he had weapons,
38:45
Speaker 1: he had cash, he had other things in that whole,
38:48
Speaker 1: none of those items that were taken away, but one
38:51
Speaker 1: of the things that was really glaring in this case,
38:53
Speaker 1: and I think probably at the end of the day,
38:55
Speaker 1: tells the tale. One thing that they did find in
39:00
Speaker 1: that home that was destroyed and it was lying about
39:04
Speaker 1: on the ground or images of miss Frazier.
39:08
Speaker 2: Mister white Belt together.
39:11
Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks