Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: A Mother's Betrayal: The Chilling Forensics of the Daybell Children's Deaths

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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: A Mother's Betrayal: The Chilling Forensics of the Daybell Children's Deaths · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:08
Speaker 1: Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan fending for yourself. How
0:21
Speaker 1: many kids does that apply to in this world we
0:23
Speaker 1: live in now? I know one that it did, in fact,
0:27
Speaker 1: applied to Tylie Ryan. Tally was a young lady. She
0:33
Speaker 1: had seen the life that her mother had lived. Five husbands,
0:38
Speaker 1: multiple moves to settlement. Tillie had essentially become the anchor
0:45
Speaker 1: in her family, certainly as that applied to her little brother.
0:51
Speaker 1: To ju Valo always envisioned them clinging to one another.
0:55
Speaker 1: There's that image where they're hugging each other very tightly,
0:58
Speaker 1: and I would think that in their world that's really
1:00
Speaker 1: all they had to hold on to for stability was
1:03
Speaker 1: one another. But just like with JJ, we found out
1:07
Speaker 1: a lot of disturbing news about how Tyley met her
1:10
Speaker 1: end because we've heard from the forensic pathologists that did
1:16
Speaker 1: her examination. In this episode, we're going to break it down,
1:19
Speaker 1: We're going to discuss it, the horror of Tyley's death.
1:26
Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags. There
1:34
Speaker 1: is no satisfaction. And my listeners know how much I
1:40
Speaker 1: hate the word closure because it doesn't exist, particularly when
1:43
Speaker 1: it comes to death. You get answers, and some answers
1:47
Speaker 1: are just wanting their unsatisfying, I think because you haven't
1:54
Speaker 1: quite filled in all of the blanks, and unfortunately, with
1:58
Speaker 1: Tyler Ryan's death, that's that's kind of the situation we
2:01
Speaker 1: find ourselves in right now. But what I can say
2:05
Speaker 1: is that her death was horrific. Dave Mac, would you
2:11
Speaker 1: agree with that assessment?
2:13
Speaker 2: On what we know about Tyler Ryan and her passing
2:19
Speaker 2: is it's frustrating and sad, I say that not lightly frustrating,
2:25
Speaker 2: because we don't still to this moment, know all the
2:29
Speaker 2: things you would normally know about somebody who died when
2:33
Speaker 2: you have remains to examine. I say remains, because there
2:38
Speaker 2: was not a body to examine as one would expect
2:40
Speaker 2: when you say body. What happened to Tyler Ryan? And
2:44
Speaker 2: we don't even know exactly when. What we do know
2:47
Speaker 2: is that Tyler Ryan was last seen September eighth in
2:51
Speaker 2: Yellowstone Park in a picture with her mother, her little
2:54
Speaker 2: brother JJ, and her uncle Alex Cox, who was Lori
2:58
Speaker 2: Valo's brother. We have that picture and we have some
3:02
Speaker 2: other information that we know she was alive with the
3:06
Speaker 2: family September the eighth, and then we know she's missing
3:10
Speaker 2: until June ninth of twenty twenty. What took place in
3:14
Speaker 2: the infram is where people like you come in. How
3:17
Speaker 2: did they find Tyler Ryan.
3:19
Speaker 1: I think that to say buried is inaccurate. I prefer
3:24
Speaker 1: the term discarded with an attempt to cover up burial.
3:31
Speaker 1: To me, when you say that, it goes to honoring,
3:35
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, Dave. When we honor someone,
3:37
Speaker 1: we bury them. She was not this young woman. She's
3:41
Speaker 1: in that weird space in time. She's seventeen.
3:45
Speaker 2: Actually she died too. She died two weeks before her
3:47
Speaker 2: seventeenth birthday.
3:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, right on the cusp, and you know,
3:50
Speaker 1: the world's about to open up to her, and unfortunately,
3:53
Speaker 1: I think in a very bad way, it had already
3:57
Speaker 1: opened up to her. She had seen things that I
4:00
Speaker 1: think that by virtue the way that her mother chose
4:05
Speaker 1: to live her life, she had been exposed to just
4:08
Speaker 1: the dissettlement in and of itself that she had had
4:11
Speaker 1: to endure for all those years.
4:13
Speaker 2: It's very important to note two things really quickly. One,
4:16
Speaker 2: when we did a program about JJ Vallo and how
4:19
Speaker 2: his body was recovered, and his body was recovered and
4:23
Speaker 2: if you haven't listened to it. I encourage you to
4:25
Speaker 2: do so. But what happened with Tyler Ryan totally different.
4:29
Speaker 2: It was like two totally separate things, not connected by anything.
4:34
Speaker 2: And you mentioned that Tyler had been through a lot
4:36
Speaker 2: with her mother, Well, her mother was married five times.
4:39
Speaker 2: When you watch the interview of Tyler Ryan with police
4:43
Speaker 2: after Joe, after Charles Vallo was murdered by Alex Cox,
4:47
Speaker 2: watched that interview and in the times after, she seems unaffected.
4:52
Speaker 2: Tyler Ryan seemed totally unaffected. She actually was emulating what
4:55
Speaker 2: her mother was doing. They were joking, talking like it
4:59
Speaker 2: was just another day. She's copying her mother and no emotion, giggling, laughing,
5:04
Speaker 2: moving on. So, Tylie Ryan was so impacted by the
5:07
Speaker 2: lifestyle that her mother led that her demise and the
5:11
Speaker 2: way she was discarded shows something a total disconnect from
5:16
Speaker 2: life and love.
5:17
Speaker 1: That's rooted I think in something else, that touch of reality,
5:22
Speaker 1: that dose of reality in her short life. It was
5:25
Speaker 1: read into the record and trial, by the way, Laurie
5:27
Speaker 1: Valo's trial is actually going on right now as we're
5:30
Speaker 1: laying this down. It came out in testimony on the
5:34
Speaker 1: part of the forensic pathologist that he had had a
5:38
Speaker 1: chance to review Tillie's medical records, and I was kind
5:44
Speaker 1: of surprised by this. She had lived a very short life,
5:48
Speaker 1: but in that time she had been diagnosed with anxiety,
5:53
Speaker 1: she had gone through having OVERI insist, and get this,
5:59
Speaker 1: she had actually suffered pancreatitis in that short life. Pancreatitis
6:06
Speaker 1: is a miserable condition and over insists or certainly unpleasant
6:12
Speaker 1: as well. And then you have this anxiety. You know what,
6:14
Speaker 1: seventeen years old? Wash she have anxiety? I'm a firm believer.
6:17
Speaker 1: You know that many times illnesses manifest themself as a
6:20
Speaker 1: result of stressors in your life and that sort of thing.
6:22
Speaker 1: And you take its measure by thinking that this person
6:27
Speaker 1: that she's attached to at the hip, her mother has
6:30
Speaker 1: literally drugged this child through a keyhole her entire life,
6:33
Speaker 1: through all these various relationships and situations that they've been in.
6:38
Speaker 1: You'll never convince me, you know, you're not going to
6:41
Speaker 1: have things manifest manifest in your life physically.
6:45
Speaker 2: What is pancreatitis exactly, Joe, I have no idea.
6:48
Speaker 1: Well, it's an inflammation of the pancreas and it's deadly actually,
6:51
Speaker 1: I mean it is it's super deadly and many times
6:56
Speaker 1: it's associated with things like elevated cholesterol. Not the she was,
7:00
Speaker 1: but you know, you'll have people that have problems with
7:03
Speaker 1: chronic alcoholism develop pancreatitis. There's any number of reasons why
7:08
Speaker 1: you can develop it, but it is an infection of
7:10
Speaker 1: the pancreas, very painful. I mean, it comes along with
7:14
Speaker 1: like horrible abnominal pain, high fever, It can give systemic as,
7:19
Speaker 1: It impacts your the totality of your system, the way
7:22
Speaker 1: your pancreas functions. Remember the pancreas, you know, controls insulin
7:26
Speaker 1: in your body. Just a horrible set of circumstances. And
7:29
Speaker 1: you couple that with everything that she was having to endure,
7:33
Speaker 1: you know, right right before she was murdered. She's not
7:38
Speaker 1: yet seventeen, and she's dealing with the homicide of her
7:43
Speaker 1: stepfather at the hand of her uncle.
7:46
Speaker 2: And please add in there, Joe, that Tyler Ryan was
7:50
Speaker 2: at home and knew the truth of what had transpired.
7:54
Speaker 2: You mentioned stress and worry, and that can lead to
7:58
Speaker 2: some of these things that she experiencing.
8:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, and here's another little nugget kind of picked up
8:04
Speaker 1: on friends of mind that are in the media. That
8:06
Speaker 1: have been following kind of the family dynamic of this
8:10
Speaker 1: more so than I have try to stick more with
8:13
Speaker 1: the forensics, even though in this case is really hard,
8:15
Speaker 1: as you can see, to kind of hide my feelings
8:18
Speaker 1: relative to it. But in this particular case, from what
8:21
Speaker 1: I'm hearing, she would not stand for some of the
8:24
Speaker 1: stuff that her mother would engage in. She would be
8:27
Speaker 1: combative with her, She would make comments to her. She
8:30
Speaker 1: was not just going to go along with the mom
8:31
Speaker 1: because mom said that this is what she could do.
8:34
Speaker 1: You know, She's not another man coming into her mother's
8:39
Speaker 1: life that her mother can manipulate with her beauty and
8:43
Speaker 1: sex appeal and whatever else that she's you know, trying
8:46
Speaker 1: to sell to whomever it's coming down the track. Kyleie
8:49
Speaker 1: has seen behind the curtain, you know what I'm saying.
8:51
Speaker 2: And you know what she showed that to people that
8:54
Speaker 2: came into Laurie's life. For instance, that Lorie Valo's best
8:57
Speaker 2: friend was Melanie Gibb and Melanie Gibb, it was brought
9:01
Speaker 2: up in trial that Tyler Ryan didn't particularly care for
9:04
Speaker 2: Melanie Gibb. So I think that while she has a
9:06
Speaker 2: mother that is dragging her that you mentioned dragging through
9:09
Speaker 2: a keyhole. I think that's a great that's a great
9:11
Speaker 2: identifier there, but that maybe Tilly didn't overreact with her mother,
9:17
Speaker 2: but it manifested itself in the way that Tyley looked
9:20
Speaker 2: at Lourie's friends that were also part of this crazy
9:23
Speaker 2: world that Titley wasn't buying into, which is why Tyler
9:26
Speaker 2: had to go. Tilli wasn't on board.
9:29
Speaker 1: They had made an assessment that she's one of these
9:31
Speaker 1: dark spirits, or however they were framing it, you know,
9:35
Speaker 1: as a justification for these things. But what we do
9:39
Speaker 1: know this new space that her mother had chosen to
9:44
Speaker 1: occupy or was planning on occupying, this place that's out
9:49
Speaker 1: in this beautiful area of the country out there in
9:51
Speaker 1: the Eastern I hope it ended in sheer horror and
9:54
Speaker 1: it actually wound up being Tyler's resting place after she
10:00
Speaker 1: apparently murdered. If you're spending time out in rural America,
10:24
Speaker 1: if you're out on a farm, I don't know of
10:27
Speaker 1: any farm that doesn't have a place where you burn
10:30
Speaker 1: brush down. Here in South they called a burn pile
10:33
Speaker 1: where you can take limbs and things that break off
10:36
Speaker 1: of trees and whatnot, and you can you save it
10:39
Speaker 1: up and kind of gather it and maybe you'll have
10:41
Speaker 1: a pondfire, and maybe you'll just stand out there and
10:43
Speaker 1: burn it and make sure it doesn't spread, and then
10:46
Speaker 1: you walk away and everything is said and done. They
10:51
Speaker 1: had a place like this. There was this location that
10:56
Speaker 1: Chad Dave Bell had, you know, on the backside of
10:58
Speaker 1: his property, adjacent to this big building which I've always
11:01
Speaker 1: suspected had something to do with the deaths of these children.
11:05
Speaker 1: That was just out back of it where it looked
11:08
Speaker 1: more like a fir ring actually, but it was also
11:11
Speaker 1: known as a location where Chad da Bell and his
11:15
Speaker 1: wife Tammy would bear pets. And as it turned out,
11:22
Speaker 1: this is where Tyler Ryan's body was found.
11:24
Speaker 2: Duar, and you mentioned that it was a burn pile,
11:27
Speaker 2: you know, a burn pile you burned trash and rubbish.
11:30
Speaker 2: But also in that same ring, as you mentioned, there
11:33
Speaker 2: were benches around there where that family roasted in marshmallows,
11:35
Speaker 2: having moores, and they chose that location, the pet cemetery location,
11:41
Speaker 2: to actually dispose discard the body of Tiller Ryan. I
11:46
Speaker 2: don't know how that impacted the investigation, but I'm really curious, Joe,
11:50
Speaker 2: when you start digging around something like this, and you
11:53
Speaker 2: have what you know is the pet cemetery area, and
11:58
Speaker 2: you have obviously fire. What are you finding as an
12:01
Speaker 2: investigator as you start looking for remains.
12:05
Speaker 1: Throw a word out to you, stratification. I don't mean
12:08
Speaker 1: that in a sociological standpoint. I'm talking about from a
12:11
Speaker 1: geological standpoint. We have STRATAI relative to the ground where
12:17
Speaker 1: you have various layers of earth, and this would have
12:21
Speaker 1: been stratification in the sense of recent. When I say recent,
12:25
Speaker 1: I'm not talking at one hundreds and thousands of years.
12:27
Speaker 1: I'm talking about in the recent history where you do
12:30
Speaker 1: this layering, if you will, of things. So for every
12:33
Speaker 1: bit of wood that you burned, are other items that
12:37
Speaker 1: you're trying to dispose of by fire. It burns down,
12:40
Speaker 1: it settles, right, and then just imagine that progressively becomes
12:46
Speaker 1: more compressed over period times. You burn more items, you
12:49
Speaker 1: throw more stuff in. You're getting this strata of all
12:53
Speaker 1: of these elements that have been burned down and rendered
12:55
Speaker 1: down over the years, and where they found highly these remains.
13:02
Speaker 1: This earth would have been probably a bit more loose,
13:07
Speaker 1: if you will, you know it had been. The earth
13:10
Speaker 1: was probably turned more regularly with JJ's remains. When they
13:17
Speaker 1: went out to that retention pond or dried up pond
13:19
Speaker 1: or whatever that area is, whatever they're calling it where
13:22
Speaker 1: his remains were found, that earth had not been turned
13:25
Speaker 1: beautiful green grass all around except for that one area.
13:28
Speaker 1: But when you get to an area where you've got
13:31
Speaker 1: a lot of debris that's just been settling there for
13:34
Speaker 1: a while, and you might add to it, the soil
13:38
Speaker 1: is going to look disrupted as well. So when you
13:40
Speaker 1: show up as an investigator, you're going to have to
13:42
Speaker 1: take a long, hard look. And it might not just
13:46
Speaker 1: be your sight that you're relying on when you're looking around.
13:50
Speaker 1: It might be smell. It very well might be smell
13:53
Speaker 1: because you're sitting there and you're thinking, I'm smelling something
13:57
Speaker 1: that is obviously organic, it is decomposed, and you catch
14:01
Speaker 1: wind of it. And the reason that you might catch
14:05
Speaker 1: wind of it, and this is absolutely horrible. But the
14:10
Speaker 1: forensic anthropologist in this case, her assessment of Tiley's remains,
14:16
Speaker 1: she said that there had been animal activity in her remains,
14:19
Speaker 1: So she's referring to a small mammal. She doesn't know
14:22
Speaker 1: what type of small mammal, but you know, you've got possums. Famously,
14:26
Speaker 1: Chad Dave Bell had mentioned a large raccoon part of
14:30
Speaker 1: this alibi he had put forward when he was socking
14:33
Speaker 1: to his wife Tammy. Raccoons will feast as well. You
14:37
Speaker 1: have any number of rodents that will do this. If
14:39
Speaker 1: in fact, rodents or some small mammal hadn't made their
14:43
Speaker 1: way to all the remain of tiling, that means that
14:47
Speaker 1: they would have disrupted the soil. And when they disrupt
14:49
Speaker 1: the soil, they open it up. They're not going to
14:52
Speaker 1: go back and recover it, okay. So if you get
14:55
Speaker 1: close enough, you begin to detect an odor, okay, and
15:01
Speaker 1: if you look very carefully. That's why it's always very
15:03
Speaker 1: important with the case like this to not just simply
15:09
Speaker 1: have a forensic anthropologist consult on a case where they're
15:13
Speaker 1: back at a laboratory. You physically need them out there.
15:16
Speaker 1: They're amazing people. I've got a couple of friends that
15:18
Speaker 1: are forensic anthropologists, and they are I'm not going to
15:22
Speaker 1: say they're ocd by nature. They're the type of people
15:25
Speaker 1: that can look at ground and they see things that
15:29
Speaker 1: I might just regard as a rock and an't rock.
15:34
Speaker 1: They have the ability to read ground the way that
15:37
Speaker 1: nobody else can. And so if you physically have the
15:41
Speaker 1: forensic anthropologist out there, which they actually did, they actually
15:45
Speaker 1: at the scene, they can take a look at a
15:49
Speaker 1: space of ground, even in a burn area, and they
15:51
Speaker 1: can see lines of demarcation that might indicate where a
15:54
Speaker 1: burial has taken place, kind of the margins or the borders,
15:58
Speaker 1: if you will, of where the soil has been disrupted,
16:01
Speaker 1: where they actually detect a pattern. And I've had this
16:04
Speaker 1: happen a couple of times over my career where I
16:07
Speaker 1: would be staring at something and I was staring at
16:09
Speaker 1: what I should stare at, but I don't recognize it.
16:12
Speaker 1: And then it takes the forensic anthropologists to say, okay,
16:15
Speaker 1: do you see this deviation right here? This delineates the
16:20
Speaker 1: borders and you start to stare at it, and it's
16:22
Speaker 1: like you remember those old three D paintings that you
16:24
Speaker 1: would look at, and they say you got to stare
16:25
Speaker 1: at it long enough, and that it's kind of like that.
16:28
Speaker 2: All of a sudden, you see the old woman.
16:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, the image just kind of pops for you all
16:31
Speaker 1: of a sudden, and it's revelatory at that moment. And
16:34
Speaker 1: once you identify it. The tough part really begins in
16:37
Speaker 1: because you have to begin to lay your grid out.
16:40
Speaker 1: And of course with Tyly, our body's not intact, So
16:45
Speaker 1: you've got deposition of human remains that are spread out
16:49
Speaker 1: over an area. I can't give you the exact dimensions,
16:53
Speaker 1: but I know that they're spread out. They were not
16:55
Speaker 1: recovered in one piece. And if this helps it all, Warring,
17:00
Speaker 1: the forensic pathologist, actually made a statement. I'm kind of
17:03
Speaker 1: paraphrasing right now, but you know he did make this
17:07
Speaker 1: kind of offhanded remark in his testimony under direct when
17:12
Speaker 1: he was being asked about the receipt of Tyler's remains
17:15
Speaker 1: at the Ada County Corner's office. How do you receive remains?
17:20
Speaker 1: He said, Well, normally I receive remains in a body bag,
17:26
Speaker 1: So how did you receive these in multiple backs? Tyler
17:30
Speaker 1: arrived at the Corner's office in Ada County, Idaho in pieces,
17:36
Speaker 1: not one intact body. It's a partner when you work
18:02
Speaker 1: together in forensics. There's multiple practices that forensic pathologists can
18:08
Speaker 1: align themselves with in their forensic practice. First thing I
18:12
Speaker 1: think that probably comes to mind is traditionally, like forensic
18:15
Speaker 1: pathologist and forensic odentologists, a forensic dentist. Toxicology. Certainly, you're
18:21
Speaker 1: always trying to decide what was going on with the
18:24
Speaker 1: chemistry of the body, you know, what was going on inside.
18:27
Speaker 1: There's some peripheral people sometimes will consult to radiologists, a
18:31
Speaker 1: certainly neurologists that will examine brains. But I don't know
18:35
Speaker 1: if any other marriage that exists in forensic practice that
18:42
Speaker 1: is so kind of conjoined as that between the forensic
18:47
Speaker 1: pathologist and the forensic anthropologist. They're kind of doing the
18:51
Speaker 1: same thing, only the forensic anthropologist is really focused on
18:55
Speaker 1: human skeletal remains and what they can learn from the bone.
19:00
Speaker 1: Icians can point you in the right direction with it,
19:03
Speaker 1: but these people, they spend years and years going through
19:06
Speaker 1: their doctoral programs out there to learn how to read
19:10
Speaker 1: bones and tell the story that's left behind, because sometimes
19:13
Speaker 1: that's all that remains.
19:16
Speaker 2: The autopsy for JJ took about four hours. The autopsy
19:20
Speaker 2: for Tylee Ryan took him about a week. The body
19:24
Speaker 2: was burned. Was there an odor that would be recognizable
19:31
Speaker 2: as that of a decomposed individual even after being in
19:36
Speaker 2: the elements buried in the dirt burned? What kind of
19:39
Speaker 2: condition are we expecting out of this. Are you going
19:41
Speaker 2: to smell it when you start digging? Are you going
19:43
Speaker 2: to smell it when you're standing on top of the ground.
19:45
Speaker 1: In the state in which they have mentioned that Tyley's
19:49
Speaker 1: remains were in. Probably once you start, once you break
19:52
Speaker 1: the earth, I mean really substantially break the earth. You know,
19:55
Speaker 1: a cadaver dog would hit immediately, But for kind of
19:58
Speaker 1: our spectrum our all factory spectrum as humans, it would
20:02
Speaker 1: take turning the earth to really smell it. The decomposition
20:05
Speaker 1: that you smell relative to a decaying or remain has
20:08
Speaker 1: to do with soft tissue. Bones will have an odor
20:11
Speaker 1: to them, but it's not as profound as is associated
20:16
Speaker 1: with with soft tissue. And Tyley she still had and
20:21
Speaker 1: this is horrible to say, but it's body bags. We're
20:24
Speaker 1: going to talk about this. But she still had her
20:26
Speaker 1: bowel was still present. Her heart, though compromise and kind
20:30
Speaker 1: of shrunken I think probably as related to heat, was
20:34
Speaker 1: still there. Her lungs were still there, so not everything
20:38
Speaker 1: had been eradicated. In total. The forensic anthropologists doctor Christensen,
20:45
Speaker 1: had stated that she had one hundred bones that were found,
20:50
Speaker 1: and of course human bodies got over two hundred, so
20:53
Speaker 1: some had been rendered down or just impossible to have recovered.
20:57
Speaker 1: She had also mentioned that there was some type of
21:00
Speaker 1: animal is out there, and animals will take away bones
21:02
Speaker 1: as well. You begin to think about the bones of
21:04
Speaker 1: the fingers and toes and the feet and all those
21:06
Speaker 1: sorts of things. But they found a goodly portion of
21:09
Speaker 1: the remains that were left behind, but they had been burned.
21:14
Speaker 1: That makes this kind of a daunting challenge. The forensic
21:18
Speaker 1: anthropologists will do their assessment on the body, but it's
21:24
Speaker 1: at the end of the day that the forensic pathologist
21:27
Speaker 1: is the one that actually signs a death certificate. In
21:29
Speaker 1: the list what the cause and manner of death is,
21:31
Speaker 1: they classified Tiley's manner of death. Remember we have five.
21:37
Speaker 1: We've talked about this before, but we have five and
21:40
Speaker 1: they classified her manner of death as homicide. But the
21:43
Speaker 1: cause is very interesting. Her cause of death is non
21:47
Speaker 1: specific homicidal trauma. And you hear that many times when
21:51
Speaker 1: you have these kind of fragmented bodies like this, you
21:53
Speaker 1: know the cause of death was something that was at
21:56
Speaker 1: the hand of another, and that's what defines a homicide
21:59
Speaker 1: death at the hand of another, that's what you're saying,
22:02
Speaker 1: when you actually use that term, it's going to be
22:05
Speaker 1: violent traumatic. But beyond that, they can't say. It's like
22:10
Speaker 1: saying gunshot wound, or strangulation or bludgeoning or stabbing or
22:15
Speaker 1: some kind of blunt force trauma. The forensic pathologist said
22:19
Speaker 1: he couldn't go any further than that. So this becomes
22:22
Speaker 1: at that point in time in our world, in the
22:25
Speaker 1: medical leal world, that this becomes a kind of a
22:29
Speaker 1: circumstantial event, right, and you're assessing what you have remaining
22:34
Speaker 1: from the physical remains, and then you're coupling that with
22:37
Speaker 1: the circumstance in which the body is found. You've got
22:39
Speaker 1: a body that there has been great effort that has
22:42
Speaker 1: been put forth to render the body down by fire
22:45
Speaker 1: and then cover it to obscure it from view. So
22:49
Speaker 1: that in and of itself gives us an indication that
22:51
Speaker 1: you've got something very very nefarious at work here, and
22:56
Speaker 1: that's what the forensic pathologists had to work with and
22:59
Speaker 1: that was their ruling.
23:00
Speaker 2: But there was one part of this that kind of
23:03
Speaker 2: stood out to me, and that is the identified heart,
23:09
Speaker 2: both lungs, one kidney. You mentioned portions of bowel and liver,
23:13
Speaker 2: but they found small fragments of brain matter. I know
23:18
Speaker 2: obviously that they've got multiple bags. Her body didn't come
23:22
Speaker 2: in intact, But are we talking about the total destruction
23:26
Speaker 2: of a human being beyond It's enough that she's dead,
23:29
Speaker 2: but now we're smashing her head. Is that what had
23:32
Speaker 2: to happen for there to be brain matter?
23:34
Speaker 1: Hard to say, And let me tell you why you've
23:36
Speaker 1: got a real feel for this, Dave. When you have
23:39
Speaker 1: thermal injuries, okay, and thermal injuries can it's not just
23:44
Speaker 1: an anti mortem event. You can have thermal injuries to
23:47
Speaker 1: a body post mortem. Many things happen dynamically. You can
23:53
Speaker 1: get heat related fractures of the body, okay, of the
23:57
Speaker 1: bone itself, so the bone will actually crack as a
24:01
Speaker 1: result of exposure to heat as it's beginning to break down.
24:05
Speaker 1: If you have the skull and they don't, they didn't
24:08
Speaker 1: have the intact skull they talked about, Like the area
24:11
Speaker 1: around the superorbal ridges, there's a few focal areas that remain.
24:17
Speaker 1: You have to wonder did Tiley's skull fracture as a
24:23
Speaker 1: result of a heat fracture being exposed to intense flame?
24:26
Speaker 1: And then you've got brain matter that's leaching out, or
24:30
Speaker 1: is this something that was maybe part of the causation
24:35
Speaker 1: of her death and you had brain matter that was
24:38
Speaker 1: extruding in some way at the time of death and
24:41
Speaker 1: then they find it there. So that again is one
24:44
Speaker 1: of these things that's very difficult to assess. And heat fractures,
24:48
Speaker 1: anything that occurs in death, those fractures are going to
24:51
Speaker 1: appear differently, particularly to the trained eye of a forensic anthropologist.
24:55
Speaker 1: You know, where you have some kind of anti mortal
24:57
Speaker 1: event where you'll have associated hemorrhage surrounding the points of
25:01
Speaker 1: fracture and all that stuff. You don't have a lot
25:03
Speaker 1: to go on here because a lot of the soft
25:05
Speaker 1: tissue has been rendered down. And that's one of the
25:07
Speaker 1: big things that we look to in forensic pathology is
25:11
Speaker 1: if we have soft tissue that's going to give us
25:14
Speaker 1: an indication of things like bruises or contusions and scratches, marks,
25:19
Speaker 1: literature marks, you know, even gunshot ones. We've talked about
25:21
Speaker 1: a range of fire on the show before. You know,
25:23
Speaker 1: deposition of sood. Somebody's been cracked in the head with
25:27
Speaker 1: a hammer, Perhaps you'll have markings on the outer soft
25:30
Speaker 1: tissue to give me an indication of laceration and you
25:34
Speaker 1: don't have that to deal with. And that's very non specific.
25:38
Speaker 1: But my eye in this case is drawn to something
25:45
Speaker 1: that the forensic anthropologists mentioned on the stand, and that
25:50
Speaker 1: is that she, given her extensive training and background, she
25:56
Speaker 1: saw striking evidence found on the pelvis. She opined from
26:01
Speaker 1: the stand that what she saw was an attempt at dismemberment.
26:08
Speaker 1: And we had heard this, we had heard this before,
26:10
Speaker 1: but they were very non specific about this dismemberment. This
26:14
Speaker 1: whole issue with dismemberment. My thought was, where are they
26:17
Speaker 1: getting it from? Did you see saw marks on the bone.
26:21
Speaker 1: That's not what she see, you know, according to doctor Christiansen,
26:25
Speaker 1: she had seen great external force that was exerted to
26:31
Speaker 1: the bones of the pelvis. It's very non specific, but
26:34
Speaker 1: it's I hesitate to say crushing, but there's kind of
26:37
Speaker 1: these like linear marks that gives you an idea of
26:40
Speaker 1: a downward strike of something. So I mean, are we
26:43
Speaker 1: talking about an axe? Are we talking about a pick axe?
26:47
Speaker 1: Which I think has been mentioned before. In order to
26:50
Speaker 1: break the body apart to try to render it down,
26:54
Speaker 1: because you have to make a body manageable if you're
26:56
Speaker 1: going to try to render it down and sometimes just
27:00
Speaker 1: as it happened, she did the forends against pologist did
27:03
Speaker 1: mention that this is not typical of a traditional quote
27:07
Speaker 1: unquote dismemberment, where you would go to a joint perhaps
27:11
Speaker 1: and saw through a joint break down the elements of
27:14
Speaker 1: the body. That's not what was happening. That's not what
27:17
Speaker 1: they were seeing. This is an odd place day. It's
27:19
Speaker 1: very odd that you would have fractures in the pelvic
27:23
Speaker 1: region of Tilly's body that are associated with some kind
27:27
Speaker 1: of strike downward force that's occurring. It sounds almost half hearted,
27:33
Speaker 1: just like the burning, because her body was not totally
27:35
Speaker 1: rendered down. You know, it takes eighteen hundred degrees fahrenheit
27:38
Speaker 1: in a crematory well of like constant fire. They're not
27:41
Speaker 1: doing that here. They're using wood apparently in order to
27:46
Speaker 1: fuel this. They did a very shoddy job because they
27:49
Speaker 1: left behind all of these remnants of bone and organs
27:53
Speaker 1: as well. They did not finish the job. It seems
27:56
Speaker 1: like it was something that was done quite hastily.
27:59
Speaker 2: In reality. I mean, could they determine that the markings
28:02
Speaker 2: that showed they were trying to dismember occurred before or
28:05
Speaker 2: after fire?
28:06
Speaker 1: These are going to be post mortem injuries. And the
28:09
Speaker 1: direct quote from doctor Christians is that there were five
28:13
Speaker 1: areas of sharp force trauma to the left hip bone
28:16
Speaker 1: and they were not the result of a disease process.
28:19
Speaker 1: You know, this is kind of speculative, but you're thinking
28:22
Speaker 1: about someone that's going to go to the trouble of
28:25
Speaker 1: conducting a dismemberment. You have to have the right tools
28:28
Speaker 1: for the job. And if you're talking about strikes with
28:32
Speaker 1: some kind of weapon that's being swung downward, that sounds
28:37
Speaker 1: like bad preparation. You're not thinking this process through. It's
28:41
Speaker 1: certainly not somebody that would have had experience with butchering, say,
28:46
Speaker 1: for instance, an animal like a deer. You know what
28:49
Speaker 1: you need. You're going to have to have a hacksaw,
28:51
Speaker 1: you're going to have to have sharp knife, all these
28:53
Speaker 1: things that come along with that kind of experience. You're
28:56
Speaker 1: using some type of item that's just a weapon or
29:00
Speaker 1: tool of convenience. I'll be very interested to see what
29:04
Speaker 1: the trace evidence people have to say about this case.
29:07
Speaker 1: What did they find. All signs from me point to
29:10
Speaker 1: that red barn out there. I've always thought that something
29:14
Speaker 1: had happened, because if you're going to purpose yourself to
29:17
Speaker 1: dismember or render down human remains. You have to have
29:20
Speaker 1: a sequestered area to do that. Do you have to
29:23
Speaker 1: have a location where you can do this under cover,
29:27
Speaker 1: where nobody is going to take notice of it. You
29:30
Speaker 1: have to have a certain amount of privacy. This is
29:32
Speaker 1: not something that you're just going to do out in
29:34
Speaker 1: the open in your backyard. This is something where you're
29:36
Speaker 1: going to need cover for it.
29:38
Speaker 2: Tylie was sixteen years old, two weeks away from her
29:41
Speaker 2: seventeenth birthday. JJ just a little fella seven years old,
29:47
Speaker 2: and they went missing. When we first started covering this case,
29:52
Speaker 2: it was a missing child case. There are two children
29:55
Speaker 2: missing and we don't know where they are. But her mom,
30:00
Speaker 2: Tilly's mom, JJ's is in Hawaii and has married some guy.
30:05
Speaker 2: So we were backpedaling trying to put these pieces together.
30:09
Speaker 2: We already know that JJ and Tylei are both gone.
30:13
Speaker 2: They're both passed away, which is what we're going to
30:15
Speaker 2: actually talk about today. But the reality is it started
30:19
Speaker 2: as a missing person's case with some very religious adults involved.
30:24
Speaker 2: I've got a grandchild Jjy's age. It has been very
30:28
Speaker 2: emotional to think of what happened to this boy. And
30:32
Speaker 2: his older sister, and it was done at the hands
30:35
Speaker 2: of people who were supposed to love and care for them.
30:38
Speaker 2: I have so many questions, and I'm praying that you're
30:41
Speaker 2: going to be able to give us the answers that
30:42
Speaker 2: will at least help us understand the mechanics of what
30:45
Speaker 2: took place.
30:46
Speaker 1: I've been scratching my head over David. Let me say
30:48
Speaker 1: this going into this conversation, I've been talking with some
30:52
Speaker 1: of my friends that are on the ground in the courtroom,
30:56
Speaker 1: who are physically there, in the news media, and to
31:00
Speaker 1: a person, they described the reaction of people in the
31:05
Speaker 1: courtroom and even members of the jury. There were people
31:11
Speaker 1: they were so disgusted by what they saw that they
31:15
Speaker 1: turned away. There were people wiping tears away. They couldn't
31:19
Speaker 1: bear to look at it. As a matter of fact,
31:23
Speaker 1: the judge at one point in time had to step
31:24
Speaker 1: in and say, Okay, that's going to be the limit
31:26
Speaker 1: of what we're going to be showing here, because it
31:29
Speaker 1: was so so horrible what they were bearing witness to.
31:34
Speaker 1: And I always have to go back to what is
31:37
Speaker 1: expected of a jury member, maybe one of the most
31:41
Speaker 1: honorable things you can do in this country. I know
31:43
Speaker 1: people group about it and complain that they got called
31:45
Speaker 1: away from work. But when you think about the privilege
31:48
Speaker 1: that it is to sit on a jury and you're
31:51
Speaker 1: common everyday folk, people like me, Dave. I haven't seen everything,
31:55
Speaker 1: but I've seen a lot of stuff. It's tough, and
31:59
Speaker 1: a case like this is even tougher, but just all
32:01
Speaker 1: the more so for these jury members that are having
32:04
Speaker 1: to take all of this in and view it in
32:07
Speaker 1: balance and try to understand and try to take the
32:10
Speaker 1: measure of it. I mean, really try to take the
32:13
Speaker 1: measure of it. You mentioned your grand baby. I got
32:15
Speaker 1: grand babies too. You sit there and you think about it,
32:18
Speaker 1: and you think, oh my god. We can try to
32:21
Speaker 1: understand precisely what happened. In leading us along this journey.
32:27
Speaker 1: We had the benefit of having a man named doctor
32:30
Speaker 1: Garth Warren who is actually with the Ada County Corner's
32:36
Speaker 1: office in over in Boise. And just so folks know,
32:40
Speaker 1: JJ and Tyley's remains were not examined in that location,
32:46
Speaker 1: that remote location over in eastern Idaho. They were transported
32:51
Speaker 1: to Aida County to that Corner's facility there. Folks might
32:55
Speaker 1: not understand, but if you don't have a facility particularly
33:00
Speaker 1: that is manned by a forensic pathologist. You most of
33:03
Speaker 1: these little counties will contract with a bigger county that does.
33:07
Speaker 1: That's what happened here, So their remains had to be
33:09
Speaker 1: transported literally all the way across the state. It's a
33:12
Speaker 1: painstaking process.
33:14
Speaker 2: To back up a minute, I mentioned early on, this
33:17
Speaker 2: was at first a missing childcase. Two children were missing.
33:20
Speaker 2: Their mom was not sharing information about their whereabouts. She
33:24
Speaker 2: was telling all kinds of different stories to people who
33:26
Speaker 2: knew her that they were with a friend, they were
33:28
Speaker 2: with a relative, I'm keeping them safe. And what ended
33:32
Speaker 2: up happening through the investigation of law enforcement and the FBI,
33:36
Speaker 2: everybody being involved. That's how they were led to on
33:40
Speaker 2: June ninth, twenty twenty finding two separate burial sites at
33:44
Speaker 2: Chad day Bell's house. So we actually started the looking
33:49
Speaker 2: for JJ and Tyley in November of twenty nineteen, when
33:53
Speaker 2: their grandmother asked for a welfare check on JJ. Hadn't
33:57
Speaker 2: talked to him in a couple of months, very concerned,
33:59
Speaker 2: and that's where this story began for many of us.
34:03
Speaker 2: So I said, we were backing up right at the beginning.
34:06
Speaker 2: The bodies are recovered on June ninth of twenty twenty.
34:10
Speaker 2: For you, Joseph Scott Morgan, what are some things you're
34:14
Speaker 2: thinking about? What do you need to find as a
34:17
Speaker 2: forensic person to determine how these people were killed and
34:22
Speaker 2: why are they where they are.
34:23
Speaker 1: It's not just what's beneath the surface day, it's what
34:26
Speaker 1: the ground is going to tell you in that area,
34:29
Speaker 1: particularly when you have a clandestine grave, and that's what
34:32
Speaker 1: both of these cases would be considered. That's the way
34:35
Speaker 1: we termine a clandestine grave. That means a location where
34:39
Speaker 1: remains have been purposely buried in order to hide them.
34:45
Speaker 1: There are certain changes that you look for externally on
34:48
Speaker 1: the surface, for turned soil, all those sorts of things
34:51
Speaker 1: that don't quite match up. And these are two distinct
34:54
Speaker 1: locations where these children were found. You know, when we
34:58
Speaker 1: think about highly, you know, a lot has been made
35:01
Speaker 1: of the fact that her remains were found immediately adjacent
35:04
Speaker 1: to what they referred to as a pet cemetery. Animals
35:07
Speaker 1: were buried there that were associated with this familial group,
35:12
Speaker 1: which we could go down that rabbit hole all day long.
35:15
Speaker 1: When you begin to assess how the remains of your
35:18
Speaker 1: precious daughter are treated and that you discard them amongst
35:21
Speaker 1: the carcasses of dead animals, and of course there's a
35:25
Speaker 1: burn pit there too. And what was really striking to
35:28
Speaker 1: me when I first initially saw the aerial photography in
35:31
Speaker 1: this case is I could see, before the ert the
35:36
Speaker 1: evidence responsing from the FBI showed up, there was like
35:40
Speaker 1: a ring around this area where they had. You know,
35:43
Speaker 1: you could tell that the family had at one point
35:46
Speaker 1: time pulled up large wooden benches. They were like fell
35:50
Speaker 1: trees that were kind of sliced down. You could sit
35:52
Speaker 1: on them, and they'd created a ring. Eventually all those
35:54
Speaker 1: are moved, but you can see the initial image of
35:57
Speaker 1: this and it conjured up, you know, sitting around a
36:00
Speaker 1: bonfire with your family playing the guitar, singing, making schmores
36:05
Speaker 1: and all of these sorts of things. You know, that
36:08
Speaker 1: kind of joyous environment, and then you marry that up
36:12
Speaker 1: with this horrific finding when they began to try to
36:16
Speaker 1: discern where she was, and her grave was not that
36:21
Speaker 1: deep below the initial surface. As a matter of fact,
36:26
Speaker 1: we find out that there's spent some animal activity around there.
36:29
Speaker 1: But just to kind of frame this, when you see
36:32
Speaker 1: her location, you know that it's adjacent to where things
36:35
Speaker 1: were burned, all right, maybe bonfires, maybe just trash off
36:39
Speaker 1: of this farming area. You walk a distance over, there's
36:45
Speaker 1: what appears to be a dried pond. It's like a
36:49
Speaker 1: big defect in the ground. It almost looks like a crater,
36:52
Speaker 1: but it's real green. It was real green in lush.
36:54
Speaker 1: But there was one area where soil had been turned
36:57
Speaker 1: and it's right on the edge, and that's where JJ's
37:01
Speaker 1: remains were found. So he's in a completely different area.
37:04
Speaker 1: It looks kind of very peaceful compared to where Tiley was,
37:09
Speaker 1: where there was a lot of traffic. There was no
37:11
Speaker 1: traffic in that area where JJ was found. Soil had
37:15
Speaker 1: not been turned around the surrounding area. You could tell
37:18
Speaker 1: there was not a lot of foot traffic excepting that
37:20
Speaker 1: one location where he was deposited. And these two children
37:25
Speaker 1: were treated completely different day, completely different, And you're really
37:31
Speaker 1: learning a lot about how their bodies were handled, and
37:34
Speaker 1: I think going along with that, you begin to learn
37:37
Speaker 1: a lot about the people. And when it comes down
37:42
Speaker 1: to JJ Valo, his body was I don't know, there's
37:47
Speaker 1: really no other term to use other than cocooned. He
37:52
Speaker 1: was cocooned. He was protected to a certain degree. He
37:57
Speaker 1: certainly protected from the elements. You know, when you compare
38:01
Speaker 1: how his mortal remains were treated compared to his sister,
38:06
Speaker 1: you've got a big difference here, huge difference for him.
38:10
Speaker 1: His body, his little body, his little broken body was able,
38:14
Speaker 1: I think, in this particular case to begin to tell
38:18
Speaker 1: a tale because it was so very intactive.
38:22
Speaker 2: When you get to the scene and police have done
38:26
Speaker 2: their investigation, they have gotten the search warrants, and they've
38:28
Speaker 2: laid out how they came about to search this property.
38:33
Speaker 2: The police don't know the exact place. I mean, they
38:36
Speaker 2: have a really good idea. In this particular case, police
38:39
Speaker 2: were watching Chad day Bell. He was on the property.
38:42
Speaker 2: It was his property, and they were watching Chad as
38:45
Speaker 2: they began working in that backyard. And the detective noticed
38:50
Speaker 2: that Chad day Bell kept watching where they were looking
38:53
Speaker 2: and kept following with his eyes looking at the same
38:56
Speaker 2: spot like they haven't found him yet. They haven't found
38:59
Speaker 2: him yet. They noticed where he was looking, and that
39:03
Speaker 2: sent the detectives on where we need to dig right
39:06
Speaker 2: here for JJ. They didn't know JJ versus highly at
39:09
Speaker 2: that point, but that's how they actually figured out where
39:12
Speaker 2: to start. What is the process that they go into.
39:16
Speaker 2: I can't imagine them pulling out big shovels and just
39:19
Speaker 2: digging in deep.
39:20
Speaker 1: No. No, First off, you have to document everything you
39:23
Speaker 1: can with photography and videography before you ever put what
39:26
Speaker 1: we call spade to dirt and turn any bit of
39:28
Speaker 1: soil whatsoever. And even before the tools come out, you're
39:33
Speaker 1: going to do what's referred to as gridding off an area.
39:36
Speaker 1: And if you just imagine a grid coordinates only on
39:40
Speaker 1: a smaller scale, and you make each one of the
39:42
Speaker 1: little squares maybe a foot by a foot, and you
39:46
Speaker 1: have several of these along the way, and you label these,
39:49
Speaker 1: you're going into a specific grid, and that way you
39:52
Speaker 1: can document everything that's contained within that grid, because you
39:55
Speaker 1: don't know what you're going to find. So as you
39:58
Speaker 1: take the soil out and place it into a bucket,
40:02
Speaker 1: which is where it would have gone, and those buckets
40:04
Speaker 1: are labeled, they sift through everything until you get down
40:09
Speaker 1: to the body as it is. And in JJ's case,
40:13
Speaker 1: I had mentioned the word cocooning, and he is wrapped.
40:16
Speaker 1: He's wrapped in plastic bags. He certainly got a white
40:23
Speaker 1: bag over his head. I can specifically imagine because I've
40:27
Speaker 1: been in circumstances like this, you look down and you
40:29
Speaker 1: begin to take the measure of what you have before you,
40:32
Speaker 1: and you have a body what appears to be a
40:35
Speaker 1: body that is covered in plastic. I've had them in
40:40
Speaker 1: shower curtains, tarps, this queen those sorts of things where
40:44
Speaker 1: bodies are wrapped up like that and you don't know
40:46
Speaker 1: what is inside. And so it was at that moment
40:50
Speaker 1: when they got down to that point where they had
40:52
Speaker 1: recovered all of the surrounding dirt. Because you don't know
40:55
Speaker 1: what you're going to find in there, you have to
40:56
Speaker 1: save all this stuff and sift through it. The investigator
40:59
Speaker 1: then opened up the plastic bag, the outer black plastic
41:04
Speaker 1: bag that JJ was wrapped in total, and determined that
41:09
Speaker 1: he did, in fact have remains here.
41:11
Speaker 2: When they made that slit in the bag. In the testimony,
41:15
Speaker 2: they described brown hair and a crowning. I can't imagine
41:20
Speaker 2: the feeling that comes over you when you see hair.
41:26
Speaker 2: You know this is who you've been looking for. What
41:28
Speaker 2: is that like? Does that not really impact these individuals
41:32
Speaker 2: for the rest of their life with that trauma?
41:34
Speaker 1: That doesn't right at the moment, because you're if you've
41:37
Speaker 1: got your clinical hat on which you should to protect
41:40
Speaker 1: you while you're there. There's certain things you just can't escape.
41:43
Speaker 1: But there's a bit of relief too in a case
41:46
Speaker 1: like this, because you know that you've been looking for
41:47
Speaker 1: him and all those those sweet pictures that we see
41:51
Speaker 1: of JJ all over the place. You know his hair
41:53
Speaker 1: is like swept to one side, I mean, and it's
41:55
Speaker 1: like parted on one side and kind of swept. He's
41:57
Speaker 1: got long bangs, and you can get an ideas to
42:00
Speaker 1: the color of his hair. And they knew that this
42:04
Speaker 1: is they're getting into. You know, they're getting into the
42:07
Speaker 1: arena where they're going to begin to narrow down at
42:10
Speaker 1: least visual identification at this point in time. It's one
42:13
Speaker 1: of the boxes that'll be ticked at that moment time.
42:16
Speaker 1: But you listen, there's a real temptation that comes upon you.
42:21
Speaker 1: You have to restrain yourself at a scene like this
42:23
Speaker 1: day because you want to just go in and just
42:26
Speaker 1: rip the bag open, right and just dig in and
42:28
Speaker 1: see what. That's the worst thing you can do. That
42:30
Speaker 1: is the absolutely worst thing that you can do, because
42:33
Speaker 1: you're not in a controlled environment. First off, you've got
42:36
Speaker 1: a dozen hands around you, You've got everybody peeking over
42:39
Speaker 1: and wanting to see, and at just the baseline, you're
42:43
Speaker 1: going to destroy it. For every cut that you make
42:46
Speaker 1: in that bag, every compromise of a structural integrity of
42:49
Speaker 1: that bag, you begin to potentially ruin any evidence that's
42:53
Speaker 1: there because all this stuff is very fragile. Oh my god,
42:56
Speaker 1: it's so fragile. So when you remove this body, you
42:59
Speaker 1: have to live lifted up. And then what we generally
43:02
Speaker 1: do is take a clean white sheet and that clean
43:06
Speaker 1: white sheet is placed into an open body back. The
43:10
Speaker 1: sheet is then folded around the body, which in Jaja's
43:14
Speaker 1: case is contained is cocoon like we mentioned, and then
43:18
Speaker 1: you zip the bag up and then you seal it
43:21
Speaker 1: with a lock. That's where your chain of custody actually begins. Remember,
43:25
Speaker 1: the body is the biggest piece of evidence you have.
43:27
Speaker 1: So there are these little red locks and they actually
43:29
Speaker 1: talked about them in court, little red locks that you
43:31
Speaker 1: use that have numbers on them. And that thing is
43:33
Speaker 1: not broken until it gets to the morgue and the forendsic.
43:38
Speaker 1: Pathologists will look at it and they'll annotate it in
43:42
Speaker 1: their notes. They say, I observed a red body bag
43:45
Speaker 1: lock with a number. And then they take a pair
43:48
Speaker 1: of scissors, and they say, and they'll including their report.
43:50
Speaker 1: I cut this away myself, so they confirm this chain
43:54
Speaker 1: of custody all along the way. You have to because
43:57
Speaker 1: you know you've got a body, Dave, that's traveling over
44:00
Speaker 1: one hundred miles, it's going to be in a vehicle
44:03
Speaker 1: traveling down and people don't think about the logistics of this.
44:07
Speaker 1: Does the driver stop along the way? Is the driver
44:09
Speaker 1: with the body the entire time? Did they stop off
44:12
Speaker 1: and get something to eat? Did they stop off at
44:14
Speaker 1: a gas station? People think, oh, my god, they wouldn't
44:16
Speaker 1: do that. Yes they do. I've actually known people that
44:19
Speaker 1: have gone through drive through restaurants with bodies and cars.
44:23
Speaker 1: And because of that, we've taken steps to document the
44:26
Speaker 1: time that they leave, the mileage that's on the odometer,
44:30
Speaker 1: What time did you arrive at the final destination? What
44:33
Speaker 1: was your mileage there? Because everything has to be accounted
44:35
Speaker 1: for and you want that, and it's a daunting task
44:38
Speaker 1: just to remove the body from the scene and get
44:41
Speaker 1: it downrange to where it has to be depositive, which
44:44
Speaker 1: is going to be ad to County, Idaho.
44:46
Speaker 2: We all have heard the stories of the odor these
44:50
Speaker 2: bodies have been in the ground for a considerable amount
44:53
Speaker 2: of time. Is there still after all these months? Is
44:56
Speaker 2: there still an odor? Is it something that you can
45:01
Speaker 2: smell once you start uncovering.
45:03
Speaker 1: Yes, and yes. The deeper you dig down, the more
45:06
Speaker 1: profound the odor is. So in JJ's case, what I
45:12
Speaker 1: am understanding from testimony and from my colleagues that have
45:16
Speaker 1: seen the images, he was actually appreciable. His face was appreciable.
45:20
Speaker 1: You could look at that image that they showed on
45:23
Speaker 1: the screen and you could say that's JJ. He was intact. Now,
45:28
Speaker 1: the color changes that come along with decomposition had been
45:30
Speaker 1: occurring in death. Our bodies go from kind of a
45:33
Speaker 1: modeled color to kind of a red, then kind of
45:38
Speaker 1: a greenish color than to black, and you could still
45:42
Speaker 1: appreciate his features. His body was intact to the point
45:46
Speaker 1: where you could look at his body and at least
45:49
Speaker 1: visually get a general confirmation of identification. That's not valid
45:53
Speaker 1: in my world. I like to have scientific confirmation, and
45:56
Speaker 1: I just like to eyeball the body and say that is,
45:59
Speaker 1: in fact this person. I don't even like families to
46:01
Speaker 1: do that, because you never know what's going to happen.
46:03
Speaker 1: There's always something along the way. So I like to
46:05
Speaker 1: get scientific confirmation with this fingerprints or dental or certainly DNA.
46:10
Speaker 1: The process is just beginning. Now. What happened, you know
46:13
Speaker 1: when you got the remains soon more? Well, one of
46:16
Speaker 1: the things that was so glaring, you know, those pajamas
46:19
Speaker 1: that JJ was last seen in as he's being born
46:23
Speaker 1: by Alex Cox on his shoulder, he's wearing those pajamas day,
46:26
Speaker 1: he's wearing those pajamas.
46:28
Speaker 2: That was part of the testimony that came up with
46:30
Speaker 2: David Worwick, the boyfriend at the time of Lorie VALA's
46:34
Speaker 2: best friend Melanie Gibb. He was there that weekend of
46:37
Speaker 2: September twenty second, twenty third, and he's gave a description
46:41
Speaker 2: of Alex Cox carrying JJ into the Valo apartment and
46:46
Speaker 2: it was a very beautiful thing that he described JJ
46:50
Speaker 2: with his head resting on Alex's shoulder and Alex taking
46:53
Speaker 2: his nephew upstairs to the bedroom. He described the clothes,
46:56
Speaker 2: even though he said I don't know exactly, I can't
46:59
Speaker 2: remember one hundred percent, but I think he actually by
47:02
Speaker 2: saying I think he was wearing, you know, And he
47:04
Speaker 2: described the clothing that JJ was found in and that
47:09
Speaker 2: if you were watching the trial, you're going or listening
47:11
Speaker 2: to it, You're wondering, why is he saying this, Well,
47:14
Speaker 2: that's why they knew the answer.
47:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, they knew the answer. And I think that many
47:18
Speaker 1: people had and there have been people that have suspected
47:21
Speaker 1: that JJ may have been deceased when Alex was carrying
47:24
Speaker 1: along that night. I don't believe that was the case.
47:27
Speaker 1: I'll go ahead and reveal this right now because one
47:29
Speaker 1: of the things that came up in testimony was that
47:32
Speaker 1: when they were able to do toxicology, and remember they
47:37
Speaker 1: didn't really have blood or urine to do talks with JJ.
47:43
Speaker 1: So that means that you at autopsy, what you have
47:46
Speaker 1: to do is you have to take organ samples. These
47:49
Speaker 1: are going to be prefixed orgon samples, so you can't
47:52
Speaker 1: like expose them to formulae, which is a type of formaldehyde.
47:56
Speaker 1: You have to get them in the current state in
47:58
Speaker 1: which you find them. And we've talked about this before,
48:01
Speaker 1: but they're spun down at that moment in time to
48:03
Speaker 1: liquefy them. Liver in particular, because liver is it's like
48:07
Speaker 1: a gigantic filter in our body and it holds onto
48:09
Speaker 1: a lot of the toxins and whatnot. But what they
48:11
Speaker 1: did find in JJ's system was actually gama hydroxy butyrate
48:17
Speaker 1: which GHB, which is a rape drug. Now people will say, ah,
48:21
Speaker 1: that's like an aha moment, you know, light bulb goes off,
48:24
Speaker 1: and people have thought that maybe he had been poisoned.
48:27
Speaker 1: That's probably not the case because let me kind of
48:29
Speaker 1: throw this out to you, Dave. In decomposition, GHB is
48:33
Speaker 1: actually produced and it's very in the process of decomposition,
48:39
Speaker 1: just like people don't realize, like chloroform is actually produced
48:42
Speaker 1: in the decomposition process. The problem that doctor Warren had
48:47
Speaker 1: in a case, and any physician has when you begin
48:50
Speaker 1: to talk about talks and trying to understand what's on board,
48:55
Speaker 1: is that when you're out down your timeline like this
49:00
Speaker 1: from the sense of decomposition, you can't get a quantified
49:07
Speaker 1: amount of something. You can qualify it. The machinery will
49:11
Speaker 1: tell you that yet this is present, but to what
49:15
Speaker 1: degree is at present? It's not really measurable. Because one
49:18
Speaker 1: of the things any drug you can think of, cocaine,
49:21
Speaker 1: for instance, cocaine actually if you look at it for
49:24
Speaker 1: folks that are not familiar with lab results, is you know,
49:26
Speaker 1: that cocaine actually has a therapeutic level because cocaine has
49:30
Speaker 1: been used for medical purposes, so it has a therapeutic range.
49:35
Speaker 1: So everything, all these numbers are variable. You can't put
49:38
Speaker 1: that kind of fine point on a body that's decomposing.
49:41
Speaker 1: So I think that it's significant that GHB was in
49:45
Speaker 1: his system to a certain degree, but based on the
49:50
Speaker 1: fact that there was so much decomposition, or that he
49:53
Speaker 1: was downranged that far, you just can't quantify it, and
49:57
Speaker 1: so I think some folks are probably they were hoping
50:01
Speaker 1: that you would have that definitively there as a cause
50:04
Speaker 1: of death for him. There have been many times in
50:26
Speaker 1: my career where I was assisting with an autopsy and
50:31
Speaker 1: I would look down at the remains that we were examining,
50:36
Speaker 1: and you have kind of this moment where you begin
50:40
Speaker 1: to understand what you're in the middle of. You have
50:44
Speaker 1: this appreciation for how fragile this person's remains are that
50:49
Speaker 1: are before you, and all of the evidence contained within
50:52
Speaker 1: and without. I've hesitated before. I actually had my FORENDSIP
50:57
Speaker 1: mythologist look at me. One time. We were doing it
51:00
Speaker 1: autopsy on a lady that had been bound and gagged,
51:02
Speaker 1: and I kind of froze for a moment, and he
51:04
Speaker 1: looked at him and said, were you waiting for it?
51:07
Speaker 1: Let's get on with this. I was trying to understand
51:11
Speaker 1: or process in my mind what I needed to do
51:13
Speaker 1: to remove these bindings from this lady's hands. She had
51:16
Speaker 1: been tied with the rope because I didn't want to
51:18
Speaker 1: screw anything up. I can imagine there's a hesitancy on
51:21
Speaker 1: the part of the pro sector. The pathologist that's there
51:25
Speaker 1: and his assistants, his team. They want to make sure
51:27
Speaker 1: that they have everything done and documented, X rays, photography, measurements,
51:34
Speaker 1: all of that stuff has to be done before they
51:37
Speaker 1: go in and begin to remove all these layers that
51:42
Speaker 1: JJ's packaged in.
51:43
Speaker 2: When it comes right down to it, you have taken
51:46
Speaker 2: care of all of the business necessary to get JJ's
51:50
Speaker 2: remains up out of the ground. He has been transported,
51:53
Speaker 2: it's been documented, and now he's on the table and
51:56
Speaker 2: so far they cut a small slit and that's it
51:59
Speaker 2: right then put in the body bag with the white sheet.
52:02
Speaker 2: He's now on the table in a clinical setting. And
52:07
Speaker 2: what happens now and what can you expect to find?
52:11
Speaker 1: I can tell you what they've done. They've done full
52:13
Speaker 1: body X rays on them because they don't know what
52:15
Speaker 1: they're going to find when they open that bag. You
52:17
Speaker 1: don't know what a cause of death is at this point.
52:19
Speaker 1: Remember you you know I was talking about toxicology and whatnot.
52:21
Speaker 1: That's weeks away. At this point, you have no idea
52:25
Speaker 1: what you're looking at here, and so they'll do head
52:28
Speaker 1: to two X rays. Before they do that, they'll turn
52:30
Speaker 1: that around really quickly. They'll develop them and throw them
52:32
Speaker 1: up on the lightboard, and they'll look for any kind
52:35
Speaker 1: of what we refer to as radio opaque items that
52:38
Speaker 1: are in there, like broken knife blades are certainly projectiles
52:41
Speaker 1: from a firearm. You want to avoid as you're removing
52:45
Speaker 1: this tape. You don't want to go ripping and roaring.
52:49
Speaker 1: Here's a couple of reasons why. First off, with the tape,
52:53
Speaker 1: if you begin to kind of cut it, then you're
52:57
Speaker 1: compromising the integrity of that tape to dislodge it, okay,
53:02
Speaker 1: just to facilitate opening the bag. So you don't know
53:06
Speaker 1: what's going to be contained on either aspect of that tape,
53:10
Speaker 1: like on the smooth surface that's on the backside, the
53:13
Speaker 1: non tacky surface, and then on the underside which I
53:16
Speaker 1: can get into that certainly, but then you think about
53:19
Speaker 1: the bag itself. Well, these bags are non to a
53:22
Speaker 1: certain degree. They're a non poorous surface. They're not exactly
53:25
Speaker 1: like glass, but it's you're not dealing with wood like
53:29
Speaker 1: rough wood either. There are any number of times when
53:34
Speaker 1: you can actually get fingerprints off of bags. Certainly the
53:37
Speaker 1: interior heat and humidity play a role in this, but
53:41
Speaker 1: you have to work from the perspective that anything that
53:45
Speaker 1: is on the surface of that bag has the potential
53:48
Speaker 1: of leaving something behind. And that could be a latent
53:52
Speaker 1: print that's left behind, an oil or here's something, Dave
53:55
Speaker 1: that not many people have heard of before. We have
53:58
Speaker 1: something to refer to as plastic prints, and a plastic
54:02
Speaker 1: print is all of our listeners just imagine. And this
54:07
Speaker 1: is something I do with my granddaughter. She loves Plato.
54:12
Speaker 1: She loves Plato in hadn't got the silly putty yet,
54:14
Speaker 1: but she loves Plato. Harper and I will be playing
54:16
Speaker 1: with Plato. You know, if you press your finger into
54:19
Speaker 1: the Plato and remove it, you can actually appreciate your fingerprint.
54:23
Speaker 1: It's the same principle with duct tape, with that tacky
54:27
Speaker 1: the glue the adhesive that's on there. Did you know
54:31
Speaker 1: that you can actually press your finger and I urge anybody. Look,
54:35
Speaker 1: if you've ever wrapped Christmas presents and you're in a
54:37
Speaker 1: frenzy on Christmas Eve, you know how kind of wadded
54:41
Speaker 1: that the tape gets and it'll get stuck to your
54:44
Speaker 1: hand you're trying to get it off. Well, you're leaving
54:46
Speaker 1: a plastic print. It's not oil dependent, okay, because that's
54:51
Speaker 1: on smooth surfaces. You leave a print behind because and
54:55
Speaker 1: it transfers from these fatty lipids that are on the
54:58
Speaker 1: surface of your fingers. Okay, it's easily compromised. But when
55:01
Speaker 1: you talk about leaving it behind in this adhesive that's resilient, dude,
55:06
Speaker 1: it really is. And so you can actually image that.
55:10
Speaker 1: There's any number of sprays that you can apply to
55:13
Speaker 1: this that'll kind of capture it, and you can get
55:16
Speaker 1: beautiful photographs of this stuff and they can be matched
55:20
Speaker 1: up with people. So it's akin to almost like walking
55:24
Speaker 1: through a minefield because you don't because you can't see
55:28
Speaker 1: anything when you're doing it. So you have to assume
55:30
Speaker 1: that every place you put your hand in order to
55:34
Speaker 1: remove tape or whatever the case might be that could
55:38
Speaker 1: lead to a compromise.
55:40
Speaker 2: Joe, let me ask you. You're observing the body or
55:42
Speaker 2: you're observed you know the bag, okay, And you see tape,
55:46
Speaker 2: you see bags, you see all of this overall, and
55:50
Speaker 2: you're making not just mental notes but physical notes as
55:53
Speaker 2: you begin to unravel this, whether it's duct tape or bags.
55:58
Speaker 2: What is that process for doc documenting and how do
56:01
Speaker 2: you get to because your goal here is to find
56:03
Speaker 2: out how this person died.
56:05
Speaker 1: Correct in the case of JJ Valow, if they've already
56:09
Speaker 1: done X rays and they don't see any obvious signs
56:12
Speaker 1: of bullets or knife blades that are broken off, or
56:16
Speaker 1: fractures that might result from blunt force trauma like he
56:19
Speaker 1: had his skull crushed. As horrible as that is, then
56:24
Speaker 1: you begin to think, well, is it strugg related or
56:27
Speaker 1: is it something else? And you begin to exclude things,
56:32
Speaker 1: and you know, doctor Warren's conclusion relative to JJ was
56:37
Speaker 1: that his remains demonstrated to them based upon how that
56:44
Speaker 1: white bag, remember I mentioned a white bag earlier in
56:46
Speaker 1: this episode was wrapped around his head with multiple links
56:51
Speaker 1: of this tape, that his death resulted from suffocation. That's
56:57
Speaker 1: a diagnosis of exclusion is What that means is that
57:01
Speaker 1: you have gotten to this point you don't have any
57:04
Speaker 1: other answers to what may have brought about his death.
57:08
Speaker 2: Are you suggesting that he was alive when they put
57:10
Speaker 2: the bag on his head?
57:12
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I am. And you know how I know
57:15
Speaker 1: that day I tell you I know it. He actually
57:19
Speaker 1: had marks on his little fingers that would be consistent
57:23
Speaker 1: with a struggle. These are anti mortem, which means, of course,
57:26
Speaker 1: all my listeners you know, know this prior to death.
57:31
Speaker 1: That's where these insults came from. He's got these marks
57:34
Speaker 1: that are on his wrist. His hands were actually bound
57:37
Speaker 1: with duct tape. They were overlapped on top of one another,
57:42
Speaker 1: and multiple twists of this tape were facilitated like that.
57:46
Speaker 1: So imagine, if you want to get a sense of
57:50
Speaker 1: how horrific this is, if you have ever been in
57:53
Speaker 1: a position where you've had to struggle to breathe, that's
57:56
Speaker 1: what this child's face with his brain is screaming, I
58:02
Speaker 1: need oxygen, and it's at that point in time. Let
58:05
Speaker 1: me paint this picture for you a little bit more
58:07
Speaker 1: in depth. This is a child that had to wear
58:10
Speaker 1: a diaper at his age. This child was totally dependent
58:16
Speaker 1: upon the adults in his life to take care of it.
58:18
Speaker 1: He had physical issues, he had developmental issues, and whoever
58:23
Speaker 1: did this put a plastic bag over this baby's head
58:26
Speaker 1: and turned that tape over and over and over again
58:31
Speaker 1: and blocked his airway. He could not uptake oxygen at all,
58:37
Speaker 1: and he's struggling. That primal brain is kicking in and
58:41
Speaker 1: he's fighting. He's fighting. However, he could in order to
58:46
Speaker 1: try to break the surface of the proverbial water just
58:48
Speaker 1: to get a breath, and he couldn't. It wasn't there
58:50
Speaker 1: any longer.
58:51
Speaker 2: The one thing that a lot of us can hold
58:54
Speaker 2: on to when we cover these stories is that the
58:57
Speaker 2: victim didn't suffer. But now you're telling me the exact opposite.
59:02
Speaker 2: And you were able to determine this by the way
59:05
Speaker 2: his body was found in the ground, that not only
59:08
Speaker 2: was he murdered by probably a loved one, but that
59:11
Speaker 2: he suffered and knew who did it and what they
59:14
Speaker 2: were doing when it was happening.
59:16
Speaker 1: I'm saying that plainly. Yeah, he had an awareness, and
59:20
Speaker 1: yes he did suffer. That conclusion is being drawn by
59:24
Speaker 1: what doctor Warren had stated. There was evidence there that
59:27
Speaker 1: he had struggled. He had fought for his life. People
59:31
Speaker 1: use that term, they throw it around, to what degree
59:33
Speaker 1: do you have the ability to fight for your life
59:36
Speaker 1: if you're a small child and you've got the hands
59:41
Speaker 1: of an adult or adults on you facilitating your death.
59:52
Speaker 1: In order to honor both Tyler and JJ, we're going
59:57
Speaker 1: to have two separate episodes detailing the information that we
1:00:01
Speaker 1: have surrounding their deaths and the findings of the forensic
1:00:04
Speaker 1: pathologists and the forensic anthropologists. Tune in Thursday for our
1:00:09
Speaker 1: follow up episode where we will be discussing the death
1:00:13
Speaker 1: of Tyler Ryan. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybags.