October 29, 2025 • 38 mins
Stephen Bryant became a one man crime wave in October 2004, murdering three men, attempted to kill another man and committed some robberies as well. Bryant dipped a pot holder in the blood of one of his victims and wrote "Victim number four in two weeks, catch me If you can" on the wall. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack break down the crimes of Stephen Bryant, his victims, how they were murdered, and why Bryant gets to choose his method of execution.
Transcribe Highlights
00:00.03 Introduction - Buffet
03:21.10 8 day crime spree
08:15.43 Killer gets time to "get right"
14:43.16 Firing squad execution
18:41.71 Why do autopsy on execution
24:42.77 Cruel and unusual
30:02.90 Crime spree begins 18 months after release from prison
35:40.44 What's next?
39:41.74 Conclusion
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quody bus with Joseph s gotten More. It's a unique
position in this world to be given a choice, a choice,
a multiple choice, by the way of how your life
will end. I don't know that there are too many
people out there that are ever offered this opportunity. Most
(00:26):
of us, the line's share of us, don't know when
our time will come. But there is a person currently
on death row in the great state of South Carolina
who has been offered a chance at deciding his fate.
His choices are the electric chair, lethal injection, or the
(00:52):
firing squad, and as of the date of this recording,
he has essentially two to two and a half weeks
to make that decision. The man I'm talking about is
Stephen Bryant. Stephen Bryant has been housed on death row
(01:13):
for a protracted period of time now in South Carolina.
But when I tell you what he has been convicted
of and accused of, you're gonna understand why the state
of South Carolina wants to end his life. Coming to
you from the beautiful campus of Jacksonville State University, I
(01:35):
am Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybags, Dave. I'm
not a big fan of buffets. I don't like buffets.
It gets too confusing. Just put something from it. I
don't eat a lot too much anymore anyway, high protein
(01:57):
and all of that. Kelena trying to.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Get help that you and I were on opposite ends
of the spectrum. I had no idea, but I don't
do buffet yet because of all the choices.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
No, yeah, here you go, you do.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
But you know, it gets to a point at some
point in time you feel like you're being slopped like
a hog. And you know, so gone through the days
of a fantastic buffets in Las Vegas, you know where
you would actually get something really cool. Now we're just
left would yuck. So yeah, so, and there's too much temptation.
I like to stay away from temptation because I'm easily tempted.
(02:30):
I give in to temptation. So but that's a story
for another day. This case that, and I'm saying case
because we're talking about essentially, I don't know dead men
walking here.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Now.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
The reason Stephen Bryant is either going to face a
firing squad, electricture or lethal injection is because of one
murder that he committed.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
But he went on a crime screen.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
He did a crime buffet eighteen months after he got
out of prison on a burglary conviction. He becomes a
one man crime wave beginning October fifth, twenty two thousand
and four, ends up eight days later October thirteenth. He
commits his last crime of the spree, gets caught and
confesses to everything.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
All right, so play this straight.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
A day.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Reign of terror started eighteen months after his release from prison.
It made me think of Charlie Manson. When Manson was
up for parole in nineteen sixty seven after spending ten
years in prison for forging a forty three dollars treasury check,
Manson said he did not want out.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Do not let me out. This is my home.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
And they made him leave, okay, and he goes to
Heyda Ashbury and there you go. It didn't take him long.
But I'm thinking about that with Stephen Bryant. He was
in prison for eighteen months, he gets out and the
same amount of time on the outside, and he goes
on this killing spree to put himself right back in prison.
(04:02):
That's all I can think of. He got arrested, confesses,
and that's where we start with Stephen Bryant.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah, hang on, hang on, hang on. I got to
tell you this escalated really quickly because you know, I
can only assume that if he is released from prison,
he has to check in with somebody, and if he violates,
he's going to go back. Why not go break the
windows out of storefronts or I don't know, steal cars
(04:34):
or something like that, So you want to go back
to prison. And again, that's just my supposition here that
he was institutionalized. We actually heard this term famously in
Shawshank Redemption, you know, from the character Red played by
Morgan Freeman, by the way, one of my favorite movies
of all time, where he says, I don't know anything different.
(04:55):
I'm institutionalized now. He even says, because you know, he
was a guy that could acquire things on the inside.
He said, I wouldn't even know how to get a
stick a gum on the outside. Is terrifying to me.
But your default position is to go and commit, admittedly,
commit three homicides, and they are absolutely they're so callous
(05:20):
in the way that they were done. We're talking about
randomized homicides here, but yet that's that's what you're going with.
If you want to get back on the inside so
that you know, you feel safe. You feel safe, so
you're going to go out and rob three other people
of their lives. To me, that's that's quite striking, I think,
(05:42):
you know, relative to this, and in all manner of
I think people would say explanations, I'd say excuses for behavior.
And we know that there's a big difference between explanations
and excuses, right, you know, everything from you know, he
(06:02):
was abused as a child. There are a lot of
people that are abused as children, you know, but he
just couldn't get that out of his mind that he's
abused as a child, and so he's he's going to
open up this very very dark door and go down
this road and exact I don't know, some measure of revenge,
(06:23):
perhaps on the person that abused him as a child,
on three innocent dudes that are out there. I don't know.
Maybe a psychiatrist will say, well, they're male victims, so
he's projecting. You know, I love it when they say projecting.
You know, he's projecting onto them. You know, the anger
that he had all bottled up, and wow, man, sounds
(06:46):
like I've heard this before from somewhere it just it's
like a loop that just kind of plays in everybody's
mind over these years. You know, you hear, you hear
these excuses for this kind of behavior, but now you
know he's in a position where he's he literally it
is literally an example of somebody having to pick their
(07:07):
poison if you will.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Well, you know, Joe, the part about this story that
really kind of exploded, I mean, other than the fact
that it really was an eight day crimespreed that led
to the deaths of three men and near death experiences
of a few others, plus a number of burglaries, but
with the crime that he was sentenced to death for,
he actually dipped a potholder into the victim's blood and wrote,
(07:33):
catch me if you can. The media latches onto certain
aspects of a crime that they can run with, and
this is one of them. And now I'm kind of
thinking about Manson again. You know, when they wrote on
the different murders associated with the Manson family, they were
writing in the victim's blood, same thing. So I just
(07:55):
I guess my real problem with this is that we're
talking about this because it's an execution, and whereas Stephen
Brian's victims didn't have any say and what was going
to happen to them or when it was going to happen,
and he disgraces everything by dipping a potholder in blood
and write and catch me if you can. Meanwhile, he
(08:16):
gets to choose how he's going to die, and we
have to be concerned. I'm serious, man, We ought to
just put in this leap shoot him in the back
of the head.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Why is it an initiative?
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Yeah, here's you know, and here's another tragedy that kind
of accompanies this along the way, is that he is
gifted I use that term gifted. He's gifted the opportunity
to get right beforehand. Now that can be either spiritually
(08:50):
get right, it can be get right from a relationship
standpoint where he has this period of time where he
can to peace, whatever that means for an individual on
death row, come to peace and come to terms with
what's about happened these you know, these individuals that did
(09:12):
not have that opportunity. Uh, you know, their life was stolen,
you know, at the hand of this individual. And and
going back to what you had mentioned about the potholder,
this gentleman T. J. Tasian, Uh that he executed this
man in his home. And by the way, this subject
(09:39):
feigned having car trouble and went and asked this man
if he could help him, and he's allowed into this
man's house. This man, you know, just out of the blue. Yeah,
in Sumter County, South Carolina. It's, you know, kind of
an isolated area. You notice he didn't go up to
some armed citizen, you know, like a cop or somebody
(10:02):
like that and try to do this. He goes to
a guy in a rural area. I don't know this man.
I don't I don't know him. His family did very well.
And I'm talking about the victim here TJ probably you
know southern hospitality. Yeah, man, you need help, I'll be
glad to help you. In the next thing, you know,
(10:22):
darkness and oblivion. His life is ended. Here's another little
diddy about this guy. Not only did he actually did
Bryant actually write on the wall in blood catch me
if you can. There's a little precursor to this as well,
(10:44):
when he wrote on the wall that dig this this
is really spying tingling if you will victim four in
two weeks, catch me if you can. Amazing And this
was actually written on the wall in this man's house.
(11:05):
And as another little aside, he spelled victim wrong by
the way, so I don't know how much learning he
had had early on. And yeah, I mean people can say, well,
you're shaming this man. Now, I'm telling you what the
reality is of what you're faced with here. You've got
somebody that has made a free will decision to do this.
(11:28):
I don't care how many ghosts you might be haunted
by in your life. I don't care about the imbalances
in your medication or lack of not taking your medication.
You made free will choice. Now that doesn't necessarily mean
that I agree completely with the death penalty. From my
personal perspective, I've been involved in death penalty cases. I've
(11:49):
stood over the bodies of people that were victims that
wound up wound up being part of a capital murder trial.
I've stood over the bodies of individuals that have been executed,
you know, and helped to do the autopsies in those cases.
But what it does come down to, I think at
(12:12):
the end of the day, with any kind of case
like this, is that there is a touch of evil
that I don't know that we even have the ability
to measure an act may be a sense of absence
of remorse and a callousness towards those of us that
(12:35):
want to lend a helping hand and receive nothing, nothing
but a gunshot wound to the back of our head
in return. Well, this is another case out of South Carolina.
(12:59):
South Line has certainly produced a number of things in
the news over the past few years, you know, everything
from Murdau to a variety of other cases that you
and I have covered, you know, in true crime. I
think one thing that really stands out to me is,
I don't know if you recall this, brother, but they
(13:20):
if I remember correctly, I think it was in April
of twenty twenty five they sentenced, are carried out the
execution of a fellow there, Maddy I think was his name,
Matty uh McCall maddy. Remember they strapped him down in
(13:42):
the chair and they had the three the three correctional
individuals that you know that that fired rounds at this guy.
And I'm saying I'm being generous by saying that, because
one completely missed and you know, too struck. But they
(14:05):
were essentially ineffective. This guy languished for some time at
the ends of these muzzles after they had been you know,
they popped off these rounds. I think he lasted for
like ninety seconds. And you know, I'd been I'd appeared
I can't remember where it was. I'd appeared on some
program talking about gunshot wounds and relative to firing squads,
(14:28):
you know, because that's come up in conversations, obviously particularly
adjacent to the most recent unpleasantness in Idaho, because we're
you know, we're talking about that, and there's some future
ones that people are talking about as well, going back
to Utah and the Charlie Kirk case. And I'm not
(14:50):
talking about Charlie's homicide. I'm talking about what the prosecutor
said that he intends to do in Utah to the
accused in that case. The reason I'd been brought on
to chat about these things was the effectiveness, or the
level of lethality of firearms being utilized for execution. And
(15:11):
I got to tell you, Dave, to me, from a
level of efficiency, it would seem that the firing squad
would be right on the money. But you know, the
rounds that are fired down range are only as effective
as individual operating weapon platform. I hope I hope that
if this comes comes through, because the state Supreme Court
(15:31):
in South Carolina has ruled that his execution is going
to take place in November, now this thing can be
bumped up the line further. I would assume to you know,
to the US Supreme Court, which I think naturally happens,
and there could be a governor pardon our stay, not pardon,
(15:52):
but a stay in the execution, or you know, converting
his sentence to life sentence perhaps, But just from a
technical standpoint, I hope that the State of South Carolina
has made improvements if this is the modality they're going
to go with in this case, because you know, they've
(16:13):
had problems. They did a and I found this quite interesting.
South Carolina up until last year had had a thirteen
year and I get this, a thirteen year self imposed
moratorium on capital punishment. And one of the reasons was
(16:34):
was that their default position had always been lethal injection,
and they were giving double doses of phenobarbital, which you
know it has been used in a lot of cases.
It's generally a drug mixture, but in this case in
(16:55):
South Carolina, they're pushing two buluses of phoeni barb and
the lack of reliability in their drug delivery, you know,
kind of put them back on their heels. They were
saying it's cruel and unusual, But I got to tell you,
equally cruel and unusual is, you know, missing a person's
heart when you're at a very very short range with
(17:17):
a rifled weapon firing through gun ports. I'm assuming where
you can target the individual. And here's the other thing,
the anatomically. Anatomically, as someone is seated in the chair,
they do an anatomical marking on the body, you know,
like a patch of paper that overlies the heart, so
(17:40):
that you can specifically target into that location. And this
is not a difficult shot with a thirty caliber rifle
from a very very very short, short distance. I just
hope that if this is what they're doing from a
procedural standpoint, that they've first off selected new p and
(18:01):
secondly have taken them to the range to train them.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Joe, that was crazy, you know.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Braillen and I went camping last weekend at a father
grandfather son thing where we got to shoot targets with
twenty two's and we actually went skeet shooting with shotguns.
I didn't Breaklyn did and on the second skeet. Second time,
he's doing it his entire life. He hits it. I'm
telling you the guy's good. But he's ten years old.
He's a better marksman. Joe, you mentioned something about having
(18:29):
to perform autopsies on a person who was executed, and
are I guess you're being serious, right, Why would you
do an X? Why would you have to do an autopsy.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
To rule out abuse? That bottom line, that's the reason
it's done. Bottom line is to rule out any kind
of abuse that may have occurred while this person was incarcerated.
And I might be overstepping my bounds here, I think
that this is accurate. I think that in any state
where they do have death uh the death penalty on
(19:02):
the on the books, I think that it is required
under law to do a post mortem examination. I know
in Georgia, which is where I was involved in in
those examinations. We you know, I think I participated in three,
if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
One, let me get this straight. I think one was
an electrocution and two were lethal injections. And so you say, well,
why would you want to do that? Well, it goes
to this idea of cruel and unusual punishment if and
this is it's always kind of a philosophical conundrum. I
(19:44):
think for many people, you know, there's always that old adage,
we need to we need to get this person healthy
so that we can kill them. Have you ever heard
people talk about that if somebody has like, uh, some
type of physical malady or something like this, we want
to get them healthy so that we can, you know,
so that we can end their life. I you know,
(20:07):
you sit there and the procedure for these autopsies is
much more extensive than the procedures involved in a standard autopsy.
I mean, every every inch of the of the subject's
body is dissected. And I'm talking about you know, you
normally think of us doing standard why inc why incision
(20:28):
and a morgue, removing the organs of the chest and
the abdominal cavity. We're opening the head, you know, we're
taking out the brain, We're doing all these sorts of things.
But I'm talking about, you know, you're going to the
extremities to do dissections to rule out that there's any
any type of hemorrhage that has taking place, even on
the soles of the feet. Actually had one of my
students asked me about this the other day because we're
(20:50):
doing gross anatomical dissections now here in the forensics program
at jack State, and we actually got onto this topic.
And so why would you you know, why would you
want to examine the soles of the feet? Well, the
reason you do that is that, uh, there's actually torture
methodology out there where the ankles are restrained and the
(21:12):
bottoms of the feet are are struck, and you can
find evidence of trauma. You can see you know, contusions,
all these sorts of things, the backs of the hands,
palms of the hands, all of these in the back,
you know, your anterior chest, the buttocks, the buttocks is
actually dissected, the backs of the legs, the whole nine yards.
So that's you know, that's what And I'm assuming that
(21:36):
that would happen in South Carolina. They would do an
extensive post mornum examination on the subject after they have
been executed. I can only imagine, like with the aforementioned
case where we had this subject that whoever you know,
fired that weapon and they had a fly er. What
(21:58):
people that go to range a lot say, I had
a flyer, and that means they missed the target, or
they missed the target. They may have hit the paper target,
but it wasn't center mass or whatever the case. However,
they measure their own skill. My skill is not very good.
I'm a horrible shot, but they'll get a flyer. And
I can only imagine the pathologists standing there at the
(22:23):
table and saying, you know, because these are things you
act ask ask in, like homicide is taking taking place
on the street where you might have an ear witness
that heard three or four shots, and you say, wait,
we've got a group of people that are standing here
that are all witnesses to this. We know procedurally what
is required, and I've only got two gunshot ones and
(22:49):
they're not on target. Where's the third? What happened to
the third? Well, we're going to have to go out
and determine that, you know, something else that I've kind
of tore with them my mind from a forensic standpoint
regarding that case in specific, since this was ordained by
the State of South Carolina and they had the proceed
(23:11):
they've got to have an sp You know, any organization
you or I have ever worked in, there's an sop
for everything, right, this is the way that you will do.
There's a recipe to avoid getting fired, all right, or
getting accused of something. They've got to have an sop
for this. I really wonder if if they called in
a team from SLED from the South Carolina Law Enforcement,
(23:32):
which a fine organization did great work. I wonder if
they brought those guys in to do a shooting reconstruction.
You thought about that they actually go into the execution
chamber here and they're pulling trajectories to try to find
out where the flyer was and document this thing, because
(23:53):
it's so it's so bizarre that you could have somebody
at such a short range with the shoulder fired arm,
a rifle shoulder fire arm, and they can't hit center masks.
They could have gone down the road to Paris Island
and pulled a recruit, pulled a recruit that had already
gone through firing range phase down there with the Marine
(24:14):
Corps and brought them in and you know, they could
have done it easily with iron sights with no problem whatsoever.
You know, And I'm thinking, who you know, Who's who's
you know? Kind of who's who's making the decisions here?
The reason I'm I'm kind of going on about it.
Then prattling on about this is that you're saying that
(24:36):
you want to avoid cruel and unusual. You're saying that
you want to make these things more efficient. Well, what
you have demonstrated in your previous test run and it's
not a test, but in your previous run at this
is that there is an absolute lack of efficiency. And
(24:58):
it can be implied by some right lawyer out there
that this is cruel and unusual because when you see
the results of this guy and look, you know, this
guy committed horrible crime that wound up being executed. But
the flip side to this is you're going to fly
the plane into the side of the mountain because you've
screwed up again. You know, they have a problem with
(25:21):
the electric chair because you know, we've had people in
the past and you don't have to believe me, go
look it up. There's the images where people catch on fire,
you know, with with and they get nasty injuries and
it doesn't always work the first time around. You've got
these problems with lethal injection, You've got problems with lethal injection,
(25:42):
and now now you've got a problem with firing squad
here and you're going to roll this out again. I'll
be very interested to watch this case, first off, to
see if it actually does in fact go forward, but
secondarily to see if the methodology has been improved. So
(26:17):
here we are again, Dave. We're talking about talking about
an execution, our appending execution of this fellow in South Carolina.
The most important thing I think to revisit here is
the fact that and it trumps. It trumps any concerns
(26:41):
I have about Stephen Bryant or the actual victims here, Joe.
I don't mean to seem cold, but I have to.
I think about the victims and the victims' families as
we spend so much time worrying about the criminals, and
why are we spending so much time worrying about their comfort?
And again I'm not trying to be mean.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
I don't want them tortured or anything like that, but really,
you're you're gonna have to explain why we can't just
use propofol. Okay, the same thing Michael Jackson used, and
it puts them to sleep. You put it in an ivy,
they go to sleep, lop their head off. It doesn't
matter what you use to do that make it quick
but they're asleep already. They're asleep. They don't know.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Have you seen have you seen these people on online?
While say online on these on these reels, they there's
actually it's not a challenge, but they they have that
and I can't imagine they actually do this in surgery.
They allow this in surgery, but they do. It's going
on everywhere, you know, surgery, the surgery, sweet to me,
is always seen sacri sainct. It's it's like walking into
(27:44):
a sanctuary to church. You know, it's like, I don't
want any tom foolery going on. But you know they're
they're doing the scene where they fight an seesia. Have
you seen this? And they'll and and the person will
be there, the patient, and they tell them they're you know,
and they'll make a statement. They'll say, okay, I'm fighting
(28:04):
the anesthesia. I'm going to try to you know, stay
awake for as long as I possibly can. And you know,
and you see them begin, you know, kind of fade
out like this and they can't. You know, they and
some people, now there are some people that will continue
to enumerate as they're going along. They're counting or they're
having a conversation all of a sudden it kind of
drifts off, and some last longer than others. I guess
(28:25):
that's dependent upon their own physiology and the dosages and
all that stuff that's involved with that. But yeah, I
mean understand what you're saying about, you know, trying to
make this and I think that early on with with
with lethal injection, it seemed like the most kind and
gentle way to do this. And there are actually a
(28:51):
lot of people that are involved in the UH in
the well, some people call it self deliverance, it's not
what I call it, but in the movement to end lives.
You know, in other countries, you know, they'll administer these
drugs and with great, great effectiveness. By the way, of
course that's not controlled by our judiciary. But you know,
(29:15):
at the end of the day, we're still talking about
you know, who died at this guy's hands, Dave.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
You know I mentioned earlier when you were talking about
the buffet. I can't get that out of my head.
When Stephen Brian got out of prison, we don't really
know everything he did for eighteen months, but we do
know that after a year and a half he decides,
I mean, he makes a conscious decision here to start
a life of crime all over again. On October fifth,
(29:47):
two thousand and four, in South Carolina, he commits a burglary.
There were two on the same day, actually, but this
is how it went down. He ended up in prison
the very first time was for burglary. He comes out,
he's out of prison for a year and a half,
and he starts right away burglary again. Three days after
he commits the first burglary, October the eighth, he commits
(30:08):
a second burglary and shoots a fisherman named Clinton Brown.
He shot him in the back because that's kind of coward.
Stephen Bryant is now. Clinton Brown survived, He didn't die.
He survived, but he was shy in the back. A
couple of days the next day, actually October the ninth,
Stephen Bryant goes to a coworker's house, Cliff Ganey. He
(30:28):
picks Cliff up, takes him to a convenience store. They
get a couple of adult beverages and go for a drive,
and Cliff Ganey gets shot three times and left on
the side of the road dead. Stephen Bryant then goes
back to his house because he knows nobody's there, and
he robs the place. This is a coworker, this is
a friend of his. Takes his time because nobody's home.
(30:53):
October eleventh, two days after he thinks he has killed
mister Ganey, Bryan kills the guy we're talking about earlier,
Willard Tajan, they call him TJ. Dagan was sixty two
years old. And this is the guy who lived in
a very rural area off the road. And Stephen Brian
shows up at the house, knocks on the door, Hey man,
(31:13):
I got car trouble. Can you help me out? And
then Brian ends up shooting Tasan nine times. He ransacks
the man's house looking for items to steal, and since
he was there by himself with mister Tasan and Tajan's dead,
he sits around smoking cigarettes, smokes a cigar, and even
answers the phone because Tasan's wife and daughter were calling.
(31:37):
Stephen Briant answers the phone and actually tells the daughter, Yeah,
come on, I killed him. He's dead. He tells him
that on the phone, I killed your dad. While he's there,
Joe and I have to ask you something because one
of the things that came out. Is that Stephen Bryant
actually put cigarettes out in the eyes of mister Tasan
(32:01):
cigarettes out in the eyes? Is there any way to
determine if it was done before he was dead or after?
I mean, can you tell when it was done if
he was alive when he was having a cigarette stuck
in his eye?
Speaker 1 (32:13):
Yes, there is, you know, we we can I hate
to use this term, we can visualize it. And that's
you know, how the diagnosis would be made anti mortem
versus post mortem. Just if it's done in an anti
mortemar and our friends here on bodybacks that listen to
us regularly understand the difference between any moretem postmar there
(32:37):
is at a cellular level, if this had been done,
if this had been done in life and in the
anti mortem state, at a cellular level, there would be
a reaction or response at that level, and we would
be able to appreciate that. And of course the longer
it goes, the more reactive, you know, you start to
(33:01):
see other various responses physiologically. But again here we go again,
you know, and around and around we go with desecration
of human remains. We just have talked about this and
I have to revisit this again. There is an indication
(33:24):
of a certain level, a new certain level of evil
in our world that it's not brother, it's not enough
to kill somebody. This is it's you know, people have
used the term in the past blood lust. Well, the
dead don't bleed, you know what, what kind of lust
(33:44):
does this at this point in time? And I'm not
using that in a sexualized manner. I'm just saying, like,
if you're desiring, if it is a desire of your
your heart, your spirit, your mind, whatever it is, what
what's the need are you trying to demonstrate how angry
you are, like some petulant child, you know, busting their
(34:06):
toys up, or you know, breaking something around the house,
or you know somebody that's you know, doing harm to
just random people walking up down the street. You know,
we see a lot of people, you know, punching people randomly.
You're doing this to the dead now, And for me,
it's it's kind of a real insight into human depravity,
(34:28):
I think, and I don't I got to tell you,
I think this is further evidence of there's a train
coming down the track and I don't see it slowing
down on any level because this stuff keeps happening. Now,
this happened back in two thousand and four, if I'm
remembering correctly, This case happened back in two thousand and four.
(34:49):
But since that point in time, I think that you
and I and again it might be just anecdotal on
our part because you and I cover so many cases,
but there seems to be an increase, certainly since two
thousand and four in these kinds of cases where where
bodies are desecrated, and it just it just keeps going
(35:10):
on and on and on. You know, my old saying
about there is no basement in the house of depravity.
It just it goes deeper and deeper and deeper. And
one thing, you know, people say one thing leads to another,
but you know, I don't, you know, I don't know.
I mean, what's on board next? Cannibalism? And I mean
obviously there's been cases that in the past. But yeah,
(35:32):
I mean, we just keep you know, we just keep
going on and on. And listen, we covered ed Geen, right,
you know, a couple of weeks ago, I think, and
and listen, he was depraved, he was a necrophile. But
back then, in that context ed Gean was was certainly
the exception and not the norm. The world that we
(35:53):
live in now, we have no idea what's going on
out there. We really don't anywhere around us right now
as we are speaking right now, we have no idea
about the level of depravity. People you know, will ask me,
do you ever do you ever run out of material?
(36:13):
You know, for things that you're going to cover? Dave,
I think that probably you better than I can attest
to the fact that that we can't plumb the depths.
There's stuff that is referred to us that we ask,
that our friends ask us to cover, and we we
can't get to it because we're drowning. You know, in
(36:34):
cases over and over again, we think that are going
to have some kind of forensic value and some kind
of narrative value where we can tell the tale of
these victims, and the victims are, in fact the most
important part. It's not. It's not the killer in this case.
And that's why this case is so important for body
backs to cover, for you and I to cover, because
(36:55):
you know, at the end of the day, when you
search out TJ's name in a Google search, it is not,
in fact TJ's name that comes up it's the perpetrator's
name that comes up, Dave. And I don't know where
(37:18):
this road is going to wind up, because I know
that probably and I haven't done a scientific study, but
it would seem that there is a significant, statistically significant
group of people in our country that want folks held
accountable for horrible crimes. And we have a tradition of
the death penalty here in the US. And for a
(37:40):
while the plug was pulled on it and it wasn't there,
But now it's back again, and I've read some studies
where people welcome, welcome the fact that it's here. And
of course I've got friends of mine that, you know,
think that it's the most diverse thing in the world.
But either way, if you know, if you're going to
(38:02):
do this, if you're going to do it, you better
make sure that all your ducks are in a row
and that no one can point their finger at you
and say that this was in fact cruel and unusual.
You need to make sure that the methodology that you
finally settle on is going to be straight and to
(38:24):
the point and on target. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
this is bodybags
Quody bus with Joseph s gotten More. It's a unique
position in this world to be given a choice, a choice,
a multiple choice, by the way of how your life
will end. I don't know that there are too many
people out there that are ever offered this opportunity. Most
(00:26):
of us, the line's share of us, don't know when
our time will come. But there is a person currently
on death row in the great state of South Carolina
who has been offered a chance at deciding his fate.
His choices are the electric chair, lethal injection, or the
(00:52):
firing squad, and as of the date of this recording,
he has essentially two to two and a half weeks
to make that decision. The man I'm talking about is
Stephen Bryant. Stephen Bryant has been housed on death row
(01:13):
for a protracted period of time now in South Carolina.
But when I tell you what he has been convicted
of and accused of, you're gonna understand why the state
of South Carolina wants to end his life. Coming to
you from the beautiful campus of Jacksonville State University, I
(01:35):
am Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybags, Dave. I'm
not a big fan of buffets. I don't like buffets.
It gets too confusing. Just put something from it. I
don't eat a lot too much anymore anyway, high protein
(01:57):
and all of that. Kelena trying to.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Get help that you and I were on opposite ends
of the spectrum. I had no idea, but I don't
do buffet yet because of all the choices.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
No, yeah, here you go, you do.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
But you know, it gets to a point at some
point in time you feel like you're being slopped like
a hog. And you know, so gone through the days
of a fantastic buffets in Las Vegas, you know where
you would actually get something really cool. Now we're just
left would yuck. So yeah, so, and there's too much temptation.
I like to stay away from temptation because I'm easily tempted.
(02:30):
I give in to temptation. So but that's a story
for another day. This case that, and I'm saying case
because we're talking about essentially, I don't know dead men
walking here.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Now.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
The reason Stephen Bryant is either going to face a
firing squad, electricture or lethal injection is because of one
murder that he committed.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
But he went on a crime screen.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
He did a crime buffet eighteen months after he got
out of prison on a burglary conviction. He becomes a
one man crime wave beginning October fifth, twenty two thousand
and four, ends up eight days later October thirteenth. He
commits his last crime of the spree, gets caught and
confesses to everything.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
All right, so play this straight.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
A day.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Reign of terror started eighteen months after his release from prison.
It made me think of Charlie Manson. When Manson was
up for parole in nineteen sixty seven after spending ten
years in prison for forging a forty three dollars treasury check,
Manson said he did not want out.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Do not let me out. This is my home.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
And they made him leave, okay, and he goes to
Heyda Ashbury and there you go. It didn't take him long.
But I'm thinking about that with Stephen Bryant. He was
in prison for eighteen months, he gets out and the
same amount of time on the outside, and he goes
on this killing spree to put himself right back in prison.
(04:02):
That's all I can think of. He got arrested, confesses,
and that's where we start with Stephen Bryant.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah, hang on, hang on, hang on. I got to
tell you this escalated really quickly because you know, I
can only assume that if he is released from prison,
he has to check in with somebody, and if he violates,
he's going to go back. Why not go break the
windows out of storefronts or I don't know, steal cars
(04:34):
or something like that, So you want to go back
to prison. And again, that's just my supposition here that
he was institutionalized. We actually heard this term famously in
Shawshank Redemption, you know, from the character Red played by
Morgan Freeman, by the way, one of my favorite movies
of all time, where he says, I don't know anything different.
(04:55):
I'm institutionalized now. He even says, because you know, he
was a guy that could acquire things on the inside.
He said, I wouldn't even know how to get a
stick a gum on the outside. Is terrifying to me.
But your default position is to go and commit, admittedly,
commit three homicides, and they are absolutely they're so callous
(05:20):
in the way that they were done. We're talking about
randomized homicides here, but yet that's that's what you're going with.
If you want to get back on the inside so
that you know, you feel safe. You feel safe, so
you're going to go out and rob three other people
of their lives. To me, that's that's quite striking, I think,
(05:42):
you know, relative to this, and in all manner of
I think people would say explanations, I'd say excuses for behavior.
And we know that there's a big difference between explanations
and excuses, right, you know, everything from you know, he
(06:02):
was abused as a child. There are a lot of
people that are abused as children, you know, but he
just couldn't get that out of his mind that he's
abused as a child, and so he's he's going to
open up this very very dark door and go down
this road and exact I don't know, some measure of revenge,
(06:23):
perhaps on the person that abused him as a child,
on three innocent dudes that are out there. I don't know.
Maybe a psychiatrist will say, well, they're male victims, so
he's projecting. You know, I love it when they say projecting.
You know, he's projecting onto them. You know, the anger
that he had all bottled up, and wow, man, sounds
(06:46):
like I've heard this before from somewhere it just it's
like a loop that just kind of plays in everybody's
mind over these years. You know, you hear, you hear
these excuses for this kind of behavior, but now you
know he's in a position where he's he literally it
is literally an example of somebody having to pick their
(07:07):
poison if you will.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Well, you know, Joe, the part about this story that
really kind of exploded, I mean, other than the fact
that it really was an eight day crimespreed that led
to the deaths of three men and near death experiences
of a few others, plus a number of burglaries, but
with the crime that he was sentenced to death for,
he actually dipped a potholder into the victim's blood and wrote,
(07:33):
catch me if you can. The media latches onto certain
aspects of a crime that they can run with, and
this is one of them. And now I'm kind of
thinking about Manson again. You know, when they wrote on
the different murders associated with the Manson family, they were
writing in the victim's blood, same thing. So I just
(07:55):
I guess my real problem with this is that we're
talking about this because it's an execution, and whereas Stephen
Brian's victims didn't have any say and what was going
to happen to them or when it was going to happen,
and he disgraces everything by dipping a potholder in blood
and write and catch me if you can. Meanwhile, he
(08:16):
gets to choose how he's going to die, and we
have to be concerned. I'm serious, man, We ought to
just put in this leap shoot him in the back
of the head.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Why is it an initiative?
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Yeah, here's you know, and here's another tragedy that kind
of accompanies this along the way, is that he is
gifted I use that term gifted. He's gifted the opportunity
to get right beforehand. Now that can be either spiritually
(08:50):
get right, it can be get right from a relationship
standpoint where he has this period of time where he
can to peace, whatever that means for an individual on
death row, come to peace and come to terms with
what's about happened these you know, these individuals that did
(09:12):
not have that opportunity. Uh, you know, their life was stolen,
you know, at the hand of this individual. And and
going back to what you had mentioned about the potholder,
this gentleman T. J. Tasian, Uh that he executed this
man in his home. And by the way, this subject
(09:39):
feigned having car trouble and went and asked this man
if he could help him, and he's allowed into this
man's house. This man, you know, just out of the blue. Yeah,
in Sumter County, South Carolina. It's, you know, kind of
an isolated area. You notice he didn't go up to
some armed citizen, you know, like a cop or somebody
(10:02):
like that and try to do this. He goes to
a guy in a rural area. I don't know this man.
I don't I don't know him. His family did very well.
And I'm talking about the victim here TJ probably you
know southern hospitality. Yeah, man, you need help, I'll be
glad to help you. In the next thing, you know,
(10:22):
darkness and oblivion. His life is ended. Here's another little
diddy about this guy. Not only did he actually did
Bryant actually write on the wall in blood catch me
if you can. There's a little precursor to this as well,
(10:44):
when he wrote on the wall that dig this this
is really spying tingling if you will victim four in
two weeks, catch me if you can. Amazing And this
was actually written on the wall in this man's house.
(11:05):
And as another little aside, he spelled victim wrong by
the way, so I don't know how much learning he
had had early on. And yeah, I mean people can say, well,
you're shaming this man. Now, I'm telling you what the
reality is of what you're faced with here. You've got
somebody that has made a free will decision to do this.
(11:28):
I don't care how many ghosts you might be haunted
by in your life. I don't care about the imbalances
in your medication or lack of not taking your medication.
You made free will choice. Now that doesn't necessarily mean
that I agree completely with the death penalty. From my
personal perspective, I've been involved in death penalty cases. I've
(11:49):
stood over the bodies of people that were victims that
wound up wound up being part of a capital murder trial.
I've stood over the bodies of individuals that have been executed,
you know, and helped to do the autopsies in those cases.
But what it does come down to, I think at
(12:12):
the end of the day, with any kind of case
like this, is that there is a touch of evil
that I don't know that we even have the ability
to measure an act may be a sense of absence
of remorse and a callousness towards those of us that
(12:35):
want to lend a helping hand and receive nothing, nothing
but a gunshot wound to the back of our head
in return. Well, this is another case out of South Carolina.
(12:59):
South Line has certainly produced a number of things in
the news over the past few years, you know, everything
from Murdau to a variety of other cases that you
and I have covered, you know, in true crime. I
think one thing that really stands out to me is,
I don't know if you recall this, brother, but they
(13:20):
if I remember correctly, I think it was in April
of twenty twenty five they sentenced, are carried out the
execution of a fellow there, Maddy I think was his name,
Matty uh McCall maddy. Remember they strapped him down in
(13:42):
the chair and they had the three the three correctional
individuals that you know that that fired rounds at this guy.
And I'm saying I'm being generous by saying that, because
one completely missed and you know, too struck. But they
(14:05):
were essentially ineffective. This guy languished for some time at
the ends of these muzzles after they had been you know,
they popped off these rounds. I think he lasted for
like ninety seconds. And you know, I'd been I'd appeared
I can't remember where it was. I'd appeared on some
program talking about gunshot wounds and relative to firing squads,
(14:28):
you know, because that's come up in conversations, obviously particularly
adjacent to the most recent unpleasantness in Idaho, because we're
you know, we're talking about that, and there's some future
ones that people are talking about as well, going back
to Utah and the Charlie Kirk case. And I'm not
(14:50):
talking about Charlie's homicide. I'm talking about what the prosecutor
said that he intends to do in Utah to the
accused in that case. The reason I'd been brought on
to chat about these things was the effectiveness, or the
level of lethality of firearms being utilized for execution. And
(15:11):
I got to tell you, Dave, to me, from a
level of efficiency, it would seem that the firing squad
would be right on the money. But you know, the
rounds that are fired down range are only as effective
as individual operating weapon platform. I hope I hope that
if this comes comes through, because the state Supreme Court
(15:31):
in South Carolina has ruled that his execution is going
to take place in November, now this thing can be
bumped up the line further. I would assume to you know,
to the US Supreme Court, which I think naturally happens,
and there could be a governor pardon our stay, not pardon,
(15:52):
but a stay in the execution, or you know, converting
his sentence to life sentence perhaps, But just from a
technical standpoint, I hope that the State of South Carolina
has made improvements if this is the modality they're going
to go with in this case, because you know, they've
(16:13):
had problems. They did a and I found this quite interesting.
South Carolina up until last year had had a thirteen
year and I get this, a thirteen year self imposed
moratorium on capital punishment. And one of the reasons was
(16:34):
was that their default position had always been lethal injection,
and they were giving double doses of phenobarbital, which you
know it has been used in a lot of cases.
It's generally a drug mixture, but in this case in
(16:55):
South Carolina, they're pushing two buluses of phoeni barb and
the lack of reliability in their drug delivery, you know,
kind of put them back on their heels. They were
saying it's cruel and unusual, But I got to tell you,
equally cruel and unusual is, you know, missing a person's
heart when you're at a very very short range with
(17:17):
a rifled weapon firing through gun ports. I'm assuming where
you can target the individual. And here's the other thing,
the anatomically. Anatomically, as someone is seated in the chair,
they do an anatomical marking on the body, you know,
like a patch of paper that overlies the heart, so
(17:40):
that you can specifically target into that location. And this
is not a difficult shot with a thirty caliber rifle
from a very very very short, short distance. I just
hope that if this is what they're doing from a
procedural standpoint, that they've first off selected new p and
(18:01):
secondly have taken them to the range to train them.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Joe, that was crazy, you know.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Braillen and I went camping last weekend at a father
grandfather son thing where we got to shoot targets with
twenty two's and we actually went skeet shooting with shotguns.
I didn't Breaklyn did and on the second skeet. Second time,
he's doing it his entire life. He hits it. I'm
telling you the guy's good. But he's ten years old.
He's a better marksman. Joe, you mentioned something about having
(18:29):
to perform autopsies on a person who was executed, and
are I guess you're being serious, right, Why would you
do an X? Why would you have to do an autopsy.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
To rule out abuse? That bottom line, that's the reason
it's done. Bottom line is to rule out any kind
of abuse that may have occurred while this person was incarcerated.
And I might be overstepping my bounds here, I think
that this is accurate. I think that in any state
where they do have death uh the death penalty on
(19:02):
the on the books, I think that it is required
under law to do a post mortem examination. I know
in Georgia, which is where I was involved in in
those examinations. We you know, I think I participated in three,
if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
One, let me get this straight. I think one was
an electrocution and two were lethal injections. And so you say, well,
why would you want to do that? Well, it goes
to this idea of cruel and unusual punishment if and
this is it's always kind of a philosophical conundrum. I
(19:44):
think for many people, you know, there's always that old adage,
we need to we need to get this person healthy
so that we can kill them. Have you ever heard
people talk about that if somebody has like, uh, some
type of physical malady or something like this, we want
to get them healthy so that we can, you know,
so that we can end their life. I you know,
(20:07):
you sit there and the procedure for these autopsies is
much more extensive than the procedures involved in a standard autopsy.
I mean, every every inch of the of the subject's
body is dissected. And I'm talking about you know, you
normally think of us doing standard why inc why incision
(20:28):
and a morgue, removing the organs of the chest and
the abdominal cavity. We're opening the head, you know, we're
taking out the brain, We're doing all these sorts of things.
But I'm talking about, you know, you're going to the
extremities to do dissections to rule out that there's any
any type of hemorrhage that has taking place, even on
the soles of the feet. Actually had one of my
students asked me about this the other day because we're
(20:50):
doing gross anatomical dissections now here in the forensics program
at jack State, and we actually got onto this topic.
And so why would you you know, why would you
want to examine the soles of the feet? Well, the
reason you do that is that, uh, there's actually torture
methodology out there where the ankles are restrained and the
(21:12):
bottoms of the feet are are struck, and you can
find evidence of trauma. You can see you know, contusions,
all these sorts of things, the backs of the hands,
palms of the hands, all of these in the back,
you know, your anterior chest, the buttocks, the buttocks is
actually dissected, the backs of the legs, the whole nine yards.
So that's you know, that's what And I'm assuming that
(21:36):
that would happen in South Carolina. They would do an
extensive post mornum examination on the subject after they have
been executed. I can only imagine, like with the aforementioned
case where we had this subject that whoever you know,
fired that weapon and they had a fly er. What
(21:58):
people that go to range a lot say, I had
a flyer, and that means they missed the target, or
they missed the target. They may have hit the paper target,
but it wasn't center mass or whatever the case. However,
they measure their own skill. My skill is not very good.
I'm a horrible shot, but they'll get a flyer. And
I can only imagine the pathologists standing there at the
(22:23):
table and saying, you know, because these are things you
act ask ask in, like homicide is taking taking place
on the street where you might have an ear witness
that heard three or four shots, and you say, wait,
we've got a group of people that are standing here
that are all witnesses to this. We know procedurally what
is required, and I've only got two gunshot ones and
(22:49):
they're not on target. Where's the third? What happened to
the third? Well, we're going to have to go out
and determine that, you know, something else that I've kind
of tore with them my mind from a forensic standpoint
regarding that case in specific, since this was ordained by
the State of South Carolina and they had the proceed
(23:11):
they've got to have an sp You know, any organization
you or I have ever worked in, there's an sop
for everything, right, this is the way that you will do.
There's a recipe to avoid getting fired, all right, or
getting accused of something. They've got to have an sop
for this. I really wonder if if they called in
a team from SLED from the South Carolina Law Enforcement,
(23:32):
which a fine organization did great work. I wonder if
they brought those guys in to do a shooting reconstruction.
You thought about that they actually go into the execution
chamber here and they're pulling trajectories to try to find
out where the flyer was and document this thing, because
(23:53):
it's so it's so bizarre that you could have somebody
at such a short range with the shoulder fired arm,
a rifle shoulder fire arm, and they can't hit center masks.
They could have gone down the road to Paris Island
and pulled a recruit, pulled a recruit that had already
gone through firing range phase down there with the Marine
(24:14):
Corps and brought them in and you know, they could
have done it easily with iron sights with no problem whatsoever.
You know, And I'm thinking, who you know, Who's who's
you know? Kind of who's who's making the decisions here?
The reason I'm I'm kind of going on about it.
Then prattling on about this is that you're saying that
(24:36):
you want to avoid cruel and unusual. You're saying that
you want to make these things more efficient. Well, what
you have demonstrated in your previous test run and it's
not a test, but in your previous run at this
is that there is an absolute lack of efficiency. And
(24:58):
it can be implied by some right lawyer out there
that this is cruel and unusual because when you see
the results of this guy and look, you know, this
guy committed horrible crime that wound up being executed. But
the flip side to this is you're going to fly
the plane into the side of the mountain because you've
screwed up again. You know, they have a problem with
(25:21):
the electric chair because you know, we've had people in
the past and you don't have to believe me, go
look it up. There's the images where people catch on fire,
you know, with with and they get nasty injuries and
it doesn't always work the first time around. You've got
these problems with lethal injection, You've got problems with lethal injection,
(25:42):
and now now you've got a problem with firing squad
here and you're going to roll this out again. I'll
be very interested to watch this case, first off, to
see if it actually does in fact go forward, but
secondarily to see if the methodology has been improved. So
(26:17):
here we are again, Dave. We're talking about talking about
an execution, our appending execution of this fellow in South Carolina.
The most important thing I think to revisit here is
the fact that and it trumps. It trumps any concerns
(26:41):
I have about Stephen Bryant or the actual victims here, Joe.
I don't mean to seem cold, but I have to.
I think about the victims and the victims' families as
we spend so much time worrying about the criminals, and
why are we spending so much time worrying about their comfort?
And again I'm not trying to be mean.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
I don't want them tortured or anything like that, but really,
you're you're gonna have to explain why we can't just
use propofol. Okay, the same thing Michael Jackson used, and
it puts them to sleep. You put it in an ivy,
they go to sleep, lop their head off. It doesn't
matter what you use to do that make it quick
but they're asleep already. They're asleep. They don't know.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Have you seen have you seen these people on online?
While say online on these on these reels, they there's
actually it's not a challenge, but they they have that
and I can't imagine they actually do this in surgery.
They allow this in surgery, but they do. It's going
on everywhere, you know, surgery, the surgery, sweet to me,
is always seen sacri sainct. It's it's like walking into
(27:44):
a sanctuary to church. You know, it's like, I don't
want any tom foolery going on. But you know they're
they're doing the scene where they fight an seesia. Have
you seen this? And they'll and and the person will
be there, the patient, and they tell them they're you know,
and they'll make a statement. They'll say, okay, I'm fighting
(28:04):
the anesthesia. I'm going to try to you know, stay
awake for as long as I possibly can. And you know,
and you see them begin, you know, kind of fade
out like this and they can't. You know, they and
some people, now there are some people that will continue
to enumerate as they're going along. They're counting or they're
having a conversation all of a sudden it kind of
drifts off, and some last longer than others. I guess
(28:25):
that's dependent upon their own physiology and the dosages and
all that stuff that's involved with that. But yeah, I
mean understand what you're saying about, you know, trying to
make this and I think that early on with with
with lethal injection, it seemed like the most kind and
gentle way to do this. And there are actually a
(28:51):
lot of people that are involved in the UH in
the well, some people call it self deliverance, it's not
what I call it, but in the movement to end lives.
You know, in other countries, you know, they'll administer these
drugs and with great, great effectiveness. By the way, of
course that's not controlled by our judiciary. But you know,
(29:15):
at the end of the day, we're still talking about
you know, who died at this guy's hands, Dave.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
You know I mentioned earlier when you were talking about
the buffet. I can't get that out of my head.
When Stephen Brian got out of prison, we don't really
know everything he did for eighteen months, but we do
know that after a year and a half he decides,
I mean, he makes a conscious decision here to start
a life of crime all over again. On October fifth,
(29:47):
two thousand and four, in South Carolina, he commits a burglary.
There were two on the same day, actually, but this
is how it went down. He ended up in prison
the very first time was for burglary. He comes out,
he's out of prison for a year and a half,
and he starts right away burglary again. Three days after
he commits the first burglary, October the eighth, he commits
(30:08):
a second burglary and shoots a fisherman named Clinton Brown.
He shot him in the back because that's kind of coward.
Stephen Bryant is now. Clinton Brown survived, He didn't die.
He survived, but he was shy in the back. A
couple of days the next day, actually October the ninth,
Stephen Bryant goes to a coworker's house, Cliff Ganey. He
(30:28):
picks Cliff up, takes him to a convenience store. They
get a couple of adult beverages and go for a drive,
and Cliff Ganey gets shot three times and left on
the side of the road dead. Stephen Bryant then goes
back to his house because he knows nobody's there, and
he robs the place. This is a coworker, this is
a friend of his. Takes his time because nobody's home.
(30:53):
October eleventh, two days after he thinks he has killed
mister Ganey, Bryan kills the guy we're talking about earlier,
Willard Tajan, they call him TJ. Dagan was sixty two
years old. And this is the guy who lived in
a very rural area off the road. And Stephen Brian
shows up at the house, knocks on the door, Hey man,
(31:13):
I got car trouble. Can you help me out? And
then Brian ends up shooting Tasan nine times. He ransacks
the man's house looking for items to steal, and since
he was there by himself with mister Tasan and Tajan's dead,
he sits around smoking cigarettes, smokes a cigar, and even
answers the phone because Tasan's wife and daughter were calling.
(31:37):
Stephen Briant answers the phone and actually tells the daughter, Yeah,
come on, I killed him. He's dead. He tells him
that on the phone, I killed your dad. While he's there,
Joe and I have to ask you something because one
of the things that came out. Is that Stephen Bryant
actually put cigarettes out in the eyes of mister Tasan
(32:01):
cigarettes out in the eyes? Is there any way to
determine if it was done before he was dead or after?
I mean, can you tell when it was done if
he was alive when he was having a cigarette stuck
in his eye?
Speaker 1 (32:13):
Yes, there is, you know, we we can I hate
to use this term, we can visualize it. And that's
you know, how the diagnosis would be made anti mortem
versus post mortem. Just if it's done in an anti
mortemar and our friends here on bodybacks that listen to
us regularly understand the difference between any moretem postmar there
(32:37):
is at a cellular level, if this had been done,
if this had been done in life and in the
anti mortem state, at a cellular level, there would be
a reaction or response at that level, and we would
be able to appreciate that. And of course the longer
it goes, the more reactive, you know, you start to
(33:01):
see other various responses physiologically. But again here we go again,
you know, and around and around we go with desecration
of human remains. We just have talked about this and
I have to revisit this again. There is an indication
(33:24):
of a certain level, a new certain level of evil
in our world that it's not brother, it's not enough
to kill somebody. This is it's you know, people have
used the term in the past blood lust. Well, the
dead don't bleed, you know what, what kind of lust
(33:44):
does this at this point in time? And I'm not
using that in a sexualized manner. I'm just saying, like,
if you're desiring, if it is a desire of your
your heart, your spirit, your mind, whatever it is, what
what's the need are you trying to demonstrate how angry
you are, like some petulant child, you know, busting their
(34:06):
toys up, or you know, breaking something around the house,
or you know somebody that's you know, doing harm to
just random people walking up down the street. You know,
we see a lot of people, you know, punching people randomly.
You're doing this to the dead now, And for me,
it's it's kind of a real insight into human depravity,
(34:28):
I think, and I don't I got to tell you,
I think this is further evidence of there's a train
coming down the track and I don't see it slowing
down on any level because this stuff keeps happening. Now,
this happened back in two thousand and four, if I'm
remembering correctly, This case happened back in two thousand and four.
(34:49):
But since that point in time, I think that you
and I and again it might be just anecdotal on
our part because you and I cover so many cases,
but there seems to be an increase, certainly since two
thousand and four in these kinds of cases where where
bodies are desecrated, and it just it just keeps going
(35:10):
on and on and on. You know, my old saying
about there is no basement in the house of depravity.
It just it goes deeper and deeper and deeper. And
one thing, you know, people say one thing leads to another,
but you know, I don't, you know, I don't know.
I mean, what's on board next? Cannibalism? And I mean
obviously there's been cases that in the past. But yeah,
(35:32):
I mean, we just keep you know, we just keep
going on and on. And listen, we covered ed Geen, right,
you know, a couple of weeks ago, I think, and
and listen, he was depraved, he was a necrophile. But
back then, in that context ed Gean was was certainly
the exception and not the norm. The world that we
(35:53):
live in now, we have no idea what's going on
out there. We really don't anywhere around us right now
as we are speaking right now, we have no idea
about the level of depravity. People you know, will ask me,
do you ever do you ever run out of material?
(36:13):
You know, for things that you're going to cover? Dave,
I think that probably you better than I can attest
to the fact that that we can't plumb the depths.
There's stuff that is referred to us that we ask,
that our friends ask us to cover, and we we
can't get to it because we're drowning. You know, in
(36:34):
cases over and over again, we think that are going
to have some kind of forensic value and some kind
of narrative value where we can tell the tale of
these victims, and the victims are, in fact the most
important part. It's not. It's not the killer in this case.
And that's why this case is so important for body
backs to cover, for you and I to cover, because
(36:55):
you know, at the end of the day, when you
search out TJ's name in a Google search, it is not,
in fact TJ's name that comes up it's the perpetrator's
name that comes up, Dave. And I don't know where
(37:18):
this road is going to wind up, because I know
that probably and I haven't done a scientific study, but
it would seem that there is a significant, statistically significant
group of people in our country that want folks held
accountable for horrible crimes. And we have a tradition of
the death penalty here in the US. And for a
(37:40):
while the plug was pulled on it and it wasn't there,
But now it's back again, and I've read some studies
where people welcome, welcome the fact that it's here. And
of course I've got friends of mine that, you know,
think that it's the most diverse thing in the world.
But either way, if you know, if you're going to
(38:02):
do this, if you're going to do it, you better
make sure that all your ducks are in a row
and that no one can point their finger at you
and say that this was in fact cruel and unusual.
You need to make sure that the methodology that you
finally settle on is going to be straight and to
(38:24):
the point and on target. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
this is bodybags
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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