May 27, 2026 • 44 mins
On February 22, 2003, the body of 57-year-old Jeanette Wilton was discovered near her home in the Flint River, close to a train trestle. Joseph Scott Morgan takes an in-depth look at the autopsy that showed the mother of three and grandmother to seven, had been sexually assaulted before she died of strangulation and multiple stab wounds to her neck. She also suffered blunt force trauma to her head and face along with contusions and postmortem abrasions. Dave Mack looks at the investigation where no murder weapon was found, no suspects identified, no arrest made, and the case went cold quickly. Two decades would pass before the case was brought in from the cold, and with the help of the Western Michigan University Cold Case Program, the Michigan State Police Cold Case Team was able to examine the evidence and find forensic evidence that could be sent to Othram in the Woodlands, Texas, leading to the identification of a suspect and an arrest.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quality balance with Joseph's gotten more. You know, there's just
something about grandmothers. I don't know of any human being,
certainly in my life that has impacted me the man
(00:22):
that I am right now more so than my grandmother.
And one of the reasons is I spent so much
time around her. I learned so much from her, and
not just from the things that she would say, but
how she lived her life. She's a very simple woman,
a rural woman down here in the Deep South. But
(00:44):
my lord, there is not a single day that I
don't think about her. And that's the beauty of it,
because I can pass that on to my kids and
to my grandkids. Maybe some of the lessons I learned
just from observing her. But the sad reality is this,
once she was gone from my life, there were no
(01:07):
more lessons to be learned. There was nothing else to
be taught. Today, we're going to talk about a case
involving one such woman who is now absent from her
grandchildren's lives. And it's not that she passed away in
her sleep. She's not even aged. Talking about a woman
(01:32):
that was brutally murdered and left all alone dead at
the hands of a monster. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
this is Body Batteries, Dave. I think some of the
(01:55):
first memories I have in life are of my grandmother.
I'll tell you a real quick story. When I was
I think I was like three or four, we lived
in an old house that was so incredibly cold, and
it didn't This is before the days of central heating
(02:15):
and air, and folks will probably identify with this. We
had one of those old box metal natural gas heaters
and it you know, it had a big flat shelf
on it had the glowing rocks inside of it. There
was some kind of ceramic thing you could I've actually
seen generations take pots of hot or water on and
(02:38):
put on top of these things to kind of rehumidify
the air. When I was little, got out of the
bathtub and I sat.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
On the thing.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
And it burned the entire backside of my leg. And
you know, I love my mother, I truly do. But
you know, there's been kind of this family lored that
goes on about this. When I was little, I wasn't
screaming for my mother. I was screaming for my pearl,
which is my grandmother refused to go by the name Granny,
(03:12):
her grandma. Her name was Pearl, and she insisted that
I call her that. Oh my having to take me
to the hospital because it burned, and she was there
all through the treatment. I was screaming, crying, carrying on
and yelling. And you know, Dave, I say that because
I love Grandma so much, and I think about what
(03:33):
is absent from the life and lives of this family
that we're talking about today.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Oh, I'm thinking, you said your granny wanted to go
by Pearl and not Granny. And all I was thinking
is Beverly Hillbillies, lesson flat and Earl scrugs, Pearl, girl,
don't give your love to Earl. That's what I'm thinking.
So here's what we have got. A fifty seven year
old woman, a woman who, by the way, has taken
care of people for her whole adult life. She is
(04:01):
really dedicated to taking care of everyone at the hospital,
whatever she had to do. And one thing that's really
important to catch here, Joe, she was taking care of
her aged father at the time this happened. And when
I was reading the obituary, you know where it says,
you know you've left behind, and I realized that her
(04:24):
taking care of her father in his older age, and
now he has outlived her. She was able to give
him so much of herself to keep him comfortable and
healthy that she actually died before he did. That was
a very telling thing. Jeanette Wilson was fifty seven years old,
(04:45):
Michigan native. She did spend a little time in Florida
during her life, but most of the time was It's
Michigan and her body was found by Joe. Has taught
me something, friends, Look at the finder. Look at the finder.
I am so suspicious of the person who finds the body.
That's not a worry here, but I am concerned over something, Joe,
(05:07):
And I'm hoping you can shed light on this because
the way this is described as fifty seven year old
woman is found in the Flint River near her home,
or she's found near the Flint River near her home,
there's a big difference being found in the river near
a train trestle and on land near the river. Yes,
(05:32):
and I can't figure out exactly what it is. But
at seven, at fifty seven years old, Jeanette Wilton was
found murdered.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Yeah, and you think about the deposition of remains. I
love that term you think about, you know, where they
are positive and that gives you a sense of who
you're dealing with. I think not to get off into
the area of profiler, but let's just let's look at
it just from a common sense perspective. All right, we
(06:02):
don't we don't have to, you know, call in people
with PhDs and behavioral.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Science and all that sort of thing. You look at
it from investigative.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
It would be so funny if you would pick up
your phone right now and call Nancy and say, Nancy,
we need a lawyer.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Well, I'm gonna call Yeah, you're you're right, I uh,
I would call uh you know.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Uh uh, Actually we would call you on this one. Yeah,
you would be the person we would call. Talk to
me about Jennette Wilson and where her body was found
and how that impacts what's going to take place in
the investigation. Yeah, will because it took a long time
to solve this case, Joe, it did.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
And you have to tie that person back to wherever
they are domiciled, where they lived, right, Yeah, and then
relative to proximity proximity to residents. Okay, you think about uh, well,
first off, who knew that she lived where she lived,
and then how do they know about the other geographic
landmarks in that location, because you got a train trestle, obviously,
(07:03):
but you have a significant body of water here. And
so if you're trying to get her to the river,
all right, to put her there, or maybe you placed
her in the river at some point toime and she
washed ashore, what was the purpose of being in that
specific location. Because here's the thing. If an individual is
(07:27):
placed into a body of water, something happens relative to
the geography, right, particularly if you're talking about a river,
they will be removed from that location or that approximates
where they may have lived. Right, So you're left scratching
your head. Let me ask all of our friends just
a quick second here, you think about this. How many
(07:49):
times have you ever driven across a bridge and or
stood on the bank of a river and you see
something floating down the river And it could be branches,
any other kind of debris, could be literally somebody has
thrown a bag of garbage over a bridge and is
floating down there. You might not give it a second thought,
you know, when humans float on bodies of water like this. Okay,
(08:12):
you're not necessarily going to pay attention to it, But
what does it do well the river without drawing attention
to say, somebody that's in a car that's transporting a
body and maybe they have to get out of the
car remove the body. Once you place that body in
the river, it's gently just kind of floating away, or
in the case if you're near whitewater, it's going to
(08:32):
rapidly move the body. But what else is going on?
You're also washing the body, if you will, removing any
kind of evidence that might have trace elements to it.
That would be a value. But Dave, it would seem
in this particular case that there were trace elements that
had been left behind that I believe are probably specific
(08:54):
tie backs to whoever the killer is in this case.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Well, you know, the.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
One thing that when I was looking at it, because
over time you realize that not all reporters are equal
in the works they do, and when you're relying on
public records. Because by the way, I didn't mention this earlier.
This started in February of two thousand and three. February
of two thousand and three, as we are doing this
show right now, they've just solved this time for twenty
(09:23):
three years, the family of Jeanette has not known who
her killer was. They had no clue. Now they do,
but they didn't until in the last couple of weeks.
So when I'm looking back and going back to all
these old reports and trying to find police, sports and
everything else, where was her body found? Because it means everything,
And based on what we know now, there was a
(09:51):
vicious attack that took place on this woman and it
was near her home. So based on that, we've got
one or two things to figure out. Either she was
out for a walk and it was a random attack.
Somebody was following her, watching after her. She's a fifty
seven year old woman. Was it a robbery that went
(10:12):
bad and had to end in a murder. I mean,
I don't know. All these things have to be figured
out because we start with the body on or near
the river, the Flint River. And in two thousand and
three when this happened, we did have lots of DNA
education in terms of what the public knew about it,
because most of us learned about it from the ninety
(10:34):
five trial of oj Right.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
But compared to where we are now, wasn't DNA kind
of in its infancy then yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Well, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
I would say pre adolescent, because you know it had
been used to great effect in other cases. However, please
understand this, when it comes to the sampling that we do.
Now both have to scene what we collected the scene,
also what we can use as a sample. There's a
(11:06):
higher probability that back during that period of time, the
precious sample that you had could easily be destroyed because
if it's you know, for instance, like if it's destructive testing,
so you got a one off chance, so you have
to take it in the little bits or snips and
so that you have enough remaining like if you didn't
get a hit in the beginning. And this is how
(11:30):
forward thinking that our scientists were not just in that
generation the early two thousands, but even prior to that,
they knew that if they could get a robust enough
sample that maybe technology would eventually catch up. Right, And
that's the beauty of where we are right now, because
you know, I got to tell you technology has in
(11:50):
fact caught up, but I think probably we still haven't
seen the other advances that are going to take place.
Right now, we think that we're really in the sweet spot. Brother,
I got to tell you something, We're nowhere near it
because it's going to become so sensitive, the testing, the ability,
everything else. And you know, in the case of Jeanette,
(12:13):
the beauty of this is that they retained enough of
a sample that points back to probably who did this,
But it also begins telling the tale of what actually
happened to her. Because I got to tell you, friends,
when you hear, when you hear what was done to
(12:36):
this mother and grandmother, it's the stuff of a horror movie.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Are you listening?
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Because the dead or speaking, And in this particular case,
what was left behind relative to Jeannette's death has it
gives us an idea of not just her moments prior
(13:17):
to having her life extinguished. I got to tell you, friends,
it actually goes to what was done to her in
the post mortem state. And to say that it's depraved,
I think as an understatement, Dave, I don't know that.
And it seems like every one of these cases you
know that we discussed, we're always looking for new adjectives
(13:40):
to try to describe, and you know, the purest one
is just evil.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
As far as I'm saying, we keep hitting the bottom
of the with the shovel and Sley, No, there's another Scoopfule. Well, yeah,
let me just start with the basic here's what happened,
because from what happened, I'm not hearing the depravity that
you're describing. February four, second, two thousand and three, the
body of Jeanette Wilton found near her home in the
(14:04):
Flint River, close to a train trestle. She had been
sexually assaulted and strangled. She had trauma to her head
and face. That is the basic police report, you know,
acknowledging we have a body. Here's what we see. Overall,
each one of these things goes deep, though, Yeah, what
(14:27):
does the autopsy tell us? Actually, when you have a
body like this out near a river, what do investigators
have to do to keep everything they need to actually
get all the evidence collected properly.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
It's a massive undertaking with any outdoor scene. You know
that the beauty of if there can be beauty in
the in the sense of working a homicide, of being
within a structure. You've got containment, right, and that's the
way here. You have containment. We have four walls, right,
we have sea them, we have floor, we have doors,
(15:04):
we have windows. But when you get out into an
area where you've got a body of water flowing through
the area. It's going to be either along the river banks,
and I've seen I can't even begin to tell you
the things I've seen along river banks over the years
when just that have been found as I'm working in
another case, I've actually been on cases with bodies that
(15:27):
were found in the water and we have actually found
other bodies or.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
While you were working a case, yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Or remnant of what was left behind. So you never know,
you know in any kind of case what you're going
to come across. In an outdoor environment, it doesn't just
have to be adjacent to a body of water. It
can be a thickly wooded area. It can be actually
an area off of a roadway. You know, think about
have you ever driven down an interstate highway and you
(15:58):
see like a clump of tree, ease or bushes along
the roadway. You'd really be surprised what is deposited therein
in those locations. And that's in plain sight. I mean
it's obscured by the growth. But just to get off
into that area, you can found camp sites where people
are you know, have set up a home. They would
(16:19):
identify it as a home trash, you know, valuables that
have been tossed or what had contained valuables like purses, wallets,
all those sorts of things, and they they've had the
valuables taken out of them, and of course bodies too.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Tell you this, Joe, I lived in eastern North Carolina
on the Pamlico River, right across the river from Little Washington,
North Carolina. Yeah, I kid you not. One of the
worst days was the Monday after a long you know,
after a weekend during the summer, because people just get
rid of stuff. They just I'm telling you, man, we're
not kind to our environment. You and I grew up
(16:54):
in the age I remember the Indians that Native Americans
standing on side of the road had the tear drop. Well,
people throwing trash. That's what it's like living on a river.
That's what it's like every day after a holiday weekend especially.
But you would find so many things out there that
you were going, what is this? And I'm thinking that
here too, because you know that if you're around the
(17:15):
front river, you're gonna have a lot of water log
stuff to be trudging through. I'm guessing you're gonna have
footprints somewhere. You're gonna have prints of something somewhere that's
going to lead you back to the suspect here.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Yeah, and you have to one of the key things
relative to an outdoor scene is you have to find
a point of ingress so that when you are actually
making or the perpetrator is making their way down to
the water side, you know where a riverside, where exactly
did they enter this area? Where did they have an
(17:49):
opportunity to access Because listen, this is one thing, and
I'm thinking right now about practicality and also common sense.
You know that you're not gonna have somebody with a
human remain thrown over the shoulder kind of marching down
the road. Oh look, this looks like a good place
to kind of dive into the bushes. I'll make my
way down to the riverside and I'll place the body here.
(18:10):
That's not what we're talking about. You have to have
a place where if you're in a motor vehicle, which
you would assume that they would be, because they're going
to have to convey a body that gives you shelter
and cover, mobile shelter and cover, then pull over so
that nobody's going to pay any attention to you, look around,
get out of the car. Now where's the body? Is
it in the cab of the car or is it
in the trunk, because both of those scenarios present problems. Also,
(18:36):
if you're carrying something that's heavy, any footprints that are collected,
now dig this. If it's soft mud, for instance, like
the composition of the soil is very very soft, well,
if you walk in, those footprints that are left behind
might be deeper if you're carrying something, as opposed to
depositing something and turning around and going back to the car,
(18:58):
and they might run parallel to one another, but you'd
have two sets of prints going both directions. It's also
going to change your gate the way you walk. All
these sorts of things depth because the weight that you're bearing,
you're bearing your normal body weight, and then you add
to that so the depth and a lot of that
goes to soil composition as well in some of the
things that we consider. But when you come across a
(19:20):
body that's out there and has been so ravaged and
so brutalized, one of the things you have to keep
in mind is are there any instrumentalities of death down there?
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Because you could not just.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Assume that she was killed elsewhere and then merely dumped there. Okay,
Also on the table at this point in time, was
she kidnapped, taken out of a motor vehicle, walked down
there and assaulted, and then killed in place and then left.
That's Those are two different scenarios completely. And if you
(19:57):
have an attack that takes place, say adjacent to the
because it's a quiet, perhaps shielded area, then you can
have scuff marks on the soil where you can actually
and people that are really good at reading footprints can
see movement, they can see dynamic movement.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Also.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
I hate to say this, but if there is some
kind of attack, if you know what I mean, you
can actually see where knees are contacting the ground. You
can see where somebody's backside is trying to fight against this.
Just think of the horror that you can just literally
interpret from the marks that are left on this surface.
And then of course you have to think about the
(20:36):
trace evidence that's left behind, because there would be blood,
and you know how I know that there would be blood, Dave.
When I was reading over this autopsy report, Jeannette, and
here's something interesting that we I don't know that we've
had a case like this. We've had people that have
had their throats cut. But they're saying in a types
(20:57):
of report, she was actually stabbed.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
In the throat.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Yeah, like repeatedly stabbed.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
In the throat.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
If these were lethal, lethal injuries to her throat with
a sharp instrument, I'm not talking about cutting. We've talked
about on body backs before with incized insized weapons that
are you can call it an incision or a cut.
It's different than a stab, a penetrative event. So they're
saying stab wounds, multiple stab wounds in the neck. Well,
(21:25):
there's a high probability that you're going to nick a vessel.
What happens when you nick a vessel, Well, you're going
to have blood showering.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Everywhere, all right, and it would be all over her.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
It would be on the grounds surrounding her body, maybe leaves, grass,
even little twigs that are there. So you have to
be very very careful when you get in there and
you begin to observe, now observe that location relative to
everything else that's in that space.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
When investigators show up on the scene, Joe and they're
determining did this attack take place? Right here, because when
it's a place like this where the body's found outside
near a trestle, it almost seems like the body was dumped.
It doesn't seem like this is where the attack took place.
But don't you have to treat everything around the body
(22:12):
as a possible part of the crime scene.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Oh yeah, yeah, you cannot be you know.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
One of the worst things you can do is an
investigators be arrogant and presumptive. You can't. You have to
be your mind. You have to have the ability to
see potential there. Stay away from using the term open minded.
And the reason why is many times when I hear
people say you need to be open minded, many times
(22:37):
those people's brains have fallen out of their head long
long ago because they were so open minded. You have
to be open to possibilities though, that's the most important thing,
and to be able to see that and try to
interpret it along the way.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Have you ever accidentally trampled on evidence?
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Joe, Yes, repeated numbers of times, and sometimes it cannot
be avoided, particularly if you're outdoors.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Right.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
This goes back to this idea when you have containment
within a space. Even though I have trampled on an
evidence inside of a closed space, inside of a dwelling
or a structure, Yes, that has in fact happened. However,
when you get outdoors, you don't have any control over well,
certainly the weather. You don't have any control over lighting
(23:22):
as well, because look, friends, do yourself favor if you're
ever outside, you're taking a nature walk. Here, just see
how the light changes when you're walking down a trail. Right,
some places will be highly illuminated, and then you walk
through another area and all of a sudden, it's like
somebody flipped the switch and you're walking around, not literally
in the dark, but it goes to kind of a twilight,
(23:44):
you know, And so we're affected by the same things.
At a scene where the nuance of the lighting itself
can compromise your ability to pick up on small little details,
you try to go in there with artificial lighting and
blast all of the shadows away. And that's not just
from a photography standpoint, but that's literally in real time lighting.
(24:06):
You know, where we have lights that are set up.
That's one of the reasons you see these big light
trucks that the fire Department provides. Many times we bring
our own portable lighting and try to blast that area
with light so that we can see where we're stepping.
We can also identify evidence. But you know, like I'll
give you, for instance, one of the worst sounds you
can ever hear as an investigator, if you have a
(24:31):
multiple fire gunshot related death. One of the worst sounds
you'll ever hear in your life is sensing it very
lightly on the tip of your boot and you're in
a say, a parking lot, and you hear that metallic
clink as you've just kicked a spent casing and it
goes rolling off. You've done that, now, Yes, of course
(24:51):
I have. I've stepped on them before, I've ground them
into the ground not knowing that it was there because
of poor lighting or my lack of attention. That's why
you always have to be on your p's and q's
when you're working with these scenes day.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
If I was out there, John, I'm so clumsy. I
would lose my gig the first day. But in the
back of my head, I'm thinking, just to terrorize a
new guy on the gig, right, get a bag of
like peanuts.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
You know, I just don't do that.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Don't give anybody any ideas here.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
You guys had a pretty dark sense of humor as well.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
We did, We did.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
But it all comes down to trying to remain focused
on the victim that lay at our feet because you're
trying to you are, in fact, trying to tell their
story with every little drop of the blood, every little fiber,
and certainly, in Jeanette's case, every single injury. Because I
can only imagine the investigators at that moment in time,
(25:47):
within that environment they're trying. First off, the first thing
they're going to say is if this was me, who
in the world had this much hatred and anger that
could be directed at this poor woman? You know, Dave,
(26:15):
I just briefly mentioned the stab wounds that Jeannette had
sustained in this brutal, homicidal attack, but kind of let
me run this down to you. Relative to the injuries
that she had that she had sustained, it's important to
understand that she was It's almost as if someone was
(26:39):
trying to destroy her and destroy her appearance.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Okay, who she was? All right?
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Because think about it, most people that identify us, I
would say, now, some of us are identified by our voices, right,
but on site, when you're seeing somebody you'll say, hey,
you know, that's my wife, that's my child, that's my friend,
and we're picking up on that right. Our identity rest here, Dave.
(27:08):
In Jeannette's case, she has been so brutalized that her
face has literally been pounded over and over and over again.
And it's not just her face, it's also her head.
These are blunt force. This was a blunt force attack
that she sustained. And what they're saying is that much
(27:34):
of these injuries, many of these injuries that you have
to the face and to the head, they many of
these fall into a category of being post mortem. Really, yeah,
so that means that whoever did this to Jeanette did
this after the fact.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
Okay, now we know that when you that bruises, don't
bruise after you're dead is not pumping blood, right, So
that just what what does it look like? How do
you how do you know? How can you determine? I mean,
if you hit me in the face right now, it
would show, and it would But what about if somebody's
already gone.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Yeah, well, in death. What I'm thinking, because they keep
using the term blunt force injuries, I'm thinking she probably
had lacerations to her face in her head laceration arises
from blunt force trauma. So if she's pounded like this
in the post mortem sense, if we have the head here,
she's struck in the head with either her hand, I'm
thinking maybe an object. It's going to lacerate the skin.
(28:38):
Laceration is not a cut, it's a tearing that's associated
with blunt force trauma. So as the skin is actually
torn apart, what you're not going to see in the
dead is there will not be any indwelling hemorrhage. Okay,
So you're not going to see hemorrhage surrounding these injuries.
That's that's the first indicator to me. Now, she could
(29:01):
have sustained some blunt force trauma in the anti mortem sense,
like in order to get her to submit. You know,
she's being pounded on in the face and the head.
But enough of the it's significant to note that enough
of these have been identified as post mortem trauma. Okay,
So that leads me to believe that you don't have
(29:21):
the tissue reacting in the way that it would react,
you know, say, for instance, in life, because you know,
if you're hitting the face, your eye is going to swell.
Your cheek's going to swell, it'll turn red. And if
you in size that area, you'll you'll actually be able
to appreciate where there are little areas of hemorrhage. Well,
that only occurs in life. So if you're looking at
(29:43):
this from the perspective of what happened in the post
mortem state, I think that's really important.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Now.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
The other thing that we do know, and I briefly
touched on this, she's been stabbed in the neck apparently
multiple times. In addition of that, they're also saying she
was strangled, So you've got all of this layering that's
going on, and this makes this case particularly difficult for
forensic pathologists to try to suss out, you know, when
(30:11):
they're trying to understand the progression of the injuries.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
I know a lot of people want to know in
what order did these things take place in terms of
knife stabs in the neck and strangulation. Yeah, I'm is
there a way that you could legitimately tell based on
the wounds?
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Anytime someone asks regarding progression or order, that's the term
that's used a lot, and you'll hear it in court.
What order did these occur in there's no way. We
got two categories anti mortem before death post mortem. If
you want to throw in there, there's a state called
perry mortem pe r i mortem, which means kind of
(30:54):
in that twilight and milky zone between life and death.
But for our purposes, anti mortem and postport them. And
that's really you know, when you're talking about order, there's
really no way to put a finer point on that.
I mean, in a perfect world that would be grant.
You know, like, could we determine if what was the
(31:16):
progression of a stab one?
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Right? You know, at what point in.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
This journey towards death was this person stab Where was
the first one, the second, third, and fourth and so
forth and so on. That's that's highly improbable that a
forensicologist is going to be able to nail it down
in the mor because they're doing their examination. All ins
say is that in life they were And I'm just
throwing out this number. That doesn't mean it comes back
(31:41):
to this case. This is an example. She was stabbed
in the next three times in life, she was stabbed
in the next three times in death, okay. And the
way you delineate that is that there's an absence of hemorrhage.
The other interesting part to this is they're talking about strangulation. Well,
if you're talking about strangulation, if we're thinking about manual well,
(32:04):
really the only way that you could determine that or
make a determination time wise is to say that this
is in fact an anti mortem event, because if someone
is strangled, I'm talking about manual strangulation as opposed to
ligature strangulation, we're going to see focal areas of.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Hemorrhags in the neck.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
So this stuff, like I had mentioned, it's stratified, okay,
relative to the layers that are taking place here, and
that that's one of the big problems here when you're
trying to go into a courtroom and describe these injuries
to a jury member because they want to know. They
want to know also, you know, because we know she's
(32:44):
sexually assaulted, when was she sexually assaulted? Well that opens
up another can of worms at this point in tom
not just from the physical sense, but also from the
behavioral sense.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
Right, what was this?
Speaker 1 (32:58):
What was the purpose of this person doing this? Is
that that they wanted total and complete control over the victim,
and therefore they would end their life and then sexually
assault in the post mortem state, or is this something
that they wanted to do in life? So that and
you know, as we know, sexual assault is not about sex.
(33:21):
It's it's it's about power, right, and so their their
power trip with this is to hear her screams, is
to fill her moving about trying to escape and all that,
And that's escalating the situation precipitously here, and so that's
that's important for us to understand as well. But you know,
(33:41):
when the police get there and they're observing all of this,
I can only imagine the depth and the breath, and
I would imagine day like many of the cases would
cover on on body bags that have, you know, so
called gone cold, which I'm the longer I'm doing this now,
I don't really believe in cold came. I just believe
cases that go into staces kind of. I really, I
(34:04):
bet you anything that back then in two thousand and two,
these people probably thought they were going to hook somebody
upretty quickly on this.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
I think they did think they would, because they started
looking like they always do. You start close to home,
if you don't have an obvious suspect, you start with
those closest to the victim, and you work on the
victimology and you go out from there, and they came
up with nothing, Joe, they came up with NA and
it I agree with you anymore. The only term cold
(34:35):
case that is good for is that now departments all
across the country have a department called the gold case.
And because of technology and the way it has grown,
there are opportunities now to solve crimes that before would
have just been sitting there. And in this particular case,
I you know, it's funny because when we first started
doing I thought, okay, you get a little DNA from
(34:56):
the crime scene from twenty years ago, you mail it
to tax and the middleman's unit authorom. They put it
into their little computer, and twenty minutes later, mister Peabody
spits it out. You know, and here's your answer. It's
not like that. It takes so much investigation on the
ground in the loco, with the actual case and the
case file, and then it's a stair step. It's one
(35:20):
step ahead. This was a long time. It takes a
lot of effort by a lot of different people on
both ends working it. Because it's like every time you
think you're taking a couple of steps further that has
to be investigated. You have to look at all the
possibilities there, and it keeps getting bigger, and it's just
it's crazy what goes into it, Joe. But in this case,
(35:40):
what did they have and how did they go about
getting AUTHORM involved?
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Well, they had they had a case that actually credit
to Western Michigan University. There's a group of students there
that began to work on this case along with the
Michigan State Police and of course the authority over in
Saginaw where this actually took place. Listen, it's not a
(36:06):
matter that the police, the investigators back in two thousand
and two failed that it doesn't enter into it, and
don't come saying that to me, right, They didn't fail.
They had to wait for technology to catch up with them.
Because the public at large thinks that, you know, you
can't collect something and put it into a machine and
(36:30):
it's going to spit out an answer those days. That
didn't exist back then. And even even in the sense
that you would have codis, if person's not in codice,
then all you have is a decent sample and you
don't have anything to.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Compare it to.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
You have to wait for the technology to catch up
with it and to catch up with the sample. And
to the credit of the individuals that were working and
seeing and working in the morgue that did the biological
sampling and the collection of everything. You know, similar fluid,
those sorts of things that where you can put point
(37:05):
on point contact, put them at the scene, on the
surface of the body, within the body, all those sorts
of things. You have to hold onto that because it's
more precious than gold and silver and precious diamonds. Okay,
that's how much value it has. And they had to
wait and so in waiting after they begin to put
(37:26):
together a profile that would consisted of a geographic profile,
which we've talked about before, it's going to put together
a profile of the victim, the victimology, right, and then
anybody that's in her associated circle. The way it's done now, though,
when you have the science, you can, interestingly enough, if
(37:47):
you can get a profile on an individual from the
molecule of life from DNA, right, you can go back
and do kind of reverse investigation of the perpetrator. Well,
if we've identified this person, what contact you know, paint
me a picture? Why why Janette? And does this person
(38:11):
have any personal contact with her, What would be the
motivation to literally destroy this woman and discard her like
she's rubbish.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
Dave.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Now, I think that because of the damage that was done,
and I'm glad you cleared it up that a lot
of the damage to Jeanette was done post mortem, if
she was already gone. Yeah, that that opened a door
for investigators to start considering a lot of different things.
And once they got the DNA profile, once they got
it out to author them and they started coming back
(38:42):
with possibilities. Investigators were able to hone in on a
person and they were looking for somebody that could have
a personal attachment to Jeanette because of the way the attack,
what happened during the attack, and although it's kind of
a stretch, the person that they believe did this having
(39:07):
married to one of Jeannette's nieces. There you go, So
they did have that contact.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
There.
Speaker 3 (39:14):
There's no idea because they can't say there was a
lot going on in terms of a relationship between the two,
but there had to have been something for it to
end up the way that they did. With what the
suspect did to Jeannette.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
It was just evil, Yeah, and all it takes for
somebody that is twisted, okay, is to merely cast their
eyes upon what it is that they're desiring.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
Okay. In this case, I think it's Jeanette.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
And obviously and now we have a name.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
Yeah, but yes we do. Jason Robert Cabello. He's forty
seven years old now, and Joe. When they brought Jason
Cabell into the police department, have a chat with him.
They've got the DNA, they know they've got it matched,
you know, and he was married to one of Jeanette's nieces,
as I mentioned. And they're talking to him three different times,
(40:17):
giving him the opportunity to say, okay, I did this
or make up a story? Okay, get three times he
said no, and they're like, okay, whoever's DNA is inside
Jeannette sexually assaulted her and it's yours. How did it
(40:37):
get there?
Speaker 2 (40:38):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
I mean, it really was that ugly that even after
all of the evidence is sitting in front of this guy, Joe,
he would not cop to it.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
Well, I think that there's another peripheral family member that
had actually made comments about the subject in that he
allegedly had been making un wanted sexual advances toward them
as well within the familial unit, and that can be
broad ranging. You know, when you say familial unit doesn't
necessarily mean that it's like your immediate family, but you
(41:11):
know those that are connected on the periphery. And here's
the beauty of it when you begin to think about
Authorm and what they do. It's doesn't necessarily have to
be your father that's pointing the finger. It can be
a distant cousin. And I think that in this case,
(41:31):
this perpetrator who robbed Jeannette of her life, her children
of her life, her grandbabies of her life, this person
wasn't counting on this.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
This is back in two thousand and two.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
The idea that back then that we would have this
ability is mind blowing to this guy. Yeah, you know,
thinking back to what that young forensic investigator would have
thought back then would be the possibilit today, but it
is now possibility. And here's the most important thing. Authorm
(42:06):
had a hand in this. In the Woodlands, Texas, our
friends David and Christian Middleman. There are many of you
out there, and I see you at crime Con, I
see you. I get your messages. They say Hey, I
want to do what you did for a living. Well
maybe maybe you do, but many of you want to help,
(42:26):
and many of you want to be investigators. You want
to lend a hand because you're looking not for closure,
because we don't like that word on body bags. We
want resolution, We want answers that are rooted in science.
You want to know how you can do that, Visit
my friends at authorm. Go to dnasols dot com. Now
when you go there to that website, you can look
(42:49):
through all of the open cases. Some might be in
your region. You want to give a helping hand. They're
not asking for a bazillion dollars here, just a couple
of bucks pushing it their way because there is there's
a trigger when they hit a certain number, When they
hit a certain number with any of these cases, to
(43:11):
flip the switch and they go to work, they have
the sample, they begin to process it and they will
give the information to the police and they can process
it just like they did in Jeannette's case. So that's
dnasols dot com. I recommend any of you my friends
out there, please go take a look at this website.
(43:31):
Check it out, see what they're doing, because it is
mind blowing. We're in a whole new world, trends, a
whole new world. You want to help. You want to
help families that have an empty chair at the table,
those wives, those husbands that are quietly weeping every single night,
those children that don't have parents any longer because they've
(43:54):
been robbed of them. Check them out, Check them out
dnasaus dot com. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is
body Bags
Quality balance with Joseph's gotten more. You know, there's just
something about grandmothers. I don't know of any human being,
certainly in my life that has impacted me the man
(00:22):
that I am right now more so than my grandmother.
And one of the reasons is I spent so much
time around her. I learned so much from her, and
not just from the things that she would say, but
how she lived her life. She's a very simple woman,
a rural woman down here in the Deep South. But
(00:44):
my lord, there is not a single day that I
don't think about her. And that's the beauty of it,
because I can pass that on to my kids and
to my grandkids. Maybe some of the lessons I learned
just from observing her. But the sad reality is this,
once she was gone from my life, there were no
(01:07):
more lessons to be learned. There was nothing else to
be taught. Today, we're going to talk about a case
involving one such woman who is now absent from her
grandchildren's lives. And it's not that she passed away in
her sleep. She's not even aged. Talking about a woman
(01:32):
that was brutally murdered and left all alone dead at
the hands of a monster. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
this is Body Batteries, Dave. I think some of the
(01:55):
first memories I have in life are of my grandmother.
I'll tell you a real quick story. When I was
I think I was like three or four, we lived
in an old house that was so incredibly cold, and
it didn't This is before the days of central heating
(02:15):
and air, and folks will probably identify with this. We
had one of those old box metal natural gas heaters
and it you know, it had a big flat shelf
on it had the glowing rocks inside of it. There
was some kind of ceramic thing you could I've actually
seen generations take pots of hot or water on and
(02:38):
put on top of these things to kind of rehumidify
the air. When I was little, got out of the
bathtub and I sat.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
On the thing.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
And it burned the entire backside of my leg. And
you know, I love my mother, I truly do. But
you know, there's been kind of this family lored that
goes on about this. When I was little, I wasn't
screaming for my mother. I was screaming for my pearl,
which is my grandmother refused to go by the name Granny,
(03:12):
her grandma. Her name was Pearl, and she insisted that
I call her that. Oh my having to take me
to the hospital because it burned, and she was there
all through the treatment. I was screaming, crying, carrying on
and yelling. And you know, Dave, I say that because
I love Grandma so much, and I think about what
(03:33):
is absent from the life and lives of this family
that we're talking about today.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Oh, I'm thinking, you said your granny wanted to go
by Pearl and not Granny. And all I was thinking
is Beverly Hillbillies, lesson flat and Earl scrugs, Pearl, girl,
don't give your love to Earl. That's what I'm thinking.
So here's what we have got. A fifty seven year
old woman, a woman who, by the way, has taken
care of people for her whole adult life. She is
(04:01):
really dedicated to taking care of everyone at the hospital,
whatever she had to do. And one thing that's really
important to catch here, Joe, she was taking care of
her aged father at the time this happened. And when
I was reading the obituary, you know where it says,
you know you've left behind, and I realized that her
(04:24):
taking care of her father in his older age, and
now he has outlived her. She was able to give
him so much of herself to keep him comfortable and
healthy that she actually died before he did. That was
a very telling thing. Jeanette Wilson was fifty seven years old,
(04:45):
Michigan native. She did spend a little time in Florida
during her life, but most of the time was It's
Michigan and her body was found by Joe. Has taught
me something, friends, Look at the finder. Look at the finder.
I am so suspicious of the person who finds the body.
That's not a worry here, but I am concerned over something, Joe,
(05:07):
And I'm hoping you can shed light on this because
the way this is described as fifty seven year old
woman is found in the Flint River near her home,
or she's found near the Flint River near her home,
there's a big difference being found in the river near
a train trestle and on land near the river. Yes,
(05:32):
and I can't figure out exactly what it is. But
at seven, at fifty seven years old, Jeanette Wilton was
found murdered.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Yeah, and you think about the deposition of remains. I
love that term you think about, you know, where they
are positive and that gives you a sense of who
you're dealing with. I think not to get off into
the area of profiler, but let's just let's look at
it just from a common sense perspective. All right, we
(06:02):
don't we don't have to, you know, call in people
with PhDs and behavioral.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Science and all that sort of thing. You look at
it from investigative.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
It would be so funny if you would pick up
your phone right now and call Nancy and say, Nancy,
we need a lawyer.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Well, I'm gonna call Yeah, you're you're right, I uh,
I would call uh you know.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Uh uh, Actually we would call you on this one. Yeah,
you would be the person we would call. Talk to
me about Jennette Wilson and where her body was found
and how that impacts what's going to take place in
the investigation. Yeah, will because it took a long time
to solve this case, Joe, it did.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
And you have to tie that person back to wherever
they are domiciled, where they lived, right, Yeah, and then
relative to proximity proximity to residents. Okay, you think about uh, well,
first off, who knew that she lived where she lived,
and then how do they know about the other geographic
landmarks in that location, because you got a train trestle, obviously,
(07:03):
but you have a significant body of water here. And
so if you're trying to get her to the river,
all right, to put her there, or maybe you placed
her in the river at some point toime and she
washed ashore, what was the purpose of being in that
specific location. Because here's the thing. If an individual is
(07:27):
placed into a body of water, something happens relative to
the geography, right, particularly if you're talking about a river,
they will be removed from that location or that approximates
where they may have lived. Right, So you're left scratching
your head. Let me ask all of our friends just
a quick second here, you think about this. How many
(07:49):
times have you ever driven across a bridge and or
stood on the bank of a river and you see
something floating down the river And it could be branches,
any other kind of debris, could be literally somebody has
thrown a bag of garbage over a bridge and is
floating down there. You might not give it a second thought,
you know, when humans float on bodies of water like this. Okay,
(08:12):
you're not necessarily going to pay attention to it, But
what does it do well the river without drawing attention
to say, somebody that's in a car that's transporting a
body and maybe they have to get out of the
car remove the body. Once you place that body in
the river, it's gently just kind of floating away, or
in the case if you're near whitewater, it's going to
(08:32):
rapidly move the body. But what else is going on?
You're also washing the body, if you will, removing any
kind of evidence that might have trace elements to it.
That would be a value. But Dave, it would seem
in this particular case that there were trace elements that
had been left behind that I believe are probably specific
(08:54):
tie backs to whoever the killer is in this case.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Well, you know, the.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
One thing that when I was looking at it, because
over time you realize that not all reporters are equal
in the works they do, and when you're relying on
public records. Because by the way, I didn't mention this earlier.
This started in February of two thousand and three. February
of two thousand and three, as we are doing this
show right now, they've just solved this time for twenty
(09:23):
three years, the family of Jeanette has not known who
her killer was. They had no clue. Now they do,
but they didn't until in the last couple of weeks.
So when I'm looking back and going back to all
these old reports and trying to find police, sports and
everything else, where was her body found? Because it means everything,
And based on what we know now, there was a
(09:51):
vicious attack that took place on this woman and it
was near her home. So based on that, we've got
one or two things to figure out. Either she was
out for a walk and it was a random attack.
Somebody was following her, watching after her. She's a fifty
seven year old woman. Was it a robbery that went
(10:12):
bad and had to end in a murder. I mean,
I don't know. All these things have to be figured
out because we start with the body on or near
the river, the Flint River. And in two thousand and
three when this happened, we did have lots of DNA
education in terms of what the public knew about it,
because most of us learned about it from the ninety
(10:34):
five trial of oj Right.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
But compared to where we are now, wasn't DNA kind
of in its infancy then yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Well, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
I would say pre adolescent, because you know it had
been used to great effect in other cases. However, please
understand this, when it comes to the sampling that we do.
Now both have to scene what we collected the scene,
also what we can use as a sample. There's a
(11:06):
higher probability that back during that period of time, the
precious sample that you had could easily be destroyed because
if it's you know, for instance, like if it's destructive testing,
so you got a one off chance, so you have
to take it in the little bits or snips and
so that you have enough remaining like if you didn't
get a hit in the beginning. And this is how
(11:30):
forward thinking that our scientists were not just in that
generation the early two thousands, but even prior to that,
they knew that if they could get a robust enough
sample that maybe technology would eventually catch up. Right, And
that's the beauty of where we are right now, because
you know, I got to tell you technology has in
(11:50):
fact caught up, but I think probably we still haven't
seen the other advances that are going to take place.
Right now, we think that we're really in the sweet spot. Brother,
I got to tell you something, We're nowhere near it
because it's going to become so sensitive, the testing, the ability,
everything else. And you know, in the case of Jeanette,
(12:13):
the beauty of this is that they retained enough of
a sample that points back to probably who did this,
But it also begins telling the tale of what actually
happened to her. Because I got to tell you, friends,
when you hear, when you hear what was done to
(12:36):
this mother and grandmother, it's the stuff of a horror movie.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Are you listening?
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Because the dead or speaking, And in this particular case,
what was left behind relative to Jeannette's death has it
gives us an idea of not just her moments prior
(13:17):
to having her life extinguished. I got to tell you, friends,
it actually goes to what was done to her in
the post mortem state. And to say that it's depraved,
I think as an understatement, Dave, I don't know that.
And it seems like every one of these cases you
know that we discussed, we're always looking for new adjectives
(13:40):
to try to describe, and you know, the purest one
is just evil.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
As far as I'm saying, we keep hitting the bottom
of the with the shovel and Sley, No, there's another Scoopfule. Well, yeah,
let me just start with the basic here's what happened,
because from what happened, I'm not hearing the depravity that
you're describing. February four, second, two thousand and three, the
body of Jeanette Wilton found near her home in the
(14:04):
Flint River, close to a train trestle. She had been
sexually assaulted and strangled. She had trauma to her head
and face. That is the basic police report, you know,
acknowledging we have a body. Here's what we see. Overall,
each one of these things goes deep, though, Yeah, what
(14:27):
does the autopsy tell us? Actually, when you have a
body like this out near a river, what do investigators
have to do to keep everything they need to actually
get all the evidence collected properly.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
It's a massive undertaking with any outdoor scene. You know
that the beauty of if there can be beauty in
the in the sense of working a homicide, of being
within a structure. You've got containment, right, and that's the
way here. You have containment. We have four walls, right,
we have sea them, we have floor, we have doors,
(15:04):
we have windows. But when you get out into an
area where you've got a body of water flowing through
the area. It's going to be either along the river banks,
and I've seen I can't even begin to tell you
the things I've seen along river banks over the years
when just that have been found as I'm working in
another case, I've actually been on cases with bodies that
(15:27):
were found in the water and we have actually found
other bodies or.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
While you were working a case, yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Or remnant of what was left behind. So you never know,
you know in any kind of case what you're going
to come across. In an outdoor environment, it doesn't just
have to be adjacent to a body of water. It
can be a thickly wooded area. It can be actually
an area off of a roadway. You know, think about
have you ever driven down an interstate highway and you
(15:58):
see like a clump of tree, ease or bushes along
the roadway. You'd really be surprised what is deposited therein
in those locations. And that's in plain sight. I mean
it's obscured by the growth. But just to get off
into that area, you can found camp sites where people
are you know, have set up a home. They would
(16:19):
identify it as a home trash, you know, valuables that
have been tossed or what had contained valuables like purses, wallets,
all those sorts of things, and they they've had the
valuables taken out of them, and of course bodies too.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Tell you this, Joe, I lived in eastern North Carolina
on the Pamlico River, right across the river from Little Washington,
North Carolina. Yeah, I kid you not. One of the
worst days was the Monday after a long you know,
after a weekend during the summer, because people just get
rid of stuff. They just I'm telling you, man, we're
not kind to our environment. You and I grew up
(16:54):
in the age I remember the Indians that Native Americans
standing on side of the road had the tear drop. Well,
people throwing trash. That's what it's like living on a river.
That's what it's like every day after a holiday weekend especially.
But you would find so many things out there that
you were going, what is this? And I'm thinking that
here too, because you know that if you're around the
(17:15):
front river, you're gonna have a lot of water log
stuff to be trudging through. I'm guessing you're gonna have
footprints somewhere. You're gonna have prints of something somewhere that's
going to lead you back to the suspect here.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Yeah, and you have to one of the key things
relative to an outdoor scene is you have to find
a point of ingress so that when you are actually
making or the perpetrator is making their way down to
the water side, you know where a riverside, where exactly
did they enter this area? Where did they have an
(17:49):
opportunity to access Because listen, this is one thing, and
I'm thinking right now about practicality and also common sense.
You know that you're not gonna have somebody with a
human remain thrown over the shoulder kind of marching down
the road. Oh look, this looks like a good place
to kind of dive into the bushes. I'll make my
way down to the riverside and I'll place the body here.
(18:10):
That's not what we're talking about. You have to have
a place where if you're in a motor vehicle, which
you would assume that they would be, because they're going
to have to convey a body that gives you shelter
and cover, mobile shelter and cover, then pull over so
that nobody's going to pay any attention to you, look around,
get out of the car. Now where's the body? Is
it in the cab of the car or is it
in the trunk, because both of those scenarios present problems. Also,
(18:36):
if you're carrying something that's heavy, any footprints that are collected,
now dig this. If it's soft mud, for instance, like
the composition of the soil is very very soft, well,
if you walk in, those footprints that are left behind
might be deeper if you're carrying something, as opposed to
depositing something and turning around and going back to the car,
(18:58):
and they might run parallel to one another, but you'd
have two sets of prints going both directions. It's also
going to change your gate the way you walk. All
these sorts of things depth because the weight that you're bearing,
you're bearing your normal body weight, and then you add
to that so the depth and a lot of that
goes to soil composition as well in some of the
things that we consider. But when you come across a
(19:20):
body that's out there and has been so ravaged and
so brutalized, one of the things you have to keep
in mind is are there any instrumentalities of death down there?
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Because you could not just.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Assume that she was killed elsewhere and then merely dumped there. Okay,
Also on the table at this point in time, was
she kidnapped, taken out of a motor vehicle, walked down
there and assaulted, and then killed in place and then left.
That's Those are two different scenarios completely. And if you
(19:57):
have an attack that takes place, say adjacent to the
because it's a quiet, perhaps shielded area, then you can
have scuff marks on the soil where you can actually
and people that are really good at reading footprints can
see movement, they can see dynamic movement.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Also.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
I hate to say this, but if there is some
kind of attack, if you know what I mean, you
can actually see where knees are contacting the ground. You
can see where somebody's backside is trying to fight against this.
Just think of the horror that you can just literally
interpret from the marks that are left on this surface.
And then of course you have to think about the
(20:36):
trace evidence that's left behind, because there would be blood,
and you know how I know that there would be blood, Dave.
When I was reading over this autopsy report, Jeannette, and
here's something interesting that we I don't know that we've
had a case like this. We've had people that have
had their throats cut. But they're saying in a types
(20:57):
of report, she was actually stabbed.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
In the throat.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Yeah, like repeatedly stabbed.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
In the throat.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
If these were lethal, lethal injuries to her throat with
a sharp instrument, I'm not talking about cutting. We've talked
about on body backs before with incized insized weapons that
are you can call it an incision or a cut.
It's different than a stab, a penetrative event. So they're
saying stab wounds, multiple stab wounds in the neck. Well,
(21:25):
there's a high probability that you're going to nick a vessel.
What happens when you nick a vessel, Well, you're going
to have blood showering.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Everywhere, all right, and it would be all over her.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
It would be on the grounds surrounding her body, maybe leaves, grass,
even little twigs that are there. So you have to
be very very careful when you get in there and
you begin to observe, now observe that location relative to
everything else that's in that space.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
When investigators show up on the scene, Joe and they're
determining did this attack take place? Right here, because when
it's a place like this where the body's found outside
near a trestle, it almost seems like the body was dumped.
It doesn't seem like this is where the attack took place.
But don't you have to treat everything around the body
(22:12):
as a possible part of the crime scene.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Oh yeah, yeah, you cannot be you know.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
One of the worst things you can do is an
investigators be arrogant and presumptive. You can't. You have to
be your mind. You have to have the ability to
see potential there. Stay away from using the term open minded.
And the reason why is many times when I hear
people say you need to be open minded, many times
(22:37):
those people's brains have fallen out of their head long
long ago because they were so open minded. You have
to be open to possibilities though, that's the most important thing,
and to be able to see that and try to
interpret it along the way.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Have you ever accidentally trampled on evidence?
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Joe, Yes, repeated numbers of times, and sometimes it cannot
be avoided, particularly if you're outdoors.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Right.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
This goes back to this idea when you have containment
within a space. Even though I have trampled on an
evidence inside of a closed space, inside of a dwelling
or a structure, Yes, that has in fact happened. However,
when you get outdoors, you don't have any control over well,
certainly the weather. You don't have any control over lighting
(23:22):
as well, because look, friends, do yourself favor if you're
ever outside, you're taking a nature walk. Here, just see
how the light changes when you're walking down a trail. Right,
some places will be highly illuminated, and then you walk
through another area and all of a sudden, it's like
somebody flipped the switch and you're walking around, not literally
in the dark, but it goes to kind of a twilight,
(23:44):
you know, And so we're affected by the same things.
At a scene where the nuance of the lighting itself
can compromise your ability to pick up on small little details,
you try to go in there with artificial lighting and
blast all of the shadows away. And that's not just
from a photography standpoint, but that's literally in real time lighting.
(24:06):
You know, where we have lights that are set up.
That's one of the reasons you see these big light
trucks that the fire Department provides. Many times we bring
our own portable lighting and try to blast that area
with light so that we can see where we're stepping.
We can also identify evidence. But you know, like I'll
give you, for instance, one of the worst sounds you
can ever hear as an investigator, if you have a
(24:31):
multiple fire gunshot related death. One of the worst sounds
you'll ever hear in your life is sensing it very
lightly on the tip of your boot and you're in
a say, a parking lot, and you hear that metallic
clink as you've just kicked a spent casing and it
goes rolling off. You've done that, now, Yes, of course
(24:51):
I have. I've stepped on them before, I've ground them
into the ground not knowing that it was there because
of poor lighting or my lack of attention. That's why
you always have to be on your p's and q's
when you're working with these scenes day.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
If I was out there, John, I'm so clumsy. I
would lose my gig the first day. But in the
back of my head, I'm thinking, just to terrorize a
new guy on the gig, right, get a bag of
like peanuts.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
You know, I just don't do that.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Don't give anybody any ideas here.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
You guys had a pretty dark sense of humor as well.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
We did, We did.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
But it all comes down to trying to remain focused
on the victim that lay at our feet because you're
trying to you are, in fact, trying to tell their
story with every little drop of the blood, every little fiber,
and certainly, in Jeanette's case, every single injury. Because I
can only imagine the investigators at that moment in time,
(25:47):
within that environment they're trying. First off, the first thing
they're going to say is if this was me, who
in the world had this much hatred and anger that
could be directed at this poor woman? You know, Dave,
(26:15):
I just briefly mentioned the stab wounds that Jeannette had
sustained in this brutal, homicidal attack, but kind of let
me run this down to you. Relative to the injuries
that she had that she had sustained, it's important to
understand that she was It's almost as if someone was
(26:39):
trying to destroy her and destroy her appearance.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Okay, who she was? All right?
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Because think about it, most people that identify us, I
would say, now, some of us are identified by our voices, right,
but on site, when you're seeing somebody you'll say, hey,
you know, that's my wife, that's my child, that's my friend,
and we're picking up on that right. Our identity rest here, Dave.
(27:08):
In Jeannette's case, she has been so brutalized that her
face has literally been pounded over and over and over again.
And it's not just her face, it's also her head.
These are blunt force. This was a blunt force attack
that she sustained. And what they're saying is that much
(27:34):
of these injuries, many of these injuries that you have
to the face and to the head, they many of
these fall into a category of being post mortem. Really, yeah,
so that means that whoever did this to Jeanette did
this after the fact.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
Okay, now we know that when you that bruises, don't
bruise after you're dead is not pumping blood, right, So
that just what what does it look like? How do
you how do you know? How can you determine? I mean,
if you hit me in the face right now, it
would show, and it would But what about if somebody's
already gone.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Yeah, well, in death. What I'm thinking, because they keep
using the term blunt force injuries, I'm thinking she probably
had lacerations to her face in her head laceration arises
from blunt force trauma. So if she's pounded like this
in the post mortem sense, if we have the head here,
she's struck in the head with either her hand, I'm
thinking maybe an object. It's going to lacerate the skin.
(28:38):
Laceration is not a cut, it's a tearing that's associated
with blunt force trauma. So as the skin is actually
torn apart, what you're not going to see in the
dead is there will not be any indwelling hemorrhage. Okay,
So you're not going to see hemorrhage surrounding these injuries.
That's that's the first indicator to me. Now, she could
(29:01):
have sustained some blunt force trauma in the anti mortem sense,
like in order to get her to submit. You know,
she's being pounded on in the face and the head.
But enough of the it's significant to note that enough
of these have been identified as post mortem trauma. Okay,
So that leads me to believe that you don't have
(29:21):
the tissue reacting in the way that it would react,
you know, say, for instance, in life, because you know,
if you're hitting the face, your eye is going to swell.
Your cheek's going to swell, it'll turn red. And if
you in size that area, you'll you'll actually be able
to appreciate where there are little areas of hemorrhage. Well,
that only occurs in life. So if you're looking at
(29:43):
this from the perspective of what happened in the post
mortem state, I think that's really important.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Now.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
The other thing that we do know, and I briefly
touched on this, she's been stabbed in the neck apparently
multiple times. In addition of that, they're also saying she
was strangled, So you've got all of this layering that's
going on, and this makes this case particularly difficult for
forensic pathologists to try to suss out, you know, when
(30:11):
they're trying to understand the progression of the injuries.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
I know a lot of people want to know in
what order did these things take place in terms of
knife stabs in the neck and strangulation. Yeah, I'm is
there a way that you could legitimately tell based on
the wounds?
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Anytime someone asks regarding progression or order, that's the term
that's used a lot, and you'll hear it in court.
What order did these occur in there's no way. We
got two categories anti mortem before death post mortem. If
you want to throw in there, there's a state called
perry mortem pe r i mortem, which means kind of
(30:54):
in that twilight and milky zone between life and death.
But for our purposes, anti mortem and postport them. And
that's really you know, when you're talking about order, there's
really no way to put a finer point on that.
I mean, in a perfect world that would be grant.
You know, like, could we determine if what was the
(31:16):
progression of a stab one?
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Right? You know, at what point in.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
This journey towards death was this person stab Where was
the first one, the second, third, and fourth and so
forth and so on. That's that's highly improbable that a
forensicologist is going to be able to nail it down
in the mor because they're doing their examination. All ins
say is that in life they were And I'm just
throwing out this number. That doesn't mean it comes back
(31:41):
to this case. This is an example. She was stabbed
in the next three times in life, she was stabbed
in the next three times in death, okay. And the
way you delineate that is that there's an absence of hemorrhage.
The other interesting part to this is they're talking about strangulation. Well,
if you're talking about strangulation, if we're thinking about manual well,
(32:04):
really the only way that you could determine that or
make a determination time wise is to say that this
is in fact an anti mortem event, because if someone
is strangled, I'm talking about manual strangulation as opposed to
ligature strangulation, we're going to see focal areas of.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Hemorrhags in the neck.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
So this stuff, like I had mentioned, it's stratified, okay,
relative to the layers that are taking place here, and
that that's one of the big problems here when you're
trying to go into a courtroom and describe these injuries
to a jury member because they want to know. They
want to know also, you know, because we know she's
(32:44):
sexually assaulted, when was she sexually assaulted? Well that opens
up another can of worms at this point in tom
not just from the physical sense, but also from the
behavioral sense.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
Right, what was this?
Speaker 1 (32:58):
What was the purpose of this person doing this? Is
that that they wanted total and complete control over the victim,
and therefore they would end their life and then sexually
assault in the post mortem state, or is this something
that they wanted to do in life? So that and
you know, as we know, sexual assault is not about sex.
(33:21):
It's it's it's about power, right, and so their their
power trip with this is to hear her screams, is
to fill her moving about trying to escape and all that,
And that's escalating the situation precipitously here, and so that's
that's important for us to understand as well. But you know,
(33:41):
when the police get there and they're observing all of this,
I can only imagine the depth and the breath, and
I would imagine day like many of the cases would
cover on on body bags that have, you know, so
called gone cold, which I'm the longer I'm doing this now,
I don't really believe in cold came. I just believe
cases that go into staces kind of. I really, I
(34:04):
bet you anything that back then in two thousand and two,
these people probably thought they were going to hook somebody
upretty quickly on this.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
I think they did think they would, because they started
looking like they always do. You start close to home,
if you don't have an obvious suspect, you start with
those closest to the victim, and you work on the
victimology and you go out from there, and they came
up with nothing, Joe, they came up with NA and
it I agree with you anymore. The only term cold
(34:35):
case that is good for is that now departments all
across the country have a department called the gold case.
And because of technology and the way it has grown,
there are opportunities now to solve crimes that before would
have just been sitting there. And in this particular case,
I you know, it's funny because when we first started
doing I thought, okay, you get a little DNA from
(34:56):
the crime scene from twenty years ago, you mail it
to tax and the middleman's unit authorom. They put it
into their little computer, and twenty minutes later, mister Peabody
spits it out. You know, and here's your answer. It's
not like that. It takes so much investigation on the
ground in the loco, with the actual case and the
case file, and then it's a stair step. It's one
(35:20):
step ahead. This was a long time. It takes a
lot of effort by a lot of different people on
both ends working it. Because it's like every time you
think you're taking a couple of steps further that has
to be investigated. You have to look at all the
possibilities there, and it keeps getting bigger, and it's just
it's crazy what goes into it, Joe. But in this case,
(35:40):
what did they have and how did they go about
getting AUTHORM involved?
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Well, they had they had a case that actually credit
to Western Michigan University. There's a group of students there
that began to work on this case along with the
Michigan State Police and of course the authority over in
Saginaw where this actually took place. Listen, it's not a
(36:06):
matter that the police, the investigators back in two thousand
and two failed that it doesn't enter into it, and
don't come saying that to me, right, They didn't fail.
They had to wait for technology to catch up with them.
Because the public at large thinks that, you know, you
can't collect something and put it into a machine and
(36:30):
it's going to spit out an answer those days. That
didn't exist back then. And even even in the sense
that you would have codis, if person's not in codice,
then all you have is a decent sample and you
don't have anything to.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Compare it to.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
You have to wait for the technology to catch up
with it and to catch up with the sample. And
to the credit of the individuals that were working and
seeing and working in the morgue that did the biological
sampling and the collection of everything. You know, similar fluid,
those sorts of things that where you can put point
(37:05):
on point contact, put them at the scene, on the
surface of the body, within the body, all those sorts
of things. You have to hold onto that because it's
more precious than gold and silver and precious diamonds. Okay,
that's how much value it has. And they had to
wait and so in waiting after they begin to put
(37:26):
together a profile that would consisted of a geographic profile,
which we've talked about before, it's going to put together
a profile of the victim, the victimology, right, and then
anybody that's in her associated circle. The way it's done now, though,
when you have the science, you can, interestingly enough, if
(37:47):
you can get a profile on an individual from the
molecule of life from DNA, right, you can go back
and do kind of reverse investigation of the perpetrator. Well,
if we've identified this person, what contact you know, paint
me a picture? Why why Janette? And does this person
(38:11):
have any personal contact with her, What would be the
motivation to literally destroy this woman and discard her like
she's rubbish.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
Dave.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Now, I think that because of the damage that was done,
and I'm glad you cleared it up that a lot
of the damage to Jeanette was done post mortem, if
she was already gone. Yeah, that that opened a door
for investigators to start considering a lot of different things.
And once they got the DNA profile, once they got
it out to author them and they started coming back
(38:42):
with possibilities. Investigators were able to hone in on a
person and they were looking for somebody that could have
a personal attachment to Jeanette because of the way the attack,
what happened during the attack, and although it's kind of
a stretch, the person that they believe did this having
(39:07):
married to one of Jeannette's nieces. There you go, So
they did have that contact.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
There.
Speaker 3 (39:14):
There's no idea because they can't say there was a
lot going on in terms of a relationship between the two,
but there had to have been something for it to
end up the way that they did. With what the
suspect did to Jeannette.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
It was just evil, Yeah, and all it takes for
somebody that is twisted, okay, is to merely cast their
eyes upon what it is that they're desiring.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
Okay. In this case, I think it's Jeanette.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
And obviously and now we have a name.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
Yeah, but yes we do. Jason Robert Cabello. He's forty
seven years old now, and Joe. When they brought Jason
Cabell into the police department, have a chat with him.
They've got the DNA, they know they've got it matched,
you know, and he was married to one of Jeanette's nieces,
as I mentioned. And they're talking to him three different times,
(40:17):
giving him the opportunity to say, okay, I did this
or make up a story? Okay, get three times he
said no, and they're like, okay, whoever's DNA is inside
Jeannette sexually assaulted her and it's yours. How did it
(40:37):
get there?
Speaker 2 (40:38):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
I mean, it really was that ugly that even after
all of the evidence is sitting in front of this guy, Joe,
he would not cop to it.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
Well, I think that there's another peripheral family member that
had actually made comments about the subject in that he
allegedly had been making un wanted sexual advances toward them
as well within the familial unit, and that can be
broad ranging. You know, when you say familial unit doesn't
necessarily mean that it's like your immediate family, but you
(41:11):
know those that are connected on the periphery. And here's
the beauty of it when you begin to think about
Authorm and what they do. It's doesn't necessarily have to
be your father that's pointing the finger. It can be
a distant cousin. And I think that in this case,
(41:31):
this perpetrator who robbed Jeannette of her life, her children
of her life, her grandbabies of her life, this person
wasn't counting on this.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
This is back in two thousand and two.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
The idea that back then that we would have this
ability is mind blowing to this guy. Yeah, you know,
thinking back to what that young forensic investigator would have
thought back then would be the possibilit today, but it
is now possibility. And here's the most important thing. Authorm
(42:06):
had a hand in this. In the Woodlands, Texas, our
friends David and Christian Middleman. There are many of you
out there, and I see you at crime Con, I
see you. I get your messages. They say Hey, I
want to do what you did for a living. Well
maybe maybe you do, but many of you want to help,
(42:26):
and many of you want to be investigators. You want
to lend a hand because you're looking not for closure,
because we don't like that word on body bags. We
want resolution, We want answers that are rooted in science.
You want to know how you can do that, Visit
my friends at authorm. Go to dnasols dot com. Now
when you go there to that website, you can look
(42:49):
through all of the open cases. Some might be in
your region. You want to give a helping hand. They're
not asking for a bazillion dollars here, just a couple
of bucks pushing it their way because there is there's
a trigger when they hit a certain number, When they
hit a certain number with any of these cases, to
(43:11):
flip the switch and they go to work, they have
the sample, they begin to process it and they will
give the information to the police and they can process
it just like they did in Jeannette's case. So that's
dnasols dot com. I recommend any of you my friends
out there, please go take a look at this website.
(43:31):
Check it out, see what they're doing, because it is
mind blowing. We're in a whole new world, trends, a
whole new world. You want to help. You want to
help families that have an empty chair at the table,
those wives, those husbands that are quietly weeping every single night,
those children that don't have parents any longer because they've
(43:54):
been robbed of them. Check them out, Check them out
dnasaus dot com. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is
body Bags
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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