May 1, 2025 • 48 mins
Family members describe 44-year-old Tracy Lynn Wilemon as a fun-loving, spunky, hard-working mother who was thriving in Clanton, Alabama. She was saving money from her job at a nursing home to visit her daughter in Lake Havasu, Arizona. Things were looking good for Tracy. Until her own cousin, Tony Van Dyke and her boyfriend, James "Taz" Osgood lived out some type of crazy rape/murder fantasy that led to the death of Tracy Lynn Wilemon, the death sentence for James "Taz" Osgood, and a life sentence in a federal prison for Tony Van Dyke. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss the case and Joe Scott will walk you through one of the worst crime scenes ever.
Transcribe Highlights
00:00.03 Introduction - Justice
03:16.56 Death Penalty
08:14.63 Evil visits
13:45.68 Working in a nursing home
18:54.21 Remembering the victim - death sentence
23:32.20 Knife wound to neck
28:54.83 Multiple stab wounds, torture
34:01.95 Containment of the scene
39:05.14 Death Sentenced being carried out quickly
44:12.64 Description of drug effects used in execution
48:08.45 Conclusion
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body days. But Joseph's gotten more when we think about
how we would like to get back at people, don't
we Yeah, that's you know, you're insulted, you're humiliated, you're
harmed in some way, maybe something has been taken from you. This,
(00:26):
this idea of making things right is ancient. It goes
back even further than the Bible. The first time we
see mention of it is through the Babylonians, with of
course the Code of Hammurabi. And what it comes down
(00:47):
to is this idea of what's referred to as reciprocal justice,
hum the back and forth, if you will. Today we're
going to talk about a fellow who just died in
(01:08):
the death chamber in Alabama, and towards his end he
became a believer in Lex Talionis. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan,
and this is Bodybacks. David. This case came across my
(01:36):
desk and I afforded it to you because I thought
that it was one of these cases that well, first off,
it's it's happened, or it happened. The actual murder that
is involved here actually happened not too far way from
(02:00):
where we are in the whole Grand scheme of things,
and it is arguably and even our governor, who goes
affectionately I think by the term of mem Governor k
Ivy actually made a statement in regards to it, and
(02:21):
just very briefly, just in a few words. Here this
is a direct quote from her when she was actually
asked to grant clemency in this case. And she's referring
to the victim, and she says, the murder of Tracy
Wilman was premeditated, gruesome and disturbing, and tonight the state
(02:50):
carried out the death sentence of James Osgoode. And this
is coming from a woman who the governor who had
signed to death warrant on someone else this year so far.
But she's also granted clemency to one person because she
said she was not convinced of their guilt. It's not like,
(03:12):
you know, she's going out and saying that all one
hundred and sixty four individuals on Alabama's death row, I'm
going to make sure they're all put to death. She's
doing a bit of reflection and examination. But I think
that this is one of those events, This's case in particular,
is one of those that again, here's that term that
you hear associated with courts lots of times. It's so
(03:33):
shocked the conscience that she felt like that, Yeah, it
was time. It was time to put this to an end.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
You know, the thing about the death penalty being carried
out on somebody who has become a believer ends up
striking a chord with so many people. Joe, and I
have to be really honest with you right here. I
am a believer. I'm a follower of Jesus Christ, and
in that I know that to be absent the body
(04:03):
is to be present with the Lord. When my life
ends here, I begin a new journey into eternity. And
I've often wondered when it goes back to Carla Fae Tucker,
and she was involved in this horrible murder and she
(04:24):
was sentenced to death, and when her death sentence was
about to be carried out, there were protests there. I mean,
you had the seven hundred Club broadcasting from the prison
pretty much. I mean, it was crazy within the religious world.
And I kept thinking, you know, if you truly believe
what you claim to believe, I mean, you're going to paradise,
(04:45):
So you know, carry out the sentence. Let's move forward.
I don't mean to be flipping about it, but I
oftentimes think about the victim here. But I remember the
this Carla fay Tucker thing was huge and it really
hit me.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Yeah, just did.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
And there and you know, there's uh, you know, there's
the old adage and this is very pessimistic on my part,
but it's you know, the old flippant you used from flippant,
the flippant adage, uh that people people find Jesus in
prison and the you know, the comeback is, I didn't
(05:21):
know he was in prison, and so and you know,
the pessimist in you, you're always thinking that a scam
is being run on you, you know, to take you know,
to take you in or change the attitudes towards something.
But I got to tell you, Dave, in this case
with the perpetrator, and he admits to being the perpetrator,
(05:44):
he doesn't fight against it. Osborne. What's so striking about
this case. There's many things, but what's so striking about
it is that he took a view of this, or
rather Old Testament view of this, that he needed to
pay for what he had done to this poor woman, who,
(06:07):
by the way, I mean, you know, she the victim,
and it's a lot has been written about her. I
think she's just trying to get her life back. You know,
she was divorced.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
I'm glad you were pointing that out about the victim
trying to get her life back, because that is the
running that's been running through this. She was born and
raised in Riverside, California, got married, it was a bad marriage,
but it did give her a daughter, and at forty
four years old, she's in Clinton, Alabama. Think about it.
That's a long track from Riverside, California to Clinton, Alabama.
(06:43):
It's about fifty miles north of Montgomery, about the same
distance south of Birmingham, all right, And she's in there
because her cousin has a job at this nursing home.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
And hey, I'll go. You know how when we're trying
to start a new we still need friends and family.
And what happened.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
So she ends up in Clanton near her cousin, Tanya
Van Dyke, and you know, they're about the same age
and they're working at the same nursing home. Look, she
started all over in her early forties. Here, she started
with nothing, Joe. I mean, the victim here started with
absolutely did not even have a car, all right, So
she takes this job at the nursing home. She's saving
(07:21):
every penny she actually buys a car. She's working and
getting the money together to go out and get her daughter.
I mean, she is really rebuilding her life.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Yeah. I think her daughter was out in.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Patta, Lake Asu, Arizona.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Yeah, Lake Havasu, and she was, I don't know, trying
to do some kind of reclamation here. I think, you know,
with her life, just trying to put things together exactly.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
And she was on that path.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yeah. Yeah, and you know who, Look, I'm not saying
anyone is deserving of any kind of violence, and there's
no way you can grade it. I mean, how many
people have we covered about the ends of their lives,
you know, on bodybacks where they didn't see it coming.
(08:06):
I mean it's and death is that way? Evil? Is
that way? You never? You never. I think that some
of us might say, you know, we can judge people
and say, well, you should have known that was going
to happen. Yeah, maybe so, But you know there are
those cases, Dave, where people I didn't know what was
going to happen. They just happen to be the wrong
(08:27):
place the wrong time and evil visited them, and you know,
you're struggling with your life, you're trying to get it
back on wheels, and suddenly I don't know this, This
person who has this and it's been described as a
very twisted fantasy, wants to act out with another perpetrator
(08:55):
on Tracy. Yep, you know. And that's what you know,
that's that's that's what's so absolutely horrible. This is not
like she's been taken out in the field and you know,
executed with a single shot to the back of the head.
You're talking sexual deviance coupled with torture, torture. You know.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
It comes from a friend, a family member. It comes
from her cousin. That's the thing, Joe, How did they
get into her house? Okay, she's got living in a
trailer park, she got her single wife, she's got her
life back together, as mentioned, and here comes Tanya Van Dyke,
her cousin. All Right, That's something I cannot hammer home
enough because we oftentimes will not open the door to
evil because you see evil for what it is and
(09:40):
you don't let it in. But in this case, evil
came to her as a cousin. She'd known her whole life. Yeah,
as a cousin who actually was a part of her
rebuilding her life.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
From a nuts and bolts perspective. As far as investigations
and forensics go, we you know, I mentioned this all
the thoms because where we can't help ourselves when we're
instructing people no signs the fourth century or struggle, right,
you know, that's one of the things that we talk about.
If we have like a death and a home, we're
(10:15):
going to look around doorways and windows to see if
anybody force their way in. And you know, Dave one
of the conclusions that we will arrive at, and it's
very broad. You can't apply this every single time. But
if you find a case that on its surface seems
like a home invasion, but yet the door has not
(10:36):
been kicked in, the wind has not been jimmied in
any way, there's this kind of broad assumption you start
with where you say, this person was probably known to
the individual that was domiciled here, so there's not some
kind of resistance or fight, you know, necessarily when all
of this takes place. Yeah, yes, like you know, and
(11:00):
it's kind of like you know, the old adage about
a vampire vampire is not going to uh, not that
they're real. However, there have been people that have claimed
to be vampires, and we're gonna have to cover some
of those cases that have occurred over the years of
people of drinking blood. But in the true sense of
you know, fictionalized vamp vampires. The old adage about the
(11:21):
vampire is not going to come into your house unless
you invite them. They have to be invited into your home,
crossing the threshold, if you will. And who sees this
kind of thing coming, Dave, I mean really, who sees
it coming? And and and can anticipate that when that
door swings open, that this kind of fog of evil
(11:44):
begins to seep in and the one thing that it's
looking for.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Is your life?
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Can I tell you're right up front, Dave. I don't
like going to nursing homes. They've always given me the willies.
I don't like them. I know that they're a necessity
and some people don't have choice. They have to go
into these places. And not only I think is it
(12:29):
a difficult place to live, It's a very difficult place
to work. I've just think about what you're doing. You're
you're you're taking care of individuals who are people going
to nursing homes for a variety of reasons. It's not
they're not all aged, but the line's share of them are,
(12:53):
and you have to help and maintain at the most
basic levels everything bodily functions, checking on you know, blood
pressures and sugars and making sure that they're going to
go to the bathroom. I'm making sure that they eat,
(13:13):
you know, all those things, changing bed linens and rolling
people in bed so they don't get bedsords.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
I'm so glad you just said that, Joe, because you realize,
do you realize what it's like to roll somebody over
that is very heavy and even though they are alive,
they are dead weight.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
They're not helping.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
My sister in law actually ended up on disability from
injuries suffered working in a nursing home because constantly working.
And I am again not complaining and not knocking them
at all, but that's what happened to her. I kept thinking,
how you know what's going on with her? And that's
what it was, because she was constantly having to maneuver
people who couldn't help themselves, and it took its toll.
(13:55):
But Yeah, there's also beyond the physical aspects of a
nursing home, there's also the emotional, psycho logical, and mental,
because you have people that are sometimes put in a
nursing home and this is the saddest thing, and they're
kind of kicked to the curb by family here.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Yeah, they are. That does happen. And so you have
someone like Tracy that slips in and isn't it interesting?
You know, she's You've got people that are at the
end of their life maybe uh, they have no one
left in their life. And Tracy is kind of in
the same boat, with the exception here that she has
(14:31):
a cousin that's actually employed with her. And I often
wonder did the cousin help her get the job? And
you know, how how are they going to wind up
there together?
Speaker 3 (14:42):
You know?
Speaker 1 (14:42):
You come, you come here. It's a steady paycheck. You know,
you can get your life squared away, you know, re
establish yourself and we'll work on getting your daughter. And
you know, I think about that and think, wow, you know,
was that part of this game? Was this part of
(15:03):
you know? And I wonder if this is the overarching
theme here, Dave, did this man this man that we've
talked about James Osgood. Was this his plan? Had he
orchestrated this in some way by utilizing having the utility
(15:25):
literally of the cousin to draw someone in, you know,
almost like a moth to the flame, Dave.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
They've referred to it as a fantasy played out. And
if it is that long game of evil, then you've
got somebody who actually recruited I'm talking about the cousin here,
Tanya van Dyke recruiting her cousin to come to Alabama
(15:52):
from California, Arizona, wherever she happened to be where she
had family on the West coast, getting her to come
all the way to Alabama to start her life over
where the only person she knows is Tanya, you know.
And if they did this for the purposes of eventually
living out this fantasy that led to the death of
I'm just that's like an evil at a whole new level.
(16:15):
That really is if Tracy Lynn Wilman was actually recruited
to come to Alabama when she's at the low part
of her life trying to rebuild it, and her cousin
reaches out and brings her here with the hope all
because Tanya Van Dyke and James Osgood nicknamed Taz, they
(16:37):
had a plan that would be an evil level I
can't even imagine.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Yeah, you know, and you're talking about the long game here?
Had this you know, how much talk had there been
between both of these perpetrators. One of now, of course,
has has died in the death chamber, this cousin, I'll
go ahead and tell you right now, Kivy has. The
(17:06):
Governor of Alabama has stated that she's this this person
is in federal prison and she will, according to the
Governor of Alabama, she will never see the light of day.
Did I wonder if that was part of their long game?
You know, if they you know, they couldn't in no way,
(17:27):
I guess have predicted that it could have gone like this.
But how can you begin to dabble in this level
of evil and not understand that there will be a
consequence that you will pay. And of course, you know
this man Oscood, he actually did wind up paying with
(17:48):
his life. But David, I want to go back in
time and try to understand kind of the timeline of
what went down here relative to the this level of
brutality that we've been told and have you know, kind
of born witness to through all of the reports that
(18:09):
have come out about this case. That, by the way,
like many of these cases, and we've done other death
penalty cases before, Dave, remember our focus here is the victim.
The victim now, okay, And isn't it interesting? Like an
old dusty bottle of wine. It's forgotten, you know, somewhere somewhere,
far far away, And the only time you hear about
(18:31):
it again is when the individual that has been convicted
is going to go to the death chamber. And even
when that person is going to the death chamber, the
victim tracy in this case becomes almost like a you know,
it's like a secondary issue to all this. I think
(18:52):
it is important that we remember.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
That's how when we began looking at this story. Many times,
when somebody is sent to death, the legal eagles come
out of everywhere, you know, to debate, to debate the
death penalty, and taking that out of the equation, let's
just get down to what actually transpired and what led
to the conviction and what led to the sentence. In
(19:15):
this particular case, you have, as I mentioned earlier, you've
got Tanya van Dyke who is cousins with the victim here,
and our victim, Tracy Linn Wilman, is going through a
time in her life where she's now divorced, her child
is not with her, and she is starting with nothing.
She's working at the same nursing home as her cousin.
(19:36):
And that's why I thought, certainly she had to have
been brought out. Hey, I've got a job for you.
Come out here and let's start over, you know. Come on,
And I mean I've done that. I've brought people from
other states to work for me because I knew them,
I trusted them, and come on, stay at my house
till you get you know, your feet under you. Anyway,
So we have Tracy Wilman arriving in Alabama working at
(19:56):
the nursing home with her cousin, but she has her
own place, got her a trailer in a trailer park.
And in this particular case, James Osgood and Tanya Van
Dyke are a couple. They're in a romantic relationship and
they spend the first part of the day with tracy
Linn Wilman just being together, you know, family and friends.
(20:20):
But during the course of the day, at some point
in time, inside Tracy Wilman's trailer. Tanya Van Dyke gets
her and they say coerced or talked her into going
back to the bedroom. Somehow, I don't know what exactly
that means, but somehow Tanya Van Dyke got Tracy to
(20:40):
go back towards her bedroom in the trailer, and Ozgood
was right behind her. Osgood has a gun and over
the next several hours, they being Van Dyke and Ozgood
took terms raping at gunpoint Tracy Linn Wilman, a woman
(21:10):
who is just getting her life back together, and here
we go holding a gun at her head, taking turns
holding the gun. By the way, they actually, we don't
need to go into the details. Y'all can figure this out.
You know what happens when people are into a sexual
fantasy where a man and a woman are taking turns
(21:30):
holding a gun and forcing their victim to be involved
in their entire sexual fantasy. At one point, Tracy's I
got to go to the bathroom. I need to use
the bathroom. Well, just so you know, when they were
cleaning up feces and blood was found smeared on the
(21:52):
victim's body, Joe. She was degraded beaten and, according to
the prosecution, was being sexually attacked while her throat was
cut and it wasn't cut once. There were several cutting
(22:12):
marks on her neck. How does that happen.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Joe, Well, you have I've seen cases with edged weapons
where an individual will take a knife. And this goes
back to a term that you and I have used
before of menacing, which I love that term, by the way,
as a descriptor. You know that you can actually kind
(22:37):
of paint the picture and where you're placing a knife
against someone's skin and you're saying, if you don't do this,
I'm going to cut you, okay. And so my suspicion
is is that these incised injuries that she sustained are
(23:02):
variable in depth. Okay, So you're going to have you'll
see these little upbraided We refer to them as curve
linear And it's a weird words. It's I've always I
always thought, you know. When I heard it for the
first time, and of course it came from a forensic pathologist,
I said, you know that, out of all the terms
that you guys use, this is one of the most
(23:24):
made up terms I've ever had, because it has features
of Okay, break it down for you. Being curved and
being linear, you know, like straight lines.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
So does it seems possible?
Speaker 1 (23:37):
No, it doesn't. However it is, and let me tell
you why. If you have let's just say someone takes
the leading edge of a knife, okay, maybe even the
tip of the knife and they slice someone. Well, the
biomechanical action of the wrist itself as that blade is
(23:58):
drug across the skin will give it almost an arcing
like appearance curva, and then it'll straighten out at the end. Linear.
Now also on a you know, if you think of
the neck as kind of a cylinder as well, that
those the surface of the neck is not like say
the surface of our chest. Right, so you've got this
(24:21):
cylindrical kind of shape that you're applying a straight age
blade to and depended and trust me, the victim, and
in this case is going to be tracy. She doesn't
want this, so she's going to be moving back and forth.
So you can kind of get these real weird presentations
of curve linear insults that are edged from generated from
(24:45):
an edge weapon. Now if she's resistant. If she's resistant,
now more force is applied, so you can go deeper okay,
as you press that blade, and a lot of it
depended upon how sharp that blade is as well, So
then you begin to drag the blade deeper as you're
(25:07):
applying more pressure. Now, one of the interesting things here
is that if I am not mistaken, Osgood makes the
comment during his trial or his admission, that she was
not dead yet, and so the idea that he's got
(25:32):
to finish her off, and while he's having sex with
her as well as this cousin that's there as well.
All the while she's struggling, Tracy is and those cuts
are getting deeper and deeper until they get in to
(25:53):
the vasculature of her neck. You know, all of these
all of these structures that exist in our necks, and
I'm talking about you know, the croatids, jugulars, but you
know there are other more superficial, uh superficial vessels that
run through the neck too. You don't have to necessarily
score a hit on a crotid, which, by the way,
(26:15):
crotids are very deep. Okay, there the crowded arteries are buried.
You can do like a pressure. As a matter of fact,
it's if I was if you're taking someone's pulse it's
it's arguably one of the best spots to go to,
you know, kind of adjacent there to the layer necks
and you press down you can feel your heart pumping
(26:37):
like that, you know, and that blade was laying over
the top of those vessels and over the trachea as well.
Now it has been said that Tracy's throat was actually
cut all the way through. And one of the terms
and you know this, uh, this term has been thrown
(26:59):
around for years and years, and sometimes it is a
literal assessment, and that is the term that the throat
has been cut from ear to ear. I've always thought,
Dave that that term probably a rose I would think
with people that were butchering animals because there's a utility
(27:21):
to it. One of the most horrible places I've ever
been in my life. I had to go to this place.
I'm not going to go into it, but it was
a case we were investigating. Had to go to a
slaughterhouse where they kill pigs and they would trust the
pigs up and they'd cut their throat and literally it's
a it is cutting from ear to ear. And the
(27:45):
reason they would do that they wanted to drain the blood,
you know, out of the hog. And I've often thought
that that that idea, that assessment of being cut from
ear to ear is something that probably came up butchery.
And you hear homicides many times, Dave, that where the
homicides are are described in terms of butchery. You know,
(28:09):
it's pure butchery. You know that we saw And then
I thought, well, maybe it came about as a result
of executions, but no, I don't think so. I think
that it came the term ear to ear probably came
about as a result of people that were working in
saw our houses and they knew how to dispatch an animal.
Just because you show up with a knife doesn't mean
(28:30):
you know how to use it. But in addition to
throat cutting, Tracy presents with multiple stab wounds as well.
That's why there's there's a torture element here, Dave. You
know you've already run down the list of these horrific
things that this poor woman was subjected to, you know,
(28:52):
obviously sexual assault, the smearing of the body with bodily fluids,
and the terrorism itself. I've had to live when I
was little, you know, me and my mother. My mother
was a single mom, and we lived in a trailer.
One thing I can tell you about a single white
(29:13):
trailer you talk about being trapped is as you're headed back,
and generally the main bedroom is on the far end,
away from the kitchen and these things. And I know
you've been in if you haven't lived in one, which
you probably have at some point in time. When you
go down that hallway, that hallway is a narrow pass.
It almost looks like something you'd see on a ship.
(29:35):
So once they've got you bottled up in that hallway,
you ain't going nowhere, man, There's nowhere to hide. It's
not like you can go into the basement or escape
into the attic, or go jumping out of winda. That's
not the way it happens. So when they begin to
corral her and take her back there they were showing
up with bad intentions. Dave. I know you might find
(30:10):
it surprising, but you know, when you're a DestinE investigator,
you do have kind of a There are moments in
times where you'll have a visceral reaction. And I always
found with me it had to do with bedrooms for
some reason, I think, I don't know why, but when
(30:32):
you get that containment inside of a bedroom, and you
see like this uber level of violence that takes place
in this environment, and there's no you know how I
talked about like Tracy would have you know, she's forced
down the hallways, nowhere for you to go. For the
investigators that work, there's no place for you to go.
You can't. It's not like you can spin around and
(30:53):
catch a breath. When you're introduced into this environment and
you're working it and you're documenting it. It's like being
in a cell, it really is. And you're contained in
this bedroom. And I can tell you right now that
within this environment you're going to have you know, as
we've unfortunately mentioned, you're gonna have a lot of smells.
(31:15):
There's going to be feces, and that has not necessarily
been been fully explored and understood, but you know, just
just feces itself. One of two things happened, either through
humiliation she was defecated upon or this is her own
(31:39):
feces and probably probably presented because she was being raped.
And I'm not going to go too far down that road,
but you can kind of use your imagination. And then
the smearing of the blood that's everywhere, So you're contained
with this within this environment of the whole smell of
(32:00):
feces combined with the metallic, sickly sweet smell of blood,
and then you're seeing all of these any remnant that's
left behind on mattresses, kind of where are the bed linens?
And here wear are her clothes? You want to make
sure that you handle those very carefully, because if she
was clothed, first off, does she still have clothing on
(32:23):
or was it ripped from her? And that's one of
the things you want to try to understand and contextualize it,
and you're having to do it within this very confined space.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
I don't want.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Confined spaces, and trailers in and of themselves are very
difficult to work in.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
When police are looking over a scene and there is
a mess, I mean, there's no way around this. This
is a scene that has body fluid blood everywhere. And
I guess how much how much are police officers trained
when they show up at a crime scene to not
(33:01):
mess with everything else that's going on, so that because
you have a person who is dead, they're gone, What
is the first step that's taken by an officer to
prevent that crime scene from getting messed up?
Speaker 1 (33:20):
If it's a seasoned officer, if there's anybody else in
there after the EMTs have done their thing, which in
this case there would not have been much of a
need for an EMT. If the police walks in and
you've got early signs of decomposition, the police will, particularly
(33:40):
the uniform officer if they are seasoned, we'll check for
a pulse just to say they did it, and then
they're going to have everybody back out. Now, you know
how I talked about the negative side of having to
work in a confined space. The upside when you're in
a structure like this is that you you've got containment
(34:02):
and also you're going to have it will only accommodate
a certain number of people, you know, because one of
one of the most disdainful things in the world are
look you lose and look. It's not just the general public.
You know, people are kind of high and mighty when
you know they and I've heard cops behind mighty you
(34:25):
know where they'll say, well, I was driving. You know,
these people are driving down the road and they're slowing down,
they're looking at the accident. Cops do that too, you know.
Don't don't fool yourself here, all right, there's nothing in
that bedroom that's some kind of outside person that might
happen to have a badge needs to see. If they're
not part of that team and you're working in a
(34:47):
confined space, you're also going to have the opportunity to
keep all of the evidence within that environment. If if
the first officer that arrives identifies the need to shut
it down and to back everybody out, that's the key.
That's why, in my opinion, I think that uniform officers
beat officers are probably I think probably one of the
(35:13):
most key elements in any kind of death investigation because
what they do at the beginning is going to freeze
that moment in time. And you know, look, there's a
lot of fragile evidence in here. I know that it's
quite disgusting, you know these things that we've mentioned, Dave,
but you know you can have and there's a lot
of obviously because this is a sexual attack, there's a
(35:35):
lot of contact trace in this environment. Things that are
so fragile that just hair transfers that are there. Back
in twenty ten when this case took place, not so
much would we have thought, I don't think about touch
DNA at that point. A matter of fact, I can
almost guarantee that that would not have been necessarily on
(35:58):
the radar so much. But I'm just thinking about if
there is this much blood that scene, you can actually
get handprints that are left behind that are not necessarily
going to be associated with a victim because there's a
lot of manipulation in the body. Think about this, Tracy
is being subjected to a sexual attack, not at the
(36:20):
hand of just one person, but at the hands of
two people. So now you have an opportunity if they
have touched the blood, which I don't see how you
can avoid not touching it, and you transfer that onto
the surfaces of say, for instance, the sheets, the wall,
maybe even onto Tracy's own body as you're trying to
(36:42):
manipulate her to get her to do what you want
her to do. We've got a male and a female perpetrator, Well,
it would stand to reason the female perpetrator's handprint would
be smaller than the male, right, So that's a very
distinctive thing that we're looking at there that goes to
specific identity. So all of these things have to be
calculated relative to protection of the scene. But on the
(37:06):
more human side of it, you know, when these police
officers in Clanton, Alabama walked into this trailer dayte, I
can tell you I don't think that they were expecting
to see what they saw.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
You know, this was a standard well I say standard
where when Tracy didn't show up for work, her employer,
you know, called around and said, hey, can we get
a welfare check? I mean, that's how many times are
we starting stories with that? And that's what happened here,
that she didn't show up for work. And that's why
(37:44):
I'm thinking. You go and knock on the door, you
don't see any forced entry, you don't see any signs
of anything. When they finally did get in there to her,
they found obviously a horrific mess. I'm a little taken
aback by this fantasy idea, which means the course of
interviews with police, they were given an entire story by
(38:05):
Osgood and Van Dyke that this is just as despicable
as it gets. Joe, that's why we had an actual
capital you know, we've got sentence to death here, so
think about that. And by the way, it's a very
short term time sure time rather in terms of carrying
out the sentence on a death sentence.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
I would be shocked. I was shocked by that, Dave.
I'm glad. I'm so glad you brought that up, because
most of the time, if you've got somebody that is
on death row, these cases are going to go out
to infinity, you know, as far as waiting. If you're
the family member of a victim and you you're wanting
(38:50):
lex talian us here, I can't say that every family
desires that. However, if it would seem it would seem
in terms of long like it's never going to come.
And in this case we're talking, we're twenty twenty five. Obviously, now,
I was shocked that when people might be actually shocked
(39:11):
at what I'm about to say, I'm shocked by the
fact that they they actually did this so soon compared
to a lot of other cases that are out there,
you know, like I mentioned, I think there's like roughly
one hundred and sixty five people on death row in
the state of Alabama. He's he's just one, and a
(39:32):
lot of it had to do with the fact that
he didn't want to fight anymore. As a matter of fact,
I'm done, Yeah, he fired, he was. I think that
it was almost the name of the order of the
ACLU they were providing the attorneys for him, and the
acl you he fired, He fired his acl you appointed attorney.
(39:54):
You know, He's like, I'm I'm over it. I don't
want to do this any longer. He said that he
has come to an understanding of the idea of an
eye for an eye and that he's ready to pay
the price. But one little aside here, Dave Osgood actually
stated that since since the murder torture, let's put it
(40:22):
that way, the torture and murder of Tracy back in
twenty ten, he he has never spoken her name, never
spoken her name, and he stated that he felt as
though that it would be disrespectful to say her name.
And actually the last thing that he said before he
(40:46):
was the process of lethal injection took place is I'm sorry, Tracy.
I'm sorry Tracy. Now, you know that's no recompense for
a life that's been snuffed out. You know, her, her
child has grown up without her, was already in a
bad situation, you know, being away from her mama, that
(41:08):
far away and everything that is, you know, the family.
She came to Alabama probably hoping that you know, people
could help her here and wanted to be wanted and
one of the greatest betrayals that anyone could could suffer through.
Because you know, we hear a lot about people talking
(41:28):
about what's the term that you hear folks saying about
women where they're sexualized and they're put in magazines and
and all these sorts of things. And uh, this was objectification.
This is the worst, the worst that you can imagine
(41:50):
as far as objectification of a woman. Uh, she is
truly you know when you break that word down, the
root is object right, So object reduces humanity to me,
it does at least it's like you take away the humanity,
the total and complete humanity and human value of an
(42:10):
individual in order to use her for the purposes of
this evil desire that you have the sick, twisted fantasy,
which this has been described as.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
And Joe, yeah, once they've gotten past the conviction, the
crime and everything else, and now we've got to carry
out the sentence. You and I covered the the death
sentence of another inmate in Alabama, where lethal injection was
not used. They use a different form of carrying out
the sentence. Was this death carried out in the same
(42:43):
way as our previous one.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
Or was this one back to lethal injection?
Speaker 1 (42:46):
What happened in Alabama. You've now got three choices. It's
weird to hear that someone has choices, and this is
kind of this is not Look, this is not simply
an Alabama. You've got a lot of these states now
that are looking at other methodologies because, let's face it,
lethal injection has been problematic, you know, for years and
(43:09):
years now because pharmaceutical companies don't want to provide the drugs.
They're always having to change the formula. And how are
you going to do an experiment to try to understand,
you know, what works best and what is I'm doing
air quotes right now, what is in fact the most
humane way to do it? But in Alabama, you know,
(43:31):
the electric chair is still on the table. You've got
lethal injection. And of course what you were just referring
to is nitrogen hypoxia, which they you know, we covered
the first case in America that had ever been carried out,
and that was here in Alabama. Now there's been a
(43:52):
matter of fact, there was one earlier in the year
here in Alabama where another subject that we didn't cover
that case, but he met his end through nitrogen hypoxia.
For some reason, Osgood chose over hypoxia. He chose to
go with the lethal injection. And for you know, most
(44:13):
most of these states, they have a they have a
protocol that well you have to have it and you
know what the drug cocktail is going to be. So
in Alabama there's like a three a three drug administration
(44:34):
where you have one drug that is that is utilized
and it's utilized therapeutically for many people for anti anxiety,
given in large enough doses. It's used as an adjunct
to anesthesia where this drug in particular is administered and
(44:58):
it it gives you this kind of pharmaceutical induced amnesia
where you can't remember surgery. Okay, you can't remember that
that happened. And once they get you in that sedated state,
there'll be another another drug that is administered where it
is going to begin to compromise your ability to breathe
(45:24):
and it's like a paralytic, which is absolutely horrific if
you're asking me where, but you're not going to have
an awareness of it because the sedative has been given
prior to that. And then finally it's going to be
finished off with potassium chloride and if you give people
a large enough dose of potassium chloride, it it screws
(45:45):
up with it screws up the conduction in your heart,
and essentially you go in to a state where you're
in cardiac arrest and you die. And that's that's the
process that the individual goes through. And if I'm not mistaken,
it was the execution itself was rather uneventful. I think, Dave,
(46:08):
there was not like there was not some grandiose kind
of thing that was going on with this, or you know,
there was not you know, these huge uh you know,
shouting and screaming and everything. I think that Osgood had
set his mind to this course and this is this
is just the way things were going to be.
Speaker 3 (46:27):
He did.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
He said, uh, I'm a paraphrase. He said, a couple
of years ago, I really messed up. This is it.
I don't want any no pro he said. If you protest,
didn't the death penalty, do not use my name age
on your platform. So he was very direct on this.
But Joe, I'm wondering, and I think a lot of
people wanted the same thing. When we debate, I say,
(46:47):
we in the cultural debate, you know, h yeah, right,
that why not decide we're going to this person has
been sentenced to death, we're going to carry it out.
How about use propofol? Put the person to sleep, and
then how you kill them? Is imity is not even
Germaine to the discussion. Because they're out, they're under, they're
a sleep, they're not They will not come back until
(47:09):
you remove the propofol. So don't remove it, keep it
plugged up, keep it dripping. Boom, just use the guillotine.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
I mean that sleep, I think, yeah, boom, Yeah, I
understand what you're saying. But the legal eagles out there,
they when they argue this, most of the time they
come from the perspective of of of it's the anxiety
leading up to knowing the drug is coming, and this
(47:40):
makes it cruel for them they'll use They'll say that
that defines cruel and unusual. And you know my fallback
position has always been relative to two victims. Is that. Yeah,
you might say that's cruel and unusual. I bet I
can try that, I bet I can tell you. Let
(48:02):
me describe to you what happened to the likes of Tracy.
You know what she went through, you know, back there
in that tiny little bedroom where she probably you know,
finally slept, maybe with some level of peace once she
began to sit down the roots. She had a job,
(48:23):
she had thoughts of her daughter. She was proud of
a car that she was able to purchase. She had
money in her pocket. Sun was rising again for but unfortunately,
monsters arrived on her doorstep. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
(48:47):
this is Bodybacks.
Body days. But Joseph's gotten more when we think about
how we would like to get back at people, don't
we Yeah, that's you know, you're insulted, you're humiliated, you're
harmed in some way, maybe something has been taken from you. This,
(00:26):
this idea of making things right is ancient. It goes
back even further than the Bible. The first time we
see mention of it is through the Babylonians, with of
course the Code of Hammurabi. And what it comes down
(00:47):
to is this idea of what's referred to as reciprocal justice,
hum the back and forth, if you will. Today we're
going to talk about a fellow who just died in
(01:08):
the death chamber in Alabama, and towards his end he
became a believer in Lex Talionis. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan,
and this is Bodybacks. David. This case came across my
(01:36):
desk and I afforded it to you because I thought
that it was one of these cases that well, first off,
it's it's happened, or it happened. The actual murder that
is involved here actually happened not too far way from
(02:00):
where we are in the whole Grand scheme of things,
and it is arguably and even our governor, who goes
affectionately I think by the term of mem Governor k
Ivy actually made a statement in regards to it, and
(02:21):
just very briefly, just in a few words. Here this
is a direct quote from her when she was actually
asked to grant clemency in this case. And she's referring
to the victim, and she says, the murder of Tracy
Wilman was premeditated, gruesome and disturbing, and tonight the state
(02:50):
carried out the death sentence of James Osgoode. And this
is coming from a woman who the governor who had
signed to death warrant on someone else this year so far.
But she's also granted clemency to one person because she
said she was not convinced of their guilt. It's not like,
(03:12):
you know, she's going out and saying that all one
hundred and sixty four individuals on Alabama's death row, I'm
going to make sure they're all put to death. She's
doing a bit of reflection and examination. But I think
that this is one of those events, This's case in particular,
is one of those that again, here's that term that
you hear associated with courts lots of times. It's so
(03:33):
shocked the conscience that she felt like that, Yeah, it
was time. It was time to put this to an end.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
You know, the thing about the death penalty being carried
out on somebody who has become a believer ends up
striking a chord with so many people. Joe, and I
have to be really honest with you right here. I
am a believer. I'm a follower of Jesus Christ, and
in that I know that to be absent the body
(04:03):
is to be present with the Lord. When my life
ends here, I begin a new journey into eternity. And
I've often wondered when it goes back to Carla Fae Tucker,
and she was involved in this horrible murder and she
(04:24):
was sentenced to death, and when her death sentence was
about to be carried out, there were protests there. I mean,
you had the seven hundred Club broadcasting from the prison
pretty much. I mean, it was crazy within the religious world.
And I kept thinking, you know, if you truly believe
what you claim to believe, I mean, you're going to paradise,
(04:45):
So you know, carry out the sentence. Let's move forward.
I don't mean to be flipping about it, but I
oftentimes think about the victim here. But I remember the
this Carla fay Tucker thing was huge and it really
hit me.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Yeah, just did.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
And there and you know, there's uh, you know, there's
the old adage and this is very pessimistic on my part,
but it's you know, the old flippant you used from flippant,
the flippant adage, uh that people people find Jesus in
prison and the you know, the comeback is, I didn't
(05:21):
know he was in prison, and so and you know,
the pessimist in you, you're always thinking that a scam
is being run on you, you know, to take you know,
to take you in or change the attitudes towards something.
But I got to tell you, Dave, in this case
with the perpetrator, and he admits to being the perpetrator,
(05:44):
he doesn't fight against it. Osborne. What's so striking about
this case. There's many things, but what's so striking about
it is that he took a view of this, or
rather Old Testament view of this, that he needed to
pay for what he had done to this poor woman, who,
(06:07):
by the way, I mean, you know, she the victim,
and it's a lot has been written about her. I
think she's just trying to get her life back. You know,
she was divorced.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
I'm glad you were pointing that out about the victim
trying to get her life back, because that is the
running that's been running through this. She was born and
raised in Riverside, California, got married, it was a bad marriage,
but it did give her a daughter, and at forty
four years old, she's in Clinton, Alabama. Think about it.
That's a long track from Riverside, California to Clinton, Alabama.
(06:43):
It's about fifty miles north of Montgomery, about the same
distance south of Birmingham, all right, And she's in there
because her cousin has a job at this nursing home.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
And hey, I'll go. You know how when we're trying
to start a new we still need friends and family.
And what happened.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
So she ends up in Clanton near her cousin, Tanya
Van Dyke, and you know, they're about the same age
and they're working at the same nursing home. Look, she
started all over in her early forties. Here, she started
with nothing, Joe. I mean, the victim here started with
absolutely did not even have a car, all right, So
she takes this job at the nursing home. She's saving
(07:21):
every penny she actually buys a car. She's working and
getting the money together to go out and get her daughter.
I mean, she is really rebuilding her life.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Yeah. I think her daughter was out in.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Patta, Lake Asu, Arizona.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Yeah, Lake Havasu, and she was, I don't know, trying
to do some kind of reclamation here. I think, you know,
with her life, just trying to put things together exactly.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
And she was on that path.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yeah. Yeah, and you know who, Look, I'm not saying
anyone is deserving of any kind of violence, and there's
no way you can grade it. I mean, how many
people have we covered about the ends of their lives,
you know, on bodybacks where they didn't see it coming.
(08:06):
I mean it's and death is that way? Evil? Is
that way? You never? You never. I think that some
of us might say, you know, we can judge people
and say, well, you should have known that was going
to happen. Yeah, maybe so, But you know there are
those cases, Dave, where people I didn't know what was
going to happen. They just happen to be the wrong
(08:27):
place the wrong time and evil visited them, and you know,
you're struggling with your life, you're trying to get it
back on wheels, and suddenly I don't know this, This
person who has this and it's been described as a
very twisted fantasy, wants to act out with another perpetrator
(08:55):
on Tracy. Yep, you know. And that's what you know,
that's that's that's what's so absolutely horrible. This is not
like she's been taken out in the field and you know,
executed with a single shot to the back of the head.
You're talking sexual deviance coupled with torture, torture. You know.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
It comes from a friend, a family member. It comes
from her cousin. That's the thing, Joe, How did they
get into her house? Okay, she's got living in a
trailer park, she got her single wife, she's got her
life back together, as mentioned, and here comes Tanya Van Dyke,
her cousin. All Right, That's something I cannot hammer home
enough because we oftentimes will not open the door to
evil because you see evil for what it is and
(09:40):
you don't let it in. But in this case, evil
came to her as a cousin. She'd known her whole life. Yeah,
as a cousin who actually was a part of her
rebuilding her life.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
From a nuts and bolts perspective. As far as investigations
and forensics go, we you know, I mentioned this all
the thoms because where we can't help ourselves when we're
instructing people no signs the fourth century or struggle, right,
you know, that's one of the things that we talk about.
If we have like a death and a home, we're
(10:15):
going to look around doorways and windows to see if
anybody force their way in. And you know, Dave one
of the conclusions that we will arrive at, and it's
very broad. You can't apply this every single time. But
if you find a case that on its surface seems
like a home invasion, but yet the door has not
(10:36):
been kicked in, the wind has not been jimmied in
any way, there's this kind of broad assumption you start
with where you say, this person was probably known to
the individual that was domiciled here, so there's not some
kind of resistance or fight, you know, necessarily when all
of this takes place. Yeah, yes, like you know, and
(11:00):
it's kind of like you know, the old adage about
a vampire vampire is not going to uh, not that
they're real. However, there have been people that have claimed
to be vampires, and we're gonna have to cover some
of those cases that have occurred over the years of
people of drinking blood. But in the true sense of
you know, fictionalized vamp vampires. The old adage about the
(11:21):
vampire is not going to come into your house unless
you invite them. They have to be invited into your home,
crossing the threshold, if you will. And who sees this
kind of thing coming, Dave, I mean really, who sees
it coming? And and and can anticipate that when that
door swings open, that this kind of fog of evil
(11:44):
begins to seep in and the one thing that it's
looking for.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Is your life?
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Can I tell you're right up front, Dave. I don't
like going to nursing homes. They've always given me the willies.
I don't like them. I know that they're a necessity
and some people don't have choice. They have to go
into these places. And not only I think is it
(12:29):
a difficult place to live, It's a very difficult place
to work. I've just think about what you're doing. You're
you're you're taking care of individuals who are people going
to nursing homes for a variety of reasons. It's not
they're not all aged, but the line's share of them are,
(12:53):
and you have to help and maintain at the most
basic levels everything bodily functions, checking on you know, blood
pressures and sugars and making sure that they're going to
go to the bathroom. I'm making sure that they eat,
(13:13):
you know, all those things, changing bed linens and rolling
people in bed so they don't get bedsords.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
I'm so glad you just said that, Joe, because you realize,
do you realize what it's like to roll somebody over
that is very heavy and even though they are alive,
they are dead weight.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
They're not helping.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
My sister in law actually ended up on disability from
injuries suffered working in a nursing home because constantly working.
And I am again not complaining and not knocking them
at all, but that's what happened to her. I kept thinking,
how you know what's going on with her? And that's
what it was, because she was constantly having to maneuver
people who couldn't help themselves, and it took its toll.
(13:55):
But Yeah, there's also beyond the physical aspects of a
nursing home, there's also the emotional, psycho logical, and mental,
because you have people that are sometimes put in a
nursing home and this is the saddest thing, and they're
kind of kicked to the curb by family here.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Yeah, they are. That does happen. And so you have
someone like Tracy that slips in and isn't it interesting?
You know, she's You've got people that are at the
end of their life maybe uh, they have no one
left in their life. And Tracy is kind of in
the same boat, with the exception here that she has
(14:31):
a cousin that's actually employed with her. And I often
wonder did the cousin help her get the job? And
you know, how how are they going to wind up
there together?
Speaker 3 (14:42):
You know?
Speaker 1 (14:42):
You come, you come here. It's a steady paycheck. You know,
you can get your life squared away, you know, re
establish yourself and we'll work on getting your daughter. And
you know, I think about that and think, wow, you know,
was that part of this game? Was this part of
(15:03):
you know? And I wonder if this is the overarching
theme here, Dave, did this man this man that we've
talked about James Osgood. Was this his plan? Had he
orchestrated this in some way by utilizing having the utility
(15:25):
literally of the cousin to draw someone in, you know,
almost like a moth to the flame, Dave.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
They've referred to it as a fantasy played out. And
if it is that long game of evil, then you've
got somebody who actually recruited I'm talking about the cousin here,
Tanya van Dyke recruiting her cousin to come to Alabama
(15:52):
from California, Arizona, wherever she happened to be where she
had family on the West coast, getting her to come
all the way to Alabama to start her life over
where the only person she knows is Tanya, you know.
And if they did this for the purposes of eventually
living out this fantasy that led to the death of
I'm just that's like an evil at a whole new level.
(16:15):
That really is if Tracy Lynn Wilman was actually recruited
to come to Alabama when she's at the low part
of her life trying to rebuild it, and her cousin
reaches out and brings her here with the hope all
because Tanya Van Dyke and James Osgood nicknamed Taz, they
(16:37):
had a plan that would be an evil level I
can't even imagine.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Yeah, you know, and you're talking about the long game here?
Had this you know, how much talk had there been
between both of these perpetrators. One of now, of course,
has has died in the death chamber, this cousin, I'll
go ahead and tell you right now, Kivy has. The
(17:06):
Governor of Alabama has stated that she's this this person
is in federal prison and she will, according to the
Governor of Alabama, she will never see the light of day.
Did I wonder if that was part of their long game?
You know, if they you know, they couldn't in no way,
(17:27):
I guess have predicted that it could have gone like this.
But how can you begin to dabble in this level
of evil and not understand that there will be a
consequence that you will pay. And of course, you know
this man Oscood, he actually did wind up paying with
(17:48):
his life. But David, I want to go back in
time and try to understand kind of the timeline of
what went down here relative to the this level of
brutality that we've been told and have you know, kind
of born witness to through all of the reports that
(18:09):
have come out about this case. That, by the way,
like many of these cases, and we've done other death
penalty cases before, Dave, remember our focus here is the victim.
The victim now, okay, And isn't it interesting? Like an
old dusty bottle of wine. It's forgotten, you know, somewhere somewhere,
far far away, And the only time you hear about
(18:31):
it again is when the individual that has been convicted
is going to go to the death chamber. And even
when that person is going to the death chamber, the
victim tracy in this case becomes almost like a you know,
it's like a secondary issue to all this. I think
(18:52):
it is important that we remember.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
That's how when we began looking at this story. Many times,
when somebody is sent to death, the legal eagles come
out of everywhere, you know, to debate, to debate the
death penalty, and taking that out of the equation, let's
just get down to what actually transpired and what led
to the conviction and what led to the sentence. In
(19:15):
this particular case, you have, as I mentioned earlier, you've
got Tanya van Dyke who is cousins with the victim here,
and our victim, Tracy Linn Wilman, is going through a
time in her life where she's now divorced, her child
is not with her, and she is starting with nothing.
She's working at the same nursing home as her cousin.
(19:36):
And that's why I thought, certainly she had to have
been brought out. Hey, I've got a job for you.
Come out here and let's start over, you know. Come on,
And I mean I've done that. I've brought people from
other states to work for me because I knew them,
I trusted them, and come on, stay at my house
till you get you know, your feet under you. Anyway,
So we have Tracy Wilman arriving in Alabama working at
(19:56):
the nursing home with her cousin, but she has her
own place, got her a trailer in a trailer park.
And in this particular case, James Osgood and Tanya Van
Dyke are a couple. They're in a romantic relationship and
they spend the first part of the day with tracy
Linn Wilman just being together, you know, family and friends.
(20:20):
But during the course of the day, at some point
in time, inside Tracy Wilman's trailer. Tanya Van Dyke gets
her and they say coerced or talked her into going
back to the bedroom. Somehow, I don't know what exactly
that means, but somehow Tanya Van Dyke got Tracy to
(20:40):
go back towards her bedroom in the trailer, and Ozgood
was right behind her. Osgood has a gun and over
the next several hours, they being Van Dyke and Ozgood
took terms raping at gunpoint Tracy Linn Wilman, a woman
(21:10):
who is just getting her life back together, and here
we go holding a gun at her head, taking turns
holding the gun. By the way, they actually, we don't
need to go into the details. Y'all can figure this out.
You know what happens when people are into a sexual
fantasy where a man and a woman are taking turns
(21:30):
holding a gun and forcing their victim to be involved
in their entire sexual fantasy. At one point, Tracy's I
got to go to the bathroom. I need to use
the bathroom. Well, just so you know, when they were
cleaning up feces and blood was found smeared on the
(21:52):
victim's body, Joe. She was degraded beaten and, according to
the prosecution, was being sexually attacked while her throat was
cut and it wasn't cut once. There were several cutting
(22:12):
marks on her neck. How does that happen.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Joe, Well, you have I've seen cases with edged weapons
where an individual will take a knife. And this goes
back to a term that you and I have used
before of menacing, which I love that term, by the way,
as a descriptor. You know that you can actually kind
(22:37):
of paint the picture and where you're placing a knife
against someone's skin and you're saying, if you don't do this,
I'm going to cut you, okay. And so my suspicion
is is that these incised injuries that she sustained are
(23:02):
variable in depth. Okay, So you're going to have you'll
see these little upbraided We refer to them as curve
linear And it's a weird words. It's I've always I
always thought, you know. When I heard it for the
first time, and of course it came from a forensic pathologist,
I said, you know that, out of all the terms
that you guys use, this is one of the most
(23:24):
made up terms I've ever had, because it has features
of Okay, break it down for you. Being curved and
being linear, you know, like straight lines.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
So does it seems possible?
Speaker 1 (23:37):
No, it doesn't. However it is, and let me tell
you why. If you have let's just say someone takes
the leading edge of a knife, okay, maybe even the
tip of the knife and they slice someone. Well, the
biomechanical action of the wrist itself as that blade is
(23:58):
drug across the skin will give it almost an arcing
like appearance curva, and then it'll straighten out at the end. Linear.
Now also on a you know, if you think of
the neck as kind of a cylinder as well, that
those the surface of the neck is not like say
the surface of our chest. Right, so you've got this
(24:21):
cylindrical kind of shape that you're applying a straight age
blade to and depended and trust me, the victim, and
in this case is going to be tracy. She doesn't
want this, so she's going to be moving back and forth.
So you can kind of get these real weird presentations
of curve linear insults that are edged from generated from
(24:45):
an edge weapon. Now if she's resistant. If she's resistant,
now more force is applied, so you can go deeper okay,
as you press that blade, and a lot of it
depended upon how sharp that blade is as well, So
then you begin to drag the blade deeper as you're
(25:07):
applying more pressure. Now, one of the interesting things here
is that if I am not mistaken, Osgood makes the
comment during his trial or his admission, that she was
not dead yet, and so the idea that he's got
(25:32):
to finish her off, and while he's having sex with
her as well as this cousin that's there as well.
All the while she's struggling, Tracy is and those cuts
are getting deeper and deeper until they get in to
(25:53):
the vasculature of her neck. You know, all of these
all of these structures that exist in our necks, and
I'm talking about you know, the croatids, jugulars, but you
know there are other more superficial, uh superficial vessels that
run through the neck too. You don't have to necessarily
score a hit on a crotid, which, by the way,
(26:15):
crotids are very deep. Okay, there the crowded arteries are buried.
You can do like a pressure. As a matter of fact,
it's if I was if you're taking someone's pulse it's
it's arguably one of the best spots to go to,
you know, kind of adjacent there to the layer necks
and you press down you can feel your heart pumping
(26:37):
like that, you know, and that blade was laying over
the top of those vessels and over the trachea as well.
Now it has been said that Tracy's throat was actually
cut all the way through. And one of the terms
and you know this, uh, this term has been thrown
(26:59):
around for years and years, and sometimes it is a
literal assessment, and that is the term that the throat
has been cut from ear to ear. I've always thought,
Dave that that term probably a rose I would think
with people that were butchering animals because there's a utility
(27:21):
to it. One of the most horrible places I've ever
been in my life. I had to go to this place.
I'm not going to go into it, but it was
a case we were investigating. Had to go to a
slaughterhouse where they kill pigs and they would trust the
pigs up and they'd cut their throat and literally it's
a it is cutting from ear to ear. And the
(27:45):
reason they would do that they wanted to drain the blood,
you know, out of the hog. And I've often thought
that that that idea, that assessment of being cut from
ear to ear is something that probably came up butchery.
And you hear homicides many times, Dave, that where the
homicides are are described in terms of butchery. You know,
(28:09):
it's pure butchery. You know that we saw And then
I thought, well, maybe it came about as a result
of executions, but no, I don't think so. I think
that it came the term ear to ear probably came
about as a result of people that were working in
saw our houses and they knew how to dispatch an animal.
Just because you show up with a knife doesn't mean
(28:30):
you know how to use it. But in addition to
throat cutting, Tracy presents with multiple stab wounds as well.
That's why there's there's a torture element here, Dave. You
know you've already run down the list of these horrific
things that this poor woman was subjected to, you know,
(28:52):
obviously sexual assault, the smearing of the body with bodily fluids,
and the terrorism itself. I've had to live when I
was little, you know, me and my mother. My mother
was a single mom, and we lived in a trailer.
One thing I can tell you about a single white
(29:13):
trailer you talk about being trapped is as you're headed back,
and generally the main bedroom is on the far end,
away from the kitchen and these things. And I know
you've been in if you haven't lived in one, which
you probably have at some point in time. When you
go down that hallway, that hallway is a narrow pass.
It almost looks like something you'd see on a ship.
(29:35):
So once they've got you bottled up in that hallway,
you ain't going nowhere, man, There's nowhere to hide. It's
not like you can go into the basement or escape
into the attic, or go jumping out of winda. That's
not the way it happens. So when they begin to
corral her and take her back there they were showing
up with bad intentions. Dave. I know you might find
(30:10):
it surprising, but you know, when you're a DestinE investigator,
you do have kind of a There are moments in
times where you'll have a visceral reaction. And I always
found with me it had to do with bedrooms for
some reason, I think, I don't know why, but when
(30:32):
you get that containment inside of a bedroom, and you
see like this uber level of violence that takes place
in this environment, and there's no you know how I
talked about like Tracy would have you know, she's forced
down the hallways, nowhere for you to go. For the
investigators that work, there's no place for you to go.
You can't. It's not like you can spin around and
(30:53):
catch a breath. When you're introduced into this environment and
you're working it and you're documenting it. It's like being
in a cell, it really is. And you're contained in
this bedroom. And I can tell you right now that
within this environment you're going to have you know, as
we've unfortunately mentioned, you're gonna have a lot of smells.
(31:15):
There's going to be feces, and that has not necessarily
been been fully explored and understood, but you know, just
just feces itself. One of two things happened, either through
humiliation she was defecated upon or this is her own
(31:39):
feces and probably probably presented because she was being raped.
And I'm not going to go too far down that road,
but you can kind of use your imagination. And then
the smearing of the blood that's everywhere, So you're contained
with this within this environment of the whole smell of
(32:00):
feces combined with the metallic, sickly sweet smell of blood,
and then you're seeing all of these any remnant that's
left behind on mattresses, kind of where are the bed linens?
And here wear are her clothes? You want to make
sure that you handle those very carefully, because if she
was clothed, first off, does she still have clothing on
(32:23):
or was it ripped from her? And that's one of
the things you want to try to understand and contextualize it,
and you're having to do it within this very confined space.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
I don't want.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Confined spaces, and trailers in and of themselves are very
difficult to work in.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
When police are looking over a scene and there is
a mess, I mean, there's no way around this. This
is a scene that has body fluid blood everywhere. And
I guess how much how much are police officers trained
when they show up at a crime scene to not
(33:01):
mess with everything else that's going on, so that because
you have a person who is dead, they're gone, What
is the first step that's taken by an officer to
prevent that crime scene from getting messed up?
Speaker 1 (33:20):
If it's a seasoned officer, if there's anybody else in
there after the EMTs have done their thing, which in
this case there would not have been much of a
need for an EMT. If the police walks in and
you've got early signs of decomposition, the police will, particularly
(33:40):
the uniform officer if they are seasoned, we'll check for
a pulse just to say they did it, and then
they're going to have everybody back out. Now, you know
how I talked about the negative side of having to
work in a confined space. The upside when you're in
a structure like this is that you you've got containment
(34:02):
and also you're going to have it will only accommodate
a certain number of people, you know, because one of
one of the most disdainful things in the world are
look you lose and look. It's not just the general public.
You know, people are kind of high and mighty when
you know they and I've heard cops behind mighty you
(34:25):
know where they'll say, well, I was driving. You know,
these people are driving down the road and they're slowing down,
they're looking at the accident. Cops do that too, you know.
Don't don't fool yourself here, all right, there's nothing in
that bedroom that's some kind of outside person that might
happen to have a badge needs to see. If they're
not part of that team and you're working in a
(34:47):
confined space, you're also going to have the opportunity to
keep all of the evidence within that environment. If if
the first officer that arrives identifies the need to shut
it down and to back everybody out, that's the key.
That's why, in my opinion, I think that uniform officers
beat officers are probably I think probably one of the
(35:13):
most key elements in any kind of death investigation because
what they do at the beginning is going to freeze
that moment in time. And you know, look, there's a
lot of fragile evidence in here. I know that it's
quite disgusting, you know these things that we've mentioned, Dave,
but you know you can have and there's a lot
of obviously because this is a sexual attack, there's a
(35:35):
lot of contact trace in this environment. Things that are
so fragile that just hair transfers that are there. Back
in twenty ten when this case took place, not so
much would we have thought, I don't think about touch
DNA at that point. A matter of fact, I can
almost guarantee that that would not have been necessarily on
(35:58):
the radar so much. But I'm just thinking about if
there is this much blood that scene, you can actually
get handprints that are left behind that are not necessarily
going to be associated with a victim because there's a
lot of manipulation in the body. Think about this, Tracy
is being subjected to a sexual attack, not at the
(36:20):
hand of just one person, but at the hands of
two people. So now you have an opportunity if they
have touched the blood, which I don't see how you
can avoid not touching it, and you transfer that onto
the surfaces of say, for instance, the sheets, the wall,
maybe even onto Tracy's own body as you're trying to
(36:42):
manipulate her to get her to do what you want
her to do. We've got a male and a female perpetrator, Well,
it would stand to reason the female perpetrator's handprint would
be smaller than the male, right, So that's a very
distinctive thing that we're looking at there that goes to
specific identity. So all of these things have to be
calculated relative to protection of the scene. But on the
(37:06):
more human side of it, you know, when these police
officers in Clanton, Alabama walked into this trailer dayte, I
can tell you I don't think that they were expecting
to see what they saw.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
You know, this was a standard well I say standard
where when Tracy didn't show up for work, her employer,
you know, called around and said, hey, can we get
a welfare check? I mean, that's how many times are
we starting stories with that? And that's what happened here,
that she didn't show up for work. And that's why
(37:44):
I'm thinking. You go and knock on the door, you
don't see any forced entry, you don't see any signs
of anything. When they finally did get in there to her,
they found obviously a horrific mess. I'm a little taken
aback by this fantasy idea, which means the course of
interviews with police, they were given an entire story by
(38:05):
Osgood and Van Dyke that this is just as despicable
as it gets. Joe, that's why we had an actual
capital you know, we've got sentence to death here, so
think about that. And by the way, it's a very
short term time sure time rather in terms of carrying
out the sentence on a death sentence.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
I would be shocked. I was shocked by that, Dave.
I'm glad. I'm so glad you brought that up, because
most of the time, if you've got somebody that is
on death row, these cases are going to go out
to infinity, you know, as far as waiting. If you're
the family member of a victim and you you're wanting
(38:50):
lex talian us here, I can't say that every family
desires that. However, if it would seem it would seem
in terms of long like it's never going to come.
And in this case we're talking, we're twenty twenty five. Obviously, now,
I was shocked that when people might be actually shocked
(39:11):
at what I'm about to say, I'm shocked by the
fact that they they actually did this so soon compared
to a lot of other cases that are out there,
you know, like I mentioned, I think there's like roughly
one hundred and sixty five people on death row in
the state of Alabama. He's he's just one, and a
(39:32):
lot of it had to do with the fact that
he didn't want to fight anymore. As a matter of fact,
I'm done, Yeah, he fired, he was. I think that
it was almost the name of the order of the
ACLU they were providing the attorneys for him, and the
acl you he fired, He fired his acl you appointed attorney.
(39:54):
You know, He's like, I'm I'm over it. I don't
want to do this any longer. He said that he
has come to an understanding of the idea of an
eye for an eye and that he's ready to pay
the price. But one little aside here, Dave Osgood actually
stated that since since the murder torture, let's put it
(40:22):
that way, the torture and murder of Tracy back in
twenty ten, he he has never spoken her name, never
spoken her name, and he stated that he felt as
though that it would be disrespectful to say her name.
And actually the last thing that he said before he
(40:46):
was the process of lethal injection took place is I'm sorry, Tracy.
I'm sorry Tracy. Now, you know that's no recompense for
a life that's been snuffed out. You know, her, her
child has grown up without her, was already in a
bad situation, you know, being away from her mama, that
(41:08):
far away and everything that is, you know, the family.
She came to Alabama probably hoping that you know, people
could help her here and wanted to be wanted and
one of the greatest betrayals that anyone could could suffer through.
Because you know, we hear a lot about people talking
(41:28):
about what's the term that you hear folks saying about
women where they're sexualized and they're put in magazines and
and all these sorts of things. And uh, this was objectification.
This is the worst, the worst that you can imagine
(41:50):
as far as objectification of a woman. Uh, she is
truly you know when you break that word down, the
root is object right, So object reduces humanity to me,
it does at least it's like you take away the humanity,
the total and complete humanity and human value of an
(42:10):
individual in order to use her for the purposes of
this evil desire that you have the sick, twisted fantasy,
which this has been described as.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
And Joe, yeah, once they've gotten past the conviction, the
crime and everything else, and now we've got to carry
out the sentence. You and I covered the the death
sentence of another inmate in Alabama, where lethal injection was
not used. They use a different form of carrying out
the sentence. Was this death carried out in the same
(42:43):
way as our previous one.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
Or was this one back to lethal injection?
Speaker 1 (42:46):
What happened in Alabama. You've now got three choices. It's
weird to hear that someone has choices, and this is
kind of this is not Look, this is not simply
an Alabama. You've got a lot of these states now
that are looking at other methodologies because, let's face it,
lethal injection has been problematic, you know, for years and
(43:09):
years now because pharmaceutical companies don't want to provide the drugs.
They're always having to change the formula. And how are
you going to do an experiment to try to understand,
you know, what works best and what is I'm doing
air quotes right now, what is in fact the most
humane way to do it? But in Alabama, you know,
(43:31):
the electric chair is still on the table. You've got
lethal injection. And of course what you were just referring
to is nitrogen hypoxia, which they you know, we covered
the first case in America that had ever been carried out,
and that was here in Alabama. Now there's been a
(43:52):
matter of fact, there was one earlier in the year
here in Alabama where another subject that we didn't cover
that case, but he met his end through nitrogen hypoxia.
For some reason, Osgood chose over hypoxia. He chose to
go with the lethal injection. And for you know, most
(44:13):
most of these states, they have a they have a
protocol that well you have to have it and you
know what the drug cocktail is going to be. So
in Alabama there's like a three a three drug administration
(44:34):
where you have one drug that is that is utilized
and it's utilized therapeutically for many people for anti anxiety,
given in large enough doses. It's used as an adjunct
to anesthesia where this drug in particular is administered and
(44:58):
it it gives you this kind of pharmaceutical induced amnesia
where you can't remember surgery. Okay, you can't remember that
that happened. And once they get you in that sedated state,
there'll be another another drug that is administered where it
is going to begin to compromise your ability to breathe
(45:24):
and it's like a paralytic, which is absolutely horrific if
you're asking me where, but you're not going to have
an awareness of it because the sedative has been given
prior to that. And then finally it's going to be
finished off with potassium chloride and if you give people
a large enough dose of potassium chloride, it it screws
(45:45):
up with it screws up the conduction in your heart,
and essentially you go in to a state where you're
in cardiac arrest and you die. And that's that's the
process that the individual goes through. And if I'm not mistaken,
it was the execution itself was rather uneventful. I think, Dave,
(46:08):
there was not like there was not some grandiose kind
of thing that was going on with this, or you know,
there was not you know, these huge uh you know,
shouting and screaming and everything. I think that Osgood had
set his mind to this course and this is this
is just the way things were going to be.
Speaker 3 (46:27):
He did.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
He said, uh, I'm a paraphrase. He said, a couple
of years ago, I really messed up. This is it.
I don't want any no pro he said. If you protest,
didn't the death penalty, do not use my name age
on your platform. So he was very direct on this.
But Joe, I'm wondering, and I think a lot of
people wanted the same thing. When we debate, I say,
(46:47):
we in the cultural debate, you know, h yeah, right,
that why not decide we're going to this person has
been sentenced to death, we're going to carry it out.
How about use propofol? Put the person to sleep, and
then how you kill them? Is imity is not even
Germaine to the discussion. Because they're out, they're under, they're
a sleep, they're not They will not come back until
(47:09):
you remove the propofol. So don't remove it, keep it
plugged up, keep it dripping. Boom, just use the guillotine.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
I mean that sleep, I think, yeah, boom, Yeah, I
understand what you're saying. But the legal eagles out there,
they when they argue this, most of the time they
come from the perspective of of of it's the anxiety
leading up to knowing the drug is coming, and this
(47:40):
makes it cruel for them they'll use They'll say that
that defines cruel and unusual. And you know my fallback
position has always been relative to two victims. Is that. Yeah,
you might say that's cruel and unusual. I bet I
can try that, I bet I can tell you. Let
(48:02):
me describe to you what happened to the likes of Tracy.
You know what she went through, you know, back there
in that tiny little bedroom where she probably you know,
finally slept, maybe with some level of peace once she
began to sit down the roots. She had a job,
(48:23):
she had thoughts of her daughter. She was proud of
a car that she was able to purchase. She had
money in her pocket. Sun was rising again for but unfortunately,
monsters arrived on her doorstep. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
(48:47):
this is Bodybacks.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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