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Mayhem in the Morgue | First Day · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

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Speaker 1: Hi guys, Nancy Grace here and right now, I want
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Speaker 1: to introduce you to a podcast you're going to love.
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Speaker 1: May Him in the Morgue with our friend and colleague,
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Speaker 1: doctor Kendall Crown's chief medical Examiner Terrant County. That's Fort Worth, Texas.
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Speaker 1: Never a lack of business in that morgue. He is
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Speaker 1: the esteemed lecturer in the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU,
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Speaker 1: with literally thousands of death investigations under his belt. He
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Speaker 1: has spent a career reading silent evidence left on the body,
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Speaker 1: from blunt force trauma to the smallest trace that points
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Speaker 1: investigators in the right direction. Crowns explains how the morgue
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Speaker 1: holds answers to crimes no one else can decipher. Follow
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Speaker 1: Mayhem in the Morgue. You can find it wherever you
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Speaker 1: get your podcasts, and now here is our friend, doctor
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Speaker 1: Kendall Crowns.
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Speaker 2: Welcome to Mayhem Anymore with your host, Doctor Kindle Crown.
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Speaker 2: So today's episode is first day. So everybody has first days, right,
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Speaker 2: We all have a first day of work, first day
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Speaker 2: of school, et cetera, et cetera. So today I'm going
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Speaker 2: to talk about one of my first days in my career.
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Speaker 2: So I was on my last rotation medical school. I
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Speaker 2: was one month away from graduating, and the rotation I
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Speaker 2: had chosen to take was in forensic pathology, which was
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Speaker 2: what I wanted to do as a career. And I
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Speaker 2: arrived at the medical Examiner's office, walked through the front doors,
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Speaker 2: and I was met by the entire staff, the medical examiners,
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Speaker 2: the death investigators, the clerks, everybody. They gave me a
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Speaker 2: little cubicle in the death investigator's office where I could
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Speaker 2: put all my stuff. So I set up and I
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Speaker 2: got ready for my day. About midday, a call came
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Speaker 2: in and it was possible homicide. The cheap and death
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Speaker 2: investigator Bill says to me, Hey, let's check this one out.
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Speaker 2: You're coming with me. I was super excited. I get
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Speaker 2: to go to a homicide scene on my very first
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Speaker 2: day of my medical school rotation. This is super cool.
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Speaker 2: So we head out and we go to this apartment
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Speaker 2: complex for the death that occurred. So this rotation was
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Speaker 2: in my hometown. I had grown up there and lived
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Speaker 2: there for close to twenty eight years, so this was
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Speaker 2: their apartment complex. I had driven past hundreds of times
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Speaker 2: over the years, just kind of nondescript. It was on
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Speaker 2: this way to an old arcade I used to go
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Speaker 2: to play video games and playpool at when I was
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Speaker 2: in high school and college. So we get there and
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Speaker 2: the homicide detective's already been there and they were waiting
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Speaker 2: for us. They were waiting in the dead guy's kitchen.
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Speaker 2: And so when we walk in, they're sitting in the
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Speaker 2: kitchen and they've made sandwiches from the dead guy's refrigerator
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Speaker 2: and they're sitting there eating them. And they said to Bill,
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Speaker 2: They go, hey, Bill, is it an homicide. This is
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Speaker 2: some stupid pervert. Go check him out. And so we
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Speaker 2: head on down the hallway to the dead guy's room
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Speaker 2: and when we get in there, there's pouring all over
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Speaker 2: the bed. Now, this is the day, is before the internet,
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Speaker 2: so it's paper porn. Nothing on the computer, no cell
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Speaker 2: phones back then, just paper porn. Dead guy's in his
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Speaker 2: closet and he's hanged. So at this point I had
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Speaker 2: read about hangings before this day. Hangings are usually, you know,
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Speaker 2: guy hag from a ceiling. He can be suspended, he
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Speaker 2: can be sitting down, it can be a number of things,
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Speaker 2: but he's just kind of hanged. But this one was different,
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Speaker 2: So how is it different. So he's hanged with a
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Speaker 2: white nylon rope. It's about his neck, tied with a
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Speaker 2: hangman's noose with thirteen coils. But then he's also completely naked.
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Speaker 2: He has clothes pins on his nipples and a whiffleball
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Speaker 2: bat jammed up his butt. He's leaning against this large
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Speaker 2: blue plastic barrel. Also, the rope itself had an intricate
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Speaker 2: mechanism associated with it. The rope went up to the
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Speaker 2: ceiling through an islet, then over a beam that then
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Speaker 2: went to another islet that was attached to the wall
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Speaker 2: that then attached to the side of the barrel that
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Speaker 2: he was sitting against. The piece attached to the barrel
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Speaker 2: had kind of an intricate failsafe mechanism or a tripwire
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Speaker 2: mechanism that was attached to the side of the barrel,
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Speaker 2: so essentially it was an escape mechanism. One thing to
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Speaker 2: know also is the beam itself had multiple grooves on
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Speaker 2: it from the rope, so he had done this a
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Speaker 2: number of times before and been successful. His fail safe
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Speaker 2: mechanism was if he passed out, he'd fall off the barrel,
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Speaker 2: it would trip the fail safe and cause the roupe
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Speaker 2: to become loose and completely fall off, causing the tension
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Speaker 2: to be released from the dead guy's neck and his
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Speaker 2: blood flow and his oxygen would be restored and he
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Speaker 2: wouldn't die. But on this day, instead of falling off
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Speaker 2: the barrel, he kind of leaned back onto the barrel,
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Speaker 2: so the fail safe never fired and he died. He
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Speaker 2: didn't expect to end up dead. So I'm looking at this,
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Speaker 2: I'm just overwhelmed. There's porn, there's a naked guy, there's
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Speaker 2: a whiffleball bat, there's all this stuff going on. It's
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Speaker 2: just sensory overwhelming to me. Never seen anything like this before.
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Speaker 1: Totally.
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Speaker 2: He didn't understand it's a hanging. But what's going on?
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Speaker 2: So I said to Bill, uh, what's going on? Bill?
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Speaker 2: And Bill nonchalantly says to me, Oh, this is just
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Speaker 2: aerotica sixia. At that point, I had never heard about
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Speaker 2: erotica sixia before, and I just was like, autoerotic what
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Speaker 2: he goes autoerotic asicksia. What they're doing is they're masturbating
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Speaker 2: and they hang themselves because they think the decreased oxygen
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Speaker 2: to their brain will increase the pleasure. And so sometimes
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Speaker 2: when they're doing it, they accidentally end up dying. So
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Speaker 2: I'm standing there just kind of overwhelmed taking this all in.
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Speaker 2: I didn't even know what questions to ask at this
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Speaker 2: point because this is just totally confusing. So the homicide
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Speaker 2: detectives come down the hallway and they go, hey, Bill,
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Speaker 2: who's the new guy. Who's the rookie? And Bill says, oh,
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Speaker 2: this is Kendall Crowns. He's our medical student who's rotating
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Speaker 2: him with us this month. And the detectives say, okay,
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Speaker 2: have the new guy cut him down. Have the rookie
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Speaker 2: cut him down. And Bill goes, hey, that's a great idea.
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Speaker 2: He pulls a pocket knife out of his pocket and
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Speaker 2: he hands it to me and goes cut him down, Kendall.
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Speaker 2: And I'm like, yeah, all right, I'll do that. This
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Speaker 2: is cool. I'm doing forensics, you know. So I crawl
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Speaker 2: up on this barrel. I'm standing on it. Barrel's about
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Speaker 2: four foot off the ground. I grab hold of that
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Speaker 2: rope with one hand and I start cutting with my other.
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Speaker 2: I am not the strongest person in the world, and
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Speaker 2: there is no way, even on a good day, I
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Speaker 2: could hold one hundred and eighty pound naked guy with
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Speaker 2: one hand, but I'll continue. So I'm cutting, I'm cutting,
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Speaker 2: I'm cutting, and I'm getting through this rope. I'm getting
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Speaker 2: close to the end, and in my peripheral vision, I
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Speaker 2: noticed the homicide's detectives are stepping backwards and they're kind
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Speaker 2: of laughing, and Bill's stepping backwards. He's kind of laughing.
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Speaker 2: I mean, they all know what's going to happen. Of course,
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Speaker 2: you know what's going to happen at this point. I didn't.
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Speaker 2: For whatever reason that day, I was so laser focused
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Speaker 2: on this rope and I couldn't even think of what
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Speaker 2: was going to happen once I got to the end.
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Speaker 2: So I keep cutting, and I get to the end.
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Speaker 2: I cut through that rope and all of a sudden, bam,
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Speaker 2: I'm holding one hundred and eighty pound naked guy with
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Speaker 2: one hand on a wabbly barrel, and one hundred and
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Speaker 2: eighty pound naked guy falls to the ground like a
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Speaker 2: sack of potatoes, and I come falling right on top
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Speaker 2: of him. My land on him with my elbow right
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Speaker 2: into his abdomen. So if I'm hitting him with's my
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Speaker 2: elbow and his abdomen, you know where the rest of
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Speaker 2: me is in relation to the rest of him, so ew.
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Speaker 2: But anyway, my elbow digs into his abdomen and creates pressure,
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Speaker 2: and that pressure that's created forces that whiffleball bat out
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Speaker 2: of his button across the room. I roll off of
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Speaker 2: him and I jumped to my feet and I'm like, oh,
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Speaker 2: I'm okay, I'm okay. No one cared if I was
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Speaker 2: okay at that point because they were all too busy laughing.
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Speaker 2: They were bent over laughing so hard. So once everybody
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Speaker 2: calmed down, we got out a body bag and we
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Speaker 2: rolled him into the body bag and Bill said to me, yeah,
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Speaker 2: you're picking that bat up. Buddy handed me a pair
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Speaker 2: of gloves, thankfully, and I walked over and I picked
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Speaker 2: up that bat and I threw it in the body bag.
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Speaker 2: We zipped him up. Homicide detectives left probably tell everybody
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Speaker 2: about what happened about the stupid medical student, and we
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Speaker 2: waited for body transport. Body transport showed up, they picked
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Speaker 2: up the body, Bill told him the story. They all
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Speaker 2: got a good laugh head back to the medical examiner's office,
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Speaker 2: and the dead guy was later on autopsyed. He was found
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Speaker 2: his cause of death was hanging man or death was accent,
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Speaker 2: and we'll go into why that is on another episode.
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Speaker 2: But anyway, and then that day came to an end.
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Speaker 2: So at the end of the goal, I learned a
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Speaker 2: very important lesson. I can't hold one hundred and eighty
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Speaker 2: pound naked guy while balancing on a barrel. Never have
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Speaker 2: done it again in the rest of my career. Very
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Speaker 2: important lesson. I always look back on it, and I
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Speaker 2: always think, thank goodness of Internet and cell phones weren't
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Speaker 2: around back then, because if they had been, I would
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Speaker 2: have been a viral sensation that probably would still be
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Speaker 2: going on for the next hundred years. So that brings
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Speaker 2: us to the end of the episode. I hope you
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Speaker 2: learned something. I hope you were entertained until the next time.