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Speaker 1: Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Hi, guys, Nancy Grace. Here,

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Speaker 1: in light of the mass murders in Indianapolis, we are

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Speaker 1: doing an extra round of Q and A focusing specifically

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Speaker 1: on forensics and the crime scene. As many of you

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Speaker 1: Illegal Eagles know by now, multiple victims were shot inside

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Speaker 1: at home on the East side of Indianapolis, one of

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Speaker 1: the worst mass murders in Indianapolis history. The victims forty

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Speaker 1: two year old mother, Kezie Childs, her husband, the father

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Speaker 1: of the children, also forty two, Raymond Childs Junior, their

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Speaker 1: eighteen year old son Elijah Childs, their thirteen year old daughter,

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Speaker 1: Rita Childs, nineteen year old young woman almost twenty Kiara Hawkins,

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Speaker 1: and her unborn baby boy do to be born in

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Speaker 1: about four weeks. Also eighteen boy. The younger boy in

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Speaker 1: the home, just fifteen years old, is in critical condition

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Speaker 1: the hospital right now. To Joseph Scott Morgan kindly joining me,

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Speaker 1: Professor Forensics, Jacksonville State University, author TV Star Joe Scott.

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Speaker 1: When I say TV Star, you got there because of

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Speaker 1: all of the training, I'm talking about literally thousands of

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Speaker 1: death scenes that you have investigated. I know from the

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Speaker 1: investigation into the Atlanta Fulton County Courthouse shooting and an

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Speaker 1: earlier mass murder I prosecuted. To let me say, process

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Speaker 1: the crime scene can take days and days. Yeah, Ken

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Speaker 1: and Nancy, you have to think about this, you know,

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Speaker 1: as a mindset. When you go into this environment as

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Speaker 1: an investigator, you're walking into an environment that, for the

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Speaker 1: average citizen is total chaos. And that's the framework that

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Speaker 1: you come from because you're human as an investigator. But

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Speaker 1: you have to set that aside and you have to order.

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Speaker 1: I refer to it as ordering your brain, if you will,

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Speaker 1: and compartmentalizing what you have to do, because when you

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Speaker 1: look at this, it's almost as if someone took a

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Speaker 1: jigsaw puzzle of a you know, several thousand pieces and

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Speaker 1: literally just threw it up in the air at random.

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Speaker 1: The only problem is is that jigsaw puzzle is saturated

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Speaker 1: with blood and other evidence, and you have to make

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Speaker 1: sense of that because at that moment in time, when

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Speaker 1: you cross that threshold into this hell scape, you only

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Speaker 1: get to walk across the threshold for the first time.

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Speaker 1: Once you can't, you can't back out of it. There's

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Speaker 1: no way to get it right. The next time. You

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Speaker 1: have to get it right, So even before you walk

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Speaker 1: into this environment. You were talking about the courthouse, I

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Speaker 1: had friends that were there as you did, I know,

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Speaker 1: or if you think about the Buckhead shooting that we

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Speaker 1: had many years ago in Atlanta. You walk into these

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Speaker 1: environments and you have to be well planned and ready

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Speaker 1: to rock and roll when you walk through the door,

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Speaker 1: and be totally focused because it's so easy to be distracted. Hey,

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Speaker 1: it's easy to be distracted on a regular homicide case,

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Speaker 1: but can you imagine when you're surrounded by tons and

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Speaker 1: tons of evidence, not to mention the horror of these

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Speaker 1: destroyed lives, and you have to take it step by step.

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Speaker 1: That's almost I teach my students that it's like walking

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Speaker 1: through a minefield. You assume that every step that you

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Speaker 1: take going forward in the future with this particular case

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Speaker 1: has the potential to destroy the case. So you have

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Speaker 1: to be very careful as to how you're going to

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Speaker 1: handle each one of these individuals and break it down

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Speaker 1: piece by piece, because Nancy, they're deceased at this point,

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Speaker 1: they're not going anywhere, and many times, you know, the

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Speaker 1: public will look at this and say, how can you

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Speaker 1: do this? How can you stay there for days and

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Speaker 1: days and days in this environment. Maybe why are you

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Speaker 1: leaving these bodies in there? I can't tell you how

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Speaker 1: many times I've heard that over the course of my career.

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Speaker 1: The reality is this, Obviously the body is not going

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Speaker 1: to be there forever. People are very uncomfortable with death.

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Speaker 1: But you have to process this as carefully and methodically

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Speaker 1: as you possibly can at that one moment, because the

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Speaker 1: public's right. The body needs to be removed, and it

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Speaker 1: will be removed, but not until we're complete with everything

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Speaker 1: that we have to do to document what brought about

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Speaker 1: the end of this individual. When you are looking at

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Speaker 1: a crime scene of this magnitude, dealing with all the blood,

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Speaker 1: blood spatter, blood drops, blood spray transfer marks, what cops

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Speaker 1: are trying to do forensic CSI right now is to

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Speaker 1: determine since there is no eyewitness to the sequence of

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Speaker 1: the shootings, apparently the fifteen year old little brother was

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Speaker 1: downstairs in a basement, they can learn that. They can

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Speaker 1: learn exactly what happened if the scene is not destroyed

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Speaker 1: and if somebody who knows what they're doing goes in first.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you can't move anybody, you can't walk through blood.

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Speaker 1: I know this sequence I know that the fifteen year

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Speaker 1: old brother was downstairs. He heard the thirteen year old

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Speaker 1: sister upstairs Rita scream out. He's shooting everybody, so I

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Speaker 1: know she's not the first dead body. All of this

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Speaker 1: is very important, by the way, if the state plans

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Speaker 1: to go forward with intentional murder. For intentional murder, you

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Speaker 1: have to show premeditation. Premeditation, of course, can be proven

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Speaker 1: in the blink of an eye, the twinkling of an instant,

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Speaker 1: and the time it takes you to raise a gun

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Speaker 1: and pull this trigger. That's time to form premeditation under

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Speaker 1: our current jurisprudence. So the fact that the shooter goes

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Speaker 1: room to room methodically shooting his family, and yes, we

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Speaker 1: believe the seventeen year old son angry at the dad

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Speaker 1: is the shooter according to police, But did he go

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Speaker 1: through the home methodically? Was there time between each shooting

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Speaker 1: for him to form mensrea premeditation? That's what they're looking for.

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Speaker 1: They're looking to see if he first acted in self defense.

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Speaker 1: Did the father go after him? Doesn't seem like it,

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Speaker 1: but did he Apparently all the victims were unarmed. These

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Speaker 1: are just a few of the things that forensics will

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Speaker 1: be trying to determine and every spatter drop, smear will

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Speaker 1: be important. I know what the Atlanta Fulton County courthouse shooting,

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Speaker 1: there are multiple victims. It literally took days days where

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Speaker 1: the victims were left as they were for a period

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Speaker 1: of time, so the sequence of events and could be

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Speaker 1: determined and all of the forensic evidence kept pristine as

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Speaker 1: it were. Explain Joseph Scott Morgan. Yeah, you know, this

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Speaker 1: is the marriage of what you do as a prosecutor, Nancy,

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Speaker 1: and what I do as a forensic scientist. And you

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Speaker 1: can tell a tale and the evidence will do that.

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Speaker 1: Let's talk about blood just for a second. When you

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Speaker 1: talk about blood evidence and blood staining that is left behind,

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Speaker 1: it will give you an indication, just to kind of

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Speaker 1: frame this a little bit. It gives you an indication

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Speaker 1: of relationship. And I'm talking about physical relationship in that

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Speaker 1: moment of this violence, Like how what kind of distance

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Speaker 1: are we talking about? We can talk about physical relationships.

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Speaker 1: Was the perpetrator, say, for instance, in an asymmetric position

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Speaker 1: where they are literally above, say, for instance, the victim

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Speaker 1: where they're firing down, and that will tell a specific teal.

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Speaker 1: Did he make contact, for instance, with the body after

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Speaker 1: he fired this high velocity round into the body, say,

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Speaker 1: for instance, to bludgeing them with a weapon after they

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Speaker 1: do this to make sure they're dead. And then as

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Speaker 1: he withdraws a weapon, you might have a passive mark

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Speaker 1: on the bottom of the weapon. You might have a

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Speaker 1: drip that kind of free falls, and then you can

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Speaker 1: track that away. So this gives you an idea. And

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Speaker 1: it goes to sequencing too, doesn't it, you know, because

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Speaker 1: you're thinking about as chaotic as this is, did he

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Speaker 1: actually you know, if we assume, and this is a

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Speaker 1: big assumption, you are the parents, specifically the father, the

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Speaker 1: primary target. Well, is that the location that he went

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Speaker 1: to first? If the dad is in bed remember this

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Speaker 1: happened in the wee hours of the night. If the

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Speaker 1: dad was in bed, then that means that he was shot.

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Speaker 1: He was in repose. If you will say he's laying

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Speaker 1: face up and the shooter fires down into his body, Well,

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Speaker 1: there's not gonna be a lot of blood tracking away

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Speaker 1: from that. But after that initial gunshot goes off, there's

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Speaker 1: an awareness. Remember what you said, the thirteen year old said,

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Speaker 1: he's shooting He's shooting us, So that means the dynamics

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Speaker 1: of this thing changed as she's fleeing. Let's assumes she

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Speaker 1: is out of her room to get away. Remember she

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Speaker 1: said he is shooting. She identified somebody, we know it's

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Speaker 1: a male. Well, if she's running away from the down

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Speaker 1: he fires it her down a hallway, well maybe as

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Speaker 1: he's fired at her, she's tracking blood from this injury

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Speaker 1: that she has, and what were the relationships between everybody else.

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Speaker 1: I've worked cases of mass homicide where people had an

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Speaker 1: awareness this was happening and they went and crawled in

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Speaker 1: the closet. The shooters still threw open the door and

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Speaker 1: shot them down through the top of their head, if

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Speaker 1: you will, to render them dead at that point. In

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Speaker 1: that same environment, I had people that were shot multiple

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Speaker 1: times laying in puddles of blood, but you could still

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Speaker 1: track where their bare feet because this case happened in

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Speaker 1: the middle of the night, I'm talking about where their

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Speaker 1: bare feet had tracked through the blood of their own

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Speaker 1: siblings to try to get away, but they just didn't

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Speaker 1: make it. So the blood element here is going to

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Speaker 1: be very important because this is going to tie back

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Speaker 1: to the specific dynamics of the event. How did this

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Speaker 1: go down? Did it go down in real time and

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Speaker 1: what can we put is in real time? Can we

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Speaker 1: sequence this? And that's going to be important because when

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Speaker 1: that information, that scientific information comes back to the prosecutor

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Speaker 1: and you're standing, you're standing before the jury, you want

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Speaker 1: to be able to paint that picture. And forensics many

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Speaker 1: times gives the prosecutor that ability to tell this tale

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Speaker 1: through the biological evidence of actually what happened. And it's

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Speaker 1: very very powerful too, particularly when you can illustrate it

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Speaker 1: with an image in court and you can demonstrate what

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Speaker 1: was seen at the crime scene. And then you can

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Speaker 1: further enhance it by putting an expert on the stand

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Speaker 1: and say why don't you go into this a little

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Speaker 1: bit deeper to tell the people of the jury precisely

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Speaker 1: what happened. Crime stories with Nancy Grace. So when the

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Speaker 1: crime scene TEXSI goes into this scene, was the first

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Speaker 1: thing they're going to do beside hopefully keep everybody else

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Speaker 1: the hay out. Yeah. Well, the most solid thing that

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Speaker 1: we have Nancy in crime scene observation is initially they're

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Speaker 1: going to be a myriad of photographs that are taken.

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Speaker 1: That is, after the scene is secured and the initial

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Speaker 1: kind of walk through as conductor, we call it a

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Speaker 1: walk through. In this case, you would not want to

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Speaker 1: completely walk through because there's going to be copious amounts

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Speaker 1: of blood everywhere. You're going to take overall photos. The

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Speaker 1: first thing they're going to do is put on footies

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Speaker 1: and foot CSI gear so that their treadmarks off their

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Speaker 1: shoes onto the crime scene. Yeah, and you're you're right

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Speaker 1: about that. There's a great image if you if you

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Speaker 1: look back at the O. J. Simpson case where you've

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Speaker 1: got Dennis I think the guy's name is Dennis Fong,

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Speaker 1: I can't remember specifically, but the criminals from from La County.

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Speaker 1: He's at the scene and he's wearing what we refer

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Speaker 1: to as a bunny suit, one of these taivex suits.

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Speaker 1: He's walking down the sidewalk carrying bags of evidence. And

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Speaker 1: then you have the detective standing over there and they're

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Speaker 1: in their street shoes and they're in the same environment.

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Speaker 1: What's the point. Everybody has to be suited up because

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Speaker 1: that is a transfer of evidence. Everything that you bring,

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Speaker 1: you bring everything from the environment you pre existed in

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Speaker 1: prior to arriving at the scene into that environment, and

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Speaker 1: so you have to be very careful you have to

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Speaker 1: put shoe covers on, preferably, you have to put a

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Speaker 1: tiebeck suit on. You have to cover your hair. We

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Speaker 1: lose hair every day, we lose skin cells every day.

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Speaker 1: You have to have gloves on in order to protect

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Speaker 1: against any kind of trace evidence that you're going to

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Speaker 1: contaminate the scene with. And it makes it particularly difficult

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Speaker 1: when you're processing the scene. You're sweating, you get lightheaded,

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Speaker 1: that's what we're seeing. You can't hydrate because you can't

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Speaker 1: bring water into this environment, and you don't want to

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Speaker 1: keep coming and going out of the scene because that

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Speaker 1: ups the risk. So you better be prepared when you

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Speaker 1: walk in into this environment because you have to protect

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Speaker 1: literally have to protect the scene from yourself as an investigator.

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Speaker 1: How long do you think the processing will take? I mean,

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Speaker 1: we've got an eyewitness, we've got an eye witness. But

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Speaker 1: remember the eyewitness that we think we have is the

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Speaker 1: little brother of who we believe right now is the perp.

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Speaker 1: Name has not been released because he is juvenile, who

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Speaker 1: knows what will happen by time of trial. He may

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Speaker 1: feel loyal to his loyalty to his brother, and totally

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Speaker 1: we can't I mean, we don't know what's going to happen.

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Speaker 1: That's why the crime scene texts are so important. That

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Speaker 1: this crime scene be preserved in its natural state before

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Speaker 1: it can be ruined by people touching things, breathing on things,

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Speaker 1: dropping their hair and their fibers all over everything. You

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Speaker 1: have to be able to corroborate everything this little boy

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Speaker 1: is going to say or not say. He may not

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Speaker 1: even testify, so the case it may have to be proven,

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Speaker 1: but based on all the horrifics alone. Yeah, Nancy, I

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Speaker 1: want you to keep this in mind and listen. Listen

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Speaker 1: to what I'm saying very carefully here. I'm glad that

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Speaker 1: they have a quote unquote eyewitness, but that's that's something

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Speaker 1: that the detective will deal with. And no question, this

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Speaker 1: kid am on video. But right now he's still in

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Speaker 1: critical condition in the hospital. Oh yeah, he is. And

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Speaker 1: any kind of information that can extricate from this young

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Speaker 1: man is going to help. However, as a crumpsing technician

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Speaker 1: at the scene, I don't care if it's if it's

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Speaker 1: a suicide, I am going to work that scene is

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Speaker 1: if I have no eyewitnesses, that should be my working

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Speaker 1: assumption at all times that there is a potential for

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Speaker 1: the scene to go forward. I don't know what other

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Speaker 1: information is, and as a matter of fact, the less

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Speaker 1: information I have coming in at that moment in time,

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Speaker 1: it's a distraction to me because I want to keep

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Speaker 1: my mind as pristine as possible when I'm looking at

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Speaker 1: the evidence before me. That way, it's not influenced at

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Speaker 1: all by cross talk or you know, any kind of

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Speaker 1: supposition that's out there that the police might be doing

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Speaker 1: on their own. I want to focus on the body itself.

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Speaker 1: I get one shot at doing this, Nancy, so anything

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Speaker 1: that makes me intellectually lazy at the scene. I have

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Speaker 1: to be able to laser focus on all of the

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Speaker 1: blood stain that's left behind, all of the spatter. I

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Speaker 1: have to be able to focus on the distribution of say,

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Speaker 1: for instance, the brass casings that come out of this firearm.

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Speaker 1: I have to be able to appreciate the injuries and

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Speaker 1: document those injuries and talk about what precisely happened. Hey,

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Speaker 1: I even have to focus on the condition of the

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Speaker 1: body relative to say, the post mortem interval, because I

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Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know this kid may have he

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Speaker 1: may have killed these people in a way in advance,

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Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden something happened to trigger

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Speaker 1: this thing. Maybe two or three of these people were

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Speaker 1: dead before you know, the young kid ran out of

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Speaker 1: the house, and they've been dead for hours. I don't

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Speaker 1: know that because I wasn't there. My working assumption at

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Speaker 1: that point in time is that I'm ignorant of all

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Speaker 1: facts other than the body that I have before me.

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Speaker 1: And at the end, the product that I produce as

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Speaker 1: a forensic scientist from that scene, it's going to be

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Speaker 1: all the more pure because I'm not influenced by all

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Speaker 1: the chatter that's going along and that sort of thing.

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Speaker 1: I make sure that I collect all the hair evidence

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Speaker 1: I collect in document through photography and measurements, all of

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Speaker 1: the blood evidence, the spattered the dynamics of this thing.

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Speaker 1: You know, you said that you measure and that's so important.

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Speaker 1: I recall my elected DA calling me down to his office.

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Speaker 1: Of course, I ran down the stairs, didn't want on

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Speaker 1: an elevator, and a long time friend of his, who

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Speaker 1: was now at that time a partner in one of

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Speaker 1: the biggest law firms in Atlanta daughter had ostensibly committed suicide. Well,

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Speaker 1: the dad, mister Slaton's rand did not believe it was suicide.

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Speaker 1: So I went straight out to the scene, and I

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Speaker 1: took with me the medical examiner investigators in a lot

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Speaker 1: of metropolitan cities them medical Examiner's office has their own

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Speaker 1: investigators in addition to homicide investigators and detectives. They met

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Speaker 1: me and they brought their notes, and they had taken

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Speaker 1: very careful measurements. The woman was found may God rest

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Speaker 1: her soul in bed, naked, shot in the head, this

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Speaker 1: is just one example. And they had measured to the inch,

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Speaker 1: the half inch, the millimeter, how far away the spent

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Speaker 1: shells were the brass as you call it, to determine

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Speaker 1: help determine did she actually commit suicide? And we're the

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Speaker 1: shell casings where they should have been in that event.

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Speaker 1: My point is every shell casing is measured against a

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Speaker 1: fixed objects such as the wall, against other objects such

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Speaker 1: as the body, the foot of the body, the head

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Speaker 1: of the body. All of these measurements can somehow amazingly

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Speaker 1: turn out to be critical evidence at trial. Joe Scott, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they can be, Nancy, and by the way, she did

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Speaker 1: not commit suicide. Well, that's that's the important part here

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Speaker 1: because in just going to this point alone, you know,

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Speaker 1: if you think about deaths, if you go in with

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Speaker 1: a basic base assumption that just because some uniform cop

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Speaker 1: tells you when you show up at the scene that

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Speaker 1: this is a suicide of self inflicted, I assume they're lying.

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Speaker 1: I don't know. Hey, hey, hey, hey, don't trust the uniforms. Okay,

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Speaker 1: they're just going on what they see and what they

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Speaker 1: think at that moment. They're not very births like you. Yeah, exactly,

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Speaker 1: because they're not from respect man, hey, man, listen, just

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Speaker 1: because yeah, and that is my point precisely, Nancy. They

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Speaker 1: need to keep their mouth shut at that point in time,

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Speaker 1: because yeah, you know, if everything they say is going

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Speaker 1: to end up in a police report and say you

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Speaker 1: get to trial and you're you're prosecuting a homicide and

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Speaker 1: they go, well, wait a minute, the defense is wait

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Speaker 1: a minute, your uniform, cause this is a suicide. Didn't

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Speaker 1: he even though the said that that's what it looked like,

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Speaker 1: but didn't know that. So yes, yeah, and you look

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Speaker 1: at this and you your working assumption, every working assumption

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Speaker 1: is that every case, and I mean every case, even

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Speaker 1: if it's an eighty year old mama that's got you know,

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Speaker 1: a long history of heart disease and these sorts of things.

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Speaker 1: Your working assumption is that this is a homicide because

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Speaker 1: you can't you know, and this is an old legal term,

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Speaker 1: you can't unring the bell at that point. You can't

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Speaker 1: go back and get a do over. So relationship, say,

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Speaker 1: for instance, in the case that you're you're commenting on

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Speaker 1: the relationship of say a spent casing. Uh, that's going

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Speaker 1: to be very critical, is it? You have to think

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Speaker 1: about the physical science of it. Is it possible, depending

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Speaker 1: upon the weapon and the actual spent brass, is it

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Speaker 1: possible that that piece of brass would have ejected in

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Speaker 1: that manner to wind up in that location relative to

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Speaker 1: the body. Now the brass is all the way across

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Speaker 1: the room, okay, and you've got someone that's laying there

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Speaker 1: with a weapon, maybe immediately adjacent to their hand or

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Speaker 1: loosely clutched. You know, my spody sensors are going to

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Speaker 1: go off that point, Tom saying this just doesn't look

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Speaker 1: right and is there a powder burn? You know, most people,

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Speaker 1: for instance, if you look at a suicide case, and

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Speaker 1: people don't realize Nancy. You know, in death investigation we

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Speaker 1: work almost two times more suicides and we do homicides

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Speaker 1: because it's just the nature of you just don't hear

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Speaker 1: about them unless it's a famous person. But with suicide, say,

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Speaker 1: for instance, with gunshot wounds, most of the time, if

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Speaker 1: it's a self inflicted gunshot wounds, say, for instance, to

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Speaker 1: the side of the head, we're gonna have what's referred

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Speaker 1: to as a press contact gunshot wound. That means that

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Speaker 1: the end of that muzzle will be tightly pressed against

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Speaker 1: the skin and there will be very little, say for instance,

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Speaker 1: stippling around the injury because it's all encapsulated. It's all sealed,

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Speaker 1: so everything out of the end of that barrel blast

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Speaker 1: into the head. Now, let's flip that around. If you

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Speaker 1: have someone that is shot, say for instance, with the

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Speaker 1: same type of weapon and inspired at a distance, which

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Speaker 1: is atypical for suicide, and you have a powder distribution,

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Speaker 1: that's going to give you an idea that this is

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Speaker 1: not probably a self inflicted wound, or the chances are

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Speaker 1: very slim that it would be because it fits out

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Speaker 1: in Okay, we're getting in the weeds because you know what,

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Speaker 1: this was not suicide, This was not self inflicted. This

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Speaker 1: was mass murder. With me Joseph Scott Morgan, Professor Forensics

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Speaker 1: Jacksonville State University, author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon.

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Speaker 1: We Wait as Justice Unfoalds Nancy Grace signing off with

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Speaker 1: our Crime Stories bonus podcast, Goodbye Friend one