March 5, 2025 • 42 mins
The Hertgen family is wealthy and full of athletes. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack take a look at the family dynamic that led to one brother allegedly murdering his younger brother, taking out his eyeball and possibly sitting down to a dinner of "brother's eyeball". Joe explains what takes place removing an eyeball and how investigators determine a golf club was used in the murder.
Transcript Highlights
00:00.03 Introduction
02:55.32 Did Brother take eyeball out of brother
08:20.08 Cat is also dead
13:03.60 questions about crime scenes
18:05.90 First documented murder
23:42.72 Cannibalism
29:31.53 1500 story of incest and cannibalism
34:29.38 Golf club used as weapon
39:54.92 Removing an eyeball
44:03.91 Conclusion
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body dys but Joseph's gotten more. Let me ask you
a question real quick. Have you ever been in a
situation in your life where you didn't know what to
do next? Maybe you were frustrated, maybe you were lost,
(00:25):
maybe you were terrified, and maybe you had encroaching thoughts
that were rather dark, But there was something about that
moment in time in your life where, like I like
to refer to them, the guardrails kind of kept you
from running off the road. What if, just what if
(00:52):
all those things in your life, maybe throughout that had
seemed normal now like a distant memory, and the governor
was off and you're running wild, so wild, that perhaps
you would take the life of your very own sibling
(01:16):
and then do something so deranged and something so far
from what is accepted in normal society, and suddenly you
appear to be a monster. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
(01:40):
this is Bodybags. Dave MCA's story came across my desk
just in the last week, and you know, we've been
running around so crazy recently with all of the things
(02:02):
that we're covering in the news right now, it seems
that tempo has picked up once again. It kind of
ebbs and flows with us, doesn't it. But the story,
you know, kind of gave me pause because I have
not heard of a case of this in some time.
(02:23):
That certainly, you know, kind of drew me in. And
it's a very specific thing that happened. And we're talking
about homicide here, actually alleged homicide a brother or brother.
But it goes beyond just merely a homicidal event. Now
we're talking from some reports, we're talking about perhaps a
(02:48):
case of cannibalism. And you know, just when you and
I feel like we've seen everything or heard everything, hold
on to your hat because there's more to bear refiled.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Actually, I'm going to put those big wrap around glasses
on my face that you get when you get your eyes,
you know, dilated at the eye doctor back in the day,
and I'm keeping those things on super tight. This cat,
it wasn't enough to kill his brother and destroy the
cat and burnsta apparently allegedly, maybe he got the guy's
(03:26):
eyeball out and ate it like it's a piece of
candy or something. I don't know if he sucked on it,
you know, or and I don't know what it tastes like.
I know that Shrek said you can use him for jelly,
you know, if I remember from the first Shrek movie.
But Matthew Hertkin. We're talking Cain and Abel here because
you know what, Joe. One thing I found out old
(03:46):
Matthew Hrtkin was an athlete, you know.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Yea, so was his brother.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Whereas Matthew went to college and you know, was on
the team and stuff. His brother was a star. Matthew
never excelled the way his little brother did. Now he's smart,
very affluent family. I mean, these people had it going
on financially and another part, but not in where it
really mattered. And when you get into brother on brother crime, slash, murder,
(04:11):
slash whatever, Cain and Abel, you know, Caine, you're.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
What is it? I love this line. I've said it before.
Your brother's blood crawls out to me from the ground.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yeah, you know he Cain killed Abel because he was jealous,
and I'm thinking that Matthew Hurtkin killed his brother out
of jealousy. Now I'm thinking the eyeball thing might have
come from Demolition Man.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
It was, you know the movie I'm talking about.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Oh yeah, yeah, I do. Actually sure, I hadn't thought
about that. In some time.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
All right, think about this. You know, in the nineties,
Dennis Rodman the worm was the greatest great reboundary in
the NBA, and he's still dyeing his hair all weird colors. Right, Yes,
it's absolutely Wesley Snipes and Demolition Man. That's why he
already got the idea and started doing them.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah. I don't think I ever connected those two.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
There was a scene in the movie when Wesley Snipe
is breaking up and Warden Smithers goes to uh talk
to him. He's a you know, he's a defrosted ice cube.
And the thing is is they use the eyeball, you know,
the retina scanner toy in and out, so that you know,
you couldn't fake that, right, And so Wesley Snipes, you know,
they show that he has carved the dude's eyeball out
of his head and he holds out of the scanner,
(05:18):
you know, and it says, no, you have a nice day,
will it, Warden Williams Smithers or whatever, And he has
the eye at the end of this pen thing right yeah,
right out there you got the pupil. And when it
says that, he says, yeah, you too, and all I
could think of is why didn't he say I will.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
I know, there you go, hang hanging curveball. But you
know that, you know now what was once fictional is
the truth. Back then we didn't necessarily have biometrics like
we do now. We use those in forensics quite a bit.
But yeah, to think about this particular case, it's got
(06:00):
a bit of everything in it. You've got, And keep
in mind, to this point, no one has been found
guilty at all on any level. There's more to unfold
because this literally Dave just has happened. It's one of
the reasons I want to cover it and kind of
talk about a little bit because you've got several elements
(06:23):
that are kind of at work here. First off, there
is a homicide that takes place, and it's perpetrated with
what I've often referred to as weapons of convenience. I
think that you know, we have both a golf club
right now that's involved. You know, the authorities have said
(06:47):
was used, it had utility, and there's any number of
ways I could think that it could be used. But
perhaps it was used as a bludgeon, Maybe the shaft
was broken into it was utilized that way, and then
of course we have we have a knife that's involved
as well. So you've got several types of of instruments
(07:13):
that are being utilized here that brought about the death
of this young man. In addition to that, you have
what I don't know, I guess what the British would
refer to as crockery lying about the house. There's a plate, Yeah,
there's a plate.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
There's a plate like once a week you give me
some British rockery.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
There's a yeah, no, no, yeah, well croc is actually
a bowl or you know, some type of a vessel
like that which you know evolves out of chamber pot,
you know, so crockery, it's a crock of insert word.
And then there's flatware. Uh, and it's stained allegedly with blood,
(07:55):
as if someone sat down at a to dine. And
again that's that's pretty dog on chilling. And on top
of this, you mentioned something just a moment ago that
forgive me, I'd actually forgotten forgotten about. But the victim's
pussy cat has been immolated, has been burned up, and
(08:24):
they cannot they don't know here's the ruby. They don't
know if the kitty cat was in fact deceased already
and then set a blaze, or if the the cat
was actually uh, set a blaze while alive. I've got
my opinions about that, you know, and some of the
same principles that we apply with fire desks with humans,
(08:47):
you know, would certainly apply with a cat. So I
can't Again. I always try to put myself into the
shoes of an investigator, and you get up this particular morning,
you have your cup of coffee, and suddenly you know
you're spun up to go out and work this case.
(09:07):
I don't think you would have had this on your
BINGO card for that particular day if you were an
investigator and it you know this. It just goes to
show I think that for investigators in particular, you never
know what you're going to step into anytime you cross
the threshold into a dwelling. And this actually took place
in an apartment, and you know, in an apartment of
(09:30):
all place, of all places, and you know this kind
of esteemed area where where these individuals you know, resided,
And it's just the reason I wanted to cover it
is that it is so utterly bizarre and it just
seems like something that that it was crafted in Hollywood,
(09:53):
perhaps just thinking of me. Yeah, go ahead, no, please.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Go Yeah, we're pretty electronics is I think. We watch
a lot of movies, lots of TV, you know. I
mean the guy maybe he got that's where he got
his idea. I'm not saying he did. I'm just saying
that it's possible that that's where he you know, I mean,
look who come allegedly came up with the idea. All
I could think of was when the cat, you know, ps,
your cat is dead? I was thinking Tom Jones is
singing in the background, I mean a cat, you know
(10:21):
which the older I get, the weirder stuff pops out
of my head. But I see a story like this
and I'm like, you know, at some point you go, yeah,
I think I've seen it all. You know, we cover
a story and yeah, we saw this before. We've never
seen this one before.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
I know we haven't, and I've only had When it
comes to the C word and I get asked about
you'd be surprised. People are rather emboldened, I think. And
it's because it's not that I'm anything special. It's just
that myself and people like me have seen things that
other people can't fathom. And this is actually one of
(10:57):
the questions that I get asked. I've had to ask
of me a crime con any number of times where
I've spoken in different locations. Have I ever worked a
case of cannibalism in my career? And I've only been,
uh kind of peripherally involved in a case where uh
(11:17):
where a fellow eight eight to his roommate over quite
a bit of tom he had killed him, butchered him,
had him.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
Rast Elroy was a big man, Joe.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
And he would.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
He has done a number of shows about about people
using by cooking or eating there to get rid of
the evidence.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
You know. We h yeah, we had a number of
those stories over the years.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yeah, and they do. They do exist. They pop out,
I think, and it runs. It runs. So not that
hom sade is not abnormal. Do not get me wrong,
don't misconstrue what I'm saying here. But there are certain
things when you start to get out towards as fringes
or that fringe like behavior like this. There's there are
(12:06):
those moments in time where it doesn't matter about the
level of horror that you're bearing witness to out there, uh, trauma, grief,
the pain, that's involved with a lot of things. You
there's certain things that happen literally in the taboo sense,
(12:28):
taboo in a very broad sense. You know, there's certain
things that are not acceptable morally, and I think, uh,
it makes people retract, you know that. Okay, Yeah, he
murdered his brother, thattor side.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
There's a word for this. Yeah, hang on second, making
up words you have to, I'm serious.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
You're talking about how people feel like they can ask
you anything they asked me to ask you stuff.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Well, yeah, and it's actually that happens with a lot
of people in my life and you know, welcome to
my world. It happens with my mother. My mother actually
has a coffee club that she gets together with like
once a week. Yeah yeah. And and all of the
ladies that are part of the coffee club meet in
(13:19):
one restaurant and they sit around and they're very you know,
kind of you know, lovely southern bell types, speaking quiet
tones and everything. And then some of the questions that
well ask my mother, some of the questions I'll ask
my mother about, well, did he did did did Joe
work this case? Or did he cover this case? And
(13:41):
can you tell us about and so you know that door.
Once that door kind of swings open, you'd be surprised
some of the questions you get asked. So yeah, and
cannibalism is one of the things, because I think that
the more taboo something is Many times, I think it's
not just the shock factor. I think that people day,
deep down inside, they would prefer to hear you say,
(14:04):
know that that did not happen, because it kind of
confirmed some of these dark things in the back of
their mind, you know what I'm saying. You know, they
want someone to tell them that they're still safe and
that there's not something out there like this. But I
got to tell you in this particular case, this young
man Joseph by the way is his name. He died
(14:30):
allegedly at the hands of his brother, and when the
police arrived at the scene to begin to work it,
it's the stuff that many of these officers will never
forget till the day they die. Davis, you had mentioned
(15:00):
this family. I keep seeing this term in the news.
This family is rather affluent. I love that word. It
kind of rolls off the tongue, doesn't it. Affluent? And
you you take from that that it's not just about money.
(15:21):
It's also about power and the position that you hold
in society, the achievements of your kids, which many times
is in many relationships, familiar relationships, it's an extension of
what the parents see themselves as accomplishing. I'm guilty of that,
you know, with my kids. You know, they I don't
(15:41):
necessarily take credit for it, but you know, I'll sit
around and say, well, my son or my daughter, you know,
did this and that, or my grandkids did this or that,
like I had anything to do with it. But you know,
you know, the affluence, the affluent part of it, though,
is an interesting word, isn't it fascinating how you'll see
in the media where the the media will catch on
(16:06):
to these buzzwords and they'll use them one after the other,
it doesn't matter what publication it is. And we see
this played out, you know, in in electronic media too,
you know, where it seems like they're saying the exact
same thing. And I don't doubt that they are, but
you know, you they'll grab hold of that one word,
you know, the word that. And this kind of goes
with affluence as well, that I kept hearing over and
(16:28):
over again. I don't know if you remember this I
was bellyaching about it for a while, and that was
in the Murdall trial. They couldn't get past the word
the scion. They kept referring to the elder, the elder
murdaw the convicted murderer now as the scion, you know.
And it's like the media will catch onto these words,
you know, and some of them are beautifully descriptive and
(16:50):
other ones are like really really off base. It doesn't
really capture, you know what.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
I really want to break that stupid case down because
it is just the horrible you know. It's everything we
expect of certain entitled people and how they act and how.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
They can get away with anything that they did. You know.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
It's like there are a lot of people that need
to be in trouble for what took place in South Carolina.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
But we'll do that on another day.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
We have to go back to a word that I
interrupted you on. You're you're talking about that there is
an actual word, and I know there's patracide. I learned
that by watching Ozark, because yeah, yeah, you're right, Ruth's
dad got out of prison. He was talking to Marty
about it.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
You know.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
I learned patra side in the prison library. It's killing
your father. But what when you kill your brother? There
really is a name for that, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
It's fractricide. It's it's like, you know, the same fraternity,
you know, like you get fraternity, you have brothers and
fraternal you know, those sorts of things. So yeah, you
you have you have this this idea of one brother
killing another. And let's face it, you know, we go
back to what we had earlier said the oldest homicide
(17:58):
on record, right came nable brother. Uh no, pun intended there.
You know, you've got one brother dying at the hand
of another. It goes back, it is it is ancient,
you know, and jealousy does play a big part. But
you think about what could have been, you know, any
one of the motivating factors, uh, you know, behind this
(18:20):
that would have driven someone to do this to somebody
that is literally part of the same gene pool. Who
is the older brother kind of a protector, you know,
you think about you know, Matthew went to Wesleyan University,
I think, and of course Joseph spent time at the
(18:42):
University of Michigan, from where he graduated actually I think
with a bachelor's degree. In finance and business administration in
this sort of thing's accounting, and you know, you you
kind of it leaves you scratching your head. What could
be uh, the motivating factor behind this? Was there a
pre existing I don't know, anger, you know, dwelling in dwelling,
(19:07):
anger within the family unit, Was there jealousy? All these
sort of things. But you know, there's there's kind of
a clue here, I think because in the case of
the accused with Matthew, he he had there was some
some poetry that he had written, and it's almost apocalyptic
(19:30):
kind of stuff. From what the police are telling us. Now,
we don't have all of the details at this particular
point in time, but we do know that some of
the stuff apparently was quite eye catching to the police
because it was so over the top and some of
these rambling things that he had written down. I wonder.
(19:54):
I wonder because you know, it's like we were talking about earlier.
You want some kind of of of explanation because you're
trying to make sense out of something that is so
incredibly bizarre. You want to be able to say that, Okay,
this guy is completely off his nut. He is he's
(20:17):
working outside the boundaries of anything that is, you know,
humanly acceptable. So anytime you find a little nugget along
the way, you try to use that to explain the absurdity,
the bizarre nature of this, because I think that for
a lot of us we want to have that it
(20:38):
kind of cushions us a bit. But that doesn't I
don't know that it really explains things for the investigators
to the point where they can completely understand it. They say, well,
this is a clue relative to what had happened, and
it's form and function. With the police, it's not you know,
we have the luxury of sitting back as civilians and
(20:58):
kind of reading into some of the things. But when
you're conducting a forensic investigation at a scene that's important
information you gather, it is certainly document it where you
find it. If you find it in the immediate vicinity
of the body, for instance, or maybe, as I mentioned earlier,
the flatware in the crockery that's lying about. You know,
(21:19):
it's valuable in that sense, I think to frame things out.
But you know, for a case like this, when you're
considering the total dynamic of what happened at the scene,
I believe that one of the big questions that comes up,
and this is absolutely horrific, this injury that involves this
(21:44):
missing eye, which I find it interesting. You know they're
referring to I read one article where they said the
consumption of the missing organ, which again is more chilling
to me than actually saying, yeah, he took his brother's
eye and hate it. Did this occur in life or
(22:06):
did it occur in death? And how do you conduct
that examination? It's going to be a big part of this.
How do you determine that because as horrific as that is,
you think, well, would it actually be feasible? Would it
be possible to remove someone's eye in life? I think
you'd have one hell of a time in order to
(22:28):
try to achieve that task. And then what steps did
you take after this in order to prepare it? Did
you just sit down at the table. They're talking about
the bloody plate, they're talking about a knife, a fork,
How did how was this consumed? And is there anything
kind of symbolic here, because you know there's there's different
(22:50):
types of cannibalism that exists. People don't think about this
and just let me back up and give kind of
a little history lesson here. Over the years, there's been
any number of documentation, uh documented cases of cannibalism as
it applies to warring tribes. Okay, uh, there there were
(23:10):
a couple of tribes out there that would eat the
brain of their of their conquered victim because in those
particular contexts, they believed the brain is where the soul
was held. So they're consuming also this idea of consuming
the power of of their of their their foe. But
(23:31):
then you have cannibalism that is necessitated as a result
of trying to prevent starvation. And there are countless numbers
of these cases. I'm thinking, you know, primarily, you know,
right off the top of my head, the the the
case of the you know, the rugby team that crashed
in the Andes back in the seventies, and that book Alive,
(23:53):
which was one of the most terrifying books I'd ever
read when I was a young young you know, I
guess I was probably uh maybe in the seventh grade
when I read that book, and it terrified me. It
was it was horrible. You know, when you you sit
there and you think about this really happened, and these
guys had to do this survive. You see that and
even even the real story behind Moby Dick. I don't
(24:15):
know if people are aware of this, but the true
story behind it involved cannibalism where these guys are adrift
in a boat, and that's happened a number of times,
you know, over the course of time, and that's to
prevent starvation. And then you have this kind of well.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
You have the Diner party too.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
You have the Donner, Yeah, you have the Donner you
write the Donner Party where you know they're trying to
cross that pass and they're frozen in and they do
that and that was, you know, just out of necessity.
You know, you think about it's the most horrible thing
in the world. But what are you going to do?
You know when you get to that point, well, that's
kind of a thing that's necessitated by the circumstances that
(24:51):
you're in. But your brother, you know, how how do
you how do you do this arithmetic where you arrive
at this point where you've made the active decision that
you're going to literally consume this aforementioned organ that over
(25:13):
the course of your life has viewed you, has seen
you in good times and in bad, and now it's
been ingested. We've seen all the movies over the years,
(25:41):
you know, things that depict serial killers, you know, taking
people's lives and ingesting them if you will afterwards, and
that that's a special and I'm not a profiler, but
that that's a special category. I think that a lot
of these people fall into you think about uh, movies
(26:03):
that have portrayed this sort of thing over a period
of time. You know, Hannibal actor being being chief among
these uh as far as fictional character goes. But you know,
you draw upon things like, uh, you know a Damer
for instance, up in Milwaukee that took liberty with these
(26:25):
young men that he had picked up for years and
years and would consume their uh, their bodies and parts
of their bodies. You know, he he had the desire,
uh to turn these people into zombies. And you know,
(26:46):
I'll throw one out at you. And I've always wanted
to kind of cover this case on on on body bags.
That is kind of a myth, but some people believe
that's actually based in reality, and that is this actual
(27:07):
incestuous clan that existed in Scotland back I don't know,
in the fifteen hundreds, the sixteen hundreds, and it's actually
involving a guy named Alexander Bean and he was married
to a lady named Agnes Douglas. And as horrific as
(27:30):
this is, I'll go ahead and tell you. They lived
in a cave and they had multiple children. Some people
think as many as fourteen that they had had, and
these children got involved in incestuous relationships between one another,
and they lived in this cave and they produced offspring. Well,
they became cannibals, and they would and also the term
(27:55):
they used to use was high women, where they would
row people. They would stop people that were along a
roadway and they would capture them and take them into
this cave and they would butcher the bodies. They would
salt the bodies down, have them hanging about. And there's
there's an entire kind of mythological thing that has grown
(28:15):
up out of out of this story. It's actually called
I think it's called the Sauny s a w n
e y being uh cases and uh. Some people think
about this and they think, how could someone get to
this point, you know, where they would involve themselves in
this kind of behavior. But it does exist, and there's
a there's a real psychosexual I think component to it,
(28:38):
you know with Domer perhaps where he's saying that he
wants to hold on to these people. I had friends
that were at that scene, one good friend in particular
that actually did the autopsies on these remains somewhat what
was remaining of the remains, and the stories you know
that he told about those things that he that he
(29:01):
saw are things that will probably stay with him until
the day he dies. I don't know how I would
have dealt with it, you know, those remnants that are that.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Are tell me about it. Story at the fifteen hundreds
that I've got the willies over right now, I ain't going.
I know, it's a lot of time, you.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Know, Yeah, it's it's really chilling, you know when you
begin and at some point in time, I would like
for you and I to to do an entire episode
on those cases. And it's really hard, you know, go
back through the midst the mist of time.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
You know, body bags is another one to sleep one, okay.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
But you know when you but you've got Damer that's
in recent memory and and that's a vast number of
people you know, that he victimized over that period of time,
and the forensics in that case were mind blowing, you know,
the the attempt to uh obviously maintain the bodies, keep
them there, you know. And he's doing this in a
really tiny apartment.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
And how he got all for so long? He did,
you know, he really did show. Okay, I'm making notes
right now.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
We'll come back because right now I'm kind of curious
as to the brothers we've got. We have the older
brother that goes on a beating slash killings free and
I wonder about what was going on inside this apartment.
You know, right now we don't actually know all the
details on whose apartment it was or anything else. In
a very nice place, you know. But you have Matthew,
(30:23):
who is the suspect. He hasn't been convicted, he's been charged.
He goes to the apartment and we're going to assume
that his twenty six year old brother Joseph was living
in this apartment. We're assuming that because we don't know anyway.
That always gets me in trouble with Nancy, you know that.
But Dave, what else do you assume you know that one?
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Right?
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Anyway?
Speaker 2 (30:45):
So what we have though, Okay, we've got two brothers,
and then we've got Matthew, the suspect calling nine to
one one and waiting for police to show up. When
they get there, they find the scene. They find the
Royal buffet, the last meal, the last feast, and ps, your.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Cat is dead.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (31:07):
What if I was a defense attorney and he pleads
not guilty and I pitched the deal that he went
to visit his brother. The crazy cat when he came in,
was attacking my younger brother, and the cat was hitting
it with one paw and scratching his eyeball out with
the other one. I flung the cat off the couch
to save my brother. I accidentally fell on a golf
(31:29):
club and then it repeatedly fell on top of my brother,
hurting him even more. The eyeball was on a plate
and the cat was starting to cut it up with
a knife. Who was the most amazing thing I've ever seen.
He actually used his paws like fingers and toes and
he's cutting it up. And that's what That's what you
came into.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
That's what you saw. Why do you think I'm the
one that called police? Now?
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Everything I just described actually happened in that apartment to
a degree, and added a few flourished as the cat
didn't actually have fingers and toes, but he had paused,
he could have done it. Probably didn't. But we have
a scene where, starting back at the beginning, Matthew beat
the crap out of his brother.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Yeah, he did. And as I mentioned earlier, it's I think,
and this is indicative of something. I think he did
it with weapons of opportunity day.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
No, I club doesn't come to mind as something I
would use to kill somebody with.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
No, it's not. And you know it doesn't seem like
a very practical, practical weapon, you know, to facilitate this
sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
You would think that the shaft would break and that
you into like a spear. Maybe, but are we talking well,
wait a minute, iron or woold? Would you be able
to determine based on the side what the club looked like,
the marks.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
On the body?
Speaker 2 (32:50):
How would you go about matching these up? I know
how we do it with a gun, I know how
we do it with a knife. Even a baseball bat
makes sense, But how are you going to do it
with a club that is not a uniform shape? And
probably in that entire apartment, even if it's a seven iron,
there's not another an iron in there. That this is
the only one that's going to look like that.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Yeah, and it's going to have well you'll have contact
trace trace evidence on the surface of it first off,
you know, and unless it went to the trouble of
washing this thing off and you use you talked about
an iron as opposed to a wood. Now I'm thinking
the iron is a is a great example. When you
look at it on the face of the golf club,
it's got these little ridges, these litter, little uh, linear
(33:31):
markings on it that you know, you can control the
ball with, you can do backspen with it, and all
that sort of stuff, and they're very deep, you know,
because this is it's called an iron for a reason,
and it's it's got these very peculiar angles to it.
And anytime you have an instrument that does have distinctive
pitches to it, if you will and uh leading edge,
(33:53):
perhaps some sharp points, uh, it will leave a very
distinctive pattern. Now the trick is uh or you can
be able to match that up. That's why I'm a
I'm a huge proponent of if you if you have
a suspected weapon that you're going to utilize and or
(34:13):
that you believe as an investigator that this brought this about.
And this doesn't always happen, by the way, so you know,
this is kind of a little inside baseball info here.
It's best if you can actually bring the alleged or
suspected weapon to the morgue, and we will in the morgue,
we will actually take time to try to marry these
(34:36):
things up. There's any number of times where I have
held items in my gloved hand with only my hands
in the item in view, adjacent to an injury, and
they take a photo of it. Is you know, kind
of compare and contrast, and you there's if something has
a particular pattern to it, you can pick up on it.
(34:58):
You know, if you're talking about like a would which
the head is a lot larger, it's actually a bit lighter.
It's not going to leave the same distinctive markings as
say the iron wood, and so you would want to
compare those and whose clubs are these? And is there
any kind of symbolic thing here? You know, a knife
(35:19):
is one thing, okay, but you're talking about a family
of athletes as well, and in it kind of fascinating
that this alleged perpetrator chose allegedly chose a golf club
to literally beat the life out of his little brother
with there in this apartment. So yeah, I think that
(35:40):
there's a lot to explore this the I'm fascinated by
this idea of you know, him having been seated potentially
at the table and having ingested his brother's eye, if
you will, Now, how are.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
You going to figure that one out?
Speaker 2 (35:59):
I know we saw the plate and we saw blood
when we saw some things on the indicated maybe, but
are they going to be able to find out and
not doing.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
No, no, no, be honest.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Here did he cook it?
Speaker 2 (36:09):
Did he put in the microwave? Did he do it
on a frying pan? Did he boil it like you
would an egg? Did he eat it like a yoke?
Did he cut it up and put it on a
piece of I.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Think that this is something what remnant was left behind?
Had he actually ingested or is there you know, because
the tissue that the eye is made up of. Let's
just say you look at it from the perspective of
if he did. In fact, let's see, how can I
say this dissect the eye on the plate with the
(36:39):
intention of eating it. If there's some remnant of tissue there,
you can actually take that tissue and put it on
a slide, and first off, you can identify it that
soft tissue is tissue that originated from the eye. Okay,
and if he's ingested this, there's really no way to
you know, kind of track this relati to you know,
(37:01):
kind of examining this. I think that what you're left
with because I and I have removed eyes in the
morgue generally on the poster eer side. Once you once
the skull is open and the brain is removed, we
will remove them posteriorally. Okay, You're not going to try
(37:23):
to go in through the orbit necessarily to do it's
impractical in that circumstance. Now, when eye surgeons do surgery,
they'll approach anteriorly, okay, and a lot of that is
dependent upon where whatever it is they're working on is
located anatomically only. It's no easy task in order to
(37:44):
remove an eye at autopsy. That's one of the reasons
we go in. You know, from the backside we can
examine the optic nerve. There's these little attachments you know
that you know that help you know, that cause us
to move, you know, that facilitators moving our eye and
those have to be detached and it's carefully removed. Can
(38:07):
an eye literally be dug out? Yeah, it can be.
But here's the thing. If an instrument is used like
a knife, that's going to leave behind tool marks. One
of my questions is he is Joseph has sustained stab
woms allegedly as well well, the stab wounds that he
sustained were the derivative of the flatware that his brother
(38:32):
was using to ingest his eye, see what I'm saying.
And if so, if he used that flatware, whether it's
a fork or a knife or whatever, did he make
any marks on the orbit, on any portion of the
orbit of the eye to extricate it? And can you
match that up? Well? Yeah, possibly, you would have to
(38:54):
be very careful at autopsy to examine that area and
to try to appreciate it. So I think it. I'm
not going to say that we necessarily got an uphill battle.
You know, with this case, We've got a brother and
you know this is occurring and arguably, I guess, probably
one of the most affluent areas in all of New Jersey.
(39:14):
This is in Princeton. I mean it's literally an ivy
league town. Are how how are you going to be
able to work your way through this case? I think
and winning if this thing goes to trial. If he doesn't,
you know, he's been charged, and what were the charges again,
(39:36):
David is you.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Know before you even got that, I was going to
ask you about how does the cat fit into all this?
Because that's one of the charges. It was bad enough
because he got first g murder charge, animal cruelty and
weapons charges. So just sticking with the animal cruelty and
the first murder, is there not an add on type
of a crime you could have for you know, taking
your brother? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Because the determined Yeah, yeah, And I think that that's
a big part. And if it's after death, obviously we've
covered enough cases certainly dismemberment, and this would fall into
that category of abusive corpse. And you know, I mean,
you and I've covered enough brother that we know that
from state to state the terminology varies, but essentially means
the same thing. You've correct me from wrong. We've got
(40:21):
a first degree homicide charge if I'm not mistaken, and
then the animal cruelty thing. It doesn't really matter if
and don't get me wrong, I'm not being insensitive to
the animal, But it doesn't really matter if dead is dead,
the animal is deceased, so, you know, because one of
the thoughts was, was the cat set on fire while
(40:44):
I was alive? As horrible as that is, or did
in fact this individual kill the cat and then set
it on fire? And here's another kind of gruesome piece
to this. Did he this to the cat before he
killed his brother as kind of a way to torture
(41:04):
him in some way? You know, because the accused is
a big guy. I mean he looks like when you
look at this guy, he looks like he could play
offensive tackle, you know. Joseph, the victim is I'm not
going to say diminutive. He's an athletic looking guy, but
you know he's he's kind of one of those guys
that's he's in tip top shape, you know, he's but
(41:25):
he's certainly not the size of his brother or the
other brother who I believe his name is David. He's
also a big guy. You know, how does the cat
fit in? Well, just you know, kind of jumping over
into the to the you know, the psychological standpoint, this
cat meant something to Joseph, then it's something that a
(41:46):
perpetrator that has this kind of mindset that's writing down
all this apocalyptic stuff about blood oozing from his eyes.
That's actually one of the comments that he made. That
cat meant something to him. And obviously Joe or Joseph
is Joey rather it is the target of this. You'd
want to destroy his cat too, if he held that
(42:07):
cat near and dear and precious. And you've got this
big kind of ogre of a guide that has been charged,
not found guilty, but charged in this case. I don't
know it. I think that as we go along, Dave,
if we continue to have cases like this, I don't
know how we're going to I don't know how we
(42:28):
can trump this. Something will happen as a result of
me saying that. But you know, just when you think,
as you said, well said, when you think you've seen
it all, you suddenly discover that you haven't. I'm Joseph
Scott Morgan, and this is body packs
Body dys but Joseph's gotten more. Let me ask you
a question real quick. Have you ever been in a
situation in your life where you didn't know what to
do next? Maybe you were frustrated, maybe you were lost,
(00:25):
maybe you were terrified, and maybe you had encroaching thoughts
that were rather dark, But there was something about that
moment in time in your life where, like I like
to refer to them, the guardrails kind of kept you
from running off the road. What if, just what if
(00:52):
all those things in your life, maybe throughout that had
seemed normal now like a distant memory, and the governor
was off and you're running wild, so wild, that perhaps
you would take the life of your very own sibling
(01:16):
and then do something so deranged and something so far
from what is accepted in normal society, and suddenly you
appear to be a monster. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
(01:40):
this is Bodybags. Dave MCA's story came across my desk
just in the last week, and you know, we've been
running around so crazy recently with all of the things
(02:02):
that we're covering in the news right now, it seems
that tempo has picked up once again. It kind of
ebbs and flows with us, doesn't it. But the story,
you know, kind of gave me pause because I have
not heard of a case of this in some time.
(02:23):
That certainly, you know, kind of drew me in. And
it's a very specific thing that happened. And we're talking
about homicide here, actually alleged homicide a brother or brother.
But it goes beyond just merely a homicidal event. Now
we're talking from some reports, we're talking about perhaps a
(02:48):
case of cannibalism. And you know, just when you and
I feel like we've seen everything or heard everything, hold
on to your hat because there's more to bear refiled.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Actually, I'm going to put those big wrap around glasses
on my face that you get when you get your eyes,
you know, dilated at the eye doctor back in the day,
and I'm keeping those things on super tight. This cat,
it wasn't enough to kill his brother and destroy the
cat and burnsta apparently allegedly, maybe he got the guy's
(03:26):
eyeball out and ate it like it's a piece of
candy or something. I don't know if he sucked on it,
you know, or and I don't know what it tastes like.
I know that Shrek said you can use him for jelly,
you know, if I remember from the first Shrek movie.
But Matthew Hertkin. We're talking Cain and Abel here because
you know what, Joe. One thing I found out old
(03:46):
Matthew Hrtkin was an athlete, you know.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Yea, so was his brother.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Whereas Matthew went to college and you know, was on
the team and stuff. His brother was a star. Matthew
never excelled the way his little brother did. Now he's smart,
very affluent family. I mean, these people had it going
on financially and another part, but not in where it
really mattered. And when you get into brother on brother crime, slash, murder,
(04:11):
slash whatever, Cain and Abel, you know, Caine, you're.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
What is it? I love this line. I've said it before.
Your brother's blood crawls out to me from the ground.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yeah, you know he Cain killed Abel because he was jealous,
and I'm thinking that Matthew Hurtkin killed his brother out
of jealousy. Now I'm thinking the eyeball thing might have
come from Demolition Man.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
It was, you know the movie I'm talking about.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Oh yeah, yeah, I do. Actually sure, I hadn't thought
about that. In some time.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
All right, think about this. You know, in the nineties,
Dennis Rodman the worm was the greatest great reboundary in
the NBA, and he's still dyeing his hair all weird colors. Right, Yes,
it's absolutely Wesley Snipes and Demolition Man. That's why he
already got the idea and started doing them.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah. I don't think I ever connected those two.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
There was a scene in the movie when Wesley Snipe
is breaking up and Warden Smithers goes to uh talk
to him. He's a you know, he's a defrosted ice cube.
And the thing is is they use the eyeball, you know,
the retina scanner toy in and out, so that you know,
you couldn't fake that, right, And so Wesley Snipes, you know,
they show that he has carved the dude's eyeball out
of his head and he holds out of the scanner,
(05:18):
you know, and it says, no, you have a nice day,
will it, Warden Williams Smithers or whatever, And he has
the eye at the end of this pen thing right yeah,
right out there you got the pupil. And when it
says that, he says, yeah, you too, and all I
could think of is why didn't he say I will.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
I know, there you go, hang hanging curveball. But you
know that, you know now what was once fictional is
the truth. Back then we didn't necessarily have biometrics like
we do now. We use those in forensics quite a bit.
But yeah, to think about this particular case, it's got
(06:00):
a bit of everything in it. You've got, And keep
in mind, to this point, no one has been found
guilty at all on any level. There's more to unfold
because this literally Dave just has happened. It's one of
the reasons I want to cover it and kind of
talk about a little bit because you've got several elements
(06:23):
that are kind of at work here. First off, there
is a homicide that takes place, and it's perpetrated with
what I've often referred to as weapons of convenience. I
think that you know, we have both a golf club
right now that's involved. You know, the authorities have said
(06:47):
was used, it had utility, and there's any number of
ways I could think that it could be used. But
perhaps it was used as a bludgeon, Maybe the shaft
was broken into it was utilized that way, and then
of course we have we have a knife that's involved
as well. So you've got several types of of instruments
(07:13):
that are being utilized here that brought about the death
of this young man. In addition to that, you have
what I don't know, I guess what the British would
refer to as crockery lying about the house. There's a plate, Yeah,
there's a plate.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
There's a plate like once a week you give me
some British rockery.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
There's a yeah, no, no, yeah, well croc is actually
a bowl or you know, some type of a vessel
like that which you know evolves out of chamber pot,
you know, so crockery, it's a crock of insert word.
And then there's flatware. Uh, and it's stained allegedly with blood,
(07:55):
as if someone sat down at a to dine. And
again that's that's pretty dog on chilling. And on top
of this, you mentioned something just a moment ago that
forgive me, I'd actually forgotten forgotten about. But the victim's
pussy cat has been immolated, has been burned up, and
(08:24):
they cannot they don't know here's the ruby. They don't
know if the kitty cat was in fact deceased already
and then set a blaze, or if the the cat
was actually uh, set a blaze while alive. I've got
my opinions about that, you know, and some of the
same principles that we apply with fire desks with humans,
(08:47):
you know, would certainly apply with a cat. So I
can't Again. I always try to put myself into the
shoes of an investigator, and you get up this particular morning,
you have your cup of coffee, and suddenly you know
you're spun up to go out and work this case.
(09:07):
I don't think you would have had this on your
BINGO card for that particular day if you were an
investigator and it you know this. It just goes to
show I think that for investigators in particular, you never
know what you're going to step into anytime you cross
the threshold into a dwelling. And this actually took place
in an apartment, and you know, in an apartment of
(09:30):
all place, of all places, and you know this kind
of esteemed area where where these individuals you know, resided,
And it's just the reason I wanted to cover it
is that it is so utterly bizarre and it just
seems like something that that it was crafted in Hollywood,
(09:53):
perhaps just thinking of me. Yeah, go ahead, no, please.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Go Yeah, we're pretty electronics is I think. We watch
a lot of movies, lots of TV, you know. I
mean the guy maybe he got that's where he got
his idea. I'm not saying he did. I'm just saying
that it's possible that that's where he you know, I mean,
look who come allegedly came up with the idea. All
I could think of was when the cat, you know, ps,
your cat is dead? I was thinking Tom Jones is
singing in the background, I mean a cat, you know
(10:21):
which the older I get, the weirder stuff pops out
of my head. But I see a story like this
and I'm like, you know, at some point you go, yeah,
I think I've seen it all. You know, we cover
a story and yeah, we saw this before. We've never
seen this one before.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
I know we haven't, and I've only had When it
comes to the C word and I get asked about
you'd be surprised. People are rather emboldened, I think. And
it's because it's not that I'm anything special. It's just
that myself and people like me have seen things that
other people can't fathom. And this is actually one of
(10:57):
the questions that I get asked. I've had to ask
of me a crime con any number of times where
I've spoken in different locations. Have I ever worked a
case of cannibalism in my career? And I've only been,
uh kind of peripherally involved in a case where uh
(11:17):
where a fellow eight eight to his roommate over quite
a bit of tom he had killed him, butchered him,
had him.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
Rast Elroy was a big man, Joe.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
And he would.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
He has done a number of shows about about people
using by cooking or eating there to get rid of
the evidence.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
You know. We h yeah, we had a number of
those stories over the years.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yeah, and they do. They do exist. They pop out,
I think, and it runs. It runs. So not that
hom sade is not abnormal. Do not get me wrong,
don't misconstrue what I'm saying here. But there are certain
things when you start to get out towards as fringes
or that fringe like behavior like this. There's there are
(12:06):
those moments in time where it doesn't matter about the
level of horror that you're bearing witness to out there, uh, trauma, grief,
the pain, that's involved with a lot of things. You
there's certain things that happen literally in the taboo sense,
(12:28):
taboo in a very broad sense. You know, there's certain
things that are not acceptable morally, and I think, uh,
it makes people retract, you know that. Okay, Yeah, he
murdered his brother, thattor side.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
There's a word for this. Yeah, hang on second, making
up words you have to, I'm serious.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
You're talking about how people feel like they can ask
you anything they asked me to ask you stuff.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Well, yeah, and it's actually that happens with a lot
of people in my life and you know, welcome to
my world. It happens with my mother. My mother actually
has a coffee club that she gets together with like
once a week. Yeah yeah. And and all of the
ladies that are part of the coffee club meet in
(13:19):
one restaurant and they sit around and they're very you know,
kind of you know, lovely southern bell types, speaking quiet
tones and everything. And then some of the questions that
well ask my mother, some of the questions I'll ask
my mother about, well, did he did did did Joe
work this case? Or did he cover this case? And
(13:41):
can you tell us about and so you know that door.
Once that door kind of swings open, you'd be surprised
some of the questions you get asked. So yeah, and
cannibalism is one of the things, because I think that
the more taboo something is Many times, I think it's
not just the shock factor. I think that people day,
deep down inside, they would prefer to hear you say,
(14:04):
know that that did not happen, because it kind of
confirmed some of these dark things in the back of
their mind, you know what I'm saying. You know, they
want someone to tell them that they're still safe and
that there's not something out there like this. But I
got to tell you in this particular case, this young
man Joseph by the way is his name. He died
(14:30):
allegedly at the hands of his brother, and when the
police arrived at the scene to begin to work it,
it's the stuff that many of these officers will never
forget till the day they die. Davis, you had mentioned
(15:00):
this family. I keep seeing this term in the news.
This family is rather affluent. I love that word. It
kind of rolls off the tongue, doesn't it. Affluent? And
you you take from that that it's not just about money.
(15:21):
It's also about power and the position that you hold
in society, the achievements of your kids, which many times
is in many relationships, familiar relationships, it's an extension of
what the parents see themselves as accomplishing. I'm guilty of that,
you know, with my kids. You know, they I don't
(15:41):
necessarily take credit for it, but you know, I'll sit
around and say, well, my son or my daughter, you know,
did this and that, or my grandkids did this or that,
like I had anything to do with it. But you know,
you know, the affluence, the affluent part of it, though,
is an interesting word, isn't it fascinating how you'll see
in the media where the the media will catch on
(16:06):
to these buzzwords and they'll use them one after the other,
it doesn't matter what publication it is. And we see
this played out, you know, in in electronic media too,
you know, where it seems like they're saying the exact
same thing. And I don't doubt that they are, but
you know, you they'll grab hold of that one word,
you know, the word that. And this kind of goes
with affluence as well, that I kept hearing over and
(16:28):
over again. I don't know if you remember this I
was bellyaching about it for a while, and that was
in the Murdall trial. They couldn't get past the word
the scion. They kept referring to the elder, the elder
murdaw the convicted murderer now as the scion, you know.
And it's like the media will catch onto these words,
you know, and some of them are beautifully descriptive and
(16:50):
other ones are like really really off base. It doesn't
really capture, you know what.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
I really want to break that stupid case down because
it is just the horrible you know. It's everything we
expect of certain entitled people and how they act and how.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
They can get away with anything that they did. You know.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
It's like there are a lot of people that need
to be in trouble for what took place in South Carolina.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
But we'll do that on another day.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
We have to go back to a word that I
interrupted you on. You're you're talking about that there is
an actual word, and I know there's patracide. I learned
that by watching Ozark, because yeah, yeah, you're right, Ruth's
dad got out of prison. He was talking to Marty
about it.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
You know.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
I learned patra side in the prison library. It's killing
your father. But what when you kill your brother? There
really is a name for that, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
It's fractricide. It's it's like, you know, the same fraternity,
you know, like you get fraternity, you have brothers and
fraternal you know, those sorts of things. So yeah, you
you have you have this this idea of one brother
killing another. And let's face it, you know, we go
back to what we had earlier said the oldest homicide
(17:58):
on record, right came nable brother. Uh no, pun intended there.
You know, you've got one brother dying at the hand
of another. It goes back, it is it is ancient,
you know, and jealousy does play a big part. But
you think about what could have been, you know, any
one of the motivating factors, uh, you know, behind this
(18:20):
that would have driven someone to do this to somebody
that is literally part of the same gene pool. Who
is the older brother kind of a protector, you know,
you think about you know, Matthew went to Wesleyan University,
I think, and of course Joseph spent time at the
(18:42):
University of Michigan, from where he graduated actually I think
with a bachelor's degree. In finance and business administration in
this sort of thing's accounting, and you know, you you
kind of it leaves you scratching your head. What could
be uh, the motivating factor behind this? Was there a
pre existing I don't know, anger, you know, dwelling in dwelling,
(19:07):
anger within the family unit, Was there jealousy? All these
sort of things. But you know, there's there's kind of
a clue here, I think because in the case of
the accused with Matthew, he he had there was some
some poetry that he had written, and it's almost apocalyptic
(19:30):
kind of stuff. From what the police are telling us. Now,
we don't have all of the details at this particular
point in time, but we do know that some of
the stuff apparently was quite eye catching to the police
because it was so over the top and some of
these rambling things that he had written down. I wonder.
(19:54):
I wonder because you know, it's like we were talking about earlier.
You want some kind of of of explanation because you're
trying to make sense out of something that is so
incredibly bizarre. You want to be able to say that, Okay,
this guy is completely off his nut. He is he's
(20:17):
working outside the boundaries of anything that is, you know,
humanly acceptable. So anytime you find a little nugget along
the way, you try to use that to explain the absurdity,
the bizarre nature of this, because I think that for
a lot of us we want to have that it
(20:38):
kind of cushions us a bit. But that doesn't I
don't know that it really explains things for the investigators
to the point where they can completely understand it. They say, well,
this is a clue relative to what had happened, and
it's form and function. With the police, it's not you know,
we have the luxury of sitting back as civilians and
(20:58):
kind of reading into some of the things. But when
you're conducting a forensic investigation at a scene that's important
information you gather, it is certainly document it where you
find it. If you find it in the immediate vicinity
of the body, for instance, or maybe, as I mentioned earlier,
the flatware in the crockery that's lying about. You know,
(21:19):
it's valuable in that sense, I think to frame things out.
But you know, for a case like this, when you're
considering the total dynamic of what happened at the scene,
I believe that one of the big questions that comes up,
and this is absolutely horrific, this injury that involves this
(21:44):
missing eye, which I find it interesting. You know they're
referring to I read one article where they said the
consumption of the missing organ, which again is more chilling
to me than actually saying, yeah, he took his brother's
eye and hate it. Did this occur in life or
(22:06):
did it occur in death? And how do you conduct
that examination? It's going to be a big part of this.
How do you determine that because as horrific as that is,
you think, well, would it actually be feasible? Would it
be possible to remove someone's eye in life? I think
you'd have one hell of a time in order to
(22:28):
try to achieve that task. And then what steps did
you take after this in order to prepare it? Did
you just sit down at the table. They're talking about
the bloody plate, they're talking about a knife, a fork,
How did how was this consumed? And is there anything
kind of symbolic here, because you know there's there's different
(22:50):
types of cannibalism that exists. People don't think about this
and just let me back up and give kind of
a little history lesson here. Over the years, there's been
any number of documentation, uh documented cases of cannibalism as
it applies to warring tribes. Okay, uh, there there were
(23:10):
a couple of tribes out there that would eat the
brain of their of their conquered victim because in those
particular contexts, they believed the brain is where the soul
was held. So they're consuming also this idea of consuming
the power of of their of their their foe. But
(23:31):
then you have cannibalism that is necessitated as a result
of trying to prevent starvation. And there are countless numbers
of these cases. I'm thinking, you know, primarily, you know,
right off the top of my head, the the the
case of the you know, the rugby team that crashed
in the Andes back in the seventies, and that book Alive,
(23:53):
which was one of the most terrifying books I'd ever
read when I was a young young you know, I
guess I was probably uh maybe in the seventh grade
when I read that book, and it terrified me. It
was it was horrible. You know, when you you sit
there and you think about this really happened, and these
guys had to do this survive. You see that and
even even the real story behind Moby Dick. I don't
(24:15):
know if people are aware of this, but the true
story behind it involved cannibalism where these guys are adrift
in a boat, and that's happened a number of times,
you know, over the course of time, and that's to
prevent starvation. And then you have this kind of well.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
You have the Diner party too.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
You have the Donner, Yeah, you have the Donner you
write the Donner Party where you know they're trying to
cross that pass and they're frozen in and they do
that and that was, you know, just out of necessity.
You know, you think about it's the most horrible thing
in the world. But what are you going to do?
You know when you get to that point, well, that's
kind of a thing that's necessitated by the circumstances that
(24:51):
you're in. But your brother, you know, how how do
you how do you do this arithmetic where you arrive
at this point where you've made the active decision that
you're going to literally consume this aforementioned organ that over
(25:13):
the course of your life has viewed you, has seen
you in good times and in bad, and now it's
been ingested. We've seen all the movies over the years,
(25:41):
you know, things that depict serial killers, you know, taking
people's lives and ingesting them if you will afterwards, and
that that's a special and I'm not a profiler, but
that that's a special category. I think that a lot
of these people fall into you think about uh, movies
(26:03):
that have portrayed this sort of thing over a period
of time. You know, Hannibal actor being being chief among
these uh as far as fictional character goes. But you know,
you draw upon things like, uh, you know a Damer
for instance, up in Milwaukee that took liberty with these
(26:25):
young men that he had picked up for years and
years and would consume their uh, their bodies and parts
of their bodies. You know, he he had the desire,
uh to turn these people into zombies. And you know,
(26:46):
I'll throw one out at you. And I've always wanted
to kind of cover this case on on on body bags.
That is kind of a myth, but some people believe
that's actually based in reality, and that is this actual
(27:07):
incestuous clan that existed in Scotland back I don't know,
in the fifteen hundreds, the sixteen hundreds, and it's actually
involving a guy named Alexander Bean and he was married
to a lady named Agnes Douglas. And as horrific as
(27:30):
this is, I'll go ahead and tell you. They lived
in a cave and they had multiple children. Some people
think as many as fourteen that they had had, and
these children got involved in incestuous relationships between one another,
and they lived in this cave and they produced offspring. Well,
they became cannibals, and they would and also the term
(27:55):
they used to use was high women, where they would
row people. They would stop people that were along a
roadway and they would capture them and take them into
this cave and they would butcher the bodies. They would
salt the bodies down, have them hanging about. And there's
there's an entire kind of mythological thing that has grown
(28:15):
up out of out of this story. It's actually called
I think it's called the Sauny s a w n
e y being uh cases and uh. Some people think
about this and they think, how could someone get to
this point, you know, where they would involve themselves in
this kind of behavior. But it does exist, and there's
a there's a real psychosexual I think component to it,
(28:38):
you know with Domer perhaps where he's saying that he
wants to hold on to these people. I had friends
that were at that scene, one good friend in particular
that actually did the autopsies on these remains somewhat what
was remaining of the remains, and the stories you know
that he told about those things that he that he
(29:01):
saw are things that will probably stay with him until
the day he dies. I don't know how I would
have dealt with it, you know, those remnants that are that.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Are tell me about it. Story at the fifteen hundreds
that I've got the willies over right now, I ain't going.
I know, it's a lot of time, you.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Know, Yeah, it's it's really chilling, you know when you
begin and at some point in time, I would like
for you and I to to do an entire episode
on those cases. And it's really hard, you know, go
back through the midst the mist of time.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
You know, body bags is another one to sleep one, okay.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
But you know when you but you've got Damer that's
in recent memory and and that's a vast number of
people you know, that he victimized over that period of time,
and the forensics in that case were mind blowing, you know,
the the attempt to uh obviously maintain the bodies, keep
them there, you know. And he's doing this in a
really tiny apartment.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
And how he got all for so long? He did,
you know, he really did show. Okay, I'm making notes
right now.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
We'll come back because right now I'm kind of curious
as to the brothers we've got. We have the older
brother that goes on a beating slash killings free and
I wonder about what was going on inside this apartment.
You know, right now we don't actually know all the
details on whose apartment it was or anything else. In
a very nice place, you know. But you have Matthew,
(30:23):
who is the suspect. He hasn't been convicted, he's been charged.
He goes to the apartment and we're going to assume
that his twenty six year old brother Joseph was living
in this apartment. We're assuming that because we don't know anyway.
That always gets me in trouble with Nancy, you know that.
But Dave, what else do you assume you know that one?
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Right?
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Anyway?
Speaker 2 (30:45):
So what we have though, Okay, we've got two brothers,
and then we've got Matthew, the suspect calling nine to
one one and waiting for police to show up. When
they get there, they find the scene. They find the
Royal buffet, the last meal, the last feast, and ps, your.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Cat is dead.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (31:07):
What if I was a defense attorney and he pleads
not guilty and I pitched the deal that he went
to visit his brother. The crazy cat when he came in,
was attacking my younger brother, and the cat was hitting
it with one paw and scratching his eyeball out with
the other one. I flung the cat off the couch
to save my brother. I accidentally fell on a golf
(31:29):
club and then it repeatedly fell on top of my brother,
hurting him even more. The eyeball was on a plate
and the cat was starting to cut it up with
a knife. Who was the most amazing thing I've ever seen.
He actually used his paws like fingers and toes and
he's cutting it up. And that's what That's what you
came into.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
That's what you saw. Why do you think I'm the
one that called police? Now?
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Everything I just described actually happened in that apartment to
a degree, and added a few flourished as the cat
didn't actually have fingers and toes, but he had paused,
he could have done it. Probably didn't. But we have
a scene where, starting back at the beginning, Matthew beat
the crap out of his brother.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Yeah, he did. And as I mentioned earlier, it's I think,
and this is indicative of something. I think he did
it with weapons of opportunity day.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
No, I club doesn't come to mind as something I
would use to kill somebody with.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
No, it's not. And you know it doesn't seem like
a very practical, practical weapon, you know, to facilitate this
sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
You would think that the shaft would break and that
you into like a spear. Maybe, but are we talking well,
wait a minute, iron or woold? Would you be able
to determine based on the side what the club looked like,
the marks.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
On the body?
Speaker 2 (32:50):
How would you go about matching these up? I know
how we do it with a gun, I know how
we do it with a knife. Even a baseball bat
makes sense, But how are you going to do it
with a club that is not a uniform shape? And
probably in that entire apartment, even if it's a seven iron,
there's not another an iron in there. That this is
the only one that's going to look like that.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Yeah, and it's going to have well you'll have contact
trace trace evidence on the surface of it first off,
you know, and unless it went to the trouble of
washing this thing off and you use you talked about
an iron as opposed to a wood. Now I'm thinking
the iron is a is a great example. When you
look at it on the face of the golf club,
it's got these little ridges, these litter, little uh, linear
(33:31):
markings on it that you know, you can control the
ball with, you can do backspen with it, and all
that sort of stuff, and they're very deep, you know,
because this is it's called an iron for a reason,
and it's it's got these very peculiar angles to it.
And anytime you have an instrument that does have distinctive
pitches to it, if you will and uh leading edge,
(33:53):
perhaps some sharp points, uh, it will leave a very
distinctive pattern. Now the trick is uh or you can
be able to match that up. That's why I'm a
I'm a huge proponent of if you if you have
a suspected weapon that you're going to utilize and or
(34:13):
that you believe as an investigator that this brought this about.
And this doesn't always happen, by the way, so you know,
this is kind of a little inside baseball info here.
It's best if you can actually bring the alleged or
suspected weapon to the morgue, and we will in the morgue,
we will actually take time to try to marry these
(34:36):
things up. There's any number of times where I have
held items in my gloved hand with only my hands
in the item in view, adjacent to an injury, and
they take a photo of it. Is you know, kind
of compare and contrast, and you there's if something has
a particular pattern to it, you can pick up on it.
(34:58):
You know, if you're talking about like a would which
the head is a lot larger, it's actually a bit lighter.
It's not going to leave the same distinctive markings as
say the iron wood, and so you would want to
compare those and whose clubs are these? And is there
any kind of symbolic thing here? You know, a knife
(35:19):
is one thing, okay, but you're talking about a family
of athletes as well, and in it kind of fascinating
that this alleged perpetrator chose allegedly chose a golf club
to literally beat the life out of his little brother
with there in this apartment. So yeah, I think that
(35:40):
there's a lot to explore this the I'm fascinated by
this idea of you know, him having been seated potentially
at the table and having ingested his brother's eye, if
you will, Now, how are.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
You going to figure that one out?
Speaker 2 (35:59):
I know we saw the plate and we saw blood
when we saw some things on the indicated maybe, but
are they going to be able to find out and
not doing.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
No, no, no, be honest.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Here did he cook it?
Speaker 2 (36:09):
Did he put in the microwave? Did he do it
on a frying pan? Did he boil it like you
would an egg? Did he eat it like a yoke?
Did he cut it up and put it on a
piece of I.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Think that this is something what remnant was left behind?
Had he actually ingested or is there you know, because
the tissue that the eye is made up of. Let's
just say you look at it from the perspective of
if he did. In fact, let's see, how can I
say this dissect the eye on the plate with the
(36:39):
intention of eating it. If there's some remnant of tissue there,
you can actually take that tissue and put it on
a slide, and first off, you can identify it that
soft tissue is tissue that originated from the eye. Okay,
and if he's ingested this, there's really no way to
you know, kind of track this relati to you know,
(37:01):
kind of examining this. I think that what you're left
with because I and I have removed eyes in the
morgue generally on the poster eer side. Once you once
the skull is open and the brain is removed, we
will remove them posteriorally. Okay, You're not going to try
(37:23):
to go in through the orbit necessarily to do it's
impractical in that circumstance. Now, when eye surgeons do surgery,
they'll approach anteriorly, okay, and a lot of that is
dependent upon where whatever it is they're working on is
located anatomically only. It's no easy task in order to
(37:44):
remove an eye at autopsy. That's one of the reasons
we go in. You know, from the backside we can
examine the optic nerve. There's these little attachments you know
that you know that help you know, that cause us
to move, you know, that facilitators moving our eye and
those have to be detached and it's carefully removed. Can
(38:07):
an eye literally be dug out? Yeah, it can be.
But here's the thing. If an instrument is used like
a knife, that's going to leave behind tool marks. One
of my questions is he is Joseph has sustained stab
woms allegedly as well well, the stab wounds that he
sustained were the derivative of the flatware that his brother
(38:32):
was using to ingest his eye, see what I'm saying.
And if so, if he used that flatware, whether it's
a fork or a knife or whatever, did he make
any marks on the orbit, on any portion of the
orbit of the eye to extricate it? And can you
match that up? Well? Yeah, possibly, you would have to
(38:54):
be very careful at autopsy to examine that area and
to try to appreciate it. So I think it. I'm
not going to say that we necessarily got an uphill battle.
You know, with this case, We've got a brother and
you know this is occurring and arguably, I guess, probably
one of the most affluent areas in all of New Jersey.
(39:14):
This is in Princeton. I mean it's literally an ivy
league town. Are how how are you going to be
able to work your way through this case? I think
and winning if this thing goes to trial. If he doesn't,
you know, he's been charged, and what were the charges again,
(39:36):
David is you.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Know before you even got that, I was going to
ask you about how does the cat fit into all this?
Because that's one of the charges. It was bad enough
because he got first g murder charge, animal cruelty and
weapons charges. So just sticking with the animal cruelty and
the first murder, is there not an add on type
of a crime you could have for you know, taking
your brother? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Because the determined Yeah, yeah, And I think that that's
a big part. And if it's after death, obviously we've
covered enough cases certainly dismemberment, and this would fall into
that category of abusive corpse. And you know, I mean,
you and I've covered enough brother that we know that
from state to state the terminology varies, but essentially means
the same thing. You've correct me from wrong. We've got
(40:21):
a first degree homicide charge if I'm not mistaken, and
then the animal cruelty thing. It doesn't really matter if
and don't get me wrong, I'm not being insensitive to
the animal, But it doesn't really matter if dead is dead,
the animal is deceased, so, you know, because one of
the thoughts was, was the cat set on fire while
(40:44):
I was alive? As horrible as that is, or did
in fact this individual kill the cat and then set
it on fire? And here's another kind of gruesome piece
to this. Did he this to the cat before he
killed his brother as kind of a way to torture
(41:04):
him in some way? You know, because the accused is
a big guy. I mean he looks like when you
look at this guy, he looks like he could play
offensive tackle, you know. Joseph, the victim is I'm not
going to say diminutive. He's an athletic looking guy, but
you know he's he's kind of one of those guys
that's he's in tip top shape, you know, he's but
(41:25):
he's certainly not the size of his brother or the
other brother who I believe his name is David. He's
also a big guy. You know, how does the cat
fit in? Well, just you know, kind of jumping over
into the to the you know, the psychological standpoint, this
cat meant something to Joseph, then it's something that a
(41:46):
perpetrator that has this kind of mindset that's writing down
all this apocalyptic stuff about blood oozing from his eyes.
That's actually one of the comments that he made. That
cat meant something to him. And obviously Joe or Joseph
is Joey rather it is the target of this. You'd
want to destroy his cat too, if he held that
(42:07):
cat near and dear and precious. And you've got this
big kind of ogre of a guide that has been charged,
not found guilty, but charged in this case. I don't
know it. I think that as we go along, Dave,
if we continue to have cases like this, I don't
know how we're going to I don't know how we
(42:28):
can trump this. Something will happen as a result of
me saying that. But you know, just when you think,
as you said, well said, when you think you've seen
it all, you suddenly discover that you haven't. I'm Joseph
Scott Morgan, and this is body packs
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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