Danny Calahane was at home with his young daughter when two men showed up with screwdrivers aiming to do Danny harm. Danny fought back against the intruders, chasing them from his home while protecting his daughter. The intruders came back, this time with sulfuric acid, attacking Danny and covering his body in the acid. As the two men fled the scene, police and paramedics were called. Danny Calahane was suffering from a pain that cannot be easily explained. Transporting the injured man to the hospital Danny was given morphine, enough to give him some relief, and in those brief moments Danny described his attackers. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack breakdown the story behind the headline. What was the attack all about? Who was behind the attack? What kind of injuries did Danny Calahane suffer? How is it possible that Danny lived for 10 weeks in the hospital with around the clock care and still died from the injuries he suffered in the acid attack. And WHY was Danny's Ex-Wife found Guilty of his MURDER!
Host Joseph Scott Morgan
Co-Host Dave Mack
Transcribe Highlights
00:00.04 Introduction - 5 years of Body Bags
04:03.66 Acid Attack - sulfuric acid
09:45.95 Used as a corrosive
14:53.17 Danny, ex-wife Paris, and "Frost"
20:18.91 After attack, Danny was verbal
24:27.70 Different than treating knife wound
30:14.40 Don't know how acid transported
35:10.04 Third degree burns
40:15.03 Ex-wife wanted money, jealous of Danny's life
41:31.65 Conclusion
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quody bags with Joseph's gotten more. We've been at body
bags now for I don't know five years, started in
twenty twenty one, and over the course of that time
with you my friends, we've talked about just I don't know,
(00:23):
just about everything that's kind of imaginable in the standard
sense of modalities of death, you know what you know,
particularly when it comes to homicides, this sort of thing,
and we're talking about gunfire and knives, and we've even
had a couple of swords. I remember us we had
one case where guy was a guy took an old
(00:46):
I think it was like a sewing machine and beat
somebody to death with it. We've had this memberments, you
name it, we have had it. But that's the nature
of life and death. Right today, we're going to get
into a case with a very interesting mode of death,
(01:11):
something that I don't think I've covered before. I could
be wrong, but today we're going to talk about it,
death that was brought about by using a particular type
of chemical. Now we've had poisonings, but this is not
a poisoning. This is actually an attack on a father
(01:37):
whose young daughter was in his house. This was a
purposed attack and guess what the purpose used. You're not
going to believe it. Sulphuric acid. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
and this is body by acts. I've done the blended
(02:07):
family thing, Dave. And it's when you don't have a
child that lives under your roof full time, you long
for those moments. You long for those moments where you
have your child at home with you, those weekends, you know,
(02:30):
and it's it's it's something that you anticipate because you're wondering,
you know, what's going on in their little life. You
know when they're away from you, and finally you have
that opportunity to be with them. And Dave, the tragedy
I think in this case is that it was I
don't know how better to say that it was one
(02:51):
of those weekends. It was one of those weekends where
a father had his daughter with him at his home
and it ends up in one of the most horrific
set of circumstances that I think that we can possibly
even imagine.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
I just remember you bringing this story up and saying,
you know, we've had acid attacks before. As a matter
of fact, we've had a number of them, yet we
haven't had an acid attack on an individual that ended
up in death. And that is down and dirty what
this story is all about that death by acid. Now,
(03:32):
I remember a story that we covered out about the
model in New York who was attacked by an ex
boyfriend and he threw acid on her face. And you know,
she came back from it and went public in the
early nineties, I think, and there have been others since then.
And it's a shocking attack. I mean, when you use
in this case sulfuric acid, Joe, you're aiming to at
(03:57):
the very least maim life. What does sulphuric acid do
to the skin?
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Oh, it's well, I'll put it to you this way.
You know what it can do on metal. It's a corrosive,
and so how much more so when you begin to
think about what it can do to to living human tissue.
Of One of the things that people, I think forget
about acid is that acid is actually a dehydrant, so
(04:29):
it can desicate, it can descate the skin. I'm reflecting back.
This is a long long time ago, but I worked
a case involving a gentleman that had fallen into a
vat of acid at a and this is something I
(04:50):
haven't covered on body backs, but this is something that
I was involved in as as an investigator way back,
way back, when got fell into a vat of acid
in a I think it was a tannery, which is,
you know, like you're tanning the leather on on like
(05:13):
an industrial scale to make shoes and belts and all
that sort of stuff. And he fell in and his
best friend was there, Dave, and his best friend dove
in after him.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah, I know, no greater love half of the man
than he laid down his life for his brother.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
And wait, so the guy fell in on accident, but
his best friend sees him and dives at knowing what
he's dying, began to do, not that it's an accident.
Oh my goodness, I know.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
And the friend died sometime later. But I remember examining
that fellow's body at that time and the only way
I could really describe it was I'm not being disrespectful here,
but just so that our friends can understand what it
felt like it was. It felt like it felt like
(06:01):
a basketball, like an actual leather basketball. I'm not talking
about one of these kind of I'm talking about a
genuine like all leather basketball. It was tense. If you've
if you've ever seen like a hyperinflated football basketball, you
know where you just got too much air in it,
and that the texture of that surface, that's what it
(06:23):
felt like. And it was I remember thinking it was
it had kind of cracking features to it. One other
interesting part to that case. In particular, I assisted in
the autopsy of that case. And Dave, uh, you know
(06:44):
when we when we open a body in the morgue. Obviously,
and for all of our friends know this, we've talked
about autopsies. You know, we use scalpels. That's what you
use to make the initial incision. Generally, if you've ever
seen television programs and those sorts of things. We do
(07:05):
what's called the standard Wy incision. It starts at the
apex of both shoulders and kind of comes down. That
incision marries up over the sternum and then we go
all the way down to the pubics and it creates
a y. It's called standard Wy incision. I do that
with one scalpel blade. Okay, it took five scalpel blades. Well, yeah,
(07:30):
that's what it does to the skin, and that gives
yourself Yeah, that gives you some kind of idea, and
so that binding that takes place with acid and then
the water that's contained. And we know that a large
percentage of our body is water, right, and it literally
(07:54):
dehydrates the body, it desiccates it to the point. And
that's like if you see leather. For instance, Native American
tribes used to do leather tanning in a natural manner.
I mean, how many times have we seen some kind
of movie or something where they've got like a deer hide,
you know, that's stretched out, you know, and then they
(08:14):
scraped the hide and all that. And you can use
salt and that sort of thing, but it kind of naturally, naturally,
you know, drives out and you can make it malleable
and all that. You got to work with it.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Though.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Well, when you're talking about in America, we and around
the world, you know we've done. You know, when you
get into an industrial scale of producing leather, you know,
all you got to do is walk into a shoe
store and I don't know how many pairs of shoes
or how many shoes out there are all leather. Now,
I think you pay a really high price for that.
But leather belts, leather handbags, you name, wallets, you know,
(08:50):
anything like that. You're working on an industrial scale, so
they don't have time to take you know, leather you
know that's acquired from you know, buffalo or from cow
or whatever and stretch it out and having that it's
done on industrial scale, and so you introduce, say the
practice of introducing acid into that. And when you talk
(09:13):
about sulfuric acid, sulfuric acid itself has many industrial uses.
One of the things that people I think are not
aware of. It can be used, for instance, to make
explosives with As a matter of fact, it's been outlawed
in several countries. You can't be in possession of sulfuric
(09:35):
acid because it is so tightly tied to the explosives industry.
You know, like if folks want to make a bomb
at home, for instance, all right, sulfuric acid could potentially
be one of the components that would be utilized or
do that fertilizer is created using you know, sulfuric acid.
(09:56):
It's a corrosive. It can be you in metallurgical work.
I mean, the list just goes on and on and on,
and all different acids have different utilities to them. So
you know, we we think about this and and when
you think about the horror that comes along with actually
(10:17):
using acid, where you you actually weaponize it, Dave, it
paints this this really dark, dark picture. I submit to you,
my friend, that with acid, and like you said, there
there are accounts of acid attacks that you know, we
(10:39):
could just go over and over and over again. I
don't think that it that it has. It has the
utility of being used as a guaranteed fatal weapon. All right,
you're really you're really running the risk here. If your
goal is to end somebody's life, as it's not going
(11:00):
to be. That's not going to be my default position. Okay,
So if that's not the case, then why would you
use acid. You brought up an excellent point just a
moment ago about kind of marking the person for lack
of a better term, you know, where where you're going
to let's say they're a beautiful model and you want
(11:23):
to take that rob them of that thing which is
not just their their beauty, but their identity, you know,
and it's it's a it's a weapon of terror. I mean,
it truly is, you know. And over the years there's
been you know, things like that acid has been used
as a torture weapon as well. They do the you
(11:45):
know infamously they're they're the acid drops, you know, where
they'll take bits of acid or or droplets of acid
and drop it directly onto the skin, right, And it's acid.
Sulphuric acid is one of those agents that is, as
soon as you come in contact with it, your pain
(12:05):
centers fire. There are other things out there that are
a bit more muted. Sophuric acid is not one of those.
So not only would it impact say, for instance, because
of its corrosive nature the skin where it actually makes contact,
the other thing that it can do is that if
it's in if it has any kind of vaporized element
(12:28):
to it, guess what happens if you inhale, it'll actually
get into your airway.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
And this is it's kind of a double you know,
double whammy here. And so that's why I tell you
that most of these events involving acid are not necessarily
meant to use be used as a weapon as a
(12:59):
lethal weapon. They're meant to be used as a tool
for marking, maybe even warning, and particularly in our case today,
involving maybe drug lords that won't, in fact, to send
(13:20):
a message even if there's a small child in the house.
Brother Daved, I got to tell you, you know, one
(13:42):
of the things that I've always kind of prided myself on,
if you will, as a husband and a father, I've
always viewed myself as a protector of my family. And
I think that, certainly as a man, if there's danger afoot,
(14:05):
you need to be willing to put yourself between the
danger and your wife and your kids. And in this
particular case, I think that our victim was placed into
that position. I mean, he's got his precious little girl
(14:25):
for a weekend visit, man, and you have the situation
that all hell breaks loose at his residence and he's
attacked with acid. But there's a bit leading up to
this though. I have, yeah, a bit, yea master of understatement.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yeah, here's what was going on. Okay, we've already talked
about the drugs and the prison and all that, But
when it comes right down to it, we have the victim, Danny,
we have his ex wife, Paris Wilson, and we have
drug Kingpinity Frost. Danny was trying to get out of
the drug world, and in that process, one of his
(15:10):
dealers failed to pay Danny and the dealer skipped down.
That meant Danny now owed drug kingpin Frost the money
that he didn't have. Danny did not have the money
and it was taking too long to pay. Frost decided
to send a message. The first message, well, let's kidnap
(15:30):
him and threaten him, and he sends out Kennedy slash
Frost sends the thugs to kidnap Danny. They are unsuccessful,
so next Kennedy Frost reaches out to Paris Wilson, the
ex wife of Danny, the mother of their daughter. They
(15:52):
have a daughter together. Frost intimates that he will pay
Paris a lot of money if she will just tell
them where Danny is and when he will be there.
Paris agrees, so Paris tells Kennedy slash Frost, Danny will
(16:12):
be at his house February twenty first in the evening
because my daughter will be visiting her dad that weekend.
So Danny has what a.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Rocket scientist, I can see where this is going and
how horrible, you know. And the other thing is is
that he's having to fight a war on two fronts.
He's got a drug dealer that's after him. I don't
know that Hollywood could make this up. Maybe they could.
Sounds like a Guy Ritchie movie. So you've got you've
(16:43):
got drug dealers on one hand, and you've got an
ex wife who holds you in complete contempt now because
you've moved on with your life and you happen to
have a girlfriend, right yep.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
And Paris Wilson just isn't tolerating any of it. And
so Harris looks at it as I can make a
bunch of money and I can get Danny turned over
to the big drug pen, drug kingpin, and I'm the winner.
So think about the type of individual she is that
she knows her daughter is with her dad the night
(17:16):
she basically sends the thugs to attack Danny. Now that
is the setup that night. You mentioned early on Joe
about protecting, you know, being a protector of your family. Well,
the night of February twenty first, Joe, Danny and his
daughter are at the house when two thugs with a
(17:38):
screwdriver break into his house. Danny Kahane is thirty eight
years old. He goes beast mode on these guys. They're
there to do him harm. He's protecting his wife, his
significant I mean, his daughter, his significant other, and Danny
just boom, he chases two thugs out of his house.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Yeah, well, this guy is he's I'll put it to
you this way. His other occupation is actually a fitness trainer, right,
you know, so I don't know that you know he's
going to cower over in the corner. He would, yeah,
he would. He would probably be willing to go toe
to toe. And all you got to do is do
that adrenaline spike you know where somebody comes in your house.
(18:21):
But screwdrivers, are you kidding me? You know, out of
all the and again this goes to you know, look,
we've talked about sharp force and penetrating injuries for a
long time now on body bags. Yes, screwdrivers can in
fact be lethal, all right, but I got to tell
you it's not the most efficient thing you can show
(18:43):
up with in hand. A screwdriver. I don't know, I mean,
why not a hammer? You know, I'm just I'm thinking here,
why not knives? But a screwdriver? This is the best
you can do? Maybe it's just a thought of Again
I go back to you know what I talked about
(19:03):
with acid, how it's kind of it's scarring, it's maiming,
it's not lethal, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, this
sounds like something that is more of a threat without
some kind of lethal intent. Perhaps initially it's just to
get you to comply with you know what the end
(19:23):
game is here. But they came back though day.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Well, the screwdriver didn't work, you know, and Danny, as
you mentioned, he went besmode on these guys and chases
two younger men out of his house. They didn't leave, though,
They came back with screwdrivers and sulfuric acid. They the
attack continued and Danny was hit with the sulfuric acid,
(19:51):
and then the guys ran away. Now, Joe, what takes
place after the sulfuric acid? Help does arrive?
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (20:02):
It does. Danny is in a lot of pain, but
he is lucid enough to do. He told the tendons,
I don't know who they were, but he gave good descriptions.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
So yeah, he was Yeah, he was still verbal. And
here's another thing. He was having a we don't really
know what tom this information was conveyed, but he was
having to claw his way up, not just through the pain,
but they gave him a bolus of morphine. Yeah, at
that particular time. For anybody that's never had morphine in
(20:36):
therapeutic setting, I'm not talking about elicted since if you've
ever had an opiate like this, particularly morphine, it puts
you into this kind of dream like state. It's like
your couple of tics above being completely unconscious. Now it
(20:58):
can you know, it can put you into that level
of unconsciousness, but you're not feeling You're not feeling any pain.
You know. Of course, a lot of that is dependent
upon how damaged you are and secondly, how large the
bullets of morphine is that they pushed on you at
(21:19):
that particular time. But he was still able. He was
lucid enough at least to give this an initial descriptor.
I got to tell you, I can only imagine the
paramedics that showed up on the scene and they're viewing
this guy, Dave, if he was I'll put you this way,
They're not just going to see his flesh that has
(21:42):
been burned. And by the way, suphuric acid causes third
degree burns, which is you know, just about as bad
as it can get. There is a level of fourth degree.
Fourth degree means that you actually have skeletal elements that
are showing through this kin. Come on.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
So that's how bad a third degree burn is right there.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Yeah, so we're right, we're right below the fourth degree.
If depending upon the amount of acid that could be
applied to a specific area, you know, you could go
beyond that. But you know, you start to get up
into third degree burns, particularly with like a chemical event
like this. It the larger the percentage. And I know
(22:32):
our friends out there are so bright that listen to
body bags, they're going to understand this. The higher percentage
of surface area impacted by either acid like this or
just open flame, the less likelihood is that you're going
to survive, that you're going to live to see the
next day. But what's curious about this, Dave, is that
(22:57):
after they were able to remove Danny from the scene,
they got him to a hospital and Dave, this guy
and I'm still amazed by this. This guy survived ten
weeks after an attack. And trust me, this was this survival.
(23:24):
This ain't no Betta Roses all right. As a matter
of fact, if you ever want to be grateful for
the life you have, if you have an opportunity to
go into a burn unit at any point in time.
It is one of the most horrible things to have
to bear witness to because day after day with burn
(23:46):
patients is misery. You measure it by well, today is
less miserable than the day before was, but you never
know what the next day holds, because they're always having
to treat you. They're always fiddling with you, they're always
applying whatever therapeutic measures they have in order to get
(24:07):
you to a position where you can survive. Because burning,
whether it be heat, direct heat, or whether it be
a chemical burn, is one of the toughest things that
in a therapeutic environment that you can tackle because you're
having to fight. They're having to fight a battle on
(24:30):
multiple fronts. It's not as simple, say, for instance, as
a stab one. Okay, so if someone gets stabbed, you've
got to penetrating an injury that goes into the body.
Let's say the screwdriver, right, If they're stabbed, it might
be just one spot, or it could be a couple
of spots. Well, if you get in there and you
can tie those vessels off and you haven't hit like
(24:51):
a vital organ, let's say it's gone directly into the
lung or the heart or deliver It's painful, but it's survivable,
will creep toward toward health at some point in time.
But with a burn, it's not just the surface area
that's being impacted. You've got something that is systemically wrong
(25:13):
on multiple levels. You're talking about everything from the you're
running the risk of sepsis septicemia where you'll get a
you'll get a you know, a system wide infection. You're
running the risk, say for instance, of impacting your kidneys.
(25:35):
This is one of the big problems that people have
that have been burned, where they have renal failure. Right,
you have this idea of the skin that and keep
in mind they're always having to pump you with fluids
in this environment and one of the most horrible things
that you bear witness to in the wake of a
(25:59):
burn related death many times, and I can't say that
they had to do this with Danny, but burn victims
have to go through any number of different types of surgeries.
You say, well, Morgan, you're talking about skin graph Well, yeah,
skin graphing is part of it. However, did you know
Dave that as the body on these burden units and
(26:24):
it doesn't happen with every case. But these bodies on
these patients on these burning units, as they as they're
they're longer, their bodies begin to swell. And one of
the most horrible things that I've ever borne witness to
in the morgue is you get these people that have
been on the burn units for a protracted period of time,
and they've taken them to surgery multiple times, and what
(26:45):
they do is they make these long, linear incisions in
the body, and they're all over the surface of the body.
And these are not these are things that are done
by the surgeon where they're actually having to open the
skin up. They're not going in to close anything. Well,
the reason is is that this tension builds up on
(27:06):
the skin and if you don't release that tension, you're
going to have a major problem on your hands. So
in addition to you know, and skin grass would come
long after that. But just to understand the misery that
people are subjected to as a result of a burning event,
(27:26):
it would make it would make anybody weak need not
just to bear witness to it, but how much more
so to have to endure it. And it's a very
and so we go back with Danny, I'm really wondering
about these perpetrators had they had prior experience with sulphuric acid,
(27:52):
because I got to tell you, as it's nasty business
in sense it. If you truly know what sulfuric acid does,
why in the world would you pick up a bottle
of it and you run the risk of burning yourself?
(28:14):
Because how many times how many times have you guys
out there ever picked up I don't know, you're gonna
throw a glass of water on somebody, you know, maybe
it's a prank. I don't know, maybe you did it
out of anger, but you're going to splash water on somebody, right,
It's a liquid obviously, just like sulphuric acid is. Have
(28:35):
you ever thrown a glass of water at somebody and
you wind up getting some water on your skin? Well,
just imagine if you will, that that splash that occurs,
not to mention the leaking out of the conveyance or
whatever the vessel is you're splashing from, but also the
backsplash of it could get onto you. Trust me, It's
(28:58):
like having a lava sat down upon the surface of
your skin. David, all the research that you've done on
(29:19):
this case, did you discover at any point in time
how they conveyed the acid to this location to Was
there ever a big reveal for you here?
Speaker 2 (29:30):
I am so glad that you asked, because I was
looking for that specific thing. And when you were talking
a minute ago about like water splashing, like you're carrying
it in a bucket or whatever, I was trying to
think if you remember the show that was on Breaking
Bad where there was a certain type of acid that
was used that could eat through steel, cement, porcelain, all
(29:53):
kinds of things, except it couldn't eat through plastic.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Plastic go.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Yeah, And I was wondering, how would you get sulfuric
acid from a vehicle into a house? How? And Joe,
even now that has not been cleared, we do not
know how the attackers transported the acid. What we do know,
these particular attackers, hired by drug king Pen Kennedy slash Frost,
(30:23):
were experienced at using acid as a weapon, So they
knew what they were doing with this sulfuric acid, they
knew the harm it caused, and they knew how to
properly transport it. That's all we know right now.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
But here's my.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Question, Joe, because this is what really has me bothered.
I looked for the specific area where Danny was wounded,
but we've seen and covered stories of burning with acid
and things like that. People as they recover. You were
mention how the recovery is where they actually have to split. Yeah,
(31:04):
you know, well one of the other things when a
patient is healing that as sick as and said and
harsh as, this is the area that's been affected as
it heals has to be scrubbed, yes, and peeled back.
It's just the most horrific thing. And I encourage you
if you don't understand, look it up because it really
(31:27):
will make you understand the medical profession. Those people who
choose a life of treating burn victims have a very
special place in my heart because it's not something I
could do and even imagine doing it. They have to
have They just are special people, but.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
They are they are. And the I'm glad you mentioned
the scraping part because you know there's a uh, there's
an element to burning that takes place, particularly when we're
talking about these acid burns, there is a necrosis that
takes place, and necrosis actually means death, well necro right,
(32:06):
and so, but necrosis. You actually have an event that
occurs with sulphuric acid. When it impacts the skin like this,
this necrotic event begins to occur, and so the skin
and just imagine this. Remember how I talked about sept
semia earlier. This is kind of part of it. The
(32:27):
skin actually begins to ride, okay, and we don't want
you know, rotting elements of our body are incompatible with life, right,
so they understand that, you know, these angels that work
on burn units, you know they understand this, and this
is part of it. Can you imagine going to work
(32:49):
every day and knowing you have to and I couldn't.
I wouldn't presume to get into their mind. But just
from my little feeble attempt here, you know that you're
going to cause somebody pain when you go to work.
You know, there's a lot of people out there that
go to a job and they think, well, I might
cause pain today. Brother, you don't know pain, all right,
(33:09):
So you're gonna you know, these people that you're treating,
they're going to create pain and through the pain comes
the healing hopefully. But of course that's that's not the
case with Danny man Well and Joe.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
They knew that early on that Danny was doused. His
entire body suffered from acid. And I looked at this
several different ways because I'm trying to figure out how
in the world, you know, But the description is he
was he had burns over his entire body. Now, Joe,
Danny was treated very quickly. They had rescue workers at
(33:44):
the house. He was lucid. They drugged him up to
survive the pain, because I can't imagine the agony he
was in. He was transported to the hospital and treated,
and he was able to speak with law enforcement, with
investigators for weeks. But Joe, I'm mentioned the scraping, you know,
from a healing standpoint, where they have the goal and
they're going to be doing skin grabs and things like that.
(34:07):
In Danny's case, it was believed early on that this
is an unsurvivable event, and yet he survived for ten weeks.
I find those two things to be incompatible with one another.
How is it possible? Can you please help me understand
how it is in this day and age that a
(34:27):
person can have top notch medical care and daily minutes
by minute, and yet he still dies from the wounds.
I mean you're two and a half months.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Let me make an old reference here if there are
people out there that love old SOPHIV movies. If you've
ever seen the movie Aliens, Aliens, which is the second Aliens,
where this thing, whatever this monster is, it issues force
with it has asset, you know, when you cut it right,
that's what's circulating through the body. And there's those famous
(35:02):
scenes where kind of it drips through that the blood,
if you will, begins to drip through multiple layers of
the hull okay, of that ship. That sulphuric acid. So
if we think about the burning, right, if we've got
heat related burning right, like a flame, I use the
term open flame or even explosion, it will be third
(35:25):
degree burns. But there is kind of a there's kind
of a limit, okay, as to the depth. It's the
problem with sulphuric acid is that I'm not going to
say the depth is limitless, but it's going to burn
a lot deeper than like open flame. And so when
(35:47):
the medical staff was able to assess this, they probably
came to the conclusion it would be one thing. Let's say,
for instance, it was a singular burn on Danny's arm,
right and it's on the forum. Well, and this does
happen with burn patients, but they see this is only here.
(36:09):
Guess what. They can go to the elbow or just above
it and they can amputate. And yet you would be
you'd have busted wing for the rest of your life,
but you're going to have your life, right. My suspicion
is is that there were so many critical surfaces that
this substance contacted that they knew. You know, you can't
(36:33):
you can't amputate someone's head. You know you can't amputate
their entire shoulder like this. They all you can really do.
And I hate to say this, but all you can
do is really and you know you take this out,
all you can really do is make them comfortable. I'm
just amazed. I would like to know how long is
(36:58):
what his level of lucidity was for this ten week period.
My suspicion is is it didn't last a long long time.
I don't For all I know, he could have been
loosened up until he drew his last breath. And while
I'm talking about breath, let me introduce this into the equation.
One of the things that happens with burns it's not
(37:20):
just infection, it's not just the scarring, it's not just
the depth one of the other things. And particularly when
you're talking about something caustic like acid. Remember how I
mentioned earlier where it's you take that breath, Well, it
begins to affect the airway, okay, And what many people
(37:41):
die of it's not just that initial acute phase where
you've got kind of the burning of the lining. When
you couple all of the other compromises to the system,
they can begin to develop a edema in their lungs.
And what that means is that their lungs begin to
(38:02):
fill up with fluid. Well, if your lungs are indimitous,
there's and you're in system failure. There's no way to
clear your lungs. And I don't typically like to use
this term, but just so that put it in the
vernacular because it's used, it's kind of inaccurate. But many
(38:25):
people will say that the individual drowned in their own fluids.
All right, Well, that's kind of what you're looking at here.
The lungs become so heavy and they are displacing oxygen.
So we all know that we need to take up
oxygen or survive. All right, we learned that very very young. Right. Well,
if it's just common sense, if you if the spaces
(38:47):
in your lungs are taken up by fluid, you can't
take up oxygen. Right, So the goal, you know you've got.
I envisioned this medical staff kind of juggling, running chainsaws.
You know they're because they're having to fight this fight
on so many different levels. When you see when you
(39:10):
see what they're having to deal with, and it's they're
literally moving from one problem to another. That's why it
takes It takes incredibly brilliant people to work on a
burn unit, all right, because you've got all of these
systemic failures that are going on, and you're having to
flip switches all over the place to try to figure
(39:31):
it out. It's going to be a combination probably accepted
semia as well as resptory failure, because his lungs wouldn't function. Unbelievable,
it really is. And you know his his ex wife,
who by the way, still has her life. Yes, Okay,
(39:57):
when I think about what was done to this man,
and when I think about that it was over money
coupled with her jealousy, I think it's important to understand
(40:21):
a quote that came from her, and it had to
do with the fact that she said, right before this
attack took place that I hope acid gets flung upon
you and your girlfriend. I really wonder, I really wonder
(40:48):
if miss Wilson fully understood the depth of that statement.
Danny did. Because Danny survived ten weeks in misery and now,
as happened in many of these cases, the only legacy
(41:10):
he has is this precious little girl, this left behind
with neither a mother or a loving father. I'm Joseph
Scott Morgan, and this is body bags.
Quody bags with Joseph's gotten more. We've been at body
bags now for I don't know five years, started in
twenty twenty one, and over the course of that time
with you my friends, we've talked about just I don't know,
(00:23):
just about everything that's kind of imaginable in the standard
sense of modalities of death, you know what you know,
particularly when it comes to homicides, this sort of thing,
and we're talking about gunfire and knives, and we've even
had a couple of swords. I remember us we had
one case where guy was a guy took an old
(00:46):
I think it was like a sewing machine and beat
somebody to death with it. We've had this memberments, you
name it, we have had it. But that's the nature
of life and death. Right today, we're going to get
into a case with a very interesting mode of death,
(01:11):
something that I don't think I've covered before. I could
be wrong, but today we're going to talk about it,
death that was brought about by using a particular type
of chemical. Now we've had poisonings, but this is not
a poisoning. This is actually an attack on a father
(01:37):
whose young daughter was in his house. This was a
purposed attack and guess what the purpose used. You're not
going to believe it. Sulphuric acid. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
and this is body by acts. I've done the blended
(02:07):
family thing, Dave. And it's when you don't have a
child that lives under your roof full time, you long
for those moments. You long for those moments where you
have your child at home with you, those weekends, you know,
(02:30):
and it's it's it's something that you anticipate because you're wondering,
you know, what's going on in their little life. You
know when they're away from you, and finally you have
that opportunity to be with them. And Dave, the tragedy
I think in this case is that it was I
don't know how better to say that it was one
(02:51):
of those weekends. It was one of those weekends where
a father had his daughter with him at his home
and it ends up in one of the most horrific
set of circumstances that I think that we can possibly
even imagine.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
I just remember you bringing this story up and saying,
you know, we've had acid attacks before. As a matter
of fact, we've had a number of them, yet we
haven't had an acid attack on an individual that ended
up in death. And that is down and dirty what
this story is all about that death by acid. Now,
(03:32):
I remember a story that we covered out about the
model in New York who was attacked by an ex
boyfriend and he threw acid on her face. And you know,
she came back from it and went public in the
early nineties, I think, and there have been others since then.
And it's a shocking attack. I mean, when you use
in this case sulfuric acid, Joe, you're aiming to at
(03:57):
the very least maim life. What does sulphuric acid do
to the skin?
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Oh, it's well, I'll put it to you this way.
You know what it can do on metal. It's a corrosive,
and so how much more so when you begin to
think about what it can do to to living human tissue.
Of One of the things that people, I think forget
about acid is that acid is actually a dehydrant, so
(04:29):
it can desicate, it can descate the skin. I'm reflecting back.
This is a long long time ago, but I worked
a case involving a gentleman that had fallen into a
vat of acid at a and this is something I
(04:50):
haven't covered on body backs, but this is something that
I was involved in as as an investigator way back,
way back, when got fell into a vat of acid
in a I think it was a tannery, which is,
you know, like you're tanning the leather on on like
(05:13):
an industrial scale to make shoes and belts and all
that sort of stuff. And he fell in and his
best friend was there, Dave, and his best friend dove
in after him.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah, I know, no greater love half of the man
than he laid down his life for his brother.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
And wait, so the guy fell in on accident, but
his best friend sees him and dives at knowing what
he's dying, began to do, not that it's an accident.
Oh my goodness, I know.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
And the friend died sometime later. But I remember examining
that fellow's body at that time and the only way
I could really describe it was I'm not being disrespectful here,
but just so that our friends can understand what it
felt like it was. It felt like it felt like
(06:01):
a basketball, like an actual leather basketball. I'm not talking
about one of these kind of I'm talking about a
genuine like all leather basketball. It was tense. If you've
if you've ever seen like a hyperinflated football basketball, you
know where you just got too much air in it,
and that the texture of that surface, that's what it
(06:23):
felt like. And it was I remember thinking it was
it had kind of cracking features to it. One other
interesting part to that case. In particular, I assisted in
the autopsy of that case. And Dave, uh, you know
(06:44):
when we when we open a body in the morgue. Obviously,
and for all of our friends know this, we've talked
about autopsies. You know, we use scalpels. That's what you
use to make the initial incision. Generally, if you've ever
seen television programs and those sorts of things. We do
(07:05):
what's called the standard Wy incision. It starts at the
apex of both shoulders and kind of comes down. That
incision marries up over the sternum and then we go
all the way down to the pubics and it creates
a y. It's called standard Wy incision. I do that
with one scalpel blade. Okay, it took five scalpel blades. Well, yeah,
(07:30):
that's what it does to the skin, and that gives
yourself Yeah, that gives you some kind of idea, and
so that binding that takes place with acid and then
the water that's contained. And we know that a large
percentage of our body is water, right, and it literally
(07:54):
dehydrates the body, it desiccates it to the point. And
that's like if you see leather. For instance, Native American
tribes used to do leather tanning in a natural manner.
I mean, how many times have we seen some kind
of movie or something where they've got like a deer hide,
you know, that's stretched out, you know, and then they
(08:14):
scraped the hide and all that. And you can use
salt and that sort of thing, but it kind of naturally, naturally,
you know, drives out and you can make it malleable
and all that. You got to work with it.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Though.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Well, when you're talking about in America, we and around
the world, you know we've done. You know, when you
get into an industrial scale of producing leather, you know,
all you got to do is walk into a shoe
store and I don't know how many pairs of shoes
or how many shoes out there are all leather. Now,
I think you pay a really high price for that.
But leather belts, leather handbags, you name, wallets, you know,
(08:50):
anything like that. You're working on an industrial scale, so
they don't have time to take you know, leather you
know that's acquired from you know, buffalo or from cow
or whatever and stretch it out and having that it's
done on industrial scale, and so you introduce, say the
practice of introducing acid into that. And when you talk
(09:13):
about sulfuric acid, sulfuric acid itself has many industrial uses.
One of the things that people I think are not
aware of. It can be used, for instance, to make
explosives with As a matter of fact, it's been outlawed
in several countries. You can't be in possession of sulfuric
(09:35):
acid because it is so tightly tied to the explosives industry.
You know, like if folks want to make a bomb
at home, for instance, all right, sulfuric acid could potentially
be one of the components that would be utilized or
do that fertilizer is created using you know, sulfuric acid.
(09:56):
It's a corrosive. It can be you in metallurgical work.
I mean, the list just goes on and on and on,
and all different acids have different utilities to them. So
you know, we we think about this and and when
you think about the horror that comes along with actually
(10:17):
using acid, where you you actually weaponize it, Dave, it
paints this this really dark, dark picture. I submit to you,
my friend, that with acid, and like you said, there
there are accounts of acid attacks that you know, we
(10:39):
could just go over and over and over again. I
don't think that it that it has. It has the
utility of being used as a guaranteed fatal weapon. All right,
you're really you're really running the risk here. If your
goal is to end somebody's life, as it's not going
(11:00):
to be. That's not going to be my default position. Okay,
So if that's not the case, then why would you
use acid. You brought up an excellent point just a
moment ago about kind of marking the person for lack
of a better term, you know, where where you're going
to let's say they're a beautiful model and you want
(11:23):
to take that rob them of that thing which is
not just their their beauty, but their identity, you know,
and it's it's a it's a weapon of terror. I mean,
it truly is, you know. And over the years there's
been you know, things like that acid has been used
as a torture weapon as well. They do the you
(11:45):
know infamously they're they're the acid drops, you know, where
they'll take bits of acid or or droplets of acid
and drop it directly onto the skin, right, And it's acid.
Sulphuric acid is one of those agents that is, as
soon as you come in contact with it, your pain
(12:05):
centers fire. There are other things out there that are
a bit more muted. Sophuric acid is not one of those.
So not only would it impact say, for instance, because
of its corrosive nature the skin where it actually makes contact,
the other thing that it can do is that if
it's in if it has any kind of vaporized element
(12:28):
to it, guess what happens if you inhale, it'll actually
get into your airway.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
And this is it's kind of a double you know,
double whammy here. And so that's why I tell you
that most of these events involving acid are not necessarily
meant to use be used as a weapon as a
(12:59):
lethal weapon. They're meant to be used as a tool
for marking, maybe even warning, and particularly in our case today,
involving maybe drug lords that won't, in fact, to send
(13:20):
a message even if there's a small child in the house.
Brother Daved, I got to tell you, you know, one
(13:42):
of the things that I've always kind of prided myself on,
if you will, as a husband and a father, I've
always viewed myself as a protector of my family. And
I think that, certainly as a man, if there's danger afoot,
(14:05):
you need to be willing to put yourself between the
danger and your wife and your kids. And in this
particular case, I think that our victim was placed into
that position. I mean, he's got his precious little girl
(14:25):
for a weekend visit, man, and you have the situation
that all hell breaks loose at his residence and he's
attacked with acid. But there's a bit leading up to
this though. I have, yeah, a bit, yea master of understatement.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yeah, here's what was going on. Okay, we've already talked
about the drugs and the prison and all that, But
when it comes right down to it, we have the victim, Danny,
we have his ex wife, Paris Wilson, and we have
drug Kingpinity Frost. Danny was trying to get out of
the drug world, and in that process, one of his
(15:10):
dealers failed to pay Danny and the dealer skipped down.
That meant Danny now owed drug kingpin Frost the money
that he didn't have. Danny did not have the money
and it was taking too long to pay. Frost decided
to send a message. The first message, well, let's kidnap
(15:30):
him and threaten him, and he sends out Kennedy slash
Frost sends the thugs to kidnap Danny. They are unsuccessful,
so next Kennedy Frost reaches out to Paris Wilson, the
ex wife of Danny, the mother of their daughter. They
(15:52):
have a daughter together. Frost intimates that he will pay
Paris a lot of money if she will just tell
them where Danny is and when he will be there.
Paris agrees, so Paris tells Kennedy slash Frost, Danny will
(16:12):
be at his house February twenty first in the evening
because my daughter will be visiting her dad that weekend.
So Danny has what a.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Rocket scientist, I can see where this is going and
how horrible, you know. And the other thing is is
that he's having to fight a war on two fronts.
He's got a drug dealer that's after him. I don't
know that Hollywood could make this up. Maybe they could.
Sounds like a Guy Ritchie movie. So you've got you've
(16:43):
got drug dealers on one hand, and you've got an
ex wife who holds you in complete contempt now because
you've moved on with your life and you happen to
have a girlfriend, right yep.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
And Paris Wilson just isn't tolerating any of it. And
so Harris looks at it as I can make a
bunch of money and I can get Danny turned over
to the big drug pen, drug kingpin, and I'm the winner.
So think about the type of individual she is that
she knows her daughter is with her dad the night
(17:16):
she basically sends the thugs to attack Danny. Now that
is the setup that night. You mentioned early on Joe
about protecting, you know, being a protector of your family. Well,
the night of February twenty first, Joe, Danny and his
daughter are at the house when two thugs with a
(17:38):
screwdriver break into his house. Danny Kahane is thirty eight
years old. He goes beast mode on these guys. They're
there to do him harm. He's protecting his wife, his
significant I mean, his daughter, his significant other, and Danny
just boom, he chases two thugs out of his house.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Yeah, well, this guy is he's I'll put it to
you this way. His other occupation is actually a fitness trainer, right,
you know, so I don't know that you know he's
going to cower over in the corner. He would, yeah,
he would. He would probably be willing to go toe
to toe. And all you got to do is do
that adrenaline spike you know where somebody comes in your house.
(18:21):
But screwdrivers, are you kidding me? You know, out of
all the and again this goes to you know, look,
we've talked about sharp force and penetrating injuries for a
long time now on body bags. Yes, screwdrivers can in
fact be lethal, all right, but I got to tell
you it's not the most efficient thing you can show
(18:43):
up with in hand. A screwdriver. I don't know, I mean,
why not a hammer? You know, I'm just I'm thinking here,
why not knives? But a screwdriver? This is the best
you can do? Maybe it's just a thought of Again
I go back to you know what I talked about
(19:03):
with acid, how it's kind of it's scarring, it's maiming,
it's not lethal, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, this
sounds like something that is more of a threat without
some kind of lethal intent. Perhaps initially it's just to
get you to comply with you know what the end
(19:23):
game is here. But they came back though day.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Well, the screwdriver didn't work, you know, and Danny, as
you mentioned, he went besmode on these guys and chases
two younger men out of his house. They didn't leave, though,
They came back with screwdrivers and sulfuric acid. They the
attack continued and Danny was hit with the sulfuric acid,
(19:51):
and then the guys ran away. Now, Joe, what takes
place after the sulfuric acid? Help does arrive?
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (20:02):
It does. Danny is in a lot of pain, but
he is lucid enough to do. He told the tendons,
I don't know who they were, but he gave good descriptions.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
So yeah, he was Yeah, he was still verbal. And
here's another thing. He was having a we don't really
know what tom this information was conveyed, but he was
having to claw his way up, not just through the pain,
but they gave him a bolus of morphine. Yeah, at
that particular time. For anybody that's never had morphine in
(20:36):
therapeutic setting, I'm not talking about elicted since if you've
ever had an opiate like this, particularly morphine, it puts
you into this kind of dream like state. It's like
your couple of tics above being completely unconscious. Now it
(20:58):
can you know, it can put you into that level
of unconsciousness, but you're not feeling You're not feeling any pain.
You know. Of course, a lot of that is dependent
upon how damaged you are and secondly, how large the
bullets of morphine is that they pushed on you at
(21:19):
that particular time. But he was still able. He was
lucid enough at least to give this an initial descriptor.
I got to tell you, I can only imagine the
paramedics that showed up on the scene and they're viewing
this guy, Dave, if he was I'll put you this way,
They're not just going to see his flesh that has
(21:42):
been burned. And by the way, suphuric acid causes third
degree burns, which is you know, just about as bad
as it can get. There is a level of fourth degree.
Fourth degree means that you actually have skeletal elements that
are showing through this kin. Come on.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
So that's how bad a third degree burn is right there.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Yeah, so we're right, we're right below the fourth degree.
If depending upon the amount of acid that could be
applied to a specific area, you know, you could go
beyond that. But you know, you start to get up
into third degree burns, particularly with like a chemical event
like this. It the larger the percentage. And I know
(22:32):
our friends out there are so bright that listen to
body bags, they're going to understand this. The higher percentage
of surface area impacted by either acid like this or
just open flame, the less likelihood is that you're going
to survive, that you're going to live to see the
next day. But what's curious about this, Dave, is that
(22:57):
after they were able to remove Danny from the scene,
they got him to a hospital and Dave, this guy
and I'm still amazed by this. This guy survived ten
weeks after an attack. And trust me, this was this survival.
(23:24):
This ain't no Betta Roses all right. As a matter
of fact, if you ever want to be grateful for
the life you have, if you have an opportunity to
go into a burn unit at any point in time.
It is one of the most horrible things to have
to bear witness to because day after day with burn
(23:46):
patients is misery. You measure it by well, today is
less miserable than the day before was, but you never
know what the next day holds, because they're always having
to treat you. They're always fiddling with you, they're always
applying whatever therapeutic measures they have in order to get
(24:07):
you to a position where you can survive. Because burning,
whether it be heat, direct heat, or whether it be
a chemical burn, is one of the toughest things that
in a therapeutic environment that you can tackle because you're
having to fight. They're having to fight a battle on
(24:30):
multiple fronts. It's not as simple, say, for instance, as
a stab one. Okay, so if someone gets stabbed, you've
got to penetrating an injury that goes into the body.
Let's say the screwdriver, right, If they're stabbed, it might
be just one spot, or it could be a couple
of spots. Well, if you get in there and you
can tie those vessels off and you haven't hit like
(24:51):
a vital organ, let's say it's gone directly into the
lung or the heart or deliver It's painful, but it's survivable,
will creep toward toward health at some point in time.
But with a burn, it's not just the surface area
that's being impacted. You've got something that is systemically wrong
(25:13):
on multiple levels. You're talking about everything from the you're
running the risk of sepsis septicemia where you'll get a
you'll get a you know, a system wide infection. You're
running the risk, say for instance, of impacting your kidneys.
(25:35):
This is one of the big problems that people have
that have been burned, where they have renal failure. Right,
you have this idea of the skin that and keep
in mind they're always having to pump you with fluids
in this environment and one of the most horrible things
that you bear witness to in the wake of a
(25:59):
burn related death many times, and I can't say that
they had to do this with Danny, but burn victims
have to go through any number of different types of surgeries.
You say, well, Morgan, you're talking about skin graph Well, yeah,
skin graphing is part of it. However, did you know
Dave that as the body on these burden units and
(26:24):
it doesn't happen with every case. But these bodies on
these patients on these burning units, as they as they're
they're longer, their bodies begin to swell. And one of
the most horrible things that I've ever borne witness to
in the morgue is you get these people that have
been on the burn units for a protracted period of time,
and they've taken them to surgery multiple times, and what
(26:45):
they do is they make these long, linear incisions in
the body, and they're all over the surface of the body.
And these are not these are things that are done
by the surgeon where they're actually having to open the
skin up. They're not going in to close anything. Well,
the reason is is that this tension builds up on
(27:06):
the skin and if you don't release that tension, you're
going to have a major problem on your hands. So
in addition to you know, and skin grass would come
long after that. But just to understand the misery that
people are subjected to as a result of a burning event,
(27:26):
it would make it would make anybody weak need not
just to bear witness to it, but how much more
so to have to endure it. And it's a very
and so we go back with Danny, I'm really wondering
about these perpetrators had they had prior experience with sulphuric acid,
(27:52):
because I got to tell you, as it's nasty business
in sense it. If you truly know what sulfuric acid does,
why in the world would you pick up a bottle
of it and you run the risk of burning yourself?
(28:14):
Because how many times how many times have you guys
out there ever picked up I don't know, you're gonna
throw a glass of water on somebody, you know, maybe
it's a prank. I don't know, maybe you did it
out of anger, but you're going to splash water on somebody, right,
It's a liquid obviously, just like sulphuric acid is. Have
(28:35):
you ever thrown a glass of water at somebody and
you wind up getting some water on your skin? Well,
just imagine if you will, that that splash that occurs,
not to mention the leaking out of the conveyance or
whatever the vessel is you're splashing from, but also the
backsplash of it could get onto you. Trust me, It's
(28:58):
like having a lava sat down upon the surface of
your skin. David, all the research that you've done on
(29:19):
this case, did you discover at any point in time
how they conveyed the acid to this location to Was
there ever a big reveal for you here?
Speaker 2 (29:30):
I am so glad that you asked, because I was
looking for that specific thing. And when you were talking
a minute ago about like water splashing, like you're carrying
it in a bucket or whatever, I was trying to
think if you remember the show that was on Breaking
Bad where there was a certain type of acid that
was used that could eat through steel, cement, porcelain, all
(29:53):
kinds of things, except it couldn't eat through plastic.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Plastic go.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Yeah, And I was wondering, how would you get sulfuric
acid from a vehicle into a house? How? And Joe,
even now that has not been cleared, we do not
know how the attackers transported the acid. What we do know,
these particular attackers, hired by drug king Pen Kennedy slash Frost,
(30:23):
were experienced at using acid as a weapon, So they
knew what they were doing with this sulfuric acid, they
knew the harm it caused, and they knew how to
properly transport it. That's all we know right now.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
But here's my.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Question, Joe, because this is what really has me bothered.
I looked for the specific area where Danny was wounded,
but we've seen and covered stories of burning with acid
and things like that. People as they recover. You were
mention how the recovery is where they actually have to split. Yeah,
(31:04):
you know, well one of the other things when a
patient is healing that as sick as and said and
harsh as, this is the area that's been affected as
it heals has to be scrubbed, yes, and peeled back.
It's just the most horrific thing. And I encourage you
if you don't understand, look it up because it really
(31:27):
will make you understand the medical profession. Those people who
choose a life of treating burn victims have a very
special place in my heart because it's not something I
could do and even imagine doing it. They have to
have They just are special people, but.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
They are they are. And the I'm glad you mentioned
the scraping part because you know there's a uh, there's
an element to burning that takes place, particularly when we're
talking about these acid burns, there is a necrosis that
takes place, and necrosis actually means death, well necro right,
(32:06):
and so, but necrosis. You actually have an event that
occurs with sulphuric acid. When it impacts the skin like this,
this necrotic event begins to occur, and so the skin
and just imagine this. Remember how I talked about sept
semia earlier. This is kind of part of it. The
(32:27):
skin actually begins to ride, okay, and we don't want
you know, rotting elements of our body are incompatible with life, right,
so they understand that, you know, these angels that work
on burn units, you know they understand this, and this
is part of it. Can you imagine going to work
(32:49):
every day and knowing you have to and I couldn't.
I wouldn't presume to get into their mind. But just
from my little feeble attempt here, you know that you're
going to cause somebody pain when you go to work.
You know, there's a lot of people out there that
go to a job and they think, well, I might
cause pain today. Brother, you don't know pain, all right,
(33:09):
So you're gonna you know, these people that you're treating,
they're going to create pain and through the pain comes
the healing hopefully. But of course that's that's not the
case with Danny man Well and Joe.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
They knew that early on that Danny was doused. His
entire body suffered from acid. And I looked at this
several different ways because I'm trying to figure out how
in the world, you know, But the description is he
was he had burns over his entire body. Now, Joe,
Danny was treated very quickly. They had rescue workers at
(33:44):
the house. He was lucid. They drugged him up to
survive the pain, because I can't imagine the agony he
was in. He was transported to the hospital and treated,
and he was able to speak with law enforcement, with
investigators for weeks. But Joe, I'm mentioned the scraping, you know,
from a healing standpoint, where they have the goal and
they're going to be doing skin grabs and things like that.
(34:07):
In Danny's case, it was believed early on that this
is an unsurvivable event, and yet he survived for ten weeks.
I find those two things to be incompatible with one another.
How is it possible? Can you please help me understand
how it is in this day and age that a
(34:27):
person can have top notch medical care and daily minutes
by minute, and yet he still dies from the wounds.
I mean you're two and a half months.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Let me make an old reference here if there are
people out there that love old SOPHIV movies. If you've
ever seen the movie Aliens, Aliens, which is the second Aliens,
where this thing, whatever this monster is, it issues force
with it has asset, you know, when you cut it right,
that's what's circulating through the body. And there's those famous
(35:02):
scenes where kind of it drips through that the blood,
if you will, begins to drip through multiple layers of
the hull okay, of that ship. That sulphuric acid. So
if we think about the burning, right, if we've got
heat related burning right, like a flame, I use the
term open flame or even explosion, it will be third
(35:25):
degree burns. But there is kind of a there's kind
of a limit, okay, as to the depth. It's the
problem with sulphuric acid is that I'm not going to
say the depth is limitless, but it's going to burn
a lot deeper than like open flame. And so when
(35:47):
the medical staff was able to assess this, they probably
came to the conclusion it would be one thing. Let's say,
for instance, it was a singular burn on Danny's arm,
right and it's on the forum. Well, and this does
happen with burn patients, but they see this is only here.
(36:09):
Guess what. They can go to the elbow or just above
it and they can amputate. And yet you would be
you'd have busted wing for the rest of your life,
but you're going to have your life, right. My suspicion
is is that there were so many critical surfaces that
this substance contacted that they knew. You know, you can't
(36:33):
you can't amputate someone's head. You know you can't amputate
their entire shoulder like this. They all you can really do.
And I hate to say this, but all you can
do is really and you know you take this out,
all you can really do is make them comfortable. I'm
just amazed. I would like to know how long is
(36:58):
what his level of lucidity was for this ten week period.
My suspicion is is it didn't last a long long time.
I don't For all I know, he could have been
loosened up until he drew his last breath. And while
I'm talking about breath, let me introduce this into the equation.
One of the things that happens with burns it's not
(37:20):
just infection, it's not just the scarring, it's not just
the depth one of the other things. And particularly when
you're talking about something caustic like acid. Remember how I
mentioned earlier where it's you take that breath, Well, it
begins to affect the airway, okay, And what many people
(37:41):
die of it's not just that initial acute phase where
you've got kind of the burning of the lining. When
you couple all of the other compromises to the system,
they can begin to develop a edema in their lungs.
And what that means is that their lungs begin to
(38:02):
fill up with fluid. Well, if your lungs are indimitous,
there's and you're in system failure. There's no way to
clear your lungs. And I don't typically like to use
this term, but just so that put it in the
vernacular because it's used, it's kind of inaccurate. But many
(38:25):
people will say that the individual drowned in their own fluids.
All right, Well, that's kind of what you're looking at here.
The lungs become so heavy and they are displacing oxygen.
So we all know that we need to take up
oxygen or survive. All right, we learned that very very young. Right. Well,
if it's just common sense, if you if the spaces
(38:47):
in your lungs are taken up by fluid, you can't
take up oxygen. Right, So the goal, you know you've got.
I envisioned this medical staff kind of juggling, running chainsaws.
You know they're because they're having to fight this fight
on so many different levels. When you see when you
(39:10):
see what they're having to deal with, and it's they're
literally moving from one problem to another. That's why it
takes It takes incredibly brilliant people to work on a
burn unit, all right, because you've got all of these
systemic failures that are going on, and you're having to
flip switches all over the place to try to figure
(39:31):
it out. It's going to be a combination probably accepted
semia as well as resptory failure, because his lungs wouldn't function. Unbelievable,
it really is. And you know his his ex wife,
who by the way, still has her life. Yes, Okay,
(39:57):
when I think about what was done to this man,
and when I think about that it was over money
coupled with her jealousy, I think it's important to understand
(40:21):
a quote that came from her, and it had to
do with the fact that she said, right before this
attack took place that I hope acid gets flung upon
you and your girlfriend. I really wonder, I really wonder
(40:48):
if miss Wilson fully understood the depth of that statement.
Danny did. Because Danny survived ten weeks in misery and now,
as happened in many of these cases, the only legacy
(41:10):
he has is this precious little girl, this left behind
with neither a mother or a loving father. I'm Joseph
Scott Morgan, and this is body bags.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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