Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Layers of Evidence Paint, Blood, and a Courtroom Drama

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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Layers of Evidence Paint, Blood, and a Courtroom Drama · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Bodybacks with Joseph Scott Morgan. I make it a practice,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: my wife and I do, at least when we can
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: save our pennies enough and we go. Trust me, before
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: I say this, I want you to think I'm some
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: kind of rich guy because I ain't. Save our pennies
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: and pack a backpack both of us, and we hop
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: on the cheapest flight we can find and we go
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: to Great Britain, and we've done this a couple of times,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: and stay very, very cheap and stay in fancy hotels. Hey,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: if you're in America, you can always stay in some
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: big chain, right, So we try to stay in, you know,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: in hostels for families or maybe in an inn that's
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: outside of town and take public transit in. And one
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: of the things that we were prone to do while
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: we're overseas is go visit art museums. Probably one of
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: the most fantastic experiences I've ever had was the National
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Museum in London. Some of the most beautiful artistry I've
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: ever seen, and also particularly in Cardiff, Wales. Went down
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: there and went to the National Art Museum and they
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: had beautiful Monet paintings and they're all originals there and
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: you walk through these things and just the I don't know,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: you can just stare at them for hours. And the
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: old portraits too, the ones that go back hundreds and
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: hundreds of years, and it's amazing what an artist can
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: do with paint. It certainly is now. In forensics, we
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: study paint. We study paint as it applies to motor
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: vehicle accidents because you know, you might not know this,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: but when a person gets hit by car and it's
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: a hit and run, sometimes the car will deposit paint
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: on the deceased body. Today, I'm going to chat with
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: you guys about a case that involves paint, but it
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: involves paint in a manner in which I have never
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: experience in all of my years as a medical legal
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: death investigator. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Dave Mack. Good to be back with you, my friend.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: I have to tell you I came across this case
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: because actually I've had two television channels that networks that
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: have wanted me to cover it, and I was not
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: aware of it. There's so many things that come across
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: my desk in media and they are these things get
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: put up on the shelf in my brain somewhere, I
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: don't know where. I just I forget about them. I
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: didn't remember hearing about this case. But what caught my
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: attention about this case is that this is actually involving
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: a person and dig this man that's going up on
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: trial for not one not the second time, but not
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: the third time, but the fourth time. You talk about
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: an outlier. This is just not something you commonly see.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Doesn't happen like this. The bottom line always the bottom line.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: Why are there four trials? You always can have one
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: you appeal it. There was a problem with this or
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: that piece of evidence. But in this particular case, there
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: was actually a conviction at trial that was overthrown by
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: the state Supreme Judicial Court over erroneous evidence, which plays
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: into your paint discussion earlier. This case, also, Joe, it's
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: the first time in Massachusetts where a wife has been
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: charged with the death of their wife, first time for everything.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: This is the first time this has happened. And to
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: be honest with you, when you read all the reports
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: of this couple that we're dealing with today, Golly g
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Whisby sounds like just about every other married couple that
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: ends up fighting over money and jealousy and childcare, the
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: normal aggravations of everyone else. So the one thing that
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: makes it different actually makes them the same as everybody else.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: It's funny how that works.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is. And I think that that applies to
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: relationships across the board. When you have two people that
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: are in an intimate relationship, they're sharing Look, they're sharing
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: life there in a household together, You've got all of
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: the stressors on you that happened to everybody, So nothing
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: should set them apart. I would assume that from a
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: news media standpoint, this is something that the news media
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: would latch onto. But at the end of the day,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: you got two human beings and we're flawed and we're
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: prone to violence. I mean, we truly are. That's it.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: As a bottom line, we all have our measures of it.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: You can push us to limits, you can get crossways
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: with people, as they say, and in this case, this
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: is apparently happened.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: And that's what happened in the couplehood of Anna Marie
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: Cochrane Rentala and her wife Kara Rentala. They had been
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: together for several years before they actually got married. They
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: got married in two thousand and seven. They adopted a
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: girl toddler or baby at the time, Brianna. But this
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: was a very volatile couple, Joe Scott. There was a
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: lot of jealousy, there were a lot of interpersonal relationship issues,
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: a lot of debt. They worked long hours, very stressful,
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: and both of them. When you get down to the
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: nitty gritty of what actually transpired and why we are
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: now heading into a fourth trial. Two hung juries, one
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: conviction on erroneous evidence or the judge determined to be
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: bad evidence, and now a fourth time. Let me give
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: you the description. Let's just start there. Here's the description
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: from the one on trial versus Anna Maria's the victim.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: Kara is the accused. Kara claims that she and Brianna
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: went out to run some errands during the course of
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: the day. They've been gone for several hours. They get
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: home around seven o'clock at night. When they arrive in
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: the house, Brianna at this times of toddler, she's got
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: her in her arms. They've got some bags. She sets
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: the bags down, but she sees our door is open
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: towards the basement. Down the stairs, she sees Anna Marie's feet.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: She doesn't see her whole body. She sees her feet.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: That's enough for Kara to grab Brianna and the dog
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: and go next door and say, hey, would you mind
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: watching Brianna and our dog for lo while? And by
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: the way, call nine one and send them to my house.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: Right now, She's doing all this based on nothing but
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: seeing her wife's feet from the top of the stairs.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: She's at the top stairs, her wife is at the
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: bottom of the basement. All she sees their feet, they're
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: laying down when police arrived. Joe Scott Morgan the description
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: given by first responders. When they arrived at the house,
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: they walked downstairs to the basement and they were confronted
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: with a bizarre scene. Anna Marie is laying base up
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: across the lap of Kara in the basement, and there's
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: paint and blood everywhere. They said that it was the
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: weirdest scene because there's paint, blood and the wailing woman
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: on the concrete floor cradling her wife's corpse.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's kind of amazing. I've had cases over the
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: course of my career, Dave, where you have individuals that
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: fall down sets of staircases, and you do have multiple trauma.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: But here's the rub. Your body is interacting with the
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: forces of gravity as you are being pulled down the
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: staircase by gravity, you're free falling and you don't impact
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: many times deep. Now listen, taller or the longer the staircase,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: the bigger the opportunity is that you're going to hammer
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: into multiple points contact. But with most homes it essentially
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: ascends to the floor above and you're not going to
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: do much more. I don't think that these people lived
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: in some grand palace where there's a main staircase that
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: leads down to the basement where you're falling upon foot
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: and rolling over like some kind of movie set. So
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: what you would expect to see are like perhaps some bruising,
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: and it will be specifically concentrated on the body in
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: particular areas. Remember I use the term concentrated. You're not
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: going to have wildly dispersed injuries all over the body.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: You're going to have perhaps if you hit the back
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: of your head, you'll have a large contusion on the
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: back of your head. You can bust your chin, for instance.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: You can bruise your shoulder, your hip, a knee. Perhaps
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: you can go into the wall and fracture a rib
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: maybe you hit the handrail. That's going to be the extent, Dave.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: From my understanding, this victim had in excess of twenty
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: different bruises on her body. And you know what, that
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: doesn't even account for the trauma that she sustained to
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: both her scalp and her neck. And let me tell
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: you something, when you take a fall and you're looking
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: at blunt force trauma in areas of impact, the neck
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: is not the first place you look. You know, David
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: is mentioned earlier in our conversation here. I don't recall
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: ever working a case where a body is just super
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: saturated and paint like being put forward here. But there
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: was something else that kind of caught my eye with
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: this case. One of the reports stated that as this
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: victim is being cradled in the lap of her wife,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: the first responders noted that the body was rigid and stiff.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: What's really intriguing is that you're talking about an EMT, Dave.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: EMTs roll out on cases all the time. They roll
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: out on cases where people have been found dead, and
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: then they call the medical examiner after the EMT has
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: been there. And one of the things that you assess
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: in death there are what are referred to as the
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: cardinal signs of death. And one of the cardinal signs
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: of death, I mean you have non responsiveness to painful stimuli,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: signs obviously of decomposition, but one of the things that
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: you look for, and as one of the cardinal signs
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: is rigidity, rigidity, development of postmortem lividity to settling a blood,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: cool to the touch, that sort of thing. And here,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: oh my gosh, this is glaring. I mean, I can
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: only imagine what was going through maybe the EMT's minds
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: if they know this person that is an EMT and
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: they're thinking, how long have you been here?
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: That was the first thing they all were going, Wait
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: a minute, they know who they're dealing with. These women
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: were involved as paramedics locally. That's a pretty close knit group.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: From one group to the next. They do talk and
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: they know one another.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: They're like, cops, actually there, you don't you do, but
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: you don't. You cannot really get into their world because
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: of the things they see and God blessed paramedic. I
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: love them. I've had them save my life, but they
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: are no one can really identify with the world that
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: they in. Dwell, it's a different kind of life.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: And that's where this comes from, because they were shocked.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: I had a question for you, and I want to
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: let me just share so everybody understands what they saw
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: when you mentioned the rigidk When they get down, they
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: see the victim, Anna Marie, her lifeless body face up
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: across Kara's lap. Kara's hysterical, she's going overboard here, and
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: Anna Marie's eyes were open, her arms were locked in
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: a quote unquote hands up position, and her body was
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: so stiff that it took two first responders to pry
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: her off her hysterical wife. Here's what they actually said,
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: though direct quote. Now, her entire body moved as one unit,
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: like a board. We're talking about. You call this riger mortis.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: I've always heard it called rigor mortis. What is the
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: difference is there?
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: There's not. It's just it's a matter of how you
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: pronounce it, rigor riger tomato, tomato, And it all depends
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: on where you were trained.
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  Speaker 2: How long does it take for riga mortis to set
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: in like this.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: It's a gradual event. And let me dispel a few
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: rumors here. When you begin to think about rigidity in
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: a body, people will say, well, it starts in the
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: small muscles of the face and then kind of proceeds outward.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: That's not the case. It starts in all the muscle
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: groups at one time. You just first appreciated in the
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: tiny muscle. So folks may not have heard about this before,
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: but you know you can get rigidity in the muscles
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: of the eyelids. It happens in the jaw facial muscles,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: and then it kind of extends out. You'll get it
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: in the shoulders, elbows, fingers. One of the bigger groups
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: of muscles that it is last appreciated in are going
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: to be kind of these real robust muscles that you
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: have in the upper leg, like your quads and your
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: buttocks and that sort of thing. So it's taking time
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: to happen, and the process that it's going through is
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: I won't get too far off into the weeds and
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: get too sciencey with you, but in life, we have
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: the cycle that we study in school that's referred to
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: as the crib cycle, and it's a cellular respiration is
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: essentially what it is. And just keep in mind that
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: as the creb cycle spins, it creates these little balls
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: of energy called atp Well when it ceases, you begin
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: to create a DP, and ADP produces something that everybody's
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: familiar with. As a matter of fact, let me ask
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: you this question if you have it, Dave, If you
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: haven't worked out in a while, and you decide you're
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: gonna go get on the bench press or whatever, and
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: maybe you're gonna do kettlebells and you begin lifting, and man,
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: you really put yourself through a workout other than close
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: to death. How are you going to feel the next morning?
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: You're going to be stiff and sorry, I know that
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: you did it well.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Talany'll help you, it probably will, but you know what
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: will happen even without the talanol. It will begin to recede.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: And the reason it recedes is that you have what's
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: referred to as a lactic acid build up. This is
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: as close as you will ever feel in life as
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: to what it feels like when Roger Mortis sets into
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: a body. Now, you can tear a muscle, and that's
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: something different. But I'm just talking about the stiffness and
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: the joints. That's lactic acid. But the difference between us
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: and the dead is that we still have metabolic activity
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: going on, so we can process that lactic acid. They
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: can't it, their bodies can't. It has to dissipate over
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: period of time, and that's how we measure rigidity. So
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: within about an hour to four hours deep in there's
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: some factors here, you will begin to see some stiffening,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: but it will not be fully developed. You're still looking
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: at a window that and none of the science is
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: perfectly exact, and I can see how this might be
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: trouble for them in court, but you're looking at a
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: window of maybe, and this is very broad. Sometimes six
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: to twelve hours before you have full development. Some people
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: will push it even further out. A lot of it
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: is dependent upon environmental temperature and then what's going on
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: internally with the person. Heat speeds up the reaction, So
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: the hotter it is, the higher the chance that rigidity
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: will set in. As a matter of fact, if you
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: have a guy, say, for instance, that is running from
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: the police and he's got meth on board, and the
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: police shoot him and kill him on the spot, rigidity
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: will set in quicker with that guy, as opposed to
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: a grandma who's essentially in stasis, that's been laying in
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: the bed dies overnight in her sleep. It's cool to
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: the touch when you touch her, but her her limbs
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: are still flaccid because she doesn't have the same level
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: of metabolic activity. And so that's one of the little
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: cues along the way that we look for to kind
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: of gauge. And I can only imagine when these folks
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: looked at this body being cradled by this person, and
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: what was kind of fascinating. The way they describe it
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: is they say she was in a hands up position.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Now hands up means that maybe I'm surrendering, maybe worshiping God,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: whatever the case might be. But your hands are up,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: it's not extended, they're up above the head. You know
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: what that tells me, Dave, that when you see that
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: position and the hands are up above the head, one
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: of two things happened. Either that person died flat on
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: their back with her hands above their head already, or
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: they were face down hands extended out in front of
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: them and they were being choked from the rear. So
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: you could perhaps be choked from the front or took
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: from the rear, but your arms are up and extended, okay.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: And her body, according to Kara, that her body was
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: laying flat, face down, and that Kara claims that when
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: she saw Anna Marie, that she went down to cradle
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: her body and she turned her over and that's how
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: she was face up. But I've seen people love on
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: somebody who had passed away in the moments right after.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: That's a given. You care about them deeply. You know
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: they're gone, but you just can't let go yet. I
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: have never seen anybody cradle a stiff corpse. It's like
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: a mannequin. I've never seen anybody that loved somebody that
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: would want that attachment, because we all want the attachment
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: to their life. And that just shocks me right there.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: The hands up, that's another one. But she's so stiff
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: that they're moving her like a cartoon, And I'm thinking,
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: how did she get her turned over? Because according to
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: the according of reports from police, Anna Marie was well
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: over two hundred pounds. She was not a small lady.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: And it took two men, two grown men, to get
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: Anna Marie's body off of Kara.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it did. And here's another piece. When the EMT's
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: the first responders actually are doing their assessment, they mentioned
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: that they had to go through several steps in order
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: to what referred to in the Morgue as breaking rigger,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: which means that you have to fight against the rigidity
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: in order to loosen up the joints so that you
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: can assess them. You know, maybe they think that she's
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: had a seizure. I don't know. I can't imagine as
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: a practitioner, an EMS practitioner, what you're thinking, because you
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: know your job is to save life. So you're looking
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: for a place you can put in an IV line.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: You're trying to assess if there's any kind of trauma
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: that you can kind of stem bleeding from. You're looking
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: to try to stabilize them. Look, you've got a person
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: that is apparently found deceased at the bottom of a staircase.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: And one of the things that really stands out is
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: when you think about this, you're thinking about a cerebral
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: spinal injury. So they're taught from Jump Street, hey, look,
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: you've got to stabilize that neck. You've got to do
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: whatever you can, and so they're going through all of
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: these calculations in their mind. But then at some point
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: in time they have this reality check where they look
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: and they say, she's literally stiff as a board. In
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: a death investigation, it is not that one thing. It
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: is the sum total of all things considered that you
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: discover at a scene, back at the morgue, through interview
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: of subjects and for the police interrogation, it's that sum total.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: But in the world of science that myself and my
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: colleagues in habit, we're trying to determine, Dave, what is
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: it that the body can tell us about what has happened?
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: And one of the biggest questions that you always get
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: when you go out to the scene as a medical
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: legal death investigator from police officers. They'll look at us
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: and they'll say how long, Because if they can establish
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: how long relative to when life ceased, that is the
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: beginning of the trail for them to establish a timeline. Hey,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: there's even a show out there that's named forty eight hours.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: It's one of the most popular television shows anywhere. And
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: there's a reason forty eight hours is very important, and
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: in my world it's certainly important. Time is the currency
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: in which we work in all right, Joe.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: When they got there, when first responders got there, once
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: they realized that the person is dead, they're making mental
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: notes about everything there, all the paint and blood. I
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: was looking over that because they're trying to determine where
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: the blood was coming from, right, and they noticed that bruises.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: I got a question about the bruises too, But they
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: noticed a number of lacerations on her scalp and blood
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: coming from those. I guess, But does a lot of
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: blood come that way? And what it mixed with the paint?
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: But other than that, the bruises. How long does it
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: take for bruises to show up on a body if
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: the person's dead.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, Yeah, that's a fascinating question. And bruises. First off,
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: let me kind of dispel this. Dead bodies don't bruise.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: So any kind of contusion, which is a fancy word
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: for a bruise, a contusion, it has to arise in
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: an anti mortem state. That means before death. And so
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: if you've got a fight that's going on when an
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: individual is sustaining blunt force trauma, because that's where bruises
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: come from. Bruises result from the impact of being struck
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: by something. It can be a baseball bat, it can
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: be in a car accident, or it can be a
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: fist or a foot or a Headbut when that impact occurs,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: those little capillary beds just beneath the skin are being ruptured,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: plain and simple, that's what's happening. But you're not breaking
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: skin with a bruise. As they're being ruptured, the blood
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: seeps out into what's referred to as the interstitial tissue,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: and so that's those areas that surround the vessels and
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: that's what creates the bruise well as you know, as
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: any person in the sound of my voice knows, And
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: once you have a bruise, it changes color over period time.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: That's another way that we try to tell the history
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: or tell the story of what happens. So if you've
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: got a bruise that is red, that means that that's
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: an immediate event. Once it goes from black to blue
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: or blue to black, then you're talking about maybe a
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: day up to four days. And then it goes I think,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: I know I'm going to get this wrong. Then it
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: goes to green, then it gets to that nasty yellow
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: color that we all see, and then it's gone. And actually,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: and this is one of the things we use when
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: we're trying to assess child abuse cases because you can
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: have these different colors all over the bodies, and so
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: contusions are very important as to what we do. But
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: once that contusion is there, and it can be just
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: immediately prior to death, it's going to be there. There's
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: no eradicating it. Even when a body is prepared at
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: the mortuary, the bruise doesn't go away. They have to
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: put makeup over it because they're infusing the vessels, they're
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: not infusing the interstitial tissue, so you have to cover
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: it with makeup or whatever it is that the morticians do.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: So that's very important. And for every contusion that you have,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: there is a physical explanation as to why it arose,
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: and that means that that's a direct result of impact.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: Now you mentioned that there were lacerations that were on
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: the head. Now, lacerations also come about as a result
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: of blood forced trauma. It's just that there's more force
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: required my path part from my friends in therapeutic medicine
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: in this area, they will refer commonly, particularly in the
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: emergency room. Don't be mad at me for saying this,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: They refer to everything as a laceration, and everything is
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: not a laceration for us. We have lacerations those arise
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: from blunt force trauma, and then you have sharp force
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: injuries which are in sized areas. Blunt force trauma generates lacerations,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: so one of the things you look for is something
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: called tissue bridging, and they're irregular, they're very jagged, thank Frankenstein.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: And so if you're struck in the head and it
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: creates this jagged injury, when you see that gaping wound,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: you know that it's not an incized area because a
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: mild blade hasn't been taken to it. You've got these
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: little bits of tissue. If you've ever handled something like
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: a piece of meat or something that you're eating and
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: you pull it apart, the tissue gets real string. It's
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: the same principle with elaceration. I'll have these real they're
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: called tissue bridges, and you can differentiate between an incized
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: area and e laceration because it's connected. It's not a
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: clean slice, and you've got multiple of these. But for
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: every laceration, every contusion, you have to have a point
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: of impact. They don't just magically appear. The wind doesn't
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: create them. So it has to be a strike, it
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: has to be a fall, and you're kind of limited.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: If you're talking about all of these injuries, which there
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: were a plethora of them all over her. If you're
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: trying to say that this was merely caused by a
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: fall from even the top end of the staircase, maybe
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: if she fell down two hundred steps, you might have
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: a chance at seeing a contusion on multiple areas of
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: the body. But just leading down to the basement, it's
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: a horrible thing to happen. I've fallen downstairs. You've probably
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: fallen downstairs, Dave, But you're not going to generate this
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: number of injuries without a direct strike.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: I have fallen down basement stairs, but you tend to
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: slip on those. As an adult, we don't go into
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: over end. Children do that, but as adults we tend
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: to slip and our feet go out and we go
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: on our butt all the way down, and that hurts.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: But I know that I've been accused of sitting on
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: my brain sometimes, but very rarely have I landed on
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: my button, torn a hold in my head. Got other
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: things we got to get do on this, because we've
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: got paint everywhere, and by the way, all the bruising,
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: all the contusions, all the blood, none of that had
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: anything to do with the cause of death. Joe, You've
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: got blood everywhere and paint. Why are we having paint
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: and blood together? I'm really confused here. Can paramedics do
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: they know how to set up a crime scene so
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: that it looks like somebody fell down the stairs? Oh?
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: I suit you're saying, yeah, I mean, could.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: A paramedic come up with this as a reasonable idea?
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: Because well, by the way, need to throw this out there. Kara,
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: while the first responders are there, suggests that Anna Marie
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: has fallen down the stairs. But while they're still cleaning
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: the body, I know, I'm the first suspect. Well, falling
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: down the stairs is not crime, so you would not
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: be a suspect in that, So throwing out the idea
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: that it's a criminal act when you just said she
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: fell down the stairs and again remember her story. She
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: had been gone all day, comes home with their toddler, Brianna.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: At the bottom of the stairs, she sees Anna Marie
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: feet laying in the basement in paint and leaves on
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: that note. That's what we know. That's what she said.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: But then the crime scene itself, the body itself. Joe,
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: you've already told us all the things that have happened
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: with that body. The fact that riger Mortiz has not
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: just set in, but she's fixed like a board. And
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: we've got twenty three bruises. We've got lacerations of the head.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: We pointed out by the way, I didn't know that
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: about it. I really did think that all. When they
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: said laceration, I kind of thought it was like a
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: cut with a knife.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Not in a medical legal sense. So I always take
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: exception with that. I try not to be a know
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: at all. But if somebody says laceration and it's a cut, no,
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: that's not a laceration.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: See you're looking at this crime scene, Joe, what is
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: sticking out to you on the body? What is sticking
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: out to you there with the Do you see these
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: all as factors working towards the death of Ana Marie?
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of it would have to be
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: kind of like blood stained pattern analysis. To a certain degree.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: Blood is viscous. It's thicker than water. We've heard that
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: term before, haven't we, But in the little sense that's
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: why they say that it is thicker than water, it's
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: more viscous. Paint is even more viscous than blood. So
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: my understanding is that there was an open paint container down.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: There, five gallon. It was a five gallon container.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a five gallon one. And so if what you're
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: putting forth to me is that she falls while toting
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: this five gallon container, you're going to have a very
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: dynamic event depended upon if you can figure out where
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: the paint can or paint container actually strikes first, and
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: if it is kind of spinning in the air and
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: it's kind of literally you know, we use this term
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: in bloodstain analysis called cast off, where you have blood
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: issuing off the tip of a blade or a bludgeon
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: or something like that. We actually refer to it as
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: painting the walls of blood. Is it that kind of
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: dynamic thing or is the dynamicism of the blood limited
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: to kind of a slow pore, And that can be
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: assessed because if you have blood that is thrown off
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: of a bludgeon, it's going to have kind of an
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: arcing appearance to it. Some of it will be the
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: droplets will be very fine, and the higher the velocity,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: the finer the drops. But with this, if you're talking
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: about paint, let's just say, for instance, someone did take
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: paint and dump it on her body, literally pouring it
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: on her body. The dynamics of the flow the poor,
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: if you will, would need to be examined. I'm really
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: wondering if they've done that. And given the fact that
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: she is literally covered in paint, I'd like to know
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: how closely the clothing was examined by the criminalists back
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: at the crime lab. Now, her body would have been
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: transported from the scene to the emmy's office, and once
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: she had gotten to the emmy's office, she would have
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: been undressed. They would not It's not like, hey, take
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: these clothes and throw them in the washing machine. We're
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: going to get the paint out. No no, no, no, no, no, that's
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: not what's happening. Those clothes individually. We're talking about shirt, panties,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: bra socks, pants, shoes, individually, packaged and taken to the
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: crime lab for them to analyze. And if a bloodstained
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: person could come in and analyze that paint and give
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: us an idea about the dynamics of the spreading of
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: the paint over the body, that would be a fascinating
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: issue with this. But one of the things I think
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: the third trial, which was mind blowing to me, the
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: prosecution actually brought in somebody that they claimed was an
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: expert in determining at what rate paint dries, and this
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: smacked of I just have to say this the Kaylee
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: Anthony homicide case. And this is why because they brought
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: in this fellow who testified to the smell of human decomposition,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: and that so called science was thrown out the door.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: And in this case, this has been overturned because the
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: appellate court ruled that there's not enough science to back
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: this up, Like you have to be able to test
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: this thing outside the court. You know how much how
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: many papers have been written about this. It does it
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: is scientifically valid. In this particular case, they couldn't validate it.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: And that's that's the reason. The third time they didn't
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: get a conviction. Well they got a conviction, but it
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: was overturned based upon this one expert that came in
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: to testify about the drying rates of paint.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: And what was fascinating to me, Joe about the paint
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: just throwing this out there, because I actually went through
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: this one is getting white paint. Sometimes when you put
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: white paint on a wall or a ceiling in particular,
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: it has a pink tint to it. And the reason
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: for that is because if you're painting a room white
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: and you're painting on top of white, you don't know
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: where you've been, and so it comes out out of
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: the camp and it's kind of pink when you're putting
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: it on the wall, but it dries white. And that
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: was one of the things here, because you're going, well,
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: there is either so much blood that it tinted the
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: paint red, or it had been spilled recently to cover
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: up a scene, and it was still pink. An amazing thing,
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: but you go, you're right about how jacked up it
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: was when you don't have the science backing you up
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: and you come up with the night you and I
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: could have formulated a better opinion, Joe.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: I think so, Dave. And the real interesting thing about
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: this the blood evidence that they had. They had a
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: couple of spots that they could not necessarily tie back
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: to the victim, and so you've got this commingling of
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: this paint and it puts forth quite the conundrum. If
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: you've got blood, human blood that is in fact commingled
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: with paint, how can you go about and separate that
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: and does it compromise the integrity those things that we
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: would use to identify the blood and then type the
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: blood and even do a DNA analysis of the blood.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: We know that she has got fatal injuries, and this
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: is the way the me had ruled. And this is
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: what really kind of brings us home to me. She's
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: got what appear to be circumferential contusions around her neck,
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: which they consider to be consistent with an aseixial death,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: almost like a manual strangulation. So as the neck is
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: being squeezed, you get these focal areas of hemorrhage. And
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: she's got PATIKII, which means that the little vessels in
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: her eyes, maybe around her lips and in her nose
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: even have burst. And that's because of this kind of
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: facial pressure in the blood vessels and they have exploded.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: And so that's when we see this, and that again
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: is another fast You don't get this from falling down
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: a staircase.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: That's what I was going to ask you to If
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: you've got what does the blood mean, if the cause
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: of death is strangulation, what do the bruises mean if
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: the cause of death is strangulation. If the cause of
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: death is strangulation, then she could have been playing in
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: a football game that afternoon without a helmet and gotten
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: bruised in bloody and then came home. If none of
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: that matters, strangulation is the cause, what are you going
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: to find on her neck? If it is manual's strangulation,
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: what are you going to see?
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well you're externally You're going to see marks and
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: they will come up as contoosed areas because it's not
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: like a direct like if you think about someone taking
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: their hand and punching soft tissue, like punching somebody in
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: the chest or on the arm. It's kind of a
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: slow burn. With direct pressure applied to the neck, you'll
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: see these red areas around the neck. It's a lot
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: more pronounced when you have a ligature like a rope
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: that's around the neck, but you can still see it
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: with hands. And where it's most mind blowing is when
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: you get into the neck dissection. It's when we in
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: the morgue we call it reflection of the neck. So
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: the neck, the tissue of the neck, the external tissue
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: of the skin, if you will, is literally flipped back
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: and we can see all of the muscles in the
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: neck and you look for what are refer to these
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: kind of interlaced muscles on the front part of the
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: neck called strap muscles. That's what perpetrators go after. And
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: they run on either side of our trachea, and as
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: they squeeze down the trachia, they're also applying pressure to
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: the strap muscles and they get hemorrhage in them. And
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: you don't get that from somebody falling on a staircase. Now,
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: if they fell on a staircase, let's see, how could
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: they sustain that? If they fell, you could maybe fall
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: from a height and your point of impact would be
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: your neck onto an iron bar. And in the old
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: days when they had gigantic steering wheels and cars before restraints,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: I've seen them where I've actually seen high a one
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: hyoid bone fractured from striking a steering wheel on a
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: gigantic Pontiac sedan. That's the only way you're going to
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: get this other than manual strangulation. You've got this entire
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: cacophony of injuries on this woman's body. And it seems
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: as though they had enough data to convince a jury
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: with they decided to go down this rabbit hole with
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: the trying of paint, and I just I don't intellectually,
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: I don't understand the value and that is what it
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: comes down to.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: It sounds to me like the defense did a good
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: job of confusing the prosecution. And I'm not being a
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: lawyer here. If the cause of death is strangulation, why
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: are we worrying about anything else?
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: I really I have no idea, but suffice it to
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: say that Kara Rentala is currently on trial for a
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: fourth time, and like in all cases, she is innocent
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: until proven guilty. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks.