February 25, 2025 • 47 mins
A 911 call is made by a father who claims he woke up and found his 6-month-old son unresponsive. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack talk about how first responders report the smell of urine and feces in the home and how roaches are seen all over the kitchen. Joe also explains the injuries that led to the beating death of a 6-month-old boy at the hand of his own father. Kaysyn Hedrick's name was never used by the courts until after his father was sentenced for his murder.
Transcript Highlights
00:00.00 Introduction
05:07.11 Six-month-old child beaten to death by his father
09:50.22 Not releasing child's name
15:11.11 Story about Roaches taking over home
20:01.24 Investigators have to see location of death
25:05.40 Shane Hedrick taken to sheriff's office
30:07.09 Taking the measure of a scene
35:03.98 Deciding on manner and cause of death
40:10.49 Child robbed of his life
47:07.75 Conclusion
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body bags with Joseph's gotten More. I have two favorite trees,
the two separate species. The first one that I absolutely
love arises out of my childhood experiences and being from Louisiana,
(00:26):
I think that I'd be shunned from fellow population of
Louisiana if I didn't name it, and it's Liva. The
reason I love the livoak is that, well, first off,
they're so old, the biles as they say, of the
tree stretched down into the earth. I remember climbing on
(00:48):
trees at the City Park in New Orleans when I
was little. The beauty of the Spanish moss kind of
waving back and forth when it seems like there's no
other air stirring. You can pick up on it with
the Spanish miles hanging down, and they provide comfort and
shade during those horrible, horrible hot summer days in South Louisiana. Now. Conversely,
(01:14):
my other favorite tree are mountain hemlocks. And I know
the association with hemlock, you know, brings back horrible things
like hemlock tea and that we won't discuss at this
point in time. But the beauty of a hemlock in
the mountains growing up adjacent to the bank of a
rushing stream in the mountains. There's something about it, and
(01:38):
you'd see them cluster together. I lived in the Blue
Ridge for a time teaching college. But the thing that
these two trees do have in common, other than you know,
a root system and being you know, tall and majestic,
is that, like all other trees, they tell a story.
(02:03):
You can see perhaps where storms flew through and cracked
off limbs. You can see where maybe a branch started
to grow, but yet it was muted for some reason.
You can see evidence of disease, you can see evidence
of new life when you get into the core of
the tree, though it tells a much larger and broader story. Well,
(02:26):
you know, human bodies are that way, and today we're
going to talk about one particular body, the body of
a small child, the body of a baby, a body that,
(02:46):
when thoroughly examined, showed evidence of things so horrific that
it's hard to take the measure. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan,
and this is body backs. My grandfather had an old
(03:06):
Chevy pickup truck that I think he probably loved more
than life, because he pulled his horse trailers with it
and he took care of it. And he had a
drunk cousin, first cousin that showed up at his house
begging for forgiveness for something that he had wronged my
grandfather over. And it was cold outside, and he went
(03:31):
into the house because the windshield was frozen up on
my grandfather's truck and got a pot of boiling water
and poured it on my grandfather's windshield underneath that tree.
And you know what happened. The windshield shattered into a
million pieces. I think the curses that issued force from
my grandfather back in the late sixties are still hanging
(03:52):
in the limbs of that tree, more than likely. And
you know, you have those you have those moments, you know,
I think in family life where you remember, you remember
these events. And for me, trees have always been special
in that way. They hold on to them in an
(04:12):
interesting way. But some families never truly get a chance
to get off of the ground, and they don't really
tell a story like I've had the chance to live through.
As a matter of fact, the only tale that they
tell is something that's just wrapped up in pure horror.
(04:33):
And for us, unfortunately, Dave here on body backs that's
what we're faced with today.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
You know, the one thing that it really frustrates me
to the point of of just I'm tired of people
hurting their children and ending up in court and having
family members stand up and defend the adult that hurt
(04:59):
the child. And I'm tired of it because if you're
that involved and engaged in the family, that you know
what's going on and you in this case today, we
are talking about a six month old boy who was
beaten to death by his father, and when police went
to look in the home, they were hit with the
(05:21):
smell of urine and feces and roaches everywhere, trash everywhere,
roaches climbing out of the kitchen cabinets and things like that.
And just from that alone, the conditions like that, and
it's worse. We'll get into that, But that alone is
not how you raise children. That's not how you show
(05:43):
love to children. You know, you can be poor, you
don't have to be dirty, you can be anything you
want to be. But if you're going to have children,
you have to raise them in a safe environment. And
that means throwing out the trash, that means making sure
that they have a safe place to sleep, a safe
place to live. You've got a house here that the
(06:03):
crib of this six month old only had three sides
to it. The mattress was two inches from the wall,
and within reaching distance of a child was an electrical
socklet without the face plate. Just you had the socket
bear hanging there, you know. And that's the type of
thing that I think about when a mother tries to
(06:24):
defend her son who has been convicted, you know, of
doing untold damage to a child.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
I'm tired of it. It is. It is amazing. Uh,
the level of h I don't know. I think the
level of latitude that family members give themselves in their
brains to defend quote unquote uh. This this ad the
(06:51):
actions of an individual instead of you know, saying, look
at you got to you gotta take your medicine. You
got to take what's coming and responsibility for this precious
little life. And I want to kind of pause for
a moment on this idea that she talked about, the
crib with the absent rail. You know, brother Dave, I've
(07:15):
actually worked a case involving a partially assembled crib that
was missing the long rail, the side rail, if you will,
of the crib because the mother claimed that even though
United Way provided the crib to her, they didn't give
(07:37):
her enough screws, so she just pushed it against the wall.
And while she was out with her boyfriend and she
had left her let me get this straight. Her six
month old under the care of an eight year old
and a five year old while she went out with
her boyfriend and smoked crack. The baby got twisted up
(08:02):
in an afghan blanket that was in the crib and
inverted in between the mattress and the wall and died
of positional asphyxia. This is damn dangerous, if you know,
I'm just I'm pleading with you, if you know of
anybody that's out there that has a crib that's in
this condition. I'm not one of these big, you know,
(08:23):
kind of Ralph Nader product safety people. I don't go
on and on them, but when it comes to babies,
you should have the good common sense to know that
this is incompatible with life, because in literally the twinkling
of an eye, you're talking about tragedy here. And you
(08:44):
know you had mentioned that there was an uncovered electrical
socket that's immediately adjacent to the bed. How can you
not understand the gravity, and I don't care. I don't
care if you if you're affected chemically some way in
your life, I don't care. What kind of trauma you've
had as a child makes no difference to me. You're
in the big leagues now, You're charged with taking care
(09:08):
of a precious little angel, and you failed miserably. And
as a matter of fact, this is demonstrative of what
finally happens. And here's another interesting side note. Even though David,
I find this quite fascinating, you have pointed this out
to me that even though we have a conviction in
(09:28):
this case, you have pointed out that the courts, the
prosecutor has chosen not to name the child. This child
is simply known by baby Boy for me, and I'm
sure the name is known to someone out there. That
(09:50):
is arguably, and I'm talking to the courts now and
to the prosecutor, that is arguably one of the most dismissive,
horrible things that you can do, because this child deserves
to be named. This child deserves to have an identity
of their own, because this child's life had value, Dave,
(10:11):
it had value, and right now they've not released the name.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
You know the thing that really, I mean, there are
a lot of things that bother me about all of this, obviously,
as it does anybody listening. But when you, I wondered,
how come, you know, why do we avoid naming? You know,
a child who is six months old could not care
for themselves in any way, shape or form. Who are
we protecting in not naming said child? It almost it
(10:39):
does devalue the life. If you don't give the child
a name, I end up referring to it as it
or the baby.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
And yeah, it's horribly dismissive. As a matter of fact,
I would just as soon not know this individual's name
that did this, and that this subject be jammed down
into a hole with his name always forgotten, and a
stone monument be made to this baby somewhere and plastered
(11:09):
on billboards. This child died at the hand of a parent,
and this is the name because for me, that child's
life had value. And you know, I guess that some
people will say that, well, you know, Shane Hedrick, who's
(11:29):
the father, Well his life has value too, really, okay, Well,
in my economy, in my economy, I'm a bit more
concerned about the identity of the child than a convicted
child killer. I got a call many years ago sitting
(12:03):
at my desk at the Medical Examiner's office in Atlanta,
and it was one of those calls where it came
in from the emergency room. I'll never forget it at
Grady Hospital, Big the big public hospital in Atlanta. I said,
we've we've got a child that has choked to death.
(12:25):
And I was like, oh, okay, I'd had other cases
like that. But then they went on to tell me
that the child had choked to death on the carcass
of a German cockroach. And first off I had I said,
(12:49):
can you please repeat that? And they said, yeah, the
child was found uh syonaudic, not breathing. Uh cyanosis is
uh condition that you can see with skin turning blue,
that sort of thing. And when the EMTs at the
scene valiantly attempted to start an airway, they tore up
(13:17):
the thorax of the German cockroach. So when we finally
got that little baby's body into the Morgan, we did
the neck dissection. You could see the little arms and
the legs of the cockroaches down the trachea, and it
was one of the most horrible things and this demanded
(13:38):
on my part that I would go out and take
a look at the crime scene or the death scene
where this had occurred. And Dave, I got out to
that scene. I'll never forget. It was in the Perry
Housing Project, which no longer exists. It was one of
the largest housing projects in the nation and one of
the oldest. And I had like eight people that were
(14:00):
living in this two bedroom dwelling and the place was
actually very clean. There were not piles of clothes laying around.
They were hung well ordered in. An old gentleman who
lived there that was kind of the the father of
the two women that had children. He said, Sari, he says,
(14:23):
we're clean people. We try to keep up in our home.
You're welcome to look around, he says, But I got
something I want to show you. And he said, step
up here on this chair and take your flashlight and
look up in the ceiling. And I had a big
(14:43):
old mag light, gigantic, you know, chargeable flashlight. And there
was a hole in the ceiling that was about two
feet by one foot if you can imagine this in
a popcorn ceiling. Up in the whole Dave, and there
were millions of cockroaches, and he said, I've tried to
(15:10):
poison them. I've tried to do everything I can. I've
gone to the Atlanta Housing Authority and they won't do nothing.
He said, my baby's getting bit in here. He said,
I've asked to move. They won't move us. And Dave,
I went and tried to get an audience with the
head of the house in authority at that point in time,
(15:34):
and they turned me away. But guess what, I did
get a call from their counsel, from their attorneys, and
I often wonder whatever happened to that family. See, it's
not necessarily the people that inhabit a place that make
it unkempt. It's the circumstances lots of times and some
(15:58):
people they don't have wave around it. But Dave, in
the case of this precious little angel, and where this
child was domiciled, this was a choice, it was This
was a choice. It was made by this child's parents.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Day when I looked at the you know, after the well,
let's start with where the police are called. Okay, A
nine one one call comes in from Shane Hedrick, the father.
Now he claims that he woke up about nine thirty
and went to check on his son and found him unresponsive. Okay,
(16:37):
that's the call to nine one one, and that the
nine one one dispatch actually talked to him about how
to do CPR on the child, a six month old
baby boy, and that's what he did until first responders
could arrive. That's the story we got. Woke up unresponsive,
that's all I know, okay, which is always a bit
(16:59):
of a push, you know. Really, you woke up, found
your child unresponsive, and that's all you know, okay. And
so after they talked to him. By the way, the
mother of the child was not home at the time,
and I don't know what I believe about the story
(17:20):
being told, and it really doesn't matter, but she was
not home at the time that officers arrived on the
scene at nine point thirty in the morning. Okay. When
they get Shane Hendrick back to the sheriff's office and
begin the interviewing process, they also file for a search warrant,
(17:42):
and neither one of us as lawyers, we've been around
crime related programming for a long time, and we know
that the value of seeing the entire situation as it
exists as close to the time of the in this case,
death is paramount to find out what really happened.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Correct, Yes, it is. And I've had cases day where
families have taken children into the hospital, okay, like mom
and dad have taken the kids, taking a child to
an emergency room after they've been found. And this is
even in cases of SIDS or suspected SIDS, which this
(18:22):
child falls within those parameters. We're talking about six month
old SIDS. Most of the time you're looking at about
two months to about ten months. So if you get
up above that ten month marker, you can still consider SIDS,
but you're still kind of scratching your head over it.
You know, you're thinking, well, what are the other possibilities
(18:43):
because most of those deaths fall within those parameters, And
we still to this day don't know what actually causes
SIDS but the sudden infant death syndrome. But I've had
cases day. One particularly comes to mind where the parents
of the child that was found unresponsive at home called
(19:06):
a friend who immediately came to their home and clean
the house. Because when I showed up to do what
we refer to as a retro scene investigation, that means
the body is not there, but I have to go.
I want to look in the cupboards. I want to
see if there's food. I want to see the level
of cleanliness or lack thereof. Play smell like pine saw.
(19:33):
It smelled like it smelled like what the Army Barrick
smelled like. When I went through basic training the Army,
it always smelled a pine saw And you could still
see kind of those wet mop marks on the floor.
That's how quickly that I had gotten out there. And
so right you are in this idea of you, it's
impossible to assess, you know. I always like to use
(19:55):
the term a life that has been lived in a
space without physically going out to the space. It's demanded
of you as an investigator. That's one of the things
that we require happen in medical legal death investigation because
we have to contextualize everything and if I don't, if
I can't grasp that, particularly with a small child, where
(20:17):
you're not going to have a bunch of history. You know,
when we're when we're up in age, we've got all
of this life history, medical history, how we eat, how
what our common practices are. Do we kick our shoes
off when we walk to the door, or do we
put our running shoes on when we walk through the door.
You know, what do we do? You know at the
(20:38):
end of the day, how do we live our life?
How do we sleep? Are there drugs in the house?
And I don't just mean he listed drugs. You know,
are their medications that sort of thing. But with babies,
with children, you don't have that, So you have to
go out and the visualize it. I recommend that every
scene be visited, if possible, for all practitioners in my
(21:00):
particular field, so that you can paint the picture of
what happened, because you don't know, you weren't there to
witness it, and so yes.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
It's telling you their version of events.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
And I'm as much as I'm interested in hearing that,
I want to be able to objectively look at the
scene and make my own conclusion or make my notes.
Not necessarily a conclusion, but there's certain inferences that I
can draw based upon what I'm physically seeing. Manifested it's scene,
I can also go back out and if I have
(21:33):
further questions, I can say to say a family member.
And by the way, this is one of the toughest
things that you have to do. I always hated do
into some SIDS cases because there is this fear that
rises up in parents. Parents are terrified anyway, and when
somebody with a badge shows up and they start talking
(21:54):
to you, you're terrified. You know, it might make you
react in a way that you don't necessarily would commonly react.
But when you start to talk to families, you have
to get things straight because the sooner we can get
it straight, the center we can conclude our inquiry. In
this particular case, Dave, Oh my god, what the police
(22:17):
found when they got out to this home. I think
that it would make the most i don't know, the
most deplorable, degraded among us blush. It would make people
on skid Row in La blush based upon what the
(22:39):
police saw when they walked into this home.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
You know, while they took Shane Hedrick, the father who
had made the nine one one call, and by the way,
just over clear, the six month old baby boy was
declared dead at the Seine, you know, he was already dead,
and so they took father into the sheriff's office to
interview him. But they got the search warrant and went
(23:02):
back to the home. And what they found when they
entered the home I'm going right off the actual report
from the police officers. Okay, the Sheriff's department that went in.
There was a strong odor of animal feces upon entering
the home, a strong odor of animal feces. Roaches were
visible inside and outside the kitchen cabinets, dirty laundry stacked
(23:26):
in the hallway, multiple holes in the floor and ceiling,
windows boarded up with plywood electrical outlet missing cover near
children's bed. Here's the other one. Mold visible on the
baby's mattress. The crib had only three sides and there
(23:47):
was a two inch gap between the mattress and the wall. Now,
most of us are familiar with the mattress used in
a crib. They have a plastic type of a covering
because there's going to be urine and feces from the
baby on that and then he's.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Been wiped up.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Yeah, oh it's been up, yeah, in that way. You know,
you put a you have a sheet, the fitted sheet
that goes over it, and usually you have other blankets
and things like that. But it is that kind of slippery,
you know, thing you can wipe off. So what it
would take to create mold in that situation on that time.
(24:22):
It was never cleaned. It had to have never been
wiped off. It had to have been just sitting getting
dirty and never I mean, it boggles my mind. What
it would take to get mold on that on a
crib mattress, I can't imagine. But that's what they saw
and that's what they reported. Now everything about the investigation
(24:43):
is based on, well, it starts with what the reporter,
you know, you've pointed as the finder, what they say
in their initial call to nine to one one and
their initial call talk to police, and so they now
have Shane Hendrick, the father is at the sheriff department
while they're walking the house and they see the condition
(25:03):
of the home. The mother of the child was not
home at the time that nine to one one was called,
so she's not on site when this is going on.
And when they get Headrick, you know, to the Sheriff's
office and start interviewing him. It's interesting, but I want
to go to the home right now. Joe. Walking into
(25:24):
that environment I mentioned at the very beginning, A lot
of us have been poor. It doesn't take a whole
lot to be poor, but it doesn't take much to
live in a clean environment. To wipe things up, to
put trash in the proper receptacle, and to make it livable,
especially if you have small children, to make the home safe. Look,
if you got a boarded up window because you can't
(25:46):
afford the go I got you no problem. I don't
really have a problem with that, as long as there's
an exit route and that you have a plan to
get it fixed at some point. Being involved in a
number of different ministries and churches over my adult life,
I don't know a church that would turn somebody away
that needed help with something like that. With small children
in the home, regardless of how they are and who
(26:07):
they are. That's just a different discussion for a different day.
But you walk into this environment, Joe, what are you
thinking as a legal death investigator?
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Well, I'm thinking of the first thing, if it is
the way it has been painted in these in the
official report, I'm thinking that this environment is so degraded
relative to what is within the acceptable parameters for normal living,
(26:39):
and there is a baseline norm. Just so that everybody
understands that, you know, I take exception with people that say, well,
there's your reality and there's my reality. No, the reality
is is that you have to provide a clean environment
for a baby. This baby cannot provide for themselves. In
(26:59):
order for the baby to thrive, you have to have
a clean environment because you can have all things, you know,
like just the cockroaches themselves. You were talking about how
they observe these holes in the floor and you know
the walls. You know, that's that's not the end of
(27:19):
it either, because you know, one of the things I'm
thinking is that not only I don't know that people understand,
but not only do ants bite, which I've had bodies
that have ant bites all over them, cockroaches bite as well.
I don't think that people understand that they do bite.
I've had, you know, multiple cases of child abuse where
(27:43):
I've had cockroach bites on the surface of the skins.
And in addition to that, you know what else comes
up through the floor, rats, vermin like that. So anything
can get into this environment and where there is any
kind of biloge elements that are left lying around, whether
(28:04):
it be animal feces like dogs or cats, even or
if we're talking about food stuffs that are left out,
these rats are hungry. Well, it's like ringing the dinner
bell for anybody that's in the house, and and you're
observing all this, and you're trying to take the measure
(28:25):
of what you're seeing because you know, just one of
these things alone. If we're just talking about we've got
a deceased child, and we walk in and we see
a mattress that is covered in mold, I'm going to
have questions because you're talking about respiratory issues you know
that can develop with a child. Because even if the
child was not traumatized anyway, and you had a case
(28:49):
of what is suspected to be SIDS. Do you know
what most parents say that you interview when you suspected
their SIDS because the parent, it just happens, obviously, as
the name states, Sudden infant death syndrome. Consistently, I've had
parents over the year say, well, my baby had a
(29:11):
little cold, and they always describe it that way. That
means that you've got mucus coming out of the nose,
those sorts of things. Well, I'm trying to correlate as
a medical legal death investigator with a little cold, But
yet I see on the mattress that you've got mold
growing there. Well, I'm thinking you can have any number
of respiratory infections that are rooted in the growth of mold.
(29:35):
All right, And that's just one thing we're talking about here.
We're not talking about the rest of the filth that's
around the place. And it is, to say the very least,
it's troubling. The investigators that work the scene would have
spent hours just cataloging everything and listing what they were seeing.
(29:57):
And that's what you know. I use the term a lot.
You can't take the measure of things when you look
about at a scene and you begin to try to
consider what kind of life was lived by the parents,
and also the life that was lived by the child,
or that the child was subjected to. It's kind of
(30:19):
like pick your cause of death, but in this case, Dave,
we have a very very specific cause of death. Got
(30:45):
a question for you, Dave. Have you ever had something
occur in your life where you wish that you could
just throw it into the sea of forgetfulness, where you
could just black out as it were, and that you
(31:05):
would have no memory of it. You know, things that
are so horrible. I don't know about you. I have,
and I think that most of us that have been
in this world you have those moments in tom where
you could you would love to forget. But isn't it
amazing there's a thread that runs through so many things.
(31:26):
With many suspects. They have these moments where they black out, and.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
I'm thinking, how you can remember what happened?
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Yeah, yeah, you know how convenient. And in this case,
Shane Hedrick has you know, he's planted his flag here
and the whole blackout thing. You know, yeah, I blackout
when I get angry.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
And I'm thinking, okay, I get you, you want to
make that claim. But when when we're sitting here looking
at this and going okay, Shane Hendrick has already said
what happened. I woke up, found the baby unresponsive, called
nine one one. He's locked into that. So when they
get him downtown or to the sheriff's office rather, they
start talking to him and he starts talking. And if
(32:14):
you've ever been through an interview with police, they know
what they're doing. They have a pretty good BS detector,
most of them do, and they know that this isn't true.
They also know the condition of the trailer. You know,
in this particular case, they know what they're looking at.
They don't know exactly what happened, and there's no video,
(32:36):
there's no audio, there's no witness, apparently, so the detective's
responsibility is to get the truth out of this, and
they start with that I woke up, he was unresponsive.
That's all I know. If you watch Breaking Bad, That's
what Jesse was told to say to police when his
girlfriend overdosed and died in bed with him. I woke up,
(32:57):
she was dead. I called you. That's all I know.
And that's what Hedrick starts with. But they get him
downtown or get him to the office, and now he
tells detectives, well, I have a tendency to black out
when I get stressed out or angry. He then says
that he became angry, so he's already loading up. I
blacked out because I got angry. But who did he
(33:19):
get angry at last night or early this morning. It
was my wife, Loreena, and nance I got mad at
her because she was leaving to be with another man,
according to him. Hedrick then admits that he became angry
at the six month old baby because the baby was crying.
(33:40):
Six month old babies cry for a number of reasons,
and that caused him to be angry. So he's angry
that he claims his wife is out with another man,
and he's mad because the baby is crying and won't stop. Now,
Hedrick admits he struck his son while he was blacked out. Now, Joe,
(34:01):
I don't know about you, but I'm thinking if you're
blacked out, you wouldn't know what you did or did
not do. Correct if you're.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Blacked out, Yeah, if you're blacked out, Uh yeah, how
do you come to that conclusion that you actually struck
struck somebody and a six month old. You can hear
all things. You can hear that, yeah, exactly, you can.
Actually I don't know if it's possible to hear an
(34:29):
eye roll, but I would think that that would be
one of the loudest eye rolls ever. H And you know,
you can you can actually hear this. It's amazing to
me that someone would this is going to be your
and maybe it is. It's it's kind of your you know,
your your last resort at this point in time that
(34:51):
you're going to put this forward. But what's I think
what was so very troubling to me, Dave, is what
the people in the medical legal community found with this baby.
When the baby was finally examined, where they're going to
(35:12):
do their assessment and decide, you know, on a manner
and cause of death. I got to tell you, I
don't think it's any grand mystery here to talk about
what the manner of death is going to be. And
I'll plainly state it because there's been a conviction in
(35:35):
this case and it's a homicide.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
We know he is admitted to striking his six month
old baby boy because he was angry, but he blanked out.
Now I have to ask you, because I've always thought
that babies, as their bones are growing and that they're
not hard like they do as we get older, that
it is difficult to break a baby's a bone in
(35:59):
the baby. Is that correct?
Speaker 1 (36:01):
It's no, you're easier. You're absolutely right. It's very difficult
because their bones are still very pliable. They you know,
our bones, over a period of time, they they ossify
and you know, you they become more rigid. When a
(36:24):
baby is, you know, six months old, six months old,
you still literally, you know, have the font nails in
the skull that you can appreciate, you know, the soft spots.
You know, you've got an antire you've got post here.
You've also got some on the lateral. People only think
of one where the skull is still very very soft,
and it it would it requires and I'm not going
(36:49):
to go into a lot of ghastly detail based upon
some things I've seen in the morgue, but it requires
such a tremendous amount of force in order to quote
unquote fracture these non calcified elements you know, you know,
in the skull or any bone on the body. You
have to you have to show up with an incredible
(37:13):
amount of force and anger that would be fueling it
in order for this to happen. I'm not saying that.
I'm not saying that you could not kill a baby
with a single strike, because that's possible, but Dave just
goes beyond that. We're talking about fractures that have occurred,
(37:35):
which means, in my estimation, you're probably talking about multiple strikes.
And that's an indication of somebody that has no self control.
I think to a great degree, I was just reflecting
just a second ago, and forgive me for you know,
kind of I don't think I'm digressing, but for me,
(37:58):
you know, as a father and a grandfather, I think
back to my children being six months old, and it's
one of the sweetest ages. They're completely dependent upon you.
And I still have the rocker in my house where
I held my children and fed them and rock back
(38:22):
and forth even in the wee hours at you know,
three o'clock in the morning. My wife certainly did more
than I ever did. But I remember those times and
how precious and how fragile that life is. And you know,
when you're a dad and a grandpa, you begin to
think about how fragile life is. I think more so
(38:43):
when you're older. But you know, you're suddenly struck with this,
this parental thing, and I know that you encountered this
when you're looking down at that baby and you're thinking, oh,
my lord, this being is totally depended upon the actions
that I I'm going to take at this moment time,
and it's such a sweetness that's there, and you look
(39:05):
and you think, how in the world could anybody destroy this?
How are you capable of doing this? And I think
that many times you'll have in cases like this, you'll
have defense attorneys that try to use that to their advantage,
because it's always it's always the cases that are most
ghastly to me. It is where defense counsel will take
(39:31):
the horrific nature of these cases and say, certainly, no
one within their right mind could have done this to
another living creature, how much more so would their own child.
There has to be some other pathology at work here.
I'm not buying that. I'm not buying that in this case.
I'm buying that as the court has determined that this individual,
(39:54):
of their own free will chose to do this, I
have no idea about the motivations the individual have. I
don't really care because I know at the end of
the day, I still have a baby that is nameless,
that it's gone forever and ever. That we've been robbed
of this child, A child has been robbed of their life, Dave.
And there are cases like this and we cover them,
(40:14):
and it seems like every single time we do, I
feel like I need to drink after I do it,
because it just it churns up. You know, this, this
level of anger that I think most of us, most
of us would would think that. You know, and I'm
not dismissing people that aren't parents, but when you're a
parent and you're a grandparent and you see this you know,
(40:37):
I have so many of these times. I'll look at
Kimmy and I'll say to her, no questions asked, just
bring the child to us. Well, you know, don't don't
rip this child to shreds, don't kill this child, whatever
you do, because that life is so precious, Dave.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
I was always so petrified of the south spots of
this called. Of course, I'll know the big one, but
there are the others that you just mentioned, and I
was always petrified of that.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Always.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
I never got over it. And even with my grandson Brelan,
I'm so thankful that Hannah allowed me to be a
very big part of him when he was a baby,
of rocking him and holding him and loving on him
because I was a little less afraid because you know,
I had raised children and so I had a little
more confidence in my ability to hold a child. But
(41:25):
I will tell you there were times sitting there when
he was six months old and I was loving on
him and just kissing his little soft head. And I
think about that, and I think of how dependent, how precious,
and how fearful I was that I was going to
do something that could harm this child, you know, accidentally
just holding him wrong. You know, that was a fear
(41:48):
factor and I'm thinking, what would it take. What kind
of a human being could grow to adult age and
be able to break the skull of a six month
old baby boy? And that's what we found out that
according to uh met it for the forensic pathologist James
Jacoby Joe, you're going to have to explain what he
(42:11):
found because it goes beyond the pale of one one strike.
Any child six months old deserves to be struck, period,
not even Spain. They don't know what's going on, you know.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
They don't, They have no Yeah, and there's nothing that
you're going to do that's going to stop them from
crying other than attempting to sue them in a loving, compassionate, parental, true,
truly parental way, you know, those things that we want
to demonstrate to our children. How much more so with
the weakest among among the children, you know, the most vulnerable.
(42:45):
But yeah, let me kind of paint this picture for you, Dave,
and understand that this precious little six month old let
me say that six month old little baby boy didn't
have one, but two distinct fractures and their skull in
(43:06):
his skull and in addition to that, this child had
a focal area of hemorrhage in their spinal cord, which
means that there would have been a strike posteriorly to
the spine as well that would have generated kind of
(43:30):
that kind of insult or injury. So you've got a
lot that's going on here. The beauty of what the
medical examiner did in this particular case is that and
doctor Jacobe was right in doing this. And I applaud
I applaud any member of the medical legal community that
(43:53):
does consults that brings in consultancy, because it's through the consultancy,
and that's when of the reasons I started this episode
off talking about trees, it was through this consultancy that
they obtain the services of a radiologist. And there are
(44:14):
a group of people out there that are radiologists, and
that's folks that read X rays. If you get a
broken bone, it's going to be the radiologists that will
take a look. And there are people in radiology that
are actually forensic radiologists. They consult on cases that can
consult on the living. We actually perform in forensics. We
(44:35):
do living forensics as well, and many times forensic pathologists
will be consulted on living victims. And there's also a
group of people called forensic radiologists that can be brought
in and consult. They consult on the living as well,
and they consult on the deceased. And in this case,
the forensic radiologists had a big reveal here, Dave, As
(44:58):
we have stated, this unknow aimed precious little angel who
is six months old, demonstrated per per the X rays
that were taken that this little angel had sustained a
(45:18):
month earlier a fracture in the right forearm let that
sink in just for a second the right forearm one
month earlier. This baby had been living with the pain
of that before he was viciously attacked for simply crying,
(45:48):
for simply desiring comfort. For a month prior to this,
this child had dealt with this anguish, this unresolved healing injury.
That the radiologist said that there was evidence that it
(46:09):
was trying to heal on its own but had remained untreated. Well,
no wonder the child was crying. What else was the
child absent? Was it absent food? Was it absent a
warm blanket? Was it absent the soothing touch of a
(46:31):
parent that loved them. God rest this little unnamed child's soul,
and God blessed those that go out and bear witness
to the most horrific things that most of us can't
(46:54):
even possibly imagine in our worst nightmares. I'm Joseph Scott
Morgan and this is Body Backs h
Body bags with Joseph's gotten More. I have two favorite trees,
the two separate species. The first one that I absolutely
love arises out of my childhood experiences and being from Louisiana,
(00:26):
I think that I'd be shunned from fellow population of
Louisiana if I didn't name it, and it's Liva. The
reason I love the livoak is that, well, first off,
they're so old, the biles as they say, of the
tree stretched down into the earth. I remember climbing on
(00:48):
trees at the City Park in New Orleans when I
was little. The beauty of the Spanish moss kind of
waving back and forth when it seems like there's no
other air stirring. You can pick up on it with
the Spanish miles hanging down, and they provide comfort and
shade during those horrible, horrible hot summer days in South Louisiana. Now. Conversely,
(01:14):
my other favorite tree are mountain hemlocks. And I know
the association with hemlock, you know, brings back horrible things
like hemlock tea and that we won't discuss at this
point in time. But the beauty of a hemlock in
the mountains growing up adjacent to the bank of a
rushing stream in the mountains. There's something about it, and
(01:38):
you'd see them cluster together. I lived in the Blue
Ridge for a time teaching college. But the thing that
these two trees do have in common, other than you know,
a root system and being you know, tall and majestic,
is that, like all other trees, they tell a story.
(02:03):
You can see perhaps where storms flew through and cracked
off limbs. You can see where maybe a branch started
to grow, but yet it was muted for some reason.
You can see evidence of disease, you can see evidence
of new life when you get into the core of
the tree, though it tells a much larger and broader story. Well,
(02:26):
you know, human bodies are that way, and today we're
going to talk about one particular body, the body of
a small child, the body of a baby, a body that,
(02:46):
when thoroughly examined, showed evidence of things so horrific that
it's hard to take the measure. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan,
and this is body backs. My grandfather had an old
(03:06):
Chevy pickup truck that I think he probably loved more
than life, because he pulled his horse trailers with it
and he took care of it. And he had a
drunk cousin, first cousin that showed up at his house
begging for forgiveness for something that he had wronged my
grandfather over. And it was cold outside, and he went
(03:31):
into the house because the windshield was frozen up on
my grandfather's truck and got a pot of boiling water
and poured it on my grandfather's windshield underneath that tree.
And you know what happened. The windshield shattered into a
million pieces. I think the curses that issued force from
my grandfather back in the late sixties are still hanging
(03:52):
in the limbs of that tree, more than likely. And
you know, you have those you have those moments, you know,
I think in family life where you remember, you remember
these events. And for me, trees have always been special
in that way. They hold on to them in an
(04:12):
interesting way. But some families never truly get a chance
to get off of the ground, and they don't really
tell a story like I've had the chance to live through.
As a matter of fact, the only tale that they
tell is something that's just wrapped up in pure horror.
(04:33):
And for us, unfortunately, Dave here on body backs that's
what we're faced with today.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
You know, the one thing that it really frustrates me
to the point of of just I'm tired of people
hurting their children and ending up in court and having
family members stand up and defend the adult that hurt
(04:59):
the child. And I'm tired of it because if you're
that involved and engaged in the family, that you know
what's going on and you in this case today, we
are talking about a six month old boy who was
beaten to death by his father, and when police went
to look in the home, they were hit with the
(05:21):
smell of urine and feces and roaches everywhere, trash everywhere,
roaches climbing out of the kitchen cabinets and things like that.
And just from that alone, the conditions like that, and
it's worse. We'll get into that, But that alone is
not how you raise children. That's not how you show
(05:43):
love to children. You know, you can be poor, you
don't have to be dirty, you can be anything you
want to be. But if you're going to have children,
you have to raise them in a safe environment. And
that means throwing out the trash, that means making sure
that they have a safe place to sleep, a safe
place to live. You've got a house here that the
(06:03):
crib of this six month old only had three sides
to it. The mattress was two inches from the wall,
and within reaching distance of a child was an electrical
socklet without the face plate. Just you had the socket
bear hanging there, you know. And that's the type of
thing that I think about when a mother tries to
(06:24):
defend her son who has been convicted, you know, of
doing untold damage to a child.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
I'm tired of it. It is. It is amazing. Uh,
the level of h I don't know. I think the
level of latitude that family members give themselves in their
brains to defend quote unquote uh. This this ad the
(06:51):
actions of an individual instead of you know, saying, look
at you got to you gotta take your medicine. You
got to take what's coming and responsibility for this precious
little life. And I want to kind of pause for
a moment on this idea that she talked about, the
crib with the absent rail. You know, brother Dave, I've
(07:15):
actually worked a case involving a partially assembled crib that
was missing the long rail, the side rail, if you will,
of the crib because the mother claimed that even though
United Way provided the crib to her, they didn't give
(07:37):
her enough screws, so she just pushed it against the wall.
And while she was out with her boyfriend and she
had left her let me get this straight. Her six
month old under the care of an eight year old
and a five year old while she went out with
her boyfriend and smoked crack. The baby got twisted up
(08:02):
in an afghan blanket that was in the crib and
inverted in between the mattress and the wall and died
of positional asphyxia. This is damn dangerous, if you know,
I'm just I'm pleading with you, if you know of
anybody that's out there that has a crib that's in
this condition. I'm not one of these big, you know,
(08:23):
kind of Ralph Nader product safety people. I don't go
on and on them, but when it comes to babies,
you should have the good common sense to know that
this is incompatible with life, because in literally the twinkling
of an eye, you're talking about tragedy here. And you
(08:44):
know you had mentioned that there was an uncovered electrical
socket that's immediately adjacent to the bed. How can you
not understand the gravity, and I don't care. I don't
care if you if you're affected chemically some way in
your life, I don't care. What kind of trauma you've
had as a child makes no difference to me. You're
in the big leagues now, You're charged with taking care
(09:08):
of a precious little angel, and you failed miserably. And
as a matter of fact, this is demonstrative of what
finally happens. And here's another interesting side note. Even though David,
I find this quite fascinating, you have pointed this out
to me that even though we have a conviction in
(09:28):
this case, you have pointed out that the courts, the
prosecutor has chosen not to name the child. This child
is simply known by baby Boy for me, and I'm
sure the name is known to someone out there. That
(09:50):
is arguably, and I'm talking to the courts now and
to the prosecutor, that is arguably one of the most dismissive,
horrible things that you can do, because this child deserves
to be named. This child deserves to have an identity
of their own, because this child's life had value, Dave,
(10:11):
it had value, and right now they've not released the name.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
You know the thing that really, I mean, there are
a lot of things that bother me about all of this, obviously,
as it does anybody listening. But when you, I wondered,
how come, you know, why do we avoid naming? You know,
a child who is six months old could not care
for themselves in any way, shape or form. Who are
we protecting in not naming said child? It almost it
(10:39):
does devalue the life. If you don't give the child
a name, I end up referring to it as it
or the baby.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
And yeah, it's horribly dismissive. As a matter of fact,
I would just as soon not know this individual's name
that did this, and that this subject be jammed down
into a hole with his name always forgotten, and a
stone monument be made to this baby somewhere and plastered
(11:09):
on billboards. This child died at the hand of a parent,
and this is the name because for me, that child's
life had value. And you know, I guess that some
people will say that, well, you know, Shane Hedrick, who's
(11:29):
the father, Well his life has value too, really, okay, Well,
in my economy, in my economy, I'm a bit more
concerned about the identity of the child than a convicted
child killer. I got a call many years ago sitting
(12:03):
at my desk at the Medical Examiner's office in Atlanta,
and it was one of those calls where it came
in from the emergency room. I'll never forget it at
Grady Hospital, Big the big public hospital in Atlanta. I said,
we've we've got a child that has choked to death.
(12:25):
And I was like, oh, okay, I'd had other cases
like that. But then they went on to tell me
that the child had choked to death on the carcass
of a German cockroach. And first off I had I said,
(12:49):
can you please repeat that? And they said, yeah, the
child was found uh syonaudic, not breathing. Uh cyanosis is
uh condition that you can see with skin turning blue,
that sort of thing. And when the EMTs at the
scene valiantly attempted to start an airway, they tore up
(13:17):
the thorax of the German cockroach. So when we finally
got that little baby's body into the Morgan, we did
the neck dissection. You could see the little arms and
the legs of the cockroaches down the trachea, and it
was one of the most horrible things and this demanded
(13:38):
on my part that I would go out and take
a look at the crime scene or the death scene
where this had occurred. And Dave, I got out to
that scene. I'll never forget. It was in the Perry
Housing Project, which no longer exists. It was one of
the largest housing projects in the nation and one of
the oldest. And I had like eight people that were
(14:00):
living in this two bedroom dwelling and the place was
actually very clean. There were not piles of clothes laying around.
They were hung well ordered in. An old gentleman who
lived there that was kind of the the father of
the two women that had children. He said, Sari, he says,
(14:23):
we're clean people. We try to keep up in our home.
You're welcome to look around, he says, But I got
something I want to show you. And he said, step
up here on this chair and take your flashlight and
look up in the ceiling. And I had a big
(14:43):
old mag light, gigantic, you know, chargeable flashlight. And there
was a hole in the ceiling that was about two
feet by one foot if you can imagine this in
a popcorn ceiling. Up in the whole Dave, and there
were millions of cockroaches, and he said, I've tried to
(15:10):
poison them. I've tried to do everything I can. I've
gone to the Atlanta Housing Authority and they won't do nothing.
He said, my baby's getting bit in here. He said,
I've asked to move. They won't move us. And Dave,
I went and tried to get an audience with the
head of the house in authority at that point in time,
(15:34):
and they turned me away. But guess what, I did
get a call from their counsel, from their attorneys, and
I often wonder whatever happened to that family. See, it's
not necessarily the people that inhabit a place that make
it unkempt. It's the circumstances lots of times and some
(15:58):
people they don't have wave around it. But Dave, in
the case of this precious little angel, and where this
child was domiciled, this was a choice, it was This
was a choice. It was made by this child's parents.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Day when I looked at the you know, after the well,
let's start with where the police are called. Okay, A
nine one one call comes in from Shane Hedrick, the father.
Now he claims that he woke up about nine thirty
and went to check on his son and found him unresponsive. Okay,
(16:37):
that's the call to nine one one, and that the
nine one one dispatch actually talked to him about how
to do CPR on the child, a six month old
baby boy, and that's what he did until first responders
could arrive. That's the story we got. Woke up unresponsive,
that's all I know, okay, which is always a bit
(16:59):
of a push, you know. Really, you woke up, found
your child unresponsive, and that's all you know, okay. And
so after they talked to him. By the way, the
mother of the child was not home at the time,
and I don't know what I believe about the story
(17:20):
being told, and it really doesn't matter, but she was
not home at the time that officers arrived on the
scene at nine point thirty in the morning. Okay. When
they get Shane Hendrick back to the sheriff's office and
begin the interviewing process, they also file for a search warrant,
(17:42):
and neither one of us as lawyers, we've been around
crime related programming for a long time, and we know
that the value of seeing the entire situation as it
exists as close to the time of the in this case,
death is paramount to find out what really happened.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Correct, Yes, it is. And I've had cases day where
families have taken children into the hospital, okay, like mom
and dad have taken the kids, taking a child to
an emergency room after they've been found. And this is
even in cases of SIDS or suspected SIDS, which this
(18:22):
child falls within those parameters. We're talking about six month
old SIDS. Most of the time you're looking at about
two months to about ten months. So if you get
up above that ten month marker, you can still consider SIDS,
but you're still kind of scratching your head over it.
You know, you're thinking, well, what are the other possibilities
(18:43):
because most of those deaths fall within those parameters, And
we still to this day don't know what actually causes
SIDS but the sudden infant death syndrome. But I've had
cases day. One particularly comes to mind where the parents
of the child that was found unresponsive at home called
(19:06):
a friend who immediately came to their home and clean
the house. Because when I showed up to do what
we refer to as a retro scene investigation, that means
the body is not there, but I have to go.
I want to look in the cupboards. I want to
see if there's food. I want to see the level
of cleanliness or lack thereof. Play smell like pine saw.
(19:33):
It smelled like it smelled like what the Army Barrick
smelled like. When I went through basic training the Army,
it always smelled a pine saw And you could still
see kind of those wet mop marks on the floor.
That's how quickly that I had gotten out there. And
so right you are in this idea of you, it's
impossible to assess, you know. I always like to use
(19:55):
the term a life that has been lived in a
space without physically going out to the space. It's demanded
of you as an investigator. That's one of the things
that we require happen in medical legal death investigation because
we have to contextualize everything and if I don't, if
I can't grasp that, particularly with a small child, where
(20:17):
you're not going to have a bunch of history. You know,
when we're when we're up in age, we've got all
of this life history, medical history, how we eat, how
what our common practices are. Do we kick our shoes
off when we walk to the door, or do we
put our running shoes on when we walk through the door.
You know, what do we do? You know at the
(20:38):
end of the day, how do we live our life?
How do we sleep? Are there drugs in the house?
And I don't just mean he listed drugs. You know,
are their medications that sort of thing. But with babies,
with children, you don't have that, So you have to
go out and the visualize it. I recommend that every
scene be visited, if possible, for all practitioners in my
(21:00):
particular field, so that you can paint the picture of
what happened, because you don't know, you weren't there to
witness it, and so yes.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
It's telling you their version of events.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
And I'm as much as I'm interested in hearing that,
I want to be able to objectively look at the
scene and make my own conclusion or make my notes.
Not necessarily a conclusion, but there's certain inferences that I
can draw based upon what I'm physically seeing. Manifested it's scene,
I can also go back out and if I have
(21:33):
further questions, I can say to say a family member.
And by the way, this is one of the toughest
things that you have to do. I always hated do
into some SIDS cases because there is this fear that
rises up in parents. Parents are terrified anyway, and when
somebody with a badge shows up and they start talking
(21:54):
to you, you're terrified. You know, it might make you
react in a way that you don't necessarily would commonly react.
But when you start to talk to families, you have
to get things straight because the sooner we can get
it straight, the center we can conclude our inquiry. In
this particular case, Dave, Oh my god, what the police
(22:17):
found when they got out to this home. I think
that it would make the most i don't know, the
most deplorable, degraded among us blush. It would make people
on skid Row in La blush based upon what the
(22:39):
police saw when they walked into this home.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
You know, while they took Shane Hedrick, the father who
had made the nine one one call, and by the way,
just over clear, the six month old baby boy was
declared dead at the Seine, you know, he was already dead,
and so they took father into the sheriff's office to
interview him. But they got the search warrant and went
(23:02):
back to the home. And what they found when they
entered the home I'm going right off the actual report
from the police officers. Okay, the Sheriff's department that went in.
There was a strong odor of animal feces upon entering
the home, a strong odor of animal feces. Roaches were
visible inside and outside the kitchen cabinets, dirty laundry stacked
(23:26):
in the hallway, multiple holes in the floor and ceiling,
windows boarded up with plywood electrical outlet missing cover near
children's bed. Here's the other one. Mold visible on the
baby's mattress. The crib had only three sides and there
(23:47):
was a two inch gap between the mattress and the wall. Now,
most of us are familiar with the mattress used in
a crib. They have a plastic type of a covering
because there's going to be urine and feces from the
baby on that and then he's.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Been wiped up.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Yeah, oh it's been up, yeah, in that way. You know,
you put a you have a sheet, the fitted sheet
that goes over it, and usually you have other blankets
and things like that. But it is that kind of slippery,
you know, thing you can wipe off. So what it
would take to create mold in that situation on that time.
(24:22):
It was never cleaned. It had to have never been
wiped off. It had to have been just sitting getting
dirty and never I mean, it boggles my mind. What
it would take to get mold on that on a
crib mattress, I can't imagine. But that's what they saw
and that's what they reported. Now everything about the investigation
(24:43):
is based on, well, it starts with what the reporter,
you know, you've pointed as the finder, what they say
in their initial call to nine to one one and
their initial call talk to police, and so they now
have Shane Hendrick, the father is at the sheriff department
while they're walking the house and they see the condition
(25:03):
of the home. The mother of the child was not
home at the time that nine to one one was called,
so she's not on site when this is going on.
And when they get Headrick, you know, to the Sheriff's
office and start interviewing him. It's interesting, but I want
to go to the home right now. Joe. Walking into
(25:24):
that environment I mentioned at the very beginning, A lot
of us have been poor. It doesn't take a whole
lot to be poor, but it doesn't take much to
live in a clean environment. To wipe things up, to
put trash in the proper receptacle, and to make it livable,
especially if you have small children, to make the home safe. Look,
if you got a boarded up window because you can't
(25:46):
afford the go I got you no problem. I don't
really have a problem with that, as long as there's
an exit route and that you have a plan to
get it fixed at some point. Being involved in a
number of different ministries and churches over my adult life,
I don't know a church that would turn somebody away
that needed help with something like that. With small children
in the home, regardless of how they are and who
(26:07):
they are. That's just a different discussion for a different day.
But you walk into this environment, Joe, what are you
thinking as a legal death investigator?
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Well, I'm thinking of the first thing, if it is
the way it has been painted in these in the
official report, I'm thinking that this environment is so degraded
relative to what is within the acceptable parameters for normal living,
(26:39):
and there is a baseline norm. Just so that everybody
understands that, you know, I take exception with people that say, well,
there's your reality and there's my reality. No, the reality
is is that you have to provide a clean environment
for a baby. This baby cannot provide for themselves. In
(26:59):
order for the baby to thrive, you have to have
a clean environment because you can have all things, you know,
like just the cockroaches themselves. You were talking about how
they observe these holes in the floor and you know
the walls. You know, that's that's not the end of
(27:19):
it either, because you know, one of the things I'm
thinking is that not only I don't know that people understand,
but not only do ants bite, which I've had bodies
that have ant bites all over them, cockroaches bite as well.
I don't think that people understand that they do bite.
I've had, you know, multiple cases of child abuse where
(27:43):
I've had cockroach bites on the surface of the skins.
And in addition to that, you know what else comes
up through the floor, rats, vermin like that. So anything
can get into this environment and where there is any
kind of biloge elements that are left lying around, whether
(28:04):
it be animal feces like dogs or cats, even or
if we're talking about food stuffs that are left out,
these rats are hungry. Well, it's like ringing the dinner
bell for anybody that's in the house, and and you're
observing all this, and you're trying to take the measure
(28:25):
of what you're seeing because you know, just one of
these things alone. If we're just talking about we've got
a deceased child, and we walk in and we see
a mattress that is covered in mold, I'm going to
have questions because you're talking about respiratory issues you know
that can develop with a child. Because even if the
child was not traumatized anyway, and you had a case
(28:49):
of what is suspected to be SIDS. Do you know
what most parents say that you interview when you suspected
their SIDS because the parent, it just happens, obviously, as
the name states, Sudden infant death syndrome. Consistently, I've had
parents over the year say, well, my baby had a
(29:11):
little cold, and they always describe it that way. That
means that you've got mucus coming out of the nose,
those sorts of things. Well, I'm trying to correlate as
a medical legal death investigator with a little cold, But
yet I see on the mattress that you've got mold
growing there. Well, I'm thinking you can have any number
of respiratory infections that are rooted in the growth of mold.
(29:35):
All right, And that's just one thing we're talking about here.
We're not talking about the rest of the filth that's
around the place. And it is, to say the very least,
it's troubling. The investigators that work the scene would have
spent hours just cataloging everything and listing what they were seeing.
(29:57):
And that's what you know. I use the term a lot.
You can't take the measure of things when you look
about at a scene and you begin to try to
consider what kind of life was lived by the parents,
and also the life that was lived by the child,
or that the child was subjected to. It's kind of
(30:19):
like pick your cause of death, but in this case, Dave,
we have a very very specific cause of death. Got
(30:45):
a question for you, Dave. Have you ever had something
occur in your life where you wish that you could
just throw it into the sea of forgetfulness, where you
could just black out as it were, and that you
(31:05):
would have no memory of it. You know, things that
are so horrible. I don't know about you. I have,
and I think that most of us that have been
in this world you have those moments in tom where
you could you would love to forget. But isn't it
amazing there's a thread that runs through so many things.
(31:26):
With many suspects. They have these moments where they black out, and.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
I'm thinking, how you can remember what happened?
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Yeah, yeah, you know how convenient. And in this case,
Shane Hedrick has you know, he's planted his flag here
and the whole blackout thing. You know, yeah, I blackout
when I get angry.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
And I'm thinking, okay, I get you, you want to
make that claim. But when when we're sitting here looking
at this and going okay, Shane Hendrick has already said
what happened. I woke up, found the baby unresponsive, called
nine one one. He's locked into that. So when they
get him downtown or to the sheriff's office rather, they
start talking to him and he starts talking. And if
(32:14):
you've ever been through an interview with police, they know
what they're doing. They have a pretty good BS detector,
most of them do, and they know that this isn't true.
They also know the condition of the trailer. You know,
in this particular case, they know what they're looking at.
They don't know exactly what happened, and there's no video,
(32:36):
there's no audio, there's no witness, apparently, so the detective's
responsibility is to get the truth out of this, and
they start with that I woke up, he was unresponsive.
That's all I know. If you watch Breaking Bad, That's
what Jesse was told to say to police when his
girlfriend overdosed and died in bed with him. I woke up,
(32:57):
she was dead. I called you. That's all I know.
And that's what Hedrick starts with. But they get him
downtown or get him to the office, and now he
tells detectives, well, I have a tendency to black out
when I get stressed out or angry. He then says
that he became angry, so he's already loading up. I
blacked out because I got angry. But who did he
(33:19):
get angry at last night or early this morning. It
was my wife, Loreena, and nance I got mad at
her because she was leaving to be with another man,
according to him. Hedrick then admits that he became angry
at the six month old baby because the baby was crying.
(33:40):
Six month old babies cry for a number of reasons,
and that caused him to be angry. So he's angry
that he claims his wife is out with another man,
and he's mad because the baby is crying and won't stop. Now,
Hedrick admits he struck his son while he was blacked out. Now, Joe,
(34:01):
I don't know about you, but I'm thinking if you're
blacked out, you wouldn't know what you did or did
not do. Correct if you're.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Blacked out, Yeah, if you're blacked out, Uh yeah, how
do you come to that conclusion that you actually struck
struck somebody and a six month old. You can hear
all things. You can hear that, yeah, exactly, you can.
Actually I don't know if it's possible to hear an
(34:29):
eye roll, but I would think that that would be
one of the loudest eye rolls ever. H And you know,
you can you can actually hear this. It's amazing to
me that someone would this is going to be your
and maybe it is. It's it's kind of your you know,
your your last resort at this point in time that
(34:51):
you're going to put this forward. But what's I think
what was so very troubling to me, Dave, is what
the people in the medical legal community found with this baby.
When the baby was finally examined, where they're going to
(35:12):
do their assessment and decide, you know, on a manner
and cause of death. I got to tell you, I
don't think it's any grand mystery here to talk about
what the manner of death is going to be. And
I'll plainly state it because there's been a conviction in
(35:35):
this case and it's a homicide.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
We know he is admitted to striking his six month
old baby boy because he was angry, but he blanked out.
Now I have to ask you, because I've always thought
that babies, as their bones are growing and that they're
not hard like they do as we get older, that
it is difficult to break a baby's a bone in
(35:59):
the baby. Is that correct?
Speaker 1 (36:01):
It's no, you're easier. You're absolutely right. It's very difficult
because their bones are still very pliable. They you know,
our bones, over a period of time, they they ossify
and you know, you they become more rigid. When a
(36:24):
baby is, you know, six months old, six months old,
you still literally, you know, have the font nails in
the skull that you can appreciate, you know, the soft spots.
You know, you've got an antire you've got post here.
You've also got some on the lateral. People only think
of one where the skull is still very very soft,
and it it would it requires and I'm not going
(36:49):
to go into a lot of ghastly detail based upon
some things I've seen in the morgue, but it requires
such a tremendous amount of force in order to quote
unquote fracture these non calcified elements you know, you know,
in the skull or any bone on the body. You
have to you have to show up with an incredible
(37:13):
amount of force and anger that would be fueling it
in order for this to happen. I'm not saying that.
I'm not saying that you could not kill a baby
with a single strike, because that's possible, but Dave just
goes beyond that. We're talking about fractures that have occurred,
(37:35):
which means, in my estimation, you're probably talking about multiple strikes.
And that's an indication of somebody that has no self control.
I think to a great degree, I was just reflecting
just a second ago, and forgive me for you know,
kind of I don't think I'm digressing, but for me,
(37:58):
you know, as a father and a grandfather, I think
back to my children being six months old, and it's
one of the sweetest ages. They're completely dependent upon you.
And I still have the rocker in my house where
I held my children and fed them and rock back
(38:22):
and forth even in the wee hours at you know,
three o'clock in the morning. My wife certainly did more
than I ever did. But I remember those times and
how precious and how fragile that life is. And you know,
when you're a dad and a grandpa, you begin to
think about how fragile life is. I think more so
(38:43):
when you're older. But you know, you're suddenly struck with this,
this parental thing, and I know that you encountered this
when you're looking down at that baby and you're thinking, oh,
my lord, this being is totally depended upon the actions
that I I'm going to take at this moment time,
and it's such a sweetness that's there, and you look
(39:05):
and you think, how in the world could anybody destroy this?
How are you capable of doing this? And I think
that many times you'll have in cases like this, you'll
have defense attorneys that try to use that to their advantage,
because it's always it's always the cases that are most
ghastly to me. It is where defense counsel will take
(39:31):
the horrific nature of these cases and say, certainly, no
one within their right mind could have done this to
another living creature, how much more so would their own child.
There has to be some other pathology at work here.
I'm not buying that. I'm not buying that in this case.
I'm buying that as the court has determined that this individual,
(39:54):
of their own free will chose to do this, I
have no idea about the motivations the individual have. I
don't really care because I know at the end of
the day, I still have a baby that is nameless,
that it's gone forever and ever. That we've been robbed
of this child, A child has been robbed of their life, Dave.
And there are cases like this and we cover them,
(40:14):
and it seems like every single time we do, I
feel like I need to drink after I do it,
because it just it churns up. You know, this, this
level of anger that I think most of us, most
of us would would think that. You know, and I'm
not dismissing people that aren't parents, but when you're a
parent and you're a grandparent and you see this you know,
(40:37):
I have so many of these times. I'll look at
Kimmy and I'll say to her, no questions asked, just
bring the child to us. Well, you know, don't don't
rip this child to shreds, don't kill this child, whatever
you do, because that life is so precious, Dave.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
I was always so petrified of the south spots of
this called. Of course, I'll know the big one, but
there are the others that you just mentioned, and I
was always petrified of that.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Always.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
I never got over it. And even with my grandson Brelan,
I'm so thankful that Hannah allowed me to be a
very big part of him when he was a baby,
of rocking him and holding him and loving on him
because I was a little less afraid because you know,
I had raised children and so I had a little
more confidence in my ability to hold a child. But
(41:25):
I will tell you there were times sitting there when
he was six months old and I was loving on
him and just kissing his little soft head. And I
think about that, and I think of how dependent, how precious,
and how fearful I was that I was going to
do something that could harm this child, you know, accidentally
just holding him wrong. You know, that was a fear
(41:48):
factor and I'm thinking, what would it take. What kind
of a human being could grow to adult age and
be able to break the skull of a six month
old baby boy? And that's what we found out that
according to uh met it for the forensic pathologist James
Jacoby Joe, you're going to have to explain what he
(42:11):
found because it goes beyond the pale of one one strike.
Any child six months old deserves to be struck, period,
not even Spain. They don't know what's going on, you know.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
They don't, They have no Yeah, and there's nothing that
you're going to do that's going to stop them from
crying other than attempting to sue them in a loving, compassionate, parental, true,
truly parental way, you know, those things that we want
to demonstrate to our children. How much more so with
the weakest among among the children, you know, the most vulnerable.
(42:45):
But yeah, let me kind of paint this picture for you, Dave,
and understand that this precious little six month old let
me say that six month old little baby boy didn't
have one, but two distinct fractures and their skull in
(43:06):
his skull and in addition to that, this child had
a focal area of hemorrhage in their spinal cord, which
means that there would have been a strike posteriorly to
the spine as well that would have generated kind of
(43:30):
that kind of insult or injury. So you've got a
lot that's going on here. The beauty of what the
medical examiner did in this particular case is that and
doctor Jacobe was right in doing this. And I applaud
I applaud any member of the medical legal community that
(43:53):
does consults that brings in consultancy, because it's through the consultancy,
and that's when of the reasons I started this episode
off talking about trees, it was through this consultancy that
they obtain the services of a radiologist. And there are
(44:14):
a group of people out there that are radiologists, and
that's folks that read X rays. If you get a
broken bone, it's going to be the radiologists that will
take a look. And there are people in radiology that
are actually forensic radiologists. They consult on cases that can
consult on the living. We actually perform in forensics. We
(44:35):
do living forensics as well, and many times forensic pathologists
will be consulted on living victims. And there's also a
group of people called forensic radiologists that can be brought
in and consult. They consult on the living as well,
and they consult on the deceased. And in this case,
the forensic radiologists had a big reveal here, Dave, As
(44:58):
we have stated, this unknow aimed precious little angel who
is six months old, demonstrated per per the X rays
that were taken that this little angel had sustained a
(45:18):
month earlier a fracture in the right forearm let that
sink in just for a second the right forearm one
month earlier. This baby had been living with the pain
of that before he was viciously attacked for simply crying,
(45:48):
for simply desiring comfort. For a month prior to this,
this child had dealt with this anguish, this unresolved healing injury.
That the radiologist said that there was evidence that it
(46:09):
was trying to heal on its own but had remained untreated. Well,
no wonder the child was crying. What else was the
child absent? Was it absent food? Was it absent a
warm blanket? Was it absent the soothing touch of a
(46:31):
parent that loved them. God rest this little unnamed child's soul,
and God blessed those that go out and bear witness
to the most horrific things that most of us can't
(46:54):
even possibly imagine in our worst nightmares. I'm Joseph Scott
Morgan and this is Body Backs h
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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