Speaker 1: Quality datis, but Joseph's gotten more for the general public.
Speaker 1: I think that what defines my profession. The first thing
Speaker 1: that pops onto the radar is not necessarily injuries. You know,
Speaker 1: horrible trauma, sadness, grief, all of those sorts of things.
Speaker 1: The one question that people seem to ask me all
Speaker 1: the time is how is it that you deal with
Speaker 1: being around decomposing human remains. That's not necessarily a one
Speaker 1: size fits all question. It is something that I learned
Speaker 1: to do over a protracted period of time. Now, don't
Speaker 1: misunderstand me. I never got completely used to it. I
Speaker 1: think that all of you out there would probably think
Speaker 1: that I was an absolute lunatic if I said that
Speaker 1: I had. However, you do build up somewhat of a
Speaker 1: callous to it after a time. But today we're going
Speaker 1: to discuss human decomposition and I'm going to kind of
Speaker 1: give you an insight from my perspective of death investigation.
Speaker 1: So hold on to your hats, because classes in with
Speaker 1: Professor Morgan. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body
Speaker 1: Backs Brother Dave. Good to be back with you, man.
Speaker 1: I've been on my world tour man all over Europe
Speaker 1: and hitting spots and Paris and Amsterdam and Liverpool.
Speaker 2: I was going to ask you if you met any Liverpudlians.
Speaker 1: I did you know? Yeah, I did meet a few
Speaker 1: liver Pudlians, Pudlians, Puddlians, Poodlians.
Speaker 2: You know the thing Boundary called the Beatles because they
Speaker 2: complete beatles and yeah, yeah, Jerry and the Pacemakers, Yeah,
Speaker 2: called them Liverpoodlians.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And let's see who else was it was it
Speaker 1: Herman and the Hermits at say.
Speaker 2: Peter across the Mersey. Who was that? That was not
Speaker 2: Peter Noon in the Herman's Hermits, It was across the Makers.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I actually sat out and drank a pint next
Speaker 1: to the Mersey River out there with the beautiful broad Kimmy,
Speaker 1: and it was a glorious, glorious sunshiny day, gentle breeze
Speaker 1: blowing in off the water. And when I say, and look,
Speaker 1: we're we're back home in South It's like, I don't
Speaker 1: know what eighty percent humidity out there, dude. We had
Speaker 1: to wear sweatshirts and that's in you know, we're we're
Speaker 1: in June and so and they were saying, oh, it's
Speaker 1: nice warm weather. I'm thinking, wow, but it was. It
Speaker 1: was enjoyable, it was refreshing. I'm glad to be back
Speaker 1: home and uh, certainly glad to be back with you,
Speaker 1: brother Dave. I've missed being on the air with you
Speaker 1: and uh and uh, you know, spent time over in
Speaker 1: Crime Con Crime Con UK in London. So that was
Speaker 1: that was a blast, and we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: that more another episode. But I thought, coming back, you know,
Speaker 1: we continue our series of forensic education with your humble
Speaker 1: host here and you know, try to go down this line.
Speaker 2: But I got to tell you something. We had a
Speaker 2: show today on Nancy Grace and we were talking about
Speaker 2: the Holly Bobo case. And in this discussion that Nancy
Speaker 2: and I were having, we were talking about blood in
Speaker 2: the garage. Holly Bobo was a twenty year old kidnapped
Speaker 2: from her own home in Tennessee by a couple of
Speaker 2: Ruffians and she was actually in her garage carport getting
Speaker 2: ready to get into her car to go to school
Speaker 2: seven forty five in the morning when she was taken. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: And there were two different spots of blood in the
Speaker 2: garage and Nancy was asking, what did that mean, And
Speaker 2: I thought, I'm not the right guy to answer this,
Speaker 2: but I do know because of Joe, you know, And
Speaker 2: so I actually broke it all down and I said, well,
Speaker 2: a forensic person would say, and I was like, this
Speaker 2: blood droplet is different than this blood smear, right, And
Speaker 2: it was really cool to be able to bring that
Speaker 2: to the discussion because then, you know, it means something.
Speaker 2: Everything that you talk about on this show with regard
Speaker 2: to crime and it's body bags, but it actually helps
Speaker 2: all of us to have a better understanding of when
Speaker 2: the crime happens, how does it get solved? Ultimately, you
Speaker 2: and I talk about the victims every day and how
Speaker 2: do you It's never about closure, but it is about
Speaker 2: finding some resolution, some finality, and finding the justice that
Speaker 2: that person and their family deserves. And it all comes
Speaker 2: together forensically. You have to prove it. You know, you
Speaker 2: can actually convict a person of murder without ever having
Speaker 2: a dead bos.
Speaker 1: Yeah you can. Yeah. The blood. The blood. The blood
Speaker 1: for instance, many times it is representative of the corpus delecti,
Speaker 1: which means the body of the case. And so, and
Speaker 1: I think I've said this before, the more blood you have,
Speaker 1: and uh, scientists love to use the term copious always.
Speaker 2: Like that, copious amounts of blood.
Speaker 1: Yeah, copious amounts of blood. Uh, you know, huge volume
Speaker 1: of blood. Which and again here here's another uh term
Speaker 1: or the phrase they like to use, uh, incompatibility with life.
Speaker 1: You know, that's that's one of those things. You spill
Speaker 1: so much blood, you know that, Uh, And depend upon
Speaker 1: the person. You know, you have a finite amount of
Speaker 1: blood in your body, and even that finite amount that
Speaker 1: within the ranges of blood that you have within your body,
Speaker 1: is going to dictate whether or not you're going to
Speaker 1: survive or not, you know, whether it's it's going to
Speaker 1: be sufficient to the task of providing yourselves with oxygenated
Speaker 1: blood supply.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, with decomposition, we we discuss blood
Speaker 1: in decomposition and blood in fact because it is an element,
Speaker 1: a complex element. It's not a blood. It's not a
Speaker 1: standalone substance. It's a it's a it's a compound of
Speaker 1: many things, and blood itself does decome decompose.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: All you know, not all I have to tell you is, uh, listen,
Speaker 1: if you if you've ever had like a a rotten
Speaker 1: bit of meat in your refrigerator, say, for instance, you
Speaker 1: forgot the uh, the roast that was wrapped and sulfane.
Speaker 1: It was in the back of your refrigerator and you say, oh,
Speaker 1: look a roast and you pull it out and some
Speaker 1: of that seeps out onto the floor.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: It's one of the fouls substances known to man. It's
Speaker 1: not necessarily just the the you know that that element
Speaker 1: of the roast that is decomposing, it's that liquid that's
Speaker 1: contained therein which is blood and it changes color. It's
Speaker 1: got an awful, awful scent to it. And we'll go
Speaker 1: into that in this particular episode of body Bags. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's part and parcel of what we do people.
Speaker 1: I want to go back just for a second though,
Speaker 1: because many many times people say, I don't see how.
Speaker 2: In the world.
Speaker 1: You bear staying locked up in a room which I
Speaker 1: have with a decomposing body, and how can you do
Speaker 1: what you have to do scientifically as far as assessments go,
Speaker 1: and and dwell that environment with that And it's you know,
Speaker 1: how let me let me just throw this out to you, Dave.
Speaker 1: Do you have any idea how I adjusted my mindset
Speaker 1: to it, any idea whatsoever? Like what did I do.
Speaker 1: I looked at it. I looked at decomposition as a
Speaker 1: normal biological process, almost like birth. And I've been present
Speaker 1: for the birth of my children, and people will go
Speaker 1: on and on about what a beautiful thing birth is.
Speaker 1: It is. It is a beautiful thing, you know, when
Speaker 1: new life comes about. However, it's an ugly thing too
Speaker 1: if you've never been present for a birth and you
Speaker 1: see what occurs in the midst of all of this,
Speaker 1: it's a very bloody affair. And so but that's a
Speaker 1: natural biological process. And I've always tried to understand it
Speaker 1: from that perspective, if I could ever get my because look,
Speaker 1: you know, death investigators have bad days too, obviously. You
Speaker 1: know it's like you're standing there. You don't want to
Speaker 1: be around a decomposing body. But I have to You
Speaker 1: always kind of have to anchor yourself in the thought that, Okay,
Speaker 1: if I'm going to be here, I'm going to set
Speaker 1: my feet in stone. I'm going to understand this is
Speaker 1: a normal biological process. I have to get past the
Speaker 1: odor and the things that you see that surround the
Speaker 1: body in order to find the truth. And of course,
Speaker 1: in science, that's that's all I'm interested in. I'm not
Speaker 1: interested in all this other you know, peripheral stuff that
Speaker 1: a lot of people go after, you know, in the
Speaker 1: criminal justice system. That stuff, to me, uh is outside
Speaker 1: my wheelhouse. I like to understand what science is trying
Speaker 1: to tell me and listen, decomposition in human remains, Dave
Speaker 1: is one of the finest teachers that it's out there.
Speaker 2: Now. It happens quick, doesn't it. I mean, when when
Speaker 2: we from the moment we die, our body starts decomposing
Speaker 2: right away. Isn't that correct?
Speaker 1: Yeah? It does. You can't small ways. Yeah, in small
Speaker 1: ways you can't see it, you can't smell it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: at at a cellular level, the sales begin to you know,
Speaker 1: essentially break down, and you're not going to necessarily see
Speaker 1: it immediately. And we're going to get into another episode
Speaker 1: where we're going to be talking about immediate kind of
Speaker 1: of post war changes, but we're kind of taking a
Speaker 1: broad view. You're not going to get like, within within
Speaker 1: minutes of death, you're not going to have a foul
Speaker 1: odor emanating from the body that's associated with decomposition. Now,
Speaker 1: you can't have a foul odor that's emanating from human
Speaker 1: remains save for instance, if they soil themselves right during
Speaker 1: the throes of death, and that does, in fact happen.
Speaker 1: It doesn't happen every time.
Speaker 2: A lot of people say, okay, well doesn't that happen?
Speaker 1: Every single time?
Speaker 2: I thought that wasn't it. I learned it wasn't. But
Speaker 2: for the longest time I thought that when a person died,
Speaker 2: everything just let go the spin. There you go, Mary
Speaker 2: christ I'm glad.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you actually mentioned that because that you know,
Speaker 1: when you get that that release safer instance of an
Speaker 1: individual's bowels. Many times, that will take some time to occur,
Speaker 1: and you mentioned the sphincter muscle specifically. You have to
Speaker 1: have that area of the tissue begin to break down
Speaker 1: so that that tension is no longer there, and if
Speaker 1: there is feces in the bowel, it can release, and
Speaker 1: that does happen. You'll have bladder releases many times. Lots
Speaker 1: of times bladder releases happen. I found when they're in
Speaker 1: the perimortem, say, when they're in the throes of death,
Speaker 1: you know that that will occur, but you know you
Speaker 1: you don't have it every single time. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people labor under this idea that it occurs
Speaker 1: in every single event like this, and it just doesn't.
Speaker 2: Isn't that because part of its biology that we're all different.
Speaker 2: I mean, like Elvis. When Elvis died, we know that
Speaker 2: he had an impacted colon. Isn't that what that was called?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, he And a lot of that had to
Speaker 1: do with these kind of opiate based drakes, which you'll
Speaker 1: find consturbated all the time he was, Yeah, he was.
Speaker 1: And people that are addicted to things like heroin and morphine,
Speaker 1: and also any kind of opioid, even if it's some
Speaker 1: kind of synthetic, you know, thing that has been created
Speaker 1: a lot app it'll essentially lock up the bowels. And
Speaker 1: I've done I've done autopsies on individuals or participating in
Speaker 1: autopsies on individuals that are heroin ods, and you'll have
Speaker 1: their entire large bowel with fecal impaction. And it's a
Speaker 1: miserable existence because they can't they can't pass, you know, anything.
Speaker 1: And plus they most of the time they don't eat
Speaker 1: healthy foods anyway that keep the system rolling. And they're
Speaker 1: they're hydrated either, which plays a big role into it.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't happen every single time But interesting fact
Speaker 1: about about Elvis with his death. You know his I think,
Speaker 1: and I know that you're going to know this, but
Speaker 1: I think his last his last words were I'm I'm
Speaker 1: going to the bathroom to read. I think it's what
Speaker 1: he told his girlfriend at the time. Yeah, I need that.
Speaker 1: And so he's he's on the toilet or as my
Speaker 1: grainyused saying, the code, uh, he's on the commode, and
Speaker 1: and he dies. And did you know that there is
Speaker 1: a significant number of people, such a significant number of
Speaker 1: people that are found dead on toilets that we actually
Speaker 1: have a term, a kind of a euphemistic term that
Speaker 1: we use in death investigation called toilet sign. And here's why.
Speaker 1: Many folks that do die while seated on the toilet,
Speaker 1: they have mistaken this urgency to go to the bathroom
Speaker 1: that that is masking an m I they're actually having
Speaker 1: a heart attack. So they will go to the bathroom,
Speaker 1: sit on a toilet, and many times the strain of
Speaker 1: being on the toilet will push them over the edge.
Speaker 1: So yeah, wow, we literally have I can't tell you
Speaker 1: it's a countless number. At first that you know, when
Speaker 1: I was a young investigator, I didn't think it was
Speaker 1: a real thing, and the older guys had told me
Speaker 1: that it was a real thing. And so you know
Speaker 1: how older guys, you know, they they talked to us
Speaker 1: knuckleheads that are young. You don't believe anything until it's
Speaker 1: proven to you, right, trust me, I've got a twenty
Speaker 1: three year old son, and so when it's demonstrated, you say,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, they were right. You know, Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: been catching all these cases is their natural desks, but
Speaker 1: I've been catching these cases within visuals on toilets, and
Speaker 1: so yeah, it's legitimate. I don't know if there's ever
Speaker 1: been a definitive scientific study about toilet sign but it's
Speaker 1: a real thing. It's something that we talk about and
Speaker 1: we talked about it for years and years in the field,
Speaker 1: and you know, we'll just say, yeah, we have a
Speaker 1: toilet sign case today.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and that that that's a real thing that
Speaker 1: does happen.
Speaker 2: But one of the things that when we start talking
Speaker 2: about decomposition, and I didn't when you when you first
Speaker 2: mentioned wanting to do this, do you realize that those
Speaker 2: of us who follow crime report on crime cover, you know,
Speaker 2: crimes that most of us only know the scientific aspect
Speaker 2: of things when people like you are talking on a
Speaker 2: crime show, because most of us are not in an
Speaker 2: academic area. We're not taking you know, your class at school,
Speaker 2: and this is the only way we find out is
Speaker 2: by you sharing your knowledge. Because I don't know what happens.
Speaker 2: I mean, I really don't. I know that the men
Speaker 2: that I die, that everything stops living because I'm dead.
Speaker 2: And obviously if you're not living, you're dying, which means
Speaker 2: you're heading back to dirt eventually. Yeah, that's all I know.
Speaker 2: I don't know the speed that it happens. I would
Speaker 2: think it'd be very quickly, you know, in a broad sense.
Speaker 2: It look, everything is environmentally dependent, you know. And I've
Speaker 2: mentioned this countless times on.
Speaker 1: Our program, where you know, we're referring to uh, the
Speaker 1: biggest the biggest factor's heat, you know where you know.
Speaker 1: I've gone on on scenes, man, where I've had multiple
Speaker 1: bodies in a location that all died as a result
Speaker 1: of one case in particular, had I think it was
Speaker 1: four guys that had transported dope from Mexico. They were
Speaker 1: in a van and they were tasked with meeting person
Speaker 1: they were gonna to exchange with in a warehouse area
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, actually not too far from Six Legs, Atlanta,
Speaker 1: in a industrial park.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 1: All four of these guys were shot in the van
Speaker 1: through the windows and killed and the dope was taken.
Speaker 1: We didn't find their bodies for two months, and they
Speaker 1: were just parked under tree and it's actually a conversion
Speaker 1: van that was over there and no one. Some guy
Speaker 1: decided to walk back there and smoke a cigarette and
Speaker 1: when he did, he catches a whiff. Well, when I
Speaker 1: opened the door of that van, when I got there,
Speaker 1: liquid came pouring out of the van, and that was
Speaker 1: decompositional fluid. And so they'd been there for two months.
Speaker 1: I've had them even worse than that, where bodies will.
Speaker 1: They don't turn into puddles necessarily, but the skin becomes
Speaker 1: very soft and spongy. It's much like a sponge, and
Speaker 1: you can feel it kind of when you place your
Speaker 1: hands on the decomposing tissue, it feels like it feels
Speaker 1: almost like the crackling of bubble wrap many times, and
Speaker 1: that's because the cells in that area in some of
Speaker 1: these cases, they kind of expand with these decompositional gases
Speaker 1: that are contained within that area, and you can almost
Speaker 1: feel it crackle beneath your fingertips. I've had friends that
Speaker 1: have said that, and this has never happened to me.
Speaker 1: But I've had people that have said that bodies when
Speaker 1: they go to pull on them literally come apart it joints. Now,
Speaker 1: that's never happened with me. I've had I've had the
Speaker 1: manifestation was referred to as skin slippage. And you'll hear
Speaker 1: this in trials. Many times they'll talk about skin slippage,
Speaker 1: for instance, and that's where the epidermis, that top layer
Speaker 1: of skin, even down to the dermis below, the epidermist
Speaker 1: will literally peel off, you know, in your hand and
Speaker 1: that but that takes time, you know, it takes a
Speaker 1: certain amount of time. There's almost like this kind of
Speaker 1: tenderizing factor. If you will give me a little latitude
Speaker 1: there with that that that has to take place. Eventually
Speaker 1: the bodies will in fact dry out, but before they
Speaker 1: dry out, there's a whole process that occurs before you
Speaker 1: ever get to that market. I think it's important to
Speaker 1: understand that, you know, decomposition can mean a variety of
Speaker 1: different things to folks. You know, when when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, I had to build a composting bind in
Speaker 1: the backyard. My mother is. She loves gardening, she always
Speaker 1: has and so everywhere she's lived she's had a composting bent.
Speaker 1: And well what does that mean. Well, you in the
Speaker 1: composting bin, you're gonna plow organic materials in there. I
Speaker 1: remember her putting coffee grounds and eggshells and everything else,
Speaker 1: and not to mention all of the leaves from the
Speaker 1: previous spall. And you have to turn it. You have
Speaker 1: to turn it. Some people put earthworms in there, all
Speaker 1: kinds of things going. But you're trying to break down
Speaker 1: that organic substance that's in there, and it creates this rich,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of rich stirt. And it's interesting, Dave,
Speaker 1: that you said a few months ago that we that
Speaker 1: we turn you know, we turned into dust. And you know,
Speaker 1: there's that old Bible verse that, you know, what was
Speaker 1: it from dust you came, and from dust you shall return,
Speaker 1: And that that is truly the definition of what happens.
Speaker 1: It just takes some time. It's not it's not some
Speaker 1: kind of fantastical movie event. You have to you have
Speaker 1: to be down for a long time. But what kicks
Speaker 1: this whole thing off is heat, heat and absence of life.
Speaker 1: But you know, kind of the functional definition for decomposition,
Speaker 1: how do you define it? Well, it's a disintegration of
Speaker 1: body tissues after death is known as decomposition. And I'd
Speaker 1: mentioned to you just a moment ago that one of
Speaker 1: my one of my favorite characters in Looney Tunes, in
Speaker 1: the Looney Tunes universe is the Martian that you know,
Speaker 1: he's got the disintegrator array that he uses, and of
Speaker 1: course Bugs always turns it around on him. I don't
Speaker 1: think any good Bugs money cartoons ever were made after
Speaker 1: probably about nineteen seventy by the way, just my thoughts.
Speaker 1: But anyway, you know what does disintegration mean? Well, we
Speaker 1: know what integrated is That means to blend right, or
Speaker 1: if you have integrated circuits. You know, for instance, if
Speaker 1: you're talking, if you're speaking to somebody that's like an
Speaker 1: electrical engineer, well we're we're actually integrated. All of our
Speaker 1: systems are integrated. Well, once that spark of life has
Speaker 1: left the body and you no longer have this process
Speaker 1: of keeping cells oxygenated, you have cellular respiration that's going on,
Speaker 1: these things over a period of time will actually begin
Speaker 1: to pull apart, and they naturally fall apart. And so
Speaker 1: that's that's part of the process, and it's something that
Speaker 1: we you know.
Speaker 2: That you have to understand, all right, So as you're
Speaker 2: going through this entire process too, I guess I'm approaching
Speaker 2: it a little bit different and trying to think about
Speaker 2: the decomposition because, yeah, because it's not something I'm used
Speaker 2: to talking about. You know, when you're talking about the
Speaker 2: roast and the refrigerator. You know, things like that opening
Speaker 2: a bad meat from the store, and you get that
Speaker 2: if you know that you're getting something bad. So when
Speaker 2: you're talking about this beginning stages here where it's starting
Speaker 2: to break down, what does that tell you when you're
Speaker 2: coming in as an investigator and looking at things as
Speaker 2: you are studying that individual. Because all the time we
Speaker 2: want to know, well, we always want to know the motive,
Speaker 2: why did this happen? But when when did this happen?
Speaker 2: You know, I've talked about that. You've got to tell
Speaker 2: me exactly when this person died, Joe. I need to
Speaker 2: know was it before or after dinner? Did they eat
Speaker 2: dinner at ten o'clock or eight o'clock? Yeah, And sometimes
Speaker 2: those things can't be told by the contents of your stomach.
Speaker 2: There's got to be more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right, And if you're looking for me or
Speaker 1: any of my colleagues, tell you, and I'm saying to
Speaker 1: you in the universal sense, Dave, that when somebody actually died,
Speaker 1: it's an empirical impossibility. And anybody tells you that the
Speaker 1: can is lying and so you know the short term
Speaker 1: and that's a micro a micro examination you know when
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about this on another episode. Even in
Speaker 1: that sense, we the best we can do is some
Speaker 1: people say they can do it in three you know,
Speaker 1: within a three hour window. Most of the time, I
Speaker 1: think it's going to be about four to five. If
Speaker 1: you cover all your bases. When you have something, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you.
Speaker 2: Know, O, there's things surrounding it, because you know, we
Speaker 2: build that timeline, and as we're building the timeline of activity,
Speaker 2: you can take all that into consideration and narrow it
Speaker 2: down even further based on what you're seeing in the
Speaker 2: physical realm of the of the actual decomposition. So yeah,
Speaker 2: you're not just blindly finding a body on the street,
Speaker 2: you know, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you if you can, if you can kind
Speaker 1: of well here's the word, integrate some of those circumstantial finds, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: you've you've got a better shot. But broadly, you know,
Speaker 1: when we're talking about decomposition, very broadly, that's that's hard
Speaker 1: to do. It's it's very difficult to particularly if you
Speaker 1: have a body that we listen, we use terms like
Speaker 1: early decomposition, modern decomposition, and advanced decomposition, and then you'll
Speaker 1: have skeletonization. So you've got kind of that spectrum of
Speaker 1: four things there. When one of the things that you
Speaker 1: have to consider is that there's actually two processs of
Speaker 1: decomposition going on, and kind of the way in my
Speaker 1: simple mind, the way I like to look at it,
Speaker 1: you have autolytic changes in auto mean self, right, So
Speaker 1: you have autolsis that goes on, which is kind of
Speaker 1: body breaking down from within. And if you think about
Speaker 1: it from the perspective of a body literally digesting itself,
Speaker 1: that's autolysis. Okay, So you know everything that is contained
Speaker 1: within life when you have cellular respiration on the systems
Speaker 1: or firing ceases to be at that point in time,
Speaker 1: so the body begins to kind of from an enzyme standpoint,
Speaker 1: begins to kind of digest itself. Then you have future
Speaker 1: faction that goes on, and then you know, in very
Speaker 1: broad terms, you begin to you know, think about changes
Speaker 1: that are produced by you know, the action of bacteria
Speaker 1: and micro organisms, and that can that can come like
Speaker 1: in an external manifestation. And then you have, you know,
Speaker 1: if you think about even more broadly, you you have
Speaker 1: the introduction of animals or even insects that are attacking
Speaker 1: the body externally, and then you know, and that's going
Speaker 1: to promote decomposition. So there's you've got a lot to
Speaker 1: kind of consider when you come across a body that's
Speaker 1: bloated and rotting and kind of you know, coming to
Speaker 1: part one of the things that's always fascinated me. And uh,
Speaker 1: in my my students at JSU, I'll ask them this
Speaker 1: question and uh and of course I'll get this resounding
Speaker 1: sound you know when I give it to them. If
Speaker 1: you've ever seen one of these uh steakhouse commercials where
Speaker 1: they'll say we've got beautiful dry aged beef or we
Speaker 1: do wet aging process, you know what they're talking about.
Speaker 1: They're tenderizing those steaks that they have through the process
Speaker 1: of decomposition, you know, and you can have dry age,
Speaker 1: which if you go to if one of my goals
Speaker 1: in life is to try to get a reservation at
Speaker 1: Luger Steakhouse in Manhattan. It's supposed to be the best
Speaker 1: steak in the world, because I think I know where
Speaker 1: the best steak in the world is, and that's Charlie
Speaker 1: Steakhouse in New Orleans. So I want to see what
Speaker 1: Lugers is. But they have a.
Speaker 2: We have just set a goal for body bags. You
Speaker 2: and I. You've got to take me to Charlie's in
Speaker 2: North I'll.
Speaker 1: Take you to Charlie's. Yeah, I will take you to
Speaker 1: Charlie's and uh and one of the best best dining
Speaker 1: experiences I've ever had. But with Charlie's, Charlie's uses I
Speaker 1: think they used to use a rye agent method. And
Speaker 1: the thing about it is with that they're talking about
Speaker 1: they get this fine cut of beef, and we don't
Speaker 1: like to think about this sort of thing. But you know,
Speaker 1: aged beef is far better to eat than say, for instance,
Speaker 1: if you take it right off the hoof, you have
Speaker 1: to you have to let it, you have to let
Speaker 1: it decompose. And that's that's and they don't use the
Speaker 1: term decomposed. They say age. You know, it's it's much
Speaker 1: more mellow, you know, it's like a it's like an
Speaker 1: aged whiskey or wine of vintage wine. They try to
Speaker 1: put it in those terms, but what it comes down
Speaker 1: to is decomposing so that we can eat it, you know,
Speaker 1: so that it's tender for us to eat.
Speaker 2: So we're really not talking about getting fresh meat. We're
Speaker 2: talking about getting I mean, I'm kind of grossed up
Speaker 2: by that, Joe. I didn't know that. I really did.
Speaker 2: I thought, if I go down here to where they've
Speaker 2: got this, there's a bunch of cattle out here, and
Speaker 2: they've got some pretty fat ones. Look good. Yeah, that
Speaker 2: if I was to get that one skin that you
Speaker 2: take care of the hide, I want that turn that
Speaker 2: into a steak, like to have that tomorrow morning with
Speaker 2: my eggs. That's not going to be worth eating compared
Speaker 2: to something that.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it's not. It's probably edible, but it's
Speaker 1: not going to match up to Charlie's or from rumor
Speaker 1: has it to Lugers in Manhattan because they have aged
Speaker 1: that beef. Well. In terms of human decomposition, there's an
Speaker 1: aging process that goes on and if it's not controlled,
Speaker 1: which in the sense of you know, when people are
Speaker 1: eating beef. That's a controlled environment. If a body is
Speaker 1: left out, say in the wild or even in a house,
Speaker 1: and the body is not refrigerated, the body is going
Speaker 1: to do what bodies do. And look, this can be
Speaker 1: stemmed through the process of what mortuary scientists do, and
Speaker 1: that is infuse the body or profuse the body with
Speaker 1: embalming fluid and they cease that process you know of,
Speaker 1: or slow it down decompositional process. It kind of freezes
Speaker 1: it for that moment. And with decomposition, though, you have
Speaker 1: to get there early in order to stop it, because this,
Speaker 1: I can tell you, with decomposition, once it starts, it's
Speaker 1: like a barreling freight train. It's really hard to get
Speaker 1: to handle on it. Okay. And so when you hear
Speaker 1: people say, well, and this is non trauma related. You
Speaker 1: have some elderly person that has been not found for
Speaker 1: a week or two weeks in a home and the
Speaker 1: mortuary says, well, you're gonna have to have closed casket.
Speaker 1: People say, well, why would you have to have closed casket? Well,
Speaker 1: it because the body has been decomposing for that period
Speaker 1: of time, maybe under the most adverse conditions. You can
Speaker 1: imagine where you know there's no there's no air con
Speaker 1: that's that's operating. Maybe there's subject to I don't know,
Speaker 1: flies and everything else that's in, and there's there's no
Speaker 1: amount of restorate of work. I guess there is. You'd
Speaker 1: have to pay a lot of money, but there's really
Speaker 1: no amount of restorated work that you can go in
Speaker 1: and you can patch this person up so that they're
Speaker 1: presentable for an open casket. So the absence of an
Speaker 1: open casket does not necessarily mean this is a trauma
Speaker 1: related event. Many times it can be decompositional related.
Speaker 2: And okay, let me back to just on decomposition. When
Speaker 2: you're talking, you know, twenty four to thirty six hours, right,
Speaker 2: you're going to start seeing outward signs of the decomposition
Speaker 2: of the body, right, Yes, okay, in that first twenty
Speaker 2: four hours, and in particular, I'm thinking about in Idaho,
Speaker 2: in Moscow, Idaho, where the four college students were murdered,
Speaker 2: and we believe based on the information which I really
Speaker 2: want to talk to you about that timeline, but what
Speaker 2: we understand is that sometime between four and four thirty
Speaker 2: in the morning, all four of these students were murdered
Speaker 2: by knife. But their bodies were not found by law
Speaker 2: enforcement until eight hours later. All right, is there going
Speaker 2: to be I mean, is there going to be significant
Speaker 2: changes in the body during that eight hour time period?
Speaker 1: Not in the broad sense that we're in a macro
Speaker 1: sense that we're talking about here, real broadly, where you're
Speaker 1: going to have bloating and all those things that are
Speaker 1: commonly associated with decomposition, you're not going to have it
Speaker 1: in there. However, I think that it's key that we
Speaker 1: come back and address that the Idaho killings when we
Speaker 1: discuss the micro the micro sense of decomposition and those
Speaker 1: changes within that eleven hour framework you're not going to
Speaker 1: see or eleven to twelve hour framework, you're not going
Speaker 1: to see much happen. It's with how can I say
Speaker 1: this with an external manifestation which can be appreciated with
Speaker 1: the unaided eye, you know, where you're examining the body. However,
Speaker 1: within the twenty four to thirty six hour and again,
Speaker 1: these these brackets of time are very very broad. One
Speaker 1: of the things that will happen and something that kind
Speaker 1: of manifests itself if everybody that's listening to me will
Speaker 1: take your right hand and place it above the level
Speaker 1: of your pelvis on the right side of your app
Speaker 1: to when that approximates the area where your appendix is.
Speaker 1: No one can really explain it. But one of the
Speaker 1: things that we see manifested in decomposition, like an external manifestation,
Speaker 1: is that that area you'll get a focal area of
Speaker 1: greenish discoloration that will occur there, and it truly is.
Speaker 1: It turns kind of a green color, and that many
Speaker 1: many times doesn't happen in every case, but many times
Speaker 1: it'll be you know, that's generally about twenty four to
Speaker 1: thirty six hours. Well, Morgan, why is that important? Well,
Speaker 1: it's important because if I have that manifestation that is occurring,
Speaker 1: that's a marker in time. Okay. So if I look
Speaker 1: at the body and I have no other information, if
Speaker 1: I'm just visually eyeball in the body and I see
Speaker 1: I see you know, this greenish coloration on the abdomen,
Speaker 1: I can say, Wow, this might be an indications person's
Speaker 1: been down at least twenty four to thirty six hours.
Speaker 1: And you roll that into the idea that maybe their
Speaker 1: limbs are flaccid, and flaccid means flexible, okay, or bendable. Well,
Speaker 1: that means that riger's already left the body.
Speaker 2: Okay, so I gotta know, yeah, because I, like many people,
Speaker 2: don't know how quickly does rigormort to set in and
Speaker 2: how quickly does it let go. Because we all know
Speaker 2: of stories that we've told. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 2: we had one not that long ago where two gentlemen
Speaker 2: killed the third guy that they were having a three
Speaker 2: way party with and went to get a tub at
Speaker 2: home depot or wherever. And when they came back, the
Speaker 2: guy was stiff and they had to break his legs
Speaker 2: and beat him, you know, his body to make it
Speaker 2: soft enough to get in the top. If they just waited,
Speaker 2: how long would they have to wait for the body too?
Speaker 1: Or twenty four to thirty six hours? Okay, twenty four
Speaker 1: to thirty thirty six hours, and uh, it's going to
Speaker 1: remain fixed. And that's the one thing I never can
Speaker 1: understand about people that that desecreate bodies beyond what they've
Speaker 1: already been desecrated. Where they get you know, axes and
Speaker 1: these sorts of things, and you know, try to chop
Speaker 1: the legs off or whatever if you wait. And again,
Speaker 1: obviously tom plays a factor because anybody that brings death
Speaker 1: upon another person. They're not wanting to hang around and
Speaker 1: be patient about it. The body's become flashed again. They
Speaker 1: become what's termed malleable again, so that you can bend them,
Speaker 1: you can contract them all. You know, Roger Morris doesn't
Speaker 1: hang around forever and ever eight minutes just not one
Speaker 1: of those things that occurs, particularly in an unembalmed state.
Speaker 1: So you know, it will leave, it dissipates over a
Speaker 1: period of time. But when you're looking out over you know,
Speaker 1: kind of broadly over this the spectrum of death with decomposition,
Speaker 1: you you look for other signs as as you march
Speaker 1: down that timeline, Like after you get beyond that that
Speaker 1: greenish discoloration that takes place on the abdomen, you're talking
Speaker 1: about thirty six to forty eight hours, Uh, the body
Speaker 1: will become or start to distend, which means it'll you'll
Speaker 1: see the first signs of bloating. You know, the abdomen
Speaker 1: begins to swell up well, and and the face will
Speaker 1: swell too. You know, you'll see the face beginning to kind.
Speaker 2: Of if a person has had their appendix out, yeah,
Speaker 2: does there still is there still a greenish type of
Speaker 2: color yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, manifests down there, and I don't know why it is,
Speaker 1: because that's kind of the uh at that end where
Speaker 1: you have the vernis called the verniform appendix down there.
Speaker 1: Verniform is like I think it's the Latin word for
Speaker 1: worm is actually what it translates into.
Speaker 2: It.
Speaker 1: It will still manifest down that area even you know,
Speaker 1: if an individual is absent their appendix and it's down
Speaker 1: in that that area, I don't know if it because
Speaker 1: it's on the opposite end of the large vowel from
Speaker 1: where you know, the rectum is okay, so it's kind
Speaker 1: of looped all the way around there, and you know
Speaker 1: that's where the food that's being digested in the you know,
Speaker 1: in the small intestine dumps into that part of the intestine,
Speaker 1: the lower right side if you're talking about the right
Speaker 1: side of the versus body, and then it traverses from
Speaker 1: the uscending large vowel to the where it crosses over
Speaker 1: into the descending bowel and eventually it is eliminated for
Speaker 1: in the body. I don't know if that plays a
Speaker 1: role into it, but you know, you couple that and
Speaker 1: you go to another stage where you've got this kind
Speaker 1: of slight bloating that's going on and with and particularly
Speaker 1: the facial notice it. You'll get kind of the face,
Speaker 1: we'll have a swollen appearance, and you'll also see the
Speaker 1: first signs of something. Here's another term they use in
Speaker 1: in butchery with with beef. It doesn't mean the same thing,
Speaker 1: but you'll we use this term called marbling. And marbling
Speaker 1: if you imagine if you've got a spider web that
Speaker 1: would normally be I don't know, spider webs are gray white.
Speaker 1: If you imagine a black spider web superimposed upon a
Speaker 1: body and it's got these kind of weird lines that
Speaker 1: run all over the place. It's it's black, dark, dark black. Well,
Speaker 1: that's like blood that is decomposing in the vessels, and
Speaker 1: it's showing through the face. So you'll see it first
Speaker 1: manifest kind of around the jowls and the cheeks and
Speaker 1: that sort of thing the neck, and that'll extend out
Speaker 1: as time goes by, so you'll have these kind of
Speaker 1: curve linear lines you know, that run over, you know,
Speaker 1: all over the body. And that's actually what we refer
Speaker 1: to as marveling. But again, Dave, that brings us back
Speaker 1: to this benchmarking of time that's you know, you're going
Speaker 1: to talk about top end. That's that's going to take
Speaker 1: about forty eight hours, you know, with an unattended body
Speaker 1: that's found ideally in a protected environment, you know, like
Speaker 1: in a house where you know, you don't have any
Speaker 1: kind of postmortem feasting that's going on with animals or
Speaker 1: things like that. And again, the more of these little
Speaker 1: markers that we can get as death investigators, it allows us,
Speaker 1: through science and the natural biological process, to tell the
Speaker 1: story of the dead. I know a lot of people
Speaker 1: are fans of dried fruit that are listening out there.
Speaker 1: I see it everywhere I go, you know, in various
Speaker 1: grocery stores and this sort of thing. I've never really
Speaker 1: developed a taste for it. It's kind of like when
Speaker 1: I was a kid. I don't know about you, Dave,
Speaker 1: but when I was a kid, I was made to
Speaker 1: eat beef liver. I can't do it anymore. And the
Speaker 1: reason I can't do it anymore is that beef liver
Speaker 1: looks just like human liver to me, you know, and
Speaker 1: not participate in all those autopsies for all those years.
Speaker 1: But with the dried fruit, one of the things I
Speaker 1: think about when I see it is a term that
Speaker 1: we refer to is desication, because I call it desiccated.
Speaker 1: You know, it's dried, you know, and desiccation or the
Speaker 1: drying of limbs and particularly our penages like our feet,
Speaker 1: your toes, feet, fingers in your hands. The more peripheral
Speaker 1: you are to that kind of center core in a body,
Speaker 1: the higher the probability is that area is going to
Speaker 1: dry out. And that's what desiccation is. So if you're
Speaker 1: if you you know, you couple that with the the
Speaker 1: bloating that you see, and that's the next step that
Speaker 1: you move on to is going to be manifested. The
Speaker 1: idea that the extremities and I'm talking about it, if
Speaker 1: you'll just touch your fingertips or tips of your toes
Speaker 1: right now, those areas out of every other location in
Speaker 1: the body will become dry first. And so the fingers,
Speaker 1: the fingers actually take on an appearance like you know,
Speaker 1: when you're little and your mom tells you, you know,
Speaker 1: let me look at your hands, how long you've been
Speaker 1: in the pool. You get this kind of shriveled appearance here.
Speaker 1: That's basically the way it looks. The only difference is
Speaker 1: is that with the tips of fingers and decomposition, and
Speaker 1: it happens to the nose as well. It'll turn, it'll
Speaker 1: turn kind of a black discoloration and it's dried out.
Speaker 1: There's no more moisture, you know, left in that environment.
Speaker 1: And so if we benchmark that time, you know, you're
Speaker 1: talking about probably about forty eight to sixty hours down
Speaker 1: range after death. At that point in time when you're
Speaker 1: you know, you're kind of pacing yourself through the scene.
Speaker 1: That's why it's important at a scene that you you
Speaker 1: don't want to miss anything. But at the scene, particularly
Speaker 1: for the purposes of contextualizing things, it's important to be
Speaker 1: able to see to see it for what it is,
Speaker 1: you know, at the scene, and be able to document
Speaker 1: that you observe that there, you know, before you remove
Speaker 1: the body at you know, at the scene and take
Speaker 1: take the body to the corner's office of the medical
Speaker 1: examiner's office where it's going to be examined.
Speaker 2: You mentioned about the nose, and I'm thinking it is
Speaker 2: Michael Jackson. Yeah, I had so many surgeries on his nose.
Speaker 2: He give had a prosthetic end to his nose.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Can I tell you, Uh, there are a couple
Speaker 1: of times a couple of images I have seen of
Speaker 1: him over the years where it actually made my mind
Speaker 1: drift back to people that I when I examine their bodies,
Speaker 1: their nose had that same appearance. It's kind of dried,
Speaker 1: and it gives it a, I don't know how to
Speaker 1: say it, a very diminutive appearance, as it's not robust
Speaker 1: and full like you see and lie Fingers in particular,
Speaker 1: fingers are really creepy on the dead because when they're shrivelled,
Speaker 1: they're shriveled at the ends. They almost have like a
Speaker 1: claw like manifestation. What's really interesting, as fingers shrivelled and
Speaker 1: toast rivel, the abdomen actually begins to bloat. So you've
Speaker 1: got this kind of juxtaposition. And with the bloating of
Speaker 1: the abdomen you're talking, you know, seventy two hours, that
Speaker 1: begins to happen. So the body is swelling, and what's
Speaker 1: happening is all this gas is building up in the body,
Speaker 1: and as it builds up, one of the foulus substances
Speaker 1: known to man begins to exude from the body, and
Speaker 1: it generally will any orifice in the body it'll come through,
Speaker 1: and you see it a lot in the nose, the mouth,
Speaker 1: and it's it's called purging. So you've got this cellular
Speaker 1: substance where the cells are breaking down and it's a
Speaker 1: combination of blood and other elements and it creates this flow.
Speaker 1: And I think i'd shown this image to you, Dave,
Speaker 1: of this fellow that city in a chair. Uh, and
Speaker 1: he's swollen bloated. And you know that guy, Dave in life,
Speaker 1: he only weighed about one hundred and sixty pounds.
Speaker 2: Oh my yeah, but punds man that'd been shot in
Speaker 2: the chest, I know.
Speaker 1: And all of the blood that you see on his chest,
Speaker 1: everything that you see on his chest is not blood.
Speaker 1: Well it's blood in it, that's that's actually perge fluid
Speaker 1: or detail fluid. Yeah, and it's pouring. It's coming out
Speaker 1: of his nose, in his mouth.
Speaker 2: You're talking about the picture of the guy sitting in
Speaker 2: the chair, like yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, wow. Okay,
Speaker 2: Just so y'all know, and I'm not going to include
Speaker 2: this on I'm not going to show you guys this
Speaker 2: picture that picture for that, but it's in this presentation.
Speaker 2: And I opened the page and Joe explains these things
Speaker 2: to me ahead of time. It's not going to make
Speaker 2: me look like a total dummy. And I opened that
Speaker 2: picture and I'm not kidding. I thought the guy had
Speaker 2: been shot because and that he was discovered a day
Speaker 2: or two later. I didn't realize that this was a
Speaker 2: fairly small guy and died of natural causes.
Speaker 1: I've got a fascinating story that goes along with that,
Speaker 1: because there was a very young police officer that called
Speaker 1: my office the day that he was the first person
Speaker 1: to show up. It was a welfare check they'd gone
Speaker 1: out on and the guy lived alone. He had been
Speaker 1: divorced for a while, and he was I think he
Speaker 1: was like in his late fifties and he was working.
Speaker 1: You seeing the image, you're still wearing T shirt with
Speaker 1: jeans and work boots. And he sat in his chair
Speaker 1: and had a heart attack and died. Well, the young cop.
Speaker 1: And I'm not judging this guy because I would have
Speaker 1: thought the same thing. He called me from a landline
Speaker 1: at that time. This was many years ago, and said, yeah,
Speaker 1: we need you out here immediately. I think we've got
Speaker 1: a guy that has been beaten to death. And he
Speaker 1: even said at that time someone may have used a
Speaker 1: hatchet on him or an axe. And when you see
Speaker 1: this it's so grotesque and over the top, that's what
Speaker 1: you're thinking. You know, your mind automatically goes to that,
Speaker 1: because where could all this the staining come from. And
Speaker 1: it's even contrasted by the fact that the guy's wearing
Speaker 1: a white T shirt. Well, the guy has no trauma
Speaker 1: to his body. That's all decomp fluid that it's It
Speaker 1: is one of the most disgusting substances known to man.
Speaker 1: And once it makes contact with anything you're wearing, your
Speaker 1: clothing or anything like that, go ahead and start the
Speaker 1: bonfire and burn those clothes because you'll never they're unusable
Speaker 1: after that point. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is
Speaker 1: body