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MEDICAL EXAMINER'S NIGHTMARE: The Boy in the Mountains · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories with
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  Speaker 1: Nancy Grace. I'm executive producer Jackie Howard. We're discussing today
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: the Dylan red Wine murder case going on right now.
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  Speaker 1: He disappeared after visiting his father. Listen, everyone with me
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  Speaker 1: is Dylan red Wine's mother who has never given up
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  Speaker 1: in the search for the truth about where was her
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  Speaker 1: son Dylan RedWine. Elaine, do you remember the moment that
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  Speaker 1: you learned Dylan was missing. Yeah, It's probably one of
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  Speaker 1: the most relived moments in my head of all the time.
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  Speaker 1: What happened, Well, Dylan went on a plane ride to
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  Speaker 1: his father's house on Sunday and the next day at
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  Speaker 1: four thirty, around four thirty, Mark texted me and asked
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  Speaker 1: me if I had seen Dylan, and I said no,
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  Speaker 1: and he said, well, you know, he didn't know where
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  Speaker 1: he was. So I got in my car and we
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  Speaker 1: drove to Durango, which is about six hours away from
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  Speaker 1: where we're living, and I called the sheriff and filed
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  Speaker 1: a missing person's report for Dylan because his dad had
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  Speaker 1: not done that. What did you think when you got
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  Speaker 1: the text? Have you seen Dylan? Obviously I was very
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  Speaker 1: concerned because you know, Dylan was not the kind of
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  Speaker 1: kid who would just wander off or you know, Lead
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  Speaker 1: was out at least letting me or his brother Corey. Now,
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  Speaker 1: we were very close to him. And so when Mark
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  Speaker 1: had indicated that he had not heard from Dylan and
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  Speaker 1: I had not heard from Dylan, I was very, very
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  Speaker 1: obviously very upset and concerned about you know, where it
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  Speaker 1: was my baby worth he and he was thirteen years
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  Speaker 1: old then he had his own phone, so you know,
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  Speaker 1: he knew, he knew enough to call us if he felt,
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  Speaker 1: you know, that he was in danger or anything. What
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  Speaker 1: was Mark's story as to where Dylan went? How did
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  Speaker 1: the evening progress? Well, we finally got to the Today Field,
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  Speaker 1: which is about an hour forty five minutes away from
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  Speaker 1: mar Mark lives, and I immediately went into the Sheriff's office.
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  Speaker 1: Mark red Wine is accused of killing his twelve year
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  Speaker 1: old son. His body was found seven months later up
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  Speaker 1: in the mountain. Just Got Morgan, professor of forensic at
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  Speaker 1: Jacksonville State University and author of Blood Beneath My Feet,
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  Speaker 1: joins me. Now, Joe, let's start off talking about the
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  Speaker 1: discovery of the body before charges were laid against the father.
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  Speaker 1: The body of Dylan red Wine was found along with
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  Speaker 1: some clothing. The body was not fully intact, it was dispersed.
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  Speaker 1: So let's talk about the location where the body was found.
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  Speaker 1: It's important to understand that the area in which Dylan's
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  Speaker 1: body was found is in kind of an isolated area.
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  Speaker 1: And one of the things that we see in forensics,
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  Speaker 1: and particularly in body recovery of skeletal remains, is that
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  Speaker 1: most of the time you're not going to find bodies
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  Speaker 1: that are water referred to as dumped way off of
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  Speaker 1: a roadway. There's going to be a point of access
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  Speaker 1: and that was certainly the case in Dylan's body recovery. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it's in kind of an isolated, rugged area. However, there
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  Speaker 1: was actually an ATV path that was immediately adjacent to
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  Speaker 1: a roadway, which provides an individual access to go down
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  Speaker 1: the at path. And there's a footpath where Dylan's body
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  Speaker 1: was found. And keep in mind, this was only the
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  Speaker 1: trunk of his body, so we're missing a skull at
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  Speaker 1: the time that his body is actually found. It appears
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  Speaker 1: that his body was initially placed just off of this
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  Speaker 1: footpath and it literally and it's a very sharp grade
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  Speaker 1: going down from the footpath. It literally rolled down the hill.
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  Speaker 1: And this is one of the things in forensic anthropology
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  Speaker 1: and forensic forensic crumb scene investigation is that you have
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  Speaker 1: to take into account the impact of the natural surroundings.
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  Speaker 1: Gravity is going to take over. And so through this process,
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  Speaker 1: gravity drew the body down to a central area where
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  Speaker 1: where his body, the longbones, the ribs, these sorts of
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  Speaker 1: things were actually found deposited, and there were actually scraps
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  Speaker 1: of clothing. You know, it's very I don't really know
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  Speaker 1: how to say it, other than the fact that it
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  Speaker 1: kind of it kind of pricks your heart a little
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  Speaker 1: bit when you see this child's clothing. There were a
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  Speaker 1: pair of athletic shoes, his socks, uh, you know, a
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  Speaker 1: jersey kind of a sports shirt that he had on.
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  Speaker 1: You know, a lot of us can thin about our
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  Speaker 1: own kids and how we might dress them, particularly a
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  Speaker 1: thirteen year old boy at this stage in their life.
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  Speaker 1: And here he is, out here, in this desolate area,
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  Speaker 1: out in the wilderness, found essentially just laying in a
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  Speaker 1: heap or what remained of him, at least in a
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  Speaker 1: heap at the base of this hill. The autopsy revealed
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  Speaker 1: that Dylan red Wine suffered a skull fracture above his
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  Speaker 1: left eye. There was a cut with a sharp tool.
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  Speaker 1: There were two march sound on dylan skull that they
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  Speaker 1: say were actually caused to buy a sharp tool. And
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  Speaker 1: this is from the forensic specialist, forensic and propologist in France.
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  Speaker 1: So walk me through it, Joe. To have that kind
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  Speaker 1: of a skull fracture, what is it likely that this
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  Speaker 1: child went through. Well, you know, one of the things
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  Speaker 1: that they that they did discovered, what they did discover
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  Speaker 1: relative to the skull is that it appears that this
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  Speaker 1: is a skull fracture. Let me tell why this is
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  Speaker 1: so difficult and not just a skull fracture, but a
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  Speaker 1: depressed skull fracture blunt force trauma, if you will. One
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  Speaker 1: of the reasons this is so difficult is that so
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  Speaker 1: much time has passed since the fatal event occurred. You
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  Speaker 1: don't have you no longer have soft tissue. And what
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  Speaker 1: a soft tissue tell us in the forensic world, Well,
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  Speaker 1: it goes to bruising hemorrhage. You know, like a point
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  Speaker 1: of impact. If you're struck with a even a fist
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  Speaker 1: or a foot or a club or a rock, that
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  Speaker 1: doesn't exist anymore. So the only thing you have left
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  Speaker 1: is this kind of desiccated which is a fancy word
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  Speaker 1: for tried, dried, old bone that's left behind. But you
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  Speaker 1: can see where there's kind of fracturing, almost like an egg,
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  Speaker 1: where it's where it's fractured downward though, where it looks
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  Speaker 1: like something impacted this area. Now, one of the really
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  Speaker 1: curious things about this case, and a lot of people
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  Speaker 1: have kind of drawn some drawn their own inclusions, is
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  Speaker 1: that doctor France, who is one of the foremost forensic
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  Speaker 1: anthropologists in America. I mean, she is sharp as attack.
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  Speaker 1: One of the conclusions that they reached was that there were,
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  Speaker 1: in fact, what appeared to be sharp force injuries. Now,
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  Speaker 1: when we think about sharp force injuries, we think about
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  Speaker 1: stabbings and we think about cuttings. Well, this is more
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  Speaker 1: in line with a cutting, okay, which means that you
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  Speaker 1: have to have what's referred to as a milled weapon,
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  Speaker 1: which means that it's a sharp instrument that has an
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  Speaker 1: edge on it that has been forged. Okay. It's not
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  Speaker 1: like it's something like a rock that's kind of non uniform.
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  Speaker 1: This is uniform when you see these marks. She actually
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  Speaker 1: described it, and it folks at home will just think
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  Speaker 1: about the shape of a V. If you could look
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  Speaker 1: down the long axis of a V, it cuts a
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  Speaker 1: groove like that. If you can look at it on
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  Speaker 1: the side with a microscope, you can see it. It
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  Speaker 1: looks almost like a perfect view. Well, that comes from
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  Speaker 1: this idea of a knife kind of gliding along the edge,
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  Speaker 1: and there's multiple of these linear marks that were created
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  Speaker 1: by a knife. What's striking about this and one of
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  Speaker 1: the things that the forensic anthropologist has to work out
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  Speaker 1: is that the fact that this is in an area
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  Speaker 1: where you've got a lot of wildlife. I mean, you're
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  Speaker 1: talking about mountain lines, you're talking about foxes, you're talking
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  Speaker 1: about some carnivores. So how do they delineate between the
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  Speaker 1: trauma that may have been inflicted upon Dylan either just
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  Speaker 1: prior to death, which we call anti mortem perimortem, which
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  Speaker 1: means kind of in the throes of death right in
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  Speaker 1: the middle of it, and post mortem trauma as opposed
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  Speaker 1: to say, an animal coming along and I'm going to
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  Speaker 1: be very graphic here and I'm sorry, but an animal
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  Speaker 1: feasting on the remains. Well, when an animal actually begins
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  Speaker 1: to gnaw on a bone, it leaves more of a
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  Speaker 1: curved feature in the bone. That's not what you had here.
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  Speaker 1: This is somebody actually wielding a knife or wielding something
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  Speaker 1: with a sharp edge that's literally dragging it across the
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  Speaker 1: surface of the bone, that's making these marks. Now, I
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  Speaker 1: think the big question here is, well, why would somebody
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  Speaker 1: do that? Why would you have knife edge marks on
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  Speaker 1: this child's bone where there's already been a depressed skull
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  Speaker 1: fracture or blunt force trauma. Well, I think some people,
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  Speaker 1: some people have at least implied that there might have
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  Speaker 1: been an effort at dismemberment. Time stories with Nancy Grace
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  Speaker 1: Jose you bring up a really good point. Mark red
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  Speaker 1: Wine's attorney has said that Dylan left home and that
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  Speaker 1: he would decidedly get attached by a wild animal. But
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  Speaker 1: the bones, obviously the body had obviously been scavenged by
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  Speaker 1: wild animals, and doctor France said there were clear tooth
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  Speaker 1: marks and punctures and groups on all of the bones
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  Speaker 1: that were examined. But the fracture above Dylan's left eye
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  Speaker 1: was roughly one point six inches long, and that could
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  Speaker 1: not have been caused by animal activity but by blunt
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  Speaker 1: bosh trauma. Yeah, you're you're absolutely right. And this is
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  Speaker 1: why because when an animal, when an animal is actually
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  Speaker 1: actually feasting, as it's referred to. If you'll ever notice
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  Speaker 1: a dog with a bone out in a yard, one
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  Speaker 1: of the things he'll do so capture. They'll capture the
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  Speaker 1: bone with their front paws. Okay, just imagine this in
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  Speaker 1: your mind. They're capturing the bone with their front paws.
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  Speaker 1: And what do they do. What do they do with
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  Speaker 1: their mouth? Well, they turn their head to the side,
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  Speaker 1: and just watch this. Sometimes you ever see a dog
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  Speaker 1: and they begin to chew on the side. They're not tearing.
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  Speaker 1: Remember our canine teeth, which are the ford and the
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  Speaker 1: incisor teeth, and we have them too, just like an animal.
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  Speaker 1: Those are the sharp edge puncturing type. Now, this this
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  Speaker 1: occurs there they're gnawing on the side with their bicuspids
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  Speaker 1: and their their teeth with cusps that lead back to
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  Speaker 1: the molars, and this creates these kind of uh trench
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  Speaker 1: like markings on the bone, which are in fact which
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  Speaker 1: are in fact kind of grooves that are U shaped.
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  Speaker 1: They're not actually puncturing the bone. They're trying to kind
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  Speaker 1: of wear the bone down. Their goal is to get
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  Speaker 1: to the protein, which is kind of fascinating when we
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  Speaker 1: think about an animal. They're trying to get to that
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  Speaker 1: protein that's contained within that marrow, and they want the
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  Speaker 1: calcium too. They're instinctively going after that. No no, no, no.
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  Speaker 1: What we have here with Dylan and that injury that
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  Speaker 1: this child's skull has sustained, or as refer to it
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  Speaker 1: an insult, you'll hear forensic pathology to say that that
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  Speaker 1: is a direct, direct, driven point of impact that is
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  Speaker 1: occurring as a result of something that could concentrate Think
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  Speaker 1: about this, that could concentrate all that energy in one
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  Speaker 1: small area and being struck straight down onto the skull.
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  Speaker 1: I don't know. Think about the number of items that
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  Speaker 1: could do that. The flat end of a hammer, for instance,
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  Speaker 1: maybe some type of sharp, heavy metal pole that could
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  Speaker 1: be driven down into somebody's skull and could crete that
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  Speaker 1: little create that little focal area. So you've got a
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  Speaker 1: tremendous amount of energy that's being directed at that one
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  Speaker 1: single area that I can even begin to describe to
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  Speaker 1: you how impactful that would have been at the moment
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  Speaker 1: of time that there's a high likelihood that that could
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  Speaker 1: have led to his death, or maybe it was a
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  Speaker 1: finishing blow. Maybe someone had attempted to suffocate or choke.
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  Speaker 1: For all we know, he could have been shot. Because
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  Speaker 1: this is the problem all these years afterwards, like I
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  Speaker 1: said before, we don't have any soft tissue and there's
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  Speaker 1: not enough bone or skelet will remained to tell us
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  Speaker 1: actually what happened. So that's one of the big conundrums
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  Speaker 1: that the investigators have been faced with and the forensic
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  Speaker 1: scientists relative to Dylan's death. Now, one thing that the
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  Speaker 1: descents did point out while they were questioning the forensic
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  Speaker 1: anthropologists is the possibility of, say the blunt forced tama
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  Speaker 1: being caused after death, in that there was cattle in
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  Speaker 1: the area and could you know, a hoof coming contact
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  Speaker 1: with the skull. So how would the pathologists go about
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  Speaker 1: finding out what can mate figure out which weight it happened. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: this is one of the fascinating things about this. You know,
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  Speaker 1: let's keep in mind, dealing skull, if I remember correctly,
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  Speaker 1: was found over a mile away from his actual the
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  Speaker 1: rest of his remains. Remember the rest of the remains,
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  Speaker 1: the trunk of his body was actually discovered first and
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  Speaker 1: then the skull, and it's kind of a partial skull
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  Speaker 1: was found sometime later and over over a mile and
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  Speaker 1: a half away, And the area where his skull was
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  Speaker 1: found is actually kind of in a gentle rolling area.
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  Speaker 1: It's not as sharp sharp of a decline. That's where
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: his body was initially deposited. And yeah, there were cattle around,
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  Speaker 1: and yeah it could be postulated that a cow may
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  Speaker 1: have stepped on the skull, but I don't know. Again,
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  Speaker 1: that's just something that they're throwing out there to, you know,
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  Speaker 1: to put other possibilities in the wind, to get before
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  Speaker 1: the jury. I don't know how one would go about
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  Speaker 1: actually proving that, because here's the thing. If you've got
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  Speaker 1: a crushing type of injury, if you've got a crushing
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  Speaker 1: type of injury, how are you going to delineate that
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  Speaker 1: from say a hammer strike, a baseball batch strike, or
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: being run over by car and or being stepped on
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  Speaker 1: by a hoofd animal, whether it be a you know,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: an elk or a cow. And that brings us back
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  Speaker 1: to our original problem, doesn't it. The bones have been
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: deposited out there for so long, we don't have anything
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: to kind of intellectually hang our hat on to say, okay, well,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: this is this is what brought about this trauma. There's
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: no overlying bruising. You can't appreciate hemorrhage because sometimes with
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: those we can pick up on a pattern. It's much
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: much more difficult to pick up on patterns on bone
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  Speaker 1: like this. Say, if you've got, for instance, you've got
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: overlying tissue of somebody that's been struck by hammer. I've
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  Speaker 1: worked many cases where you actually can see the indentation
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  Speaker 1: or the bruise mark that's left by hammer, and it's
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: going to look literally like a quarter laying on its side.
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  Speaker 1: And when you take the skin away, all you're gonna
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  Speaker 1: have is fractured bone beneath it. So all of a sudden,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: you've lost your point of reference. That's what makes this
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: so very very difficult. So when it came down to
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: discovering what happened to Dylan red Wine, as the police
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: were investigating, they brought in cadaver dogs and sent dogs
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: into the red Wine home. Yes, blood was found there
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: and also in the fire there's trucks. So how was
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: that addressed? Well, you know, dogs are fascinating, aren't they,
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  Speaker 1: cadaver dogs in particular for me as as an old
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: death investigator. And you know, when I think about them. Uh,
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  Speaker 1: you know how I often describe the way these dogs
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  Speaker 1: work as kind of how we see when we're young.
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  Speaker 1: We're taught about that we see through a spectrum of light,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: all kinds of degrees of light, you know, when we
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: look at it. But when you look at a when
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: you think about what a dog does, they kind of
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: work on a spectrum too. It's an olfactory spectrum that
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: that's the spectrum smell, and we are we as humans
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: are greatly diminished in the presence of a canine and
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: their abilities. They can smell anything, and they can go
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: back over a long period of times. These dogs are
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: actually trained in scenting of human remain of blood. They're
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: trained with these things, and so it picks up on
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: that spectrum that they're trained to smell on. You know,
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  Speaker 1: I don't think in our wildest fantasies could any human
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  Speaker 1: being even begin to do what a dog does. And
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: in this case, when they went to red Wines home,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: they scented on the blood within the residence, Okay, which
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: is actually in one real kind of graphic image that
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: I've seen. Because they use an alternative lighting surface source
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: as well as a luminescing agent, you could see blood
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: that was on the leading edge of like a lounge chair,
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: you could see it on the floor where it was
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: covered with a carpet. And then of course they go
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: out to the truck and they find out. So what
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: can we what can we kind of determine as a
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: result of this, Well, we can return, we can determine
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: that there was in fact what's referred to as a
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: blood letting event in the specific area within the house,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: and maybe an attempt was made halfheartedly as it was
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: to clean the blood up. And you know the problem
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: with perpetrators when they go to clean up blood is
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: that they don't do a very thorough job. Many at
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: times that's how we catch them. Okay, so when they
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: went to attempt to clean this blood up, they missed
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: spots or they didn't scrub as hard as they should have.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: Now you have blood that goes from here and then
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: you find it in the truck. Well, what's the truck
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: used for. Well, the truck is used for transportation. So
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: you know, logic would dictate that there's a high probability
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: that this event that took place within the structure, within
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: the dwelling of red Wine of Mark red Wine, that
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: body that that blood issued forth from was in taken
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: to the truck, and the truck was used as a
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: conveyance to remove the body from that location, and then
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: of course Dylan's body was subsequently dumb Joe, you talked
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: a little bit about this earlier. Dylan red Wine went
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: missing in June of twenty twelve. His trunk was sound
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: in June of twenty thirteen, but his skull was not
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: found until November of twenty fifteen. What turnd of problems
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: does that cause for investigators, because because obviously the skull
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: was exposed longer into the elements, So what kind of
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: problems does that cause? I got to say from the
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: beginning it is and I'm not saying this to diminish
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: the efforts of the investigators. It's dumb luck that they
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: found this skull. I mean, it is just amazing when
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: you consider how much time went past, and if folks
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: at home will just think about just walking through the woods.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: You're walking through the woods on a regular maybe go
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: on a hike in the mountains or around your home.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: How many times do you actually look down on the
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: ground and you're able to identify something laying on the
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: ground that looks like a bone. Well, it doesn't happen
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: a lot. Can you imagine months and months and years
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: and years since the initial finding of this body deposition,
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: you have the skull that has found oh, a great
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: distance away from the actual totality of the you know,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: the rest of the body, the fact that they found it.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: So one of the things that you begin to wonder about,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: and that the police begin to wonder about, is well,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: was this an event of involving scavengers? Well, what do
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: we think about scavengers? If it was a possum, which
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: possums do scavenge bones, if it was a raccoon, which
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: they scavenge bones. Most of the time, they're going to
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: take a bone, and generally there'll be a small bone
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: and they'll take it to their burrow, and it really
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: won't be too far away. Their burrow will be easily accessible.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: To think about those little eggs, you know, hauling off
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: something heavy. Now you get into larger animals and you
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: begin to think about, say, I don't know a dog,
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: for instance, I've had any number of cases over the
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: course of my career where dogs have actually brought skulls
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: up into people's yards. And you can imagine the homeowners
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: are terrified they see the dog, and the dog will
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: literally be in the backyard gnawing on a human skull.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: How striking that is. Well, you have to think where
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: did the dog find the skull? And they see it
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: as a prize. Well, then you begin to think about
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: things like mountain lions, You think about foxes, other larger
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: animals that could go over a mile with a human remain.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: So you begin to think, well, was it a scavenger
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: that did this or was it something even more sinister
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: than that? Because it can get more sinister than that,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: because some people have actually put forth this idea that
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: you know, I hate to say this, that there may
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: have been an attempt to dismember Dylan, and I truly
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: hope that's not the case, but let's just say that
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: it was. How would how would that skull get so
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: far removed from the body. It would have to be
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: a really big scavenger in order to do that, or
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: it would have to have somebody that would have to
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: have actual possession and control over the skull and had
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: transported it there to that final resting place and deposited
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: it there. You can follow this case and more of
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: j Scott Morgan's comments at crime online dot com. This
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: is in crime stories with n integration