November 11, 2025 • 54 mins
Deputy Jason Loftsgard is the first officer on the scene of a possible carbon monoxide poisoning death.
He checks on the victims, Romondus Cooper, 44; Amanda Parker, 33; Keonna Ryan, 26; and Brent Brown, 34, and finds only Brown to still be alive.
The deputy also notes, "These people didn't die of natural causes."
State Trooper Tylor Fairbanks said. "Carbon monoxide does not cause your head to collapse on itself, and carbon monoxide poisoning also does not leave pools of blood on the ground."
Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss the entire scene, from the carbon monoxide poison call to the trial of Luke Truesdell that is going on right now.
Is it possible Luke Truesdell really killed four people with a pipe just to create the plot for a true-crime movie?
Transcript Highlights
00:00.52 Introduction, 2019 coverage of murder with a corn rake
03:05.95 Murder weapon is a metal pipe
06:57.81 Who was the main target?
12:11.61 Carbon Monoxide poisoning
18:18.11 How do you beat 4 people to death
23:03.53 The term "Brain Them"
28:03.99 Determine who was killed first
33:00.01 Suspect show himself to investigators without knowing
39:15.42 The Most Dangerous Game
44:57.51 Each victim beaten to death with metal pipe
49:55.91 Looking for degree of trauma
54:37.06 Conclusion: Trial ongoing - Will update
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quody Doors with Joseph's Gotten More. Back in twenty nineteen,
I think it was. I was covering a trial both
on Law and Crime Network as well as with Core
TV of a pick farmer out of Iowa who took
(00:25):
of all things a corn rake and impaled his wife
on it. He was eventually found guilty. I don't remember
a case like that because the level of brutality that's
involved in this thing, I'll never forget it, you know,
And seeing the crime scene images and that sort of thing,
(00:45):
I'm thinking, oh, my lord, you know, and they lived
way out, you know, and there's a lot of way
out in Iowa. Now, I've got some dear friends up there.
I really do beautiful countryside if you like, flat and agricultural,
which doesn't put me off. Enters are kind of tough,
particularly for an old Southern boy, but nice folks. But
(01:06):
the brutality of that case, you know, really made me
stop and think for a moment, Wow, you know, this
could happen out here. He was eventually found guilty. The
fellow's name was Todd Mullis. I'm sure that some of
you guys remember that case. Wife was amy heartbreaking, absolutely heartbreaking,
but today, I have got what I would say is
(01:28):
equally a brutal case. As a matter of fact, several cases,
all stemming from one single individual as a perpetrator that
I would argue is equally as brutal. It's out in
an isolated area, it's in farmland, and the tale that
I'm about to tell you is going to rock you
(01:53):
to your core because there's so much horror associated with this,
and to a certain degree, there's so much confusion. But
we're going to try to get that straightened out. Coming
to you from the beautiful campus of Jacksonville State University,
(02:13):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks. Brother Dave.
Do you have any memory of Todd, the Todd Mully's
case that I'll do the corn.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Rake That's what actually when you said corn Rake, that's
why I went, oh, yeah, you know, I we do
so many stories during the course of any year, but yeah,
I do remember that corn Rake story. And I the
horror that comes from some of these crimes. And I'm
glad you mentioned that it's not just one crime, not
just one murder. There were four souls here that were
(02:45):
ended and yet in this one and I'm not trying
to be funny, but remember the game Clue. Yeah, you know,
Colonel Mustard did it in the library with lead pipe.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
This is a story that actually kind of is like
that because the weapon is a metal pipe.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Yeah, it is. It is a metal pipe. And there
were other other elements to this that are brought in
in this case that we could dig forever from a
forensic standpoint, And I plan on going kind of deep with.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
This because it started. It was in a shed and
when I saw this, it began with a phone call
about possible carbon monoxide.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Now, yeah, and I'm going to tell you why I
think that that that came up.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
I got it.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
I'm glad you mentioned Clue. Here's a bit of trivia
that I think that a lot of our friends are
not going to be aware of, and they're going to
be shocked by. Did you know that? Well, obviously you
know that I'm a father, and being a father, there's
certain things that you're required to do. One of those
(03:49):
things if you've got kids in the house, is to
play board games. And did you know? And I kind
of wear it as a badge of honor. Maybe it's
a bad a shame. I don't know. Did you know
that in the entirety of my life, even as a
child and into adulthood and parenthood, I have never won
(04:11):
a game of Clue. So much for that master's screen
forensic science. Huh, I don't just set that thing on
fire man. Wow, I've never. I've never. I don't know
that I have the patience with it. Whatever it is.
I get distracted.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Uh. You know.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
You know people go around they talk about their you know,
low attention span and all that sort of thing, and
they start applying all these titles I got ADHD all stuff.
I don't know if it's I don't know if it's
that I there are certain games that I loved. I
loved playing you know the game I really loved. I
love playing Sorry. Maybe it's because I had to say
it so much in my life, but I love playing Sorry.
(04:53):
I love playing Trouble. You know the thing where you
pumped a little bubble in it, you know, it tells
you where to move. I love those games. I never
was a success at Clue though. It just it required
too much brain power. So I don't know if you
guys want to go ahead and tune out now, I
guess so I mean, I don't know if that invalidates
me as a forensic practitioner or a professor. And but yeah,
(05:18):
you know you mentioned this and you you know, you
show up at a scene, Dave, and I'm glad you
mentioned this bit about about carbon monoxide. You show up
at a scene, and particularly where there are multiple deaths,
all right, because one one homicide in and of itself
(05:42):
is it can not always but can be markedly complex.
And you have to take your time working the scene,
making sure you're documenting and collecting everything that has to
be But then you add bodies to this, and there
are other dynamics that come into play, and they are
(06:03):
physical and I don't mean this like in amongst the living.
I mean there's physical relationships between the decedents, right, and
you have to be able to document that everything from
distance to share trauma, to the degree of clothing, how
(06:25):
much are they clothed? You know, do you have somebody
that's partially clothed? Is there evidence that somebody was brutalized
more than another person that was there, because you know,
there's how many of these cases have we talked about
over the year's day where we've had these events where
there will be a multiple death scenario, but there will
(06:47):
be that one person that appears to have been singled out,
you know, where they've just they've been brutalized so much
more than anybody else. I think of JJ entilely, you know,
relative to that, you know, with the day bell unpleasantness
up there. But yeah, in this case. You know, one
(07:08):
of the first things that came up was this idea
of carbon monoxide assixiation.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
But carbon monoxide, Joe would be four bodies in sleeping
bags maybe, but you wouldn't see a crime scene. Do
you see people who went to sleep and didn't wake up?
As a carbon manoxide tends to do.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
I can, but I think that your default position with
your brain as you're trying. Most people do not flee
to homicide. That's something they don't want to do that,
you know, It's like they can't. They have to come
up I think with some other explanation as to why
for people of course, yeah, for people. I We'll get
(07:47):
into the details a minute. But four people are down.
So you've got the smell at the scene, which is
like inside of a kind of a pole barn kind
of thing.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
It's inside they're calling it an outbuilding, and when.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
I looked at that pole born us Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
The pole barn. So I'm thinking, okay, if you think
about the big steel beam, you know that or not
being but this big steel pole in the middle of
the room that acts as a stabilizing unit for the
whole metal building around it. I mean, I'm trying to
get an idea here. But when I read one article
on this, it was talking about the outbuilding slash shed
(08:27):
and that Amanda Parker. By the way, the victims here,
Ramanda's Cooper is forty four, Amanda Parker is thirty three,
Keon O'Ryan is twenty six, and Brent Brown is thirty four,
and they were killed or died in an outbuilding. And
then inside this outbuilding slash pole building, there's a tent
(08:52):
and that tent is where the victim, where Amanda at
least was living and had been for some time. Now
I can add something to this because, as we said,
carbon monoxide was the original call, and to me, I'm
thinking for people to sleep, and that's it. But I
looked at something a little bit further, and the people
(09:14):
that Amanda was working with, they're really not They're beyond
upset that their friend was killed because they were pointing
out that she works at a place called the Old
Brick House Pub, and they said that from the time
that she left and the time the nine one one
(09:35):
call was made, four dead bodies was less than an hour.
Less than an hour, justph Scott Morgan for Amanda Parker.
So again there are three dead bodies and one that
is really wounded bad and eventually does die. Right, But
the original call cover monoxide. So backing up to that,
(09:56):
if you're going on that call, and you and I've
talked about the mindset of investigators, police fire everybody, first
responders and as you said, last responders going into a
scene with preconceived notions and that is not a good
thing in terms of looking at and investigating a crime.
(10:18):
So what are we doing here with carbon monoxide?
Speaker 1 (10:20):
As it's terrifying? Uh, you know, back years and years ago,
almost well myself and two of my colleagues got really
ill at at a carbon monoxide event or you know,
group of desks. We had an entire family. This was
actually in a town called Kenner, Louisiana, where if you've
(10:42):
ever flown into New Orleans, you fly into Kenner. That's
where Louis Armstrong Airport is International Airport, and I got
called out there, and you know, you roll up on
the scene, there's star trucks and you know, when you
get out of vehicle, you're immediately told you got multiple deaths.
(11:02):
And in this case, I can't remember the number. It
seems like we had five dead or maybe even six
dead in the house. You know, it doesn't get cold
in New Orleans very often, or down in South Louisiana
during the wintertimes is like February or something. But we
had a call snap. And in this case, they had
talked about how the wall mounted you know those wall
(11:24):
mounted heaters, Yeah, kind of built in the wall in
like the sixties ranch style houses. It was not functioning.
So they had a relative that came over to work
on the fan. These things have an exhaust fan. My
understanding was he had reversed the flow. Oh no, yeah,
And so when you walk into this thing, all of
(11:45):
the people are, like you said, are all in bed,
and they're in there, they're covered, you know, with like blankets.
And I don't mean covered like they covered themselves before
lying down, It's what I'm saying. And they died. We
got the all clear to go in. And this is
before the days when when the fire service had the
(12:08):
portable carbon monoxide detectors. They had put huge fans. You know,
there's fans that you see if you go to a garage,
you know, during the summer, you know where where they're
you know, the garage where you take your car, not
at your home. I mean maybe you haven't, but there's
a gigantic fans, you see. And it was that were
(12:28):
trying to pull the air out and they had opened
the windows to ventilate it, and they gave us the
thumbs up and we went in and I'll never forget, man.
I looked over at I was in with it, a
homicide detective and a crime scene tech and myself and
I looked at my friend who was the crime scene tech,
and his eyes were bloodshot. Oh wow, and my head
(12:48):
was hurting. I said, is your head hurting? He said, man,
he says, just banging. Man. And then immediately it hit
me place was not not completely ventilated. We went and
grabbed grabbed the detective. He was busily writing and you
could see the changes in his face as well, and
(13:09):
it's like you're you know, you get caught up in
the work, you're not really thinking about. It grabbed him.
They had to put us on O two. I'd spend
I had to spend like I think, I spent overnight
in the hospital that night. The interesting thing about carbon
dioxide is that once you're exposed to it, they want
(13:30):
to keep you on O two for a protracted period
of time because it can I have been told at
least that there's still a level of lethality eight hours
out from an exposure. And so when we do autopsies
on bodies of individuals that have been exposed to carmonoxide,
(13:51):
even their blood dave, even the blood of the dead
is like a cherry pink color, and all of the
viscera internally, well you'll see it externally too. The eyes
turned pink. The skin you'll it'll have a pink as
hue to it. And uh, the organs have a pink
(14:13):
tent to them as well. It's it's amazing, and it's
it's the hemoglobin that's reacting to this response, and so
you know, you do you know, I remember my head
hurts so bad, and I hadn't begun to feel drowsy yet.
But you know, in this particular case, out in Iowa
(14:35):
with these four people. The finder knew that one of
these subjects inside, and I think it was Cooper, if
I'm not mistaken. They were working on a truck inside
and they could smell oil, you know, like heated oil,
and I think that they were thinking, well, the vehicle
(14:55):
is running inside of there. If you ever wonder why,
you know, the garages, the garage a garage will leave
the bay doors open. You know, these guys are working.
You know, in this environment, people don't think that that's dangerous.
Well it's not just a car falling on you or
something like that. They have to turn the engines on
(15:16):
many times, and so they'll leave the doors open to
get ventilation. Well, when they arrived, you know, they're smelling
oil in there, and and like and I hold this,
I hold this, this thought in my brain about this
relative to people. When you walk into a scene, you're
not thinking, you're not thinking. Your default position is, oh, yeah,
(15:41):
they've been beaten to death with a metal pipe, and
you're thinking, well, they've been exposed to noxious fumes and
either there might still be alive or maybe they're passed
out deceased. But the one thing that kind of betrayed
(16:04):
those thoughts was the fact that upon further examination, each
one of these subjects was lying in a pool of
their own blood. You know, recently in the news there
(16:30):
was I think it was in London. I'm not really sure.
It's happened multiple times where somebody will And of course
we saw this.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Poor girl up in Charlotte.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Not too long ago, where an individual pulls out a
knife and they begin attacking. Of course, she was a
single victim. But you know, there was recently, I think
we had eight I think it was in London that
were attacked on a bus. It's not like shooting, is it,
Dave think? And when you go to a bludgeoning, you
know where we know that a metal pipe is. As
(17:05):
a matter of fact, it's a three foot long metal pipe.
I've envisioned that this thing is probably some kind of
galvanized galvanized pipe that was used, which is kind of interesting.
If any end of one of these pipes is used.
I've had this happen before. Where it's been threaded. You'll
actually see a pattern injury that will develop on the
(17:27):
surface of the skin. Over the surface of the impact areas.
You'll you'll see these threads you know, and they'll take
on the the the negative image of the threads being
impressed into the skin. But back to my where I
was going initially, the only way I see this kind
(17:48):
of happening. You know, how do you beat three people
to death or four people to death with a metal
pipe without this being some type of ambush? I mean
that that you can't. I don't see it. You know.
It's not like some you know, martial arts movie where
you get which is always so stupid to me, where
you got one guy in the center and he's being
(18:09):
attacked by a bunch of people and you're thinking, I
want you some bum rushing, right, you know, I don't
care how high he can kick and all those sort
of things that that's but you know, you're thinking, you know,
how do you attack for people? I think you know
this didn't happen all at one time. This sounds like
an ambush day.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
It does, and this is something that they're going to
have to figure out. Now. What we have here is
let me say that I them in my head, I'm
hearing cool hand, Luke, Well, we're dealing well yeah?
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Is well?
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yeah, to communicate, communicate, yeah, Luke Trusdale thirty six years old.
He's on the scene when police arrive, and we have
the brother of Brent Brown, who actually found the bodies.
Now again carbon Minike's I call comes in to nine
one one. Matt Brown is at the scene and discovers
(19:07):
his brother Brent, and the others Keon Ryan, Amanda Parker,
and Ramanda's Cooper. He discovers them all and the blood
as you mentioned a minute ago, so immediately I went,
you got blood everywhere? Who said carbon monoxide poisoning? I mean,
I get it that, I guess I get that could
(19:29):
have been a reason that the people were able to
be attacked, if they had been overcome with carbon monoxide
and then they were beaten to death. But that big
question of how does one person use a lead pipe
to kill three nearly four people that are not handicapped physically.
(19:55):
They're in good health apparently, So that's the question that
has to be answered. And it's so funny because so
many funny strange not funny, how huh?
Speaker 1 (20:03):
I no, no, yeah, But it's funny that how.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Many times when we look at a story, we want
to know, why did this happen? Why did you do this?
Like that means anything, And I mean it doesn't when
you're solving a crime, justph Scott Morgan, when you're looking
at this, do you ever consider the why? Because does
it have bearing on your investigation?
Speaker 1 (20:26):
I think, you know, and again you know how I
feel about that word. I hate why, I really do.
I guess for some people it has a bigger impact
than it does for me. I'm more about what and
how and when and those sort of things that there's
enough on your plate, particularly at a scene. Okay, let's
(20:50):
narrow this down to a scene, all right, where you're
having to consider all of these other questions that are
out there. Why is like kind of like way down
the list at that point in time, because first off,
you don't have enough data to even formulate something until
you've collected all of the scientific data that's out there,
(21:12):
you know, and also that's going to be developed at
the morgue and in the laboratory. You know, why is
a very leisurely questioned all right?
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Right?
Speaker 1 (21:22):
To me? It is, it's it's a you know, that's
kind of you know why me? You know, that kind
of thing. If you take that same idea, that's that's
almost a luxury now going down after you have all
of the data. Yeah, you can play around with that
all you want. But you know, famously is it's been
(21:45):
stated over and over again. You there's no particularly in court,
you don't have to prove motive. Motive is not on
the table. They like to talk about motive, but you know,
there's a lot of other things people like to talk
about too, But it's not you know, it has it
doesn't have as much value in my world. I want
(22:05):
to know how how this went down relative to the well,
first off, the sequencing of it, I think is important
because you know, when you've got four people, what could
what could four people have done to either one individual
or maybe a group of individuals? Because I got to
tell you, Dave a beating death to me? When I
(22:28):
see that and I think about that, that's almost like
messaging to me, Yeah, okay, that's what could four people
have done? And are they being utilized? Are they being
utilized in order to send a message. You're saying that
a pipe was utilized to beat somebody to death? You
(22:52):
know the old term is to bring them. I don't
know if you've the brain them.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Okay, we would use that from here on. I'll tell
you that.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Yeah, person got brained to death, beating over and over again.
There's a conclusion that you arrive at apparently, and I
think that in this case they did, because the actual
weapon is recovered and at least three there's four victims,
(23:23):
four fatalities eventually. But there's three victims I think whose
DNA is found on the pipe, and then a potential
suspect whose DNA is found on the pipe. So you
get an idea that, well, this instrument was used to
kill all of them. Well, unless you're passing around to
a group of people who are utilizing it individually, here
(23:45):
your turn type of thing. You got one person that's
the perpetrator here that's beating somebody to death, and what
sequence did this happen in? I think that if you
can get to the heart of the sequence, then you
can try to understand what the motivation was, who was
the target and was there a specific target or do
(24:05):
you just have a madman that is just trying to
keep people in a confined space they have an idea
of where a confined space containing or housing for people are.
If they just want to go randomly victimize a group
of people, you know, and they're gonna wait, they're gonna wait,
and they're going to knock hell out of out of
(24:27):
these people until they've beaten them down. And Dave, this
is another thing. This really jumped in mind. He kind
of opened the door. Here. You're you're an old baseball player.
There was there ever a time in baseball where you
were not as exhausted going into I mean, like I've
(24:51):
always imagined this because I'm not a baseball guy. I'm
a football guy. But it seems to me that one
of the most exhausting things that you can do, particular
if you've got a coach that's right, and you're trying
to work on your batting stance and your swing, you
get in a batting cage and you go in there
for a protracted period of time and hit ball after
ball after ball. When you get out, I mean, everything's gone.
(25:12):
I would think, how much more so, you know, when
you're taking a metal pipe and you're beating somebody to
death with it, and where do you where do you?
Where do you call?
Speaker 2 (25:23):
No joy?
Speaker 1 (25:24):
At that moment, Tom say, Okay, it's over with, It's done.
You know, I've sufficiently eradicated this person from the face
of the planet. You know, what's the cutoff? What's the
cut off there?
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Well, think about it. Anybody who's ever cut would if
you've ever chopped with you thro a fire, you know,
the same thing. You're swinging something over and over. Then
first it's easy. At first, it's comfortable, and after a
couple of minutes, you know, your arms get tired. Your
forearms are the first ones to go. And anyway, when
I looked at this, because I'm again trying to wrap
my head around, how did one person, Trusdale control the
(25:57):
situation so that he could eat four people at the
same time. Now we're going to I assume that he
beat four people at the same time. Because the only
thing we really know, Joseph Scott Morgan is the timetable
given to us by Amanda's co workers, who said the
(26:18):
time she left work and the time that nine one
woman was called was an hour. That was it, from
the time she left work to the time she's dead.
One hour. Now, Prosecutor, I want to get to this
because Trooper Tyler Fairbanks says dud when he's asked this question,
When did you realize that this was not a carbon
(26:39):
monoxide issue? Fairbanks says, once I walked in that overhead door,
and I saw the first female with blunt forced trauma wounds?
What made you form that opinion that you were not
there for what you were initially called for? Trooper? The
carbon monoxide does not create your head to collapse on itself.
(27:02):
And carbon monoxide poisoning also does not leave pols of
blood on the ground. Now, Joe, you've got pols of
blood on the ground ahead caved in. This is just
one victim. Now you've got blood spatter on the victims,
on the walls, on the ceiling, on the floor. How
(27:24):
do you break this down? Because you've already got investigated
people who have come in to determine, checking for vital
science to see who's dead, who's alive. They are able
to determine that three are already dead. The fourth is
in bad shape and is helicoptered to the hospital, Brent Brown,
(27:44):
but he died later. Now you've got three dead on
the scene, and you've got blood everywhere. How do you,
as an investigator separate this blood spatter over here, and
this footprint over here, and this handprint over here. How
do you break all those out to actually try to
determine who is killed first?
Speaker 1 (28:05):
Okay, let me take this piece by piece because it's
very complex when you begin talking about bloodstained patterns. All right,
First off, you don't need to move to bodies. This
is one of those cases, Dave, where the body in
you're kind of from an investigative standpoint, you're kind of
(28:27):
at an advantage because you're in a closed space and
you're not not to say that you're not going to
have bloodstained deposition in an outdoor space. However, it's more
appreciable in a contained space because you've got everything's happening
in this you know, kind of three D environment where
you've got you've got overhead covering, you've got walls, and
(28:48):
you've got floors, right, and then you have the other
objects that are contained within that space, and you have
other bodies okay, and then if you're fortunate, you might
have a suspect as well. So all of those are
going to have potential for deposition of blood patterns on them.
You don't want to move the bodies, uh quickly because
(29:14):
one of the things that you're looking for, and you know,
people always ask us about the you know, they talk
about blood spatter velocity, which is a big thing. You know,
where you've got this active event, we've got low velocity,
medium velocity, and high velocity. High velocity generally exist in
the world of firearms because it just makes sense, right,
(29:36):
you know, the higher velocity of the object that's going
to slim into a surface and generate blood deposition, it
has to be traveling. Don't have to be going supersonic,
but it has to be traveling a very high rate
of speed. You get into the area of medium medium velocity.
Now you're talking about baseball, bats, hammers, pipes. Okay, does
(29:58):
droplets generally the smaller the droplet, the higher the velocity.
And I know that there's people that will disagree with that, probably,
but that's just kind of a way to think about it.
And then when you get to low velocity that you're
talking about using your hands, using your feet, you know,
those droplets again are going to be a bit larger.
(30:19):
So you're kind of in that medium velocity. You're going
to have overlapping. Overlapping patterns too, depended upon the proximity
that these where these bodies are to one another. So
you want to establish what's referred to as a point
of origin, you know, the strike point, and there might
be multiple strike points. Let me ask you something. Have
(30:42):
you ever taken a shot from somebody? You don't have
to answer this. Have you ever taken a shot from
somebody and then you stand in that same position? Well,
that's rare. Yeah, most people, Yeah, most people are going
to move, all right, now, depend upon the fort. Now,
(31:02):
there are events where you will drop a person right
where they stand. You know, you think some big guy,
some diminutive person, and you strike them on top of
the head. You have enough force that's going to drop them.
But every time, and well I'll talk about this with
head strikes. If you have an object like a pipe
(31:23):
and you're cracking them on the head, Well, that first
initial initial strike, particularly if it's a smooth kind of
if it doesn't have like a big texture kind of
surface to it. That is the object dependent upon the
angle and how much energy you can generate. Most of
(31:44):
the time, you're not going to completely open up the head. Okay,
it's going to take another strike because what you're doing
is you're compromising structural integrity of both the skin and
the bomb underline. All right, So I talk to my
students about this, and I do not teach. I do
not teach at a higher level. I don't teach bloodstained interpretation.
(32:07):
One of my colleagues does, but I teach the intro
and I've had to do it in the field. I
always use the example of paint can okay, where when
you take the paintbrush and you dip it in Okay,
that dynamic as you flick it over your shoulder is
going to create what's the equivalent of cast off. So
(32:30):
if you think about a pipe penetrating a skull, it
becomes the surface of it has blood that's on the surface.
As you flick that pipe back in order to again
facilitate striking down again, well, that blood is literally cast off.
It can be cast off in an arcing motion directly
above your head. It can go you can cast it
(32:53):
off to the side. Depending upon what plane you're swinging
this thing in. Okay, the person swinging it can get
blood on them. I got a fascinating story I had
one of my colleagues that was actually he's a forensic scientist,
and he was talking. A guy walked up to him
at a scene day where a woman had been Let's see,
(33:14):
how did it work? A woman had in fact been
beaten to death with a hammer and this guy's wearing
a white T shirt. Colleague, my colleague that's a forensic scientist,
crime scene investigator, along with the detective were talking to
this guy. Guy just walks up and just voluntarily says, hey, man,
you know, I think I know who might have done this.
(33:35):
And as he's talking to them, they say, well, go
stand over there, we've got your information. The guy turns
to walk away and David, he's got a diagonal line
of blood deposition running from his right shoulder across to
his over the top of his left kidney area. They said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Wow,
(33:58):
come here, you know, like this and met They put
the bracelets on the sky with him in the back
of the car, and it turned out he was, in
fact the perpetrator.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Okay, so you know, even the perpetrator, and you know,
our friends out there that listen to bodybags are pretty
bright people, all right, So they understand this that it's
not you're not doing this necessarily in a vacuum. So
as far as order, you'd you'd ask an excellent question,
can we determine the order? That's that's difficult to do.
(34:28):
I think it is actually I think that you're going
to have to be more reliant on the status of
the bodies. And again my fallback position is going to
be post mortem interval. You know, understanding, you know, had
had an individual laid in wait and killed that first
person early on and where they cold and stiff, maybe
(34:50):
laying there dead before the next victim shows up and
that subjects attacked, and then the next and the next
and the next. So that's why, not only you have
to leave the bodies in place so you can understand
the point of origin for the blood coming off the body,
you have to leave those bodies in place so that
you can thoroughly examine them to try to determine how
(35:11):
long they have in fact been dead. Because brother Dave,
I could tell you it's a head scratcher when you
think again, just like that earlier stated that one person
is going to take out four individuals with a single weapon.
It's kind of hard to swallow unless the people would
either be inebriated in some way where you know, and
(35:35):
I've had people that have been beaten to death in
their sleep that does happen, or have been beaten to
death when they're passed out, or it's an ambush kind
of thing where you've got somebody that just waits one
by one and they begin to hammer on an individual. Dave.
(36:08):
Every now and then, my wife Kimmy and I will say,
you know what, we haven't been scared in a while.
Let's watch a horror movie. And we don't do it
a lot, all right, It's not something that you know,
we engage in with great frequency. But I think the
first movie horror movie we actually watched together, this happened
(36:32):
in this movie came out in ninety nine. We got
married in ninety nine. The first one we ever watched.
We picked a doozy because we didn't know what to
expect with this thing. We just heard everybody talking about it.
And that's Blair Witch Project. Oh and I got to
tell you it got my attention because I couldn't. And
(36:55):
I hate to sound like, you know, a gullible fool.
I'm not saying I'm not a fool. I'm just my
level of gullibility with this thing. And I don't want
to give it away for anybody that hasn't well.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Since nineteen ninety nine, if you hadn't seen.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
It, Yeah, I think we can safely go down this road.
But yeah, I mean and it scared me. And it
scared me in a sense that you've got people that
are going out looking for something that is infamous and
they're filming the thing the entire time. There is an
element in this case out of Iowa that is fascinating
(37:31):
to me because they have hooked a guy up on
charges and as we are speaking right now, this trial
is ongoing. That's one of the reasons I wanted to
talk about it. Am I or am I not correct?
And there was an initial conversation that came up in
this case where the alleged perpetrator wanted to create a movie.
(37:58):
Is that accurate about this case?
Speaker 2 (38:00):
That is accurate? And Luke Trusdell told police a number
of things before they gave him the miranda. You know,
you have the right to remain silent. Before they mirandized him,
he made a number of statements. He was at the
scene when police arrived, and many of the statements are
(38:20):
not going to be heard by the jury. But that
was a comment he made that did he kill four
people to create the subject matter for a movie? Joe,
have you ever heard of such a thing?
Speaker 1 (38:40):
No? No, I assume that somebody else has done this.
It sounds rather fantastical. I think that someone would and
oh my lord, it's dark.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
The only way I can is you know that I
can really, you know, really describe. You know, you hear
about things where people have created fictionalized events, you know,
where they're doing it for their entertainment. What was that
book that was written all those years ago, the most dangerous,
most dangerous game I think, where you know, there were
(39:21):
hunting people on the island, on the island and all
those sorts of things.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
There was a guy named mister Kinkaid that was hunting
Gilligan on Gilligan's Island, and really they weren't smart enough
to figure out how to grab the bottom of the
helicopter to get off the island.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
But don't get me started on Gilligan at any rate.
Hate that movie. I mean I hate that TV show
for that reason. You know, Gilligan. Let me tell you something.
Gilligan would have been disposed off, diposed early on if
I had had anything to do with it.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
You know, one day we're going to break down all
the times they failed to escape the island.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
Oh my lord, I'll tell you, But don't get me
starty anyway.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Anyway, this guy wanting to create a to do a
murder at this level of multiple people for nothing more
than to create the subject matter for a movie. I
mean that if that is the top of mind, that's why.
If that is truly the motive, Joe, we have a
hollow soul we're dealing with.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Yeah, I think that we do. But is it? And look,
I'm not going to get too deep into social commentary here,
but does it really surprise you in the world that
we live in nowadays, because you know, you can see
stuff on social media that is in fact manufactured. And
I'm not even talking about the AI stuff. I'm just
talking about people that go out and you know, create
these various little dramas that are out there. So you know,
(40:46):
in hearing this, I'm not as shocked by this today.
And I hate to say that. Oh my Lord, Lord,
forgive me. I hate to say that today. I'm not
hang on, let me get let me get this straight.
I am not as shocked by this today as I
would have been ten years ago, right, and just I
(41:06):
mean just think about it. You know, you know you said, well, Morgan,
you know, God, that's that's really horrible. For you to say,
is it, you know, because there are people out there
that go around and they create these these things in
order to draw attention to themselves. And is this Is
this an indication that this guy has psychopathology going on
(41:28):
to the point where he's so debilitated he you know,
he's he's got a problem. You know. Well, no, not necessarily.
This is something that he desired. Uh, you know, according
to the authorities. But they're not allowing this in court.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Right, a lot of it. Yeah, part of his statement
will be allowed, but part of it will not be allowed.
And they're going to be arguing more about this during
the course of the trial, you know, because it's a
big part of why we're here today.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
Well, one of the you know, one of the things
they teach cops is that if you've got an individual
that makes these what do they call spontaneous admissions, right,
you don't you don't say, hey, you know, it would
be in your best interest to shut your mouth. At
this point in time, we haven't mirandized you yet, so
(42:19):
i'd be very curious about you know, that status with
this trial. Uh is it? It's not the cops duty
to tell you to shut your mouth. You know, so
if this is a spontaneous admission, right that in most cases,
that's that's valid. Now if you other than the way
(42:40):
I understand it, other than probit if questions like are
you injured or you hurt? What's your name? Where are
you from? Uh? Those sorts of kind of generalized questions
that you know, but as a guy saying, yeah, my
name is Fred Jones, I just cut my wife's head
off and put it in a camera bag, that's not
(43:02):
you know, you don't have to mirandize him, and that
that can be included.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
At really do times.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
As a matter of fact, they've gotten to a point where,
if I remember correctly, where they were not wanting beat
officers to mirandize people. You know, immediately you don't ask
them questions, probative questions other than are you okay? You know,
because you're you're just trying to is there anybody else
(43:30):
in the house? You know, this guy's covered with blood?
Is there anybody else in the house that's been injured? Well,
that's not you're not asking them to give away anything.
You don't want to say, why did you do this?
Or you know what you know? Did you do this?
Speaker 2 (43:44):
Or whatever? The case might be obviously to look at
whoever's standing nearby and say, hey, we recalled from carbon
monoxide poisoning. What the heck happened? Yeah, you know you
can't do that without it getting tossed. I mean it
makes sense to me that that would be a yeah,
that's an obvious question.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
But well, yeah, because you know you're being told that
it's carbon monoxide, and you know that humans don't spontaneously,
you know, develop holes and defects in their body and
blood begins gushing out from them. There has to be
there has to be an action, you know that elicits this,
this physical reaction, And so I find this fascinating that
(44:24):
this was kind of the motivating factor behind what the
prosecution is saying was driving this individual to beat these
people to death.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
Dave, I know it with a lead pipe or with
a metal pipe. So if he was truly set up
to try to kill people for the sake of creating
the log line for a movie, the four people he killed, okay,
because Brent Brown died because of the beating. But you've
got Amanda Parker thirty three involved with Romand's Cooper forty four.
(45:00):
He has two sons, Keana Ryan, twenty six, and Brent Brown,
who was thirty four. Each one was beaten to death.
They found bludgeoned with a metal pipe. And what is
prying to come up in court now is what happened
and why? Again? Why is something we need not necessarily
(45:22):
something they need? But why would anybody kill four people?
And how did he pull it off by himself? The
prosecution says it was an ambush and the defense says
it wasn't an ambush. You know, actually I don't know
what they're saying totally right now, because we just said
the prosecution phase. The defense will have their day. But
(45:43):
justph Scott Morgan, You've got four people that were bludgeoned
to death with a metal pipe by one person. Only
one person is charged in this crime, who claims he
was trying to create the plot for a movie. I'm
thinking to human beings not have any value, people not
have value now that we're seeing as nothing more than
(46:07):
something that can just be.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
Fodder, Yeah, fodder for entertainment. I don't know it. It
would it would seem so particularly well, particularly in this case.
And I don't again, I don't know if this is
some gigantic social commentary here, but they're going to have
to sufficiently explain this. I think one of the first
things that we're going to find out is that because
(46:30):
you know, the words carbon monoxide were floated. I'm hoping
that the medical examiner in this case that they drew
blood on each one of these victims and they will
run I think I've mentioned before the test it's called
a car box of hemoglobe and level, and that will
(46:53):
that will give you an indication. You know, we we
take on in our in our natural environment, particularly if
you live in an urban area, if you work around vehicles,
you're going to take on a certain amount of carbon monoxide.
Not all you know, it's not like you just catch
a whiff of it and you die. It's not like that.
There's you know, our body can metabolize it. But when
you get an overload of it, and so what you're
(47:14):
looking for with that sample, what you're looking for with
that sample is to see if you're within lethal ranges.
And there are lethal ranges that are established. You know
that if you have this percentage on board in your system,
that you will not survive all right, or you're going
to have major problems down the road. So once you
get that eliminated scientifically, I think that that's pretty important.
(47:38):
The other thing that you would be looking for in
this case, because they're saying that it is a metal pipe,
they've identified that it's a three foot metal pipe. When
the forensic pathologist testifies to these insults, one of the
things they're going to do is both the prosecution and
the defense are going to probe this individual and ask
(48:00):
them are all of these injuries, what similarities exist with
these injuries? And what you're observing at the autopsy doc.
You know, if you if you're looking for certain you
know the margins of these these injuries. You know, I
talked about if you've got like a threaded edge on
the thing and you're you're holding you're holding it and
you're beating someone, are there any similarities between the marks
(48:23):
that are found on all three of these are all
four of these victims that you can go back and say,
yet this appears now you can't say it with you
can't say it with absolute And here's the big difference.
Absolute scientific certainty. You say it within a reasonable a
reasonable amount of scientific certainty. You can't say there's nothing
that's one hundred percent even when you talk about DNA,
(48:44):
you're talking about you know, when the person's testifying. But
the forensic pathologist will render an opinion that will say, yet,
it appears that a weapon similar to the weapon that
we have in question was used in each one of
these cases and brought about the death. So that's again,
you know, if you're kind of working your way down
the tier regarding you know, the forensic evidence. And then
(49:09):
I think the other big delineation here, Dave, is how
many strikes were there? Oh wow, okay, now you can
I think that many people can you know kind of
and I've guilty of this. They can opine as to well,
the more strikes you have, the more of a target
the individual was not necessarily if it if they if
(49:30):
they were trying to beat the life out of somebody, somebody,
there might be an individual. You know. We've got a
lady that has died. I saw her, saw her images.
She's rather diminutive, she's very tiny. I submit to you
that it would not take as much to kill her
as it would say one of the one of the males,
all right, So she might not be beaten to the
(49:53):
point where her head is a little pulpified. Remember what
the troopers said here. He said one of the reasons
he really that this was not carbon monoxide association was
because of carbon dioxide. This is a great line, Oh
my lord, talk about a log line for a movie
that you know, carbon dioxide doesn't cause your skull to
(50:15):
cave in, all right. So you're going to be looking
for the degree of trauma. How many times are they
struck over and over and over again. Whereas you might
have one or two on one person, you might have
multiple on others. And that's that's kind of hard man.
That's really hard to do an absolute with beatings in particular,
(50:38):
it's very difficult, Dave, to try to say they were
struck this many times because you've got all of these
overlying injuries, those injuries that were generated in life, Dave,
You're going to have what are referred to as contusion abrasions.
And if you've got if you've got a person that's
being struck in the same spot every single time, those injuries,
(51:00):
the contusion abrasions become I don't know if the term
is they're overlapping. And the other part to this, too,
is that you're going to have commingling of blood at
the scene, not just on the scene, but also on
the weapon. You can have commingling of blood if he's
moving from one body to the next and he's spilt blood.
(51:20):
Remember again what the troopers said about the one victim,
there was a pool of blood. We note there are
other pools of blood. Well, if you move from one victim,
say the initial victim, to the next victim, you're going
to have blood deposition in the form of what appeared
to be footprints that might have originated from another person,
while in fact you're beating the other one to death.
Speaker 2 (51:41):
A lot of complexity with this case, Dave, Well, the
one thing we do know is that Trusdell and Ramondus
Cooper were working on a vehicle together. And again we're
getting this information from the suspect in the crime and
what he blurted when police arrived, and his statements that
(52:02):
we don't know what will be in and what will
be thrown out. That'll be determined during the course of
the trial, but that while they're working on the he
inc and Romondus Cooper are working on the vehicle. Cooper
handed him the metal pipe. The victim hands it to
the suspect because they're working on a vehicle and he
needed this pipe for whatever they were doing, and Trusdell
(52:22):
says he lost it. Now, he does claim that he
hit Cooper first, he took him out first because he
was the biggest, and that Brown might have tried to
defend himself, and that you know, he did survive long
enough to be airlifted to the hospital and the two
women were both destroyed. Right there, that's pretty much what
we know. That there were things said by Trusdell two police,
(52:49):
and beyond that, the noises in his head that were
affecting him before the murders no longer existed after, so
we're going with the voices in the head scenario. So
they had him psychologically looked at before moving forward with
the trial. So just letting you know that's the standard
(53:09):
that we're dealing with here in terms of Trusdale and
his admission of guilt and then pleading not guilty and
the case being at trial. Now. We'll have to keep
you updated on what happens once the devents has their day,
So as you're listening to this now, there will be
an update, and Joe and I will get back together
and make sure we provide that once the jury returns
(53:32):
with their verdict.
Speaker 1 (53:35):
I think that probably this is another again example of
you don't have to live in some huge metropolis for
evil to visit you. It can present itself, just like
it did in the Todd Moll's case, in a barn
(53:59):
with a corner, and evil can also visit in an
outbuilding being used as a garage to try to work
on an old car. You never know where it's coming from,
but I do know this. I do know that we
are not cannon fodder. That each one of us has value,
(54:23):
and as long as I'm doing this show that every
single victim will have value. None of us are merely
props in a movie. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this
is body Backs
Quody Doors with Joseph's Gotten More. Back in twenty nineteen,
I think it was. I was covering a trial both
on Law and Crime Network as well as with Core
TV of a pick farmer out of Iowa who took
(00:25):
of all things a corn rake and impaled his wife
on it. He was eventually found guilty. I don't remember
a case like that because the level of brutality that's
involved in this thing, I'll never forget it, you know,
And seeing the crime scene images and that sort of thing,
(00:45):
I'm thinking, oh, my lord, you know, and they lived
way out, you know, and there's a lot of way
out in Iowa. Now, I've got some dear friends up there.
I really do beautiful countryside if you like, flat and agricultural,
which doesn't put me off. Enters are kind of tough,
particularly for an old Southern boy, but nice folks. But
(01:06):
the brutality of that case, you know, really made me
stop and think for a moment, Wow, you know, this
could happen out here. He was eventually found guilty. The
fellow's name was Todd Mullis. I'm sure that some of
you guys remember that case. Wife was amy heartbreaking, absolutely heartbreaking,
but today, I have got what I would say is
(01:28):
equally a brutal case. As a matter of fact, several cases,
all stemming from one single individual as a perpetrator that
I would argue is equally as brutal. It's out in
an isolated area, it's in farmland, and the tale that
I'm about to tell you is going to rock you
(01:53):
to your core because there's so much horror associated with this,
and to a certain degree, there's so much confusion. But
we're going to try to get that straightened out. Coming
to you from the beautiful campus of Jacksonville State University,
(02:13):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks. Brother Dave.
Do you have any memory of Todd, the Todd Mully's
case that I'll do the corn.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Rake That's what actually when you said corn Rake, that's
why I went, oh, yeah, you know, I we do
so many stories during the course of any year, but yeah,
I do remember that corn Rake story. And I the
horror that comes from some of these crimes. And I'm
glad you mentioned that it's not just one crime, not
just one murder. There were four souls here that were
(02:45):
ended and yet in this one and I'm not trying
to be funny, but remember the game Clue. Yeah, you know,
Colonel Mustard did it in the library with lead pipe.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
This is a story that actually kind of is like
that because the weapon is a metal pipe.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Yeah, it is. It is a metal pipe. And there
were other other elements to this that are brought in
in this case that we could dig forever from a
forensic standpoint, And I plan on going kind of deep with.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
This because it started. It was in a shed and
when I saw this, it began with a phone call
about possible carbon monoxide.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Now, yeah, and I'm going to tell you why I
think that that that came up.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
I got it.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
I'm glad you mentioned Clue. Here's a bit of trivia
that I think that a lot of our friends are
not going to be aware of, and they're going to
be shocked by. Did you know that? Well, obviously you
know that I'm a father, and being a father, there's
certain things that you're required to do. One of those
(03:49):
things if you've got kids in the house, is to
play board games. And did you know? And I kind
of wear it as a badge of honor. Maybe it's
a bad a shame. I don't know. Did you know
that in the entirety of my life, even as a
child and into adulthood and parenthood, I have never won
(04:11):
a game of Clue. So much for that master's screen
forensic science. Huh, I don't just set that thing on
fire man. Wow, I've never. I've never. I don't know
that I have the patience with it. Whatever it is.
I get distracted.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Uh. You know.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
You know people go around they talk about their you know,
low attention span and all that sort of thing, and
they start applying all these titles I got ADHD all stuff.
I don't know if it's I don't know if it's
that I there are certain games that I loved. I
loved playing you know the game I really loved. I
love playing Sorry. Maybe it's because I had to say
it so much in my life, but I love playing Sorry.
(04:53):
I love playing Trouble. You know the thing where you
pumped a little bubble in it, you know, it tells
you where to move. I love those games. I never
was a success at Clue though. It just it required
too much brain power. So I don't know if you
guys want to go ahead and tune out now, I
guess so I mean, I don't know if that invalidates
me as a forensic practitioner or a professor. And but yeah,
(05:18):
you know you mentioned this and you you know, you
show up at a scene, Dave, and I'm glad you
mentioned this bit about about carbon monoxide. You show up
at a scene, and particularly where there are multiple deaths,
all right, because one one homicide in and of itself
(05:42):
is it can not always but can be markedly complex.
And you have to take your time working the scene,
making sure you're documenting and collecting everything that has to
be But then you add bodies to this, and there
are other dynamics that come into play, and they are
(06:03):
physical and I don't mean this like in amongst the living.
I mean there's physical relationships between the decedents, right, and
you have to be able to document that everything from
distance to share trauma, to the degree of clothing, how
(06:25):
much are they clothed? You know, do you have somebody
that's partially clothed? Is there evidence that somebody was brutalized
more than another person that was there, because you know,
there's how many of these cases have we talked about
over the year's day where we've had these events where
there will be a multiple death scenario, but there will
(06:47):
be that one person that appears to have been singled out,
you know, where they've just they've been brutalized so much
more than anybody else. I think of JJ entilely, you know,
relative to that, you know, with the day bell unpleasantness
up there. But yeah, in this case. You know, one
(07:08):
of the first things that came up was this idea
of carbon monoxide assixiation.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
But carbon monoxide, Joe would be four bodies in sleeping
bags maybe, but you wouldn't see a crime scene. Do
you see people who went to sleep and didn't wake up?
As a carbon manoxide tends to do.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
I can, but I think that your default position with
your brain as you're trying. Most people do not flee
to homicide. That's something they don't want to do that,
you know, It's like they can't. They have to come
up I think with some other explanation as to why
for people of course, yeah, for people. I We'll get
(07:47):
into the details a minute. But four people are down.
So you've got the smell at the scene, which is
like inside of a kind of a pole barn kind
of thing.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
It's inside they're calling it an outbuilding, and when.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
I looked at that pole born us Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
The pole barn. So I'm thinking, okay, if you think
about the big steel beam, you know that or not
being but this big steel pole in the middle of
the room that acts as a stabilizing unit for the
whole metal building around it. I mean, I'm trying to
get an idea here. But when I read one article
on this, it was talking about the outbuilding slash shed
(08:27):
and that Amanda Parker. By the way, the victims here,
Ramanda's Cooper is forty four, Amanda Parker is thirty three,
Keon O'Ryan is twenty six, and Brent Brown is thirty four,
and they were killed or died in an outbuilding. And
then inside this outbuilding slash pole building, there's a tent
(08:52):
and that tent is where the victim, where Amanda at
least was living and had been for some time. Now
I can add something to this because, as we said,
carbon monoxide was the original call, and to me, I'm
thinking for people to sleep, and that's it. But I
looked at something a little bit further, and the people
(09:14):
that Amanda was working with, they're really not They're beyond
upset that their friend was killed because they were pointing
out that she works at a place called the Old
Brick House Pub, and they said that from the time
that she left and the time the nine one one
(09:35):
call was made, four dead bodies was less than an hour.
Less than an hour, justph Scott Morgan for Amanda Parker.
So again there are three dead bodies and one that
is really wounded bad and eventually does die. Right, But
the original call cover monoxide. So backing up to that,
(09:56):
if you're going on that call, and you and I've
talked about the mindset of investigators, police fire everybody, first
responders and as you said, last responders going into a
scene with preconceived notions and that is not a good
thing in terms of looking at and investigating a crime.
(10:18):
So what are we doing here with carbon monoxide?
Speaker 1 (10:20):
As it's terrifying? Uh, you know, back years and years ago,
almost well myself and two of my colleagues got really
ill at at a carbon monoxide event or you know,
group of desks. We had an entire family. This was
actually in a town called Kenner, Louisiana, where if you've
(10:42):
ever flown into New Orleans, you fly into Kenner. That's
where Louis Armstrong Airport is International Airport, and I got
called out there, and you know, you roll up on
the scene, there's star trucks and you know, when you
get out of vehicle, you're immediately told you got multiple deaths.
(11:02):
And in this case, I can't remember the number. It
seems like we had five dead or maybe even six
dead in the house. You know, it doesn't get cold
in New Orleans very often, or down in South Louisiana
during the wintertimes is like February or something. But we
had a call snap. And in this case, they had
talked about how the wall mounted you know those wall
(11:24):
mounted heaters, Yeah, kind of built in the wall in
like the sixties ranch style houses. It was not functioning.
So they had a relative that came over to work
on the fan. These things have an exhaust fan. My
understanding was he had reversed the flow. Oh no, yeah,
And so when you walk into this thing, all of
(11:45):
the people are, like you said, are all in bed,
and they're in there, they're covered, you know, with like blankets.
And I don't mean covered like they covered themselves before
lying down, It's what I'm saying. And they died. We
got the all clear to go in. And this is
before the days when when the fire service had the
(12:08):
portable carbon monoxide detectors. They had put huge fans. You know,
there's fans that you see if you go to a garage,
you know, during the summer, you know where where they're
you know, the garage where you take your car, not
at your home. I mean maybe you haven't, but there's
a gigantic fans, you see. And it was that were
(12:28):
trying to pull the air out and they had opened
the windows to ventilate it, and they gave us the
thumbs up and we went in and I'll never forget, man.
I looked over at I was in with it, a
homicide detective and a crime scene tech and myself and
I looked at my friend who was the crime scene tech,
and his eyes were bloodshot. Oh wow, and my head
(12:48):
was hurting. I said, is your head hurting? He said, man,
he says, just banging. Man. And then immediately it hit
me place was not not completely ventilated. We went and
grabbed grabbed the detective. He was busily writing and you
could see the changes in his face as well, and
(13:09):
it's like you're you know, you get caught up in
the work, you're not really thinking about. It grabbed him.
They had to put us on O two. I'd spend
I had to spend like I think, I spent overnight
in the hospital that night. The interesting thing about carbon
dioxide is that once you're exposed to it, they want
(13:30):
to keep you on O two for a protracted period
of time because it can I have been told at
least that there's still a level of lethality eight hours
out from an exposure. And so when we do autopsies
on bodies of individuals that have been exposed to carmonoxide,
(13:51):
even their blood dave, even the blood of the dead
is like a cherry pink color, and all of the
viscera internally, well you'll see it externally too. The eyes
turned pink. The skin you'll it'll have a pink as
hue to it. And uh, the organs have a pink
(14:13):
tent to them as well. It's it's amazing, and it's
it's the hemoglobin that's reacting to this response, and so
you know, you do you know, I remember my head
hurts so bad, and I hadn't begun to feel drowsy yet.
But you know, in this particular case, out in Iowa
(14:35):
with these four people. The finder knew that one of
these subjects inside, and I think it was Cooper, if
I'm not mistaken. They were working on a truck inside
and they could smell oil, you know, like heated oil,
and I think that they were thinking, well, the vehicle
(14:55):
is running inside of there. If you ever wonder why,
you know, the garages, the garage a garage will leave
the bay doors open. You know, these guys are working.
You know, in this environment, people don't think that that's dangerous.
Well it's not just a car falling on you or
something like that. They have to turn the engines on
(15:16):
many times, and so they'll leave the doors open to
get ventilation. Well, when they arrived, you know, they're smelling
oil in there, and and like and I hold this,
I hold this, this thought in my brain about this
relative to people. When you walk into a scene, you're
not thinking, you're not thinking. Your default position is, oh, yeah,
(15:41):
they've been beaten to death with a metal pipe, and
you're thinking, well, they've been exposed to noxious fumes and
either there might still be alive or maybe they're passed
out deceased. But the one thing that kind of betrayed
(16:04):
those thoughts was the fact that upon further examination, each
one of these subjects was lying in a pool of
their own blood. You know, recently in the news there
(16:30):
was I think it was in London. I'm not really sure.
It's happened multiple times where somebody will And of course
we saw this.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Poor girl up in Charlotte.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Not too long ago, where an individual pulls out a
knife and they begin attacking. Of course, she was a
single victim. But you know, there was recently, I think
we had eight I think it was in London that
were attacked on a bus. It's not like shooting, is it,
Dave think? And when you go to a bludgeoning, you
know where we know that a metal pipe is. As
(17:05):
a matter of fact, it's a three foot long metal pipe.
I've envisioned that this thing is probably some kind of
galvanized galvanized pipe that was used, which is kind of interesting.
If any end of one of these pipes is used.
I've had this happen before. Where it's been threaded. You'll
actually see a pattern injury that will develop on the
(17:27):
surface of the skin. Over the surface of the impact areas.
You'll you'll see these threads you know, and they'll take
on the the the negative image of the threads being
impressed into the skin. But back to my where I
was going initially, the only way I see this kind
(17:48):
of happening. You know, how do you beat three people
to death or four people to death with a metal
pipe without this being some type of ambush? I mean
that that you can't. I don't see it. You know.
It's not like some you know, martial arts movie where
you get which is always so stupid to me, where
you got one guy in the center and he's being
(18:09):
attacked by a bunch of people and you're thinking, I
want you some bum rushing, right, you know, I don't
care how high he can kick and all those sort
of things that that's but you know, you're thinking, you know,
how do you attack for people? I think you know
this didn't happen all at one time. This sounds like
an ambush day.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
It does, and this is something that they're going to
have to figure out. Now. What we have here is
let me say that I them in my head, I'm
hearing cool hand, Luke, Well, we're dealing well yeah?
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Is well?
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yeah, to communicate, communicate, yeah, Luke Trusdale thirty six years old.
He's on the scene when police arrive, and we have
the brother of Brent Brown, who actually found the bodies.
Now again carbon Minike's I call comes in to nine
one one. Matt Brown is at the scene and discovers
(19:07):
his brother Brent, and the others Keon Ryan, Amanda Parker,
and Ramanda's Cooper. He discovers them all and the blood
as you mentioned a minute ago, so immediately I went,
you got blood everywhere? Who said carbon monoxide poisoning? I mean,
I get it that, I guess I get that could
(19:29):
have been a reason that the people were able to
be attacked, if they had been overcome with carbon monoxide
and then they were beaten to death. But that big
question of how does one person use a lead pipe
to kill three nearly four people that are not handicapped physically.
(19:55):
They're in good health apparently, So that's the question that
has to be answered. And it's so funny because so
many funny strange not funny, how huh?
Speaker 1 (20:03):
I no, no, yeah, But it's funny that how.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Many times when we look at a story, we want
to know, why did this happen? Why did you do this?
Like that means anything, And I mean it doesn't when
you're solving a crime, justph Scott Morgan, when you're looking
at this, do you ever consider the why? Because does
it have bearing on your investigation?
Speaker 1 (20:26):
I think, you know, and again you know how I
feel about that word. I hate why, I really do.
I guess for some people it has a bigger impact
than it does for me. I'm more about what and
how and when and those sort of things that there's
enough on your plate, particularly at a scene. Okay, let's
(20:50):
narrow this down to a scene, all right, where you're
having to consider all of these other questions that are
out there. Why is like kind of like way down
the list at that point in time, because first off,
you don't have enough data to even formulate something until
you've collected all of the scientific data that's out there,
(21:12):
you know, and also that's going to be developed at
the morgue and in the laboratory. You know, why is
a very leisurely questioned all right?
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Right?
Speaker 1 (21:22):
To me? It is, it's it's a you know, that's
kind of you know why me? You know, that kind
of thing. If you take that same idea, that's that's
almost a luxury now going down after you have all
of the data. Yeah, you can play around with that
all you want. But you know, famously is it's been
(21:45):
stated over and over again. You there's no particularly in court,
you don't have to prove motive. Motive is not on
the table. They like to talk about motive, but you know,
there's a lot of other things people like to talk
about too, But it's not you know, it has it
doesn't have as much value in my world. I want
(22:05):
to know how how this went down relative to the well,
first off, the sequencing of it, I think is important
because you know, when you've got four people, what could
what could four people have done to either one individual
or maybe a group of individuals? Because I got to
tell you, Dave a beating death to me? When I
(22:28):
see that and I think about that, that's almost like
messaging to me, Yeah, okay, that's what could four people
have done? And are they being utilized? Are they being
utilized in order to send a message. You're saying that
a pipe was utilized to beat somebody to death? You
(22:52):
know the old term is to bring them. I don't
know if you've the brain them.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Okay, we would use that from here on. I'll tell
you that.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Yeah, person got brained to death, beating over and over again.
There's a conclusion that you arrive at apparently, and I
think that in this case they did, because the actual
weapon is recovered and at least three there's four victims,
(23:23):
four fatalities eventually. But there's three victims I think whose
DNA is found on the pipe, and then a potential
suspect whose DNA is found on the pipe. So you
get an idea that, well, this instrument was used to
kill all of them. Well, unless you're passing around to
a group of people who are utilizing it individually, here
(23:45):
your turn type of thing. You got one person that's
the perpetrator here that's beating somebody to death, and what
sequence did this happen in? I think that if you
can get to the heart of the sequence, then you
can try to understand what the motivation was, who was
the target and was there a specific target or do
(24:05):
you just have a madman that is just trying to
keep people in a confined space they have an idea
of where a confined space containing or housing for people are.
If they just want to go randomly victimize a group
of people, you know, and they're gonna wait, they're gonna wait,
and they're going to knock hell out of out of
(24:27):
these people until they've beaten them down. And Dave, this
is another thing. This really jumped in mind. He kind
of opened the door. Here. You're you're an old baseball player.
There was there ever a time in baseball where you
were not as exhausted going into I mean, like I've
(24:51):
always imagined this because I'm not a baseball guy. I'm
a football guy. But it seems to me that one
of the most exhausting things that you can do, particular
if you've got a coach that's right, and you're trying
to work on your batting stance and your swing, you
get in a batting cage and you go in there
for a protracted period of time and hit ball after
ball after ball. When you get out, I mean, everything's gone.
(25:12):
I would think, how much more so, you know, when
you're taking a metal pipe and you're beating somebody to
death with it, and where do you where do you?
Where do you call?
Speaker 2 (25:23):
No joy?
Speaker 1 (25:24):
At that moment, Tom say, Okay, it's over with, It's done.
You know, I've sufficiently eradicated this person from the face
of the planet. You know, what's the cutoff? What's the
cut off there?
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Well, think about it. Anybody who's ever cut would if
you've ever chopped with you thro a fire, you know,
the same thing. You're swinging something over and over. Then
first it's easy. At first, it's comfortable, and after a
couple of minutes, you know, your arms get tired. Your
forearms are the first ones to go. And anyway, when
I looked at this, because I'm again trying to wrap
my head around, how did one person, Trusdale control the
(25:57):
situation so that he could eat four people at the
same time. Now we're going to I assume that he
beat four people at the same time. Because the only
thing we really know, Joseph Scott Morgan is the timetable
given to us by Amanda's co workers, who said the
(26:18):
time she left work and the time that nine one
woman was called was an hour. That was it, from
the time she left work to the time she's dead.
One hour. Now, Prosecutor, I want to get to this
because Trooper Tyler Fairbanks says dud when he's asked this question,
When did you realize that this was not a carbon
(26:39):
monoxide issue? Fairbanks says, once I walked in that overhead door,
and I saw the first female with blunt forced trauma wounds?
What made you form that opinion that you were not
there for what you were initially called for? Trooper? The
carbon monoxide does not create your head to collapse on itself.
(27:02):
And carbon monoxide poisoning also does not leave pols of
blood on the ground. Now, Joe, you've got pols of
blood on the ground ahead caved in. This is just
one victim. Now you've got blood spatter on the victims,
on the walls, on the ceiling, on the floor. How
(27:24):
do you break this down? Because you've already got investigated
people who have come in to determine, checking for vital
science to see who's dead, who's alive. They are able
to determine that three are already dead. The fourth is
in bad shape and is helicoptered to the hospital, Brent Brown,
(27:44):
but he died later. Now you've got three dead on
the scene, and you've got blood everywhere. How do you,
as an investigator separate this blood spatter over here, and
this footprint over here, and this handprint over here. How
do you break all those out to actually try to
determine who is killed first?
Speaker 1 (28:05):
Okay, let me take this piece by piece because it's
very complex when you begin talking about bloodstained patterns. All right,
First off, you don't need to move to bodies. This
is one of those cases, Dave, where the body in
you're kind of from an investigative standpoint, you're kind of
(28:27):
at an advantage because you're in a closed space and
you're not not to say that you're not going to
have bloodstained deposition in an outdoor space. However, it's more
appreciable in a contained space because you've got everything's happening
in this you know, kind of three D environment where
you've got you've got overhead covering, you've got walls, and
(28:48):
you've got floors, right, and then you have the other
objects that are contained within that space, and you have
other bodies okay, and then if you're fortunate, you might
have a suspect as well. So all of those are
going to have potential for deposition of blood patterns on them.
You don't want to move the bodies, uh quickly because
(29:14):
one of the things that you're looking for, and you know,
people always ask us about the you know, they talk
about blood spatter velocity, which is a big thing. You know,
where you've got this active event, we've got low velocity,
medium velocity, and high velocity. High velocity generally exist in
the world of firearms because it just makes sense, right,
(29:36):
you know, the higher velocity of the object that's going
to slim into a surface and generate blood deposition, it
has to be traveling. Don't have to be going supersonic,
but it has to be traveling a very high rate
of speed. You get into the area of medium medium velocity.
Now you're talking about baseball, bats, hammers, pipes. Okay, does
(29:58):
droplets generally the smaller the droplet, the higher the velocity.
And I know that there's people that will disagree with that, probably,
but that's just kind of a way to think about it.
And then when you get to low velocity that you're
talking about using your hands, using your feet, you know,
those droplets again are going to be a bit larger.
(30:19):
So you're kind of in that medium velocity. You're going
to have overlapping. Overlapping patterns too, depended upon the proximity
that these where these bodies are to one another. So
you want to establish what's referred to as a point
of origin, you know, the strike point, and there might
be multiple strike points. Let me ask you something. Have
(30:42):
you ever taken a shot from somebody? You don't have
to answer this. Have you ever taken a shot from
somebody and then you stand in that same position? Well,
that's rare. Yeah, most people, Yeah, most people are going
to move, all right, now, depend upon the fort. Now,
(31:02):
there are events where you will drop a person right
where they stand. You know, you think some big guy,
some diminutive person, and you strike them on top of
the head. You have enough force that's going to drop them.
But every time, and well I'll talk about this with
head strikes. If you have an object like a pipe
(31:23):
and you're cracking them on the head, Well, that first
initial initial strike, particularly if it's a smooth kind of
if it doesn't have like a big texture kind of
surface to it. That is the object dependent upon the
angle and how much energy you can generate. Most of
(31:44):
the time, you're not going to completely open up the head. Okay,
it's going to take another strike because what you're doing
is you're compromising structural integrity of both the skin and
the bomb underline. All right, So I talk to my
students about this, and I do not teach. I do
not teach at a higher level. I don't teach bloodstained interpretation.
(32:07):
One of my colleagues does, but I teach the intro
and I've had to do it in the field. I
always use the example of paint can okay, where when
you take the paintbrush and you dip it in Okay,
that dynamic as you flick it over your shoulder is
going to create what's the equivalent of cast off. So
(32:30):
if you think about a pipe penetrating a skull, it
becomes the surface of it has blood that's on the surface.
As you flick that pipe back in order to again
facilitate striking down again, well, that blood is literally cast off.
It can be cast off in an arcing motion directly
above your head. It can go you can cast it
(32:53):
off to the side. Depending upon what plane you're swinging
this thing in. Okay, the person swinging it can get
blood on them. I got a fascinating story I had
one of my colleagues that was actually he's a forensic scientist,
and he was talking. A guy walked up to him
at a scene day where a woman had been Let's see,
(33:14):
how did it work? A woman had in fact been
beaten to death with a hammer and this guy's wearing
a white T shirt. Colleague, my colleague that's a forensic scientist,
crime scene investigator, along with the detective were talking to
this guy. Guy just walks up and just voluntarily says, hey, man,
you know, I think I know who might have done this.
(33:35):
And as he's talking to them, they say, well, go
stand over there, we've got your information. The guy turns
to walk away and David, he's got a diagonal line
of blood deposition running from his right shoulder across to
his over the top of his left kidney area. They said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Wow,
(33:58):
come here, you know, like this and met They put
the bracelets on the sky with him in the back
of the car, and it turned out he was, in
fact the perpetrator.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Okay, so you know, even the perpetrator, and you know,
our friends out there that listen to bodybags are pretty
bright people, all right, So they understand this that it's
not you're not doing this necessarily in a vacuum. So
as far as order, you'd you'd ask an excellent question,
can we determine the order? That's that's difficult to do.
(34:28):
I think it is actually I think that you're going
to have to be more reliant on the status of
the bodies. And again my fallback position is going to
be post mortem interval. You know, understanding, you know, had
had an individual laid in wait and killed that first
person early on and where they cold and stiff, maybe
(34:50):
laying there dead before the next victim shows up and
that subjects attacked, and then the next and the next
and the next. So that's why, not only you have
to leave the bodies in place so you can understand
the point of origin for the blood coming off the body,
you have to leave those bodies in place so that
you can thoroughly examine them to try to determine how
(35:11):
long they have in fact been dead. Because brother Dave,
I could tell you it's a head scratcher when you
think again, just like that earlier stated that one person
is going to take out four individuals with a single weapon.
It's kind of hard to swallow unless the people would
either be inebriated in some way where you know, and
(35:35):
I've had people that have been beaten to death in
their sleep that does happen, or have been beaten to
death when they're passed out, or it's an ambush kind
of thing where you've got somebody that just waits one
by one and they begin to hammer on an individual. Dave.
(36:08):
Every now and then, my wife Kimmy and I will say,
you know what, we haven't been scared in a while.
Let's watch a horror movie. And we don't do it
a lot, all right, It's not something that you know,
we engage in with great frequency. But I think the
first movie horror movie we actually watched together, this happened
(36:32):
in this movie came out in ninety nine. We got
married in ninety nine. The first one we ever watched.
We picked a doozy because we didn't know what to
expect with this thing. We just heard everybody talking about it.
And that's Blair Witch Project. Oh and I got to
tell you it got my attention because I couldn't. And
(36:55):
I hate to sound like, you know, a gullible fool.
I'm not saying I'm not a fool. I'm just my
level of gullibility with this thing. And I don't want
to give it away for anybody that hasn't well.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Since nineteen ninety nine, if you hadn't seen.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
It, Yeah, I think we can safely go down this road.
But yeah, I mean and it scared me. And it
scared me in a sense that you've got people that
are going out looking for something that is infamous and
they're filming the thing the entire time. There is an
element in this case out of Iowa that is fascinating
(37:31):
to me because they have hooked a guy up on
charges and as we are speaking right now, this trial
is ongoing. That's one of the reasons I wanted to
talk about it. Am I or am I not correct?
And there was an initial conversation that came up in
this case where the alleged perpetrator wanted to create a movie.
(37:58):
Is that accurate about this case?
Speaker 2 (38:00):
That is accurate? And Luke Trusdell told police a number
of things before they gave him the miranda. You know,
you have the right to remain silent. Before they mirandized him,
he made a number of statements. He was at the
scene when police arrived, and many of the statements are
(38:20):
not going to be heard by the jury. But that
was a comment he made that did he kill four
people to create the subject matter for a movie? Joe,
have you ever heard of such a thing?
Speaker 1 (38:40):
No? No, I assume that somebody else has done this.
It sounds rather fantastical. I think that someone would and
oh my lord, it's dark.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
The only way I can is you know that I
can really, you know, really describe. You know, you hear
about things where people have created fictionalized events, you know,
where they're doing it for their entertainment. What was that
book that was written all those years ago, the most dangerous,
most dangerous game I think, where you know, there were
(39:21):
hunting people on the island, on the island and all
those sorts of things.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
There was a guy named mister Kinkaid that was hunting
Gilligan on Gilligan's Island, and really they weren't smart enough
to figure out how to grab the bottom of the
helicopter to get off the island.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
But don't get me started on Gilligan at any rate.
Hate that movie. I mean I hate that TV show
for that reason. You know, Gilligan. Let me tell you something.
Gilligan would have been disposed off, diposed early on if
I had had anything to do with it.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
You know, one day we're going to break down all
the times they failed to escape the island.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
Oh my lord, I'll tell you, But don't get me
starty anyway.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Anyway, this guy wanting to create a to do a
murder at this level of multiple people for nothing more
than to create the subject matter for a movie. I
mean that if that is the top of mind, that's why.
If that is truly the motive, Joe, we have a
hollow soul we're dealing with.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Yeah, I think that we do. But is it? And look,
I'm not going to get too deep into social commentary here,
but does it really surprise you in the world that
we live in nowadays, because you know, you can see
stuff on social media that is in fact manufactured. And
I'm not even talking about the AI stuff. I'm just
talking about people that go out and you know, create
these various little dramas that are out there. So you know,
(40:46):
in hearing this, I'm not as shocked by this today.
And I hate to say that. Oh my Lord, Lord,
forgive me. I hate to say that today. I'm not
hang on, let me get let me get this straight.
I am not as shocked by this today as I
would have been ten years ago, right, and just I
(41:06):
mean just think about it. You know, you know you said, well, Morgan,
you know, God, that's that's really horrible. For you to say,
is it, you know, because there are people out there
that go around and they create these these things in
order to draw attention to themselves. And is this Is
this an indication that this guy has psychopathology going on
(41:28):
to the point where he's so debilitated he you know,
he's he's got a problem. You know. Well, no, not necessarily.
This is something that he desired. Uh, you know, according
to the authorities. But they're not allowing this in court.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Right, a lot of it. Yeah, part of his statement
will be allowed, but part of it will not be allowed.
And they're going to be arguing more about this during
the course of the trial, you know, because it's a
big part of why we're here today.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
Well, one of the you know, one of the things
they teach cops is that if you've got an individual
that makes these what do they call spontaneous admissions, right,
you don't you don't say, hey, you know, it would
be in your best interest to shut your mouth. At
this point in time, we haven't mirandized you yet, so
(42:19):
i'd be very curious about you know, that status with
this trial. Uh is it? It's not the cops duty
to tell you to shut your mouth. You know, so
if this is a spontaneous admission, right that in most cases,
that's that's valid. Now if you other than the way
(42:40):
I understand it, other than probit if questions like are
you injured or you hurt? What's your name? Where are
you from? Uh? Those sorts of kind of generalized questions
that you know, but as a guy saying, yeah, my
name is Fred Jones, I just cut my wife's head
off and put it in a camera bag, that's not
(43:02):
you know, you don't have to mirandize him, and that
that can be included.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
At really do times.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
As a matter of fact, they've gotten to a point where,
if I remember correctly, where they were not wanting beat
officers to mirandize people. You know, immediately you don't ask
them questions, probative questions other than are you okay? You know,
because you're you're just trying to is there anybody else
(43:30):
in the house? You know, this guy's covered with blood?
Is there anybody else in the house that's been injured? Well,
that's not you're not asking them to give away anything.
You don't want to say, why did you do this?
Or you know what you know? Did you do this?
Speaker 2 (43:44):
Or whatever? The case might be obviously to look at
whoever's standing nearby and say, hey, we recalled from carbon
monoxide poisoning. What the heck happened? Yeah, you know you
can't do that without it getting tossed. I mean it
makes sense to me that that would be a yeah,
that's an obvious question.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
But well, yeah, because you know you're being told that
it's carbon monoxide, and you know that humans don't spontaneously,
you know, develop holes and defects in their body and
blood begins gushing out from them. There has to be
there has to be an action, you know that elicits this,
this physical reaction, And so I find this fascinating that
(44:24):
this was kind of the motivating factor behind what the
prosecution is saying was driving this individual to beat these
people to death.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
Dave, I know it with a lead pipe or with
a metal pipe. So if he was truly set up
to try to kill people for the sake of creating
the log line for a movie, the four people he killed, okay,
because Brent Brown died because of the beating. But you've
got Amanda Parker thirty three involved with Romand's Cooper forty four.
(45:00):
He has two sons, Keana Ryan, twenty six, and Brent Brown,
who was thirty four. Each one was beaten to death.
They found bludgeoned with a metal pipe. And what is
prying to come up in court now is what happened
and why? Again? Why is something we need not necessarily
(45:22):
something they need? But why would anybody kill four people?
And how did he pull it off by himself? The
prosecution says it was an ambush and the defense says
it wasn't an ambush. You know, actually I don't know
what they're saying totally right now, because we just said
the prosecution phase. The defense will have their day. But
(45:43):
justph Scott Morgan, You've got four people that were bludgeoned
to death with a metal pipe by one person. Only
one person is charged in this crime, who claims he
was trying to create the plot for a movie. I'm
thinking to human beings not have any value, people not
have value now that we're seeing as nothing more than
(46:07):
something that can just be.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
Fodder, Yeah, fodder for entertainment. I don't know it. It
would it would seem so particularly well, particularly in this case.
And I don't again, I don't know if this is
some gigantic social commentary here, but they're going to have
to sufficiently explain this. I think one of the first
things that we're going to find out is that because
(46:30):
you know, the words carbon monoxide were floated. I'm hoping
that the medical examiner in this case that they drew
blood on each one of these victims and they will
run I think I've mentioned before the test it's called
a car box of hemoglobe and level, and that will
(46:53):
that will give you an indication. You know, we we
take on in our in our natural environment, particularly if
you live in an urban area, if you work around vehicles,
you're going to take on a certain amount of carbon monoxide.
Not all you know, it's not like you just catch
a whiff of it and you die. It's not like that.
There's you know, our body can metabolize it. But when
you get an overload of it, and so what you're
(47:14):
looking for with that sample, what you're looking for with
that sample is to see if you're within lethal ranges.
And there are lethal ranges that are established. You know
that if you have this percentage on board in your system,
that you will not survive all right, or you're going
to have major problems down the road. So once you
get that eliminated scientifically, I think that that's pretty important.
(47:38):
The other thing that you would be looking for in
this case, because they're saying that it is a metal pipe,
they've identified that it's a three foot metal pipe. When
the forensic pathologist testifies to these insults, one of the
things they're going to do is both the prosecution and
the defense are going to probe this individual and ask
(48:00):
them are all of these injuries, what similarities exist with
these injuries? And what you're observing at the autopsy doc.
You know, if you if you're looking for certain you
know the margins of these these injuries. You know, I
talked about if you've got like a threaded edge on
the thing and you're you're holding you're holding it and
you're beating someone, are there any similarities between the marks
(48:23):
that are found on all three of these are all
four of these victims that you can go back and say,
yet this appears now you can't say it with you
can't say it with absolute And here's the big difference.
Absolute scientific certainty. You say it within a reasonable a
reasonable amount of scientific certainty. You can't say there's nothing
that's one hundred percent even when you talk about DNA,
(48:44):
you're talking about you know, when the person's testifying. But
the forensic pathologist will render an opinion that will say, yet,
it appears that a weapon similar to the weapon that
we have in question was used in each one of
these cases and brought about the death. So that's again,
you know, if you're kind of working your way down
the tier regarding you know, the forensic evidence. And then
(49:09):
I think the other big delineation here, Dave, is how
many strikes were there? Oh wow, okay, now you can
I think that many people can you know kind of
and I've guilty of this. They can opine as to well,
the more strikes you have, the more of a target
the individual was not necessarily if it if they if
(49:30):
they were trying to beat the life out of somebody, somebody,
there might be an individual. You know. We've got a
lady that has died. I saw her, saw her images.
She's rather diminutive, she's very tiny. I submit to you
that it would not take as much to kill her
as it would say one of the one of the males,
all right, So she might not be beaten to the
(49:53):
point where her head is a little pulpified. Remember what
the troopers said here. He said one of the reasons
he really that this was not carbon monoxide association was
because of carbon dioxide. This is a great line, Oh
my lord, talk about a log line for a movie
that you know, carbon dioxide doesn't cause your skull to
(50:15):
cave in, all right. So you're going to be looking
for the degree of trauma. How many times are they
struck over and over and over again. Whereas you might
have one or two on one person, you might have
multiple on others. And that's that's kind of hard man.
That's really hard to do an absolute with beatings in particular,
(50:38):
it's very difficult, Dave, to try to say they were
struck this many times because you've got all of these
overlying injuries, those injuries that were generated in life, Dave,
You're going to have what are referred to as contusion abrasions.
And if you've got if you've got a person that's
being struck in the same spot every single time, those injuries,
(51:00):
the contusion abrasions become I don't know if the term
is they're overlapping. And the other part to this, too,
is that you're going to have commingling of blood at
the scene, not just on the scene, but also on
the weapon. You can have commingling of blood if he's
moving from one body to the next and he's spilt blood.
(51:20):
Remember again what the troopers said about the one victim,
there was a pool of blood. We note there are
other pools of blood. Well, if you move from one victim,
say the initial victim, to the next victim, you're going
to have blood deposition in the form of what appeared
to be footprints that might have originated from another person,
while in fact you're beating the other one to death.
Speaker 2 (51:41):
A lot of complexity with this case, Dave, Well, the
one thing we do know is that Trusdell and Ramondus
Cooper were working on a vehicle together. And again we're
getting this information from the suspect in the crime and
what he blurted when police arrived, and his statements that
(52:02):
we don't know what will be in and what will
be thrown out. That'll be determined during the course of
the trial, but that while they're working on the he
inc and Romondus Cooper are working on the vehicle. Cooper
handed him the metal pipe. The victim hands it to
the suspect because they're working on a vehicle and he
needed this pipe for whatever they were doing, and Trusdell
(52:22):
says he lost it. Now, he does claim that he
hit Cooper first, he took him out first because he
was the biggest, and that Brown might have tried to
defend himself, and that you know, he did survive long
enough to be airlifted to the hospital and the two
women were both destroyed. Right there, that's pretty much what
we know. That there were things said by Trusdell two police,
(52:49):
and beyond that, the noises in his head that were
affecting him before the murders no longer existed after, so
we're going with the voices in the head scenario. So
they had him psychologically looked at before moving forward with
the trial. So just letting you know that's the standard
(53:09):
that we're dealing with here in terms of Trusdale and
his admission of guilt and then pleading not guilty and
the case being at trial. Now. We'll have to keep
you updated on what happens once the devents has their day,
So as you're listening to this now, there will be
an update, and Joe and I will get back together
and make sure we provide that once the jury returns
(53:32):
with their verdict.
Speaker 1 (53:35):
I think that probably this is another again example of
you don't have to live in some huge metropolis for
evil to visit you. It can present itself, just like
it did in the Todd Moll's case, in a barn
(53:59):
with a corner, and evil can also visit in an
outbuilding being used as a garage to try to work
on an old car. You never know where it's coming from,
but I do know this. I do know that we
are not cannon fodder. That each one of us has value,
(54:23):
and as long as I'm doing this show that every
single victim will have value. None of us are merely
props in a movie. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this
is body Backs
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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