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Body Bags With Joseph Scott Morgan: The Autopsy Episode - A Life Among the Dead · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:08
Speaker 1: Bodybacks with Joseph Scott Morgan. Early in the morning on
0:20
Speaker 1: October the nineteenth, twenty nineteen, in a little town in Idaho,
0:27
Speaker 1: a lady who was in her late forties was found deceased,
0:33
Speaker 1: and for whatever reason still remains a mystery to this day,
0:38
Speaker 1: the decision was made for an autopsy not to be performed.
0:42
Speaker 1: That lady's name is Tammy Day Belle, and her case
0:46
Speaker 1: is critical and a much broader investigation that's going on.
0:53
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, the absence of an autopsy
0:55
Speaker 1: in that case could have severe repercussions moving forward. Today
1:03
Speaker 1: we're going to be discussing autopsies, what they are, who
1:08
Speaker 1: makes the determination as to when they occur, And I'm
1:12
Speaker 1: going to tell you a little bit about my background
1:14
Speaker 1: with autopsis. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybags.
1:25
Speaker 1: I've been involved in death investigation for the majority of
1:29
Speaker 1: my adult life, either working in the morgue, out of
1:32
Speaker 1: the field as an investigator or now as an academic
1:36
Speaker 1: talking about medical legal death investigation every single day that
1:41
Speaker 1: I walk into school. And my friend Jackie Howard, who
1:45
Speaker 1: is the executive producer of Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.
1:49
Speaker 1: Jackie We've talked about autopsies a lot, haven't we we have, Joe,
1:53
Speaker 1: And the more that we talk about it, the more
1:55
Speaker 1: that I want to know. As we'd laid out our
1:58
Speaker 1: plans for what we wanted to discuss today, the questions
2:01
Speaker 1: just started pouring. So I figure the best place to
2:04
Speaker 1: start is with a simple question, what is an autopsy?
2:09
Speaker 1: An autopsy is essentially, there's another way to put this,
2:14
Speaker 1: it's essentially a post mortem examination. And that's in a
2:19
Speaker 1: very very broad sense. But when you hear the term autopsy,
2:25
Speaker 1: it conjures up images of an old, dilapidated morgue. You've
2:29
Speaker 1: got more personnel running about, there's coolers where bodies are
2:34
Speaker 1: stored in generally a stainless steel table, and that's not
2:37
Speaker 1: too far off the mark. But we have to understand
2:42
Speaker 1: that when we conduct an autopsy, we are trying to
2:48
Speaker 1: determine what exactly happened, what brought about the death of
2:52
Speaker 1: an individual that was not necessarily otherwise explained. And so
2:58
Speaker 1: when you begin to go down this in the autopsy suite,
3:02
Speaker 1: you know some people, interestingly enough, historically they've they've referred
3:06
Speaker 1: to in the historic record as doctors that do autopsies.
3:10
Speaker 1: They will refer to them as surgical pathology, and surgical
3:13
Speaker 1: pathology now means like you've got a doctor that goes
3:16
Speaker 1: up to surgery that's a pathologist and they look at
3:18
Speaker 1: frozen sections of tumors that have been removed from people.
3:22
Speaker 1: They'll look at them instantaneously and try to give you
3:24
Speaker 1: a diagnosis. But there is a part to surgical pathology
3:28
Speaker 1: that goes along with autopsy examinations where a pathologists will
3:33
Speaker 1: engage in literally the dissection or pro section of human
3:38
Speaker 1: remains to try to determine what exactly brought about to death.
3:42
Speaker 1: Because it absent those clinical diagnoses that you arrive at
3:48
Speaker 1: by virtue of doing these examinations, you don't actually have
3:53
Speaker 1: a final or a fatal diagnosis. The biggest questions that
3:59
Speaker 1: families have, that communities have is absolutely what happened, How
4:04
Speaker 1: did they die, When did they die, What was the
4:08
Speaker 1: mechanism that brought about their death, and hopefully through an
4:11
Speaker 1: autopsy you can make that determination. One of the things
4:14
Speaker 1: that you said just then, Joe, really caught my attention,
4:16
Speaker 1: and it was having to do with when an autopsy
4:20
Speaker 1: has done and when is it not done. I find
4:23
Speaker 1: it really interesting in the Tammy day Bell case. As
4:26
Speaker 1: you mentioned that an autopsy was not initially done, who
4:31
Speaker 1: determines that and why would you not? I mean, I know,
4:35
Speaker 1: in certain especially in the elderly, when it's thought to
4:39
Speaker 1: be natural causes, they don't necessarily do an autopsy to
4:43
Speaker 1: try to figure out why this person died. So who
4:46
Speaker 1: makes that determination and why? Well, ultimately it's going to
4:50
Speaker 1: be the lead medical legal authority in a jurisdiction. And
4:54
Speaker 1: you got to back up and understand that in the
4:56
Speaker 1: United States in particular, we have two separate types of systems. Here.
5:02
Speaker 1: You have corner systems, which are elected officials and they're
5:06
Speaker 1: not necessarily always physicians. As a matter of fact, most
5:08
Speaker 1: of the the time they're not physicians. People will be surprised
5:11
Speaker 1: to hear that. And then you have medical examiner systems,
5:15
Speaker 1: which are essentially run by physicians who many times are
5:20
Speaker 1: in fact forensic mythologists. So it really varies from state
5:26
Speaker 1: to state who's going to make the determination. Most of
5:29
Speaker 1: the time, the state statute, that is, the state law
5:33
Speaker 1: will dictate who has the authority to make a decision
5:38
Speaker 1: about an autopsy. And contrary to popular belief, I hear
5:41
Speaker 1: and famously with the Tammy day Belle case, it was
5:44
Speaker 1: stated that it was the family's wishes not to have
5:48
Speaker 1: an autopsy performed in her case and be kind of
5:51
Speaker 1: sitting there scratching her head and saying, I got a
5:53
Speaker 1: healthy young woman here that's out and running every day
5:56
Speaker 1: and seems vibrant and healthy. Why in the world would
5:59
Speaker 1: you not one an autopsy? And there's a many layers
6:04
Speaker 1: to that. Families don't want to think about their family
6:08
Speaker 1: members undergoing this procedure. They don't want to think about
6:11
Speaker 1: everything that's involved with it. They just want to go
6:13
Speaker 1: to the funeral home with the remains. But unfortunately, if
6:18
Speaker 1: it's not done, and it's not done in a timely fashion,
6:22
Speaker 1: one or two things is going to happen. Either you'll
6:25
Speaker 1: never have answers to those questions, or in Tammy Davell's case,
6:28
Speaker 1: she had been in balm transport to another state and
6:31
Speaker 1: had been buried. Even after her body is exhumed, in
6:36
Speaker 1: that case, any kind of findings that there may have
6:39
Speaker 1: been originally are going to be so compromised by that
6:42
Speaker 1: time it's really going to be difficult to make heads
6:44
Speaker 1: or tails. So most of the time it will be
6:50
Speaker 1: depended upon what the medical legal authority again back to
6:53
Speaker 1: medical examin or corner views as the best interest at
6:58
Speaker 1: that point in time to come up with an answer,
7:01
Speaker 1: scientific valid answer to try to determine what brought about
7:05
Speaker 1: this person's sudden death. And it is not dependent upon
7:11
Speaker 1: what the family wants. Okay, now that sounds cruel, but
7:17
Speaker 1: you know most of the time families are in no
7:20
Speaker 1: position to make that decision. And also they're a greater
7:23
Speaker 1: interest at work here. And we can go down the list.
7:25
Speaker 1: You got a homicide, this happened. Family is not going
7:28
Speaker 1: to have any weight given to their protest about an
7:32
Speaker 1: autopsy not being performed in that case because it's obvious.
7:35
Speaker 1: But you have to document it if you're going to
7:36
Speaker 1: prosecute a case. And then you have these kind of
7:39
Speaker 1: mysterious circumstances where you don't have any answers. And Joe,
7:42
Speaker 1: let me ask you something here in relating to what
7:44
Speaker 1: you're talking about. Can an autopsy be done even though
7:49
Speaker 1: the family doesn't want it to be? I mean, like
7:52
Speaker 1: in this case, the family said that an autopsy was
7:55
Speaker 1: not necessary here, it could the corner or the medical
7:58
Speaker 1: personnel have said, then, no, we're doing an autopsy anyway.
8:01
Speaker 1: They have authority under state law to do that. They
8:04
Speaker 1: can say, well, I respect what you're saying, I understand
8:07
Speaker 1: why you might not want one done, but there's bigger
8:10
Speaker 1: interest at work here. We have to make a determination
8:14
Speaker 1: about manner and cause of death here and find out
8:17
Speaker 1: what exactly happened, and there's reasons why you do that.
8:20
Speaker 1: First off, it's a mystery that you have to have
8:23
Speaker 1: an answer for the corner or the medical examiner is
8:26
Speaker 1: going to be the one that actually, you know, you
8:28
Speaker 1: hear the term of death certificate. People don't think about
8:30
Speaker 1: that that means that death is being certified. Okay, Well,
8:34
Speaker 1: if you don't have a reason that is put forth
8:39
Speaker 1: as a result of a pathology finding where you're looking
8:42
Speaker 1: for disease or some kind of mechanism of death, what
8:45
Speaker 1: are you going to list as a cause of death
8:47
Speaker 1: gunshot wound or MIoD cardial infarction or lung cancer, leukemia,
8:53
Speaker 1: or whatever it is the person has going on in
8:55
Speaker 1: dwelling within their body or some kind of external event
8:59
Speaker 1: that occurred to bring about their death. If you don't
9:01
Speaker 1: go in and actually examine that and make a note
9:06
Speaker 1: of that and make an absolute diagnosis, how are you
9:10
Speaker 1: going to do that. How are you going to list
9:11
Speaker 1: the cause of death? I mean, you can't just like
9:13
Speaker 1: it doesn't just come to you psychically out of the air.
9:16
Speaker 1: You have to see it. It's a scientific procedure, it's
9:20
Speaker 1: a study. And then how are you going to list
9:23
Speaker 1: the manner of death? We've only got five that choose
9:25
Speaker 1: from natural, suicide, homicide, unexplained, undetermined. You've got all of
9:32
Speaker 1: those that you have to choose from as well. So
9:35
Speaker 1: if you have nothing to put on the death certificate,
9:38
Speaker 1: you're gonna have a death certificate. It's going to remain
9:40
Speaker 1: probably incomplete for a protracted period of time because you're
9:45
Speaker 1: asking for the official to put down an official diagnosis
9:49
Speaker 1: and an official manner of death that they don't have
9:52
Speaker 1: any insight into. And of course the autopsy itself is
9:55
Speaker 1: the best way to do that. Gloria sadder Field having
9:59
Speaker 1: to do the case of the Murdles over in South Carolina,
10:03
Speaker 1: Gloria Sadderfield, the murds housekeeper, reportedly tripped over dogs going
10:11
Speaker 1: down the stairs outside the home the brick stairway, Yet
10:15
Speaker 1: her cause of death, if I'm not mistaken, was listed
10:18
Speaker 1: as natural causes. Yeah, it is super bizarre, you know,
10:21
Speaker 1: particularly with the case of Glorious Sadderfield. You've got a
10:24
Speaker 1: woman that had obviously sustained some type of very specific
10:28
Speaker 1: head trauma that brought her to the hospital. And one
10:31
Speaker 1: of the ways I teach my students, there's that old
10:33
Speaker 1: point that we talk about, and I don't know, folks,
10:36
Speaker 1: I'm not going to recite the whole thing. I'll spare
10:38
Speaker 1: spare the audience that the old the old point that goes,
10:41
Speaker 1: you know, for the one of a nail, the shoe
10:44
Speaker 1: was lost. For the one of the shoe, a horse
10:46
Speaker 1: was lost. For the one of a horse, a rider
10:49
Speaker 1: was lost, a message was lost, and so forth and
10:51
Speaker 1: so on. So you have a genesis in the beginning
10:53
Speaker 1: as to how all of these dominoes begin to fall.
10:59
Speaker 1: And in Sadderfield's case, well, what brought her to the hospital.
11:03
Speaker 1: Was it that she had a cardiac event? Was that
11:06
Speaker 1: she had a stroke, Was that she got struck by lightning? Well,
11:12
Speaker 1: none of the above. She fell and sustained head trauma.
11:17
Speaker 1: But yet they're listing this whole event as a natural event.
11:20
Speaker 1: And here's what's crazy about that case is that a
11:25
Speaker 1: private attending physician signed her death certificate. And this case
11:30
Speaker 1: was never reported to the corner. Listen, if a person
11:36
Speaker 1: rolls into the hospital as a result of a traumatic
11:38
Speaker 1: event and they don't exit that hospital and they die
11:42
Speaker 1: inside the walls, and I don't care how long they've
11:44
Speaker 1: been in the hospital. If they come in as a
11:47
Speaker 1: result of trauma and that trauma's directly related to their death,
11:50
Speaker 1: that is a reportable case. And it's my understanding the
11:53
Speaker 1: case was never even reported to the coroner. And that's
11:57
Speaker 1: a problem because the corner is not aware, they can't
12:00
Speaker 1: make a decision about whether or not an autopsy should
12:03
Speaker 1: be performed. Or she had been in for a while,
12:05
Speaker 1: so they're going to request the records and examine the records,
12:09
Speaker 1: all of the imaging, everything that comes along with that,
12:11
Speaker 1: and they'll sign the death certificate. But you know, a
12:14
Speaker 1: private physician can't list a traumatic cause of death, and
12:18
Speaker 1: they can't qualify a traumatic cause of death. So a
12:21
Speaker 1: private physician can't say blunt force trauma and the manner
12:25
Speaker 1: of death is homicide or accident. That'll get rejected most
12:28
Speaker 1: of the time. That's going to be rejected by the
12:30
Speaker 1: state Health department or whoever handles all of the paperwork,
12:34
Speaker 1: the public health agency that handles a paperwork for the state,
12:37
Speaker 1: and that's why it always goes back to the corner.
12:40
Speaker 1: But if the corner is not aware of it, the
12:42
Speaker 1: death has not been reported, it's going to be a
12:45
Speaker 1: problem going forward. So then the question begs to be
12:50
Speaker 1: answered once a decision is made to do an autopsy,
12:54
Speaker 1: is what kind of an autopsy is there going to be?
12:57
Speaker 1: If it's an autopsy, is it always the same you
13:02
Speaker 1: start with a through Z or are there truly different
13:06
Speaker 1: kinds of autopsies? There are different degrees to autopsies. When
13:10
Speaker 1: you bring a body into a morgue, for instance, you
13:13
Speaker 1: can do what's called an external examination, which means that
13:16
Speaker 1: the body will be completely photographed as is upon arrival.
13:22
Speaker 1: That means with clothing on. Okay, some places actually do
13:28
Speaker 1: X rays just so that they have them. You disrobe
13:31
Speaker 1: the body, the pathologist and their assistant do a complete
13:35
Speaker 1: and total examination of the body unclothed. Then in addition
13:39
Speaker 1: to that, you're going to draw samples for toxicology, and
13:43
Speaker 1: what these are going to be is you'll draw what's
13:46
Speaker 1: referred to as hard blood. Most of the time you're
13:47
Speaker 1: going to try to end this as externally and it's
13:50
Speaker 1: drawn from the A order. So folks will find their
13:52
Speaker 1: collar bone on the left hand side and go down
13:56
Speaker 1: the intercostal spaces, which is kind of the muscle inween
14:00
Speaker 1: each rib group, and go down about the third intercostal
14:03
Speaker 1: space in the ribs on the front side, okay, adjacent
14:07
Speaker 1: to the sternum. There will be a needle inserted there
14:10
Speaker 1: and it will go into the A order, which is
14:12
Speaker 1: the big vessel that comes off the curved vessel that
14:15
Speaker 1: comes off of the top of the heart. And it
14:17
Speaker 1: takes practice to learn how to do this, but over
14:19
Speaker 1: a period of time's we do it by touch. It's
14:22
Speaker 1: something that we can do. And then you draw blood
14:25
Speaker 1: out of that area, and then we take another needle
14:28
Speaker 1: and we draw externally. We will draw urine, and finally
14:31
Speaker 1: we'll draw vitreous fluid which comes from the eye, and
14:35
Speaker 1: all of those fluids are submitted for toxicology and we'll
14:38
Speaker 1: run the entire panel. But to the broader question here,
14:43
Speaker 1: that's the first kind of stop along the continuum where
14:46
Speaker 1: we're doing an external examination and it doesn't rise to
14:51
Speaker 1: the same level as a full autopsy or even a
14:53
Speaker 1: partial autopsy, which I'm not a fan of, but you
14:57
Speaker 1: just do the external examination. You draw the fluids, and
15:00
Speaker 1: then those are submitted generally to either a local hospital
15:03
Speaker 1: or state crime lab, and you run a drug panel,
15:06
Speaker 1: and you already have a suspicion. If you're going to
15:09
Speaker 1: do an external examination, you already have a suspicion that
15:11
Speaker 1: you might know what cause of death is, but you
15:13
Speaker 1: just want to rule out everything else, any kind of
15:15
Speaker 1: external trauma. Maybe the person died and they weren't found
15:19
Speaker 1: for a while, and then you'll move forward. Maybe you
15:22
Speaker 1: can even get the private physician. If it's a natural death,
15:24
Speaker 1: which if you're not doing an autopsy, it's probably a
15:27
Speaker 1: natural death. The private physician can sign the death certificate
15:30
Speaker 1: and they'll list a specific cause of death. Again, back
15:33
Speaker 1: to acute mild cardial infarction, which is essentially a fancy
15:37
Speaker 1: way of saying a heart attack, and that is a
15:39
Speaker 1: natural classified as a natural death. Now you'll have events
15:43
Speaker 1: that pathologists will make a decision or the enemy of
15:47
Speaker 1: the corner will make a decision. We're only going to
15:48
Speaker 1: a partial autopsy. And I have a problem with this
15:53
Speaker 1: because it's like you've got one foot in the water
15:55
Speaker 1: and one foot in the boat. If you're going to
15:57
Speaker 1: do it, commit to it, do it. And they're even
16:00
Speaker 1: cases like if you have suicides, for instance, subject has
16:05
Speaker 1: sustained a gunshot one of the head, they might only
16:08
Speaker 1: in certain jurisdictions they might actually only only open the head,
16:12
Speaker 1: for instance, and retrieve a projectile, and then they don't
16:16
Speaker 1: touch the rest of the body. And that's a problem.
16:19
Speaker 1: It can be a problem everybody needs to understand. Foundationally,
16:23
Speaker 1: in the medical legal world, our supposition is this, and
16:27
Speaker 1: everything that we do we work under this big banner
16:31
Speaker 1: that says every death, some deaths, not a few deaths.
16:36
Speaker 1: We from jump Street. We go forward with this idea
16:41
Speaker 1: that every death is in fact a homicide until we
16:45
Speaker 1: can prove otherwise. Okay, Because if you start out at
16:49
Speaker 1: that really intense high level of trying to make a
16:53
Speaker 1: determination about homicide, as you kind of make your way
16:57
Speaker 1: through these checklists that we have, you get to the
17:00
Speaker 1: next level maybe accent or suicide, and then you get
17:03
Speaker 1: to maybe natural and you've kind of checked the boxes
17:07
Speaker 1: along the way. You have to be able to effectively
17:09
Speaker 1: rule all these things out. So back to this idea
17:11
Speaker 1: of a partial autopsy. If you're only going to do
17:14
Speaker 1: a partial autopsy, why why not go ahead and do
17:17
Speaker 1: the entire autopsy. In that way, it's complete. It's only
17:20
Speaker 1: going to take you maybe another forty five minutes to
17:22
Speaker 1: an hour to get everything done, and it can lead
17:26
Speaker 1: to problems down the road. You'll have people saying, well,
17:28
Speaker 1: they had this problem or they had that problem, why
17:31
Speaker 1: didn't you look at this? And while you have the
17:33
Speaker 1: body there in front of you, you go ahead and
17:36
Speaker 1: you do the whole thing. I engage in these discussions
17:57
Speaker 1: many times with my students at Jackson's a pre teach
18:00
Speaker 1: and they'll say, how'd you know, Professor Morgan, how did
18:03
Speaker 1: you get into this environment, how'd you start doing this?
18:06
Speaker 1: How did you start working in the more or why
18:07
Speaker 1: did you choose to be in the Morgan, Let me
18:10
Speaker 1: tell you something and hear me right. The best classroom
18:15
Speaker 1: that I've ever been in, and I've paid a lot
18:17
Speaker 1: of money for tuition over the years, the best classroom
18:20
Speaker 1: that I was ever in that I was actually paid
18:23
Speaker 1: to be in as opposed to having to pay tuition
18:25
Speaker 1: for was an autopsy room. I learned more about death
18:29
Speaker 1: investigation than I ever did out on a scene with
18:33
Speaker 1: a deceased person or sitting around having coffee with an
18:37
Speaker 1: old investigator and they're telling war stories. I've learned more
18:40
Speaker 1: in the autopsy suite, actually getting my hand study and
18:44
Speaker 1: being there to actually see these things before me demonstrated,
18:47
Speaker 1: to see the mechanisms that are involved, to see all
18:50
Speaker 1: of the underlying disease. You can't have a better environment
18:54
Speaker 1: in which to learn in Okay, then lay this out
18:57
Speaker 1: for me, Joe, you were talking for about a full autopsy.
19:02
Speaker 1: Explain that to me. And how long does an autopsies
19:08
Speaker 1: take you Remember how I'd mentioned we talked about an
19:11
Speaker 1: external examination. Well, every autopsy starts off with an external examination. Now,
19:17
Speaker 1: in some cases where you have what you suspect is
19:19
Speaker 1: natural disease, it might begin an end with that and
19:23
Speaker 1: then the body will be released. However, a full autopsy
19:26
Speaker 1: will in fact start with an external examination, and you
19:29
Speaker 1: go from stem to stern relative to the overall status
19:33
Speaker 1: of the body. All of this is made nota throughout
19:36
Speaker 1: the examination. I mean measurements. We go into great detail
19:40
Speaker 1: relative to measurements, and a lot of this is actually
19:42
Speaker 1: dictated by particularly if you've got traumatic cases, say, for instance,
19:46
Speaker 1: like with Ellen Greenberg where she was stabbed. Some people
19:49
Speaker 1: have said twenty times, some people have said more than
19:51
Speaker 1: twenty times. You've got so much trauma there that each
19:55
Speaker 1: individual insult that she has externally has to be measured
19:59
Speaker 1: in orient it anatomically. Say, for instance, if someone has
20:02
Speaker 1: been let's just say somebody has been shot to the
20:05
Speaker 1: right of their sternum, which is the hard plate of
20:08
Speaker 1: the breastbone on the anterior chest. They've been shot to
20:11
Speaker 1: the right. Well, just for that gunshot wound alone, you
20:15
Speaker 1: would have to get a measurement first off of the
20:18
Speaker 1: overall circumference of the wound itself, and then you have
20:23
Speaker 1: to measure Some people do from two points, some people
20:25
Speaker 1: do from three, like from if it's on the right
20:28
Speaker 1: side of the sternom, you would do a measurement from
20:32
Speaker 1: the center of the wound to the apex of the
20:34
Speaker 1: right shoulder, and then maybe from the center the wound
20:36
Speaker 1: to the apex of the left shoulder, and then from
20:38
Speaker 1: the center of the wound to the top of the head.
20:40
Speaker 1: That takes time. And then if you have somebody to
20:42
Speaker 1: stabbed multiple times, shot multiple times, each one of those
20:47
Speaker 1: injuries dictates the speed at which you can do is
20:51
Speaker 1: because you want to do a thorough examination. And I've
20:54
Speaker 1: had people that have been stabbed well in excess of
20:56
Speaker 1: one hundred times, and you can just imagine the external examination,
20:59
Speaker 1: I'll loan it is a herculean task, to say the least,
21:04
Speaker 1: and then you might have three or four other autopsies
21:07
Speaker 1: that you're going to have to do that day. But
21:09
Speaker 1: once you get done with the external examination, then the
21:13
Speaker 1: body is of course, you're on a stainless steel autopsy table,
21:16
Speaker 1: and these are either fixed on the floor or their
21:18
Speaker 1: own rollers where and they're kind of set at a
21:21
Speaker 1: pitch because you're going to lose fluid and the fluid
21:24
Speaker 1: will run down the stainless steel table either into a
21:28
Speaker 1: pre established drain that you have on a fixed table
21:31
Speaker 1: or into this big kind of catch off sink. It's
21:33
Speaker 1: a working station that you have, and all of that
21:36
Speaker 1: fluid is washed away and you'll have multiple autopsy stations.
21:40
Speaker 1: You go to one of these really big shops in
21:43
Speaker 1: large metropolitan areas and they might have the ability to
21:46
Speaker 1: have five autopsies, say for instance, going on at one time,
21:49
Speaker 1: and you might have multiple physicians, multiple autopsy assistance photographers,
21:54
Speaker 1: everybody doing these examinations all at one time. Particularly if
21:58
Speaker 1: you're talking about like a mass casual event or if
22:00
Speaker 1: it's a really really busy day. And so after the
22:03
Speaker 1: external examination is done, essentially the chest and the abdomen
22:09
Speaker 1: are opened and we use what's referred to as a
22:12
Speaker 1: standard Y incision, and so it forms a Y where
22:17
Speaker 1: you make a diagonal cut from the apex of the
22:21
Speaker 1: left shoulder the apex of the right shoulder down to midsternal.
22:24
Speaker 1: And why is that Joe, Well, because it enables us
22:28
Speaker 1: to effectively remove back or retract that external layer of tissue,
22:35
Speaker 1: which includes skin, the subc fat, all of the muscle
22:39
Speaker 1: tissue that's in dwelling, and it reveals everything. And also
22:43
Speaker 1: the body is on what's called it's blocked in the back.
22:46
Speaker 1: You have kind of these rubber blocks. You put them
22:48
Speaker 1: beneath the shoulder blades and it hyper extends hyper extends
22:52
Speaker 1: the chest so that the shoulders kind of fall to
22:54
Speaker 1: the side. The body really opens up, and you can
22:56
Speaker 1: appreciate once you get the body open, you can shape
23:00
Speaker 1: all of the viscera and that's the internal structures very well.
23:04
Speaker 1: They can all be visualized in place, and you want
23:06
Speaker 1: to be able to see it. I mean, just imagine,
23:09
Speaker 1: if you will. You've got someone that has been shot
23:13
Speaker 1: and let's say they're shot in the left side. If
23:18
Speaker 1: people will put their finger beneath their armpit on the
23:22
Speaker 1: left side, and that bullet travels from the left and
23:27
Speaker 1: it travels maybe slightly upward from below to above, and
23:32
Speaker 1: it almost transects the body, which means it cuts across
23:35
Speaker 1: the entirety of the middle line of the body, and
23:37
Speaker 1: it exits out beneath the right armpit. You've got all
23:40
Speaker 1: of these structures that are impacted, and let's think what
23:43
Speaker 1: structures might be. Well, you've got the left lung, which
23:45
Speaker 1: has only two lobes because the heart's on the left side.
23:49
Speaker 1: It may go through the heart, then it's going to
23:52
Speaker 1: go through the right lung, which has got three lobes,
23:55
Speaker 1: and then it's going to exit through all of that tissue.
23:58
Speaker 1: And you have to track that wound see what structures
24:01
Speaker 1: are impacted by this, because what you're looking for is
24:04
Speaker 1: when you make that final diagnosis of what led to death,
24:09
Speaker 1: was it simply the lung that was impacted, was it
24:12
Speaker 1: the heart, or was it in total all of these
24:16
Speaker 1: structures being impacted, Say, for instance, if it penetrated the heart,
24:19
Speaker 1: was that injury that was sustained as a result of
24:22
Speaker 1: that gunshot when sufficient to cause more of an instantaneous death,
24:25
Speaker 1: or did this individual linger. What you're describing for me
24:28
Speaker 1: here is an autopsy is a lengthy procedure. Oh yeah, yeah,
24:34
Speaker 1: particularly when you've got these highly complex cases where you've
24:38
Speaker 1: got multiple trauma. Now you might if you have a case,
24:41
Speaker 1: for instance, where an individual is say it is very sad,
24:45
Speaker 1: but we do more of these than anything else. I
24:48
Speaker 1: would imagine as far as trauma goes, and those are suicides, Well,
24:51
Speaker 1: you've got a single self inflicted gunshot when or at
24:54
Speaker 1: least you think that it might be. But remember our
24:57
Speaker 1: starting point is every death is a homicide until we
25:00
Speaker 1: prove otherwise. You've got a single bullet in that case,
25:03
Speaker 1: and you track that bullet and lets say it's a
25:05
Speaker 1: self inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Well, maybe they're
25:07
Speaker 1: right handed. It went from the right side of the
25:09
Speaker 1: head to the left side of the head. Maybe it
25:11
Speaker 1: stayed in, maybe it exited. You're going to track that
25:13
Speaker 1: wound and beyond that, there's not too much more to discover.
25:18
Speaker 1: You're going to try to rule out any other kind
25:20
Speaker 1: of trauma that may or may not be present. And
25:23
Speaker 1: this again goes to another underlined principle within forensics, negative
25:30
Speaker 1: findings are just as important as positive findings, So an
25:34
Speaker 1: absence of trauma is significant. Okay, all right, So if
25:38
Speaker 1: I can say at autopsy that there's no trauma to
25:41
Speaker 1: the neck, well that's something that has to be made
25:44
Speaker 1: note of. You cannot just assume that people will understand
25:47
Speaker 1: there was no trauma to the neck, because if this
25:50
Speaker 1: thing were to go to court for whatever reason, one
25:52
Speaker 1: of the questions that's going to be asked of the
25:55
Speaker 1: person conducting the autopsy is, well, you don't say any
25:59
Speaker 1: thing about what you saw with the neck. Does that
26:02
Speaker 1: mean that it didn't examine the neck or does that
26:06
Speaker 1: mean that you didn't see anything? Why would you fail?
26:08
Speaker 1: I mean the next pretty significant, right, and you wind
26:11
Speaker 1: up looking like an idiot on the stand. So you
26:14
Speaker 1: cover that you have to document that there was no
26:16
Speaker 1: trauma to the neck, or that there was trauma to
26:19
Speaker 1: the neck. All of it is part and parcel of
26:21
Speaker 1: a bigger picture. So you're right when you say that
26:25
Speaker 1: these things take time. It's not just the individual trauma
26:28
Speaker 1: that you can see. You also have to document those
26:30
Speaker 1: things that are not there. And that's quite fascinating when
26:33
Speaker 1: you think about it. There's not too many other things
26:34
Speaker 1: in life that you document the absence of something in
26:38
Speaker 1: that sense. I've always been fascinated by that one, that
26:41
Speaker 1: one little point that's very significant in forensic pathology in particular,
26:46
Speaker 1: you are describing autopsy suites in larger areas where they
26:52
Speaker 1: can have multiple tables and autopsies going at the same time.
26:56
Speaker 1: Given the amount of time that it seems to take
26:59
Speaker 1: for each autopsy, and given how many deaths unfortunately that
27:04
Speaker 1: most city see every day, the idea that we see
27:08
Speaker 1: in some cop shows that hey, can you push this
27:11
Speaker 1: to the top of the line. Does that work? I'm
27:14
Speaker 1: going to be I guess kind of cheeky here. I'm
27:16
Speaker 1: going to say that all depends on how many politicians
27:18
Speaker 1: called the official. Most of the time, you'd want to think, no,
27:21
Speaker 1: everybody awaits their turn. But if there are particular high
27:25
Speaker 1: profile cases that are going on that particular day. You
27:29
Speaker 1: look back historically, I think, and you think about cases
27:31
Speaker 1: like Ron Goldman for instance, and Nicole Brown Simpson, Well
27:37
Speaker 1: that was at the La County corner where those examinations
27:41
Speaker 1: were done. You would like to think that that particular
27:47
Speaker 1: forensic pathologists and their team that was involved in that
27:51
Speaker 1: case would have been on those two cases, in those
27:54
Speaker 1: two cases alone, and that they would have been given
27:57
Speaker 1: as much time as possible. However, I don't think that
28:03
Speaker 1: people appreciate the volume of cases that come through a
28:06
Speaker 1: shop like La County. That same day, they may have
28:09
Speaker 1: had twenty other autopsies that had to be done. And
28:12
Speaker 1: there is a finite number of forensic pathologists out there,
28:16
Speaker 1: as a matter of fact, depend upon who you ask.
28:19
Speaker 1: At any point in time, you'll hear numbers like five
28:21
Speaker 1: to fifty or six hundred board certified forensic pathologist nationwide. Okay,
28:28
Speaker 1: just let that sink in. There's and I'm not saying
28:32
Speaker 1: forensic pathologists are smarter than a neurosurgeon, but there are
28:37
Speaker 1: more neurosurgeons out there practicing than there are forensic pathologists.
28:41
Speaker 1: And if you want that level of skill to be
28:42
Speaker 1: performed for an autopsy, you're going to have to really
28:46
Speaker 1: look for these people and attract them to work in
28:48
Speaker 1: a particular area, because, let's face it, you go to
28:51
Speaker 1: the large urban areas, people will apply for those jobs
28:55
Speaker 1: and they will have availability, they'll have a need for
28:57
Speaker 1: forensic pathologists. But you go to a more rural area,
29:00
Speaker 1: they're not going to have access necessarily to a forensic
29:02
Speaker 1: pathologist because there's so very few. It just the numbers
29:05
Speaker 1: just dictate that, and so it's really an odd position
29:10
Speaker 1: to be in. And then even if you have a
29:12
Speaker 1: full staff, you get to these areas, these big urban
29:15
Speaker 1: areas where they have huge volumes of deaths and autopsies
29:17
Speaker 1: that have to be performed, those staffs are overworked many
29:21
Speaker 1: many times, and it's hard to get people to come
29:23
Speaker 1: into the field. It looks really sexy on TV and
29:25
Speaker 1: people talk about it, and I have kids that come
29:27
Speaker 1: to me all the time say they want to be
29:28
Speaker 1: a forensic pathologist. But what's fascinating is I've talked to
29:33
Speaker 1: people over the years and one of the interesting things
29:36
Speaker 1: is is that when friends of pathologists go through their training,
29:39
Speaker 1: it's one of those unique kind of educational journeys where
29:43
Speaker 1: the more education you get essentially the less you get paid. Okay,
29:46
Speaker 1: so if you just stop at a fellowship or an
29:49
Speaker 1: internship will be in a clinical pathologist and anatomical pathologist,
29:53
Speaker 1: you're work in a hospital, You're going to make a
29:55
Speaker 1: lot more than the guy that goes on beyond that
29:58
Speaker 1: training and doesn't one year fellowship up in forensic pathology,
30:01
Speaker 1: and you're going to wind up working any more, work
30:04
Speaker 1: in a city, in an urban area most of the time,
30:07
Speaker 1: dealing with most unpleasant cases you can imagine, and then
30:10
Speaker 1: traveling around and going to court, and you're gonna get
30:12
Speaker 1: paid as a government employee. That's kind of one of
30:15
Speaker 1: the little dynamics that you know that you're kind of
30:18
Speaker 1: faced with in the medical legal community. Joe, you mentioned
30:22
Speaker 1: surgeons just a second ago. Is an autopsy considered surgery?
30:27
Speaker 1: I think for years it has been regarded as a
30:31
Speaker 1: type of surgery, and you will hear the term autopsy surgeon,
30:34
Speaker 1: particularly going back years and years. I love history, and
30:38
Speaker 1: what's really kind of fascinating about the trajectory that you
30:42
Speaker 1: see with gross anatomical dissection is that even up until
30:47
Speaker 1: I guess probably the early eighteen hundreds, the first part
30:51
Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century, it was illegal in many places
30:54
Speaker 1: to do dissections on human remains period. And you know,
30:58
Speaker 1: there's all kinds of stories about grave robbers that would
31:01
Speaker 1: go and disinter bodies and they would bring them back
31:03
Speaker 1: to medical schools and by the light of a whale
31:06
Speaker 1: oa lamp or whatever, medical students in order to try
31:10
Speaker 1: to learn anatomy, would dissect these bodies that have been
31:14
Speaker 1: removed from the ground just to try to understand anatomy.
31:17
Speaker 1: And so it has not been something that has been
31:21
Speaker 1: done for centuries and centuries and centuries because it was
31:24
Speaker 1: so prohibited for so long. Now through the twentieth century
31:28
Speaker 1: and obviously into the twenty first now you know autopsies
31:31
Speaker 1: are common. They are in necessity. A very small percentage
31:35
Speaker 1: of the cases that a medical examiner or a corner
31:37
Speaker 1: deal with are homicides. And that's what you always think
31:40
Speaker 1: about with people in my field, and that's not the case.
31:44
Speaker 1: It's just not the lines share cases we deal with
31:47
Speaker 1: are some kind of natural event. If you don't have
31:52
Speaker 1: an interest in natural disease pathology, looking at bodies where
31:57
Speaker 1: you're trying to make a determination about manner and cause
31:59
Speaker 1: it death, it's not going to be gunshot wounds. Most
32:02
Speaker 1: of the time, you're going to be dealing with natural
32:05
Speaker 1: disease and trying to make a determination. And there's beer
32:07
Speaker 1: considerations here. Number One is the community in which these
32:10
Speaker 1: people live. Did this person suddenly die because there's some
32:13
Speaker 1: kind of public health issue. I was in Atlanta when
32:15
Speaker 1: we were at the height of one of the biggest
32:17
Speaker 1: TV scares in the nation. We were like the TV
32:20
Speaker 1: capital of the nation in like the nineties or something,
32:24
Speaker 1: and we had all of these people that were homeless
32:27
Speaker 1: and other people that were dying of TV, and that's
32:29
Speaker 1: a public health concern, and then you think about broad
32:33
Speaker 1: ranging other diseases that are out there. I started my
32:36
Speaker 1: career at the height of the AIDS epidemic, and we
32:38
Speaker 1: were terrified to be in the morgue because we didn't
32:41
Speaker 1: know what was going to happen if we stuck ourselves
32:42
Speaker 1: with a dirty needle or cut ourselves with a dirty scalpel,
32:45
Speaker 1: and that does happen. We've all been nick in the morgue.
32:48
Speaker 1: It's not as clean as people think, it's as necessarily precise.
32:52
Speaker 1: It's like a standard of surgery, you know, when you
32:55
Speaker 1: go into these environments because you're doing multiple cases, you're
32:57
Speaker 1: doing them quickly. It's a different world to kind of
33:01
Speaker 1: be a part of. But absolutely grateful that I was
33:05
Speaker 1: part of that world because I learned more. Now I
33:07
Speaker 1: have an opportunity to teach. When people found out what
33:30
Speaker 1: I did for a living, i'd get one of two reactions.
33:35
Speaker 1: Either people would lean in and want to hear more
33:41
Speaker 1: because by our nature as humans, we have morbid curiosity
33:45
Speaker 1: about things. Or I've actually answered the question of what
33:50
Speaker 1: I did for a living at a party and had
33:53
Speaker 1: people immediately turn on their heel and walk away. They
33:57
Speaker 1: don't want to hear anything else about death. There's rarely
34:00
Speaker 1: middle ground when that conversation starts. You know, I never
34:04
Speaker 1: thought that I had a morbid curiosity about me, but
34:08
Speaker 1: I have been proven wrong. The more I talk about you,
34:11
Speaker 1: the more I want to know. So let's play twenty questions,
34:15
Speaker 1: so to speak with Joe Scott Morgan. What makes a
34:19
Speaker 1: person want to deal with dead bodies? And how do
34:24
Speaker 1: you get into that profession? How do you get to
34:27
Speaker 1: work in a morgue? For me, it was a curious
34:31
Speaker 1: set of circumstances. Now it's really actually difficult to get
34:35
Speaker 1: into a more to even view an autopsy because of
34:38
Speaker 1: all of the health considerations and all these sorts of things.
34:41
Speaker 1: But I happen to be working at a hospital in
34:45
Speaker 1: security and working also as an ear tech while the
34:49
Speaker 1: morgue in our parish down there was being renovated and
34:53
Speaker 1: they started bringing bodies to our hospital to do the
34:55
Speaker 1: autopsies for the parish, which is the same as a county,
34:58
Speaker 1: and I became friends with the p well at the
35:00
Speaker 1: coroner's office, and I would be the one that would
35:03
Speaker 1: shuffle bodies in and out the door, and there were
35:05
Speaker 1: a huge volume of them, and I just became friends
35:08
Speaker 1: with these folks and started, believe it or not, I
35:10
Speaker 1: started attending autopsies on my free time, not getting paid,
35:13
Speaker 1: but I was just fascinated by it because I'd always
35:15
Speaker 1: been a science guy. And the next thing I knew,
35:18
Speaker 1: I was taking notes for them, and eventually they allowed
35:21
Speaker 1: me to participate an autopsy. O go wait, wait, taking
35:23
Speaker 1: notes for them? What does that mean? Well, I would
35:26
Speaker 1: work as a scribe for the forensic pathologists. If you
35:29
Speaker 1: can imagine the stupid young kid who had no background
35:32
Speaker 1: in it, but was willing to sit there with bloated,
35:38
Speaker 1: decomposing remains. Horrible traumatic cases, the worst of the worst
35:44
Speaker 1: cases you can possibly see. And I didn't necessarily retract
35:48
Speaker 1: or retreat from it. And that's not always the circumstance
35:51
Speaker 1: when people go to an autopsy for the first time.
35:53
Speaker 1: I've had one of my best friends that became a
35:55
Speaker 1: fantastic homicide investigator. I was in the middle of opening
36:00
Speaker 1: gunshot wounded victim's head in the middle of it, and
36:03
Speaker 1: he my friend just kind of back up. My friend
36:05
Speaker 1: was actually a burglary detective in the jurisdiction where I
36:10
Speaker 1: was working, and he and I had played golf together
36:12
Speaker 1: over the years and whatnot, and he wanted to transition
36:14
Speaker 1: the homicide. One of the requirements is you had to
36:16
Speaker 1: go to autopsies. He'd never been and famously I'd used
36:21
Speaker 1: that kind of high pitched saw it's called striker saw
36:23
Speaker 1: and agitating saw its like cas saw, and I was
36:26
Speaker 1: open to the skull and the friends of pathologists looked
36:29
Speaker 1: up at me over his mask and he said, you
36:31
Speaker 1: better check on him. And I looked over and my
36:32
Speaker 1: friend was turning green. And he stood up. And he's
36:38
Speaker 1: a big guy, I mean just really big, bold, tough guy.
36:41
Speaker 1: He's the kind of guy you'd worn on your side.
36:43
Speaker 1: There was a fight, and he's always dressed to the nines.
36:46
Speaker 1: And he begins to back up and retreat away from
36:50
Speaker 1: the autopsy area down a little hallway, and he collapsed
36:54
Speaker 1: and went up against a tiled wall in this old
36:57
Speaker 1: hospital and slid down the wall. I look back now
36:59
Speaker 1: and I laugh at it, because I was covered. You
37:02
Speaker 1: can't imagine. I was doing autopsy, had blood on me,
37:04
Speaker 1: and we used to wear these big yellow gloves that
37:06
Speaker 1: just made the blood pop even more. And he's my friend.
37:10
Speaker 1: I was concerned. I thought he'd hurt his head. And
37:13
Speaker 1: I was approaching him, walking toward him, saying, are you okay?
37:17
Speaker 1: Are you okay? And he automatically still nauseated, and Dizzy
37:21
Speaker 1: throws his hands up like I'm a monster, and he
37:23
Speaker 1: says no, no, back away, back away, because I'm coming
37:26
Speaker 1: at him and I've gotten blood all over, and it
37:29
Speaker 1: was just it's one of those curious environments that only
37:32
Speaker 1: certain people have the ability to be able to to
37:37
Speaker 1: go into and maintain their focus. Well, that's the key.
37:44
Speaker 1: It's hard to kind of measure that until you've been
37:46
Speaker 1: in that environment. Some people think they want to do it,
37:50
Speaker 1: but then they get in there and they realize from
37:53
Speaker 1: jump Street that they don't have the And it's not
37:57
Speaker 1: a judgment of them, it's just some people react differently
38:00
Speaker 1: to seeing a human being that is being opened on
38:04
Speaker 1: a table. And I think that's that's natural, but you
38:08
Speaker 1: kind of, I think I've said that, you kind of
38:11
Speaker 1: develop a callous to it. And I don't mean you
38:14
Speaker 1: become callous. You just develop almost like if you're a
38:17
Speaker 1: carpenter and you're swinging a hammer, your hands are suited
38:20
Speaker 1: to that. After a period of time, you build up
38:23
Speaker 1: a callous on your hands so you can handle the hammer.
38:25
Speaker 1: And for us, we build up a kind of a
38:27
Speaker 1: callous to those things that are required of us to do,
38:30
Speaker 1: because who else you're going to get to do it?
38:33
Speaker 1: You know, people say they want to do it, but
38:35
Speaker 1: there's one thing about saying you want to do it,
38:37
Speaker 1: and there's no part to it doing it. You know.
38:40
Speaker 1: Over the course of my career, I wound up participating
38:42
Speaker 1: in over seven thousand autopsy so I stuck around a
38:45
Speaker 1: little while. That is a lot of bodies. You've seen
38:50
Speaker 1: those bodies in all stages of things that would fit
38:54
Speaker 1: inside a horror movie. Yeah, yeah, you have. And sometimes
38:58
Speaker 1: if I happen to watch horror movie, which I generally don't,
39:02
Speaker 1: I look at it immediately and say that doesn't look real.
39:04
Speaker 1: All right, I'll say, wow, somebody really did their research this,
39:07
Speaker 1: this looks very accurate. It's weird how you kind of
39:10
Speaker 1: judge things like that when you know you've been involved
39:12
Speaker 1: in a field. But yeah, you really do they run
39:14
Speaker 1: the gamut. I talked about it in my memoir Blood
39:17
Speaker 1: Beneath My Feet. I talked about a horrible kind of
39:20
Speaker 1: event where we had a barge that capsized in the
39:23
Speaker 1: Gulf of Mexico. They were trying to outrun a hurricane
39:28
Speaker 1: that was inbound and they didn't make it, and I
39:31
Speaker 1: think we had sixteen sixteen men that lost their lives,
39:34
Speaker 1: and they came in slowly. They were able to be
39:38
Speaker 1: recovered because they some of them weren't still on board
39:41
Speaker 1: when the thing capsized. They went over, and of course
39:44
Speaker 1: the bodies were sitting in the heat in the Gulf
39:47
Speaker 1: of Mexico, subject to everything that's in the Gulf of Mexico,
39:51
Speaker 1: and so you get partial remains, then you get intact
39:53
Speaker 1: remains that are severely bloated and compromised. We had a
39:57
Speaker 1: very small facility and did a highvolume of cases, and
40:00
Speaker 1: we still had our other cases we had to do.
40:02
Speaker 1: But we had to bring in a refrigerated truck and
40:07
Speaker 1: store these bodies, and we had to do all kinds
40:09
Speaker 1: of intense exams, I mean everything to removing the jaws
40:13
Speaker 1: on the bodies, to do odent logical examinations, to try
40:16
Speaker 1: to determine who these people were. And I was around
40:19
Speaker 1: those bodies for so long, and this is not the
40:21
Speaker 1: first time that had happened to me or on one
40:24
Speaker 1: of my colleagues. I was around those bodies for so
40:26
Speaker 1: many days, and in that environment, I couldn't get rid
40:29
Speaker 1: of the smell. I couldn't. I literally wound up having
40:34
Speaker 1: to shave my entire body because no matter how much
40:39
Speaker 1: showered and bathed and all these sorts of things, even
40:42
Speaker 1: using vinegar and all those things that they tell you,
40:44
Speaker 1: I couldn't get rid of it. I think that part
40:47
Speaker 1: of that goes to there's an actual physical thing that happens,
40:50
Speaker 1: but I think there's a scarring. I think that happens
40:53
Speaker 1: emotionally with that too, where you kind of bear that along.
40:56
Speaker 1: And we had this kind of weird culture in the
40:59
Speaker 1: medical community. We would walk up almost like you see
41:02
Speaker 1: these apes in these National Geographic documentaries where they pick
41:05
Speaker 1: at knits and that sort of thing, and we had this.
41:08
Speaker 1: We would check one another before we would go out.
41:11
Speaker 1: Maybe we'd gone out on a case where we had
41:12
Speaker 1: a decomposing body and we would smell each other would say,
41:15
Speaker 1: I've got to go talk to a family how do
41:17
Speaker 1: I smell? And that's a weird just think about that
41:19
Speaker 1: dynamic within an office and you become friends with these
41:22
Speaker 1: people you know and say, yeah, do I smell bad?
41:25
Speaker 1: And it's not because you haven't bathed or use the odorant,
41:28
Speaker 1: but if you've been in the presence of a decomposed body,
41:30
Speaker 1: you don't want to expose the public to that. And
41:32
Speaker 1: so that's kind of a weird little nuance that we
41:35
Speaker 1: have in our community. Joe, you were talking about your
41:39
Speaker 1: friends and getting to be friends with these people and
41:41
Speaker 1: how they deal with it, but how did your family
41:44
Speaker 1: deal with it? Well, interesting little aside. My wife Kim,
41:51
Speaker 1: that you know and have met and we've hung out
41:53
Speaker 1: and y'all of friends. We actually met on a blind date,
41:56
Speaker 1: and of course, being on a blind day, it's very
42:00
Speaker 1: uncomfortably anyway. And when I look on a little aside here,
42:04
Speaker 1: when I saw her, she's the most beautiful quick joys
42:06
Speaker 1: in my life, and I'm thinking, you better make the
42:08
Speaker 1: most of this, boy, or You're you're never gonna have
42:10
Speaker 1: another shot with a woman that is this beautiful. And
42:12
Speaker 1: we okay, enough of the brownie pot, enough of the
42:15
Speaker 1: brownie points. Jack. Well, we went on we went on
42:18
Speaker 1: a date, and after we went to a ball game together,
42:21
Speaker 1: and afterwards we go to a restaurant, actually a pizza place,
42:26
Speaker 1: and we're sitting across from one another having a conversation
42:29
Speaker 1: and she's saying, now, tell me again, what is it
42:32
Speaker 1: that you do for a living. And I'm sitting there
42:36
Speaker 1: and I'm describing to her that I work for the
42:39
Speaker 1: medical Examiner, which is like the corner and we go
42:43
Speaker 1: out and examine the dead and make determinations about who
42:47
Speaker 1: they are because they might be unidentified, and we also
42:50
Speaker 1: do autopsies. That's that's the way we go about this.
42:53
Speaker 1: And she's kind of sitting there with this open jawed
42:58
Speaker 1: expression on her face, and I'm thinking, oh my gosh,
43:00
Speaker 1: I've really blown this. And then all of a sudden,
43:04
Speaker 1: she looks at me and she says, until I met you,
43:08
Speaker 1: I never thought about death. And you know, you can
43:11
Speaker 1: take anything you want to away from that story, but
43:15
Speaker 1: it's not a good beginning to a blind date. But
43:17
Speaker 1: she found it interesting because most people, most people out there,
43:22
Speaker 1: they don't think about death. They think about their life.
43:25
Speaker 1: And the same with my wife. She didn't think about death.
43:30
Speaker 1: But when you're sitting there with someone that engages in
43:34
Speaker 1: this work every single day. It suddenly comes to a
43:37
Speaker 1: full form before you, and you have to consider it
43:40
Speaker 1: one way or another. This is the bottom line for it.
43:44
Speaker 1: It's horrible, horrible business, and you have to make a
43:49
Speaker 1: decision of your own free will if you want to
43:51
Speaker 1: be there or not. And if you decide to be there,
43:54
Speaker 1: then you do the job to the best of your ability,
43:57
Speaker 1: and you understand that you have a unique space that
44:00
Speaker 1: you occupy providing a service that a few other people
44:03
Speaker 1: are equipped to deal with. It doesn't mean that we're
44:06
Speaker 1: any better than anybody else. It just means that we
44:10
Speaker 1: have a set of skills that enable us to tolerate
44:13
Speaker 1: that environment within reason. But on the human side of it,
44:18
Speaker 1: and this happened to me, it wears on you. The
44:22
Speaker 1: human mind is only equipped to deal with so much horror.
44:31
Speaker 1: You're We're not created that way, We're not equipped that way.
44:35
Speaker 1: You hit tolerances, and I know personally, I can't speak
44:38
Speaker 1: for any of my colleagues, but I know personally I
44:41
Speaker 1: paid a tremendous price with constant nightmares and panic attacks
44:47
Speaker 1: and all those things that came along with a diagnosis
44:49
Speaker 1: of PTDST At the end of my career. But even
44:54
Speaker 1: though I went through all of that, I wouldn't trade
44:57
Speaker 1: it for anything in the world because now I'm at
45:02
Speaker 1: a point where I get to talk about it, where
45:06
Speaker 1: I get to teach about it, and it is quite
45:12
Speaker 1: possibly the best thing in the world for me. I'm
45:18
Speaker 1: Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body Backs.