June 3, 2026 • 45 mins
On January 8, 1994, a person walking a wooded area off of State Highway 225 in Baldwin County, Alabama, spotted skeletal remains with items scattered about the scene: A trucker hat that said America By Birth, Texan by Grace Of God, a western shirt, an inhaler, a digital watch, dark pair of prescription, bifocal glasses, a mechanical pen and pencil set, as well as a torch tip. Investigation revealed the person was a victim of a homicide and detectives believe the murder happened in 1988 or 1989, but detectives were unable to identify the victim. The investigation stalled and the case went cold. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack take on the case of "Baldwin County John Doe" a case that was cold for decades, but not forgotten. Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences working with local law enforcement Submit Forensic evidence to OTHRAM, and after 30 years, "Baldwin County John Doe" has a name, and his family has some peace.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quality bats with Joseph Scott More a long long time ago.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I was fortunate enough to be able to serve my
country in the Army National Guard. And as a result
of being in the National Guard again many many years ago,
when you go out and do field exercises or what
they're called or ftx's, and this is predates the days
of the dehydrated food, which is you got a lot
(00:36):
of these in the MRIs. We were still using sea
rats back then. Sea rats were something that went back
to I think Korea had k rats before that, but
sea rats came in little cardboard boxes and we in
the Guard you always got hand me down, so we
would get sea rats, believe it or not in the
(00:58):
eighties that were Vietnam era sea rats, and so it
would be canned food that had been canned for troops
in Vietnam and probably.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Had never been used.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
But one of the interesting things that I discovered about
sea rats was this in every one of those boxes
that you opened up, you never knew what kind of
meal you were going to get. Franks and beans was
actually my favorite. There would be a miniature pack of
cigarettes and we got a kick out of opening those up,
(01:30):
you know, as young kids in the Guard and then
you open up the box and the things. Of course,
the cigarettes would just like crumble in your hand, but
you would still eat the food. And many of our troops,
going back a long, long time ago, even back to
World War One, became hooked on cigarettes as a result
(01:51):
of their time in service in the US military. There's
even a famous image of Red Cross nurses handing out
cigarettes to World War One troops off of the back
of a flat pad. Today, we're going to talk about
a man who once was a young troop, a man
(02:11):
that served in the United States Marine Corps back in
the nineteen fifties, and he too had an addiction to cigarettes.
I often wonder about this case. Did that dependency upon
cigarettes start with his service in the Marine Corps. I
(02:33):
don't know, but I know one thing it led to.
It led to him having to deal with emphysema up
until the day he was murdered. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
and this is body backs.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Brother Dave. Back at you again. Man.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Okay, before we dig too far, I got to add
I my family is a military family as well. I
failed the physical Okay, I'd had a knee surgery and
I failed the physical. I couldn't get in even though
I tried. But I heard, and maybe you can help
me with this. I heard that in basic training you
got extra time to take a smoke break. So if
(03:19):
you smoked, you would get fifteen minutes every other hour
to smoke cigarette or whatever. And if you didn't smoke,
you keep picking up trash or whatever you know, do
to you had.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
No, no, no, you still had to pick up trash.
It didn't matter if you have a cigarette in your mouth.
But what they would say, here's an interesting term, and
all the old timers will remember this. The sergeants you say,
the smoking lamp is now lit, and so everybody that
smoked would go out and they would they would, you know,
break out their their cigarettes and you know, begin to smoke.
(03:49):
And also keep in mind, back then it really sounded
like an old guy. You could go to the post exchange,
to the PX and you could buy like a whole
carton of cigarettes for next to nothing. I mean absolutely,
and I'm talking about high end cigarette. What would be
regarded as high end cigarettes, tobacco, and any kind of
alcohol you could purchase for what would be comparatively speaking
(04:13):
a nominal fee. And what was really cool is that
your gas used to be cheaper. You could you could
fill up on post and you know, those days I
think are probably gone now. But yeah, so cigarette smoking
was something that was actually encouraged.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
I think I do know this, you're a history guy.
During World War Two, one of the things that that
was issued to those who smoked was a flameless lighter
for infantry because if you're on the front lines and
you know you used to light up your matter, your
lighter is going to flame up and they're going to
spot you. So they created a lighter that actually could
(04:47):
light a cigarette without a flame. Pretty interesting.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I've never seen one of those, but we used to
in the same searet. Kids. You used to get what
we're called waterproof matches and it was like a regular
book of matches and it would But what we used
to do if you smoked is that everybody would get
one person would unwrap their poncho and you throw your
poncho over yourself and then you would light it. But
it wasn't like to keep from giving away your position
(05:12):
so that the wind did knock your flame down. But
we were in the guard, so you know, it wasn't
like we were on the front lawns or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
But yeah, that's just one of the memories.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
And I got to tell you what this case they
originating out of our home state of Alabama and a
place that I'm kind of familiar with because my favorite
place in probably in the whole world, is a golf
coast of Yeah, it is my happy place, the Gulf
Coast of Alabama, one of the most beautiful places in
the world. So I try to get down there more
(05:43):
than once once a year. Unfortunately, many times I don't
make it even my one time, but it is an
area that it's well traveled. I've gone through there, and
I have to go through there to get back home
many times to go see my family in South Louisiana.
So I've traveled this road many many times where this
case actually originates from. And that's one of the things
(06:04):
that caught my eye, other than the fact and I'll
go ahead and kind of give something away here that
it's you know, this case is being made possible as
result or the results are being made possible as the
results of our friends in the Woodlands in Texas at Austhram.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
But the guy was known as Baldwin County John Doe
for a long time. Here's where it started. On nineteen
ninety four. Nineteen ninety four, and a person just walking
in a wooded area off of and I want to
get this right off of State Highway to twenty five five.
Reasons this is important is because in the late eighties
(06:41):
and early nineties they were doing a huge construction project
along I sixty five heading from it goes from Huntsville
to Birmingham, Montgomery and all the way down to Mobile.
That's what I sixty five does. And they were working
on I sixty five in Baldwin County in the late eighties.
Now this the remains here found off of Highway two
(07:02):
twenty five. Now you've got skeletal remains, not a body,
not flesh and bone, skeletal remains. However, with these skeletal remains,
there were some pieces of evidence, some clues, in particular
a trucker hat that said America by birth, Texan by
(07:23):
grace of God. So you immediately know right off, okay,
if either the killer or the victim is from Texas. Now,
in this case, I was shocked to find out that
this person, this skeleton that they think was the early
fifties has an inhaler. I thought, you're reading the story
(07:47):
in the background. I'm thinking, Okay, he's got an inhaler,
means he had asthma. No, he had an inhaler for emphysema.
That's how bad. And look, I'm not trying to sell
you on the benefits of smoke here. But you know
what inmphasema at late forties, early fifties, I didn't even
think that was a thing, Joe, So, oh it is
(08:08):
is shocking.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Yeah, And a lot of it is dependent upon upon
your your How can I say it's dependent upon I
don't know if it's genetic predisposition, but how resilient your
body happens to be My grandfather every Sunday night he
would go outside in the backyard and he would hand
roll his own cigarettes for the entire week. And he
(08:34):
never had se well, it's emphasema, COPD, crowd constructive pulmonary disease.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
He didn't.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
He did not have that all right. Now, he did
die of cancer that had metastised to his brain. But yeah, so,
but yeah, not everybody does interesting thing about emphasema. And
I'll you know, Dave, I'm reflecting back many years ago
when I was in the morgue, and people that work
in medicine will probably know what I'm talking about. When
(09:04):
you're treating people that have respiratory problems like emphysema, one
of the things that one of the diagnostic things that
you can look at with the lungs. You know, people think, well,
if you if you have somebody who's been a chronic smoker,
you'll see dark areas in the lungs. And that doesn't
mean that that's cancer. What it means is that's carbon deposits.
And so you'll see that. You know, as we as
(09:26):
we dissect out the lungs, it's called bread loafing, where
we'll slice the lungs and you kind of flip through
the organs like a like a book.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Is really what it'sping. But on the exteriorating if you're
talking about old, nasty lung that from an emphasis of
a smoker, and you're bread loafing, Are you going to
go home and eat a spam sandwich? Is that what
we're gonna do, spam and tomatoes.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
No, I mean, you have to survive, so you you
just get used to it and you grind on you
gotta do what you gotta do.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
I don't know, it's I don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
There's many things that that you know, go on out
there that people engage in and then they.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Go and eat.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
There's certain musical groups that if I had to listen
to that particular musical group, I could not eat the
best steak.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
In the world.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
It's just it's you know that certain people will listen
to they will remain nameless. But but yeah, in our world,
you know, it's one of the things that you see.
And here's something interesting when I try to describe what
Inmphasema presents as to like my students at school. I
know that you have a grandson, and so with my
(10:37):
grandkids too. If you ever come across packing bubbles, you
know what I'm talking about, the little things that you
can pop. They've got big ones, and then they got
the kind that are real tactile. You know, you got
the big ones you can step on. Well, on the
surface of the lungs, you develop these little air pockets
and they're called blebs b l e b s, and
so they look like those little packing bubbles and you
(10:58):
can take your hand, your gloved hand, and you run
it across the surface of the lung and you'll see
these little things kind of manifest themselves pretty quickly, and
they're kind of these little a rated areas in there,
and it's a it's an indication that from a capacity standpoint,
your lungs are giving way. And so you'll see people
(11:20):
that that cannot process oxygen like they normally would. And
we hear emphysema more commonly. You know you're going to
hear COPD is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and it's a
horrible condition and not everybody develops it as a result
of smoking, but yeah, it's one of the major contributors
to that, and if you've been smoking for a long
(11:41):
long time, you're going to have a higher risk of it.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Back to Baldwin County, John Doe, Yeah, they don't know
why there is an inhaler, but would an inhaler used
for emphysema would be different than an inhaler used for asthma.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Yeah, yeah, so it's going to be and it would
be something that you know because there are certain certain
well there are prescribed inhaler's obviously for asthma, but if
you're talking about COPD, is going to be something a
bit more specific, dependent upon the pulmonologist, you know, that's
prescribing this thing for you, and that's probably who you
would see.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
So then that would have been a clue, huge, and
that would have been a clue. That would have been
evidence of Hey, either the either the victim had in
Zima or the killer had in Vizma and left this behind.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
It fell at the same good point. I like that
you've been playing clue.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
I like that, Yeah, because you guys, no, listen, listen,
what do we have so far as far as let's
talk about.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
We don't ever use I don't I don't.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Ever use word clue. It's a cool word. But what
what if, in fact, we are talking about bits along
the continuum here from an evidentry standpoint that we might
find it to see and there are many of these
you kind of talked about it just a second ago.
We've got this hat that is maybe in Texas, it's
not that union, but in Baldwin County, Alabama. That's a
(13:05):
significant bid because now you're talking about a person that
identifies in some way with the state of Texas. Now
they're physically here, their geographic location has changed. You're talking
about a person that probably has trouble breathing, all right,
because you've got this very specific inhaler that's found there, Dave.
(13:25):
I even think that adjacent to the area where the
skeleton remains were found there were a pair of tinted
bifocals as well. And again it's it's what I refer
to as the evidentiary funnel. You know, we put data
in and then it begins to narrow, you know, down down, down,
(13:46):
down down until where you know where we can actually
identify something would come up with maybe larger clues. They
are going to points in the right direction.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Along with the bunk, along with the skeleton remains. You
mentioned the bifocals that are prescriptions and they're tinted. There
also is a mechanical pen and pencil set. There's also
a welder's tip. So you've got a number of things here,
okay that we torch tip coupled with prescription by vocals
(14:19):
that are tinted, I think, and then again the mechanical
pen and pencil set. You're looking at somebody who is
quite possibly a welder at least once in that field
as your potential victim. And based on the hat probably
from Texas. Now we are in South Alabama, Baldwin County,
and it's nineteen ninety four. Now, when you find skeletal remains,
(14:42):
you're not thinking about somebody who was camping out last
night and had a heart attack and died. You've got
skeleton remains and you, my friend justin Scott Morgan, to
begin with, how long have those remains been there?
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Well, in order to be to the point where they were,
you know, where they're that degraded a protracted period of time.
As a matter of fact, it would be see how
can I say this? For even the best forensic anthropologists,
they're not going to be able to narrow that down
(15:17):
anymore than probably I don't think that they could even
get it I don't know that they could get it
as tight as two to three years. I think that
it would be probably a broader spectrum. Yeah, a lot
of it. It's heavily dependent upon environmental conditions. Here's something
interesting if for those that have never been to this area,
let me give you an idea, just a sense.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Of how wild this area is.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
If you remember, David, I know you do. Do you
remember when the Amtrak train went off the rails and
it went into the waterways that are essentially adjacent to
that area. We have people die in there, and I
had friends that went down there to work that scene.
They were fighting off gators in that area. You're talking
about an area that it's very very swampy, it's wetland area.
(16:03):
The you know, you have this very diverse biosystem that's
down there. It's very harsh.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
I just think about Florida, uh, South Louisiana, South Alabama,
it's swampy.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
So it's fascinating to me that the skeleton is is
disintact where they're able to actually and the volume of
rain that these people get down there, and you know,
like you watch our state weather here in Alabama will
be dry as a bone up in the area where
you know we're up in North Alabama. Down there every
(16:42):
single day, you know, particularly spring summer, you can set
your you can set your watch by Yeah, it's gonna
start raining about two or three o'clock every day and
the body is out there. So I would be very
interested to know what the remainder of the area look like.
Was this man's remains or were these this man's remains
(17:04):
deposited in an area that was kind of depressed, that
would hold on to every element. How many elements did
they have left behind that they could actually do things
like measurements, assessments, all this stuff. How much data? Because
I can tell you this, they still had enough pieces
of the puzzle to where this guy is kind of
(17:28):
coming into focus. We know we've got a white male.
We know we've got a guy that has trouble breathing,
and we know that we have a person that probably
came from Texas. You know, Dave, I'm what's called a
(17:52):
professional shove leaner. And now I don't mean I worked
for the DOT. What I mean is that I'm afraid,
frustrated anthropologist at heart. And the reason I'm always been fad.
You said, I'm a history guy, and I am. I
think as a little boy, I used to envision myself
that was one of the first things I think I
(18:13):
remember wanting to do with something in archaeology, because I
would think about what it would be like to discover
those things that were long since hidden and be able
to analyze them. And still to this day, if you
bring some element from a skeleton in I'm laser focused,
and I'm more laser focused on not what my thoughts
(18:38):
are about it, but what brighter people than I, what
their thoughts are about it. Because I'm always fascinated by
anthropologists because they can take an element of a skeleton
and they can begin to tell a story, a story
that I would fail at telling. But yet they're so
tuned in to what they do and they understand the
science behind it that they can begin to paint a biography.
(19:02):
And here's an I'm gonna throw an interesting turn out
to you that I don't think I've ever used before,
and it originates with a man that is considered up
with Bill bass Doctor Bassett founded the Body Farm. A
guy that equally is held in quite high esteem in
the forensic anthropology world is a guy named Clyde Snow.
(19:27):
And doctor Snow was at was at the University of Oklahoma,
big smoker, by the way. I got to meet doctor
Snow a couple of times, and he coined a phrase, Dave,
and the phrase is called osteo biography, and pretty much
just by the by that name alone, what you know.
(19:48):
And this is in the early days when forensic anthropology was,
you know, really coming in, when people began to appreciate
the utility of it. Now we understand it, but back
then it was a different kettle of fish. And what
doctor Snow, what he opined was that if you can
understand the underlying skeletal structure as it applies to the dead,
(20:11):
not necessarily in life, yeah, in life as well, but
he's talking about those things that are left behind, maybe
with elements of life, trauma, growth, all those sorts of things,
you can tell the story of an individual. And every
time I see a skeletal remain, I reflect on that
term that doctor Snow developed all those years ago in osteobiography,
(20:35):
and I think with our man in Baldwin County, we've
started to kind of kind of see a biography come
into focus here, haven't we.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Their investigators, you know, you're starting with again, skeletal remains
in Baldwin County and found in January of ninety four.
In a matter of months, investigators we're able to det
dermed that they believed that, first of all, the skeleton
remains were victim of a homicide. That's part one, Part
(21:08):
two based on what they were able to find out.
And I'm wondering how they came about this, but they
believed The investigators believed that this murder took place nineteen
eighty eight, nineteen eighty nine. That would put the skeleton
remains there for five years. Well, what I thought, the
reason I was asking you earlier about the inhaler, and
(21:28):
you know, the different types of I didn't know there
were different types of inhalers. I mean, I really didn't, Joe.
But they would have a prescription on that inhaler, they
would have a serial. Now there'd be something on that
inhaler that could be tracked, I would think, and you know,
that would be at least a start. But they came
up with investigators came up with eighty eight eighty nine.
So they began peeling back from there. And what they
(21:53):
found was while going through this area, a lot of
men from all over it probably women too, going to
just say men, but in this case it's a male skeleton.
And there were a lot of workers from all over
that were in South Alabama to work on the Ice
sixty five expansion. It's a major thoroughfare, major if you
(22:14):
drive north south in Alabama, you're on sixty five. Probably
a matter of fact, you can get on sixty five
and go up to Nashville right and beyond.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yeah, yeah, and beyond. And the thing about it is
it terminates. It terminates in arguably the longest continually running
east west thoroughfare in the United States, and that's im
it dumps into it, which starts I think in Jacksonville, Florida,
(22:43):
and runs all the way to San Diego. So you
know that's a major artery or a major vessel, as
they say in I guess in the traffic.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
So they're working on I sixty five all through Baldwin
County to get to it, ten to.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Expand that, and trust me, they're still working on it today.
I don't think the work ever stops. But that's just
me being cynical there. It's it is. It is reality.
And look, I wouldn't want to work on side of
the road doing that job. It's it's I've worked cases
involving DT workers have been struck by vehicles and it's
a dangerous.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
That frustrat do those signs slow down when workers or
president people don't, because you've seen they don't.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
They don't it all.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Oh yeah, I have. I've seen these guys get clipped.
I've seen people be rear ended and it's horrible. But
to your point, they require you know. And one of
the things I was thinking about with that that that
welder stip that you were talking about, and the dark
sunglasses as well, because I've been around enough welders to
know not all of them wear facial shields. Some of
(23:40):
them will just have dark glasses on many times. Another
interesting thing about welders is that they will develop these
little scars on their hands, their neck, their face where
they're getting popped for these things. It's fascinating to me.
I've got enough little boy in me. I still like
to watch people build things. And one of the primary
things in my estimation that like, when you're building a
(24:03):
roadway like this, and if it's a poured concrete surface,
you have to have rebar, and so rebar are those
posts that kind of crisscross or cross hatch cross one another.
I know I'm going to get some welder out there
that's going to say, you don't know what you're talking about. Right,
You're probably right, I'll admit it, but not a problem.
But I'm fascinated by what you do, and so welders
(24:25):
would be would be a huge part of building a
road or certainly doing an expansion. And it's not just
the rebar that has to be bound in that area.
You pour the concrete over and it reinforces. But also
any kind of railings that are being put up, you know,
you're gonna have to have skilled labor like that. He's
(24:45):
not just leaning on a shovel. Okay, He's out there
for a specific task. And there's money associated, big money
associated with any kind of company that can get a
DOT contract like this to build out a US interstate.
And yes, so people would come from all over the
country in order to get these kinds of jobs or
(25:06):
happening all the time. So going back to skeletal remains
that are actually found in relatively close proximity to where
this build was going on, you begin to try to understand,
while I've got a few clues here, who might this
person be and do they have any you know, is
there anybody that is missing out there that might fit
(25:27):
into any of these categories?
Speaker 3 (25:29):
Joe, what they ended up doing after the investigation and
they never set this case aside. It wasn't like they went, well,
we got the skeletal remains and that's it. They knew
that based on Okay, go back to the glasses again,
these are not just sunglasses. They're not just dark, they
are prescription bifocal darkened glasses. There's a welder's tip, there's
(25:53):
mechanical pen and pencil. They know that they're dealing with
somebody who was probably here working on the highway as
a welder. So this is not somebody who was camping
out and scavenging food out of trash cans. And this
particular individual needed to be identified, you know. And so
they felt like they had enough evidence to go with
to get him identified, but couldn't do it, and it
(26:17):
just laid there. Now, they kept the evidence, Joe. They
the investigation that you always talk about, how great, how
good they have to be in that stage of preserving
the evidence. Yes, and in this case, the investigators in
charge of preserving all this evidence did a good job
because they were able to open this backup because now
(26:38):
here we are, granted it's thirty years later, Joe, but
thirty years later, what do we have. We got author
them and we've got DNA.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Yeah, we do, and we've also got an individual whose
life ended probably out there where he was found. Because
one of the things that they discovered day was in
the examination of the skelp remains is that this individual
had sustained a gunshot one to the head, which is
a big tail. Do you how many times have we
talked about skeletal remains over the years where we you know,
(27:12):
I'll say, in the absence of soft tissue, unless there's
an injury to the head or to one of the ribs,
we're not going to be able to tell a lot
about the trauma. This is one of those cases where
if you have the skull and you've got a circular
defect or even kind of a re irregular or what's
called a keyhole defect to the skull, which means the bullet.
(27:36):
I hate to use word tumble because it's so misconstrued,
but you can have an odd shot, you know, entering
like into the skull, and it will look almost the
projectile enters at an odd angle, and it will give
the appearance they call it a keyhole. It looks like
an old skeleton keyhole, and so it'll give that kind
of that kind of appearance. But you know, they're very
(28:00):
fortunate in.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
This case that.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
They do have the skull so that they could begin
to try to interpret what they have not talked about
in this case, and what I would be fascinated to
know is this a through and through gunshot one? And
what I mean by that if this is a if
this is in fact an execution style event, and they're
shot in the back of the head, think President Lincoln, Okay,
(28:28):
where the projectile enters the cranial vault, Okay, passes through
the brain and then strikes the interior and kind of
comes to rest in the intier Or is it through
and through which means that you would have you would
have an entrance wound and then an exit wound. I
(28:48):
bet many people out there are saying, well, Morgan, how
can you tell the difference. I'm glad you asked with
a gunshot one to the skull, okay particularly, And I'm
just let me just throw this one out there. I'm
not saying that's what happened in this case. However, Let's
just say that back in on the table of the
skull posteriorly back here, if you have an entrance, if
(29:11):
you have an entrance through the back of the skull,
unless it's a contact where you've got a lot of
gas injury, and you can still figure this out even
with gas injury where the bone kind of comes apart
but let's just say it's a clean, neat circular defect.
You will have on the entrance area, you'll have what's
referred to as internal beveling. And if you'll think about
(29:35):
your your your toe molding in your in your house
that runs along the floorboards, it's it's beveled.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Okay, So the.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Beveling actually will be internal. So the projectile actually, like
if we have this is a live around right here,
So if this projectile actually enters in to the back
of the skull, okay, then it will in fact blow
out the interior of the skull, and the interior skull
(30:05):
will be beveled. Okay, the xterior will not. It will
just be like a hole inside the skull. You'll have
the beveling. Now, if the bullet passes all the way
through the skull, you will have a smooth hole at
the exit defect, and the exterior will have external beveling
if it's through and through. Okay, that's how we can
(30:28):
determine entrance exit. It's also how on a skull alone,
if you have throw and through, you've got a better shot.
If you've got two defects to determine trajectory. You know,
is it from back to front, is it from front
to back? Is it from left to right, left to right,
or is it from right to left? Is it from
(30:50):
above to below or from below to above. All of
these little elements can be determined from that single point.
And here's the big thing. Whoever did this to this
man to this day, if they are still alive, it's
still out there and to date has not been held accountable.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
M brother Dave. Let me ask you a question. When
you were.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Of driving age, if you could have had an American
muscle car from back in our error okay, not error,
but era I have a lot of errors, uh, but
eras that you were kind of envious of that the
other kids had.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
No was there one?
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Was there one that you that you that you would want?
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Wanted car?
Speaker 3 (31:54):
Joe I had the eighty one Camaro and that style
digs I had one Camaro. Now, got to remember, just
like all vehicles, they changed the style every couple of years.
And if you remember the Transam from Smoking in the Bandit,
remember how they with the oh Man that was huge, Well,
(32:14):
you had that same style. You had the Firebird, you
had the trans Am, and then you had the Camaro
and the Z twenty eight, and so I had that
Camaro and in this particular case when this came into play,
and look, I was shocked at this story, Joe, just
so you know, because of the victim. And you know,
(32:36):
we started off by telling you the remains were found
in January ninety four, thirty years later, nobody knew they were.
That meant some family was missing somebody and they've been
gone for a long time and they didn't know where
they were. And so I thought it fascinating that the
evidence was able. They were able to take this evidence
they had and get it to offer them in Texas
(32:59):
and say, oh, it was authoring that was able to
extract the DNA, to get a DNA profile. That opened
up the investigation Joe, to where they were able to go, okay,
wait a minute, now we've got an idea. Because they
already had kind of figured out that the victim possibly
probably died in eighty eight or eighty nine, possibly probably
(33:19):
came from Texas and possibly probably working on I sixty
five as it was expanding at that time. So they
had plenty of evidence to go on in that direction,
but they didn't know who. I mean, think of you've
got hundreds, if not thousands of people that worked at
different times along the way. You know, that's where the
(33:39):
h came up.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Yeah, it did.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
And you know, we can based upon skeletal identification. We
know that we're not dealing with a female. We're not
dealing with a young male. We're not dealing with a
young female. We're not dealing necessarily with an elderly male
or female. We're dealing with a male skeleton that is
(34:02):
probably in the mid part of their life, all right,
and this would have been back in the eighties, all right,
So just to kind of contextualize that. So if you're
if they're saying eighty eight, eighty nine, and you think
that you have somebody that might be in the fifty
age range, okay, and this is kind of demographically how
(34:22):
this works if you're working backwards as an investigator, So
if you can go back in time and think about, well,
let's see if somebody was in their fifties and in
the late eighties, all right, Am I talking about somebody
(34:43):
that may have been born in the thirties, perhaps that's
when they were born, you know, coming forward, so now
I can tighten my wind down investigatively, got somebody connection
to Texas, somebody that was a welder that fits within
the parameters of this this particular age group, who might
they be? And so you begin to look and again,
(35:07):
in more of an analog time, you know, we would
look through missing persons reports, dave at them. We even
had missing persons files, because we would have families that
would call things into us and say I'm missing this person,
and you would take down information and you would keep
that as a running file in whatever jurisdiction you were from.
(35:28):
Not that you would have it, I think a lot
of people would would do that many times. We always
kind of joked about it. It was like if family
member was missing and the person had an alcohol problem
and they would go on a bender for a while.
The spouse that was left alone at home would when
they finally did come back home and say, oh.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Even call the more looking for you. You know.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
So we always you know, kind of got a laugh
out of that. But there's a kernel of truth in
that too, because you can have this this profile that's developed.
The trick is do you have the time and the
power to go back and go through all these files
in Texas Big Place due Bud Big Place, how many
people are missing out of Texas that would fit within
(36:11):
that demostra.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
Goodness, there's you know, the thing, Joe, is that they
didn't even have a set day or time. I mean
that they had years. Okay, you've got a couple of
years to deal with, and that's just that's a lot
to go on. But I mean, that's a lot to
deal with. But the folks that offer them using the
DNA profile, they were able to start, you know, because
the genetic genealogy, it's not just you know, and you
(36:34):
and I have talked about it. It's not just getting
a d in, creating a DNA strand and then putting
it in the machine and boom iopops, Joseph Scott Moore,
that doesn't happen. It's like you then do you have
to go back to the law enforcement people have to
sit down and do the work. You're starting to tie
together people who could this be? Where could they have
been and where were they in nineteen eighty eight and
(36:54):
eighty nine. It's hard for it's shoe leather work. And
the thing is truly is and it keeps going.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
And one of the cobs, oh yeah, no, you're you're
absolutely right, and they didn't give up on this because
you know, one of my biggest fears with the and
I mentioned it, and I'll continue to mention this. I'm
kind of admonishing, you know, future young investigators. You cannot
simply sit there and say, well, the boys down at
(37:22):
the laugh will solve it for me, because you know,
we're in a push button world, right and that's kind
of an old old phrase, but you know what I'm saying,
the technology will solve it. No, you still have to
do the legwork on the case. We can produce a product,
uh you know in forensics and hand us over to
you some type of profile that has in fact been created.
(37:43):
But just because you have that profile doesn't necessarily mean
or guarantee that you're going to be able to follow through.
And Dave, in this particular case, they did follow through.
I want to mention something about AUTHORAM and their technique
real quick because you know, you know, within the next
few weeks you're going to find out more about this.
But justifice it to say, I'm very familiar with their
(38:04):
techniques now because I've applied them. But I can tell
you that the harvesting the harvesting of this data from
this the skeleton remains came from potentially a couple of places.
Number one place, if there was a tooth left in
this in the skeleton's jawline at all, either in the
(38:26):
the mandible or if it was in the maxilla, it's
going to be a molar, all right, So that's the
first place that you would look to if there's nothing there.
Top of the skull comes off, which is referred to
as a calvarium, and you're going to go into an
area that's called there's two bones called petres bones just
(38:48):
like petros petros, you know, like rock, and so they're
like the roof of the internal ear canal right, that's
the best way I can describe it. It's very thick,
so those bones would be extracted and contained within that thick,
dense bone. You would go in because it's kind of protected. Okay,
you run. You have a better shot because it is
(39:11):
so insular in there that you can extract viable DNA
to begin to create. Would David and Kristen do at
Authram they can begin to harvest DNA out of there,
or I guess they could have gone into the head
of like a long bone like the femeral head and
harvest it from there. But you know, I'm thinking probably
(39:33):
the skull teeth or the Petro's bone. It's from there
that they begin to build this out. And Dave, I'll
be dog gone if they didn't get hit.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
Unbelievable that after thirty years, thirty plus years of being
known as Baldwin County John Doe, they got a name
James Carol Jackson. He was a resident of Texas. Here's
the part about the car Okay, he left Texas look
for work on I sixty five in Baldwin County. He
(40:03):
is a welder. He was also a former marine. This
is a man who served his country and he is
now fifty ish and he and his wife were on
good terms, but they were at that time separated. And
James came to Alabama from Texas in his red Camaro.
(40:25):
Meant the world to him. And the thing is is
that police, now, by the way, as this has come
about with James Carl Jackson, Joe, they're looking for that camaro.
They're nineteen seventy eight to eighty camaro, red white interior.
They haven't found it anywhere. They believe it. Police believe
it was stolen. But he came here from Texas. And
(40:46):
by the way, for the first year he was here,
he got here in eighty eight. First year, he's talking
to family every week, every week, he's in contact. Then
all of a sudden, for no reason, contact stops. Now
remember remains found January of ninety four. Police believed you've
(41:07):
been there five years. They believe that that remains we're
from a man who was killed in eighty eight or
eighty nine. That fits right where James Carrol Jackson was
in Alabama working on I sixty five. And by golly Joe,
they identified Baldwin County John.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
Doe, Yeah, they did. And here's I just want everybody
to understand this, this case that we're talking about right
now is in fact a cold case. And Dave, back
to what you were saying about the Camaro. If that
car still exists out there, that car is going to
have a specific identifier. It's called the VEN number, and
it can be traced back. They actually have a pretty
(41:46):
good photo of the car as he had it back then,
because as you said, he was very proud of it.
And I got to tell you, back in nineteen eighty
eighty one, if I'd had this car, I would have
been proud of it too. And you know that car
if it exists out there, this is the big mystery.
If it was in fact stolen and they had this car,
(42:07):
it's it's still floating around there and it still has
the same ven number. This could lead back to solving
a big mystery. So let me give you a couple
of phone numbers here real quick. If you have any
knowledge regarding this particular case out of Baldwin County, Alabama.
Here's a couple of numbers. So the Baldwin County Sheriff's
(42:28):
office number is get this airy code two five to
one nine three seven o two two. That's two five
to one nine three seven two two. In addition, they
actually have a point of contact, a cold case investigator
(42:48):
by the name of Clint Cadenhead. That's Clint Cadenhead. He's
cold case investigator with Balden County. And here's his number.
Got you pen ready?
Speaker 1 (42:59):
Here we go.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
His number is area code two five to one nine
seven two eight five eight nine, option seven. Here we
go again, two five to one ninety seven two eight
five eight nine, option seven. If you have any information
(43:23):
about this gentleman that went missing out of Baldwin County.
If you've seen somebody that you knew was a welder
that sported a hat that said American by birth, texting
by the Grace of God. He loved to wear western
style shirts that had the big pearl buttons on it.
He wore dark bifocal sunglasses. Here's a big clue too.
(43:43):
He smoked Benson and Hedges cigarettes. He had this Camaro.
Speaker 3 (43:49):
Now, he also liked to drink, and he hung out
at one specific place. It was the tennis the Tensaw Lodge.
So if you were working, think about this. If you
were working in the late eighties on I sixty five
in Baldwin County and you hung out at the Tensile
Lodge and you remember a guy driving a red Kamaro,
which he would have told you you might be able
(44:11):
to provide that piece of evidence that could solve the murder. Remember,
he didn't just fall down and die. He was murdered.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
He was murdered and left down there. My friends, let
me tell you something, and you know what I'm going
to say. If you've been listening to body bags long enough,
I believe in what Authurm is doing. This is the
most noble of all things, as it applies to the
world of death investigation. You think you want to be
an investigator, you're wondering how you can help. I urge
(44:42):
any of you all to please go and visit the
website dnasolves dot com. That's DNA solves dot com. There
at that website you can identify open cases. There may
even be some that are in your region that peak
your interest. Perhaps. Look, David and Kristen are not asking
(45:02):
for a million bucks here, all right. They're just asking
for a few bucks so that they can continue to
move towards the goals of getting these names struck off
of the nameless list, all of these unidentified people. All right,
you go, you find a case that might interest you,
You target that case, you donate money to it, tell
(45:24):
everybody about it, get the word out. Guys.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
We're in a brave new world here.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
We have the ability to get answers where answers were
not possible for you ever years ago. And the biggest
thing is to offer hope where people seemed completely devoid
of it. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is body
(45:49):
Bags
Quality bats with Joseph Scott More a long long time ago.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I was fortunate enough to be able to serve my
country in the Army National Guard. And as a result
of being in the National Guard again many many years ago,
when you go out and do field exercises or what
they're called or ftx's, and this is predates the days
of the dehydrated food, which is you got a lot
(00:36):
of these in the MRIs. We were still using sea
rats back then. Sea rats were something that went back
to I think Korea had k rats before that, but
sea rats came in little cardboard boxes and we in
the Guard you always got hand me down, so we
would get sea rats, believe it or not in the
(00:58):
eighties that were Vietnam era sea rats, and so it
would be canned food that had been canned for troops
in Vietnam and probably.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Had never been used.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
But one of the interesting things that I discovered about
sea rats was this in every one of those boxes
that you opened up, you never knew what kind of
meal you were going to get. Franks and beans was
actually my favorite. There would be a miniature pack of
cigarettes and we got a kick out of opening those up,
(01:30):
you know, as young kids in the Guard and then
you open up the box and the things. Of course,
the cigarettes would just like crumble in your hand, but
you would still eat the food. And many of our troops,
going back a long, long time ago, even back to
World War One, became hooked on cigarettes as a result
(01:51):
of their time in service in the US military. There's
even a famous image of Red Cross nurses handing out
cigarettes to World War One troops off of the back
of a flat pad. Today, we're going to talk about
a man who once was a young troop, a man
(02:11):
that served in the United States Marine Corps back in
the nineteen fifties, and he too had an addiction to cigarettes.
I often wonder about this case. Did that dependency upon
cigarettes start with his service in the Marine Corps. I
(02:33):
don't know, but I know one thing it led to.
It led to him having to deal with emphysema up
until the day he was murdered. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
and this is body backs.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Brother Dave. Back at you again. Man.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Okay, before we dig too far, I got to add
I my family is a military family as well. I
failed the physical Okay, I'd had a knee surgery and
I failed the physical. I couldn't get in even though
I tried. But I heard, and maybe you can help
me with this. I heard that in basic training you
got extra time to take a smoke break. So if
(03:19):
you smoked, you would get fifteen minutes every other hour
to smoke cigarette or whatever. And if you didn't smoke,
you keep picking up trash or whatever you know, do
to you had.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
No, no, no, you still had to pick up trash.
It didn't matter if you have a cigarette in your mouth.
But what they would say, here's an interesting term, and
all the old timers will remember this. The sergeants you say,
the smoking lamp is now lit, and so everybody that
smoked would go out and they would they would, you know,
break out their their cigarettes and you know, begin to smoke.
(03:49):
And also keep in mind, back then it really sounded
like an old guy. You could go to the post exchange,
to the PX and you could buy like a whole
carton of cigarettes for next to nothing. I mean absolutely,
and I'm talking about high end cigarette. What would be
regarded as high end cigarettes, tobacco, and any kind of
alcohol you could purchase for what would be comparatively speaking
(04:13):
a nominal fee. And what was really cool is that
your gas used to be cheaper. You could you could
fill up on post and you know, those days I
think are probably gone now. But yeah, so cigarette smoking
was something that was actually encouraged.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
I think I do know this, you're a history guy.
During World War Two, one of the things that that
was issued to those who smoked was a flameless lighter
for infantry because if you're on the front lines and
you know you used to light up your matter, your
lighter is going to flame up and they're going to
spot you. So they created a lighter that actually could
(04:47):
light a cigarette without a flame. Pretty interesting.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I've never seen one of those, but we used to
in the same searet. Kids. You used to get what
we're called waterproof matches and it was like a regular
book of matches and it would But what we used
to do if you smoked is that everybody would get
one person would unwrap their poncho and you throw your
poncho over yourself and then you would light it. But
it wasn't like to keep from giving away your position
(05:12):
so that the wind did knock your flame down. But
we were in the guard, so you know, it wasn't
like we were on the front lawns or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
But yeah, that's just one of the memories.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
And I got to tell you what this case they
originating out of our home state of Alabama and a
place that I'm kind of familiar with because my favorite
place in probably in the whole world, is a golf
coast of Yeah, it is my happy place, the Gulf
Coast of Alabama, one of the most beautiful places in
the world. So I try to get down there more
(05:43):
than once once a year. Unfortunately, many times I don't
make it even my one time, but it is an
area that it's well traveled. I've gone through there, and
I have to go through there to get back home
many times to go see my family in South Louisiana.
So I've traveled this road many many times where this
case actually originates from. And that's one of the things
(06:04):
that caught my eye, other than the fact and I'll
go ahead and kind of give something away here that
it's you know, this case is being made possible as
result or the results are being made possible as the
results of our friends in the Woodlands in Texas at Austhram.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
But the guy was known as Baldwin County John Doe
for a long time. Here's where it started. On nineteen
ninety four. Nineteen ninety four, and a person just walking
in a wooded area off of and I want to
get this right off of State Highway to twenty five five.
Reasons this is important is because in the late eighties
(06:41):
and early nineties they were doing a huge construction project
along I sixty five heading from it goes from Huntsville
to Birmingham, Montgomery and all the way down to Mobile.
That's what I sixty five does. And they were working
on I sixty five in Baldwin County in the late eighties.
Now this the remains here found off of Highway two
(07:02):
twenty five. Now you've got skeletal remains, not a body,
not flesh and bone, skeletal remains. However, with these skeletal remains,
there were some pieces of evidence, some clues, in particular
a trucker hat that said America by birth, Texan by
(07:23):
grace of God. So you immediately know right off, okay,
if either the killer or the victim is from Texas. Now,
in this case, I was shocked to find out that
this person, this skeleton that they think was the early
fifties has an inhaler. I thought, you're reading the story
(07:47):
in the background. I'm thinking, Okay, he's got an inhaler,
means he had asthma. No, he had an inhaler for emphysema.
That's how bad. And look, I'm not trying to sell
you on the benefits of smoke here. But you know
what inmphasema at late forties, early fifties, I didn't even
think that was a thing, Joe, So, oh it is
(08:08):
is shocking.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Yeah, And a lot of it is dependent upon upon
your your How can I say it's dependent upon I
don't know if it's genetic predisposition, but how resilient your
body happens to be My grandfather every Sunday night he
would go outside in the backyard and he would hand
roll his own cigarettes for the entire week. And he
(08:34):
never had se well, it's emphasema, COPD, crowd constructive pulmonary disease.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
He didn't.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
He did not have that all right. Now, he did
die of cancer that had metastised to his brain. But yeah, so,
but yeah, not everybody does interesting thing about emphasema. And
I'll you know, Dave, I'm reflecting back many years ago
when I was in the morgue, and people that work
in medicine will probably know what I'm talking about. When
(09:04):
you're treating people that have respiratory problems like emphysema, one
of the things that one of the diagnostic things that
you can look at with the lungs. You know, people think, well,
if you if you have somebody who's been a chronic smoker,
you'll see dark areas in the lungs. And that doesn't
mean that that's cancer. What it means is that's carbon deposits.
And so you'll see that. You know, as we as
(09:26):
we dissect out the lungs, it's called bread loafing, where
we'll slice the lungs and you kind of flip through
the organs like a like a book.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Is really what it'sping. But on the exteriorating if you're
talking about old, nasty lung that from an emphasis of
a smoker, and you're bread loafing, Are you going to
go home and eat a spam sandwich? Is that what
we're gonna do, spam and tomatoes.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
No, I mean, you have to survive, so you you
just get used to it and you grind on you
gotta do what you gotta do.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
I don't know, it's I don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
There's many things that that you know, go on out
there that people engage in and then they.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Go and eat.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
There's certain musical groups that if I had to listen
to that particular musical group, I could not eat the
best steak.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
In the world.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
It's just it's you know that certain people will listen
to they will remain nameless. But but yeah, in our world,
you know, it's one of the things that you see.
And here's something interesting when I try to describe what
Inmphasema presents as to like my students at school. I
know that you have a grandson, and so with my
(10:37):
grandkids too. If you ever come across packing bubbles, you
know what I'm talking about, the little things that you
can pop. They've got big ones, and then they got
the kind that are real tactile. You know, you got
the big ones you can step on. Well, on the
surface of the lungs, you develop these little air pockets
and they're called blebs b l e b s, and
so they look like those little packing bubbles and you
(10:58):
can take your hand, your gloved hand, and you run
it across the surface of the lung and you'll see
these little things kind of manifest themselves pretty quickly, and
they're kind of these little a rated areas in there,
and it's a it's an indication that from a capacity standpoint,
your lungs are giving way. And so you'll see people
(11:20):
that that cannot process oxygen like they normally would. And
we hear emphysema more commonly. You know you're going to
hear COPD is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and it's a
horrible condition and not everybody develops it as a result
of smoking, but yeah, it's one of the major contributors
to that, and if you've been smoking for a long
(11:41):
long time, you're going to have a higher risk of it.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Back to Baldwin County, John Doe, Yeah, they don't know
why there is an inhaler, but would an inhaler used
for emphysema would be different than an inhaler used for asthma.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Yeah, yeah, so it's going to be and it would
be something that you know because there are certain certain
well there are prescribed inhaler's obviously for asthma, but if
you're talking about COPD, is going to be something a
bit more specific, dependent upon the pulmonologist, you know, that's
prescribing this thing for you, and that's probably who you
would see.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
So then that would have been a clue, huge, and
that would have been a clue. That would have been
evidence of Hey, either the either the victim had in
Zima or the killer had in Vizma and left this behind.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
It fell at the same good point. I like that
you've been playing clue.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
I like that, Yeah, because you guys, no, listen, listen,
what do we have so far as far as let's
talk about.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
We don't ever use I don't I don't.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Ever use word clue. It's a cool word. But what
what if, in fact, we are talking about bits along
the continuum here from an evidentry standpoint that we might
find it to see and there are many of these
you kind of talked about it just a second ago.
We've got this hat that is maybe in Texas, it's
not that union, but in Baldwin County, Alabama. That's a
(13:05):
significant bid because now you're talking about a person that
identifies in some way with the state of Texas. Now
they're physically here, their geographic location has changed. You're talking
about a person that probably has trouble breathing, all right,
because you've got this very specific inhaler that's found there, Dave.
(13:25):
I even think that adjacent to the area where the
skeleton remains were found there were a pair of tinted
bifocals as well. And again it's it's what I refer
to as the evidentiary funnel. You know, we put data
in and then it begins to narrow, you know, down down, down,
(13:46):
down down until where you know where we can actually
identify something would come up with maybe larger clues. They
are going to points in the right direction.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Along with the bunk, along with the skeleton remains. You
mentioned the bifocals that are prescriptions and they're tinted. There
also is a mechanical pen and pencil set. There's also
a welder's tip. So you've got a number of things here,
okay that we torch tip coupled with prescription by vocals
(14:19):
that are tinted, I think, and then again the mechanical
pen and pencil set. You're looking at somebody who is
quite possibly a welder at least once in that field
as your potential victim. And based on the hat probably
from Texas. Now we are in South Alabama, Baldwin County,
and it's nineteen ninety four. Now, when you find skeletal remains,
(14:42):
you're not thinking about somebody who was camping out last
night and had a heart attack and died. You've got
skeleton remains and you, my friend justin Scott Morgan, to
begin with, how long have those remains been there?
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Well, in order to be to the point where they were,
you know, where they're that degraded a protracted period of time.
As a matter of fact, it would be see how
can I say this? For even the best forensic anthropologists,
they're not going to be able to narrow that down
(15:17):
anymore than probably I don't think that they could even
get it I don't know that they could get it
as tight as two to three years. I think that
it would be probably a broader spectrum. Yeah, a lot
of it. It's heavily dependent upon environmental conditions. Here's something
interesting if for those that have never been to this area,
let me give you an idea, just a sense.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Of how wild this area is.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
If you remember, David, I know you do. Do you
remember when the Amtrak train went off the rails and
it went into the waterways that are essentially adjacent to
that area. We have people die in there, and I
had friends that went down there to work that scene.
They were fighting off gators in that area. You're talking
about an area that it's very very swampy, it's wetland area.
(16:03):
The you know, you have this very diverse biosystem that's
down there. It's very harsh.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
I just think about Florida, uh, South Louisiana, South Alabama,
it's swampy.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
So it's fascinating to me that the skeleton is is
disintact where they're able to actually and the volume of
rain that these people get down there, and you know,
like you watch our state weather here in Alabama will
be dry as a bone up in the area where
you know we're up in North Alabama. Down there every
(16:42):
single day, you know, particularly spring summer, you can set
your you can set your watch by Yeah, it's gonna
start raining about two or three o'clock every day and
the body is out there. So I would be very
interested to know what the remainder of the area look like.
Was this man's remains or were these this man's remains
(17:04):
deposited in an area that was kind of depressed, that
would hold on to every element. How many elements did
they have left behind that they could actually do things
like measurements, assessments, all this stuff. How much data? Because
I can tell you this, they still had enough pieces
of the puzzle to where this guy is kind of
(17:28):
coming into focus. We know we've got a white male.
We know we've got a guy that has trouble breathing,
and we know that we have a person that probably
came from Texas. You know, Dave, I'm what's called a
(17:52):
professional shove leaner. And now I don't mean I worked
for the DOT. What I mean is that I'm afraid,
frustrated anthropologist at heart. And the reason I'm always been fad.
You said, I'm a history guy, and I am. I
think as a little boy, I used to envision myself
that was one of the first things I think I
(18:13):
remember wanting to do with something in archaeology, because I
would think about what it would be like to discover
those things that were long since hidden and be able
to analyze them. And still to this day, if you
bring some element from a skeleton in I'm laser focused,
and I'm more laser focused on not what my thoughts
(18:38):
are about it, but what brighter people than I, what
their thoughts are about it. Because I'm always fascinated by
anthropologists because they can take an element of a skeleton
and they can begin to tell a story, a story
that I would fail at telling. But yet they're so
tuned in to what they do and they understand the
science behind it that they can begin to paint a biography.
(19:02):
And here's an I'm gonna throw an interesting turn out
to you that I don't think I've ever used before,
and it originates with a man that is considered up
with Bill bass Doctor Bassett founded the Body Farm. A
guy that equally is held in quite high esteem in
the forensic anthropology world is a guy named Clyde Snow.
(19:27):
And doctor Snow was at was at the University of Oklahoma,
big smoker, by the way. I got to meet doctor
Snow a couple of times, and he coined a phrase, Dave,
and the phrase is called osteo biography, and pretty much
just by the by that name alone, what you know.
(19:48):
And this is in the early days when forensic anthropology was,
you know, really coming in, when people began to appreciate
the utility of it. Now we understand it, but back
then it was a different kettle of fish. And what
doctor Snow, what he opined was that if you can
understand the underlying skeletal structure as it applies to the dead,
(20:11):
not necessarily in life, yeah, in life as well, but
he's talking about those things that are left behind, maybe
with elements of life, trauma, growth, all those sorts of things,
you can tell the story of an individual. And every
time I see a skeletal remain, I reflect on that
term that doctor Snow developed all those years ago in osteobiography,
(20:35):
and I think with our man in Baldwin County, we've
started to kind of kind of see a biography come
into focus here, haven't we.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Their investigators, you know, you're starting with again, skeletal remains
in Baldwin County and found in January of ninety four.
In a matter of months, investigators we're able to det
dermed that they believed that, first of all, the skeleton
remains were victim of a homicide. That's part one, Part
(21:08):
two based on what they were able to find out.
And I'm wondering how they came about this, but they
believed The investigators believed that this murder took place nineteen
eighty eight, nineteen eighty nine. That would put the skeleton
remains there for five years. Well, what I thought, the
reason I was asking you earlier about the inhaler, and
(21:28):
you know, the different types of I didn't know there
were different types of inhalers. I mean, I really didn't, Joe.
But they would have a prescription on that inhaler, they
would have a serial. Now there'd be something on that
inhaler that could be tracked, I would think, and you know,
that would be at least a start. But they came
up with investigators came up with eighty eight eighty nine.
So they began peeling back from there. And what they
(21:53):
found was while going through this area, a lot of
men from all over it probably women too, going to
just say men, but in this case it's a male skeleton.
And there were a lot of workers from all over
that were in South Alabama to work on the Ice
sixty five expansion. It's a major thoroughfare, major if you
(22:14):
drive north south in Alabama, you're on sixty five. Probably
a matter of fact, you can get on sixty five
and go up to Nashville right and beyond.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yeah, yeah, and beyond. And the thing about it is
it terminates. It terminates in arguably the longest continually running
east west thoroughfare in the United States, and that's im
it dumps into it, which starts I think in Jacksonville, Florida,
(22:43):
and runs all the way to San Diego. So you
know that's a major artery or a major vessel, as
they say in I guess in the traffic.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
So they're working on I sixty five all through Baldwin
County to get to it, ten to.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Expand that, and trust me, they're still working on it today.
I don't think the work ever stops. But that's just
me being cynical there. It's it is. It is reality.
And look, I wouldn't want to work on side of
the road doing that job. It's it's I've worked cases
involving DT workers have been struck by vehicles and it's
a dangerous.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
That frustrat do those signs slow down when workers or
president people don't, because you've seen they don't.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
They don't it all.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Oh yeah, I have. I've seen these guys get clipped.
I've seen people be rear ended and it's horrible. But
to your point, they require you know. And one of
the things I was thinking about with that that that
welder stip that you were talking about, and the dark
sunglasses as well, because I've been around enough welders to
know not all of them wear facial shields. Some of
(23:40):
them will just have dark glasses on many times. Another
interesting thing about welders is that they will develop these
little scars on their hands, their neck, their face where
they're getting popped for these things. It's fascinating to me.
I've got enough little boy in me. I still like
to watch people build things. And one of the primary
things in my estimation that like, when you're building a
(24:03):
roadway like this, and if it's a poured concrete surface,
you have to have rebar, and so rebar are those
posts that kind of crisscross or cross hatch cross one another.
I know I'm going to get some welder out there
that's going to say, you don't know what you're talking about. Right,
You're probably right, I'll admit it, but not a problem.
But I'm fascinated by what you do, and so welders
(24:25):
would be would be a huge part of building a
road or certainly doing an expansion. And it's not just
the rebar that has to be bound in that area.
You pour the concrete over and it reinforces. But also
any kind of railings that are being put up, you know,
you're gonna have to have skilled labor like that. He's
(24:45):
not just leaning on a shovel. Okay, He's out there
for a specific task. And there's money associated, big money
associated with any kind of company that can get a
DOT contract like this to build out a US interstate.
And yes, so people would come from all over the
country in order to get these kinds of jobs or
(25:06):
happening all the time. So going back to skeletal remains
that are actually found in relatively close proximity to where
this build was going on, you begin to try to understand,
while I've got a few clues here, who might this
person be and do they have any you know, is
there anybody that is missing out there that might fit
(25:27):
into any of these categories?
Speaker 3 (25:29):
Joe, what they ended up doing after the investigation and
they never set this case aside. It wasn't like they went, well,
we got the skeletal remains and that's it. They knew
that based on Okay, go back to the glasses again,
these are not just sunglasses. They're not just dark, they
are prescription bifocal darkened glasses. There's a welder's tip, there's
(25:53):
mechanical pen and pencil. They know that they're dealing with
somebody who was probably here working on the highway as
a welder. So this is not somebody who was camping
out and scavenging food out of trash cans. And this
particular individual needed to be identified, you know. And so
they felt like they had enough evidence to go with
to get him identified, but couldn't do it, and it
(26:17):
just laid there. Now, they kept the evidence, Joe. They
the investigation that you always talk about, how great, how
good they have to be in that stage of preserving
the evidence. Yes, and in this case, the investigators in
charge of preserving all this evidence did a good job
because they were able to open this backup because now
(26:38):
here we are, granted it's thirty years later, Joe, but
thirty years later, what do we have. We got author
them and we've got DNA.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Yeah, we do, and we've also got an individual whose
life ended probably out there where he was found. Because
one of the things that they discovered day was in
the examination of the skelp remains is that this individual
had sustained a gunshot one to the head, which is
a big tail. Do you how many times have we
talked about skeletal remains over the years where we you know,
(27:12):
I'll say, in the absence of soft tissue, unless there's
an injury to the head or to one of the ribs,
we're not going to be able to tell a lot
about the trauma. This is one of those cases where
if you have the skull and you've got a circular
defect or even kind of a re irregular or what's
called a keyhole defect to the skull, which means the bullet.
(27:36):
I hate to use word tumble because it's so misconstrued,
but you can have an odd shot, you know, entering
like into the skull, and it will look almost the
projectile enters at an odd angle, and it will give
the appearance they call it a keyhole. It looks like
an old skeleton keyhole, and so it'll give that kind
of that kind of appearance. But you know, they're very
(28:00):
fortunate in.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
This case that.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
They do have the skull so that they could begin
to try to interpret what they have not talked about
in this case, and what I would be fascinated to
know is this a through and through gunshot one? And
what I mean by that if this is a if
this is in fact an execution style event, and they're
shot in the back of the head, think President Lincoln, Okay,
(28:28):
where the projectile enters the cranial vault, Okay, passes through
the brain and then strikes the interior and kind of
comes to rest in the intier Or is it through
and through which means that you would have you would
have an entrance wound and then an exit wound. I
(28:48):
bet many people out there are saying, well, Morgan, how
can you tell the difference. I'm glad you asked with
a gunshot one to the skull, okay particularly, And I'm
just let me just throw this one out there. I'm
not saying that's what happened in this case. However, Let's
just say that back in on the table of the
skull posteriorly back here, if you have an entrance, if
(29:11):
you have an entrance through the back of the skull,
unless it's a contact where you've got a lot of
gas injury, and you can still figure this out even
with gas injury where the bone kind of comes apart
but let's just say it's a clean, neat circular defect.
You will have on the entrance area, you'll have what's
referred to as internal beveling. And if you'll think about
(29:35):
your your your toe molding in your in your house
that runs along the floorboards, it's it's beveled.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Okay, So the.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Beveling actually will be internal. So the projectile actually, like
if we have this is a live around right here,
So if this projectile actually enters in to the back
of the skull, okay, then it will in fact blow
out the interior of the skull, and the interior skull
(30:05):
will be beveled. Okay, the xterior will not. It will
just be like a hole inside the skull. You'll have
the beveling. Now, if the bullet passes all the way
through the skull, you will have a smooth hole at
the exit defect, and the exterior will have external beveling
if it's through and through. Okay, that's how we can
(30:28):
determine entrance exit. It's also how on a skull alone,
if you have throw and through, you've got a better shot.
If you've got two defects to determine trajectory. You know,
is it from back to front, is it from front
to back? Is it from left to right, left to right,
or is it from right to left? Is it from
(30:50):
above to below or from below to above. All of
these little elements can be determined from that single point.
And here's the big thing. Whoever did this to this
man to this day, if they are still alive, it's
still out there and to date has not been held accountable.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
M brother Dave. Let me ask you a question. When
you were.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Of driving age, if you could have had an American
muscle car from back in our error okay, not error,
but era I have a lot of errors, uh, but
eras that you were kind of envious of that the
other kids had.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
No was there one?
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Was there one that you that you that you would want?
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Wanted car?
Speaker 3 (31:54):
Joe I had the eighty one Camaro and that style
digs I had one Camaro. Now, got to remember, just
like all vehicles, they changed the style every couple of years.
And if you remember the Transam from Smoking in the Bandit,
remember how they with the oh Man that was huge, Well,
(32:14):
you had that same style. You had the Firebird, you
had the trans Am, and then you had the Camaro
and the Z twenty eight, and so I had that
Camaro and in this particular case when this came into play,
and look, I was shocked at this story, Joe, just
so you know, because of the victim. And you know,
(32:36):
we started off by telling you the remains were found
in January ninety four, thirty years later, nobody knew they were.
That meant some family was missing somebody and they've been
gone for a long time and they didn't know where
they were. And so I thought it fascinating that the
evidence was able. They were able to take this evidence
they had and get it to offer them in Texas
(32:59):
and say, oh, it was authoring that was able to
extract the DNA, to get a DNA profile. That opened
up the investigation Joe, to where they were able to go, okay,
wait a minute, now we've got an idea. Because they
already had kind of figured out that the victim possibly
probably died in eighty eight or eighty nine, possibly probably
(33:19):
came from Texas and possibly probably working on I sixty
five as it was expanding at that time. So they
had plenty of evidence to go on in that direction,
but they didn't know who. I mean, think of you've
got hundreds, if not thousands of people that worked at
different times along the way. You know, that's where the
(33:39):
h came up.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Yeah, it did.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
And you know, we can based upon skeletal identification. We
know that we're not dealing with a female. We're not
dealing with a young male. We're not dealing with a
young female. We're not dealing necessarily with an elderly male
or female. We're dealing with a male skeleton that is
(34:02):
probably in the mid part of their life, all right,
and this would have been back in the eighties, all right,
So just to kind of contextualize that. So if you're
if they're saying eighty eight, eighty nine, and you think
that you have somebody that might be in the fifty
age range, okay, and this is kind of demographically how
(34:22):
this works if you're working backwards as an investigator, So
if you can go back in time and think about, well,
let's see if somebody was in their fifties and in
the late eighties, all right, Am I talking about somebody
(34:43):
that may have been born in the thirties, perhaps that's
when they were born, you know, coming forward, so now
I can tighten my wind down investigatively, got somebody connection
to Texas, somebody that was a welder that fits within
the parameters of this this particular age group, who might
they be? And so you begin to look and again,
(35:07):
in more of an analog time, you know, we would
look through missing persons reports, dave at them. We even
had missing persons files, because we would have families that
would call things into us and say I'm missing this person,
and you would take down information and you would keep
that as a running file in whatever jurisdiction you were from.
(35:28):
Not that you would have it, I think a lot
of people would would do that many times. We always
kind of joked about it. It was like if family
member was missing and the person had an alcohol problem
and they would go on a bender for a while.
The spouse that was left alone at home would when
they finally did come back home and say, oh.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Even call the more looking for you. You know.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
So we always you know, kind of got a laugh
out of that. But there's a kernel of truth in
that too, because you can have this this profile that's developed.
The trick is do you have the time and the
power to go back and go through all these files
in Texas Big Place due Bud Big Place, how many
people are missing out of Texas that would fit within
(36:11):
that demostra.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
Goodness, there's you know, the thing, Joe, is that they
didn't even have a set day or time. I mean
that they had years. Okay, you've got a couple of
years to deal with, and that's just that's a lot
to go on. But I mean, that's a lot to
deal with. But the folks that offer them using the
DNA profile, they were able to start, you know, because
the genetic genealogy, it's not just you know, and you
(36:34):
and I have talked about it. It's not just getting
a d in, creating a DNA strand and then putting
it in the machine and boom iopops, Joseph Scott Moore,
that doesn't happen. It's like you then do you have
to go back to the law enforcement people have to
sit down and do the work. You're starting to tie
together people who could this be? Where could they have
been and where were they in nineteen eighty eight and
(36:54):
eighty nine. It's hard for it's shoe leather work. And
the thing is truly is and it keeps going.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
And one of the cobs, oh yeah, no, you're you're
absolutely right, and they didn't give up on this because
you know, one of my biggest fears with the and
I mentioned it, and I'll continue to mention this. I'm
kind of admonishing, you know, future young investigators. You cannot
simply sit there and say, well, the boys down at
(37:22):
the laugh will solve it for me, because you know,
we're in a push button world, right and that's kind
of an old old phrase, but you know what I'm saying,
the technology will solve it. No, you still have to
do the legwork on the case. We can produce a product,
uh you know in forensics and hand us over to
you some type of profile that has in fact been created.
(37:43):
But just because you have that profile doesn't necessarily mean
or guarantee that you're going to be able to follow through.
And Dave, in this particular case, they did follow through.
I want to mention something about AUTHORAM and their technique
real quick because you know, you know, within the next
few weeks you're going to find out more about this.
But justifice it to say, I'm very familiar with their
(38:04):
techniques now because I've applied them. But I can tell
you that the harvesting the harvesting of this data from
this the skeleton remains came from potentially a couple of places.
Number one place, if there was a tooth left in
this in the skeleton's jawline at all, either in the
(38:26):
the mandible or if it was in the maxilla, it's
going to be a molar, all right, So that's the
first place that you would look to if there's nothing there.
Top of the skull comes off, which is referred to
as a calvarium, and you're going to go into an
area that's called there's two bones called petres bones just
(38:48):
like petros petros, you know, like rock, and so they're
like the roof of the internal ear canal right, that's
the best way I can describe it. It's very thick,
so those bones would be extracted and contained within that thick,
dense bone. You would go in because it's kind of protected. Okay,
you run. You have a better shot because it is
(39:11):
so insular in there that you can extract viable DNA
to begin to create. Would David and Kristen do at
Authram they can begin to harvest DNA out of there,
or I guess they could have gone into the head
of like a long bone like the femeral head and
harvest it from there. But you know, I'm thinking probably
(39:33):
the skull teeth or the Petro's bone. It's from there
that they begin to build this out. And Dave, I'll
be dog gone if they didn't get hit.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
Unbelievable that after thirty years, thirty plus years of being
known as Baldwin County John Doe, they got a name
James Carol Jackson. He was a resident of Texas. Here's
the part about the car Okay, he left Texas look
for work on I sixty five in Baldwin County. He
(40:03):
is a welder. He was also a former marine. This
is a man who served his country and he is
now fifty ish and he and his wife were on
good terms, but they were at that time separated. And
James came to Alabama from Texas in his red Camaro.
(40:25):
Meant the world to him. And the thing is is
that police, now, by the way, as this has come
about with James Carl Jackson, Joe, they're looking for that camaro.
They're nineteen seventy eight to eighty camaro, red white interior.
They haven't found it anywhere. They believe it. Police believe
it was stolen. But he came here from Texas. And
(40:46):
by the way, for the first year he was here,
he got here in eighty eight. First year, he's talking
to family every week, every week, he's in contact. Then
all of a sudden, for no reason, contact stops. Now
remember remains found January of ninety four. Police believed you've
(41:07):
been there five years. They believe that that remains we're
from a man who was killed in eighty eight or
eighty nine. That fits right where James Carrol Jackson was
in Alabama working on I sixty five. And by golly Joe,
they identified Baldwin County John.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
Doe, Yeah, they did. And here's I just want everybody
to understand this, this case that we're talking about right
now is in fact a cold case. And Dave, back
to what you were saying about the Camaro. If that
car still exists out there, that car is going to
have a specific identifier. It's called the VEN number, and
it can be traced back. They actually have a pretty
(41:46):
good photo of the car as he had it back then,
because as you said, he was very proud of it.
And I got to tell you, back in nineteen eighty
eighty one, if I'd had this car, I would have
been proud of it too. And you know that car
if it exists out there, this is the big mystery.
If it was in fact stolen and they had this car,
(42:07):
it's it's still floating around there and it still has
the same ven number. This could lead back to solving
a big mystery. So let me give you a couple
of phone numbers here real quick. If you have any
knowledge regarding this particular case out of Baldwin County, Alabama.
Here's a couple of numbers. So the Baldwin County Sheriff's
(42:28):
office number is get this airy code two five to
one nine three seven o two two. That's two five
to one nine three seven two two. In addition, they
actually have a point of contact, a cold case investigator
(42:48):
by the name of Clint Cadenhead. That's Clint Cadenhead. He's
cold case investigator with Balden County. And here's his number.
Got you pen ready?
Speaker 1 (42:59):
Here we go.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
His number is area code two five to one nine
seven two eight five eight nine, option seven. Here we
go again, two five to one ninety seven two eight
five eight nine, option seven. If you have any information
(43:23):
about this gentleman that went missing out of Baldwin County.
If you've seen somebody that you knew was a welder
that sported a hat that said American by birth, texting
by the Grace of God. He loved to wear western
style shirts that had the big pearl buttons on it.
He wore dark bifocal sunglasses. Here's a big clue too.
(43:43):
He smoked Benson and Hedges cigarettes. He had this Camaro.
Speaker 3 (43:49):
Now, he also liked to drink, and he hung out
at one specific place. It was the tennis the Tensaw Lodge.
So if you were working, think about this. If you
were working in the late eighties on I sixty five
in Baldwin County and you hung out at the Tensile
Lodge and you remember a guy driving a red Kamaro,
which he would have told you you might be able
(44:11):
to provide that piece of evidence that could solve the murder. Remember,
he didn't just fall down and die. He was murdered.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
He was murdered and left down there. My friends, let
me tell you something, and you know what I'm going
to say. If you've been listening to body bags long enough,
I believe in what Authurm is doing. This is the
most noble of all things, as it applies to the
world of death investigation. You think you want to be
an investigator, you're wondering how you can help. I urge
(44:42):
any of you all to please go and visit the
website dnasolves dot com. That's DNA solves dot com. There
at that website you can identify open cases. There may
even be some that are in your region that peak
your interest. Perhaps. Look, David and Kristen are not asking
(45:02):
for a million bucks here, all right. They're just asking
for a few bucks so that they can continue to
move towards the goals of getting these names struck off
of the nameless list, all of these unidentified people. All right,
you go, you find a case that might interest you,
You target that case, you donate money to it, tell
(45:24):
everybody about it, get the word out. Guys.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
We're in a brave new world here.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
We have the ability to get answers where answers were
not possible for you ever years ago. And the biggest
thing is to offer hope where people seemed completely devoid
of it. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is body
(45:49):
Bags
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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