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Dead in a Bathtub: Warm Water, Cold Body - Suicide or Murder · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:08
Speaker 1: Body backs with Joseph Scott Morgan. Even to this day,
0:20
Speaker 1: at this stage in my life, I'm fascinated by one
0:24
Speaker 1: group of law enforcement people, and those are state troopers
0:30
Speaker 1: or state police, dependent upon the jurisdiction are in. And
0:35
Speaker 1: one of the reasons, I think it's the fact that
0:37
Speaker 1: I've got this little bitty boy that never grew up
0:41
Speaker 1: still within me, and I love seeing the uniforms that
0:47
Speaker 1: some of these state state troopers were because they're really cool.
0:51
Speaker 1: There's a couple of them that come to mind. Let's see,
0:54
Speaker 1: Rhode Island has got these fantastic looking uniforms. State of
1:01
Speaker 1: New York really cool. They've got kind of these slouch
1:03
Speaker 1: hats that they wear. I've always been a fan of
1:09
Speaker 1: how these things are configured, what the purpose is, because
1:12
Speaker 1: you know, you look at them now and it doesn't
1:16
Speaker 1: necessarily look like the most efficient way to clothe somebody.
1:20
Speaker 1: But you have to understand state troopers and state police
1:23
Speaker 1: that are out there running the roads and working cases
1:26
Speaker 1: out there, they're a different type of law enforcement. They're
1:30
Speaker 1: there to really really set the standard for representing the
1:37
Speaker 1: law enforcement of that state. You know, when you hear
1:40
Speaker 1: those shoes clicking down the roadway approaching your car. There's
1:45
Speaker 1: a certain level of intimidation to it, and they take
1:48
Speaker 1: their appearance very very seriously, like those smoky the bear
1:53
Speaker 1: hats that they wear. It's meant to intimidate. They almost
1:58
Speaker 1: look like Marine Corps deay's and behave that way. But
2:02
Speaker 1: you know, even when someone is selected for law enforcement,
2:08
Speaker 1: you never know what you're actually gonna get because people
2:12
Speaker 1: on paper, people during training look really really good sometimes,
2:19
Speaker 1: but the proof, as we all know in this life,
2:23
Speaker 1: is in the putting. How do they hold together over
2:27
Speaker 1: the long term. Today, we're going to talk about a
2:33
Speaker 1: case involving the wife of a former trooper and how
2:41
Speaker 1: this trooper now has been accused, tried, and convicted of murder.
2:52
Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags. Hey day.
2:59
Speaker 1: Let me ask you a question, buddy, have you ever
3:00
Speaker 1: heard the click click click outside your window, headed up,
3:04
Speaker 1: headed up alongside your car as the state trooper approaches you.
3:09
Speaker 1: I'll confess I have, and it always, it always sends
3:11
Speaker 1: a shiver down my spine. I may not have been
3:13
Speaker 1: doing anything or what I may not have perceived that
3:17
Speaker 1: I was doing anything wrong, but it's different than being
3:20
Speaker 1: pulled over by a local police officer. Because most of
3:24
Speaker 1: the state troopers I've encountered over the course of my
3:27
Speaker 1: career as an death investigator or as a private citizen, unfortunately,
3:32
Speaker 1: there was something different about them because of their appearance,
3:35
Speaker 1: the way they carried themselves. It's a different breed of
3:38
Speaker 1: law enforcement. Troopers are the sentinels. They're kind of the
3:41
Speaker 1: sentinels that are there to watch care over what's happening
3:46
Speaker 1: in their particular jurisdiction at any moment in time. And Dave,
3:50
Speaker 1: I got to tell you, if you want to think
3:52
Speaker 1: about a moral compass, I think we've got a former
3:55
Speaker 1: trooper here whose compass was busted.
3:57
Speaker 2: What was he a former when this happened. Joe, Yeah,
4:01
Speaker 2: yeah he was.
4:02
Speaker 1: He well, here you go he actually he actually was,
4:09
Speaker 1: Yeah he was. And he had resigned or been forced
4:13
Speaker 1: to resign or fired back all the way back in
4:17
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen. And it was because of all things. Dig
4:23
Speaker 1: this falsification of a title I think on a motorcycle
4:29
Speaker 1: and listen, troopers are very well aware of title laws,
4:34
Speaker 1: all right, that's one of the things they do with
4:36
Speaker 1: you know that they deal with Let me see your
4:38
Speaker 1: license and registration that's the that's at the top of
4:41
Speaker 1: the list, all right. And so the fact that he
4:44
Speaker 1: got caught doing that, you really wonder and I wondered
4:47
Speaker 1: this a lot about law enforcement personnel that have gotten
4:49
Speaker 1: caught up in crimes. That's what he got caught for.
4:57
Speaker 1: What else could he have been in along the way?
5:01
Speaker 2: And we can spend days because think about it, he
5:04
Speaker 2: got caught with the one thing he knows for sure
5:07
Speaker 2: everything about all the things that we didn't catch. So
5:11
Speaker 2: moving on, he calls nine one one and has a
5:14
Speaker 2: story that his beloved wife, the love of his life,
5:18
Speaker 2: has committed suicide in the bathtub. When investigators get there,
5:22
Speaker 2: they make a couple of notes, Joe, I've never been
5:26
Speaker 2: to a crime scene like this. According to Howard, here
5:29
Speaker 2: he heard a thud. Two hours later, he goes to
5:35
Speaker 2: check on his wife and she's in the bathtub. She's
5:38
Speaker 2: cold to the touch, and he calls nine one one.
5:41
Speaker 2: When the detective gets there, and there you know, the
5:44
Speaker 2: detective shows up along with whoever was on call. The
5:47
Speaker 2: water in the bathtub is still warm, So immediately you've
5:51
Speaker 2: got a problem. You've got a very cold body and
5:53
Speaker 2: a very warm tub. Those two seem mutually exclusive to me.
5:59
Speaker 2: So that's where this investigation began. We're with red flags.
6:02
Speaker 2: Let me give you a couple of the red flags
6:04
Speaker 2: of the scene. Less blood than expected. And that's odd
6:08
Speaker 2: because in a bathtub with water, holy moly, a little
6:13
Speaker 2: cut in water makes it look like you were attacked
6:15
Speaker 2: by jaws. Just a little blood goes a long way
6:18
Speaker 2: in water. There was less blood than expected. There was
6:22
Speaker 2: glass found on the floor, clothes were turning in the dryer.
6:25
Speaker 2: Does somebody commit suicide when they have all these things
6:30
Speaker 2: going on? She had just decided to move into a
6:33
Speaker 2: new home. They were going through a divorce, she and
6:35
Speaker 2: her husband. She got her nails done earlier in the day.
6:38
Speaker 2: She was scheduling appointments to begin a body transformation, and
6:43
Speaker 2: she was excitedly telling friends about her new job. And
6:47
Speaker 2: by the way, romantically, she had moved on from her
6:51
Speaker 2: soon to be ex husband, and I already had a
6:53
Speaker 2: boyfriend who actually was treating her right. Apparently, those were
6:57
Speaker 2: all the things going along in Kenny's life at the time,
7:00
Speaker 2: when she's forty nine years old, getting ready to step
7:03
Speaker 2: out and start a new life. And that night the
7:06
Speaker 2: investigator was on scene for six hours Joe. And when
7:11
Speaker 2: Kendy's daughter came in, that would be Daniel Howard's stepdaughter,
7:16
Speaker 2: she immediately accused him of killing her. And the detective
7:20
Speaker 2: is listening to all of this, so that sets the
7:23
Speaker 2: stage for suicide or murder.
7:27
Speaker 1: I love what you said just a second ago, and
7:31
Speaker 1: this is why from an investigative standpoint, and I know
7:33
Speaker 1: that they're doing their job when you say this. They
7:36
Speaker 1: talked about the assessment of body temperature versus water temperature.
7:43
Speaker 1: And for those that don't know, when we conduct death
7:47
Speaker 1: investigations and they happen in a tub that is filled
7:50
Speaker 1: with water, we will actually take that data. We will measure,
7:54
Speaker 1: first off, the volume of the water if it's possible,
7:57
Speaker 1: but secondly we measure the temperature of the water well,
8:00
Speaker 1: and we'll take readings on that because, as you know,
8:02
Speaker 1: if it's like it's like anything else. If you're in
8:05
Speaker 1: a if you want to take a hot bath, the
8:07
Speaker 1: hot bath is not going to remain hot out into infinity.
8:12
Speaker 1: You have to heat the water up. The fact that
8:15
Speaker 1: when they got there, he actually it's very tactile, isn't it.
8:19
Speaker 1: He actually tested the water. He could appreciate. You don't
8:23
Speaker 1: have to have a specific number. I mean, all of
8:25
Speaker 1: us can differentiate between hot and cold. He said the
8:29
Speaker 1: water timp was warm, her body was cold. So going
8:35
Speaker 1: with that and knowing what we have always talked about
8:38
Speaker 1: on body bags, my friend, is that our working assumption,
8:42
Speaker 1: even in cases that appear to be quote unquote suicides,
8:46
Speaker 1: our working assumption is that everything, every single case is
8:50
Speaker 1: a homicide until proven otherwise. And in this particular case,
8:54
Speaker 1: I think that that is significant. And I got to
8:58
Speaker 1: tell you, Dave, the daughter, for my money, is not
9:01
Speaker 1: far off base because the one thing that she knew about,
9:04
Speaker 1: I think, was that there had been I'm sure hints
9:09
Speaker 1: at least of ongoing spousal abuse in this relationship between
9:15
Speaker 1: the decedent and her husband who she was divorcing. So
9:20
Speaker 1: and you know, families get a sense of all of this.
9:22
Speaker 1: And one of the things that you'll find out in
9:24
Speaker 1: suicide investigations in particular, and when people are really honest
9:28
Speaker 1: with you, they'll talk about what we refer to as
9:31
Speaker 1: the affect of the victim. They'll talk about if their
9:36
Speaker 1: affect was bright, if it was hopeful, you know, those
9:41
Speaker 1: sorts of things. Rarely do those outward appearances betray something else.
9:48
Speaker 1: You know if most of the time you will get
9:51
Speaker 1: people that have a kind of a stormy darkness to them,
9:54
Speaker 1: particularly if they've gone into a planning phase with taking
9:57
Speaker 1: their lives. But it seems to me, Dave, that everything
10:00
Speaker 1: runs contrary to that narrative. And she's literally, like you said,
10:04
Speaker 1: getting a fresh start.
10:05
Speaker 2: At forty nine years old. She was getting that divover. Okay,
10:10
Speaker 2: you know what, I think we all realized there are
10:12
Speaker 2: times in our life, there are markers in our life.
10:13
Speaker 2: And she had she'd had a relationship early in life,
10:17
Speaker 2: right after high school that gave her a child. Then
10:20
Speaker 2: she met Dan Howard and they got married and had
10:22
Speaker 2: a child, and I think she just had her fill
10:25
Speaker 2: of being boyd Yeah, I think she had her filly
10:28
Speaker 2: getting pushed around, Joe. I think she had spent most
10:31
Speaker 2: of her adult life trying to take care of her
10:32
Speaker 2: children and try to probably protect them from stepdad dad,
10:37
Speaker 2: and she seemed to have been taking the worse for
10:40
Speaker 2: the wearer. And now the kids were grown up and
10:43
Speaker 2: she had you know, that had two million dollars in
10:47
Speaker 2: where they were worth two million dollars and stuff, they
10:49
Speaker 2: had money and what have you in Land And I
10:52
Speaker 2: looked over what the defense claimed at trial. I looked
10:56
Speaker 2: over their clients and they're like, how can you twist
10:58
Speaker 2: and turn all of this to say, a woman that
11:01
Speaker 2: is taking care of herself and has a is trying
11:04
Speaker 2: to change the way she looks, You're losing weight, what
11:07
Speaker 2: have you. Don't we all do that as we take
11:09
Speaker 2: care of ourselves. That's part of that. That's not a
11:12
Speaker 2: body dysmorphia thing.
11:14
Speaker 1: No, it's not. And you know even that day in
11:17
Speaker 1: the immediate you know, you talked about the body transformation thing.
11:22
Speaker 1: I don't know what she was going to get done,
11:24
Speaker 1: as liposuction or one of these cold things that they do,
11:27
Speaker 1: or whatever the case might be. But here's something in
11:31
Speaker 1: the fine detail here. She'd even gotten her nails done.
11:35
Speaker 2: Doesn't make sense to me that somebody who's thinking about
11:37
Speaker 2: killing themselves cares about their fingernails.
11:40
Speaker 1: Well, the thing about it is, Dave, is that you,
11:46
Speaker 1: just like the detectives smelled a rat, they knew that
11:50
Speaker 1: something else was going on, and boy, what a tail
11:55
Speaker 1: unfolded before them. I've said this when I speak to
12:16
Speaker 1: people my classes, I tell them this. I do a
12:19
Speaker 1: whole section in my death investigation class at Jacksonville State
12:23
Speaker 1: on the investigation of suicides because they are unique. They
12:27
Speaker 1: are unique apart from every other kind of death investigation
12:32
Speaker 1: that you will handle as a death investigator. The nature
12:37
Speaker 1: of them is different. The way families behave are different.
12:42
Speaker 1: The life of the victim many times is guarded. You
12:49
Speaker 1: don't have a lot to work with, and unless it's
12:53
Speaker 1: an outlier like where they're trying to make some kind
12:56
Speaker 1: of public statement, a political statement, or you know, I
13:02
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe they're trying to draw attention themselves. These
13:05
Speaker 1: sens are done in private, so as an investigator, you're
13:09
Speaker 1: already behind the eight ball. That's why I always say
13:12
Speaker 1: I would if I was a death investigator, I'd much
13:15
Speaker 1: rather work a homicide than work a suicide because you're
13:18
Speaker 1: left wanting many times, and there's too many assumptions that
13:21
Speaker 1: some people make, and you're always kind of teetering on
13:24
Speaker 1: that line. You're really wondering, you know, in the wee
13:29
Speaker 1: hours of the morning, you go you get home, and
13:32
Speaker 1: you're thinking, did I do everything that I possibly could
13:36
Speaker 1: with this case? Did I did I look under every
13:38
Speaker 1: possible rock? And what you're looking for is some kind
13:42
Speaker 1: of rationale for why this person would have done it?
13:45
Speaker 2: In this case, why would they have committed suicide? And
13:47
Speaker 2: if you asked that, it's like you don't have any
13:49
Speaker 2: reasons for it. But yeah, you told me that the
13:53
Speaker 2: gun that was used in the alleged suicide from the
13:57
Speaker 2: Dan Howard school of troopering, that the gun was given
14:02
Speaker 2: to her to Kenny by her dad.
14:05
Speaker 1: Kendy Howard's father provided her with a weapon. And here's
14:11
Speaker 1: the kicker. He provided a weapon to her for protection
14:18
Speaker 1: from her then husband, Daniel Howard. So that gives you
14:24
Speaker 1: an insight and gives you an insight and what the
14:27
Speaker 1: family dynamic was like.
14:29
Speaker 2: Is it possible based on her injuries, Joe, maybe she
14:34
Speaker 2: got that gun out to defend herself and he took
14:38
Speaker 2: it from her. Because when I look at the injuries,
14:41
Speaker 2: you're gonna have to walk me through what she looked like.
14:45
Speaker 2: All we've been told so far is that when Dan
14:48
Speaker 2: Howard called nine to one one, it was to report
14:51
Speaker 2: that his wife had committed suicide in the bathroom by
14:54
Speaker 2: shooting herself in the head or mouth. And that's what
14:57
Speaker 2: we came on the scene. She's in the bathtub, she's
15:00
Speaker 2: got a gunshot wound to her face, and she's dead
15:03
Speaker 2: and we told you at the beginning, they recognize not
15:06
Speaker 2: enough blood in the water in the water form. Now
15:08
Speaker 2: that gun what other what injuries did she have? Because
15:12
Speaker 2: if it's a suicide, she's not going to have any
15:14
Speaker 2: injuries except for the one gunshot wound.
15:16
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, And here's one of the big tails that
15:19
Speaker 1: you get with. And let me explain kind of lay
15:22
Speaker 1: this out too. Forensically, there's a term that we use
15:25
Speaker 1: in forensic pathology and medical legal death investigation that is
15:28
Speaker 1: called intra oral gunshot wound ntra intra meaning within. Don't
15:36
Speaker 1: get it confused, and I did as a young man.
15:39
Speaker 1: I used to have a forensic pathologist that would correct
15:41
Speaker 1: me constantly, where I would always say inter oral, and
15:46
Speaker 1: inter means like intersection, you know, where you're coming together,
15:50
Speaker 1: two spaces meet. But intra means that the muzzle of
15:55
Speaker 1: the weapon is literally inside okay, inside of the mouth. Now,
16:00
Speaker 1: you see people in movies and whatnot that will take
16:04
Speaker 1: their life by placing, say a weapon beneath their chin.
16:07
Speaker 1: All right, I've had hundreds of those cases over the years.
16:11
Speaker 1: But you do get people that do an intra oral
16:16
Speaker 1: gunshot woman, which means that the muzzle of the weapon
16:20
Speaker 1: is placed inside of the mouth. Now, here's what you
16:25
Speaker 1: get when you get that. If you're using a semi
16:27
Speaker 1: automatic weapon, which means it's got a slide mechanism on
16:31
Speaker 1: the top, many times you will get shattered teeth or
16:35
Speaker 1: fracture teeth. And that's just the beginning. One of the
16:38
Speaker 1: reasons you get that is because what you don't see
16:42
Speaker 1: when the weapon initiates and fires, that slide, which is
16:47
Speaker 1: heavy metal, slides back, and as that action is sliding back,
16:52
Speaker 1: it will slide against the teeth and it literally fractures
16:56
Speaker 1: the teeth. You'll see teeth broken off, or you'll see
16:59
Speaker 1: them fracture. Not to mention what happens to what's referred
17:02
Speaker 1: to as the hard palette. If you'll take your tongue
17:05
Speaker 1: and put it on the roof of your mouth, that's
17:08
Speaker 1: the hard palate. You've got a little bit of tissue
17:11
Speaker 1: that's there separating, separating the interior of your mouth from
17:16
Speaker 1: that hard pallet. The hard pallette is in existence there
17:20
Speaker 1: that it's directly beneath the sinuses, okay, and it's very thin,
17:25
Speaker 1: very very thin, and it shatters most of the time
17:27
Speaker 1: what they came away with. And this is really fascinating
17:31
Speaker 1: about this case, and I think probably one of the
17:34
Speaker 1: things that really I think from a physical evidence standpoint,
17:38
Speaker 1: other than the absence of the blood and certainly the
17:41
Speaker 1: clothes and the dryer. And it wasn't just it was
17:44
Speaker 1: like the carpet you know that you find around the tub.
17:49
Speaker 1: This the trajectory of this round is going downward, Dave.
17:54
Speaker 1: It's so it's from above to below and from front
17:59
Speaker 1: to back. Okay. And when you think about that, most
18:06
Speaker 1: people that take their life with an intra or intra
18:10
Speaker 1: oral gunshot wound, the weapon just naturally is pitched upward,
18:15
Speaker 1: so it's going to go generally through the floor or
18:18
Speaker 1: the roof of the mouth and then into the brain. Okay,
18:22
Speaker 1: And you'll have all of this nasty fracturing that's going on.
18:25
Speaker 1: You'll have gas fractures, you'll get splitting of the skin.
18:28
Speaker 1: Many times, you'll get like these, the cheeks will actually
18:33
Speaker 1: bellow out. Sometimes I've seen that happen, but not in
18:37
Speaker 1: this case. You've got this kind of atypical gunshot wound
18:40
Speaker 1: where the weapon is pointed downward within the mouth, and
18:45
Speaker 1: so that leads to I think at least probably containment
18:49
Speaker 1: of any blood that may have been there bleeding from
18:54
Speaker 1: say the roof of the mouth. The brain in that
18:57
Speaker 1: area is so very vascular, tons of blood everywhere. But
19:03
Speaker 1: here's what I am thinking that Emmy saw when they
19:08
Speaker 1: got in there. And again the emme is a completely
19:11
Speaker 1: different story here, because that's kind of interesting. But when
19:14
Speaker 1: you track this wound in her mouth, if it's going
19:17
Speaker 1: from above to below, that is atypical for an intra
19:22
Speaker 1: oral gunshot wound. And when we track it, it's a
19:26
Speaker 1: downward trajectory, So that means that when she would have
19:28
Speaker 1: fired it, she would have had to have flipped the
19:31
Speaker 1: weapon up, probably actuated the trigger with her thumb. More
19:36
Speaker 1: than likely. It's not something where she could invert the weapon.
19:39
Speaker 1: I suppose she could, but highly unlikely invert the weapon
19:43
Speaker 1: like you would if it's going up. It's a completely
19:46
Speaker 1: different position. And how do you get into that position?
19:51
Speaker 1: How do you how would you go about initiating this
19:57
Speaker 1: firing sequence and not leave any more evidence than you
20:03
Speaker 1: had when they got into that wound track, Dave, I
20:06
Speaker 1: suspect that they didn't find as much hemorrhage as you
20:10
Speaker 1: might think that you would have. And what do we know, well,
20:13
Speaker 1: if if you're if your blood is not pumping, You're
20:19
Speaker 1: not going to have hemorrhage, and so all those interstitial
20:23
Speaker 1: tissues along the way are actually absent a significant amount
20:28
Speaker 1: of hemorrhage. So the answer, of course, must lie somewhere else. Dave,
20:51
Speaker 1: I was sitting here earlier, and I was, you know,
20:55
Speaker 1: reading up on Kendy Howard's death, sitting there, and I
20:59
Speaker 1: was thinking, you know, got the smacks of another case
21:01
Speaker 1: that I've been involved in, and I had an aha moment. God,
21:05
Speaker 1: I hate mentioning this woman's name, but here we go.
21:09
Speaker 1: Forgive me, Dave and everybody else. Jody Arius. I I
21:16
Speaker 1: got to thinking about and let's don't say Jody Aria
21:21
Speaker 1: so much. She's the perpetrator, but let's let's think about
21:26
Speaker 1: her boyfriend, Travis Alexander. You know, one of the things
21:30
Speaker 1: in that case that really stood out, a lot of
21:33
Speaker 1: it had to do with hemorrhage in that case when
21:35
Speaker 1: they were trying to assess his injuries. You know, he's
21:38
Speaker 1: eventually found, you know, kind of tossed into the shower
21:42
Speaker 1: by her, which she was convicted of. One of the
21:45
Speaker 1: things that you saw when and we reenacted this at CNN.
21:50
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, we even mocked up the scene.
21:52
Speaker 1: He had blood that was deposited on the laboratory sink
21:56
Speaker 1: in there, and it was fine. As for blood that
21:58
Speaker 1: he had coughed up, that's because she nicked you know,
22:01
Speaker 1: airway or his lung or whatever the case might be.
22:03
Speaker 1: She stabbed him multiple times, as everybody knows, ad nauseum,
22:08
Speaker 1: but you know, as he They believe he crawled down
22:11
Speaker 1: the hallway away from where the initial attack took place
22:16
Speaker 1: in the bathroom. One of the interesting little sides about
22:20
Speaker 1: that case that not a lot of people talk about,
22:22
Speaker 1: but I always sound fascinating was that she had actually
22:25
Speaker 1: popped him in the head with a smaller caliber weapon.
22:29
Speaker 1: And if you'll place your your left index finger, I
22:33
Speaker 1: think it was and I might get this wrong above
22:35
Speaker 1: the left eye, like superior to the left eye. That
22:39
Speaker 1: round actually tracked from above to below and from left
22:44
Speaker 1: to right. I might have my directions mixed up, but
22:46
Speaker 1: I think that's actually what's important here, though, is that
22:49
Speaker 1: she was in a dominant position over him and when
22:53
Speaker 1: she fired that round. And I remember distinctly watching that
22:56
Speaker 1: Emmy on the stand talking about this case. He said
23:00
Speaker 1: there was absolutely no hemorrhage in the wound. Track and
23:03
Speaker 1: you're talking about going through arguably the most vascular area
23:06
Speaker 1: of the body. So what that tells me is that
23:09
Speaker 1: she shot him after he was dead. And to bring
23:15
Speaker 1: this back around to the Kendy Howard case, it would
23:19
Speaker 1: seem as though that she had already met her end.
23:23
Speaker 1: They concluded she had already met her end before that
23:26
Speaker 1: weapon was ever placed in her mouth. And given the
23:30
Speaker 1: odd trajectory where we're talking about going from above to below,
23:34
Speaker 1: you've got this weird kind of downward angle. You know,
23:37
Speaker 1: You've got these people, these scientists that are scratching their
23:40
Speaker 1: heads over it, and they're wondering, you know, well, how
23:42
Speaker 1: does this actually happen? And of course they kind of
23:45
Speaker 1: felt as though that he was being deceptive here because
23:49
Speaker 1: it's something just didn't marry up. And I can also
23:52
Speaker 1: tell you something else. They found over thirty bruises on
23:55
Speaker 1: her body.
23:55
Speaker 2: Day thirty bruises on her body, and she's dead before
24:00
Speaker 2: she's shot in the mouth. That's not suicide. I don't
24:03
Speaker 2: know how. I guess I'm just a lame and I'm
24:06
Speaker 2: you know, read a lot of stories about murder, cover
24:08
Speaker 2: a lot of them, study a lot in research, and
24:11
Speaker 2: yet how do you ignore all of the wounds on
24:15
Speaker 2: her body before she ends up dead in the bathtub
24:20
Speaker 2: of warm water with her body being cold.
24:22
Speaker 1: One of the really fascinating elements to this that has
24:26
Speaker 1: been brought out is the fact and this goes back
24:28
Speaker 1: to him having been a trooper in law enforcement. When
24:32
Speaker 1: you're going through the academy and you're going through ongoing training,
24:36
Speaker 1: they talk about how you can effectively restrain somebody, and
24:40
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things that the police have
24:43
Speaker 1: gotten away from. And as a matter of fact, one
24:45
Speaker 1: of the experts that testified in the George Floyd case
24:48
Speaker 1: testified in this particular trial, and this had to do
24:53
Speaker 1: with police restraint moves and all this sort of thing.
24:56
Speaker 1: When you begin to try to assess if there's any
24:59
Speaker 1: kind of asphix ye old death, the first place we
25:01
Speaker 1: go to are the eyes. We always check the eyes
25:04
Speaker 1: to see if there are petikii, which are the little
25:08
Speaker 1: blood vessels that build up all of that pressure from
25:11
Speaker 1: the blood backing up in the skull essentially and they
25:15
Speaker 1: wind up bursting. Well, there was no evidence of petikia here,
25:19
Speaker 1: but what they believe is that there was possibility he
25:24
Speaker 1: could have used a choke hold on her where he
25:28
Speaker 1: applies pressure from the rear and gets her like in
25:32
Speaker 1: the crook of his arm. He's not actually physically choking
25:35
Speaker 1: her out with his hands, where you're creating all of
25:39
Speaker 1: this pressure that's backing up in her head. He's actually
25:42
Speaker 1: doing it so that if he has her in the
25:45
Speaker 1: crook of her of his arm, he can diminish her
25:48
Speaker 1: ability to uptake oxygen to the point where it's almost
25:52
Speaker 1: like a sleeper hole. And he continues on beyond that
25:56
Speaker 1: fatal marker where she dies and succumbs. Maybe he suspected
26:00
Speaker 1: that they could pick up on that from what we understand, though,
26:04
Speaker 1: there's no what we refer to. If people will find
26:07
Speaker 1: your trachea, which is, you know, kind of that rigid
26:10
Speaker 1: area in the center of your throat. There alongside the trachea,
26:13
Speaker 1: there are what are referred to as strap muscles, and
26:17
Speaker 1: in asphyxial deaths, many times, particularly if you're using a
26:19
Speaker 1: sea clamp or you're throttling somebody, a lot of pressure
26:23
Speaker 1: is applied. You certainly see it with literature strangulations. You'll
26:26
Speaker 1: the strap muscles will actually have hemorrhage in them too.
26:29
Speaker 1: I don't think that they're seeing that here so it
26:31
Speaker 1: would have to have been a bit more subtle. Her
26:34
Speaker 1: system is clean as far as narcotics go as well.
26:38
Speaker 1: And I know that some people are probably thinking, well,
26:41
Speaker 1: did they do a GSR on her? A gunshot residue
26:45
Speaker 1: on her? Well, guess what, her body's been placed in
26:48
Speaker 1: the bathtub. So that complicates the matter here. Somebody that
26:52
Speaker 1: had worked in law enforcement would have been aware of that.
26:55
Speaker 1: And you know, you still can't get past the laundry
26:59
Speaker 1: that and I find this fascinating. One of the detectives
27:03
Speaker 1: had gone down and they have like a digital machine,
27:07
Speaker 1: and he was able to determine how long and when
27:11
Speaker 1: this thing had been set to be turned on, which
27:13
Speaker 1: I found absolutely fascinating. I've never heard of law enforcement
27:17
Speaker 1: actually doing this and could really come up with a
27:20
Speaker 1: specific time. And I think that that was rather damning evidence.
27:23
Speaker 1: Who takes time to wash clothes or to do any
27:27
Speaker 1: of this stuff. You know, if you're going to commit suicide,
27:29
Speaker 1: like you said, that gives you an idea that you're
27:31
Speaker 1: moving on with life. You know, I got to clean
27:33
Speaker 1: my clothes, I gotta do all that. No, and so
27:36
Speaker 1: the bathroom is absent of all those you know, little
27:39
Speaker 1: accouterment that you would have on the floor, say a
27:42
Speaker 1: a bathtub rug or I don't know, maybe a seat
27:47
Speaker 1: cover before the toilet or whatever the case might be.
27:49
Speaker 2: If you were putting a body into a bathtub with
27:52
Speaker 2: water in it and you maybe lost a little footing
27:55
Speaker 2: here or there, and you knocked a bunch of water
27:56
Speaker 2: on the floor and got those all wet, might take
28:00
Speaker 2: them and throw them in the dryer, because my goodness,
28:03
Speaker 2: they wouldn't.
28:03
Speaker 1: Want to sour. Yeah, yeah, you don't. You don't want
28:06
Speaker 1: it to sour. You're going to be doing that well
28:09
Speaker 1: if you have, if you have an awareness of trace evidence,
28:11
Speaker 1: it's also a good place to put it. Maybe wash
28:13
Speaker 1: it and maybe you drive.
28:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just thinking that he got them all wet
28:16
Speaker 2: when he was putting her in the tub, and he thought, well,
28:18
Speaker 2: this isn't going to make any sense to the investigators.
28:20
Speaker 2: Now I got to dry this thing, you know.
28:22
Speaker 1: But yeah, and that does that's a conundrum for him.
28:25
Speaker 1: You know. You get in this environment and maybe you're
28:28
Speaker 1: trying to think three and four moves ahead and.
28:31
Speaker 2: You just outthink yourself.
28:33
Speaker 1: Yeah.
28:33
Speaker 2: Really, I think that really bothered me on this Joe
28:35
Speaker 2: and I. The number of bruises on her chest. Because
28:39
Speaker 2: when I was looking through the autopsy report provided by
28:41
Speaker 2: doctor John Howard, we had mentioned that he had been
28:44
Speaker 2: through an investigation earlier in his career about a number
28:48
Speaker 2: of cases where there were disputed manner of death rulings
28:53
Speaker 2: and tea. Yeah, and in one of those cases a
28:58
Speaker 2: woman Actually kidding when I tell you this, This was
29:01
Speaker 2: in the investigation that happened in twenty twelve. A woman
29:06
Speaker 2: was cut in half with defensive wounds and he ruled
29:11
Speaker 2: her death undetermined. Yeah, that led to a fight between
29:16
Speaker 2: you know, him and everybody that wants the truth. It's amazing.
29:21
Speaker 2: But he didn't note the bruising on her chest. And
29:27
Speaker 2: yet we have a report that she had over thirty
29:30
Speaker 2: bruises on her chest. She was beaten from head to toe,
29:34
Speaker 2: and we're not seeing that in doctor Howard's report.
29:38
Speaker 1: Right, How could you? And you know, the thing about bruising,
29:41
Speaker 1: we've talked about this, particularly with child abuse cases as well.
29:44
Speaker 1: One of the things that we look to do. We
29:46
Speaker 1: longed to have this data and that's the aging of
29:49
Speaker 1: the bruises. How long has this been going on because
29:51
Speaker 1: all of us, you know, you get the greenish colored bruise,
29:54
Speaker 1: you get the yellow color bruise, you get the dark bruies,
29:56
Speaker 1: you get the stuff that's really red, which is the
29:59
Speaker 1: most recent kind. And you can actually establish a timeline,
30:04
Speaker 1: you know if if what we believe.
30:06
Speaker 2: They don't change after you're dead, right, no.
30:08
Speaker 1: They don't. They're not going to what's referred to in
30:12
Speaker 1: medical community. It's not a resolving injury. So it's kind
30:16
Speaker 1: of it's frozen in time, if you will. And that's
30:19
Speaker 1: that's a beauty thing here. And here's something else that
30:22
Speaker 1: people might not realize, even after a body has been embalmed,
30:26
Speaker 1: if there was an anti mortem bruise, because anti mortem
30:32
Speaker 1: is the only way you're going to get a bruise.
30:34
Speaker 1: You know, you don't the dead don't bruise, did you know?
30:37
Speaker 1: We can go back and appreciate those bruises even after embalming,
30:41
Speaker 1: because you know that that area it's like post ordum lividity.
30:45
Speaker 1: Once those vessels are broken, it goes out into the
30:47
Speaker 1: interstitial tissue, all the fatty tissue around there. There's no
30:50
Speaker 1: way way to get that out. That's just imagine the
30:54
Speaker 1: worst stain you've ever seen on a piece of carpet
30:56
Speaker 1: and you can't get the stain out. Take that and
30:59
Speaker 1: think about the the interstetional tissue, which is kind of
31:02
Speaker 1: the fatty area and the fashion and all that stuff
31:05
Speaker 1: that's outside of the vessels. Of vessels break, you know,
31:09
Speaker 1: you think about being impacted, you get a bruise, Well
31:13
Speaker 1: it only it can only resolve on itself, and if
31:15
Speaker 1: it freezes in that moment, there's no more metabolism. It's
31:19
Speaker 1: not going to go away. So you can see these
31:22
Speaker 1: and we can actually age these. And apparently there is
31:25
Speaker 1: a history of him being very aggressive with her over
31:29
Speaker 1: the years and making her life a living hell, and
31:33
Speaker 1: that gives you some insight and how that might be
31:37
Speaker 1: missed by a forensic pathologist. I have no idea, because
31:40
Speaker 1: it seems as though that that's a salient bit of information.
31:43
Speaker 2: What was the original Why did he rule undetermined?
31:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, he left this undetermined, And you know, we have
31:50
Speaker 1: five manners, and undetermined generally means that you don't have
31:56
Speaker 1: enough substance data to move board where you're going to
32:01
Speaker 1: make that ruling. Now, you can make a ruling on
32:04
Speaker 1: the cause of death, say intra oral gunshot wound, all right,
32:09
Speaker 1: that is a cause of death. It's going to and
32:11
Speaker 1: then there's little things that come along that come along
32:14
Speaker 1: with that. So you're talking about the hemorrhage and all
32:16
Speaker 1: the other stuff that as a result of that initial
32:19
Speaker 1: firing sequence brings about that other trauma that leads to
32:23
Speaker 1: your death. You can label it as a cause of death.
32:27
Speaker 1: But many times, and I've seen this happen where you'll
32:31
Speaker 1: have something that is a violent death and they won't
32:34
Speaker 1: classify it as either homicide, suicide, or or anything else
32:40
Speaker 1: even accidental. That this rule is undetermined, and it kind
32:43
Speaker 1: of freezes that moment. Tom And given the history that
32:49
Speaker 1: you know, he had been called on the carpet, you
32:51
Speaker 1: know eighteen times before on eighteen different cases. I won't
32:55
Speaker 1: say he was called on the carpet eighteen different times,
32:57
Speaker 1: but he this investigation that was conducted the sighted eighteen
33:01
Speaker 1: cases of where things were left undetermined. You know, that
33:05
Speaker 1: can be problematic for a prosecutor moving forward. You know,
33:08
Speaker 1: you begin to think about do I want to get
33:10
Speaker 1: a second opinion at this point in time. And you know, fortunately,
33:14
Speaker 1: you know, they went back and had other people review
33:16
Speaker 1: this case and their conclusions were were that this gunshot
33:22
Speaker 1: wound that Kenny sustained was actually a post mortem gunshot
33:27
Speaker 1: wound and that, as it turns out, the prosecutor felt
33:30
Speaker 1: comfortable enough to move forward and think, you know, yeah,
33:34
Speaker 1: he killed her and then he shot her afterwards to
33:37
Speaker 1: make it look like something else.
33:39
Speaker 2: That goes beyond the bail Joe. One thing happened during trial.
33:43
Speaker 2: As we mentioned, it's already been adjudicated before it had
33:46
Speaker 2: been decided out on bail. Dan Howard had been on
33:50
Speaker 2: bail since he had been put in jail and bailed
33:52
Speaker 2: out until trial, right and during the trial they caught
33:56
Speaker 2: him at the airport trying to leave. He claims he
33:58
Speaker 2: was just returning a rental car with the end of
34:00
Speaker 2: his But when you're on trial for murder and things
34:03
Speaker 2: aren't looking like they're going your way and the police
34:05
Speaker 2: get you at the airport, they're going to revoke your bail,
34:08
Speaker 2: which is what they did to keep him here.
34:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, you talk about you know, you've got a you've
34:14
Speaker 1: got a prosecutor that's looking at a case like this
34:19
Speaker 1: and they're thinking, you know, they're in Quarterlane, Idaho. They're
34:24
Speaker 1: thinking that this guy is definitely a flight risk. You know,
34:27
Speaker 1: he could he could wind up anywhere, and they don't
34:30
Speaker 1: want to lose this because this case in and of
34:33
Speaker 1: itself is so striking. And you've got a guy that's
34:36
Speaker 1: a former public official that is accused of perpetrating this thing.
34:41
Speaker 1: They want to make sure that they can keep a
34:43
Speaker 1: close eye on him as they're moving forward, you know,
34:46
Speaker 1: and think about it is in the state's trial they
34:50
Speaker 1: employed actually trauma, a police surgeon is what they're referred
34:54
Speaker 1: to as that talked about these various grips that the
34:57
Speaker 1: police could do. They also brought in blood expert Dave
35:01
Speaker 1: and brought in what a facsimile of blood and they
35:04
Speaker 1: demonstrated how much blood should have been present and it's
35:09
Speaker 1: a fascinating study in this thing. They actually brought in
35:12
Speaker 1: an IV bag into court with a big area on
35:18
Speaker 1: the floor where they were draining that volume of blood.
35:21
Speaker 1: And that's a pain of blood essentially, And they're draining
35:24
Speaker 1: this on the floor and you can appreciate the size,
35:28
Speaker 1: the size that just a pint creates with a intra
35:33
Speaker 1: oral gunshot wound, you're talking way more than a pint.
35:37
Speaker 1: You're talking about blood everywhere. And the question would be
35:41
Speaker 1: and would have to remain in the minds of the jurors,
35:43
Speaker 1: you know, well, if we know this being demonstrated before us.
35:48
Speaker 1: Where did all that blood go? And why isn't there
35:51
Speaker 1: any evidence of it? It's like I always say, Dave,
35:54
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes sometimes the absence of evidence is just
35:59
Speaker 1: as critical as the presence of evidence. I'm Joseph Scott
36:05
Speaker 1: Morgan and this is Body Backs
36:11
Speaker 2: M