August 14, 2025 • 41 mins
Human remains were found scattered on a Georgia Hunting club property in November 2022. The remains were found in a three-mile area covering two counties, and investigators reached out to the public for help.
Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss the case that was investigated by multiple agencies, including the GBI and the FBI. They explain how the agencies came to identify the scattered remains as those of Mindi Mebane Kassotis, the wife of Nicholas Kassotis a former member of the Navy's Judge Advocate General Corps (JAG).
Kassotis is on trial right now for several charges, including murder and removal of body parts from the scene of death or dismemberment.
Transcribe Highlights
00:00.00 Introduction
03:33.49 No sympathy for those who should know better
04:59.21 Body Parts found in hunting club
09:30.53 Jeffrey MacDonald Article 32 Hearing
15:11.73 Sketch Image of victim was amazing
20:10.93 DNA is great if you have a sample in the system
24:58.72 Genetic genealogy
30:52.17 Tissue on skeleton
35:27.14 Dismemberment
39:22.78 May never know how she was killed
41:12.21 Conclusion
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quality dators. But Joseph's gotten more when you're in the military.
I know this from experience son that served as well.
I think just about every generation in my family has
served one way or another, going all the way back
to the Revolutionary War. But when you're in the military,
(00:24):
one of the things that they try to terrify you
with early on is the U SUM JAY and the
U CUM JAY is a uniform code of military justice.
And even when you're in whether it's boot camp or
basic training, you know, whatever branch you're in, they'll call
it one of those two things. The drill instructor drill sergeant,
(00:49):
whatever the Navy calls theirs. They'll say things like, you're
going to get punished vis vis the US and you
see him Jay, and it'll be some minor thing, these
various articles that they use, and it'll go into your jacket,
and so you're always under that, under that threat in
(01:14):
the military, and of course you see him Jay is
prosecuted by Jack. That's the office of Judge Advocate General.
There was even a television show that was named Jack.
I think I never watched it, but it was there.
(01:35):
Today on Bodybags, we're going to have a discussion about
the forensics surrounding a former jack officer, a former JAG
officer that is currently on trial for dismembering his wife.
(02:00):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is body bags, Dave.
I've always held to this premise, and I teach kids this,
particularly like incoming freshmen, that if you hold yourself up
in a place of esteem, whether you're a politician, a prosecutor,
(02:27):
a preacher, a priest, it doesn't matter. You hold yourself
up because you're kind of that moral benchmark for everybody.
When you fall, the crash resonates. I mean, it has heard,
you know far and why because you know, we live
(02:47):
in a society some people would say we live in
a post Christian society. There are not a lot of
moral benchmarks that are out there, and so from a
secular standpoint, people that are in service positions. I mean,
just think about police officers. You know, if a police
officer violates the law, and it might be a law
that's being violated by civilian, you don't hear anything about
(03:12):
the civilian case at all. But if a police officer
gets pulled over for DUI or writing a bad check
or something like that, dude, that's going to make the newspaper.
It's going to make the newspaper. And most of the time,
and I think all of the time, I don't have
a lot of sympathy for any of these people because
(03:35):
you should know better. You're actually holding yourself out when
you take these positions. You're holding yourself out saying I
can do this. They should have known better. And I
got to tell you, Dave, this case that we're talking
about today involving Nicholas casotis he should have known better.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
But this Jag guy, he's accused that he is accused
of heinous crime Joe and it is I actually labeled
this Joe Scott Morgan's playground because as I was looking
at this, it was in a hunting area in a
(04:17):
hunters hunting club in Georgia, and I was thinking about
Murdau and his whole hunting club thing, you know. And
we're not that far away here, We're in the outside
of Savannah, Georgia, and this hunting club. All of a sudden,
hunters start finding pieces of body and some are found
(04:39):
in a three area a three mile area circumference, an
area covering three miles and it's on this property of
this hunting club.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Not only in this radius that you're talking about, dude,
this extended over to count them two counties. I've never
I have never and I know, look, county lines are
imaginary boundaries, Okay, it doesn't. Those are boundaries that have
been set up by politicians over the years. And Georgia,
(05:10):
by the way, has some of the smallest counties because
they have the largest number of counties east of the
Mississippi out of any state in the Union, they have
more counties than any other state. A lot of people
don't realize that. I mean, even if you go up
to to pa or New York or any of those
places up there, they don't match that number. And it's
(05:30):
a huge number. So the counties are small. But when
I saw that, when I saw that these remains are
being found not only in the primary location, but are
scattered like this, I got to tell you, dude, I've
never heard of this. This. I think this is new.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Having it in a different county means a separate jurisdiction
now has control over that, right. I mean, if I've
fined a leg in Calderon County and somebody else finds
it in Cherokee County, even though it's a half mile
away from one another. Well, that leg belongs to Cherokee
County and this one belongs to Calhoun County. We think
they're from the same person, but they might not be.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Well, yeah, you're right, and let me address that real quick,
because that's an excellent point and you're spot on if
you find an element of a body in that particular county.
First off, one county might not know what the other
county is doing because they're busy with their own stuff. Okay,
(06:29):
But if you have two hunters that come in, or
one hunter that comes in and says our calls you
and says, look, I need you to come out here.
I think I just found a human foot okay, or
I found a hand or whatever it is. I can
tell you they're going to hop on their ponies and
head out. They're coming out there to take a look
at this. Then they get their detectives involved in it,
(06:51):
and then all of a sudden, you know, a word
hits the grapevine and they find out that, oh yeah,
we've got dismembered remains that are being recover in an
adjacent county. The trick is to try to understand where
the actual crime was committed. Here's another thing, how were
they deposited? Were these actually deposited or did you have
(07:14):
a fox, a raccoon, a coyote, which they have got
tons of them. You know what else? You got down
in South Georgia just like we do in South Alabama
our wild hogs. Dude, they're everywhere. They're an invasive species.
So you have this opportunity for these elements of the
(07:34):
body to be picked up and dispersed, and then you
have to factor in the human bit of this. Was
this something that a perpetrator said, you know what, I'm
going to put this here in this county and here
in the other county and I'll just disperse them. So
you have to try to understand that. And so when
you get into the examination of these remains, you're going
(07:57):
to have to look for things like like the trauma
that sustained in the dismemberment, and you'll also have to
look for because that's going to be post mortem maybe
and any animal activity is going to be post mortem
as well. So this makes this doubly complex, Dave.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
And again, other than having all of the other people
involved in all it, now you're also dealing with a
military guy ex military, but when you first find the
pieces of body, you don't know who they belong to,
so it only becomes a military thing later on. But
do former military people get treated differently in the civilian world? Okay,
(08:41):
so they're just like you and me, even if they're
a retired military they don't have like a specialty that.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
We're being treated differently in the civilian world as if
they if they committed a crime while still on the
books with the military, and you can be drugged back
in based upon that, you know, if they discover some case,
well case that we covered not too long ago, and
(09:07):
that's Jeffrey McDonald's case, you know, the military, even though
he's out and he's living his life low those many
years after he was Oh my god, I hate to
even say it acquitted.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Well, that was a military article thirty two hearing.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yeah, it was, and right, and it took place on post.
That's a triple homicide that took place at BRAG. I'm
not laughing. I'm not laughing out of joy. I'm just
saying it's so that case is so absurd. Yeah, I mean,
and I know how you feel about it. It's so
(09:43):
absolutely absurd. But yeah, once you're discharged from the military,
anything that you do in the civilian world, you're gonna
have to answer to the man outside the fence at
that point in tom and so that's that's how that
would be handled. But the one saving grace here, even
you know you've got distribution in multiple counties, the default
(10:05):
position in most of these rural counties, and this kind
of applies nationwide, particularly when it comes to corners offices.
First off, those remains are not going to go to
the individual counties to be examined. They're all going to
be batched and sent to the GBI, who controls the
(10:25):
state medical Examiner, which I don't I'm not a fan
of that model because I don't think the law I
don't think any law enforcement agency should control the corner
or the medical examiner. They need to be two completely
separate entities. They in Georgia, they are the state medical
Examiner answers to the head of the chief law enforcement
(10:46):
agency in State of Georgia, and then they're going to
put their agents on it as well. So that's in
one sense, that's a saving grace. So instead of having
two sheriff's offices or even two corners offices trying to
collate information and all that. You've got this one central
(11:07):
repository of data, investigative data that's being controlled by the GBI,
all right, and also they're in house medical examiner that's
conducting the examinations and trying to get answers.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Right now, let me ask you this show because we
have remains being found on this hunting property. Yeah, and
they're not all found at one time. They're found over
a period of time and as you mentioned, spread over
two counties. When that first call comes in from a
hunter saying I think I found something that might be human,
(11:41):
because a lot of times what you find you kind
of look at and go, I've been a hunter for
a long time, but out in the woods a long time.
This does not look like any animal I've ever seen before.
This is this looks more human. But I don't know,
and I know you've told me, and this is what
I had no idea of until we started doing this.
That many times when you guys get called out to
look for because somebody found bones in their backyard and
(12:02):
it ended up being chicken or a pig or whatever. Yeah,
hog yeah, it wasn't a human. It was just an
old bone. So conversely, if you see something that you
know is not an animal, I mean, especially in this case,
we don't even know how long they've been out there.
You don't know if the person was gotten the freezer
and cut up and then dispersed years later.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
You have no idea.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
So how do you start so uncovering this.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Well, the first thing you have to do is and
it starts. It starts with what you just put out there.
You know, are these human remains? Are these remains that
the investigator will have to dig into, that the medical
examiner will have to dig into. But the trick here
(12:47):
and the key to this is gathering all the data
bringing it back to the lab, and that's where the
true investigation begins. David, all my years of working in
(13:15):
the field and then and then teaching, really it's really
hard to say that I have seen a composite sketch
or even a clay model or digital model that is
(13:35):
right on the money as far as who an individual
is okay in life, because look, if you've got an
image that has been generated or a model that has
been generated, you're doing that for the purpose of getting
an ID and so you don't know who they are.
(13:56):
But Dave, you had an interesting perspective on this image
of the victim in this case. What was it you
just said just a second ago about this relative to
her appearance?
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Okay, they did a based on they didn't know who
they had, They did not know whose remains they had,
and they were trying to figure out. And over the
years we've seen recreations based on different bones found of
a victim, and a recreation of the skull will be
done based on whatever information they have on the bones,
(14:32):
and very rarely do they look like the person. But
in this case they did using the DNA they developed
and the different bones that they had, and they created
I guess AI created it. You know, in the computer
they can created a composite sketch of what this woman
might have looked like and side by side. Once they
(14:54):
knew who it was and put it up there. I
was shocked at how close they came based on what
they had to work with. And I mean, Joe, I
thought it was two pictures of the same person. I
didn't know that that was what they came up with.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Well, let me let me tell you this. For our purposes.
The The image that you saw is arguably generated by
one of the finest forensic artists in America, and she
actually does work for the GBI, and it's I gotta
(15:37):
tell you, it's it's spot on as far as one
of these renderings can be. And I think probably the
most captivating thing about the image that was generated are
the eyes because Mindy, the victim, she had these real
(15:57):
I guess people would call them doe eyes. You know,
they're real, big and beautiful, you know, and this rendering
kind of captures that. And you know what's so hard
about this that many times all they're working with is
a skull. So how do you arrive at this point
where you're doing it? This is what's kind of amazing
(16:19):
about it. How do you arrive at this point where
you have a skull that is completely stripped of all
identifying markers as far as skin thickness, oh, the tone
of the skin, hair color, because most of the time
with hair color, unless you find strands perhaps with the skull,
(16:41):
and that does happen. Now you'll still find bits of
like the scalp that are attached attached to the skull.
And there's kind of a membrane that's called fascia that
attaches the scalp to the skull. And many times those
(17:01):
attachments still exist even you know, maybe an animal has
been feasting post mortem, they might not get everything. You'll
find actually strands of hair, and that artist can look
at that hair be given a descriptor of it. As
a matter of fact, they can take the hair to
the hair and fiber section in a crime lab, Dave.
(17:22):
They can look at the hair a hair strand under
a microscope and they can tell you if the hair
is dyed. They can also tell you how long ago
it was dyed, because you've got these kind of human
hair looks like the sheet itself kind of looks like
it looks like scales, and it grows out and you'll
(17:43):
see those you know how you see people that my
wife has talked about this and like Cassi and his
versions here when people get black roots, okay, and like
they've got blonde hair on the ends, that's the hair
growing out. You get a strand of that hair, you
can do an approximation for how long it's been since
(18:07):
the hair was dyed. Because we hair grows at a
predictable rate, all right, So when you're looking at that.
If there's any color on the hair, you can get
idea of the color. So you take that data and
plug it into what the artist is going to do
as far as the rendering goes. And David, I agree
with you, man, this image is striking. It's absolutely striking.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
I was amazed, truly that I wasn't looking at two
photos of the same person. That's what shocked me. But
here's where they started, Joe. The initial remains, Okay, what
I actually found the very first thing that was put
out after finding partial remains. The initial report was partial
remains of a white female discovered at the Portal Hunting
(18:52):
Clubs spread over a three mile radies. Now, based on
the information they had on how they did this, they
believe they know and this was found in twenty twenty two.
They believed that the remains have been placed in that
area November twenty seventh of twenty twenty two. Around that date. Now,
I don't know how they came up with that, but
(19:13):
they did. And it went on to say the remains
of that of a white female with brown eyes, shoulder
length brown hair, approximately five nine to five ten in height,
approximately one hundred and eighty five to two hundred pounds,
with an age range of twenty to fifty years old.
She was forty, just to give you an idea, she
was forty.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
The body had no scars, marks, or tattoos. So we're
not talking about skeletonized remains here. We know that. But Joe,
how do you start with this and end up finding
a person if if they've never been fingerprinted and they've
never had their DNA in the system. How do you
find out any information about this when you only have
(19:53):
partial remains?
Speaker 1 (19:54):
I love this question. I get this question all the time,
and I love that you've asked so I can hold forth.
This is why it makes it difficult, because I've had
so many people approach me over the years about cases
they're interested in, and it involved either an unknown perpetrator
or an unknown person to say, why don't you just
(20:15):
do DNA? What does that even mean? Do DNA? I mean,
you know you can. You can collect DNA from a decedent, okay,
And there's multiple methods to do that, and you can
create a DNA profile on an individual. You can go
(20:38):
back generations, and you can talk about their ethnic origins
and all these sorts of things. But my man, if
you ain't got nothing in the system to compare it to.
It goes back to what I always say, the data
ain't worth gunpowdered blow at hell. Same thing with fingerprints,
if you recover a latent print at a scene, or
(21:00):
if you recover like in the More for instance, I'll
tell you this. I think we've had this discussion. We
talked about so much, you know, after over four hundred
episodes with say you've got a desiccated hand or a
finger and obviously have to have tissue We go in
(21:23):
and we inject those fingers with tissue builder like they
use at the funeral home to you know, so that
the dead don't have that sunken appearance. They'll put tissue
builder in there and it causes the element to regain
kind of a natural appearance, and you can roll a
print off of that. Well, if the person that you
(21:45):
have that is unknown, you roll a print off of them.
If they're not you know, in the system n c IC,
then you're you're not going to get a hit on
them fingerprint wise, so it's great to take them. You know. Obviously, look,
we've got a lot of bright listeners and you know
(22:07):
where I'm going with this, Dave. You know that as
keen as our folks are, they understand that you've got
to collect the DNA from a variety of you know,
this is the thing. If you've got remains scattered about
all of these various elements of the body, you have
(22:30):
to find that remains that's got the most viable tissue
on it. And that's what makes this very unique. So
when you're thinking about how do we do this, well,
whatever has biological viability as far as a collection of
sample goes, if you can collect that, and then with
(22:54):
the image, you know that you have this lady that's missing.
When it comes time and when you get closer to
narrowing your feel down, this is how you're going to
get her identified. You're going to go to her family,
those that are in her specific gene pool, and you're
going to request samples from them Mama, sisters, brothers, daddy.
(23:22):
I mean, you could do more distant relatives, but if
you can concentrate in on those those core groups in
her familial environment, you compare their DNA. But at this
point in time in the investigation, they're just collecting remains, man,
I mean, they're not. It's not like they have it's
(23:45):
not like they you know, you do this and you
know exactly, you know who you're going to go to. Remember,
she she they believe, prosecutors believe she was actually a
victim Hamsi victim in twenty twenty two. There was not
actually an arrest affected in this case until twenty twenty three.
(24:10):
So you know, you're trying to work all of this
stuff out. And of course, my abiding principle in any
case is particularly when it comes to the unknown, when
it comes to those individuals that we don't know who
they are. When you get the identity of an individual
and you find out who they are, everything else becomes
(24:35):
a lot more clear. You know what I mean by that.
I've stated trying to get people identified, and it's like
(24:56):
pulling the string on sweater. Mama always tells you not
to pull because it's going to come unraveled. Well, in
our case, in the forensic world, we wanted to come unraveled.
I want to see where the thread leads, if you will,
and if you can find out who Once an individual
(25:16):
is identified, automatically you have entree into their world where
you can begin to try to understand who exactly is
in their sphere, who's in their orbit? Dave, And look,
we know because it's very rare that you actually have
a dismembered remain that is not tied back to a homicide.
(25:45):
There's one case I remember, and forgive me, I know
that people listening will know this. There was the case
down in Florida where the guy was He was a
judge that had been forced to retire, and his son
was a lawyer. But he was a druggie. I don't
know if you remember this case. He killed his I mean,
he and his dad had been doing coke in the
apartment adjacent to a a golf club and he they
(26:12):
still to this day, they still have yet to find
the dad, who's in his seventies doing coke. By the way,
they still have yet to find his head to this day.
You know, and the kid went to I say, kid,
he's a grown man. But the child of the man
actually did go to trial for abusive a corpse I think,
(26:34):
but he wasn't charged with the home side. But that's
that's an outlier, Dave. Every single case, and you and
I actually did an entire episode based on dismemberment. All
these cases. We were we were handling. If you if
you think about this, why else would you dismember a body? Well,
you you have it goes to utility of disposal. Most
(26:59):
of these people think that, well, the smaller, smaller I
can make this body, the easier it is to get
rid of the body. Okay, and it makes it complex.
But what's really unclear at this point. I think in
this case, the Casoda's case is where these remains, they're
(27:21):
saying scattered. I have visions of Johnny Appleseed walking across
the countryside and you know where the big say, you know,
you always see him with the big sack on the
side and he's like tossing out tossing out seeds. Was
it that kind of thing? Or where the individual remains were?
(27:45):
They just surface depositions? And it sounds to me everything
that we hear at this point that these were surface depositions.
Where you've got because you've got people finding these, dave.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
And that's kind of where I was headed with all
of those. How how do you as an investigator somebody
comes to you with an armor a leg and you
have no idea of who it belongs to, You've got
no clue, You're starting with nothing. Yeah, and again unless
there DNA is in the system or something that identifies them,
all you really and I'm not please don't understand. I'm
(28:20):
not trying to be flipping here. But all you have
is an arm or a leg. You don't have any
means of identifying. It's just and so as an investigator,
you go, Okay, we can probably identify. Can you identify
the gender of an individual based on a bone?
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Oh? Yeah, yeah, scale you know, if I remember correctly,
we did an episode on anthropology not too long ago
and we talk about with bones in particular, gender can
be determined. First off, Pelvis's is the number one location. Okay, okay,
(28:55):
it was the birth canals, water and women than it
is and dudes. But the other thing is that with
female bones, I love this word, and I've used it
for years. I try to find I try to go
to parties and find a reason to use this word female.
Female female bones are what are referred to as grassisle,
(29:17):
which means they're fine, they're they're more diminutive, whereas male
bones tend to be robust. Now, there's certain parameters you
have to you have to look at with that. Race
impacts that, particularly if you're talking about any racial grouping
that involves anyone in Asian communities, because those skeletons and guys,
(29:39):
I got to tell you, we're all different. Just get
used to that. Asian communities they tend to be more diminutive.
You know, if you look at somebody like, I don't know,
like a montag Yard, you know, who's very diminutive. That
work with our guys here in Vietnam, they're even more
(30:00):
minuative than the people that would be considered Viemmese, if
you can imagine that, because the Vietnese are very diminutive.
So you have a male, a male bone from that
population that might actually give it, you have to be
very careful because the male bone from that that Asian
population might actually look like a female, an adult female
(30:24):
from another population. Okay, that's not associated with that, So
it's not They like to say it's exacting, but it's
not exacting. You have to understand there's certain parameters that
you have to work within. And so yeah, in answer
to your question that these are skeletal remains, which it
sounds like there were still some tissue on these remains,
(30:46):
you would have to take that into consideration because you're
probably not just dealing with purely skeletal remains. Now, with
most skeletal remains, you're going to have a shot, at
least even if it's small, with getting a DNA sample
from them, and that might mean you know, drilling down
(31:07):
into the bone, you know, to exact it from the marrow,
that area, that portion of the anatomy of the bone,
and to draw it out from there. But if you've
got teeth that are left behind, you know, which is
in my opinion, one of the best sources with skeletal remains,
But you still have soft tissues. It all depends on
(31:29):
how viable this tissue is. Dave.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
You know the amazing thing about this case, Joe, beyond
the fact that they were able to identify the woman
and go after her husband, I will tell you that
we could do twenty stories. We do twenty episodes on
this man and this couple and the death and what
it took place. Because I want to give you one
little tip. Yeah, you know, oftentimes when we have a
(31:52):
guy's name in this case, Nicholas James cassotis right, that's
his name. His wife's name is Mindy Mebane castis they
were both forty years old when when I was when
she passed. But you know what he has. He has
the old AKA also known as uh oh, Nicholas Killian Stark. Now, Joe,
(32:13):
I'm just going to throw this out there. Okay, a
name tells a name that an adult picks, you know,
that they make up, tells me a lot about somebody.
In this case, Nicholas Killian Stark. Where does the name
Killian and where does the name Stark come? For iron Man?
Iron Man three? Yeah, Killian was the bad guy Stark
(32:34):
of course, Tony Stark. So this guy named makes up
a name from you know, the movie. I'm sure it's
in the comic book. First, Just so you know, I
have no clue. I've never read a comic book in
my life. Mad Magazine was a comic book to me. Yeah,
I never read those. I mean, you know I read comics.
I never read comic books. But anyway, I digress. But
that was also known as Nicholas Killian Stark told me
(32:56):
everything he needed to go about this free show. So
now you've got a missing woman. Your wife is missing.
By the way, they were also moving around a lot.
Joe as a couple Mindy and Nicholas where they were switching.
It was almost like never spending the same night, spending
a night in the same place twice kind of thing.
(33:19):
They claimed that he was trying to dodge out of
a one point five million dollar judgment from his first marriage.
There's also if there are other stories of corrupt government
and people chasing him. I mean, he has created an
underlying story here that his defense attorney. I'm not kidding
when I tell you, Joe, at the end of every
day he is sitting out on a balcony somewhere, drinking
(33:43):
a bottle of Scotch and choking down a cigar, praying
to Night's not the night I jump because the story
this guy's making him tell is that ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Yeah, and what makes it interest I saw one little
quip about this. They've actually gone into CIA conspiracy with
this case. And of course, anytime you're with the military,
you know, you can have these kind of tethers that
you know, and it might be you may have met
(34:13):
somebody from the agency, or maybe you were in an
embassy somewhere at some point in time unemployment, and yeah,
you happen to shake the hand of somebody that was
with the agency or in the diplomatic service. I love that,
you know, and those sort of things that I don't
mean you have anything to do with them, yeah, you know,
And so a lot of these and the trial is
(34:33):
going on right now, and we're kind of watching this unfold.
But I think, you know, one of the interesting pieces
to this is trying to glean all of the information
that you can from this woman's body that has I mean,
let's face it, this is the ultimate and desecration. I mean,
(34:55):
for me, it is. I mean, there's a lot of things.
You know. We had the guy that we covered that
poor poor preacher that was out in Arizona where the
guy nailed nailed him to the wall in the shape
of Christ on the cross and said that if he
hadn't been caught, he had like fifteen other targets. As
it turned out, Oh my lord, that's desecration too, of
(35:17):
the dead. But man, when you start to get into
these areas of where you're taking a sharp instrument and
you're drawing it across, drawing it across someone's body to
either disarticulate it or cut it across mid shaft, all
these sorts of things, you're entering into an entire different,
different level here. And what amazes me I should I
(35:40):
should no longer be amazed by this. I don't know
why I am this person that you walk down the
aisle with Dave, that you probably at one point in
time may have gently held her face in your hands,
told her that you loved her, told her that you
would always take care of her and provide for your
dying day. You made an oast before God that said,
(36:03):
you know, I'm going to love you till the day
that you died sickness and health. Suddenly you're standing over
a body with a saw. How do you go from
that to that?
Speaker 2 (36:14):
In a very window of time, in a.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Very short window of tom and you know, it's kind
of it's kind of mind blowing in it.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
It was a shorter period of time than you could
have paid off a new car Joe, from the time
they got married to the time he's cutting her up allegedly.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Just to get down to the nitty gritty here, I don't.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
Want to hear from Dewey cheat them and how what
they have done is they've gone from finding severed body
parts spread out over at three mile radius they've collected
as much as they can find.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
I dare say, somebody's going to find something again later.
But they being the GBI, you have the local police
then working with the GBI, and the GBI reaching out
to the FBI. Every alphabet group was working on this
and they were able to create out of nothing the
(37:09):
face of a human being that looked just like the victim.
They were able to identify the victim by once they
id we have a missing person, let's go see what
we have here. They interviewed family after talking to them, well,
can we get a swab, you know, doing the cheek swabs.
They built up a genetic genealogy case where they were
tracking back family members of this possible person and they
(37:33):
were able to go Bengo, we've got it. And once
they were able to identify her, well, they knew that
her husband was now gone and they know what kind
of guy he is, but I've been married several times.
He's a conspiracy who goes by the name Nicholas Killian
Stark and he's now in Pennsylvania somewhere, which is where
(37:54):
he was arrested seven months after they found the body parts.
But they were able to work this back with that
DNA Joe and using genetic forensic any genealogy that you
and I have talked about so many times on this show. Yes,
and with something that twenty years ago they probably couldn't
have done maybe thirty years you know.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Yeah, yeah, maybe we had an inkling of it twenty
years ago, but nothing like we're at now. And you know,
I've got to show a love to our friends at AUTHRAM,
you know, because we see this every week. You know,
you and I at least covered one of their cases
every other week. Whether they went to AUTHORM or not
is not relevant at this to our conversation. But they
did build out a forensic genetic genealogy profile and they
(38:40):
were able to get Mendy identified. I think one of
the issues here that kind of leaves you lacking or
wanting for more is that we don't necessarily have a
cause of death. I think that that's that's always hard
(39:02):
to swallow because because families want want that data, they
want it, and listen, I got to tell you good
bad are indifferent. They deserve that data, you know, they
deserve that information, and of course, from a proscatorial standpoint,
(39:22):
you want to have it. But he for whatever methodology
he chose to chose to apply to end her life,
it can you know, it goes to how twisted this
(39:44):
whole case is. You know, nobody enters into a marriage
asking for this at all. I don't care how grim
things are. I don't care how many voices you might
have talking to you in your head because of conspiracy theories.
Nobody deserves her family deserved to have her intact. As
(40:04):
a matter of fact, they deserve to be able to
celebrate Christmas with her and Thanksgiving. We guess what, that's
all gone. It's no more. It's never going to happen
again because of the choices that one individual made. Listen,
this case is still being adjudicated as we speak right now.
(40:27):
But a tip of the cap to all the scientists
and investigators that worked on this thing for so hard,
for so long, and so hard, because if that one
hunter that was actually tracking a deer down there in
South Georgia had not come across that remain, she may
have just vanished into the vapor. But now, and this
(40:50):
is the way it should always be done, they took
the dead and for a moment in time, they've resurrected
her and wait for her body to tell the final tale.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is bodybags.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
Hm.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Hm
Quality dators. But Joseph's gotten more when you're in the military.
I know this from experience son that served as well.
I think just about every generation in my family has
served one way or another, going all the way back
to the Revolutionary War. But when you're in the military,
(00:24):
one of the things that they try to terrify you
with early on is the U SUM JAY and the
U CUM JAY is a uniform code of military justice.
And even when you're in whether it's boot camp or
basic training, you know, whatever branch you're in, they'll call
it one of those two things. The drill instructor drill sergeant,
(00:49):
whatever the Navy calls theirs. They'll say things like, you're
going to get punished vis vis the US and you
see him Jay, and it'll be some minor thing, these
various articles that they use, and it'll go into your jacket,
and so you're always under that, under that threat in
(01:14):
the military, and of course you see him Jay is
prosecuted by Jack. That's the office of Judge Advocate General.
There was even a television show that was named Jack.
I think I never watched it, but it was there.
(01:35):
Today on Bodybags, we're going to have a discussion about
the forensics surrounding a former jack officer, a former JAG
officer that is currently on trial for dismembering his wife.
(02:00):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is body bags, Dave.
I've always held to this premise, and I teach kids this,
particularly like incoming freshmen, that if you hold yourself up
in a place of esteem, whether you're a politician, a prosecutor,
(02:27):
a preacher, a priest, it doesn't matter. You hold yourself
up because you're kind of that moral benchmark for everybody.
When you fall, the crash resonates. I mean, it has heard,
you know far and why because you know, we live
(02:47):
in a society some people would say we live in
a post Christian society. There are not a lot of
moral benchmarks that are out there, and so from a
secular standpoint, people that are in service positions. I mean,
just think about police officers. You know, if a police
officer violates the law, and it might be a law
that's being violated by civilian, you don't hear anything about
(03:12):
the civilian case at all. But if a police officer
gets pulled over for DUI or writing a bad check
or something like that, dude, that's going to make the newspaper.
It's going to make the newspaper. And most of the time,
and I think all of the time, I don't have
a lot of sympathy for any of these people because
(03:35):
you should know better. You're actually holding yourself out when
you take these positions. You're holding yourself out saying I
can do this. They should have known better. And I
got to tell you, Dave, this case that we're talking
about today involving Nicholas casotis he should have known better.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
But this Jag guy, he's accused that he is accused
of heinous crime Joe and it is I actually labeled
this Joe Scott Morgan's playground because as I was looking
at this, it was in a hunting area in a
(04:17):
hunters hunting club in Georgia, and I was thinking about
Murdau and his whole hunting club thing, you know. And
we're not that far away here, We're in the outside
of Savannah, Georgia, and this hunting club. All of a sudden,
hunters start finding pieces of body and some are found
(04:39):
in a three area a three mile area circumference, an
area covering three miles and it's on this property of
this hunting club.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Not only in this radius that you're talking about, dude,
this extended over to count them two counties. I've never
I have never and I know, look, county lines are
imaginary boundaries, Okay, it doesn't. Those are boundaries that have
been set up by politicians over the years. And Georgia,
(05:10):
by the way, has some of the smallest counties because
they have the largest number of counties east of the
Mississippi out of any state in the Union, they have
more counties than any other state. A lot of people
don't realize that. I mean, even if you go up
to to pa or New York or any of those
places up there, they don't match that number. And it's
(05:30):
a huge number. So the counties are small. But when
I saw that, when I saw that these remains are
being found not only in the primary location, but are
scattered like this, I got to tell you, dude, I've
never heard of this. This. I think this is new.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Having it in a different county means a separate jurisdiction
now has control over that, right. I mean, if I've
fined a leg in Calderon County and somebody else finds
it in Cherokee County, even though it's a half mile
away from one another. Well, that leg belongs to Cherokee
County and this one belongs to Calhoun County. We think
they're from the same person, but they might not be.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Well, yeah, you're right, and let me address that real quick,
because that's an excellent point and you're spot on if
you find an element of a body in that particular county.
First off, one county might not know what the other
county is doing because they're busy with their own stuff. Okay,
(06:29):
But if you have two hunters that come in, or
one hunter that comes in and says our calls you
and says, look, I need you to come out here.
I think I just found a human foot okay, or
I found a hand or whatever it is. I can
tell you they're going to hop on their ponies and
head out. They're coming out there to take a look
at this. Then they get their detectives involved in it,
(06:51):
and then all of a sudden, you know, a word
hits the grapevine and they find out that, oh yeah,
we've got dismembered remains that are being recover in an
adjacent county. The trick is to try to understand where
the actual crime was committed. Here's another thing, how were
they deposited? Were these actually deposited or did you have
(07:14):
a fox, a raccoon, a coyote, which they have got
tons of them. You know what else? You got down
in South Georgia just like we do in South Alabama
our wild hogs. Dude, they're everywhere. They're an invasive species.
So you have this opportunity for these elements of the
(07:34):
body to be picked up and dispersed, and then you
have to factor in the human bit of this. Was
this something that a perpetrator said, you know what, I'm
going to put this here in this county and here
in the other county and I'll just disperse them. So
you have to try to understand that. And so when
you get into the examination of these remains, you're going
(07:57):
to have to look for things like like the trauma
that sustained in the dismemberment, and you'll also have to
look for because that's going to be post mortem maybe
and any animal activity is going to be post mortem
as well. So this makes this doubly complex, Dave.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
And again, other than having all of the other people
involved in all it, now you're also dealing with a
military guy ex military, but when you first find the
pieces of body, you don't know who they belong to,
so it only becomes a military thing later on. But
do former military people get treated differently in the civilian world? Okay,
(08:41):
so they're just like you and me, even if they're
a retired military they don't have like a specialty that.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
We're being treated differently in the civilian world as if
they if they committed a crime while still on the
books with the military, and you can be drugged back
in based upon that, you know, if they discover some case,
well case that we covered not too long ago, and
(09:07):
that's Jeffrey McDonald's case, you know, the military, even though
he's out and he's living his life low those many
years after he was Oh my god, I hate to
even say it acquitted.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Well, that was a military article thirty two hearing.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yeah, it was, and right, and it took place on post.
That's a triple homicide that took place at BRAG. I'm
not laughing. I'm not laughing out of joy. I'm just
saying it's so that case is so absurd. Yeah, I mean,
and I know how you feel about it. It's so
(09:43):
absolutely absurd. But yeah, once you're discharged from the military,
anything that you do in the civilian world, you're gonna
have to answer to the man outside the fence at
that point in tom and so that's that's how that
would be handled. But the one saving grace here, even
you know you've got distribution in multiple counties, the default
(10:05):
position in most of these rural counties, and this kind
of applies nationwide, particularly when it comes to corners offices.
First off, those remains are not going to go to
the individual counties to be examined. They're all going to
be batched and sent to the GBI, who controls the
(10:25):
state medical Examiner, which I don't I'm not a fan
of that model because I don't think the law I
don't think any law enforcement agency should control the corner
or the medical examiner. They need to be two completely
separate entities. They in Georgia, they are the state medical
Examiner answers to the head of the chief law enforcement
(10:46):
agency in State of Georgia, and then they're going to
put their agents on it as well. So that's in
one sense, that's a saving grace. So instead of having
two sheriff's offices or even two corners offices trying to
collate information and all that. You've got this one central
(11:07):
repository of data, investigative data that's being controlled by the GBI,
all right, and also they're in house medical examiner that's
conducting the examinations and trying to get answers.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Right now, let me ask you this show because we
have remains being found on this hunting property. Yeah, and
they're not all found at one time. They're found over
a period of time and as you mentioned, spread over
two counties. When that first call comes in from a
hunter saying I think I found something that might be human,
(11:41):
because a lot of times what you find you kind
of look at and go, I've been a hunter for
a long time, but out in the woods a long time.
This does not look like any animal I've ever seen before.
This is this looks more human. But I don't know,
and I know you've told me, and this is what
I had no idea of until we started doing this.
That many times when you guys get called out to
look for because somebody found bones in their backyard and
(12:02):
it ended up being chicken or a pig or whatever. Yeah,
hog yeah, it wasn't a human. It was just an
old bone. So conversely, if you see something that you
know is not an animal, I mean, especially in this case,
we don't even know how long they've been out there.
You don't know if the person was gotten the freezer
and cut up and then dispersed years later.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
You have no idea.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
So how do you start so uncovering this.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Well, the first thing you have to do is and
it starts. It starts with what you just put out there.
You know, are these human remains? Are these remains that
the investigator will have to dig into, that the medical
examiner will have to dig into. But the trick here
(12:47):
and the key to this is gathering all the data
bringing it back to the lab, and that's where the
true investigation begins. David, all my years of working in
(13:15):
the field and then and then teaching, really it's really
hard to say that I have seen a composite sketch
or even a clay model or digital model that is
(13:35):
right on the money as far as who an individual
is okay in life, because look, if you've got an
image that has been generated or a model that has
been generated, you're doing that for the purpose of getting
an ID and so you don't know who they are.
(13:56):
But Dave, you had an interesting perspective on this image
of the victim in this case. What was it you
just said just a second ago about this relative to
her appearance?
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Okay, they did a based on they didn't know who
they had, They did not know whose remains they had,
and they were trying to figure out. And over the
years we've seen recreations based on different bones found of
a victim, and a recreation of the skull will be
done based on whatever information they have on the bones,
(14:32):
and very rarely do they look like the person. But
in this case they did using the DNA they developed
and the different bones that they had, and they created
I guess AI created it. You know, in the computer
they can created a composite sketch of what this woman
might have looked like and side by side. Once they
(14:54):
knew who it was and put it up there. I
was shocked at how close they came based on what
they had to work with. And I mean, Joe, I
thought it was two pictures of the same person. I
didn't know that that was what they came up with.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Well, let me let me tell you this. For our purposes.
The The image that you saw is arguably generated by
one of the finest forensic artists in America, and she
actually does work for the GBI, and it's I gotta
(15:37):
tell you, it's it's spot on as far as one
of these renderings can be. And I think probably the
most captivating thing about the image that was generated are
the eyes because Mindy, the victim, she had these real
(15:57):
I guess people would call them doe eyes. You know,
they're real, big and beautiful, you know, and this rendering
kind of captures that. And you know what's so hard
about this that many times all they're working with is
a skull. So how do you arrive at this point
where you're doing it? This is what's kind of amazing
(16:19):
about it. How do you arrive at this point where
you have a skull that is completely stripped of all
identifying markers as far as skin thickness, oh, the tone
of the skin, hair color, because most of the time
with hair color, unless you find strands perhaps with the skull,
(16:41):
and that does happen. Now you'll still find bits of
like the scalp that are attached attached to the skull.
And there's kind of a membrane that's called fascia that
attaches the scalp to the skull. And many times those
(17:01):
attachments still exist even you know, maybe an animal has
been feasting post mortem, they might not get everything. You'll
find actually strands of hair, and that artist can look
at that hair be given a descriptor of it. As
a matter of fact, they can take the hair to
the hair and fiber section in a crime lab, Dave.
(17:22):
They can look at the hair a hair strand under
a microscope and they can tell you if the hair
is dyed. They can also tell you how long ago
it was dyed, because you've got these kind of human
hair looks like the sheet itself kind of looks like
it looks like scales, and it grows out and you'll
(17:43):
see those you know how you see people that my
wife has talked about this and like Cassi and his
versions here when people get black roots, okay, and like
they've got blonde hair on the ends, that's the hair
growing out. You get a strand of that hair, you
can do an approximation for how long it's been since
(18:07):
the hair was dyed. Because we hair grows at a
predictable rate, all right, So when you're looking at that.
If there's any color on the hair, you can get
idea of the color. So you take that data and
plug it into what the artist is going to do
as far as the rendering goes. And David, I agree
with you, man, this image is striking. It's absolutely striking.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
I was amazed, truly that I wasn't looking at two
photos of the same person. That's what shocked me. But
here's where they started, Joe. The initial remains, Okay, what
I actually found the very first thing that was put
out after finding partial remains. The initial report was partial
remains of a white female discovered at the Portal Hunting
(18:52):
Clubs spread over a three mile radies. Now, based on
the information they had on how they did this, they
believe they know and this was found in twenty twenty two.
They believed that the remains have been placed in that
area November twenty seventh of twenty twenty two. Around that date. Now,
I don't know how they came up with that, but
(19:13):
they did. And it went on to say the remains
of that of a white female with brown eyes, shoulder
length brown hair, approximately five nine to five ten in height,
approximately one hundred and eighty five to two hundred pounds,
with an age range of twenty to fifty years old.
She was forty, just to give you an idea, she
was forty.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
The body had no scars, marks, or tattoos. So we're
not talking about skeletonized remains here. We know that. But Joe,
how do you start with this and end up finding
a person if if they've never been fingerprinted and they've
never had their DNA in the system. How do you
find out any information about this when you only have
(19:53):
partial remains?
Speaker 1 (19:54):
I love this question. I get this question all the time,
and I love that you've asked so I can hold forth.
This is why it makes it difficult, because I've had
so many people approach me over the years about cases
they're interested in, and it involved either an unknown perpetrator
or an unknown person to say, why don't you just
(20:15):
do DNA? What does that even mean? Do DNA? I mean,
you know you can. You can collect DNA from a decedent, okay,
And there's multiple methods to do that, and you can
create a DNA profile on an individual. You can go
(20:38):
back generations, and you can talk about their ethnic origins
and all these sorts of things. But my man, if
you ain't got nothing in the system to compare it to.
It goes back to what I always say, the data
ain't worth gunpowdered blow at hell. Same thing with fingerprints,
if you recover a latent print at a scene, or
(21:00):
if you recover like in the More for instance, I'll
tell you this. I think we've had this discussion. We
talked about so much, you know, after over four hundred
episodes with say you've got a desiccated hand or a
finger and obviously have to have tissue We go in
(21:23):
and we inject those fingers with tissue builder like they
use at the funeral home to you know, so that
the dead don't have that sunken appearance. They'll put tissue
builder in there and it causes the element to regain
kind of a natural appearance, and you can roll a
print off of that. Well, if the person that you
(21:45):
have that is unknown, you roll a print off of them.
If they're not you know, in the system n c IC,
then you're you're not going to get a hit on
them fingerprint wise, so it's great to take them. You know. Obviously, look,
we've got a lot of bright listeners and you know
(22:07):
where I'm going with this, Dave. You know that as
keen as our folks are, they understand that you've got
to collect the DNA from a variety of you know,
this is the thing. If you've got remains scattered about
all of these various elements of the body, you have
(22:30):
to find that remains that's got the most viable tissue
on it. And that's what makes this very unique. So
when you're thinking about how do we do this, well,
whatever has biological viability as far as a collection of
sample goes, if you can collect that, and then with
(22:54):
the image, you know that you have this lady that's missing.
When it comes time and when you get closer to
narrowing your feel down, this is how you're going to
get her identified. You're going to go to her family,
those that are in her specific gene pool, and you're
going to request samples from them Mama, sisters, brothers, daddy.
(23:22):
I mean, you could do more distant relatives, but if
you can concentrate in on those those core groups in
her familial environment, you compare their DNA. But at this
point in time in the investigation, they're just collecting remains, man,
I mean, they're not. It's not like they have it's
(23:45):
not like they you know, you do this and you
know exactly, you know who you're going to go to. Remember,
she she they believe, prosecutors believe she was actually a
victim Hamsi victim in twenty twenty two. There was not
actually an arrest affected in this case until twenty twenty three.
(24:10):
So you know, you're trying to work all of this
stuff out. And of course, my abiding principle in any
case is particularly when it comes to the unknown, when
it comes to those individuals that we don't know who
they are. When you get the identity of an individual
and you find out who they are, everything else becomes
(24:35):
a lot more clear. You know what I mean by that.
I've stated trying to get people identified, and it's like
(24:56):
pulling the string on sweater. Mama always tells you not
to pull because it's going to come unraveled. Well, in
our case, in the forensic world, we wanted to come unraveled.
I want to see where the thread leads, if you will,
and if you can find out who Once an individual
(25:16):
is identified, automatically you have entree into their world where
you can begin to try to understand who exactly is
in their sphere, who's in their orbit? Dave, And look,
we know because it's very rare that you actually have
a dismembered remain that is not tied back to a homicide.
(25:45):
There's one case I remember, and forgive me, I know
that people listening will know this. There was the case
down in Florida where the guy was He was a
judge that had been forced to retire, and his son
was a lawyer. But he was a druggie. I don't
know if you remember this case. He killed his I mean,
he and his dad had been doing coke in the
apartment adjacent to a a golf club and he they
(26:12):
still to this day, they still have yet to find
the dad, who's in his seventies doing coke. By the way,
they still have yet to find his head to this day.
You know, and the kid went to I say, kid,
he's a grown man. But the child of the man
actually did go to trial for abusive a corpse I think,
(26:34):
but he wasn't charged with the home side. But that's
that's an outlier, Dave. Every single case, and you and
I actually did an entire episode based on dismemberment. All
these cases. We were we were handling. If you if
you think about this, why else would you dismember a body? Well,
you you have it goes to utility of disposal. Most
(26:59):
of these people think that, well, the smaller, smaller I
can make this body, the easier it is to get
rid of the body. Okay, and it makes it complex.
But what's really unclear at this point. I think in
this case, the Casoda's case is where these remains, they're
(27:21):
saying scattered. I have visions of Johnny Appleseed walking across
the countryside and you know where the big say, you know,
you always see him with the big sack on the
side and he's like tossing out tossing out seeds. Was
it that kind of thing? Or where the individual remains were?
(27:45):
They just surface depositions? And it sounds to me everything
that we hear at this point that these were surface depositions.
Where you've got because you've got people finding these, dave.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
And that's kind of where I was headed with all
of those. How how do you as an investigator somebody
comes to you with an armor a leg and you
have no idea of who it belongs to, You've got
no clue, You're starting with nothing. Yeah, and again unless
there DNA is in the system or something that identifies them,
all you really and I'm not please don't understand. I'm
(28:20):
not trying to be flipping here. But all you have
is an arm or a leg. You don't have any
means of identifying. It's just and so as an investigator,
you go, Okay, we can probably identify. Can you identify
the gender of an individual based on a bone?
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Oh? Yeah, yeah, scale you know, if I remember correctly,
we did an episode on anthropology not too long ago
and we talk about with bones in particular, gender can
be determined. First off, Pelvis's is the number one location. Okay, okay,
(28:55):
it was the birth canals, water and women than it
is and dudes. But the other thing is that with
female bones, I love this word, and I've used it
for years. I try to find I try to go
to parties and find a reason to use this word female.
Female female bones are what are referred to as grassisle,
(29:17):
which means they're fine, they're they're more diminutive, whereas male
bones tend to be robust. Now, there's certain parameters you
have to you have to look at with that. Race
impacts that, particularly if you're talking about any racial grouping
that involves anyone in Asian communities, because those skeletons and guys,
(29:39):
I got to tell you, we're all different. Just get
used to that. Asian communities they tend to be more diminutive.
You know, if you look at somebody like, I don't know,
like a montag Yard, you know, who's very diminutive. That
work with our guys here in Vietnam, they're even more
(30:00):
minuative than the people that would be considered Viemmese, if
you can imagine that, because the Vietnese are very diminutive.
So you have a male, a male bone from that
population that might actually give it, you have to be
very careful because the male bone from that that Asian
population might actually look like a female, an adult female
(30:24):
from another population. Okay, that's not associated with that, So
it's not They like to say it's exacting, but it's
not exacting. You have to understand there's certain parameters that
you have to work within. And so yeah, in answer
to your question that these are skeletal remains, which it
sounds like there were still some tissue on these remains,
(30:46):
you would have to take that into consideration because you're
probably not just dealing with purely skeletal remains. Now, with
most skeletal remains, you're going to have a shot, at
least even if it's small, with getting a DNA sample
from them, and that might mean you know, drilling down
(31:07):
into the bone, you know, to exact it from the marrow,
that area, that portion of the anatomy of the bone,
and to draw it out from there. But if you've
got teeth that are left behind, you know, which is
in my opinion, one of the best sources with skeletal remains,
But you still have soft tissues. It all depends on
(31:29):
how viable this tissue is. Dave.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
You know the amazing thing about this case, Joe, beyond
the fact that they were able to identify the woman
and go after her husband, I will tell you that
we could do twenty stories. We do twenty episodes on
this man and this couple and the death and what
it took place. Because I want to give you one
little tip. Yeah, you know, oftentimes when we have a
(31:52):
guy's name in this case, Nicholas James cassotis right, that's
his name. His wife's name is Mindy Mebane castis they
were both forty years old when when I was when
she passed. But you know what he has. He has
the old AKA also known as uh oh, Nicholas Killian Stark. Now, Joe,
(32:13):
I'm just going to throw this out there. Okay, a
name tells a name that an adult picks, you know,
that they make up, tells me a lot about somebody.
In this case, Nicholas Killian Stark. Where does the name
Killian and where does the name Stark come? For iron Man?
Iron Man three? Yeah, Killian was the bad guy Stark
(32:34):
of course, Tony Stark. So this guy named makes up
a name from you know, the movie. I'm sure it's
in the comic book. First, Just so you know, I
have no clue. I've never read a comic book in
my life. Mad Magazine was a comic book to me. Yeah,
I never read those. I mean, you know I read comics.
I never read comic books. But anyway, I digress. But
that was also known as Nicholas Killian Stark told me
(32:56):
everything he needed to go about this free show. So
now you've got a missing woman. Your wife is missing.
By the way, they were also moving around a lot.
Joe as a couple Mindy and Nicholas where they were switching.
It was almost like never spending the same night, spending
a night in the same place twice kind of thing.
(33:19):
They claimed that he was trying to dodge out of
a one point five million dollar judgment from his first marriage.
There's also if there are other stories of corrupt government
and people chasing him. I mean, he has created an
underlying story here that his defense attorney. I'm not kidding
when I tell you, Joe, at the end of every
day he is sitting out on a balcony somewhere, drinking
(33:43):
a bottle of Scotch and choking down a cigar, praying
to Night's not the night I jump because the story
this guy's making him tell is that ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Yeah, and what makes it interest I saw one little
quip about this. They've actually gone into CIA conspiracy with
this case. And of course, anytime you're with the military,
you know, you can have these kind of tethers that
you know, and it might be you may have met
(34:13):
somebody from the agency, or maybe you were in an
embassy somewhere at some point in time unemployment, and yeah,
you happen to shake the hand of somebody that was
with the agency or in the diplomatic service. I love that,
you know, and those sort of things that I don't
mean you have anything to do with them, yeah, you know,
And so a lot of these and the trial is
(34:33):
going on right now, and we're kind of watching this unfold.
But I think, you know, one of the interesting pieces
to this is trying to glean all of the information
that you can from this woman's body that has I mean,
let's face it, this is the ultimate and desecration. I mean,
(34:55):
for me, it is. I mean, there's a lot of things.
You know. We had the guy that we covered that
poor poor preacher that was out in Arizona where the
guy nailed nailed him to the wall in the shape
of Christ on the cross and said that if he
hadn't been caught, he had like fifteen other targets. As
it turned out, Oh my lord, that's desecration too, of
(35:17):
the dead. But man, when you start to get into
these areas of where you're taking a sharp instrument and
you're drawing it across, drawing it across someone's body to
either disarticulate it or cut it across mid shaft, all
these sorts of things, you're entering into an entire different,
different level here. And what amazes me I should I
(35:40):
should no longer be amazed by this. I don't know
why I am this person that you walk down the
aisle with Dave, that you probably at one point in
time may have gently held her face in your hands,
told her that you loved her, told her that you
would always take care of her and provide for your
dying day. You made an oast before God that said,
(36:03):
you know, I'm going to love you till the day
that you died sickness and health. Suddenly you're standing over
a body with a saw. How do you go from
that to that?
Speaker 2 (36:14):
In a very window of time, in a.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Very short window of tom and you know, it's kind
of it's kind of mind blowing in it.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
It was a shorter period of time than you could
have paid off a new car Joe, from the time
they got married to the time he's cutting her up allegedly.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Just to get down to the nitty gritty here, I don't.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
Want to hear from Dewey cheat them and how what
they have done is they've gone from finding severed body
parts spread out over at three mile radius they've collected
as much as they can find.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
I dare say, somebody's going to find something again later.
But they being the GBI, you have the local police
then working with the GBI, and the GBI reaching out
to the FBI. Every alphabet group was working on this
and they were able to create out of nothing the
(37:09):
face of a human being that looked just like the victim.
They were able to identify the victim by once they
id we have a missing person, let's go see what
we have here. They interviewed family after talking to them, well,
can we get a swab, you know, doing the cheek swabs.
They built up a genetic genealogy case where they were
tracking back family members of this possible person and they
(37:33):
were able to go Bengo, we've got it. And once
they were able to identify her, well, they knew that
her husband was now gone and they know what kind
of guy he is, but I've been married several times.
He's a conspiracy who goes by the name Nicholas Killian
Stark and he's now in Pennsylvania somewhere, which is where
(37:54):
he was arrested seven months after they found the body parts.
But they were able to work this back with that
DNA Joe and using genetic forensic any genealogy that you
and I have talked about so many times on this show. Yes,
and with something that twenty years ago they probably couldn't
have done maybe thirty years you know.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Yeah, yeah, maybe we had an inkling of it twenty
years ago, but nothing like we're at now. And you know,
I've got to show a love to our friends at AUTHRAM,
you know, because we see this every week. You know,
you and I at least covered one of their cases
every other week. Whether they went to AUTHORM or not
is not relevant at this to our conversation. But they
did build out a forensic genetic genealogy profile and they
(38:40):
were able to get Mendy identified. I think one of
the issues here that kind of leaves you lacking or
wanting for more is that we don't necessarily have a
cause of death. I think that that's that's always hard
(39:02):
to swallow because because families want want that data, they
want it, and listen, I got to tell you good
bad are indifferent. They deserve that data, you know, they
deserve that information, and of course, from a proscatorial standpoint,
(39:22):
you want to have it. But he for whatever methodology
he chose to chose to apply to end her life,
it can you know, it goes to how twisted this
(39:44):
whole case is. You know, nobody enters into a marriage
asking for this at all. I don't care how grim
things are. I don't care how many voices you might
have talking to you in your head because of conspiracy theories.
Nobody deserves her family deserved to have her intact. As
(40:04):
a matter of fact, they deserve to be able to
celebrate Christmas with her and Thanksgiving. We guess what, that's
all gone. It's no more. It's never going to happen
again because of the choices that one individual made. Listen,
this case is still being adjudicated as we speak right now.
(40:27):
But a tip of the cap to all the scientists
and investigators that worked on this thing for so hard,
for so long, and so hard, because if that one
hunter that was actually tracking a deer down there in
South Georgia had not come across that remain, she may
have just vanished into the vapor. But now, and this
(40:50):
is the way it should always be done, they took
the dead and for a moment in time, they've resurrected
her and wait for her body to tell the final tale.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is bodybags.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
Hm.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Hm
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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