June 4, 2026 • 46 mins
When officers are dispatched to check on a call of a man walking around a condo complex in his underwear, mumbling to himself and incoherent, they have no idea of the horror that awaits. Matthew Lewinski is taken from the condo complex and admitted to Henry Ford Hospital Intensive Care Unit. Lewinski's sister, Debra Federico, is notified by the condominium complex that lights were left 'on' inside the condo when Lewinski was taken away. Federico shows up to turn out the lights and lock the doors, but is hit with a strong smell of decay. Residents have been complaining for months about the smell but couldn't find the source of the odor. Debra Federico's husband, son and a family friend go inside the condo to turn out the lights and find the decaying remains of Matthew Lewinski's girlfriend, Courtney 'Jerri' Winters. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack detail the sickening story of murder, mayhem and mutilation. Professor Morgan explains how the forensic evidence will tell the truth of what happened, and how Matthew Lewinski was able to live for 7 months with his dead and decaying girlfriend just feet away from where he lays his head to sleep.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quality Bus with Joseph Scott More. I haven't had a
basement in a home in a long time, but I
don't know. I think that it's places i've lived. I've
tried to get inexpensive houses, and most of those are
(00:22):
ranches that are built back in the sixties, maybe late fifties,
and I do like them. But you know, for the
most part, with ranch style homes that are built during
that period of time, they only have a crawl space.
And crawl space in and of itself gives me chills
because I always think of John Wayne Gacy, right, But
(00:44):
most of them have crawl spaces. But I don't have
a basement. I haven't had a basement in a long time,
and of course that comes with problems, doesn't it anyone
that has one, you know, you think about flooding and
think about having to go up and down those stairs.
Would be nice to have one, though I always wanted
to have a man cave. Never had one of those.
(01:05):
But today I want to talk about the basement of
not just a standalone home but a condo, which is
kind of interesting, and about a man that occupied that
space for some period of time. He called it home.
That's where he hung his hat and his guar keys.
But that home was also occupied by someone else, or
(01:32):
should I say the remains of someone else, because when
they finally found out what was in the basement, it's
something that I can only imagine the finders will be
scarred by for the rest of their lives. I'm Joseph
(01:52):
Scott Morgan and this is body Backs. You like your
basement day. You got a basement, don't you.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
I have not really the traditional basement, Joe. I have
like I have a tri level home. Oh okay, okay, yeah,
so when you go down to the basement area of
the garage, it's like this two and a half car garage,
but it's at the lower level of everything. So technically, yeah,
you go downstairs, so you could be the basement. But no,
I've never actually had a basement. I've always had a
(02:23):
lower level in the house over the last couple of houses,
but I've never actually had the traditional basement, you know.
But I do have a place where I could have
a man cave, but now I don't need one anymore.
I mean the house is a man cave now. But
you know the thing about this one, Joe. The thing
that got me In this particular case, we're dealing with
a man named Matthew Lewinsky, and Matthew Lewinsky at the
(02:49):
time this took place as a thirty seven year old man.
Now he is living in his father's condo and it
has a basement. Living in his father's condo because his
dad has some medical issues and Matthew's sister is the guardian.
She's taking over everything, all of her dad's affairs. To
(03:13):
give you an idea, the dad was he was dealing
with a lot of medical issues Joe, and he did
pass away, but right after this happened. Now, when Matthew
is living in this condo, he also has a girlfriend
that he meets in April of the year that we're
dealing with, okay, and she moves in with him. So
(03:38):
you've got Matthew and his girlfriend. Her name is Courtney
Jerry Winters. Courtney moves in with Matthew Lewinsky. Now, the
problem here is that Matthew has been there for a
couple of years and he hasn't been real communicative with
the family about anything. And at one point, now you
(03:59):
got to remember, this is not his condo. He's living
in the condo that's owned by his dad. His dad
has a guardian that would be Matthew's older sister. Now
here's your quack, Joe, you're ready, I'm ready, brother hit me.
Based on the family's interaction with Miss Winters, Yes, the
(04:20):
guardian was paying for the utilities from the dad, Anthony Lewinsky.
Everything was still in his name, and so Matthew's not
paying for anything. Wow, somebody else.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Will hang on, how old is this child?
Speaker 2 (04:37):
He is thirty seven at the time this takes place. Yeah,
thirty seven years, late thirties, and he's living in his
dad's condo. His dad has a guardian because he is
not capable of, you know, being on his own anyway.
So it's one of those situations where, based on how
this plays out, other family members are doing fine. Nobody
is really interested in this condo. You know, it's dad's
(04:59):
and when dad is gone, we'll probably let it go,
which they did. But in the meantime, little brother is
living in the condo and everybody else is footing the
bill for things. It got so ugly that his girlfriend
at one point, in one of the very few exchanges
the family had with this girlfriend, she was yelling and
(05:20):
screaming at them on the phone, threatening to call the
police over them paying the power bill on time. You're
living rent free and as somebody else's house, they're putting
the bill for your utilities, and you're threatening with calling
the police for family members to pay the utility bills
for your boyfriend. Think about that from then, Well.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
It seems like a small price to pay to have
a free roof over your head and the comforts which
come along, you know, because this is up in Michigan,
so they're going to need heat, right and they've got electricity.
You know, it seems that, you know, probably in this
person's mind, probably an argument is a small price to
pay to be able to continue to sponge along with
(06:03):
the sun.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
That's small advicement. Man.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Yeah, I can stand yelling and screaming. I can even
you know, even threaten you with being arrested, you know, but.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
You don't pay my power bill, I'm calling the cops.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Anyhow, this is what happened. Joe Matthew Lewinsky is not
talking to the family, he's not letting them come in.
As a matter of fact, sister comes over to check
on the condo and he wanted to let her come
in the house. Now stay away, but the girlfriend, Miss Winters,
she gets into a rugby with him on November. Okay, no,
(06:40):
they met in April, started dating. She moves in with him.
By November, they're having so many fights over bills. She
moves out. She comes back a couple of weeks later
to pay a visit on mister Lewinsky, and in that
visit she says, Hey, I had an abortion. You want
to have a child abortion? Apparently, he goes into the
(07:03):
kitchen to make some tea. When he comes back, she's
sitting naked in the recliner and he proceeds to strangle her.
Joe Matthew Lewinsky strangles Miss Winters to death in the recliner.
He put his hands around her throat or no, one
hand on her throat for five minutes and strangled the
(07:28):
life out of this woman.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Let me ask you something did her in between the
time he left the room and went into the kitchen.
Did her clothes just miraculously fall off? Was there a
gravitational force that just kind of pulled them off? It's
an interesting interaction. I think that she has not been there.
She comes back, you know, and they were fighting prior
(07:52):
to she comes back into this dwelling and this pronouncement
that she makes, oh, by the bye, I had an abortion,
and then he leaves the room, her clothes are off.
You know, I don't know. First off, I think, you know,
one of the big questions I would have is did
(08:15):
she in fact actually have an abortion? I don't know
if there's any way that you could, you know, validate that.
And you know, what's the proof of this? Do you
think that perhaps she was needling him in some way?
I mean it kind of kind of sounds that that
way to me. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
The sad reality, Joe is the entire story that I
just told you, Yeah, comes from Matthew Lewin Lewinsky. Wow,
he's the only source. The only source for our story
comes from the man who admits he put his left
hand around her throat and choked the life out of
her for five minutes. That he choked her until she
(08:56):
stopped squirming. So kind of an asterisk, you know, next
to this story. Because he's trying to create a story
that justifies him killing a woman he's involved with, and
he thinks in his brain that it again he's having
to come up with something, you know, to justify the
murder of somebody, and he thinks in his mind, well,
(09:19):
if I was told that she had an abortion, that
would drive me to murder. That's just fiable homicide. That's
all I can think of. But what happens next, Joe,
is the reason we're talking about the story, believe it.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Or not, huh was if that wasn't enough, Okay, go ahead,
hit me.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
You always talk about the shovel, and at the bottom
of that, you know, yeah, well break out the shovel,
because we got deeper to go. Okay. After killing miss Winters,
Lewinsky drags her body down to the basement. He then
begins to I don't know when he did it, but
(09:58):
at some point in time he starts hacking away at
her body. He starts removing large swaths of skin from
her back, and he leaves her in the basement on
a tart and then goes back upstairs and resumes life.
(10:22):
This is from Matthew Lewinsky's story. Now, living in a
condominium complex where you have neighbors that are nearby, neighbors
close enough to say, hey, yeah, we heard them arguing
over money. You know, we heard those arguments, which you know,
that's bad. But then they don't see her. She's moved out, supposedly,
(10:42):
and they have the smell. Now, yeah, you've talked about
the smell of human decay and how you really can't
tell the difference in decay from human to animal and
things like that. The decay is decay, right, yes, And
neighbors talked about maybe it's trash, you know, that's gone back.
There's any number of things, but neighbors notice. They noticed
(11:04):
enough that one of the neighbors, Joe, says that when
she would get out of her car, she would pull
her shirt up over her nose to go running inside
of her Holy smokes, that's how bad the odor was. Now,
I'm gonna be honest with you. If I'm living somewhere
like that, I'm calling somebody, Hey man, something's gone wrong,
really wrong. But nobody did. It took seven months, Joe,
(11:29):
seven months.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
So just so that I'm understanding this, I'm tracking here. Okay,
the neighbors had actually been aware of the smell, and
they were, they were it was in dwelling. Were they
able to pin it down to Lewinsky's actual apartment. I
think is that the is that the source is that
(11:51):
the origin, because you know it would I gotta tell you.
And this is just my own perspective. I'm banging on
somebody's door, you know, I want to know if you're
dead and they are you in there. That's just me.
I'm a death investigator right now. I want to know
what's going on on the other side of that door,
because the odor is so incredibly foul, and if not,
(12:14):
I want to know what is dead because it's impacting
my life. Particularly if condos which might abut each other,
and that's generally the definition of condo, that smell can
leap through the wall. Right, So if I'm smelling that
while I'm laying in bed, you know, I've just gotten
(12:36):
out of the bathtub. I've had a nice refreshing hot soak,
you know, to wash off all the worries of the day.
I've got my satin robe on, I've got my pipe
in my hand and my silk slippers, and there I am.
And I'm not smoking the pipe because I enjoy the
smell of the pipe. I'm trying to mask the odor
that's coming through. And this can happen. I've I've actually
(13:01):
worked cases like this where people were just going about
their own business. And I even write about a story
in my memoir that I think the title of the
chapter is called red Beans is the name of it.
And it had to do with a guy that had
(13:23):
died in a bathtub in New Orleans and he was
decomposing and the water, the water was dripping through the ceiling.
And it was a single mom and her son and
they had been alerted to the smell and they had
complained to the landlord about this. And my friend, who
(13:46):
was a police officer, showed up at the scene. I
was there. We went down to interview her and we
looked up on the ceiling there was this gigantic water spot.
And in New Orleans, for folks that don't know, Mondays
are red beans and rice day. There's a long history
about red beans and rice in New Orleans. So I'm
personally when I make my red beans, I'm a long
(14:07):
soak guy. And people in South Louisiana I know what
that is. I soaked my beans for twenty four hours.
I put half cup of red wine in a little
bit of garlic. I just let it sit. But that's
another show for another time. This poor mother, I'll never
forget it who lived there with her son. We walked
in wet spot on the ceiling and the water from
(14:30):
the tub with the rotting body is dripping right into
her soaking beans. And I know, right, And so you
have this communication that goes on. By the way story ended, interestingly,
my friend that was the detective back then, this was
in the eighties. She didn't have any money, you know,
(14:51):
single mom, she's working. He gives her twenty bucks and says,
dinner's on the sheriff's office, y'all go. And he did
something that is kind of foreboding. If you're in South
Louisiana and you have a red bean pot, which is
(15:12):
very specific. I mean you use it only to soak
your beans and cook them in. We both took the
pot out and put it in the dumpster, and we
left her another twenty bucks to buy another pot, and
we left her a note. And I remember him going
going to going to the landlord that was there and
(15:37):
literally putting this guy against the wall. He said, let
me tell you something, this better be repaired by tomorrow.
You've got this woman with a small child, get out here,
fix this immediately, and tell her not to use that stove.
As a matter of fact, we prefer that you replace
a stove as well. And you know, on the landlords
like you know, like this, but you know, that's one
(15:58):
of those little things. And when you're when you're living
in a non detached environment and there's people that can
tell stories like this. I'm not the only one all
over the place. I'm sure that our friends out there
have stories, like you've heard some of the most horrible
things come through your wall, and I've had that happen too,
(16:18):
And I'm thinking, I'm paying money for this. I don't
want to hear what's going on next door at all.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
I don't want to hear what's.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Going on above me, you know. But anyway you think
about this, and what's interesting is how these things are
put together, these dwellings, because when you occupy a space that,
let's face it, the only thing that's separating you is
you know, sheets of sheet rock, gypsum, and it's coming through,
(16:46):
it's permeating. Maybe you have a shared air handler, maybe
that smell cycles through that building. But I can tell
you this, there's one thing you can never escape. First off,
death is coming to us all. But when you're near it,
you can never escape the smell of death. Dave, this
(17:18):
might be well. I won't say it's the most disgusting
case we've ever covered, because we really covered some disgusting things. Yeah, however,
it is troubling. I think you know being mild.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
You're being mild there, buddy.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
It is And I really set the tenor with the
story about the red beans, right, But let.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Me ask you a question before we go too much
for the I gotta ask you this though, because you mentioned,
you know, and that red beans story is important. You're
not going to talk about that if we get done. Yeah,
all right, is it possible. I'm giving an example. I
was living in Charleston, South Carolina, and you come in
on I twenty six. Yeah, to go into Charleston and
(17:57):
I twenty six at money, you as where I remember
he's smelling the paper mill, which has a very specific
smell that it hits you big time when you get there.
And yeah, yeah, you think this, I can't live here.
This is enough to not live here.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
I know what you're about to say.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
In a matter of days, you don't recognize it anymore,
you don't even smell it. It's not that way with
with decaying flesh, is it?
Speaker 1 (18:23):
I don't. I don't think it is. My granny also
had two paper mills in the town up in North
Louisiana that were when the wind was right. You wouldn't
smell it every day, but you would, but you know,
you kind of get used to it. Uh, it becomes part.
And I've had people say to me that are in
the paper industry. You know, They'll say that that funky
(18:44):
odor is a smell of money, and it truly is,
you know, and a place depends upon the mill, you know,
to keep you know, to keep things going and whatnot.
But yeah, the smell of death. Though it's very difficult
to differentiate between say, animals and humans. It always has
been for me. Maybe some people have more discriminating all
(19:05):
factory senses, perhaps, but I don't because I've been adjacent
to writing animals and writing humans, and I can't really
tell the difference. And I've been around a lot of
decomposing bodies. I don't think that it's something that you
necessarily warm up to or that just becomes because let
me tell you this. Also, even though I wouldn't say
(19:30):
it would be an overstatement to say that I was
around a decomposing body every single day that I worked
at the Emmy's office. That's unreasonable, you know, you just
you can't say that I did go into the decomp
room at least every other day, and when I would
enter there and that smell, no matter how much you
scrub it, that smell is always there. That's where we
(19:51):
store the decomp bodies. And then when I would go
on scenes, when I would go on scenes again, I
would have to get acclimated to it. Wow, and I
would force my way through it, just in my brain
to say, Okay, this is the reality of what I'm doing.
And I had to do this early on in my
career because if you get distracted by the smell, you're
(20:14):
going to miss details. And if you're missing details, you
don't need to be an investigator period into paragraphs. So
it's not something I will tell you this. I've had
people that smelled differently than other people in the stages
of decomposition, and I think it goes to stages, and
it also goes to the environment. It's if you put
(20:35):
two bodies adjacent to one another and say in a
controlled environment, and they're in the same environment, and the
bodies are decomposing at the same rate. I don't know
that you could differentiate between it, but depend upon the
stage that the body is in. And listen, it actually
waxes and wanes though, okay, like it as you're as
(20:58):
it is starting, as the puture faction phase is starting,
You've got the autolytic phase, the tholysis rather that's going
on within the body. After that leaches out and the
puture factions taking place, it's beginning to ramp up that smell,
but it will begin to slowly wane over a period
(21:19):
of time. Now I've been encrypts, I've been under houses
where I have skeletal remains, and you won't smell decomp
A dog probably could. It's got kind of a musty
odor to it many times, and I would have to
ask myself, does it smell musty because I'm in a
basement or I'm adjacent to a body that you know,
(21:41):
I'm digging out of a wall in a basement or
in a crypt you know, where a body is being exhumed,
or or is this is this actually just the natural
smell you know that would come along with it. But
it does go through phases. I have to say, and
I think that with our case today, I'm curious if
(22:05):
to smell ever, if the smell ever did begin to
wane Dave.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Well, know, Joe, one of the things that I paid
attention to in this I was trying to figure out.
You know, you have a number of people besides the neighbors.
You have family members of Matthew Lewinsky that were concerned
about the state of the home, of the condo. It
was owned by their father, Anthony, and he was not
doing well, so they needed to know the state of
his property. Now Matthew living there, I'm sure they probably
(22:33):
felt and I know I would have. I've been like, well,
at least there's somebody manning the four you know, there's
somebody there. But here's the catch we already have. Well,
you guys know what the neighbors didn't know is that
Matthew Lewinsky kills his girlfriend. She's now in the basement
and her body is there. And seven months go by.
(22:53):
Now during this time period, Joe, the whole time Lewinsky
is living in the house, his sister is trying to
not just get up with him, but they're looking for
a very specific Christmas ornament. It's a ceramic Christmas ornament
that it's important to the family. I think we all
have something like that, and this sister was trying to
find it and it was in the basement. They believed
(23:15):
it was in the basement of the home, and Matthew
would not let his sister inside the home, would not
let her in the condo. So it is the night
of July twenty sixth, and neighbors call police because Matthew
Lewinsky is outside of his condo in this communal area,
(23:38):
walking around in his underwear, nothing else, just underwear. I
don't know about you. That's not something that happens around
my house. So I would probably call the law too.
They did. Now Matthew Lewinsky taken away for observation. They
take him to the police show up, they take him
(23:59):
to the hospital because that's just not normal behavior. And
while he's gone, of course all the neighbors know, and
the condo people they all you know, running the show there,
they know that he has been taken away. There's nobody
living in the condo at the moment, and the lights
are on, lights are on nobody's home. So the condo
association reaches out to Matthew's sister Okay, Now again I
(24:23):
was clear on this that it is the sister Deborah Federico,
who is the guardian. She's in charge of dad's stuff,
right of Anthony. Now, Deborah gets the phone call from
the condo association and they're like, hey, you know your
brother was taking to the hospital last night and just
want you to know that. You know, there's nobody there,
but the lights are on, and so Deborah's like, I'll
(24:45):
take care of it. So she and her husband and
her husband, her son and a close family friend they
all go to the house, to the condo and now
they're looking at it as we can turn the lights off,
but we can look for the ceramic Christmas thing we
want without having to worry about Matthew. And so that's
(25:06):
where they go in. They're not thinking they're going to
find anything weird, but just in case, considering the fact
that Matthew was taken away to the hospital for observation
for mental issues, Deborah stays outside. She lets her husband's
son and family friend go inside the house with instructions.
This crazy now think about it. She's probably getting the
(25:28):
information about this ceramic Christmas ornament from her dad telling her, yeah,
it's in the basement. So they specifically went in to
turn out the lights and go to the basement to
find this ornament. Now, when they go in, Deborah's husband
is on FaceTime with her, so she can see and
(25:49):
kind of direct them as to where to go. When
they get to the basement, Deborah's husband sees something arms
and legs. He stops looking. He doesn't go any further.
He knows that these are arms and legs. They are
not of a mannequin. They're not a doll because they're human,
(26:13):
and he backs out and they call the police. That's
it for the family. Did not go back in there.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Joe.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
The family they saw this and they backed up. So
the family members of Anthony Lewinski, they do not go
into that home any further. Matthew Lewinski is in the hospital.
Police show up and they determine we have a body,
(26:39):
and Joe, this is not fresh. This body on the floor,
face down on top of a tarp is nude and
somebody has removed large swaths of skin from the back
of this corpse. That's what police walked into.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Joseph Scott Morgan, have you ever have you ever been
called to that? No?
Speaker 1 (27:08):
No, I've got to tell you I haven't. Now, from
an academic standpoint, I would have liked to. I would
liked to have been able to observe something like this
and try to interpret it there in place, okay, before
the body is ever removed, so that I could contextualize it.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Hey would that happen? Would they would do that?
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Right?
Speaker 2 (27:31):
I mean another body said they would not touch, move
or anything other than they would wait.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
They would wait for the medical examiner to come out.
And Michigan actually has medical examiners. They don't have a
corner system, so you would have the EMMY investigator or
the representative come out there. This is probably one of
those cases if I could get my hands on a
forensic pathologist. And Michigan's kind of interesting their system's regional
(27:59):
line there. Sometimes they'll they'll have EMMY investigators dependent upon
the size of the jurisdiction. This is Macombe County, I think,
which is just suburban Detroit, and I'm sure they do
a fine job, but yeah, I would. The reason I'm
saying this is that I would want to have the
(28:20):
forensic pathologist out there along with an EMMY investigator, just
so that they can contextualize the body to know what
they're going to be dealing with when they get the
body back to the more because this body would be
the upside. The upside from an investigative standpoint is the
(28:42):
body is not buried. Okay, You've got an exposed remain,
so you can pretty much if you blast it with
light in there, you can get an idea of what
you're dealing with. And you know, one of the more
important things that happens with the medical legal personnel at
a scene is not merely just the examination of the
(29:04):
remains and the context in which the body is found.
It's also the removal of the remains in the sense
of how the mechanics of how this is done, because
things are easily lost. So you have to and I'll
give you an example because I know this because you
mentioned it. This body was face down, okay on this tart.
(29:26):
Because if I remember correctly, the family that had gone
downstate that couldn't see the face Okay, that leads me
to believe the body is in a prone position. I
am not, under any circumstances going to roll that body
over my I can curiosity kill the cat. And this
(29:47):
is a prime example of this. I know that I'm
dealing with something that is highly complex. I've already got
the body contained on a tarp. I'm also not going
to pull the tarp from beneath the body. So what
we would do is, I would as gently as possible
fold this tart. Okay, you run the risk of transferring
(30:11):
things on the peripheral periphery of the chart of the
tarp onto the body there on the edges, but I
would gently fold this over, try to secure it. Then
I would put a white sheet, a clean white sheet,
inside of an open body bag. I would transfer in
(30:31):
total the remains in a face down position, okay, into
the bag, and then envelop the body in the clean
white sheet or the tarp, and all inside the clean
white sheet deepending upon how big the tarp is, all right,
is it manageable? Now there are people don't realize that
(30:52):
there are oversized body bags. Most medical examiners have them
because we have people that are really big many times.
And so I would probably use one of those and
zip that body up, transport the body in that state
so that you don't you do as little as you
possibly can to alter the pristine nature of the position
(31:15):
of the body. And get the body back to the
morgue and essentially unwrap it level by level to do
the examination. Because Dave, you're already saying that what they
could see at the scene were large patches of skin
that have been removed. And I know that our friends
out there know what I'm about to say, because you've
(31:35):
all seen the movie. This is Thomas Harris. This sounds
exactly like Silence of Lambs with the character of Buffalo Bill,
where he would try to go after larger women or
increase their size by feeding them and then kill them
and skin them. And he would take take off of
(31:57):
the back. And because Dave, I got to tell you,
I don't I don't recall. I know that there are
cases where bodies have been skinned over the years, but
this is very specific where you're going to the to
the posterior chest, the back and you're slicing away skin.
I think one of the other questions that is that
(32:20):
I would have where's that skin? What did you do
with it?
Speaker 2 (32:26):
I know you're at it, laying about somewhere else.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
I don't know, And Joe, that's I looked. I was
trying to find something that would indicate what why this
was done, what was going on. But again, now remember
we know that Matthew Lewinsky is at the time they're
finding the body is in the hospital right because of
(32:50):
a mental psychologe. Something's going on with him. And the
thing is he's been living with the decomposing body of
his former girlfriend for seven months. I mean, that's going
to play on you a little bit.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
I would think, yeah, I would think so too, and
run around the front yard. Were your drawers? You know,
here's your sign? Kind of an interesting, interesting perspective, But
I think the more interesting perspective here is to try
to understand exactly what did the medical examiner find, or
(33:23):
should I say, what was left that they could examine
and find evidence of back at the morgue. You know, Dave,
when you you handle a case like this in the
(33:47):
medical legal community, this is not something that is lightly undertaken.
You'll you'll have time, and I've done this many times
over the course of my career. You call back to
the office and this is what we have coming in,
you know, and you this is not some standard you know,
(34:08):
somebody got shot on the sidewalk and we're gonna, you know,
collect the remains after we document seen, we're gonna run
back and we're gonna do the autopsy and go through
all that. No, no, no, this is one of these things
where it's a it's kind of an all hands on deck.
It's like, well, first off, we're gonna go ahead and
heat up the X ray machine, right, and we've talked
(34:28):
about this before. I'm X raying that body in the
back before I ever open the bag at all, because
we know that there's an instrument involved in this. Now
this might be just a post mortem event, but I
can't you know, if you're you're kind of walking around,
you know, in the dark without a cane because you
(34:50):
don't have the story, the narrative fully yet. So from
the top of the head to the soles of the feet,
we're gonna do a full body x ray, you know,
in the back and before we ever, before we ever
open it, because what I'm looking for are any evidence
is first off, I don't know if the person's been
(35:11):
shot or not. I might have a lead trail that's
in there. Plus if they're decomposed, you're not going to
be able to pick up on what may or may
not be firearms related defects in the body. So you
look for those lead storms. We call them lead storms,
and it's like where projectile might fragment. I'm also going
(35:34):
to look for the tips of knife blades. I'll even
look for knife blades that might be broken off in
the body. Because you've got somebody here that has desecrated
the dead. Okay, this is not and they've abused a corpse,
so to you can't take the measure of that. You
can't take the measure of what they did, what instruments
they used, So you never know what's left behind in
(35:56):
the body. And you say, well, Morgan, that the purpose
of the X rays, Well, purpose of the X rays
first off, is to use them in court. But I
think the over over arking view here is if there's
anything there, I have to have a roadmap. That's why. Okay,
(36:17):
that's why doctors use X rays and any kind of
imaging when they're treating you, right, I mean we've all
been through X rays and MRIs and cat skins and
all sorts of things there. That's a roadmap for see,
if there's got to be some kind of surgical intervention,
you want to know where you're going, right, You have
to And so before you just go in there blindly,
(36:39):
you know, with with instruments looking for something you don't
know what's there. That's one of the things that we
do the toughest that you know what one of the
toughest things about X raying through a body bag is
with the body inside of it, or discerning between the
zippers and the rivets, and then also if they're wearing
close right, because you'll see like you know, like a peer,
(37:01):
I'm thinking Levi's right now in the metal buttons and
the zipper and then the ripets like on the rivets
rather that you have on the pockets the watch pocket
that you know it's in a traditional pair of levi us.
You know, you come across those little things, but you
you learn how to discern like, okay, that's that's garment related.
It's not necessarily you know, so sayd with that.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Joe. Let me ask you because we know that the
story and I was trying to be clear on this
when I was telling the story of what happened, because
we're only getting one side of this story, and it's
coming from the suspect, Matthew Lewinsky. We only have what
he told police from his hospital room after he had
the mental issue, a cycle lot, whatever you call that.
(37:42):
And when you're looking at the remains in this case,
where you know they based on what Lewinsky has said,
you know or you think you know how long the
remains have been down there is there a way to
determine when the actually transpired because he could be lying,
he might not be telling you the truth. Is there
(38:04):
a way looking at this body to know when or
about when this person met their end?
Speaker 1 (38:11):
I think so. I bet you're surprised I'm saying that,
but I think so because this is not a body
that's been cast adrift in the wilderness. It's not even
a body that's been placed into a clay bank underneath
the house and buried or buried in the backyard. Okay,
this is a body that is laid out on I'm
(38:33):
assuming you know, the concrete floor of a basement slab
on a tarp. Now that the only problem that you're
going to run into that might compromise anything if there's
any rodents in the house. And yes, rodents feast on
the dead. So you can disabuse yourself of the thought
(38:54):
that you've got a cute little mouse that's around or
you know, we all know about rats, right, so, yeah,
they do, they do.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
And then you've.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Got you've got flies that would have come in with
with maggot development. And you're gonna have all of that
stuff to deal with too, all the husk they're lying about.
But you know, Dave, the body that in and of
itself is going to give you. And of course we
have to look, we can't believe everything he's saying, but
up to this point he's actually saying, yeah, I choked
(39:23):
her out, you know, and yes, she was nude. You know,
those are two things that you might be able to confirm.
We know at least that he's saying that he choked
her out. He's not fleeing from that, okay.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Yeah, And he even said how long he choked her? Actually,
oh lord, And he said he held her with his
left hand for thirty seconds. And they mentioned thirty seconds
as in that she was really struggling. But he continued
and I don't know if he did this like I'm
a man, I did it with one hand. I don't
know what the point is, but he did say tell
(39:59):
him please. He continued to hold her for five minutes
until she stopped moving. Until she stopped breathing, and so
he knew she was dead. He strangled the life out
of this woman. Yeah, with one hand. And I want
to remind you of something. Yeah, they met in April.
They had several disagreements. She moved in with him very quickly,
(40:21):
and this happened in December. Joe, they didn't know one
another for a full twelve months before he is able
to use one hand and take the life from her body.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
I'm really wondering if this was some kind of psycho
sexual thing that went on to I wonder what their
relationship is like, because you know, that's a you know,
going back to the idea that he leaves the rooms,
he comes back and she's nude. Yeah, And I've wondered
if this was some kind of maybe sex play that
had occurred early on, you know, or you know, something
(40:56):
to that effect, because you know, the choking part of
this that you're describing, that's what's referred to as a
sea clamp.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Really, I can't wait a minute. I cannot believe that
that has a dagon.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Yeah it's a sea clamp. Yeah, it's a sea clamp.
That's what it's referred to. As you know, and most
of the time when you have somebody that is trying
to commit a homicide, it needs to be strangling. They're
going to use throttling. This is called throttling where you
use both hands, either from the front or the back.
You know, the sea clamp thing sounds like a control thing.
(41:30):
Now you can kill somebody, you know doing this, because
you can. Actually one thing you can do is you
can crush the layernix in here. You know that the
actual you know, windpipe by doing that, but you're also compressing.
You're compressing, say, the crotids right here, and the crotids
supply obygenated blood to the brain, and so the person
(41:52):
will you know, dive a noxia essentially. Now here's here's
the trick. The condition of the body is fascinating to
me when you think about what's left behind. Now we
know that there is enough left behind so that whoever
is observing her they can actually appreciate that. There are
(42:14):
cut marks on the back that kind of define that
skin has been removed. This is not like she's turned
into and forgive me for saying this, into some kind
of soupy mess. There are still lines of delineation here. Okay,
So that begs the question when the neck is reflected.
And when I say reflected, that's the term that we
(42:36):
use in autopsies. Surgeons use it as well. But you
reflect the neck, which means you do the dissection, the
wy incision, and you reflect it push it back up,
and that way we're going to be looking at the
organs of the neck and could you still pick up
on any hemorrhage in there? Even though she's in this
advance because he's being very specific day he's talking about
(42:59):
utilizing a seak. Well that pressure those pressure points are
very specific to an adult male's hand, So you're going
to be looking in one particular region that might only
communicate with a thumb that will be very specific for
hemorrhage here. And then you've got four other elements here
(43:20):
that create a broader patch of hemorrhage in the syria.
So it's just something that we have to you know,
that we have to think about.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
It's just this is one of those stories show that
you know, on the surface, you're thinking that a guy
kills his girlfriend and then lives with her body for
seven months, kind of like you know Psycho, the movie Psycho,
And yet really and truly I think You're looking at
a situation where you didn't know what to do. You know,
he's a thirty seven year old guy who's living in
(43:50):
his dad's basement. You know, I'm just I'm I'm really
at a loss for what people do to one another,
you know, boggles the mind, and I'm wondering. You know,
I do know this. This case has been adjudicated, Joe.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
Yeah, I was going to ask you about that, yep.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
And why did it.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
Take so long? I mean we're talking about years. Have
did this psychopathology play into this?
Speaker 2 (44:16):
You know, Joe, there's a lot that played into this.
But when it came right down to it, yeah, hey man,
you're set to stand trial. Okay, you can try whatever
you want. You can try to play it off. No,
they went with, yeah, you're a good standing trial. He
was convicted. Joe. I want to run down the list
for you, because I got it right. Please do convicted
(44:38):
a first degree premeditated murder, mutilation of a dead body,
and concealing the death of an individual. And at trial,
during the closing arguments, I kid you not, the defense
actually tried to say that Lewinsky was the victim, that
(44:58):
he had been the victim abuse at the hands of
his girlfriend, even though he strangled her out, as you say,
with a sea clamp. We have Their argument obviously didn't work,
and the prosecution pointed out, you know that while he's
got his hand on her neck Joe for five minutes,
watching the life leave her body. During that every second
(45:23):
he has the chance to let go. Every second for
five minutes, he has the chance to let go. Every
second is a choice to end her life. So prosecution
won the case and he is convicted of everything.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
Well, it's certainly fascinating. The case in and of itself
is fascinating. But you know me, I've often said my
friends know this, and people that followed me for some time,
I don't necessarily believe in ghost Out of all the
dead bodies I've ever been around, I've never had an apparition.
I'm not begging for it. I'm just saying it never
(45:58):
happened to me. I do believe that places are haunted.
Do you ever sit back and scratch your head, wonder
if these walls could talk. I'm thinking about that condo
right now, I'm thinking about the next people that might
occupy that space, and if those walls could talk, what
a tale they would tell, I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
(46:21):
this is body bags,
Quality Bus with Joseph Scott More. I haven't had a
basement in a home in a long time, but I
don't know. I think that it's places i've lived. I've
tried to get inexpensive houses, and most of those are
(00:22):
ranches that are built back in the sixties, maybe late fifties,
and I do like them. But you know, for the
most part, with ranch style homes that are built during
that period of time, they only have a crawl space.
And crawl space in and of itself gives me chills
because I always think of John Wayne Gacy, right, But
(00:44):
most of them have crawl spaces. But I don't have
a basement. I haven't had a basement in a long time,
and of course that comes with problems, doesn't it anyone
that has one, you know, you think about flooding and
think about having to go up and down those stairs.
Would be nice to have one, though I always wanted
to have a man cave. Never had one of those.
(01:05):
But today I want to talk about the basement of
not just a standalone home but a condo, which is
kind of interesting, and about a man that occupied that
space for some period of time. He called it home.
That's where he hung his hat and his guar keys.
But that home was also occupied by someone else, or
(01:32):
should I say the remains of someone else, because when
they finally found out what was in the basement, it's
something that I can only imagine the finders will be
scarred by for the rest of their lives. I'm Joseph
(01:52):
Scott Morgan and this is body Backs. You like your
basement day. You got a basement, don't you.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
I have not really the traditional basement, Joe. I have
like I have a tri level home. Oh okay, okay, yeah,
so when you go down to the basement area of
the garage, it's like this two and a half car garage,
but it's at the lower level of everything. So technically, yeah,
you go downstairs, so you could be the basement. But no,
I've never actually had a basement. I've always had a
(02:23):
lower level in the house over the last couple of houses,
but I've never actually had the traditional basement, you know.
But I do have a place where I could have
a man cave, but now I don't need one anymore.
I mean the house is a man cave now. But
you know the thing about this one, Joe. The thing
that got me In this particular case, we're dealing with
a man named Matthew Lewinsky, and Matthew Lewinsky at the
(02:49):
time this took place as a thirty seven year old man.
Now he is living in his father's condo and it
has a basement. Living in his father's condo because his
dad has some medical issues and Matthew's sister is the guardian.
She's taking over everything, all of her dad's affairs. To
(03:13):
give you an idea, the dad was he was dealing
with a lot of medical issues Joe, and he did
pass away, but right after this happened. Now, when Matthew
is living in this condo, he also has a girlfriend
that he meets in April of the year that we're
dealing with, okay, and she moves in with him. So
(03:38):
you've got Matthew and his girlfriend. Her name is Courtney
Jerry Winters. Courtney moves in with Matthew Lewinsky. Now, the
problem here is that Matthew has been there for a
couple of years and he hasn't been real communicative with
the family about anything. And at one point, now you
(03:59):
got to remember, this is not his condo. He's living
in the condo that's owned by his dad. His dad
has a guardian that would be Matthew's older sister. Now
here's your quack, Joe, you're ready, I'm ready, brother hit me.
Based on the family's interaction with Miss Winters, Yes, the
(04:20):
guardian was paying for the utilities from the dad, Anthony Lewinsky.
Everything was still in his name, and so Matthew's not
paying for anything. Wow, somebody else.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Will hang on, how old is this child?
Speaker 2 (04:37):
He is thirty seven at the time this takes place. Yeah,
thirty seven years, late thirties, and he's living in his
dad's condo. His dad has a guardian because he is
not capable of, you know, being on his own anyway.
So it's one of those situations where, based on how
this plays out, other family members are doing fine. Nobody
is really interested in this condo. You know, it's dad's
(04:59):
and when dad is gone, we'll probably let it go,
which they did. But in the meantime, little brother is
living in the condo and everybody else is footing the
bill for things. It got so ugly that his girlfriend
at one point, in one of the very few exchanges
the family had with this girlfriend, she was yelling and
(05:20):
screaming at them on the phone, threatening to call the
police over them paying the power bill on time. You're
living rent free and as somebody else's house, they're putting
the bill for your utilities, and you're threatening with calling
the police for family members to pay the utility bills
for your boyfriend. Think about that from then, Well.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
It seems like a small price to pay to have
a free roof over your head and the comforts which
come along, you know, because this is up in Michigan,
so they're going to need heat, right and they've got electricity.
You know, it seems that, you know, probably in this
person's mind, probably an argument is a small price to
pay to be able to continue to sponge along with
(06:03):
the sun.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
That's small advicement. Man.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Yeah, I can stand yelling and screaming. I can even
you know, even threaten you with being arrested, you know, but.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
You don't pay my power bill, I'm calling the cops.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Anyhow, this is what happened. Joe Matthew Lewinsky is not
talking to the family, he's not letting them come in.
As a matter of fact, sister comes over to check
on the condo and he wanted to let her come
in the house. Now stay away, but the girlfriend, Miss Winters,
she gets into a rugby with him on November. Okay, no,
(06:40):
they met in April, started dating. She moves in with him.
By November, they're having so many fights over bills. She
moves out. She comes back a couple of weeks later
to pay a visit on mister Lewinsky, and in that
visit she says, Hey, I had an abortion. You want
to have a child abortion? Apparently, he goes into the
(07:03):
kitchen to make some tea. When he comes back, she's
sitting naked in the recliner and he proceeds to strangle her.
Joe Matthew Lewinsky strangles Miss Winters to death in the recliner.
He put his hands around her throat or no, one
hand on her throat for five minutes and strangled the
(07:28):
life out of this woman.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Let me ask you something did her in between the
time he left the room and went into the kitchen.
Did her clothes just miraculously fall off? Was there a
gravitational force that just kind of pulled them off? It's
an interesting interaction. I think that she has not been there.
She comes back, you know, and they were fighting prior
(07:52):
to she comes back into this dwelling and this pronouncement
that she makes, oh, by the bye, I had an abortion,
and then he leaves the room, her clothes are off.
You know, I don't know. First off, I think, you know,
one of the big questions I would have is did
(08:15):
she in fact actually have an abortion? I don't know
if there's any way that you could, you know, validate that.
And you know, what's the proof of this? Do you
think that perhaps she was needling him in some way?
I mean it kind of kind of sounds that that
way to me. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
The sad reality, Joe is the entire story that I
just told you, Yeah, comes from Matthew Lewin Lewinsky. Wow,
he's the only source. The only source for our story
comes from the man who admits he put his left
hand around her throat and choked the life out of
her for five minutes. That he choked her until she
(08:56):
stopped squirming. So kind of an asterisk, you know, next
to this story. Because he's trying to create a story
that justifies him killing a woman he's involved with, and
he thinks in his brain that it again he's having
to come up with something, you know, to justify the
murder of somebody, and he thinks in his mind, well,
(09:19):
if I was told that she had an abortion, that
would drive me to murder. That's just fiable homicide. That's
all I can think of. But what happens next, Joe,
is the reason we're talking about the story, believe it.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Or not, huh was if that wasn't enough, Okay, go ahead,
hit me.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
You always talk about the shovel, and at the bottom
of that, you know, yeah, well break out the shovel,
because we got deeper to go. Okay. After killing miss Winters,
Lewinsky drags her body down to the basement. He then
begins to I don't know when he did it, but
(09:58):
at some point in time he starts hacking away at
her body. He starts removing large swaths of skin from
her back, and he leaves her in the basement on
a tart and then goes back upstairs and resumes life.
(10:22):
This is from Matthew Lewinsky's story. Now, living in a
condominium complex where you have neighbors that are nearby, neighbors
close enough to say, hey, yeah, we heard them arguing
over money. You know, we heard those arguments, which you know,
that's bad. But then they don't see her. She's moved out, supposedly,
(10:42):
and they have the smell. Now, yeah, you've talked about
the smell of human decay and how you really can't
tell the difference in decay from human to animal and
things like that. The decay is decay, right, yes, And
neighbors talked about maybe it's trash, you know, that's gone back.
There's any number of things, but neighbors notice. They noticed
(11:04):
enough that one of the neighbors, Joe, says that when
she would get out of her car, she would pull
her shirt up over her nose to go running inside
of her Holy smokes, that's how bad the odor was. Now,
I'm gonna be honest with you. If I'm living somewhere
like that, I'm calling somebody, Hey man, something's gone wrong,
really wrong. But nobody did. It took seven months, Joe,
(11:29):
seven months.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
So just so that I'm understanding this, I'm tracking here. Okay,
the neighbors had actually been aware of the smell, and
they were, they were it was in dwelling. Were they
able to pin it down to Lewinsky's actual apartment. I
think is that the is that the source is that
(11:51):
the origin, because you know it would I gotta tell you.
And this is just my own perspective. I'm banging on
somebody's door, you know, I want to know if you're
dead and they are you in there. That's just me.
I'm a death investigator right now. I want to know
what's going on on the other side of that door,
because the odor is so incredibly foul, and if not,
(12:14):
I want to know what is dead because it's impacting
my life. Particularly if condos which might abut each other,
and that's generally the definition of condo, that smell can
leap through the wall. Right, So if I'm smelling that
while I'm laying in bed, you know, I've just gotten
(12:36):
out of the bathtub. I've had a nice refreshing hot soak,
you know, to wash off all the worries of the day.
I've got my satin robe on, I've got my pipe
in my hand and my silk slippers, and there I am.
And I'm not smoking the pipe because I enjoy the
smell of the pipe. I'm trying to mask the odor
that's coming through. And this can happen. I've I've actually
(13:01):
worked cases like this where people were just going about
their own business. And I even write about a story
in my memoir that I think the title of the
chapter is called red Beans is the name of it.
And it had to do with a guy that had
(13:23):
died in a bathtub in New Orleans and he was
decomposing and the water, the water was dripping through the ceiling.
And it was a single mom and her son and
they had been alerted to the smell and they had
complained to the landlord about this. And my friend, who
(13:46):
was a police officer, showed up at the scene. I
was there. We went down to interview her and we
looked up on the ceiling there was this gigantic water spot.
And in New Orleans, for folks that don't know, Mondays
are red beans and rice day. There's a long history
about red beans and rice in New Orleans. So I'm
personally when I make my red beans, I'm a long
(14:07):
soak guy. And people in South Louisiana I know what
that is. I soaked my beans for twenty four hours.
I put half cup of red wine in a little
bit of garlic. I just let it sit. But that's
another show for another time. This poor mother, I'll never
forget it who lived there with her son. We walked
in wet spot on the ceiling and the water from
(14:30):
the tub with the rotting body is dripping right into
her soaking beans. And I know, right, And so you
have this communication that goes on. By the way story ended, interestingly,
my friend that was the detective back then, this was
in the eighties. She didn't have any money, you know,
(14:51):
single mom, she's working. He gives her twenty bucks and says,
dinner's on the sheriff's office, y'all go. And he did
something that is kind of foreboding. If you're in South
Louisiana and you have a red bean pot, which is
(15:12):
very specific. I mean you use it only to soak
your beans and cook them in. We both took the
pot out and put it in the dumpster, and we
left her another twenty bucks to buy another pot, and
we left her a note. And I remember him going
going to going to the landlord that was there and
(15:37):
literally putting this guy against the wall. He said, let
me tell you something, this better be repaired by tomorrow.
You've got this woman with a small child, get out here,
fix this immediately, and tell her not to use that stove.
As a matter of fact, we prefer that you replace
a stove as well. And you know, on the landlords
like you know, like this, but you know, that's one
(15:58):
of those little things. And when you're when you're living
in a non detached environment and there's people that can
tell stories like this. I'm not the only one all
over the place. I'm sure that our friends out there
have stories, like you've heard some of the most horrible
things come through your wall, and I've had that happen too,
(16:18):
And I'm thinking, I'm paying money for this. I don't
want to hear what's going on next door at all.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
I don't want to hear what's.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Going on above me, you know. But anyway you think
about this, and what's interesting is how these things are
put together, these dwellings, because when you occupy a space that,
let's face it, the only thing that's separating you is
you know, sheets of sheet rock, gypsum, and it's coming through,
(16:46):
it's permeating. Maybe you have a shared air handler, maybe
that smell cycles through that building. But I can tell
you this, there's one thing you can never escape. First off,
death is coming to us all. But when you're near it,
you can never escape the smell of death. Dave, this
(17:18):
might be well. I won't say it's the most disgusting
case we've ever covered, because we really covered some disgusting things. Yeah, however,
it is troubling. I think you know being mild.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
You're being mild there, buddy.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
It is And I really set the tenor with the
story about the red beans, right, But let.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Me ask you a question before we go too much
for the I gotta ask you this though, because you mentioned,
you know, and that red beans story is important. You're
not going to talk about that if we get done. Yeah,
all right, is it possible. I'm giving an example. I
was living in Charleston, South Carolina, and you come in
on I twenty six. Yeah, to go into Charleston and
(17:57):
I twenty six at money, you as where I remember
he's smelling the paper mill, which has a very specific
smell that it hits you big time when you get there.
And yeah, yeah, you think this, I can't live here.
This is enough to not live here.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
I know what you're about to say.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
In a matter of days, you don't recognize it anymore,
you don't even smell it. It's not that way with
with decaying flesh, is it?
Speaker 1 (18:23):
I don't. I don't think it is. My granny also
had two paper mills in the town up in North
Louisiana that were when the wind was right. You wouldn't
smell it every day, but you would, but you know,
you kind of get used to it. Uh, it becomes part.
And I've had people say to me that are in
the paper industry. You know, They'll say that that funky
(18:44):
odor is a smell of money, and it truly is,
you know, and a place depends upon the mill, you know,
to keep you know, to keep things going and whatnot.
But yeah, the smell of death. Though it's very difficult
to differentiate between say, animals and humans. It always has
been for me. Maybe some people have more discriminating all
(19:05):
factory senses, perhaps, but I don't because I've been adjacent
to writing animals and writing humans, and I can't really
tell the difference. And I've been around a lot of
decomposing bodies. I don't think that it's something that you
necessarily warm up to or that just becomes because let
me tell you this. Also, even though I wouldn't say
(19:30):
it would be an overstatement to say that I was
around a decomposing body every single day that I worked
at the Emmy's office. That's unreasonable, you know, you just
you can't say that I did go into the decomp
room at least every other day, and when I would
enter there and that smell, no matter how much you
scrub it, that smell is always there. That's where we
(19:51):
store the decomp bodies. And then when I would go
on scenes, when I would go on scenes again, I
would have to get acclimated to it. Wow, and I
would force my way through it, just in my brain
to say, Okay, this is the reality of what I'm doing.
And I had to do this early on in my
career because if you get distracted by the smell, you're
(20:14):
going to miss details. And if you're missing details, you
don't need to be an investigator period into paragraphs. So
it's not something I will tell you this. I've had
people that smelled differently than other people in the stages
of decomposition, and I think it goes to stages, and
it also goes to the environment. It's if you put
(20:35):
two bodies adjacent to one another and say in a
controlled environment, and they're in the same environment, and the
bodies are decomposing at the same rate. I don't know
that you could differentiate between it, but depend upon the
stage that the body is in. And listen, it actually
waxes and wanes though, okay, like it as you're as
(20:58):
it is starting, as the puture faction phase is starting,
You've got the autolytic phase, the tholysis rather that's going
on within the body. After that leaches out and the
puture factions taking place, it's beginning to ramp up that smell,
but it will begin to slowly wane over a period
(21:19):
of time. Now I've been encrypts, I've been under houses
where I have skeletal remains, and you won't smell decomp
A dog probably could. It's got kind of a musty
odor to it many times, and I would have to
ask myself, does it smell musty because I'm in a
basement or I'm adjacent to a body that you know,
(21:41):
I'm digging out of a wall in a basement or
in a crypt you know, where a body is being exhumed,
or or is this is this actually just the natural
smell you know that would come along with it. But
it does go through phases. I have to say, and
I think that with our case today, I'm curious if
(22:05):
to smell ever, if the smell ever did begin to
wane Dave.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Well, know, Joe, one of the things that I paid
attention to in this I was trying to figure out.
You know, you have a number of people besides the neighbors.
You have family members of Matthew Lewinsky that were concerned
about the state of the home, of the condo. It
was owned by their father, Anthony, and he was not
doing well, so they needed to know the state of
his property. Now Matthew living there, I'm sure they probably
(22:33):
felt and I know I would have. I've been like, well,
at least there's somebody manning the four you know, there's
somebody there. But here's the catch we already have. Well,
you guys know what the neighbors didn't know is that
Matthew Lewinsky kills his girlfriend. She's now in the basement
and her body is there. And seven months go by.
(22:53):
Now during this time period, Joe, the whole time Lewinsky
is living in the house, his sister is trying to
not just get up with him, but they're looking for
a very specific Christmas ornament. It's a ceramic Christmas ornament
that it's important to the family. I think we all
have something like that, and this sister was trying to
find it and it was in the basement. They believed
(23:15):
it was in the basement of the home, and Matthew
would not let his sister inside the home, would not
let her in the condo. So it is the night
of July twenty sixth, and neighbors call police because Matthew
Lewinsky is outside of his condo in this communal area,
(23:38):
walking around in his underwear, nothing else, just underwear. I
don't know about you. That's not something that happens around
my house. So I would probably call the law too.
They did. Now Matthew Lewinsky taken away for observation. They
take him to the police show up, they take him
(23:59):
to the hospital because that's just not normal behavior. And
while he's gone, of course all the neighbors know, and
the condo people they all you know, running the show there,
they know that he has been taken away. There's nobody
living in the condo at the moment, and the lights
are on, lights are on nobody's home. So the condo
association reaches out to Matthew's sister Okay, Now again I
(24:23):
was clear on this that it is the sister Deborah Federico,
who is the guardian. She's in charge of dad's stuff,
right of Anthony. Now, Deborah gets the phone call from
the condo association and they're like, hey, you know your
brother was taking to the hospital last night and just
want you to know that. You know, there's nobody there,
but the lights are on, and so Deborah's like, I'll
(24:45):
take care of it. So she and her husband and
her husband, her son and a close family friend they
all go to the house, to the condo and now
they're looking at it as we can turn the lights off,
but we can look for the ceramic Christmas thing we
want without having to worry about Matthew. And so that's
(25:06):
where they go in. They're not thinking they're going to
find anything weird, but just in case, considering the fact
that Matthew was taken away to the hospital for observation
for mental issues, Deborah stays outside. She lets her husband's
son and family friend go inside the house with instructions.
This crazy now think about it. She's probably getting the
(25:28):
information about this ceramic Christmas ornament from her dad telling her, yeah,
it's in the basement. So they specifically went in to
turn out the lights and go to the basement to
find this ornament. Now, when they go in, Deborah's husband
is on FaceTime with her, so she can see and
(25:49):
kind of direct them as to where to go. When
they get to the basement, Deborah's husband sees something arms
and legs. He stops looking. He doesn't go any further.
He knows that these are arms and legs. They are
not of a mannequin. They're not a doll because they're human,
(26:13):
and he backs out and they call the police. That's
it for the family. Did not go back in there.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Joe.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
The family they saw this and they backed up. So
the family members of Anthony Lewinski, they do not go
into that home any further. Matthew Lewinski is in the hospital.
Police show up and they determine we have a body,
(26:39):
and Joe, this is not fresh. This body on the floor,
face down on top of a tarp is nude and
somebody has removed large swaths of skin from the back
of this corpse. That's what police walked into.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Joseph Scott Morgan, have you ever have you ever been
called to that? No?
Speaker 1 (27:08):
No, I've got to tell you I haven't. Now, from
an academic standpoint, I would have liked to. I would
liked to have been able to observe something like this
and try to interpret it there in place, okay, before
the body is ever removed, so that I could contextualize it.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Hey would that happen? Would they would do that?
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Right?
Speaker 2 (27:31):
I mean another body said they would not touch, move
or anything other than they would wait.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
They would wait for the medical examiner to come out.
And Michigan actually has medical examiners. They don't have a
corner system, so you would have the EMMY investigator or
the representative come out there. This is probably one of
those cases if I could get my hands on a
forensic pathologist. And Michigan's kind of interesting their system's regional
(27:59):
line there. Sometimes they'll they'll have EMMY investigators dependent upon
the size of the jurisdiction. This is Macombe County, I think,
which is just suburban Detroit, and I'm sure they do
a fine job, but yeah, I would. The reason I'm
saying this is that I would want to have the
(28:20):
forensic pathologist out there along with an EMMY investigator, just
so that they can contextualize the body to know what
they're going to be dealing with when they get the
body back to the more because this body would be
the upside. The upside from an investigative standpoint is the
(28:42):
body is not buried. Okay, You've got an exposed remain,
so you can pretty much if you blast it with
light in there, you can get an idea of what
you're dealing with. And you know, one of the more
important things that happens with the medical legal personnel at
a scene is not merely just the examination of the
(29:04):
remains and the context in which the body is found.
It's also the removal of the remains in the sense
of how the mechanics of how this is done, because
things are easily lost. So you have to and I'll
give you an example because I know this because you
mentioned it. This body was face down, okay on this tart.
(29:26):
Because if I remember correctly, the family that had gone
downstate that couldn't see the face Okay, that leads me
to believe the body is in a prone position. I
am not, under any circumstances going to roll that body
over my I can curiosity kill the cat. And this
(29:47):
is a prime example of this. I know that I'm
dealing with something that is highly complex. I've already got
the body contained on a tarp. I'm also not going
to pull the tarp from beneath the body. So what
we would do is, I would as gently as possible
fold this tart. Okay, you run the risk of transferring
(30:11):
things on the peripheral periphery of the chart of the
tarp onto the body there on the edges, but I
would gently fold this over, try to secure it. Then
I would put a white sheet, a clean white sheet,
inside of an open body bag. I would transfer in
(30:31):
total the remains in a face down position, okay, into
the bag, and then envelop the body in the clean
white sheet or the tarp, and all inside the clean
white sheet deepending upon how big the tarp is, all right,
is it manageable? Now there are people don't realize that
(30:52):
there are oversized body bags. Most medical examiners have them
because we have people that are really big many times.
And so I would probably use one of those and
zip that body up, transport the body in that state
so that you don't you do as little as you
possibly can to alter the pristine nature of the position
(31:15):
of the body. And get the body back to the
morgue and essentially unwrap it level by level to do
the examination. Because Dave, you're already saying that what they
could see at the scene were large patches of skin
that have been removed. And I know that our friends
out there know what I'm about to say, because you've
(31:35):
all seen the movie. This is Thomas Harris. This sounds
exactly like Silence of Lambs with the character of Buffalo Bill,
where he would try to go after larger women or
increase their size by feeding them and then kill them
and skin them. And he would take take off of
(31:57):
the back. And because Dave, I got to tell you,
I don't I don't recall. I know that there are
cases where bodies have been skinned over the years, but
this is very specific where you're going to the to
the posterior chest, the back and you're slicing away skin.
I think one of the other questions that is that
(32:20):
I would have where's that skin? What did you do
with it?
Speaker 2 (32:26):
I know you're at it, laying about somewhere else.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
I don't know, And Joe, that's I looked. I was
trying to find something that would indicate what why this
was done, what was going on. But again, now remember
we know that Matthew Lewinsky is at the time they're
finding the body is in the hospital right because of
(32:50):
a mental psychologe. Something's going on with him. And the
thing is he's been living with the decomposing body of
his former girlfriend for seven months. I mean, that's going
to play on you a little bit.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
I would think, yeah, I would think so too, and
run around the front yard. Were your drawers? You know,
here's your sign? Kind of an interesting, interesting perspective, But
I think the more interesting perspective here is to try
to understand exactly what did the medical examiner find, or
(33:23):
should I say, what was left that they could examine
and find evidence of back at the morgue. You know, Dave,
when you you handle a case like this in the
(33:47):
medical legal community, this is not something that is lightly undertaken.
You'll you'll have time, and I've done this many times
over the course of my career. You call back to
the office and this is what we have coming in,
you know, and you this is not some standard you know,
(34:08):
somebody got shot on the sidewalk and we're gonna, you know,
collect the remains after we document seen, we're gonna run
back and we're gonna do the autopsy and go through
all that. No, no, no, this is one of these things
where it's a it's kind of an all hands on deck.
It's like, well, first off, we're gonna go ahead and
heat up the X ray machine, right, and we've talked
(34:28):
about this before. I'm X raying that body in the
back before I ever open the bag at all, because
we know that there's an instrument involved in this. Now
this might be just a post mortem event, but I
can't you know, if you're you're kind of walking around,
you know, in the dark without a cane because you
(34:50):
don't have the story, the narrative fully yet. So from
the top of the head to the soles of the feet,
we're gonna do a full body x ray, you know,
in the back and before we ever, before we ever
open it, because what I'm looking for are any evidence
is first off, I don't know if the person's been
(35:11):
shot or not. I might have a lead trail that's
in there. Plus if they're decomposed, you're not going to
be able to pick up on what may or may
not be firearms related defects in the body. So you
look for those lead storms. We call them lead storms,
and it's like where projectile might fragment. I'm also going
(35:34):
to look for the tips of knife blades. I'll even
look for knife blades that might be broken off in
the body. Because you've got somebody here that has desecrated
the dead. Okay, this is not and they've abused a corpse,
so to you can't take the measure of that. You
can't take the measure of what they did, what instruments
they used, So you never know what's left behind in
(35:56):
the body. And you say, well, Morgan, that the purpose
of the X rays, Well, purpose of the X rays
first off, is to use them in court. But I
think the over over arking view here is if there's
anything there, I have to have a roadmap. That's why. Okay,
(36:17):
that's why doctors use X rays and any kind of
imaging when they're treating you, right, I mean we've all
been through X rays and MRIs and cat skins and
all sorts of things there. That's a roadmap for see,
if there's got to be some kind of surgical intervention,
you want to know where you're going, right, You have
to And so before you just go in there blindly,
(36:39):
you know, with with instruments looking for something you don't
know what's there. That's one of the things that we
do the toughest that you know what one of the
toughest things about X raying through a body bag is
with the body inside of it, or discerning between the
zippers and the rivets, and then also if they're wearing
close right, because you'll see like you know, like a peer,
(37:01):
I'm thinking Levi's right now in the metal buttons and
the zipper and then the ripets like on the rivets
rather that you have on the pockets the watch pocket
that you know it's in a traditional pair of levi us.
You know, you come across those little things, but you
you learn how to discern like, okay, that's that's garment related.
It's not necessarily you know, so sayd with that.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Joe. Let me ask you because we know that the
story and I was trying to be clear on this
when I was telling the story of what happened, because
we're only getting one side of this story, and it's
coming from the suspect, Matthew Lewinsky. We only have what
he told police from his hospital room after he had
the mental issue, a cycle lot, whatever you call that.
(37:42):
And when you're looking at the remains in this case,
where you know they based on what Lewinsky has said,
you know or you think you know how long the
remains have been down there is there a way to
determine when the actually transpired because he could be lying,
he might not be telling you the truth. Is there
(38:04):
a way looking at this body to know when or
about when this person met their end?
Speaker 1 (38:11):
I think so. I bet you're surprised I'm saying that,
but I think so because this is not a body
that's been cast adrift in the wilderness. It's not even
a body that's been placed into a clay bank underneath
the house and buried or buried in the backyard. Okay,
this is a body that is laid out on I'm
(38:33):
assuming you know, the concrete floor of a basement slab
on a tarp. Now that the only problem that you're
going to run into that might compromise anything if there's
any rodents in the house. And yes, rodents feast on
the dead. So you can disabuse yourself of the thought
(38:54):
that you've got a cute little mouse that's around or
you know, we all know about rats, right, so, yeah,
they do, they do.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
And then you've.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Got you've got flies that would have come in with
with maggot development. And you're gonna have all of that
stuff to deal with too, all the husk they're lying about.
But you know, Dave, the body that in and of
itself is going to give you. And of course we
have to look, we can't believe everything he's saying, but
up to this point he's actually saying, yeah, I choked
(39:23):
her out, you know, and yes, she was nude. You know,
those are two things that you might be able to confirm.
We know at least that he's saying that he choked
her out. He's not fleeing from that, okay.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Yeah, And he even said how long he choked her? Actually,
oh lord, And he said he held her with his
left hand for thirty seconds. And they mentioned thirty seconds
as in that she was really struggling. But he continued
and I don't know if he did this like I'm
a man, I did it with one hand. I don't
know what the point is, but he did say tell
(39:59):
him please. He continued to hold her for five minutes
until she stopped moving. Until she stopped breathing, and so
he knew she was dead. He strangled the life out
of this woman. Yeah, with one hand. And I want
to remind you of something. Yeah, they met in April.
They had several disagreements. She moved in with him very quickly,
(40:21):
and this happened in December. Joe, they didn't know one
another for a full twelve months before he is able
to use one hand and take the life from her body.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
I'm really wondering if this was some kind of psycho
sexual thing that went on to I wonder what their
relationship is like, because you know, that's a you know,
going back to the idea that he leaves the rooms,
he comes back and she's nude. Yeah, And I've wondered
if this was some kind of maybe sex play that
had occurred early on, you know, or you know, something
(40:56):
to that effect, because you know, the choking part of
this that you're describing, that's what's referred to as a
sea clamp.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Really, I can't wait a minute. I cannot believe that
that has a dagon.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Yeah it's a sea clamp. Yeah, it's a sea clamp.
That's what it's referred to. As you know, and most
of the time when you have somebody that is trying
to commit a homicide, it needs to be strangling. They're
going to use throttling. This is called throttling where you
use both hands, either from the front or the back.
You know, the sea clamp thing sounds like a control thing.
(41:30):
Now you can kill somebody, you know doing this, because
you can. Actually one thing you can do is you
can crush the layernix in here. You know that the
actual you know, windpipe by doing that, but you're also compressing.
You're compressing, say, the crotids right here, and the crotids
supply obygenated blood to the brain, and so the person
(41:52):
will you know, dive a noxia essentially. Now here's here's
the trick. The condition of the body is fascinating to
me when you think about what's left behind. Now we
know that there is enough left behind so that whoever
is observing her they can actually appreciate that. There are
(42:14):
cut marks on the back that kind of define that
skin has been removed. This is not like she's turned
into and forgive me for saying this, into some kind
of soupy mess. There are still lines of delineation here. Okay,
So that begs the question when the neck is reflected.
And when I say reflected, that's the term that we
(42:36):
use in autopsies. Surgeons use it as well. But you
reflect the neck, which means you do the dissection, the
wy incision, and you reflect it push it back up,
and that way we're going to be looking at the
organs of the neck and could you still pick up
on any hemorrhage in there? Even though she's in this
advance because he's being very specific day he's talking about
(42:59):
utilizing a seak. Well that pressure those pressure points are
very specific to an adult male's hand, So you're going
to be looking in one particular region that might only
communicate with a thumb that will be very specific for
hemorrhage here. And then you've got four other elements here
(43:20):
that create a broader patch of hemorrhage in the syria.
So it's just something that we have to you know,
that we have to think about.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
It's just this is one of those stories show that
you know, on the surface, you're thinking that a guy
kills his girlfriend and then lives with her body for
seven months, kind of like you know Psycho, the movie Psycho,
And yet really and truly I think You're looking at
a situation where you didn't know what to do. You know,
he's a thirty seven year old guy who's living in
(43:50):
his dad's basement. You know, I'm just I'm I'm really
at a loss for what people do to one another,
you know, boggles the mind, and I'm wondering. You know,
I do know this. This case has been adjudicated, Joe.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
Yeah, I was going to ask you about that, yep.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
And why did it.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
Take so long? I mean we're talking about years. Have
did this psychopathology play into this?
Speaker 2 (44:16):
You know, Joe, there's a lot that played into this.
But when it came right down to it, yeah, hey man,
you're set to stand trial. Okay, you can try whatever
you want. You can try to play it off. No,
they went with, yeah, you're a good standing trial. He
was convicted. Joe. I want to run down the list
for you, because I got it right. Please do convicted
(44:38):
a first degree premeditated murder, mutilation of a dead body,
and concealing the death of an individual. And at trial,
during the closing arguments, I kid you not, the defense
actually tried to say that Lewinsky was the victim, that
(44:58):
he had been the victim abuse at the hands of
his girlfriend, even though he strangled her out, as you say,
with a sea clamp. We have Their argument obviously didn't work,
and the prosecution pointed out, you know that while he's
got his hand on her neck Joe for five minutes,
watching the life leave her body. During that every second
(45:23):
he has the chance to let go. Every second for
five minutes, he has the chance to let go. Every
second is a choice to end her life. So prosecution
won the case and he is convicted of everything.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
Well, it's certainly fascinating. The case in and of itself
is fascinating. But you know me, I've often said my
friends know this, and people that followed me for some time,
I don't necessarily believe in ghost Out of all the
dead bodies I've ever been around, I've never had an apparition.
I'm not begging for it. I'm just saying it never
(45:58):
happened to me. I do believe that places are haunted.
Do you ever sit back and scratch your head, wonder
if these walls could talk. I'm thinking about that condo
right now, I'm thinking about the next people that might
occupy that space, and if those walls could talk, what
a tale they would tell, I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
(46:21):
this is body bags,
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
Popular Podcasts
Hey Jonas!
Hey Jonas! The official Jonas Brothers podcast. Hosted by Kevin, Joe, and Nick Jonas. It’s the Jonas Brothers you know... musicians, actors, and well, yes, brothers. Now, they’re sharing another side of themselves in the playful, intimate, and irreverent way only they can. Spend time with the Jonas Brothers here and stay a little bit longer for deep conversations like never before.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
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