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Mayhem in the Morgue: Gator Bait · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Today's episode discusses the death of individuals. If this sort
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: of thing upsets you, this is not the episode for you.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Mayhem in the War with their host Doctor
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Kindo crowns today's episode Gator Bait. When a body comes
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: into the medical examiner's office, one of the first things
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: we do is identify that individual, and there are two
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: methods for doing this, non scientific methods and scientific methods.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: To day, we'll be discussing the scientific methods. Scientific methods
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: can be one of five things. It can be finger prints,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: comparison of dental X rays, comparison of radiographic studies done
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: at hospitals, looking at serial numbers found on medical devices
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: that are implanted in the body, and finally DNA. The
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: dental X rays, the radiographic studies, and the serial numbers
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: all require you to have medical records of some sorts,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: so you have to have a bit of a presumptive
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: id to get those in the first place. Fingerprints, of course,
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: everybody has them. Everybody's are different because they form when
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: you're a fetus, moving your hands around in the amniotic fluid,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: touching your face, et cetera. Even if you're an identical
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: twin your fingerprints are different. DNA is incredibly helpful, but
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: it does take a long period of time. We try
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: to exhaust all the other options before we resort to DNA.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: First case we'll be discussing today was that of a
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: sixty two year old male. He was retired and enjoyed
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: going fishing. He would often spend three to four days
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: off on a fishing trip all by himself. Usually on
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: these fishing trips, he would check in with his wife
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: or talk to other family members every day. He had
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: checked in late in the evening on the day before
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: his death, but the next day he did not call.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: One whole day went by, and then on the second day,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: his wife became worried. She tried to call him several
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: times without success, so she decided to drive to the
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: area where he was fishing at and look for him.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: When she arrived at the boat ramp that he normally used,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: she found his truck and trailer. She couldn't see his
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: boat out on the lake, so she decided to notify
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: the local police department. The police department arrived on the scene,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: and then they notified the coast guard and the game wardens,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: and then the search began. During the search of the area,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: they found his boat still anchored in about two to
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: three feet of water. Inside the boat was as wallet
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: and cell phone, and near by was a ripped up
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: pair of jeans, a boot, and a fish string or
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: belt which is sometimes used to keep fish in a
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: line while a person wades in the water. When they
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: picked up the torrent jeans, they also found two bones
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: that looked like they were human, and they turned out
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: to be human. They were a tibbianphibula, which are the
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: bones of your lower leg. While they were searching the area,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: they noticed three large alligators nearby. The alligators kept tracking
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: and watching the search party the entire time. The game
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: wardens decided that the alligators were somehow involved, and the
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: decision was made to shoot them. I know for all
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: you alligators lovers out there that this is a horrible moment,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: but it is what it is. The three alligators were shot,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: and an individual that was contracted through that county for
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: alligator removal came in and opened up the alligators and
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: pulled out their stomachs, kind of like that scene and Jaws.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: They opened the three stomachs up and amongst all sorts
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: of debris, apparent soft tissue, and hair and bones that
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: appeared to be human. They bagged up the stomach contents
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: and brought them to the medical examiner's office. When we
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: opened the bags containing the stomach contents, the first thing
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: that hit us was an odd acid and swamp water smell.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: It's hard to describe, but it was pretty bad. All
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: of the three bags contained mighty debris, grass, bits of frogs, rocks,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: and other random watery debris, but two of the three
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: bags contained more. They contained hair, portions of skin with
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: bite marks in it, decomposed bits of muscle, crushed up bones,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: some looking like ribs, and some just completely unidentifiable. There
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: was there's one intact bone, though, It was the hyoid bone,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: which is the U shaped bone in your neck that
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: your neck muscles attached to. So these remains were definitely human.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: The question was who is this individual? We had to
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: identify him somehow. We didn't have teeth or anything like that.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: We couldn't get fingerprints, we couldn't get dental X rays
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: or radiographic studies because everything was so smashed up, so
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: our only option was DNA. There was enough left of
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: some of the bones to get bone marrow from it,
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  Speaker 1: and we sent it off to a DNA lab. The
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: DNA lab got comparison DNA from family, and after a
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: little while they were able to determine that this person
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: was indeed the missing fisherman. Question is is how did
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: he die. Did he have a heart attack and fall
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: in the water and then the alligators ate him. Did
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: he purposely jump in the water and taunt the alligators
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: causing them to eat him. Did someone hit him over
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: the head of a baseball bat and then the alligators
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: ate him. There's infinite possibilities. You couldn't really determine how
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: he died, so we're only left with the cause of
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: death of undetermined and the manner undetermined. But at least
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: we were able to identify him. The next case of
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: scientific and identification that we'll discuss is again another DNA case.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: In this case is a human head. The head was
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: found by a twelve year old Laprador retriever by the
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: name of Carly. It was early September and she was
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: out playing in a dry creek bed near her neighborhood,
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: as she routinely did. She returned home that night with
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: her new treasure and laid down on the front porch
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: to settle in for a good shoe. When her owners
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: came out to see what she was playing with, to
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: their horror, it was a human head. One of the
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: newspapers that interviewed the family after the human head was
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: found quoted, she gets out and is always bringing things home,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: but this is the weirdest thing she has ever brought
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: home though. So once they saw the head, they called
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: the local police department. Police department came out and was like, well,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: that's a human head, and they brought it to the
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: medical examiner's office. And when we did the examination, what
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: we found was early had found and intact partially skeletonized
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: human head. It had remaining dark brown mummifhiede skin on
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: one side. The jaw was still attached with dried tissue
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: and muscle, but just barely. Most of the teeth were gone,
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: the eyes were gone, the nose was gone, the right
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: ear was completely gone, and most of the left ear
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: was gone as well. There was still some attached, short
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: buzzed brown hair, and nothing else came with the head.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: Everything from the neck down was not recovered at that time.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: I was able to pull some of the hairs with
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: the root shaft, removed a tooth and cut out a
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: small portion of skull for submonthing for DNA. The DNA
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: lab went about their job extracting DNA from the recovered
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: tissues and they entered it into the National Missing and
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Unidentified Person System, or NamUs. The DNA profiles put into
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: NamUs then can be matched against other databases, including COTIS
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: with a combined DNA index system run by the FBI.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: And sure enough, once all this was done, they got
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: a match, and the match turned out to be that
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: of a forty one year old escape fugitive that was
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: on the US Marshals Service's Top fifteen most wanted list
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: at the time he disappeared. He was at a residential
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: re entry facility finishing up a thirteen year sentence for
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: child sexual assault and possession of child pornography when one
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: day he escaped out of an emergency exit and disappeared.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: A few days after he escaped, there was a massive
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: rainstorm with intense flooding in the area he was in.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: The theory was as he probably got swept away by
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: floodwaters and drowned. He had been missing for six months
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: when Carly found him, so he had had plenty of
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: time to decompose and become mummified and be pulled apart
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: by other scavenging animals or be washed away in the
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: creek bed that he was in. That's why no more
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: of them had been found. Law enforcement made an attempt
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: to find more of them, and they even put a
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: tracking collar on Carly to see if she would find more,
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  Speaker 1: but in that time period, she didn't find any more
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: of him, and the law enforcement didn't find anything either.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Carly wasn't finding anything and the hazards were just too much.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: In fact, all Carli found during that time period was
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: a kid's baseball club. The rest of the fugitive was
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: never found, but we at least had identified him since
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: he was on the US Marshall's Most Wanted List and
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: he had been featured on national TV on a show
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: called The Hunt. It was decided to have a press
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: conference announcing that he was found in what had happened
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: to him, and closing the case for the public. At
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: this point in my career, I had been a medical
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: examiner for over a decade, but I had never been
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: involved directly in a press conference. Always been kind of
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: on the periphery. But this time, it was going to
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: be me talking to the media. The day of the
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: press conference, I showed up in my suit, tie in place,
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  Speaker 1: hair all combed, I was all ready to go. There
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: was the marshals, the local law enforcement, anthropology, the DNA analysts,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: and myself. But the star of the show was Carly.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: Her owners and Carly were there as well, and everybody
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: was excited to see her. Well, who wouldn't be. I
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: was excited to see her as well. Really, no one
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: cared that anybody else was there other than Carly. The
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: press conference began and each group came up and said
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: their portion of the story. And the one thing about
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: the medical examiner is we're always the end, you know,
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: because the guy died, the story ends with us. After all.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: The final two people to talk was a local law
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: enforcement and then me. So the DNA analyst had already
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: talked about all that they had done to determine who
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: he was, so there wasn't much for me to say there.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: So the local law enforcement was just supposed to talk
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: about their portion of the story where they had identified
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: it as a human head and then brought to the
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: medical examler's office, but the officer instead decided to also
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: tell what the Medical Examiner's Office found, including the cause
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: and manner of death, and what they recovered to give
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: to the DNA lab. So really he told my entire
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: portion of the story. I had nothing to say. I
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: was standing there listening to him talk, and I was like, hey,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: you're telling my part of the story. What am I say?
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: I was already nervous, my mouth was dry, and I
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: was becoming increasingly cold, to the point of shivering, because
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: when I get nervous, I get cold. And I really
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: didn't have a script or anything to go by, so
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: I was just gonna wing it, which was already not
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: a good idea. So when I got up to the podium,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: I really had nothing to say, nothing to add. I
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: could have literally said well, Dido and sat down, because
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: nothing was left for me to say. But instead I said, well,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: law enforcement has already pointed out what the Medical Examiner's
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Office has done, and I will further reinforce the fact
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: that the decedent's cause and manner of death is undetermined
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: and undetermined because there was not enough recovered of him
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: for us to make a scientific conclusion. The press conference ended,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: my portion was edited out. I did get a small
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: quote in one of the newspapers basically saying it was undetermined, undetermined,
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: and that was it. Still, everybody was excited to see
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: the dog, and no one really cared about me, which
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm actually okay with. I would just have to say,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: even if you're eaten and partially digested by alligators or
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: decompose mummified, and you've been turned into a dog toy,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: we can still identify you. That brings us to the
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: end of the episode. I hope you learned something, and
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: I hope you were entertained until the next time.