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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: The Murders of Tylee and JJ: The DNA Solution · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:08
Speaker 1: Bodybags with Joseph Scott Morgan as a death investigator. There
0:20
Speaker 1: are no other deaths that impact you more than the
0:25
Speaker 1: death of a child. You can't get past it. Some
0:30
Speaker 1: people would say that it's almost a trite saying, but
0:34
Speaker 1: I don't know that there are any truer words. I'm
0:36
Speaker 1: still haunted by cases from my career involving the deaths
0:40
Speaker 1: of little ones. The deaths of Tyley and JJ have
0:47
Speaker 1: haunted us now for months as we continue to look
0:52
Speaker 1: into this investigation of Laurie Valoe and Chad day Bell.
0:59
Speaker 1: But something has come to light recently relative to DNA testing,
1:04
Speaker 1: and today we're going to explore that. I'm Joseph Scott
1:08
Speaker 1: Morgan and this is body Bags. I keep going around
1:17
Speaker 1: and around and around with this case, and the more
1:22
Speaker 1: doors that are opened, the more confused I am relative
1:27
Speaker 1: to what we have as far as causal factors of death,
1:31
Speaker 1: what we have as far as tie backs relative to
1:34
Speaker 1: specific types of evidence that are out there, And I
1:38
Speaker 1: got to tell you, I'm confused at this point in time.
1:42
Speaker 1: Joining me today is Jackie Howard, executive producer of Crime
1:46
Speaker 1: Stories with Nancy Grace. Jackie, we've been on this journey
1:49
Speaker 1: together for a while. Are you as frustrated as I am?
1:52
Speaker 1: I am Joe? And to be able to understand what's
1:55
Speaker 1: going on with this case right now, we need to
1:57
Speaker 1: back up and look at the history. Loriello has been
2:00
Speaker 1: married several times and that's very germane to this case.
2:03
Speaker 1: At the moment, Laurie day Belle divorced her first husband,
2:07
Speaker 1: then married Joe Ryan, that is Tyley's dad. They divorced,
2:12
Speaker 1: and Joe Ryan died reportedly of natural causes. Next, Laurie
2:17
Speaker 1: marries Charles Valo. Laurie and Charles adopts JJ. JJ is
2:25
Speaker 1: the biological son of Charles's nephew. Charles and Laurie get
2:31
Speaker 1: a divorce, but have a contentious custody agreement. He goes
2:35
Speaker 1: to the home to see JJ and at that point
2:38
Speaker 1: he is shot by Laurie's brother Alex. He claimed it
2:43
Speaker 1: was in self defense. Next in line is Chad day Bell,
2:46
Speaker 1: but at the time that Laurie meets Chad day Belle,
2:49
Speaker 1: Chad day Bell is married to Tammy day Belle. Tammy
2:54
Speaker 1: day Belle dies in her sleep, no autopsy is done,
3:00
Speaker 1: and Chad and Laurie get married on the beach in Hawaii,
3:03
Speaker 1: just two weeks later. I'm gonna let you take this over,
3:07
Speaker 1: Nan Joe, and explain to us the intricacies of Tammy
3:11
Speaker 1: Daybelle's death. There was no autopsy, and ultimately Tammy Daybelle's
3:17
Speaker 1: body was exhumed as questions arose whether or not her
3:23
Speaker 1: death was truly of natural causes. You know, the beauty
3:28
Speaker 1: of what we have here, relative there is any kind
3:32
Speaker 1: of beauty, I think is the simplicity of science, as
3:35
Speaker 1: confusing as people can make things in their own life,
3:39
Speaker 1: the messiness of it. When we're looking at death investigation,
3:43
Speaker 1: we always turned to the science and we try to
3:47
Speaker 1: get an understanding of the world that we inhabit. Certainly
3:50
Speaker 1: Tammy Day bell we think about her death. We think
3:53
Speaker 1: about JJ and Tyley, and with Tammy, Tammy was, you know,
3:58
Speaker 1: and we've done a full episode of Bodie Bags on
4:00
Speaker 1: Tammy and that case has always struck me as so
4:07
Speaker 1: bizarre and not necessarily just simply her death, but what
4:11
Speaker 1: took place afterwards, because you have a very young woman
4:15
Speaker 1: who was in robust health that had no and I
4:19
Speaker 1: mean no signs of any kind of disease or pathology
4:24
Speaker 1: or anything going on. As a matter of fact, it's
4:25
Speaker 1: been widely reported that she was trained to participate in
4:29
Speaker 1: races and all these sorts of things that is running,
4:32
Speaker 1: and she had no previous complaints. But yet she's found
4:35
Speaker 1: dead by her husband, Chad day Bell, that faithful morning
4:39
Speaker 1: and seemingly the wheels began to fall off. From an
4:44
Speaker 1: investigative standpoint, you've got a less than thorough investigation into
4:49
Speaker 1: her death at that moment in time. She is not autopsied,
4:54
Speaker 1: which somebody given her age range should have been autopsied,
4:59
Speaker 1: particularly with no previous medical history, because you know, the
5:03
Speaker 1: coroner looks at a case like this and if you
5:05
Speaker 1: don't have an attending physician that's treating you for some
5:08
Speaker 1: kind of disease, then it falls to the corner to
5:12
Speaker 1: sign the death certificate. Well, what are you going to
5:14
Speaker 1: list as a cause of death in a situation like this?
5:18
Speaker 1: And in conclusion, you know, her death was listed as
5:22
Speaker 1: a very nonspecific natural type of death and it's anything
5:26
Speaker 1: but that she was essentially embalmed and taken across state
5:30
Speaker 1: lines from Idaho to Utah and where she was buried.
5:34
Speaker 1: Her body was in the ground for months before somebody
5:38
Speaker 1: came to their senses and said, you know what, we've
5:40
Speaker 1: got all these other deaths that are occurring. We've got
5:42
Speaker 1: this young woman who is in pretty good health. We
5:45
Speaker 1: probably need to exhume her and take her body out
5:48
Speaker 1: and take a look at what's happened. Let me jump
5:49
Speaker 1: in here, Joe, Forty something year old women do not
5:52
Speaker 1: usually die in their sleep. When it does happen, obviously,
5:56
Speaker 1: the first thing you think of is some kind of
5:59
Speaker 1: heart condition, a heart attack or something along those lines.
6:03
Speaker 1: But if that had been the case here, that would
6:07
Speaker 1: have been listed on the death certificate as the cause
6:10
Speaker 1: of death as opposed to just natural causes. Correct. Yeah, yeah,
6:14
Speaker 1: it would have been. And you know, when we think
6:16
Speaker 1: about heart attack, the only way to make that diagnosis
6:19
Speaker 1: is to do an autopsy. Now, you can suppose a
6:22
Speaker 1: few things. I guess if somebody has a diagnosis of
6:25
Speaker 1: heart disease, they have a diagnosis of hypertension or any
6:28
Speaker 1: other kind of contributing factors. But we didn't have that.
6:31
Speaker 1: So in order to make a diagnosis of a heart attack,
6:34
Speaker 1: which actually is term that is used in the general
6:38
Speaker 1: public from a medical perspective, it's called a miodcardial infarction,
6:42
Speaker 1: which means that part of the micardium of the heart
6:46
Speaker 1: has died due to insufficient blood supply, oxygenated blood supply.
6:51
Speaker 1: So you have that little bit of heart muscle, the
6:54
Speaker 1: miocardium that actually dies and the heart is incapable of
6:58
Speaker 1: keeping up and dividing the body with the supply of blood,
7:02
Speaker 1: and so the individual dies. But you have to visualize
7:05
Speaker 1: that in order to make that diagnosis post mortem. This
7:09
Speaker 1: is not like you've got somebody in the hospital where
7:11
Speaker 1: you're doing diagnostic testing and all those kinds of things
7:15
Speaker 1: that go on that didn't happen here. You've got somebody
7:18
Speaker 1: that you're saying that this is a cardiac related death.
7:20
Speaker 1: They're found dead in bed, they have no previous history,
7:23
Speaker 1: and you're just going to kind of go off into
7:26
Speaker 1: the ether and make this determination. Well, that's a problem,
7:31
Speaker 1: particularly when you have in your periphery you have all
7:35
Speaker 1: of these other people that have died. That is a
7:39
Speaker 1: horrible set of circumstances to put the authorities in. And
7:42
Speaker 1: that decision was made at that critical moment time where
7:46
Speaker 1: they just decided to release the body and have her buried.
7:49
Speaker 1: And the reason it poses a problem is not only
7:52
Speaker 1: have you not examined internally to see what was going
7:57
Speaker 1: on with a heart or with a brain, you know,
7:58
Speaker 1: because it could have been a stroke. Okay, I guess
8:00
Speaker 1: you could make that that argument. But also once the
8:04
Speaker 1: embalming process takes place, then all the blood is gone.
8:08
Speaker 1: You know, that's the purpose of embolming. You know, you
8:10
Speaker 1: remove the blood, you replace it with embalming fluid. At
8:13
Speaker 1: that point in time, can't do toxicology because you can't
8:15
Speaker 1: see what's going on at a chemical level in the body.
8:18
Speaker 1: All of that's gone. It's literally flushed down the drain
8:21
Speaker 1: in the mortuary. It's gone. You can't do it. You're hoping,
8:26
Speaker 1: you know, once you have a body that has been
8:28
Speaker 1: disinterred where it has been exhumed, which requires an order
8:32
Speaker 1: of a judge, which is no small feed, you're hoping
8:35
Speaker 1: that something physically will still present itself, like you know,
8:38
Speaker 1: the things we talk about, like if you're looking at
8:40
Speaker 1: an asphyxial death where perhaps there are little pinprick hemorrhages
8:45
Speaker 1: in the eyes, you know, for instance, PATICII, to see
8:48
Speaker 1: that there's evidence that there was pressure applied to the
8:51
Speaker 1: airway and that maybe the reason the individual died, or
8:55
Speaker 1: if there's some kind of physical manifestation in the neck,
8:58
Speaker 1: you know, hemorrhage in the muscles, because the embalming process
9:01
Speaker 1: is not going to wipe away that hemorrhage because it's
9:04
Speaker 1: outside of the vessels at that point in time, it's
9:06
Speaker 1: kind of stained the muscle tissue or the interstitial tissue,
9:10
Speaker 1: and so you're hoping that you can find that or
9:13
Speaker 1: fractured highoid, you know, we always talk about highoid or
9:17
Speaker 1: the cardilaginous bodies in the neck. You're hoping that there's
9:20
Speaker 1: some evidence there that you can appreciate, but other than that,
9:23
Speaker 1: you're not going to find anything. So they've really put
9:25
Speaker 1: themselves between a rock and a hard place when it
9:28
Speaker 1: comes to Tammy Daville's death. The final determination in Tammy
9:31
Speaker 1: day Belle's death has not been publicly announced yet. We
9:34
Speaker 1: do know that the autopsy is complete, but again, officials
9:38
Speaker 1: have not released the actual cause of death. However, the
9:42
Speaker 1: Daybell children did tell CBS News forty eight hours that
9:47
Speaker 1: they were told that their mother died of asphyxiation. So
9:52
Speaker 1: let's move forward now, Joe to JJ Entirely, their bodies
9:56
Speaker 1: were found on Chad day Belle's property. How did police
10:02
Speaker 1: go about finding the bodies? Was it cadaver dogs. Was
10:07
Speaker 1: it ground penetrating, ground penetrating sonar or radar or was
10:13
Speaker 1: it just good old fashioned police work? How did they
10:16
Speaker 1: find the bodies? Joe? First off, this is a missing
10:18
Speaker 1: person's case, if you know, if we can reflect back,
10:21
Speaker 1: everybody wants to know where JJ Valo and Tyley Ryan
10:25
Speaker 1: and I remember covering this when it first dropped, and
10:28
Speaker 1: you know, everybody was anxious to find these kids that
10:30
Speaker 1: just seemingly vanished off of the face of the planet.
10:33
Speaker 1: Of course, Tyley went missing before JJ did, and folks
10:39
Speaker 1: were looking for her, and then of course JJ went
10:43
Speaker 1: missing as well. After you've exhausted everything, as investigators where
10:48
Speaker 1: you're doing a missing persons investigation, you have to go
10:52
Speaker 1: back to that point in time where were they last
10:55
Speaker 1: seen and you have to think, you know, it's what
10:58
Speaker 1: are the odds that these two chill that are part
11:01
Speaker 1: of the same family would just kind of vaporize and
11:06
Speaker 1: disappear into thin air and there not be a connection.
11:09
Speaker 1: So what draws you back to where they were connected?
11:13
Speaker 1: And that's what led authorities to Chad day Bell's property.
11:16
Speaker 1: And it's you know, it's in a rural area in Idaho.
11:20
Speaker 1: You could refer to it as a that's kind of
11:22
Speaker 1: an aggrabased environment that's there and a lot of property.
11:26
Speaker 1: There's outbuildings adjacent to the main house, and you kind
11:29
Speaker 1: of have pasture land out there. There's kind of a
11:31
Speaker 1: communal firing where, you know, you can see aerial shots.
11:35
Speaker 1: You can actually see logs that people have pulled up
11:37
Speaker 1: around the firing. You can imagine you're hanging out with
11:40
Speaker 1: friends and whatnot. Maybe somebody's got a guitar out. You're
11:43
Speaker 1: maybe roasting marshmallows over the fire up in that chili
11:46
Speaker 1: environment in Idaho and just enjoying yourself. It almost has
11:50
Speaker 1: a bucolic feel to it when you begin to see it,
11:52
Speaker 1: and then the horror is kind of revealed. You know,
11:55
Speaker 1: I can remember it clear as day. They'd found this disturbed,
11:59
Speaker 1: upturned soil which looked odd on the property where you've
12:03
Speaker 1: got what appears to be side that has been laid
12:06
Speaker 1: down over a particular area, and it's not like widespread,
12:10
Speaker 1: it's in one focal area. And they go to remove
12:15
Speaker 1: these layers of side, dig down through the strata there,
12:18
Speaker 1: you know, and soil, and they come across these odd
12:22
Speaker 1: stones that are beneath the beneath the surface there and
12:25
Speaker 1: they begin to pull those away. They're described as these
12:29
Speaker 1: flat stones, and they're lying there beneath those stones is
12:34
Speaker 1: the body of JJ. He's wrapped up. He's wrapped up
12:37
Speaker 1: in that environment. You know some thought had gone into this,
12:41
Speaker 1: because you know, why would you put stones over the body? Well,
12:44
Speaker 1: whoever did this understood that when soil is disturbed, you
12:52
Speaker 1: can never get soiled back to the way it once
12:55
Speaker 1: appeared once you've put shovel to it. So I think
13:00
Speaker 1: at least the reason the stones were placed there was
13:03
Speaker 1: so that there would be some underpinning of the soil
13:07
Speaker 1: and it wouldn't have such a depressed appearance to it.
13:09
Speaker 1: When you begin to look at the topography of the
13:11
Speaker 1: soil and that overlying saw that had been intentionally placed there,
13:17
Speaker 1: it gives you the impression that everything is as it
13:20
Speaker 1: should be, and of course that wasn't the case because
13:22
Speaker 1: it saw it. I think as it did give away.
13:24
Speaker 1: You know, you've got that one plot that's there that
13:27
Speaker 1: you know happens to have a different appearance, and everything
13:29
Speaker 1: else around you you can never draw it back to
13:31
Speaker 1: its natural setting prior to disturbing soil. And then they
13:37
Speaker 1: began to examine this firing area over there, which also
13:40
Speaker 1: is adjacent and this is kind of ghastly adjacent to
13:43
Speaker 1: where the family would bury pets, and some people have
13:46
Speaker 1: referred to it as a pet cemetery. I don't know
13:49
Speaker 1: if that's accurate or not, but you know, when they
13:51
Speaker 1: began to dig through the firing and dig through the
13:55
Speaker 1: area's immediately adjacent there, they began to find fragmented bone
14:00
Speaker 1: and even some soft tissue eventually, and of course that
14:03
Speaker 1: turned out to be Kylie's remains. She had been rendered down,
14:08
Speaker 1: an attempt had been made to render her remains down
14:11
Speaker 1: in this fire, and it has come out to you
14:15
Speaker 1: at this point that not only was there an attempt
14:19
Speaker 1: to consume her remains with fire, but prior to that,
14:24
Speaker 1: there's an indication from the authorities. They've alluded to it
14:27
Speaker 1: that she was dismembered. And so you've got these these
14:32
Speaker 1: bone fragments that are there, and they're not just merely
14:34
Speaker 1: bone fragments. When you're going through an area like this,
14:38
Speaker 1: you have to understand that if you're talking about dismemberment,
14:40
Speaker 1: and I have to think that this is the case,
14:42
Speaker 1: because they've mentioned this several times. They have evidence that
14:46
Speaker 1: the bones are not just merely fragmented as a result
14:50
Speaker 1: of what are referred to as like heat fractures where
14:53
Speaker 1: bone comes apart because the fire is so hot. They
14:56
Speaker 1: have specific margins that they're looking at that give them
14:59
Speaker 1: an indication that a tool was applied to the bone,
15:01
Speaker 1: to the sculptal remains, and these are going to be
15:04
Speaker 1: neater cuts, and that gives you an idea of what
15:07
Speaker 1: had taken place prior to the body being burned. There's
15:12
Speaker 1: preparation that's gone on with both of these remains. Tyley's
15:17
Speaker 1: is certainly very ghastly. But when you look at JJ
15:21
Speaker 1: going back to his spot where they had laid him
15:24
Speaker 1: down in the ground, there was this kind of weird
15:29
Speaker 1: memorialization because one of the things I didn't mention was that, yeah,
15:32
Speaker 1: he had been wrapped in plastic. Certainly his head was
15:36
Speaker 1: and you know, I remember the detective talking about in
15:39
Speaker 1: great detail, and you seem was very disturbed when he
15:41
Speaker 1: was given he was given testimony and preliminary hearing about
15:44
Speaker 1: how much tape there was. There was a tremendous amount
15:47
Speaker 1: of duct tape that was involved in in the wrapping
15:50
Speaker 1: of his body. But they also had taken some kind
15:52
Speaker 1: of blanket and laid over his body before they put
15:55
Speaker 1: the stones, And that gives you an idea. I think,
15:58
Speaker 1: at least that's what we've referred to as memorialization of
16:01
Speaker 1: the dead. His body was treated differently than Tyle's. Tyle's
16:07
Speaker 1: was there was an attempt to completely eradicate any evidence
16:10
Speaker 1: of her existence, but with JJ there was an attempt to,
16:13
Speaker 1: I don't know, honor him in some way, which is
16:16
Speaker 1: kind of a weird term, I know, But when you
16:19
Speaker 1: compare it to the way his body was treated versus Tyl's,
16:23
Speaker 1: it's quite striking. There's many times when you're an investigator
16:44
Speaker 1: and you're standing out at a scene, particularly where you've
16:48
Speaker 1: got more than one body, you're very confused. For a moment.
16:51
Speaker 1: You're trying to decide what should I do next? Am
16:54
Speaker 1: I doing everything that I need to do in order
16:56
Speaker 1: to preserve and make note of all of the little
17:00
Speaker 1: details that are at the scene. And you know, there
17:03
Speaker 1: are many times I've gone home after working cases where
17:05
Speaker 1: I scratched my head and said, oh, gee, did I
17:07
Speaker 1: do this? Did I do that? And in this particular case,
17:10
Speaker 1: relative to JJ Valo and Tylie Ryan, I can only
17:14
Speaker 1: imagine those investigators felt the same way, because it is
17:18
Speaker 1: just Jackie, just an overwhelming amount of evidence that they
17:22
Speaker 1: had to collect out there. Let's look at the positioning
17:25
Speaker 1: of the bodies. JJ's body and the remains of Tylie
17:30
Speaker 1: Ryan were not close together. They were in the same
17:33
Speaker 1: general vicinity, but they were not laid side by side.
17:37
Speaker 1: The recovery of JJ's body would have have to have
17:40
Speaker 1: been much simpler, given that he was entombed in cased
17:47
Speaker 1: in plastic with duct tape wrapped almost mummy style around
17:53
Speaker 1: his body. So once the officers the investigators opened the
18:00
Speaker 1: plastic and realize that there was a body inside and
18:04
Speaker 1: they could see the red Pj's that it was reported
18:08
Speaker 1: that JJ went missing in, how do they proceed, Joe.
18:12
Speaker 1: Do they just move and lift his body into a
18:17
Speaker 1: body bag and then search the soil and ground underneath.
18:21
Speaker 1: How would they do that? Yeah? Yeah, And essentially that's
18:24
Speaker 1: what you would have to do with both of these cases.
18:26
Speaker 1: It's truly an excavation, if you will, and I mean
18:29
Speaker 1: that in the purest anthropological term. You're having to make
18:33
Speaker 1: sure that you account for everything that you possibly can.
18:37
Speaker 1: Talking about JJ, you never know what's going to be
18:40
Speaker 1: down in a dug grave, and it can be the
18:44
Speaker 1: slightest thing of work. Cases where people will flick cigarette
18:47
Speaker 1: butts down into holes before they placed the body on
18:50
Speaker 1: top of the cigarette butt. You can find evidence of
18:53
Speaker 1: shovel strikes on stone that are down there, maybe there's
18:58
Speaker 1: a route that has been cut through, and again that's
19:01
Speaker 1: that has evidentiary value. And there are even cases where
19:05
Speaker 1: individuals have left behind items that may have fallen out
19:10
Speaker 1: of their pocket if you can imagine that while digging
19:12
Speaker 1: a hole. So you have to account for all of that.
19:16
Speaker 1: It's not just a matter of having lifted JJ's remains
19:20
Speaker 1: out of this dug grave and then place them in
19:24
Speaker 1: a body bag and taking them away. There's a certain
19:26
Speaker 1: amount of care that has to go into this. And
19:30
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things that you have to
19:32
Speaker 1: think about with particularly with you know, we talked about
19:35
Speaker 1: this tape and it's they've identified it as duct tape,
19:39
Speaker 1: is that duct tape and the surfaces of these bags
19:44
Speaker 1: can in fact contain evidence that will be linkage back
19:47
Speaker 1: to individuals that are responsible for this. Again, I reflect
19:50
Speaker 1: back through the father of modern forensics, in my opinion,
19:53
Speaker 1: is at model a card. You know this idea of
19:56
Speaker 1: Lacart's principle. Every contact leaves a trace. Anything that you
20:00
Speaker 1: do where you're touching a surface, whether it be a
20:03
Speaker 1: plastic bag, and certainly with tape, you have the potential
20:08
Speaker 1: of leaving behind trace evidence that's caught up, say, for instance,
20:11
Speaker 1: on the adhesive surfaces of the tape, and on the
20:14
Speaker 1: surfaces of the bags, and particularly if you've got multiple
20:18
Speaker 1: layers of bags, which kind of sounds like is one
20:21
Speaker 1: of the things that we're dealing with here. If you've
20:23
Speaker 1: encased a body bag within bag on that inner surface,
20:29
Speaker 1: the surfaces exposed to the dirt and to moisture. Direct exposure,
20:34
Speaker 1: you might not have a chance at getting trace evidence
20:36
Speaker 1: off of that, but that inner area of that inner
20:38
Speaker 1: layer you could even find latent prints on the surface
20:41
Speaker 1: of the plastic itself. Remember plastic is non porous, so
20:45
Speaker 1: it's not as smooth as glass, but you can leave
20:48
Speaker 1: behind print there. So you have to be very very
20:51
Speaker 1: careful and treated very carefully. One of the things that
20:54
Speaker 1: was really striking to me is, and I found this
20:57
Speaker 1: a little bit truffling, is that the detective that was
21:01
Speaker 1: watching all this took place. In his testimony, he actually
21:04
Speaker 1: stated that one of the investigators at the scene had
21:07
Speaker 1: taken out a knife and had cut the bag open
21:10
Speaker 1: at the scene, revealing JJ's face. You can see brown
21:15
Speaker 1: hair and these sorts of things. That's something that I
21:18
Speaker 1: would not advise anybody to do at the scene. There'll
21:21
Speaker 1: be plenty of time to get identification done once you
21:24
Speaker 1: get it back into a controlled environment. But the problem
21:26
Speaker 1: with cutting a bag open is that once that bag
21:30
Speaker 1: is open, first off, you don't know what you're cutting
21:32
Speaker 1: across beneath that surface. Remember, if you're talking about multiple layers,
21:36
Speaker 1: you can disrupt evidence beneath there. And also just to
21:41
Speaker 1: open the bag, that means you're pulling it apart, and
21:43
Speaker 1: then you're in a dirty environment and anything can fall
21:47
Speaker 1: into that bag, your own hair, for instance, if you're
21:50
Speaker 1: not prepared physically where you're wearing a tiebec suit for instance,
21:53
Speaker 1: in gloves, and all those sorts of things, where you
21:55
Speaker 1: can transfer your own evidence that you're bringing into the
21:58
Speaker 1: scene or evidence that you were there as an investigator.
22:01
Speaker 1: It's not a controlled environment. You want to try to
22:04
Speaker 1: get that body back in pristine state, and in this case,
22:07
Speaker 1: they had to transport these bodies all the way back
22:09
Speaker 1: to Boise because that's where the bodies are examined, and
22:14
Speaker 1: you would want to essentially do an entire x ray
22:18
Speaker 1: of the body before you ever remove anything from that
22:22
Speaker 1: body or disrupt the packaging in any way, because that
22:26
Speaker 1: a case can rise and fall dependent upon that. Just
22:29
Speaker 1: because you have a need to see the face, that
22:34
Speaker 1: doesn't trump the importance of the value of the evidence
22:38
Speaker 1: that you might be disrupting. The recovery of Tiley's body
22:42
Speaker 1: was an entirely different matter because, as you said, Tiley's
22:48
Speaker 1: body had been dismembered and she had been burned. In fact,
22:52
Speaker 1: there was evidence of a green plastic bucket which was
22:55
Speaker 1: used to burn Tyley's head her body. Tylie's body was
23:02
Speaker 1: placed into the fire and stirred. For lack of a
23:08
Speaker 1: better way to put it, that's so disrespectful to say
23:11
Speaker 1: it that way, but in reality, that's what happened. That's
23:15
Speaker 1: the reality of what you're doing with here. You know,
23:17
Speaker 1: you can't church this up and make it pleasant and
23:20
Speaker 1: nice for everybody. You can't do that. That's the reality
23:24
Speaker 1: of whoever did this is this is dastardly dirty work
23:28
Speaker 1: that has taken place here. And so as an investigator,
23:32
Speaker 1: when you're taking a look at the scene and you're
23:35
Speaker 1: trying to process it. Again. I go back to this
23:37
Speaker 1: idea that this is from an anthropological standpoint, you have
23:41
Speaker 1: to apply, you know, archaeological methodologies here in doing the recovery.
23:45
Speaker 1: And I think in one of the scenes, I actually
23:47
Speaker 1: saw sifting stations that they had set up, which are
23:50
Speaker 1: screening stations, and people are kind of familiar with this,
23:53
Speaker 1: you know, where you have the big kind of box
23:55
Speaker 1: that has the screening where you shake down and you
23:58
Speaker 1: can look through all the remnants in there, because if
24:01
Speaker 1: you're talking about cremines, which is what burned remains are
24:04
Speaker 1: referred to as things. For the average investigator that are
24:09
Speaker 1: out there at the scene, you might see something that
24:12
Speaker 1: to you just looks like a dirt clode. But for
24:15
Speaker 1: the experienced anthropologists that's out helping you with the recovery,
24:19
Speaker 1: they can certainly see the difference between and I'm talking
24:21
Speaker 1: about just eyeball and it. That's how good these people are.
24:24
Speaker 1: They can tell the difference between a dirt clode, for instance,
24:28
Speaker 1: and a bit of human bone. It's amazing when you're
24:32
Speaker 1: around folks in this field, and this is what they
24:34
Speaker 1: spend years and years learning to do. And working their
24:37
Speaker 1: way through. So you look at these circumstances and you
24:41
Speaker 1: see what has been left behind. You have to take care.
24:44
Speaker 1: And in several of the photographs you can see these
24:47
Speaker 1: aerial shots that they have. They've dug down several layers,
24:50
Speaker 1: but not real, real deep. This is not a deep
24:52
Speaker 1: deep burial, you know, where you think about a grave,
24:55
Speaker 1: you know the standard is six feet deep. It's not
24:57
Speaker 1: like that. But you can tell in some of the
24:59
Speaker 1: progressions of the photos because they're taking over time. You
25:02
Speaker 1: see the investigators are standing there and it's getting deeper
25:05
Speaker 1: and deeper, but not to the level of like you know,
25:09
Speaker 1: up to their mid thigh or anything. It wasn't that deep.
25:13
Speaker 1: But you have to take down every layer. And this
25:15
Speaker 1: is the strata stratified, and you have to look at
25:19
Speaker 1: each bit of strata and collect everything that you can
25:23
Speaker 1: to this this issue with the bucket, which is chilling,
25:26
Speaker 1: to say the very least, that might be one of
25:28
Speaker 1: the few items that you have could potentially give you
25:31
Speaker 1: an indication of what type of accelerant was used. If
25:34
Speaker 1: they were applying some type of gas or something like
25:37
Speaker 1: a fuel like this to initiate the fire, and that
25:42
Speaker 1: that bucket as horrific as it is, might hold a
25:45
Speaker 1: key to tying back chemically to any kind of accelerant
25:51
Speaker 1: that was applied to this area, because you know, I
25:54
Speaker 1: don't know that they didn't recover any type of clothing.
25:59
Speaker 1: I don't know if they did or not, because many
26:01
Speaker 1: times we rely on clothing looking for accelerance, and we
26:05
Speaker 1: can take those and have those tested and that sort
26:07
Speaker 1: of thing to see what type of fuel had been
26:10
Speaker 1: applied to that area. The bucket is going to be
26:11
Speaker 1: critical though, And to your point, this attempt at rendering
26:16
Speaker 1: is absolutely horrific because there's this issue of contact and
26:21
Speaker 1: melting and all these sorts of things that have kind
26:23
Speaker 1: of commingled with Tyley's remains. When this case is in court,
26:28
Speaker 1: the jury is going to hear that, and it's going
26:30
Speaker 1: to be absolutely horrific. I think it's going to be
26:34
Speaker 1: something that these people, certainly on this jury have never
26:36
Speaker 1: heard of before, have never seen, have never fought that
26:40
Speaker 1: somebody could do this to another human being, And it's
26:43
Speaker 1: going to be quite striking. It's gonna be very very powerful.
26:46
Speaker 1: But they have to make sure that everything they've collected
26:49
Speaker 1: out that scene, all that bit of fragmented bone, that
26:51
Speaker 1: they've talked about a lot that they've collected it because
26:54
Speaker 1: even the most minuscule bit of bone that's out there,
26:58
Speaker 1: you have to examine it adividually and it will have
27:01
Speaker 1: individual characteristics. And this goes back to the thought about dismemberment.
27:08
Speaker 1: With dismemberment, you have to understand that there will be
27:12
Speaker 1: tool marks, and if you have tool marks, that means
27:17
Speaker 1: that someone picked up an instrument and used it to
27:22
Speaker 1: take apart the spot, and that tool mark will be
27:25
Speaker 1: a specific tie back to a type of tool, whether
27:28
Speaker 1: it's a saw, a hatchet, an axe, whatever the case
27:32
Speaker 1: might be. If that's the case, then you can begin
27:36
Speaker 1: to kind of understand what may have happened if if
27:39
Speaker 1: it was a crushing kind of blow that you might
27:42
Speaker 1: see with an axe, or if it was a sawing,
27:45
Speaker 1: which you know, there's any number of saws and they're
27:48
Speaker 1: very distinctive their teeth. You have hack saws that are
27:50
Speaker 1: going to look completely different than say, lumbert saws, are
27:54
Speaker 1: limb saws, those sorts of things, and again, those are
27:57
Speaker 1: specific tie backs that are It's a concept that we
28:00
Speaker 1: talked about in forensics all the time called individualization of evidence.
28:04
Speaker 1: And so they've taken their time with us. This is
28:06
Speaker 1: one of the reasons it's taken so long for this
28:09
Speaker 1: case to finally make it to the point where we're
28:12
Speaker 1: right on the verge trial. Perhaps everything that you said,
28:17
Speaker 1: Joe leads us to the filing made by prosecutors asking
28:22
Speaker 1: for DNA testing on evidence found at the recovery scene
28:27
Speaker 1: of the bodies. Finally there may be an answer to
28:31
Speaker 1: who killed JJ Higley. There's an old saying that people
28:53
Speaker 1: talk about paralysis through analysis. You know, you can overthink
28:57
Speaker 1: things many times, and when you have bits of evidence
29:01
Speaker 1: that have to be analyzed, have to be examined because
29:04
Speaker 1: you remember, we have to keep in mind that every
29:07
Speaker 1: bit of evidence, forensic evidence or potential evidence that's at
29:12
Speaker 1: a scene or little breadcrumbs that lead back to what
29:15
Speaker 1: actually happened. Remember, we weren't there to witness these horrible events.
29:20
Speaker 1: The evidence is going to actually point us in that
29:23
Speaker 1: particular direction, to give us an indication of what may
29:28
Speaker 1: have happened and more importantly, who may have been involved.
29:31
Speaker 1: And I think that that's what they're looking at here.
29:33
Speaker 1: The prosecution in the case against Lorie Valoe and Chad
29:38
Speaker 1: day Bell has requested that a judge allow forensic DNA
29:43
Speaker 1: testing on evidence recovered from this scene, nan Joe. With
29:49
Speaker 1: the way that we are in society today with NCIS,
29:52
Speaker 1: CSI and Criminal Minds, all of the forensic investigative shows
29:59
Speaker 1: that are very popular these days, people have the idea
30:03
Speaker 1: that the minute evidence has recovered, that it's automatically sent
30:06
Speaker 1: to the lab and tested for everything possible. That's not
30:10
Speaker 1: the case. In fact, prosecutors had not really requested anything
30:15
Speaker 1: be tested before. Now why, well, we have to go back.
30:20
Speaker 1: I think in twenty twenty one there was a request
30:23
Speaker 1: and the defense has kind of fought that. They fought
30:26
Speaker 1: that all along the way because they knew they have
30:29
Speaker 1: known for some time that the evidence that prosecution the state. Okay,
30:35
Speaker 1: because this is now people have a hard time. I
30:38
Speaker 1: want to break this down very briefly. This is the
30:41
Speaker 1: state's evidence. It's the state's evidence, it's not the defense
30:45
Speaker 1: is evidence. Is the evidence that the state has gone
30:48
Speaker 1: out their crimesing unit and they have collected. This is
30:52
Speaker 1: the evidence that has been collected at autopsy, at examination.
30:56
Speaker 1: All these items have been collected by the state. So
30:59
Speaker 1: when the defense sees this, they know that there's going
31:04
Speaker 1: to be one shot at this because what they have
31:06
Speaker 1: been told is that the state intends to conduct what
31:11
Speaker 1: is referred to as a consumptive test, and consumptive means
31:17
Speaker 1: that these little points of evidence that they're finding, you're
31:19
Speaker 1: going to get one shot at it because it's so minuscule,
31:22
Speaker 1: in my opinion, at least, it's so minuscule that simply
31:26
Speaker 1: by testing that bit of evidence, it's going to eradicate
31:30
Speaker 1: the evidence at that point. Essentially, at the end, you're
31:32
Speaker 1: just going to have a finding. You know, through the testing,
31:36
Speaker 1: whether it's DNA or fiber evidence or whatever the case
31:39
Speaker 1: might be, are potentially even fingerprint evidence, and so it's
31:43
Speaker 1: going to be consumptive testing that evidence will no longer
31:48
Speaker 1: exist to be tested. Again, that's what the defense is
31:51
Speaker 1: putting forth. That's what the state is stating is going
31:53
Speaker 1: to happen, and they have waited some time to do this.
31:56
Speaker 1: I am I think, like many people, struck by the
31:59
Speaker 1: fact that it hasn't been done to this point. Again,
32:02
Speaker 1: back to this idea of individualization. These are specific tie back,
32:07
Speaker 1: scientific tie backs to everybody that had contact with these bodies,
32:10
Speaker 1: who was involved in these events leading up to the death.
32:15
Speaker 1: And one of the things that comes to mind is.
32:17
Speaker 1: And one of the things that's the most striking for
32:19
Speaker 1: me is they've talked about these dried dark spots that
32:23
Speaker 1: are on the handles of both a pickaxe and on
32:27
Speaker 1: the handle of shovel and I don't know the side
32:30
Speaker 1: Hang on right there a second, Joe, Let's detail what
32:33
Speaker 1: you're talking about here. Prosecutors want to send for testing
32:38
Speaker 1: hairs found on duct tape inside the body bag that
32:41
Speaker 1: was used to transport JJ Valo's body. Fingerprint details on
32:47
Speaker 1: the adhesive side of the tape. Dark spots on the
32:50
Speaker 1: handles of a shovel and a pickaxe were covered from
32:53
Speaker 1: the day Belle property swabs from JJ's fingernails that were
32:58
Speaker 1: obtained during his autopsy. Those are the things you're referencing. Yeah,
33:03
Speaker 1: it is. Let's kind of go through these and think
33:06
Speaker 1: about what, you know, what each of these means. People
33:10
Speaker 1: talk a lot about DNA, it's not all going to
33:14
Speaker 1: necessarily be DNA. It can be other things of other
33:17
Speaker 1: evidentiary value. I think the duct tape is a fine
33:20
Speaker 1: example of this because not only what we have found
33:23
Speaker 1: out is not only are there potential latent prints that
33:27
Speaker 1: are left behind on the tape, latent prints means that
33:31
Speaker 1: it's potentially either an invisible print or if you think
33:36
Speaker 1: about the adhesive and everybody at home you can do
33:38
Speaker 1: this yourself. But if you have a piece of tape,
33:40
Speaker 1: take a piece of tape and go to the adherent side,
33:43
Speaker 1: the sticky side, and roll your finger the pad of
33:46
Speaker 1: your finger over that adherent that he's upside and when
33:50
Speaker 1: you pull it away, you can actually see that there
33:53
Speaker 1: is a finger print that's left there. That's what we
33:56
Speaker 1: refer to as a plastic print. It's not a typical
33:59
Speaker 1: print that has been left behind by fatty lippets, which
34:02
Speaker 1: you know, you go to a non poor surface like
34:04
Speaker 1: a mirror, and you put your fingers on that surface,
34:07
Speaker 1: you'll leave behind a print there that is there because
34:11
Speaker 1: of a transfer from the kind of the fatty residue
34:14
Speaker 1: that's seeping through on the paths of your fingers. With
34:17
Speaker 1: this in the adhesive of the tape, and I can
34:20
Speaker 1: only imagine that might be what they're talking about. You're
34:22
Speaker 1: going to have an impression that has been left behind
34:26
Speaker 1: that is going to be a visible print. Perhaps the
34:31
Speaker 1: trick is how do you examine that print without destroying it?
34:35
Speaker 1: And are they going to be able to do that.
34:37
Speaker 1: They've talked about that, I know, for instance, I don't
34:40
Speaker 1: know if they've identified some type of item that is
34:43
Speaker 1: within that impression that has been left behind. Certainly you
34:47
Speaker 1: could have perhaps a skin cell that is left there
34:50
Speaker 1: in that adhesive. And then you're left with this idea, well,
34:54
Speaker 1: do I examine the print or do I extricate that
34:58
Speaker 1: bit of by iCal tissue to do a DNA And
35:03
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to sacrifice one in order to do
35:05
Speaker 1: the other. Perhaps maybe it's only a partial print, but
35:08
Speaker 1: yet you have some kind of biological item that's in there, say,
35:10
Speaker 1: for instance, like skin or tissue or something, or even blood,
35:13
Speaker 1: I'm going to have to destroy that in order to
35:16
Speaker 1: compromise one thing to get the other. Then you think
35:18
Speaker 1: about JJ's fingernails, and this was quite horrible. I know,
35:24
Speaker 1: and remember he had been he had been entombed to
35:27
Speaker 1: use the term that was used earlier. But you know
35:30
Speaker 1: he's interred in this grave that has been dug, and
35:33
Speaker 1: he's been down for a while. We're talking from I
35:36
Speaker 1: think September. I can't remember the exact number of months,
35:39
Speaker 1: but it was a protracted period of time. They wentn't
35:42
Speaker 1: missing in September I know his nails were still intact,
35:46
Speaker 1: which is not uncommon, but they have evidence that they've
35:49
Speaker 1: recovered from beneath the nails. And what happens at autopsy
35:55
Speaker 1: when we do nail examinations is that you do two things.
35:59
Speaker 1: You look for tissue that's caught beneath the nail, where
36:03
Speaker 1: you have skin cells that are perhaps caught up. You
36:06
Speaker 1: have tissue that is rolled up beneath there. Again, if
36:10
Speaker 1: it's skinned or any kind of tissue, you can perhaps
36:14
Speaker 1: you can get a biological sample from that. And then
36:16
Speaker 1: we do nail clippings. So the nails would have been
36:19
Speaker 1: clipped at that point and collected and held onto. They
36:23
Speaker 1: still have all of that. That's something that has been
36:25
Speaker 1: captured that they are trying to determine what to do
36:29
Speaker 1: with it, and so that's quite striking. I think in
36:31
Speaker 1: this case we have to think about they've found, apparently
36:35
Speaker 1: going back to the tape, a hair or hairs that
36:38
Speaker 1: are caught up in the tape. The question is whose
36:41
Speaker 1: hair is it. It's one thing you would have an
36:43
Speaker 1: expectation that you would have JJ's hair that may be
36:48
Speaker 1: on the tape, But if it's another hair, is that
36:50
Speaker 1: hair viable and what's the point of origin? Is it
36:54
Speaker 1: a head hair, is it a pubic hair, is it
36:56
Speaker 1: an arm hair that has been pulled off? And when
36:59
Speaker 1: you begin to look at the morphology of the hair,
37:02
Speaker 1: that is the examination of the nature of the hair,
37:04
Speaker 1: you can kind of identify that in one big grouping.
37:07
Speaker 1: But then you begin to think about DNA examination of
37:10
Speaker 1: the hair. Is it a bulb, Do you actually have
37:13
Speaker 1: it yanked out from the base, from the root, if
37:16
Speaker 1: you will, and that's a much more rich area in
37:19
Speaker 1: order to harvest DNA from. Or is it merely a
37:23
Speaker 1: broken shaft. That's a bit less specific because you're going
37:27
Speaker 1: to have to motochondrial DNA on the shaft of a hair.
37:30
Speaker 1: So the idea is to track that hair back to
37:33
Speaker 1: try to find that point of origin. Now, if Chad
37:37
Speaker 1: day Bell, who has been charged in this case, and
37:40
Speaker 1: there's indications that Alex Cox was involved in this, I
37:45
Speaker 1: think that the defense is going to say, well, we
37:47
Speaker 1: would expect to find hair from Chad day Bell or
37:52
Speaker 1: Alex Cox because both of these men were in JJ's life,
37:57
Speaker 1: and this is kind of an arbitrary finding. They're going
37:59
Speaker 1: to try to paint it like that it's an expected finding.
38:03
Speaker 1: You know, you have a commingling of DNA perhaps, but
38:06
Speaker 1: I think that the fact that it's caught up in
38:08
Speaker 1: that tape, and that tape was used to bind him up,
38:11
Speaker 1: it's going to be very, very powerful of it. The
38:13
Speaker 1: biggest issue with this testing is that once it's done,
38:18
Speaker 1: it's done. There will not be another opportunity to conduct
38:22
Speaker 1: a test if any error is made. Obviously, they're wanting
38:28
Speaker 1: to find the possibility of finding out who was present
38:31
Speaker 1: at the time the murders took place. However, once this
38:35
Speaker 1: testing is done, it is done. All possibilities of any
38:41
Speaker 1: future testing are lost. Yeah, there's no du over. There's
38:45
Speaker 1: no do over whatsoever. Even the prosecution the state is
38:51
Speaker 1: that's what they're stating. This is going to be a
38:52
Speaker 1: consumptive test. It's going to be gone forever and ever. Amen.
38:57
Speaker 1: One interesting part to this is that the defense has
39:02
Speaker 1: stated that they want representatives there for this testing. I
39:08
Speaker 1: think the folks at the State Crime Lab said, you know, no, no,
39:12
Speaker 1: that's not going to happen. One individual did at least,
39:15
Speaker 1: and people have stated relative to the DNA testing that
39:19
Speaker 1: they would like an observer there, maybe a third party
39:21
Speaker 1: to do it. I think somebody is even put forth
39:26
Speaker 1: this idea that you'd get an independent lab to examine that,
39:29
Speaker 1: and that's that's not going to happen, because, as I stay,
39:31
Speaker 1: what did I stayed earlier? I stated that this is
39:34
Speaker 1: the state's evidence. There's a reason that the people of
39:37
Speaker 1: Idaho pay to have a state crime lab. It is
39:40
Speaker 1: the tool that the state uses in order to process evidence.
39:44
Speaker 1: It is, to the best of my knowledge, a certified lab,
39:47
Speaker 1: so that means that it meets all of the standards.
39:49
Speaker 1: So what are you saying that they're going to do
39:51
Speaker 1: something nefarious to the evidence. I don't think that that
39:54
Speaker 1: would be the case. You want a third party to
39:56
Speaker 1: come in. I think that that might be reasonable, But
40:00
Speaker 1: one of the problems is is that you run the
40:01
Speaker 1: risk of cross contamination. You know, the more people that
40:04
Speaker 1: are involved in this thing, the more damage that can
40:07
Speaker 1: be done. So those are very interesting questions that the
40:10
Speaker 1: court is going to have to deal with, the judge
40:12
Speaker 1: is going to have to deal with it. I think
40:14
Speaker 1: that it's a It can be a dangerous precedent, if
40:17
Speaker 1: you will, because if they move forward and they say, okay,
40:20
Speaker 1: well we're going to deviate from what the norm is
40:23
Speaker 1: here from what our standard is. Then that means that
40:27
Speaker 1: this case would be impactful, not just obviously on everybody
40:31
Speaker 1: that's involved, but any other cases that move forward in
40:34
Speaker 1: state of Idaho relative to criminal prosecution. They say, well,
40:38
Speaker 1: you know they got it done. We want to have
40:40
Speaker 1: this done as well. And it literally becomes a true nightmare,
40:44
Speaker 1: not just from an administration standpoint, but certainly from getting
40:47
Speaker 1: to the truth. So's this case is going to resonate.
40:51
Speaker 1: Both of these cases will resonate in Idaho and maybe
40:54
Speaker 1: you across the country for years and years to come.
40:57
Speaker 1: You brought up the state officials saying no, we really
41:00
Speaker 1: don't want anybody there observing. And the fact of the
41:04
Speaker 1: matter is, Joe, is that they're worried about human error.
41:08
Speaker 1: They're worried about being distracted. Since this is the only
41:12
Speaker 1: opportunity to do this testing, any distractions can lead to
41:18
Speaker 1: human error. So unless this person who is watching stands still,
41:23
Speaker 1: doesn't move, doesn't talk, that's the only way to eliminate
41:28
Speaker 1: the possibility. They're worried about human error. Yeah, they are,
41:32
Speaker 1: they are. You have to think about, well, what would
41:34
Speaker 1: that person's role be that would be there. Would they
41:37
Speaker 1: be participating in the testing or would they just be
41:39
Speaker 1: an observer? Do they make comment? Again, you're talking about
41:43
Speaker 1: error and being distracted. And look, from a medical legal standpoint,
41:47
Speaker 1: I've been involved in cases autopsies, for instance, where we've
41:50
Speaker 1: had third parties that are present in the autopsy suite.
41:53
Speaker 1: I think famously one of the cases that comes to
41:55
Speaker 1: mind in recent years is Epstein's case. Remember, doctor Boden
41:59
Speaker 1: was physically present. He was representative for the family that
42:02
Speaker 1: was there during Jeffrey Epstein's autopsy, and of course that
42:05
Speaker 1: was a case that they suspected as being suicide. But
42:08
Speaker 1: yet he was there. He was physically in the autopsy suite.
42:11
Speaker 1: He made his own observations in that environment. But he
42:14
Speaker 1: was not there in an unofficial capacity representing the state.
42:18
Speaker 1: He was representing the family. And in this particular case,
42:22
Speaker 1: we're talking not about a case that is involving a suicide.
42:26
Speaker 1: We're talking about a criminal case where you have these
42:29
Speaker 1: delicate tests that are having to be done. This is
42:32
Speaker 1: not like an autopsy. That's very don't give me, don't
42:35
Speaker 1: mistake me. Autopsies are delicate, all right, But when you're
42:39
Speaker 1: talking about dealing with microscopic evidence and a molecular evidence
42:44
Speaker 1: to put a finer point on it. You don't want
42:46
Speaker 1: any distractions. There's too much resting on this. I'm Joseph
42:54
Speaker 1: Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks.