December 3, 2025 • 43 mins
Wrongfully convicted of a crime that never occurred based on now discredited bite mark forensic pathology testimony from notorious "experts" Michael West and Steven Haynes.
Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss the case of Jimmie Duncan, a man convicted for a heinous crime that lands him on death row at Angola. Joe also breaks down the now debunked science of "bite mark" evidence and one of the men who used it to steal nearly 30 years of a man's life.
Transcribe Highlights
00:00.15 Introduction: lead into gold
04:15.11 Jimmie Duncan on Death Row for 27 years
09:02.73 Duncan gave two statements at the time of Haley's death
13:45.43 Joe shares story of son being injured
19:18.94 Forensic dentists are amazing, this story is about "bite mark"
23:53.48 Bundy Bite mark in Florida case
28:42.33 Duncan was in Angola - horrible prison
33:42.26 What was the motivation of the doctors
38:37.56 The bite mark taken from the mold made from the accused teeth
42:51.45 Conclusion
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body bats with Joseph's Gotten More. I've always been fascinated
by the idea of alchemy. This goes back, you know,
several centuries, not with me, I'm not quite that old,
but it does go back in time to a period
(00:24):
when people thought that they could take literal lead and
transform it into gold. You know, Isaac Newton was actually
dabbling in alchemy for years and years. It seems like
(00:46):
a real shortcut, doesn't it That it has all of
the answers. It can kind of satiate that desire to
be wealthy, to have something that no one else has,
to make you wealthy beyond your craziest dreams. But you know,
in forensic science we have a coin of the realm
(01:09):
as well. Our coin of the realm is not gold,
though it does help with funding. What we have, though,
is information, and if we can glean information that's going
to point us to a perpetrator, all the better. Today
we're going to talk about a man, a man who
(01:33):
spent decades in one of the worst prisons in the
United States because people for a long long time believed
that bite mark evidence was valid. Bite mark evidence, as
(01:53):
it turns out, is our lead into gold. In the
world of forensics. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is
Bodybacks Dave. So many times my grandmother left me coins
many years ago when you passed, and I've got them
(02:15):
in a safety deposit box now and I value them,
and I think that probably what I have is not
valuable at all. You know, silver dollars, you know, from
the early from the nineteen twenties. I've always thought that,
you know, maybe someday I could take those and convert
that into into great wealth. Maybe not great wealth, but
(02:38):
at least, you know, pay the mortgage for a couple
of months. Maybe, But I don't think it really has
any value other than the fact that, you know, my
granny gave them to me. Can you imagine that your
life is on the line, the most precious thing that
(02:58):
you possess, and suddenly that lie for the life that
you plan to have is ripped away from you, That
everything that all of the future that you had laid
out in front of you, all the dreams and everything
is like a thief in the nightman just came and
stole it from you. Can you imagine how horrible it is?
Speaker 2 (03:19):
This story is the reason and the only reason I'm
anti death penalty. It really is, because I mean it
is the only reason is because I don't trust other
people to be honest. And the dishonesty that is still
plaguing Jimmy Duncan right now in Louisiana goes beyond anything
I can imagine, because you know, Jimmy Duncan spends twenty
(03:41):
seven years on death row for a crime that never
occurred because an expert said there was a bite mark
evidence it was perfect, you know, And it's like I
went back and I had to reread this, Joe, because
I was looking at how the mark evidence came to
be and how the mark was made, and then how
(04:05):
it was matched up. It was fabricated. It was fabricated evidence,
and it led to this man being on death row.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Death row.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Regular death row inmates are not in general population. They
I mean, I'm not saying that prison should be changra law.
You know, it is supposed to be prison, But think
about this for a minute. You know, you're on death
row for twenty seven years for a not only you
didn't commit a crime that didn't happen. Yeah, it's one
thing to go to jail for twenty years that's bad enough,
(04:40):
you know, for a crime you didn't commit. I get that.
I will tell you this story shows you how bad
human beings can be. That's all I can think of.
Because bless his heart, I'm not saying, Jimmy duncan you
know hides his wings, you know, because they scratched the
back of his you know, it's I love that term.
(05:03):
I just don't know the guy. I just know that
he's twenty seven years in prison for not just a
crime he didn't commit, a crime that didn't happen.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah, and and to make if it couldn't get any
more horrific, the crime that he's accused of. Oh my, lord, Dave,
we're talking about Lord, I hate to say this. We're
talking about a homicide involving a baby and a sexual
(05:37):
assault yep, on the said baby as well. That that's
that's what you know. He's he's been accused of and
has been convicted of, and now his life is gone.
You talked about he's not in jin pop he if
(05:58):
he's if he's on death row, you know, that's a
life of total isolation anyway. You know, you're you're sequestered.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Isn't that Usually it's usually twenty three hours in a
cell by yourself, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah, yeah it is. And then you know you hear
the the clanking all the time, and that's a real
thing you hear. You hear that portrayed in movies. I've
work cases, you know, in prisons and whatnot, and you
it's amazing when you're you know, you're on the inside
like that, and you're in that area that you know
(06:33):
that I hate call it a residential area. But in
those pods and everything echoes. You can hear bathroom sounds,
you can hear people screaming, you can hear people crying.
And everything is either a concrete or a metallic surface.
So if you in it's cavernous. If you drop something,
even that echoes in your ears. Can you imagine what
(06:56):
it's like to step outside of a prison and breathe
free for the first time and you don't, you don't
hear those sounds? Are being able to sleep through the night,
you know, And it's not you know, you don't have
the the cacophony of all of that ringing in your mind.
Not to mention, I've got relatives on the outside that
are getting older. Oh yeah, I may never see them again. Period.
(07:20):
I'm not going to see them as a freeman. There's
a chance they're going to pass away before I ever
get to wrap my arms around them again. I'm never
We're just coming off Thanksgiving. I'll never sit at a
Thanksgiving table again.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
And you know, Joe, there's also going to be in
the back of your head that, yes, I know they
love me, but I've been convicted. I've been sentenced to death,
even though I know I didn't do it. They've got
to be they're just loving me at a distance now,
but they've got to be thinking. You know, you'd have
to have those doubts at some point. Of course, my
mama loves me, but you know what I mean, that
(07:53):
would be the beyond horror to realize that your own family,
even though they say they're on your side, how can
they be You've been convicted. Anyway, Here's what really happened, though,
when you get or not what really happened, Here's what
he was accused of. Okay, go back to December eighteenth,
nineteen ninety three, his live in girlfriend twenty three month
(08:13):
old daughter. Okay, we're talking about a child that is
not quite two years old yet. Hailey was in the bathtub.
Mister Duncan briefly stepped away and returned to find her unconscious.
He tried to perform CPR. He rushed to neighbors for help,
(08:33):
who called paramedics. Doctors were unable to revive Hailey, and
she was pronounced dead at the hospital within the hour.
Shocked and grief stricken, mister Duncan, who has always maintained
his innocence, gave two statements to authorities, both of which
aligned with the investigation conducted by the police and are
(08:54):
consistent with current scientific understanding of the evidence as demonstrated
at hearing, which is why we're doing the show today.
Is hearing that took place in twenty twenty four. In
the weeks prior to her death, Hailey suffered from a
series of seizures. Now, Joe, before we get into her
(09:20):
background of what was going on, let's stop with a
dead twenty three month old in nineteen ninety three. Yeah, okay,
you live with a woman. You're in Louisiana, and her
two year old child is now dead. And it doesn't
(09:41):
make sense that a child would just two months old,
I mean twenty three months old. They do drowned, but
not quickly in a tub. Usually babies do, infants do,
but a two year old is a toddler. You know,
two year olds can get up and do things. So
I'm thinking this guy had to have done something. There's
no way to just falls out in the tub, right.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Well, it can happen. And if in fact, this child
was a seizure prone and we have a diagnosis of seizure, yeah,
I mean it would be possible for a child to
seize if you step out just for a moment and
that child seeses just understand what's happening. The brain is
(10:26):
literally shutting down. And I'm sure that you have over
the years. I know I have. I've witnessed seizures. They're
a terrifying event. And I know that a lot of
our friends out there that listen to us, they've seen it.
And you know, these people are completely out of control.
You think about somebody that has epilepsy. They are as
vulnerable as a little child. How much more so now
(10:48):
a child just shy of a two year mark of age,
you know, has a seizure. They're unattended. Yeah, it's possible,
and they're still going to be uptaking air, right, They're
going to uptake air or attempt to if they are submerged,
Guess what's coming into their lungs. Well, it's going to
be bath water at that point in time. Wow. But
(11:11):
you know you have an individual that for whatever reason
turned away, maybe for a split second, for a millisecond,
this child has a seizure and the next thing you know,
the child is no longer with us period.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
You know when you look at this case of what
happened when he did turn away for however long it was.
In the weeks prior to her death, Haley suffered from
a series of seizures as you described head injuries now,
the final injury stemming from a fall that resulted in
(11:50):
multiple skull fractures and a hospital stay for nearly a week.
So before she passed, before this day where she's in
the water, she has spent a week in the hospital,
documented head injuries, documented reasons she's having seizures. Right, the
doctors knew all this, so they've got this information. She's
(12:11):
home for two weeks when the drowning takes place, and
I guess I'm thinking they were awful quick to go
with the the drowning. You know that this guy must
have done something. Even though we have all this recent proof,
it's not six months ago, it's last week. She's been
(12:31):
out of the hospital fourteen days.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Yeah, you think about that, and you know that the
word abuse, right, you know, kind of hangs in the
back of your head. Can I tell you a quick story.
When my son Noah was very little, I guess he
was probably two, maybe he was walking obviously, and we
(12:54):
had him in a diaper and his sister, his older sister,
was at a wind meet and it was one of
these kind of buildings right where it's they can raise
and lower the walls so you can come in and
out during the summertime, but it's still covered. It's hard
to describe at any rate. In this grassy area where
(13:16):
we had a blanket set up because we were having
a picnic. Lexi was in between, you know, her races
and whatnot. Noah's just wandering around. Okay, Well, you know how,
and I know you know this because you're a daddy.
You know how. You know your kids scream. It's a
weird thing. You know their scream, you know their cry.
You know, it's like it's it's something that is innate
(13:39):
within us to know this. I looked over and I
heard Noah scream and he was standing on a piece
of sheet metal that was covering a pump that went
to the pool, standing there and this THINGE is like,
it's like silk, okay, and we're in the dead of summertime.
(14:03):
I went and grabbed him, pulled him off of it,
and his feet were already blistered, and I remember hopping
in the car and he squaled. Man, I mean, this
baby is just and you know, and I took him
to the emergency room. And I can't tell you how
many times as an investigator I'd been to an emergency
room working a case involving a child, and the parents
(14:24):
are there, and of course the medical staff is there,
and you're looking at the parents, you're trying to talk
to them, you're interviewing them. And I'll never forget that
feeling that came over me while I was there. Because
his kid's feet were burned, Noahs were, and the way
the staff looked at me at that moment time they audited.
(14:45):
Their default position is I'd done something to my son,
you know. And literally the top the epidermis of his
feet was hanging off, that's how hot this thing was.
So you get that implanted into the back of your mind,
even though you might be pure as the driven snow,
(15:07):
when it comes to you know your parenting abilities, and
you haven't done anything malevolent here, that's going to be there.
How much more so when you have a child that
has had head injuries, they have drowned now and you've
got this man that is in custodial care of the child, automatically,
(15:32):
you know the the default is going to be, you know,
very accusatory. I'm just I'm amazed regarding this. How how
in fact this thing kind of played out, Dave, Because
you know, it's one thing if you're treating a child,
(15:53):
you're treating them for seizures. You know that they have seizures,
they fracture their skull, and they send you home with
a child to take care of them. But then, then,
to make matters worse, the child suddenly dies and you
(16:13):
are the target of an investigation. There's two names I'm
gonna mention, Dave, and one of them is not Jimmy. Okay,
(16:41):
these names hang in my mouth like a rotten meat.
Those names are Michael West and Stephen Hayne. They are,
in fact, if Shakespeare were to be writing this, these
(17:06):
people would be the villains in the story, and it's
not the first time that they would have appeared in
one of Shakespeare's plays. All Right, we returned to the well.
Stephen Hayne, who is or was a pathologist who is
(17:30):
now deceased, was working as a forensic pathologist in state Mississippi, Okay,
and he in fact, had been working with Michael West
for a number of years. And I think that reflectively,
we're going to touch on a couple of cases that
these two have been involved with before. Michael West, for
(17:53):
any of you guys that haven't heard of him, he
was a forensic odentologist and exact yeah, forensic odentologist is
actually otherwise known as a forensic dentist. And I'm not
here to assail forensic dentistry in any way, Okay. I
(18:15):
don't want people to come away thinking that it's completely invalid.
What we're focusing on here is going to be bitemark interpretation.
The other purpose of forensic dentistry is to get bodies identified.
And I've seen them work miracles, and I'm talking about
(18:37):
bodies that are so burned, so decayed that to get
the to get those elements of the mouth, the teeth out,
and be able to examine them and say that this is,
in fact, from a dental perspective, this is in fact
the person that we suspect that it is. And like
bodies that have been burned composing explosion victims, I've worked
(19:04):
all manner of cases with forensic dentist or odentologists to
arrive at those conclusions. One of the the big bugaboo
here though, is bite mark. Bite mark is one of
these practices that has been around for a long long
(19:24):
time day and in my opening I had mentioned, you know,
kind of the alchemy, the idea that you can turn
lead into gold. In science, I know that you and
I have had this discussion before. In science, we want
to be able to quantitate anything that we can okay,
(19:48):
whether it's toxicology or DNA to a lesser degree, ballistics
I think fingerprints, which some people will you know, say
uh maybe. But with bite mark, it's such a dynamic thing.
Just think about this and either either you have had it,
(20:13):
or I've had it, or we both had it experiences
with our kids. Did your kids go to school, they
start school off? Any of your kids start school off
with a bier with a kid that was in the class.
Remember there's always a kid in the class that bites
kids all the time. All Right, your kid or maybe
somebody else's kid comes home, they've got a bite mark
on them, and you know the person. And it always
(20:35):
happens with little kids, right, You've got the one, the
one kid that you know will bite individuals and it
will harm, you know, harm a younger child. There's just
some kids that do this and it might be witnessed
with a case of bite mark. Though as it applies
to forensic investigations, here's the problem. The problem is is
(21:01):
that when people are bitten in life, they're not static.
They don't stay in one place. So let's walk through
very briefly the process of biting something. And this is
one of the things I teach at jack State in
my forensicaldetology section when I'm teaching my intro kids. So
(21:26):
you think about your teeth. We've got thirty two, Okay,
you've got incisors. Okay, you've got your canines, which some
people will say or my dog teeth right, the pointy ones,
it's got a single cusp on it. Then you've got
the bi cuspets which sit right behind the canine, and
(21:48):
then following the bi cuspets, you have the molars. Okay,
now let me tell you what the purpose is the incisors.
Just like we use the term in sharp force injury,
the incisors are they're used for cutting. Okay. So if
you think that's where we get the term insized, okay,
or that's where they get the term in size are from?
(22:08):
They get it from in size that means to cut.
All right. So let's say that we're going to eat
a sandwich. We take a bite of a sandwich, and
those leading teeth in the front, both upper and lower,
like almost like a guillotine if you think they go
through our PBJ. Okay, Well, what do the canones do well?
(22:31):
The canines act in a tearing mechanism. Okay. So you've
got these prongs that are kind of sitting up. You
got them on the upper the upper or called them
the maxillary canones. You got two of those, and then
below you've got to manon the teeth that's set in
your lower jaw, in your mandible. You've got those where
(22:55):
they go up as well, and they tear, they kind
of rip it away. Then to by cuspots. If you
think about them by meaning too. They act is almost
like pitchforks that pull the food back to the molars,
and the molars grind, all right. So that's kind of
(23:16):
the process of a bite. Now you've got a lot
of other actions that are going on here. The tongue
is involved, actually, particularly when we're eating something in bite marks, though,
one of the things that occurs with the tongue is
that there's a sucking action. Many times when you see
bite marks, you'll see the formation of a hickey if
(23:36):
you will, you know, kind of a love bite. And
trust me, I'm not making light of the sisters of
Coyo at FSU with Bundy, but if there's a classic
image that they've got of the buttock of one of
the sisters of Coyo and you can see this kind
of contoosed area on her rear end where you know,
(24:00):
Bundy allegedly bit down on her, and there's that sucking
motion that takes place. You've also got the scraping that
takes place of the teeth. The upper teeth are static.
The lower teeth in you know that are part of
your mandible. They're you know, they're movable, okay, so they
will move up in the bite and you've got somebody
(24:23):
that is alive beneath you can you imagine, and they're
trying to pull away. Well, if you do, let's just
say you do an examination of that bite mark that
is left behind. It is almost empirically impossible to assign
a number to that because of the dynamics of this bite.
(24:44):
Now they'll do all kinds of things like casting of
the teeth, they'll do impressions, these sorts of things, but
there's nothing that you can go on to really say
definitively that one bite originated, that that bite originated from
a specific person. It's kind of an educated guest. Now
(25:04):
you can probably qualitatively say it. You can say, okay,
this is a bite mark, looks like it might be human,
But I can't you know, place a number to that
to say, yeah, this is you know, uh, suspect A.
This is definitely suspect A's teeth that did this. And
this is one of the problems that that practice has
(25:28):
run into, and now it's fallen out of favor. It
really used to be where bite mark was kind of
the sexy thing that everybody. It was their default position.
Oh man, if we've got a bite mark. If we've
got a bite mark. Yeah, yeah, it's a This case
is solid. We're going to be able to move forward
with it. We can tie this bite mark back to
(25:50):
this individual. Their whole profiles that are developed upon people
that do biting. You know, if you have profilers that
are doing this sort of thing like sexual sadism and
all these things. And I'm not saying that that's not
a real thing, but what I'm saying, if you're trying
to scientifically say that that is a specific person that
did this, it's very, very difficult.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Joe, I thought it was an exact science until I
read about it, until I actually studied. Because I'm stay
with the ky Omega House in Bundy, because that's probably
one of the most famous cases that have ever been seen.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
For hey, it's the first case that where it was
used and they derived a conviction from that.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
And Bundy tried to file his teeth because he had
a very one of his teeth had a very specific
thing and he tried to change that. But anyway, after
I looked into it, yeah and realized doesn't even make
sense to use this as anything more than Okay, Joe
was in the room, Dave was in the room. Oh
(26:52):
wait a minute, half a day's teeth are knocked out.
Joe's got a full set. One of these guys left
the mark. You know, that's about all you can do.
But when it comes to this case show, there's so
much wrong with it. You had a man who is
on death row for twenty seven years for killing a
twenty three month old and sexually abusing him. We're talking
about that too. This little girl, according to these two doctors,
(27:12):
was sexually abused and then drowned and pool while in
the care of her mom's boyfriend. And a lot of
the information that you guys have already heard in the
first part of the show about her having seizures and things,
the jury never heard any of that at trial. The
jury never knew that the girl had a history. And
(27:34):
by the way, when we were talking about the what
had happened, you know, and how she'd only been home
two weeks, you know, after having skull fractures and everything
else from a seizure, that one of the things that
actually could bring about another seizure a warm bath, which
was exactly what she was doing at the time she died. Now,
(27:57):
to get to this bite mark evidence that actually convicted
the man. Yeah, how did it take place? Jesseph Scott
Morgan that I'm looking through this and you have the
body of a dead twenty three month old at the hospital, right, yeah,
and the body is then taken who gets the body first? Okay,
(28:19):
I have a dead body. The police are investigating what happens,
because I don't know what really happens. I'm at the hospital.
Here is the body of a twenty three month old
baby who is dead, and she's got a lot of damage,
a lot of damage. There's a lot going on here,
some healing wounds, some that are brand new. I mean,
there's a lot going on with this child. And her
(28:40):
mom wasn't home. It was this guy who was watching
this twenty three month old. I'm telling you, the pitchforks
and daggers are coming out on this guy.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Oh yeah, and can you imagine. Let's just say he
wasn't on death row, right and he had been convicted
and hadn't been hadn't been sentenced. Oh yeah, he would
not There's a chance wouldn't have survived. Okay, to breathe,
to breathe, free air again. But the way this would
happen is that when this little angel's body would have
(29:14):
come from the hospital the corner, because they have corners
in Louisiana, would have been taken to the local pathologist,
and the pathologist would have, you know, done the examination,
would have done a forensic examination and forensic pathology dissection.
You know, with all of the assessments that they're going
(29:35):
to do. I still have yet to kind of understand
how they arrived putting bite mark aside, I still don't
understand how they arrived at the sexual assault portion of this.
You know, what, what precisely are they saying here? Is
(29:56):
this penetrative? Is this a penetrative event? Is it an
external event? So that's that's kind of curious to me
because when you have a child this young, you're going
to have very obvious trauma to this child's body in
(30:19):
her vaginal and potentially uh rectal area, and it would
be glaring. I mean, it would be so glaring, you know,
because it's not just the internal examination you know that
you're doing. There's an external examination where you're looking for
external trauma. As you can imagine, Dave, particularly if you're
talking about a full grown man that has you know,
(30:42):
forced himself on on this, uh, this baby. So how
do you arrive What empirical evidence do you have that
demonstrates this? That's that's my first My first question here,
so is is it just merely the supposition that that
you've got to a bite mark, so ergo that's sexual
(31:05):
in nature, and that's your premise that this thing is
kind of you know, growing from and then it begins
to pick up steam. Believe nothing that you hear and
(31:28):
only half of what you see. It's almost like sleight
of hand, right, It ain't really magic. There is no
such thing as magic, Okay, particularly in science. Most of
it is suggestion when you've got these kind of parlor
tricks that are going on. And Dave, I think that
(31:50):
one of the big indicators here is is how this
child's body was assessed. The body is an assess literally
by Hayne and by West, and they've come up with
several diagnoses here. You know, we've got the sexual assault,
(32:11):
we've got the drowning. And then you couple that with
the information they would have been armed with right about
the prior seizures. How could they not in the in
the in the fracture, the fracture skull.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
That's what takes this to the gates of hell, because
they had to have known that this child had gone
through this incredible brain trauma, you know, in skull fractures,
and had been in the hospital for a week before
she had been home for that. You know, if they
didn't know, then there's more evil at work than I
even know. Because the day of the act, the day
(32:46):
that Haley died, her body was transported to Jackson, Mississippi,
to be autopsied by doctor Hayne. Now, doctor Hayne was
in business with doctor West. That's important to know. Doctor
West is that forensic odentologist that we were just talking
about a minute ago. And the idea was to bring
(33:10):
in doctor West to help identify what he claimed were
the same thing. He tried to convince you you were
looking at by mark and that there were bike marks
on Haley's body. That's what they were trying to I
don't understand why I'm really having trouble with this show.
I know that I don't like to ask the question why,
but I really am thinking, what was their motivation? What
(33:34):
was the motivation of these two respected men two do
what happened next? Because following a cursory visual examination, doctor
Hayne concluded, Okay, a cursory examination, meaning somebody with my
ability to look at a body and say, ah, yeah,
here's what I think happened. There's not even looking, there's
(33:54):
not really touching, There's not a whole lot here. It's
just a cursory examination looking at the body and say
saying Haley had been bitten and was sexually assaulted at
her about the time of death. And he reported that
to law enforcement based on a cursory investigation of the
body in a videotaped experiment. I want to make sure
(34:16):
you hear what I'm saying in a videotaped experiment. Joseph
Scott Morgan. The day after Haley's death, doctor West pressed
molds of mister Duncan's teeth into Haley's body, creating the
(34:37):
bite marks that were later matched to mister Duncan's teeth
at trial.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Yeah, and how and.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Why did that? Know? How and why? I want to
know why that would happen other than pure evil? Ye.
I just for the life of me, Joe, I can't.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
Give you this. Yeah, it's it's fabrication of evidence, says
what it comes down to. And you asked me what
would be you asked me, what what the what the
motivation would be behind this? I can gear and damn
to you that it's not altruism. Uh, They're not doing
this for the good of mankind. What's the old soul
(35:20):
song you know from the early early seventies, money money,
money money.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Eh.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
You know you mentioned it and you said the word
they're in business. This is a business. You know they
talk about flesh trade, right, you've heard that term before.
This is right up there. Okay. You know when you
think about it, this guy and because if you can,
if you can keep, if you can keep the prosecutors
coming back to you, you know, business is open, baby.
(35:48):
So you think about that, and you think about the
time that this man spent in there. Just understand that
when a forensic goodontologist does one of these molds, what
they do is they actually go to the suspect. You can,
as a matter of fact, I urge anybody you can
go back to the Bundy case and you can see
(36:11):
the mold that they they wrote up a warrant for this.
I don't know if you recall this in the story,
and compelled him to give.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
It and he did everything. That's why I said the
guy was firing, he.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Tried to file his teeth. Yeah, well, it's the same
thing in mister Duncan's case. You know, he he is
being compelled to offer up a mold of his teeth.
You cast this mold, and then after the fact, you
go back and after the thing is hardened, you take
(36:44):
the body of this child. Let me repeat that, the
body of this child, and you videotape taking said mold,
and just thinking, if anybody out there has ever had
a cast mold of your teeth, they're sitting in doctor's,
a dentist office everywhere. If you get a chance, ask
(37:07):
ask your dentist, when do you have a cast mold
that I can say? I want you to feel how
hard this thing is? All right? You take this and
then you get he's been videotaped pressing this into into
her skin. Okay, and you're damn right. It's going to
create an impression. It's like you know, by that time,
(37:27):
it's like pressing it into Plato. All right. And so
the fact that procedurally the jury is not afforded the
opportunity to understand the process here, it's it's it is
light of hand when you think about it, because you're
going to come away and if you press it into
her skin, then there's not going to be any question
(37:53):
about the mold that you have taken from the suspect,
which matches perfectly, and then press it into the skin,
which is going to also match perfectly with the mold
that originated with the accused. I mean, all of the
points are going to match up the fact that this
(38:15):
was done and that it was allowed.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
It.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
The more I talk about this again, I'm having a
lot of these thoughts that are coming back into my
mind where you know, you you feel as though that
somebody ought to be in prison and it shouldn't be
dunking right, okay, because of what has been There's there's
no way you can you can ever replace his life
(38:41):
that has been lost and the fact that he languished there.
Every single day you talk about Dave, people go, they
bang on and on about cruel and unusual all the time, right,
you know, particularly when we talk about capital cases. You
know where there's some O theology that doesn't quite work.
(39:02):
I'll see you your capital punishment. You know you know
uh uh, I don't know uh failures, And I'll raise
you mister Duncan's Hell on Earth, you know, Okay, because
that that's what you're looking at.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
You and I were talking about this the other day.
There was a Netflix documentary that actually featured two men
that that were involved in something similar to this and
involving the same doctors here. And it was shocking to
me watching this to think about the lives of that
(39:37):
are lost to criminals with a doctor smock, you know.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
And oh yeah, yeah, Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer, Yeah,
they're both. Yeah, oh it's you know. One and they
went to Parchment, which is almost as equally as horrible
as Angola, which is in you know, in Mississippi. One
on death row and one was in for life man.
(40:02):
And let me just fill in the blanks with that story.
There were two separate cases of young girls that were
found in creek beds and they had quote unquote bite
marks that matched each one of these individuals, two separate cases,
and they these these fellows, based upon that the expert
(40:23):
testimony of West and Haine, were actually convicted Dave and
sentenced to this hell on Earth. And they didn't they
did not do this, as it turned out. As it
turned out, it was a single perpetrator that did this.
It was one guy that killed both of these young
(40:45):
girls that were found dead at his hand. And these
two guys had been, you know, sitting in parchment all
of this time. There's a long history of this, uh
and it's it's a stain. I mean, it's it's an
absolute stain that this occurred. And what's what's really fascinating
(41:08):
about this. I think that we've got a we've got
a practice forensic codonology that has been around for years
and years. We depend upon them to do identifications for
us in the medical legal world, as I previously mentioned,
and so many good things have come out of forensic
(41:28):
codeontology practice. As a matter of fact, if you've ever
seen a gray scale ruler, it's at a ninety degree angle.
We use those on scenes too, you know, to provide
scale when we're taking pictures that scenes. You know what
those rulers are called. They're called EBFO rulers, and they're
(41:48):
now the industry standard. In ABFO stands for American Board
a Forensic Codeontologist. They're the ones that developed those rulers
and now they're used everywhere and they permeate all practice
within forensic science. You know, we'll use them in the morgue,
you use them at scenes, you know, to demonstrate, you know,
(42:09):
bits of evidence that are out there. And that's the
legacy that I would prefer, you know, uh, forensic odentologists have,
but because of individuals like these aforementioned subjects, Unfortunately, nowadays,
(42:32):
when you think of forensic identology and bite mark, we're
left with nothing, with nothing but pseudoscience and modern alchemy.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks
Body bats with Joseph's Gotten More. I've always been fascinated
by the idea of alchemy. This goes back, you know,
several centuries, not with me, I'm not quite that old,
but it does go back in time to a period
(00:24):
when people thought that they could take literal lead and
transform it into gold. You know, Isaac Newton was actually
dabbling in alchemy for years and years. It seems like
(00:46):
a real shortcut, doesn't it That it has all of
the answers. It can kind of satiate that desire to
be wealthy, to have something that no one else has,
to make you wealthy beyond your craziest dreams. But you know,
in forensic science we have a coin of the realm
(01:09):
as well. Our coin of the realm is not gold,
though it does help with funding. What we have, though,
is information, and if we can glean information that's going
to point us to a perpetrator, all the better. Today
we're going to talk about a man, a man who
(01:33):
spent decades in one of the worst prisons in the
United States because people for a long long time believed
that bite mark evidence was valid. Bite mark evidence, as
(01:53):
it turns out, is our lead into gold. In the
world of forensics. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is
Bodybacks Dave. So many times my grandmother left me coins
many years ago when you passed, and I've got them
(02:15):
in a safety deposit box now and I value them,
and I think that probably what I have is not
valuable at all. You know, silver dollars, you know, from
the early from the nineteen twenties. I've always thought that,
you know, maybe someday I could take those and convert
that into into great wealth. Maybe not great wealth, but
(02:38):
at least, you know, pay the mortgage for a couple
of months. Maybe, But I don't think it really has
any value other than the fact that, you know, my
granny gave them to me. Can you imagine that your
life is on the line, the most precious thing that
(02:58):
you possess, and suddenly that lie for the life that
you plan to have is ripped away from you, That
everything that all of the future that you had laid
out in front of you, all the dreams and everything
is like a thief in the nightman just came and
stole it from you. Can you imagine how horrible it is?
Speaker 2 (03:19):
This story is the reason and the only reason I'm
anti death penalty. It really is, because I mean it
is the only reason is because I don't trust other
people to be honest. And the dishonesty that is still
plaguing Jimmy Duncan right now in Louisiana goes beyond anything
I can imagine, because you know, Jimmy Duncan spends twenty
(03:41):
seven years on death row for a crime that never
occurred because an expert said there was a bite mark
evidence it was perfect, you know, And it's like I
went back and I had to reread this, Joe, because
I was looking at how the mark evidence came to
be and how the mark was made, and then how
(04:05):
it was matched up. It was fabricated. It was fabricated evidence,
and it led to this man being on death row.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Death row.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Regular death row inmates are not in general population. They
I mean, I'm not saying that prison should be changra law.
You know, it is supposed to be prison, But think
about this for a minute. You know, you're on death
row for twenty seven years for a not only you
didn't commit a crime that didn't happen. Yeah, it's one
thing to go to jail for twenty years that's bad enough,
(04:40):
you know, for a crime you didn't commit. I get that.
I will tell you this story shows you how bad
human beings can be. That's all I can think of.
Because bless his heart, I'm not saying, Jimmy duncan you
know hides his wings, you know, because they scratched the
back of his you know, it's I love that term.
(05:03):
I just don't know the guy. I just know that
he's twenty seven years in prison for not just a
crime he didn't commit, a crime that didn't happen.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah, and and to make if it couldn't get any
more horrific, the crime that he's accused of. Oh my, lord, Dave,
we're talking about Lord, I hate to say this. We're
talking about a homicide involving a baby and a sexual
(05:37):
assault yep, on the said baby as well. That that's
that's what you know. He's he's been accused of and
has been convicted of, and now his life is gone.
You talked about he's not in jin pop he if
(05:58):
he's if he's on death row, you know, that's a
life of total isolation anyway. You know, you're you're sequestered.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Isn't that Usually it's usually twenty three hours in a
cell by yourself, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah, yeah it is. And then you know you hear
the the clanking all the time, and that's a real
thing you hear. You hear that portrayed in movies. I've
work cases, you know, in prisons and whatnot, and you
it's amazing when you're you know, you're on the inside
like that, and you're in that area that you know
(06:33):
that I hate call it a residential area. But in
those pods and everything echoes. You can hear bathroom sounds,
you can hear people screaming, you can hear people crying.
And everything is either a concrete or a metallic surface.
So if you in it's cavernous. If you drop something,
even that echoes in your ears. Can you imagine what
(06:56):
it's like to step outside of a prison and breathe
free for the first time and you don't, you don't
hear those sounds? Are being able to sleep through the night,
you know, And it's not you know, you don't have
the the cacophony of all of that ringing in your mind.
Not to mention, I've got relatives on the outside that
are getting older. Oh yeah, I may never see them again. Period.
(07:20):
I'm not going to see them as a freeman. There's
a chance they're going to pass away before I ever
get to wrap my arms around them again. I'm never
We're just coming off Thanksgiving. I'll never sit at a
Thanksgiving table again.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
And you know, Joe, there's also going to be in
the back of your head that, yes, I know they
love me, but I've been convicted. I've been sentenced to death,
even though I know I didn't do it. They've got
to be they're just loving me at a distance now,
but they've got to be thinking. You know, you'd have
to have those doubts at some point. Of course, my
mama loves me, but you know what I mean, that
(07:53):
would be the beyond horror to realize that your own family,
even though they say they're on your side, how can
they be You've been convicted. Anyway, Here's what really happened, though,
when you get or not what really happened, Here's what
he was accused of. Okay, go back to December eighteenth,
nineteen ninety three, his live in girlfriend twenty three month
(08:13):
old daughter. Okay, we're talking about a child that is
not quite two years old yet. Hailey was in the bathtub.
Mister Duncan briefly stepped away and returned to find her unconscious.
He tried to perform CPR. He rushed to neighbors for help,
(08:33):
who called paramedics. Doctors were unable to revive Hailey, and
she was pronounced dead at the hospital within the hour.
Shocked and grief stricken, mister Duncan, who has always maintained
his innocence, gave two statements to authorities, both of which
aligned with the investigation conducted by the police and are
(08:54):
consistent with current scientific understanding of the evidence as demonstrated
at hearing, which is why we're doing the show today.
Is hearing that took place in twenty twenty four. In
the weeks prior to her death, Hailey suffered from a
series of seizures. Now, Joe, before we get into her
(09:20):
background of what was going on, let's stop with a
dead twenty three month old in nineteen ninety three. Yeah, okay,
you live with a woman. You're in Louisiana, and her
two year old child is now dead. And it doesn't
(09:41):
make sense that a child would just two months old,
I mean twenty three months old. They do drowned, but
not quickly in a tub. Usually babies do, infants do,
but a two year old is a toddler. You know,
two year olds can get up and do things. So
I'm thinking this guy had to have done something. There's
no way to just falls out in the tub, right.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Well, it can happen. And if in fact, this child
was a seizure prone and we have a diagnosis of seizure, yeah,
I mean it would be possible for a child to
seize if you step out just for a moment and
that child seeses just understand what's happening. The brain is
(10:26):
literally shutting down. And I'm sure that you have over
the years. I know I have. I've witnessed seizures. They're
a terrifying event. And I know that a lot of
our friends out there that listen to us, they've seen it.
And you know, these people are completely out of control.
You think about somebody that has epilepsy. They are as
vulnerable as a little child. How much more so now
(10:48):
a child just shy of a two year mark of age,
you know, has a seizure. They're unattended. Yeah, it's possible,
and they're still going to be uptaking air, right, They're
going to uptake air or attempt to if they are submerged,
Guess what's coming into their lungs. Well, it's going to
be bath water at that point in time. Wow. But
(11:11):
you know you have an individual that for whatever reason
turned away, maybe for a split second, for a millisecond,
this child has a seizure and the next thing you know,
the child is no longer with us period.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
You know when you look at this case of what
happened when he did turn away for however long it was.
In the weeks prior to her death, Haley suffered from
a series of seizures as you described head injuries now,
the final injury stemming from a fall that resulted in
(11:50):
multiple skull fractures and a hospital stay for nearly a week.
So before she passed, before this day where she's in
the water, she has spent a week in the hospital,
documented head injuries, documented reasons she's having seizures. Right, the
doctors knew all this, so they've got this information. She's
(12:11):
home for two weeks when the drowning takes place, and
I guess I'm thinking they were awful quick to go
with the the drowning. You know that this guy must
have done something. Even though we have all this recent proof,
it's not six months ago, it's last week. She's been
(12:31):
out of the hospital fourteen days.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Yeah, you think about that, and you know that the
word abuse, right, you know, kind of hangs in the
back of your head. Can I tell you a quick story.
When my son Noah was very little, I guess he
was probably two, maybe he was walking obviously, and we
(12:54):
had him in a diaper and his sister, his older sister,
was at a wind meet and it was one of
these kind of buildings right where it's they can raise
and lower the walls so you can come in and
out during the summertime, but it's still covered. It's hard
to describe at any rate. In this grassy area where
(13:16):
we had a blanket set up because we were having
a picnic. Lexi was in between, you know, her races
and whatnot. Noah's just wandering around. Okay, Well, you know how,
and I know you know this because you're a daddy.
You know how. You know your kids scream. It's a
weird thing. You know their scream, you know their cry.
You know, it's like it's it's something that is innate
(13:39):
within us to know this. I looked over and I
heard Noah scream and he was standing on a piece
of sheet metal that was covering a pump that went
to the pool, standing there and this THINGE is like,
it's like silk, okay, and we're in the dead of summertime.
(14:03):
I went and grabbed him, pulled him off of it,
and his feet were already blistered, and I remember hopping
in the car and he squaled. Man, I mean, this
baby is just and you know, and I took him
to the emergency room. And I can't tell you how
many times as an investigator I'd been to an emergency
room working a case involving a child, and the parents
(14:24):
are there, and of course the medical staff is there,
and you're looking at the parents, you're trying to talk
to them, you're interviewing them. And I'll never forget that
feeling that came over me while I was there. Because
his kid's feet were burned, Noahs were, and the way
the staff looked at me at that moment time they audited.
(14:45):
Their default position is I'd done something to my son,
you know. And literally the top the epidermis of his
feet was hanging off, that's how hot this thing was.
So you get that implanted into the back of your mind,
even though you might be pure as the driven snow,
(15:07):
when it comes to you know your parenting abilities, and
you haven't done anything malevolent here, that's going to be there.
How much more so when you have a child that
has had head injuries, they have drowned now and you've
got this man that is in custodial care of the child, automatically,
(15:32):
you know the the default is going to be, you know,
very accusatory. I'm just I'm amazed regarding this. How how
in fact this thing kind of played out, Dave, Because
you know, it's one thing if you're treating a child,
(15:53):
you're treating them for seizures. You know that they have seizures,
they fracture their skull, and they send you home with
a child to take care of them. But then, then,
to make matters worse, the child suddenly dies and you
(16:13):
are the target of an investigation. There's two names I'm
gonna mention, Dave, and one of them is not Jimmy. Okay,
(16:41):
these names hang in my mouth like a rotten meat.
Those names are Michael West and Stephen Hayne. They are,
in fact, if Shakespeare were to be writing this, these
(17:06):
people would be the villains in the story, and it's
not the first time that they would have appeared in
one of Shakespeare's plays. All Right, we returned to the well.
Stephen Hayne, who is or was a pathologist who is
(17:30):
now deceased, was working as a forensic pathologist in state Mississippi, Okay,
and he in fact, had been working with Michael West
for a number of years. And I think that reflectively,
we're going to touch on a couple of cases that
these two have been involved with before. Michael West, for
(17:53):
any of you guys that haven't heard of him, he
was a forensic odentologist and exact yeah, forensic odentologist is
actually otherwise known as a forensic dentist. And I'm not
here to assail forensic dentistry in any way, Okay. I
(18:15):
don't want people to come away thinking that it's completely invalid.
What we're focusing on here is going to be bitemark interpretation.
The other purpose of forensic dentistry is to get bodies identified.
And I've seen them work miracles, and I'm talking about
(18:37):
bodies that are so burned, so decayed that to get
the to get those elements of the mouth, the teeth out,
and be able to examine them and say that this is,
in fact, from a dental perspective, this is in fact
the person that we suspect that it is. And like
bodies that have been burned composing explosion victims, I've worked
(19:04):
all manner of cases with forensic dentist or odentologists to
arrive at those conclusions. One of the the big bugaboo
here though, is bite mark. Bite mark is one of
these practices that has been around for a long long
(19:24):
time day and in my opening I had mentioned, you know,
kind of the alchemy, the idea that you can turn
lead into gold. In science, I know that you and
I have had this discussion before. In science, we want
to be able to quantitate anything that we can okay,
(19:48):
whether it's toxicology or DNA to a lesser degree, ballistics
I think fingerprints, which some people will you know, say
uh maybe. But with bite mark, it's such a dynamic thing.
Just think about this and either either you have had it,
(20:13):
or I've had it, or we both had it experiences
with our kids. Did your kids go to school, they
start school off? Any of your kids start school off
with a bier with a kid that was in the class.
Remember there's always a kid in the class that bites
kids all the time. All Right, your kid or maybe
somebody else's kid comes home, they've got a bite mark
on them, and you know the person. And it always
(20:35):
happens with little kids, right, You've got the one, the
one kid that you know will bite individuals and it
will harm, you know, harm a younger child. There's just
some kids that do this and it might be witnessed
with a case of bite mark. Though as it applies
to forensic investigations, here's the problem. The problem is is
(21:01):
that when people are bitten in life, they're not static.
They don't stay in one place. So let's walk through
very briefly the process of biting something. And this is
one of the things I teach at jack State in
my forensicaldetology section when I'm teaching my intro kids. So
(21:26):
you think about your teeth. We've got thirty two, Okay,
you've got incisors. Okay, you've got your canines, which some
people will say or my dog teeth right, the pointy ones,
it's got a single cusp on it. Then you've got
the bi cuspets which sit right behind the canine, and
(21:48):
then following the bi cuspets, you have the molars. Okay,
now let me tell you what the purpose is the incisors.
Just like we use the term in sharp force injury,
the incisors are they're used for cutting. Okay. So if
you think that's where we get the term insized, okay,
or that's where they get the term in size are from?
(22:08):
They get it from in size that means to cut.
All right. So let's say that we're going to eat
a sandwich. We take a bite of a sandwich, and
those leading teeth in the front, both upper and lower,
like almost like a guillotine if you think they go
through our PBJ. Okay, Well, what do the canones do well?
(22:31):
The canines act in a tearing mechanism. Okay. So you've
got these prongs that are kind of sitting up. You
got them on the upper the upper or called them
the maxillary canones. You got two of those, and then
below you've got to manon the teeth that's set in
your lower jaw, in your mandible. You've got those where
(22:55):
they go up as well, and they tear, they kind
of rip it away. Then to by cuspots. If you
think about them by meaning too. They act is almost
like pitchforks that pull the food back to the molars,
and the molars grind, all right. So that's kind of
(23:16):
the process of a bite. Now you've got a lot
of other actions that are going on here. The tongue
is involved, actually, particularly when we're eating something in bite marks, though,
one of the things that occurs with the tongue is
that there's a sucking action. Many times when you see
bite marks, you'll see the formation of a hickey if
(23:36):
you will, you know, kind of a love bite. And
trust me, I'm not making light of the sisters of
Coyo at FSU with Bundy, but if there's a classic
image that they've got of the buttock of one of
the sisters of Coyo and you can see this kind
of contoosed area on her rear end where you know,
(24:00):
Bundy allegedly bit down on her, and there's that sucking
motion that takes place. You've also got the scraping that
takes place of the teeth. The upper teeth are static.
The lower teeth in you know that are part of
your mandible. They're you know, they're movable, okay, so they
will move up in the bite and you've got somebody
(24:23):
that is alive beneath you can you imagine, and they're
trying to pull away. Well, if you do, let's just
say you do an examination of that bite mark that
is left behind. It is almost empirically impossible to assign
a number to that because of the dynamics of this bite.
(24:44):
Now they'll do all kinds of things like casting of
the teeth, they'll do impressions, these sorts of things, but
there's nothing that you can go on to really say
definitively that one bite originated, that that bite originated from
a specific person. It's kind of an educated guest. Now
(25:04):
you can probably qualitatively say it. You can say, okay,
this is a bite mark, looks like it might be human,
But I can't you know, place a number to that
to say, yeah, this is you know, uh, suspect A.
This is definitely suspect A's teeth that did this. And
this is one of the problems that that practice has
(25:28):
run into, and now it's fallen out of favor. It
really used to be where bite mark was kind of
the sexy thing that everybody. It was their default position.
Oh man, if we've got a bite mark. If we've
got a bite mark. Yeah, yeah, it's a This case
is solid. We're going to be able to move forward
with it. We can tie this bite mark back to
(25:50):
this individual. Their whole profiles that are developed upon people
that do biting. You know, if you have profilers that
are doing this sort of thing like sexual sadism and
all these things. And I'm not saying that that's not
a real thing, but what I'm saying, if you're trying
to scientifically say that that is a specific person that
did this, it's very, very difficult.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Joe, I thought it was an exact science until I
read about it, until I actually studied. Because I'm stay
with the ky Omega House in Bundy, because that's probably
one of the most famous cases that have ever been seen.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
For hey, it's the first case that where it was
used and they derived a conviction from that.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
And Bundy tried to file his teeth because he had
a very one of his teeth had a very specific
thing and he tried to change that. But anyway, after
I looked into it, yeah and realized doesn't even make
sense to use this as anything more than Okay, Joe
was in the room, Dave was in the room. Oh
(26:52):
wait a minute, half a day's teeth are knocked out.
Joe's got a full set. One of these guys left
the mark. You know, that's about all you can do.
But when it comes to this case show, there's so
much wrong with it. You had a man who is
on death row for twenty seven years for killing a
twenty three month old and sexually abusing him. We're talking
about that too. This little girl, according to these two doctors,
(27:12):
was sexually abused and then drowned and pool while in
the care of her mom's boyfriend. And a lot of
the information that you guys have already heard in the
first part of the show about her having seizures and things,
the jury never heard any of that at trial. The
jury never knew that the girl had a history. And
(27:34):
by the way, when we were talking about the what
had happened, you know, and how she'd only been home
two weeks, you know, after having skull fractures and everything
else from a seizure, that one of the things that
actually could bring about another seizure a warm bath, which
was exactly what she was doing at the time she died. Now,
(27:57):
to get to this bite mark evidence that actually convicted
the man. Yeah, how did it take place? Jesseph Scott
Morgan that I'm looking through this and you have the
body of a dead twenty three month old at the hospital, right, yeah,
and the body is then taken who gets the body first? Okay,
(28:19):
I have a dead body. The police are investigating what happens,
because I don't know what really happens. I'm at the hospital.
Here is the body of a twenty three month old
baby who is dead, and she's got a lot of damage,
a lot of damage. There's a lot going on here,
some healing wounds, some that are brand new. I mean,
there's a lot going on with this child. And her
(28:40):
mom wasn't home. It was this guy who was watching
this twenty three month old. I'm telling you, the pitchforks
and daggers are coming out on this guy.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Oh yeah, and can you imagine. Let's just say he
wasn't on death row, right and he had been convicted
and hadn't been hadn't been sentenced. Oh yeah, he would
not There's a chance wouldn't have survived. Okay, to breathe,
to breathe, free air again. But the way this would
happen is that when this little angel's body would have
(29:14):
come from the hospital the corner, because they have corners
in Louisiana, would have been taken to the local pathologist,
and the pathologist would have, you know, done the examination,
would have done a forensic examination and forensic pathology dissection.
You know, with all of the assessments that they're going
(29:35):
to do. I still have yet to kind of understand
how they arrived putting bite mark aside, I still don't
understand how they arrived at the sexual assault portion of this.
You know, what, what precisely are they saying here? Is
(29:56):
this penetrative? Is this a penetrative event? Is it an
external event? So that's that's kind of curious to me
because when you have a child this young, you're going
to have very obvious trauma to this child's body in
(30:19):
her vaginal and potentially uh rectal area, and it would
be glaring. I mean, it would be so glaring, you know,
because it's not just the internal examination you know that
you're doing. There's an external examination where you're looking for
external trauma. As you can imagine, Dave, particularly if you're
talking about a full grown man that has you know,
(30:42):
forced himself on on this, uh, this baby. So how
do you arrive What empirical evidence do you have that
demonstrates this? That's that's my first My first question here,
so is is it just merely the supposition that that
you've got to a bite mark, so ergo that's sexual
(31:05):
in nature, and that's your premise that this thing is
kind of you know, growing from and then it begins
to pick up steam. Believe nothing that you hear and
(31:28):
only half of what you see. It's almost like sleight
of hand, right, It ain't really magic. There is no
such thing as magic, Okay, particularly in science. Most of
it is suggestion when you've got these kind of parlor
tricks that are going on. And Dave, I think that
(31:50):
one of the big indicators here is is how this
child's body was assessed. The body is an assess literally
by Hayne and by West, and they've come up with
several diagnoses here. You know, we've got the sexual assault,
(32:11):
we've got the drowning. And then you couple that with
the information they would have been armed with right about
the prior seizures. How could they not in the in
the in the fracture, the fracture skull.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
That's what takes this to the gates of hell, because
they had to have known that this child had gone
through this incredible brain trauma, you know, in skull fractures,
and had been in the hospital for a week before
she had been home for that. You know, if they
didn't know, then there's more evil at work than I
even know. Because the day of the act, the day
(32:46):
that Haley died, her body was transported to Jackson, Mississippi,
to be autopsied by doctor Hayne. Now, doctor Hayne was
in business with doctor West. That's important to know. Doctor
West is that forensic odentologist that we were just talking
about a minute ago. And the idea was to bring
(33:10):
in doctor West to help identify what he claimed were
the same thing. He tried to convince you you were
looking at by mark and that there were bike marks
on Haley's body. That's what they were trying to I
don't understand why I'm really having trouble with this show.
I know that I don't like to ask the question why,
but I really am thinking, what was their motivation? What
(33:34):
was the motivation of these two respected men two do
what happened next? Because following a cursory visual examination, doctor
Hayne concluded, Okay, a cursory examination, meaning somebody with my
ability to look at a body and say, ah, yeah,
here's what I think happened. There's not even looking, there's
(33:54):
not really touching, There's not a whole lot here. It's
just a cursory examination looking at the body and say
saying Haley had been bitten and was sexually assaulted at
her about the time of death. And he reported that
to law enforcement based on a cursory investigation of the
body in a videotaped experiment. I want to make sure
(34:16):
you hear what I'm saying in a videotaped experiment. Joseph
Scott Morgan. The day after Haley's death, doctor West pressed
molds of mister Duncan's teeth into Haley's body, creating the
(34:37):
bite marks that were later matched to mister Duncan's teeth
at trial.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Yeah, and how and.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Why did that? Know? How and why? I want to
know why that would happen other than pure evil? Ye.
I just for the life of me, Joe, I can't.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
Give you this. Yeah, it's it's fabrication of evidence, says
what it comes down to. And you asked me what
would be you asked me, what what the what the
motivation would be behind this? I can gear and damn
to you that it's not altruism. Uh, They're not doing
this for the good of mankind. What's the old soul
(35:20):
song you know from the early early seventies, money money,
money money.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Eh.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
You know you mentioned it and you said the word
they're in business. This is a business. You know they
talk about flesh trade, right, you've heard that term before.
This is right up there. Okay. You know when you
think about it, this guy and because if you can,
if you can keep, if you can keep the prosecutors
coming back to you, you know, business is open, baby.
(35:48):
So you think about that, and you think about the
time that this man spent in there. Just understand that
when a forensic goodontologist does one of these molds, what
they do is they actually go to the suspect. You can,
as a matter of fact, I urge anybody you can
go back to the Bundy case and you can see
(36:11):
the mold that they they wrote up a warrant for this.
I don't know if you recall this in the story,
and compelled him to give.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
It and he did everything. That's why I said the
guy was firing, he.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Tried to file his teeth. Yeah, well, it's the same
thing in mister Duncan's case. You know, he he is
being compelled to offer up a mold of his teeth.
You cast this mold, and then after the fact, you
go back and after the thing is hardened, you take
(36:44):
the body of this child. Let me repeat that, the
body of this child, and you videotape taking said mold,
and just thinking, if anybody out there has ever had
a cast mold of your teeth, they're sitting in doctor's,
a dentist office everywhere. If you get a chance, ask
(37:07):
ask your dentist, when do you have a cast mold
that I can say? I want you to feel how
hard this thing is? All right? You take this and
then you get he's been videotaped pressing this into into
her skin. Okay, and you're damn right. It's going to
create an impression. It's like you know, by that time,
(37:27):
it's like pressing it into Plato. All right. And so
the fact that procedurally the jury is not afforded the
opportunity to understand the process here, it's it's it is
light of hand when you think about it, because you're
going to come away and if you press it into
her skin, then there's not going to be any question
(37:53):
about the mold that you have taken from the suspect,
which matches perfectly, and then press it into the skin,
which is going to also match perfectly with the mold
that originated with the accused. I mean, all of the
points are going to match up the fact that this
(38:15):
was done and that it was allowed.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
It.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
The more I talk about this again, I'm having a
lot of these thoughts that are coming back into my
mind where you know, you you feel as though that
somebody ought to be in prison and it shouldn't be
dunking right, okay, because of what has been There's there's
no way you can you can ever replace his life
(38:41):
that has been lost and the fact that he languished there.
Every single day you talk about Dave, people go, they
bang on and on about cruel and unusual all the time, right,
you know, particularly when we talk about capital cases. You
know where there's some O theology that doesn't quite work.
(39:02):
I'll see you your capital punishment. You know you know
uh uh, I don't know uh failures, And I'll raise
you mister Duncan's Hell on Earth, you know, Okay, because
that that's what you're looking at.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
You and I were talking about this the other day.
There was a Netflix documentary that actually featured two men
that that were involved in something similar to this and
involving the same doctors here. And it was shocking to
me watching this to think about the lives of that
(39:37):
are lost to criminals with a doctor smock, you know.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
And oh yeah, yeah, Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer, Yeah,
they're both. Yeah, oh it's you know. One and they
went to Parchment, which is almost as equally as horrible
as Angola, which is in you know, in Mississippi. One
on death row and one was in for life man.
(40:02):
And let me just fill in the blanks with that story.
There were two separate cases of young girls that were
found in creek beds and they had quote unquote bite
marks that matched each one of these individuals, two separate cases,
and they these these fellows, based upon that the expert
(40:23):
testimony of West and Haine, were actually convicted Dave and
sentenced to this hell on Earth. And they didn't they
did not do this, as it turned out. As it
turned out, it was a single perpetrator that did this.
It was one guy that killed both of these young
(40:45):
girls that were found dead at his hand. And these
two guys had been, you know, sitting in parchment all
of this time. There's a long history of this, uh
and it's it's a stain. I mean, it's it's an
absolute stain that this occurred. And what's what's really fascinating
(41:08):
about this. I think that we've got a we've got
a practice forensic codonology that has been around for years
and years. We depend upon them to do identifications for
us in the medical legal world, as I previously mentioned,
and so many good things have come out of forensic
(41:28):
codeontology practice. As a matter of fact, if you've ever
seen a gray scale ruler, it's at a ninety degree angle.
We use those on scenes too, you know, to provide
scale when we're taking pictures that scenes. You know what
those rulers are called. They're called EBFO rulers, and they're
(41:48):
now the industry standard. In ABFO stands for American Board
a Forensic Codeontologist. They're the ones that developed those rulers
and now they're used everywhere and they permeate all practice
within forensic science. You know, we'll use them in the morgue,
you use them at scenes, you know, to demonstrate, you know,
(42:09):
bits of evidence that are out there. And that's the
legacy that I would prefer, you know, uh, forensic odentologists have,
but because of individuals like these aforementioned subjects, Unfortunately, nowadays,
(42:32):
when you think of forensic identology and bite mark, we're
left with nothing, with nothing but pseudoscience and modern alchemy.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Betrayal: Weekly
Betrayal Weekly is back for a brand new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack. And make sure to check out Seasons 1-4 of Betrayal, along with Betrayal Weekly Season 1.