June 3, 2025 • 34 mins
Joseph Scott Morgan spends hours talking about crime scenes and forensics in the media and in the classroom. Today he explains everything from a "Natural Death" to "Russian Roulette". The key is to determine "How the Cause Came About".
Natural Deaths: Death as a result of a normal biological process. Accidental Deaths: Death that results from misadventure without assignment of blame to another by the certifier of death. Undetermined Deaths: The causative factors surrounding the death cannot be established. Homicidal Deaths: A death that is at the hand of another. Suicidal Deaths: Death at one's own hand
Transcribe Highlights
00:02.88 Introduction
00:56.30 More than just a "death investigator"
05:00.66 Teaching Forensics while covering crime
10:05.12 Cases thrown out due "dry labbing"
15:00.79 Determinations of how someone died
20:02.38 Manner of Death explained
24:59.02 Medical Legal ruling of Manner of death in Russian Roulette
30:03.94 The term "Cause of Death"
35:04.21 Death at ones own hand
Conclusion of Lesson One
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morton. Most folks out there
know me as a death investigator. As a matter of fact,
if you ever see me pop up on any of
these television platforms or even on a podcast somewhere, they'll
say death investigator Joseph Scott Morton. But you know, there's
(00:21):
actually a bit more to me other than that. From
a professional standpoint, At this point in my life, I
have spent as much time now in academia as I
did as a death investigator. So you can call me
a death investigator if you want, But I'm also a
(00:42):
professor and right now I teach at Jacksonville State University
in Jacksonville, Alabama. I've been here for just over a decade.
The one thing that motivated me to start this podcast,
Bodybags is there's a need for people to receive an
(01:03):
education in forensics, at least at a baseline. And considering that,
I know that I have been infinitely blessed with the
circumstances in my life and with the opportunities I've had.
So with that spirit in mind, this is going to
(01:27):
mark the first in an ongoing series of let's just
say it, an introduction to forensic science, and I want
to offer this up to all of our listeners as
kind of a peak behind the curtain and maybe, just
maybe you'll come away with more of an understanding of
(01:49):
my world and the world of forensic science. I'm Joseph
Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks Dave. To start off,
I have to say I got to confess a bit
of I want to make a confession here. When I
(02:12):
started off as a young man, I was let's see,
how can I say it? I was compelled, motivated by
envy and jealousy. And here's what I mean by that.
After I got into the field, and mind you, I
(02:36):
was uneducated. I came into my field and had no education. Literally,
starting from a matter of fact confession here, I was
working on an associate's degree when I first started. I
hadn't finished it yet. But I happened to be in
the right place the right time. And I don't know
(02:59):
what day it happened on, but I suddenly found myself
surrounded by people that had a lot of letters after
their names, and I knew that not only did I
have to have practical validation in my field. I'm not
talking about law enforcement here, I'm talking about in forensic science.
I had to have academic validation because, let's face it,
(03:22):
if you go to sit on a stand and you
claim that you're a forensic practitioner and you're not degreed, necessarily,
there will be questions that will be asked, well, why
didn't you ever think it was important enough to get
a degree? The cool thing about it is I had
people that were all around me at that point in
(03:42):
time that encouraged me. As dark as it got, as
hard as it was, I had people that were around
me that would push me. And so couple that motivation
from that perspective and then the motivation of jealousy and
envy warning those things that I did not have, I
(04:05):
wound up in a position where I began to teach.
It started out when I was still working at the
Medical Examiner. I'd go to police academies and I do
seminars and teach that way. But then the bug really
bit me. I loved being in a classroom, and I
loved taking all of that knowledge coupled with the horrible
(04:28):
things that I'd worn witness to and trying to impart that.
So you and I have been in ongoing discussions for
a while now, and I thank you for your encouragement
in this because I think that it's a worthy pursuit
on our part and I want to be able to teach.
I want this to be kind of the opening salvo,
(04:50):
if you will, as we start out on this journey together.
My friend.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
You know, it's interesting the way you approach this job
as an educational thing, and it really comes from the
fact that in the last couple of years, as forensics
has become more of a player in terms of covering
crime stories, not just within say, the world of Nancy Grace,
but beyond that. You're on TV on networks almost on
(05:15):
a nightly basis because people are interested in the forensics
of crime and how they're used to solve crimes. And
I think it's partly due to television, it's partly due
to just the education of crime and the interests that
there is. But there's a constant thing that keeps popping
up that the uneducated in all of us, that we
(05:36):
don't know the difference between terms the manner and cause
of death. When we hear these things spoken about, they
don't mean it doesn't mean something very specific but to
the delay person, but they all mean something totally different
and you and you've actually I've covered stories with you
(05:58):
when you went that's not even right. What they're saying
on this network program is not correct terminology. They're different things.
And I think it's important before people open their mouths
about something as important as forensics, about death and about
studying crimes, that you better know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yeah, you do, And I listen. I've been caught by people,
you know, where I will misspeak about something or uh,
you know. And and of course the world is is
uh is full of critics. I can't remember. There's a
famous uh, there's a famous quote by Teddy Roosevelt about
critic critics and he's arguably my favorite favorite president of
(06:41):
all time, Teddy Roosevelt. And and it was something to
the effect that, you know, being a critic really doesn't
take that much effort, you know, And doesn't that sound
like something he would say?
Speaker 2 (06:53):
It?
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Does it?
Speaker 2 (06:54):
You know what, anybody can be a critic. Anybody can
claim as a career I'm a writer really had been published,
not yet, but I'm really.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Yeah, what do you write?
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (07:03):
You know you can just claim things without proving it.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yeah, you're right, you're right. I blush when people refer
to me as an author and I've written one book.
I've participated in other books, but I've written one book
and people will say, well, I'm an author, and you know,
I kind of shy away from that because there are
people that are out there that have written copious volumes
of work out there that you know, are truly authors.
(07:28):
I mean, it is their craft, it is their profession.
It's not what do they say, it's not a hobby.
It is in fact a vocation. So with that said,
I can tell you what is not merely a hobby
for me, and that is forensics and delving into that world.
And one more little aside that that I love about
(07:51):
forensics is this, it is an applied science. It's not theoretical. Now,
there are theoretical elements that are involved in all pursuits.
In forensics, you know, you begin to think about chemistry
and physics and biology, the three big ones, of course,
and you can take elements from that theoretical science and
(08:13):
apply it to solving crime. And there's a direct application.
And I've mentioned this before, but I'll say it again.
How many folks in the sound of my voice recall
when you were in high school and you walked into
a chemistry lab for the first time, and you said,
you're going to take chemistry if it was one of
(08:33):
your requirements. In my school, it was a requirement, and
I literally thought the teacher was speaking gibberish, like a
made up language the first day. I think I was
in the ninth or tenth grade. Biology kind of be
easy to understand, but when you start to thinking about chemistry,
(08:54):
for instance, it's so it's not very tangible. You know,
they try to make it tangible by giving you those
molecular models. You remember those, and certainly you conduct experiments,
but you know just to But when you look at
crime science and you think about perhaps taking that application
(09:22):
of chemistry and applying it to drug analysis, that opens
up a completely different world where you're able to look
at a substance and you might think that it's cocaine
or it could be baby powder for all you know.
But that actually had a.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Case in Georgia where a woman spent time in jail
while they were they tested cotton candy and came back
as meth, and the woman lost everything, kids got taken
away and turned out it was cotton candy. Right, and
that happened in the last five years. We're not talking
one hundred years ago. We're talking in the last five years.
Somebody messed up forensics so bad the woman lost everything.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Yeah, and that's that's been something a through line. Also
in the DNA world, there been I know one case
that's up in New England maybe Massachusetts. Lady was participating
in something called dry labbing and it was because she
relative to DNA and she essentially took samples and was
(10:21):
running them through the process without actually running them through
the prescribed process. And there were people that went to
jail as a result. And she's now I think if
she's not in state prison, she's in federal prison. And
those cases are thrown out. And you know, that's why
you have to you have to understand the basic science
and you have to understand form and function. So with
(10:44):
that said, I really would like to begin to address
some of these topics along the way. I think that
we'll do probably one per week, and you know, reach
out to us on social media. You can find me
on Instagram and an x and now on Facebook to
a certain degree. If you have a suggestion for not cases,
(11:07):
but what would you like us to kind of tackle
relative to forensic practice, and I'm.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Going to step further. I've had a lot of people
reach out via Facebook. I'll use Facebook because devenant with you.
I had other stuff going on, mess with all the others,
and I know I should and I'm gonna work harder
at it. Blah blah blah.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
I don't want you to work harder at it. Sometimes
if I get on X, I feel like I need
to take my brain out and scrub it with comment
I always do. It's just so cool of humanity. Most
of the time.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Those of you who have reached out to us, and
we have followed up with a couple of you on
different and we're working on one now. I had to
put some things off to the side due to some
personal issues, but we're back into the swing of these.
And if you've got something that you want to send,
please do but in particular, and this is something I
was so glad you wanted to address show because manner
cause mechanism, all right, yeah to me, I look at
(11:56):
that and I'm just just blow you know, they all
are very dramatically different when you break it down and
you're trying to talk about intelligently crime solving. I remember
back and I told you this before, and it was
the Wayne Williams trial, the Atlanta child killing trial that
got my attention because it was one of the first,
(12:17):
if not the first, one of the first that used
fiber analysis to a huge degree. With the carpet fibers
that tied Nathaniel Cater to Wayne Williams to the trunk
of his car, I believe was Cater. But then I
found out who the actual fiber guy was and where
he got his degree, and that for me changed everything. Now,
(12:40):
you just said when you started this, you were working
on an associate's degree when you started the death investigation process.
Is that correct?
Speaker 1 (12:50):
That's what you said?
Speaker 2 (12:51):
How does that happen? I'm not trying to divert where
we're headed, but I needed to know you were in it.
What were you in a hear associates program for that
led you down this.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Path criminal justice in biology? And that's how that's how
it started out. Yeah, yeah, wow, Yeah. And I knew
that I'd always had a fascination with science, and of
course I love the law. Come from a family that
has a lot of lawyers in it, and at one
point time I thought that I wanted to do to
(13:20):
become a lawyer at one point time, and it wasn't
because I had this huge passion for the law. Thank god,
my uncle, who is quite famous in his own right
relative to being a jurist, talked me out of it. Actually,
he tried to talk to me into medical school. And
(13:40):
he's like, as a matter of fact that he had
said at one point in time, if you got to
law school, I'll never speak to you again. And this
is a guy that was well learned. He's actually taught
at the National Judges Academy at in Reno for many
years to teach new judges.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
That's that's how highly thought of he was to Because
your family is saying lawyer, doctor, mine was saying, Dave,
if you can't play sport ravish shovel, that's all you got.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
You know, well, you know, probably I've probably learned more
from people that are non degreed than I have from
those that are degreed. And here's why. The beauty of
forensic science, like I said earlier, is an applied science.
It's something practical that you can put your hands on,
(14:32):
you can hold it, you can begin to understand it,
and it's not too much different than a trade. As
a matter of fact, just a little insight. Even in
the world of forensics, if you have a master's in
forensic science and you want to be a ballistics expert,
for instance, did you know that even with a graduate degree,
(14:56):
you're still going to have to be in a print
ship just like the old times and sit at the
feet of a master. There are certain determinations in the
(15:23):
medical legal community that we are tasked with making, and
from the perspective of how someone died and how we're
going to categorize that and try to understand, try to
understand literally how it happened. We're going to start off there, okay,
(15:44):
because a subset of that is human identification, which is
one of our mandates. But we're going to save that
lecture for another time. But I think that it's very important, Dave,
that we start off on this road that we often
hear talked about in the news, and that is kind
(16:05):
of the first, the first major stop along the way
when it comes to death investigation. That's a manner of death.
There are several cases that are that are in the news.
One in particular, Oh God, I hate even saying this
woman's name, Karen Reid. I've spent many hours covering this,
(16:29):
particularly on Court TV, and you know, shout out to
my friend vinniepolitan uh and now thanks for the opportunities
that I've had. But it's it's rather tedious. But when
it comes down to it and you look at Karen Reid,
the case is not about Karen Reid. The case, for
me is actually about John O'Keefe, Okay, Boston police officer.
(16:54):
He is discovered unresponsive, I think, essentially dead in the snow,
and he's got some pretty significant trauma. But you know, Dave,
they have charged and that is the prosecution the state.
They've charged Karen Reid, of course, with I think it's
(17:15):
like vehicular homicide. In other words, they're saying that she
is responsible for his death just because a prosecutor charges
someone with homicide or murder. And it depends on the
statute how it's written in each state. Like for instance, Georgia,
(17:39):
our neighbor here, they don't refer to homicide and the
law they refer to it as murder. Talk about malice,
murder and all those sorts of things over there. But
when it comes down to it, you're talking about death
at the hand of another. Well, just because the prosecutor
says that this is a homicide, that don't mean the
(18:01):
medical examiner is going to call it that, all right?
And this particularly you see a big party in the
ways in this world when it comes to motor vehicle
accidents for instance. Okay, but here's the hang up with
John O'Keeffe's death. The medical examiner in his case could
not even call his death an accident. And this is
(18:25):
going back to when they made their final ruling, goes
back to twenty twenty three. Okay, they could not even
make a final ruling of accident or homicide. They actually
left his manner of death as undetermined essentially, do you see?
(18:46):
And I know that's confusing.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
It is no a bit, it's a lot confusing. I
assumed wrongly that you do the autopsy, you take all
the circumstances into play, and you're able to determine what happened,
how did this person end up dead? So the manner
of death? What what are we actually talking about with
manner of death?
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Okay? I want everybody in their in their mind's eye
right now to envision a gigantic umbrella. And you know
how umbrellas have those little ribs, you know, like the
little metal ribs that hold hold up well, I have
something that's called the Morgan, the Morgan Umbrella of death,
all right, And each one of those little ribs we
have five. So under each rib of the umbrella you
(19:31):
have homicide, suicide, accident, natural, and undetermined. And it's beneath
that umbrella that we begin to try to marry up
causal factors relative to death, to try to determine how
(19:51):
we're going to classify, how we're going to classify death
and try to understand it and categorize it. This comes
into play obviously in the criminal justice system. Let me
tell you another big area where this comes into play.
And people don't think about this, okay, because you have
to understand something. And I'm not just specifically saying you
(20:14):
have to understand something, my friend. Everybody has to understand this.
What the medical legal community does is it is not.
In fact, we're not in the business of merely serving
the criminal justice system, Okay. We're also in the business
of serving people involved in civil courts as well. As
(20:35):
a matter of fact, a goodly amount of the work
that we do is demonstrated in civil courts and I'll
give you the best example. You have someone that has
a certain type of insurance policy, for instance, and certain
manners of death will not pay out. Okay, but if
it's an accident, then you get double the amount. Okay.
(21:00):
Do you see how there's like the big big money. Yeah,
like the movie Double Indemned it. You know, so you've
got you know, big big money that's involved. As a
matter of fact, And I'll give you a little insight
from the medical examiner's world. And this has happened countless occasions,
(21:20):
and it's very sad, and people don't hear about this
very much. I've had wives that have shown up at
the medical Examiner's office and they'll have stacks and reams
of paper day, wanting to get an audience with at
least an investigator, hopefully the medical examiners themselves, and they're
in tears. And they're in tears because we have yet
(21:47):
to rule a manner on a death and because they
can't get funds released. And I'm sure that there are
many people in sond of my voice that can identify
having to deal with insurance companies about this because the
death has yet to be classified. I've had I've set
across the table from people that were going to have
(22:08):
their homes were closed on. I had one lady I
remember distinctly, had already had her car repossessed, and the
electricity had been cut off twice in our home, and
she did not have a job. She was sole dependent
on her husband, and they had a rather robust, robust
insurance policy and it hadn't been paid out, and she
(22:29):
was living a hand of mouth existence. So there's a
lot more to this than merely you know, what you
might see in true crime, you know where we're trying
to make these determinations like that. So a lot of
this goes into, as you well mentioned, what kind of
history can we get about the event? Well, if you
(22:49):
look at John O'Keefe and his death, what do we
understand about that scene and how his death came about?
Is there an enough information and has it been effectively
relayed to the state medical examiner they're in Massachusetts so
that they can make a determination about what they're seeing.
(23:13):
Keep in mind, you're not pitching this to a lawyer.
A lawyer has this massive canon of law that they
can choose from. We've only got five of the manners
of death, so we have to have enough information, and
plus you're talking to somebody that is of a scientific mind.
(23:33):
If it does not make sense to them logically, then
they will not move forward. One of the most difficult
cases I think for and I've been involved in a
couple of these over the years, for a medical examiner
to make a determination many times is Russian Roulette cases
because you can go down that road and it's like
(23:56):
one of the toughest colleges. I got to tell you this,
one of the toughest college courses I ever took as
an undergrad was logic. Aside from chemistry classes and everything else,
I hated logic and essentially you're sitting there working on proofs,
doing word problems. God bless all the philosophers out there,
because it is a tough class. I was happy to
(24:18):
take a sea in that class, very happy. But when
you begin to go down this road of logically what
logically makes sense here, you can get off into the
weeds relative to relative to something like Russian Roulette. And
it's actually something I do with my students at Jacksonville State.
(24:38):
I will tell them, Okay, we're going to pretend that
we're all medical examiners today, you're a corner. I have
to get them out of the mind of pretending that
they're a police officer. And we'll go down this road
and I'll give them a scenario and I kind of
tell I'll tell you what it is real. Briefly, you
got three guys. One guy says, hey, my grandpa as
(25:00):
a retired police officer. He left me his revolver. And
he says to the other two, do you want to
see it? They've been drinking as well. Do you want
to see it? And they say yeah enthusiastically. Then one
guy says, you got any bullets, Let's load it up
and let's only put one bullet in it. And then
one guy says, let's play a game. So they sit
(25:22):
down with the knowledge in mind that there is a
certain risk of lethality here, and they spin the weapon
and they go through the whole process, and of course
one winds up nine. You would be surprised, you might
be shocked. I've got to have you. I'm going to
have you come to my class, Dave, so that you
can bear witness to this, because I do this exercise
every semester with my medical legal class. You'd be surprised.
(25:45):
How the classroom breaks down as to what they would
rule the manner of death of as in a case
of Russian Roulette. It's amazing, you know, are you going
to rule it as a homicide? Is it in act
a suicide? Is it an accidental event? Or is it undetermined?
(26:06):
I've actually had a few people say, well it was
natural I don't know. One person in the back shout
out natural selection, and so I you know, you know
it was me. So I'm going to have you come
to class just so that you if any of our
friends out there are curious asking you to bear witness
(26:27):
to this, you can actually kind of see the numbers
and how. And I do it with undergraduate classes and
I do it with police academy classes as well when
I'm teaching them about death investigation, because you have to
have enough confirmatory scientific information to move forward. And does
it fit within the parameters of what we're talking about,
And let's just run through the mannor real quick.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Let me ask you, Yeah, sure that Nextes and O's
Joe more than just Xtors and O's. I mean, what
if I'm playing Devil's advocate here, at least you've got
in your scenario what if my goal was I'm trying
to kill you off, and I've got us all drinking,
and now I've got the gun and I'm the one
pushing this whole thing, and I'm gearing it up, and
(27:09):
then you know, my goal was to have you dead.
And you play a long boom, you shoot yourself in
the head. The other guy goes, man, Dave was really
working that hard. Hey man, you're the one, you know,
does that come into play? Do you have time with
police or investigators that they sit down and hey man,
we found out some information that might have to do
with this or is this purely no?
Speaker 1 (27:30):
No, no, that's a that's a good point because lots of
times we'll do this exercise from the perspective of the
medical examiner conintok cold and not having a lot of
input from police. Now if the medical and this is
a great example, let's just say, John O'Keefe, what kind
(27:52):
of data did they show up with to try to
because listen to prosecutor in that case, they would really
prefer for the medical examiner to rule this as a homicide.
It just kind of bolsters their case. What did you
show up with? And you know, you get into the
to the eye word again. You know, you start to
think about intent. Sometimes it's referred to as specific intent,
(28:15):
and that plays into a little bit of a to
what we do. But our ruling and our view of
things in the medical legal world is so desperately different
from what the legal eagles do. Yeah, if they came
to us with that information, we've developed something that he
said outside of what we saw at the scene. Yeah,
(28:37):
watch this tonight. I want to get rid of both
these guys and this well that that would certainly give
us pause. But if we have no other information, then
every medical examiner is going to view this as what
can I prove scientifically? And Dave, one more thing I
want to say about this is that amazing amazingly medical
(29:03):
examiners split on this topic, just like the students do.
And that's something so you will not You can go
to a variety of different medical examiners, you can put
them in a room and let's just say it was
a silent ballot, because nobody likes to look like they're
on the outside. If you if you just threw it
(29:23):
to them, of course, they've always got to debate one another.
That's one of the things they'd love to do when
they get together. But if you could just do it silently,
you'd be surprised how this breaks out. But at the
end of the day, you have to have enough information
to call this manner of death a certain thing, and
many times we're left wanting, as are many families. So
(30:00):
we have manner considered at this moment, Tom, how are
we going to rule it? Remember we've only got five choices.
But on the flip side, if you refer back to
that imagery that I gave you of the umbrella, when
it comes to a term that many people have heard
(30:20):
for years now, it's the term cause of death. The
cause of death and manner death are so desperately different.
So when we consider manner and cause of death, I
would argue that probably causal factors are more easily arrived
(30:42):
at than manner of death because you've got a limited
number of categories you can put any death into. But
I can observe something and say, well, this is the
causal factor in an individual's death. I'll give you, for instance,
gunshot one of the head. Okay, well, the cause of
(31:05):
death that's going to be a gunshot one of the head. Okay,
Now you think about remember the umbrella. I talked about
how many different of those categories under the umbrella of death. Well,
gunshot one of the head fit under. Okay, we've got
what's the most obvious one. I think probably suicide, self inflicted.
(31:27):
We've got homicide, We've got accident. Although anytime someone, as
an investigator tells me this is an accidental shooting, my
eyebrow goes up as high as it possibly can. You know,
particularly when it comes to police officers and people in
the military that have had a familiarity with weapons. I'm
(31:48):
going to take a long, hard look at that, and
then you do have undetermined events. So gunshot one of
the head is it's kind of straightforward, but there are
other things that come into play. And I got to
tell you one the biggest bugaboos recently that has really
is real burr underneath my saddle is this Virginia Roberts Jeffrey.
(32:15):
Because it seems like anybody out there that has the
ability to sling ink on a newspaper has been saying
her cause of death was a suicide. I can show
you article after article after article after article. Well, let
me pause one second here and just say, you're a
(32:35):
bunch of idiots. Did you get that last line? You're
an idiot because suicide is not her cause of death.
That's a manner of death. And still to this day,
the territorial coroner has yet to give us the call
(33:00):
death at the time of this taping. Okay, we don't know.
What we do know about about her case is that
it has apparently been ruled the manner has been ruled
as a suicide. But that's not the cause of death.
So you get hung up in this kind of and
(33:22):
it's not really a word salad. There aren't a lot
of words involved here. It's rather simplistic. You know. If
you look at the law, it's highly complex. But when
it comes to manner and cause of death, you think
about her and you think about you know, and it
makes you wonder, well, what could have brought about her death? Well,
(33:43):
they're limitless, you know. If they're saying that this is suicide, which,
by the way, suicide is defined as death at one's
own hand. And as you notice in that definition, which
is the actual definition that she used in medical legal circles,
death that one's on hand says nothing about intent because
(34:06):
intent is generally something that's left up to the legal
side of the House to prove. We don't have to
prove that. Now, it might influence us if they say
they've been intending to do this or they have talked
about it will factor that in. But our definition is
death that one's on hand. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and
this is bodybacks
Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morton. Most folks out there
know me as a death investigator. As a matter of fact,
if you ever see me pop up on any of
these television platforms or even on a podcast somewhere, they'll
say death investigator Joseph Scott Morton. But you know, there's
(00:21):
actually a bit more to me other than that. From
a professional standpoint, At this point in my life, I
have spent as much time now in academia as I
did as a death investigator. So you can call me
a death investigator if you want, But I'm also a
(00:42):
professor and right now I teach at Jacksonville State University
in Jacksonville, Alabama. I've been here for just over a decade.
The one thing that motivated me to start this podcast,
Bodybags is there's a need for people to receive an
(01:03):
education in forensics, at least at a baseline. And considering that,
I know that I have been infinitely blessed with the
circumstances in my life and with the opportunities I've had.
So with that spirit in mind, this is going to
(01:27):
mark the first in an ongoing series of let's just
say it, an introduction to forensic science, and I want
to offer this up to all of our listeners as
kind of a peak behind the curtain and maybe, just
maybe you'll come away with more of an understanding of
(01:49):
my world and the world of forensic science. I'm Joseph
Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks Dave. To start off,
I have to say I got to confess a bit
of I want to make a confession here. When I
(02:12):
started off as a young man, I was let's see,
how can I say it? I was compelled, motivated by
envy and jealousy. And here's what I mean by that.
After I got into the field, and mind you, I
(02:36):
was uneducated. I came into my field and had no education. Literally,
starting from a matter of fact confession here, I was
working on an associate's degree when I first started. I
hadn't finished it yet. But I happened to be in
the right place the right time. And I don't know
(02:59):
what day it happened on, but I suddenly found myself
surrounded by people that had a lot of letters after
their names, and I knew that not only did I
have to have practical validation in my field. I'm not
talking about law enforcement here, I'm talking about in forensic science.
I had to have academic validation because, let's face it,
(03:22):
if you go to sit on a stand and you
claim that you're a forensic practitioner and you're not degreed, necessarily,
there will be questions that will be asked, well, why
didn't you ever think it was important enough to get
a degree? The cool thing about it is I had
people that were all around me at that point in
(03:42):
time that encouraged me. As dark as it got, as
hard as it was, I had people that were around
me that would push me. And so couple that motivation
from that perspective and then the motivation of jealousy and
envy warning those things that I did not have, I
(04:05):
wound up in a position where I began to teach.
It started out when I was still working at the
Medical Examiner. I'd go to police academies and I do
seminars and teach that way. But then the bug really
bit me. I loved being in a classroom, and I
loved taking all of that knowledge coupled with the horrible
(04:28):
things that I'd worn witness to and trying to impart that.
So you and I have been in ongoing discussions for
a while now, and I thank you for your encouragement
in this because I think that it's a worthy pursuit
on our part and I want to be able to teach.
I want this to be kind of the opening salvo,
(04:50):
if you will, as we start out on this journey together.
My friend.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
You know, it's interesting the way you approach this job
as an educational thing, and it really comes from the
fact that in the last couple of years, as forensics
has become more of a player in terms of covering
crime stories, not just within say, the world of Nancy Grace,
but beyond that. You're on TV on networks almost on
(05:15):
a nightly basis because people are interested in the forensics
of crime and how they're used to solve crimes. And
I think it's partly due to television, it's partly due
to just the education of crime and the interests that
there is. But there's a constant thing that keeps popping
up that the uneducated in all of us, that we
(05:36):
don't know the difference between terms the manner and cause
of death. When we hear these things spoken about, they
don't mean it doesn't mean something very specific but to
the delay person, but they all mean something totally different
and you and you've actually I've covered stories with you
(05:58):
when you went that's not even right. What they're saying
on this network program is not correct terminology. They're different things.
And I think it's important before people open their mouths
about something as important as forensics, about death and about
studying crimes, that you better know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yeah, you do, And I listen. I've been caught by people,
you know, where I will misspeak about something or uh,
you know. And and of course the world is is
uh is full of critics. I can't remember. There's a
famous uh, there's a famous quote by Teddy Roosevelt about
critic critics and he's arguably my favorite favorite president of
(06:41):
all time, Teddy Roosevelt. And and it was something to
the effect that, you know, being a critic really doesn't
take that much effort, you know, And doesn't that sound
like something he would say?
Speaker 2 (06:53):
It?
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Does it?
Speaker 2 (06:54):
You know what, anybody can be a critic. Anybody can
claim as a career I'm a writer really had been published,
not yet, but I'm really.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Yeah, what do you write?
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (07:03):
You know you can just claim things without proving it.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yeah, you're right, you're right. I blush when people refer
to me as an author and I've written one book.
I've participated in other books, but I've written one book
and people will say, well, I'm an author, and you know,
I kind of shy away from that because there are
people that are out there that have written copious volumes
of work out there that you know, are truly authors.
(07:28):
I mean, it is their craft, it is their profession.
It's not what do they say, it's not a hobby.
It is in fact a vocation. So with that said,
I can tell you what is not merely a hobby
for me, and that is forensics and delving into that world.
And one more little aside that that I love about
(07:51):
forensics is this, it is an applied science. It's not theoretical. Now,
there are theoretical elements that are involved in all pursuits.
In forensics, you know, you begin to think about chemistry
and physics and biology, the three big ones, of course,
and you can take elements from that theoretical science and
(08:13):
apply it to solving crime. And there's a direct application.
And I've mentioned this before, but I'll say it again.
How many folks in the sound of my voice recall
when you were in high school and you walked into
a chemistry lab for the first time, and you said,
you're going to take chemistry if it was one of
(08:33):
your requirements. In my school, it was a requirement, and
I literally thought the teacher was speaking gibberish, like a
made up language the first day. I think I was
in the ninth or tenth grade. Biology kind of be
easy to understand, but when you start to thinking about chemistry,
(08:54):
for instance, it's so it's not very tangible. You know,
they try to make it tangible by giving you those
molecular models. You remember those, and certainly you conduct experiments,
but you know just to But when you look at
crime science and you think about perhaps taking that application
(09:22):
of chemistry and applying it to drug analysis, that opens
up a completely different world where you're able to look
at a substance and you might think that it's cocaine
or it could be baby powder for all you know.
But that actually had a.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Case in Georgia where a woman spent time in jail
while they were they tested cotton candy and came back
as meth, and the woman lost everything, kids got taken
away and turned out it was cotton candy. Right, and
that happened in the last five years. We're not talking
one hundred years ago. We're talking in the last five years.
Somebody messed up forensics so bad the woman lost everything.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Yeah, and that's that's been something a through line. Also
in the DNA world, there been I know one case
that's up in New England maybe Massachusetts. Lady was participating
in something called dry labbing and it was because she
relative to DNA and she essentially took samples and was
(10:21):
running them through the process without actually running them through
the prescribed process. And there were people that went to
jail as a result. And she's now I think if
she's not in state prison, she's in federal prison. And
those cases are thrown out. And you know, that's why
you have to you have to understand the basic science
and you have to understand form and function. So with
(10:44):
that said, I really would like to begin to address
some of these topics along the way. I think that
we'll do probably one per week, and you know, reach
out to us on social media. You can find me
on Instagram and an x and now on Facebook to
a certain degree. If you have a suggestion for not cases,
(11:07):
but what would you like us to kind of tackle
relative to forensic practice, and I'm.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Going to step further. I've had a lot of people
reach out via Facebook. I'll use Facebook because devenant with you.
I had other stuff going on, mess with all the others,
and I know I should and I'm gonna work harder
at it. Blah blah blah.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
I don't want you to work harder at it. Sometimes
if I get on X, I feel like I need
to take my brain out and scrub it with comment
I always do. It's just so cool of humanity. Most
of the time.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Those of you who have reached out to us, and
we have followed up with a couple of you on
different and we're working on one now. I had to
put some things off to the side due to some
personal issues, but we're back into the swing of these.
And if you've got something that you want to send,
please do but in particular, and this is something I
was so glad you wanted to address show because manner
cause mechanism, all right, yeah to me, I look at
(11:56):
that and I'm just just blow you know, they all
are very dramatically different when you break it down and
you're trying to talk about intelligently crime solving. I remember
back and I told you this before, and it was
the Wayne Williams trial, the Atlanta child killing trial that
got my attention because it was one of the first,
(12:17):
if not the first, one of the first that used
fiber analysis to a huge degree. With the carpet fibers
that tied Nathaniel Cater to Wayne Williams to the trunk
of his car, I believe was Cater. But then I
found out who the actual fiber guy was and where
he got his degree, and that for me changed everything. Now,
(12:40):
you just said when you started this, you were working
on an associate's degree when you started the death investigation process.
Is that correct?
Speaker 1 (12:50):
That's what you said?
Speaker 2 (12:51):
How does that happen? I'm not trying to divert where
we're headed, but I needed to know you were in it.
What were you in a hear associates program for that
led you down this.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Path criminal justice in biology? And that's how that's how
it started out. Yeah, yeah, wow, Yeah. And I knew
that I'd always had a fascination with science, and of
course I love the law. Come from a family that
has a lot of lawyers in it, and at one
point time I thought that I wanted to do to
(13:20):
become a lawyer at one point time, and it wasn't
because I had this huge passion for the law. Thank god,
my uncle, who is quite famous in his own right
relative to being a jurist, talked me out of it. Actually,
he tried to talk to me into medical school. And
(13:40):
he's like, as a matter of fact that he had
said at one point in time, if you got to
law school, I'll never speak to you again. And this
is a guy that was well learned. He's actually taught
at the National Judges Academy at in Reno for many
years to teach new judges.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
That's that's how highly thought of he was to Because
your family is saying lawyer, doctor, mine was saying, Dave,
if you can't play sport ravish shovel, that's all you got.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
You know, well, you know, probably I've probably learned more
from people that are non degreed than I have from
those that are degreed. And here's why. The beauty of
forensic science, like I said earlier, is an applied science.
It's something practical that you can put your hands on,
(14:32):
you can hold it, you can begin to understand it,
and it's not too much different than a trade. As
a matter of fact, just a little insight. Even in
the world of forensics, if you have a master's in
forensic science and you want to be a ballistics expert,
for instance, did you know that even with a graduate degree,
(14:56):
you're still going to have to be in a print
ship just like the old times and sit at the
feet of a master. There are certain determinations in the
(15:23):
medical legal community that we are tasked with making, and
from the perspective of how someone died and how we're
going to categorize that and try to understand, try to
understand literally how it happened. We're going to start off there, okay,
(15:44):
because a subset of that is human identification, which is
one of our mandates. But we're going to save that
lecture for another time. But I think that it's very important, Dave,
that we start off on this road that we often
hear talked about in the news, and that is kind
(16:05):
of the first, the first major stop along the way
when it comes to death investigation. That's a manner of death.
There are several cases that are that are in the news.
One in particular, Oh God, I hate even saying this
woman's name, Karen Reid. I've spent many hours covering this,
(16:29):
particularly on Court TV, and you know, shout out to
my friend vinniepolitan uh and now thanks for the opportunities
that I've had. But it's it's rather tedious. But when
it comes down to it and you look at Karen Reid,
the case is not about Karen Reid. The case, for
me is actually about John O'Keefe, Okay, Boston police officer.
(16:54):
He is discovered unresponsive, I think, essentially dead in the snow,
and he's got some pretty significant trauma. But you know, Dave,
they have charged and that is the prosecution the state.
They've charged Karen Reid, of course, with I think it's
(17:15):
like vehicular homicide. In other words, they're saying that she
is responsible for his death just because a prosecutor charges
someone with homicide or murder. And it depends on the
statute how it's written in each state. Like for instance, Georgia,
(17:39):
our neighbor here, they don't refer to homicide and the
law they refer to it as murder. Talk about malice,
murder and all those sorts of things over there. But
when it comes down to it, you're talking about death
at the hand of another. Well, just because the prosecutor
says that this is a homicide, that don't mean the
(18:01):
medical examiner is going to call it that, all right?
And this particularly you see a big party in the
ways in this world when it comes to motor vehicle
accidents for instance. Okay, but here's the hang up with
John O'Keeffe's death. The medical examiner in his case could
not even call his death an accident. And this is
(18:25):
going back to when they made their final ruling, goes
back to twenty twenty three. Okay, they could not even
make a final ruling of accident or homicide. They actually
left his manner of death as undetermined essentially, do you see?
(18:46):
And I know that's confusing.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
It is no a bit, it's a lot confusing. I
assumed wrongly that you do the autopsy, you take all
the circumstances into play, and you're able to determine what happened,
how did this person end up dead? So the manner
of death? What what are we actually talking about with
manner of death?
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Okay? I want everybody in their in their mind's eye
right now to envision a gigantic umbrella. And you know
how umbrellas have those little ribs, you know, like the
little metal ribs that hold hold up well, I have
something that's called the Morgan, the Morgan Umbrella of death,
all right, And each one of those little ribs we
have five. So under each rib of the umbrella you
(19:31):
have homicide, suicide, accident, natural, and undetermined. And it's beneath
that umbrella that we begin to try to marry up
causal factors relative to death, to try to determine how
(19:51):
we're going to classify, how we're going to classify death
and try to understand it and categorize it. This comes
into play obviously in the criminal justice system. Let me
tell you another big area where this comes into play.
And people don't think about this, okay, because you have
to understand something. And I'm not just specifically saying you
(20:14):
have to understand something, my friend. Everybody has to understand this.
What the medical legal community does is it is not.
In fact, we're not in the business of merely serving
the criminal justice system, Okay. We're also in the business
of serving people involved in civil courts as well. As
(20:35):
a matter of fact, a goodly amount of the work
that we do is demonstrated in civil courts and I'll
give you the best example. You have someone that has
a certain type of insurance policy, for instance, and certain
manners of death will not pay out. Okay, but if
it's an accident, then you get double the amount. Okay.
(21:00):
Do you see how there's like the big big money. Yeah,
like the movie Double Indemned it. You know, so you've
got you know, big big money that's involved. As a
matter of fact, And I'll give you a little insight
from the medical examiner's world. And this has happened countless occasions,
(21:20):
and it's very sad, and people don't hear about this
very much. I've had wives that have shown up at
the medical Examiner's office and they'll have stacks and reams
of paper day, wanting to get an audience with at
least an investigator, hopefully the medical examiners themselves, and they're
in tears. And they're in tears because we have yet
(21:47):
to rule a manner on a death and because they
can't get funds released. And I'm sure that there are
many people in sond of my voice that can identify
having to deal with insurance companies about this because the
death has yet to be classified. I've had I've set
across the table from people that were going to have
(22:08):
their homes were closed on. I had one lady I
remember distinctly, had already had her car repossessed, and the
electricity had been cut off twice in our home, and
she did not have a job. She was sole dependent
on her husband, and they had a rather robust, robust
insurance policy and it hadn't been paid out, and she
(22:29):
was living a hand of mouth existence. So there's a
lot more to this than merely you know, what you
might see in true crime, you know where we're trying
to make these determinations like that. So a lot of
this goes into, as you well mentioned, what kind of
history can we get about the event? Well, if you
(22:49):
look at John O'Keefe and his death, what do we
understand about that scene and how his death came about?
Is there an enough information and has it been effectively
relayed to the state medical examiner they're in Massachusetts so
that they can make a determination about what they're seeing.
(23:13):
Keep in mind, you're not pitching this to a lawyer.
A lawyer has this massive canon of law that they
can choose from. We've only got five of the manners
of death, so we have to have enough information, and
plus you're talking to somebody that is of a scientific mind.
(23:33):
If it does not make sense to them logically, then
they will not move forward. One of the most difficult
cases I think for and I've been involved in a
couple of these over the years, for a medical examiner
to make a determination many times is Russian Roulette cases
because you can go down that road and it's like
(23:56):
one of the toughest colleges. I got to tell you this,
one of the toughest college courses I ever took as
an undergrad was logic. Aside from chemistry classes and everything else,
I hated logic and essentially you're sitting there working on proofs,
doing word problems. God bless all the philosophers out there,
because it is a tough class. I was happy to
(24:18):
take a sea in that class, very happy. But when
you begin to go down this road of logically what
logically makes sense here, you can get off into the
weeds relative to relative to something like Russian Roulette. And
it's actually something I do with my students at Jacksonville State.
(24:38):
I will tell them, Okay, we're going to pretend that
we're all medical examiners today, you're a corner. I have
to get them out of the mind of pretending that
they're a police officer. And we'll go down this road
and I'll give them a scenario and I kind of
tell I'll tell you what it is real. Briefly, you
got three guys. One guy says, hey, my grandpa as
(25:00):
a retired police officer. He left me his revolver. And
he says to the other two, do you want to
see it? They've been drinking as well. Do you want
to see it? And they say yeah enthusiastically. Then one
guy says, you got any bullets, Let's load it up
and let's only put one bullet in it. And then
one guy says, let's play a game. So they sit
(25:22):
down with the knowledge in mind that there is a
certain risk of lethality here, and they spin the weapon
and they go through the whole process, and of course
one winds up nine. You would be surprised, you might
be shocked. I've got to have you. I'm going to
have you come to my class, Dave, so that you
can bear witness to this, because I do this exercise
every semester with my medical legal class. You'd be surprised.
(25:45):
How the classroom breaks down as to what they would
rule the manner of death of as in a case
of Russian Roulette. It's amazing, you know, are you going
to rule it as a homicide? Is it in act
a suicide? Is it an accidental event? Or is it undetermined?
(26:06):
I've actually had a few people say, well it was
natural I don't know. One person in the back shout
out natural selection, and so I you know, you know
it was me. So I'm going to have you come
to class just so that you if any of our
friends out there are curious asking you to bear witness
(26:27):
to this, you can actually kind of see the numbers
and how. And I do it with undergraduate classes and
I do it with police academy classes as well when
I'm teaching them about death investigation, because you have to
have enough confirmatory scientific information to move forward. And does
it fit within the parameters of what we're talking about,
And let's just run through the mannor real quick.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Let me ask you, Yeah, sure that Nextes and O's
Joe more than just Xtors and O's. I mean, what
if I'm playing Devil's advocate here, at least you've got
in your scenario what if my goal was I'm trying
to kill you off, and I've got us all drinking,
and now I've got the gun and I'm the one
pushing this whole thing, and I'm gearing it up, and
(27:09):
then you know, my goal was to have you dead.
And you play a long boom, you shoot yourself in
the head. The other guy goes, man, Dave was really
working that hard. Hey man, you're the one, you know,
does that come into play? Do you have time with
police or investigators that they sit down and hey man,
we found out some information that might have to do
with this or is this purely no?
Speaker 1 (27:30):
No, no, that's a that's a good point because lots of
times we'll do this exercise from the perspective of the
medical examiner conintok cold and not having a lot of
input from police. Now if the medical and this is
a great example, let's just say, John O'Keefe, what kind
(27:52):
of data did they show up with to try to
because listen to prosecutor in that case, they would really
prefer for the medical examiner to rule this as a homicide.
It just kind of bolsters their case. What did you
show up with? And you know, you get into the
to the eye word again. You know, you start to
think about intent. Sometimes it's referred to as specific intent,
(28:15):
and that plays into a little bit of a to
what we do. But our ruling and our view of
things in the medical legal world is so desperately different
from what the legal eagles do. Yeah, if they came
to us with that information, we've developed something that he
said outside of what we saw at the scene. Yeah,
(28:37):
watch this tonight. I want to get rid of both
these guys and this well that that would certainly give
us pause. But if we have no other information, then
every medical examiner is going to view this as what
can I prove scientifically? And Dave, one more thing I
want to say about this is that amazing amazingly medical
(29:03):
examiners split on this topic, just like the students do.
And that's something so you will not You can go
to a variety of different medical examiners, you can put
them in a room and let's just say it was
a silent ballot, because nobody likes to look like they're
on the outside. If you if you just threw it
(29:23):
to them, of course, they've always got to debate one another.
That's one of the things they'd love to do when
they get together. But if you could just do it silently,
you'd be surprised how this breaks out. But at the
end of the day, you have to have enough information
to call this manner of death a certain thing, and
many times we're left wanting, as are many families. So
(30:00):
we have manner considered at this moment, Tom, how are
we going to rule it? Remember we've only got five choices.
But on the flip side, if you refer back to
that imagery that I gave you of the umbrella, when
it comes to a term that many people have heard
(30:20):
for years now, it's the term cause of death. The
cause of death and manner death are so desperately different.
So when we consider manner and cause of death, I
would argue that probably causal factors are more easily arrived
(30:42):
at than manner of death because you've got a limited
number of categories you can put any death into. But
I can observe something and say, well, this is the
causal factor in an individual's death. I'll give you, for instance,
gunshot one of the head. Okay, well, the cause of
(31:05):
death that's going to be a gunshot one of the head. Okay,
Now you think about remember the umbrella. I talked about
how many different of those categories under the umbrella of death. Well,
gunshot one of the head fit under. Okay, we've got
what's the most obvious one. I think probably suicide, self inflicted.
(31:27):
We've got homicide, We've got accident. Although anytime someone, as
an investigator tells me this is an accidental shooting, my
eyebrow goes up as high as it possibly can. You know,
particularly when it comes to police officers and people in
the military that have had a familiarity with weapons. I'm
(31:48):
going to take a long, hard look at that, and
then you do have undetermined events. So gunshot one of
the head is it's kind of straightforward, but there are
other things that come into play. And I got to
tell you one the biggest bugaboos recently that has really
is real burr underneath my saddle is this Virginia Roberts Jeffrey.
(32:15):
Because it seems like anybody out there that has the
ability to sling ink on a newspaper has been saying
her cause of death was a suicide. I can show
you article after article after article after article. Well, let
me pause one second here and just say, you're a
(32:35):
bunch of idiots. Did you get that last line? You're
an idiot because suicide is not her cause of death.
That's a manner of death. And still to this day,
the territorial coroner has yet to give us the call
(33:00):
death at the time of this taping. Okay, we don't know.
What we do know about about her case is that
it has apparently been ruled the manner has been ruled
as a suicide. But that's not the cause of death.
So you get hung up in this kind of and
(33:22):
it's not really a word salad. There aren't a lot
of words involved here. It's rather simplistic. You know. If
you look at the law, it's highly complex. But when
it comes to manner and cause of death, you think
about her and you think about you know, and it
makes you wonder, well, what could have brought about her death? Well,
(33:43):
they're limitless, you know. If they're saying that this is suicide, which,
by the way, suicide is defined as death at one's
own hand. And as you notice in that definition, which
is the actual definition that she used in medical legal circles,
death that one's on hand says nothing about intent because
(34:06):
intent is generally something that's left up to the legal
side of the House to prove. We don't have to
prove that. Now, it might influence us if they say
they've been intending to do this or they have talked
about it will factor that in. But our definition is
death that one's on hand. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and
this is bodybacks
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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