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Pathologist Speaks Out On Autopsy - TMZ Review · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: Imagine looking through this high powered microscope at the lung
0:04
tissue of a drowning victim. Like you are armed with
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the absolute best forensic technology available in.
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Speaker 2: The world today, right, the absolute cutting edge exactly.
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Speaker 1: I mean, you can sequence microscopic DNA fragments, you can
0:18
run complex toxicology screens to find trace chemicals in the blood.
0:22
You can literally see this cellular structure of human breath itself.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's incredible what we can do, It really is.
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Speaker 1: But now I want you to imagine having to step
0:31
away from that microscope. Right, you walk into a quiet room,
0:35
you look a grieving family in the eye, and you say,
0:38
I have absolutely no idea if this was a tragic accident,
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or if someone held your son's head underwater.
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Speaker 2: Man, that just it completely shatters the illusion we all
0:47
walk around with, doesn't it. Oh? Absolutely, we have this
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comforting belief that modern science is this omniscient narrator. Like
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we watch all these forensic television shows where a blue
0:56
light and I don't know, a single fiber wrap up
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a murder.
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Speaker 1: And for five minutes, right, the whole CSI.
1:01
Speaker 2: Effect exactly, and we project that fantasy onto reality. But
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when the human body interacts with nature and especially water,
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that technological safety net just completely unravels.
1:13
Speaker 1: Which brings us to the very real, very tragic center
1:17
of today's deep dive. We're looking at a case that
1:20
has absolutely consumed the Internet lately.
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Speaker 2: Oh, consumed is putting it mildly. It's a frenzy, it
1:26
really is.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's generating this massive, chaotic whirlwind of speculation and theories.
1:32
I am talking, of course, about the case of Nolan Wells.
1:35
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:35
Speaker 1: If you you know our listener has spent any time
1:37
online recently, you've undoubtedly seen the endless barrage of theories
1:42
regarding what happened to this young man on Horn Island.
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Speaker 2: Well, the Internet is just functioning exactly how it always
1:47
does when there's a vacuum of information, right, Definitely, you
1:50
have this one highly vocal group that is absolutely convinced
1:54
this was a tragic but straightforward accidental drowning. Right then
1:58
another faction theorizes he simply drank too much, stumbled into
2:02
the surf and was swept away by a sudden, violent current,
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which happens, Yeah, it does. And then you have the
2:08
darkest corners of the discussion, the outright accusations that he
2:12
was murdered by the people he was with on that island.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and we are taking a massive step back from
2:18
all of that today. We're ignoring the social media algorithms,
2:21
the chaotic Reddit threads, and those viral armchair detective videos.
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Speaker 2: Please do right.
2:27
Speaker 1: Our mission for you, the listener, is to cut strictly
2:30
through that digital noise and look exclusively at the forensic
2:34
reality of this case, the actual science, exactly. And to
2:37
do that, we are pulling our insights today from one
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very specific, highly credible source. It's a recent interview on
2:44
TMZ hosted by Jackson Bukei, featuring doctor Kisha Davis.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. Doctor Davis is a highly experienced pathologist and she
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stepped into this very public forum to discuss the brutal
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realities of the independent autopsy performed on Nolan Wells. And
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her insights are vital right now now because while the
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results from the initial state autopsy have been sealed by investigators, and.
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Speaker 1: You know, whenever official records are sealed, public speculation just
3:08
rushes in like floodwater to fill that void.
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Speaker 2: Oh instantly, people start drawing these wild conclusions from leaked
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photos or you know, secondhand rumors exactly.
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Speaker 1: So our fundamental question for you today is this, Yeah,
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when the state autopsy is locked away and the public
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is wildly speculating based on fragments of information, how do
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medical professionals actually uncover the truth? Like, what does the
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science itself actually dictate?
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Speaker 2: Well, we really need to establish a baseline before we
3:37
even look at the physical evidence, because human nature desperately
3:42
craves a simple, black and white answer.
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Speaker 1: We really do we do?
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Speaker 2: We want to put a tragedy into a neat easily
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understandable box, right, suicide, homicide, natural causes or accident?
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Speaker 1: Right, like a multiple choice question?
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Speaker 2: Exactly? We want the medical equivalent of a broken bone
3:57
on an X ray, you know, a clean, jagged white
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line that tells us exactly what went wrong.
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Speaker 1: But forensic science, and particularly in cases involving bodies are
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covered from water and subjected to the elements, it operates
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almost entirely in incredibly complex, frustrating shades of gray.
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Speaker 2: Oh.
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Speaker 1: Absolutely, it's a meticulous process of gathering microscopic clues that
4:16
might I mean, they might point in three different directions
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at once.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's maddening.
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Speaker 1: And to really understand why those answers aren't black and
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white we first need to understand the people who are
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looking for them, right, who is actually telling the story
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of the body.
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Speaker 2: And that leads directly into this really profound point doctor
4:32
Davis makes right at the beginning of her interview.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, she is very.
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Speaker 2: Careful to outline her specific credentials, and in doing so,
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she reveals the strict hierarchy of pathology because not all
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pathologists are doing the exact same job, nor are they
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trained to look for the same thing.
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Speaker 1: She explicitly notes that she is an APCP and for
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those of you listening who aren't embedded in the medical field,
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that stands for anatomic and clinical pathologists.
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Speaker 2: Correct.
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Speaker 1: She explains that she absolutely performs autopsies and she had
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to do them as a core grueling part of her
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medical training.
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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, lots of them.
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Speaker 1: But she makes a very distinct pivot to emphasize that
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forensic pathologists are on a completely different tier when it
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comes to untangling a mystery like the Nolan Wells case.
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Speaker 2: She actually refers to forensic pathologists as the krem de
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la creme for answering these highly specific, legally fraught death
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related questions.
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Speaker 1: The krim dela creme.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and that distinction comes down to the sheer volume
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and focus of their training. Like when a doctor finishes
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four years of medical school, they go into a standard
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residency for pathology, which is another four years. Wow, all right, right,
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And an APCP like doctor Davis spends that time becoming
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an absolute master at looking at diseases, analyzing tissues under microscope,
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running clinical diagnostics. Like if you have a biopsy for cancer,
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and APCP is the expert who reads it.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this with an analogy, because the medical
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jargon can go dense, and I think this really helps
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clarify why doctor Davis's point matters so much.
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Speaker 2: Sure, go for it.
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Speaker 1: Think of a brilliant APCP like doctor Davis as a
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master mechanic.
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Speaker 2: Right.
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Speaker 1: If you bring them a car engine that just suddenly
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died on the highway, they can tear that engine down
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to the bolts.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, they know every piece exactly.
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Speaker 1: They can look at the pistons, check the oil viscosity,
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examine the timing belt, and tell you exactly what internal
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mechanical failure caused the engine to seize. They know the
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anatomy of the machine perfectly.
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Speaker 2: But and this is the key, they aren't necessarily looking
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for a bomb.
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Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's a great point.
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Speaker 2: That's where the forensic pathologist steps in. They are the
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aviation crash investigators standing in a massive debris field.
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Speaker 1: Right.
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Speaker 2: They don't just know how the engine works. They are
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specifically trained to look at the wreckage, the environmental factors,
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the impact angles, the scattered debris, all to determine if
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that engine failed because of say a manufacturing defect, a
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pilot error, or if someone intentionally tampered with the fuel
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line before take off.
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Speaker 1: So both are absolute experts in the machinery, but one
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is specifically trained to read the wreckage for foul play exactly.
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What's fascinating here is how doctor Davis, who again is
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a highly trained, board certified expert herself, readily and humbly
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defers to that specialized expertise.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, she knows the boundaries of her special toyo right.
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Speaker 1: She even points the audience toward another professional, doctor Judy Melinick,
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who is a forensic pathologist active on social media.
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Speaker 2: Doctor Mellenick is great, she is.
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Speaker 1: She uses her platform to try and explain these incredibly dense,
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counterintuitive medical complexities to a public that is hungry for answers,
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but frankly lacking in medical literacy.
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Speaker 2: And if we connect this to the bigger picture, the
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reason this hierarchy of pathology is so vital to understand
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in the Nolan Wells case is that it highlights a massive,
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dangerous flaw in the current Internet discourse. Oh yeah, just
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think about the sheer arrogance required for an Internet sleuth
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to make a definitive claim here.
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Speaker 1: It's staggering. I mean, you have an experienced medical doctor
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like doctor Davis essentially saying, you know, even with my
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medical degree in my pathology residency, I defer to the
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forensic specialists on the exact mechanics of this death right.
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Yet you have someone on social media with zero medical
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training looking at a heavily compressed glory photograph of the
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scene and declaring with absolute certainty that they know the
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cause of death.
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Speaker 2: It's wild. Relying on the highly specialized experts. Isn't just
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a matter of professional courtesy, you know, It's a necessity
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for justice because forensic pathology is a discipline of deep,
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often maddening nuance. And here is the truly daunting part.
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Even for those krem de la creme investigators, even with
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their decade of medical training and their specialized fellowships. There
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is one specific element that makes their job incredibly, sometimes
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impossibly difficult.
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Speaker 1: Water.
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Speaker 2: Yes, water, Yeah.
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Speaker 1: The moment a human body enters a natural body of water,
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the physical evidence is fundamentally and sometimes permanently altered. Water
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is an active agent of destruction in a forensic investigation.
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Speaker 2: It really is.
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Speaker 1: Let's dive deep into what the source material calls the
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sixteen percent problem.
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Speaker 2: Okay, this part is fascinating.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. During the interview, doctor Davis references a specific finished
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study regarding water recoveries and the statistics she pulls from
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it should make anyone who is pausing a YouTube video
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to play detective stop dead in their tracks.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely.
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Speaker 1: According to this comprehensive study, sixteen percent of bodies recovered
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from water end up with an undetermined cause of death.
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Speaker 2: We really need to sit with that number for a second.
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Sixteen percent. Yeah, nearly one in five cases where a
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human being is pulled from the water, the absolute best
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forensic science on the planet has to throw its hands
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up in defeat and officially state we don't know for sure.
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Speaker 1: I know that sounds absurd to you listening. I mean,
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it's the twenty first century. We have artificial intelligence, we
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have nanotechnology. How can sixteen percent of these cases be
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totally undetermined?
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Speaker 2: It's hard to accept.
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Speaker 1: My first thought was, well, surely there is a simple
10:00
biological tests. You look at the lungs and if they're
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full of water, the person drowned. If they're empty, they
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died on land. Simple.
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Speaker 2: It seems intuitive, right, But biology is rarely that accommodating.
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Pathologists are struggling to differentiate between two very distinct, highly
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consequential timelines.
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Speaker 1: Okay.
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Speaker 2: Scenario A is what we traditionally think of right, A living,
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breathing person enters the water, struggles, and actively drowns. Scenario
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B is the nightmare scenario. Someone was unalived to use
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Doctor Davis as careful phrasing, before they were ever placed
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in the water.
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Speaker 1: So the victim passes away on land from asphyxiation or
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poison or trauma, and then their body is moved to
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the ocean or a lake to make it look like
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an accidental drowning.
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Speaker 2: Yes, the water is used as a tool to wash
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away the crime scene.
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Speaker 1: And untangling those two scenarios at a cellular level can
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be incredibly tricky.
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Speaker 2: It really is Doctor Davis goes into the specific physiological
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signs forensic pathologists hunt for. Right, when someone actively drowns,
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it is a violent biological event. The person inhales water
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deep into the respiratory system. So pathologists look for fluid
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in the alveolar spaces.
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Speaker 1: Let's break that down physically. The alveoli are those tiny
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microscopic air sacks deep at the very end of your
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bronchial tubes. Right there are like millions of tiny balloons
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where oxygen transfers into your blood.
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Speaker 2: Right, and when a living person inhales water, it violently
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floods those tiny balloons.
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Speaker 1: Wow.
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Speaker 2: Furthermore, pathologists look for frothy fluid in the upper airways.
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Speaker 1: Frothy fluid.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, This froth is a very specific mechanical byproduct of
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a struggle. It's created when water aggressively mixes with the
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body's natural surfactant nucus and air during that desperate gasping reflex.
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Oh wow, it whips up into a foam that you
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can literally see during an autopsy.
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Speaker 1: And the source notes that about ninety percent of the
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time these physical changes, the flooded alveoli the frothy foam.
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They clearly and cleanly point to active drowning.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, the markers are.
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Speaker 1: The body fought the water, and the evidence of that
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fight is left in the tissue.
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Speaker 2: But that remaining percentage is a vast dark gray area, right,
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Because if a person is deceased before they enter the water,
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their heart has stopped. They are not fighting, They are
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not actively inhaling or creating that violent froth.
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Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense.
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Speaker 2: However, the body is still a porous vessel submerged in liquid, so.
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Speaker 1: The water can just passively enter the airways over.
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Speaker 2: Time, Precisely, the hydrostatic pressure of being underwater will slowly
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force liquid past the vocal cords and into the lungs. Yeah,
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you might not see the exact same extensive microscopic changes
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deep in the alveolar spaces, and you won't see the
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froth of a struggle, but you will still be examining
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a body with water in its lungs.
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Speaker 1: Okay, I really want to push back on the limits
12:44
of this science here, just to vocalize the frustration that
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the listener and certainly Nolan Wells's family must be feeling.
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Speaker 2: That's totally fair.
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Speaker 1: If you are a parent, you have a body, you
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have water in the lungs, and you have highly paid
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scientists saying, well, it's ambiguous. Why is in finding specific
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microscopic markers a one hundred percent rock solid guarantee. Yeah,
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it feels like the medical community is just hedging its
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bets to avoid being wrong.
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Speaker 2: And that frustration is a deeply human reaction to ambiguity.
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You know, but it misinterprets how scientific consensus actually works,
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and forensic pathology experts rarely use terms like one hundred
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percent proof when dealing with the chaotic variables of nature.
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Nature doesn't deal in absolutes. Instead, the standard professional language
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relies on phrases like the findings being compatible with or
13:33
consistent with drowning.
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Speaker 1: Compatible with That is such a legally loaded phrase, it
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feels almost noncommittal.
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Speaker 2: It is entirely intentional. It means the cellular and macro
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clues we are observing fit the narrative of drowning. They
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align with the physics and biology of that event. But
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it emphatically does not definitively ruled out that a highly unusual, stealthy,
13:54
or complex event occurred beforehand. As doctor Davis notes, you
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cannot hang a definitive legal conclusion on a single clue.
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You have to gather dozens of data points toxicology, water temperature,
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lung weight, cellular structure, and see which way the aggregate
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scale tips.
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Speaker 1: Wow. So the water fundamentally alters the physical evidence. It
14:16
washes away trace DNA, it introduces its own aquatic fluids
14:19
into the body, and it drastically blurs the timeline of death. Yes,
14:23
but in the specific case of Nolan Well's, the independent
14:26
pathologist hired by the family isn't just fighting the natural
14:29
chaotic effects of the ocean.
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Speaker 2: Now they are facing a massive, entirely man made obstacle
14:33
before they even make their first incision.
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Speaker 1: They are fighting the physical aftermath of the first autopsy,
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which brings us to the immense procedural challenge of the
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second opinion and the reality of navigating a forensic maze
14:45
that someone else has already walked through.
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Speaker 2: And this is a procedural reality that Internet sleuths completely misunderstand,
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and it breeds a massive amount of unnecessary conspiracy.
14:56
Speaker 1: Okay, let's lay out the strict sequence of events from
14:58
the TMZ interview. Nolan Wells had an initial autopsy performed
15:03
by the state. Right, this is standard legal protocol. It
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is their jurisdiction, and as doctor Davis is careful to note,
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the state has every right and the legal responsibility to
15:14
perform the most thorough initial investigation they possibly can. Absolutely,
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but for whatever legal or investigative reasons the authorities have
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deemed necessary, the results of that state autopsy have been
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sealed from the.
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Speaker 2: Public and crucially sealed from the independent medical team, at
15:29
least during the initial phases of their secondary review. Wow,
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which means when the grieving family hires an independent forensic
15:35
pathologist to perform a second autopsy to get that vital
15:39
second opinion, that independent doctor is working at a severe,
15:43
almost crippling disadvantage.
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Speaker 1: And doctor Davis gets very specific about the forensic procedures
15:48
that create this disadvantage. And this isn't because the state
15:52
medical examiner did anything malicious or underhanded, right.
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Speaker 2: Not at all.
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Speaker 1: It's because of the inherently destructive nature of an autopsy itself.
16:00
An autopsy is, by definition, the dismantling of the human body.
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She talks extensively about a process called bread loafing.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, bread loafing is a visceral term, but it is
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exactly what it sounds like. Okay, During a thorough high
16:14
quality initial dissection, the pathologist must take the major organs
16:19
out of the body and slice them very thinly, just
16:21
like slicing a loaf of bread from end to end.
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Speaker 1: I have to admit, when I first heard the phrase
16:25
bread loafing in a medical context, I thought it was
16:28
some kind of bizarre slag, right. It sounds casual, But
16:30
realizing it's a literal destructive surgical technique completely changes how
16:35
you view a second autopsy. Why is it so necessary
16:39
to destroy the organ to understand it?
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Speaker 2: Because the surface of an organ lies wow, okay, they
16:44
are looking for internal clues that are completely invisible from
16:47
the outside. They have to slice the lungs thinly to
16:50
look for a hidden mucus plug, a tiny undetected tumor,
16:54
or the deep tissue changes of drowning we just discussed, right.
16:58
They do it to the liver to look for disease,
17:00
they do it to the brain to look for microhemorrhages,
17:02
and they do it to the heart to look for blockages.
17:05
Speaker 1: But the unavoidable consequence of bread loafing is that the
17:08
structural integrity of the organ is forever altered. Yes, you
17:12
cannot unslice a loaf of bread.
17:14
Speaker 2: Exactly.
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Speaker 1: So when the second independent pathologist comes into the autopsy
17:18
suite seeking to examine the lungs to see if there
17:20
is that specific frothy fluid in the airways or water
17:24
in the deep alveolar spaces, well, they physically can't.
17:28
Speaker 2: No, they can't.
17:29
Speaker 1: The lungs have already been chopped into cross sections, the
17:31
fluid dynamics are gone, the anatomy is completely compromised.
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Speaker 2: Furthermore, doctor Davis explains the routine removal of organ blocks.
17:39
Speaker 1: Organ block Yeah.
17:41
Speaker 2: In any death that is sudden, suspicious, or unwitnessed, the
17:45
first pathologist will typically remove the larynx and the throat
17:49
as one entire connected block of tissue and cartilage.
17:53
Speaker 1: Wait, they take the whole throat structure out.
17:55
Speaker 2: Why because they are specifically hunting for trauma. They need
17:59
to examine and the hyoid bone, which is a small,
18:02
fragile U shaped bone high up in the neck. They
18:05
are looking for microscopic brakes, fractures, or hemorrhages in the
18:09
surrounding strap muscles that would definitively indicate signs of manual
18:13
strangulation or blunt force trauma.
18:16
Speaker 1: But if they're cutting through the delicate structures of the
18:18
neck to remove this entire block and say there happen
18:22
to be something lightly dislodged in the airway. Yea, the
18:25
very surgical act of cutting might disturb or destroy that evidence.
18:28
Speaker 2: It absolutely could.
18:29
Speaker 1: And more importantly, once that entire throat block is removed
18:32
by a state medical examiner, yeah, it stays in the
18:35
state's evidence lockers.
18:36
Speaker 2: Exactly. It is preserved, usually in formuland for a further
18:40
microscopic evaluation, which means the second independent pathologist literally does
18:45
not have a throat to examine when they receive the body.
18:48
Speaker 1: That's wild, they have to.
18:49
Speaker 2: Stare at an empty space and wait, sometimes for months
18:53
to get the written records, the microscopic slides, or the
18:56
physical tissue back from the first autopsy.
19:00
Speaker 1: Ellenach, the forensic pathologist doctor Davis referenced earlier, has a brilliant,
19:05
terrifying analogy for this exact scenario.
19:07
Speaker 2: Oh, I love this analogy.
19:09
Speaker 1: She says that performing a second autopsy is literally like
19:12
being blindfolded, dropped into the middle of a complex maze
19:15
and told to find your way out. Yeah, but the catches.
19:18
You are only allowed to look at an aerial map
19:20
of the maze for ten seconds before the blindfold went on,
19:23
and someone has been moving the walls around while you walk.
19:25
Speaker 2: It perfectly captures the profound handicap of the second examiner,
19:29
It really does. The first pathologist sees the pristine, untouched maze.
19:34
They see the body exactly as nature and circumstance left it.
19:38
The second pathologist is feeling their way through a biological
19:40
landscape that has already been fundamentally surgically rearranged.
19:44
Speaker 1: And here's where it gets really interesting, because this collision
19:49
between standard necessary medical procedure and internet conspiracy is exactly
19:55
where the discourse around Nolan Wells got incredibly toxic. Oh yeah,
20:00
Because of this exact process, the routine removal of the
20:03
throat block for standard microscopic examination, a massive viral rumor
20:08
started spreading across social media that Nolan Wells's neck was missing.
20:12
Speaker 2: It spread like absolute wildfire. It was on every single platform.
20:15
Speaker 1: People were panicking. They were making reaction videos claiming a
20:18
massive cinematic police cover up.
20:20
Speaker 2: Right, Sales stole his neck? What are they hiding?
20:24
Speaker 1: Yes, but when you actually sit down and listen to
20:26
an expert like doctor Davis, you realize how a complete
20:29
lack of scientific literacy takes a totally mundane, routine medical
20:33
procedure with holding an oregon block for standard evaluation and
20:37
twists it into a grotesque conspiracy theory.
20:39
Speaker 2: It just highlights the extreme danger of partial information leaking
20:43
to the public. Right the public. Here's the phrase missing tissue,
20:46
and their brains, you know, primed by true crime documentaries,
20:50
immediately assume maliceon corruption. But the medical community hears missing
20:55
tissue and assumes correctly that the first pathologist was simple,
21:00
being thorough and retaining the block for standard evidentiary processing.
21:04
Speaker 1: My question, then, pushing back on the whole concept. If
21:08
a second autopsy is like running a maze blindfolded, and
21:11
the vital organs are sliced up into bread loaves and
21:13
crucial evidence blocks are literally sitting in a different building,
21:17
why do families even bother spending the money and emotional
21:20
energy to do it.
21:21
Speaker 2: It's a fair question.
21:22
Speaker 1: Is there actually any scientific value left in the body.
21:26
Speaker 2: It's a very valid question and one you might expect
21:28
in APCP to be cynical about. But doctor Davis is
21:32
adamant that yes, there is immense undeniable value.
21:35
Speaker 1: Okao.
21:36
Speaker 2: So second autopsies act as a crucial check and balance
21:39
in the medical and legal world because despite the blindfolded maze, handicapped,
21:43
despite the missing blocks, cases do get overturned and reclassified
21:47
because of them.
21:48
Speaker 1: How is that practically possible if the primary evidence is altered.
21:51
Speaker 2: Or gone, Because human error exists even in the creme
21:54
de la creme. A fresh set of highly trained eyes,
21:58
viewing the body with a different perspective or a different
22:01
initial hypothesis, might notice a subtle detail in the remaining tissue.
22:06
Oh I see, They might interpret the toxicology reports with
22:08
a different contextual understanding, or crucially, they might find a
22:13
hairline bone fracture that was initially overlooked in the rush
22:16
of the first examination. It is difficult work, yes, but
22:19
it is an essential part of pursuing the ultimate truth.
22:23
Speaker 1: So we have the physical alteration of the body by
22:25
the brutal forces of the water. We have the physical
22:28
alteration of the body by the scalpel of the first autopsy. Yeah,
22:32
but that leads us perfectly into another way. The body
22:35
alters itself purely through the passage of time, and this
22:38
phenomenon caused massive, widespread public confusion in the Nolan Wells case.
22:43
We have to talk about the pathological gray zone of decomposition.
22:46
Speaker 2: This specific detail is perhaps the most heavily debated physical
22:50
finding in the entire Internet discourse surrounding this case.
22:54
Speaker 1: We're talking about the red discoloration found on the back
22:56
of Nolan Wells's neck. When the independent autopsy report mention
23:00
this specific redness, the Internet immediately almost uniformly jumped to
23:05
a single, violent conclusion.
23:07
Speaker 2: They assumed it was a bruise, a deep tissue contusion
23:11
caused by blunt force.
23:12
Speaker 1: The public assumption was instantaneous and absolute. A red mark
23:16
on the back of the neck means he was struck.
23:18
Someone hit him from behind with an object, knocked him unconscious,
23:22
and threw his incapacitated body into the water to drown.
23:26
To the Internet, case closed, it's murder, right.
23:29
Speaker 2: But doctor Davis provides a stark, sobering contrast between that
23:34
emotional public assumption and the complex cellular reality a pathologist
23:39
actually faces on the table.
23:40
Speaker 1: Let's get into that.
23:41
Speaker 2: Medically speaking. To create a true contusion, what we commonly
23:44
call a bruise, it must happen while a person is
23:47
still living. Okay, it requires a functioning cardiovascular system. You
23:51
need a beating heart, acting as a pump, forcing blood
23:53
under high pressure out of ruptured capillaries and into the
23:56
surrounding damaged tissue. That high pressure leakage is what causes
24:00
the familiar swelling and discoloration of a bruise. But red
24:04
discoloration on a corpse can be caused by something entirely different,
24:08
governed not by a beating heart, but by.
24:11
Speaker 1: Gravity, decomposition, and lividity.
24:13
Speaker 2: Precisely, doctor Davis lists a whole host of environmental variables
24:18
that cause post mortem changes, biological shifts that occur after
24:22
death that perfectly indistinguishably mimic the physical appearance of a
24:26
violent bruise.
24:27
Speaker 1: My initial thought was that freezing ocean water must act
24:30
like a preservative, you know, like putting meat in a freezer.
24:32
But if the water is constantly moving, tossing the body around,
24:36
how does that mimic a beating What are the actual
24:38
variables here?
24:39
Speaker 2: He mentions the specific stage of decomposition, which accelerates or
24:43
decelerates based on the environment. She mentions the time elapsed
24:47
since death, the core temperature of the water right, but crucially,
24:50
as you pointed out, the movement and resting state of
24:52
the body when the heart stops pumping, gravity takes complete
24:56
control of the blood. It settles like heavy sediment in
24:59
a river. This is called liver mortis or lividity.
25:02
Speaker 1: So the blood just pools at the lowest physical point
25:04
of the body exactly.
25:06
Speaker 2: The red blood cells break down and the hemoglobin physically
25:09
stains the surrounding tissue a dark reddish purple.
25:12
Speaker 1: Wow.
25:12
Speaker 2: If a body is resting on a river bed or
25:15
caught in the rocks of a tidal zone, the blood
25:17
will pool heavily in the areas facing downward. Furthermore, if
25:22
the body is continually bumping against rocks or debris due
25:25
to the current, the kinetic transfer of energy can cause
25:28
localized tissue damage and discoloration that looks exactly like a
25:32
strike from a fist or a weapon.
25:33
Speaker 1: So the independent pathologist is staring at this red mark
25:36
on the back of the neck and they have to
25:38
ask a nearly impossible question. Is this a contusion from
25:42
a violent strike while his heart was beating or is
25:45
this post mortem lividity and environmental wear and tear from
25:49
simply existing in a turbulent body of water.
25:51
Speaker 2: And to figure that out, the pathologists cannot just look
25:53
at the redness they have to look for supporting, confirming clues,
25:57
and this is where the TMZ interview highlights some critical
26:00
negative finding. This is important in medicine. A negative finding
26:04
means something they specifically looked for but did not find,
26:08
and sometimes what is missing is more important than what
26:12
is there.
26:13
Speaker 1: Doctor Davis notes that the pathologist closely examined the skin
26:17
directly on top of and surrounding the red discoloration. There
26:21
was no breakage, there was no abrasion, there was no laceration.
26:26
Speaker 2: If you get hit in the back of a head
26:27
or neck hard enough with a blunt object to leave
26:29
a massive, deep red contusion, physics dictates you would expect
26:33
the skin to split, tear, or at least show signs
26:36
of severe surface abrasion from the impact.
26:38
Speaker 1: But the skin was entirely intact, exactly Furthermore, they looked
26:42
underneath a discoloration. They examined the underlying cervical spine and skull,
26:48
and there were zero fractures none. The bone architecture was
26:51
completely untouched. The pathologist even went a step further, conducting
26:55
a thorough examination of other parts of the body where
26:57
the overlying skin looked completely normal, just to check if
27:01
there were hidden internal fractures elsewhere that might indicate a struggle.
27:04
Speaker 2: Or a fall, and again there were none.
27:06
Speaker 1: Okay, I want to clarify a really vital logical point
27:09
for you listening, because it is so incredibly easy to
27:14
misinterpret medical jargon in these high stakes cases. Just because
27:18
there were no bone fractures, and just because the skin
27:21
wasn't violently broken, does not definitively prove that nothing happened
27:25
to Nolan Wells.
27:26
Speaker 2: That is a critical foundational distinction in forensic science.
27:30
Speaker 1: Doctor Davis explicitly says this in the interview. A lack
27:33
of broken bones doesn't mean no one hit him. A
27:35
person can absolutely suffer a concussive blow that leaves a
27:38
mark without shattering a vertebra. It simply means that this
27:41
specific red discoloration exists firmly in the pathological gray zone.
27:47
It is a biological space where science, despite all its
27:50
electron microscopes and m rhyme machines, cannot definitively declare it
27:54
a violent strike versus the natural pooling of blood and
27:57
water trauma. Yeah, the physical evidence simply isn't robust enough
28:01
to carry the immense legal weight of a definitive conclusion.
28:05
Speaker 2: And this emphasizes how pathologists must operate contrary to how
28:08
the Internet wants them to operate. You observe a sign,
28:11
in this case, localized redness on the neck, but deducing
28:15
the actual cause of that sign requires multiple, converging, undeniable clues. Yeah,
28:21
you cannot just take an isolated visual anomaly, point to
28:24
it and declare it a factive murder. In pathology, multiple
28:28
completely different causes a rock, a fist, or just gravity
28:32
can lead to the exact same visual finding on a corpse.
28:35
Speaker 1: So the autopsy provides us with a finding, but it
28:39
cannot and often does not, provide us with the context
28:42
of that finding exactly, which brings us to what I
28:44
consider the most jarring, unsettling revelation in this entire deep dive.
28:49
Because physical clues like water in the alveolar spaces or
28:52
ambiguous redness on the neck can be so easily blurred
28:55
by nature, the autopsy alone is rarely enough.
28:58
Speaker 2: It is a best only half the picture.
29:00
Speaker 1: Doctor Davis reveals something during the interview that I think
29:03
many people, myself included, find deeply disturbing to think about
29:07
an autopsy, no matter how painstaking, no matter how expert
29:10
the krem de la creme pathologist is is ultimately only
29:13
as good as the story, the context, or the witness
29:15
testimony that accompanies the body onto the table.
29:18
Speaker 2: She explores a truly terrifying reality about the strict limits
29:22
of forensic science, and it is this, Not all crimes
29:25
leave pathological evidence.
29:27
Speaker 1: I want to repeat that because it gave me absolute
29:30
chills reading the source material. Not all crimes leave pathological evidence.
29:34
Speaker 2: Its terrifying.
29:35
Speaker 1: We are so conditioned to believe that every evil deed
29:38
leaves a biological footprint. But doctor Davis gives two very specific,
29:44
highly plausible, and highly disturbing examples of how water can
29:48
erase intent.
29:49
Speaker 2: The first example she gives involves a crime of omission.
29:53
Speaker 1: Okay, imagine a.
29:53
Speaker 2: Scenario where someone is in the water, struggling against a
29:56
rip current, exhausting themselves, and another person or a group
30:00
of people simply stand on the shoreline or the boat
30:03
and watch them drown.
30:04
Speaker 1: Wow.
30:04
Speaker 2: They don't throw a life preserver, they don't jump in,
30:06
they don't call for aid. Depending on the specific legal
30:09
jurisdiction and the established duty of care, that can absolutely
30:13
be a crime. It is severe lethal negligence.
30:16
Speaker 1: But if you take that victim's body and put it
30:18
on a stainless steel autopsy table.
30:21
Speaker 2: The pathologists will find water in the lungs. They will
30:24
find alveolar damage consistent with drowning. They will note the
30:28
frothy fluid of a struggle. But the microscopic cells of
30:31
the lungs cannot tell the doctor that someone stood safely
30:35
on the shore and coldly watched it happen. There is
30:38
zero physical cellular evidence of that human malice. The lungs
30:43
only record the water, They do not record the audience.
30:46
Speaker 1: Oh Man, and her second example is even more direct,
30:48
more aggressive. She poses the question, what if someone was
30:53
in the water with the victim and they literally just
30:55
placed a hand on the back of the victim's head,
30:58
push them underwater, and held there until they stop fighting again.
31:01
Speaker 2: What are you going to see in the autopsy suite, as.
31:04
Speaker 1: Doctor Davis chillingly states.
31:06
Speaker 2: Nothing exactly. You will see the physiological signs of active drowning,
31:09
But pushing ahead underwater unless there was a massive, protracted,
31:13
violent struggle that left defensive bruises, deep lacerations, or broken
31:18
bones might leave absolutely no unique pathological marks whatsoever.
31:22
Speaker 1: That is just wow.
31:23
Speaker 2: The immense volume of water washes away any transfer of
31:27
DNA or skin cells. There are obviously no fingerprints left
31:31
on wet skin, and the ultimate mechanism of death, the
31:35
lack of oxygen due to water displacing air and the lungs,
31:39
is biologically identical to a tragic accidental drowning.
31:43
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for us if we
31:45
take this chilling reality of science's limitations and connected directly
31:50
back to the Nolan Wells case and specifically to the
31:52
people who are on Horn Island with him that day. Yeah,
31:55
I want to point out to you the listener, that
31:56
without the honest, forthcoming testimonies of the individuals who are
31:59
pre pres the autopsy alone is entirely, frustratingly mute on
32:05
the ultimate question of intent.
32:07
Speaker 2: This raises a profoundly important question about our societal expectations
32:11
of science. We want science to be an omniscient narrator,
32:14
we really do. We want the autopsy report to read
32:16
like a novel, telling us the entire detail story of
32:19
the final moments of a human life. But science can
32:21
only tell us the mechanics of how a body failed.
32:24
It can say the heart stopped because the lungs filled
32:27
with fluid. It cannot tell us the human malice, the
32:30
callous negligence, or the tragic, unavoidable accident that initiated that
32:34
cascade of failure.
32:36
Speaker 1: Science gives us the how, but relies entirely on humans
32:39
to give us the why. Exactly and right now. According
32:42
to the realities discussed in the interview, those humans aren't talking.
32:46
Doctor Davis explicitly notes that the other individuals who are
32:49
present are not necessarily speaking to the public or perhaps
32:54
even the authorities in a way that clears the ambiguity.
32:57
So we are missing the crucial half of the story.
33:00
The body is speaking, but without the context, its words are.
33:03
Speaker 2: Muffled, and this massive disconnect between what science is actually
33:07
capable of definitively proving and what the Internet demands it
33:11
proves right this very second leads to a highly dangerous,
33:15
toxic environment of endless speculation.
33:17
Speaker 1: Which has a devastating real world human cost. We have
33:21
to remember that this isn't just an abstract puzzle and
33:24
a true crime subreddit. This is about a real family
33:26
living through the worst days of their lives.
33:28
Speaker 2: It's awful.
33:29
Speaker 1: Toward the end of the TMZ interview, doctor Davis shifts
33:32
away from the purely clinical, detached aspects of the case
33:36
and makes a very personal emotional plea.
33:39
Speaker 2: She grounds the entire complex medical conversation and fundamental empathy.
33:45
She reveals that she herself is a mother of a
33:47
young adult male, and speaking directly from that vulnerable perspective,
33:51
she aligns herself completely with the agonizing pain the Wells
33:55
family is going through. She notes that at the end
33:57
of the day, there may have been terrible wrongdoing, or
33:59
their may not have been, But every single time the
34:02
Internet speculates based on ignorance, every time a content creator
34:06
adds a baseless, sensationalized theory to the narrative for clicks,
34:10
it actively compounds the family's trauma.
34:12
Speaker 1: It's a profound observation about the societal drive for truth
34:16
versus the immediate visceral harm of misinformation. People are angry.
34:21
They see a young life loss senselessly. They see sealed
34:24
records and a lack of immediate satisfying answers from authorities,
34:27
and their natural instinct is to become sleuths.
34:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, they want to solve it. They want to find
34:32
the bad guy.
34:32
Speaker 1: The anger and the desire for justice are completely understandable,
34:37
but without understanding the basic foundational limitations of science without
34:41
knowing about the destructive necessity of bread loafing, or the
34:44
staggering sixteen percent undetermined rate, or how liver mortis perfectly
34:49
mimics a beating. These amateur sleuths run wildly with falsehoods.
34:54
Speaker 2: They absolutely do.
34:55
Speaker 1: They take a standard missing throat block and mutate it
34:58
into a grotesque conspiracy about a stolen neck. And as
35:01
Dtotavis points out, this doesn't bring justice. It just wastes
35:05
investigative time and actively tortures a grieving family who has
35:09
to read these horrific theories about their loved one.
35:12
Speaker 2: But the interview doesn't just leave us sitting in this
35:14
depressing reality of internet mobs and scientific ambiguity, Thankfully, No,
35:19
it actually introduces a highly proactive, fascinating solution, a practical
35:23
way to channel that societal desire for justice into something
35:26
that actually helps families navigate this nightmare.
35:29
Speaker 1: Yes, the source material details the vital work of an
35:32
organization known as the Autopsy Initiative. Now, this is really
35:35
interesting and it cuts through a lot of the noise.
35:37
Colin Kaepernick's name has been heavily associated with this, and
35:40
doctor Davis clarifies his exact role during the interview. Yeah,
35:44
he is a co founder of the Autopsy Initiative, And
35:47
what this organization does is incredibly practical and desperately needed.
35:51
They completely cover the exorbitant financial costs of independent autopsies
35:56
for families who are dealing with police related deaths or
36:00
otherwise highly suspicious, unresolved cases.
36:03
Speaker 2: Doctor Davis mentions that she's intimately familiar with their work,
36:06
having spoken directly with their team and even featured the
36:08
organization on her own platform, the Medical Collective podcast.
36:12
Speaker 1: I think it is absolutely vital to highlight this initiative
36:15
to you listening, because we spend so much of our
36:17
time online feeling helpless when we read the news. Oh
36:20
for sure, we get angry on behalf of these families
36:22
who are stonewalled by sealed state records, bureaucratic red tape,
36:26
or simply a lack of funds to hire their own experts.
36:29
But this organization transforms that helpless Internet anger into actionable, professional,
36:35
rigorous medical review.
36:36
Speaker 2: It synthesizes exactly what doctor Davis has been advocating for
36:40
throughout the entire conversation, providing grieving families with free, highly professional,
36:46
independent second opinions ensures that the truth is pursued through
36:50
rigorous scientific methodology, not through the chaotic whims of social
36:55
media algorithms.
36:56
Speaker 1: It gives families immediate access to the forensic crend de
36:59
lacreme when they need it most, bypassing the financial barriers
37:03
to justice. And, as doctor Davis notes, because of the
37:06
meticulous work funded by the Autopsy Initiative, some cases have
37:09
indeed been successfully overturned. Hidden evidence has been found, context
37:14
has been clarified. The second look matters immensely. It works.
37:18
Speaker 2: It provides the proper scientific channel for seeking truth rather
37:22
than relying on crowdsource speculation.
37:24
Speaker 1: So as we wrap up today's deep dive, let's take
37:26
a moment to look back at the immense journey we've
37:28
taken through doctor Davis's insights into the strategic case.
37:31
Speaker 2: It's been a lot to process it has.
37:34
Speaker 1: We started by breaking down the complex, rigid hierarchy of pathologists,
37:38
learning why we must defer to the specific specialized expertise
37:42
of forensic crash investigators rather than just brilliant mechanics.
37:46
Speaker 2: We waded into the murky, highly ambiguous, microscopic waters of
37:50
drowning evidence, exploring the biological reasons why a staggering sixteen
37:55
percent of these aquatic cases remain forever undetermined.
37:59
Speaker 1: We looked at the immense, frustrating procedural limitations of conducting
38:02
a second autopsy, the destructive necessary reality of bread loafing,
38:07
and the terrifying handicap of navigating a medical maze blindfolded. Yeah,
38:11
we clarified the deeply misunderstood gray zone of decomposition, explaining
38:15
exactly how water, gravity, and time can perfectly mimic the
38:18
bruises of a violent attack.
38:20
Speaker 2: And finally, we confronted the truly unsettling truth that the
38:23
autopsy is only ever half the story, and that science,
38:26
for all its advancements, absolutely requires honest human witness testimony
38:30
to give the physical findings their true context and meaning.
38:32
Speaker 1: Which leads me with a final, rather chilling thought for
38:35
you to ponder on your own tonight. It builds right
38:38
on that terrifying necessity of the story. Doctor Davis told
38:41
us that a pathologist fundamentally requires witness testimony to determine
38:45
if a drowning was a crime or an accident, because
38:48
simply pushing someone underwater leads no unique pathological marks.
38:52
Speaker 2: Biologically, it looks completely identical to a tragic accident.
38:56
Speaker 1: Right, So if modern science, with all of our incredible tools,
38:59
cannot tell the difference without a human witness speaking up,
39:02
how many historical accidental drownings over the past century might
39:06
actually have been unnoticed, perfect crimes, simply because the witnesses
39:11
on the shoreline chose to stay silent.
39:13
Speaker 2: Man, it is a profoundly dark thought and a stark
39:17
testament to the fragile, deeply human nature of justice.
39:21
Speaker 1: It really is. It brings us right back to where
39:23
we started in that waiting room. We all want the
39:25
X ray. We want the clean, jagged white line that
39:28
tells us exactly what is broken and exactly who broke it.
39:30
But in the turning waters of forensic pathology, the X
39:33
ray machine is often useless. We are left feeling our
39:36
way through the dark, relying on the slow, meticulous, and
39:38
sometimes maddeningly inconclusive work of the experts, and ultimately relying
39:43
on each other to tell the truth. Thank you for
39:46
joining us on this deep dive. Keep asking questions, keep
39:48
demanding real expertise, and has always stay curious.