Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Poisonous Intent, The Eric Richens Case

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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Poisonous Intent, The Eric Richens Case · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. When I was a kid,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: my grandmother had these tumblers I love to drink out of.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: They've made them now in the present day, so that
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: they're very similar to the way they were back in
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: the fifties and sixties, and they're aluminum and you can
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: actually see the condensation kind of dripping off the sides,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: and for me, that always indicated a cool, refreshing drink.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: There's an alcoholic beverage out there that uses a similar mug,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: but it's made of a copper, and it's equally as refreshing,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: but with of course the added alcohol that comes along
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: with it. Here's the recipe. Two ounces vodka, six ounces
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: ginger beer, half ounce of freshly squeezed lime juice, and
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: this is to be placed into a copper mug with
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: ice and stirred. It's called a Moscow mule. But you know,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: looking through this recipe, I don't see an indication that
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: fentanyl is required to make this drink. Today we're going
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: to discuss the apparent homicide of Eric Richen's and it
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: involves a drink, the Moscow mule. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: and this is body Bags back with me my friend
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Dave Mack. He's a senior crime reporter with Crime Online. Dave,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: We've been following this case now for weeks and it
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: just what was it that Alice said? It just keeps
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: getting curious or as we go along, it's a tragedy.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: I don't mean to laugh, but my gosh, did you
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: see this coming? I really didn't.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: No, I didn't, and I'm sure a lot of other
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: people will soon agree. When Eric Richins died, Corey Richins
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: actually wrote a book to help her children deal with grief.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: And in promoting this book, by the way, self published,
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: meaning there wasn't a big book company that actually signed
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: her up to do this. She wrote it down and
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: she paid to have it put out there, and so
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: that got her on local TV. So when the news
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: media is covering this story, what do we have. We've
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: got the grieving widow talking about helping her children and
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: how they wrote this book and here's the book. So
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: it's that footage of being able to add to the
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: story that gets more attention, or the fact that it's
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: just a crazy story about rich people killing one another,
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, that and then you take I'm kind of
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: interested in Dave in this dynamic, considering that this has
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: been in this being, this book has been introduced into
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: the storyline. Yes, she did self publish, obviously in the
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: area in which she lived.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: It.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: You know, it had some traction because she was on
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: local news. And I'm sure that what's the word the
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: media always uses, brave, She's being brave. She's on television,
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: she's there in the face of this tragedy that has
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: confronted her and her children which are left behind. And
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: I can tell you the through line kind of went
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: something like this, I would imagine, Well, I saw in
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: my children a great need to be helped through this
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: time period in Greece, and I just knew that I
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: didn't want others to suffer as my family has suffered. Now,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: I thought that this would be a way to help.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: That's kind of the way these things kind of play out.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: I really wonder though, and this is very twisted, I
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: guess in its own way, how many people were truly
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: grieving out there, had lost a spouse and they had kids,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: and they latched onto this and just followed this just
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: a bit here, I won't go too far with it,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: and they began to follow this. They read the book
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: and they thought, God, this would really be good for
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: my kids. I'm having a hard hard time, and it's
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: almost as like this miracle has happened. I have a
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: tool now at my disposal, and they've read this thing.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: They've disseminated the information to the kids. Maybe they've read
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: it with kids in their current situation. And now they
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: look back and they see what she's accused of, and
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: it really gives you pause, doesn't it.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: Yes, because Corey Rigins is now accused of murdering her
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: husband through poisoning. I mean, we'll get more into detail
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: on that in just a bit, but I'm thinking about
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: the people who actually did hold on to this, and
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: not just talking about children and losing a parent. I'm
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: talking about anybody dealing with any grip and sharing that
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: grief with loved ones and trying to get through it
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: and holding onto this and really, you know, being able
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: to look at her and go, Wow, I can get
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: through this. She did, She's on TV talking about it.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: I can get through it too. And that's the shocking
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: depth of depravity we find ourselves today.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and again there's that word, and it seems to
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: be a theme that runs through a lot of these cases. Depravity.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: You think about the depths to which people can sink
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: in the face of these things, and from an investigative standpoint,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: you begin to wonder, is this part and parcel of
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: an attempt to throw investigators off to truly buy into
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: the character of the grieving widow. I can tell you this,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: A lot more is going to come out about this case.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: She's been charged, she's in custody, and we're going to
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: hear a lot about motivation and the endgame, which, of course,
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: in this particular case, led to the death of her husband.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: The thing about poisoners, they are so very stealthy. I
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: appeared on a television show several episodes a thing that
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: was produced down in Australia called Poisonous Liaisons. It was
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: one of the most satisfying things I'd done. And all
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: of the deaths that we covered on that program had
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: to do with poisoners. And they've been around, they're as
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: old as time, but they vary so much differently than
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: what you think of a person that goes out and
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: commits some kind of just brutal homicide with their bare
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: hands or a weapon. It requires a level of intimacy
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: that you don't see in other cases. Because you can
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: have intimacy when it comes to stabbing someone to death
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: or certainly bludgeoning someone. But how is it that you
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: can kind of insert yourself into their world the victim,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: that is, get close enough to them so that you
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: can have them ingest a substance that you know good
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: and well. It could in fact lead to their death,
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: and that may be what has happened here in the
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: death of Eric Ritchins.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: When you read off the ingredients the way the Moscow
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: mule is served. Had you ever heard of that drink?
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Joe? Yeah, Yeah, They've been popular for a while, and
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: I really wonder if that's the reason it was chosen.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Perhaps the thing that it does contain is ginger, and
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: ginger for years and years actually has a medicinal impact
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: that's legitimate. You can take ground ginger and it sues nausea.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: These sorts of things I remember when I was little.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: I know there's a lot of people in our general
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: that can identify with this. One of the things my
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: grandma will give me was ginger ale and Sherbert. My
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: thought is that vodka has a taste to it but
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: it's not as pronounced as say, like tequila or something
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: like that. It's a bit more subtle. It's not even
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: as pronounced as gin, and certainly not as whiskey. And
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: then you can mask certain tastes with it. So if
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: you're going to put some type of element, introduce some
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: element into this recipe, I think that this is a
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: perfect selection. Not to mention your masking, it would lie
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: as well.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: Let's get into this family. You want to for just
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: a minute, Yeah, I'd love to. We're dealing with Eric
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: and Corey Richins. Eric Richins was from a very well
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: established family. There could be book just written on his
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: family and the name. And this was actually such a
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: good man. You see people all the time that you
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: know from work, school, church, whatever, and you find those
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: people that are just really good and you kind of think,
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: is he like this for real? Eric Richins was that guy,
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: loved his kids, had a great business, He had all
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: the trappings you know of coming from a wealthy family.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: Just a good guy. To give you a little tip,
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: Eric was an outdoorsy guy and he was kind of
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: known in the family as the guy that everybody's waiting
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: on you to have a big family dinner and AERA's
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: running behind because he decided to take his four wheeler
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: out for a few minutes before they left and he
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: wrecked it. But he's on his way. He just got
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: a dirty shirt on. That was Eric.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: This was a guy that had three boys that were
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: involved in all kinds of sports, right, and he either
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: coached or was the assistant coach on all of their teams.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: On top of that, guy had a bang in business,
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: which actually does come into play in this story when
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: we get right down to it. Corey and Eric had
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: been married for nine years, three boys. Corey was in
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: real estate and had a real estate license and flipped
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: houses that depended on some of Eric's money and ability
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: to create money to get loans and things like that.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: It came down to this one huge property that depending
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: on which article you're reading, it was either a two
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: million dollar property or a three point seven to five
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: million dollar property that Corey wanted to buy and flip.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: It was unfinished and just fyi, the home that was
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: the final straw on the camel's back in the rich
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: In's couplehood actually has been known as the money pit
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: in that area, and some people have referred to it
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: as a cursed property. I'm not saying it caused Eric
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: to die, but it was part of the reasons that
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: Corey was really trying to get him out of the picture.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: There are many times where there's the proverbial straw, you
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: know that goes without saying. And I'm looking at an
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: image of it right now, and it's massive, and of
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: course it's almost like when you go out to Utah,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: everywhere you look you get another postcard shot. Even though
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: this thing is unfinished. It's massive. It's certainly not my
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: taste and certainly not within the of what I could
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: do financially. But you look at it and it's framed
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: with mountains all the way around it. It looks like
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: it would be a lovely, lovely place. But when we're
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: investigating deaths, there's any number of motivations, as we know,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: and as we've talked about in the past relative to homicides,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: certainly financial it goes without saying. It is generally in
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: the top three, and you can connect all kinds of
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: stuff to that, either financial distress, maybe it's connected to
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: finances as they apply to drugs, a need for money,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: an acquisition of money. It can also part and parcel
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: of anger that's generated as a result of money that's
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: owed to individuals or the position that debt is going
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: to put somebody in. But is this catastrophic enough? Is
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: this situation because you know, there's a lot of people
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: out there that have pulled themselves out of the ditch
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: proverbally certainly in real estate, that have made horrible decisions
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: over the years, I don't know that it rises to
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: the level where you think, well, the only answer I
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: have here is am I going to take the ultimate
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: step and murder my spouse over? So that leads me
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: to the question is is this the first time out
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: of the gate that she has attempted to do this? Because,
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: as has been alleged by the authorities, when you're thinking
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: about how much of a dosage to apply to an individual,
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: this requires considerable amount of thought if you approach it
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: as if it's a scientific endeavor. There have been cases
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: over the years where people have applied graduated amounts of
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: a substance to some medium like a drink or food
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: or something like that, and say they ate that they
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: got a little bit sick and it didn't really have
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: the impact that I thought that it was going to
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: have let's go ahead and kick it up a notch.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: And this does It requires a certain level of a nerve,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: if you will, in order to get close enough to
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: somebody to do this.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: When you look at their relationship and you have the
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: picture being painted, Eric Richins is the dream father. There
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: was a lot going on negatively with regard to Corey
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: Richins and what she was doing. Reportedly, she was stealing
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: from her husband financially, and he didn't just find out
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: about it a week before he died. The actual thieving
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: she is accused of began about two and a half
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: years into the marriage. They got married in twenty thirteen.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: By twenty sixteen, she was already stealing money. And we're
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: not talking a little bit here. Reportedly, hundreds of thousands
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: of dollars just got morgan. Eric found out in twenty twenty.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: That's when we know he actually found out that Corey
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: had taken out at least one hundred thousand dollars from
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: his accounts. And we mentioned the business accounts. You know,
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: he had access to a lot of cash. She borrowed
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: large amounts of money on his credit cards, over thirty
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: thousand dollars. There she actually borrowed two hundred and fifty
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: thousand dollars using a front gudulent power of attorney, forging
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: his initials on documents, allowing her to act on his behalf,
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: and he found out about it. This is again a
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: couple of years ago, so already Eric knew what his
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: wife was all about. He was making plans to get
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: himself out of this. His biggest issue with the boys
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: wasn't money, but he was making plans. And that's why
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: when we look at the last few months of their
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: life together, Corey realized she's losing the cash cow. If
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: she can get rid of him and keep the money,
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: her life keeps cruising ahead. Where when you mentioned more
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: than one time, as far as we know, she hadn't
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: killed anybody up to this point, so I imagine figuring
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: out what do I use to kill him? She probably
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: had to do some research there, and she happened to
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: have a friend I put that in air quotes. Don't
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: know how close they were, but somebody she had known
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: for a while who was actually kind of a drug dealer,
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: and so I'm sure they had a few discussions about, Hey,
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: what kind of drugs could I use for X? Y
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: Z and that's where this all began. So I'm wondering,
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: at what level do you find out how much a
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: person has used to poison somebody. Can you go back
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: and find out did she try to use other chemicals
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: to kill Eric in the months leading up to his
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: actual death? Is there a way to figure that out?
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: No?
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: Not.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: Most of the time where you can go back and check.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: What you're looking for is to see if drugs have
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: been metabolized in the system, and that means kind of
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: gone through the cycle where it passes through initially from
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: initial ingestion or initial injection. However it is applied and
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: it passes out of the system. Drugs do have a life,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: to have a half life within a system. But you know,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: I found out something else interesting about this case. Apparently,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: at some point in time, it has been alleged that
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: Eric really believed that she may be trying to kill him.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: There was one instance where he had eaten a sandwich
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: I think that had been given to him, and he
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: began to have what he thought was an allergic reaction.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, it had gotten so bad
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: that he had to use one of his kid's EpiPen
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: injectors to get over the hump with this. I don't
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: know that really how deeply at that time this was
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: dug into. He had apparently mentioned it to some of
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: his peripheries in his life that he thought that maybe
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: she was trying to kill him. But at that point
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: in time, I guess he was thinking that maybe it
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: was an anaphylaxis event, which can you can have a seizure.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: I'll have to tell you about a case I worked
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: many years ago where the lady committed suicide via anaphylaxis.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: It never worked anything like that, and it's a horrible
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: way to die. But at least his perception at the
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: time was that he started out I believe in that
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: particular case where he took a small dosite to benaderill,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: which can help in milder cases, but he felt the
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: need or compelled to grab hold of his child's EpiPen
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: and inject it into his leg, which is an intramuscular
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: injection where you go right down into the muscle of
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: the leg, generally the meaty part, and slam this thing home.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: And it's very powerful. And this attack that he was
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: having subsided at that moment. Tom So, is this indicative
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: of a history perhaps that there's something going on, but
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: there's really no way from that perspective where you could
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: go back and see, in fact, if whatever substance that
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: was that had been applied to him was present at autopsy.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: It's not within the norm for thirty nine year old
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: active males with no previous medical history to suddenly die.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: It doesn't work that way. You have an individual that
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: suddenly dies that fits that parameter, it will draw the
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: eye of investigators. And the first stop along this route
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: is going to be the medical examiner because they'll be
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: tasked with it. And Dave, just so our listeners understand,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: if I were as an investigator that worked for the
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: medical examiner, they have state medical Examiner in Utah, and
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: I had a young man that died like this, I
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: am not just going to be able to waltz over
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: to his attending physician, who might be a guy that
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: he just goes and sees for an annual checkup, and say, hey, doc, yeah,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: one of your patients has just passed away. Will you
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: sign his death certificate? That doctor is going to look
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: at me as if I have spiders crawling out of
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: my ears and say, have you lost your mind, I'm
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: not signing this. He has no previous medical history at all.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: I'm not putting my name on that because he's got
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: to conjure up a cause of death for this person.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: And it may, on the surface appear to be a
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: natural event because he doesn't have any trauma. Okay, but
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: this requires on the part of the medical examiner to
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: do a deep dive to try to understand what in
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: fact happened. What was it this bolt of thunder that
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: brought down death upon this man at such a young age.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: When the police are called to an event like this
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: thirty nine year old guy dad in the middle of
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: the night and in a seemingly comforting area. You know,
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: he's at home in bed and being a wife and kids,
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: the whole nine. I'm wondering, as you get into this
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: and you start looking around as an investigator of people
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: who are no longer with us, if you notice the
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: man that is dead doesn't appear to have been like
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: there was no life saving measures? Does CPR? But the
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: spouse says, yeah, I did CPR, but nothing is there.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: Can you figure that out? When you're looking at the body?
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: Can you tell if somebody has actually tried to do
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: life saving measures on the individual.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: Well, that's a tough thing. First off, if you've been trained,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: for instance, in basic life saving. If folks go to
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: the Red Cross, for instance, and they get their CPR certification,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: you know one of the things that they want you
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: to do, if at all possible, is to get the
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: subject onto if they're in cardiac arrest, get them onto
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: a hard surface, And the purpose of that is so
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: that you can be above them and you can do
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: an overall examination very quickly. You're looking for things, and
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: you have to be able to get the airway open,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: which is generally facilitated more easily on that kind of
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: surface if you're not a medical professional, where you can
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: kind of arch the neck back, observe the airway. The
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: old thing about sweeping the airways, see if the airway
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: is acluded, block by anything. And then to do chess compressions,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: you need a firm surface. You're interlocking your hands, you're
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: placing them adjacent to the sternum, and you're doing these
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: counts of compressions and then breaths that you have to do.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: So one of the things that we'll look for is
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: you said that you try to save him, well, why
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: didn't you pull them over onto the floor. I mean,
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: she could easily say it was a lot bigger than me.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: I was just frantic. I was just trying to save him.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: But that's one of the first indicators. Have they taken
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: any steps to see, you know, if there's any kind
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: of trauma, And of course if EMTs roll out there,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: it's going to be pretty obvious. They leave debris everywhere
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: because they're cracking open. And I'm not saying that I'm
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: not in an accusatory the way people have to understand.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: You know, they have to crack open their supplies there
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: and they just drop them because they're in the midst
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: of trying to save somebody's life. And you'll have disposable
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: amboo bags, which are the little breathing bags that they use,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: and you'll have ekg leads that are stuck on various locations,
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: anatom on the body, and sometimes in the field you
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: can see paddle marks on the chest where they know
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: they've tried to jolt the individual back into back into rhythm.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: As an investigator, you want to try to understand is
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: there anything that stands out here? Is there anything at
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: the scene that is going to give me pause to
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: think this is something as there was an old friends
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: of pathologist that used to tell me in the morgue,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: he says, I want to know if there was anything
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: to indicate that this death is something other than as advertised,
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: is what he would say. And so that became kind
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: of a key feature in my mind as I'm looking
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: at this, is there anything here to indicate that this
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: is something other than has advertised by the family, Because
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: the family who in this case is going to be
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: the person that discovers them, is going to be the
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: person that's setting the tone for the narrative.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: And that's what got my attention. According to court documents,
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: Richins and his wife, Corey, were celebrating a business accomplishment
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: the night he died. Corey reportedly made Eric a moscow
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: mule and brought it to him in the bedroom. In
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: the meantime, Corey says she went to help one of
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: their children and didn't return to bed for several hours.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: It was then she noticed Derek was cold to the touch,
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: and she calls nine one one and is supposedly attempting
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: to give Eric's CPR. According to the rest affidavit, though
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: first responders arrived and it seemed as though she really
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: hadn't done anything. There was an apparently amount of blood
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: in his mouth that made them realize that she's lying.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: So immediately it's you've got a dead thirty nine year
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: old man. There's no bullet wounds, there's no knife wounds,
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: there's no other indications on his body that anything has
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: been done to him. And yet she claims she performed CPR.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: There's evidence she didn't. So they're gonna have to run
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: a drug panel. I'm guessing they're gonna have to figure
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: out a toxicology So when they do that, Joe, And
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: this is just because I don't know what are they
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: testing for. I mean just testing for cocaine pills. I mean,
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: I don't know what the test includes. But I'm make
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: guessing in this day and age, there would be a
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: pretty long list of drugs and things to test for
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: in a person these days.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there are. And let me give you I'm so
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: glad you mentioned this about the evidence of blood in
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: the mouth. And you make a valid point here regarding
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: the presence of it and an absence of it, say,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: for instance, on her, because if you're doing mouth to mouth,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: there'll be that transfer of substances out of the mouth.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: I've interviewed people that have had vomitous on their face
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: as a result of doing CPR, and I know that's
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: really disgusting, But this is body bags. That's what we
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: talk about, and that's evidence. It's evidence of something that
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: has occurred. But when you begin to think about blood
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: in the mouth, I'd be very curious to know what
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: his pallor was like. The pallor is a term that
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: people use regarding the coloration of the body. And we
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: have mentioned this before. Remember I've talked about how people
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: that are in congestive failure have almost an eggplant color
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: to them, where they'll be purple, and that goes to congestion.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: And what we look for is the level of congestion
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: from what they refer to as from the nipple line
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: to the top of the head. Well, if that's going on,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: and we suspect that it is some kind of congestive
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: failure that's going on, and we know he doesn't have, say,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: heart disease or something like that, then things come to mind.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: We begin to think was this and the six yeled
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: death or was this a drug death? And because many
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: drugs that are out there. You mentioned the panel that's
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: run and this is referred to as a post mortem panel.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: Was there anything on board? And let me tell you
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: the three sources primarily that we draw from from the
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: body at autopsy. First off, we draw blood. Most of
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: the time that's going to come from the A order,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: which is a large vessel that runs off of the heart. Okay,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: and sometimes we'll have to go for peripheral blood, particularly
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: if you've got a real massive trauma case. You might
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: have to even know I've had to go into the
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: federal artery in the leg in order to draw blood
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: because there's been such copious blood loss. Then we're going
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: to go and grab urine. People say, how do you
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: do that? Well, after you have the body open, you
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: can actually go into what's referred to as the roof
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: of the bladder and draw directly out of the bladder,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: so you can get a rather robust sample of urine,
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: which is pretty good a great source to look for
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: a variety of different types of drugs. And then we
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: go and this often dissettles people. We go into the
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: eye and we draw what's referred to as vitreous fluid,
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: which is a viscous kind of fluid that provides form
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: to the eye. The reason our eyes are not flat,
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: they're filled with this viscous fluid. It holds onto things
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: for a protracted period of time. You can't necessarily quantify
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: the level of drugs that are there, but you can
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: kind of qualify it. It's kind of like reading the
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: rings on a tree. That's the way I've always compared
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: it in my simple mind. It helps me remember that
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: every now and then, we'll draw bile from gallbladder if
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: the gallbladder still exists. Many people have had closet sectomes
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: and gallbladder's no longer there. But here's the one thing
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: that is really curious about this case, David. The authorities
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: have in fact released the fact that they think whatever
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: this agent was, and they suspect right now that it
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: was fentanyl because it was found ine system, that it
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: was ingested. This is not something he smoked, it's not
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: something he was injected with. Would you like me to
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: tell you how they make that determination?
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: How would you possibly know the difference this is?
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: It's not again I talk about friends of pathology can
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: be layered and complicated all this stuff, but it's really
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: it's really common sense, we take gastric samples. So when
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: we're doing our dissection in the body in the morgue,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: what happens is is that when the stomach is examined,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: first off, you don't examine it inside the body cavity.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: You tie it off superior, like at the base of
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: the esophagus where it kind of dumps into the top
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: part of the stomach. You tie it off there, you
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: clip it above the tie off. Then you go inferior
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: or below the stomach where it dumps into the small bowel,
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: and there's a loop of bowel that comes off there.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: What you go through there and you tie that off.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: All the other connective tissue that is going to hold
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: the stomach in place is going to be trimmed away,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: and the stomach comes out like a big sack essentially.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: And this is very important because once you get the
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: stomach outside of the body cavity, because if you open
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: it up in the body cavity, it'll commingle with any
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: kind of residual blood that's come about from the autopsy
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: and this sort of thing. Place the stomach onto the
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: dissecting board and you get a big container. Right, you
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: hold one end of the stomach and let gravity do
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: the work. You clip one of the ends that has
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: been tied off, and the contents of the stomach literally
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: pour into these containers. I've seen it done in a
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: variety of ways. I've seen people actually dip the contents out,
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: but this is the most effective way because you can
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: at everything. One of the things that you first do
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: is you visualize. It's just the same with any other
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: kind of examination. You'll visualize. You're looking for what has
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: been ingested. And some food stuffs are very easy to appreciate,
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: particularly things that are green and leafy. You can pick
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: up on that pretty quickly. You can actually smell when
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: you open the stomach. The smell of alcohol, for some reason,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: becomes highly concentrated when you open the stomach. If anybody's
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: even had one glass of wine, it'll not get back.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: It's not like someone have you ever like the morning
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: after you've been around somebody that has been drinking the
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: night before and they kind of breathe on you. You can
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: get that odor of alcohol. And I know that there's
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: a lot of jokes made about that. Imagine that smell
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: that you smell coming off a living person and multiply
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: that by a factor of two and it'll knock you
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: to your knees many times. So you're trying to get
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: all of the contents, and so you're going to visualize
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: these contents. You'll see autopsy reports that we'll talk about aromas.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Most famously, it's going to be alcohol. You know, there's
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: a distinct odor of alcohol, forensic pathologists will say. But
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: to the visual aspect, you're looking to see if there
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: are any particulate and remnant of drugs that are remaining white,
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: powdery little dots for instance. Depended upon the type of drug,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: it is that it hasn't been fully digested in the
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: system yet. Now, if that fails, you take a sample
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: of that gastric content. Remember I talked about how we
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: dumped it into a container. Well you take a separate
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: tube and you pour that content into the tube and
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: that goes to the state crime lab and they will
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: run all of the panels that are standard now in
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: the world in which we dwell. Nowadays, there is a
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: pestilence upon our country and it's fentoyl. It's so pervasive
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: it's used as an additive for drugs. Now, people will
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: lace things with fentanyl. People have used fentyl, which is
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: a narcotic for a long time. You know, it's been
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: on the schedule of drugs that have been used used
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: by physicians for pain relief and all these sorts of things.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: It's out there, but it's so insidious, Dave, that this
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: now is part of a standard forensic drug panel. If
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: you're looking to be stealthy in a poisoning, fentanyl is
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: not the way you want to go. It's not an exotic,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: it's not something like we've got to send this drug
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: test off to Germany to see if they can find
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: find something there that we might not be thinking. No, no, no,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: this is they're going to get a hit on this.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: And once they determine that it's there, and that's when
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: you know you'd ask me early on, that's when you're
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: going to Now once you've and I keep saying this,
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: once you've qualified it, that means that it is there,
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: then you're going to quantity fied. And in the case
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: of Eric Richins, police have decided something here. They've decided
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: not only is Eric Richins's death a homicide, but it
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: is a homicide via fentyl.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: So how much fentanyl would Eric Richins have ingested, how
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: much would it take to kill a person? And what
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: does fentanyl do to the body.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: Joe, amazingly, Fentanyl is one of these drugs that when
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: it is it's essentially microdosed from the perspective of how
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: much is administered, even from a therapeutic you know, fentyl
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: traditionally has been a therapeutic drug, right, It's something that's
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: used in medical practice. It's a precursor many times for anesthesia.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: And here's the thing. If you most of the time
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: when you take a drug, it's measured in milligram, right, Dave.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: So if it's measured in milligrams, think about this. Fentanyl
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: is administered in micrograms. Okay, So just so you understand,
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: one microgram of fentanyl is equivalent to point zero zero
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: zero one milligrams of another drug. And when you get
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: up into the level of say, for instance, now we're
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: talking micrograms not milligrams. When you start to get up
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: into like one hundred and fifty micrograms, you're starting to
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: get up into that lethal level. It doesn't take much.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, there's a there's a couple
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: of great images that are online. People can appreciate this.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: It is granular, a granular presentation of fentanyl adjacent to
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: a penny. And when you see this comparison between the two,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: the penny and everyone knows what a penny looks like,
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: the penny looks gigantic and just that small doses that's
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: being demonstrated there in a physical sense, because it's really
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: hard to wrap your brain around these numbers. It looks
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: so tiny, but it is so very, very lethal. You
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: have to think about what the mechanism is that occurs
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: when fentanyl is ingested. You know what's its purpose? Well,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: the purpose with fentanyl being a precursor, for instance, for
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: something like anesthesia, something that's going to put you into
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: that kind of dream like state. You know, it's going
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: to press you down and down and down. Well, if
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: you give a person too much of this stuff, it
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: automatically goes to work obviously on the brain neurological centers,
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: but more specifically, it really compromises deepening. Upon how much
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: you have on board, it really compromises your ability to breathe.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: It will send and how many times have we talked
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: about this on body backs. With a lot of other drugs,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: particularly heroin, it will send the individual into respiratory distress.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: And can you imagine you're in this kind of dream
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: like state and there's no way to kind of climb
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: up out of it. But maybe just meant maybe you're
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: sensing your inability to breathe. It's like being held beneath
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: water and you can't breathe, you can't come up out
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: of it, and your body's reacting. You start to convulse.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: Perhaps your brain is screening for oxygen, but you can't
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: uptake it at all, and so this is going to
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: lead to respiratory failure. In many of these cases, you'll
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: see that presentation that we see with heroin many times,
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: where the people will turn that kind of eggplant shade
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: of purple, they'll have the frothy, ademitous cone that's coming
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: out of their mouth, and you just know that it's
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: a horrible, languishing way to die. It's and this is
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: the really kind of you know, scary thing about it
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: is that it can be done so very stealthily. And
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: you know, in this case in particular, what the police
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: are indicating is that this moscow mule had been laced
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: with this stuff. And we don't really have a firm
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: figure on the levels that are involved. I think that
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: we probably will eventually. But the sad thing is is
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: that there are thousands and thousands of these cases, not
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: exactly like this, but there are thousands and thousands of
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: these cases all across the country where you have people
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: that are manufacturing these drugs that are including within the
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: drug itself that they're selling, whether it's cocaine or heroin
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: or whatever. And the thing about it is, it's like
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: putting snake venom in everything that's being sold.