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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Forensic Anthropology and the Suicide of Gabby Petito's Murderer · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:01
Speaker 1: Body dynas, but Joseph's gotten more. It's an interesting thing,
0:09
Speaker 1: the human skeleton. Did you know that every stage of
0:14
Speaker 1: life that we go through is kind of marked by
0:20
Speaker 1: our physical support system, if you will, our anatomical support system,
0:25
Speaker 1: our framework, that framework that our organs rest within and
0:31
Speaker 1: that our skin stretches over. It marks time for us.
0:37
Speaker 1: It is a It gives off developmental signals. It talks
0:44
Speaker 1: about disease, and I say talk as if you can
0:47
Speaker 1: have a conversation with it. But if you read it right,
0:50
Speaker 1: you can learn a lot about people through their skeletons.
0:57
Speaker 1: And in my world, in the world of metal legal
1:00
Speaker 1: death investigation, sometimes skeletal remains are all that we have
1:08
Speaker 1: to tell the tale. I'm Josephcotten Morgan and this is
1:14
Speaker 1: body Bags, Brother Dave. I've been excited about doing this
1:20
Speaker 1: episode with you because I got to make a confession
1:23
Speaker 1: right here, right now and tell you this dirty, dark
1:27
Speaker 1: little secret about myself. I am, at my heart, a
1:37
Speaker 1: amateur frustrated forensic anthropologists. I've always worked with forensic anthropologists.
1:46
Speaker 1: I've been in their worlds, I've been in their labs,
1:49
Speaker 1: I've been in the field with them, slapping mosquitoes and
1:54
Speaker 1: fending off snakes. Yes, been in swampy walk, I've been
2:00
Speaker 1: in a rugged terrain. But I have always been enamored
2:05
Speaker 1: a forensic anthropologists, and every opportunity that I have, I've
2:10
Speaker 1: always welcomed that moment when I can kind of sit
2:13
Speaker 1: at their feet and learn because they're fascinating individuals. They're
2:18
Speaker 1: fascinating because they have to take very very little and
2:25
Speaker 1: tell a story with it. It's not like a forensic
2:28
Speaker 1: pathologist where you still have soft tissue, you've got evidence
2:33
Speaker 1: of trauma in the immediate with focal areas of hemorrhage
2:39
Speaker 1: and all that stuff that we talked about on bodybags. No, no, no,
2:43
Speaker 1: that's not what forensic anthropologists do. They have to frame
2:48
Speaker 1: everything out in very broad sense, and sometimes they can
2:51
Speaker 1: come up with detailed information, but it's just it's the
2:54
Speaker 1: way they go about it. The tools that they have
2:56
Speaker 1: to utilize. And I'm not talking about stuff that they
2:59
Speaker 1: can necessarily holding their hands as far as tools, but
3:02
Speaker 1: their intellect that those things that they bring to the
3:05
Speaker 1: table to try to literally and just envision this for
3:10
Speaker 1: a second day, to try to fill in the blanks
3:13
Speaker 1: where soft tissue used to be. It no longer exists.
3:17
Speaker 1: You got the framework, but you know, the shingles are
3:20
Speaker 1: off the roof. There's no more siding on the house.
3:23
Speaker 1: All you've got is that framework that's left behind.
3:27
Speaker 2: And so as we dig into this today, dig.
3:33
Speaker 1: Hey, I see what you did there.
3:35
Speaker 2: I follow that all right.
3:36
Speaker 3: But I noticed when you were looking and sharing some
3:40
Speaker 3: of this information with me that you had the basic
3:44
Speaker 3: five things or ten things whatever, the very specific parts
3:49
Speaker 3: of forensic anthropology. Yeah, so like from physical anthropology to linguistics. Yes,
3:57
Speaker 3: so if we carve these out one at a time
4:02
Speaker 3: and they're all tied together, I'm already ready to flunk
4:06
Speaker 3: the first final because having done stuff on radio and
4:12
Speaker 3: television dealing with crime stuff forever, it seems, and I've
4:16
Speaker 3: never dug this deep. I've heard things talked about, I've
4:20
Speaker 3: heard you talk about them, but like, when you get
4:22
Speaker 3: right down to it, physical anthropology, start right there, Joe,
4:26
Speaker 3: and tell me what is that and what does it
4:28
Speaker 3: mean to you?
4:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's back up a little bit, because you have
4:31
Speaker 1: you have this kind of you. If you think about
4:34
Speaker 1: what's contained beneath the roof of the house of anthropology,
4:40
Speaker 1: you know, you go back to people like Margaret and
4:42
Speaker 1: Meade that were studying tribal behaviors and all that sort
4:45
Speaker 1: of stuff.
4:47
Speaker 2: And she was real quick. I apologize for jumping in. Yeah,
4:52
Speaker 2: all right.
4:53
Speaker 3: Back in the day, I think I was in sixth grade,
4:56
Speaker 3: we lived two houses down from a woman named Margaret Meade.
5:03
Speaker 3: Really yeah, and she was really kind of secretive. You know,
5:06
Speaker 3: she was probably in her fifties at the time. I
5:09
Speaker 3: couldn't really tell she was old, you know, and everybody
5:13
Speaker 3: over for sanction.
5:15
Speaker 2: Yeah. But anyway, I thought, for the longest time, is
5:18
Speaker 2: that her?
5:18
Speaker 3: You know, when her.
5:19
Speaker 2: Name came up in like junior high something anyway.
5:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, you first hear junior high.
5:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, it wasn't. But I would walk by her house.
5:26
Speaker 1: Thinking what are the odds?
5:27
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I mean it's the thought. It's just you know, she's.
5:34
Speaker 1: Part of the study of cultural anthropology and you know,
5:38
Speaker 1: anthro it has to do with the study of mankind. Uh.
5:42
Speaker 1: And some people will say, well, it's the study of
5:45
Speaker 1: individual personages or it's a study of groups, and she,
5:52
Speaker 1: you know, she's an example of kind of how that blended,
5:54
Speaker 1: I think. But that's you have these multiple sections within anthropology,
6:00
Speaker 1: and you know, one of my favorite things under the
6:03
Speaker 1: umbrella of anthropology is actually linguistics. I'm fascinated by linguistics.
6:10
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated by linguists that you know, can talk about
6:15
Speaker 1: the origins of languages and you know, and all of
6:19
Speaker 1: these all of these different little subtleties relative to how
6:23
Speaker 1: we communicate with one another in the origin of you know,
6:27
Speaker 1: of various types of languages and how we're kind of
6:30
Speaker 1: all interconnected that people don't think about. But then you
6:34
Speaker 1: come to physical anthropology, and beneath that umbrella you can
6:41
Speaker 1: go down a couple of different roads. You have physical anthropology,
6:46
Speaker 1: which some would say a subset of that is archaeology
6:54
Speaker 1: and paleo which goes back, you know, into the time
6:59
Speaker 1: of dinosaurs and all those sorts of things. But for
7:02
Speaker 1: our purposes, we you know, we have forensic anthropology. And
7:07
Speaker 1: anybody that starts off wanting to be a forensic anthropologist,
7:11
Speaker 1: which mind you, is a very long road, you're going
7:18
Speaker 1: to be rooted in all of those classical studies that
7:20
Speaker 1: individuals do in anthropology. You got to really want that.
7:23
Speaker 1: Because here's the thing. I have a lot of students
7:26
Speaker 1: that come to me and they'll say, Professor Morgan, I
7:29
Speaker 1: want to go to the body farm and work up there,
7:31
Speaker 1: and I want to become a forensic anthropologist. I'm like,
7:35
Speaker 1: are you sure be careful what you're what you're asking
7:38
Speaker 1: for here, because it's going to be a very long road,
7:42
Speaker 1: you know, to attain the level of skill that you need.
7:45
Speaker 1: Most forensic anthropologists they don't hang a shingle out. It's
7:50
Speaker 1: not like they've got a business. Okay, where you go
7:54
Speaker 1: to and you walk into the forensic anthropologist's office and
7:58
Speaker 1: you know, you're sitting in the outer room you're reading
8:00
Speaker 1: I don't know, you're reading Red Book and you're waiting
8:05
Speaker 1: for an appointment or something. It's not like that. That's
8:08
Speaker 1: a different kind of doctor. You're in there consulted. And
8:13
Speaker 1: guess what, most of them work in academia, so there's
8:17
Speaker 1: not enough work out there to support yourself. Most people
8:22
Speaker 1: that are forensic anthropologists work work in work in institutions
8:30
Speaker 1: somewhere where they teach in addition to it, and then
8:33
Speaker 1: assault as a forensic anthropologists.
8:36
Speaker 3: That's that's an amazing thing when you because I really
8:39
Speaker 3: did think that you have a case and you you
8:44
Speaker 3: know what you need in terms of looking into this,
8:46
Speaker 3: and you know, I need a forensic anthropologist. I really
8:48
Speaker 3: did think that you had ten of them, you know,
8:52
Speaker 3: and you just start top of the list and you start.
8:54
Speaker 2: Calling who's available. You know.
8:56
Speaker 3: It was only after doing this show for some time
8:58
Speaker 3: that I realized that most of the people who do
9:01
Speaker 3: this very specialized work and requiring a lot of education
9:06
Speaker 3: in the classroom tremendous amount, and even more education out
9:10
Speaker 3: in the field working with somebody who really knows what
9:12
Speaker 3: they're doing, that they are lashed to a desk and
9:16
Speaker 3: have to create the time to even go back out
9:19
Speaker 3: in the field.
9:20
Speaker 2: It's a very difficult thing to compromse. I just thought
9:22
Speaker 2: they were I don't know why.
9:24
Speaker 1: Most of these people that are academic anthropologists, many of
9:31
Speaker 1: them work in large institutions. And there's a term that
9:34
Speaker 1: she used in academia, and you've probably heard it before,
9:38
Speaker 1: but it bears repeating. It's called publisher parish. So they
9:43
Speaker 1: study publisher parish. That means that you have to have
9:46
Speaker 1: ongoing research where you're essentially what it comes down to,
9:50
Speaker 1: a lot of people will hold it up and say, well,
9:52
Speaker 1: we're we're studying for the betterment of academia, and you know, no,
9:57
Speaker 1: you're not. You're you're studying and so that you can
10:00
Speaker 1: get a federal grant and bring it back into the institution.
10:03
Speaker 1: And the institution needs those moneies in order to continue
10:06
Speaker 1: to function. And that's demonstrative of what's going on at
10:09
Speaker 1: the institution. We're just putting all cards on the table here.
10:12
Speaker 1: That's the reality of it. So if you're a forensic anthropologist,
10:16
Speaker 1: not only are you teaching classes, but you're also having
10:20
Speaker 1: to do individual research and oh, by the bye, you're
10:23
Speaker 1: in addition to that, you're working with a variety of
10:26
Speaker 1: different law enforcement agencies. I think probably the template for that,
10:30
Speaker 1: and the best example is doctor Bill Bass, who founded
10:34
Speaker 1: the Body Farm up in ut Up at the University
10:37
Speaker 1: of Tennessee and Knoxville and solely for the purpose of
10:41
Speaker 1: trying to understand how human beings decay, which is something
10:45
Speaker 1: that most people in their wildest dreams would not think
10:51
Speaker 1: about that occurring. And he created this decay lab, if
10:56
Speaker 1: you will. And now there's several of them that are
10:59
Speaker 1: out there institutions. One of the ones that comes to
11:02
Speaker 1: mind is the Maple Center, which is down at the
11:04
Speaker 1: University of Florida. You say, well, Morgan, why would you
11:07
Speaker 1: need why would you need two of these in the South. Well,
11:11
Speaker 1: first off, there's not just two. I think Western Carolina
11:14
Speaker 1: has one as well now or they did. Did you
11:18
Speaker 1: know that when we talk about decomposition and how remains
11:25
Speaker 1: are naturally rendered down, the impact of the environment in Knoxville,
11:32
Speaker 1: Tennessee is completely different than if we were in gains
11:37
Speaker 1: with Florida. Those two environments are so desperately apart from
11:41
Speaker 1: one another. You're not going to have same insects, You're
11:44
Speaker 1: not going to have same environmental conditions. All of those
11:48
Speaker 1: considerations have to go in and it's just like, and
11:50
Speaker 1: I submit that a lot of the data that you
11:52
Speaker 1: might collect in long term research at a place like
11:55
Speaker 1: UT is not necessarily going to apply if you're working
11:59
Speaker 1: a case, let's say in Bismarck, North Dakota, Okay, because
12:04
Speaker 1: the environment is going to dictate a lot of this.
12:07
Speaker 1: You know, just what's your insect life up there, because
12:09
Speaker 1: it ain't going to be the same as it is,
12:13
Speaker 1: you know, in smoky mountains, and it's not going to
12:15
Speaker 1: be the same as you're going to get down in
12:17
Speaker 1: that marshy territory down in Gainesville where it's super hot
12:20
Speaker 1: and humid and all those sorts of things. And you
12:23
Speaker 1: could extend it out even further. You know what about
12:25
Speaker 1: you know because there's a very famous entomologist world were
12:28
Speaker 1: renowned entomologists that worked at the University of Hawaii or
12:33
Speaker 1: was it the University of Hawaii or the Shamanat I
12:37
Speaker 1: think anyway, it doesn't matter, but he was in Hawaii. Well,
12:41
Speaker 1: his world, if he's studying human remains, desiccation, human remains,
12:47
Speaker 1: that world is going to be completely different than some
12:50
Speaker 1: other locations. So you have to have a skill set
12:55
Speaker 1: where I think as a forensic anthropologist, where you study
12:59
Speaker 1: or an understanding variety of things first off and at
13:02
Speaker 1: the most basic human anatomy, and you have to know
13:06
Speaker 1: it like the back of your hand. Nobody intended you
13:11
Speaker 1: have to know human anatomy. You have to be able
13:14
Speaker 1: to here's an interesting thing and I heard this little
13:16
Speaker 1: I got to tell you the story because it always
13:18
Speaker 1: fascinated me. There was a story that was related to
13:23
Speaker 1: me by a friend of mine that was a forendsic
13:26
Speaker 1: anthropologist and had gone through the program at UT and
13:30
Speaker 1: he did. He had to go through what was heard
13:33
Speaker 1: too as the box test, and the box test was
13:38
Speaker 1: where doctor Bass would sit on one side of the
13:43
Speaker 1: table and the student would be on the other side
13:47
Speaker 1: of the table and there'd be a cardboard box in
13:49
Speaker 1: between you, and it had holes cut in either end.
13:53
Speaker 1: You couldn't see inside the box. And doctor Bass would
13:56
Speaker 1: insert his hand into one end of the box. Students
14:00
Speaker 1: and sert their hand into the other side of the box,
14:02
Speaker 1: and the box is filled with comingled skeletal remains, and
14:08
Speaker 1: just by touch, just by feel, doctor Bass would pick
14:13
Speaker 1: up that element that's contained in there. It could be
14:15
Speaker 1: a raccoon bone, it could be a human finger, an
14:24
Speaker 1: element of the hand, and just by touch you had
14:28
Speaker 1: to tell him what it was blindly. That's how rigorous
14:36
Speaker 1: this is. And just let that sink in just for
14:39
Speaker 1: a second, because that's you know, when you hit that
14:42
Speaker 1: level of where you're using kind of your tactile senses
14:46
Speaker 1: to be able to and you know, it's amazing the
14:51
Speaker 1: training that these people receive. People think about it, well,
14:55
Speaker 1: I'm going to go to the I'm going to go
14:57
Speaker 1: to the Body Farm, or I'm going to go to
14:59
Speaker 1: the Maple Center. Take one of these courses. Yeah, you
15:02
Speaker 1: can do that, and you have a foundation, you know,
15:05
Speaker 1: for what moves forward. Because there are specialized courses that
15:08
Speaker 1: civilians and law enforcement you can go to, but it's
15:11
Speaker 1: not like going through a master's or a doctoral program,
15:14
Speaker 1: certainly a doctoral program. When you get there, I puts.
15:18
Speaker 2: In the box just to mess with them.
15:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, kidd. It's the prospect of that on
15:23
Speaker 1: one level is very terrifying to me. But you have
15:26
Speaker 1: to put on your science hat when you do that.
15:29
Speaker 3: I'm just thinking of the training and education it would
15:31
Speaker 3: take to determine this is a raccoon bone and not.
15:35
Speaker 2: A foot a small bone from the foot.
15:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, because we've got a billion bones in there and
15:39
Speaker 3: some are really small, and that I mean, that just
15:41
Speaker 3: boggles my mind that you could do that by touch.
15:44
Speaker 1: Well. I got to tell you one of a little
15:46
Speaker 1: interesting story. The same friend of mine who was from
15:50
Speaker 1: Louisiana but went to ut for his masters and its
15:54
Speaker 1: PhD uh. He used to like to take back roads home.
15:59
Speaker 1: He stayed off of interstates. It was just this thing.
16:02
Speaker 1: He just liked to travel, you know, through the un
16:06
Speaker 1: you know, through the less populated areas of the South.
16:10
Speaker 1: And he had made it all the way from Knoxville
16:12
Speaker 1: and he was driving through like middle Middle Mississippi, you know,
16:16
Speaker 1: heading home to South Louisiana, and he pulled into a
16:20
Speaker 1: filling station there and there was a guy.
16:25
Speaker 2: That was.
16:27
Speaker 1: That was the attendant, if you will, and it's a
16:30
Speaker 1: typical kind of Southern image. You can imagine he fell
16:34
Speaker 1: and overall sitting outside in an old broken chair, and
16:39
Speaker 1: he greeted my friend, you know, as he drove up,
16:43
Speaker 1: and my friend said that he noticed guy had a
16:47
Speaker 1: necklace run around him, a leather necklace, and he looked
16:50
Speaker 1: at it and he said he saw a pennant on it.
16:54
Speaker 1: And then further closer examination, he realized that it was
16:57
Speaker 1: not a pennant, but it was a toothpick and it
17:00
Speaker 1: was hanging and it was a toothpick made out of bone.
17:05
Speaker 1: And instantaneously, because of his training at UT, he knew
17:09
Speaker 1: what that bone was. It was a vaculum. Do you
17:11
Speaker 1: know what a vaculum is?
17:13
Speaker 2: Daved?
17:14
Speaker 1: A baculum is actually a bone that is are you
17:19
Speaker 1: ready for this? That it's contained as part of the
17:23
Speaker 1: antomical structure of certain animals, particularly raccoons, that allows them
17:28
Speaker 1: to achieve an erection, and so it can be taken
17:36
Speaker 1: and filed to a sharp point. And I'd never heard
17:42
Speaker 1: of this before. And you can drill a hole in
17:44
Speaker 1: one end of it, hanging around your neck and use
17:46
Speaker 1: it as a toothpick. And this fella had one of those.
17:50
Speaker 1: It's that kind of attention to detail. I was with
17:53
Speaker 1: the same friend of mine one day and we were
17:56
Speaker 1: walking across the construction area to go get a cup
17:58
Speaker 1: of coffee, not too far away from the Medical Examiner's
18:01
Speaker 1: office and construction areas. If you're ever walking through I
18:06
Speaker 1: think most people can identify with this. You see clods
18:08
Speaker 1: of dirt built up, laying about and that sort of thing,
18:12
Speaker 1: and you look down at the earth and to us,
18:14
Speaker 1: we see clods of dirt. To him, it wasn't like that.
18:20
Speaker 1: My friend always walked around with his head downward looking
18:27
Speaker 1: and I heard him say hmm. And I learned a
18:30
Speaker 1: long time ago that if this individual ever said hmm
18:35
Speaker 1: or wow, look at that, it's something I need to
18:37
Speaker 1: take notice of. He reaches down, picks up a clod
18:40
Speaker 1: of dirt, cracks it in half, and he caught the
18:43
Speaker 1: edge of something that was abnormal in his clod, and
18:46
Speaker 1: he pulled out what he estimated to be an eighteen
18:51
Speaker 1: ninety friction match holder with the carving of a or
18:59
Speaker 1: the impression of a dog and a hunter on it
19:03
Speaker 1: where a fellow had dropped the scene where he kept
19:07
Speaker 1: his matches in and he could strike them, and therese
19:11
Speaker 1: called friction matches, the old kind where you can see
19:13
Speaker 1: somebody like flicking it with their thumb, you know, like
19:15
Speaker 1: they're doing the movies, and I never would have seen that.
19:19
Speaker 1: But it's that kind of training and attention to detail
19:22
Speaker 1: that you want in any kind of forensic anthropologists you're
19:27
Speaker 1: going to invite onto your death scene. I think probably
19:45
Speaker 1: out of I don't know if you guys share this opinion,
19:48
Speaker 1: but for me, out of all of the Terminator movies
19:51
Speaker 1: with Schwarzenegger, my favorite one is the second one, you know,
19:54
Speaker 1: with the Liquid guy. I love that movie. I'd watch it.
20:01
Speaker 1: It's almost like a remote drop moment for me. I
20:03
Speaker 1: watch it pretty much every time that it comes on.
20:06
Speaker 1: First one's okay, I never really watched the other ones,
20:12
Speaker 1: but there's a line in that movie involving Sarah Connor
20:17
Speaker 1: where she is holding someone against their will and she
20:22
Speaker 1: says to them there are two hundred I think it
20:26
Speaker 1: was two hundred and six bones in the human body,
20:30
Speaker 1: and she implies at least that she's going to break
20:34
Speaker 1: every one of them if this individual doesn't comply to
20:37
Speaker 1: her and that you know, that ain't gonna happen. But
20:43
Speaker 1: at any rate, she brings that up. And one of
20:46
Speaker 1: the things that you think about with skeletal anatomy is
20:52
Speaker 1: that it's so vast and just you know, just indulge
20:56
Speaker 1: me here and think about this with with the with
21:04
Speaker 1: the skeletal anatomy, most adults do have approximately and it
21:08
Speaker 1: can vary, do have two hundred and six bones in
21:11
Speaker 1: the body. Okay, babies are born with two hundred and seventy's.
21:18
Speaker 1: It's one of those weird things where the older you get,
21:23
Speaker 1: the fewer bones you have developmentally, and that kind of
21:26
Speaker 1: interesting and that's that goes through the process of the
21:29
Speaker 1: bones fusing and these sorts of things where you're you know,
21:34
Speaker 1: you're developing along the way. And again those numbers, many
21:40
Speaker 1: people think that those numbers are absolutely static. Sometimes they're not.
21:43
Speaker 1: Sometimes people will have more or fewer. But on the whole,
21:51
Speaker 1: it's approximately two hundred and two hundred and six. And
21:54
Speaker 1: you've got two separate if you want to break it
21:58
Speaker 1: down atomically so that we can understand it, you've got uh,
22:06
Speaker 1: two axes that you work on really with the human skeleton.
22:09
Speaker 1: You have the what's referred to as the axillary, which
22:14
Speaker 1: is going to be kind of the mid line, that
22:17
Speaker 1: the center part of your body. And then you have
22:19
Speaker 1: the appendicular and those are like your attachments, like your
22:22
Speaker 1: arms and your legs. So you've got your center core,
22:26
Speaker 1: your trunk, which is going to be the axilla, and
22:29
Speaker 1: then you're going to have the appendicular that extends out
22:33
Speaker 1: from the bodies. So you're working in those two, those
22:35
Speaker 1: two broad groups when you're trying to determine, you know,
22:41
Speaker 1: what remains there are. I was thinking, David, I was
22:44
Speaker 1: telling you before we went on air to days start
22:50
Speaker 1: taping taping boy dating myself there when Brian Laundry's remained
23:00
Speaker 1: were found down there in that swamp. I'm actually looking
23:06
Speaker 1: at his report right now that the forensic anthropologists generated.
23:12
Speaker 1: By the way, it's very well written report.
23:15
Speaker 2: Back up very quickly.
23:17
Speaker 3: Brian Laundry the person who killed his fiance Gabby Gabby
23:26
Speaker 3: sorry Gabby Patito and then drove her band that she
23:29
Speaker 3: made for back to his parents' house in Florida, where
23:31
Speaker 3: they had been living before they were on their trip,
23:33
Speaker 3: and then after dodging police with help from his parents,
23:36
Speaker 3: he then goes out into the woods camping and commits suicide.
23:41
Speaker 3: But after committing suicide, the area where he did it
23:45
Speaker 3: in that park got flooded. Yeah, okay, So the reason
23:51
Speaker 3: I'm setting that scene is a lot of people don't
23:53
Speaker 3: realize what the forensic anthropologist was required to do when
23:59
Speaker 3: they got on scene. So what was different about that
24:02
Speaker 3: Joe that required a very very special investigator to come
24:07
Speaker 3: in and figure out what happened?
24:09
Speaker 2: I mean, he's got a gun.
24:10
Speaker 1: Shut in the head, right, Yeah, he does. And by
24:13
Speaker 1: the way, it's a very atypical gunshot wound as far
24:16
Speaker 1: as self inflicted. I've always you know, kind of raised
24:19
Speaker 1: an eyebrow to that.
24:20
Speaker 2: But that's okay.
24:22
Speaker 1: Well, it wasn't necessarily positioned in classic classic location as
24:28
Speaker 1: far as an entrance wind goes. It was more up
24:31
Speaker 1: and back, which you know, always intrigued me intellectually.
24:36
Speaker 2: You know, where would it normally be? Where would you expect?
24:38
Speaker 1: Well, you're you're thinking there are Let's just break it
24:42
Speaker 1: down this way. There are four major bone groups that
24:46
Speaker 1: compose the human skull. You got. You'll tap your forehead,
24:49
Speaker 1: that's your frontal bone, and up above it bilaterally on
24:54
Speaker 1: either side, you have what's referred to as the paradal
24:58
Speaker 1: or some people will say parati heel, and it's kind
25:02
Speaker 1: of a curved bone. It's on both sides and it's
25:05
Speaker 1: high up and then below the proetal on either side. Again, bilaterally,
25:10
Speaker 1: you have the temporal bone, okay, which is a very
25:13
Speaker 1: thin bone. It's on either side forward of the ear.
25:17
Speaker 1: As the prital bone sweeps back and down, it marries
25:23
Speaker 1: up with the excipital bone, which is that bony protuberance
25:30
Speaker 1: that you have on the backside. And those are like
25:32
Speaker 1: the four major bone groups in forensics that we look at,
25:36
Speaker 1: you know, Like if we'll I'll give you an example
25:38
Speaker 1: why it's important. Like when we go to the scene
25:42
Speaker 1: most of the time, if we're talking about an injury
25:46
Speaker 1: to the skull, we're going to say things like he's
25:49
Speaker 1: sustained a gunshot woman or a parent gunshot wound to
25:54
Speaker 1: the right right temple or in the right pril bone.
26:01
Speaker 1: And it is i don't know, five centimeters four of
26:06
Speaker 1: the top of the right ear. It's superior to the
26:10
Speaker 1: right right miatus, which is your actually to your ear hole.
26:17
Speaker 1: It's it's superior to that by ten ten centimeters and
26:23
Speaker 1: so it's all about orientation, you know, where these are
26:26
Speaker 1: with laundry in particular, if you have this baseline of
26:33
Speaker 1: number of bones and again this approximation of two hundred
26:36
Speaker 1: and six when they went out there day to this
26:40
Speaker 1: and I'm glad you pointed this out, you know, I
26:41
Speaker 1: completely Isn't that amazing? We talked about this case for years, right,
26:46
Speaker 1: certainly months with gap Tito, and it's you know, for
26:50
Speaker 1: me going you know, moving forward, and probably with you.
26:53
Speaker 1: I hate to speak for you, but you know, it
26:54
Speaker 1: begins to fade, you know, after a while, because you're
26:57
Speaker 1: layering all these other cases on top of it. When
27:01
Speaker 1: they went to examine or try to recover his remains,
27:07
Speaker 1: they've they found roughly one hundred and three bones. Okay,
27:11
Speaker 1: So that that gives you an idea, you know, you're
27:15
Speaker 1: you're literally that is literally if you're thinking about two
27:18
Speaker 1: hundred and six bones that we're supposed to have had
27:22
Speaker 1: half of that? Okay, Now what do we mean by that? Well,
27:27
Speaker 1: you know you've got and bones can range in size,
27:30
Speaker 1: you know, I guess the smallest bone is probably the
27:34
Speaker 1: state ease, which is one of those tiny little bones
27:37
Speaker 1: that's inside of your ear all right, you remember that
27:39
Speaker 1: we learned all that in school. You know, we've got
27:41
Speaker 1: the hammer and the anvil and all that stuff.
27:44
Speaker 3: Just to give you an idea, Like many people listening
27:46
Speaker 3: right now, I actually probably napped for most of that,
27:50
Speaker 3: and then the night before I broke out the book
27:54
Speaker 3: and memorized as best I could. Took the test the
27:58
Speaker 3: next day, and if I got a C minus, I
27:59
Speaker 3: was the abbeys.
28:01
Speaker 1: My big bugaboo was always the hands and the feet.
28:04
Speaker 1: Those the hands and feet are absolutely miracle creation of God.
28:11
Speaker 1: They're they're so complex and so a typical cap to
28:16
Speaker 1: any any doctor that's out there that works on hands
28:20
Speaker 1: and feet, because it's the The anatomy is so complex,
28:24
Speaker 1: the biomechanics are so complex. But you know, you have
28:28
Speaker 1: the state ease, which is arguably the tiniest bone, and
28:33
Speaker 1: then the longest bone and the human bodies the femur,
28:36
Speaker 1: which is you know where it fits into uh, into
28:40
Speaker 1: your your hip socket if you will, extends all the
28:43
Speaker 1: way from your hip down. So with with laundry. For example,
28:47
Speaker 1: he you know, he roughly had one hundred, one hundred
28:52
Speaker 1: and eight bones that they were covered out there. And
28:54
Speaker 1: what made is so very difficult is that this Dave,
28:57
Speaker 1: this was not This was not a burial, okay, And
29:03
Speaker 1: forensic anthropologists have to work in a variety of different conditions.
29:11
Speaker 1: This is a water environment, which they by the way,
29:16
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken, I probably am. I think that
29:21
Speaker 1: the forensic anthropologists either came from University of Southern Florida
29:25
Speaker 1: or the University of Central Florida. My money's on Southern
29:29
Speaker 1: Florida though, And she kind of led the team out there,
29:33
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken, because FBI crime Scene Response team
29:37
Speaker 1: was already out there. And this is very complex because
29:39
Speaker 1: once bodies begin to decay and you're in a very
29:44
Speaker 1: austere environment like this, the kind of rising and falling
29:49
Speaker 1: of tide are not tied. But the water levels in
29:53
Speaker 1: the swampy area are going to be dictated by rainfall.
29:57
Speaker 1: And you know, for those of us that have you know,
30:00
Speaker 1: spent any time in Florida, you know that they'll get
30:02
Speaker 1: gully washers down there, that will everything will be you'll
30:06
Speaker 1: have water standing in the streets well. Just and that's
30:09
Speaker 1: in a controlled environment where you have gutter systems and
30:11
Speaker 1: all that. Just imagine you're in the swampy area back
30:15
Speaker 1: in this park day and there's nowhere for the water
30:17
Speaker 1: to really drain to. In the immediate it just kind
30:21
Speaker 1: of kind of floats there, okay, and then it'll drop
30:26
Speaker 1: back down, then it'll go back up, then it'll drop
30:29
Speaker 1: back down. So you know, in the early piece to this,
30:34
Speaker 1: when he died, he now becomes subject to that same environment.
30:40
Speaker 1: And there's even you know, and even in the report
30:43
Speaker 1: for laundry, you know, the forensic anthropologist goes to some
30:48
Speaker 1: length and describe that there had been you know, carnivore
30:50
Speaker 1: activity that had been you know, feasting on his remains.
30:54
Speaker 1: So there's no telling how many bones were essentially drug
30:58
Speaker 1: off to some burrow somewhere, taken up in a tree,
31:01
Speaker 1: which will happen the tinier bones. And it creates a
31:06
Speaker 1: very complex environment. And some of the stuff that forensic
31:10
Speaker 1: anthropologists do a lot of it is based on not
31:15
Speaker 1: just what they're seeing, but what they do what they
31:18
Speaker 1: don't see. Just let that sink in for a second.
31:21
Speaker 1: You know, you think about other sciences that are out there,
31:27
Speaker 1: and there are some that work on this idea that
31:32
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not just looking for positive findings. I'm
31:35
Speaker 1: looking for negative findings, and I don't mean positive and
31:38
Speaker 1: negative relative to how you happen to feel about something
31:41
Speaker 1: in a moment time. I'm talking about a presence or
31:44
Speaker 1: an absence of something, and so that's one of the
31:46
Speaker 1: things you know with laundry in particularly, and there have
31:48
Speaker 1: been a lot of other cases like this too over
31:51
Speaker 1: the years. So just because you go out to a
31:54
Speaker 1: scene where their skeletal remains doesn't mean that the remains
31:58
Speaker 1: are going to be completely hacked, that it will all
32:02
Speaker 1: be there. And that's where the difficulty really arises as
32:10
Speaker 1: it's applied to the skill of the forensic anthropologists. How
32:14
Speaker 1: are they going to be able to interpret what they're finding,
32:18
Speaker 1: how does it fit into the narrative of the death,
32:20
Speaker 1: and what can their assessment reveal out there. I found
32:26
Speaker 1: that it's better for me, in particular, that when I
32:30
Speaker 1: am at the scene with the forensic anthropologist, no matter
32:35
Speaker 1: how much study I've done in the past, no matter
32:38
Speaker 1: how many cases I've worked, it's better that for that
32:43
Speaker 1: moment in time, when I'm in that individual's presence, I'm
32:47
Speaker 1: no longer an investigator. I'm a student that should keep
32:52
Speaker 1: their mouths shut and their eyes and their ears. People
33:11
Speaker 1: talk a lot about doctor bass as well as should
33:13
Speaker 1: because he is a giant in the field of forensic anthropology.
33:18
Speaker 1: Uh and in forensic science, it's not just a lot
33:20
Speaker 1: of stuff that doctor Bass has done has you know,
33:23
Speaker 1: kind of seeped over into other practice. He's greatly influenced
33:27
Speaker 1: forensic pathology. I think he's he's influenced the study of
33:31
Speaker 1: ballistics relative to how bones interact with projectiles. Tool marks
33:38
Speaker 1: is one of the big areas that they that they investigate.
33:42
Speaker 1: He had one fellow on his staff for a long
33:44
Speaker 1: time that was one of the leading experts in the
33:47
Speaker 1: world on saw marks. And all this guy did was
33:50
Speaker 1: study the different types of saw blades and what kind
33:55
Speaker 1: of impressions they would generate on bone, whether it's you know,
33:59
Speaker 1: aular saw or a hack saw. But one of the
34:04
Speaker 1: more interesting characters in forensic anthropology is a guy that
34:08
Speaker 1: is no longer with us, and I think he was
34:12
Speaker 1: at the University of Oklahoma for a long time. It's
34:14
Speaker 1: doctor Clyde Snow and doctor Snow who I never had
34:18
Speaker 1: an opportunity to meet. I wish that I could have.
34:21
Speaker 1: Doctor Snow was kind of a rotund individual that was
34:26
Speaker 1: always dressed. He always looked like he was going on
34:28
Speaker 1: safari and smoked a lot and he but he came
34:35
Speaker 1: up with a really interesting term and I still use
34:37
Speaker 1: this to this day. When I teach a section at
34:40
Speaker 1: jack State on on forensic anthropology, he coined the phrase.
34:44
Speaker 1: He coined the phrase, let me get this straight straight osteobiography.
34:52
Speaker 1: And what he understood that many people don't understand is
34:58
Speaker 1: that by the study of human skeletal remains, we can
35:05
Speaker 1: learn so much about bodies, and not just the remains
35:13
Speaker 1: that are in front of you, but a life that
35:14
Speaker 1: had been lived prior to that. And let me give
35:18
Speaker 1: you a kind of a one of the the big
35:21
Speaker 1: for instances here. Let's just say that you've got human
35:26
Speaker 1: remains and you're trying to determine you're trying to do
35:29
Speaker 1: sex determination on a skeletal remain. Well, you're not just
35:36
Speaker 1: looking at the size of the bone, because males male's
35:40
Speaker 1: bones tend to be robust. Female bones tend to be
35:44
Speaker 1: was referred to as grassisle, which means kind of delicate. Fine,
35:48
Speaker 1: you're looking for any kind of disease related changes. Well,
35:54
Speaker 1: if you've got a bone that shows shows an indicatation
36:00
Speaker 1: of osteoporosis, well, odds are that's not going to be
36:05
Speaker 1: a male skeletal element. That's going to be a female element.
36:08
Speaker 1: Because there's a huge industry out there that's built up
36:12
Speaker 1: on treating osteoporosis. I mean, how many times do you
36:15
Speaker 1: hear that in the news. I knew one friend of
36:22
Speaker 1: my wife who she ate ate tombs every single day
36:28
Speaker 1: because her doctor told her that it's a great source
36:31
Speaker 1: of calcium to you know, knock down, use something, use
36:36
Speaker 1: something to knock down the advancement of osteoporosis. There's other
36:41
Speaker 1: diseases too, you know. You have like if you're digging
36:44
Speaker 1: through older remains and they'll have somebody died of tuberculosis,
36:51
Speaker 1: there will be these changes that take place to bone
36:54
Speaker 1: as a result of tuberculosis. You have cases where I
37:01
Speaker 1: know there's a current dig that's going on over in
37:04
Speaker 1: uh and I'd mentioned this I think in a previous
37:07
Speaker 1: episode going on over in Bristol, England, and you have
37:13
Speaker 1: the bodies of children, and the children are malnourished well developmentally,
37:18
Speaker 1: that skeleton is going to demonstrate malnutrition. Okay, trauma. I
37:27
Speaker 1: don't know about you, Dave. I think I have played football,
37:31
Speaker 1: I think I I think I have broken every one
37:35
Speaker 1: of my fingers at one point in time, most of
37:38
Speaker 1: them I would just pop, and now I'm paying the
37:42
Speaker 1: price for it. I've broken my hand, broken my nose
37:47
Speaker 1: three times. You know I've had Yeah, no kidding, it
37:52
Speaker 1: seems like it. But you know, if you were to
37:55
Speaker 1: strip down all that remains a Joe Scott Morgan and
37:59
Speaker 1: you were looking at my skeleton, well, I have an osteobiography.
38:03
Speaker 1: As a result, you're going to be able to tell
38:06
Speaker 1: certain little things about me and the life that I
38:09
Speaker 1: had led. Not only are you going to be able
38:13
Speaker 1: to see, for instance, when my nose that has been
38:15
Speaker 1: broken multiple times, not only going to see evidence that
38:19
Speaker 1: it has been broken, but as time has gone on,
38:24
Speaker 1: you're going to be able to appreciate the You're going
38:29
Speaker 1: to be able to appreciate how long ago this happened
38:32
Speaker 1: because the bone will begin to smooth. You look at.
38:36
Speaker 1: One of the things that I'm always fascinated by is
38:38
Speaker 1: if I ever had a skull, I would look at
38:41
Speaker 1: the sutures on the top of the skull, which are
38:46
Speaker 1: if you, I urge anybody right now, go and look
38:51
Speaker 1: up picture an actual picture of a human skull, and
38:55
Speaker 1: you'll see these kind of curvilinear lines that run through
39:00
Speaker 1: the middle line of the skull and they run on
39:03
Speaker 1: the backside of the frontal bone and back in the
39:06
Speaker 1: acceptial area. Well, those are called suture lines. And when
39:09
Speaker 1: we're babies and we're forming, you know that kind of
39:13
Speaker 1: and they have interlocking teeth. Well, we'll look at a
39:19
Speaker 1: human skull, Dave, and if those suture lines are smooth,
39:28
Speaker 1: like when you run your hand over it, you can't
39:30
Speaker 1: feel them. Sometimes they're obliterated. You know that that person
39:36
Speaker 1: was like really advanced in age because you think about
39:40
Speaker 1: just doing this, just imagine this every time you raise
39:44
Speaker 1: your eyebrows frowned. Okay, smile, The overlying skin is moving
39:54
Speaker 1: and it wears on bone. Over a period of time,
39:59
Speaker 1: it eradicates it, and you'll have like we call it
40:02
Speaker 1: sure suture obliteration. You'll also have it if you take
40:07
Speaker 1: the tip of your tongue and stick it a roof
40:11
Speaker 1: of your mouth. That's actually your hard palette. You've heard
40:15
Speaker 1: that term before. Well, if you stripped away the skin,
40:18
Speaker 1: the tissue off of your hard palate and you could
40:21
Speaker 1: get down to the bone, which actually is kind of
40:23
Speaker 1: like the floor of the skull, there's suture lines in
40:26
Speaker 1: there and those sutures well, I actually did a paper
40:29
Speaker 1: on this years ago. You have suture line obliteration in
40:35
Speaker 1: the roof of the mouth as well, and then you
40:38
Speaker 1: have joint where you can see arthritic changes. And if
40:42
Speaker 1: anybody has had like a gunshot wound of broken arm,
40:48
Speaker 1: even if it's been surgically repaired, you can still see
40:54
Speaker 1: evidence that the bone is what's called modeled. It's trying
40:57
Speaker 1: to fuse, you know, back together, and you'll get you know,
41:00
Speaker 1: bones will do that. You can have somebody that has
41:04
Speaker 1: a severe break and they never got it treated. You'll
41:08
Speaker 1: see some old person that's limping around, for instance, and
41:11
Speaker 1: if you look at their like if you're talking about
41:14
Speaker 1: a fractured femur that was never repaired by you know,
41:18
Speaker 1: by surgery or whatever, you'll see these kind of I
41:23
Speaker 1: don't really know how to describe them. You'll see these
41:26
Speaker 1: kind of protuberances on the bone and it's it's kind
41:30
Speaker 1: of ghastly looking where the bone is has fused back
41:34
Speaker 1: together and the person permanently walks with a limp. Probably
41:37
Speaker 1: in life they had a hard time, but that bone
41:39
Speaker 1: wants to get back together and heal, and you can
41:43
Speaker 1: see surgical interventions as well. There's any number of bones
41:46
Speaker 1: that I've been on site with forensic anthropology we've recovered
41:50
Speaker 1: that had screws in them, you know, where you'll have
41:55
Speaker 1: somebody that had some kind of surgical repair and this
41:59
Speaker 1: is these are stainless steel screws back in the day.
42:04
Speaker 1: They're probably using other types of components now to do that.
42:07
Speaker 3: The original Planet of the Apes when Tarlton Heston is
42:09
Speaker 3: in the cave and he's going through the different things
42:12
Speaker 3: that it be found in there. One was dental the
42:14
Speaker 3: other was the heart valve, you know, and he was
42:18
Speaker 3: describing the things that he knew of that.
42:20
Speaker 2: Person who has long gone. All those left. Isn't that amazing?
42:24
Speaker 1: I forgot all about that scene And you're absolutely right,
42:28
Speaker 1: and that stuff does remain behind. I think at the
42:33
Speaker 1: Morphy case in particular, Oh wow, where the port was
42:38
Speaker 1: found with her remains, her skeletal remains, and that stuff.
42:42
Speaker 1: Eventually it would it's going to go away, but it'll
42:47
Speaker 1: hang back. And there's certain things that you're looking for
42:49
Speaker 1: at the scene that will give you an indication of
42:52
Speaker 1: this individual's osteobiography. But you know, there's so many cases
42:57
Speaker 1: over the years have have required the use of forensic
43:05
Speaker 1: anthropologists probably. And let me give you an example, going
43:10
Speaker 1: back to doctor Snow. Doctor Snow was had quite the
43:15
Speaker 1: reputation of being you know, he was kind of a
43:17
Speaker 1: I don't know if you use the term swashbuckler. I
43:20
Speaker 1: don't think he was swimming off of chandeliers, but he
43:24
Speaker 1: was a man of his time. He actually went and
43:27
Speaker 1: can you imagine doing this, he imagine going down to
43:30
Speaker 1: Central America in the height of all the civil wars
43:34
Speaker 1: that were happening back in the eighties, and Dave he'd
43:37
Speaker 1: go down there and exhum mass graves and be shot
43:42
Speaker 1: at while he's down there, and he's standing on the
43:45
Speaker 1: edge in some jungle location, you know, in Honduras or Nicaragua,
43:50
Speaker 1: where El Salvador, wherever it is that he was, and
43:55
Speaker 1: to try to make sense out of what was still
43:57
Speaker 1: in those graves. And I think a lot of people
43:59
Speaker 1: would say, and this goes to kind of being an anthropologist,
44:03
Speaker 1: A lot of people will say, well, they're dead. What
44:06
Speaker 1: difference does it make. We know that they were all
44:07
Speaker 1: lined up and shot and pushed down a grave. But
44:10
Speaker 1: you can learn a lot from first off, what has
44:14
Speaker 1: been deposited in the grave. For instance, if in war
44:18
Speaker 1: crimes cases and you see this in You've seen this
44:23
Speaker 1: in Europe over the years as well, and I would
44:27
Speaker 1: submit to you in Southeast Asia, when people are killed
44:33
Speaker 1: and dumped into a grave, well you need to have
44:36
Speaker 1: forensic anthropologists to tell you are they only killing males?
44:44
Speaker 1: Are they killing males, are they killing only females? Are
44:51
Speaker 1: they killing the elderly? Are they trying to eradicate all
44:56
Speaker 1: of the children in a particular village. From that, you
45:01
Speaker 1: can begin to kind of piece together what sorts of
45:04
Speaker 1: people you're dealing with. And when this goes, say, for instance,
45:08
Speaker 1: you're working a case of you know, genocide like this,
45:12
Speaker 1: that information would go to like a World court or
45:15
Speaker 1: wherever it is that they try to prosecute these things
45:18
Speaker 1: to give them an idea as to who is being
45:21
Speaker 1: targeted in any particular case. You know, there are a
45:24
Speaker 1: lot of cases where, particularly if you have tribal issues,
45:28
Speaker 1: where they'll kill all the males and then kidnap all
45:30
Speaker 1: the women and children and try to you know, bring
45:34
Speaker 1: them into their own community. And so that's the type
45:38
Speaker 1: of thing that you know that doctor Snow would do,
45:41
Speaker 1: and then he would look, you know, he'd also try
45:43
Speaker 1: to give them an idea. How were they killed? Is
45:46
Speaker 1: there an indication that they had endured torture over a
45:50
Speaker 1: protracted period of time where they're being beaten, they've got
45:52
Speaker 1: multiple broken bones that occurred in life, or was this
45:57
Speaker 1: simply they dragged them out of their homes in the
46:00
Speaker 1: middle of the night and began to pop them in
46:01
Speaker 1: the back of the head into a preduct grave. So
46:06
Speaker 1: you can learn a lot. You can learn a lot
46:12
Speaker 1: by what you're seeing physically manifesting itself out of a
46:16
Speaker 1: scene with going back to, you know, to other cases
46:23
Speaker 1: that are out there. I had friends that worked Waco,
46:26
Speaker 1: for instance, that were out there. Dave, You're talking just
46:31
Speaker 1: tens of not just skeletal remains, but you're talking skeletal
46:37
Speaker 1: remains that are skeletonized as a result of intense flame.
46:43
Speaker 1: These these remains are incredibly fragile. I wrote about in
46:50
Speaker 1: my book Blood Beneath My Feet from all those years
46:53
Speaker 1: ago where I'd had an episode of I was going
47:00
Speaker 1: through a real tough time in my life and really
47:02
Speaker 1: dealing with certain issues with PTSD. And we had a
47:08
Speaker 1: guy on Georgia four hundred that had run his car
47:11
Speaker 1: into the side of a pillar of a support uh
47:16
Speaker 1: support pillar of a overpass on George of four hundred.
47:20
Speaker 1: And I'll never forget. It was a little Uh, I
47:22
Speaker 1: was gonna say Texas. It was a little Ford Ranger
47:24
Speaker 1: pickup truck. He was on his way into work and
47:27
Speaker 1: when he hit this bridge pillar support pillar, his truck
47:31
Speaker 1: burst into flames, and he was trying to get out
47:34
Speaker 1: of the car and he, you know, he succumbed and
47:37
Speaker 1: his body continued to burn. And to give you an
47:40
Speaker 1: idea of the fragile nature of it and what you encounter.
47:46
Speaker 1: When I was at the scene, I went to and
47:50
Speaker 1: as was my practice, i'd look inside the cap of
47:54
Speaker 1: a vehicle, even if it had been on fire. And
47:56
Speaker 1: I'm looking around, and this guy's hands were in let's
48:00
Speaker 1: refer to as the pugilistic condition or posture, where the
48:04
Speaker 1: hands are drawn up at the Everything contracts at that
48:08
Speaker 1: point in time depend upon heat. And as I stuck
48:12
Speaker 1: my head into the cab, the guy's left hand brushed
48:17
Speaker 1: against my right cheek, and in kind of a stamp move,
48:22
Speaker 1: I grabbed like this with my left gloved hand, and
48:25
Speaker 1: his entire arm broke off in my hand. And when
48:30
Speaker 1: you think about the intensity of fire, for instance, like
48:35
Speaker 1: in Waco, or you think about the Twin Towers, this
48:41
Speaker 1: intense flame that's in there, these remains become very very fragile,
48:47
Speaker 1: so you're already dealing with something where you're trying to
48:52
Speaker 1: assess a few things. Well, first off, you want to
48:54
Speaker 1: know who they are. We've talked about this on body
48:56
Speaker 1: bags before. It's to me, knowing who somebody is is
49:00
Speaker 1: probably more important than knowing what caused their death, because
49:05
Speaker 1: if I can find out who they are, I can
49:07
Speaker 1: fill in the blanks relative to the life that they led,
49:10
Speaker 1: and maybe in some way the police can take that
49:13
Speaker 1: information and go find out who killed them. So you're
49:16
Speaker 1: trying to determine who they are, and then you're trying
49:19
Speaker 1: to determine what happened to them. And it's only a
49:22
Speaker 1: forensic anthropologist that really has that skill set to deal
49:25
Speaker 1: with these very fragile, delicate remains, and they're always fighting
49:29
Speaker 1: against the elements. That's one of the fascinating things about
49:32
Speaker 1: the practice of forensic anthropology. You know all those things
49:36
Speaker 1: that they do when they go back to their lab
49:39
Speaker 1: and try to ascertain whose remains they're dealing with, Who
49:45
Speaker 1: is this person it's rather a daunting task, Dave.
49:50
Speaker 3: So the forensic anthropologist is brought in, going back to
49:53
Speaker 3: brian laundry for a minute, because we find his skeletonized
49:58
Speaker 3: remains as bones and I guess there was minimal amount
50:03
Speaker 3: of flesh.
50:03
Speaker 1: Yeah.
50:05
Speaker 2: They take the bones and they send them to the friends.
50:07
Speaker 3: They anthropologist, and the entire point is to figure out
50:13
Speaker 3: how this person died. They already know who it is.
50:15
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm sure that's part of the process. You
50:18
Speaker 3: have to positively identify the individual, even though you know
50:21
Speaker 3: it is all right. But you mentioned that there was
50:24
Speaker 3: something wrong about or not wrong, something different about the gunshot.
50:29
Speaker 1: Yeah.
50:30
Speaker 3: So the forensic anthropologists coming into this, are they tasked
50:36
Speaker 3: with determining what happened? Or are they tasked with tell
50:41
Speaker 3: us the facts of this situation of what you see
50:44
Speaker 3: right here, not your years of experience, but just what
50:48
Speaker 3: does the bone tell you?
50:49
Speaker 2: Is that what they're doing. I'm kind of curious.
50:51
Speaker 1: Because you said that is what they're doing. And listen,
50:55
Speaker 1: police are sitting there and they're scratching their head, okay,
50:59
Speaker 1: because they're trying to determine, uh, what happened to this individual.
51:05
Speaker 1: They might suspect that there's a gunshot woman. But when
51:07
Speaker 1: you're listening, if you're if you're talking about a remain
51:13
Speaker 1: that has been exposed to harsh elements, you can have
51:17
Speaker 1: events where the skeleton will just kind of come to pieces, okay,
51:22
Speaker 1: and you don't know, for instance, would laundry as an example,
51:28
Speaker 1: you don't know if this defect and we'll call it
51:31
Speaker 1: a defect instead of a gunshot woman, because that's really
51:34
Speaker 1: all that you know at that point, you've got a whole.
51:38
Speaker 1: Is that was that whole something that occurred in life
51:43
Speaker 1: leading up to death or is it something that occurred afterwards,
51:46
Speaker 1: because you begin to think about, well, you've got animal activity,
51:51
Speaker 1: you know that that's occurring out there? Was there an
51:56
Speaker 1: animal that was gnawing on this on this remain? I
52:01
Speaker 1: give you if you think that that's far fetched. I've
52:04
Speaker 1: had in my career. I've had two cases involving involving
52:12
Speaker 1: dogs that drug skulls up into backyards and their masters
52:17
Speaker 1: went into the backyard and they were in the backyard
52:20
Speaker 1: at both homes at the same time, at not the
52:22
Speaker 1: same time, but two different cases. And the dog you know,
52:25
Speaker 1: if you've ever I loved dogs, by the way, but
52:28
Speaker 1: if you if you ever see a dog with a ball,
52:30
Speaker 1: they'll put it between their their paws and they'll they'll
52:33
Speaker 1: play with it and that sort of thing. Well, you
52:35
Speaker 1: take something shaped like a ball, like a human skull,
52:37
Speaker 1: and they're going to have it between their their their
52:40
Speaker 1: forepaws like this. And in both cases, the dog had
52:44
Speaker 1: set to gnawing on the top of the skull and
52:48
Speaker 1: over period of time, if you know, if they kept
52:51
Speaker 1: that skull and just kind of they'd break the whole
52:55
Speaker 1: thing down eventually.
52:56
Speaker 3: Uh.
52:57
Speaker 1: You know, I've got a I've got a rescue lib
53:00
Speaker 1: door retriever and she's got incredible jaw strength. I mean,
53:03
Speaker 1: she can eradicate an entire bone in no period of
53:06
Speaker 1: time whatsoever. It's amazing what they can do. So you
53:10
Speaker 1: have to factor all that in. You're trying to give
53:12
Speaker 1: this information back to the police, and the forensic anthropologies
53:17
Speaker 1: is given enough time, will arrive at their own conclusion
53:20
Speaker 1: about not just anti mortem versus post mortem, but they
53:26
Speaker 1: will also give you an idea as to things like
53:34
Speaker 1: with gunshot wounds. They'll give you an idea about directionality.
53:38
Speaker 1: You know, is this front to back, is it left
53:41
Speaker 1: to right, is it from above to below? You know
53:44
Speaker 1: trajectory of bullets. Then you get into these areas that
53:48
Speaker 1: Lord knows, Dave you and I have covered so many
53:51
Speaker 1: of them. With dismemberments, you have to be really no
53:54
Speaker 1: pun intended as forensic anthropologies. You have to be very
53:57
Speaker 1: sharp relat to dismemberment because you have to understand what
54:02
Speaker 1: kind of tool could have facilitated this bone coming apart.
54:07
Speaker 1: You know that it didn't just spontaneously come apart in
54:11
Speaker 1: midshaft of a femur with a spiral saw marks on
54:16
Speaker 1: the on the leading edges of it. This is something
54:18
Speaker 1: that somebody took a you know, maybe they took a
54:21
Speaker 1: bandsaw or they took a circular saw and just ran
54:24
Speaker 1: it through the center of the thing. Well, what type
54:27
Speaker 1: of instrument is this? So you have to be up
54:29
Speaker 1: on tool marks to be able to assess this. And
54:32
Speaker 1: also was this done in life? Was this part of torture?
54:35
Speaker 1: Could it? You know, was some limb hacked off while
54:38
Speaker 1: the person was still alive or was this something that
54:41
Speaker 1: was done after the fact. So you have to be
54:46
Speaker 1: really up your You have to really up your game
54:50
Speaker 1: as a forensic anthropologist to not just understand the bone
54:55
Speaker 1: itself or trying to classify it anatomically. But these individuals
54:59
Speaker 1: have to be able to be able to understand what
55:03
Speaker 1: happened to the person in death, because for the most part,
55:08
Speaker 1: when we die and you call in a forensic anthropologist,
55:12
Speaker 1: our bony structures are all that remain. I'm Joseph Scott
55:20
Speaker 1: Morgan and this is Bodybacks.