Speaker 1: Body times. But Joseph's gotten more. I didn't enjoy high school,
Speaker 1: not by a long shot. I was involved in a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff, but I was kind of nerdy, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of on the outside. Played football, was in RTC,
Speaker 1: but beyond that, I couldn't get out of that place
Speaker 1: quick enough. But the people that really kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: stayed with me were my middle school teachers, or as
Speaker 1: we used to call it, junior high school teachers, and
Speaker 1: to a certain degree, my elementary school teachers. There's you know,
Speaker 1: because those are really the first people you have contact
Speaker 1: with as you're kind of developing your learning, and so
Speaker 1: I actually think that they have more of an influence
Speaker 1: on you than maybe even the high school teachers. And
Speaker 1: there are a couple that kind of stand out in
Speaker 1: my mind as I look back through time. It's amazing
Speaker 1: how teachers can change lives to a certain degree. Of course,
Speaker 1: you know, families do it more than actual teachers, but
Speaker 1: they do have an influence. But can you imagine that
Speaker 1: you're a student in school and the person that has
Speaker 1: taught you for maybe several years, that you've seen around campus,
Speaker 1: seen in the hallways, suddenly they up and vanish without
Speaker 1: a trace. Today, we're going to have a discussion about
Speaker 1: one such teacher that vanished, and to make matters even
Speaker 1: more interesting, we're going to talk about what turned out
Speaker 1: to be her skull that washed up almost one hundred
Speaker 1: miles away from where the rest of her remains were.
Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks Dave. Who
Speaker 1: was your favorite teacher? Like, do you have a favorite
Speaker 1: teacher like in elementary school or junior Pica?
Speaker 2: Second grade?
Speaker 1: Second grade?
Speaker 2: Really missus Sampica, Yeah, she was awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, mine was actually in the third grade Missus Peoples.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, Miss Peoples.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and.
Speaker 2: Crazy Yeah it is that way, yeah.
Speaker 1: Going back all that way. I mean I can name
Speaker 1: a couple from high school, but primarily in that elementary phase.
Speaker 1: For me, it was it was the best I learned
Speaker 1: how to read, you know, really learned how to read, learned,
Speaker 1: you know, started my time's tables. But reading was a
Speaker 1: big deal, was a big escape in my life, you know,
Speaker 1: coming from a family that was topsy turvy and abuse
Speaker 1: that was going on. She had given me a gift
Speaker 1: of being able to read and also the ability to
Speaker 1: retreat from what was going on in my mind and
Speaker 1: being able to escape into a book. And so I read.
Speaker 1: I read everything I used to read. I had two
Speaker 1: sets of of uh encyclopedias in my bedroom, and my
Speaker 1: grandmother gifted both of them to me. One was a
Speaker 1: World Book and the other was funking Wagonal by the way.
Speaker 1: By the way, she had gotten volume by volume from
Speaker 1: Safeway Grocery.
Speaker 2: Scots Way too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you couldn't afford you couldn't afford World Book.
Speaker 2: You got fun go wagonals.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you'd have to buy the World Book all
Speaker 1: at once. And it would be like a college kid
Speaker 1: that would show up at the door and they're trying
Speaker 1: to make they've got the summer job. I always saw, God,
Speaker 1: that's a tough job. And they would come by and
Speaker 1: they would sell them that way. Uh but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: my encyclopedias, and then you know, started out reading The
Speaker 1: Hardy Boys and which I had every one of those
Speaker 1: volumes and and a lot of other stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like a.
Speaker 2: Older reading in second grade.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thing, it truly is. And you know that imprint
Speaker 1: is left. But Dave, I got to tell you this
Speaker 1: this case which I'll go at full disclosure right now,
Speaker 1: this is as a result of our great friends at
Speaker 1: Authorm Laps in the Woodlands. They finally close out a
Speaker 1: case that I believe and correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: I believe initiated in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 3: That's when. That's when Kay Adams. That's I can't pronounce
Speaker 3: her other name. I think it's a Medan Meden Meden think, okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: I can go with that. But whenever they give me
Speaker 3: an aka and it has a Smith, Jones or Adams,
Speaker 3: I'm going that way. So either way, maybe that was
Speaker 3: a teaching thing, because you know, sometimes you get a
Speaker 3: teacher and you know them as one name, and then
Speaker 3: they get married and the name changes and it messes
Speaker 3: with everybody. I don't know, but anyway you look at it.
Speaker 3: In nineteen eighty seven, forty eight year old elementary school
Speaker 3: teacher Kay Josephine Medden, her husband goes on a business
Speaker 3: trip and when he returns, she's gone. He goes to police, Hey,
Speaker 3: my wife's missing. They live in a fairly rural area
Speaker 3: in northern California, Humboldt County, and he have a husband.
Speaker 3: Of course, goes to the police, goes to the local
Speaker 3: sheriff and says that my wife's missing. I don't know
Speaker 3: where she is, and so they start looking. I mean,
Speaker 3: he's been gone. She was here when I left, she's
Speaker 3: not here now. I don't know what that would be like, Joe.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm putting myself in that man's position and going,
Speaker 3: what Because this is a different time nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 3: you didn't have cell phones, you didn't have the things
Speaker 3: a week right now, If if you and Kim were
Speaker 3: separated by distance, you could pick up the phone and
Speaker 3: get her on the phone right now, there would be
Speaker 3: no missing for a day. If you couldn't get her
Speaker 3: on the phone, and you should, you know, be able
Speaker 3: to get her on the phone, you would have somebody
Speaker 3: looking for her. But in this case, he's gone for
Speaker 3: however long on business and gets home and his wife's
Speaker 3: not there. He didn't have any clue. We don't know
Speaker 3: when she went missing because there was nobody home.
Speaker 1: But yeah, precisely, but we.
Speaker 2: Know they searched as soon as they got home.
Speaker 1: Yeah they did. And keep in mind the specifics of
Speaker 1: the story is kind of interesting, and it goes along, Dave,
Speaker 1: with what you're saying about the husband going on a
Speaker 1: business trip. They merely talk about how she was gone
Speaker 1: or she went and missing. Get this in the summer
Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, I don't know about you, but by my account,
Speaker 1: summer last from essentially like June twentieth or something like
Speaker 1: that most of the time and then into September. So
Speaker 1: that's the kind of broad spectrum that you're working on here.
Speaker 1: So obviously they could probably narrow it down. But you know,
Speaker 1: the saying he was on his business trip, Yeah, yeah, precisely,
Speaker 1: and that's how you would go back and pinpoint it.
Speaker 1: The other thing that's kind of missing, you know, in
Speaker 1: the story is the idea of precisely where he went
Speaker 1: on his business trip, you know, where was he? You know,
Speaker 1: and I'm not saying it. Look as you well know,
Speaker 1: you and I are history on the show. You know,
Speaker 1: we talk about you know, looking you know, looking for
Speaker 1: individuals that are associated with the individual, you know, like
Speaker 1: the intimate's familial stuff. And it feels like I ought
Speaker 1: to just have that on a loop. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: because but it's it's one of the things that plays
Speaker 1: in to a lot of these cases. But you know,
Speaker 1: he's out, he's away, he's away from her, so that
Speaker 1: he you know, you don't have day to day accountability.
Speaker 1: You know, gee hunt, I'm running to the store or
Speaker 1: you know, I'm going to go and see my mom,
Speaker 1: or I'm going to go visit friends for a couple
Speaker 1: of nights or something like that. Back then, that was
Speaker 1: a that was a big ask. You know, you couldn't
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 3: I made a couple of notes on that of what
Speaker 3: I would want to know. Yeah, I wonder where her
Speaker 3: husband went on his business trip. I want to know
Speaker 3: how long the husband was gone. I want to know
Speaker 3: did the husband come back from the trip after his
Speaker 3: wife was reported missing or did he come home and
Speaker 3: she had been gone? We know her stuff was left behind, things.
Speaker 1: Like that book. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Still, and back then a woman in her mid forties
Speaker 3: would not leave her house without her pocket. But no,
Speaker 3: you know, first it's on their hip. And then, of
Speaker 3: course did the husband help look for the wife. I
Speaker 3: think he did because they looked over the property. But then, Joe,
Speaker 3: a couple of months go by, and then what happens
Speaker 3: what Joe?
Speaker 2: I feel like the big reveal.
Speaker 3: And now TV's Big Winner. What happened next?
Speaker 1: Joe? Oh my lord. Yeah, so we've gone from quote
Speaker 1: unquote the summer of nineteen eighty seven, to a bit
Speaker 1: more specificity, if you will. So November of nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: seven rolls around and lo and behold, what do the
Speaker 1: members of the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office receiving the mail?
Speaker 1: It's a package of skeletal remains. Now, I don't know
Speaker 1: about you. First off, I can't imagine someone taking skeletal
Speaker 1: remains and placing them in the United States Postal Service
Speaker 1: and having them delivered to a law enforcement agency. And
Speaker 1: can I say one more thing about skeletal remains were
Speaker 1: when we're talking about time here, brother Dave, the fact
Speaker 1: that she went missing in nineteen eighty seven, the summer
Speaker 1: of and the skeletal remains were mailed in November. I
Speaker 1: don't know what the status of those skeletal remains upon
Speaker 1: receipt were, but I can tell you this. I've worked
Speaker 1: a lot of cases involving skeletonized remains and partially skeletonized remains, Okay,
Speaker 1: in that same timeframe, and a lot of it depends
Speaker 1: upon obviously depends upon the environmental conditions. But Dave, I
Speaker 1: got to tell you, after a period, let's say that
Speaker 1: she went missing in June. Okay, so we got July, August, September, October, November.
Speaker 1: That's five months, Dave. Most of the time, if you
Speaker 1: were to find skeleton remains out in the woods after
Speaker 1: a five month period, you're still going to have some
Speaker 1: soft tissue, provided that animals hadn't gotten to it. So
Speaker 1: that opens up an entirely different world here. If these remains,
Speaker 1: let's just say the status of them was completely cleaned
Speaker 1: upon arrival at the Sheriff's office, you're talking about something
Speaker 1: that is so beyond the pale here, because if you
Speaker 1: got an individual that brought about her death, all right,
Speaker 1: and they had these skeleton remains, they spent time with them, Dave,
Speaker 1: They've actually spent tom cleaning them. And I don't know,
Speaker 1: that's just one of the first things that kind of
Speaker 1: popped in my mind with this.
Speaker 3: It makes sense because Joe, in order for them to
Speaker 3: become skeleton, just a skeleton bone, they weren't left out
Speaker 3: in the woods to their own device. I'm going to
Speaker 3: assume that it's not like this is a boy scout
Speaker 3: that was out of a cad jamboree. He got lost
Speaker 3: in the woods, found some bones and said, hey, I'm
Speaker 3: going to put these in a bag and I'll take
Speaker 3: them back. And oh, I don't want to be accused
Speaker 3: of any wrongdoing, so I'm going to anonymously mail them
Speaker 3: from San Francisco. Now that's not what happened. That does
Speaker 3: not make any sense.
Speaker 1: This thing will. And just so our friends understand, this
Speaker 1: was in fact postmarked out of Cruisco, right, so included
Speaker 1: something else. Yeah, please please tell a lot because this
Speaker 1: thing you just get, you know, what was it? Ali said?
Speaker 1: It gets curious or and curious or yeah, police go ahead, man.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 3: So we have bones sent in the mail and they
Speaker 3: find a note, and the note is a treasure map
Speaker 3: you meant from the Hardy Boys a little while ago.
Speaker 3: I like to think of as GOLDA balloons and pieces
Speaker 3: of eight all belong to applegate the gold is here.
Speaker 3: But wait, so they get a map that they remains
Speaker 3: are incomplete. It's not a complete skeleton. They're just getting
Speaker 3: parts here, just pieces of bone or bones. I don't
Speaker 3: know to what level because they've never really broken it down.
Speaker 3: But a letter that was included with the bones included
Speaker 3: directions to more bones, but what was found was still
Speaker 3: an incomplete set. So whoever did this sent some of
Speaker 3: the bones to the police to get their attention. Then
Speaker 3: he sent them on a scavenger hunt to find more bones.
Speaker 2: Was he in the woods watching? Wow?
Speaker 1: And again that's quite chilling. And since we're talking about
Speaker 1: a coastal area, we're talking about an area that is rural,
Speaker 1: wide open. I wonder did X actually mark the spot?
Speaker 1: I got a question for you, Dave. Would you like
Speaker 1: to know would you like to know if we get
Speaker 1: how we clean bones that we get from a scene
Speaker 1: that are brought back to our facility at a medical
Speaker 1: examiner's office. Would you like to know how we do that?
Speaker 3: I am kind of curious at this point, to be
Speaker 3: honest with you, mainly because I'm thinking about how did
Speaker 3: these bones come in, you know.
Speaker 2: Where there's scene or what was going on with them.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of couple of methodologies here, all right.
Speaker 1: It's to hold onto your hat because most people don't
Speaker 1: realize that this is even a thing, all right. So
Speaker 1: if we have remains that and when I say partial
Speaker 1: skeletal remains, generally what happens when you find when you
Speaker 1: find a body. I have found, at least in my experience,
Speaker 1: that the things that actually the areas that degrade the
Speaker 1: most where you're going to have the least soft tissue
Speaker 1: are going to be the appendicular skeleton, which is like
Speaker 1: the arms and the legs. Okay, so the feet you'll
Speaker 1: have little bones, the little complex bones that kind of
Speaker 1: fall away. You have to be real careful, particularly the
Speaker 1: feet and the fingers and that sort of thing. But
Speaker 1: then as you get closer to the core, there's still
Speaker 1: a chance you're going to have soft tissue. Most of
Speaker 1: the time, it's going to be like leather. And even
Speaker 1: on the arms you might have leather like skin that's there,
Speaker 1: and it's because it's kind of being cure naturally, all right,
Speaker 1: So in human skin does appear like leather specifically. All right,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get I'm not going to go
Speaker 1: down the road of ed Geen here. That's another episode
Speaker 1: where he was, you know, turning human hides. He was
Speaker 1: treating them to tan them, you know, and that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. But that's that's a discussion for another day.
Speaker 1: But at the back at the Medical Examiner's facility, if
Speaker 1: you have an anthropology lab, we actually have cauldrons there.
Speaker 1: They're not black cast iron cauldrons, however, cauldrons nonetheless, and
Speaker 1: there are these big stainless steel pods. We will detach
Speaker 1: as best we can without traumatizing the remains too much.
Speaker 1: We will try to kind of almost pull apart those
Speaker 1: scales remains and place them into this cauldron. It's got
Speaker 1: water in it. Okay, And if anybody out there knows
Speaker 1: what a crockpot is, I think of coming home from
Speaker 1: church and Mom's got a pot roast in there she's
Speaker 1: been cooking. You ever notice how the meat, you know,
Speaker 1: literally falls off as a result of slow cooking. Well,
Speaker 1: it's the same principle with rendering down human remains. You
Speaker 1: would it has been explained to me by forensic anthropologists.
Speaker 1: You don't want to do it at too high He
Speaker 1: is kind of a slow kind of thing. And the
Speaker 1: only thing I've been able to compare it to is
Speaker 1: a crockpot. And I've actually seen a very large crockpot
Speaker 1: in a morgue before, where they would take smaller elements
Speaker 1: of human bodies and render them down that way over
Speaker 1: a period of time. What happens is is that the
Speaker 1: tissue essentially separates gently from the bones, and the bones,
Speaker 1: of course are heavier, so they'll settle to the bottom.
Speaker 1: What was one of the things that was really really
Speaker 1: disturbing to me, and even by my standards. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like when you you go to retrieve these these
Speaker 1: remains and the way they have it with the so
Speaker 1: called cauldron. They're big stainless steel things. They have a
Speaker 1: they have like a basket that sits down in it, okay,
Speaker 1: almost like you're doing a crawfish bowl, all right, or
Speaker 1: crab ball, and you drop it into, you know, into
Speaker 1: the pot. You know, well, this thing's very fine, it's
Speaker 1: got little tiny holes in it. And so after the
Speaker 1: soft tissue kind of drifts away, you pull this thing
Speaker 1: up and the skeletal remains have settled to the bottom
Speaker 1: of this basket. And when you when you take that
Speaker 1: lid off. Initially though, there is like this really disgusting
Speaker 1: beige froth that's on top of the on top of
Speaker 1: the fluid in this thing, okay, and then you just
Speaker 1: kind of drain it like that. And once you get
Speaker 1: to that point, you carefully go through these remains because
Speaker 1: the key here is to try to determine what's missing,
Speaker 1: because are you dealing with a incomplete skeleton? Did you
Speaker 1: gather for everything at the scene? Did a dog come
Speaker 1: up and wander away with some critical bit of an
Speaker 1: anatomical element, and you're it's gone forever and a forever
Speaker 1: and ever. Amen, and every bit to this, particularly in
Speaker 1: the case of this teacher, everything has evidentiary value, Dave.
Speaker 1: So it's key that you you try to assemble as
Speaker 1: much of the skeleton as you can. I'm just fascinated
Speaker 1: that they had these bones that are sent in to
Speaker 1: the police department, a collection of bones which they've retained,
Speaker 1: all right, and then they send the police, like you said,
Speaker 1: on a treasure hunt with How bizarre is this. I've
Speaker 1: never even heard of anything like this to go find
Speaker 1: more skeleton remains, which they did recover. I'm if I'm
Speaker 1: understanding this correctly, but it was still incomplete David.
Speaker 2: That was actually before we started.
Speaker 3: I asked Joe a couple of questions because that's exactly
Speaker 3: what happened. I thought, Okay, obviously you have somebody here
Speaker 3: who has.
Speaker 2: Has We can't jump to that conclusion. I know we can't.
Speaker 3: But they had to have killed this poor woman and
Speaker 3: then hacked or body of rendered it down to bones.
Speaker 3: I mean, this isn't like it happened in nature and
Speaker 3: somebody found it and mailed it in.
Speaker 2: Just none of that makes sense.
Speaker 3: What does make sense is that there's a really sadistic
Speaker 3: witch out here, male or female, that did this. They
Speaker 3: killed a forty eight year old elementary school teacher, is
Speaker 3: what they did, while her husband was away, and then
Speaker 3: did her endous things to her body, and then didn't
Speaker 3: even send it all into police. They let them on
Speaker 3: a wild goose chase and didn't even give them all
Speaker 3: the bones, just gave them enough to keep them looking.
Speaker 3: And this case went on for decades. They could not
Speaker 3: solve it. And I'm wondering Joe from nineteen eighty seven
Speaker 3: when you mentioned this a minute ago, we know she
Speaker 3: went missing sometime in the summer of eighty seven. Was
Speaker 3: the first group of bones came in November of eighty seven,
Speaker 3: and they were postmarked from San Francisco. The bones had
Speaker 3: to have been mechanically rendered down because in nature they
Speaker 3: would not have been bones, only they would have had
Speaker 3: other things on them, and they probably would have been
Speaker 3: scattered hither and yonn from animals. But they're mailed in
Speaker 3: from San frids Cisco or San Francsco. And folksmark with
Speaker 3: a note. So you've got all kinds of evidence here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, what do you do it.
Speaker 2: To somebody who had something to do with these bones?
Speaker 2: And yeah? Age back then, buddy, No.
Speaker 1: No, no, it wasn't. It wasn't. We're talking about eighty seven.
Speaker 1: I'd already been I'd already been practicing as a death
Speaker 1: investigator for two years by the time down in New Orleans.
Speaker 1: So and no, you know, we we weren't in the
Speaker 1: Stone Age. I mean we had we were certainly limited
Speaker 1: in certain areas compared to where we are today, specifically
Speaker 1: in DNA. But you know there are other things. But
Speaker 1: here's another bit that they would have had access to.
Speaker 1: First off, if you've got a note, was it written
Speaker 1: in long hand or was it typed? Okay? And so
Speaker 1: even with that, if you're doing it on what's saying old?
Speaker 1: Do you remember the selectric computers? I don't know. Did
Speaker 1: you take typing in high school?
Speaker 3: Talking about yeah, annual? We only had three electric ones, Joe. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we had to learn how a manual type.
Speaker 1: So you had the arm that would push it back, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a royal type.
Speaker 3: To mash them hard. Used my fingers how deformed one?
Speaker 2: Okay, that's true.
Speaker 3: I played basketball. I jammed this fingermail. Yeah. Yeah, on
Speaker 3: my right hand, I jammed and it popped that knuckle.
Speaker 3: I had to hide it from my parents. We have
Speaker 3: money for a doctor, and so the Lord and I
Speaker 3: had typing. I had typing class that nine weeks in
Speaker 3: seventh grade, and I had to tape it. I put
Speaker 3: a piece of metal on the ends like a post.
Speaker 3: I had so much trouble with that. I had to know, my.
Speaker 1: Lord man who rated? I got to ask who rated
Speaker 1: the electric typewriter? So were they teacher's pets? Yeah, it
Speaker 1: had to be, because it wasn't me.
Speaker 2: I know. I was just trying to get to thirty
Speaker 2: words for minutes I could pass.
Speaker 1: No kid, Yeah, that was my goal too. And I
Speaker 1: will tell you so if you think in eighty seven your.
Speaker 3: Computers, Joe, the best class I ever had was typing
Speaker 3: because it taught me how to use a keyboard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it did, it did. And I guess they still
Speaker 1: teach typing. I don't know if they do or not.
Speaker 1: I know they teach a lot of information science classes
Speaker 1: now and maybe yeah, no kid, so thumbs, yeah, and
Speaker 1: I've got dumb thumb. So it's I'll miss misspell things
Speaker 1: many times.
Speaker 2: At any rate.
Speaker 1: So Yeah, so if you're Leopolden Love.
Speaker 3: They had a typewriter, the type the note. Remember that
Speaker 3: mantle didn't throw it away in parts, and they still
Speaker 3: were able to find that and put it back together.
Speaker 3: That was sixty years before.
Speaker 1: This, right, And so with those those those strikes on
Speaker 1: a piece of paper, you might think that every single
Speaker 1: typewriter in the world is the same. Let's just say
Speaker 1: that I was. I was kind of uh, you know,
Speaker 1: laughing a second deal about royal typewriters, but you know,
Speaker 1: you think about the old manual typewriters. That strike that
Speaker 1: takes place when you depress that button requires a lot
Speaker 1: of force. You can actually strike it and it's going
Speaker 1: to hit that tape that has the ink on it,
Speaker 1: and you can have a light strike or a heart strike.
Speaker 1: I know all of this because when I was at
Speaker 1: the State Medical Examiner's Office, assigned there for like eight
Speaker 1: months with the State Medical Examiner's Office in Georgia. My
Speaker 1: office was immediately adjacent to the question document person, and
Speaker 1: she and I became great friends. And I would sit
Speaker 1: there and I was amazed at what she what she
Speaker 1: the vast, her vast spectrum of learning everything from counterfeit
Speaker 1: money to hand handwriting to two old typewriters, even computer stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, at that at that point in time. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got that bit of evidence, which would still be significant.
Speaker 1: But look, you can have all the typed letters in
Speaker 1: the world, but if you don't have a machine to
Speaker 1: go back to. Now, there are certain machines out there
Speaker 1: that generate a particular type of strike that would separate one,
Speaker 1: like one particular brand from another. You know that that
Speaker 1: might be something that you could go on, but you
Speaker 1: would have to you know, and you can narrow it
Speaker 1: down to say selectric, all right, and there's but how
Speaker 1: many additions of selectric were made over the years, you
Speaker 1: know that somebody could got you know, we can't even
Speaker 1: begin to calculate.
Speaker 2: That you could find a fingerprint on the paper.
Speaker 1: Yeah you could again, I think I mentioned the other
Speaker 1: day about the use of what you've got, Like one
Speaker 1: of the ways you recover prints off of paper is
Speaker 1: you can either use like ninhydrant spray or you can
Speaker 1: use iodine as well, and that binds with it and
Speaker 1: you can actually pick up on grassen I dine idne
Speaker 1: raising raising latent prints on paper and it's beautiful. I
Speaker 1: mean it's there forever and ever amen once you do
Speaker 1: it though, So yeah, and the features are very unique.
Speaker 1: Here's another piece to this, no pun intended. But with
Speaker 1: the skeletal remains, let's say that he didn't have knowledge
Speaker 1: of Professor Morgan's crock pots, all right, and what we
Speaker 1: know to use in forensics and how anthropologists render things down, Well,
Speaker 1: that leads me to think that if he's taking soft
Speaker 1: tissue off, did he use a knife or some other
Speaker 1: sharp object. Well, if he did that, then these bones
Speaker 1: there's a high probability you'd have tool marks in various
Speaker 1: locations on these bones, which is a gold mine. But again,
Speaker 1: just like with the typewriter. Hell, just like with DNA,
Speaker 1: if you don't have an original source of a knife,
Speaker 1: of a typewriter, or somebody's DNA which you've collected, doesn't
Speaker 1: initially have much value. So you know, we have this
Speaker 1: presentation of the skeletal remains which arrive at the Humboldt
Speaker 1: County Sheriff's office, along with a note, this kind of
Speaker 1: cryptic note to again send the police out to a
Speaker 1: specific location or recover remains. But Dave, something happened in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three relative to this case, and I'm actually
Speaker 1: kind of fascinated by this because what are the odds,
Speaker 1: what are the odds that this particular partial element would
Speaker 1: ever be discovered. It's almost like there's a hand of
Speaker 1: providence on this.
Speaker 2: Why is it an anonymous person that founded?
Speaker 3: Joe?
Speaker 2: I'm curious about.
Speaker 3: That because the finder of this piece of skull, the
Speaker 3: person who founded, is anonymous to us, and where they
Speaker 3: found it is kind of.
Speaker 1: I would say it.
Speaker 2: Oh, they're impossible. Yeah, I mean I.
Speaker 3: Got some real questions about this that I'm not suitable
Speaker 3: to ask, you know, I just really wonder, Joe, I mean,
Speaker 3: does this not make you question everything?
Speaker 2: But you know about it?
Speaker 3: Because we know we got the first set mailed in
Speaker 3: with the note to the second set? And now we
Speaker 3: have part of a skull, and I'm assuming a couple
Speaker 3: other bones, not just one little piece of bone here,
Speaker 3: because how would you pick up one piece of bone
Speaker 3: and it wouldn't think I got a human skull.
Speaker 2: I don't know how big it was to you? Was
Speaker 2: it big?
Speaker 1: No? I don't know. It sounds like it was fragmented
Speaker 1: and yeah, either well, there's any number of things that
Speaker 1: could have happened. All right, Maybe the skull maybe the
Speaker 1: skull or that portion of skull, because it was a
Speaker 1: partial skull that was recovered. And if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 1: this skull, this part of the skull was actually found
Speaker 1: uh on a beach area and what's referred to as
Speaker 1: Trinidad Head one hundred miles away. Yeah, one hundred miles
Speaker 1: away from her home. One hundred miles.
Speaker 2: So Trinidad Head. Is that a tip?
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I hadn't even considered that, Dave. Really,
Speaker 1: you're in the wrong line of work, dude. That's yeah,
Speaker 1: that's actually kind of fascinating, isn't it. And so you
Speaker 1: we don't know who the finder is and they're never named,
Speaker 1: but they found this, this partial of a skull, and
Speaker 1: how that skull would make it back to the rest
Speaker 1: of the remains again is kind of fascinating as well.
Speaker 1: You know how, and I'm asking this in a, you know,
Speaker 1: a kind of a generalized kind of way. How did
Speaker 1: they connect these remains from Humboldt County to this partial
Speaker 1: skull that's one hundred miles away. And the other thing
Speaker 1: too here I can't get past the idea of that
Speaker 1: note and those remains being mailed from San Francisco. You know,
Speaker 1: I know, as a native California you can explain this
Speaker 1: to us, because you know, those of us that are
Speaker 1: uneducated geographically about California, we always hear the terms northern California.
Speaker 1: It's northern California, Southern California. You're a Southern California, dude.
Speaker 1: And so you've got northern California and this is northern California.
Speaker 1: And I've driven up the coastal road there one on one.
Speaker 1: There's a whole lot of northern California. Not to say
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of southern California, but it's worth
Speaker 1: to go the more isolated it is.
Speaker 3: I grew up in suburbia, you know. I grew up
Speaker 3: where our second grade field trip, yeah, a dairy farm.
Speaker 3: So we could see cows in person, Okay, actually see them,
Speaker 3: because none of us had ever seen a cow. I mean,
Speaker 3: where are we going to see a cow? We saw
Speaker 3: kmart and we saw you know, and so that was
Speaker 3: a big deal for us. And but you go to
Speaker 3: northern California and they're slaughter and hogs where they go
Speaker 3: to school. I mean, it's a big difference, you know,
Speaker 3: And it's beautiful up there. It is breathtakingly beautiful as
Speaker 3: those county.
Speaker 1: Yes it is. And you know, when I saw the
Speaker 1: images of this Trinidad head as you as it's being
Speaker 1: referred to as this location where this remnant is found,
Speaker 1: it's and I urge anybody that's listening to this episode
Speaker 1: go check out the images of this place. It's striking,
Speaker 1: I mean absolutely striking. And that's still some great distance
Speaker 1: from San Francisco. So and then to get even further,
Speaker 1: if you get up to the area that's the town
Speaker 1: of Eureka, which a lot of this is kind of
Speaker 1: centered around relative to Humboldt County, that's still a great,
Speaker 1: great drive up there as well. I mean you're talking
Speaker 1: about a massive distance here when you couple all three
Speaker 1: of these geographic points along the way. So how do
Speaker 1: these remains get dispersed and how do they bring them
Speaker 1: all back together collectively so that you can try to
Speaker 1: try to come up with some kind of narrative about
Speaker 1: what happened, because you know, you can look at us,
Speaker 1: you can look at a skeleton, all right, and even
Speaker 1: absent a head, all right, the skull forensic anthropologists who
Speaker 1: are excellent at this. If you have a pelvis or
Speaker 1: even part of a pelvis. They can actually look at
Speaker 1: that pelvis and give you an idea if this is
Speaker 1: a male or female. Generally, female pelvis is are wider
Speaker 1: to accommodate a birth canal, and the males tend to
Speaker 1: be more narrow. The bones with females are referred to
Speaker 1: and I love this word. It's the term grassile. Grass
Speaker 1: Isle actually refers it's kind of translates loosely into the
Speaker 1: word for fine, like fine, delicate, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Whereas with male skeletons, they're referred to as robust, you know,
Speaker 1: and a lot of that hinges on, you know, facial
Speaker 1: characteristics if you have a skull. But even with a
Speaker 1: partial skull, trust me, anthropologists are going to take a
Speaker 1: stab at it and they're going to try to put
Speaker 1: all of this together. But however, they were able to
Speaker 1: reconstitute these remains. When it comes down to brass tacks,
Speaker 1: humbold County still had an unidentified and what they knew
Speaker 1: as a female Jane Doe that was within their jurisdiction.
Speaker 1: And I can only imagine, you know, and this is
Speaker 1: the thing. You can have people that will call in
Speaker 1: and report cases all right, they'll say, you know, my
Speaker 1: mom's missing or my daughter is missing. But just because
Speaker 1: you say they're missing doesn't mean that. Okay, nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: that's ninety seven, that's ten, two thousand and seven, that's twenty, twenty, seventeen,
Speaker 1: thirty years after thirty years, is anybody going to remember
Speaker 1: that there was one hundred person search team scouring the
Speaker 1: area up there when she went missing? Is anybody going
Speaker 1: to have a recollection of that? No, because so many
Speaker 1: other things have happened since that time. The fact that
Speaker 1: they were able to do this kind of reconstitution of
Speaker 1: this skeleton and then come up with an actual name
Speaker 1: is absolutely amazing, and that brings us to who.
Speaker 3: Dave Authorm Always back to Authorm when when I was
Speaker 3: looking at this, Joe, and I was going back because
Speaker 3: I was looking at the notes from ninety three, and
Speaker 3: because you're talking to a lot of DNA. We're talking
Speaker 3: about this the other day of the great strides that
Speaker 3: had been made. But by ninety three they were pretty
Speaker 3: set up to get a lot of information, a lot.
Speaker 2: A lot of it was new.
Speaker 3: Hill didn't always know what to do with it, but
Speaker 3: it was there, and Authorn was able to Basically it
Speaker 3: gets down to genetic genealogy again of we've got a link,
Speaker 3: now let's find it back. And this is the part
Speaker 3: that I always tell folks. Author is so amazing at this.
Speaker 3: The work they do is so intense that they can't
Speaker 3: even do it Like you and I work and we
Speaker 3: considered our desk and work and do whatever for five
Speaker 3: six seven hours. They do it at fifteen minutes at
Speaker 3: a crack because it's such intense work that they have
Speaker 3: to take be forced to.
Speaker 1: Take a break, yep.
Speaker 3: And I imagine they don't want to because each little
Speaker 3: thing they pull back, it's like can you imagine being
Speaker 3: on that hunt and each one you know, it's this is.
Speaker 1: We're that close, We're close.
Speaker 3: And it is that a level of thinking that I
Speaker 3: cannot comprehend that that I'm thinking, you're so smart, How
Speaker 3: are we still the same species?
Speaker 2: You know it?
Speaker 1: I know it seems like they've risen above a certain
Speaker 1: of my pay grade. I can see some day someday
Speaker 1: you and I are going to visit the woodlands in Texas.
Speaker 1: It's the area just north of Houston. I'm going to
Speaker 1: take you to that lab. And when you go to
Speaker 1: Authorm's lab. It's like you're walking onto the deck of
Speaker 1: the starship Enterprise. It is so amazing, and everything is
Speaker 1: really locked down because they're work they're actively working cases
Speaker 1: in there that have open investigations. You know, before you
Speaker 1: can actually walk through the area, they literally have to
Speaker 1: stop what they're doing and collect everything they're working on
Speaker 1: and secure it and then you can walk through the area.
Speaker 1: That's how that's how locked down this place is. And
Speaker 1: but just to see the technology that they're using and
Speaker 1: and the strides that they have made. And again, this
Speaker 1: goes back to to k and it always comes back
Speaker 1: to and I believe she is a victim here, even
Speaker 1: though I cannot definitively say that she is a homicide victim.
Speaker 1: There are so many things that are pointing to somebody
Speaker 1: else's hand involved in this. And it seems like I've
Speaker 1: used this term a lot lately. I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: on my mind. Perhaps i'd say a sadist that would
Speaker 1: do this because you're not you've had her remains, assuming
Speaker 1: that what we believe is true, and you have particulated
Speaker 1: her remains, you're rendering down her remains and you're literally
Speaker 1: waving it in the face of law enforcement not to
Speaker 1: mention and I hate to report this, but her husband too,
Speaker 1: and you know he if I'm not mistaken, he died
Speaker 1: just a few years ago and he never got to
Speaker 1: see a resolution to this. Can you imagine going through
Speaker 1: the rest of your life. And maybe he remarried, I
Speaker 1: don't know, but still, even if he did remarry, that
Speaker 1: question would always linger in the back of this poor
Speaker 1: man's mind. And I can guarantee you there were people
Speaker 1: around there and around this case that said, you know, quiet, quietly,
Speaker 1: hush tones, Yeah, we think he had something to do
Speaker 1: with it. There's always those people.
Speaker 3: You know, because Joe, we have such vagueness to the beginning. Yeah,
Speaker 3: where you know, he went on a business trip and
Speaker 3: he came back and his wife was gone. We don't
Speaker 3: know when she was gone because we weren't looking for
Speaker 3: her before he left. We don't know when he actually
Speaker 3: left or when he came back. I mean, there's a
Speaker 3: lot of unknowns there. But let's assume that they tied
Speaker 3: all that down and we're able to say, hey, this,
Speaker 3: you know, let's hope that she was there with him
Speaker 3: at the airport and they took a picture as he
Speaker 3: got on the plane. You know, that's what I would
Speaker 3: hope that, because that's the only way you're going to
Speaker 3: have that guy in the clear.
Speaker 2: Otherwise, what a miserable life of doubt.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and it would always haunt you. You know.
Speaker 1: I think about this case, and I think again, going
Speaker 1: back to this idea, if we believe that that she
Speaker 1: died at the hand end of another, which is of
Speaker 1: course how we define a homicide. I reflect on this
Speaker 1: and I think if this was La or even San Francisco,
Speaker 1: you might say, well, yeah, you know, there's people here
Speaker 1: that would break into somebody's house and do this sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Sacramento that sort of thing. But Dave, where
Speaker 1: they lived, by all accounts, it's so isolated. It seems
Speaker 1: to me that whoever had an awareness that this couple
Speaker 1: lived there would be very familiar, not only familiar with that,
Speaker 1: but also familiar with the comings and goings of her
Speaker 1: and her husband. Additionally, you brought up a great point,
Speaker 1: and it really hit me like a ton of bricks
Speaker 1: when you made the mention about the map and sending
Speaker 1: those police out there to look for those remains. Was
Speaker 1: he watching? Was he watching? I don't know, Maybe he was,
Speaker 1: because if he has a sadistic meant he would probably
Speaker 1: take great pleasure in doing that sort of thing. But
Speaker 1: we do know this, We do know that part of
Speaker 1: this puzzle, at least relative to who this victim was,
Speaker 1: has been solved. The journey of any death investigation generally starts,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, at least with the identification of a victim,
Speaker 1: because if you learn who they are, that is the
Speaker 1: first step on a long journey towards success, because once
Speaker 1: you know who they are, you begin to explore who
Speaker 1: their associates were. Who was it that she came in
Speaker 1: contact with. Well, back in eighty seven, she was teaching
Speaker 1: in a public school. She had contact with a lot
Speaker 1: of people, students, parents, staff members, maybe the guy that
Speaker 1: was coming to the school to deliver sodas, or the
Speaker 1: people that will pull up in the truck and deliver
Speaker 1: the food, or maybe the guy that hauled away the
Speaker 1: trash at the school. See, in a small community, if
Speaker 1: you work at a school, you probably have more contact
Speaker 1: with individuals in that tiny community than anyone else that
Speaker 1: might occupy that same space. So I think that that
Speaker 1: is probably the starting place in this case, because at
Speaker 1: this point in time, the husband who has unfortunately passed
Speaker 1: on is not somebody you can go back and chat with.
Speaker 1: But there are people to chat with. But again, a
Speaker 1: big shout out to our friends at Authorm. They are doing,
Speaker 1: in my estimation, God's work. I think that this is
Speaker 1: the noblest thing that you can do as far as
Speaker 1: death investigation goes. The reason and I always say this,
Speaker 1: the reason that I belie leaving what they're doing is
Speaker 1: I've stood over the graves of so many people that
Speaker 1: were placed into potters Field with no name, simply an
Speaker 1: aluminum band that's wrapped around their ankle, wrapped around the
Speaker 1: wrist that's snapped in place. They're placed in a body
Speaker 1: bag and thrown in an unmarked grave, and it just
Speaker 1: says Jane Do or John Doe. So many of those
Speaker 1: cases I stood over and watched them push the dirt in.
Speaker 1: They're clearing these, my friends, They're clearing them, and you
Speaker 1: can help clear them too. If you're interested in participating
Speaker 1: in bringing a family out there peace to yourself favor,
Speaker 1: log on to DNA solts dot com. You can go there.
Speaker 1: You can pick out a case. Maybe it's in your region,
Speaker 1: maybe it's a case. When you hear the background, it
Speaker 1: kind of catches you. It grabs you by your heart
Speaker 1: and you say, what I want to help with this,
Speaker 1: and they'll take anything that you can give them. They're
Speaker 1: not picky, all right, because they have to reach a
Speaker 1: certain amount and it's like seven thousand to seventy five
Speaker 1: hundred bucks just to get the ball rolling on this
Speaker 1: Star Trek technology, as I'd mentioned, to move the case forward.
Speaker 1: But you might be the person that pushes it over
Speaker 1: the edge, and by virtue of a donation that you make,
Speaker 1: you might bring peace to a family somewhere out there
Speaker 1: that is always looking in an empty chair, that never
Speaker 1: knows what happened to their loved one. I'm Joseph Scott
Speaker 1: Morgan and this is Body Backs