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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: A Baffling Ligature -Joysee Cartagena’s Death · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:08
Speaker 1: Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. When it comes to
0:19
Speaker 1: death investigation, there's things along the journey of an investigator
0:24
Speaker 1: that you encounter as just a person that is put
0:29
Speaker 1: into this crazy world where you're bearing witness to the
0:33
Speaker 1: end of life, and those elements that you observe in there,
0:37
Speaker 1: you know, go back to a statement I'm fond of making,
0:40
Speaker 1: and that is observing the abnormal and the context of
0:44
Speaker 1: the normal. And this applies, I think also to items
0:47
Speaker 1: that we use daily for whatever reason. You know. It
0:50
Speaker 1: can be everything from no paper that maybe you're familiar
0:54
Speaker 1: with that you see that you have possession of in
0:57
Speaker 1: your own home that people have to scratch out a note,
1:01
Speaker 1: or it could be a vehicle that you encounter that
1:05
Speaker 1: maybe you have a friend that has one just like it,
1:08
Speaker 1: but yet it's involved in a death. Today we're going
1:12
Speaker 1: to talk about something that's rather innocuous. It's a little
1:16
Speaker 1: plastic strip that we're all familiar with now, and I
1:19
Speaker 1: guess a few years ago we weren't necessarily so aware
1:24
Speaker 1: of them. But I've got a bunch of them around
1:27
Speaker 1: the house. I use them for all manner of things.
1:29
Speaker 1: It's zip ties, little bits of plastic with teeth that
1:33
Speaker 1: you can use to bind and hold things in place.
1:37
Speaker 1: It plays a crucial role in an ongoing death investigation
1:41
Speaker 1: in Sandford, Florida. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is bodybags, Dave.
1:51
Speaker 1: I've got zip tiz ling all around the house. Some
1:53
Speaker 1: people call them a cable ties. And my wife loves
1:57
Speaker 1: to travel, so anytime we're loading up the car, I always,
2:02
Speaker 1: you know, feel the need to obsess over making sure
2:05
Speaker 1: that things are secure and that they're in place. And
2:08
Speaker 1: I've been known to use a zip tie to hold
2:10
Speaker 1: certain things down on the luggage track on top of
2:13
Speaker 1: my truck. Say truck and I got an old SUV
2:15
Speaker 1: and you know, just hold it in place. I'm terrified.
2:17
Speaker 1: I'm terrified of things flying off going down the middle
2:20
Speaker 1: of the road, say. And most of the time, I
2:23
Speaker 1: view a zip tie as something that is essentially it
2:28
Speaker 1: has this level of security to it that not many
2:31
Speaker 1: other things have out there. That is immediate. It's not
2:34
Speaker 1: like tying a rope or something like that. Once you
2:36
Speaker 1: zip this baby, it's there in place.
2:38
Speaker 2: It's easy to use. They're cheap, and it's like in
2:42
Speaker 2: your toolbox you have duct tape and zip ties. Those
2:46
Speaker 2: are the two guaranteed things you're going to have in there.
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Speaker 2: If you need to just be handy.
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Speaker 1: You seem like a handy kind of guy. I am not,
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Speaker 1: and so zip ties for me are like lowest common denominator.
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Speaker 1: Even though I have a boat, I'm not good at
3:00
Speaker 1: time not so that's kind of scary. But with zip ties,
3:03
Speaker 1: I know that if I put it in place, pretty
3:06
Speaker 1: much unless something really catastrophic happens, that thing's going to
3:09
Speaker 1: stay in place.
3:10
Speaker 2: And that's why I use them too, same reason. Whether
3:12
Speaker 2: I'm dealing with electronic wires or big stuff out by
3:16
Speaker 2: the pool, doesn't matter. There's a zip tie for everyone.
3:19
Speaker 2: And today we're actually going to be able to delve
3:23
Speaker 2: into this a little bit because here's the scenario we have.
3:27
Speaker 2: We have a couple. Joel bowsa fifty ish his girlfriend
3:31
Speaker 2: a Joycey Cartagena. They have been together since about twenty sixteen.
3:38
Speaker 2: That's when the pictures and things and the stories start
3:40
Speaker 2: showing up on Joycey's Facebook page. Anyway, So starting in
3:44
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, this couple dated and ended up moving in together.
3:50
Speaker 2: They were living together and had been again for a
3:52
Speaker 2: couple of years. Joycey was one of those people that
3:56
Speaker 2: everybody says, beautiful inside out, smart, always consumed with the
4:01
Speaker 2: needs of others. That's the one thing that kept being
4:05
Speaker 2: repeated by people who were friends with and knew or
4:08
Speaker 2: worked with Joycey Cartagena was how she always looked at
4:12
Speaker 2: other people first. Meanwhile, her boyfriend, Joel Bouza, actually pretty
4:18
Speaker 2: much the opposite of that. He didn't really have much
4:20
Speaker 2: of a career. He was a handyman, worked as an
4:23
Speaker 2: inconsistent working handyman. They'd been living together. Joel was pretty
4:27
Speaker 2: much dependent financially on Joycey to provide the day in
4:31
Speaker 2: and out. And by the way, joyce Cartgana spent years
4:33
Speaker 2: working for their school board and the worked as the
4:37
Speaker 2: secretary of one of the schools there in Central Florida,
4:39
Speaker 2: and had for a number of years before she began
4:43
Speaker 2: working for Jet Blue, working in customer service. With jet Blue,
4:46
Speaker 2: she could actually log on to her computer and everything
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Speaker 2: right from the house in a virtual setting, and that
4:53
Speaker 2: worked out really well for her. And again, she was
4:55
Speaker 2: so well thought of and so consistent in her performance
4:59
Speaker 2: show that when she didn't log in for her day,
5:03
Speaker 2: it wasn't something they just blew off. At work. When
5:06
Speaker 2: Joyce Krktahana didn't log in to do her job, people
5:10
Speaker 2: immediately knew there was a problem and they did not
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Speaker 2: wait very long. Matter of fact, after trying all the
5:16
Speaker 2: normal ways of getting up with her and getting no reply,
5:19
Speaker 2: they actually they being her co workers, they call the
5:21
Speaker 2: police and said, hey, we had a coworkerho didn't show up.
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Speaker 2: She always does, would you do well being checked on her.
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Speaker 1: One of the things that we do as death investigators
5:31
Speaker 1: is that you have to go back and check your timeline.
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Speaker 1: And I'm always kind of preaching about postmortum interval where
5:38
Speaker 1: we measure changes after death, but more importantly, you can
5:42
Speaker 1: have that data. However, if you don't have an additional
5:45
Speaker 1: data set which goes to where they were expected to be,
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Speaker 1: you don't have anything really a baseline to compare it
5:52
Speaker 1: to when they were last seen and when they are
5:54
Speaker 1: expected to be at a location. And it's important to
5:58
Speaker 1: try to understand context was when were they supposed to
6:02
Speaker 1: show up at a prescribed time or go online at
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Speaker 1: a prescribed time? And the world that we live in now,
6:08
Speaker 1: particularly in this era of COVID and lockdowns and post
6:13
Speaker 1: COVID and kind of the world that we in dwell.
6:15
Speaker 1: Now people have gotten used to this remote working environment.
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Speaker 1: People know when you go live on air, I say
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Speaker 1: on air, I'm using in our context, but when you
6:24
Speaker 1: go live on a system that you're supposed to be
6:26
Speaker 1: working on, and certainly with a system like Jed Blue.
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Speaker 2: Right, well, they're going to log in and see who's working.
6:32
Speaker 2: And that's why I bothered him. So it was here's
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Speaker 2: a little confusion for me, Joe, And it's not that
6:37
Speaker 2: big of a deal, but again going back to the timeline,
6:40
Speaker 2: it does mess with me a little bit. So we
6:42
Speaker 2: know that her co workers actually called to have a
6:45
Speaker 2: well being checked done, and we know that her boyfriend,
6:48
Speaker 2: Joel Boutza arrived at the home at about two ten,
6:53
Speaker 2: and that's when all of this begins for us. The
6:56
Speaker 2: clock started ticking about two ten in the afternoon. Police
6:59
Speaker 2: arrived and they are told by Joel Bouza that when
7:03
Speaker 2: he got home that afternoon from his handyman job, he
7:07
Speaker 2: found Joycey Cartahena laying on the floor, face down, a
7:11
Speaker 2: zip tie around her neck and he immediately Joel Boutze
7:17
Speaker 2: starts telling police, oh, it was a suicide. She took
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Speaker 2: her own life from the very beginning from the very
7:22
Speaker 2: first minutes he is telling them it's a suicide. Joe,
7:27
Speaker 2: as a death investigator, when you come to this meeting
7:30
Speaker 2: of the minds, I know that the police are first
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Speaker 2: on hand. Well, when you find a body that is
7:36
Speaker 2: obviously dead and you know it's that the person is
7:39
Speaker 2: no longer here, what does the first call police make.
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Speaker 1: Well, certainly when they find somebody in these conditions like this,
7:48
Speaker 1: because this would be quite striking when they roll up
7:50
Speaker 1: on the scene and they see this woman in this state,
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Speaker 1: every death that is that doesn't have some kind of
8:00
Speaker 1: pre existing natural ideology, you're going to roll a detective
8:06
Speaker 1: out there more than likely. And I have to remind
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Speaker 1: people this case is taking place in Sanford, Florida. And
8:11
Speaker 1: I don't know if you recall this, but David, this
8:14
Speaker 1: is you know, associated with that town is actually associated
8:17
Speaker 1: with one of the most infamous cases probably in the
8:19
Speaker 1: last twenty years, and that's Trayvon Martin case. It's one
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Speaker 1: of those places where we know that they have a
8:25
Speaker 1: detective bureau, and so the detectives are going to roll
8:28
Speaker 1: out there. It's not just going to be the bee
8:30
Speaker 1: cop that's there. They'll probably call for crime scene text
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Speaker 1: as well to take photographs, because that's going to be essential.
8:37
Speaker 1: You want to freeze this moment in time, because this
8:40
Speaker 1: is an atypical case. Certainly, if you've got someone who
8:45
Speaker 1: has allegedly taken their own life, and you've got somebody
8:48
Speaker 1: an intimate there someone this bowsa fellow who is stating
8:53
Speaker 1: he's lived with her now for a number of years,
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Speaker 1: so they have a very intimate relationship. He exists in
8:59
Speaker 1: this domestic environment with her. He would have an awareness,
9:03
Speaker 1: Whitney Dave if she's got some kind of suicidal idiation
9:06
Speaker 1: or anything like that. But it's super bizarre.
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Speaker 2: But everybody that knewer, everybody that worked with her, the
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Speaker 2: suicide last thing on their mind, and a couple other
9:16
Speaker 2: things come into play, and it's amazing to me how
9:20
Speaker 2: police work through things. I know that there's no statute
9:24
Speaker 2: of limitations on murder, and so when you have a
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Speaker 2: person who is dead under I guess the suspicious circumstances
9:31
Speaker 2: would be the proper term. Because she's found alone in
9:35
Speaker 2: her house, face down on the floor. Is zip time.
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Speaker 2: They've got the boyfriend saying she committed suicide, and they're
9:41
Speaker 2: going to make a few calls say, well, does anybody
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Speaker 2: else close to her think suicide is a real thing?
9:45
Speaker 2: Because in reality, they got to figure out more of
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Speaker 2: what's going on here, and what they first see on
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Speaker 2: her body besides the zip tie around her neck, well,
9:55
Speaker 2: they see like carpet burns and drag marks. They can
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Speaker 2: tell that she was involved in some kind of a
10:01
Speaker 2: scuffle before this happened. And so I'm thinking in my head,
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Speaker 2: Joe immediately jumping to conclusions because I'm an idiot, she
10:10
Speaker 2: got into a fight and he killed her, and now
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Speaker 2: he's covering it and make it look like a suicide.
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Speaker 2: But the other side of me said, okay, wait a minute,
10:17
Speaker 2: what if they did have an argument, what if they
10:20
Speaker 2: did get a little rough and tumble. But old handyman
10:22
Speaker 2: Joel Boutza, he says, I'm out, I'm going to go
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Speaker 2: to work. I got a handyman job to do. You
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Speaker 2: do whatever. And she sits there and she is a
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Speaker 2: little bit bruised, a little bit, some scrapes and decides
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Speaker 2: I just can't take it anymore. I'm going to have
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Speaker 2: to check out. That's a realistic possibility, isn't it.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. And I've had cases like that where people have
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Speaker 1: taken their own life in the wake of a domestic dispute,
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Speaker 1: and it's almost like I'm going to show you kind
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Speaker 1: of event, and of course it ends up like all suicides,
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Speaker 1: very tragically.
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Speaker 2: In this case. I'm just curious, when you have this
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Speaker 2: scenario and you're the forensic person coming to the scene,
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Speaker 2: are you going to listen to what the boyfriend says?
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Speaker 2: Are you just going to kind of block it out
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Speaker 2: and just go, here's the body. I've got to figure
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Speaker 2: out everything went on without having all this other distraction.
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Speaker 1: In my ear, it's important as the forensics person at
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Speaker 1: the scene that you look at the environment and let
11:18
Speaker 1: the environment, as new age as it sounds, speak to
11:21
Speaker 1: you without any static Doctor Tom Degucci, who was the
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Speaker 1: chief hemme in la many many years ago, stated early
11:29
Speaker 1: on in his career that he learned to look at
11:31
Speaker 1: the ceiling when he walked into a crime scene because
11:34
Speaker 1: he didn't want to be distracted at other things. And
11:36
Speaker 1: he would work his way down from the ceiling until
11:38
Speaker 1: he got to the body, and he wouldn't talk to
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Speaker 1: anybody else. He wouldn't talk to cops, he wouldn't talk
11:43
Speaker 1: to other principles that were involved in it until after
11:45
Speaker 1: he had done his initial assessment, and in a case
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Speaker 1: like JOYSS, it's important to understand that the body is
11:54
Speaker 1: probably going to tell you more than any witness at
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Speaker 1: the scene. I've seen people choke to death either manually,
12:21
Speaker 1: that is, with bare hands. I've seen people that have
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Speaker 1: been choked with items which involves most of the time
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Speaker 1: a ligature, which is a fine rope or something like
12:33
Speaker 1: this that can incclude the airway or certainly block blood
12:38
Speaker 1: flow to the brain. I don't know that I have
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Speaker 1: ever encountered a case involving a zip tie, and that's
12:44
Speaker 1: what really stuck out to me in this particular case,
12:48
Speaker 1: because you have an individual that is stating that this
12:52
Speaker 1: is a self inflicted event, and it would take a
12:55
Speaker 1: tremendous day amount of willpower in order to licked this
13:00
Speaker 1: upon yourself, in order to take your own life. They
13:02
Speaker 1: are certainly far more simpler and less uncomfortable ways to
13:07
Speaker 1: do this.
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Speaker 2: I would think a zip tie in and of itself
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Speaker 2: would be a fairly painful way to go because of
13:14
Speaker 2: the sharp you know, most zip ties, they're kind of sharp,
13:17
Speaker 2: you know, the plastic on the ends, and that beyond
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Speaker 2: the fact that you're choking the life out of yourself.
13:22
Speaker 2: If that's what's happening, you've got a lot of pain
13:24
Speaker 2: going on from that side that you wouldn't have if,
13:27
Speaker 2: say you used a belt or something along those lines.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, And it is difficult because the way the zip
13:32
Speaker 1: tie is actually designed is that it has little teeth.
13:37
Speaker 1: Imagine like almost as if this is an old fashioned jack,
13:41
Speaker 1: which I don't know if people nowadays can identify with
13:43
Speaker 1: that would go up. It's kind of graduated like this,
13:46
Speaker 1: and the higher you go, the more tension you get,
13:48
Speaker 1: and it increases elevation with a car in that sense.
13:52
Speaker 1: But with this you're actually constricting. It's working the opposite,
13:57
Speaker 1: but it's got teeth that you can't back up. The
13:59
Speaker 1: only to remove a zip tie, if you've never used one,
14:02
Speaker 1: and I think everyone I've ever encountered is made out
14:05
Speaker 1: of some kind of plastic, is to actually take a
14:07
Speaker 1: sharp instrument and cut it away. Now, there are a
14:11
Speaker 1: number of demonstrations and I kind of look them up
14:13
Speaker 1: in advance out there of people that there's one infamously
14:17
Speaker 1: out there with some former CIA agent that's talking about
14:21
Speaker 1: how you break loose from zip ties if your hands
14:23
Speaker 1: are bound with them, and police actually use zip tie
14:26
Speaker 1: or they call them plastic cuffs to cuff people on mass.
14:30
Speaker 1: So if you have like a big riot or something
14:32
Speaker 1: like that, you'll see these guys with these things hooked
14:34
Speaker 1: to their belts and those are zip ties, a form
14:37
Speaker 1: of zip ties that they're using to restrain people instead
14:40
Speaker 1: of handcuffs. And you can't get those things off unless
14:43
Speaker 1: you actually cut them, and so there's a tremendous amount
14:46
Speaker 1: of tension, and right you are about the pain that
14:49
Speaker 1: would be involved. One of the things that we really
14:52
Speaker 1: look at when it comes to ligatures, and just imagine
14:56
Speaker 1: this just for a second. The less surface space that
15:00
Speaker 1: has on it, whether it's a rope or a belt
15:03
Speaker 1: or in this case is zip time, the more narrow
15:06
Speaker 1: it is, the deeper the furrow. Okay, so the furrow
15:10
Speaker 1: is actually that crease that is created by this particular item,
15:15
Speaker 1: and it goes deeper and deeper and deeper into the
15:18
Speaker 1: tissue the tighter you make it. And that applies to
15:21
Speaker 1: someone that might hang themselves or someone that's killed with
15:25
Speaker 1: what we refer to as a groat, which people may
15:27
Speaker 1: have seen in the movies, which is this item that's
15:31
Speaker 1: essentially a literature that has two handles on it traditionally,
15:34
Speaker 1: and you see people assassins that will use them and
15:37
Speaker 1: they'll choke people out with these things come up behind
15:39
Speaker 1: them in a stealthy like manner and take the individual's life.
15:43
Speaker 1: So you have those that are out there. But the
15:47
Speaker 1: more narrow these things are, the deeper the furrow. And
15:50
Speaker 1: so we begin to kind of appreciate this at autopsy
15:54
Speaker 1: when we're examining these these bodies that have literatures, and
15:58
Speaker 1: most of the time when we have someone that is
16:00
Speaker 1: in fact deceased at the scene, we don't rush to
16:04
Speaker 1: cut a ligature off at the scene. We don't if
16:08
Speaker 1: we have confirmed that the individual is deceased there, We're
16:11
Speaker 1: gonna leave it in place, because that tells us a
16:13
Speaker 1: lot at the morgue about the dynamic of the event,
16:19
Speaker 1: the placement of the item. Has it been moved or
16:22
Speaker 1: removed and then placed over an area, And we can
16:26
Speaker 1: actually appreciate that as a result of some of the
16:28
Speaker 1: trauma that's left behind by these things.
16:30
Speaker 2: Dave, and you're also I was wondering that earlier, and
16:33
Speaker 2: I was hoping you were going to cover it because
16:35
Speaker 2: my first thought if it was me and I found
16:39
Speaker 2: my loved one on the floor. My first thought would
16:42
Speaker 2: be to cut it off, would be to cut the
16:44
Speaker 2: zip tie off the neck, just because if there's any
16:47
Speaker 2: chance that I can save this individual, I'm not gonna
16:50
Speaker 2: be able to do it with that zip tie around
16:52
Speaker 2: your neck.
16:52
Speaker 1: No, listen, that's an excellent point, I gotta say, man,
16:56
Speaker 1: that just goes to basic human compassion, doesn't it.
16:59
Speaker 2: Yes, You've got a loved one who if she did
17:01
Speaker 2: it to herself, then you don't want this to happen.
17:05
Speaker 2: So you're going to do everything in your power to
17:07
Speaker 2: say for life. First thing, zip tie is coming off.
17:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't care if I've got to go to
17:12
Speaker 1: the kitchen and get a butter knife. If I don't
17:14
Speaker 1: have a knife on my person, the thing's coming off,
17:17
Speaker 1: or I'm trying to rip it off with my bare hands,
17:18
Speaker 1: anything that I can to bring this person back to life,
17:21
Speaker 1: to reanimate them, if you will. And I think that
17:24
Speaker 1: that speaks volumes about this particular case. If you've got
17:28
Speaker 1: a circumstance where this is left in place by the
17:32
Speaker 1: person who found her, that there's no effort, there's, as
17:36
Speaker 1: they say, no heroic measures were taken in order to
17:40
Speaker 1: bring them back around. I mean, what do you do?
17:43
Speaker 1: You stand over the body and just kind of shrug
17:45
Speaker 1: your shoulders and say, oh, oh, well, well, I think
17:47
Speaker 1: I've got a suicide. I think that she took her
17:49
Speaker 1: own life. That does I mean that goes to the
17:51
Speaker 1: heart of this.
17:52
Speaker 2: I think one thing that strikes me here is that
17:55
Speaker 2: while the forensic people take over you, it's your job
17:59
Speaker 2: to figure out what happened and is it murder or suicide.
18:02
Speaker 2: You've got to help figure that out forensically. But the
18:05
Speaker 2: police are also doing their work, and I'm wondering how
18:07
Speaker 2: much their efforts in trying to find out what led
18:11
Speaker 2: up to it. And you talk about timeline, but when
18:13
Speaker 2: the police are trying to figure out what was going
18:15
Speaker 2: on in this couple's life prior to her body being found,
18:20
Speaker 2: and if it has any impact whatsoever forensically, after you've
18:24
Speaker 2: already done your examination, if there's any questions, does the
18:28
Speaker 2: police investigation help you to determine what might have happened
18:33
Speaker 2: with the body.
18:34
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, yeah, it's key because let me throw
18:37
Speaker 1: this out to you, Dave. You've got a person that
18:40
Speaker 1: is putting forth an idea, the finder, and you have
18:45
Speaker 1: a finder who is an intimate and as I stated earlier,
18:49
Speaker 1: they're going to have the most knowledge of what's going
18:52
Speaker 1: on in this person's life at that particular time. If
18:54
Speaker 1: they're putting out the idea that this is in fact
18:58
Speaker 1: a suicide, you're going to have to prove that from
19:02
Speaker 1: an investigative standpoint, that's the problem. We need to be
19:05
Speaker 1: able to prove this. And if you look at it
19:07
Speaker 1: from a scientific perspective, So what do we have as
19:11
Speaker 1: part of this equation that's going to lead us down
19:14
Speaker 1: this path logically where we arrive at a potential manner
19:19
Speaker 1: of suicide. Well, some of the things that come about
19:22
Speaker 1: are prior suicide attempts. Has this individual ever attempted suicide?
19:27
Speaker 1: Are they under the care of someone for mental health issues,
19:31
Speaker 1: and that can be anybody from a licensed professional counselor
19:36
Speaker 1: to a psychiatrist. Are they taking medications that might help
19:40
Speaker 1: them reduce anxiety or depression or alleviate depression in their life.
19:46
Speaker 1: So you're going down this checklist, right and at the
19:49
Speaker 1: end of this profile that you're building as an investigator
19:53
Speaker 1: relative to the victim, when you add on what this
19:56
Speaker 1: individual the finder is saying, you begin to think, well,
20:00
Speaker 1: is there enough evidence here that I can move forward
20:02
Speaker 1: and safely say that this is in fact a suicide.
20:05
Speaker 1: Our one supposition as death investigators, I can't say it enough,
20:09
Speaker 1: is that all deaths, not some, but all deaths are
20:12
Speaker 1: homicides until proven otherwise. So I have to exclude as
20:16
Speaker 1: a death investigator all other possibilities, and if I have
20:20
Speaker 1: someone that has, if I've worked suicides, and just so
20:24
Speaker 1: that you understand and our listeners understand, death and medical
20:28
Speaker 1: legal death investigators work far more suicides and you ever
20:30
Speaker 1: do homicides. It's something that we're very good at. You
20:33
Speaker 1: just don't ever hear about it because you have this
20:36
Speaker 1: ratio that's, you know, sometimes two to one, three to one,
20:39
Speaker 1: depended upon where you are geographically, you've got more people.
20:42
Speaker 1: You just don't hear about it unless it's a celebrity,
20:45
Speaker 1: for instance, that has taken their life. We're skilled at this,
20:48
Speaker 1: and police are skilled at it too, because they're coming
20:52
Speaker 1: at it from a different perspective, and certainly when they
20:54
Speaker 1: see someone laying on the floor with a zip tie
20:57
Speaker 1: around their neck, this is atypical. So you can imagine
21:00
Speaker 1: we're going to take a long, hard look at this
21:02
Speaker 1: to try to understand and essentially check the boxes here
21:07
Speaker 1: to see if it fits within this construct. And also
21:11
Speaker 1: just so you know, not every case of suicide involves
21:15
Speaker 1: a suicide note. They don't always involve a recording. So
21:19
Speaker 1: just because there's not a note there necessarily doesn't mean
21:22
Speaker 1: that it's not a suicide. Some people just make that
21:25
Speaker 1: decision to go ahead and do it, and in a
21:27
Speaker 1: case like this, you're left with more questions than your answers, Brother, Dave,
21:52
Speaker 1: I got to tell you, man, we have to wait
21:54
Speaker 1: sometimes for the dead to speak to us, and they
21:57
Speaker 1: do their best to reveal information in the morgue. Most
22:01
Speaker 1: of the time. That's kind of where we that's where
22:04
Speaker 1: we dance as medical legal death investigators. What can the
22:06
Speaker 1: body tell us? And in this particular case, boy, did
22:11
Speaker 1: this poor woman have a tale to tell?
22:14
Speaker 2: Joe. Whenever there's a death and you have a significant
22:18
Speaker 2: other involved, their investigation is immediately going to be multifaceted.
22:24
Speaker 2: They're going to have to focus on the boyfriend's slash
22:26
Speaker 2: husband as well as other possibilities. But they have to
22:30
Speaker 2: look at that and eliminate that individual. That's just a given.
22:33
Speaker 2: In this particular case, though they found Joycey Cartagena based
22:39
Speaker 2: down zip tie around her neck. Boyfriend is right there.
22:42
Speaker 2: It's two ten in the afternoon. He's seeing suicide. That
22:45
Speaker 2: shows up in all the police paperwork, Chief of police
22:48
Speaker 2: that he was leading us down this path. He was
22:51
Speaker 2: directing on the scene that it was a suicide. But
22:56
Speaker 2: they had to look at everything. It took time. Now
22:59
Speaker 2: we're going to roll this out there and say he
23:01
Speaker 2: has been charged. But it didn't happen right away. It
23:06
Speaker 2: actually took some time and Joe, they had to find
23:08
Speaker 2: out that first of all, that while Josie Kartagena and
23:12
Speaker 2: Joel Boutze had lived together for a number of years
23:15
Speaker 2: and had been a couple since probably twenty sixteen, that
23:20
Speaker 2: there were issues. Joycey had a lot of debt. That
23:24
Speaker 2: is something kind of an underlying financial issue. She also
23:29
Speaker 2: supported Joel Boutze financially. He didn't actually support himself. He
23:33
Speaker 2: depended on her financially and she was in big time debt.
23:37
Speaker 2: We also have from her son, who, by the way,
23:41
Speaker 2: this young man is so broken hearted. Oh my goodness,
23:46
Speaker 2: it just it hurts your heart to hear him talk
23:48
Speaker 2: about his mother. But he is actually studying to become
23:51
Speaker 2: a doctor, and he was talking about how the day
23:55
Speaker 2: of According to Joel Bouts of the boyfriend, the more
24:00
Speaker 2: of the death they coupled Joyce Cartahana and Jel A Bounce.
24:04
Speaker 2: I had an argument that morning about money, about finances,
24:08
Speaker 2: and he went off to do his handyman job, and
24:10
Speaker 2: she didn't show up. She did not log on. Nothing
24:14
Speaker 2: happened after he left. In terms of her being alive.
24:17
Speaker 2: We don't know when she died, but we know that
24:19
Speaker 2: as soon as he went to work, she was not
24:22
Speaker 2: actually doing anything that we can prove. We've got rug
24:25
Speaker 2: burns and other signs of physical altercation on her body,
24:31
Speaker 2: and the police are putting all this together along with
24:34
Speaker 2: the idea that he is pushing as a suicide. So
24:37
Speaker 2: we know now he has been charged with murder. But why, Joe,
24:42
Speaker 2: would it take two months nearly to get that charge?
24:46
Speaker 2: Why did it take so long?
24:48
Speaker 1: They're testing every possible outcome here and trying to examine it,
24:52
Speaker 1: and also they're waiting for information to come back from
24:55
Speaker 1: the m's office, this assessment of the trauma that she
24:58
Speaker 1: had sustained. Look, it's one thing I'm glad you brought
25:01
Speaker 1: up this idea of rug burns or carpet burns. That's
25:04
Speaker 1: an abraided area on the skin, and if you've never
25:07
Speaker 1: suffered one or had one, they are markedly painful. So
25:13
Speaker 1: let me just break this down to you. If an
25:15
Speaker 1: individual impacts on a carpeted surface and they get this
25:19
Speaker 1: abraided area on their skin, it's not something that they're
25:22
Speaker 1: going to do over and over and over again. Okay,
25:24
Speaker 1: it's like sticking your hand in fire. Once you burn
25:27
Speaker 1: your hand, you're not going to do it again. So
25:29
Speaker 1: the question is why in the world would you have
25:33
Speaker 1: multiple braided areas on your body. They are opining, at
25:38
Speaker 1: least at this point that these are related to a
25:40
Speaker 1: carpeted surface.
25:41
Speaker 2: Perhaps, so if there was only one marking like that,
25:45
Speaker 2: it could be explained or maybe dismissed. But having more
25:48
Speaker 2: than one, no.
25:49
Speaker 1: That's something that you sit back and you think, Okay,
25:52
Speaker 1: I've got that bit to deal with. And then you've
25:55
Speaker 1: got the atypical nature of this modality of death with
25:59
Speaker 1: the zip tie, which which just super bizarre. But you
26:01
Speaker 1: know something that you said just a moment ago that
26:03
Speaker 1: the police spokesman was saying, and I get the idea
26:06
Speaker 1: that this individual has had a certain amount of training
26:09
Speaker 1: in an area that we death investigators really have to
26:13
Speaker 1: be careful in and that is a staged stage deaths.
26:18
Speaker 1: You made the comment, and I love this that he
26:21
Speaker 1: said they were being steered, and the steering is taking
26:24
Speaker 1: place initially by this boyfriend. So he's steering and directing.
26:30
Speaker 1: You want an explanation, and rightly so from the finder.
26:35
Speaker 1: You want this individual to give you information relative to
26:38
Speaker 1: what they know about the person. But when they continue
26:41
Speaker 1: constantly to interject themselves into the conversation or into the
26:46
Speaker 1: investigator's kind of purpose here in order to assess what's
26:51
Speaker 1: going on, you get kind of an odd feeling about them.
26:54
Speaker 1: Why do you keep suggesting this? Why is it that
26:57
Speaker 1: it couldn't be something other than this? And all of
27:01
Speaker 1: the data points along the way. You're collecting these as
27:05
Speaker 1: you go along, and you're doing this assessment of what
27:09
Speaker 1: this person knows about this intimate that they're involved with.
27:13
Speaker 1: You look at the injuries that are there, the atypical
27:16
Speaker 1: nature of this thing around her neck, this zip tie
27:20
Speaker 1: which you may have never seen before as a modality
27:25
Speaker 1: of suicide. Let me tell you one of the phone
27:28
Speaker 1: calls that they made after they left the scene, they
27:31
Speaker 1: called her doctor. I can almost guarantee it, they would
27:34
Speaker 1: have called her treating physician. They would have assessed that
27:37
Speaker 1: information at the scene. You're saying that suicide. Okay, Now,
27:41
Speaker 1: if she doesn't have a psychiatrist, we're going to call
27:44
Speaker 1: or a counselor we're immediately going to call her treating physician.
27:47
Speaker 1: Are you currently treating her for depression? Because an attending physician,
27:51
Speaker 1: even if it's an internal medicine doc, can sit there
27:54
Speaker 1: and say, well, I'll give you this for depression, or
27:57
Speaker 1: i'll give you this for anxiety, and again your check
28:00
Speaker 1: in a box. If you call that person, they say, no,
28:02
Speaker 1: she's got this kind of bright affect. She's never talked about.
28:05
Speaker 1: One of the things they say is she doesn't have
28:07
Speaker 1: any suicidal ideation with vocalization. None of that stuff is
28:11
Speaker 1: going on. She doesn't have a history of suicide, and
28:14
Speaker 1: so that's one of the things that you're kind of
28:16
Speaker 1: checking off, and it doesn't It just doesn't add up, Dave.
28:20
Speaker 2: When you get to the part of a ziptie being
28:22
Speaker 2: around her neck, do you immediately go with, well, that's
28:25
Speaker 2: obviously how she was choked, or is it possible maybe
28:28
Speaker 2: that she was choked in a different way, hands around
28:32
Speaker 2: the neck and the zip tie was then put on
28:34
Speaker 2: it because they said it's a large zipti that the
28:37
Speaker 2: zip tie was then added on actor she had already passed,
28:39
Speaker 2: and that was to cover up fingerprint marks.
28:42
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the dynamics of a ligature strangulation as
28:45
Speaker 1: opposed to say, a manual strangulation. When I say manual,
28:49
Speaker 1: what I mean is like manual labor. That means to
28:52
Speaker 1: work with your hands. You're going to place your hands,
28:56
Speaker 1: if you were the perpetrator, around the neck of someone,
29:00
Speaker 1: or get them in a choke hold where they're in
29:02
Speaker 1: the crook of your arm and you're going to choke
29:05
Speaker 1: down on them. You're going to apply pressure, external pressure
29:09
Speaker 1: that is going to impact the internal structures of the neck.
29:12
Speaker 1: Now that can be the trichia, you know, the airway,
29:14
Speaker 1: or it can be the vessels that are supplying the
29:17
Speaker 1: brain with oxygenated blood. So that's going to leave a
29:22
Speaker 1: significant marker for you at autopsy. So when the autopsy
29:28
Speaker 1: is conducted, first off, you're going to photograph this area
29:32
Speaker 1: very very carefully, and if the zip tie is still
29:34
Speaker 1: in place, which it sounds like it probably was, you'll
29:38
Speaker 1: take images of the zip tie. What we refer to
29:41
Speaker 1: as insight to which means in place, then away from
29:46
Speaker 1: probably one hundred and eighty degrees around the circumference of
29:52
Speaker 1: the tie itself, the mid range, away from where the
29:56
Speaker 1: thing is actually tied off, where it kind of pull
29:59
Speaker 1: it tight. You're going to clip it right there. You'll
30:02
Speaker 1: set it aside. You'll take a photograph of the actual
30:05
Speaker 1: ligature or the zip tie itself, and you'll take a
30:08
Speaker 1: photograph of this furrow that's left behind. Now one of
30:11
Speaker 1: the things that you see, and this is kind of
30:14
Speaker 1: interesting that you'll see with ligature as many times you
30:17
Speaker 1: see it in hanging, these sorts of things. You'll see
30:20
Speaker 1: these things refer to as Tardou spots, which are they're
30:23
Speaker 1: like petiki and they're all over. They'll just kind of
30:26
Speaker 1: blast all around that area, particularly if you've got this
30:29
Speaker 1: kind of focal area that has been tied down very
30:33
Speaker 1: very tightly, like you see with the news, so it
30:35
Speaker 1: looks like petiki, but there'll be like a little storm
30:37
Speaker 1: of them, and you'll get them kind of all over
30:39
Speaker 1: the surface of the skin. You can appreciate and you
30:41
Speaker 1: would take note of that they don't appear every single time,
30:45
Speaker 1: but it's something you would look for externally before you
30:47
Speaker 1: open the body. If you've got a ligature that is
30:51
Speaker 1: this tight, and buddy, it would be tight man, and
30:54
Speaker 1: you don't have any signs of hemorrhage in that area
30:58
Speaker 1: that that ligature or zip tie in this case was
31:01
Speaker 1: in place. Over you got a problem and it's going
31:04
Speaker 1: to be revealed once you do what's called the neck reflection.
31:08
Speaker 1: So we go into these cases where we actually reflect
31:13
Speaker 1: back the tissue of the neck, the external tissue, so
31:16
Speaker 1: the skin. You get down into the layer of the
31:18
Speaker 1: muscle around the neck and you begin to examine those areas.
31:22
Speaker 1: You look for something that they're the structures within the
31:24
Speaker 1: neck called the strap muscles. And there are these muscles
31:27
Speaker 1: that kind of intertwine with one another that on our
31:30
Speaker 1: own either side of the trachea that kind of cross
31:32
Speaker 1: over the trachea in this area, and this is the
31:34
Speaker 1: way there were engineered. And you look for soft tissue
31:39
Speaker 1: hemorrhage in the muscles, in the overlying tissue, the SubQ fat,
31:43
Speaker 1: all those areas you look for hemorrhage in there. If
31:46
Speaker 1: you have got a ligature that is as tight, you're
31:49
Speaker 1: going to have a very focalized area. You can even
31:52
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Internally, you'll see like this line that goes
31:55
Speaker 1: across if you're absent that. But yet you have this
31:58
Speaker 1: kind of broad, expansive morrhage that is not quite as deep,
32:03
Speaker 1: but it is there that there is a high probability
32:06
Speaker 1: that if you have associated hemorrhage that may perhaps be
32:09
Speaker 1: brought about as someone having the life choked out of them.
32:14
Speaker 1: You look at the ligature that you have and you
32:17
Speaker 1: don't see any kind of associated demarcation with the ligature itself.
32:21
Speaker 1: You know that this is something other than as advertised,
32:24
Speaker 1: that perhaps they were choked out or manually strangled, and
32:29
Speaker 1: then the zip tide was put on as just an
32:33
Speaker 1: afterthought to kind of put this forward. She took her
32:36
Speaker 1: own life, She had access to a zip tide and
32:39
Speaker 1: she put her around her neck and she tightened the
32:40
Speaker 1: thing down. Can you imagine? And so science is going
32:43
Speaker 1: to trump every single time, it's going to trump whatever
32:46
Speaker 1: you might be speaking. You're trying to speak this into existence, right.
32:50
Speaker 2: You got this guy from the very beginning. He's already
32:53
Speaker 2: in there saying this is what it is. Again, I
32:55
Speaker 2: am still stuck with Joe, this person that you have
32:58
Speaker 2: had an intimate relationship with for years is dead on
33:03
Speaker 2: your floor, and you didn't try to do anything to
33:05
Speaker 2: help except tell the police I have a suicide. It
33:08
Speaker 2: just boggles the mind. But I'm wondering, Joe. You know,
33:10
Speaker 2: when you put a zip tie and you pull it,
33:12
Speaker 2: certain areas of the zip tie would have pressure on
33:15
Speaker 2: them first, you know, as you're pulling back on it.
33:19
Speaker 2: Would you be able to trace that in post perhaps?
33:22
Speaker 1: I think that probably the most pressure is going to
33:26
Speaker 1: be exerted, probably away from where it's actuated from where
33:32
Speaker 1: you slip the tip of this thing in and then
33:34
Speaker 1: pull it tight. So you're going to have initial pressure
33:37
Speaker 1: that's applied again one hundred and eighty degrees away from
33:41
Speaker 1: wherever that connective point is, and then latterly which would
33:45
Speaker 1: be at the ninety degree marks on either side as
33:47
Speaker 1: you're tightening it down. And then finally you'll have that
33:50
Speaker 1: one place where you make that one final pull as
33:54
Speaker 1: you tighten it down right there, and sometimes the skin
33:57
Speaker 1: can get wrapped up in there, it'll pinch. We've seen
33:59
Speaker 1: this happen with people that have had their hands zip tied.
34:02
Speaker 1: You'll get these little pinched areas that'll have focal areas
34:05
Speaker 1: of hemorrhis that are associated with that, and so there
34:08
Speaker 1: are a number of things that you're going to look
34:09
Speaker 1: for on their person and here's something else. And this
34:13
Speaker 1: particularly happens with female victims, even if they're fully clothed
34:16
Speaker 1: in a case like this that has this kind of violence. Nowadays,
34:21
Speaker 1: what will happen in the morgue even if she's fully clothed, Dave,
34:24
Speaker 1: They're going to do a rape kit. There's a high
34:26
Speaker 1: probability because you know, lots of times people can be
34:29
Speaker 1: raped and they'll be redressed. For instance, I'm not saying
34:32
Speaker 1: that that happened in this case, but I'm saying that,
34:34
Speaker 1: just to be safe, this would have happened, they would
34:37
Speaker 1: have also have done and this is kind of fascinating,
34:39
Speaker 1: they would have also done examinations of her hands. You know,
34:43
Speaker 1: we talked about the ubraided areas that she would have
34:47
Speaker 1: relative to these friction abrasions that come about as a
34:51
Speaker 1: result of contacting carpet. But we would look at the
34:54
Speaker 1: nails and do the nail trimmings and the nail scrapings.
34:58
Speaker 1: Nail scrapings and trimmings is the way it acts. Happens
35:00
Speaker 1: to see if there is anything caught beneath those nails.
35:03
Speaker 1: It seemed as though, I don't know what you think
35:06
Speaker 1: about this day, but it seems as though the narrative
35:08
Speaker 1: that we're being given, she fought back or resisted in
35:11
Speaker 1: some way. And many times if an individual can, they're
35:15
Speaker 1: going to try to particularly if someone is putting pressure
35:17
Speaker 1: on their neck and the individual is using their hands.
35:21
Speaker 1: You would look at a suspect if you can get
35:23
Speaker 1: them early enough, you would look at the wrist right
35:26
Speaker 1: to see if there's nail marks, and they're going to
35:28
Speaker 1: look like little half moons where the nails kind of
35:31
Speaker 1: penetrate into the skin of the perpetrator, and also scratch
35:35
Speaker 1: marks on the face because you're trying to do the
35:37
Speaker 1: victim is trying to do anything that can to get away.
35:40
Speaker 2: And in this particular case, we haven't heard no you
35:43
Speaker 2: know what, Joe, we have. They did say that they
35:46
Speaker 2: could tell a struggle had taken place. You've got the
35:48
Speaker 2: other marks with the rugburns and things like that. They
35:50
Speaker 2: alluded to other things that they witnessed on at the
35:53
Speaker 2: crime scene. You mentioned a rape kit even though she's
35:56
Speaker 2: fully clothed, And that's the other part of this. To
35:58
Speaker 2: believe his story is to just be wacko and looking
36:03
Speaker 2: at it from every other way possible. Joe, if not him,
36:06
Speaker 2: somebody just came in there after he left for work
36:09
Speaker 2: and killed her for no reason and went on about
36:10
Speaker 2: their mary away without taking anything.
36:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right, And the police or the DA at
36:16
Speaker 1: least have enough that they felt secure enough in charging Boosa.
36:22
Speaker 1: They did, in fact charge him with homicide.
36:24
Speaker 2: First degree premeditated murder.
36:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they premeditated, which is a boy that's a
36:29
Speaker 1: certain element there, particularly in Florida. You have this knowledge
36:33
Speaker 1: in advance that you're planning to do this, and so
36:36
Speaker 1: premeditation is certainly something that's very chilling. This is not
36:40
Speaker 1: a reactive event in the opinion of the police. He
36:44
Speaker 1: has been charged, he hasn't been convicted, He hasn't even
36:47
Speaker 1: been tried. But from what I understand, the judge didn't
36:50
Speaker 1: feel secure enough apparently, or the magistrate didn't feel secure
36:53
Speaker 1: enough to offer bond for him. He's being held without bond, Dave.
36:57
Speaker 1: So that gives you an idea as to where prosecutor's
37:01
Speaker 1: mind is, and certainly the police's minds are. I think
37:05
Speaker 1: that it's very important though, that we understand that even
37:09
Speaker 1: though he's saying that this is a suicide, and the
37:12
Speaker 1: police believe that it is a homicide. It's important to know, Dave,
37:16
Speaker 1: that we have people out all across this country and
37:20
Speaker 1: within the sound of our voices that are struggling with
37:23
Speaker 1: things right now. And if you are someone you love
37:26
Speaker 1: and you care about is struggling with thoughts of self harm,
37:30
Speaker 1: please know that there is help. You can simply dial
37:33
Speaker 1: nine eight eight for suicide and Crisis Lifeline. I'm Joseph
37:42
Speaker 1: Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks as