Speaker 1: Quality diamonds, but Joseph's gotten more. I don't know about y'all,
Speaker 1: but I think about temperature every day, and generally it
Speaker 1: has to do with determining how much money I'll have
Speaker 1: at the end of the month to pay for my
Speaker 1: air conditioning bill, because I hate being an old I
Speaker 1: don't even like I'm not even gonna say hot. I
Speaker 1: hate being in a warm house. I like being in
Speaker 1: a cool house. And unfortunately my desire for physical comfort
Speaker 1: is noncompatible with summertime in the Deep South. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: wind up having a huge electric bill at the end
Speaker 1: of every month, guaranteed. I think about temp in that sense.
Speaker 1: But you know, I thought about temp for a long
Speaker 1: time as a death investigator, because we use temperature in
Speaker 1: order to determine how long it's been since someone has
Speaker 1: I don't know, been cast off this mortal coil in
Speaker 1: the words of the Bard, and there are a lot
Speaker 1: of indicators that we look for, and today on bodybags,
Speaker 1: we're going to have a discussion about PMI post mortem interval,
Speaker 1: and in particular, we're going to have a discussion that
Speaker 1: ties back to a case that it's currently in the
Speaker 1: news and will be for months and months to come
Speaker 1: the murder of the four students in Idaho. I'm Joseph
Speaker 1: Scott Morgan and this is bodybacks, David. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you recall this, but have you have you ever
Speaker 1: been around in it's generally a grandparent. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: if it is as hot as the surface of the
Speaker 1: sun outside. They're going to run the heat. They're going
Speaker 1: to put a shawl around them or a blanket. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're going to have like woolen socks on. And a
Speaker 1: part of that is getting old, you know, you lose
Speaker 1: muscle masks.
Speaker 2: You you funny bit about old people being cold? Why
Speaker 2: is this so cold in feezing?
Speaker 1: It's so cold in it? Thought about that in years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what a great stand up that was. Uh yeah, it's
Speaker 1: so cold in heal baby.
Speaker 2: But why is that? Because I had these two women
Speaker 2: that were they were sisters and they were like the
Speaker 2: Snoop sisters back in the day on the Waltons. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 2: I think they're combined age with three hundred and fifty seven.
Speaker 2: But I remember my mother in law was afraid something
Speaker 2: had happened to one of them and asked me to
Speaker 2: take were over there because they wouldn't answer the phone.
Speaker 2: And as we got to the house, Joe, it was
Speaker 2: August in Alabama, so it was probably in the upper nineties,
Speaker 2: late afternoon. We were already sweating from the humidity, and
Speaker 2: I could hear their TV as we got to the door.
Speaker 2: They had it turned up very loud. And when my
Speaker 2: mother in law opened the door, just you know, was
Speaker 2: knocking on it and the door cracked open, I felt
Speaker 2: the heat hit me. I actually backed up the heat
Speaker 2: from the house and I thought, oh, they're dead. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And they were in there and they were bundled up,
Speaker 2: both of them, both of them bundled up with the
Speaker 2: heat going. And it's ninety eight degrees outside. That was
Speaker 2: freaky to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's probably equally as hot in that house,
Speaker 1: yeahsty Yeah, And it's terrifying on one level. Do you remember,
Speaker 1: I know, I know that you do. The summer God,
Speaker 1: it was I know, well over a decade. You remember
Speaker 1: that summer of horror they had in Chicago. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: where it was so hot. Yep, the old people were
Speaker 1: dying in their homes. And I knew the chief and
Speaker 1: me at the time for Cook County, which is Chicago,
Speaker 1: Ed what's his name, doctor Ed Donahue, I think, great
Speaker 1: forensic pathologist and a heck of a nice guy. I mean,
Speaker 1: just a really really cool cat. And anyway, it was
Speaker 1: and this happened right before this happened right before he
Speaker 1: retired from Cook County. I can see why this would
Speaker 1: be something that will push you over this because they
Speaker 1: had people that were dying left and right, and you know,
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of a story for another day, but
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's deaths related to hypothermia, uher hyper thermia, Yeah,
Speaker 1: as opposed to hypo.
Speaker 2: So I had me to run with that. But I'm
Speaker 2: just curious, man, that you mentioned the old people and heat.
Speaker 2: Do they really I mean, do as we age, do
Speaker 2: we feel colder?
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I think I think the perception is right.
Speaker 1: I'm not a geriatric specialist, but.
Speaker 2: I'm becoming a geriatric. You'll have to, you're qualified. I
Speaker 2: think that one of the things that occurs. First off,
Speaker 2: you're losing you're losing mass in your body. You know,
Speaker 2: your insulation is kind of dwindling away, fat layer, muscle layer,
Speaker 2: And in addition to that, you don't have the same
Speaker 2: robust circulatory system that you once had. And so therefore
Speaker 2: you're gonna feel cooler or you'll feel like, you know,
Speaker 2: I know, my grandmother always said she feel like she
Speaker 2: had a chill on her, you know, And that's that's
Speaker 2: kind of a common theme, you know, that kind of
Speaker 2: runs through it as you get older.
Speaker 1: It hadn't hit me yet. I mean, I can tell you.
Speaker 1: I'll sit around and I'll be sweating, and I'll look
Speaker 1: at him and I'll say, hey, what's the air conditioning on?
Speaker 1: She'll say sixty eight. I'll say, wow, it's really hot
Speaker 1: in here, and she'll say, turn the fan up her.
Speaker 1: And that's another thing. We can't sleep without a fan on.
Speaker 1: I'm addicted to it. I even use a fan. I
Speaker 1: use a fan app on my phone when I'm traveling.
Speaker 1: That's how addicted to fans I am. And it lasts
Speaker 1: for it lasts literally for ten hours.
Speaker 2: So on meeting one Dago, my name's Dave, that's it.
Speaker 2: I'm addicted of.
Speaker 1: Hey, all right, so pos yeah, yeah, yeah, post warum
Speaker 1: interval I it's it's you know, you hear this term
Speaker 1: is thrown around. I'm guilty of using it. I can't
Speaker 1: say guilty because it's an abbreviation, but h you know,
Speaker 1: so it's it's p M. I you'll hear use that
Speaker 1: term constantly, but it is postmar interval and the the
Speaker 1: four big categories that we look at when we're trying
Speaker 1: to assess the dead, and that is going to be
Speaker 1: riger mortise or rigor it's pronounced both ways. Uh. We
Speaker 1: have post mortem lividity, which is also uh the term
Speaker 1: uh live or mortise. Then we have alger mortise, not
Speaker 1: to be confused with a former vice president and it
Speaker 1: and and then we have then we have gasterric content.
Speaker 1: So you have four areas that are really kind of
Speaker 1: exploited by us in in circles of death investigation to
Speaker 1: give us, you know, to try to do. And really
Speaker 1: what it is, Dave, it's a it's a snapshot of time. Okay,
Speaker 1: and we go out and we try to do these assessments.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you this, and I'll say this right
Speaker 1: up front. This is kind of my you know, word
Speaker 1: of warning here. None of the stuff is accurate to
Speaker 1: the point where you could bet your life on it. Okay,
Speaker 1: It's not like it's not a true quantitative measurement where
Speaker 1: you can say with precision. I'm talking about like Swiss
Speaker 1: watch precision where you can say this is the exact
Speaker 1: moment in time when they took their last breath. That's
Speaker 1: mathematically it's impossible to do that. You cannot do that.
Speaker 1: I actually went to I'll never forget it. I was
Speaker 1: at a conference one time. By the way, I recommend
Speaker 1: highly that if you're interested in becoming a medical legal
Speaker 1: death investigator. The mother church of all medical legal death
Speaker 1: investigation is Saint Louis University in Saint Louis, Missouri, School
Speaker 1: of Medicine, Department of Forensic Pathology. There are four classes
Speaker 1: that are offered every year in intro to medical legal
Speaker 1: death Investigation. I went through the class in I finally
Speaker 1: got a spot in nineteen eighty seven. I've been working
Speaker 1: looking for over two years by that time. And it
Speaker 1: is a rigorous program.
Speaker 2: You go for.
Speaker 1: Five days, it's eight hours a day, and it is
Speaker 1: they don't knowledge into your brain in this place, like
Speaker 1: you can't imagine. There's no really no breaks in here.
Speaker 1: So you're you're learning among the finest. You're learning from
Speaker 1: the finest at the medical school. And it was there
Speaker 1: that I first got, you know, really my intro in
Speaker 1: a class sense. At Saint Louis University to how do
Speaker 1: we how do we determine, you know, how somebody how
Speaker 1: long someone has been dead. And there's a program called
Speaker 1: the Master's program that's only offered like every other summer,
Speaker 1: and you have to have attended the basic course first.
Speaker 1: And I went to this thing. They had this guy
Speaker 1: from Germany and Dave. This is in the days. It
Speaker 1: wasn't a chalkboard, but he had a whiteboard up on
Speaker 1: the stage and it wasn't one, it was three. And
Speaker 1: he had created a formula that extended over the surfaces
Speaker 1: of three whiteboards. And he claimed that he had the
Speaker 1: magic bullet to determining time of death. And I remember
Speaker 1: there were a bunch of us sitting there and we
Speaker 1: just we're just kind of rolling our eyes. First off,
Speaker 1: no one has this much time. This is only something
Speaker 1: a university professor could do. When you're in tempo and
Speaker 1: you're out in the field and you're you've got a
Speaker 1: homicide that you're working, and you might have a suicide holding,
Speaker 1: a motor vehicle accident holding. You're going to glean as
Speaker 1: much information at the homicide as you possibly can. You
Speaker 1: got to move on to the next case. He had
Speaker 1: taken years to compile this data in a perfect world,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe it had some utility maybe, but still
Speaker 1: to this day, they can't give you a specific time
Speaker 1: of death. So that's kind of my warning before we
Speaker 1: get into all of this. So if you ever come
Speaker 1: across someone that actually tells you that they can do it,
Speaker 1: that they can give you an exact time, run, don't
Speaker 1: walk out away.
Speaker 2: For years, I really did think you could come within
Speaker 2: fifteen minutes of knowing. I really did until I talk
Speaker 2: to you about it, because I didn't know. I mean,
Speaker 2: you watch TV. Oh I see he had a corn
Speaker 2: in his diarrhea. That means you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the best we can do. And I'd say
Speaker 1: the best I've ever been able to do just looking
Speaker 1: at the numbers alone that we collect and the examination
Speaker 1: that we do at the scene. Maybe maybe four hours,
Speaker 1: maybe four to five.
Speaker 2: And now can you take this in with the other timeline, right, I.
Speaker 1: Mean right, you have to. That's that's to the exclusion
Speaker 1: of circumstantial you know, I last saw him at this time. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm just talking about pure science now, as pure as
Speaker 1: it can be in that kind of environment. So it's
Speaker 1: a not controlled, a non controlled environment and everything, and
Speaker 1: I mean just about everything we're going to discuss right
Speaker 1: now is environmentally dependent. So I think that it's really
Speaker 1: important that we keep our wits about us and just
Speaker 1: understand that.
Speaker 2: So it's fascinating. It's amazing that you have to truly
Speaker 2: know investigation beyond just the like you mentioned the guy
Speaker 2: uses three whiteboards to write a formula down to put
Speaker 2: this to get it, and yet it actually does. There's
Speaker 2: more to it than just the nuts and bolts. You
Speaker 2: have to actually investigate the person's life to know about
Speaker 2: their death.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that lecture lasted for it was like two
Speaker 1: hours and forty five minutes, and I wish I had
Speaker 1: that time back. It did demonstrate to me. It did
Speaker 1: demonstrate to me, however, that nobody really knows. I mean,
Speaker 1: nobody really knows. And you know, I guess you could say, well,
Speaker 1: somebody's sitting in front of a clock, and this is
Speaker 1: an old example people have used before. I've heard it stated.
Speaker 1: And they're shot and it's a thurn through wound and
Speaker 1: it hits the clock and the clock stops. And so
Speaker 1: you marry that up with it if you get to
Speaker 1: the body at you know, what is it? They say?
Speaker 1: A broken A broken clock is right twice a day,
Speaker 1: so even that has a caveat to it. But for me,
Speaker 1: for me, I think starting off with rigidity otherwise known
Speaker 1: as riger mortis.
Speaker 2: When does that happen?
Speaker 1: Jim, Well, it begins, you know, you first begin to
Speaker 1: appreciate it pretty It's not immediate, and this is kind
Speaker 1: of how it works. So if you think about the
Speaker 1: muscle groupings in your body, and I'm talking about like
Speaker 1: the tiny muscles that you even have, like that surrounds
Speaker 1: your eyelids, it happens everywhere. Okay, it happens simultaneously where
Speaker 1: you have this rigidity that begins to set in throughout
Speaker 1: the body. And a lot of people will say it
Speaker 1: starts in the small muscles of the body and extends
Speaker 1: out to larger ones. That's a fallacy. That's inaccurate. It
Speaker 1: starts everywhere, everywhere simultaneously. However, it's most appreciated in the
Speaker 1: small muscles, and then the larger muscle groups are slower,
Speaker 1: you know, to kind of come around. So I'll give
Speaker 1: you a great example of this. You might not have rigidity,
Speaker 1: say in the elbows, the wrist, maybe the shoulders, and
Speaker 1: certainly in the knees. But if you and this is
Speaker 1: one of the things. This is the first area I
Speaker 1: always go to to check a body for rigidity, and
Speaker 1: that's the mouth. If I press down on the chin
Speaker 1: in order to try to open the mouth and I'm
Speaker 1: struggling with it. This is what I know. That muscle
Speaker 1: grouping that is adjacent to where your jaw fits in
Speaker 1: de mandible actually fits in to that joint like the
Speaker 1: TMJ when it goes in there, those muscle groups are
Speaker 1: most affected. They're tiny, Okay, So you get this rigidity
Speaker 1: that sets and the jaw. And yet people say you
Speaker 1: can appreciate it in the eyelids. I've never really seen that.
Speaker 1: I guess clinically they say you can. But for me
Speaker 1: as a practitioner on the field, the jaw would be
Speaker 1: where I would go to first, and then it kind
Speaker 1: of extends out from there. You know, the smaller, smaller
Speaker 1: muscle groups, you'll see it, you know, like in the fingers,
Speaker 1: you know, or in the toes before you're going to
Speaker 1: see it in the ankles or the knees, are certainly
Speaker 1: in the hips. But what's what has occurred is that
Speaker 1: we are dependent. We are dependent in life on what's
Speaker 1: called cellular respiration. And so those cells are living, breathing
Speaker 1: all right. When they begin to shut down. When they
Speaker 1: begin to shut down, cellular respiration has ceased, and so
Speaker 1: the body, the body generally you I'm not going to
Speaker 1: go into great detail, but there's crib cycle and it
Speaker 1: throws off these little balls of energy. Okay, ATP, Well
Speaker 1: that ceases, then you begin to produce ADP. And one
Speaker 1: of the products of ADP is actually lactic acid. So
Speaker 1: if you have ever worked out, if you've ever worked
Speaker 1: out in your life, and you hadn't done it in
Speaker 1: a while, and you wake up the next morning and
Speaker 1: you're stiff as a board, Look, you can go take
Speaker 1: all the motrin and tile and all and aspirin and
Speaker 1: everything else you want to take, but sooner or later,
Speaker 1: that rigidity is going to leave your body. That's actually
Speaker 1: a lactic acid build up that you're having, you're experiencing
Speaker 1: and your joints. The reality is, because we're upright and
Speaker 1: still breathing, our body metabolizes that. Okay, the dead can't,
Speaker 1: the can't. The can't, they can't do it at the
Speaker 1: same rate that we do in life. Now after a
Speaker 1: period of time, and this is one of important things
Speaker 1: about rigidity. After a period of time, time that lactic
Speaker 1: acid build up in the dead begins to back out
Speaker 1: and it leaves all right. So there's I think that
Speaker 1: there's a common common thought where people believe that, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, once you're here, here's and we've heard
Speaker 1: this before, once you're cold and stiff, man, you're cold
Speaker 1: and stiff. Well, no you'll be you'll be cold, but
Speaker 1: you ain't gonna be stiff because that your your arms,
Speaker 1: your legs, your hips, your jaw, everything becomes flacid. Once again,
Speaker 1: you revert back. So you have to you have to
Speaker 1: be there like Johnny on the spot. So what are
Speaker 1: you looking at relative to this, Well, it's first noticeable.
Speaker 1: The rigidity, the ryger mortis is first noticeable. It's going
Speaker 1: to take about one to three hours. A lot of
Speaker 1: it's going to be, first off, dependent upon the physiology
Speaker 1: of the person, and then it's also going to be
Speaker 1: dependent upon the ambient environmental temperature. And we always have
Speaker 1: to remember that anything that involves heat speeds things up.
Speaker 1: So it's going to take about ten to twelve hours
Speaker 1: for it to be complete. So why is that important
Speaker 1: if we're death investigators. Well, it's very important because if
Speaker 1: I show up at a scene, Dave, and the body
Speaker 1: is completely rigid, like you can't move it, then I'm
Speaker 1: going to hazard guests. Based on ryger morts loan, that
Speaker 1: person's been dead for ten to twelve hours perhaps, So
Speaker 1: my question is going back to Idaho. I'm not being
Speaker 1: disrespectful here. It's a legitimate question. We have such a
Speaker 1: delay and when those students were last known alleged to
Speaker 1: have been alive. Okay, the big number that everybody talks
Speaker 1: about is slightly after four am, roughly, okay, give or
Speaker 1: take all, right, going down until you know about half
Speaker 1: past the hour. That nine one one call doesn't originate
Speaker 1: until like eleven something am almost so yeah, almost twelve,
Speaker 1: So you know you're looking at seven seven hours, I
Speaker 1: guess roughly, and you'd have to bracket that very carefully.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm curious. This is dangerous ground here. I'm curious
Speaker 1: as to what the coroner saw because she said in
Speaker 1: one report, Dave, that huh that these kids were obviously
Speaker 1: asleep when this happened. So my question based upon on
Speaker 1: that statement that she made in an interview, like within
Speaker 1: like two days, two or three days after this happened.
Speaker 1: So talk to me about rigidity. Did you measure rigidity?
Speaker 1: Because I don't know, you're telling me that everybody was
Speaker 1: obviously asleep, all right, Well, according to what we're hearing now,
Speaker 1: particularly based upon the dateline dump that came out, these
Speaker 1: bodies were not in the position that we were led
Speaker 1: to believe. They certainly weren't tucked into beds, you know,
Speaker 1: all snug in the bed. So for the medical legal authority,
Speaker 1: I would have to ask what was the extent of
Speaker 1: your examination at the scene. Did you check for rigidity
Speaker 1: in the bodies? You know, was there stiffness in the jaw,
Speaker 1: stiffness in the limbs? You know, where the bodies flaccid? Still?
Speaker 1: Could were they movable? And that's that's just on the
Speaker 1: point of Roger Mortis alone. I think that that's a
Speaker 1: legitimate question that's going to come out. Of course, if
Speaker 1: the case goes off in August, which you know we're
Speaker 1: thinking it might. I don't know. I sit back and
Speaker 1: I think about that data and how it was collected
Speaker 1: that's scene. Was rigidity measured? Because you know, my friends,
Speaker 1: I got to tell you, you can't measure the stuff at
Speaker 1: the morgue. The forensic pathologist if you ever read an
Speaker 1: autopsy report, they'll say that when I received the body,
Speaker 1: the body was cool to the touch, rocking mortis was
Speaker 1: present in the jaw and the extremities. That's their boilerplate,
Speaker 1: and they'll talk about post warmal Avidity, we'll get into
Speaker 1: that in a second. But you can't that assessment at
Speaker 1: the morgue by the forensic pathologist be honestly, you ain't
Speaker 1: worth a gunpowdered blow at hell because that data really
Speaker 1: doesn't mean anything. The body has been taken out of
Speaker 1: context by that time, David. It's a three hour drive
Speaker 1: a Moscow to Aida County where these autopsies were done,
Speaker 1: and once the bodies are removed, they're going to go
Speaker 1: into a cooler, so that's going to affect the data.
Speaker 1: You can't and then if there was air conditioning or
Speaker 1: no air conditioning running in the van, that's going to
Speaker 1: impact once you take those bodies out of that environment.
Speaker 1: If you don't do that assessment right then and there
Speaker 1: at that moment, it's not worth doing. So that's I
Speaker 1: think that's a legitimate question. The stiffness that you encounter
Speaker 1: with the human remain it's shocking, you know, when you
Speaker 1: and even for me, as you know, a guy that
Speaker 1: was involved in this field for a long time, it
Speaker 1: was shocking for me. You know, when I would you
Speaker 1: still have an expectation when you're around the dead. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously they're human. You still have an expectation they're going
Speaker 1: to respond to you like any other human. But the
Speaker 1: dead don't respond that way. There is a stiffness that
Speaker 1: they have that you don't encounter in any other context.
Speaker 1: You can even think about, say, for instance, if there's
Speaker 1: somebody resisting you and they're holding their arm like you've
Speaker 1: grabbed them by their arm, and that resistance they are
Speaker 1: still not the strength of riger It's quite striking. But
Speaker 1: here's another thing. You think about the changes in bodies
Speaker 1: relative to temperature. If any of you have ever lost
Speaker 1: a loved one, and in those last moments when you're
Speaker 1: at a funeral home or wherever it is, maybe you're
Speaker 1: sitting with a loved one and they pass on, there's
Speaker 1: something about the coolness of death. It's it's like no
Speaker 1: other type of sensory perception on your part like the
Speaker 1: coolness of death. It's like you can, like if you
Speaker 1: go outside in the wintertime and your fingers are cold,
Speaker 1: or your.
Speaker 2: Nose is cold.
Speaker 1: You've got you've always got the friend that walks up
Speaker 1: to you and says, hey, feel this, and they put
Speaker 1: their hands on your face, you know, and you retract.
Speaker 1: There's something about the coolness of death, and that's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons. Even in literature you'll hear terms like
Speaker 1: the icy fingers of death. And it's a real thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you've ever been next to an open
Speaker 1: casket and you touch someone in there, there's something it's
Speaker 1: the absence of of any kind of life, I think.
Speaker 1: And when you're attempting to assess the dead based simply
Speaker 1: upon temperature, this is something that most people, I think
Speaker 1: out there believe that this is our go to and
Speaker 1: for me, it's probably some of the most worthless data
Speaker 1: that exists. The reason is is that there are too
Speaker 1: many variables involved, and no one can quite seem to
Speaker 1: come up with a methodology where they want to measure
Speaker 1: the temperature of a body. And let me give you
Speaker 1: an example. So you've got a real baseline here when
Speaker 1: you're talking about how cool or cold body is, and
Speaker 1: you touch the body and people will either say, well,
Speaker 1: the body is warm to the touch or cool to
Speaker 1: the touch. That's very baseline, very base, right. Then you
Speaker 1: have other methodologies that are employed, like using a thermometer. Well,
Speaker 1: you run into a lot of problems using a thermometer,
Speaker 1: and here are a few. Many people will try to
Speaker 1: do what's called an axillary temperature, and that means that
Speaker 1: you take a glass thermometer and you place it in
Speaker 1: the armpit externally and you place the arm against the armpit,
Speaker 1: holding the thermometer in place for about five minutes so
Speaker 1: you can get an accurate reading, and all the while
Speaker 1: you have another thermometer hanging in the air, suspending the air,
Speaker 1: taking the ambient environmental temperature. Now, you can either do
Speaker 1: that with an analog thermometer like an old glass thermometer
Speaker 1: mercury thermometer, or you can do a temperature reader in
Speaker 1: a room which exists widely. Now, and you have to
Speaker 1: do this like every I think it's like every You
Speaker 1: do it in twenty men in at intervals while you're
Speaker 1: at a scene to try to get an idea if you
Speaker 1: can get an idea of how the temper here is
Speaker 1: dropping off on a body, but it's still wildly inaccurate.
Speaker 1: Now there's a whole group of people out there in
Speaker 1: medical legal debt investigation. Now I'm about to blow your
Speaker 1: mind with what I'm going to tell you. They believe
Speaker 1: that it is good practice to take a human body
Speaker 1: at a scene. Remember, we have to do everything that's seen.
Speaker 1: You can't do it, the more it's worthless data. And
Speaker 1: you take scalpel and you take a digital Turkey thermometer.
Speaker 1: You make an incision beneath the last rib on the
Speaker 1: right side, which is that overlays your liver, which is
Speaker 1: the most dense organ in the body. And so you're
Speaker 1: looking for what's called and you guys have heard this before,
Speaker 1: core body temperature. So once you make that incision, you
Speaker 1: take the thermometer and insert it into deliver and it
Speaker 1: gives you a pretty instantaneous reading. But here's the problem
Speaker 1: with it. If that's your methodology you're going to employ,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter what the case is. If you try
Speaker 1: to go to court with that, you better be doing
Speaker 1: it every damn time. So that means that did you
Speaker 1: get a core temperature on the multiple stablind victim? Just
Speaker 1: think about just for a second. Let that seep into
Speaker 1: your ground water. So you've got a body at a scene,
Speaker 1: a homicide that's got multiple stab wounds. Now you're going
Speaker 1: to take a scalpel and make another incision into the
Speaker 1: body and then insert the thermometer. Oh and by the way,
Speaker 1: this is what they tell you to do. After you've
Speaker 1: done this, man marks a lot and make a circle
Speaker 1: around your incision and put your initials on it. Now.
Speaker 1: I remember the first time I was taught this, I
Speaker 1: was thinking, okay, so let me get this straight. You
Speaker 1: want me to open a body at a scene where
Speaker 1: I'm surrounded by not just police officers, but if I'm outside,
Speaker 1: which I have been before, surrounded by angry group of
Speaker 1: people and they see me whip out the cold steel
Speaker 1: and I'm kneeling over somebody's son. In this environment, I'm
Speaker 1: to make an incision in front of this group of
Speaker 1: people and insert a digital thermometer. That's what you're asking
Speaker 1: me to do. Got it? Good idea? So you know
Speaker 1: the problem is is that your adopted practice. You have
Speaker 1: to do that every single time. You know, you can't say, well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do it on some cases, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to do it on the others. Because if you
Speaker 1: take that in that your office adopted policy and you
Speaker 1: go into court with it. Defense attorneys can potentially eat
Speaker 1: you up. They'll say, well, you did it on all
Speaker 1: these other cases, what do you do in this case?
Speaker 1: In your data kind of invalid at this point, and
Speaker 1: you see how this can become a real problem. And plus,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm just not a fan of making
Speaker 1: incisions in dead bodies at the scene in an uncontrolled environment.
Speaker 1: And look, maybe that is very accurate, but I have
Speaker 1: to ask this question, and I don't know, is the
Speaker 1: data that you're going to glean from that one procedure
Speaker 1: is it worth compromising a case. It's kind of like,
Speaker 1: you know, for years there were people that said, oh,
Speaker 1: well we need to do a rectal temperature at a
Speaker 1: scene on a dead body. Well, if that's going to
Speaker 1: be your office policy, what about rape cases? Are you
Speaker 1: going to take a foreign object at a suspected rape
Speaker 1: homicide case and do a rectal temperature at the scene
Speaker 1: because you're getting close to the core kind of And
Speaker 1: maybe the data is valid, but I think there's more
Speaker 1: important evidence that can be gleaned from I don't know, directum.
Speaker 2: Than be destroying evidence. You're ready to get the temperature.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, so is the data actually worth it? Now let
Speaker 1: me run this down to you. So with about the
Speaker 1: first hour after death, you're going to lose about a
Speaker 1: degree and a half to two degrees of temp that's
Speaker 1: been generated in life. You're going to lose that temperature
Speaker 1: off the body after the first hour. Then for the
Speaker 1: next next twelve hours up to the twelfth hour, you're
Speaker 1: losing one degree. Okay, So if you start off at
Speaker 1: ninety eight point six, you can do the math from there.
Speaker 1: So when you get to that twelfth hour after death,
Speaker 1: you've heard people say, well, you've assumed room temperature. That's
Speaker 1: kind of what it means. That means that you're and
Speaker 1: I teach my classes at Jacksonville State this and it's
Speaker 1: kind of gruesome, I know, but it's reality. You're just
Speaker 1: like any other inanimate object that dwells that same space,
Speaker 1: So a piece of furniture, a desk, you know, a
Speaker 1: book bag, whatever it is. Because the life that once
Speaker 1: existed within that shell of a person, you're no longer
Speaker 1: going back cellular the respiration.
Speaker 2: Your body's not.
Speaker 1: Producing anything at that point, Okay, you are truly dead
Speaker 1: at that point, and so there's nothing coming off of
Speaker 1: the body as far as ratiing heat. Or anything like that.
Speaker 1: So that can be it can be a real problem.
Speaker 1: That's why my default position, I think pretty much throughout
Speaker 1: my career was always either warm to the touch or
Speaker 1: cool to the touch. But beyond that, what am I
Speaker 1: going to glean by? You know, what they're saying nowadays
Speaker 1: is kind of the industry standard of making an incision
Speaker 1: and embodying and inserting. And this is happening. You know,
Speaker 1: people think, oh, come on morning, now it happens. It
Speaker 1: happens out there, there are people engaging in this practice.
Speaker 1: I think it's foolhardy, it's reckless. It truly is, because
Speaker 1: I think that the data that is obtained from that
Speaker 1: that particular procedure, it's not worth the risk of ruining
Speaker 1: an entire investigation. So at the risk of being crass,
Speaker 1: if you've ever had a stomach virus at any point
Speaker 1: in time and you've had to go in to make
Speaker 1: an offering to the porcelain God, you have seen your
Speaker 1: stomach contents, okay, and it's not a lot different from
Speaker 1: what we see in the morgue. The only thing is
Speaker 1: is that when you're kneeling before the porcelain God, you're
Speaker 1: not studying it as a matter of fact, you're holding
Speaker 1: your head and you're thinking, God, please stop the room
Speaker 1: from spending. Please, I promise I'll do whatever. I guess
Speaker 1: I'm talking about being drunk now, I guess I promise
Speaker 1: I'll never do this again. You know, you're making all
Speaker 1: these promises to God that I won't do this again.
Speaker 1: And if you've got a bug, it's it's horrible as well.
Speaker 1: You know, you're you're not thinking about necessarily what's coming
Speaker 1: out of you. You just know that it's coming out of you.
Speaker 1: And for us in medical legal death investigation, Dave, that's
Speaker 1: something that, as disgusting and gross as it sounds, that's
Speaker 1: something that we actually take our time trying to understand.
Speaker 2: You know, I told you this before we started. When
Speaker 2: Loadanna's nephew was murdered, there was a question he was
Speaker 2: giving a friend a ride home and you know, attacked
Speaker 2: the victim kind of thing. He was in the wrong
Speaker 2: place at the wrong time. Talk about your innocent victim.
Speaker 2: He really was. But because he was in his early
Speaker 2: twenties and he was out late. It was two thirty
Speaker 2: in the morning. They want to know alcohol, drugs, and
Speaker 2: stomach contents. Were their pills in there what was going on,
Speaker 2: And what they found out was that there was no alcohol,
Speaker 2: there was no drug, there was no pills. They actually
Speaker 2: had the food that he had when he drove through
Speaker 2: Hearty's late at night and got a traditional meal because
Speaker 2: he was hungry, and that was one of as weird
Speaker 2: as it sounds, it was very comforting for the family
Speaker 2: because they had been put through all of this idea
Speaker 2: that somehow their dead nephew, their dead grandson deserved it,
Speaker 2: you know, And it was like he was giving a
Speaker 2: guy a ride home and talk about your innocent victim.
Speaker 2: But that was one thing, and we actually they asked
Speaker 2: me about that. The family did later on about a
Speaker 2: number of things with the case, and is something I
Speaker 2: told you too many times people go through an entire
Speaker 2: case with a loved one who dies in a way
Speaker 2: other than natural, and there is so much going on,
Speaker 2: they don't get answers that years later mean something. You know,
Speaker 2: why did this happen? Or what does this mean? And
Speaker 2: I'm thankful I was able to answer those questions. So
Speaker 2: I had to look up a lot of them I knew,
Speaker 2: but still I got them those answers, and it really
Speaker 2: did help. There was a grieving process that had continued
Speaker 2: for fifteen years, and I was able to help with
Speaker 2: that in the end. And I did want to ask
Speaker 2: you to mention something about Kathy maybut that was the
Speaker 2: corner in Idaho. Yeah, you mentioned a few minutes ago,
Speaker 2: and I went back and I pulled up my notes
Speaker 2: from what did we learn in the first three days?
Speaker 2: Because she remember, she was all over the place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which I gotta let me interject real quick, and
Speaker 1: I'll shut my mouth.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: The thing, no, no, no, The thing about it is
Speaker 1: that's foreboden in my world. Yes, you're a corner or
Speaker 1: medical examiner, you know, to keep your mouth shut. You're
Speaker 1: inside the investigative bubble. You take your cues from the police. Now, look,
Speaker 1: if you're an elected corner, godspeed. I mean, you can
Speaker 1: do what you want to do, all right.
Speaker 2: And that's what this was correct.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, she's and she's a nurse and an attorney, right,
Speaker 1: and she got elected to the office of corner, which
Speaker 1: is cool. I have no problem with that. However, if
Speaker 1: you're inside the investigative bubble, there's just certain things that
Speaker 1: we know that we don't because you still have killer
Speaker 1: on the loose at this point in tom.
Speaker 2: Right, we're talking two days after Yeah, Yeah, and Joe,
Speaker 2: this is what this is a summary, this is what
Speaker 2: I've got from it. I was shocked, and I remember
Speaker 2: when we had this information of double checking because I thought,
Speaker 2: this has got to be wrong. This has got to
Speaker 2: be internet rumor. You know, it can't be right, because
Speaker 2: I've never heard this coming out of somebody's mouth this
Speaker 2: close to an investigation. Multiple stab wounds. She stated that
Speaker 2: each victim suffered multiple stab wounds, pretty extensive wounds. Actually,
Speaker 2: she described the wounds as pretty extensive, set a large knife.
Speaker 2: Victims were likely attacked with a large knife, according to
Speaker 2: preliminary autopsy, some defensive wounds. At least one victim showed
Speaker 2: signs of defensive wounds, suggesting they may have woken up
Speaker 2: during the attack, because if you remember, they were all
Speaker 2: attacked while they were sleeping. Yeah, she said some defensive
Speaker 2: wounds tears or tears rather tears and big open gouges.
Speaker 1: Not a term I would use, but.
Speaker 2: This is what kaylgan Zava's father said. Kathy Maybe shared
Speaker 2: with him, described those wounds on his daughter as big
Speaker 2: open gouges and tears. Now. She also said that based
Speaker 2: on that the murderer was pretty angry. It was a
Speaker 2: pretty angry attacker. They were killed in their beds. Now
Speaker 2: we have actually heard a little bit different on this.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we have. Yeah, there's you know, there's a
Speaker 1: number of things floating around right now. And again it
Speaker 1: comes comes back from of the day Line, the dump
Speaker 1: that happened with date Line, which we're still waiting to
Speaker 1: find out who leaked that information. It doesn't surprise me
Speaker 1: in the news media ran with it, but it's just
Speaker 1: the fact that it was, that it's out there. And
Speaker 1: again going back to the corner's assessment, you know, you
Speaker 1: can talk about I guess if you want to tears
Speaker 1: and goalges, which is I.
Speaker 2: Want to ask you something that you could say that
Speaker 2: I've got to ask you if what it means? What's
Speaker 2: that she said there were no significant bruising. Now we
Speaker 2: know that there is a seven hour interval at least
Speaker 2: between the times of the murders and the time that
Speaker 2: nine one one was called. At least seven hours. Kathy
Speaker 2: may but at the time said she thought that might
Speaker 2: have been killed around two am. Now they now have
Speaker 2: moved that time to after four am, before four thirty am,
Speaker 2: before four to twenty actually, but no significant bruising. But
Speaker 2: there was a little bit of bruising, but nothing significant.
Speaker 2: Is that not an uncommon occurrence in a We're seeing
Speaker 2: bodies at least seven and by the time she got
Speaker 2: out there, it had to be even more than just seven.
Speaker 2: It had to have been closer to ten hours by
Speaker 2: the time she got out there. She didn't get out
Speaker 2: there in the first thirty minutes or so.
Speaker 1: No, I can't imagine they would have locked They would
Speaker 1: have locked the scene down. Police would have had had
Speaker 1: a what's over? But if you remember as well, the
Speaker 1: DA showed up out there too, I'll never forget, you know,
Speaker 1: And apparently he had walked the guy with a big
Speaker 1: beard he'd walked through as well at some point in time.
Speaker 1: So I guess what it comes down to as far
Speaker 1: as the duties of the corner and the assessment of
Speaker 1: these kids, is how much data was collected at the
Speaker 1: scene relative to you know, we had talked about rigidity,
Speaker 1: we had talked about we talked about body temperature. Do
Speaker 1: we even have an understanding as to whether or not
Speaker 1: the bodies were cool or worn to the touch? I
Speaker 1: think that's important. And then you know, bringing it back
Speaker 1: to Zanta. What what's the one thing here, and this
Speaker 1: isn't a trick question, what's the one thing that we
Speaker 1: know that Xana was doing that was she was one
Speaker 1: of the last things that she was reportedly doing relative
Speaker 1: to food, door Dash she was in door Dash showed
Speaker 1: up and you know, one of my questions is what
Speaker 1: kind of food was it?
Speaker 2: Was?
Speaker 1: Any of it consumed? And going back to earlier in
Speaker 1: the evening when Maddie and Kaylee had one for you know,
Speaker 1: they went to the grub truck, right, so they're going
Speaker 1: to have food on board as well.
Speaker 2: And would that would that be in their stomach contents?
Speaker 2: I mean I don't know enough yah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so with generally, generally we as humans and this
Speaker 1: this is this is heavily depended upon whether or not
Speaker 1: we have we have some kind of gastrointestinal problem. You know,
Speaker 1: is our stomach and digestive system functioning normally? Okay, So
Speaker 1: that's the caveat to this. So it takes it takes
Speaker 1: about four to six hours four to six hours for
Speaker 1: the stomach to empty. So where is it empty? It
Speaker 1: empties into the small intestine. The small intestine is slower,
Speaker 1: you know, small intestine. You know, you heard these wild
Speaker 1: stories about how long the small intestine is. Well it
Speaker 1: the small intestine takes about twelve hours to eliminate. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's going to be So if you block that and
Speaker 1: you say, well, what happened, you know during this period
Speaker 1: of time, there's not a lot you know, you can
Speaker 1: there's some appreciable evidence in the small intestine. But if
Speaker 1: you go back to the stomach and you have you
Speaker 1: have food remnant in the stomach, gastric content as it
Speaker 1: referred to. When you open that stomach, and when we
Speaker 1: take out the stomach at autopsy, you clip it at
Speaker 1: where essentially I won't go into all the specific anatomical terms,
Speaker 1: but just think about where the esophka is coming down,
Speaker 1: descending out of the mouth, descends right before it gets
Speaker 1: his stomach. You tie it off and you clip it. Okay,
Speaker 1: Then you clip the end of the stomach after tying
Speaker 1: it off, where it's about to dump into the small intestine,
Speaker 1: so you can remove the stomach completely intact without spilling
Speaker 1: the contents. It's messy business and most of the time
Speaker 1: we will take the stomach away from the body over
Speaker 1: to a sink and we've got a pan. If you've
Speaker 1: ever seen you know, when you go to a grocery
Speaker 1: store and you're going to put produce in a scale,
Speaker 1: that pan that you put produce in the scale with,
Speaker 1: that's what it looks like. We have those in the morgue.
Speaker 1: So we will have the stainless steel pan. We'll open
Speaker 1: the stomach in the pan and dump out the contents
Speaker 1: in there, and that way we don't lose anything. Because
Speaker 1: I've worked with forendsic pathologists in the morgue before that
Speaker 1: would literally open the stomach inside the cavity. Well, that's
Speaker 1: that's dangerous business because if you don't, if you don't
Speaker 1: dissect out the stomach and per the evisceration and you
Speaker 1: remove the stomach, if you just try to do it
Speaker 1: in there the interior of the body or the cavity, okay,
Speaker 1: it's very bloody stuff. You've got standing blood that's in there.
Speaker 1: So now you're going to commingle the stomach contents. Everything
Speaker 1: gets very confused, so it's best to take it out.
Speaker 1: And so if you have stomach content, you know that
Speaker 1: this person had eaten four to six hours roughly, because
Speaker 1: it takes that time for the stomach to clear all right.
Speaker 1: Another thing that's dependent is if you drink. If you
Speaker 1: drink a sports shake, okay, that ain't the same as
Speaker 1: going and eating a Porterhouse steak and a baked potato.
Speaker 1: It's going to take a lot, a lot longer for
Speaker 1: that pass through your system. Okay, so you have to
Speaker 1: take that into account. But here's what's kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: Day you had talked about this loved one of yours
Speaker 1: that had died, and he had gone I think you
Speaker 1: said he'd gone to Hearty's, which serves these giganic hamburgers.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, you know when you get when you
Speaker 1: open up the stomach, you can actually appreciate. People think
Speaker 1: they chew their food really well, they really don't. You
Speaker 1: can actually look. You can see ground beef. Pasta is
Speaker 1: one of the worst things. You can see spaghetti. You
Speaker 1: can make out what kind of noodles there are. Hot
Speaker 1: Dogs are probably at the top of list because they're encased,
Speaker 1: so you either have a natural casing, which is like
Speaker 1: an intestine, or you have one of the disgusting I'm
Speaker 1: a big Nathan's hot dog fan. I love Nathan's because
Speaker 1: there they have a natural casing. All right, I'm not
Speaker 1: a fan of like things that have I won't name
Speaker 1: a brand, things that have synthetic case intona. And so
Speaker 1: even with that, hot dogs will remain in place. You'll
Speaker 1: see that anything like grains, corn rice, vegetables, broccoli for instance,
Speaker 1: Lettuce doesn't. It's not like you chew it up and
Speaker 1: it's gone. Generally, things like soups, those sorts of things
Speaker 1: where the vegetables that are contained in there are cooked down.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot that you can recognize. And the
Speaker 1: reason I'm not saying this in order to discuss listeners
Speaker 1: what I'm The reason I'm saying this is because there's
Speaker 1: valuable information contained in the stomach, particularly if you're talking
Speaker 1: about a drug. God, maybe somebody has ingested something that
Speaker 1: was toxic. That's why that from that, when we remove
Speaker 1: the stomach, will actually get a very large plastic test
Speaker 1: tube and will collect the stomach contents and put a
Speaker 1: lift on it. We actually submit that to the state
Speaker 1: crime lab because you can run you can run test
Speaker 1: on that, you can actually do toxicology off of that.
Speaker 2: That's I was going to ask you, how does alcohol
Speaker 2: play a factor in what is in your stomach? Like
Speaker 2: is wine different than beer? And is whiskey different than
Speaker 2: what yeah, well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well. The thing about it is, this is kind
Speaker 1: of an interesting little side. If you've ever been around
Speaker 1: somebody that had been as my granddaddy, you say, pulling
Speaker 1: a cork the night before, the next the next morning,
Speaker 1: I don't care if they brush your teeth, showered, shaved,
Speaker 1: put on aqua velva, high karate, English leather, pick your
Speaker 1: poison or Georgio. You can still smell the alcohol coming
Speaker 1: off their body. If you think that's intense around a
Speaker 1: living person. If you've got somebody that has been drinking
Speaker 1: the night before and they died, like in a car crash,
Speaker 1: or maybe they got no fight and they were hammered,
Speaker 1: you know when they when you open the body, and
Speaker 1: I'm talking about not even opening some I'm just talking
Speaker 1: about the initial opening of the body, it like rushes
Speaker 1: out like a big gasse at fist and punches you
Speaker 1: right in the nose. You have that smell that like
Speaker 1: permeates everything. It's everywhere, and so you can It's the
Speaker 1: only way I can really describe it is that it's
Speaker 1: sickly sweet. It's got this sickly sweet odor to it,
Speaker 1: much like you know the smell that comes off of
Speaker 1: somebody's body that's been drunk. They have that kind of
Speaker 1: sickly sweet smell. It's even more pronounced in the dead
Speaker 1: when you open the body. I used to work with
Speaker 1: forensic pathologists. Guy's dead now. He was really, really old
Speaker 1: and very listen. To say that forensic pathologists are eccentric
Speaker 1: is an insult to eccentric people, because they are so
Speaker 1: so eccentric. This guy used to claim, and he was
Speaker 1: he he fancied himself a wine connoisseur. He was in
Speaker 1: New Orleans, so you'd go to all of these beautiful
Speaker 1: creole restaurants and he would always sample wise. He used
Speaker 1: to claim that just by the odor, he could claim
Speaker 1: he could state what type of wine they had been drinking.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, you're so full of it's you're so full
Speaker 1: of it. You can't do that. But for us, you know,
Speaker 1: in the morgue, the gastric content tells a lot about
Speaker 1: the activity of an individual. You know, we don't think
Speaker 1: about like passively. If we're if we're eating, if we're
Speaker 1: eating either for nutrition or we're eating because of stress
Speaker 1: or whatever. We might pick up a handful of something
Speaker 1: We're gonna pop it in our mouth or we just
Speaker 1: grab a quick something to eat. Well, you don't know
Speaker 1: if that ingestion of that thing is going to be
Speaker 1: the last thing you ever consume and that's going to
Speaker 1: travel with you. So that's one of the reasons. And
Speaker 1: I from a scientific standpoint, I value the information that
Speaker 1: I gleaned from gast content. But probably out of all
Speaker 1: of the postmarm interval elements, it has to be postmarmal
Speaker 1: avidity or live mortis for me. And here's why all
Speaker 1: of these other things are so and particularly riger mortis
Speaker 1: and an alger mortise, which is body temperature, they're so
Speaker 1: heavily environmentally dependent, Dave liver mortis is not so. Just
Speaker 1: imagine if you've got someone that dies sitting like the
Speaker 1: guy you know, I showed you the image the other
Speaker 1: day when we did the first segment of this teaching
Speaker 1: series about decomposition. The guy that was seated in the chair, well,
Speaker 1: the guy that was seated in the chair that died
Speaker 1: of an m I just a natural death, had a
Speaker 1: heart attack based upon how he seated. The blood because
Speaker 1: it's no longer pumping through the body, it's going to
Speaker 1: settle to the gravitationally dependent areas of his body. Gravity
Speaker 1: is like the one constant universe that kind of never changes. Now,
Speaker 1: if I had I've got an old friend that's an astrophysicist,
Speaker 1: probably one of the brightest people I've ever met in
Speaker 1: my life. As you can imagine Country's butter too. You
Speaker 1: wouldn't you wouldn't suspect this guy's got PhD In astrophysics
Speaker 1: from Clemson. I used to eat lunch with him. I
Speaker 1: just sit there amazed by this guy. He would dispute
Speaker 1: this with me because you know, I'd say gravity is
Speaker 1: the one constant, it doesn't vary. He say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: if you go to the poles, it's different. You know,
Speaker 1: if you're on the equator, it's different. We understand what
Speaker 1: we're saying here. It's not as it's not as variable
Speaker 1: as temperature.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: So if you're seated in a chairing and you have
Speaker 1: somebody that passes away, the blood is going to settle
Speaker 1: well to the ankles, the feet. We'll actually see the
Speaker 1: feet swell, they'll turn purple. That's why it's called How
Speaker 1: many times have you ever heard somebody say they didn't
Speaker 1: have another adjue to describe how angry they were, and
Speaker 1: they said, I was livid like that. Well, that's where
Speaker 1: we get this term live or mortis. It's or post
Speaker 1: mortem lividity. It's that kind of purple coloration that comes
Speaker 1: on the body. And it's not a decompositional change, you know,
Speaker 1: where you'll see bodies that will go kind of purple
Speaker 1: and black and that sort of thing. It's not like that.
Speaker 1: This is the blood pooling. It goes first to the vessels,
Speaker 1: the capillary beds. They're not meant for storing blood, they're
Speaker 1: meant for moving blood. And those little beds burst and
Speaker 1: when they burst, it leaches out into what's called the
Speaker 1: interstitial tissue, the kind of the fatty tissue that surrounds
Speaker 1: all the vessels and it stains it. And dude, once
Speaker 1: it's gotten in there, you can't change it. So if
Speaker 1: you like, for instance, we have cases where people will
Speaker 1: be killed in one location, the person might think about
Speaker 1: whether they're going to do with the body. They'll crumple
Speaker 1: up the body after it's been laying on the floor
Speaker 1: for about an hour or two hours, and they'll put
Speaker 1: them in a trunk. Well, the first time they lay
Speaker 1: them on their left side, they've been laying on the
Speaker 1: left side where they were killed, they place them on
Speaker 1: the trunk, laying on the right side. So you might
Speaker 1: have two presentations of post mortal avidity. And before it
Speaker 1: gets fixed, it can actually migrate around, and that's a
Speaker 1: real problem, you know, if you're trying to do an assessment.
Speaker 1: So it takes a measured point in time for post
Speaker 1: mortal avidity to fix, and once it's fixed and it
Speaker 1: stains the skin, it's not going to move. And so
Speaker 1: if you've got a body, if we come to a
Speaker 1: scene and we've got an individual that is lying in
Speaker 1: a prone position, which means their chest is in contact
Speaker 1: with the ground, and I show up at the scene
Speaker 1: and they're laying like that, but yet they've got post
Speaker 1: mortal avidity between their shoulder blades, I'm going to know
Speaker 1: that before I arrived, somebody moved that body. At one
Speaker 1: point in time, they were face up and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, someone got the grand idea to either
Speaker 1: flip them or move them, you know. And this goes
Speaker 1: to scene staging as well. Well. Going back to our
Speaker 1: four unfortunate students in Idaho, based upon the timeframe of
Speaker 1: postmartal lividity, I can tell you this post wal avidity
Speaker 1: is close to being completely fixed by the time the
Speaker 1: corner shows up at the scene. That's how much of
Speaker 1: a lag time you've had. And the way we test
Speaker 1: it in the way I would hope that she had
Speaker 1: tested it at the scene is if you get one
Speaker 1: of these big purple, vivacious areas, if you take your
Speaker 1: thumb on a gloved hand and you depress that area
Speaker 1: that's purple and it doesn't blanch, it still stays. That
Speaker 1: means it's fixed. That means that those little appt their
Speaker 1: beds have erupted and it's still you know, it's no
Speaker 1: longer blanchable, whereas you can get that staining.
Speaker 2: But if you.
Speaker 1: Press it and it blanches, that's called blanchable avidity. That
Speaker 1: means that it hasn't fixed yet. And so for both
Speaker 1: of those, both those instances, there's a measured amount of
Speaker 1: time that you know, it takes for this to occur.
Speaker 1: So when we're looking it'll be a parent. You can
Speaker 1: see it kind of pop up on the radar within
Speaker 1: twenty to thirty minutes after death. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: the kid that you saw when you I wasn't one
Speaker 1: of these kids that could do that that you go
Speaker 1: to playground with and they can hang upside down the
Speaker 1: monkey bars and their head turns the red and it
Speaker 1: kind of swells. Less blood set now it still moving,
Speaker 1: but you know what I'm saying. So if within twenty
Speaker 1: to thirty minutes, you'll see the blood kind of pooling
Speaker 1: in these areas and it's going to take and intensity
Speaker 1: is going to increase up until about the seventh or
Speaker 1: eight hour, and then it's there. It's not moving. So
Speaker 1: wouldn't that be an interesting set of data to have
Speaker 1: about the cases in Idaho? Was a lividity fixed where
Speaker 1: there are multiple presentations of lividity. And I hope, I
Speaker 1: certainly hope that coming up in August that all of
Speaker 1: these questions there are many, but all of these questions
Speaker 1: that can be answered, and that can be answered through
Speaker 1: science and that assessment that hopefully took place on that
Speaker 1: day back in twenty twenty two in November, I hope
Speaker 1: it will thorough and I hope that we learned more
Speaker 1: about what happened that night. I'm Joseph got Morgan and
Speaker 1: this is bodybags.
Speaker 2: H