October 3, 2024 • 42 mins
On a Friday afternoon in North Myrtle Beach a 911 call comes in about a person apparently injured on the side of the road under an overpass. By the time help arrives, the victim is dead and the person that called 911 has vanished. No eyewitnesses but lots of information. The victim appears to have been shot in the face, her car is still running, her phone is inches away from her fingers and is working as there are messages and email chimes going off. The woman's purse with cash is inside the car, her name is Amber Berbiglia, 23-years-old. Joseph Scott Morgan will explain how the first impression that Amber was shot in the face with a gun turns out to be wrong and Dave Mack will breakdown the timeline on a murder that happened on a sunny afternoon near the beach that has gone as cold as a winter snow storm.
00:00 Introduction
02:06 Amber Berbiglia Unsolved murder
05:05 How paying a bill in person plays into the story
09:20 Encampents under overpasses
15:11 Woman laid out dead on side of road
19:28 Amber's Cell Phone used up until
2:3024:30 What made Amber stop her vehicle
28:51 Wound so bad it was assumed to be gunshot wound
33:23 First Responder would not see the bones underneath
36:25 Whoever called 911 did not wait for help to arrive
41:49 Conclusion - Horry County, South Carolina still asking for tips
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body dams, but Joseph's got more. Going back to my
teenage years, one of the most joyful memories I have
are my best friend and I going to the beach.
(00:25):
And it wasn't just any beach, it was Myrtle Beach.
And my buddy's parents had a condo that's sat there
on that beautiful wind swept area. And you know, when
(00:48):
you're a kid, you're in your you know, early teens
and up to your mid teens, you just all you
want to do is spend time out there in those waves,
body surfing, hanging out. And it was a place of peace.
But you know, I gotta tell you every location, every location,
(01:15):
no matter how peaceful, has some story of horror attached
to it. Now it might not be your horror, but
it is somebody else's, and you need to take that
into consideration, particularly when it comes to the case we're
(01:36):
going to talk about today. This is an unsolved case
of a beautiful young woman who was found adjacent to
a roadway beneath an overpass, apparently beaten to death. Today
(02:02):
we're going to talk about the death of a young
woman named Amber. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is
body bags. David, let me ask you a question. Do
you do you remember having to go to a location.
(02:24):
I know our younger friends are not going to have
a sense of this, they're gonna think it's nutty, But
do you have memories of going to a location to
physically pay a bill? Where you would go and pay
any kind of utility bill a whether it's cable, electricity,
(02:50):
or phone. I've actually paid. I used to have to
go and pay a telephone bill, and this is so
nutty when I think about it. I would go to
a local pharmacy to pay my telephone bill because these
little businesses would intake money and do billing or however
(03:11):
was handled, particularly in rural spots. Did that ever, Did
that ever occur for you? Do you have a memory
of that?
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Actually? You know, in putting this story together about Amber Bravilia,
she paid her went to town to pay her cable bill.
And that's what we used to have to do if
you didn't mail it in, you know, if you and
that was one of those things where I'm one of
those people I just want to make sure it's there,
So rather than mail a check back in the day,
(03:40):
just go and stand there and get it paid, get
your receipt, move on, no problems. And that's what she
was doing. It's something so uncommon now that if you
were to go to well, our power company around here,
if you go to pay the bill, you go up
there waiting to meet a person and give them cash
or whatever, and they actually the tellers now tell you
go to the kiosk. She's over here as a computer
(04:01):
that basically go online and pay it with your debit card,
you know, not here or not. I'm like, but can't
I just hand you my card?
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Exactly? I do that.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
So Amber Burbilia starts that that actually is the starting
point for the story. There's a lot of background that
you'll need to know, but this is where we started
the timeline because we know at a very certain time
of a very certain day she was at this location.
She's actually seen at that location paying that bill at
(04:33):
one point thirty in the day. And this is from
twenty twelve, so I think back twelve years ago, you know,
it was something that we still did then. I think
it was in that crossover time period.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
It was, you know, in that in that period of
time where well I remember, you know, the big thing was,
well I don't want to put my personal information online,
particularly as it you know, as it applies to a
banking or checking account or something.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
I still get icky about that.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Oh of course I do too, you know, just physically.
And look, I got to give you some credit. You know,
you said that you would go and pay your bill
physically so that you could guarantee that it was going
to be in somebody's hand. Well, I would go and
pay a bill that wasn't the case. My My rationale
is I would wait till the last minute to go
(05:28):
and do it to make sure that my services weren't
cut off. I'm not saying that my services have ever
been cut off, but those records are sealed at this point.
But what I'm saying is is that the convenience of
that and we I think that many people would view
it as an inconvenience, but it also you know, back then,
(05:48):
you knew the people on the other side of the
counter you were paying this to most of the time.
And this world that we're in is completely different than
twenty twelve. And man, that's what at the time of
this recording fourteen years ago, I guess twelve years Yeah, it's.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Okay, Joe hanging there. You've been in London for a
couple of weeks.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Yeah, absolutely, I've got London.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Bottom line being bottom line, we have this as the
starting point of the timeline because within three hours from
paying that bill, less than two miles away, her body
was found next to her running car and she's dead.
(06:35):
And at first they think she's been shot in the face.
And as they being investigator's part everybody on scene, they
see Amber Rebellia's body next to her running car. Car
was still running under an overpass. There are no witnesses around,
and her cell phone is within inches of her fingers.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
So we're in the area of Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach.
It's a Friday afternoon, just after four pm when her
body is found. And for those of us who have
been to Myrtle Beach North Myrtle Beach, Friday afternoon is
travel day. That's when people are coming in. You take
half a day at work to get to the beach
that afternoon, you know. And that's what Myrtle Beach and
(07:23):
North Myrtle Beach are built on, is the tourist dollars
coming to the beach. So you've got a lot of
traffic going around that area, which is kind of problematic
for police, and from an investigation standpoint, you have a
body next to her car just after four on a Friday,
and figure out what happened next when there are no witnesses.
(07:46):
The call, by the way, that came to nine to
one one was a passerby. They don't wait. They merely
call nine one one, and we don't know the content
of the call, but we know that they said, hey,
there is a woman or a person outside of their
car and the overpasses are on the ground that it
was pretty vague from what we've gathered. They haven't released
(08:06):
the call and that's it. The people didn't stay around
to wait. They merely made the call and when officers
arrived at the scene, no eyewitnesses and Amber Barbilia was
declared dead at the scene.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah, the police are really have really played this one.
Close to the vest. Overpasses themselves create an interesting environment
to work a case. I've worked several on roadways. Obviously,
I've worked car crashes that have been you know, that
(08:40):
have taken place beneath an overpass, but I've also worked
homicides and one of the creepy things about overpasses. If
you've ever noticed, is that when you are driving through
or driving underneath it, you know, it's generally in a
flash you don't pay attention to the environment. But if
(09:04):
you ever slow down enough and take a look beneath
the roadway that is literally over your head at this
point in time, there are actually many times encampments that
are beneath these bridges that act as the overpass. I
(09:25):
think one of the biggest questions, Dave is how how
would you how would you get Amber to stop her
car at that specific sheltered location. The car, if I
remember correctly, is running when they get there, so you
(09:46):
know you have sufficient fuel. There were no flat tires
that we know of, which is you know, let's face it,
the main reason people pull over on the shoulder of
the road because you've picked up some kind of debris
or you know, piece of angle wire and kincher tar.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
You mentioned full tank of gas, you know, not worrying.
That's actually part of the timeline, Joe. When we went back,
we found we investigators trying to figure out what happened.
They actually have Amber Rebilia on video on surveillance camera
paying for gas that day at twelve thirty or so
(10:28):
on her way to pay the bill at the cable company.
So we have her two times where we know exactly
where she is getting gas, paying for it, and then
at the cable company. Because when the police were looking
over the video, they were looking to see if anybody
was following her. Yeah, you know, are we seeing any
consistency here which they didn't find or have not let
(10:48):
on that they found anything. I say that because this
is an unsolved case. We don't know who did this. Joe.
I'm hoping that somebody listening to this, we'll share this
with somebody else. Because Amber Rebiliu's story got lost in
the shuffle. I've talked to people in that area Joe
(11:10):
online that are unaware of this story, and it's because
of two people, Britney Drexel and Heather Elvis. I'm not
blaming them, by the way, just pointing out Britney Drexel
went missing in two thousand and nine from Myrtle Beach,
A beautiful high school kid. You know, she's the girl
who went to spring break at Myrtle Beach from New
(11:32):
York without her mom knowing, told her mom she was
going to spend the weekend with some friends and ends
up at Myrtle Beach and goes missing. And it was
years before they solved that one. And then there's the
story of Heather Elvis. Heather Elvis went missing six months
after the death of Amber Barbilia. While they're still working
(11:53):
this case and trying to get media attention for Amber,
Heather Elvis goes missing. And so that's kind of how
this this story got lost in the shuffle. And as
we're trying to bring awareness that somebody had to have
seen something, Joe, somebody does what happened?
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yeah, And going back, you know, thinking about this investigatively,
we've got two exchanges of money that are going on here.
You know, we we had mentioned or you had mentioned
rightly that we know that she had topped off her
car all right with gas. So how was that transaction conducted?
(12:30):
Did she pay at the pump or did she go
into the store in the store, Yeah, and so if
she goes into the store, what method did she use
to pay with? Well, if you've got bills on hand,
you know, we we we just kind of I think, uh,
(12:51):
we just kind of assumed that everybody pays with car.
That's that's not the case, and it certainly wasn't the case.
Back then you've mentioned I just gotten back from London,
David came back with physical pounds in my pocket because
most of the places I went to, uh, they wanted plastic,
you know, of some kind uh which I hate, I loathe,
(13:13):
but but you know, you think about.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
A quick sidebark. Can you use your debit card in London?
Speaker 1 (13:21):
You can? However, I would be very careful doing that.
You know. You want something like a credit card where
you have more accountabilities. Yeah, and you can't dig into
somebody's checking account and that's you know that that's when
(13:42):
you think about Amber's case. You know, did she have
a wad of cash and you're thinking about this? Maybe
she's checking checking a list here. Well, it's time for
me to I'm going into the weekend. I want to
top off my car, I need to pay the bill.
And you've got these points of opportunity for somebody to
(14:02):
observe her, you know, and who would be in her
sphere that would and when we get to these details, Dave,
her death is just absolute ghastly. Who would show up
with this amount of violence in their heart towards this
beautiful young woman who from what we understand and what
(14:24):
the police have related and her family was as gentle
as Lamb. But somewhere out there there is a very
very dark soul that's inhabiting perhaps still that area. And
I agree with you, Dave. Somebody knows something. Friends. It's
(15:02):
one thing if you walk into a house and you
have an individual that's deceased, automatically you know a lot
about that person. Perhaps it's a domicile, it's where they
hang their hat, if you will, or maybe they're visiting someone.
(15:23):
But Dave, let me tell you something. You talk about
a nightmare when you're talking about a roadway which is
a major thoroughfare in this case, and you have a
young woman laying out next to the road, just do
the quick arithmetic on this. Yeah, you've got any number
(15:45):
of suspects you know that should be driving, you know,
to and fro.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Interesting to point out, Joe, And when I looked at
the maps, the overpass was a very busy road. The
road that her body was found on was underneath the
busy overpass on kind of an offshoot road. You would
be a local to use it. It wouldn't be something
that you would normally head into It doesn't really need to.
(16:11):
You know, it's a almost like an access road to
a degree, but it is like you drive over the
bridge or the overpass rather and turning onto this road
to go to a specific area. You know. That's where
it's really odd. And before anyone thinks casting aspersions on
her character that it was a meet up for something,
because that was suggested, the law enforcement has said, and
(16:36):
I don't think I've ever seen this before, Joe, where
a law officer stood up and said Amber Burbilia did
nothing wrong. Amber Burbilia wasn't involved in criminal activity, She
wasn't doing anything illegal, she was just being a college
kid on a normal day. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Think about what a bold statement. That is huge? Uh,
you know, because and this is and as I mentioned,
this is a case where the police uh you know,
I use the term there. Uh, they're playing it close
through the vest. But we have this huge chunk of information.
And that's not something that just kind of, you know,
(17:16):
mysteriously descends from the heavens, you know, and enters into
you know, into the the case file of the god.
This is something that they've done digging with, They've done
background checks on her, they've you know, they've probably run
credit reports. I mean, they've done everything that you would
think that that you would want, you know, where you
(17:36):
could actually harvest as much information about her life, because
this is a terrifying case when you think about the
level of brutality, just that alone would would motivate. And
I'm not dismissing other cases, but when you have a
citizen that has found deceased on the side of the road,
(17:57):
that has absolutely been brutalized like that, and the police
are left scratching their head, they're going to think, you know,
what in the world would drive one human being to
do this to another human being and then kind of
exit the scene very quickly in some manner. I have
to assume perhaps a car. I have no idea. Maybe
(18:19):
they left on foot. I don't know. But her car
is still running. It hasn't run out of gas, and
we know that she had I think she had been
texting like up till like two thirty, I think in
the afternoon, and then are approximating that, and she's found
roughly around four.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
To get to the nitty gritty here, yeah, Amber, as
we mentioned earlier, she stops by Murphy Gas, tops off
her tank, the inside the cameras on the inside of
the store, pick her up. Inside the store, she tops
off her tank. She then heads over to pay the
billet time warner around one thirty. So we have this
(18:58):
little thing there, okay, of what she was doing that
day now from one thirty until her body is found,
say four thirty ish. Yeah, you mentioned a minute ago
she was on her phone texting until about two thirty.
Very important in this timeline because as you notice, we've
been able to narrow it down, you know, from Gassi
at noon, paint a bill at one thirty. Now we
(19:21):
know she's on her phone texting until two thirty. Then
her phone goes silent at two thirty ish. The reason
that's important is because you mentioned there was no eyewitness
on the scene. A nine to one one call was
placed that said, and we paraphrasing because we have not
(19:45):
seen the actual call or the dialogue, but somebody called
and said they had seen a body outside of a car,
looked hurt. And from my investigation thus far, I believe
it was some guys writing on four wheelers and they
were writing by called nine one one and didn't want
to have anything to do with it, just kept on trucking.
(20:08):
I think the police know more on that, but that's
for the investigation bottom line, as there was nobody there.
When police and investigating paramedics arrived, they thought at first
that Amber Babilia was shot in the face. The damage
to her face was so bad. We've narrowed this down
this time gap between two thirty and by the way,
(20:31):
she was due at working four that afternoon. She always
was on time. She wasn't one of these people who
showed up late. She wasn't a person to do a
no call, no show, so much so that when she
didn't show up at four, it was only a couple
of minutes after four when they called her coworkers calling me, hey,
what's up. She's always here. And the reason I point
(20:51):
that out, Joe, because we know twoint thirty was the
end time for her using her phone. We know the
call comes in just after four pm from her coworker
and doesn't get answered, it goes to voicemail. When amper
Borbilia is found on the ground outside of her still
running vehicle, her cell phone was within inches of her hand,
(21:13):
but when officers arrived on scene they could hear it chiming,
you know, text messages, emails, things like that that were
popping up on her phone. And the reason I point
out that it was so close to her hand is
because she was that close to help. Whatever happened happened
(21:36):
so fast and furious Joe that even though she had
her phone in working order, she could not dial even
nine one one. She didn't have the ability.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
And you know, obvious to say the phone is fully
charged or charged to the point where it's it's functional,
if you show up and that's a weird that's actually
a weird thing to have happen. It always caught my
tent when I would show up at a scene. And
this goes back all the way back to the days
when we had landlines as well. When you're inside or
(22:09):
adjacent to a person that has died and their phone
is ringing, and it really kind of sends a chill
up your spine. And then you know, as years went
past and we got more into digital, they you know,
and we would hear buzzing, uh perhaps and it would
be coming from the pocket of the decedent, you know,
at the scene. I know that seems very you know,
(22:30):
kind of passe, uh, but it is. It is something
that kind of breathes life into the case, and that
the fact that she had it right there really did.
I think that, you know, we could probably sit back
and speculate quite a bit about how you would get
this young woman to pull over on the side of
(22:52):
the road. And what was she inclined I think to
that kind of behavior. Did she have like a big
heart for people that were in distress? All right, just
think about it, you know, stranger danger. Maybe she saw
somebody that flagged her down inside the road at that
particular and why that why that location beneath an overpass,
(23:15):
was that person inhabiting that area? Is there evidence up
the hill from there where maybe they had been living
beneath the bridge where their footprints that led away, Because Dave,
given the level of trauma that they're talking about here
that Amber was subjected to, there would be significant blood evidence.
(23:37):
I would think that had transitioned onto the perpetrator, whoever
did this, Because here's key, because when I'm thinking about
this initially, when we began to talk about this case,
I had had thought that maybe, you know, someone had
punched her or had grabbed her by the back of
(24:01):
the head and perhaps slammed her face into into the pavement.
But Dave, this is one big piece of information that's
being released. There's a weapon involved here. There's specifically a
weapon that has been utilized with this poor young woman
(24:23):
that has brought about her death. So the question is,
how do you get her to stop that vehicle in
broad in broad daylight. And we're not talking about you know,
we're at dusk or anything like that. We're talking about
in the mid afternoon, and she's going to pull over
(24:45):
to that point. And it's not like she got stopped.
The car was stopped in the middle of the road, okay,
where people are having to go around the car. The
car is there parked, okay, there's items still in the car,
nothing is gone, and she is taken on the side
(25:08):
of the road and killed right there on the spot.
The body is not removed at all, and from what
we can assess at this point in time, clothing has
not been disrupted. I think that the police do in
fact know more obviously than they're letting letting be known.
But here's the key who would be motivated to do
(25:30):
this to her, you know, who would be in her circle.
My understanding, Dave, is that she was actually engaged and
She's in the last stages of her of her degree.
I think she was going to do something like fashion
design or something like this. And she had met a
young man while in London, of all places, and they
(25:55):
had dated for I think two years, but he was
still in your role, you know. In Amber's case, one
(26:17):
of the questions I believe would be how how was
she killed? We have some clues that have been presented
to us, not just by the police, but also come
(26:38):
from Amber's mother as well. Evidence that was clearly displayed
literally at her viewing for the funeral. Dave.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
I thought that was shocking when she the mother said
the funeral home said we need to put a long
sleeve a outfit on her cover her arms for visitation,
and her mother says she put up a fight. This
didn't come from law enforcement, although they did back it up, Joe.
(27:10):
This came from her mom. Her mom's frustrated and she
not at the police. Yeah, she's not. I want to
be crystal clear on this. She's not mad at police.
They are investigating, and they are Can you imagine having
your twenty three year old daughter's life ripped to shreds
and now they're digging through the piles just trying to
They're trying to solve a crime here, which means they're
(27:33):
going to find out everything they can, good and bad
about the victim and her associates, mom, dad, family members,
and you mentioned the fiance. She's Amper Burbillia grew up
in upstate New York. She only came to Riy County,
South Carolina after she graduated high school and attended college
right there at Oriy County. She did travel to London
(27:56):
spent two time over there where she met her fiance.
He is still in Europe when this happens. She is
I mentioned in the very first segment. Police came out
and said she's a nice lady. Wasn't doing anything wrong,
not a criminal, not illegal, because there are a lot
of people who said it looked like that was a
place for a meetup site for a drug deal. You know,
(28:18):
the location of her body and the car is running.
But when you look at this and find out mom
says funeral directors has put long sleeves on her recover
up the defensive wounds that she had marks all over
her arms. That was shocking to me, Joe, because that
indicates a fight that took place outside of that car,
(28:39):
and her face is so damaged they think she's shot
in the face. When you're starting to investigate, where do
you start looking. You've got real issues here with the
victim in terms of her injuries that you can't even
have you ever have you ever covered a case like this, Joe,
where the wound was so bad there was an assumption
(29:02):
as to what caused it, but it turned out to
be false.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Yeah. Yeah, Because people automatically, when you see most of
the time, when you see a tremendous amount of blood,
particularly around the head of many people, at least particularly
those of us that haven't had as many as many cases, say,
for instance, as someone such as myself or my other colleagues,
you might automatically believe that so much force was used
(29:28):
here that it had to be a gunshot wound. And
that's just not the case. As a matter of fact,
this is more This is far more complex than a
simple gunshot wound. Okay, just so that we understand that,
But let me back up just for a second. One
of the big striking points here, and I folks really
need to kind of understand this big piece of evidence
(29:53):
are her arms and this is why this is not
like this is not like she got flagged down by somebody, Okay,
and they've drawn her attention. Maybe they're showing her something
on the side of the road and they're talking to her,
and someone comes up behind her and strikes her in
(30:14):
the head. Amber had awareness, Dave, she saw this coming.
She she actually saw this coming. And these these these
strikes that she has sustained are so over the top
that there would have been a tremendous amount of force
(30:36):
in facilitating this. And there's an instrument of some kind. Now,
when I say instrument, don't misconstrue that I can't say
that this specifically was a hammer. For all I know,
it was a rock. I don't know, but it was something.
It was some instrument. You do not do this with
your bare hands, okay, if you, if you would, you'd
(30:57):
have to be a very, very mighty my person to
transfer that kind of energy from say a simple punch.
Because we're talking about they have stated that she was
struck twice, all right, Well, it was so much force
that there was a tremendous amount of tissue disruption and blood.
(31:21):
And whoever did this felt as though that the first
blow wasn't good enough. Let that sink in just for
a second. Now when she would have been brought into
the autopsy, Sweet, I'm hoping that they did this. I
hope her body was completely x rayed. And the reason
(31:42):
is this, when you're performing an examination on someone that
has sustained this level of trauma, before you ever open
the head, Okay, to be quite blunt with you, you
have to understand where all these little fracture lines are. Okay,
(32:03):
so you're going to have if you think about I
like to describe it this way with my students in particular,
if you think about a pane of glass, okay, and
you're shooting maybe a BB through a pained glass, you
can fracture that glass, and that center point of impact
will create a defect or a whole but spider webing
(32:24):
out from that, you'll have all these kind of curve
linear markings that are going our fractures that are happening
in glass. Think about that with a skull. So if
you've got this energy transference of this whatever this item
is that she was attacked with, you can actually have
a center point of impact and you'll be able to
actually take the skin and put it back together. You
(32:48):
can see the abraided area, you can see the elacerated area,
and adjacent to that there's another strike. And you can
actually have cross communicating fractures or overlying fractures, and it
becomes very complex. And this is why X rays are
so important. If you can X ray the body beforehand,
you have a you have a presentation that is not
(33:14):
as confusing if you're looking at a radiograph, because when
you're just eyeballing this, they I can tell you, I
know exactly what they saw. They're going to see masses
of clotted blood and disrupted tissue, and you're not going
to be able to appreciate these little fine lines. That's
why if anybody, any of our friends out there, if
you've ever had a fracture and you go to the
(33:36):
emergency room and they show you the show you the
x ray they've taken, Well, your arm is all swollen,
or your leg is all swollen, or maybe it's a gash.
You can't really appreciate that clinically, But you look at
the X ray and you can see all the little
fracture lines. Well, that gives you an idea, I think,
at least as to her position. Releve To the instrument
(34:01):
that impacted her head, whatever this was, and it's a
tremendous amount of force, because we know that when they
arrived on the scene, and this is the EMTs making
this initial assessment, because they checked her for signs of
life and they immediately Dave. They called it at the scene,
they said that you know, she's gone. You know, it's
(34:24):
not like they started doing chest compressions and put her
on a gurney, put her into the back of the
ambulance and rolled to the nearest hospital. She was obviously
deceased at that point in time, and you know, when
they would have gotten there, she still would have been
warmed to the touch day. There's a high probability she
would have been and she had no signs of life
at all.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Now we know from the injuries to her face being
described as gunshot wound at first, and it was only
after an autopsy was done that the medical examiner said no,
it was blunt force trauma to her head. And then
her mother giving the description of Amber's arms and actually
(35:07):
saying Amber did not go down without a fight, suggesting
that the funeral home told her the long sleeves to
cover up the wounds that means whatever took place took
place on the side of the road. She wasn't killed
someplace else and dumped there. Her car is still running,
her purse is in the car and it still has
(35:29):
cash in it, Her phone is laying next to her,
within inches of her fingertips, and again her body shows
defensive wounds and that she had been fighting. I was
I think maybe the mother mentioned there were rocks along
the side of the underpass there. There's a large homeless
(35:50):
population in that area, not like right there at the spot,
but in general, and trying to figure out what happened
that led to this. We know a rough estimate of
time two thirty in the afternoon, but after two thirty,
when she doesn't get on the phone anymore but she
(36:11):
is receiving calls and text and four pm, when she's
supposed to be at work and doesn't show up. We
know the nine one one call was by somebody who
was driving by the location, ostensibly saying I saw this,
But the person doesn't wait. They keep going, which is
odd to me. If I saw something, I would think
(36:32):
I would stay there until help arrived. If I saw something,
I would check the body, wouldn't you.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Yeah, yeah, I would. I don't understand this idea, you know,
particularly if you v yourself as uh, I don't know,
good Samaritan, Yeah, a good Samaritan or just somebody that
has some level of compassion that you would want to
I mean, you've obviously seen somebody in distress and they're
(36:58):
over on the side of the road, laying there. What
why wouldn't you stop? Uh? And I think, you know,
that's one of the glaring things here for me, because
that person might have a significant nugget of information that
they might not even know that they possess, because you know,
you'd mentioned four wheelers and four wheelers imply kind of
(37:24):
an intimate knowledge of the area. You're not just going
to blindly ride around an area certainly adjacent to a
thoroughfare like this on a four wheeler unless you feel
completely comfortable in that environment.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Do you want to add something to this, Joe, that
idea of people on four wheelers riding around. I can't
remember if that was in a replice reporter, if it
was just people talking, you know, it's just one of
those things that popped up. But the nine one one
call hasn't been released. It could have come from anybody.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Yeah, it could maybe, you know, and again it's late
in the afternoon. Maybe it's it's somebody operating a car
and they're going down the road and they're trying to
go you know, think about the time of day. They're
having to get to their work, just like Amber was
trying to get to her work. Or perhaps they were
(38:14):
attempting to go pick up their kids or whatever the
case might be.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
This is on their way to the beach for party weekend.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Yeah, and the last thing they want to do is stop.
They've been planning the trip. So I don't know what
else the police have here moving forward with this case.
I think one of the things that I would certainly
be inclined to want to research in her case, how
(38:43):
many how many other potential attacks like this have occurred,
you know, they're in Horay County that have some kind
of similarity to this. I would think that they would
have the ability to kind of uh maybe correlate, you know,
(39:05):
any other actions by somebody uh that uh maybe attacks
individuals with rock or they have a hammer with them
or you know, a crescent wrench for all I know,
you know, who who would be inclined to do this
have they ever hooked anybody up on charges and this
extends out beyond Hory County, any of the adjacent counties
(39:26):
like this. So I'm hoping, I'm really hoping that there
will be maybe as a result of you know, our
commenting on this on body Bags or perhaps some other
platform that will draw attention to it, because you know,
(39:46):
this is kind of overshadowed. You know, the first case,
you know, one of the cases you had mentioned about
that it's going to stick with me forever, and ever's
Heather Elvis. We covered that extensively with Nancy. Yeah, and
so you had several things that had occurred over a
period of time in this general vicinity. And isn't it
(40:07):
a shame that Amber's case has kind of gotten lost
in the shuffle. And I hate to say that, but
you know, there's a chance here, you know, there's still
a chance to belie the police are interested in getting
that's solved. Whoever did this is I have to say it.
(40:29):
They're a madman, whoever they are, that would brutalize her
to this extent and generate these kind of injuries and
then just leave her laying there. What would be the
purpose of doing this to her and then leaving all
of her belongings. You're not even going to hop in
her car and drive away, which, let's face it, they
(40:49):
easily could have. The car was running, man, and you've
gotten money there, you're not going to take that. You've
got a cell phone there, You're not going to take that.
Why is it that someone would single out this beautiful
young college student and brutalize her like that? I have
no idea, but I do have an idea that there
is more information out there. And listen, for all of
(41:13):
you here that are within the sound of my voice,
I urge you. I urge you that if you have
any and I mean any information in regards to Amber's case,
I beg of you to please reach out to the
Hoary County Police Department. And that number, let me get it,
(41:35):
let me read it out to you is eight four
to three nine eight four seven seven, and that's their
tip line again. It's eight four to three nine one
five eight four seven seven. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
(41:59):
this his body back
Body dams, but Joseph's got more. Going back to my
teenage years, one of the most joyful memories I have
are my best friend and I going to the beach.
(00:25):
And it wasn't just any beach, it was Myrtle Beach.
And my buddy's parents had a condo that's sat there
on that beautiful wind swept area. And you know, when
(00:48):
you're a kid, you're in your you know, early teens
and up to your mid teens, you just all you
want to do is spend time out there in those waves,
body surfing, hanging out. And it was a place of peace.
But you know, I gotta tell you every location, every location,
(01:15):
no matter how peaceful, has some story of horror attached
to it. Now it might not be your horror, but
it is somebody else's, and you need to take that
into consideration, particularly when it comes to the case we're
(01:36):
going to talk about today. This is an unsolved case
of a beautiful young woman who was found adjacent to
a roadway beneath an overpass, apparently beaten to death. Today
(02:02):
we're going to talk about the death of a young
woman named Amber. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is
body bags. David, let me ask you a question. Do
you do you remember having to go to a location.
(02:24):
I know our younger friends are not going to have
a sense of this, they're gonna think it's nutty, But
do you have memories of going to a location to
physically pay a bill? Where you would go and pay
any kind of utility bill a whether it's cable, electricity,
(02:50):
or phone. I've actually paid. I used to have to
go and pay a telephone bill, and this is so
nutty when I think about it. I would go to
a local pharmacy to pay my telephone bill because these
little businesses would intake money and do billing or however
(03:11):
was handled, particularly in rural spots. Did that ever, Did
that ever occur for you? Do you have a memory
of that?
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Actually? You know, in putting this story together about Amber Bravilia,
she paid her went to town to pay her cable bill.
And that's what we used to have to do if
you didn't mail it in, you know, if you and
that was one of those things where I'm one of
those people I just want to make sure it's there,
So rather than mail a check back in the day,
(03:40):
just go and stand there and get it paid, get
your receipt, move on, no problems. And that's what she
was doing. It's something so uncommon now that if you
were to go to well, our power company around here,
if you go to pay the bill, you go up
there waiting to meet a person and give them cash
or whatever, and they actually the tellers now tell you
go to the kiosk. She's over here as a computer
(04:01):
that basically go online and pay it with your debit card,
you know, not here or not. I'm like, but can't
I just hand you my card?
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Exactly? I do that.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
So Amber Burbilia starts that that actually is the starting
point for the story. There's a lot of background that
you'll need to know, but this is where we started
the timeline because we know at a very certain time
of a very certain day she was at this location.
She's actually seen at that location paying that bill at
(04:33):
one point thirty in the day. And this is from
twenty twelve, so I think back twelve years ago, you know,
it was something that we still did then. I think
it was in that crossover time period.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
It was, you know, in that in that period of
time where well I remember, you know, the big thing was,
well I don't want to put my personal information online,
particularly as it you know, as it applies to a
banking or checking account or something.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
I still get icky about that.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Oh of course I do too, you know, just physically.
And look, I got to give you some credit. You know,
you said that you would go and pay your bill
physically so that you could guarantee that it was going
to be in somebody's hand. Well, I would go and
pay a bill that wasn't the case. My My rationale
is I would wait till the last minute to go
(05:28):
and do it to make sure that my services weren't
cut off. I'm not saying that my services have ever
been cut off, but those records are sealed at this point.
But what I'm saying is is that the convenience of
that and we I think that many people would view
it as an inconvenience, but it also you know, back then,
(05:48):
you knew the people on the other side of the
counter you were paying this to most of the time.
And this world that we're in is completely different than
twenty twelve. And man, that's what at the time of
this recording fourteen years ago, I guess twelve years Yeah, it's.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Okay, Joe hanging there. You've been in London for a
couple of weeks.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Yeah, absolutely, I've got London.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Bottom line being bottom line, we have this as the
starting point of the timeline because within three hours from
paying that bill, less than two miles away, her body
was found next to her running car and she's dead.
(06:35):
And at first they think she's been shot in the face.
And as they being investigator's part everybody on scene, they
see Amber Rebellia's body next to her running car. Car
was still running under an overpass. There are no witnesses around,
and her cell phone is within inches of her fingers.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
So we're in the area of Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach.
It's a Friday afternoon, just after four pm when her
body is found. And for those of us who have
been to Myrtle Beach North Myrtle Beach, Friday afternoon is
travel day. That's when people are coming in. You take
half a day at work to get to the beach
that afternoon, you know. And that's what Myrtle Beach and
(07:23):
North Myrtle Beach are built on, is the tourist dollars
coming to the beach. So you've got a lot of
traffic going around that area, which is kind of problematic
for police, and from an investigation standpoint, you have a
body next to her car just after four on a Friday,
and figure out what happened next when there are no witnesses.
(07:46):
The call, by the way, that came to nine to
one one was a passerby. They don't wait. They merely
call nine one one, and we don't know the content
of the call, but we know that they said, hey,
there is a woman or a person outside of their
car and the overpasses are on the ground that it
was pretty vague from what we've gathered. They haven't released
(08:06):
the call and that's it. The people didn't stay around
to wait. They merely made the call and when officers
arrived at the scene, no eyewitnesses and Amber Barbilia was
declared dead at the scene.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah, the police are really have really played this one.
Close to the vest. Overpasses themselves create an interesting environment
to work a case. I've worked several on roadways. Obviously,
I've worked car crashes that have been you know, that
(08:40):
have taken place beneath an overpass, but I've also worked
homicides and one of the creepy things about overpasses. If
you've ever noticed, is that when you are driving through
or driving underneath it, you know, it's generally in a
flash you don't pay attention to the environment. But if
(09:04):
you ever slow down enough and take a look beneath
the roadway that is literally over your head at this
point in time, there are actually many times encampments that
are beneath these bridges that act as the overpass. I
(09:25):
think one of the biggest questions, Dave is how how
would you how would you get Amber to stop her
car at that specific sheltered location. The car, if I
remember correctly, is running when they get there, so you
(09:46):
know you have sufficient fuel. There were no flat tires
that we know of, which is you know, let's face it,
the main reason people pull over on the shoulder of
the road because you've picked up some kind of debris
or you know, piece of angle wire and kincher tar.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
You mentioned full tank of gas, you know, not worrying.
That's actually part of the timeline, Joe. When we went back,
we found we investigators trying to figure out what happened.
They actually have Amber Rebilia on video on surveillance camera
paying for gas that day at twelve thirty or so
(10:28):
on her way to pay the bill at the cable company.
So we have her two times where we know exactly
where she is getting gas, paying for it, and then
at the cable company. Because when the police were looking
over the video, they were looking to see if anybody
was following her. Yeah, you know, are we seeing any
consistency here which they didn't find or have not let
(10:48):
on that they found anything. I say that because this
is an unsolved case. We don't know who did this. Joe.
I'm hoping that somebody listening to this, we'll share this
with somebody else. Because Amber Rebiliu's story got lost in
the shuffle. I've talked to people in that area Joe
(11:10):
online that are unaware of this story, and it's because
of two people, Britney Drexel and Heather Elvis. I'm not
blaming them, by the way, just pointing out Britney Drexel
went missing in two thousand and nine from Myrtle Beach,
A beautiful high school kid. You know, she's the girl
who went to spring break at Myrtle Beach from New
(11:32):
York without her mom knowing, told her mom she was
going to spend the weekend with some friends and ends
up at Myrtle Beach and goes missing. And it was
years before they solved that one. And then there's the
story of Heather Elvis. Heather Elvis went missing six months
after the death of Amber Barbilia. While they're still working
(11:53):
this case and trying to get media attention for Amber,
Heather Elvis goes missing. And so that's kind of how
this this story got lost in the shuffle. And as
we're trying to bring awareness that somebody had to have
seen something, Joe, somebody does what happened?
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yeah, And going back, you know, thinking about this investigatively,
we've got two exchanges of money that are going on here.
You know, we we had mentioned or you had mentioned
rightly that we know that she had topped off her
car all right with gas. So how was that transaction conducted?
(12:30):
Did she pay at the pump or did she go
into the store in the store, Yeah, and so if
she goes into the store, what method did she use
to pay with? Well, if you've got bills on hand,
you know, we we we just kind of I think, uh,
(12:51):
we just kind of assumed that everybody pays with car.
That's that's not the case, and it certainly wasn't the case.
Back then you've mentioned I just gotten back from London,
David came back with physical pounds in my pocket because
most of the places I went to, uh, they wanted plastic,
you know, of some kind uh which I hate, I loathe,
(13:13):
but but you know, you think about.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
A quick sidebark. Can you use your debit card in London?
Speaker 1 (13:21):
You can? However, I would be very careful doing that.
You know. You want something like a credit card where
you have more accountabilities. Yeah, and you can't dig into
somebody's checking account and that's you know that that's when
(13:42):
you think about Amber's case. You know, did she have
a wad of cash and you're thinking about this? Maybe
she's checking checking a list here. Well, it's time for
me to I'm going into the weekend. I want to
top off my car, I need to pay the bill.
And you've got these points of opportunity for somebody to
(14:02):
observe her, you know, and who would be in her
sphere that would and when we get to these details, Dave,
her death is just absolute ghastly. Who would show up
with this amount of violence in their heart towards this
beautiful young woman who from what we understand and what
(14:24):
the police have related and her family was as gentle
as Lamb. But somewhere out there there is a very
very dark soul that's inhabiting perhaps still that area. And
I agree with you, Dave. Somebody knows something. Friends. It's
(15:02):
one thing if you walk into a house and you
have an individual that's deceased, automatically you know a lot
about that person. Perhaps it's a domicile, it's where they
hang their hat, if you will, or maybe they're visiting someone.
(15:23):
But Dave, let me tell you something. You talk about
a nightmare when you're talking about a roadway which is
a major thoroughfare in this case, and you have a
young woman laying out next to the road, just do
the quick arithmetic on this. Yeah, you've got any number
(15:45):
of suspects you know that should be driving, you know,
to and fro.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Interesting to point out, Joe, And when I looked at
the maps, the overpass was a very busy road. The
road that her body was found on was underneath the
busy overpass on kind of an offshoot road. You would
be a local to use it. It wouldn't be something
that you would normally head into It doesn't really need to.
(16:11):
You know, it's a almost like an access road to
a degree, but it is like you drive over the
bridge or the overpass rather and turning onto this road
to go to a specific area. You know. That's where
it's really odd. And before anyone thinks casting aspersions on
her character that it was a meet up for something,
because that was suggested, the law enforcement has said, and
(16:36):
I don't think I've ever seen this before, Joe, where
a law officer stood up and said Amber Burbilia did
nothing wrong. Amber Burbilia wasn't involved in criminal activity, She
wasn't doing anything illegal, she was just being a college
kid on a normal day. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Think about what a bold statement. That is huge? Uh,
you know, because and this is and as I mentioned,
this is a case where the police uh you know,
I use the term there. Uh, they're playing it close
through the vest. But we have this huge chunk of information.
And that's not something that just kind of, you know,
(17:16):
mysteriously descends from the heavens, you know, and enters into
you know, into the the case file of the god.
This is something that they've done digging with, They've done
background checks on her, they've you know, they've probably run
credit reports. I mean, they've done everything that you would
think that that you would want, you know, where you
(17:36):
could actually harvest as much information about her life, because
this is a terrifying case when you think about the
level of brutality, just that alone would would motivate. And
I'm not dismissing other cases, but when you have a
citizen that has found deceased on the side of the road,
(17:57):
that has absolutely been brutalized like that, and the police
are left scratching their head, they're going to think, you know,
what in the world would drive one human being to
do this to another human being and then kind of
exit the scene very quickly in some manner. I have
to assume perhaps a car. I have no idea. Maybe
(18:19):
they left on foot. I don't know. But her car
is still running. It hasn't run out of gas, and
we know that she had I think she had been
texting like up till like two thirty, I think in
the afternoon, and then are approximating that, and she's found
roughly around four.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
To get to the nitty gritty here, yeah, Amber, as
we mentioned earlier, she stops by Murphy Gas, tops off
her tank, the inside the cameras on the inside of
the store, pick her up. Inside the store, she tops
off her tank. She then heads over to pay the
billet time warner around one thirty. So we have this
(18:58):
little thing there, okay, of what she was doing that
day now from one thirty until her body is found,
say four thirty ish. Yeah, you mentioned a minute ago
she was on her phone texting until about two thirty.
Very important in this timeline because as you notice, we've
been able to narrow it down, you know, from Gassi
at noon, paint a bill at one thirty. Now we
(19:21):
know she's on her phone texting until two thirty. Then
her phone goes silent at two thirty ish. The reason
that's important is because you mentioned there was no eyewitness
on the scene. A nine to one one call was
placed that said, and we paraphrasing because we have not
(19:45):
seen the actual call or the dialogue, but somebody called
and said they had seen a body outside of a car,
looked hurt. And from my investigation thus far, I believe
it was some guys writing on four wheelers and they
were writing by called nine one one and didn't want
to have anything to do with it, just kept on trucking.
(20:08):
I think the police know more on that, but that's
for the investigation bottom line, as there was nobody there.
When police and investigating paramedics arrived, they thought at first
that Amber Babilia was shot in the face. The damage
to her face was so bad. We've narrowed this down
this time gap between two thirty and by the way,
(20:31):
she was due at working four that afternoon. She always
was on time. She wasn't one of these people who
showed up late. She wasn't a person to do a
no call, no show, so much so that when she
didn't show up at four, it was only a couple
of minutes after four when they called her coworkers calling me, hey,
what's up. She's always here. And the reason I point
(20:51):
that out, Joe, because we know twoint thirty was the
end time for her using her phone. We know the
call comes in just after four pm from her coworker
and doesn't get answered, it goes to voicemail. When amper
Borbilia is found on the ground outside of her still
running vehicle, her cell phone was within inches of her hand,
(21:13):
but when officers arrived on scene they could hear it chiming,
you know, text messages, emails, things like that that were
popping up on her phone. And the reason I point
out that it was so close to her hand is
because she was that close to help. Whatever happened happened
(21:36):
so fast and furious Joe that even though she had
her phone in working order, she could not dial even
nine one one. She didn't have the ability.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
And you know, obvious to say the phone is fully
charged or charged to the point where it's it's functional,
if you show up and that's a weird that's actually
a weird thing to have happen. It always caught my
tent when I would show up at a scene. And
this goes back all the way back to the days
when we had landlines as well. When you're inside or
(22:09):
adjacent to a person that has died and their phone
is ringing, and it really kind of sends a chill
up your spine. And then you know, as years went
past and we got more into digital, they you know,
and we would hear buzzing, uh perhaps and it would
be coming from the pocket of the decedent, you know,
at the scene. I know that seems very you know,
(22:30):
kind of passe, uh, but it is. It is something
that kind of breathes life into the case, and that
the fact that she had it right there really did.
I think that, you know, we could probably sit back
and speculate quite a bit about how you would get
this young woman to pull over on the side of
(22:52):
the road. And what was she inclined I think to
that kind of behavior. Did she have like a big
heart for people that were in distress? All right, just
think about it, you know, stranger danger. Maybe she saw
somebody that flagged her down inside the road at that
particular and why that why that location beneath an overpass,
(23:15):
was that person inhabiting that area? Is there evidence up
the hill from there where maybe they had been living
beneath the bridge where their footprints that led away, Because Dave,
given the level of trauma that they're talking about here
that Amber was subjected to, there would be significant blood evidence.
(23:37):
I would think that had transitioned onto the perpetrator, whoever
did this, Because here's key, because when I'm thinking about
this initially, when we began to talk about this case,
I had had thought that maybe, you know, someone had
punched her or had grabbed her by the back of
(24:01):
the head and perhaps slammed her face into into the pavement.
But Dave, this is one big piece of information that's
being released. There's a weapon involved here. There's specifically a
weapon that has been utilized with this poor young woman
(24:23):
that has brought about her death. So the question is,
how do you get her to stop that vehicle in
broad in broad daylight. And we're not talking about you know,
we're at dusk or anything like that. We're talking about
in the mid afternoon, and she's going to pull over
(24:45):
to that point. And it's not like she got stopped.
The car was stopped in the middle of the road, okay,
where people are having to go around the car. The
car is there parked, okay, there's items still in the car,
nothing is gone, and she is taken on the side
(25:08):
of the road and killed right there on the spot.
The body is not removed at all, and from what
we can assess at this point in time, clothing has
not been disrupted. I think that the police do in
fact know more obviously than they're letting letting be known.
But here's the key who would be motivated to do
(25:30):
this to her, you know, who would be in her circle.
My understanding, Dave, is that she was actually engaged and
She's in the last stages of her of her degree.
I think she was going to do something like fashion
design or something like this. And she had met a
young man while in London, of all places, and they
(25:55):
had dated for I think two years, but he was
still in your role, you know. In Amber's case, one
(26:17):
of the questions I believe would be how how was
she killed? We have some clues that have been presented
to us, not just by the police, but also come
(26:38):
from Amber's mother as well. Evidence that was clearly displayed
literally at her viewing for the funeral. Dave.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
I thought that was shocking when she the mother said
the funeral home said we need to put a long
sleeve a outfit on her cover her arms for visitation,
and her mother says she put up a fight. This
didn't come from law enforcement, although they did back it up, Joe.
(27:10):
This came from her mom. Her mom's frustrated and she
not at the police. Yeah, she's not. I want to
be crystal clear on this. She's not mad at police.
They are investigating, and they are Can you imagine having
your twenty three year old daughter's life ripped to shreds
and now they're digging through the piles just trying to
They're trying to solve a crime here, which means they're
(27:33):
going to find out everything they can, good and bad
about the victim and her associates, mom, dad, family members,
and you mentioned the fiance. She's Amper Burbillia grew up
in upstate New York. She only came to Riy County,
South Carolina after she graduated high school and attended college
right there at Oriy County. She did travel to London
(27:56):
spent two time over there where she met her fiance.
He is still in Europe when this happens. She is
I mentioned in the very first segment. Police came out
and said she's a nice lady. Wasn't doing anything wrong,
not a criminal, not illegal, because there are a lot
of people who said it looked like that was a
place for a meetup site for a drug deal. You know,
(28:18):
the location of her body and the car is running.
But when you look at this and find out mom
says funeral directors has put long sleeves on her recover
up the defensive wounds that she had marks all over
her arms. That was shocking to me, Joe, because that
indicates a fight that took place outside of that car,
(28:39):
and her face is so damaged they think she's shot
in the face. When you're starting to investigate, where do
you start looking. You've got real issues here with the
victim in terms of her injuries that you can't even
have you ever have you ever covered a case like this, Joe,
where the wound was so bad there was an assumption
(29:02):
as to what caused it, but it turned out to
be false.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Yeah. Yeah, Because people automatically, when you see most of
the time, when you see a tremendous amount of blood,
particularly around the head of many people, at least particularly
those of us that haven't had as many as many cases, say,
for instance, as someone such as myself or my other colleagues,
you might automatically believe that so much force was used
(29:28):
here that it had to be a gunshot wound. And
that's just not the case. As a matter of fact,
this is more This is far more complex than a
simple gunshot wound. Okay, just so that we understand that,
But let me back up just for a second. One
of the big striking points here, and I folks really
need to kind of understand this big piece of evidence
(29:53):
are her arms and this is why this is not
like this is not like she got flagged down by somebody, Okay,
and they've drawn her attention. Maybe they're showing her something
on the side of the road and they're talking to her,
and someone comes up behind her and strikes her in
(30:14):
the head. Amber had awareness, Dave, she saw this coming.
She she actually saw this coming. And these these these
strikes that she has sustained are so over the top
that there would have been a tremendous amount of force
(30:36):
in facilitating this. And there's an instrument of some kind. Now,
when I say instrument, don't misconstrue that I can't say
that this specifically was a hammer. For all I know,
it was a rock. I don't know, but it was something.
It was some instrument. You do not do this with
your bare hands, okay, if you, if you would, you'd
(30:57):
have to be a very, very mighty my person to
transfer that kind of energy from say a simple punch.
Because we're talking about they have stated that she was
struck twice, all right, Well, it was so much force
that there was a tremendous amount of tissue disruption and blood.
(31:21):
And whoever did this felt as though that the first
blow wasn't good enough. Let that sink in just for
a second. Now when she would have been brought into
the autopsy, Sweet, I'm hoping that they did this. I
hope her body was completely x rayed. And the reason
(31:42):
is this, when you're performing an examination on someone that
has sustained this level of trauma, before you ever open
the head, Okay, to be quite blunt with you, you
have to understand where all these little fracture lines are. Okay,
(32:03):
so you're going to have if you think about I
like to describe it this way with my students in particular,
if you think about a pane of glass, okay, and
you're shooting maybe a BB through a pained glass, you
can fracture that glass, and that center point of impact
will create a defect or a whole but spider webing
(32:24):
out from that, you'll have all these kind of curve
linear markings that are going our fractures that are happening
in glass. Think about that with a skull. So if
you've got this energy transference of this whatever this item
is that she was attacked with, you can actually have
a center point of impact and you'll be able to
actually take the skin and put it back together. You
(32:48):
can see the abraided area, you can see the elacerated area,
and adjacent to that there's another strike. And you can
actually have cross communicating fractures or overlying fractures, and it
becomes very complex. And this is why X rays are
so important. If you can X ray the body beforehand,
you have a you have a presentation that is not
(33:14):
as confusing if you're looking at a radiograph, because when
you're just eyeballing this, they I can tell you, I
know exactly what they saw. They're going to see masses
of clotted blood and disrupted tissue, and you're not going
to be able to appreciate these little fine lines. That's
why if anybody, any of our friends out there, if
you've ever had a fracture and you go to the
(33:36):
emergency room and they show you the show you the
x ray they've taken, Well, your arm is all swollen,
or your leg is all swollen, or maybe it's a gash.
You can't really appreciate that clinically, But you look at
the X ray and you can see all the little
fracture lines. Well, that gives you an idea, I think,
at least as to her position. Releve To the instrument
(34:01):
that impacted her head, whatever this was, and it's a
tremendous amount of force, because we know that when they
arrived on the scene, and this is the EMTs making
this initial assessment, because they checked her for signs of
life and they immediately Dave. They called it at the scene,
they said that you know, she's gone. You know, it's
(34:24):
not like they started doing chest compressions and put her
on a gurney, put her into the back of the
ambulance and rolled to the nearest hospital. She was obviously
deceased at that point in time, and you know, when
they would have gotten there, she still would have been
warmed to the touch day. There's a high probability she
would have been and she had no signs of life
at all.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Now we know from the injuries to her face being
described as gunshot wound at first, and it was only
after an autopsy was done that the medical examiner said no,
it was blunt force trauma to her head. And then
her mother giving the description of Amber's arms and actually
(35:07):
saying Amber did not go down without a fight, suggesting
that the funeral home told her the long sleeves to
cover up the wounds that means whatever took place took
place on the side of the road. She wasn't killed
someplace else and dumped there. Her car is still running,
her purse is in the car and it still has
(35:29):
cash in it, Her phone is laying next to her,
within inches of her fingertips, and again her body shows
defensive wounds and that she had been fighting. I was
I think maybe the mother mentioned there were rocks along
the side of the underpass there. There's a large homeless
(35:50):
population in that area, not like right there at the spot,
but in general, and trying to figure out what happened
that led to this. We know a rough estimate of
time two thirty in the afternoon, but after two thirty,
when she doesn't get on the phone anymore but she
(36:11):
is receiving calls and text and four pm, when she's
supposed to be at work and doesn't show up. We
know the nine one one call was by somebody who
was driving by the location, ostensibly saying I saw this,
But the person doesn't wait. They keep going, which is
odd to me. If I saw something, I would think
(36:32):
I would stay there until help arrived. If I saw something,
I would check the body, wouldn't you.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Yeah, yeah, I would. I don't understand this idea, you know,
particularly if you v yourself as uh, I don't know,
good Samaritan, Yeah, a good Samaritan or just somebody that
has some level of compassion that you would want to
I mean, you've obviously seen somebody in distress and they're
(36:58):
over on the side of the road, laying there. What
why wouldn't you stop? Uh? And I think, you know,
that's one of the glaring things here for me, because
that person might have a significant nugget of information that
they might not even know that they possess, because you know,
you'd mentioned four wheelers and four wheelers imply kind of
(37:24):
an intimate knowledge of the area. You're not just going
to blindly ride around an area certainly adjacent to a
thoroughfare like this on a four wheeler unless you feel
completely comfortable in that environment.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Do you want to add something to this, Joe, that
idea of people on four wheelers riding around. I can't
remember if that was in a replice reporter, if it
was just people talking, you know, it's just one of
those things that popped up. But the nine one one
call hasn't been released. It could have come from anybody.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Yeah, it could maybe, you know, and again it's late
in the afternoon. Maybe it's it's somebody operating a car
and they're going down the road and they're trying to
go you know, think about the time of day. They're
having to get to their work, just like Amber was
trying to get to her work. Or perhaps they were
(38:14):
attempting to go pick up their kids or whatever the
case might be.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
This is on their way to the beach for party weekend.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Yeah, and the last thing they want to do is stop.
They've been planning the trip. So I don't know what
else the police have here moving forward with this case.
I think one of the things that I would certainly
be inclined to want to research in her case, how
(38:43):
many how many other potential attacks like this have occurred,
you know, they're in Horay County that have some kind
of similarity to this. I would think that they would
have the ability to kind of uh maybe correlate, you know,
(39:05):
any other actions by somebody uh that uh maybe attacks
individuals with rock or they have a hammer with them
or you know, a crescent wrench for all I know,
you know, who who would be inclined to do this
have they ever hooked anybody up on charges and this
extends out beyond Hory County, any of the adjacent counties
(39:26):
like this. So I'm hoping, I'm really hoping that there
will be maybe as a result of you know, our
commenting on this on body Bags or perhaps some other
platform that will draw attention to it, because you know,
(39:46):
this is kind of overshadowed. You know, the first case,
you know, one of the cases you had mentioned about
that it's going to stick with me forever, and ever's
Heather Elvis. We covered that extensively with Nancy. Yeah, and
so you had several things that had occurred over a
period of time in this general vicinity. And isn't it
(40:07):
a shame that Amber's case has kind of gotten lost
in the shuffle. And I hate to say that, but
you know, there's a chance here, you know, there's still
a chance to belie the police are interested in getting
that's solved. Whoever did this is I have to say it.
(40:29):
They're a madman, whoever they are, that would brutalize her
to this extent and generate these kind of injuries and
then just leave her laying there. What would be the
purpose of doing this to her and then leaving all
of her belongings. You're not even going to hop in
her car and drive away, which, let's face it, they
(40:49):
easily could have. The car was running, man, and you've
gotten money there, you're not going to take that. You've
got a cell phone there, You're not going to take that.
Why is it that someone would single out this beautiful
young college student and brutalize her like that? I have
no idea, but I do have an idea that there
is more information out there. And listen, for all of
(41:13):
you here that are within the sound of my voice,
I urge you. I urge you that if you have
any and I mean any information in regards to Amber's case,
I beg of you to please reach out to the
Hoary County Police Department. And that number, let me get it,
(41:35):
let me read it out to you is eight four
to three nine eight four seven seven, and that's their
tip line again. It's eight four to three nine one
five eight four seven seven. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
(41:59):
this his body back
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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