August 15, 2024 • 46 mins
The family of James Nalborczyk reports him missing on December 21, telling police the last time they saw or talked to James was on December 7. Police investigate and visit Nalborczyk's girlfriend, Michelina Goodwin who quickly tells them she and James broke up and he left driving a company truck to a job in West Virginia. On this episode of Body Bags, Joseph Scott Morgan will explain how Michelina Goodwin's claim that she accidentally shot her boyfriend in the back does not match the evidence. If it was an accident, why did Michelina and a friend, chop up James into little pieces, put his body parts in bags, and hide the bags in very rural areas of two counties.
Transcript Highlights
00:07.55 Introduction: Becoming a "Proctor"
05:00.24 Talk about Murder of Ingrid Lyne
09:47.51 Discussion of killers keeping body nearby
14:23.46 Discussion of family thinks James is missing, he is dead
19:20.00 Discussion of forensic evidence of weapon firing
24:28.57 Talk about "drop test" on a gun
29:29.26 Discussion of "accidental shooting"
34:27.65 Discussion of body being wrapped in paper
38:46.85 Talk about privacy law
44:18.04 Discussion of two perpetrators who roll over on each other
46:14.07 Conclusion - no way to make blood disappear
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body doctors with Joseph Scott more years ago, I was
on a task force that set up the national standards
for medical legal death investigations and it was a real
honor to be a part of that task force. But
(00:26):
as part of this we had to become proctors. And
not only did we develop the curriculum, but back then
you had to have proctery or test sites where you
would go and learn how to administer the test. And
this was all funded by the FEDS. During that period
(00:46):
of time, I had the privilege of going to the
State and Medical Examiner's office in Maryland, and there I
got to see the inner workings of an office that
has been in existence for many, many years, that has
(01:09):
quite the story history. As a matter of fact, it
was probably one of the first medical examiner, true medical
examiner systems in the nation. But they've seen a thing
or two over the years. But I got to tell you,
working at the Medical Examiner, particularly in a place is
(01:32):
busy as Maryland is, you never know what's going to
roll through the door, even if that body comes in
in multiple pieces. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is bodybags, Hey, Dave,
(01:56):
This case that has been in the news this past
it hadn't even really entered onto my radar, and I
was kind of shocked by it because it's so over
the top relative to the forensic evidence and relative Well,
let's just start at the beginning.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Starting from the top. Here, it is Micheline A Goodwin
and James Nebord Check our boyfriend and girlfriend. They're in
a relationship and they're living together. A friend named Larry
Murphy is at their house when Michelina and James get
into a fight. An argument ended upstairs bedroom. Larry Murphy
tries to inner seed. They said, get out of here,
go downstairs, leave us alone. The argument continues, and then
(02:35):
while he's downstairs, Larry Murphy, here's a gunshot. What happens
next is why we're talking about this story. Micheline A
Goodwin comes down the stairs. I just shot James. Now,
Larry Murphy, you've really got three choices. One, pick up
the phone and call nine to one one get help now.
Two call nine one one, tell the police. This woman
(02:58):
just killed her boyfriend. That's two and number three. Let
me grab my car keys, load him and let's go.
We're taking him to the hospital. We'll deal with the
consequences later. None of those choices seem good to Micheline,
A good one. Here's what she wants Larry Murphy to do.
I need you, Larry, to help me cut up his body,
put it in bags, and let's go and get rid
(03:20):
of it in a couple of different counties in Maryland,
rural areas that nobody will ever find his body. And
that's what they do. They don't call for help, nothing
they do. It boggles my mind. And then the family
of James Aboard Chick, it's coming up on Christmas is
December twenty first, and the family realizes nobody has spoken
to or seen James in a while, and they're comparing
(03:43):
notes and realize, hey, last time we need to talk
to him was December seventh. Nobody knows where he is
and it's December twenty first. Still, let's go to the police.
We haven't seen him in two weeks, we don't know
where he is. Help us find James aboard Chick. And
that's where the missing person's case begins. Now where do
you think police are going to go? First? Yeah, right
back to Michelin, A good one's house, because that's where
(04:05):
James was living with her now, Joe, I don't know
what's in the water. I don't know why. We've had
so many stories about people getting dismembered, but it seems
like a thing now.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
You know, maybe it's just our perception, but this idea
of you know, scattering the remains, it actually reminds me
of a case. I think it was from back in thousand,
two thousand and sixteen, and there was actually a young
(04:39):
mother who was divorced. If I'm not mistaken, she was
a nurse and she had met a guy online and
while they were she's going out with a date with
this guy and he was like a homeless guy. I
remember her name was Ingrid Lynn. I don't know if
(05:02):
you remember that case. We covered it extensively. We you
know it was I was on with Nancy and then
back in the hl N days and all that. But
that individual actually took her out on a date. And
believe it or not, I know you're you're a big
baseball person. Took her to a Mariner's game. That was
their first name.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Uh yeah, Actually, Kim and I are first date was
a Braves game. So you know you're thinking, wow, okay,
you're going to take her out to a ballgame, and
then he takes her back to her home and kills
her in her home and then uses uses a limb
(05:43):
saw to dismember her in her bathtub. And what it
has in common with this is that he deposited her
remains in various locations around the city. I'll never forget
that the guy that found he went to pull his
(06:06):
recycling bin now back from the street back to his house,
and it felt heavy, and he looked down in it
and there was a bag and there was a human
footsticking about it.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
And this is in Seattle. They really care. That's ecology.
You know, they made sure. And he's thinking, hey, who
put real trash.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
In exactly, And so he's moving this thing around and
there it is. But you know, you think about this case.
They didn't just they didn't just deposit her remains in
Charles County. They actually went into did I say she?
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Yeah you did. But it's okay. Look in the in
the game we played Joe, anymore, you might even insult
somebody that's a guy that you say, you know, we
can't say he or she. We're gonna have to come
up with they and them and stuff like that to
cover these I know this.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
They deposited Jimmy's remains and not just uh in Charles
County but also St. Mary's County. Are these far away
you know a lot about it? No, they literally bump
up against one another.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
And where's Baltimore? Say, is Baltimore in one of those counties?
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Yeah, it's like primarily I think in Charles County, But
you know, like so many of these metroplex areas like this,
it expands out so far. You think about Atlanta, you
think about d C and Baltimore. It's really it used
to be where there was like this dividing line, and
even to and I'll probably get called out on this,
but even up to like Philly, it's almost like you
(07:32):
kind of bounce from one to another and you never
really know where you are, you know, other than you
cross state lines and whatnot, because it's just this continuous flow.
But if you're familiar with the area and you think about, well, okay,
I'm not just going to sit here and deposit remains
in one location. I think that what we ought to
(07:52):
do is make an initial deposition of remains and then
we're going to migrate over to an adjacent county and
deposit more there. I don't know, Davy. If let's try
to get inside the skin of somebody that's doing this,
what what do you think as the lay person here,
what do you think is the rationale for wanting.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
To do that? You know, I thought about this, Joe,
that you would want to get you and the deceased
parts as far away as you can, right. You want
them to be hidden because you're going to so many
these times when we cover cases, people admit what they've
done as soon as they get caught, they talk to
(08:35):
the cops and within a matter of minutes, there you know,
here is the truth, Here's what really happened. Why'd you
bother doing it?
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Then?
Speaker 2 (08:42):
If you're going to give up the truth so fast,
why did you bother doing this? You take the person's life, really,
can't you? Anyway? That's I'm guessing this is this is
a lot of work too. It is that I know
that's very morbid, but this is a lot of work,
and I think you're right on the money here. Why
you know, why would you give up the information? So
I asked, if you've done it, when you've spread them
(09:04):
everywhere again, spread across two counties and actually two different
states are involved here, You're dealing with Maryland and Virginia.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
I think, yeah, well yeah, and it's spread out over
this huge area. Here's another thing too, for every And
I've always been fascinated by this, the idea, and you
had mentioned it just a second ago, and you've got
You've kind of got plus is uh as an upside
and a downside here. I found that with killers, many
(09:31):
times they keep remains near them in some instances. And
I think the reason that keep remains near them it's
a control issue. They want to know that the body
is where I put it, I have, you know. And
that's why I think some people bury bodies in yards
in their backyard, you know, because it seems counterintuitive, right,
(09:53):
I'm going to kill somebody, but yet I'm going to
hang on to the remains. I'm going to bury them
in the backyard. I had a case in in South
Louisiana that I consulted on at one point in time,
and a guy had killed his wife and had buried
her in the backyard and had taken had gone to
(10:14):
Walmart and bought I think like fifteen rose bushes, and
the neighbors said later on, yeah, one night we heard
him working in the backyard. We got up the next
morning and looked over the fence and there's a rose
garden where one had not been. I mean the roses
(10:36):
were not blooming. Wow, but you know, the roses were there.
And it took them years years to decide. Well, first off,
he had the house. They couldn't get a search warrant
for it. And when the new people moved in that
he had sold it. I guess he thought that people
had forgotten about it. They go out there and they
dig up the rose garden. Sure enough, there she is.
(10:58):
And they went in in luminol up that's friends to
aluminol Oh. Wow, in the basement of this place, and
there was blood everywhere. He had painted, recarpeted, all this
sort of stuff down there, and he couldn't They still
show up, yeah, yeah, yeah, And so they were able
to determine. They couldn't type it or anything, but they
knew something horrible it happened.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
But it's okay. Where I always thought, they keep the
body closer, the body parts, because that way they know
if anybody finds anything, they be like in Atlanta, where
we're dealing with Christopher Wolfenberger, you've got him murdering, allegedly
murdering his wife in nineteen ninety nine and cutting her
all up, and her skull shows up on this in
an industrial park area. Well if you actually think, and
(11:38):
then her other body parts show up a couple of
days later.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Yeah, and that's only arms and legs. We still don't
know what happened to her, torso, but then they go away.
I got to say this right now, tip of the cap,
Tip of the cap to my good friend Cheryl McCollum.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Oh my gosh, she spent a lot of time on
this case.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
She sure did. And I recommend to anybody at this
point in time, if you get a chance, you need
to go listen to his own seven. It was absolutely amazing,
great work on Cheryl's part.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
But you know that Wolfenberger case, Joe, he actually Christopher Wolfenberger,
the husband of Melissa. Yeah, that was a road that
he drove every day to work. He worked right there.
So you've got him basically putting her body in an
area that he.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Knows, right, And that's one of the things that's interested
me about that case in particular, is that he worked
at a glass shop. Well, what do they use at
glass shops. People don't think about this. They actually use
cutting tools and they're very fine cutting tools. And so
you think about our case today with Jimmy, and you
(12:42):
think about this idea. Did who had access to tools,
who had the knowledge in order to actually take him apart?
And where could you do it? Sequestered like this? But
back to the idea of the deposition or remains, Dave, Okay,
if you're.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
The opposite of what we were talking about, well.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
I think percentage wise, percentage wise okay, if you're thinking,
because the only thing I could think of is that
if you're if you're going out to deposit human remains,
dismembered human remains, by the way, in various locations like this,
you're now upping the probability that you're going to get
(13:24):
caught because you have these things dispersed and so if
some citizen just comes walking by, you might find one here,
you might find one there. And I you know, and
I think, well, maybe the rationale was, well, if we
put him out all over the place, if we put
him out all over the place, perhaps they'll think that
these things are not related in some way, and what
(13:47):
they don't count on and what many don't count on
is that in the end, science always tell us the truth.
(14:10):
Here's the weird thing, Dave. And going back to this
kind of point of order you brought up a few
moments ago. If if you go to all the trouble
to first off kill someone and then go to a
(14:31):
lot of trouble to dismember them, why are you going
to roll over on it? And from what you're telling me,
that's essentially what this woman did. Am I correct?
Speaker 2 (14:45):
I'm so amazed at again the effort, the effort it
takes to do everything that Michelina Goodwin did, along with
help from Larry Murphy. Apparently that they did to James
and bod They a gun accidentally fires and kills the
(15:06):
man and he's missing. Those are two separate things. One
we know he's dead, two we know he's missing. So
you got two groups of people, the people who did
the killing. Well, the person who did the killing, she
knows he's dead, and the guy that helped her with them,
he knows he's dead. But you know what, everybody else,
James is missing. His family thinks he's missing. That where
(15:28):
did he go? Now? First thing, police do, they pull
backgrounds on everybody they know if you're not just lost stuff,
not just booking in jail and things.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
They know.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
They talk to friends, they talk to relatives. They know
if you have a drug problem, they know if you
have a gambling problem. They know who you are. The
people that are closest to this case, they know what
they're dealing with, and they use this information because they
don't believe what they're being told. Grown people don't just
go missing and drop off the face of the earth
for no reason, if it's out of character. There are
(16:01):
some people who do leave. There are some people who
do not maintain regular contact with their family, and their
family doesn't report them missing.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
There have been a few times in my life when
I have felt about this. It felt like disappearing, but
not chosen to do that.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
I gotta get away, gotta get away. But in this case,
the family does have contact with James and Borchik on
a fairly regular basis, So when they realize they haven't
talked to him in several days, they've tried to find out.
So they go to his girlfriend Michelina. Where is he
don't know, haven't seen him? Have you reported him missing?
Have you tried to find him? Nah? We were arguing,
(16:35):
he split up, We were breaking up, any number of things. Okay,
we were breaking up. Oh wait a minute, I remember
he took his work truck. See, I told him I
was going to break up with him. So he took
his work drug and he drove off to West Virginia
singing a John Denver song. That's he's over there somewhere working.
Look for the work truck. You know. That was the story.
We had an argument, we broke up, he took his
(16:56):
work drug and left the state. So that's what the
investigators are left with. They have Micheline, a Goodwin and
Larry Murphy who were there, and then they have the
missing man, James, the bor chick. The story they're told
us he is not believable in reality because you'd be
able to find him. If that was the case, he
would be talking to family. If that was the case,
(17:19):
you guys broke up and he left, the family would
know they talked to him. So he ain't talking to anybody.
So the police are going to look at it a
little bit closer, so they start leaning on him. Now
we're talking about last time he's seen December seventh, Reported
missing December twenty first, right, before Christmas. That's a special
time for every family in one way or another, and
(17:42):
they don't know where he is. So here we are.
By the time police have had their fill of following
the false leads and they sit down with Micheline a Goodwin,
they're gonna hit her hard. They're going to really lean
because they're not believing her story. Joe, Can they go
into the house and find out if a gun's been fired?
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Can they go into a house and find out if
a gun has been fired? I think that you would
have to be adjacent. Let me put it to you
this way. Let's say, for instance, and here here's a
good example, if you were standing adjacent to a let's
say a set of curtains, for instance, and you had
(18:23):
an idea that maybe the weapon was discharged there, Maybe
some circumstantial evidence came up, maybe some kind of spontaneous
comment came up. Maybe if it's a discharged there and
it has gotten into the fabric of the curtain, or
maybe adjacent to a bed where there's a comforter and
you knew where to look, maybe you could find some remnant.
(18:46):
But if a weapon is just merely fired, it would
be really hard to say yeah, well a weapon has
recently been fired here.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
You know, I'm just trying to think of what they
would be saying to her, because a lot of us
know of DNA. We know that this science of the
forensic sciences have gotten to the point where you feel
like if you were in an elevator and somebody, you know,
somebody disturbed the ambiance, you know, you would be able
to figure out who did it by the odor I mean,
you would think these anymore. That's what I kind of
(19:19):
believe when I watch television and movies. It's like they
can figure everything out. They know I was there.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Yeah, there are there are certain limitations scientifically, you know,
but over a period of time, you know, and when
I say period of time, I'm talking about in pretty
short order. If you're just simply talking about a weapon
being discharged, it would be very difficult to go back
and say, yes, a weapon has been discharged in this room.
(19:45):
You have to have some kind of soot or well
powdered deposition on the person on clothing, that sort of
thing to go back and say that, yes, a weapon
was fired. Now which what weapon was it? And that
that's key because even you know, you can say that,
(20:06):
you know, I don't know. You can say I work
in a munitions factory or something, and you're still going
to get some kind of residue on you perhaps, And
so it's all relative to the circumstances in that immediate moment.
But I could have sworn that at some point in
(20:26):
tom this person actually stated that there was an accidental
discharge of the weapon.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Is that I took them to January eighteenth. They leaned
on her, That's what I was saying. I was thinking
of the things police could tell her. You know, Michelina,
you know we have ways of finding out a gun
was fired here. You know, we knew all this. They knew.
They had a really good idea, but they didn't have
any proof. They didn't have a body, they didn't have
any evidence, they didn't have anything. Joe, So they bring
(20:55):
her in, they sweat her, and MICHELINI go went on
January eighteenth, admits here's what happened. We were having an argument.
Larry tried to involve himself. We told him to go
back downstairs, get away, and so he knows nothing to
tell you. And I was threatened, so I grabbed a gun.
(21:16):
I wasn't gonna shoot him or anything. I was just
doing it to protect myself and I accidentally the gun
went off. I mean, it was just such an accident, Joe.
I didn't mean to do it. I'm really sorry. Really
well where did you shoot him? Did you hit him
in the face? Did you wing him? Did you you know? Oh,
I shot him in the back. Okay, you accidentally shot
him in the back and he died one shot. Did
(21:39):
you call nine one one if it was an accident?
Did you pick up the phone and ask for help?
Did you take him to the hunt? Is an accident?
It was an accident. Why didn't you do? What did
you do?
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Because why do you take measures? You know, to try
to say because that goes to what do they call
it a gross indifference or whatever it is, that callous indifference.
I'm sorry where you just you don't care. You're just
going to let them, you know, suffer, you know, lying there.
But love I love it when people say things like, yeah,
(22:13):
the weapon went off by accident.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
No. And and listen, there are we're talking about forensics
relative to this. You know, there are a couple of
kind of tests that we in the lab, not me,
but my colleagues at work in fireums examination otherwise known
as ballistics. In those sections of crime labs, they will
actually do test on weapons, uh, to determine the plausibility
(22:42):
of any particular weapon accidentally discharging. And do you mind
if I break these down for you, because I'll tell
you I think people, I think people will be kind
of interested in it. Uh. And it's it's kind of
wild stuff when you because we hear these stories all
the time, and most of the time you hear them
(23:06):
associated with suicides because, as I've mentioned on many occasions,
the suicides outpaced homicides. You know, so you're going to
get more self inflicted gunshot wounds than you will gunshot
wounds inflicted by another. And people will try and families
(23:26):
many times say, well he accidentally shot himself, right, Okay,
well how does that happen? Well, there's a couple of
different tests that are done. First off, there is a
drop test that's actually done so if you have a
weapon where it is charged, and charging a weapon can
(23:47):
be safe. For instance, if you think about a handgun
that has a semi automatic with a slide on it. Okay,
so you see it on television where people racked the
slide back and it's it's off safety, so it's red
as dead. Remember, so if the safety is red, it
means dead. So what they will do is they will
(24:08):
take the question weapon and they will drop it from
a height. If the weapon is charged, okay, and they
will see if merely by dropping that weapon, if the
firing pin, if the firing pin releases and engages, okay,
And they'll do that.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
In the very time Alec Baldwin testing when he said
the gun just fired, he didn't touch the trigger. They
dropped that gun.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Yeah, yeah, they did a drop test on it, and
what and so the chances of that happening there, they're outliers.
It just it doesn't happen. Now, Listen, every weapon, you
can have a production line of weapons. Okay, let's just
say ABC Gun Corporation makes a particular type of handgun
(24:54):
platform and they do a run of say two hundred
weapons at one time. You can have one in there
that might have a faulty trigger mechanism. You might confine it, okay,
but nine times out of ten, this is just not
going to happen.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
So with that.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Said, With that said, the other thing that we that
we think about traditionally also is trigger pull. So if
everybody will think about your if you're left or right hand,
to use your index finger to place it on. You
put your finger pad the end of your index finger,
your finger pad on the trigger itself. And how many
(25:34):
times do you watch movies and whatnot? Particularly people in military,
they'll talk about your handling the weapon unsafely if you
have your finger inside the trigger housing. People that know
how to handle weapons keep their finger outside the trigger housing.
All right, So you're ready to shoot, and so what
we do there is actually a weight test. This is
pretty fascinating. You take the weapon and you charge it, okay,
(25:59):
Then you hang the weapon, all right, and you place
weight on that weapon. And have you ever heard the
term certain amounts of pounds of pressure that it takes
to engage that trigger. Well, you add weight and that
gives you the number of pounds okay, I won't take Yeah,
that takes to engage the trigger. And so you've heard
(26:21):
the term say, for instance, a hair trigger, Well, hair
trigger is not I think people say that about individuals
who who will say they're going to fire a weapon
and maybe they fired weapons, and they'll say the person
has a hair trigger. It's not the person that has
a hair trigger in the literal sense, it is the weapon.
(26:42):
So does it have a light touch? And weapons can
be actually adjusted to that. You can adjust weapons so
that it takes less pounds of pull in order to
initiate that firing sequence. So the lighter the touch, the
lighter the touch, the fewer pounds it takes to initiate
that firing sequence. So they run through all of these tests.
(27:03):
So in this particular case, if you have an individual
who states, well, yeah, the weapon accidentally discharged, you've got
three choices here. Okay, we can say she dropped the
weapon and the weapon accidentally discharged. Okay, did that happen
not that we know of. Okay, does the weapon have
(27:25):
a hair trigger? Well, we would go back and we
would test the number of pounds of pressure it would
take being applied to the trigger to get that sequence going.
Or did she accidentally put her finger inside the trigger guard? Okay,
after the weapon is charged and then happen to pull
(27:47):
the trigger initiate the firing sequence. Oh and by the way,
score a lethal shot in his back and that's dynamically
that's what they're looking at, and kind of that's what
they have to understand and see if that actually works.
But as we know, in most cases like this, a
(28:08):
case of a weapon accidentally discharging is a red herring
at best. All Right, Dave, got a proposition for you.
(28:31):
All Right, I'm game, be very careful before you make
that statement, particularly in regardless to what I'm about to say.
What would it I'll say? Okay, let me bear the
burden here. Okay, I'm the perpetrator, all right, your old
buddy Joe Scott, I'm the perpetrator. If I'm the perpetrator
(28:58):
and you're aware that I have just quote unquote accidentally
shot somebody. First off, two part question here might be
a two part with multiple subsections. Hang on, you know me,
I'm rather verbose. So okay, so let's say I accidentally
(29:20):
shoot somebody. All right. First off, if you're in the
same structure with me and you hear the report of
a firearm going off and you rush upstairs, it's not
just me, it's you, and we've got a person on
(29:42):
the floor, either dead or dying. Why aren't you saying
we got to call an ambulance and get somebody over here. Secondly,
you've bought into the idea that maybe he's dead I
don't know, can't confirm it, or maybe maybe it's an accident.
(30:02):
We got to call the cops. He's dead, we can
prove this. Or hey, Dave, will you go out to
the shed and grab the axe, the hatchet, maybe a
soft I need one, and help me take a part
(30:25):
this person's body. Oh and by the bye, help me
deposit it over a two county area? Are you a game?
I think that's the question? What what?
Speaker 2 (30:37):
What? My response is, Okay, Joe, it's an accident. Let's
just call the police and get them over here and
let them deal with the poor old James here, because
you know James is dead, he's he's your boyfriend. But anyway,
the bottom line here is that you got a dead
(30:57):
guy on the floor. You were the two people in
the room, and I was downstairs because you wouldn't let
me help in the argument, and now you want me
to go and chop up the body with you. Okay, sure, no.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
I gotta This is the thing I've got to ask
in regards to Mitchellina good ones and then Larry Murphy, right,
how how committed of a friendship do you have to be?
In just go with me here. How committed of a
friendship do you have to be in here to say, yeah, man,
(31:30):
I'm all on board for this task. I will sit
here and I will undertake this gruesome duty with you
to make sure what you know, what kind of reward
are you offering this man that he is literally going
to run the risk of spending the rest of his
(31:50):
life in prison? I mean, what do you have over
his head? And also are you in pair in some manner?
Are you mentally impaired? Are you maybe uh drug addled
in some way? I don't.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
I'm glad you brought that.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Curious about that.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
We find all this out by going back a minute
when we were talking about Micheline A Goodwin sits down
with the police. They've gotten no information really because there's
only two people that know where James uh Narbacheck is Nabucheck.
They are only two people and that is Micheline A.
(32:31):
Goodwin and Larry Murphy. There are only two people that know.
All the police know is the guy's missing. That's and
he's an adult. The Michelina said he grabbed the company
truck and went out of state. We were breaking up.
So based on that limited information that the police have,
they really only can go after these two individuals, and
they break Michelina first, and that's how they find out.
(32:54):
It's not like the police were investigating and knew that
his body was somewhere other than the house. Police didn't
know that. They just knew they couldn't find him anywhere.
And so it's Michelina Goodwin who actually then tells police, okay,
we cut him up. Wait a minute, we you and
(33:16):
mister Murphy, you chopped him up. Where's his body? And
so she takes them to the body parts and that's
where we know. They're strewn in remote areas of two
different counties, which leads you to believe they chopped him
up in small enough bags like doggie bags. I'm guessing.
I'm not thinking that they didn't roll them up in
(33:37):
a piece of carpet. And you know, do those they
put him in bags? I guess, Joe, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Generally what will happen is that they will be placed
into individual bags like this, or wrapped in in some
type of sort of paper. And on a side here,
I got to tell you this, many people might not
be aware of this. Did you know that years ago
back in the morgue. We didn't use body backs in
(34:05):
many cases. I know the first morgue I ever worked in,
we actually used butcher paper. You remember, a butcher paper
is brown, and it was on a huge role and
we would wrap bodies in it. And it's made in
such a manner. I'm not a paper expert, but it's
made in such a manner that it would absorb blood.
(34:26):
And so I've had body parts that have been wrapped
actually in newspaper, and I've had body parts that are
wrapped in plastic over the course of my career, or
I have seen them as a result of cases that
I was assisting in our autopsy in where they're brought.
You know, they're brought in one of my colleagues work
(34:46):
case as the investigator, and so you you think about
this and how does that conversation go in the vehicle
as well? You know, so you're writing about all through
the countryside a place that you're famil o, you're with.
Remember you're not going they're not driving down to the shore,
(35:08):
you know in Maryland where you know in an environment,
say if you go to a watery environment and up there,
what are they really known for in Maryland? Grotesque here.
But you've got a lot of wetlands. But you've also
(35:28):
got blue crabs. We have them in South Louisiana. Guess
what they love. They're scavengers. And so you're going to
deposit body parts all about the place like this, and
you're riding around trying to make this decision. Well, gee,
that looks like a good spot. Let's drive on a
little further. That looks like a good spot. And how
(35:49):
long would this take? How long would it take? Because
you know, this victim is not a small man. He's
not a small man. And so once you get it passed,
and I go back to to this case involving Melissa Woffenberger,
the you know, they still don't have her torso. Torso
(36:14):
is the most difficult element of the body to get
rid of, and particularly if you're trying to dissect it out.
If I don't know if folks know this, did you
know that your body, particularly torso, is broken down into quadrants.
So when you're you have quadrants that are generally on
(36:35):
the front of your body. And if you take an
anatomy clash, you know you look at say the top
left quadrant, top right quadrant, bottom right quadrant bottom left quadrant,
and you can also break that down abdominantly, so you
have to factor that into the equation as well as
how are you going to essentially parse the body up
(36:58):
and it becomes a genuine when undertaking where they did,
this would have been super saturated with blood.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Okay, let me stop you there, because that's what I
had to ask Joe. We have this, We have the
police with no information until they sit down with Mischelina
Goodwin and she admits to what they've done. They were
not you know, the police are not allowed to just
come in your house on a fishing expedition, and there's
a real good reason for that, okay, But in this case,
(37:30):
they could not come up with a good reason to
get a search warrant to go into that house because
they obviously would have been able to find blood based
on where she said he was shot.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Yeah, and hopefully Nancy doesn't get mad at me about this,
and you know she calls me up saying, Joe, Scott,
just Scott. But do you know constitutionally, the Supreme Court
has ruled there is no exception, there is no exception
(38:02):
to your right's privacy even when it comes to homicide investigation.
The only time Okay, this is how this would work.
I'm glad you brought this up. So the only time
that say, for instance, you can't go searching in what
to refer to as hidden places. You have to have
a specific search warrant. So if a police officer walks
(38:23):
into a house to ascertain the safety, almost like a
welfare check, like you're walking into a house, if they
see blood, say, sweeping out from beneath the bottom of
a closet, they can open that door for the purposes
of seeing if anyone is in there they need help,
(38:43):
And if they find a dead body, they still cannot
They still cannot begin to work the scene. They have
to back out of the house after it's secured and
made safe and make sure no one else is you know,
in harm's way, search one, and then go back in
and process the scene.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Okay, because if they start searching right then.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
It's all it's all thrown out. Yeah, it's you have
to have a good And there's multiple court cases that
go to this point, and I could rattle them off.
I actually teach them at the police cademy every year
about this. Particularly. There's really no exceptions.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Whenever I get into an argument with somebody about this,
and I'm was like, look, the reason the law is there.
What if there's a police officer that doesn't like Dave
mack yep and he just decides I don't like what
he says on the show I'm and he comes into
my house finding a reason to arrest me. They can't
(39:44):
do that. That's why it's not a reasonable thing. You
have to go before a judge. You have to write
down probable cause, what do you think you're going to find?
Where do you think you're going to find it? Where
you're going to look? The judge reads all that and
based on the evidence, that's where they say, Okay, go ahead, off,
go in there and get what you got to get.
But in this case, yeah, that's what I'm saying, they
(40:04):
didn't have it. They could not until Michelini Goodwin sat
down with Police Joe. They couldn't go in there apparently
because they didn't know. They had assumptions. That was about
all they had for a month.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Well, what's fascinating about this case, Dave, is that does
that rule apply to the body parts? Where she is
taking you out to a location and let's just say
they threw they threw one of the elements of the
body into the ditch. Okay, immediately adjason. It's in a
public area, it's in plane view, which is there's actually
(40:41):
a plane view doctrine. They're not going into someone's house.
You've got an alleged perpetrator who's confessing to this. They said, Yeah,
that's the foot right there, that's the hand right there.
You know, that's the head right there. Do they need
a warrant to collect that? Probably not. They're going to
process it and just to be safe, they might get
(41:01):
a warrant at that point in time. But if you're
talking to like a physical structure where the dismemberment actually
took place, then that that's a completely different kettle of
fish because you have you have an expectation of privacy
within your own home. So they would if they're developing
(41:22):
this information and her confession would be enough to develop
a warrant off of, and they could go back and
process the scene. They're going to be looking for remnants
of blood, maybe impact areas that keep using the term
which is horrible chopping shopping in this case before Joey,
you know, and it's it's It's stated over and over
that if you're facilitating chopping up a body per se,
(41:47):
are there going to be underlying strike marks, Say, if
you're doing it on a floor, whether it's a wooden floor,
stone floor, vinyl floor, whatever, is there associated blood blood
evidence is left behind with this as well, and that's
certainly something to consider. Or in this particular.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Case, you know, we had the case out in California.
Have the agent's son, you know, the super powerful agent
guy whose son is accused of killing his wife and
dumping her torso in the trash dumpster, and that you know,
he had some he had hired some workers to take
these bags away and they like they opened it up
and like there's body parts and he's lots of mannequin.
(42:23):
It's Halloween. In this case. The police get the information
from Michelini goodwhen she tells them we took care of this.
Now they go to these different areas and get the bag.
She leads them to these remote areas. Yes, when because
when we look at a map and you see a line,
here's x Y's here's Charles County, here's Mabel County, they
(42:49):
mean something because they're different jurisdictions. For police oftentimes, do
you have to like go out there and you know,
bring out the compass and you know, a road crew
to determine is this the right this county or not?
I mean, if it crosses over into a different county,
I got a bag, I got a foot over here,
and I've got an arm over here in a different county?
Do I have to call the police in all these
(43:10):
different areas?
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Well, it's advisable, and sheriffs were out there. However, do
you know who actually processes scene? The Maryland State Police. Okay,
so they have state they have statewide jurisdiction. Okay, But
to your point, and I think this is kind of fascinating,
what they would do in a case like this is
that they're going to put markers down with every bit
(43:33):
of evidence. It's particularly in the deposition areas, and they're
going to geographically map this area, and it's you know,
it's quite striking. You know, I think I think any
of us can identify with this if you're just say
you're looking, I don't know. I think I hate to
reduce it down to this, but say you're trying to
buy a new home and you go to one of
(43:55):
these things like Zillow or one of these things, and
you're looking, well, what area of this particular geographic location
our most houses selling in and you look for that
concentrated area. Take that and apply it to deposition of
body parts. Or if you're looking at serial killer, which
this has been done for a long time. Wow, you
(44:16):
look at where bodies have been deposited all of the place,
and people try to find these patterns and things, and
sometimes they marry up with common thoroughfares that a suspect
might take to go do things, say if you're going
grocery shopping, or if the person is dealing drugs, for instance,
areas that you would might have some kind of peripheral
knowledge of. But you know, Dave, it's this case is
(44:41):
certainly different in the fact that you've got two perpetrators
in this case and they essentially both roll over. What
exactly was Larry Murphy his part to this? Did he
wind up being charged?
Speaker 2 (45:00):
He was charged, Joe. He was charged with first degree murder,
second degree murder, burial or disposal of a body in
an authorized place, and accessory after the fact, murder. And
one thing that came out of all of this, and
I'm still a little stunned the mess, just that they
had it left behind me. I know they tried to
(45:21):
clean it up to cover their tracks, but Joe, it
had to just have been horrible. Is there any way
to get yes it clean after that?
Speaker 1 (45:30):
You can't. You can't get rid of it. In totality.
You can't make it disappear, no matter how much scrubbing
you do, no matter how much raking of dirt, no
matter how much painting you do, perhaps or laying down
(45:52):
of carpet. But I do know this, I do know this.
Both Goodwin and Murphy have, at least for the time being,
disappeared from freedom. They're now incarcerated Mitchellina Goodwin was actually
(46:18):
charged and convicted and is now currently serving sixty one
years in the Maryland State Penitentiary. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
and this is Bodybacks.
Body doctors with Joseph Scott more years ago, I was
on a task force that set up the national standards
for medical legal death investigations and it was a real
honor to be a part of that task force. But
(00:26):
as part of this we had to become proctors. And
not only did we develop the curriculum, but back then
you had to have proctery or test sites where you
would go and learn how to administer the test. And
this was all funded by the FEDS. During that period
(00:46):
of time, I had the privilege of going to the
State and Medical Examiner's office in Maryland, and there I
got to see the inner workings of an office that
has been in existence for many, many years, that has
(01:09):
quite the story history. As a matter of fact, it
was probably one of the first medical examiner, true medical
examiner systems in the nation. But they've seen a thing
or two over the years. But I got to tell you,
working at the Medical Examiner, particularly in a place is
(01:32):
busy as Maryland is, you never know what's going to
roll through the door, even if that body comes in
in multiple pieces. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is bodybags, Hey, Dave,
(01:56):
This case that has been in the news this past
it hadn't even really entered onto my radar, and I
was kind of shocked by it because it's so over
the top relative to the forensic evidence and relative Well,
let's just start at the beginning.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Starting from the top. Here, it is Micheline A Goodwin
and James Nebord Check our boyfriend and girlfriend. They're in
a relationship and they're living together. A friend named Larry
Murphy is at their house when Michelina and James get
into a fight. An argument ended upstairs bedroom. Larry Murphy
tries to inner seed. They said, get out of here,
go downstairs, leave us alone. The argument continues, and then
(02:35):
while he's downstairs, Larry Murphy, here's a gunshot. What happens
next is why we're talking about this story. Micheline A
Goodwin comes down the stairs. I just shot James. Now,
Larry Murphy, you've really got three choices. One, pick up
the phone and call nine to one one get help now.
Two call nine one one, tell the police. This woman
(02:58):
just killed her boyfriend. That's two and number three. Let
me grab my car keys, load him and let's go.
We're taking him to the hospital. We'll deal with the
consequences later. None of those choices seem good to Micheline,
A good one. Here's what she wants Larry Murphy to do.
I need you, Larry, to help me cut up his body,
put it in bags, and let's go and get rid
(03:20):
of it in a couple of different counties in Maryland,
rural areas that nobody will ever find his body. And
that's what they do. They don't call for help, nothing
they do. It boggles my mind. And then the family
of James Aboard Chick, it's coming up on Christmas is
December twenty first, and the family realizes nobody has spoken
to or seen James in a while, and they're comparing
(03:43):
notes and realize, hey, last time we need to talk
to him was December seventh. Nobody knows where he is
and it's December twenty first. Still, let's go to the police.
We haven't seen him in two weeks, we don't know
where he is. Help us find James aboard Chick. And
that's where the missing person's case begins. Now where do
you think police are going to go? First? Yeah, right
back to Michelin, A good one's house, because that's where
(04:05):
James was living with her now, Joe, I don't know
what's in the water. I don't know why. We've had
so many stories about people getting dismembered, but it seems
like a thing now.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
You know, maybe it's just our perception, but this idea
of you know, scattering the remains, it actually reminds me
of a case. I think it was from back in thousand,
two thousand and sixteen, and there was actually a young
(04:39):
mother who was divorced. If I'm not mistaken, she was
a nurse and she had met a guy online and
while they were she's going out with a date with
this guy and he was like a homeless guy. I
remember her name was Ingrid Lynn. I don't know if
(05:02):
you remember that case. We covered it extensively. We you
know it was I was on with Nancy and then
back in the hl N days and all that. But
that individual actually took her out on a date. And
believe it or not, I know you're you're a big
baseball person. Took her to a Mariner's game. That was
their first name.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Uh yeah, Actually, Kim and I are first date was
a Braves game. So you know you're thinking, wow, okay,
you're going to take her out to a ballgame, and
then he takes her back to her home and kills
her in her home and then uses uses a limb
(05:43):
saw to dismember her in her bathtub. And what it
has in common with this is that he deposited her
remains in various locations around the city. I'll never forget
that the guy that found he went to pull his
(06:06):
recycling bin now back from the street back to his house,
and it felt heavy, and he looked down in it
and there was a bag and there was a human
footsticking about it.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
And this is in Seattle. They really care. That's ecology.
You know, they made sure. And he's thinking, hey, who
put real trash.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
In exactly, And so he's moving this thing around and
there it is. But you know, you think about this case.
They didn't just they didn't just deposit her remains in
Charles County. They actually went into did I say she?
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Yeah you did. But it's okay. Look in the in
the game we played Joe, anymore, you might even insult
somebody that's a guy that you say, you know, we
can't say he or she. We're gonna have to come
up with they and them and stuff like that to
cover these I know this.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
They deposited Jimmy's remains and not just uh in Charles
County but also St. Mary's County. Are these far away
you know a lot about it? No, they literally bump
up against one another.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
And where's Baltimore? Say, is Baltimore in one of those counties?
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Yeah, it's like primarily I think in Charles County, But
you know, like so many of these metroplex areas like this,
it expands out so far. You think about Atlanta, you
think about d C and Baltimore. It's really it used
to be where there was like this dividing line, and
even to and I'll probably get called out on this,
but even up to like Philly, it's almost like you
(07:32):
kind of bounce from one to another and you never
really know where you are, you know, other than you
cross state lines and whatnot, because it's just this continuous flow.
But if you're familiar with the area and you think about, well, okay,
I'm not just going to sit here and deposit remains
in one location. I think that what we ought to
(07:52):
do is make an initial deposition of remains and then
we're going to migrate over to an adjacent county and
deposit more there. I don't know, Davy. If let's try
to get inside the skin of somebody that's doing this,
what what do you think as the lay person here,
what do you think is the rationale for wanting.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
To do that? You know, I thought about this, Joe,
that you would want to get you and the deceased
parts as far away as you can, right. You want
them to be hidden because you're going to so many
these times when we cover cases, people admit what they've
done as soon as they get caught, they talk to
(08:35):
the cops and within a matter of minutes, there you know,
here is the truth, Here's what really happened. Why'd you
bother doing it?
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Then?
Speaker 2 (08:42):
If you're going to give up the truth so fast,
why did you bother doing this? You take the person's life, really,
can't you? Anyway? That's I'm guessing this is this is
a lot of work too. It is that I know
that's very morbid, but this is a lot of work,
and I think you're right on the money here. Why
you know, why would you give up the information? So
I asked, if you've done it, when you've spread them
(09:04):
everywhere again, spread across two counties and actually two different
states are involved here, You're dealing with Maryland and Virginia.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
I think, yeah, well yeah, and it's spread out over
this huge area. Here's another thing too, for every And
I've always been fascinated by this, the idea, and you
had mentioned it just a second ago, and you've got
You've kind of got plus is uh as an upside
and a downside here. I found that with killers, many
(09:31):
times they keep remains near them in some instances. And
I think the reason that keep remains near them it's
a control issue. They want to know that the body
is where I put it, I have, you know. And
that's why I think some people bury bodies in yards
in their backyard, you know, because it seems counterintuitive, right,
(09:53):
I'm going to kill somebody, but yet I'm going to
hang on to the remains. I'm going to bury them
in the backyard. I had a case in in South
Louisiana that I consulted on at one point in time,
and a guy had killed his wife and had buried
her in the backyard and had taken had gone to
(10:14):
Walmart and bought I think like fifteen rose bushes, and
the neighbors said later on, yeah, one night we heard
him working in the backyard. We got up the next
morning and looked over the fence and there's a rose
garden where one had not been. I mean the roses
(10:36):
were not blooming. Wow, but you know, the roses were there.
And it took them years years to decide. Well, first off,
he had the house. They couldn't get a search warrant
for it. And when the new people moved in that
he had sold it. I guess he thought that people
had forgotten about it. They go out there and they
dig up the rose garden. Sure enough, there she is.
(10:58):
And they went in in luminol up that's friends to
aluminol Oh. Wow, in the basement of this place, and
there was blood everywhere. He had painted, recarpeted, all this
sort of stuff down there, and he couldn't They still
show up, yeah, yeah, yeah, And so they were able
to determine. They couldn't type it or anything, but they
knew something horrible it happened.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
But it's okay. Where I always thought, they keep the
body closer, the body parts, because that way they know
if anybody finds anything, they be like in Atlanta, where
we're dealing with Christopher Wolfenberger, you've got him murdering, allegedly
murdering his wife in nineteen ninety nine and cutting her
all up, and her skull shows up on this in
an industrial park area. Well if you actually think, and
(11:38):
then her other body parts show up a couple of
days later.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Yeah, and that's only arms and legs. We still don't
know what happened to her, torso, but then they go away.
I got to say this right now, tip of the cap,
Tip of the cap to my good friend Cheryl McCollum.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Oh my gosh, she spent a lot of time on
this case.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
She sure did. And I recommend to anybody at this
point in time, if you get a chance, you need
to go listen to his own seven. It was absolutely amazing,
great work on Cheryl's part.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
But you know that Wolfenberger case, Joe, he actually Christopher Wolfenberger,
the husband of Melissa. Yeah, that was a road that
he drove every day to work. He worked right there.
So you've got him basically putting her body in an
area that he.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Knows, right, And that's one of the things that's interested
me about that case in particular, is that he worked
at a glass shop. Well, what do they use at
glass shops. People don't think about this. They actually use
cutting tools and they're very fine cutting tools. And so
you think about our case today with Jimmy, and you
(12:42):
think about this idea. Did who had access to tools,
who had the knowledge in order to actually take him apart?
And where could you do it? Sequestered like this? But
back to the idea of the deposition or remains, Dave, Okay,
if you're.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
The opposite of what we were talking about, well.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
I think percentage wise, percentage wise okay, if you're thinking,
because the only thing I could think of is that
if you're if you're going out to deposit human remains,
dismembered human remains, by the way, in various locations like this,
you're now upping the probability that you're going to get
(13:24):
caught because you have these things dispersed and so if
some citizen just comes walking by, you might find one here,
you might find one there. And I you know, and
I think, well, maybe the rationale was, well, if we
put him out all over the place, if we put
him out all over the place, perhaps they'll think that
these things are not related in some way, and what
(13:47):
they don't count on and what many don't count on
is that in the end, science always tell us the truth.
(14:10):
Here's the weird thing, Dave. And going back to this
kind of point of order you brought up a few
moments ago. If if you go to all the trouble
to first off kill someone and then go to a
(14:31):
lot of trouble to dismember them, why are you going
to roll over on it? And from what you're telling me,
that's essentially what this woman did. Am I correct?
Speaker 2 (14:45):
I'm so amazed at again the effort, the effort it
takes to do everything that Michelina Goodwin did, along with
help from Larry Murphy. Apparently that they did to James
and bod They a gun accidentally fires and kills the
(15:06):
man and he's missing. Those are two separate things. One
we know he's dead, two we know he's missing. So
you got two groups of people, the people who did
the killing. Well, the person who did the killing, she
knows he's dead, and the guy that helped her with them,
he knows he's dead. But you know what, everybody else,
James is missing. His family thinks he's missing. That where
(15:28):
did he go? Now? First thing, police do, they pull
backgrounds on everybody they know if you're not just lost stuff,
not just booking in jail and things.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
They know.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
They talk to friends, they talk to relatives. They know
if you have a drug problem, they know if you
have a gambling problem. They know who you are. The
people that are closest to this case, they know what
they're dealing with, and they use this information because they
don't believe what they're being told. Grown people don't just
go missing and drop off the face of the earth
for no reason, if it's out of character. There are
(16:01):
some people who do leave. There are some people who
do not maintain regular contact with their family, and their
family doesn't report them missing.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
There have been a few times in my life when
I have felt about this. It felt like disappearing, but
not chosen to do that.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
I gotta get away, gotta get away. But in this case,
the family does have contact with James and Borchik on
a fairly regular basis, So when they realize they haven't
talked to him in several days, they've tried to find out.
So they go to his girlfriend Michelina. Where is he
don't know, haven't seen him? Have you reported him missing?
Have you tried to find him? Nah? We were arguing,
(16:35):
he split up, We were breaking up, any number of things. Okay,
we were breaking up. Oh wait a minute, I remember
he took his work truck. See, I told him I
was going to break up with him. So he took
his work drug and he drove off to West Virginia
singing a John Denver song. That's he's over there somewhere working.
Look for the work truck. You know. That was the story.
We had an argument, we broke up, he took his
(16:56):
work drug and left the state. So that's what the
investigators are left with. They have Micheline, a Goodwin and
Larry Murphy who were there, and then they have the
missing man, James, the bor chick. The story they're told
us he is not believable in reality because you'd be
able to find him. If that was the case, he
would be talking to family. If that was the case,
(17:19):
you guys broke up and he left, the family would
know they talked to him. So he ain't talking to anybody.
So the police are going to look at it a
little bit closer, so they start leaning on him. Now
we're talking about last time he's seen December seventh, Reported
missing December twenty first, right, before Christmas. That's a special
time for every family in one way or another, and
(17:42):
they don't know where he is. So here we are.
By the time police have had their fill of following
the false leads and they sit down with Micheline a Goodwin,
they're gonna hit her hard. They're going to really lean
because they're not believing her story. Joe, Can they go
into the house and find out if a gun's been fired?
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Can they go into a house and find out if
a gun has been fired? I think that you would
have to be adjacent. Let me put it to you
this way. Let's say, for instance, and here here's a
good example, if you were standing adjacent to a let's
say a set of curtains, for instance, and you had
(18:23):
an idea that maybe the weapon was discharged there, Maybe
some circumstantial evidence came up, maybe some kind of spontaneous
comment came up. Maybe if it's a discharged there and
it has gotten into the fabric of the curtain, or
maybe adjacent to a bed where there's a comforter and
you knew where to look, maybe you could find some remnant.
(18:46):
But if a weapon is just merely fired, it would
be really hard to say yeah, well a weapon has
recently been fired here.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
You know, I'm just trying to think of what they
would be saying to her, because a lot of us
know of DNA. We know that this science of the
forensic sciences have gotten to the point where you feel
like if you were in an elevator and somebody, you know,
somebody disturbed the ambiance, you know, you would be able
to figure out who did it by the odor I mean,
you would think these anymore. That's what I kind of
(19:19):
believe when I watch television and movies. It's like they
can figure everything out. They know I was there.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Yeah, there are there are certain limitations scientifically, you know,
but over a period of time, you know, and when
I say period of time, I'm talking about in pretty
short order. If you're just simply talking about a weapon
being discharged, it would be very difficult to go back
and say, yes, a weapon has been discharged in this room.
(19:45):
You have to have some kind of soot or well
powdered deposition on the person on clothing, that sort of
thing to go back and say that, yes, a weapon
was fired. Now which what weapon was it? And that
that's key because even you know, you can say that,
(20:06):
you know, I don't know. You can say I work
in a munitions factory or something, and you're still going
to get some kind of residue on you perhaps, And
so it's all relative to the circumstances in that immediate moment.
But I could have sworn that at some point in
(20:26):
tom this person actually stated that there was an accidental
discharge of the weapon.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Is that I took them to January eighteenth. They leaned
on her, That's what I was saying. I was thinking
of the things police could tell her. You know, Michelina,
you know we have ways of finding out a gun
was fired here. You know, we knew all this. They knew.
They had a really good idea, but they didn't have
any proof. They didn't have a body, they didn't have
any evidence, they didn't have anything. Joe, So they bring
(20:55):
her in, they sweat her, and MICHELINI go went on
January eighteenth, admits here's what happened. We were having an argument.
Larry tried to involve himself. We told him to go
back downstairs, get away, and so he knows nothing to
tell you. And I was threatened, so I grabbed a gun.
(21:16):
I wasn't gonna shoot him or anything. I was just
doing it to protect myself and I accidentally the gun
went off. I mean, it was just such an accident, Joe.
I didn't mean to do it. I'm really sorry. Really
well where did you shoot him? Did you hit him
in the face? Did you wing him? Did you you know? Oh,
I shot him in the back. Okay, you accidentally shot
him in the back and he died one shot. Did
(21:39):
you call nine one one if it was an accident?
Did you pick up the phone and ask for help?
Did you take him to the hunt? Is an accident?
It was an accident. Why didn't you do? What did
you do?
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Because why do you take measures? You know, to try
to say because that goes to what do they call
it a gross indifference or whatever it is, that callous indifference.
I'm sorry where you just you don't care. You're just
going to let them, you know, suffer, you know, lying there.
But love I love it when people say things like, yeah,
(22:13):
the weapon went off by accident.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
No. And and listen, there are we're talking about forensics
relative to this. You know, there are a couple of
kind of tests that we in the lab, not me,
but my colleagues at work in fireums examination otherwise known
as ballistics. In those sections of crime labs, they will
actually do test on weapons, uh, to determine the plausibility
(22:42):
of any particular weapon accidentally discharging. And do you mind
if I break these down for you, because I'll tell
you I think people, I think people will be kind
of interested in it. Uh. And it's it's kind of
wild stuff when you because we hear these stories all
the time, and most of the time you hear them
(23:06):
associated with suicides because, as I've mentioned on many occasions,
the suicides outpaced homicides. You know, so you're going to
get more self inflicted gunshot wounds than you will gunshot
wounds inflicted by another. And people will try and families
(23:26):
many times say, well he accidentally shot himself, right, Okay,
well how does that happen? Well, there's a couple of
different tests that are done. First off, there is a
drop test that's actually done so if you have a
weapon where it is charged, and charging a weapon can
(23:47):
be safe. For instance, if you think about a handgun
that has a semi automatic with a slide on it. Okay,
so you see it on television where people racked the
slide back and it's it's off safety, so it's red
as dead. Remember, so if the safety is red, it
means dead. So what they will do is they will
(24:08):
take the question weapon and they will drop it from
a height. If the weapon is charged, okay, and they
will see if merely by dropping that weapon, if the
firing pin, if the firing pin releases and engages, okay,
And they'll do that.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
In the very time Alec Baldwin testing when he said
the gun just fired, he didn't touch the trigger. They
dropped that gun.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Yeah, yeah, they did a drop test on it, and
what and so the chances of that happening there, they're outliers.
It just it doesn't happen. Now, Listen, every weapon, you
can have a production line of weapons. Okay, let's just
say ABC Gun Corporation makes a particular type of handgun
(24:54):
platform and they do a run of say two hundred
weapons at one time. You can have one in there
that might have a faulty trigger mechanism. You might confine it, okay,
but nine times out of ten, this is just not
going to happen.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
So with that.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Said, With that said, the other thing that we that
we think about traditionally also is trigger pull. So if
everybody will think about your if you're left or right hand,
to use your index finger to place it on. You
put your finger pad the end of your index finger,
your finger pad on the trigger itself. And how many
(25:34):
times do you watch movies and whatnot? Particularly people in military,
they'll talk about your handling the weapon unsafely if you
have your finger inside the trigger housing. People that know
how to handle weapons keep their finger outside the trigger housing.
All right, So you're ready to shoot, and so what
we do there is actually a weight test. This is
pretty fascinating. You take the weapon and you charge it, okay,
(25:59):
Then you hang the weapon, all right, and you place
weight on that weapon. And have you ever heard the
term certain amounts of pounds of pressure that it takes
to engage that trigger. Well, you add weight and that
gives you the number of pounds okay, I won't take Yeah,
that takes to engage the trigger. And so you've heard
(26:21):
the term say, for instance, a hair trigger, Well, hair
trigger is not I think people say that about individuals
who who will say they're going to fire a weapon
and maybe they fired weapons, and they'll say the person
has a hair trigger. It's not the person that has
a hair trigger in the literal sense, it is the weapon.
(26:42):
So does it have a light touch? And weapons can
be actually adjusted to that. You can adjust weapons so
that it takes less pounds of pull in order to
initiate that firing sequence. So the lighter the touch, the
lighter the touch, the fewer pounds it takes to initiate
that firing sequence. So they run through all of these tests.
(27:03):
So in this particular case, if you have an individual
who states, well, yeah, the weapon accidentally discharged, you've got
three choices here. Okay, we can say she dropped the
weapon and the weapon accidentally discharged. Okay, did that happen
not that we know of. Okay, does the weapon have
(27:25):
a hair trigger? Well, we would go back and we
would test the number of pounds of pressure it would
take being applied to the trigger to get that sequence going.
Or did she accidentally put her finger inside the trigger guard? Okay,
after the weapon is charged and then happen to pull
(27:47):
the trigger initiate the firing sequence. Oh and by the way,
score a lethal shot in his back and that's dynamically
that's what they're looking at, and kind of that's what
they have to understand and see if that actually works.
But as we know, in most cases like this, a
(28:08):
case of a weapon accidentally discharging is a red herring
at best. All Right, Dave, got a proposition for you.
(28:31):
All Right, I'm game, be very careful before you make
that statement, particularly in regardless to what I'm about to say.
What would it I'll say? Okay, let me bear the
burden here. Okay, I'm the perpetrator, all right, your old
buddy Joe Scott, I'm the perpetrator. If I'm the perpetrator
(28:58):
and you're aware that I have just quote unquote accidentally
shot somebody. First off, two part question here might be
a two part with multiple subsections. Hang on, you know me,
I'm rather verbose. So okay, so let's say I accidentally
(29:20):
shoot somebody. All right. First off, if you're in the
same structure with me and you hear the report of
a firearm going off and you rush upstairs, it's not
just me, it's you, and we've got a person on
(29:42):
the floor, either dead or dying. Why aren't you saying
we got to call an ambulance and get somebody over here. Secondly,
you've bought into the idea that maybe he's dead I
don't know, can't confirm it, or maybe maybe it's an accident.
(30:02):
We got to call the cops. He's dead, we can
prove this. Or hey, Dave, will you go out to
the shed and grab the axe, the hatchet, maybe a
soft I need one, and help me take a part
(30:25):
this person's body. Oh and by the bye, help me
deposit it over a two county area? Are you a game?
I think that's the question? What what?
Speaker 2 (30:37):
What? My response is, Okay, Joe, it's an accident. Let's
just call the police and get them over here and
let them deal with the poor old James here, because
you know James is dead, he's he's your boyfriend. But anyway,
the bottom line here is that you got a dead
(30:57):
guy on the floor. You were the two people in
the room, and I was downstairs because you wouldn't let
me help in the argument, and now you want me
to go and chop up the body with you. Okay, sure, no.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
I gotta This is the thing I've got to ask
in regards to Mitchellina good ones and then Larry Murphy, right,
how how committed of a friendship do you have to be?
In just go with me here. How committed of a
friendship do you have to be in here to say, yeah, man,
(31:30):
I'm all on board for this task. I will sit
here and I will undertake this gruesome duty with you
to make sure what you know, what kind of reward
are you offering this man that he is literally going
to run the risk of spending the rest of his
(31:50):
life in prison? I mean, what do you have over
his head? And also are you in pair in some manner?
Are you mentally impaired? Are you maybe uh drug addled
in some way? I don't.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
I'm glad you brought that.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Curious about that.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
We find all this out by going back a minute
when we were talking about Micheline A Goodwin sits down
with the police. They've gotten no information really because there's
only two people that know where James uh Narbacheck is Nabucheck.
They are only two people and that is Micheline A.
(32:31):
Goodwin and Larry Murphy. There are only two people that know.
All the police know is the guy's missing. That's and
he's an adult. The Michelina said he grabbed the company
truck and went out of state. We were breaking up.
So based on that limited information that the police have,
they really only can go after these two individuals, and
they break Michelina first, and that's how they find out.
(32:54):
It's not like the police were investigating and knew that
his body was somewhere other than the house. Police didn't
know that. They just knew they couldn't find him anywhere.
And so it's Michelina Goodwin who actually then tells police, okay,
we cut him up. Wait a minute, we you and
(33:16):
mister Murphy, you chopped him up. Where's his body? And
so she takes them to the body parts and that's
where we know. They're strewn in remote areas of two
different counties, which leads you to believe they chopped him
up in small enough bags like doggie bags. I'm guessing.
I'm not thinking that they didn't roll them up in
(33:37):
a piece of carpet. And you know, do those they
put him in bags? I guess, Joe, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Generally what will happen is that they will be placed
into individual bags like this, or wrapped in in some
type of sort of paper. And on a side here,
I got to tell you this, many people might not
be aware of this. Did you know that years ago
back in the morgue. We didn't use body backs in
(34:05):
many cases. I know the first morgue I ever worked in,
we actually used butcher paper. You remember, a butcher paper
is brown, and it was on a huge role and
we would wrap bodies in it. And it's made in
such a manner. I'm not a paper expert, but it's
made in such a manner that it would absorb blood.
(34:26):
And so I've had body parts that have been wrapped
actually in newspaper, and I've had body parts that are
wrapped in plastic over the course of my career, or
I have seen them as a result of cases that
I was assisting in our autopsy in where they're brought.
You know, they're brought in one of my colleagues work
(34:46):
case as the investigator, and so you you think about
this and how does that conversation go in the vehicle
as well? You know, so you're writing about all through
the countryside a place that you're famil o, you're with.
Remember you're not going they're not driving down to the shore,
(35:08):
you know in Maryland where you know in an environment,
say if you go to a watery environment and up there,
what are they really known for in Maryland? Grotesque here.
But you've got a lot of wetlands. But you've also
(35:28):
got blue crabs. We have them in South Louisiana. Guess
what they love. They're scavengers. And so you're going to
deposit body parts all about the place like this, and
you're riding around trying to make this decision. Well, gee,
that looks like a good spot. Let's drive on a
little further. That looks like a good spot. And how
(35:49):
long would this take? How long would it take? Because
you know, this victim is not a small man. He's
not a small man. And so once you get it passed,
and I go back to to this case involving Melissa Woffenberger,
the you know, they still don't have her torso. Torso
(36:14):
is the most difficult element of the body to get
rid of, and particularly if you're trying to dissect it out.
If I don't know if folks know this, did you
know that your body, particularly torso, is broken down into quadrants.
So when you're you have quadrants that are generally on
(36:35):
the front of your body. And if you take an
anatomy clash, you know you look at say the top
left quadrant, top right quadrant, bottom right quadrant bottom left quadrant,
and you can also break that down abdominantly, so you
have to factor that into the equation as well as
how are you going to essentially parse the body up
(36:58):
and it becomes a genuine when undertaking where they did,
this would have been super saturated with blood.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Okay, let me stop you there, because that's what I
had to ask Joe. We have this, We have the
police with no information until they sit down with Mischelina
Goodwin and she admits to what they've done. They were
not you know, the police are not allowed to just
come in your house on a fishing expedition, and there's
a real good reason for that, okay, But in this case,
(37:30):
they could not come up with a good reason to
get a search warrant to go into that house because
they obviously would have been able to find blood based
on where she said he was shot.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Yeah, and hopefully Nancy doesn't get mad at me about this,
and you know she calls me up saying, Joe, Scott,
just Scott. But do you know constitutionally, the Supreme Court
has ruled there is no exception, there is no exception
(38:02):
to your right's privacy even when it comes to homicide investigation.
The only time Okay, this is how this would work.
I'm glad you brought this up. So the only time
that say, for instance, you can't go searching in what
to refer to as hidden places. You have to have
a specific search warrant. So if a police officer walks
(38:23):
into a house to ascertain the safety, almost like a
welfare check, like you're walking into a house, if they
see blood, say, sweeping out from beneath the bottom of
a closet, they can open that door for the purposes
of seeing if anyone is in there they need help,
(38:43):
And if they find a dead body, they still cannot
They still cannot begin to work the scene. They have
to back out of the house after it's secured and
made safe and make sure no one else is you know,
in harm's way, search one, and then go back in
and process the scene.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Okay, because if they start searching right then.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
It's all it's all thrown out. Yeah, it's you have
to have a good And there's multiple court cases that
go to this point, and I could rattle them off.
I actually teach them at the police cademy every year
about this. Particularly. There's really no exceptions.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Whenever I get into an argument with somebody about this,
and I'm was like, look, the reason the law is there.
What if there's a police officer that doesn't like Dave
mack yep and he just decides I don't like what
he says on the show I'm and he comes into
my house finding a reason to arrest me. They can't
(39:44):
do that. That's why it's not a reasonable thing. You
have to go before a judge. You have to write
down probable cause, what do you think you're going to find?
Where do you think you're going to find it? Where
you're going to look? The judge reads all that and
based on the evidence, that's where they say, Okay, go ahead, off,
go in there and get what you got to get.
But in this case, yeah, that's what I'm saying, they
(40:04):
didn't have it. They could not until Michelini Goodwin sat
down with Police Joe. They couldn't go in there apparently
because they didn't know. They had assumptions. That was about
all they had for a month.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Well, what's fascinating about this case, Dave, is that does
that rule apply to the body parts? Where she is
taking you out to a location and let's just say
they threw they threw one of the elements of the
body into the ditch. Okay, immediately adjason. It's in a
public area, it's in plane view, which is there's actually
(40:41):
a plane view doctrine. They're not going into someone's house.
You've got an alleged perpetrator who's confessing to this. They said, Yeah,
that's the foot right there, that's the hand right there.
You know, that's the head right there. Do they need
a warrant to collect that? Probably not. They're going to
process it and just to be safe, they might get
(41:01):
a warrant at that point in time. But if you're
talking to like a physical structure where the dismemberment actually
took place, then that that's a completely different kettle of
fish because you have you have an expectation of privacy
within your own home. So they would if they're developing
(41:22):
this information and her confession would be enough to develop
a warrant off of, and they could go back and
process the scene. They're going to be looking for remnants
of blood, maybe impact areas that keep using the term
which is horrible chopping shopping in this case before Joey,
you know, and it's it's It's stated over and over
that if you're facilitating chopping up a body per se,
(41:47):
are there going to be underlying strike marks, Say, if
you're doing it on a floor, whether it's a wooden floor,
stone floor, vinyl floor, whatever, is there associated blood blood
evidence is left behind with this as well, and that's
certainly something to consider. Or in this particular.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Case, you know, we had the case out in California.
Have the agent's son, you know, the super powerful agent
guy whose son is accused of killing his wife and
dumping her torso in the trash dumpster, and that you know,
he had some he had hired some workers to take
these bags away and they like they opened it up
and like there's body parts and he's lots of mannequin.
(42:23):
It's Halloween. In this case. The police get the information
from Michelini goodwhen she tells them we took care of this.
Now they go to these different areas and get the bag.
She leads them to these remote areas. Yes, when because
when we look at a map and you see a line,
here's x Y's here's Charles County, here's Mabel County, they
(42:49):
mean something because they're different jurisdictions. For police oftentimes, do
you have to like go out there and you know,
bring out the compass and you know, a road crew
to determine is this the right this county or not?
I mean, if it crosses over into a different county,
I got a bag, I got a foot over here,
and I've got an arm over here in a different county?
Do I have to call the police in all these
(43:10):
different areas?
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Well, it's advisable, and sheriffs were out there. However, do
you know who actually processes scene? The Maryland State Police. Okay,
so they have state they have statewide jurisdiction. Okay, But
to your point, and I think this is kind of fascinating,
what they would do in a case like this is
that they're going to put markers down with every bit
(43:33):
of evidence. It's particularly in the deposition areas, and they're
going to geographically map this area, and it's you know,
it's quite striking. You know, I think I think any
of us can identify with this if you're just say
you're looking, I don't know. I think I hate to
reduce it down to this, but say you're trying to
buy a new home and you go to one of
(43:55):
these things like Zillow or one of these things, and
you're looking, well, what area of this particular geographic location
our most houses selling in and you look for that
concentrated area. Take that and apply it to deposition of
body parts. Or if you're looking at serial killer, which
this has been done for a long time. Wow, you
(44:16):
look at where bodies have been deposited all of the place,
and people try to find these patterns and things, and
sometimes they marry up with common thoroughfares that a suspect
might take to go do things, say if you're going
grocery shopping, or if the person is dealing drugs, for instance,
areas that you would might have some kind of peripheral
knowledge of. But you know, Dave, it's this case is
(44:41):
certainly different in the fact that you've got two perpetrators
in this case and they essentially both roll over. What
exactly was Larry Murphy his part to this? Did he
wind up being charged?
Speaker 2 (45:00):
He was charged, Joe. He was charged with first degree murder,
second degree murder, burial or disposal of a body in
an authorized place, and accessory after the fact, murder. And
one thing that came out of all of this, and
I'm still a little stunned the mess, just that they
had it left behind me. I know they tried to
(45:21):
clean it up to cover their tracks, but Joe, it
had to just have been horrible. Is there any way
to get yes it clean after that?
Speaker 1 (45:30):
You can't. You can't get rid of it. In totality.
You can't make it disappear, no matter how much scrubbing
you do, no matter how much raking of dirt, no
matter how much painting you do, perhaps or laying down
(45:52):
of carpet. But I do know this, I do know this.
Both Goodwin and Murphy have, at least for the time being,
disappeared from freedom. They're now incarcerated Mitchellina Goodwin was actually
(46:18):
charged and convicted and is now currently serving sixty one
years in the Maryland State Penitentiary. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
and this is Bodybacks.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club
Welcome to Bookmarked by Reese’s Book Club — the podcast where great stories, bold women, and irresistible conversations collide! Hosted by award-winning journalist Danielle Robay, each week new episodes balance thoughtful literary insight with the fervor of buzzy book trends, pop culture and more. Bookmarked brings together celebrities, tastemakers, influencers and authors from Reese's Book Club and beyond to share stories that transcend the page. Pull up a chair. You’re not just listening — you’re part of the conversation.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com