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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Decompositional Changes -Deciphering COD · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:01
Speaker 1: Quality times, but Joseph's gotten more for the general public.
0:08
Speaker 1: I think that what defines my profession. The first thing
0:13
Speaker 1: that pops onto the radar is not necessarily injuries. You know,
0:19
Speaker 1: horrible trauma, sadness, grief, all of those sorts of things.
0:23
Speaker 1: The one question that people seem to ask me all
0:28
Speaker 1: the time is how is it that you deal with
0:33
Speaker 1: being around decomposing human remains. That's not necessarily a one
0:40
Speaker 1: size fits all question. It is something that I learned
0:46
Speaker 1: to do over a protracted period of time. Now, don't
0:50
Speaker 1: misunderstand me. I never got completely used to it. I
0:54
Speaker 1: think that all of you out there would probably think
0:57
Speaker 1: that I was an absolute lunatic if I said that
1:00
Speaker 1: I had. However, you do build up somewhat of a
1:04
Speaker 1: callous to it after a time. But today we're going
1:09
Speaker 1: to discuss human decomposition and I'm going to kind of
1:14
Speaker 1: give you an insight from my perspective of death investigation.
1:19
Speaker 1: So hold on to your hats, because classes in with
1:23
Speaker 1: Professor Morgan. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body
1:29
Speaker 1: Backs Brother Dave. Good to be back with you, man.
1:34
Speaker 1: I've been on my world tour man all over Europe,
1:37
Speaker 1: and hitting spots and Paris and Amsterdam and Liverpool.
1:45
Speaker 2: I was going to ask you if you met any Liverpudlians.
1:47
Speaker 1: I did you know? Yeah, I did meet a few
1:51
Speaker 1: liver Pudlians. Pudlians, Puddlians, Poodlians.
1:54
Speaker 3: You know the thing Boundary called the Beatles because they
1:56
Speaker 3: complete beatles and yeah, yeah, Jerry and the Pacemakers, Yeah,
2:00
Speaker 3: called them Liverpoodlians.
2:03
Speaker 1: Yeah. And let's see who else was it was it
2:05
Speaker 1: Herman and the Hermits at say.
2:08
Speaker 2: Peter across the Mersey. Who was that? That was not
2:13
Speaker 2: Peter Noon in the Herman's Hermits.
2:14
Speaker 1: It was.
2:17
Speaker 2: Across the Makers.
2:20
Speaker 1: Yeah. I actually sat out and drank a pint next
2:22
Speaker 1: to the Mersey River out there with the beautiful broad Kimmy,
2:25
Speaker 1: and it was a glorious, glorious sunshiny day, gentle breeze
2:30
Speaker 1: blowing in off the water. And when I say, and look,
2:32
Speaker 1: we're we're back home in South It's like, I don't
2:34
Speaker 1: know what eighty percent humidity out there, dude. We had
2:38
Speaker 1: to wear sweatshirts and that's in you know, we're we're
2:40
Speaker 1: in June and so and they were saying, oh, it's
2:43
Speaker 1: nice warm weather, I'm thinking, wow, but it was. It
2:47
Speaker 1: was enjoyable, it was refreshing. I'm glad to be back
2:50
Speaker 1: home and uh, certainly glad to be back with you,
2:53
Speaker 1: brother Dave. I've missed being on the air with you,
2:55
Speaker 1: and uh and uh, you know, spent time over in
2:58
Speaker 1: Crime Con Crime Con UK in London. So that was
3:03
Speaker 1: that was a blast, and we're going to talk about
3:04
Speaker 1: that more another episode. But I thought, coming back, you know,
3:08
Speaker 1: we continue our series of forensic education with your humble
3:14
Speaker 1: host here and you know, try to go down this line.
3:17
Speaker 2: But I got to tell you something.
3:20
Speaker 3: We had a show today on Nancy Grace and we
3:24
Speaker 3: were talking about the Holly Bobo case. And in this
3:29
Speaker 3: discussion that Nancy and I were having, we were talking
3:33
Speaker 3: about blood in the garage. Holly Bobo was a twenty
3:37
Speaker 3: year old kidnapped from her own home in Tennessee by
3:41
Speaker 3: a couple of ruffians and she was actually in her
3:44
Speaker 3: garage carport getting ready to get into her car to
3:46
Speaker 3: go to school seven forty five in the morning when
3:49
Speaker 3: she was taken.
3:49
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, And there.
3:52
Speaker 3: Were two different spots of blood in the garage and
3:55
Speaker 3: Nancy was asking what did that mean? And I thought,
4:00
Speaker 3: I'm not the right guy to answer this, but I
4:02
Speaker 3: do know because of Joe, you know, And so I
4:06
Speaker 3: actually broke it all down and I said, well, a
4:08
Speaker 3: forensic person would say, and I was like, this blood
4:11
Speaker 3: droplet is different than this blood smear, right, And it
4:16
Speaker 3: was really cool to be able to bring that to
4:19
Speaker 3: the discussion because then you know, it means something. Everything
4:23
Speaker 3: that you talk about on this show with regard to
4:26
Speaker 3: crime and it's body bags, but it actually helps all
4:30
Speaker 3: of us to have a better understanding of when the
4:33
Speaker 3: crime happens, how does it get solved? Ultimately, you and
4:37
Speaker 3: I talk about the victims every day and how do
4:40
Speaker 3: you It's never about closure, but it is about finding
4:43
Speaker 3: some resolution, some finality, and finding the justice that that
4:48
Speaker 3: person and their family deserves. And it all comes together forensically.
4:53
Speaker 3: You have to prove it. You know, you can actually
4:55
Speaker 3: convict a person of murder without ever having a dead bos.
5:00
Speaker 1: Yeah you can. Yeah. The blood. The blood. The blood
5:03
Speaker 1: for instance, many times it is representative of the corpus delecti,
5:07
Speaker 1: which means the body of the case. And so, and
5:11
Speaker 1: I think I've said this before, the more blood you have,
5:14
Speaker 1: and uh, scientists love to use the term copious always like.
5:18
Speaker 2: That, copious amounts of blood.
5:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, copious amounts of blood. Uh, you know, huge volume
5:24
Speaker 1: of blood. Which and again here here's another uh term
5:27
Speaker 1: or the phrase they like to use, uh incompatibility with life.
5:32
Speaker 1: You know, that's that's one of those things. You spill
5:34
Speaker 1: so much blood, you know that, Uh, And depend upon
5:37
Speaker 1: the person. You know, you have a finite amount of
5:39
Speaker 1: blood in your body, and even that finite amount that
5:42
Speaker 1: within the ranges of blood that you have within your body,
5:46
Speaker 1: is going to dictate whether or not you're going to
5:47
Speaker 1: survive or not, you know, whether it's it's going to
5:49
Speaker 1: be sufficient to the task of providing yourselves with oxygenated
5:55
Speaker 1: blood supply. So but uh, you know, with decomposition, we
6:01
Speaker 1: we discuss blood in decomposition and blood in fact because
6:05
Speaker 1: it is an element, a complex element. It's not a blood.
6:09
Speaker 1: It's not a standalone substance. It's a it's a it's
6:14
Speaker 1: a compound of many things, and blood itself does decome decompose. Uh.
6:21
Speaker 1: All you know, not all I have to tell you is, uh, listen,
6:24
Speaker 1: if you if you've ever had like a a rotten
6:29
Speaker 1: bit of meat in your refrigerator, say, for instance, you
6:33
Speaker 1: forgot the uh, the roast that was wrapped and sulfane.
6:37
Speaker 1: It was in the back of your refrigerator and you say, oh,
6:39
Speaker 1: look a roast and you pull it out and some
6:41
Speaker 1: of that seeps out onto the floor.
6:44
Speaker 2: Uh.
6:44
Speaker 1: It's one of the fouls substances known to man. It's
6:47
Speaker 1: not necessarily just the the you know that that element
6:51
Speaker 1: of the roast that is decomposing, it's that liquid that's
6:54
Speaker 1: contained therein which is blood and it changes color. It's
6:59
Speaker 1: got an awful, awful scent to it. And we'll go
7:02
Speaker 1: into that in this particular episode of body Bags. But yeah,
7:05
Speaker 1: it's it's part and parcel of what we do people.
7:10
Speaker 1: I want to go back just for a second though,
7:12
Speaker 1: because many, many times people say, I don't see how
7:15
Speaker 1: in the world you bear staying locked up in a
7:21
Speaker 1: room which I have with a decomposing body, and how
7:27
Speaker 1: can you do what you have to do scientifically as
7:31
Speaker 1: far as assessments go, and and dwell that environment with
7:35
Speaker 1: that and it's you know, how let me let me
7:38
Speaker 1: just throw this out to you, Dave, Do you have
7:40
Speaker 1: any idea how I adjusted my mindset to it, any
7:46
Speaker 1: idea whatsoever? Like what did I do? I looked at it.
7:51
Speaker 1: I looked at decomposition as a normal biological process, almost
7:59
Speaker 1: like birth. And I've been present for the birth of
8:05
Speaker 1: my children, and people will go on and on about
8:09
Speaker 1: what a beautiful thing birth is. It is. It is
8:12
Speaker 1: a beautiful thing, you know, when new life comes about. However,
8:16
Speaker 1: it's an ugly thing too. If you've never been present
8:20
Speaker 1: for a birth and you see what occurs in the
8:23
Speaker 1: midst of all of this, it's a very bloody affair.
8:27
Speaker 1: And so but that's a natural biological process. And I've
8:31
Speaker 1: always tried to understand it from that perspective, if I
8:35
Speaker 1: could ever get my because look, you know, death investigators
8:37
Speaker 1: have bad days too, obviously. You know it's like you're
8:40
Speaker 1: standing there. You don't want to be around a decomposing body.
8:42
Speaker 1: But I have to You always kind of have to
8:45
Speaker 1: anchor yourself in the thought that, Okay, if I'm going
8:48
Speaker 1: to be here, I'm going to set my feet in stone.
8:51
Speaker 1: I'm going to understand this is a normal biological process.
8:53
Speaker 1: I have to get past the odor and the things
8:56
Speaker 1: that you see that surround the body in order to
9:01
Speaker 1: find the truth. And of course, in science, that's that's
9:03
Speaker 1: all I'm interested in. I'm not interested in all this
9:07
Speaker 1: other you know, peripheral stuff that a lot of people
9:10
Speaker 1: go after, you know, in the criminal justice system. That stuff,
9:14
Speaker 1: to me, uh is outside my wheelhouse. I like to
9:17
Speaker 1: understand what science is trying to tell me and listen,
9:20
Speaker 1: decomposition in human remains, Dave is one of the finest
9:24
Speaker 1: teachers that it's out there.
9:26
Speaker 2: Now.
9:27
Speaker 3: It happens quick, doesn't it. I mean, when when we
9:30
Speaker 3: from the moment we die, our body starts decomposing right away.
9:35
Speaker 2: Isn't that correct?
9:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does. You can't small ways, Yeah, in small
9:39
Speaker 1: ways you can't see it, you can't smell it. But yeah,
9:44
Speaker 1: at at a cellular level, the sales begin to you know,
9:50
Speaker 1: essentially break down, and you're not going to necessarily see
9:53
Speaker 1: it immediately. And we're going to get into another episode
9:57
Speaker 1: where we're going to be talking about immediate kind of
10:00
Speaker 1: of post war changes, but we're kind of taking a
10:04
Speaker 1: broad view. You're not going to get like, within within
10:09
Speaker 1: minutes of death, you're not going to have a foul
10:12
Speaker 1: odor emanating from the body that's associated with decomposition. Now,
10:15
Speaker 1: you can't have a foul odor that's emanating from human remains,
10:18
Speaker 1: save for instance, if they soil themselves right during the
10:22
Speaker 1: throes of death, and that does, in fact happen. It
10:24
Speaker 1: doesn't happen every time. A lot of people say, okay,
10:26
Speaker 1: well doesn't that happen? Every single time.
10:28
Speaker 2: I thought that wasn't it. I learned it wasn't.
10:30
Speaker 3: But for the longest time I thought that when a
10:34
Speaker 3: person died, everything just let go the sphincsen.
10:39
Speaker 2: There you go, Mary christ I'm glad.
10:40
Speaker 1: I'm glad you actually mentioned that because that you know
10:44
Speaker 1: when you get that that release safer instance of an
10:48
Speaker 1: individual's bowels. Many times, that will take some time to occur,
10:53
Speaker 1: and you mentioned the sphincter muscle specifically. You have to
10:59
Speaker 1: have that area of the tissue begin to break down
11:01
Speaker 1: so that that tension is no longer there and if
11:03
Speaker 1: there is feces in the bowel, it can release, and
11:08
Speaker 1: that does happen. You'll have bladder releases many times. Lots
11:12
Speaker 1: of times bladder releases happen. I found when they're in
11:15
Speaker 1: the perimortem, say, when they're in the throes of death,
11:17
Speaker 1: you know that that will occur, but you know you
11:22
Speaker 1: you don't have it every single time. I think a
11:24
Speaker 1: lot of people labor under this idea that it occurs
11:28
Speaker 1: in every single event like this, and it just doesn't.
11:32
Speaker 3: Isn't that because part of its biology that we're all different.
11:35
Speaker 3: I mean, like Elvis. When Elvis died, we know that
11:37
Speaker 3: he had an impacted colon. Isn't that what that was called?
11:41
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, he And a lot of that had to
11:44
Speaker 1: do with these kind of opiate based drugs, which you'll.
11:47
Speaker 2: Find me consturbated all the time.
11:49
Speaker 1: He was, Yeah, he was. And people that are addicted to
11:51
Speaker 1: things like heroin and morphine, and also any kind of opioid,
11:55
Speaker 1: even if it's some kind of synthetic, you know, thing
11:58
Speaker 1: that has been created a lot app it'll essentially lock
12:01
Speaker 1: up the bowels. And I've done I've done autopsies on
12:07
Speaker 1: individuals or participating in autopsies on individuals that are heroin ods,
12:11
Speaker 1: and you'll have their entire large bowel with fecal impaction.
12:17
Speaker 1: And it's a miserable existence because they can't I can't
12:20
Speaker 1: pass you know anything. And plus they most of the
12:22
Speaker 1: time they don't eat healthy foods anyway that keep the
12:25
Speaker 1: system rolling. And they're they're hydrated either, which plays a
12:30
Speaker 1: big role into it. So it doesn't happen every single time.
12:33
Speaker 1: But interesting fact about about Elvis with his death, you
12:39
Speaker 1: know his I think and I know that you're going
12:41
Speaker 1: to know this, but I think his last his last
12:44
Speaker 1: words were I'm I'm going to the bathroom to read.
12:46
Speaker 1: I think it's what he told his girlfriend at the time. Yeah,
12:51
Speaker 1: I need that. And so he's he's on the toilet
12:55
Speaker 1: or as my grainyused saying, the code uh, he's on
12:58
Speaker 1: the commode, and and he dies. And did you know
13:02
Speaker 1: that there is a significant number of people, such a
13:08
Speaker 1: significant number of people that are found dead on toilets
13:11
Speaker 1: that we actually have a term, a kind of a
13:14
Speaker 1: euphemistic term that we use in death investigation called toilet sign.
13:18
Speaker 1: And here's why. Many folks that do die while seated
13:26
Speaker 1: on the toilet, they have mistaken this urgency to go
13:30
Speaker 1: to the bathroom that that is masking an m I
13:34
Speaker 1: they're actually having a heart attack. So they will go
13:37
Speaker 1: to the bathroom, sit on a toilet, and many times
13:39
Speaker 1: the strain of being on the toilet will push them
13:42
Speaker 1: over the edge. So yeah, wow, we literally have I
13:44
Speaker 1: can't tell you it's a countless number. At first that
13:47
Speaker 1: you know, when I was a young investigator, I didn't
13:49
Speaker 1: think it was a real thing, and the older guys
13:52
Speaker 1: had told me that it was a real thing. And
13:54
Speaker 1: so you know how older guys, you know, they they
13:58
Speaker 1: talked to us knuckleheads that are young. You don't believe
14:02
Speaker 1: anything until it's proven to you, right, trust me, I've
14:04
Speaker 1: got a twenty three year old son, and so when
14:07
Speaker 1: it's demonstrated, you say, oh my gosh, they were right.
14:10
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, I've been catching all these cases is
14:13
Speaker 1: their natural desks, but I've been catching these cases within
14:15
Speaker 1: visuals on toilets, and so yeah, it's legitimate. I don't
14:18
Speaker 1: know if there's ever been a definitive scientific study about
14:22
Speaker 1: toilet sign but it's a real thing. It's something that
14:24
Speaker 1: we talk about and we talked about it for years
14:26
Speaker 1: and years in the field, and you know, we'll just say, yeah,
14:29
Speaker 1: we have a toilet sign case today.
14:31
Speaker 2: Wow.
14:31
Speaker 1: So yeah, and that that that's a real thing that
14:33
Speaker 1: does happen.
14:34
Speaker 3: But one of the things that when we start talking
14:36
Speaker 3: about decomposition, and I didn't when you when you first
14:40
Speaker 3: mentioned wanting to do this, do you realize that those
14:44
Speaker 3: of us who follow crime report on crime cover, you know,
14:49
Speaker 3: crimes that most of us only know the scientific aspect
14:54
Speaker 3: of things when people like you are talking on a
14:58
Speaker 3: crime show, because most of us are not in an
15:01
Speaker 3: academic area. We're not taking you know, your class at school,
15:05
Speaker 3: and this is the only way we find out is
15:07
Speaker 3: by you sharing your knowledge. Because I don't know what happens.
15:11
Speaker 3: I mean, I really don't. I know that the men
15:13
Speaker 3: that I die, that everything stops living because I'm dead.
15:17
Speaker 3: And obviously if you're not living, you're dying, which means
15:20
Speaker 3: you're heading back to dirt eventually. Yeah, that's all I know.
15:24
Speaker 3: I don't know the speed that it happens. I would
15:26
Speaker 3: think it'd be very quickly.
15:29
Speaker 1: You know, in a broad sense. It look, everything is
15:33
Speaker 1: environmentally dependent, you know, And I've mentioned this countless times
15:37
Speaker 1: on our program, where you know, we're referring to uh,
15:43
Speaker 1: the biggest the biggest factor's heat, you know where you know.
15:49
Speaker 1: I've gone on on scenes, man, where I've had multiple
15:53
Speaker 1: bodies in a location that all died as a result
15:56
Speaker 1: of One case in particular, had I think it was
16:02
Speaker 1: four guys that had transported dope from Mexico. They were
16:05
Speaker 1: in a van and they were tasked with meeting person
16:10
Speaker 1: they were gonna do the exchange with in a warehouse
16:13
Speaker 1: area in Atlanta, actually not too far from Six Lags, Atlanta,
16:17
Speaker 1: in a industrial park, and all four of these guys
16:21
Speaker 1: were shot in the van through the windows and killed
16:24
Speaker 1: and the dope was taken. We didn't find their bodies
16:27
Speaker 1: for two months, and they were just parked under tree
16:30
Speaker 1: and it's actually a conversion van that was over there
16:33
Speaker 1: and no one. Some guy decided to walk back there
16:35
Speaker 1: and smoke a cigarette and when he did, he catches
16:38
Speaker 1: a whiff. Well, when I opened the door of that van,
16:41
Speaker 1: when I got there, liquid came pouring out of the van,
16:45
Speaker 1: and that was decompositional fluid. And so they'd been there
16:49
Speaker 1: for two months. I've had them even worse than that,
16:52
Speaker 1: where bodies will. They don't turn into puddles necessarily, but
16:58
Speaker 1: the skin becomes very soft and spongy. It's much like
17:01
Speaker 1: a sponge, and you can feel it kind of when
17:05
Speaker 1: you place your hands on the decomposing tissue, it feels
17:10
Speaker 1: like it feels almost like the crackling of bubble wrap
17:15
Speaker 1: many times, and that's because the cells in that area
17:21
Speaker 1: in some of these cases, they kind of expand with
17:24
Speaker 1: these decompositional gases that are contained within that area, and
17:27
Speaker 1: you can almost feel it crackle beneath your fingertips. I've
17:32
Speaker 1: had friends that have said that, and this has never
17:36
Speaker 1: happened to me. But I've had people that have said
17:38
Speaker 1: that bodies when they go to pull on them literally
17:43
Speaker 1: come apart it joints. Now, that's never happened with me.
17:46
Speaker 1: I've had I've had the manifestation was referred to as
17:50
Speaker 1: skin slippage. And you'll hear this in trials. Many times
17:53
Speaker 1: they'll talk about skin slippage, for instance, and that's where
17:56
Speaker 1: the epidermis, that top layer of skin, even down to
18:00
Speaker 1: the dermis below, the epidermist will literally peel off, you know,
18:05
Speaker 1: in your hand and that but that takes time, you know,
18:09
Speaker 1: it takes a certain amount of time. There's almost like
18:11
Speaker 1: this kind of tenderizing factor if you will give me
18:16
Speaker 1: a little latitude there with that that that has to
18:18
Speaker 1: take place. Eventually the bodies will in fact dry out,
18:23
Speaker 1: But before they dry out, there's a whole process that
18:27
Speaker 1: occurs before you ever get to that market. I think
18:44
Speaker 1: it's important to understand that. You know, decomposition can mean
18:48
Speaker 1: a variety of different things to folks. You know, when
18:53
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, I had to build a
18:58
Speaker 1: composting bind in the backyard. My mother is. She loves gardening,
19:04
Speaker 1: she always has and so everywhere she's lived she's had
19:07
Speaker 1: a composting bent. And well what does that mean. Well,
19:11
Speaker 1: you in the composting bin, you're gonna prow organic materials
19:14
Speaker 1: in there. I remember her putting coffee grounds and eggshells
19:17
Speaker 1: and everything else, and not to mention all of the
19:19
Speaker 1: leaves from the previous spall. And you have to turn it.
19:22
Speaker 1: You have to turn it. Some people put earthworms in there,
19:24
Speaker 1: all kinds of things going. But you're trying to break
19:27
Speaker 1: down that organic substance that's in there, and it creates
19:31
Speaker 1: this rich, you know, kind of rich stirt. And it's interesting, Dave,
19:34
Speaker 1: that you said a few months ago that we that
19:38
Speaker 1: we turn you know, we turned into dust. And you
19:41
Speaker 1: know there's that old Bible verse that, you know, what
19:45
Speaker 1: was it from dust you came, and from dust you
19:48
Speaker 1: shall return? And that that is truly the definition of
19:54
Speaker 1: what happens. It just takes some time. It's not it's
19:58
Speaker 1: not some kind of fantastical movie event. You have to
20:03
Speaker 1: you have to be down for a long time. But
20:05
Speaker 1: what kicks this whole thing off is heat. Heat and
20:08
Speaker 1: absence of life. But you know, kind of the functional
20:11
Speaker 1: definition for decomposition, how do you define it? Well, it's
20:14
Speaker 1: a disintegration of body tissues after death is known as decomposition.
20:21
Speaker 1: And I'd mentioned to you just a moment ago that
20:26
Speaker 1: one of my one of my favorite characters in Looney Tunes,
20:30
Speaker 1: in the Looney Tunes universe is the Martian that you know,
20:35
Speaker 1: he's got the disintegrator array that he uses, and of
20:38
Speaker 1: course Bugs always turns it around on him. I don't
20:41
Speaker 1: think any good Bugs money cartoons ever were made after
20:44
Speaker 1: probably about nineteen seventy by the way, just my thoughts.
20:48
Speaker 1: But anyway, you know what does disintegration mean? Well, we
20:53
Speaker 1: know what integrated is That means to blend right, or
20:57
Speaker 1: if you have integrated circuits. You know, for instance, if
21:01
Speaker 1: you're talking, if you're speaking to somebody that's like an
21:03
Speaker 1: electrical engineer, well we're we're actually integrated. All of our
21:07
Speaker 1: systems are integrated. Well, once that spark of life has
21:11
Speaker 1: left the body and you no longer have this process
21:15
Speaker 1: of keeping cells oxygenated, you have cellular respiration that's going on,
21:20
Speaker 1: these things over a period of time will actually begin
21:24
Speaker 1: to pull apart and they naturally fall apart, and so
21:30
Speaker 1: that's that's part of the process and it's something that
21:33
Speaker 1: we you know, that you have to understand.
21:36
Speaker 3: All right, So as you're going through this entire process too,
21:43
Speaker 3: I guess I'm approaching it a little bit different and
21:46
Speaker 3: trying to think about the decomposition because, yeah, because it's
21:50
Speaker 3: not something I'm used to talking about. You know, when
21:53
Speaker 3: you're talking about the roast and the refrigerator. You know,
21:55
Speaker 3: things like that opening a bad meat from the store
21:59
Speaker 3: and you get that if you know that you're getting
22:01
Speaker 3: something bad. So when you're talking about this beginning stages
22:06
Speaker 3: here where it's starting to break down, what does that
22:10
Speaker 3: tell you when you're coming in as an investigator and
22:13
Speaker 3: looking at things as you are studying that individual. Because
22:18
Speaker 3: all the time we want to know, well, we always
22:20
Speaker 3: want to know the motive why did this happen? But
22:24
Speaker 3: when when did this happen? You know, I've talked about that.
22:27
Speaker 3: You've got to tell me exactly when this person died, Joe.
22:29
Speaker 3: I need to know was it before or after dinner?
22:32
Speaker 3: Did they eat dinner at ten o'clock or eight o'clock? Yeah,
22:34
Speaker 3: And sometimes those things can't be told by the contents
22:39
Speaker 3: of your stomach. There's got to be more.
22:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right, And if you're looking for me or
22:45
Speaker 1: any of my colleagues, tell you, and I'm saying to
22:48
Speaker 1: you in the universal sense, Dave, that when somebody actually died,
22:53
Speaker 1: it's an empirical impossibility. And anybody tells you that the
22:55
Speaker 1: can is line and so you know, the short term
23:00
Speaker 1: and that's a micro a micro examination you know when
23:04
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about this on another episode. Even in
23:08
Speaker 1: that sense, we the best we can do is some
23:12
Speaker 1: people say they can do it in three you know,
23:14
Speaker 1: within a three hour window. Most of the time, I
23:17
Speaker 1: think it's going to be about four to five if
23:19
Speaker 1: you cover all your bases something.
23:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you know, O, there's things surrounding it, because
23:24
Speaker 3: you know, we build that timeline, and as we're building
23:27
Speaker 3: the timeline of activity, you can take all that into
23:30
Speaker 3: consideration and narrow it down even further based on what
23:32
Speaker 3: you're seeing in the physical realm of the of the
23:36
Speaker 3: actual decomposition. So yeah, you're not just blindly finding a
23:39
Speaker 3: body on the street, you know, right.
23:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you if you can, if you can kind
23:43
Speaker 1: of well here's the word, integrate some of those circumstantial
23:46
Speaker 1: finds right, Yeah, you've you've got a better shot. But broadly,
23:51
Speaker 1: you know, when we're talking about decomposition, very broadly, that's
23:54
Speaker 1: that's hard to do. It's it's very difficult to particularly
23:58
Speaker 1: if you have a body that we listen, we use
24:01
Speaker 1: terms like early decomposition, modern decomposition, and advanced decomposition, and
24:06
Speaker 1: then you'll have skeletonization. So you've got kind of that
24:09
Speaker 1: spectrum of four things there. When one of the things
24:14
Speaker 1: that you have to consider is that there's actually two
24:18
Speaker 1: processs of decomposition going on, and kind of the way
24:22
Speaker 1: in my simple mind, the way I like to look
24:24
Speaker 1: at it, you have autolytic changes in auto mean self, right,
24:28
Speaker 1: So you have autolsis that goes on, which is kind
24:32
Speaker 1: of body breaking down from within. And if you think
24:34
Speaker 1: about it from the perspective of a body literally digesting itself,
24:40
Speaker 1: that's autolysis. Okay, So you know everything that is contained
24:45
Speaker 1: within life when you have cellular respiration on the systems
24:49
Speaker 1: or firing ceases to be at that point in time,
24:53
Speaker 1: so the body begins to kind of from an enzyme standpoint,
24:56
Speaker 1: begins to kind of digest itself. Then you have future
25:00
Speaker 1: faction that goes on and then you know, in very
25:04
Speaker 1: broad terms, you begin to you know, think about changes
25:09
Speaker 1: that are produced by you know, the action of bacteria
25:12
Speaker 1: and micro organisms, and that can that can come like
25:16
Speaker 1: in an external manifestation. And then you have, you know,
25:19
Speaker 1: if you think about even more broadly, you you have
25:23
Speaker 1: the introduction of animals or even insects that are attacking
25:27
Speaker 1: the body externally, and then you know, and that's going
25:30
Speaker 1: to promote decomposition. So there's you've got a lot to
25:35
Speaker 1: kind of consider when you come across a body that's
25:38
Speaker 1: bloated and rotting and kind of you know, coming to
25:42
Speaker 1: part one of the things that's always fascinated me. And uh,
25:46
Speaker 1: in my my students at JSU, I'll ask them this
25:50
Speaker 1: question and uh and of course I'll get this resounding
25:55
Speaker 1: sound you know when I give it to them. If
25:57
Speaker 1: you've ever seen one of these uh steakhouse commercials where
26:03
Speaker 1: they'll say we've got beautiful dry aged beef or we
26:08
Speaker 1: do wet aging process, you know what they're talking about.
26:13
Speaker 1: They're tenderizing those steaks that they have through the process
26:17
Speaker 1: of decomposition, you know, and you can have dry age,
26:20
Speaker 1: which if you go to if one of my goals
26:22
Speaker 1: in life is to try to get a reservation at
26:24
Speaker 1: Luger Steakhouse in Manhattan. It's supposed to be the best
26:28
Speaker 1: steak in the world, because I think I know where
26:31
Speaker 1: the best steak in the world is, and that's Charlie
26:33
Speaker 1: Steakhouse in New Orleans. So I want to see what
26:35
Speaker 1: Lugers is.
26:36
Speaker 3: But they have a we have just set a goal
26:41
Speaker 3: for body bags.
26:43
Speaker 2: You and I. You've got to take me to Charlie's
26:46
Speaker 2: in North I'll.
26:47
Speaker 1: Take you to Charlie's. Yeah, I will take you to
26:49
Speaker 1: Charlie's and uh and one of the best best dining
26:54
Speaker 1: experiences I've ever had. But with Charlie's, Charlie's uses I
26:58
Speaker 1: think they used to use a rye agent method. And
27:01
Speaker 1: the thing about it is with that they're talking about
27:04
Speaker 1: they get this fine cut of beef, and we don't
27:07
Speaker 1: like to think about this sort of thing. But you know,
27:10
Speaker 1: aged beef is far better to eat than say, for instance,
27:14
Speaker 1: if you take it right off the hoof, you have
27:17
Speaker 1: to you have to let it, you have to let
27:19
Speaker 1: it decompose. And that's that's and they don't use the
27:22
Speaker 1: term decomposed. They say age. You know, it's it's much
27:25
Speaker 1: more mellow. You know, it's like a it's like an
27:28
Speaker 1: aged whiskey or wine of vintage wine. They try to
27:31
Speaker 1: put it in those terms, but what it comes down
27:34
Speaker 1: to is decomposing so that we can eat it, you know,
27:36
Speaker 1: so that it's tender for us to eat.
27:39
Speaker 3: So we're really not talking about getting fresh meat. We're
27:42
Speaker 3: talking about getting I mean, I'm kind of grossed up
27:45
Speaker 3: by that, Joe.
27:46
Speaker 2: I didn't know that. I really did.
27:48
Speaker 3: I thought, if I go down here to where they've
27:50
Speaker 3: got this, there's a bunch of cattle out here, and
27:53
Speaker 3: they've got some pretty fat ones.
27:54
Speaker 2: Look good.
27:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, that if I was to get that one skin
27:57
Speaker 3: that you take care of the hide, I want that
27:58
Speaker 3: turn that into a steak, like to have that tomorrow
28:00
Speaker 3: morning with my eggs. That's not going to be worth
28:03
Speaker 3: eating compared to something that's.
28:05
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it's not. It's probably edible, but it's
28:08
Speaker 1: not going to match up to Charlie's or from rumor
28:11
Speaker 1: has it to Lugers in Manhattan because they have aged
28:15
Speaker 1: that beef. Well. In terms of human decomposition, there's an
28:20
Speaker 1: aging process that goes on and if it's not controlled,
28:24
Speaker 1: which in the sense of you know, when people are
28:26
Speaker 1: eating beef. That's a controlled environment. If a body is
28:30
Speaker 1: left out, say in the wild or even in a house,
28:33
Speaker 1: and the body is not refrigerated, the body is going
28:38
Speaker 1: to do what bodies do. And look, this can be
28:40
Speaker 1: stemmed through the process of what mortuary scientists do, and
28:45
Speaker 1: that is infuse the body or profuse the body with
28:49
Speaker 1: embalming fluid and they cease that process you know of,
28:54
Speaker 1: or slow it down decompositional process. It kind of freezes
28:58
Speaker 1: it for that moment. And with decomposition, though, you have
29:04
Speaker 1: to get there early in order to stop it, because this,
29:09
Speaker 1: I can tell you, with decomposition, once it starts, it's
29:15
Speaker 1: like a barreling freight train. It's really hard to get
29:19
Speaker 1: to handle on it. Okay. And so when you hear
29:22
Speaker 1: people say, well, and this is non trauma related. You
29:26
Speaker 1: have some elderly person that has been not found for
29:31
Speaker 1: a week or two weeks in a home and the
29:34
Speaker 1: mortuary says, well, you're gonna have to have closed casket.
29:39
Speaker 1: People say, well, why would you have to have closed casket? Well,
29:42
Speaker 1: it because the body has been decomposing for that period
29:44
Speaker 1: of time, maybe under the most adverse conditions. You can
29:47
Speaker 1: imagine where you know there's no there's no air con
29:51
Speaker 1: that's that's operating. Maybe there's subject to I don't know,
29:57
Speaker 1: flies and everything else that's in, and there's there's no
30:00
Speaker 1: amount of restorate of work. I guess there is. You'd
30:03
Speaker 1: have to pay a lot of money, but there's really
30:05
Speaker 1: no amount of restorated work that you can go in
30:08
Speaker 1: and you can patch this person up so that they're
30:10
Speaker 1: presentable for an open casket. So the absence of an
30:13
Speaker 1: open casket does not necessarily mean this is a trauma
30:16
Speaker 1: related event. Many times it can be decompositional related.
30:21
Speaker 2: And okay, let me.
30:24
Speaker 3: Back to just on decomposition. When you're talking, you know,
30:28
Speaker 3: twenty four to thirty six hours, right, you're going to
30:31
Speaker 3: start seeing outward signs of the decomposition of the body, right, Yes, okay,
30:38
Speaker 3: in that first twenty four hours, and in particular, I'm
30:41
Speaker 3: thinking about in Idaho, in Moscow, Idaho, where the four
30:45
Speaker 3: college students were murdered, and we believe based on the
30:50
Speaker 3: information which I really want to talk to you about
30:52
Speaker 3: that timeline, but what we understand is that sometime between
30:55
Speaker 3: four and four thirty in the morning, all four of
30:58
Speaker 3: these students were murdered by knife. But their bodies were
31:04
Speaker 3: not found by law enforcement until eight hours later. All right,
31:09
Speaker 3: is there going to be I mean, is there going
31:13
Speaker 3: to be significant changes in the body during that eight
31:17
Speaker 3: hour time period?
31:18
Speaker 1: Not in the broad sense that we're in a macro
31:20
Speaker 1: sense that we're talking about here, real broadly, where you're
31:23
Speaker 1: going to have bloating and all those things that are
31:25
Speaker 1: commonly associated with decomposition, you're not going to have it
31:29
Speaker 1: in there. However, I think that it's key that we
31:32
Speaker 1: come back and address that the Idaho killings when we
31:36
Speaker 1: discuss the micro the micro sense of decomposition and those
31:41
Speaker 1: changes within that eleven hour framework you're not going to
31:46
Speaker 1: see or eleven to twelve hour framework, you're not going
31:49
Speaker 1: to see much happen. It's with how can I say
31:52
Speaker 1: this with an external manifestation which can be appreciated with
31:55
Speaker 1: the unaided eye, you know, where you're examining the body. However,
32:00
Speaker 1: within the twenty four to thirty six hour and again,
32:02
Speaker 1: these these brackets of time are very very broad. One
32:06
Speaker 1: of the things that will happen and something that kind
32:09
Speaker 1: of manifests itself if everybody that's listening to me will
32:11
Speaker 1: take your right hand and place it above the level
32:16
Speaker 1: of your pelvis on the right side of your app
32:19
Speaker 1: to when that approximates the area where your appendix is.
32:23
Speaker 1: No one can really explain it. But one of the
32:25
Speaker 1: things that we see manifested in decomposition, like an external manifestation,
32:30
Speaker 1: is that that area you'll get a focal area of
32:33
Speaker 1: greenish discoloration that will occur there, and it truly is.
32:37
Speaker 1: It turns kind of a green color, and that many
32:41
Speaker 1: many times doesn't happen in every case, but many times
32:44
Speaker 1: it'll be you know, that's generally about twenty four to
32:46
Speaker 1: thirty six hours. Well, Morgan, why is that important? Well,
32:48
Speaker 1: it's important because if I have that manifestation that is occurring,
32:53
Speaker 1: that's a marker in time. Okay. So if I look
32:57
Speaker 1: at the body and I have no other information, if
33:00
Speaker 1: I'm just visually eyeball in the body and I see
33:03
Speaker 1: I see you know, this greenish coloration on the abdomen,
33:08
Speaker 1: I can say, Wow, this might be an indications person's
33:10
Speaker 1: been down at least twenty four to thirty six hours.
33:14
Speaker 1: And you roll that into the idea that maybe their
33:17
Speaker 1: limbs are flaccid, and flaccid means flexible, okay, or bendable. Well,
33:23
Speaker 1: that means that riger's already left the body.
33:25
Speaker 3: Okay, so I gotta know, yeah, because I, like many people,
33:32
Speaker 3: don't know how quickly does rigormort to set in and
33:37
Speaker 3: how quickly does it let go. Because we all know
33:40
Speaker 3: of stories that we've told. As a matter of fact,
33:43
Speaker 3: we had one not that long ago where two gentlemen
33:48
Speaker 3: killed the third guy that they were having a three
33:50
Speaker 3: way party with and went to get a tub at
33:53
Speaker 3: home depot or wherever. And when they came back, the
33:55
Speaker 3: guy was stiff and they had to break his legs
33:58
Speaker 3: and beat him, you know, his body to make it
34:00
Speaker 3: soft enough to get in the top. If they just waited,
34:03
Speaker 3: how long would they have to wait for the body
34:04
Speaker 3: to or twenty four to.
34:05
Speaker 1: Thirty six hours? Okay, twenty four to thirty thirty six hours,
34:10
Speaker 1: and uh, it's going to remain fixed. And that's the
34:13
Speaker 1: one thing I never can understand about people that that
34:19
Speaker 1: desecreate bodies beyond what they've already been desecrated. Where they
34:23
Speaker 1: get you know, axes and these sorts of things, and
34:25
Speaker 1: you know, try to chop the legs off or whatever
34:29
Speaker 1: if you wait. And again, obviously tom plays a factor
34:33
Speaker 1: because anybody that brings death upon another person. They're not
34:36
Speaker 1: wanting to hang around and be patient about it. The
34:39
Speaker 1: body's become flashed again. They become what's termed malleable again,
34:43
Speaker 1: so that you can bend them, you can contract them all.
34:46
Speaker 1: You know, Roger Morris doesn't hang around forever and ever
34:48
Speaker 1: eight minutes just not one of those things that occurs,
34:51
Speaker 1: particularly in an unembalmed state. So you know, it will leave,
34:56
Speaker 1: it dissipates over a period of time. But when you're
35:00
Speaker 1: looking out over you know, kind of broadly over this
35:06
Speaker 1: the spectrum of death with decomposition, you you look for
35:14
Speaker 1: other signs as as you march down that timeline, Like
35:18
Speaker 1: after you get beyond that that greenish discoloration that takes
35:22
Speaker 1: place on the abdomen, you're talking about thirty six to
35:28
Speaker 1: forty eight hours, Uh, the body will become or start
35:32
Speaker 1: to distend, which means it'll you'll see the first signs
35:37
Speaker 1: of bloating. You know, the abdomen begins to swell up well,
35:41
Speaker 1: and the face will swell too. You know, you'll see
35:43
Speaker 1: the face beginning to kind.
35:45
Speaker 3: Of if a person has had their appendix out, yeah,
35:48
Speaker 3: does there still is there still a greenish type of color?
35:52
Speaker 2: Yeah?
35:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, manifests down there, and I don't know why it is,
35:56
Speaker 1: because that's kind of the uh at that end where
36:01
Speaker 1: you have the vernis called the verniform appendix sound there.
36:05
Speaker 1: Verniform is like I think it's the Latin word for
36:07
Speaker 1: worm is actually what it translates into.
36:12
Speaker 2: It.
36:12
Speaker 1: It will still manifest down that area even you know,
36:15
Speaker 1: if an individual is absent their appendix and it's down
36:18
Speaker 1: in that that area, I don't know if it because
36:21
Speaker 1: it's on the opposite end of the large vowel from
36:24
Speaker 1: where you know, the rectum is okay, so it's kind
36:27
Speaker 1: of looped all the way around there, and you know
36:31
Speaker 1: that's where the food that's being digested in the you know,
36:36
Speaker 1: in the small intestine dumps into that part of the intestine,
36:40
Speaker 1: the lower right side if you're talking about the right
36:42
Speaker 1: side of the versus body, and then it traverses from
36:47
Speaker 1: the uscending large vowel to the where it crosses over
36:56
Speaker 1: into the descending bowel and eventually it is eliminated for
37:00
Speaker 1: in the body. I don't know if that plays a
37:02
Speaker 1: role into it, but you know, you couple that and
37:05
Speaker 1: you go to another stage where you've got this kind
37:08
Speaker 1: of slight bloating that's going on and with and particularly
37:12
Speaker 1: the facial notice it. You'll get kind of the face,
37:16
Speaker 1: we'll have a swollen appearance, and you'll also see the
37:18
Speaker 1: first signs of something. Here's another term they use in
37:22
Speaker 1: in butchery with beef. It doesn't mean the same thing,
37:27
Speaker 1: but you'll we use this term called marbling. And marbling
37:32
Speaker 1: if you imagine if you've got a spider web that
37:35
Speaker 1: would normally be I don't know, spider webs are gray white.
37:39
Speaker 1: If you imagine a black spider web superimposed upon a
37:44
Speaker 1: body and it's got these kind of weird lines that
37:48
Speaker 1: run all over the place. It's it's black, dark, dark black. Well,
37:55
Speaker 1: that's like blood that is decomposing in the vessels and
37:58
Speaker 1: it's showing through the face. So you'll see it first
38:01
Speaker 1: manifest kind of around the jowls and the cheeks and
38:04
Speaker 1: that sort of thing the neck, and that'll extend out
38:07
Speaker 1: as time goes by, so you'll have these kind of
38:10
Speaker 1: curve linear lines you know, that run over, you know,
38:13
Speaker 1: all over the body. And that's actually what we refer
38:15
Speaker 1: to as marveling. But again, Dave, that brings us back
38:18
Speaker 1: to this benchmarking of time. That's you know, you're going
38:21
Speaker 1: to talk about top end. That's that's going to take
38:23
Speaker 1: about forty eight hours, you know, with an unattended body
38:26
Speaker 1: that's found ideally in a protected environment, you know, like
38:31
Speaker 1: in a house where you know, you don't have any
38:34
Speaker 1: kind of postmortem feasting that's going on with animals or
38:37
Speaker 1: things like that. And again, the more of these little
38:42
Speaker 1: markers that we can get as death investigators, it allows us,
38:49
Speaker 1: through science and the natural biological process, to tell the
38:53
Speaker 1: story of the dead. I know a lot of people
39:09
Speaker 1: are fans of dried fruit that are listening out there.
39:16
Speaker 1: I see it everywhere I go, you know, in various
39:19
Speaker 1: grocery stores and this sort of thing. I've never really
39:22
Speaker 1: developed a taste for it. It's kind of like when
39:26
Speaker 1: I was a kid. I don't know about you, Dave,
39:28
Speaker 1: but when I was a kid, I was made to
39:29
Speaker 1: eat beef liver. I can't do it anymore. And the
39:32
Speaker 1: reason I can't do it anymore is that beef liver
39:36
Speaker 1: looks just like human liver to me, you know, and
39:38
Speaker 1: not participate in all those autopsies for all those years.
39:41
Speaker 1: But with the dried fruit, one of the things I
39:44
Speaker 1: think about when I see it is a term that
39:46
Speaker 1: we refer to is desication because I call it desiccated.
39:49
Speaker 1: You know, it's dried, you know, and desiccation or the
39:54
Speaker 1: drying of limbs and particularly our penages like our feet,
39:59
Speaker 1: your toes, feet, fingers in your hands. The more peripheral
40:03
Speaker 1: you are to that kind of center core in a body,
40:07
Speaker 1: the higher the probability is that area is going to
40:09
Speaker 1: dry out. And that's what desiccation is. So if you're
40:12
Speaker 1: if you you know, you couple that with the the
40:15
Speaker 1: bloating that you see, and that's the next step that
40:18
Speaker 1: you move on to is going to be manifested. The
40:22
Speaker 1: idea that the extremities and I'm talking about it, if
40:24
Speaker 1: you'll just touch your fingertips or tips of your toes
40:26
Speaker 1: right now, those areas out of every other location in
40:30
Speaker 1: the body will become dry first. And so the fingers,
40:34
Speaker 1: the fingers actually take on an appearance like you know,
40:38
Speaker 1: when you're little and your mom tells you, you know,
40:40
Speaker 1: let me look at your hands, how long you've been
40:41
Speaker 1: in the pool. You get this kind of shriveled appearance here.
40:46
Speaker 1: That's basically the way it looks. The only difference is
40:49
Speaker 1: is that with the tips of fingers and decomposition and
40:52
Speaker 1: it happens to the nose as well. It'll turn, it'll
40:57
Speaker 1: turn kind of a black discoloration and it's dried out.
41:02
Speaker 1: There's no more moisture, you know, left in that environment.
41:06
Speaker 1: And so if we benchmark that time, you know, you're
41:10
Speaker 1: talking about probably about forty eight to sixty hours down
41:13
Speaker 1: range after death. At that point in time when you're
41:17
Speaker 1: you know, you're kind of pacing yourself through the scene.
41:20
Speaker 1: That's why it's important at a scene that you you
41:24
Speaker 1: don't want to miss anything, but at the scene, particularly
41:27
Speaker 1: for the purposes of contextualizing things, it's important to be
41:31
Speaker 1: able to see to see it for what it is,
41:34
Speaker 1: you know, at the scene, and be able to document
41:36
Speaker 1: that you observe that there, you know, before you remove
41:39
Speaker 1: the body at you know, at the scene and take
41:42
Speaker 1: take the body to the corner's office of the medical
41:44
Speaker 1: examiner's office where it's going to be examined.
41:46
Speaker 3: You mentioned about the nose, and I'm thinking it is
41:48
Speaker 3: Michael Jackson. Yeah, I had so many surgeries on his nose.
41:51
Speaker 3: He give had a prosthetic end to his nose.
41:53
Speaker 1: Yeah. Can I tell you, Uh, there are a couple
41:55
Speaker 1: of times, a couple of images I have seen of
41:57
Speaker 1: him over the years where it actually made my mind
42:00
Speaker 1: drift back to people that I when I examine their bodies,
42:05
Speaker 1: their nose had that same appearance. It's kind of dried,
42:09
Speaker 1: and it gives it a, I don't know how to
42:12
Speaker 1: say it, a very diminutive appearance, as it's not robust
42:15
Speaker 1: and full like you see and lie fingers in particular,
42:19
Speaker 1: fingers are really creepy on the dead because when they're shrivelled,
42:22
Speaker 1: they're shriveled at the ends. They almost have like a
42:26
Speaker 1: claw like manifestation. What's really interesting, as fingers shrivelled and
42:29
Speaker 1: toast rivel, the abdomen actually begins to bloat. So you've
42:35
Speaker 1: got this kind of juxtaposition. And with the bloating of
42:38
Speaker 1: the abdomen you're talking, you know, seventy two hours, that
42:41
Speaker 1: begins to happen. So the body is swelling, and what's
42:43
Speaker 1: happening is all this gas is building up in the body,
42:45
Speaker 1: and as it builds up, one of the foulus substances
42:48
Speaker 1: known to man begins to exude from the body, and
42:53
Speaker 1: it generally will any orifice in the body it'll come through,
42:57
Speaker 1: and you see it a lot in the nose, the mouth,
43:01
Speaker 1: and it's it's called purging. So you've got this cellular
43:06
Speaker 1: substance where the cells are breaking down and it's a
43:09
Speaker 1: combination of blood and other elements and it creates this flow.
43:15
Speaker 1: And I think i'd shown this image to you, Dave,
43:18
Speaker 1: of this fellow that city in a chair. Uh, and
43:21
Speaker 1: he's swollen bloated. And you know that guy, Dave in life,
43:26
Speaker 1: he only weighed about one hundred and sixty pounds.
43:28
Speaker 2: Oh my yeah, but punds man that'd been shot in
43:31
Speaker 2: the chest.
43:32
Speaker 1: I know. And all of the blood that you see
43:34
Speaker 1: on his chest. Everything that you see on his chest
43:37
Speaker 1: is not blood. Well it's blood in it, that's that's
43:40
Speaker 1: actually perge fluid or detail fluid. Yeah, and it's pouring,
43:44
Speaker 1: it's coming out of his nose, in his mouth.
43:45
Speaker 3: You're talking about the picture of the guy sitting in
43:47
Speaker 3: the chair, like yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, wow. Okay,
43:50
Speaker 3: Just so y'all know, And I'm not going to include
43:52
Speaker 3: this on I'm not going to show you guys this
43:54
Speaker 3: picture that picture for that, but it's in this presentation.
43:58
Speaker 3: And I opened the page and Joe explains these things
44:01
Speaker 3: to me ahead of time. It's not going to make
44:03
Speaker 3: me look like a total dummy. And I opened that
44:05
Speaker 3: picture and I'm not kidding. I thought the guy had
44:07
Speaker 3: been shot because and that he was discovered a day
44:10
Speaker 3: or two later. I didn't realize that this was a
44:12
Speaker 3: fairly small guy and died of natural causes.
44:15
Speaker 1: I've got a fascinating story that goes along with that,
44:18
Speaker 1: because there was a very young police officer that called
44:22
Speaker 1: my office the day that he was the first person
44:25
Speaker 1: to show up. It was a welfare check they'd gone
44:27
Speaker 1: out on and the guy lived alone. He had been
44:29
Speaker 1: divorced for a while, and he was I think he
44:32
Speaker 1: was like in his late fifties and he was working.
44:36
Speaker 1: You seeing the image, you're still wearing t shirt with
44:39
Speaker 1: jeans and work boots. And he sat in his chair
44:41
Speaker 1: and had a heart attack and died. Well, the young cop.
44:44
Speaker 1: And I'm not judging this guy because I would have
44:46
Speaker 1: thought the same thing. He called me from a landline
44:51
Speaker 1: at that time. This was many years ago, and said, yeah,
44:54
Speaker 1: we need you out here immediately. I think we've got
44:56
Speaker 1: a guy that has been beaten to death. And he
44:59
Speaker 1: even said at that time someone may have used a
45:02
Speaker 1: hatchet on him or an axe. And when you see this,
45:04
Speaker 1: it's so grotesque. And over the top. That's what you're thinking.
45:08
Speaker 1: You know, your mind automatically goes to that, because where
45:10
Speaker 1: could all this the staining come from. And it's even
45:13
Speaker 1: contrasted by the fact that the guy's wearing a white
45:15
Speaker 1: T shirt. Well, the guy has no trauma to his body.
45:18
Speaker 1: That's all decomp fluid that it's It is one of
45:23
Speaker 1: the most disgusting substances known to man. And once it
45:26
Speaker 1: makes contact with anything you're wearing, your clothing or anything
45:30
Speaker 1: like that, go ahead and start the bonfire and burn
45:34
Speaker 1: those clothes because you'll never they're unusable after that point.
45:38
Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body