May 9, 2024 • 44 mins
At least 12 bodies have been pulled from "Lady Bird Lake" in Austin, Texas in the last 22 months. Some can be explained as deaths that happen on or near a lake, but not all. On this episode of Body Bags Joseph Scott Morgan will break down the difference between a regular death in a lake and a possible serial killer, while Dave Mack breaks down the stories behind the victims.
Transcript Highlights
00:16.18 Introduction about water and murder
03:37.66 Discussion does Austin have a serial killer?
08:13.12 Discussion what does "serial killer" do to an area
13:22.11 Talk about other serial killers, were they really caught
17:54.47 Talk about witnessing a death on the water
22:03.17 Discussion of toxicology
27:53.13 Discussion of victims
32:38.32 Talk about water as a dumping ground
36:26.16 Discussion of decomposition in water
40:04.57 Talk about water flow
47:42.83 Discussion about rumors over fact
Conclusion
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. Anybody that knows me
knows that over the past few years, I've developed a
real love of water. And I don't mean to say
(00:28):
that in the sense that I finally discovered showering for
the first time in my life. What I mean by
that is the fact that I acquired an old boat.
It's nothing fancy, it's good enough for me and my
precious wife, and I spent a lot of time on
the local river, just cruising up and down it. Sometimes
we anchor out in a little cove and there's actually
these little islands on this river that we go to
(00:52):
and we'll kind of ground a boat and build a
fire and sit there and just talk about life and
listen to music. Matter of fact, probably my favorite thing
to listen to is Van Morrison. While I'm sitting there,
I could listen to him for hours. But today I'm
going to talk about another river, and actually a lake
that is part of the bigger river is what we
(01:15):
call an impoundment. The river is actually the Colorado River,
and I think that just by name alone, you would
probably think, oh wow, this must run right through the
heart of the rocky mountains and no, it doesn't. It
actually is a few states away. It runs through Texas,
and there's one spot in this river that has been
(01:38):
declared a lake in the lake's name is Ladybird Lake
in Austin, Texas. Is there a serial killer at work there?
Let's talk about it. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
is Bodybags. David. Know you think I'm lying to your brother,
(02:03):
but I'm going to take you out to my boat.
We're just gonna cruise up and down the river. You're
gonna hang out, get some sunshine. But you never have
Tom You're always working.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
You know, I'll make the time to go to the river.
But I'm a little concerned that you want to, you know,
invite me down to the river the day we're doing
a show about possibly the Ladybird Lake Killer, the Rainy
Street Killer, whatever you want to name him or her
for Austin, Texas, a serial killer on the loose. Possibly maybe,
(02:33):
I don't know. But that's when you want to invite
me to the river. Is when we're talking about death
around a body of water. Thanks, Joe. Let's get into
this though. Today we're looking at Ladybird Lake, which I
didn't know anything about until I started looking into this
idea that some people believe there is a serial killer
(02:54):
at work and they call him the Ladybird Killer or
the Rainy Street killer. And these are people in that
local area in Austin, which Austin has been a very
hot spot over the last several years. A lot of yeah,
the entertainment world. A lot of people moved to Austin
and own property in things in Austin.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
So, yeah, try to pay rent there by the way,
Is that bad? Oh my gosh. I've had two friends
from California that moved there and they said, wow, really Yeah,
Look when Joe Rogan shows up in a place like
that and he puts roots down there, you've got all
these other people that are moving in from the entertainment industry.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah, it's going to get pricey. It doesn't going to
bee immediately. Yeah, but the bottom line being the bottom
line in life, you have two choices. You can either
choose a path that brings you joy and satisfaction, or
you can choose another way. Life is like that, Yeah,
and I choose to I choose to do something I
(03:50):
believe makes a difference and what you and I do
on a daily basis dealing with crime, the after effects
of crime, solving solving crimes in terms of the body
and what happened to me. There are people every day
that are You and I both agreed there's no such
thing as closure, but there are people who are being
(04:12):
emotionally satisfied by understanding things a little bit better of
what happened to their loved one or in our case,
many times we're speaking for the person who can't speak
for themselves anymore. And that's very important as a human
being to understand that life is precious, and too many
(04:32):
times it is disregarded. We have people that are growing
up that don't believe that. They do not believe life
is precious.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
No, they don't, and I think that there are It's
sad enough in the case of all of these deaths,
and there's a willbarrow full of them.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
That's the thing, Joe here, that we actually have to
separate the ones out that we think might be connected.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Yeah, it's a luminous It's sad enough that these people
are found deceased, because with everybody that you find along
the way, there is a family that's out there. I
like to use the idea of the empty chair, there's
an empty chair around somebody's table that will never be
(05:19):
occupied by that person again, and it's absolutely heartbreaking when
you see it played out over and over again. And
some of the issues with these so called Ladybird Lake
deaths is that there's not connectivity necessarily with a lot
(05:40):
of these things. It's not a vast area. I think
it's just over four hundred acres this lake is, and
by many people's estimations, that's not a huge, huge lake.
You know, you consider some of the places that are
out there, but it's significant enough, and you've got multiple
points of entry, and we can go in to that.
But it's just the idea that just because you have
(06:05):
people being found deceased in a location does not a
serial event make and you have to be very very
careful with that, and particularly in you know, when I
look at it through my eyes and try to take
the long view of it, and I think about the
serial events that I was involved in as an investigator
(06:27):
over the years, both in New Orleans and Atlanta, words
have to be chosen very very carefully because you can
literally send people into a frenzy. And one of my
favorite movies of all time is Jaws. I love the
(06:49):
book too, but I love the movie because it's so
the characters, you know, just kind of pop to life.
And the mayor in that who's this real smarmy guy.
He's admonishing the sheriff in this thing because the sheriff Brodie,
he's trying to secure the beach and he says, wait
(07:11):
a minute, he says, you say bear Kuda, And people say,
what huh you say, shark? You got a panic on
your hands. And we've seen this played out now Loath
these many months, you know, and just within the last
couple of weeks, they've recovered two more bodies out of
(07:33):
Ladybird Lake. And just like words can damage people, you know,
you say things to people, maybe loved ones, You use
certain terms, you say things that are not necessarily what edifying.
When you throw out the term serial killer into a community,
(07:56):
you damage that community. And before we talk about anything else,
I'm in no position to admonish anybody, but I would suggest,
strongly suggest that people begin to kind of throttle back
their rhetoric in regards to this, because now you've got
(08:17):
you're building reputations here, a reputation of a location where
I'm sure that there have been great times had by
many people along the shores there. This place was first
impounded I think back in the sixties, and for long,
a long time, it was regarded as an ey sore
and until you know, the former first lady stepped in,
(08:40):
Lady Bird Johnson, and you know, began to work on
this and establish it, clean it up it was. It
was considered a not so desirous location. But now you know,
and I listen, just a few years ago, I've got
to I got to make it, admit this. I'd never
been to this location before, but just a couple of
(09:02):
years ago, Kim and I went to Crime Con when
it was held in Austin. We had a blast there.
By the way, I love the city, I love the
time that we spent there. But I got to see
this place, and I got to tell you when I
was looking at it, Dave, I didn't really know what
I was looking. I thought I was looking at a river.
And it is technically a river, it's the Colorado River,
but it's kind of quaterned off because you've got dams, yeah,
(09:26):
on each end, and that kind of plays into a
lot about what we're going to talk about today.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
They diverted it to create a cooling bond for power plant,
is what it amounts to. It actually has a reason,
you know, for being there. The reason it exists, it
actually has. It wasn't natural, you know, it was created
and as you mentioned, you get too damn. You've got
a lot of issues going on and a lot of bodies.
But just to give you an idea, Ladybird Lake built
(09:51):
in nineteen sixty it is you mentioned, a four hundred
and sixteen acre lake. It is primarily used for recreation now,
but there have been so many deaths reported in the
last couple of years that depending on how you want
to frame the story, you could talk about twenty deaths,
you could talk about four deaths. And I think it's
(10:14):
being very dismissive to just say nothing is linked here.
These are all just isolated incidents. And because some of
them are, but some are not right. And that's why
when I was trying to pull it all together, Joe,
there was for me. It started with a story of
a person who saw a body in the lake and
was like poking it with a stick kind of thing,
(10:35):
calling the police, you know, and it's that it was
like another body found in Ladybird Lake. And when you
start identifying all of them as one, I think you
hurt families that are mourning because you've just lumped their
family victim into this pool very quickly. The Gilgo Beach murders,
(10:59):
you know, Rex Chureman gets arrested, and people say, okay,
we got the we have a suspect in the you
know what, we got a suspect in four. There's ten
bodies we're dealing with here. Yeah, there's something else at work.
And now is it getting any attention? No?
Speaker 1 (11:14):
No, totally will listen. Hey, look from when I was
a child, uh you know, uh you know I remember
uh the missing murdered children in Atlanta with Wayne Williams. Yeah, okay, Well,
first off, Wayne Williams was never convicted of killing a child.
People he was convicted of one in particular were adults
(11:39):
and the male yeah, male male escorts. And here's one
other thing. When he was incarcerated, children did stop dying
in Atlanta. Uh So you know, you have to be
very very careful. And that's why we have practices in
that are you know, associate with death investigation. You have
(12:01):
practices of people at profile individuals. They take all of
this data and put it together. And contrary to what
you see on television, the life of a profiler is
not this kind of sexy thing where they're riding around
in a cool car and going out to scenes. Most
of the scenes that are involved in these cases in
(12:22):
serialized events are gone. They're not showing up fresh. It's
a lot of work spent at a desk and talking
to people and analyzing data. And my way of thinking
is has all of the data been assessed? Because when
you do things like statistical analyzes, you have to consider
(12:42):
everything race, gender, location, and also more importantly, you have
to consider time. How long have bodies been popping up
in Lady Bird Lake. I found in life that for me,
(13:19):
at least, I can't speak to anybody else. But if
I have a task, it's better to compartmentalize things, to
take it piece by piece. The old adage, how do
you eat an elephant? You you do it one bite
at a time. And I look at I look at
(13:40):
this data relative to these Ladybird Lake bodies, and I
want to ask, a, you're such a great wordsmith here,
holy moly, give it give us an give us an
idea kind of frame it out for us. What kind
of numbers are we looking that with. You know, normally
(14:02):
when you and I are talking, right, I say, you know,
tell us a little bit something about the case. Well,
here we go, tell us a little bit something about
the cases, right, because that's very, very very important. Here.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
The blurred lines are because of the numbers here. There
have been a lot of bodies pulled out of the lake.
Ten reported deaths since twenty twenty two, four in twenty
twenty two, five and twenty twenty three, one in the
past month, actually two in the past month. Now that
shows you how this has changed as I've begun reporting
and putting these things together. So just dealing with those
(14:36):
ten and by the way, we can go up to
twenty depending on how far back you go anyho oh exactly.
And I was telling Joe earlier that there are deaths
that happen around.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Water all the time, all the time.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
And so you can't just lump them all together and
pretend there's a serial killer that has killed twenty two people,
you know, at Ladybird Lake. That would be tantamount to
accusing Ted Bundy of killing everybody that died of lake.
Someamish back in the seventies. He didn't do that.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Hey, I got to tell you something, you know. I
was talking about my boat earlier last summer. We were
actually sitting on the dock and yeah, oh well, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Now,
we watched a guy that was so drunk he fell
off of his boat like a couple of times.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
We alerted the people across the way, and there was
a wileye fishery guy that rode around a boat. We
let him know about it. And the guy, per our witness,
had gotten back into the boat each time with a
lot of difficulty and help from his friends. While we
were just sitting on our dock. Three hours later, they
were dragging the river. Oh man, and that was across
(15:45):
away from us. We'd cruised up the river. This guy died.
He fell off of his boat and drowned. Water water
is like dealing with a rattlesnake. If you don't know
what you're doing, it is deadly. It is deadly. Our bodies,
ye are not equipped to be in a water environment.
And so all you have to do is mix alcohol, drugs,
(16:09):
a health problem, anything can come up, and you can wander.
If you're adjacent to a lake, you can fall in.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
And we actually have a situation just like that. Joe,
one of the typical cases or boy that that sounds dismissive,
it's not. There's a guy named Jason John. Jason John
died day before Valentine's Day last year twenty twenty three.
In the autopsy report, the Travis County Medical Examiner's Office
determined his cause of death was drowning and the manner
(16:37):
of death was ruled accidental.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
According to the reports, thirty year old man Jason John
was witnessed by a bystander to be vomiting by the
bank of Lady Bird Lake and then subsequently falling and
subverged into the water in the early morning of February fifth.
(17:00):
I said February thirteenth, the minute ago, that's when it
was ruled to drowing. I apologize. But on February fifth,
he falls into the water and this transient which means homeless,
homeless guy sees him fall into the water, tries to
get him out and can't get him out. The transient
guy goes to a hotel and calls nine to one
one and by the time they get there they couldn't
(17:21):
find him.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Yeah, he's gone. Somep surface at that point, yep.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
And toxicology report showed, you know, alcohol was in his system,
no illegal drugs, no significant internal or external injuries, no fractures,
no traumatic injuries, nothing, just he got really drunk and
apparently fell in the lake and drowned.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Well, let me throw this out to you since we're
talking in broad terms about cereal perpetrators. First off, I've
I'm thinking back right now, going through my I've got
an imaginary paper file index going through in my mind
right now, and I'm thinking I have I don't think
I have ever encountered, even with friends and things that
(18:03):
I've read, I don't think that I have ever encountered
a case of serial homicide. Somebody will probably prove me
wrong involving using water, and specifically a body of water
as a means to kill somebody. Now, can't homicides be
accomplished these are the water, Yes they can, they can,
(18:25):
But those are those generally, in my experience, have occurred
in bathtubs where people have been particularly children, where they're
held held beneath the surface and they're drowned. But those
are most of the time, those are one off events.
It's not like you you have these events that are
occurring where you know, you've got some guy twirling his
(18:48):
mustache over in the counter, over in the you know,
all dressed in black, saying I'm going to use water
to kill people with, and you know, you start talking
about accidental drownings and things like that. You know, you
you got to look at the toxicology and as you
pointed out in this particular case, guy's got alcohol on board.
So how do you balance that out? And my question
is to you, is that we're looking for patterns here right, Yes, Well,
(19:13):
you know how many of these cases have been ruled
actually an accident versus a natural or versus undetermined or hey, look,
give it to me. If you've got a homicide rite,
let me know about it. Well, I'd like to know.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Here's the situation, Joe in Austin, Texas, where Ladybird Lake
is and where Rainy Street is. Oftentimes because of the
number of bodies pulled out of the water, they refer
to it. Those who want to act like they have
a serial killer, say Rainy Street killer. There might be
I'm not saying there isn't, just saying that there are
(19:47):
a lot of people following crime now it's a very
hot topic. There are a lot of podcasts, a lot
of social media covering crime, and there are a lot
of people who are web slutes that really you realize
we're not all the same mentally, and some people bring
a lot of weird baggage to how they look at
a story. And so trusting somebody online that created a
(20:11):
podcast or a show about crime doesn't give them any
insight into what they're talking about unless they were a
former investigator or a former forensic, you know, something along
those lines. Other than that, you've got armchair quarterbacks determining
what actually happened and what we have here. Or we
have some similar deaths. They seem to be alcohol related,
(20:33):
they seem to have happened in the late night, early
morning hours after somebody had been on Rainy Street. And
the question is somebody targeting men of a specific age
or a specific look, that is targeting them in the
bars of Rainy Street and basically dumping their bodies in
(20:55):
the lake? Is that what this is a dumping ground?
And so when we look at some of these we
had Jason john as I mentioned this guy's puking on
the side of the lake and falls in Yeah, no
illegal drugs found in his system, No traumatic injuries, just alcohol.
Could something have been put in a drink that he
had that made him uncontrollable? I don't know. Forty year
(21:17):
old Cliff Axtell. This guy works as a landscape specialist.
He works at Veritas Commercial Properties. He's known for his
innovative strategies in real estate. Guy's very well thought of,
married to kids, excelling in his senior year at Harvard
Extension School, making the deans list each semester. This guy
is a good guy, and he's working his full time
(21:39):
job and leading worship at his church. But Cliff Axtell
is seen at Stubb's Barbecue in downtown Austin on March fifth,
never makes it back home. His body is recovered in
Lady Bird Lake. Stubbs Barbecue is near Rainy Street. Yeah,
and police said the death is not being investigated as suspicious.
(22:02):
It's his death is listed as undetermined based on this scenario.
I just laid out for you who he is, what
he is, what he does. How does this? I mean,
it is certainly suspicious, but how do you not consider it?
Did he just fall in the lake and die? I
don't understand that Joe.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Right, and so depend upon the condition of a body
when it's pulled from a body of water. You know,
that's one of the things that you're going to look for.
And if you're trying to look for patterns, which you
do in cereal crimes, you have to find patterns relative
to the physical remains. Because, as we know, it's well stated,
(22:42):
it's out there floating about. Serial killers very rarely deviate
from methodologies. They get very comfortable with it.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
And when you say that, when you say de methodologies,
what are you actually saying?
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Well, okay, I'll give you an example. I worked a
series of deaths of prostitutes many years ago in New Orleans,
and they were actually all up and down the Iten corridor.
It wasn't just simply in Louisiana. That's what I'll say
about it. But in all of these cases, the individuals used,
in every one of these cases a ligature to kill
(23:17):
these these women. I had another case involving a series
of serial killings, again prostitutes, and the individual was using
a wire, not just a ligature, but a piece of
wire to choke these women out with. I've had another
series where elderly women were being choked bare handed by
(23:43):
an individual. And the reason I'm pointing this out is
that it's Wow. I don't want to sound cruel or crass,
but it's it's almost like, this is the vocation. This
is not an avocation. This is everything else. Zerial killers
world is all about getting an opportunity to kill again.
(24:05):
They might have a job, but that job is not
the primary interest in their life. Their vocation is actually killing.
So if you take that and you look at say
a craftsman who hate to use that, but if you
where they have a certain particular set of tools that
they that they use, they're not going to deviate from
that pattern. So here's what I would say to people
(24:27):
that may be thinking that the so called Lady Bird
Lake killer or the Rainy Straight Street killer is a
serial perpetrator. Give me the evidence that these individuals have
been held underwater, because that's what would have to do.
(24:48):
And granted, hey, look I'm there with you. I mean,
you're saying that that perhaps they are inebriated or impaired
by drugs, and you're only target get in one group.
You're going to take them down to the water's edge
and it's going to be like some kind of weird
baptism where the individual is not going to be brought
(25:10):
up into new life, but will essentially pass on to eternity.
(25:35):
The one thing that I do know about water is that,
particularly in large bodies, you might not see it on
the surface, but water does flow. It might appear on
the top that it's tranquil and very peaceful, but beneath
(25:57):
the surface there is always some kind of current running
through it. Much like serialized homicide, there is always something
that gives you an idea of a flow. And I
think that's very important, uh, to identify here, not not
(26:18):
not just the flow of a so called serial killer
that's at work, but also the flow of the water
in general, because that's going to give us an indication
about about bodies and where they wound up. Because a
water environment is not a static environment. It's always changing. Heck,
(26:39):
even the even the shoreline changes, uh, And so it's
a it's a dynamic environment. It's not like an open
field where you find a body that's like lying there,
you know, and they have a what's referred to as
a dumping ground. We hear that term a lot, and
I actually said it a little while ago. I know
you did, and I wanted to point out dumping grounds.
(27:02):
You know, again, just like methodologies for killing locations where
they leave bodies right, it's very significant and you've got
to have access, you got to have cover many times
to do this. And I don't know if we're there, Dave,
I really don't.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
I want to go back to something you were talking
about with the guy you witnessed with your own two eyes,
drunkenly falling into the water and getting back out and
getting into his boat, but eventually he did die. When
in the case of Jason John where he has described
(27:43):
drunk throwing up on the shoreline of Lady Bird Lake
in Austin and he falls into the water and this
transient who is watching all of this can't get him
out of the water. I'm I'm a little fuddled by that, Joe.
Wouldn't the water, regardless of your intoxication level, wouldn't it
(28:06):
be enough to if you fall in, to wake you
up enough that you could get yourself out. I mean,
apparently I'm wrong. I'm not going to say that.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Odd.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
You're dealing with February here, the first week of February.
It's not going to be warm.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Water yeah, even in Austin. You know, I think everybody
associates wrongly that Texas is a very warm place all
year long. It ain't, no matter of texts. A matter
of fact, some of the coldest times in my life
have been in Texas. It gets very it gets very
(28:42):
very chilly there. So, yeah, that that can certainly have
an effect that time of year.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
But if it's a man made lake, could it have
like a almost like a bowl effect where the shoreline
doesn't slowly come up, it just goes straight in?
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Like yeah, bad, it could eventually, And yeah, when you're
thinking about a bulkhead where you know, for folks that
don't understand that it's almost like a sea wall that's
built in. Do you actually have a gradual shore where
you kind of and there are places along the lake
where you can kind of walk in gradually, But are
there places where you could fall over? And if you're
(29:17):
impaired in some way, are you going to be able
to swim back up to the top and grab the
edge and that sort of thing and pull yourself out. Well,
the let's face it, the drunk or you are, the
less control you have over your motor skills and and
so with all of these cases that you know that
that we're thinking about here, you have to take that
(29:39):
into consideration. That's one of the reasons in these cases
in particular, the toxicology is going to play such such
such an incredible role because you get an idea as
to perhaps what their state of mind was. And it's
not it's not just alcohol, obviously, you're you're talking about
any kind of substance that they have on board at
(30:02):
the time of their death. The trick is can you
get to the body soon enough in order to draw
the samples that you would need in order to assess
that if the body is so degraded, perhaps that might
be bespoiled. And there's a few of these cases that
have been left undetermined. My thought is is that maybe
(30:24):
the bodies were degraded or decomposed to a certain point
where they couldn't make that assessment, you know, with a
lot of concrete evidence.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Scientific evidence is a body like if it's left on
the shoreline or in just in the grass, it would
decompose a certain way based on temperature and things like
that and animals, But in water would the body, I know,
it would decompose differently. It would be the difference.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Oh yeah, Actually, here here's kind of a little factoid
for people. If you have a you've heard the term
ada posts, ada post, you have it, okay, So the
term adapos refers to fat, okay. And one of the
things that you see manifested on bodies that have been
(31:13):
submerged in water many times is called adapaceere and at
apare is Oldzheimer's used to refer to it as death wax,
and literally it's the fatty tissue beneath the skin. And
this happens in aquatic environments where it almost blossoms out.
(31:35):
And the only thing I can really tell people what
it looks like is hardened cottage cheese, only slightly yellow.
Some people will refer to it as having a cauliflower
like appearance to it. And what's really weird. The rest
of the body might be kind of softened up, but
when you tap the surface of the adepare it many
(31:58):
times it'll have the ferment of an overinflated basketball. It's
a really weird thing. So and that's you know, like,
for instance, if we have a body that is found
up in a wooded area and it has at a pacre,
we're going to know that maybe somebody pulled the body
out of the water after a protracted period of time,
planted the body there, left the body there after it's
(32:19):
been in a water borne environment. So it's it's one
of those weird little things you get. The distribution of
like post warmal avidity, the settling of blood, it's going
to be all over the place. It's it's almost like
the body is in a zero gravity environment, so it's
affecting the the settling of blood many times. So those
(32:40):
are just a couple of little things that we look for. Yeah,
it's it's it's bizarre not to mention aquatic life. And
of course it's going to vary from from well, you know,
from saltwater or brackish water to fresh water. Fresh water
one of the things you're going to be looking for
with marine life. Life in particular in my experience, at
(33:03):
least or crawfish. Some folks say crayfish, I say crawfish.
You know that will feast on the body. You'll see
that many times. And also the topography of the water itself,
what lies beneath, because a lot of these lakes you
(33:25):
don't see it. If you could drain the lake and
look at it. You'll see all kinds of debris down there.
I mean all manner of things, particularly like trees. And
that brings me to trees and brush. That brings me
to this idea that you've got this Ladybird lake that
is dammed on both ends. Well, guess what happens with
a dam. They have to do a dam or lease
(33:48):
periodically because upstream and downstream. I think this is correct.
This body of water, the Colorado River place a big
in agriculture, and so they have to use this for
water sources for agriculture, they have to use it to
provide drinking water in some circumstances. And not to mention
(34:13):
the rex stuff, which is kind of an aside, But
when you do a dam release, Dave, I don't know
if you've ever been around a dam when it releases.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
First time I saw it, I was scared to death.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Oh it's terrifying. I mean, it will make mighty men tremble,
and you don't want to be near it. I've worked
a couple of cases in Atlanta that involve dam releases,
and when they blow that horn, buddy, you better be scrambling.
It's terrifying. And so when that wall of water pushes out.
It's the dynamics of that are going to affect the
(34:46):
distribution of bodies that are in there. So let's just
say that a body went in. I don't know, let's
just use Rainy Street because they seem to be really
hot on this topic, the Rainy Street Killer. Isn't it
amazing how they always apply a term to cereal what
they perceive as serial events. They've got to hang a
they've got to hang some kind of moniker on it.
(35:06):
But anyway, when that dam release happens, you you see
this push of water. If it's if the body or
a person goes in adjacent to Rainy Street, that can
push the body in any number of ways, because it's
again going back to this idea of being on dry land.
The body is not set in that one position. And
(35:31):
you have to think also about the distribution of all
of these bodies. So if we took this, if we
took a big map and put it up and pinpointed
where the bodies were located, you would have to think, Okay,
where could this person have gone in and wound up in? Well,
(35:52):
unless the body is hung up and brush adjacent to
the shore, it's a crapshoot. You have no idea because
where you find the bodies is not necessarily where they
went in. And you know, one of the you know,
one of the big things that I'm thinking about is
this double murder that happened on Lake a Coney in
(36:14):
Georgia a few years ago. I think it's the it's
the Dermans. I don't know if you remember this case
with the two elderly people. The husband was found decapitated
and the wife was found weighted down in a cove
that was almost three miles away from her home that
(36:37):
sat on Lake a Coney and I might have the mileotron,
but it was a distance away. Well, she was weighted down,
was she You have to ask the question, and again
that's a dam release lake. And so was her body
pushed to that location or did somebody go in a
boat and drop her there? Could she have Could her
body have floated that far with a weight on it?
(36:58):
I don't know, but you have evidence of this. And
that's why these cases are so very difficult to work
from a profiling standpoint. When you begin to think about
the distribution of them, where's the individual going to have
opportunity and access and the means in order to get
a body out into the water. How far away are
(37:19):
they from shore, what depth are they at? So you've
got all these considerations, Dave to think about.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
And we're actually, as I mentioned, you know, we talking
about twenty bodies, and boy, that is so dismissive, and
I apologize. There are twenty people, give or take that
have been pulled from the lake in a period of
time that you can deal with. Okay, say two or
three years, four years, you can go back further than that.
But if you just the people who want to make
(37:46):
this into a serial killer event will pick out an
area of two or three years and say, we've pulled
X number of bodies out of Lake Lady Bird Lake
since then. And the one idea was pull these four
that are similar and in each one of these as
we've already covered with Jason John Okay seen throwing up
(38:08):
on the side of the lake, falls in. A guy
sees this all happen, calls nine to one. One can't
get him out. So when they do get to him,
he's dead. You've got Cliff Axtell he was drinking. Oh no,
I take that back. Cliff Axtell was at Stubbs Barbecue, which,
by the way, it's in downtown Austin. It's right near
Rainy Street and they have a very vivid night life,
(38:31):
a lot of adult beverages being served. His body was
recovered in Ladybird Lake and police gave that an undetermined
They don't know what happened, is how he died or
anything else. Jonathan Honey, He's from Washington, d C. That
was visiting Austin for a bachelor trip. He was drinking
with friends that bars along Rainy Street. He leaves to
(38:52):
find some food. I'm hungry guys and grabbing a by dat.
He gets something to eat at a food truck on
Rainy Street and then vanishes. His friends are missing. His
body has recovered the next day and Ladybird Lake alcohol
is found in his system, along with a couple of
over the counter prescribe medications. Medical examiner rules Honey's death
(39:13):
as an accidental drowning. Again, we're back to the same thing.
We got three guys you ever take the same age
and all end up dying in and and around Ladybird Lake.
So that's when you get down to all of the others.
They don't fit. None of them fit a profile these four,
(39:35):
and there's another one that I think is Nimoga to
Gael I think is his name, and they kind of
fit that same pattern of drinking with friends late at night,
end up in Ladybird Lake drowned. But all the others
kind of explainable. Is something other than that, But these
four you can't really explain. How did four people end
(39:57):
up drown Well, yeah, and I think that by themselves
that night, right, And so when you think about there's
a thirty year old by the name of Christopher Hayes Clark,
Jonathan Honey thirty three, Cliff exl that you had mentioned,
(40:17):
and then Jason John and I guess they're similar in
the sense that they happened happened in approximating one another
time wise. But is that the work? Is that truly
the work? Let's just be very open. Is that truly
(40:38):
the work of some sinister master criminal out there? Or
is this just dumb, dumb fate here if you will.
Where these individuals are inebriated or compromised in some other
way physically, where they fall in maybe they're disoriented, I
have no idea, and they get turned around and they
happen to go into the water. It's I don't know,
(41:02):
to me, one of the dangers here. I think there's
actually a couple of them. First off, when you start
throwing around the term and I say you, I don't
mean you, I mean the media. Let that sink in
for a minute. When the media.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
Starts throwing around the term serial killer and they have
other people that are feeding into this. It's one thing
to speculate on a case, but now you become a
driver of fear in a particular location. You know, do
I want to take my kids down there? And then
that from the general public goes up to the people
(41:44):
in charge and they say, why aren't you doing anything else?
Why aren't you doing anything about the serial killer? Well,
first off, we don't have a serial killer. And the
chief I think it was the chief of police. Let
me see what was that name? Yeah, Chief Greenwald. He
had stated in April of twenty twenty three that he's
(42:08):
dealing with rumors. Can you imagine every time he goes
out in public. And I know he gets paid to
do a job, but every time he gets goes out
in public, he has to address this issue. And trust me,
Austin's got a lot of other issues that have to
be dealt with. They're asking He's being asked, well, well,
where's the you know, why don't you guys doing anything
(42:28):
about serial killer? It's like, what serial killer are you
referring to? What proof? What proof do you have that
there is actually a serial killer at work here in Austin?
Please explain that to me. Give me the details. Do
you know something that I don't know or my investigators
don't know, or that the medical examiner doesn't know. If
you have information, please tell us and lay it out,
(42:50):
I mean in detail, so that we understand exactly what
you're talking about, because lord knows, if we have a
serial killer, we want to interdict the situation and put
it to rect. I mean, the Chief's not sitting around thinking,
oh my gosh, serial killer. Wow, this will really get
us on the map. We're just going to allow this
to go on and on forever. They're going to throw
(43:10):
the full weight and force. I've been on serial killer
task Force. I have seen what kind of force is
brought to bear on these things. And you can read
the room real easy relative to this by virtue of
who's involved in the overall investigation. Because when a serial
killer is actually identified in a location. Those elected officials,
(43:33):
and you can kind of they're the barometer for this.
The last thing they want is to have open cases
related to a serial killer. And the last thing they
also want is to not be demonstrating positive action going
forward to resolve this issue. There is nothing that will,
(43:56):
you know, get somebody you know out of office or
have fingers pointed at them quicker than something like this,
because it literally terrifies the public. It's like I said,
you know earlier about the analogy with Jaws. You say Barracuda,
people say what you say, shark games on him. I'm
(44:23):
Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is bodybags.
Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. Anybody that knows me
knows that over the past few years, I've developed a
real love of water. And I don't mean to say
(00:28):
that in the sense that I finally discovered showering for
the first time in my life. What I mean by
that is the fact that I acquired an old boat.
It's nothing fancy, it's good enough for me and my
precious wife, and I spent a lot of time on
the local river, just cruising up and down it. Sometimes
we anchor out in a little cove and there's actually
these little islands on this river that we go to
(00:52):
and we'll kind of ground a boat and build a
fire and sit there and just talk about life and
listen to music. Matter of fact, probably my favorite thing
to listen to is Van Morrison. While I'm sitting there,
I could listen to him for hours. But today I'm
going to talk about another river, and actually a lake
that is part of the bigger river is what we
(01:15):
call an impoundment. The river is actually the Colorado River,
and I think that just by name alone, you would
probably think, oh wow, this must run right through the
heart of the rocky mountains and no, it doesn't. It
actually is a few states away. It runs through Texas,
and there's one spot in this river that has been
(01:38):
declared a lake in the lake's name is Ladybird Lake
in Austin, Texas. Is there a serial killer at work there?
Let's talk about it. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
is Bodybags. David. Know you think I'm lying to your brother,
(02:03):
but I'm going to take you out to my boat.
We're just gonna cruise up and down the river. You're
gonna hang out, get some sunshine. But you never have
Tom You're always working.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
You know, I'll make the time to go to the river.
But I'm a little concerned that you want to, you know,
invite me down to the river the day we're doing
a show about possibly the Ladybird Lake Killer, the Rainy
Street Killer, whatever you want to name him or her
for Austin, Texas, a serial killer on the loose. Possibly maybe,
(02:33):
I don't know. But that's when you want to invite
me to the river. Is when we're talking about death
around a body of water. Thanks, Joe. Let's get into
this though. Today we're looking at Ladybird Lake, which I
didn't know anything about until I started looking into this
idea that some people believe there is a serial killer
(02:54):
at work and they call him the Ladybird Killer or
the Rainy Street killer. And these are people in that
local area in Austin, which Austin has been a very
hot spot over the last several years. A lot of yeah,
the entertainment world. A lot of people moved to Austin
and own property in things in Austin.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
So, yeah, try to pay rent there by the way,
Is that bad? Oh my gosh. I've had two friends
from California that moved there and they said, wow, really Yeah,
Look when Joe Rogan shows up in a place like
that and he puts roots down there, you've got all
these other people that are moving in from the entertainment industry.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah, it's going to get pricey. It doesn't going to
bee immediately. Yeah, but the bottom line being the bottom
line in life, you have two choices. You can either
choose a path that brings you joy and satisfaction, or
you can choose another way. Life is like that, Yeah,
and I choose to I choose to do something I
(03:50):
believe makes a difference and what you and I do
on a daily basis dealing with crime, the after effects
of crime, solving solving crimes in terms of the body
and what happened to me. There are people every day
that are You and I both agreed there's no such
thing as closure, but there are people who are being
(04:12):
emotionally satisfied by understanding things a little bit better of
what happened to their loved one or in our case,
many times we're speaking for the person who can't speak
for themselves anymore. And that's very important as a human
being to understand that life is precious, and too many
(04:32):
times it is disregarded. We have people that are growing
up that don't believe that. They do not believe life
is precious.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
No, they don't, and I think that there are It's
sad enough in the case of all of these deaths,
and there's a willbarrow full of them.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
That's the thing, Joe here, that we actually have to
separate the ones out that we think might be connected.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Yeah, it's a luminous It's sad enough that these people
are found deceased, because with everybody that you find along
the way, there is a family that's out there. I
like to use the idea of the empty chair, there's
an empty chair around somebody's table that will never be
(05:19):
occupied by that person again, and it's absolutely heartbreaking when
you see it played out over and over again. And
some of the issues with these so called Ladybird Lake
deaths is that there's not connectivity necessarily with a lot
(05:40):
of these things. It's not a vast area. I think
it's just over four hundred acres this lake is, and
by many people's estimations, that's not a huge, huge lake.
You know, you consider some of the places that are
out there, but it's significant enough, and you've got multiple
points of entry, and we can go in to that.
But it's just the idea that just because you have
(06:05):
people being found deceased in a location does not a
serial event make and you have to be very very
careful with that, and particularly in you know, when I
look at it through my eyes and try to take
the long view of it, and I think about the
serial events that I was involved in as an investigator
(06:27):
over the years, both in New Orleans and Atlanta, words
have to be chosen very very carefully because you can
literally send people into a frenzy. And one of my
favorite movies of all time is Jaws. I love the
(06:49):
book too, but I love the movie because it's so
the characters, you know, just kind of pop to life.
And the mayor in that who's this real smarmy guy.
He's admonishing the sheriff in this thing because the sheriff Brodie,
he's trying to secure the beach and he says, wait
(07:11):
a minute, he says, you say bear Kuda, And people say,
what huh you say, shark? You got a panic on
your hands. And we've seen this played out now Loath
these many months, you know, and just within the last
couple of weeks, they've recovered two more bodies out of
(07:33):
Ladybird Lake. And just like words can damage people, you know,
you say things to people, maybe loved ones, You use
certain terms, you say things that are not necessarily what edifying.
When you throw out the term serial killer into a community,
(07:56):
you damage that community. And before we talk about anything else,
I'm in no position to admonish anybody, but I would suggest,
strongly suggest that people begin to kind of throttle back
their rhetoric in regards to this, because now you've got
(08:17):
you're building reputations here, a reputation of a location where
I'm sure that there have been great times had by
many people along the shores there. This place was first
impounded I think back in the sixties, and for long,
a long time, it was regarded as an ey sore
and until you know, the former first lady stepped in,
(08:40):
Lady Bird Johnson, and you know, began to work on
this and establish it, clean it up it was. It
was considered a not so desirous location. But now you know,
and I listen, just a few years ago, I've got
to I got to make it, admit this. I'd never
been to this location before, but just a couple of
(09:02):
years ago, Kim and I went to Crime Con when
it was held in Austin. We had a blast there.
By the way, I love the city, I love the
time that we spent there. But I got to see
this place, and I got to tell you when I
was looking at it, Dave, I didn't really know what
I was looking. I thought I was looking at a river.
And it is technically a river, it's the Colorado River,
but it's kind of quaterned off because you've got dams, yeah,
(09:26):
on each end, and that kind of plays into a
lot about what we're going to talk about today.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
They diverted it to create a cooling bond for power plant,
is what it amounts to. It actually has a reason,
you know, for being there. The reason it exists, it
actually has. It wasn't natural, you know, it was created
and as you mentioned, you get too damn. You've got
a lot of issues going on and a lot of bodies.
But just to give you an idea, Ladybird Lake built
(09:51):
in nineteen sixty it is you mentioned, a four hundred
and sixteen acre lake. It is primarily used for recreation now,
but there have been so many deaths reported in the
last couple of years that depending on how you want
to frame the story, you could talk about twenty deaths,
you could talk about four deaths. And I think it's
(10:14):
being very dismissive to just say nothing is linked here.
These are all just isolated incidents. And because some of
them are, but some are not right. And that's why
when I was trying to pull it all together, Joe,
there was for me. It started with a story of
a person who saw a body in the lake and
was like poking it with a stick kind of thing,
(10:35):
calling the police, you know, and it's that it was
like another body found in Ladybird Lake. And when you
start identifying all of them as one, I think you
hurt families that are mourning because you've just lumped their
family victim into this pool very quickly. The Gilgo Beach murders,
(10:59):
you know, Rex Chureman gets arrested, and people say, okay,
we got the we have a suspect in the you
know what, we got a suspect in four. There's ten
bodies we're dealing with here. Yeah, there's something else at work.
And now is it getting any attention? No?
Speaker 1 (11:14):
No, totally will listen. Hey, look from when I was
a child, uh you know, uh you know I remember
uh the missing murdered children in Atlanta with Wayne Williams. Yeah, okay, Well,
first off, Wayne Williams was never convicted of killing a child.
People he was convicted of one in particular were adults
(11:39):
and the male yeah, male male escorts. And here's one
other thing. When he was incarcerated, children did stop dying
in Atlanta. Uh So you know, you have to be
very very careful. And that's why we have practices in
that are you know, associate with death investigation. You have
(12:01):
practices of people at profile individuals. They take all of
this data and put it together. And contrary to what
you see on television, the life of a profiler is
not this kind of sexy thing where they're riding around
in a cool car and going out to scenes. Most
of the scenes that are involved in these cases in
(12:22):
serialized events are gone. They're not showing up fresh. It's
a lot of work spent at a desk and talking
to people and analyzing data. And my way of thinking
is has all of the data been assessed? Because when
you do things like statistical analyzes, you have to consider
(12:42):
everything race, gender, location, and also more importantly, you have
to consider time. How long have bodies been popping up
in Lady Bird Lake. I found in life that for me,
(13:19):
at least, I can't speak to anybody else. But if
I have a task, it's better to compartmentalize things, to
take it piece by piece. The old adage, how do
you eat an elephant? You you do it one bite
at a time. And I look at I look at
(13:40):
this data relative to these Ladybird Lake bodies, and I
want to ask, a, you're such a great wordsmith here,
holy moly, give it give us an give us an
idea kind of frame it out for us. What kind
of numbers are we looking that with. You know, normally
(14:02):
when you and I are talking, right, I say, you know,
tell us a little bit something about the case. Well,
here we go, tell us a little bit something about
the cases, right, because that's very, very very important. Here.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
The blurred lines are because of the numbers here. There
have been a lot of bodies pulled out of the lake.
Ten reported deaths since twenty twenty two, four in twenty
twenty two, five and twenty twenty three, one in the
past month, actually two in the past month. Now that
shows you how this has changed as I've begun reporting
and putting these things together. So just dealing with those
(14:36):
ten and by the way, we can go up to
twenty depending on how far back you go anyho oh exactly.
And I was telling Joe earlier that there are deaths
that happen around.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Water all the time, all the time.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
And so you can't just lump them all together and
pretend there's a serial killer that has killed twenty two people,
you know, at Ladybird Lake. That would be tantamount to
accusing Ted Bundy of killing everybody that died of lake.
Someamish back in the seventies. He didn't do that.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Hey, I got to tell you something, you know. I
was talking about my boat earlier last summer. We were
actually sitting on the dock and yeah, oh well, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Now,
we watched a guy that was so drunk he fell
off of his boat like a couple of times.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
We alerted the people across the way, and there was
a wileye fishery guy that rode around a boat. We
let him know about it. And the guy, per our witness,
had gotten back into the boat each time with a
lot of difficulty and help from his friends. While we
were just sitting on our dock. Three hours later, they
were dragging the river. Oh man, and that was across
(15:45):
away from us. We'd cruised up the river. This guy died.
He fell off of his boat and drowned. Water water
is like dealing with a rattlesnake. If you don't know
what you're doing, it is deadly. It is deadly. Our bodies,
ye are not equipped to be in a water environment.
And so all you have to do is mix alcohol, drugs,
(16:09):
a health problem, anything can come up, and you can wander.
If you're adjacent to a lake, you can fall in.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
And we actually have a situation just like that. Joe,
one of the typical cases or boy that that sounds dismissive,
it's not. There's a guy named Jason John. Jason John
died day before Valentine's Day last year twenty twenty three.
In the autopsy report, the Travis County Medical Examiner's Office
determined his cause of death was drowning and the manner
(16:37):
of death was ruled accidental.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
According to the reports, thirty year old man Jason John
was witnessed by a bystander to be vomiting by the
bank of Lady Bird Lake and then subsequently falling and
subverged into the water in the early morning of February fifth.
(17:00):
I said February thirteenth, the minute ago, that's when it
was ruled to drowing. I apologize. But on February fifth,
he falls into the water and this transient which means homeless,
homeless guy sees him fall into the water, tries to
get him out and can't get him out. The transient
guy goes to a hotel and calls nine to one
one and by the time they get there they couldn't
(17:21):
find him.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Yeah, he's gone. Somep surface at that point, yep.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
And toxicology report showed, you know, alcohol was in his system,
no illegal drugs, no significant internal or external injuries, no fractures,
no traumatic injuries, nothing, just he got really drunk and
apparently fell in the lake and drowned.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Well, let me throw this out to you since we're
talking in broad terms about cereal perpetrators. First off, I've
I'm thinking back right now, going through my I've got
an imaginary paper file index going through in my mind
right now, and I'm thinking I have I don't think
I have ever encountered, even with friends and things that
(18:03):
I've read, I don't think that I have ever encountered
a case of serial homicide. Somebody will probably prove me
wrong involving using water, and specifically a body of water
as a means to kill somebody. Now, can't homicides be
accomplished these are the water, Yes they can, they can,
(18:25):
But those are those generally, in my experience, have occurred
in bathtubs where people have been particularly children, where they're
held held beneath the surface and they're drowned. But those
are most of the time, those are one off events.
It's not like you you have these events that are
occurring where you know, you've got some guy twirling his
(18:48):
mustache over in the counter, over in the you know,
all dressed in black, saying I'm going to use water
to kill people with, and you know, you start talking
about accidental drownings and things like that. You know, you
you got to look at the toxicology and as you
pointed out in this particular case, guy's got alcohol on board.
So how do you balance that out? And my question
is to you, is that we're looking for patterns here right, Yes, Well,
(19:13):
you know how many of these cases have been ruled
actually an accident versus a natural or versus undetermined or hey, look,
give it to me. If you've got a homicide rite,
let me know about it. Well, I'd like to know.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Here's the situation, Joe in Austin, Texas, where Ladybird Lake
is and where Rainy Street is. Oftentimes because of the
number of bodies pulled out of the water, they refer
to it. Those who want to act like they have
a serial killer, say Rainy Street killer. There might be
I'm not saying there isn't, just saying that there are
(19:47):
a lot of people following crime now it's a very
hot topic. There are a lot of podcasts, a lot
of social media covering crime, and there are a lot
of people who are web slutes that really you realize
we're not all the same mentally, and some people bring
a lot of weird baggage to how they look at
a story. And so trusting somebody online that created a
(20:11):
podcast or a show about crime doesn't give them any
insight into what they're talking about unless they were a
former investigator or a former forensic, you know, something along
those lines. Other than that, you've got armchair quarterbacks determining
what actually happened and what we have here. Or we
have some similar deaths. They seem to be alcohol related,
(20:33):
they seem to have happened in the late night, early
morning hours after somebody had been on Rainy Street. And
the question is somebody targeting men of a specific age
or a specific look, that is targeting them in the
bars of Rainy Street and basically dumping their bodies in
(20:55):
the lake? Is that what this is a dumping ground?
And so when we look at some of these we
had Jason john as I mentioned this guy's puking on
the side of the lake and falls in Yeah, no
illegal drugs found in his system, No traumatic injuries, just alcohol.
Could something have been put in a drink that he
had that made him uncontrollable? I don't know. Forty year
(21:17):
old Cliff Axtell. This guy works as a landscape specialist.
He works at Veritas Commercial Properties. He's known for his
innovative strategies in real estate. Guy's very well thought of,
married to kids, excelling in his senior year at Harvard
Extension School, making the deans list each semester. This guy
is a good guy, and he's working his full time
(21:39):
job and leading worship at his church. But Cliff Axtell
is seen at Stubb's Barbecue in downtown Austin on March fifth,
never makes it back home. His body is recovered in
Lady Bird Lake. Stubbs Barbecue is near Rainy Street. Yeah,
and police said the death is not being investigated as suspicious.
(22:02):
It's his death is listed as undetermined based on this scenario.
I just laid out for you who he is, what
he is, what he does. How does this? I mean,
it is certainly suspicious, but how do you not consider it?
Did he just fall in the lake and die? I
don't understand that Joe.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Right, and so depend upon the condition of a body
when it's pulled from a body of water. You know,
that's one of the things that you're going to look for.
And if you're trying to look for patterns, which you
do in cereal crimes, you have to find patterns relative
to the physical remains. Because, as we know, it's well stated,
(22:42):
it's out there floating about. Serial killers very rarely deviate
from methodologies. They get very comfortable with it.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
And when you say that, when you say de methodologies,
what are you actually saying?
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Well, okay, I'll give you an example. I worked a
series of deaths of prostitutes many years ago in New Orleans,
and they were actually all up and down the Iten corridor.
It wasn't just simply in Louisiana. That's what I'll say
about it. But in all of these cases, the individuals used,
in every one of these cases a ligature to kill
(23:17):
these these women. I had another case involving a series
of serial killings, again prostitutes, and the individual was using
a wire, not just a ligature, but a piece of
wire to choke these women out with. I've had another
series where elderly women were being choked bare handed by
(23:43):
an individual. And the reason I'm pointing this out is
that it's Wow. I don't want to sound cruel or crass,
but it's it's almost like, this is the vocation. This
is not an avocation. This is everything else. Zerial killers
world is all about getting an opportunity to kill again.
(24:05):
They might have a job, but that job is not
the primary interest in their life. Their vocation is actually killing.
So if you take that and you look at say
a craftsman who hate to use that, but if you
where they have a certain particular set of tools that
they that they use, they're not going to deviate from
that pattern. So here's what I would say to people
(24:27):
that may be thinking that the so called Lady Bird
Lake killer or the Rainy Straight Street killer is a
serial perpetrator. Give me the evidence that these individuals have
been held underwater, because that's what would have to do.
(24:48):
And granted, hey, look I'm there with you. I mean,
you're saying that that perhaps they are inebriated or impaired
by drugs, and you're only target get in one group.
You're going to take them down to the water's edge
and it's going to be like some kind of weird
baptism where the individual is not going to be brought
(25:10):
up into new life, but will essentially pass on to eternity.
(25:35):
The one thing that I do know about water is that,
particularly in large bodies, you might not see it on
the surface, but water does flow. It might appear on
the top that it's tranquil and very peaceful, but beneath
(25:57):
the surface there is always some kind of current running
through it. Much like serialized homicide, there is always something
that gives you an idea of a flow. And I
think that's very important, uh, to identify here, not not
(26:18):
not just the flow of a so called serial killer
that's at work, but also the flow of the water
in general, because that's going to give us an indication
about about bodies and where they wound up. Because a
water environment is not a static environment. It's always changing. Heck,
(26:39):
even the even the shoreline changes, uh, And so it's
a it's a dynamic environment. It's not like an open
field where you find a body that's like lying there,
you know, and they have a what's referred to as
a dumping ground. We hear that term a lot, and
I actually said it a little while ago. I know
you did, and I wanted to point out dumping grounds.
(27:02):
You know, again, just like methodologies for killing locations where
they leave bodies right, it's very significant and you've got
to have access, you got to have cover many times
to do this. And I don't know if we're there, Dave,
I really don't.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
I want to go back to something you were talking
about with the guy you witnessed with your own two eyes,
drunkenly falling into the water and getting back out and
getting into his boat, but eventually he did die. When
in the case of Jason John where he has described
(27:43):
drunk throwing up on the shoreline of Lady Bird Lake
in Austin and he falls into the water and this
transient who is watching all of this can't get him
out of the water. I'm I'm a little fuddled by that, Joe.
Wouldn't the water, regardless of your intoxication level, wouldn't it
(28:06):
be enough to if you fall in, to wake you
up enough that you could get yourself out. I mean,
apparently I'm wrong. I'm not going to say that.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Odd.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
You're dealing with February here, the first week of February.
It's not going to be warm.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Water yeah, even in Austin. You know, I think everybody
associates wrongly that Texas is a very warm place all
year long. It ain't, no matter of texts. A matter
of fact, some of the coldest times in my life
have been in Texas. It gets very it gets very
(28:42):
very chilly there. So, yeah, that that can certainly have
an effect that time of year.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
But if it's a man made lake, could it have
like a almost like a bowl effect where the shoreline
doesn't slowly come up, it just goes straight in?
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Like yeah, bad, it could eventually, And yeah, when you're
thinking about a bulkhead where you know, for folks that
don't understand that it's almost like a sea wall that's
built in. Do you actually have a gradual shore where
you kind of and there are places along the lake
where you can kind of walk in gradually, But are
there places where you could fall over? And if you're
(29:17):
impaired in some way, are you going to be able
to swim back up to the top and grab the
edge and that sort of thing and pull yourself out. Well,
the let's face it, the drunk or you are, the
less control you have over your motor skills and and
so with all of these cases that you know that
that we're thinking about here, you have to take that
(29:39):
into consideration. That's one of the reasons in these cases
in particular, the toxicology is going to play such such
such an incredible role because you get an idea as
to perhaps what their state of mind was. And it's
not it's not just alcohol, obviously, you're you're talking about
any kind of substance that they have on board at
(30:02):
the time of their death. The trick is can you
get to the body soon enough in order to draw
the samples that you would need in order to assess
that if the body is so degraded, perhaps that might
be bespoiled. And there's a few of these cases that
have been left undetermined. My thought is is that maybe
(30:24):
the bodies were degraded or decomposed to a certain point
where they couldn't make that assessment, you know, with a
lot of concrete evidence.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Scientific evidence is a body like if it's left on
the shoreline or in just in the grass, it would
decompose a certain way based on temperature and things like
that and animals, But in water would the body, I know,
it would decompose differently. It would be the difference.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Oh yeah, Actually, here here's kind of a little factoid
for people. If you have a you've heard the term
ada posts, ada post, you have it, okay, So the
term adapos refers to fat, okay. And one of the
things that you see manifested on bodies that have been
(31:13):
submerged in water many times is called adapaceere and at
apare is Oldzheimer's used to refer to it as death wax,
and literally it's the fatty tissue beneath the skin. And
this happens in aquatic environments where it almost blossoms out.
(31:35):
And the only thing I can really tell people what
it looks like is hardened cottage cheese, only slightly yellow.
Some people will refer to it as having a cauliflower
like appearance to it. And what's really weird. The rest
of the body might be kind of softened up, but
when you tap the surface of the adepare it many
(31:58):
times it'll have the ferment of an overinflated basketball. It's
a really weird thing. So and that's you know, like,
for instance, if we have a body that is found
up in a wooded area and it has at a pacre,
we're going to know that maybe somebody pulled the body
out of the water after a protracted period of time,
planted the body there, left the body there after it's
(32:19):
been in a water borne environment. So it's it's one
of those weird little things you get. The distribution of
like post warmal avidity, the settling of blood, it's going
to be all over the place. It's it's almost like
the body is in a zero gravity environment, so it's
affecting the the settling of blood many times. So those
(32:40):
are just a couple of little things that we look for. Yeah,
it's it's it's bizarre not to mention aquatic life. And
of course it's going to vary from from well, you know,
from saltwater or brackish water to fresh water. Fresh water
one of the things you're going to be looking for
with marine life. Life in particular in my experience, at
(33:03):
least or crawfish. Some folks say crayfish, I say crawfish.
You know that will feast on the body. You'll see
that many times. And also the topography of the water itself,
what lies beneath, because a lot of these lakes you
(33:25):
don't see it. If you could drain the lake and
look at it. You'll see all kinds of debris down there.
I mean all manner of things, particularly like trees. And
that brings me to trees and brush. That brings me
to this idea that you've got this Ladybird lake that
is dammed on both ends. Well, guess what happens with
a dam. They have to do a dam or lease
(33:48):
periodically because upstream and downstream. I think this is correct.
This body of water, the Colorado River place a big
in agriculture, and so they have to use this for
water sources for agriculture, they have to use it to
provide drinking water in some circumstances. And not to mention
(34:13):
the rex stuff, which is kind of an aside, But
when you do a dam release, Dave, I don't know
if you've ever been around a dam when it releases.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
First time I saw it, I was scared to death.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Oh it's terrifying. I mean, it will make mighty men tremble,
and you don't want to be near it. I've worked
a couple of cases in Atlanta that involve dam releases,
and when they blow that horn, buddy, you better be scrambling.
It's terrifying. And so when that wall of water pushes out.
It's the dynamics of that are going to affect the
(34:46):
distribution of bodies that are in there. So let's just
say that a body went in. I don't know, let's
just use Rainy Street because they seem to be really
hot on this topic, the Rainy Street Killer. Isn't it
amazing how they always apply a term to cereal what
they perceive as serial events. They've got to hang a
they've got to hang some kind of moniker on it.
(35:06):
But anyway, when that dam release happens, you you see
this push of water. If it's if the body or
a person goes in adjacent to Rainy Street, that can
push the body in any number of ways, because it's
again going back to this idea of being on dry land.
The body is not set in that one position. And
(35:31):
you have to think also about the distribution of all
of these bodies. So if we took this, if we
took a big map and put it up and pinpointed
where the bodies were located, you would have to think, Okay,
where could this person have gone in and wound up in? Well,
(35:52):
unless the body is hung up and brush adjacent to
the shore, it's a crapshoot. You have no idea because
where you find the bodies is not necessarily where they
went in. And you know, one of the you know,
one of the big things that I'm thinking about is
this double murder that happened on Lake a Coney in
(36:14):
Georgia a few years ago. I think it's the it's
the Dermans. I don't know if you remember this case
with the two elderly people. The husband was found decapitated
and the wife was found weighted down in a cove
that was almost three miles away from her home that
(36:37):
sat on Lake a Coney and I might have the mileotron,
but it was a distance away. Well, she was weighted down,
was she You have to ask the question, and again
that's a dam release lake. And so was her body
pushed to that location or did somebody go in a
boat and drop her there? Could she have Could her
body have floated that far with a weight on it?
(36:58):
I don't know, but you have evidence of this. And
that's why these cases are so very difficult to work
from a profiling standpoint. When you begin to think about
the distribution of them, where's the individual going to have
opportunity and access and the means in order to get
a body out into the water. How far away are
(37:19):
they from shore, what depth are they at? So you've
got all these considerations, Dave to think about.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
And we're actually, as I mentioned, you know, we talking
about twenty bodies, and boy, that is so dismissive, and
I apologize. There are twenty people, give or take that
have been pulled from the lake in a period of
time that you can deal with. Okay, say two or
three years, four years, you can go back further than that.
But if you just the people who want to make
(37:46):
this into a serial killer event will pick out an
area of two or three years and say, we've pulled
X number of bodies out of Lake Lady Bird Lake
since then. And the one idea was pull these four
that are similar and in each one of these as
we've already covered with Jason John Okay seen throwing up
(38:08):
on the side of the lake, falls in. A guy
sees this all happen, calls nine to one. One can't
get him out. So when they do get to him,
he's dead. You've got Cliff Axtell he was drinking. Oh no,
I take that back. Cliff Axtell was at Stubbs Barbecue, which,
by the way, it's in downtown Austin. It's right near
Rainy Street and they have a very vivid night life,
(38:31):
a lot of adult beverages being served. His body was
recovered in Ladybird Lake and police gave that an undetermined
They don't know what happened, is how he died or
anything else. Jonathan Honey, He's from Washington, d C. That
was visiting Austin for a bachelor trip. He was drinking
with friends that bars along Rainy Street. He leaves to
(38:52):
find some food. I'm hungry guys and grabbing a by dat.
He gets something to eat at a food truck on
Rainy Street and then vanishes. His friends are missing. His
body has recovered the next day and Ladybird Lake alcohol
is found in his system, along with a couple of
over the counter prescribe medications. Medical examiner rules Honey's death
(39:13):
as an accidental drowning. Again, we're back to the same thing.
We got three guys you ever take the same age
and all end up dying in and and around Ladybird Lake.
So that's when you get down to all of the others.
They don't fit. None of them fit a profile these four,
(39:35):
and there's another one that I think is Nimoga to
Gael I think is his name, and they kind of
fit that same pattern of drinking with friends late at night,
end up in Ladybird Lake drowned. But all the others
kind of explainable. Is something other than that, But these
four you can't really explain. How did four people end
(39:57):
up drown Well, yeah, and I think that by themselves
that night, right, And so when you think about there's
a thirty year old by the name of Christopher Hayes Clark,
Jonathan Honey thirty three, Cliff exl that you had mentioned,
(40:17):
and then Jason John and I guess they're similar in
the sense that they happened happened in approximating one another
time wise. But is that the work? Is that truly
the work? Let's just be very open. Is that truly
(40:38):
the work of some sinister master criminal out there? Or
is this just dumb, dumb fate here if you will.
Where these individuals are inebriated or compromised in some other
way physically, where they fall in maybe they're disoriented, I
have no idea, and they get turned around and they
happen to go into the water. It's I don't know,
(41:02):
to me, one of the dangers here. I think there's
actually a couple of them. First off, when you start
throwing around the term and I say you, I don't
mean you, I mean the media. Let that sink in
for a minute. When the media.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
Starts throwing around the term serial killer and they have
other people that are feeding into this. It's one thing
to speculate on a case, but now you become a
driver of fear in a particular location. You know, do
I want to take my kids down there? And then
that from the general public goes up to the people
(41:44):
in charge and they say, why aren't you doing anything else?
Why aren't you doing anything about the serial killer? Well,
first off, we don't have a serial killer. And the
chief I think it was the chief of police. Let
me see what was that name? Yeah, Chief Greenwald. He
had stated in April of twenty twenty three that he's
(42:08):
dealing with rumors. Can you imagine every time he goes
out in public. And I know he gets paid to
do a job, but every time he gets goes out
in public, he has to address this issue. And trust me,
Austin's got a lot of other issues that have to
be dealt with. They're asking He's being asked, well, well,
where's the you know, why don't you guys doing anything
(42:28):
about serial killer? It's like, what serial killer are you
referring to? What proof? What proof do you have that
there is actually a serial killer at work here in Austin?
Please explain that to me. Give me the details. Do
you know something that I don't know or my investigators
don't know, or that the medical examiner doesn't know. If
you have information, please tell us and lay it out,
(42:50):
I mean in detail, so that we understand exactly what
you're talking about, because lord knows, if we have a
serial killer, we want to interdict the situation and put
it to rect. I mean, the Chief's not sitting around thinking,
oh my gosh, serial killer. Wow, this will really get
us on the map. We're just going to allow this
to go on and on forever. They're going to throw
(43:10):
the full weight and force. I've been on serial killer
task Force. I have seen what kind of force is
brought to bear on these things. And you can read
the room real easy relative to this by virtue of
who's involved in the overall investigation. Because when a serial
killer is actually identified in a location. Those elected officials,
(43:33):
and you can kind of they're the barometer for this.
The last thing they want is to have open cases
related to a serial killer. And the last thing they
also want is to not be demonstrating positive action going
forward to resolve this issue. There is nothing that will,
(43:56):
you know, get somebody you know out of office or
have fingers pointed at them quicker than something like this,
because it literally terrifies the public. It's like I said,
you know earlier about the analogy with Jaws. You say Barracuda,
people say what you say, shark games on him. I'm
(44:23):
Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is bodybags.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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