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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Unraveling the Gannon Stauch Case A Forensic Odyssey (1) · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Body Backs with Joseph Scott Morgan. I got an unusual
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: term for you. Some of you may not have heard
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: it if you've never lived near a large body of water,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: particularly down a long coast. It's called rip wrap. It's defined.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: It's like a collection of rock and concrete that's kind
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: of cracked up. It forms the banks of waterways. It's
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: something that's man made that's put in place to prevent
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: erosion and kind of delineates the shoreline of an area
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: that otherwise might give way to the forces of nature.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: And it holds things. When you go, say, for instance,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: beneath the bridge in these areas, you'll see rip rap.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: It's not pleasant to stand on. Can't really fish from it,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: I guess you could, but it's very uneven, and when
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: the tide goes out you can see more of it.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: You can see what's there lying beneath what otherwise might
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: be covered with water. It collects all manner of things,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: dead animals, vegetation, trash that's been discarded. But on a
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: day in the blazing sun of the Florida Panhandle, a
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: worker descended down into that uneven space that rip wrap,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: and there at his feet, less suitcase, and within that
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: suitcase where the remains of Gannon Stock. We've already talked
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: about Gannon before on body Bags, but today we've got
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: more information and I wanted to provide an update because
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: at this moment in time as I speak, his stepmother
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: is on trial for his murder. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: and this is Body Bags. Joining me today is my buddy,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Dave Mack, senior crime reporter with Crime Online, Nancy Grace. Dave,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: I didn't know that we would make it to this day.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: It seems like this trial has been off in the horizon,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: never seemed like it would get here. I guess it's
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: that way with most big cases. But I'd say that
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: you certainly are invested in this case. I know that
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: you've been covering it for some time.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: January twenty seventh of twenty twenty, Joe, you mentioned this
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: case has already been covered on Body Bags, and I
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: encourage you to go and listen to that show because
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: there are things in there that will help round out
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: your understanding of what happened. But we now have information
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: that we didn't have until now, and so Joe, I
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: got to be honest to get through this story without
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: crying is going to require more than I have. Because
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: this little eleven year old boy was left in the
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: care of his stepmother. You know, his dad, Al served
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: in the National Guard. Al left January twenty fifth of
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty on assignment. He was leaving and so he
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: heads out of town two days later. Letitia, by the way,
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: she is pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, so
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: we can say she killed him, right.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: It seems reasonable. Of course, everybody's innocent until proven guilty.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: But her supposition, in her defense team supposition, is that
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: she's not to be held responsible for this. And let's
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: just put it plainly, the brutal And when I say brutal,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: it ranks up there, Dave, I have to admit, after
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: what we found out, the brutal homicide of this precious
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: little boy Gannon.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: When we started covering this, it was a missing person case.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: You've got to remember January twenty seventh, he's reported missing, Okay.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: Letitia was his stepmother. She told El Paso County Sheriff's
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: office that he left home between three point fifteen and
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: four pm local time to walk to a friend's house
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: in Colorado Springs. Joe you and I both have kids.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: Is there ever a time where you knew your child
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: left the house to go somewhere else and you didn't
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: know exactly what time it was within two or three minutes.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's something that you always keep track of.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: At forty five minute window, that was the first red flag.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, particularly you know you're talking about you're talking about
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: a little boy.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: There were a couple of different stories that Letitia told.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: It took three days to change the classification to hey,
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: he left to go to a friend's house. Then they
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: on January thirties at missing in dangered person and of
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: course we know what took place after that. His body
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: was found. Now, Joe, there are two months here, from
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: January twenty seventh to March twentieth when his body was
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: recovered in that suitcase. And as you mentioned, the trial
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: is ongoing. We found out a number of things this week,
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: including the suitcase that was the body bag for this child.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: It was brought into court. Okay, you've got an eleven
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: year old child that has been dead and I'm kind
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: of assuming dead since January twenty seventh. They don't find
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: his body in the suitcase until March twentieth, in Florida.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in Florida. That's the big thing. Remember, this whole
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: thing starts in Colorado, where his body was found, though
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: it was not on I ten, which is the major
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: east west thoroughfare in the interstate system. And for those
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: that don't know with interstates, if you have an interstate
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: that ends in a zero, those are east west, all right.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: So we've got I ten, which is our most southerly
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: major interstate that runs east and west, and it runs
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: through the Panhandle. Anybody that's ever traveled from west of Florida,
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: that's that's heading in. If you're going to places like
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: Panama City Beach or Destined or even headed to Jacksonville,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: you're going to be on Ien. And so off of
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Ien on either side north and south there are little
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: parallel routes that run. And where Gannon's body was found
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: was actually in a tributary that eventually dumps into the
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Gulf of Mexico. And I think that's key here when
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: you begin to think about body disposal. It's an absolute
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: stroke of luck. Is the only way I can say
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: that he was even found. This is a vast area, Dave.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: If we take that idea that you're placing Gannon's body
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: that is contained within the suitcase into a body of
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: water that you know is heading north and south southwhard
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: the final destination is going to be the Gulf of Mexico.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: The fact that it got hung up on rocks on
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: rip rap, as I mentioned earlier, and I urge if
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: you're not familiar with what rip rapp looks like, just
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: go take a look. It's such an odd, odd term anyway,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: but go take a look and you'll see what I'm saying.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: It's got it's kind of play into You have to
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: place it in there with big machinery. I know. The
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: first time I ever heard the term was actually an
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: association with Lake Poncha Train when I was living down
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: there and they took old two lane Stadium which was demolished.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: It's actually where they used to play the old Sugar Bowl,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: and they took it and demolished it and they created
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: rip rap out of it. It created these kind of
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: sea walls. It extended out into Lake ponch Train in
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: New Orleans and you could walk out and you could
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: actually see the seat number still painted on the rip
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: rap and that's as big chunks of concrete or kind
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: of deciduous rock. They gather up and they can place
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: and create these these boundaries, if you will, or wall
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: sometimes and so it's kind of jagged. That's the only
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: saving grace here that that kind of captured Gannon's body
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: vis via the rip rap and him being contained in
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: the suitcase, and you're talking two months downrange from the
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: last time he was seen. It makes it very difficult
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: from what we've talked about a lot on body bags,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: which is postmarim interval, because the environment down in that
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: area of the country is so harsh. It is I
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: can't begin to describe it. If you've never worked as
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: a crime scene investigator, or as an emmy investigator or
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: a homicide investigator. Down those areas, things break down very,
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: very carefully. The only reason that Gannon's remains would have
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: remained intact is because of this encasement that he was
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: in contained within this suitcase. So he's literally sealed up
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: in it his remains. And I have to say, based
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: upon what we learn from direct testimony from the medical
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: examiner that examined Gannon's remains, I'm amazed she was able
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: to ascertain what she was able to ascertain. It is
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: absolutely miraculous. That's the only way I can say it.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: You've got this one in a million shot that you're
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: going to have somebody come along and find the suitcase,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: and then secondly that it would be preserved to the
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: extent that it was preserved, that you've got a forensic
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: pathologist that can interpret all that was left behind.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: When you back up to where this began in Colorado
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: Springs to Colorado and Gannon is murdered and placed in
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: the suitcase. As an investigator, as somebody who does these
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: crime scenes, Joe, her story was that he was walking
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: to a friend's house. And granted there are five different
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: stories that she told, five different stories about what took place.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: As investigators, as you come in to start looking over
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: a crime scene or potential crime scene, how do you
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: find blood if it's been cleaned up. How if somebody
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: is killed and there's blood everywhere, how did they actually
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: find it if it's been cleaned up.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: First off, you have to have a suspected area. You're
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: not just going to go through through what you believe
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: to be a potential crime scene and just randomly apply
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: these reagents to try to get the remnant of the
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: blood to luminous, that's what it's referred to. It has
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: a luminescent quality with luminol in particular. First off, you
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: have to be almost in total darkness in order to
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: appreciate it. And then once you apply the luminol, it
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: only lasts for a few seconds. So it's a matter
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: of application, and it's a matter of somebody being quick
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: with a camera, and it's a perfect perfect environment in
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: order to actualize that and to visualize it, and then
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: to capture it to document it, because what you're trying
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: to document, first off, is not just that there may
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: have been blood there, but you're also trying to interpret
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: the dynamics of the blood. You know, is this a
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: dynamic deposition of blood in the area where it is
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: sprayed or cast off in this environment, or is it
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: something that's passively dripping, like off of the end of
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: some type of weapon that you would bludge in somebody
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: with if you're standing over the body, or maybe a
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: knife that you're holding in your hand that you know,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: you just have blood just kind of passively dripping off
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: the tip as you're standing over that area. So a
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: lot of stuff has to come together in order to
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: try to understand it. It's it's fascinating we're having this
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: conversation because I was given a lecture in my medical
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: legal death Investigation class at Jacksonville State the other day
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: on the topic of death related to abuse and neglect,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: and I was trying to emphasize to the class that
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: it's important that you go even if there's not a
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: body of the scene, and many times with children there's not.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: They go into the hospital. You go to the hospital
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: to obviously examine the body there and get the report
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: from the empts and the positions, but you need to
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: go back out to the scene and one of the
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: things that we find, it seems many times, particularly with kids.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: I was relating to the class that I'd gone out
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: on two scenes that I could remember over the course
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: of my career where you walk in and the room
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: smells like pine saw and pine sal is very distinctive.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: It fills the air. It's very aromatic, and not necessarily
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: in a good way. I remember it. I remember it
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: from the barracks in the Army. The Army had an
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: unending supply of pine saw. So you have that smell
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: and you think, well, does the environment normally smell like
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: pine sal in here. Well, that's another thing you're looking for.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: You're looking to go into these homes and many times
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: or locations and you think, well, you know what, there's
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: a heavy smell of bleach. People think that bleach is
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: the answer to everything, and of course bleach is not
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: necessarily going to defeat any kind of stains that are
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: left behind. So that's just one of the things that
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: we look for. You know, it seems, whether it's in
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: a dwelling where the people are domicile, or a vehicle
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: for instance, you try to get a sense in that
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: environment what is left behind, What exactly is the evidence
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: trying to tell you, even at a molecular level, that
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: has been left behind, of what kind of violence may
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: or may not have occurred in this location. Sometimes when
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: you're walking through unknown territory, places you haven't been before,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: you need a guide. And in my world in forensics,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: one of the best guides you can have when it
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: comes to death investigation is a forensic pathologist. And of course,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: in my opinion, I've been around for you in my career.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: The one that I saw provide testimony out in Colorado
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: rinks right up there. What a fantastic job she did.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: There are so many questions I have for you that
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of people wonder because we're so
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: conditioned to what takes place on TV and in movies.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: We know, based on the investigation and the trial, that
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: this crime scene was in Gannon's bedroom in the house.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: When police come in, When investigators come into a story
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: where they're told the boy ran away or he went
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: missing or whatever, police have red flags and they immediately know, Okay,
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: we have to go down this path because this is
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: the story she's telling today and we have to investigate it.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: But aren't they going to immediately start looking around at
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: the house and see what is a miss? They know
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: the house has been cleaned because her story, she had
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: originally told them she had been raped by a man
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: in the home and that he had absconded with Gannon.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: At what point do the investigators start looking for blood
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: evidence or any kind of evidence inside the home because
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: they know that her story is not sticky, it's not
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: standing up to any kind of scrutiny.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: The main indicator here is what locations do Most people
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: inhabit within a home, and I think default from a
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: default perspective, if you're talking about kids, you're going to
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: go to their bedrooms. You're going to want to know
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: is there anything that looks amiss? Because you're going to
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: spend most of your time in the bedroom. It's a
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: place that you're most familiar with kids. That's where they
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: have their toys or gaming systems, or clothes, just their
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: school books. Everything that kind of revolves around their little
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: world is contained therein So odds are they would spend
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: quite a bit of time there, and you're going to
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: look and if there's some kind of indicator when you
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: walk in, Like let's just say, for instance, you're doing
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: a walk through at a scene and you're going from
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: room to room. You know, you go from one room,
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: maybe the family room, and it looks neat and ordered,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: But then maybe you go to Gannon's room and it's
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: like really really neat. It's like really really clean. As
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: a matter of fact, maybe there's an odor there of cleanser. Okay,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: maybe maybe the bed. I don't know about you. When
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: I was eleven years old, I wasn't really good at
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: making a bed. But you look at his bed, maybe
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: maybe it looks like you can bounce a quarter off
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: of it. All right, is this something that eleven year
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: old boy would have done. Is everything neatly put away,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: neatly folded. I'm not saying that mom wouldn't go in
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: behind you and do all that stuff for you. However,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: odds are that if something appears to be too good
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: to be true, it probably is. So to your original question, yeah,
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: the investigators are going to fold over into that and
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: really begin to dig down into this area, particularly if
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: they have a search horant. Just so folks understand, if
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: you have a search warrant, you have to name in
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: that search warrant where you're going to search, even if
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: it's within the residence. You can't just randomly, really nearly
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: rip somebody's house apart. You have to be able to
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: describe this to a judge. It has to be specifically
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: laid out in the search warrant. And you say we're
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: going to search Gannon's bedroom, you know, we're going to
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: go through the all the associated articles within there, including
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: the closets. But you're not going to do that throughout
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: the entire house, all right, So there has to be
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: something that's going to lead you there, and most of
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: the time that's going to arise from a couple of
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: places either from an initial walkthrough, when this call comes
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: out and he's missing, well that compels the police to
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: go to the house to do just a welfare check.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: You got a missing kids, so we're going to walk
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: to the house. Maybe initially the cops walked through and
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: they said, wow, this really smells really like it's been
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: freshly cleaned in here. Well, that gives you. That gives
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: you cause at that point in time to include that
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: in the warrant. We really want to focus your honor
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: on this specific area of the house. And so there
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: might be specific areas where you think something may have happened,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: but you can't prove it. You need to dig deeper,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: and that's going to require search warrant. So you go
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: back and then then once you have that search warrant,
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: you go in and you begin to do things like
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: pull up carpet, you begin to flip mattresses, check and
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: see if the walls have been freshly painted. I've had
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: that happen before. You apply reagents like like something like
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: luminol or blue star or those types of reagents to
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: see if you can make any kind of presentation where
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: you think that blood may have been. And that's going
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: to be a big indicator for you.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: Now, we do know based on the affidavit, there was
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: a lot of evidence in Gannon's bedroom, the blood spatter
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: on the walls. There was enough blood in that child's
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: bedroom to soak through the mattress, soak through the carpet,
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: the carpet pad, and stained the concrete below his bed.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: I have to wonder what condition his body was in.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: We've got a body that's not found for two months.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: We've got a body of an eleven year old that
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: was in a suitcase that was in Florida in the water.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: What would you expect to find.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: This is an interesting point with this case, David. I'll
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: tell you why. This pathologist though Gannon's remains were Let's
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: face it, they're severely decomposed, all right, But she came
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: armed with that information that you were just talking about,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: even though she's down in Florida, and they they come
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: to the conclusion pretty quickly that it is Gannon's remains.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: I would imagine if they weren't on a plane, they
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: were certainly on the phone. Police officers, investigators out in
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Colorado are speaking, all right, they're speaking to the investigators
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: in Florida. They're speaking to the m's office down in Florida,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: and what they're telling him is like, look, we've got
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: a scene up here that looks like, holy hell, we
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: know that there's going to be there was a significant
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: blood letting within this environment. Can you imagine when doctor
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: Ignacio opened that suitcase there at the mme's office and
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: she's observing the mortal remains of this little little boy.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: She had no idea who he was, but she sees
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: all of this trauma. She's trying to figure this out
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: and trying to kind of work out the calculus in
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: her brain essentially as to how all this went down.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: She's having to look at this and say, God, wherever
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: he was, there has to have been a tremendous amount
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: of blood. Well, guess what. She's already seemingly got an
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: answer to this question. And that's a huge step for
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: you from a medical legal standpoint, because there's stuff that
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: you now you can kind of connect the dots, whereas
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: many times you might be at a disadvantage. And the
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: fact that he still had soft tissue, because you know
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: she's going in to describe injuries here, well, it's hard
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: to describe injuries when you don't have soft tissue if
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: you're just dealing with skeletal remains. So we know that
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: there was a significant amount of soft tissue left behind
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: so that she could make this interpretation. When you're looking
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: back and you begin to understand how much blood was
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: in that residence at that location, it's coming into focus
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: at that moment in time. Okay, well this explains this
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: at the scene, this presentation that they're seeing. Maybe you've
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: got blunt force trauma, which he did, you've got a
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: gunshot wound which he had, got sharp force injury which
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: he possessed many of that's going to explain some of
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: the dynamics at the scene that will perhaps create some
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: kind of correlation between what you're seeing when these decomposed
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: remains and what you're finding it the scene. And the
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: fact that this doctor caught this case is fascinating to me.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: And I don't know, it's kind of an odd ball
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: situation because you've got a case that originates in Colorado
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: and winds up being discovered down in Florida. And I
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: think many people would question, well, why didn't they just
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: take his body back to Colorado to do the example?
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: First off, if it is a homicide.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: How do you not I rule out a homicide an
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: eleven year old is dead inside of a suitcase found
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: at the water's edge.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: Well, we can't assume anything because we live in a
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: world inhabited by attorneys and we have to be very,
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: very thorough and so the the question is not is
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: it a homicide? The question is more where did the
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: homicide take place? First off, you have to establish the identification.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: That's one of the hallmarks in medical legal death investigation.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: There's three principles that we work upon, and that's determining
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: manner of death, cause of death, and identification. And you
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: learn so much about a deceased individual when you figure
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: out who they are, because suddenly history comes pouring in
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: at that moment time. You can begin to track them
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: back from where they were and where they wound up
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: and all in, what the family dynamic is like, what
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: their life was like, simply based on an identification. So
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: you have to establish that. And if you remove him
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: from that state to take him back to Colorado in
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: order to do the autopsy, there's always that question, is
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: this Florida jurisdiction or is it Colorado jurisdiction? Well, it's
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: kind of a shared jurisdiction, if you will. We know
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: that the body was deposited in Florida. There's a huge
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: difference between the deposition of a body and where that
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: body met its end by law. So I think that
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: the working idea here to keep everybody on the same
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: sheet of music is you don't want to destroy evidence,
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: and certainly that could happen because this is very, very fragile, Dave,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: very fragile. We've already talked about how long Gannon had
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: been down The fact that they decided to do the
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: autopsy there in that particular district is indicative of how
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: much care they were taking. People in Colorado were like, hey, look,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: we're good with this. You go ahead and do the
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: autopsy down there. And I think a lot of people
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: get confused over this, particularly when you've got these multi
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: jurisdictional kinds of things, because people don't understand how the
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: system works. And back to what I was saying about
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: doctor Ignatio when she did this autopsy, do you know
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: that she was actually covering for this district? Florida doesn't
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: have corners, they have district medical examiners, so you've got
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: like District seven and District eight nine and all those
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: sorts of things. The state is broken down into multi
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: county jurisdictions, and she happened to be working in an
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: adjacent district and there's not that many forensic pathologists, so
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: they cover for one another. So she was taking call
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: for that jurisdiction or covering this cases why. I don't know,
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: maybe one pathologist was testifying, or they were taking some
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: time off, which they need because there's so many cases
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: and there's so few of them.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: So it was just happenstance that she ended up getting this.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, isn't that something? And now she's in a different
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: district in Florida than she originally was, so she's kind
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: of moved around within the state, which happens. She's licensed
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: in the state of Florida. She I think she did
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: her fellowship in forensics actually down in Miami Dade, which
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: is a fantastic medical Examiner's office for training, and so
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: she's very familiar with this area and so that's why
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: her her testimony gave so much weight. But you know,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: you've got this forensic pathologist that has to travel from
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: Florida to Colorado to offer up testimony because they've come
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: to the conclusion based upon their scientific assessment that the
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: amount of blood that they found at that residence is
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: what we refer to as incompatible with life. That means
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: that so much blood was lost that there is a
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: high probability that that homicide took place there. And she
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: was seeing the final results of this. And another skill
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: set that she has that say, for instance, people out
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: in Colorado that maybe they've exclusively worked there. She's familiar
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: with this tropical environment, Dave. She's very familiar with saltwater environment.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Think about her training. All of these cases that she
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: works down there, they're subject to the environment that is
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: dictated by what is Florida the rated decomposition. It measures
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: out differently than say, for instance, in Colorado. Those are
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: two very distinct geographical location. So she's the best person
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: to kind of interpret. And this is most important, I
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: think when we're trying to establish a timeline, how long
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: hagain and actually been deceased, and how long had you
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: been in that suitcase. Because we have people that do
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: this job that stare down at all that remains even
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: in the worst circumstances, we can kind of begin to
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: formulate an idea. The question is once that idea is formulated.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: Are you capable as a forensic practitioner of expressing that
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: in a courtroom to get that point across to a jury?
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: Can you lay that out in layman's terms? And that's
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: what happened in this courtroom in Colorado with this forensic
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: pathologist Dave.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: Before you go to a peer in a trial where
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: you're trying to tell the story of the victim, do
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: you try to keep your emotions in check or do
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: you allow that human side of things so the jury
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: knows you're not just teaching a course on this, but
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: actually being emotional and enough to make them realize this
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: is an eleven year old boy we're talking about. This
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: is not a two hundred year old skeleton we found
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: in the desert. This is a child who should be
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: playing baseball right now. How do you do that as
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: a as a forensic person?
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, as a forensics person, I think I couldn't do it. Now.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: I couldn't. I'd openly weep. There's no way. But I
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: remember the man that I was all those years ago
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: when I would have to give testimony about what I
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: was finding. It seems you do your best to remain
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: as clinical as you possibly can and let the jury
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: draw their conclusions. And here's the thing. You need to
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: remain as clinical as you possibly can before the jury
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: because if you openly start to weep on the stand
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: over the death of a child like and trust me, Dave,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: if anybody, if any child that has ever walked this
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: earth deserves to have tears shed over his life, and
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: the loss of life is gannon all right, But you
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: cannot allow that to come through because that can be
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: viewed as prejudicial. So you have to fight this fight.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: It's tough, I mean, it really is. So thank you
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: for asking me that question, because it's one of those
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: things that it just it punches you right in the face,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: particularly when you're reflective about it, after you've walked out
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: of the courtroom, you've gotten off the stand, and you
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: realize what you've just been discussing. There are those moments,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: and I have to believe that the forends of pathologist
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: in this case did that. I watched her testimony and
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: she was very stalwart when her descriptors, you know, didn't
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: emote a bunch of sadness and all those sorts of things.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: There's only so much sadness that you you know that
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: you can respond to in your own life. And trust me,
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: this pathologist has seen her share. I mean she's worked
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: everywhere all over Florida. She's seen some really bad cases,
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: and she did. I think that to remain clinical. People
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: view that as cold. On the contrary, I view it
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: as doing your best job that you can for Cannon, Okay,
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: because there has to be somebody that's willing to face
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: the mails from and describe what they saw that that
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: would make weaker people fold, you know, under understand what
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: she's what she's describing to everybody here in very clinical.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: Right. Well, we've known about some of the wounds, Okay,
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: we knew about eighteen apparent stab wounds. We knew about
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: a gunshot wound to the lower left jaw, we knew
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: about cuts on the hands and arms consistent with defensive wounds.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: But to actually share that's just the outline. Because I'm
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: trying to figure out as a layperson, I need to
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: understand what these actually mean, what the actual impact of
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: these were, because coming into it dry, I'm thinking, Okay,
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: she drugged him with Laura said he was lethargic, he's
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: laying in bed, she cuts him, she kills him and
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: then she puts him in the suitcase and there we go.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: That is not what happened at all.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: No, it's not. However, I will say that they found
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: hydro codone and a set of menifin in his system.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: Of course it couldn't. You know, you can't at this
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: point relative to decomposition, You can't place a number to
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: it to say that he had been odeed in some
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: way or that he was even in a state where
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: he lacked awareness. I think that just by looking at
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: what the forensic pathologist has interpreted as defensive injuries gives
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: you an idea that he did not lack awareness. He
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: knew what was going on. There's part of you, I
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: think that you wish that he hadn't okay, but that's
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: evidenced in the fact that he had some kind of
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: response to pain because of his hands. He had multiple
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: cuts on the surfaces of his hands and his fingers.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: You know, those images were just when they displayed those
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: in court, it was quite striking and you could still
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: This is the fascinating thing about the status of his
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: remains is that they were still appreciable day that like
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: if you're in the jury and you've never been exposed
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: to a severely decomposed body. You can look at that
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: image and say, oh, that's a hand, you know, that's
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: definitely a hand, and what she's describing you can actually
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: see the injuries, and then when she gets into it,
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: you understand form and function at that point in time.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: Of the incredible things about this Now, I think people
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: would say, well, Morgan, if you if you can't quantify
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: the number relative to the level of these drugs that
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: were in a system, how do you arrive at the
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: conclusion that they were even there anyway? Well, there's not
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: going to be any there's not going to be any
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: blood to test from a toxicological standpoint in the sense
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: of how we would normally test it. And one of
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: the things that some folks might not be aware of
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: that when we have a severely decomposed body, there's a
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: couple of ways that we test for any kind of
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: substances there. Go to deliver and to the kidneys. Now
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: they will be decomposed, obviously, but there will still be
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: enough of a remnant there that you can cut a
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: section of liver, place it into a tube a centrifuge,
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: if you will. People have seen a centrifuge. It spins around,
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: and it spins around to the point where it liquifies
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: solid wor like liver, and spins it down and liquifies it.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: You draw it up and then when you draw it up,
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: you can actually test it, and you can test it
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: for the presence of any number of different substances that
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: are contained in the system. Another thing that we do
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: with decomposing bodies, we can actually take maggots from a body,
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: and remember the maggots have been present with the body,
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: have been digesting the body. You can collect those and
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: spin those down as well. In certain cases you can
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: find remnant of opiate. You can also find cocaine in
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: maggots as well after you spin them down in liquify them,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: which I've always found just absolutely fascinated.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: That's unbelievable. I didn't have any idea you could do that.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it isn't that something. And so you have to
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: bring every tool that you have to bear here. And
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: the fact that he had medication on board goes into
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: this narrative. Why are you applying a substance like a
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: hydro codone, which is you just a painkiller? How much
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: were you giving this child he's only eleven years old,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: and as we know, it can make you loopy. As
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: a matter of fact, people die from it, die from
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: overdoses all the time.
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: Oddly enough, the actual medication, the hydro codone, was prescribed
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: to his father, Al Al had a finger injury and
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: he had been given this hydro coda and a set
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: of minifit as a pain reliever. He didn't take all
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: of it, and the medication was in his nightstand drawer,
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: and it was the location and what was in it
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: was only known to Al and Letitia. Nobody else knew
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: what was in there or where it was, so she
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: knew where it was. They actually brought that up and
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: actually gave it to Gannon in some way.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: But obviously that was not sufficient to the task because
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: what doctor Gnacio wound up determining is that and just
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: featured this just for a second, this child actually sustained
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: eighteen stab ones. Just let that sink in. Eighteen plus.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: He was shot. You know, you talked about this gsw
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: that he's got. I think it was through the left
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: jaw that was, you know, the coup de gras, if
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: you will. And he's got blunt force trauma that has
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: resulted in lacerations. Remember we've talked about on body backs before.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: There's a difference between the laceration and sharp force injuries.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: Lacerations arise from blunt force trauma. So you know, you
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: can be beaten, you can be kicked, you can be
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: bludgeoned with something you know, like a heavy object, and
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: that's going to result in these lacerations which don't have
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: clean margins. They've got this kind of connective tissue that
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: we call tissue bridging that are left behind when you
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: have a stab wound. That means that you're talking about
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: like a milled edge that creates these margins that are
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: very distinctive. Okay, here's the tough thing though, Dave, when
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: you begin to think about how compromised the body would
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: be due to decomposition, one of the obstacles that you
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: really have to overcome is the interpretation of these wounds.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: Once an area of human remain has been insulted in
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: some way, whether it's a gunshot wound, stab wound, blunt
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: force trauma, you open up an area and when that
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: area is opened up because it is exposed, that soft
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: tissue is exposed that promotes more or more rapid decomposition
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: in that specific area, and if the body is exposed
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: to the elements in this case, of course it wasn't
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: the case would gain them. But if you have the
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: body out in a say a wooded area, just laying
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: on the floor of a forest, we're going to have
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: larval development with maggots and flies and all that sort
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: of stuff, and then you have the chance that vermin
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: are going to come by and that area begins to
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: break down. So the trick is, do you have the
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: skill set in order to interpret what is decomposition from
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: what we refer to as decompositional artifact versus some kind
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: of anti mortem injury or fatal injury into mortem being
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: before death. And so that's a real skill set that
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: you have to have to obtain and refine over a
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: period of time, and many times it's dictated by the
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: environment which you practice. And that's why it's so essential
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: that this particular practitioner, this fantastic medical examiner, was from Florida,
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: that she was able to see all of these injuries
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: and appreciate them and contextualize them from the environment in
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: which Cannon's body was discovered. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: this is bodybags.