June 12, 2026 • 54 mins
Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack recorded this episode in front of a Live Audience at CrimeCon 2026 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Joe and Dave discuss three cases that were resolved decades after the incidents took place: the 1964 gruesome torture and murder of Catherine Blackurn, the 1958 disappearance of the Martin Family, and the 2006 discovery of the "woman in the well". As a staple of CrimeCon, Joseph Scott Morgan appears on many of the panel discussions as well as presenting his own programs and is a "must see" person at CrimeCon attendees! The episode at CrimeCon was an "audio only" recording so we have added some pictures from CrimeCon 2026 for the video. Thanks to Joe Scott Morgan's wife, Kim, for the photos and videos.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Bodybags with Joseph Scott Moore.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Please welcome the host of the podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Joseph Well got through getting my pail.
Speaker 4 (00:26):
Kids buys that place? But what else is he? Right?
Speaker 1 (00:33):
So Josephott Moore and this is Body Bags.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
Thank you guys.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
There was a story that started September thirteenth, nineteen sixty four.
Click s you have hands? How many of you were
born after that? Wow? Dude, we're old.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Got us.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Sorry, I just didn't expect that.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
I thought it was going to be different.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
I thought it was going to go a different way.
Fifty year old woman September thirteenth, nineteen sixty four. She
is showing an apartment in Albany, New York's trying to
rent it out. This is in the days before Facebook,
Marketplace and Craigslist and things like that, and we tend
to look at that time as a gentler, softer time.
It's not whenever we look at these horrible crimes that
(01:40):
happened before digital media, we just hear about them all
the time. Now, back then, this scared me when I
read it because this poor woman, she was showing her
apartment to a possible renter and she was bludgeoned he'll explain,
need no explanation. But she was tortured for hours with
(02:09):
heated kitchen knives in an attack that was so vicious.
She didn't die from the actual hitting, this horrible attack
that went on for hours. She bled to death. So
imagine the torture that she went through. Knowing, you get
(02:34):
to a certain point where you can't recover. You know,
if you remember the Manson family murders, the first one,
you know, with the Tate murders, Abigail Folger, you know,
she was running in the front yard and Patricia Creenwinkle
I think, was on her back and was stabbing her.
And she said, why don't you stop, I'm already dead
before you die, you know, And she had to know.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Joe, Yeah, you do. And you know with particularly, you know,
I talk a lot, and you know when we do
body bags. The beauty of it, I think, at least
in my mind, is the fact that we try to teach, right,
That's the big thing. And I try to approach it
from from the perspective of maybe most people have not
(03:18):
had an opportunity to learn forensics and have the opportunities
I've had in my life with education and experience and
all those sort of things. So the you know, the
driving force behind what we do is to try to
instruct and we've talked about sharpforce injuries on bodybacks for
loath these many years. We've been going since twenty one
(03:40):
now I guess heading towards six hundred episodes, and we
one of the things about sharpforce injuries we have primarily
there's three, but technically for our purposes today we're talking
about two. So we have stab ones. Right, everybody understands this.
This is a in a trade of event where you
(04:01):
have someone that is burying a milled edge into somebody's
body with a little metal tip. Right, And just because
you stab someone or someone is stabbed, that does not
make that a lethal event. Does everybody understand that? Because
there's no guarantee that a subject is going to be
struck in a vital area? Okay, now, does that mean
(04:24):
that it's not painful? Oh? No, it doesn't. You know,
because one of the things that has been so horrific
over the year is because you know that I've been
very deeply invested in the Ellen Greenberg case. Right, And
so every time you know, a blade hits an area,
your pain centers will fire well, many of Ellen's Ellen's injuries,
(04:44):
for instance, hit bone, right, and so that doesn't mean
that it was totally penetrative. You know, that went into
one of her organs. Perhaps this is yeah, and obviously
so you know when we have that case, In a
case like this, this lingering that goes on, you know,
(05:06):
kind of feeds into what I think. And I'm not
a behaviorist, I'm not a profile or a psychologist. But
from a medical legal perspective, when we're on the scene,
when we do evaluations of bodies, we can begin to
see patterns developed, right, particularly when you have somebody that
is probably a sexual statist, you know, which we would
(05:28):
have in this particular case. So she's lingering for a
protracted period of time. She would have had an awareness
that all of this is going on, being beaten, being
stabbed repeated in numbers of times, being moved about or
this space.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
It was something I wanted to ask you about this too. Okay.
They were able to break the crime down and by
the way, the reason you know we're doing this because
it was a cold case that went unsolved for many,
many years, but it was solved recently. They said that
she was struck in the back of the head. And
then she was stabbed in the neck. Yes, and then
(06:04):
while she was unconscious she was sexually molestious. How can
you tell something like that happened when they know that
she was unconscious for that, but then was conscious for
what came next.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
I think that the best you can do is going
to be speculative in an event like that to say
whether she was conscious or unconscious. I don't know that
there's any way to truly draw that conclusion. However, if
you have a post mortem sexual assault, that means after death, right,
We've learned that on body bags over the years. You
(06:40):
can deduce that that is possible because if there are
any kind of injuries related to those private areas, okay,
and you have a forcible sexual assault that goes on
those areas, the tears, those things that occur, there will
not be an associated hemorrhage with that, okay. And many,
(07:02):
many of the people that are sexual sadists and engage
in this, they like to have total control over over
these individuals, you know. Interestingly enough, and I don't know
if this is still a thing, but there used to
be a whole group of people that would fetishize death
and they would pay individuals to pretend they were dead,
(07:24):
to the point that they would have these individuals ice
their bodies down while alive and just remain still. That
is a thing.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
So yeah, it is, and it's you know, and the
person who wants it will to do it.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Yeah, no kid, have you ever sat in ice? You
ever had to ice your arm or your back?
Speaker 4 (07:42):
No? And that's not a chance. And so so these
people exist and the fact that this torture would go
on for a protracted period of time, and you know,
we haven't even talked about this idea of heating up blaze.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Well that's what I was going to ask you next.
Because they they being the investigators, they were able to
figure out the timeline of how the attack took place.
Having done the show, we've done over five hundred episodes,
heading into six hundred and by the way, now on
video yep, we launched it this week with the with
this week our first week. But there is a way
(08:18):
to tell that this state is after molesting her while
she's unconscious, then heats up knives on the gas stove
and then uses them to torture her by creating images
in her body. And they know that she was awake
for that.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
Yeah. Yeah, and they've been very nonspecific over the years.
Keep in mind, this is all the way back in
nineteen sixty four. But yet these these are specific patterns
that this individual utilized with this knife and over and
over and over again to create these surface images that
(08:59):
they were attempting to do with a knife and this
heated knife. And yeah, she's reactive in the sense that
these injuries. At autopsy, they were able to tell that
there was a response at a cellular level relative to
these injuries, where you could tell that she was still
alive while all of this was going on. And I
(09:23):
think the really sad portion of this, other than you know,
all of the horror that we've just kind of described here,
is the idea that she went into this with her
guard down, you know, because it was a matter of
showing a property, which to me, I think that I
(09:45):
don't know how many real estate people I have in
the audience, generally, there's there's a couple, it's a It
can be a very dangerous business because you don't know
who you're going to connect with. And there have been
other stories not exactly like this, but people that are
in the state industry where they will just blondly meet somebody,
and certainly back then, Dave.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah, in nineteen sixty four. And by the way, she's
no little wallflower. Our victim here was the fore woman
at a factory. Knew how to manage men, knew how
to bossom around, knew how to get the job done,
which is how they found her body because she didn't
show up for work and Sholways did. But Joe, the
case did go cold, even with all of what you
(10:26):
now know. Took place basically in her kitchen of her
home after she was This guy was such a just
evil at a new level. He took her by surprise
by hitting her in the back of the head, you know,
that's first thing. But they didn't solve it right away, Joe,
and it lingered and went away, and it was not
(10:49):
until twenty eighteen that a new detective took over the
case and said, give me everything. And Joe points this
out a lot. But back in night tek sixty four,
the detectives that were working this case that had to
preserve the evidence. A lot of whether or not these
can be sold depends on what they did then, and
in this case, they did a good job.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
Yeah they did. And the devil is in the details,
you know, when you're standing and this even applies to
this period of time in the medical legal world, when
you are standing over a body in an autopsy suite
the evidence that you're going to collect. I think we
think in terms nowadays that we've invented everything in the
(11:33):
immediate You have to understand there were people doing a
very difficult job that did not have the technology at
their disposal back during that period of time that we
do now where we can turn things around a lot
quicker now than they could back then, and certainly those
assets were not available to the individuals things such as DNA, right,
(11:55):
DNA was something that was only understood the medical community
understood it, but they didn't even understand things like necessarily
like medical predispositions to the degree that we understand the today.
And you know, it wasn't until Alec Jeffries in nineteen
eighty four even began to talk about the utility of
(12:16):
DNA applications in Great Britain. And that was back in
eighty four, and that would have been twenty years after that,
and it was just in the dawning of tom And
now you know, we're seeing something that is developing to
the level that you know, in my young mind that
I was in, you know, all of those years ago
when I started out as a forensics investigator, I could
(12:37):
not even have envisioned it. Because there's a new day.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Dawning there is. And that's where this case ended up
in twenty eighteen, and the new investigator took over. She
reached out to a school that was working on teaching
like Joe does, and as I've met already a number
of forensic students. But they took the evidence and ultimately
(13:00):
submitted it to AUTHRAM and they actually were able to
build out. AUTHORM does amazing work in how they build
out you know, the genealogy of it. It's the genetic
genealogy is such an incredibly intense thing that they take
us a sliver and it keeps going back. It's not
like it's not like they find this little strand of
(13:23):
DNA inserted into the computer and out pops the suspect.
It doesn't work like that. Oftentimes, they get a little
bit here and it goes back to the local detectives
who now have to go back and reinterview more people.
They keep narrowing the list until they build a family tree,
and next thing you know, they find an uncle, a cousin,
somebody in that related field. And then they go, okay, well,
(13:43):
who are the possible people here, And it came up
with a guy who was thirty seven years old in
nineteen sixty four, Joseph Nowakowski, Yes Nawawski. And by the
time they figured out that he was a suspect, not
the victim, not the gott to find out for sure,
(14:05):
he had been dead for twenty years. He died in
nineteen ninety eight. So they went through the very easy
task being faceiegious. You try to get a body dug
up for anything, it ain't easy. Judges take rest in
peace very seriously.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
All we have to do is look back at Tammy
Davell that that's a I think people think that, you know,
families will come will approach me about cases that are
cold or that they have questions about, and they'll say, well,
we'll just have her e zum or we'll have him exomed. Okay, okay, Well,
first off, you have to find an attorney that will
(14:44):
handle that for you, because you've got an order of
exhamation and you have to find the police that are
invested in it from an investigative standpoint, and then then
you have to find a judge that is willing to
crack to crack a grave open because they are not
in favor of this. But the fascinating thing about this
case is going back to what I said earlier. You
(15:06):
know how in sixty four the investigators people in the
more they're handicapped, right, they don't have this access to
the same technology. Okay, what they did is back then
they did tray sampling on her body and they also
did a rape kit on her. Now, how many of
(15:29):
you guys in the audience, I'd love to see a
show of hands have heard the horror stories about rape kits?
Anybody out there have heard this? And it is the
honest of goodness truth, because you will have poor victims.
Can you imagine? And I hope and I pray to
God there's nobody in here that's had to go through this,
go through the trauma of having been sexually assaulted, then
(15:53):
go to an emergency room and they do a rape
kit on a living patient. You know that sample To me,
it extends into almost a spiritual level. This is sacred,
you know, that you have. Okay, this evidence that has
been collected, and so many of them have been you know,
(16:16):
kind of defiled, if you will, by the people that
collect them. They're not treated in the same regard as
other things might be treated, and they begin to degrade
over a period of time. The incredible thing about this
case is that that evidence since sixty four was preserved
and they were able to find DNA linkage to this
(16:39):
unknown person. And then what makes this cold case so
very unique, and I think that authorm you know, saw
this certainly, is that they were able to do this
exhimation and collect what they could from those remains of
this questioned individual, and to go back and do confirmation.
(17:02):
But you know, it's it's kind of a hollow It's
kind of a hollow thing, right. You imagine all of
her family members there. Don't think the family didn't know
what had happened to her. You know, in that structure,
how many how many of you guys believed that all
of those people are still around today, those people that
loved her, that cared about her. You know, this is
(17:24):
this is sacred ground that you're on when you begin
to talk about DNA and the collection of it. And
how it should be treated. And in this case they
actually had a victory date.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
We had another case. This was one that it began.
It began in the most wholesome of ways of all time.
Remember the movie Christmas Vacation. Chevy Chase. In the opening scenes,
he's driving the family truckster. But whatever the nineteen eighty
eight version of the TRUCKSTU was.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
I think it was a tourist station.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
They're driving the wagon out and he gets into a
match for a truck and they're doing some road rage.
I guess that was kind of a fortunate things to come.
And Chevy Chase, who we all know has no real
anger issues. My god, I'll talk about a scene that
played out in real life for him. But they go
(18:28):
on the woods to find the Griswold family Christmas tree. Well,
I have to wonder, like so many of the vacation movies,
I don't know if y'all know this, those are all
based in some truth. Each one, go ahead answer it.
Each one of those vacation movies was about a particular
family vacation that took place, And I have to wonder
(18:51):
if the one they did in eighty eight was sampling
the nineteen fifty eight Martin Family disappearance. It's a nineteen
fifty eight case of a dad, Kenneth Martin. He's fifty four,
his wife Barbara's forty eight. They have three daughters, BARBARAE. Well,
I'd say Barbara that they call Barbarie because mom is
(19:12):
Barbara Virginia. And then they have an eleven year old
that is named Susie. Now, they went off on the
Griswold family Christmas, the Martin family Christmas. They actually went
out into the country in the first week of December
to collect things to use around the house for Christmas decorations.
(19:33):
They went out there to collect.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
Greenery and that sort of thing that you would do
Tremain's and that's where.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
They it's the most wholesome. I've never done anything that
wholesome in my life. I've never even thought of doing
something that wholesome in my life. And I thought, I
this is December seventh, nineteen fifty eight. And by the way,
they have an older son who is in the military.
And it, believe it or not, comes into play in
(19:58):
the investigation of this story. You're gonna learn something here
is that even in the most wholesome of families doing
the most wholesome of family things. If you don't get
an answer to what happened, people's imaginations and investigators run
wild and they will create stuff that would have Nancy
(20:22):
Grace blowing her eyelashes out. I mean, it got nutty
with this family. So the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic
Area in Oregon, that's where we are for this case.
December the seventh, nineteen fifty eight, Martin family goes out
on their Christmas tree decoration hunting expedition and they never return.
(20:44):
UFO picked them up for something. Something happened to the
family because they never came home. Car never found, None
of the family ever found for a while, just gone.
Joe and I recover in this case, were like, there's
got bees. Come on, No, they left the house December seventh,
(21:04):
nineteen fifty eight, didn't come on.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
It's one thing. It's one thing if you you have
five people that go missing like this, But to have
an automobile in addition to that vanish off to face
the planet you have, you know, And Dave was, you know,
you know, being lighthearted there about UFOs. But you began
to think about how how can entire family a vehicle.
(21:31):
How can it just vaporize into nothing? And again, this
is back in the fifties. How many of you guys,
do I have any any friends here from Oregon at all? Anybody?
Have you guys heard of this case at all? You have?
And I've got to tell you. I'm Louisiana born and raised.
(21:52):
I've stood on the banks of the Thank you. I've
stood on the banks of the Columbia River. I have
never felt so small in my life this year. If
you've never done this, I beg of you go. It
is one of the most powerful things that you will see.
(22:13):
You'll know that you know there's this was created. I
think it was created to terrify people like me because
you know, you look at the and the Mississippi River
doesn't really flow slowly. They say that it, you know,
say that it does, but there's a significant current in it.
But the Columbia in and of itself is stuff. It
(22:34):
is the stuff of nightmares. If you were to go
over the edge of this thing, all right, and it
will really get your attention. And a lot of people
go there. I've been there for the Salmon Run, which
is absolutely amazing. You see these guys going out on
the boats they're catching salmon. You know where it dumps in, well,
essentially you know it's heading to the Pacific Ocean. But
(22:56):
you see the power of that. And we know that
they were in fact adjacent to the river, and Lord knows,
there's enough evergreens out out in that part of the country,
which is one of the most lovely places that you
could ever visit, out in that part of the country
where you could go and collect that, and their purpose
to do this right Dave there.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
And the thing about this is that even in nineteen
fifty eight, when they did not have a resolution, quickly
this story became a national story and for months, investigators
were there for months. They had one thousand dollars reward.
Joe and I looked up the value in nineteen fifty
eight versus now, and it's considerable. But a thousand bucks
would have had a few folks out there hunting for it,
(23:37):
and nothing until until one of the little girls floated
up and they're found in the river. Now this is
months after they're gone, no car is found, they're all missing,
and then one of the girls is found shortly after that.
(24:00):
Second girls found in the river. Now Joe based on
the months that went by. What condition would those bodies
have been talking about eleven, thirteen, fourteen years old? What
would they look like to us after being in that
cold rough river for months?
Speaker 4 (24:20):
Yeah, So there's a couple of things you have to
consider with human remains in this kind of environment. First off,
just the current alone, and there are any kind of
obstacles in the water. You have rocky outcroppings, there's a
lot of timber that goes into those waters.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Oh, I got to mention one of the things. The
girls were found thirty miles of art. Yeah, and they
were found within a week.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
Of one another, very roughly a week.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Yeah, but thirty miles separated them one week and thirty
miles sorry.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
Yeah, And so you can begin to do when if
you're trying to do the calculus of this, it's it's
almost impossible to do because the first thing you have
to consider is was there a known route that somebody
or that this family and you would have to do
a deep dive into this. No, pun intended to go
back and say, you know, if they were traveling in
(25:16):
the car, is there a common route that they would
go on to go on picnics or something like this
where would potentially be a point of entry into the river.
But then you begin to try to calculate the volume
of water, which can't I don't think that's passing through there.
The rate, are there any dam releases? How many storms
have you had? And so when you have two bodies
(25:36):
that pop up and you see that there is this
grand distance, you know, thirty miles they're separating them. First off,
it's dumb luck. I think that these kids were found
in the first place because it's so vast and it
would have easily been It's quite plausible they could have
been just washed out into the Pacific, eventually making it
(25:57):
down traveling at that speed. But they did in fact
find them. The trick is because there were a lot
of theories, and I think the sun, you know, it
played into this, like you had said, because they want
to know where the sun was.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
He's the only survivor, and he was in New York State,
he was in the military, and what had happened during
the investigation. As I told you that when an obvious
answer doesn't come up right away, well let's just find
what we can. They found some bulletshell casings, and they're like,
wait a minute, didn't their son before he mysteriously took
(26:33):
off in the military. Didn't he work in a hardware
store that sold guns, And wasn't he accused at seventeen
years old of stealing a gun? Didn't that what happened
and that actually became a running threat. But I want
to give you a headline from the Associated Press, an
article in nineteen fifty nine. By the way, all of
this is out in the open, okay, all of the sun.
(26:55):
I'm thinking dude was across the country and still became
an actual suspect. A nineteen fifty nine Associated Press article
titled where do you search if you've already searched every place?
Logic and fragmentary clues would suggest that's where they were
left in nineteen fifty nine, after two bodies show up
(27:18):
thirty miles apart and then nothing. Now, there were a
lot of theories in those of you who mentioned you're
from Oregon, you know that there were a couple of
people who believe they could solve this crime. Maybe we
don't know, but there was one guy in particular, a diver.
And by the way, they dove that river a bunch.
(27:39):
And right after it happened in the first months before
anybodies were found. They were in the water, couldn't find anything,
but this one guy wouldn't give up show and wasn't
it twenty twenty four when he finally came up with
something he did?
Speaker 4 (27:56):
And what this is leading to is the fact that
they were able to recover part of the vehicle at
this point in tom And as you can imagine, you know,
going back to the river, think about how much time
has passed since in sixty four to twenty.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Fifty eight fifty I'm sorry.
Speaker 4 (28:19):
Fifty eight, so you know, you do the addition, you
think about all the silt that has built up the
vehicle being buried, what would be left of the vehicle
as a result of the slamming against this structure, this
man made structure beneath those beneath the surface, and how
fragile it is, And you would think sitting there, I
(28:42):
would imagine could there possibly be any human remain left
in this structure or in this particular spot. And Dave,
they actually found something.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Here, unbelievable based on this one guy sixty six years
later finding the vehicle a Ford station wagon, and they
did find human remains and they were able to identify
the family after all these years, and again it goes
back to just finding them in the river is not enough.
(29:15):
You got to find out first of all, You've got
to prove who they are. You cannot ever assume we
could do a whole thing on misidentification. Actually, we have
a show coming up on that about an actual forensic
expert misidentifying somebody and telling mom and dad, hey, that
was your kid, and now you find out, no, my
kids in my kids still in the hospital, it's their kid.
(29:37):
Go get them away from my daughter, their kids in
the grave.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
I mean yeah, and misidentifications happened with great frequency.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
And that's I didn't know that until I started working
with Joe. I had no idea that was a thing.
So they make sure before they come out, because you
know what, somebody could have done something and planted a
body in there. I mean, you know, you it sounds crazy,
but not finding a station wag again for sixty something years,
that seems just as crazy. You know, you're gonna tell
(30:05):
me that really was in there all that time, and
it was. But they did identify the body in April
this year. We're talking last month. Kenneth Martin, Barbara Martin.
That was their daughter and their daughter Barbie. The three
who were not found were positively identified.
Speaker 4 (30:23):
Yeah, the theory is is that the vehicle went into
the water. There's a high probability that it inverted when
it went in. My suspicion is is that when this
impact occurred that the windows probably shattered. There's no way
(30:43):
really to tell at this point. In Tom And how
many of you, well, I know I can see from
the audience, I've got many like myself, kids of the sixties.
You know, what's the old country song about the only
restraint in the car we had back then was mama's.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Right arm, mama's mama's arm.
Speaker 4 (31:02):
Nobody belted, you know back then. So when you have
a vehicle that inverts like this or flips over on
the on the roof, if the glass cracks out, which
there's a high probability the glass was not uh it
if I'm if memory serves me correct, The type of
glass they had back then didn't cube like safety glass
(31:25):
we have now. It would have the flow. Remember I've
talked about how substantial this flow is, so the bodies
would be captured and washed out when vehicles collapse and
crush in on one another, on themselves, rather individuals are pinned.
You've heard about people being pinned in vehicles. It just
(31:48):
so happens that the youngest child and both of the
parents were pinned within the vehicle. I think there probably
would have been an awareness. I can't imagine that all
of these people would have died simultaneously, and it would
have been a horrific way to have passed on and
(32:10):
two of the more washed out. Now this goes to
the sample they were able to retrieve. Is again bringing
it into the modern context. When our friends at AUTHORM
got involved in this case, you were able to and
again we don't use the word closures, not our thing,
but there is a resolution. There's a resolution. And also,
(32:35):
you know, the thought that anybody else could have potentially
have been involved in this, you know, I think that
that's kind of poo pooed at this point in time,
and we think about this and it seems like, you know,
going back in time, right that nineteen fifty eight was
a long long time ago, and I guess it kind
of was. Probably. Out of all the cases that we're
(33:09):
presenting today, there are three, and the third one is
one that you're not going to believe that we covered
this year and it is the greatest example I think
of when all hope is given up, there is still hope.
And this case comes to us out of Canada. Do
(33:31):
I have any friends from Canada here right now? Okay, good,
let's talk about them. So Saskatoon, I'm just kidding. Yeah,
this is this comes to us out of Saskatoon, and
this is this is a case that has become famously
known as the Woman in the Well case. Dave opened
(33:51):
this up for a little It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
In Jenity thousand and six, everybody in this room was
born then, right, God, let me be born in twenty they
would be twenty years old, right now, all right? This
started in June twenty two, thousand and six. Skeletal remains
of an unidentified individual found by work crews excavating fuel
(34:17):
tanks from an old gas station in the city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
The investigation begins right away. Now. The remains actually had
clothing that as they were doing this investigation. I remember
(34:37):
talking to Joe about it off the air, because this
isn't something that I would think you would, you know,
immediately jump to They had to find a historian that
dealt in textiles, an actual historian that deals in textiles,
so they could identify you have to know everything about
the clothing on the on the scale.
Speaker 4 (34:55):
Yeah, let me a quick little side here. I was
involved in the exhumation of I know. I had somebody
shout out they were from Louisiana. I was involved in
the exhumation of doctor Weiss. If you don't know who
doctor Weiss is, he's the guy that shot Heuey P.
(35:16):
Long And there were questions about that case. And this
is I'd gotten involved in this case with an old
friend of mine. If you look up his name, he's
pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Kat.
Speaker 4 (35:27):
It used to be up at George Washington. I think
he's passed on now. Jim Stars S T A, R, R,
S and H. He did like the exclamation of Jesse
James's grave. Those sorts of things. Well, I got involved
with the thing with doctor Weiss because there were questions
and guys being involved in in forensics. I never knew.
(35:47):
I knew that textiles were a thing, you know, relative
to because we do trace evidence all the time with
threads and all those sorts of things. I never knew
that the Smithsonian had a subdivision within within their organization
that you could avail yourself of with old fabrics. And
(36:12):
the questions had run for years and years about doctor wife.
And after we had gotten him removed from his crip
and we had his body there, they actually Doctor Stars
had arranged for a textile person to come in and
this individual was present while the body or the remnant
(36:34):
of clothing was being taken away and they could analyze
it and go back in time. So this is one
of these fascinating things, little sides here about.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
This particular and so again you're talking about two thousand
and six. They find the skeleton remains in a well,
and you know the way that the body was packaged.
You know, think about it. You've got clothing. I want
to get this. The clothing dated back and it included
a fitted jacket, a high collared blouse, and a long skirt.
(37:07):
The historian came back with the date between nineteen ten
and nineteen twenty. So I remember talking to Joe. When
you find skeletal remains, you know, depending on how they've
been wrapped up and preserving, can you tell the difference
between decades? You know, is it ten years, twenty years,
fifty years? Can you tell, and I mean, you've got it.
(37:30):
This is not a guarantee that that's when this woman
was killed or died between nineteen ten and nineteen twenty.
That's not a guarantee. I could have wrapped up a
dead body in some old clothing, you know, so I
can't assume anything. But she was also after she was hey,
she's got the clothes on. There after in her pear
lap sack. Then stuffed her into a wooden barrel. I
(37:54):
got ahead of myself saying her because I don't know
how many cross dressers there were back then. Some would
have us believe there were a lot. The woman's body
wrapped in a burlab sack, stuffed into a wooden barrel
and dropped into the well, a well that had existed.
(38:19):
And this is the part that really old git. You see,
it was the Shore hotel back in the day. Remember
they were excavating for gas tanks, you know, and then
they're going, wait a minute, we're sitting on the remains
of an old hotel and this was a well. So
it was a hotel and boarding house. And here's the
(38:40):
part I love with. The hotel and boarding house had
a mixed reputation in a bustling railroad town, and the
Shore Hotel was demolished in nineteen twenty seven, so we're
already eighty years pasted the demise of this hotel. When
(39:02):
the remains are found in the well, yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:07):
Well, what's one of our working theories here? Though? What
did they say about the status of the remains? Did
he say that her remains were merely dumped down into
a well? No, they weren't. What had happened prior to
her being dumped into the well? Anybody? She was wrapped right,
(39:28):
Not only was she wrapped in something she was then
she was then placed into a barrel. You know. So
what do you think we're sniffing out here at this
point in time? Right? Out of our five manners of
death that we've talked about previously on bodybacks, right, we're
looking at homicide, and of course, our working assumption in
all death investigation is, I don't care if it's you know,
(39:51):
a ninety eight year old mamma, okay, that I'd go
out on the scene on my working assumption is that
every death is a what homicide until proven otherwise. We
have a lot of clues here, right, you know, we
have somebody that is trying. It's not like it's not
like she was even buried in the backyard. Okay, we
(40:12):
might if we see a burial in the backyard that
we have a body that's not crypted or vaulted, we
might assume it could be an old family burial, you know,
particularly during this period of time that you find remains
down there, and that you can kind of explain that.
Now we're talking about somebody that is wrapped up, placed
in a barrel and then kind of cast off into
(40:32):
the abyss. And here's the really creepy thing to me.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Wait a minute, now it gets creepy.
Speaker 4 (40:38):
Yeah, now it gets creepy.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
Thanks Joe.
Speaker 4 (40:42):
This was somebody's drinking water.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
Yea, so I know it was coming.
Speaker 4 (40:50):
You didn't think I could go to another level. Digit
there you go, But go ahead.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
They break out the and again. Now I remember, this
investigation takes place eighty years after this hotel has been
torn down, assuming and okay, you can't assume anything, but
you can use your brain based on the clothing, based
on the way that this person had been thrown away,
not just tossed out in a field somewhere, but actually
(41:18):
in a way to disguise the death. These skeleton remains
were investigated and over the years, investigators they were working
to identify the woman. And think about this, You've got
a dead body in sascatcha tune, probably not going to
have a suspect you're going to have to go pick up. Now,
it's a who done it? I mean, as bad as
(41:40):
it sounds that somebody's relative could be somebody's mother, I
don't know. But what I'm saying is there's a different
investigation that's taking place than one where hey man, we
got a killer on the loose. We better figure this
out right now. Now they're looking at it historically. I mean,
you're calling in you people to take a look at this.
Isn't this a nice mystery? Truly not. I mean, it's
a dead body, even if it is one hundred years old,
(42:01):
it's still a body that was disposed of like common trash.
We all have a certain amount of dignity to our lives,
or it should. That's what separates us from animals and coburger.
But as we go and this one, over the years,
the investigators tried everything. They finally did break this down
(42:21):
and they did figure out who it was.
Speaker 4 (42:23):
Jeff, Yeah, they did. And the beauty of this, when
you begin to think about from beauty from an investigation
people to please understood, exid the beauty of this is
that you have what's referred to as containment of the
evidence and containment of the remains, because how many cases
you have to hear about it where you appear things
like dimensioning of scattered, scattered human remains. That's not what
(42:47):
you had. And she was wrapped actually in burlap, and
burlap is kind of fascinating because it's actually pretty resilient
and actually little side note, burl app is actually sackcloth.
If you've ever read in your Bible about sackcloth and ashes,
that's essentially what you're looking at.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
Here the history of Jonah.
Speaker 4 (43:10):
Yeah. So it's very very resilient in the fact that
you did have at least containment. Now with the barrel.
They found the bindings for the barrel if you remember,
you know, the rings that go around a barrel and
those sorts of things. There were nails that were found
along with this, but you had it in a centralized location,
(43:30):
and the absence of the use of the well any
longer I think played a part in this, as well,
but you still have the water table that it's rising
and falling over the years, which impacts everything. The fact
that they still had enough there to recover. And yes,
let me ask you a question, can you She was
identified and again with AUTHRAM being involved in this, because
(43:53):
the Canadian authorities sought out our friends at AUTHRAM to
take these samples too, and them to identify. But she
went by actually by two names. I want to make
sure I get this right. She went by the name
Alice Spence and also went by the name of Alice Burke.
(44:15):
She was born in eighteen eighty one. To kind of
frame that out for you, now, there was no conclusion
about her cause of death because there was not it
certainly no soft tissue. You know, with soft tissue we're
looking for hemorrhage, and that those days it passed. But
just try this on for size. You think about genetic
(44:38):
genealogy and the world that we endwell and whether you
believe it or not, whether it scares you or not,
it scares me. I have to tell you, you know, because
that's our code, right, that's who we are, and this
is it's like spitting in the ocean. There's not too
much you can do to hold it back. Okay, it's
headed your way, but can you imagine multiple generations afterwards,
(45:07):
you go to somebody's house if you were the local authorities,
after you've been able to build out this tree through
authorm and you go and you knock on someone's door
and say, pardon me, do you have a family member
from like back right after the turn of the century,
(45:29):
the twentieth century that went and missing? Can you imagine
having somebody show up at your door and give you
that information. And as it turned out, I think it
was her. The descendant turned out to be a niece,
if I'm not mistaken that they showed up to this
and she would have been like her great great great aunt. Okay,
(45:53):
and you know, as we say down the South, I
love to use this term. We always saw that she'd
just run off times, you know, we say that.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
And so saskatchetoon Jane does right, she just ran off.
In reality, they believe, you know, again, can't prove it now,
but the belief is that her husband killed her and
her It was interesting. I've read a number of things
that her niece wrote after they contacted her, and it's
(46:22):
just this, you know, I can't imagine the waterfall of
emotions that you would have because at first you're kind
of detached. You know, it's not somebody, really know, it's
a relative. But then you start thinking about it, and
all of a sudden, you like, wait a minute, he
got away with murder of my aunt, you know, And
then I can see that, you know, that would kind
of light a fire and it would make you want
(46:43):
to be involved. And that's the purpose of doing this
today is to do these stories so that you guys
understand that we can all be involved in this. Joe
hits this up every time we talk about authoram you know,
did you guys realize that author there are cases all
over You've probably got one, whatever city you're from, town, whatever,
there's probably a case that hasn't been solved, one in
(47:04):
your state that might be high profile, and they might
have and you know, they might have some DNA that
can be tested. There is a solution possible. But you know,
with authorm, it is such an intense thing they go
through to do this. They don't charge a lot of money,
they're not funded by the government, they're not funded by
(47:27):
any of the billionaires we hear about who want to
sway politics. They're funded by crowdfunding sources. They crowdfund to
solve these unsolvable crimes. Seventy five hundred dollars, that's all
they have to have, and they'll open up the case.
Nobody's getting rich. When you look at the team of experts,
the years of education, what they have developed. They will
(47:51):
open up the case. Once their crowdfunding has hit seventy
five hundred, that's when they go, Okay, guys, let's start.
It's amazing and you can all volunteer. You can be involved.
Speaker 4 (48:01):
I've been involved in forensics for a long, long time, guys, Okay,
both as a practitioner and as college professor. Okay, And
as I've gotten a bit longer in the tooth, there
are certain things that draw my attention more. For me,
(48:25):
it is my mission in life to get the unknown identified.
And the reason I see it as my mission now
is that I have stood over trenches where we had
(48:52):
a potter's field, and we would wait until we had
enough bodies to put them in the trenches, enough bodies
to go and lay them out one by one, never
to be identified. It's not just about sexual assault cases.
It's not just about homicide cases. You guys don't realize this.
(49:17):
You probably don't. It's like my wife said on our
first date.
Speaker 2 (49:21):
Ouch.
Speaker 4 (49:23):
She said, she looked at me across the table and said,
until I met you, I never thought about death. Now
you can take that any number of ways you want.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
She was sharpening the blade right.
Speaker 4 (49:39):
There, you go. But to her credit, she's no different
than anybody else. Right now, as we sit here, there
are medical legal death investigators that are out on skeletal
remain somewhere somewhere anywhere in this hue in the US, Okay,
(50:01):
and they were working on a recovery, or they've got
a decomposing body that's floating in a river or in
a bayou in South Louisiana they don't know who.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
They are, or in the land outside of Vegas.
Speaker 4 (50:12):
Yeah, or in the land outside of Vegas.
Speaker 3 (50:14):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (50:15):
You know, you just think about the Lake Mead bodies, right,
And some of those people have have no they have
no id ID whatsoever. The days of John Doe and
Jane Doe. We're seeing the sun set on that so
many times over the years, working with the Medical Examiner
(50:38):
in Atlanta, in the corner in New Orleans, I had
to sit there and there's there's this kind of sorrowful
part to me. You know, you sit there as an investigator,
you think, did I actually do everything that I could
have done? Now's the time because just like David and
Kristen Middleman have stated their goal, and he's probably one
(51:02):
of the most they are probably one of the most
altruistic groups of people I've ever come across. Their goal
is simply put, we want to clear the nameless list.
There is nothing more noble than that. But you know,
I know right now of organizations, governmental organizations that would
(51:22):
rather put money toward frivolous things that politicians will always do.
They've always done it. But it's a big slap in
the face to all of the dead in the state
and all they have to do. And I've seen I've
been to offices where there are literally cardboard boxes, guys
(51:42):
with skeletal remains just sitting on shelves. You don't think
that happens. It happens. It's a very small price to pay,
you know where your priorities rest. How many empty chairs
have there been at things giving dinners over the years.
We just thought he ran off. We just thought he
(52:05):
ran I'll close with this years ago. How many of
you guys remembered the program on HBO called Autopsy Biden
did it? Well, if you ever saw that show, they
profiled one of my cases on there, and it was
a guy that back in nineteen seventy four disappeared in
South Louisiana and the family, again not to continue to
(52:29):
beat this drum, they thought that he had run off. Well,
a pest control guy came to the house, came to
the house, went under the house, and there beneath the
hollow stair stairwell that leads up to the front porch,
(52:50):
they found almost a totally intact human skeleton with a
rusted thirty eight pistol laying next to him. And he
had been on a ca And you remember how the
guys in mechanic shops had their names right here in
that kind of oval shape thing like Fred or Bill
or whatever. You could still yeah, Billy, Bob, you could
still make it out. He had bell bottomed jeans on it.
(53:11):
I'll never forget it. And I was laying right next
to his skeletal remains underneath that house. The family found
out he didn't run off that day, but that was
dumb luck. There are a lot of them out there,
these bodies that people just assume that they vanished into
thin air. They could be dead in the woods somewhere.
(53:33):
Got hunter that just comes along and find them. These
answers are out there, These questions are out there to
be answered, and we are quickly headed towards the time
where many of these questions are going to be well,
those answers will be accessible to us. That's the beauty
of it. So please keep this in mind. There is
(53:55):
always hope. It doesn't matter how far back in time
these cases go, right, it doesn't matter. There's always hope.
We can always get people identified. And right now there
is probably somebody that you know or you are at
least distantly connected to, where they have a family member
out there that they say, we don't know whatever happened
to him or her. We have no idea. They just
(54:18):
left and disappeared. They could be in a cardboard box
somewhere on a shelf, and in our country that should
not be the case. Absolutely positively. I'm Josephcott Morgan and
this his body bags. Thank you, guys,
Bodybags with Joseph Scott Moore.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Please welcome the host of the podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Joseph Well got through getting my pail.
Speaker 4 (00:26):
Kids buys that place? But what else is he? Right?
Speaker 1 (00:33):
So Josephott Moore and this is Body Bags.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
Thank you guys.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
There was a story that started September thirteenth, nineteen sixty four.
Click s you have hands? How many of you were
born after that? Wow? Dude, we're old.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Got us.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Sorry, I just didn't expect that.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
I thought it was going to be different.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
I thought it was going to go a different way.
Fifty year old woman September thirteenth, nineteen sixty four. She
is showing an apartment in Albany, New York's trying to
rent it out. This is in the days before Facebook,
Marketplace and Craigslist and things like that, and we tend
to look at that time as a gentler, softer time.
It's not whenever we look at these horrible crimes that
(01:40):
happened before digital media, we just hear about them all
the time. Now, back then, this scared me when I
read it because this poor woman, she was showing her
apartment to a possible renter and she was bludgeoned he'll explain,
need no explanation. But she was tortured for hours with
(02:09):
heated kitchen knives in an attack that was so vicious.
She didn't die from the actual hitting, this horrible attack
that went on for hours. She bled to death. So
imagine the torture that she went through. Knowing, you get
(02:34):
to a certain point where you can't recover. You know,
if you remember the Manson family murders, the first one,
you know, with the Tate murders, Abigail Folger, you know,
she was running in the front yard and Patricia Creenwinkle
I think, was on her back and was stabbing her.
And she said, why don't you stop, I'm already dead
before you die, you know, And she had to know.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Joe, Yeah, you do. And you know with particularly, you know,
I talk a lot, and you know when we do
body bags. The beauty of it, I think, at least
in my mind, is the fact that we try to teach, right,
That's the big thing. And I try to approach it
from from the perspective of maybe most people have not
(03:18):
had an opportunity to learn forensics and have the opportunities
I've had in my life with education and experience and
all those sort of things. So the you know, the
driving force behind what we do is to try to
instruct and we've talked about sharpforce injuries on bodybacks for
loath these many years. We've been going since twenty one
(03:40):
now I guess heading towards six hundred episodes, and we
one of the things about sharpforce injuries we have primarily
there's three, but technically for our purposes today we're talking
about two. So we have stab ones. Right, everybody understands this.
This is a in a trade of event where you
(04:01):
have someone that is burying a milled edge into somebody's
body with a little metal tip. Right, And just because
you stab someone or someone is stabbed, that does not
make that a lethal event. Does everybody understand that? Because
there's no guarantee that a subject is going to be
struck in a vital area? Okay, now, does that mean
(04:24):
that it's not painful? Oh? No, it doesn't. You know,
because one of the things that has been so horrific
over the year is because you know that I've been
very deeply invested in the Ellen Greenberg case. Right, And
so every time you know, a blade hits an area,
your pain centers will fire well, many of Ellen's Ellen's injuries,
(04:44):
for instance, hit bone, right, and so that doesn't mean
that it was totally penetrative. You know, that went into
one of her organs. Perhaps this is yeah, and obviously
so you know when we have that case, In a
case like this, this lingering that goes on, you know,
(05:06):
kind of feeds into what I think. And I'm not
a behaviorist, I'm not a profile or a psychologist. But
from a medical legal perspective, when we're on the scene,
when we do evaluations of bodies, we can begin to
see patterns developed, right, particularly when you have somebody that
is probably a sexual statist, you know, which we would
(05:28):
have in this particular case. So she's lingering for a
protracted period of time. She would have had an awareness
that all of this is going on, being beaten, being
stabbed repeated in numbers of times, being moved about or
this space.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
It was something I wanted to ask you about this too. Okay.
They were able to break the crime down and by
the way, the reason you know we're doing this because
it was a cold case that went unsolved for many,
many years, but it was solved recently. They said that
she was struck in the back of the head. And
then she was stabbed in the neck. Yes, and then
(06:04):
while she was unconscious she was sexually molestious. How can
you tell something like that happened when they know that
she was unconscious for that, but then was conscious for
what came next.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
I think that the best you can do is going
to be speculative in an event like that to say
whether she was conscious or unconscious. I don't know that
there's any way to truly draw that conclusion. However, if
you have a post mortem sexual assault, that means after death, right,
We've learned that on body bags over the years. You
(06:40):
can deduce that that is possible because if there are
any kind of injuries related to those private areas, okay,
and you have a forcible sexual assault that goes on
those areas, the tears, those things that occur, there will
not be an associated hemorrhage with that, okay. And many,
(07:02):
many of the people that are sexual sadists and engage
in this, they like to have total control over over
these individuals, you know. Interestingly enough, and I don't know
if this is still a thing, but there used to
be a whole group of people that would fetishize death
and they would pay individuals to pretend they were dead,
(07:24):
to the point that they would have these individuals ice
their bodies down while alive and just remain still. That
is a thing.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
So yeah, it is, and it's you know, and the
person who wants it will to do it.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Yeah, no kid, have you ever sat in ice? You
ever had to ice your arm or your back?
Speaker 4 (07:42):
No? And that's not a chance. And so so these
people exist and the fact that this torture would go
on for a protracted period of time, and you know,
we haven't even talked about this idea of heating up blaze.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Well that's what I was going to ask you next.
Because they they being the investigators, they were able to
figure out the timeline of how the attack took place.
Having done the show, we've done over five hundred episodes,
heading into six hundred and by the way, now on
video yep, we launched it this week with the with
this week our first week. But there is a way
(08:18):
to tell that this state is after molesting her while
she's unconscious, then heats up knives on the gas stove
and then uses them to torture her by creating images
in her body. And they know that she was awake
for that.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
Yeah. Yeah, and they've been very nonspecific over the years.
Keep in mind, this is all the way back in
nineteen sixty four. But yet these these are specific patterns
that this individual utilized with this knife and over and
over and over again to create these surface images that
(08:59):
they were attempting to do with a knife and this
heated knife. And yeah, she's reactive in the sense that
these injuries. At autopsy, they were able to tell that
there was a response at a cellular level relative to
these injuries, where you could tell that she was still
alive while all of this was going on. And I
(09:23):
think the really sad portion of this, other than you know,
all of the horror that we've just kind of described here,
is the idea that she went into this with her
guard down, you know, because it was a matter of
showing a property, which to me, I think that I
(09:45):
don't know how many real estate people I have in
the audience, generally, there's there's a couple, it's a It
can be a very dangerous business because you don't know
who you're going to connect with. And there have been
other stories not exactly like this, but people that are
in the state industry where they will just blondly meet somebody,
and certainly back then, Dave.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah, in nineteen sixty four. And by the way, she's
no little wallflower. Our victim here was the fore woman
at a factory. Knew how to manage men, knew how
to bossom around, knew how to get the job done,
which is how they found her body because she didn't
show up for work and Sholways did. But Joe, the
case did go cold, even with all of what you
(10:26):
now know. Took place basically in her kitchen of her
home after she was This guy was such a just
evil at a new level. He took her by surprise
by hitting her in the back of the head, you know,
that's first thing. But they didn't solve it right away, Joe,
and it lingered and went away, and it was not
(10:49):
until twenty eighteen that a new detective took over the
case and said, give me everything. And Joe points this
out a lot. But back in night tek sixty four,
the detectives that were working this case that had to
preserve the evidence. A lot of whether or not these
can be sold depends on what they did then, and
in this case, they did a good job.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
Yeah they did. And the devil is in the details,
you know, when you're standing and this even applies to
this period of time in the medical legal world, when
you are standing over a body in an autopsy suite
the evidence that you're going to collect. I think we
think in terms nowadays that we've invented everything in the
(11:33):
immediate You have to understand there were people doing a
very difficult job that did not have the technology at
their disposal back during that period of time that we
do now where we can turn things around a lot
quicker now than they could back then, and certainly those
assets were not available to the individuals things such as DNA, right,
(11:55):
DNA was something that was only understood the medical community
understood it, but they didn't even understand things like necessarily
like medical predispositions to the degree that we understand the today.
And you know, it wasn't until Alec Jeffries in nineteen
eighty four even began to talk about the utility of
(12:16):
DNA applications in Great Britain. And that was back in
eighty four, and that would have been twenty years after that,
and it was just in the dawning of tom And
now you know, we're seeing something that is developing to
the level that you know, in my young mind that
I was in, you know, all of those years ago
when I started out as a forensics investigator, I could
(12:37):
not even have envisioned it. Because there's a new day.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Dawning there is. And that's where this case ended up
in twenty eighteen, and the new investigator took over. She
reached out to a school that was working on teaching
like Joe does, and as I've met already a number
of forensic students. But they took the evidence and ultimately
(13:00):
submitted it to AUTHRAM and they actually were able to
build out. AUTHORM does amazing work in how they build
out you know, the genealogy of it. It's the genetic
genealogy is such an incredibly intense thing that they take
us a sliver and it keeps going back. It's not
like it's not like they find this little strand of
(13:23):
DNA inserted into the computer and out pops the suspect.
It doesn't work like that. Oftentimes, they get a little
bit here and it goes back to the local detectives
who now have to go back and reinterview more people.
They keep narrowing the list until they build a family tree,
and next thing you know, they find an uncle, a cousin,
somebody in that related field. And then they go, okay, well,
(13:43):
who are the possible people here, And it came up
with a guy who was thirty seven years old in
nineteen sixty four, Joseph Nowakowski, Yes Nawawski. And by the
time they figured out that he was a suspect, not
the victim, not the gott to find out for sure,
(14:05):
he had been dead for twenty years. He died in
nineteen ninety eight. So they went through the very easy
task being faceiegious. You try to get a body dug
up for anything, it ain't easy. Judges take rest in
peace very seriously.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
All we have to do is look back at Tammy
Davell that that's a I think people think that, you know,
families will come will approach me about cases that are
cold or that they have questions about, and they'll say, well,
we'll just have her e zum or we'll have him exomed. Okay, okay, Well,
first off, you have to find an attorney that will
(14:44):
handle that for you, because you've got an order of
exhamation and you have to find the police that are
invested in it from an investigative standpoint, and then then
you have to find a judge that is willing to
crack to crack a grave open because they are not
in favor of this. But the fascinating thing about this
case is going back to what I said earlier. You
(15:06):
know how in sixty four the investigators people in the
more they're handicapped, right, they don't have this access to
the same technology. Okay, what they did is back then
they did tray sampling on her body and they also
did a rape kit on her. Now, how many of
(15:29):
you guys in the audience, I'd love to see a
show of hands have heard the horror stories about rape kits?
Anybody out there have heard this? And it is the
honest of goodness truth, because you will have poor victims.
Can you imagine? And I hope and I pray to
God there's nobody in here that's had to go through this,
go through the trauma of having been sexually assaulted, then
(15:53):
go to an emergency room and they do a rape
kit on a living patient. You know that sample To me,
it extends into almost a spiritual level. This is sacred,
you know, that you have. Okay, this evidence that has
been collected, and so many of them have been you know,
(16:16):
kind of defiled, if you will, by the people that
collect them. They're not treated in the same regard as
other things might be treated, and they begin to degrade
over a period of time. The incredible thing about this
case is that that evidence since sixty four was preserved
and they were able to find DNA linkage to this
(16:39):
unknown person. And then what makes this cold case so
very unique, and I think that authorm you know, saw
this certainly, is that they were able to do this
exhimation and collect what they could from those remains of
this questioned individual, and to go back and do confirmation.
(17:02):
But you know, it's it's kind of a hollow It's
kind of a hollow thing, right. You imagine all of
her family members there. Don't think the family didn't know
what had happened to her. You know, in that structure,
how many how many of you guys believed that all
of those people are still around today, those people that
loved her, that cared about her. You know, this is
(17:24):
this is sacred ground that you're on when you begin
to talk about DNA and the collection of it. And
how it should be treated. And in this case they
actually had a victory date.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
We had another case. This was one that it began.
It began in the most wholesome of ways of all time.
Remember the movie Christmas Vacation. Chevy Chase. In the opening scenes,
he's driving the family truckster. But whatever the nineteen eighty
eight version of the TRUCKSTU was.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
I think it was a tourist station.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
They're driving the wagon out and he gets into a
match for a truck and they're doing some road rage.
I guess that was kind of a fortunate things to come.
And Chevy Chase, who we all know has no real
anger issues. My god, I'll talk about a scene that
played out in real life for him. But they go
(18:28):
on the woods to find the Griswold family Christmas tree. Well,
I have to wonder, like so many of the vacation movies,
I don't know if y'all know this, those are all
based in some truth. Each one, go ahead answer it.
Each one of those vacation movies was about a particular
family vacation that took place, And I have to wonder
(18:51):
if the one they did in eighty eight was sampling
the nineteen fifty eight Martin Family disappearance. It's a nineteen
fifty eight case of a dad, Kenneth Martin. He's fifty four,
his wife Barbara's forty eight. They have three daughters, BARBARAE. Well,
I'd say Barbara that they call Barbarie because mom is
(19:12):
Barbara Virginia. And then they have an eleven year old
that is named Susie. Now, they went off on the
Griswold family Christmas, the Martin family Christmas. They actually went
out into the country in the first week of December
to collect things to use around the house for Christmas decorations.
(19:33):
They went out there to collect.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
Greenery and that sort of thing that you would do
Tremain's and that's where.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
They it's the most wholesome. I've never done anything that
wholesome in my life. I've never even thought of doing
something that wholesome in my life. And I thought, I
this is December seventh, nineteen fifty eight. And by the way,
they have an older son who is in the military.
And it, believe it or not, comes into play in
(19:58):
the investigation of this story. You're gonna learn something here
is that even in the most wholesome of families doing
the most wholesome of family things. If you don't get
an answer to what happened, people's imaginations and investigators run
wild and they will create stuff that would have Nancy
(20:22):
Grace blowing her eyelashes out. I mean, it got nutty
with this family. So the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic
Area in Oregon, that's where we are for this case.
December the seventh, nineteen fifty eight, Martin family goes out
on their Christmas tree decoration hunting expedition and they never return.
(20:44):
UFO picked them up for something. Something happened to the
family because they never came home. Car never found, None
of the family ever found for a while, just gone.
Joe and I recover in this case, were like, there's
got bees. Come on, No, they left the house December seventh,
(21:04):
nineteen fifty eight, didn't come on.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
It's one thing. It's one thing if you you have
five people that go missing like this, But to have
an automobile in addition to that vanish off to face
the planet you have, you know, And Dave was, you know,
you know, being lighthearted there about UFOs. But you began
to think about how how can entire family a vehicle.
(21:31):
How can it just vaporize into nothing? And again, this
is back in the fifties. How many of you guys,
do I have any any friends here from Oregon at all? Anybody?
Have you guys heard of this case at all? You have?
And I've got to tell you. I'm Louisiana born and raised.
(21:52):
I've stood on the banks of the Thank you. I've
stood on the banks of the Columbia River. I have
never felt so small in my life this year. If
you've never done this, I beg of you go. It
is one of the most powerful things that you will see.
(22:13):
You'll know that you know there's this was created. I
think it was created to terrify people like me because
you know, you look at the and the Mississippi River
doesn't really flow slowly. They say that it, you know,
say that it does, but there's a significant current in it.
But the Columbia in and of itself is stuff. It
(22:34):
is the stuff of nightmares. If you were to go
over the edge of this thing, all right, and it
will really get your attention. And a lot of people
go there. I've been there for the Salmon Run, which
is absolutely amazing. You see these guys going out on
the boats they're catching salmon. You know where it dumps in, well,
essentially you know it's heading to the Pacific Ocean. But
(22:56):
you see the power of that. And we know that
they were in fact adjacent to the river, and Lord knows,
there's enough evergreens out out in that part of the country,
which is one of the most lovely places that you
could ever visit, out in that part of the country
where you could go and collect that, and their purpose
to do this right Dave there.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
And the thing about this is that even in nineteen
fifty eight, when they did not have a resolution, quickly
this story became a national story and for months, investigators
were there for months. They had one thousand dollars reward.
Joe and I looked up the value in nineteen fifty
eight versus now, and it's considerable. But a thousand bucks
would have had a few folks out there hunting for it,
(23:37):
and nothing until until one of the little girls floated
up and they're found in the river. Now this is
months after they're gone, no car is found, they're all missing,
and then one of the girls is found shortly after that.
(24:00):
Second girls found in the river. Now Joe based on
the months that went by. What condition would those bodies
have been talking about eleven, thirteen, fourteen years old? What
would they look like to us after being in that
cold rough river for months?
Speaker 4 (24:20):
Yeah, So there's a couple of things you have to
consider with human remains in this kind of environment. First off,
just the current alone, and there are any kind of
obstacles in the water. You have rocky outcroppings, there's a
lot of timber that goes into those waters.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Oh, I got to mention one of the things. The
girls were found thirty miles of art. Yeah, and they
were found within a week.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
Of one another, very roughly a week.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Yeah, but thirty miles separated them one week and thirty
miles sorry.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
Yeah, And so you can begin to do when if
you're trying to do the calculus of this, it's it's
almost impossible to do because the first thing you have
to consider is was there a known route that somebody
or that this family and you would have to do
a deep dive into this. No, pun intended to go
back and say, you know, if they were traveling in
(25:16):
the car, is there a common route that they would
go on to go on picnics or something like this
where would potentially be a point of entry into the river.
But then you begin to try to calculate the volume
of water, which can't I don't think that's passing through there.
The rate, are there any dam releases? How many storms
have you had? And so when you have two bodies
(25:36):
that pop up and you see that there is this
grand distance, you know, thirty miles they're separating them. First off,
it's dumb luck. I think that these kids were found
in the first place because it's so vast and it
would have easily been It's quite plausible they could have
been just washed out into the Pacific, eventually making it
(25:57):
down traveling at that speed. But they did in fact
find them. The trick is because there were a lot
of theories, and I think the sun, you know, it
played into this, like you had said, because they want
to know where the sun was.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
He's the only survivor, and he was in New York State,
he was in the military, and what had happened during
the investigation. As I told you that when an obvious
answer doesn't come up right away, well let's just find
what we can. They found some bulletshell casings, and they're like,
wait a minute, didn't their son before he mysteriously took
(26:33):
off in the military. Didn't he work in a hardware
store that sold guns, And wasn't he accused at seventeen
years old of stealing a gun? Didn't that what happened
and that actually became a running threat. But I want
to give you a headline from the Associated Press, an
article in nineteen fifty nine. By the way, all of
this is out in the open, okay, all of the sun.
(26:55):
I'm thinking dude was across the country and still became
an actual suspect. A nineteen fifty nine Associated Press article
titled where do you search if you've already searched every place?
Logic and fragmentary clues would suggest that's where they were
left in nineteen fifty nine, after two bodies show up
(27:18):
thirty miles apart and then nothing. Now, there were a
lot of theories in those of you who mentioned you're
from Oregon, you know that there were a couple of
people who believe they could solve this crime. Maybe we
don't know, but there was one guy in particular, a diver.
And by the way, they dove that river a bunch.
(27:39):
And right after it happened in the first months before
anybodies were found. They were in the water, couldn't find anything,
but this one guy wouldn't give up show and wasn't
it twenty twenty four when he finally came up with
something he did?
Speaker 4 (27:56):
And what this is leading to is the fact that
they were able to recover part of the vehicle at
this point in tom And as you can imagine, you know,
going back to the river, think about how much time
has passed since in sixty four to twenty.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Fifty eight fifty I'm sorry.
Speaker 4 (28:19):
Fifty eight, so you know, you do the addition, you
think about all the silt that has built up the
vehicle being buried, what would be left of the vehicle
as a result of the slamming against this structure, this
man made structure beneath those beneath the surface, and how
fragile it is, And you would think sitting there, I
(28:42):
would imagine could there possibly be any human remain left
in this structure or in this particular spot. And Dave,
they actually found something.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Here, unbelievable based on this one guy sixty six years
later finding the vehicle a Ford station wagon, and they
did find human remains and they were able to identify
the family after all these years, and again it goes
back to just finding them in the river is not enough.
(29:15):
You got to find out first of all, You've got
to prove who they are. You cannot ever assume we
could do a whole thing on misidentification. Actually, we have
a show coming up on that about an actual forensic
expert misidentifying somebody and telling mom and dad, hey, that
was your kid, and now you find out, no, my
kids in my kids still in the hospital, it's their kid.
(29:37):
Go get them away from my daughter, their kids in
the grave.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
I mean yeah, and misidentifications happened with great frequency.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
And that's I didn't know that until I started working
with Joe. I had no idea that was a thing.
So they make sure before they come out, because you
know what, somebody could have done something and planted a
body in there. I mean, you know, you it sounds crazy,
but not finding a station wag again for sixty something years,
that seems just as crazy. You know, you're gonna tell
(30:05):
me that really was in there all that time, and
it was. But they did identify the body in April
this year. We're talking last month. Kenneth Martin, Barbara Martin.
That was their daughter and their daughter Barbie. The three
who were not found were positively identified.
Speaker 4 (30:23):
Yeah, the theory is is that the vehicle went into
the water. There's a high probability that it inverted when
it went in. My suspicion is is that when this
impact occurred that the windows probably shattered. There's no way
(30:43):
really to tell at this point. In Tom And how
many of you, well, I know I can see from
the audience, I've got many like myself, kids of the sixties.
You know, what's the old country song about the only
restraint in the car we had back then was mama's.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Right arm, mama's mama's arm.
Speaker 4 (31:02):
Nobody belted, you know back then. So when you have
a vehicle that inverts like this or flips over on
the on the roof, if the glass cracks out, which
there's a high probability the glass was not uh it
if I'm if memory serves me correct, The type of
glass they had back then didn't cube like safety glass
(31:25):
we have now. It would have the flow. Remember I've
talked about how substantial this flow is, so the bodies
would be captured and washed out when vehicles collapse and
crush in on one another, on themselves, rather individuals are pinned.
You've heard about people being pinned in vehicles. It just
(31:48):
so happens that the youngest child and both of the
parents were pinned within the vehicle. I think there probably
would have been an awareness. I can't imagine that all
of these people would have died simultaneously, and it would
have been a horrific way to have passed on and
(32:10):
two of the more washed out. Now this goes to
the sample they were able to retrieve. Is again bringing
it into the modern context. When our friends at AUTHORM
got involved in this case, you were able to and
again we don't use the word closures, not our thing,
but there is a resolution. There's a resolution. And also,
(32:35):
you know, the thought that anybody else could have potentially
have been involved in this, you know, I think that
that's kind of poo pooed at this point in time,
and we think about this and it seems like, you know,
going back in time, right that nineteen fifty eight was
a long long time ago, and I guess it kind
of was. Probably. Out of all the cases that we're
(33:09):
presenting today, there are three, and the third one is
one that you're not going to believe that we covered
this year and it is the greatest example I think
of when all hope is given up, there is still hope.
And this case comes to us out of Canada. Do
(33:31):
I have any friends from Canada here right now? Okay, good,
let's talk about them. So Saskatoon, I'm just kidding. Yeah,
this is this comes to us out of Saskatoon, and
this is this is a case that has become famously
known as the Woman in the Well case. Dave opened
(33:51):
this up for a little It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
In Jenity thousand and six, everybody in this room was
born then, right, God, let me be born in twenty they
would be twenty years old, right now, all right? This
started in June twenty two, thousand and six. Skeletal remains
of an unidentified individual found by work crews excavating fuel
(34:17):
tanks from an old gas station in the city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
The investigation begins right away. Now. The remains actually had
clothing that as they were doing this investigation. I remember
(34:37):
talking to Joe about it off the air, because this
isn't something that I would think you would, you know,
immediately jump to They had to find a historian that
dealt in textiles, an actual historian that deals in textiles,
so they could identify you have to know everything about
the clothing on the on the scale.
Speaker 4 (34:55):
Yeah, let me a quick little side here. I was
involved in the exhumation of I know. I had somebody
shout out they were from Louisiana. I was involved in
the exhumation of doctor Weiss. If you don't know who
doctor Weiss is, he's the guy that shot Heuey P.
(35:16):
Long And there were questions about that case. And this
is I'd gotten involved in this case with an old
friend of mine. If you look up his name, he's
pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Kat.
Speaker 4 (35:27):
It used to be up at George Washington. I think
he's passed on now. Jim Stars S T A, R, R,
S and H. He did like the exclamation of Jesse
James's grave. Those sorts of things. Well, I got involved
with the thing with doctor Weiss because there were questions
and guys being involved in in forensics. I never knew.
(35:47):
I knew that textiles were a thing, you know, relative
to because we do trace evidence all the time with
threads and all those sorts of things. I never knew
that the Smithsonian had a subdivision within within their organization
that you could avail yourself of with old fabrics. And
(36:12):
the questions had run for years and years about doctor wife.
And after we had gotten him removed from his crip
and we had his body there, they actually Doctor Stars
had arranged for a textile person to come in and
this individual was present while the body or the remnant
(36:34):
of clothing was being taken away and they could analyze
it and go back in time. So this is one
of these fascinating things, little sides here about.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
This particular and so again you're talking about two thousand
and six. They find the skeleton remains in a well,
and you know the way that the body was packaged.
You know, think about it. You've got clothing. I want
to get this. The clothing dated back and it included
a fitted jacket, a high collared blouse, and a long skirt.
(37:07):
The historian came back with the date between nineteen ten
and nineteen twenty. So I remember talking to Joe. When
you find skeletal remains, you know, depending on how they've
been wrapped up and preserving, can you tell the difference
between decades? You know, is it ten years, twenty years,
fifty years? Can you tell, and I mean, you've got it.
(37:30):
This is not a guarantee that that's when this woman
was killed or died between nineteen ten and nineteen twenty.
That's not a guarantee. I could have wrapped up a
dead body in some old clothing, you know, so I
can't assume anything. But she was also after she was hey,
she's got the clothes on. There after in her pear
lap sack. Then stuffed her into a wooden barrel. I
(37:54):
got ahead of myself saying her because I don't know
how many cross dressers there were back then. Some would
have us believe there were a lot. The woman's body
wrapped in a burlab sack, stuffed into a wooden barrel
and dropped into the well, a well that had existed.
(38:19):
And this is the part that really old git. You see,
it was the Shore hotel back in the day. Remember
they were excavating for gas tanks, you know, and then
they're going, wait a minute, we're sitting on the remains
of an old hotel and this was a well. So
it was a hotel and boarding house. And here's the
(38:40):
part I love with. The hotel and boarding house had
a mixed reputation in a bustling railroad town, and the
Shore Hotel was demolished in nineteen twenty seven, so we're
already eighty years pasted the demise of this hotel. When
(39:02):
the remains are found in the well, yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:07):
Well, what's one of our working theories here? Though? What
did they say about the status of the remains? Did
he say that her remains were merely dumped down into
a well? No, they weren't. What had happened prior to
her being dumped into the well? Anybody? She was wrapped right,
(39:28):
Not only was she wrapped in something she was then
she was then placed into a barrel. You know. So
what do you think we're sniffing out here at this
point in time? Right? Out of our five manners of
death that we've talked about previously on bodybacks, right, we're
looking at homicide, and of course, our working assumption in
all death investigation is, I don't care if it's you know,
(39:51):
a ninety eight year old mamma, okay, that I'd go
out on the scene on my working assumption is that
every death is a what homicide until proven otherwise. We
have a lot of clues here, right, you know, we
have somebody that is trying. It's not like it's not
like she was even buried in the backyard. Okay, we
(40:12):
might if we see a burial in the backyard that
we have a body that's not crypted or vaulted, we
might assume it could be an old family burial, you know,
particularly during this period of time that you find remains
down there, and that you can kind of explain that.
Now we're talking about somebody that is wrapped up, placed
in a barrel and then kind of cast off into
(40:32):
the abyss. And here's the really creepy thing to me.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Wait a minute, now it gets creepy.
Speaker 4 (40:38):
Yeah, now it gets creepy.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
Thanks Joe.
Speaker 4 (40:42):
This was somebody's drinking water.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
Yea, so I know it was coming.
Speaker 4 (40:50):
You didn't think I could go to another level. Digit
there you go, But go ahead.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
They break out the and again. Now I remember, this
investigation takes place eighty years after this hotel has been
torn down, assuming and okay, you can't assume anything, but
you can use your brain based on the clothing, based
on the way that this person had been thrown away,
not just tossed out in a field somewhere, but actually
(41:18):
in a way to disguise the death. These skeleton remains
were investigated and over the years, investigators they were working
to identify the woman. And think about this, You've got
a dead body in sascatcha tune, probably not going to
have a suspect you're going to have to go pick up. Now,
it's a who done it? I mean, as bad as
(41:40):
it sounds that somebody's relative could be somebody's mother, I
don't know. But what I'm saying is there's a different
investigation that's taking place than one where hey man, we
got a killer on the loose. We better figure this
out right now. Now they're looking at it historically. I mean,
you're calling in you people to take a look at this.
Isn't this a nice mystery? Truly not. I mean, it's
a dead body, even if it is one hundred years old,
(42:01):
it's still a body that was disposed of like common trash.
We all have a certain amount of dignity to our lives,
or it should. That's what separates us from animals and coburger.
But as we go and this one, over the years,
the investigators tried everything. They finally did break this down
(42:21):
and they did figure out who it was.
Speaker 4 (42:23):
Jeff, Yeah, they did. And the beauty of this, when
you begin to think about from beauty from an investigation
people to please understood, exid the beauty of this is
that you have what's referred to as containment of the
evidence and containment of the remains, because how many cases
you have to hear about it where you appear things
like dimensioning of scattered, scattered human remains. That's not what
(42:47):
you had. And she was wrapped actually in burlap, and
burlap is kind of fascinating because it's actually pretty resilient
and actually little side note, burl app is actually sackcloth.
If you've ever read in your Bible about sackcloth and ashes,
that's essentially what you're looking at.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
Here the history of Jonah.
Speaker 4 (43:10):
Yeah. So it's very very resilient in the fact that
you did have at least containment. Now with the barrel.
They found the bindings for the barrel if you remember,
you know, the rings that go around a barrel and
those sorts of things. There were nails that were found
along with this, but you had it in a centralized location,
(43:30):
and the absence of the use of the well any
longer I think played a part in this, as well,
but you still have the water table that it's rising
and falling over the years, which impacts everything. The fact
that they still had enough there to recover. And yes,
let me ask you a question, can you She was
identified and again with AUTHRAM being involved in this, because
(43:53):
the Canadian authorities sought out our friends at AUTHRAM to
take these samples too, and them to identify. But she
went by actually by two names. I want to make
sure I get this right. She went by the name
Alice Spence and also went by the name of Alice Burke.
(44:15):
She was born in eighteen eighty one. To kind of
frame that out for you, now, there was no conclusion
about her cause of death because there was not it
certainly no soft tissue. You know, with soft tissue we're
looking for hemorrhage, and that those days it passed. But
just try this on for size. You think about genetic
(44:38):
genealogy and the world that we endwell and whether you
believe it or not, whether it scares you or not,
it scares me. I have to tell you, you know, because
that's our code, right, that's who we are, and this
is it's like spitting in the ocean. There's not too
much you can do to hold it back. Okay, it's
headed your way, but can you imagine multiple generations afterwards,
(45:07):
you go to somebody's house if you were the local authorities,
after you've been able to build out this tree through
authorm and you go and you knock on someone's door
and say, pardon me, do you have a family member
from like back right after the turn of the century,
(45:29):
the twentieth century that went and missing? Can you imagine
having somebody show up at your door and give you
that information. And as it turned out, I think it
was her. The descendant turned out to be a niece,
if I'm not mistaken that they showed up to this
and she would have been like her great great great aunt. Okay,
(45:53):
and you know, as we say down the South, I
love to use this term. We always saw that she'd
just run off times, you know, we say that.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
And so saskatchetoon Jane does right, she just ran off.
In reality, they believe, you know, again, can't prove it now,
but the belief is that her husband killed her and
her It was interesting. I've read a number of things
that her niece wrote after they contacted her, and it's
(46:22):
just this, you know, I can't imagine the waterfall of
emotions that you would have because at first you're kind
of detached. You know, it's not somebody, really know, it's
a relative. But then you start thinking about it, and
all of a sudden, you like, wait a minute, he
got away with murder of my aunt, you know, And
then I can see that, you know, that would kind
of light a fire and it would make you want
(46:43):
to be involved. And that's the purpose of doing this
today is to do these stories so that you guys
understand that we can all be involved in this. Joe
hits this up every time we talk about authoram you know,
did you guys realize that author there are cases all
over You've probably got one, whatever city you're from, town, whatever,
there's probably a case that hasn't been solved, one in
(47:04):
your state that might be high profile, and they might
have and you know, they might have some DNA that
can be tested. There is a solution possible. But you know,
with authorm, it is such an intense thing they go
through to do this. They don't charge a lot of money,
they're not funded by the government, they're not funded by
(47:27):
any of the billionaires we hear about who want to
sway politics. They're funded by crowdfunding sources. They crowdfund to
solve these unsolvable crimes. Seventy five hundred dollars, that's all
they have to have, and they'll open up the case.
Nobody's getting rich. When you look at the team of experts,
the years of education, what they have developed. They will
(47:51):
open up the case. Once their crowdfunding has hit seventy
five hundred, that's when they go, Okay, guys, let's start.
It's amazing and you can all volunteer. You can be involved.
Speaker 4 (48:01):
I've been involved in forensics for a long, long time, guys, Okay,
both as a practitioner and as college professor. Okay, And
as I've gotten a bit longer in the tooth, there
are certain things that draw my attention more. For me,
(48:25):
it is my mission in life to get the unknown identified.
And the reason I see it as my mission now
is that I have stood over trenches where we had
(48:52):
a potter's field, and we would wait until we had
enough bodies to put them in the trenches, enough bodies
to go and lay them out one by one, never
to be identified. It's not just about sexual assault cases.
It's not just about homicide cases. You guys don't realize this.
(49:17):
You probably don't. It's like my wife said on our
first date.
Speaker 2 (49:21):
Ouch.
Speaker 4 (49:23):
She said, she looked at me across the table and said,
until I met you, I never thought about death. Now
you can take that any number of ways you want.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
She was sharpening the blade right.
Speaker 4 (49:39):
There, you go. But to her credit, she's no different
than anybody else. Right now, as we sit here, there
are medical legal death investigators that are out on skeletal
remain somewhere somewhere anywhere in this hue in the US, Okay,
(50:01):
and they were working on a recovery, or they've got
a decomposing body that's floating in a river or in
a bayou in South Louisiana they don't know who.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
They are, or in the land outside of Vegas.
Speaker 4 (50:12):
Yeah, or in the land outside of Vegas.
Speaker 3 (50:14):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (50:15):
You know, you just think about the Lake Mead bodies, right,
And some of those people have have no they have
no id ID whatsoever. The days of John Doe and
Jane Doe. We're seeing the sun set on that so
many times over the years, working with the Medical Examiner
(50:38):
in Atlanta, in the corner in New Orleans, I had
to sit there and there's there's this kind of sorrowful
part to me. You know, you sit there as an investigator,
you think, did I actually do everything that I could
have done? Now's the time because just like David and
Kristen Middleman have stated their goal, and he's probably one
(51:02):
of the most they are probably one of the most
altruistic groups of people I've ever come across. Their goal
is simply put, we want to clear the nameless list.
There is nothing more noble than that. But you know,
I know right now of organizations, governmental organizations that would
(51:22):
rather put money toward frivolous things that politicians will always do.
They've always done it. But it's a big slap in
the face to all of the dead in the state
and all they have to do. And I've seen I've
been to offices where there are literally cardboard boxes, guys
(51:42):
with skeletal remains just sitting on shelves. You don't think
that happens. It happens. It's a very small price to pay,
you know where your priorities rest. How many empty chairs
have there been at things giving dinners over the years.
We just thought he ran off. We just thought he
(52:05):
ran I'll close with this years ago. How many of
you guys remembered the program on HBO called Autopsy Biden
did it? Well, if you ever saw that show, they
profiled one of my cases on there, and it was
a guy that back in nineteen seventy four disappeared in
South Louisiana and the family, again not to continue to
(52:29):
beat this drum, they thought that he had run off. Well,
a pest control guy came to the house, came to
the house, went under the house, and there beneath the
hollow stair stairwell that leads up to the front porch,
(52:50):
they found almost a totally intact human skeleton with a
rusted thirty eight pistol laying next to him. And he
had been on a ca And you remember how the
guys in mechanic shops had their names right here in
that kind of oval shape thing like Fred or Bill
or whatever. You could still yeah, Billy, Bob, you could
still make it out. He had bell bottomed jeans on it.
(53:11):
I'll never forget it. And I was laying right next
to his skeletal remains underneath that house. The family found
out he didn't run off that day, but that was
dumb luck. There are a lot of them out there,
these bodies that people just assume that they vanished into
thin air. They could be dead in the woods somewhere.
(53:33):
Got hunter that just comes along and find them. These
answers are out there, These questions are out there to
be answered, and we are quickly headed towards the time
where many of these questions are going to be well,
those answers will be accessible to us. That's the beauty
of it. So please keep this in mind. There is
(53:55):
always hope. It doesn't matter how far back in time
these cases go, right, it doesn't matter. There's always hope.
We can always get people identified. And right now there
is probably somebody that you know or you are at
least distantly connected to, where they have a family member
out there that they say, we don't know whatever happened
to him or her. We have no idea. They just
(54:18):
left and disappeared. They could be in a cardboard box
somewhere on a shelf, and in our country that should
not be the case. Absolutely positively. I'm Josephcott Morgan and
this his body bags. Thank you, guys,
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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