October 1, 2025 • 47 mins
The remains of an unknown female were discovered in a well shaft in Saskatoon's Sutherland neighborhood in 2006. Now, almost 20 years later, she has been identified as a woman born in 1881! Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack go behind the shocking find and discover who the woman was and how she was murdered! Alice Spence (nee Burke), a woman of Irish ancestry who was about 35 years old at the time of her death, sometime between 1916 and 1918. Saskatoon and Toronto Police Services Team with Othram to Identify Canada's "Woman in the Well". Check out DNASolves.com
Transcribe Highlights
00:08.72 Introduction -History
03:17.40 Ben Franklin's bathroom
05:20.03 Human remains in burlap bag, placed in a barrel, found in a well
10:01.36 Murderer did good job hiding body
15:30.58 Forensic anthropologist at work
20:25.39 Joe Loves the Saints
25:05.77 Atl, body stashed down manhole
30:12.75 Hyoid bone could still be intact
35:20.77 Gilgo, burlap sacks used
40:14.48 Othram is changing lives
45:12.44 Body finally identified with trauma from murder
47:03.89 Conclusion
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quody balance with Joseph's gotten More my Lord. I love history.
If I thought that I could have made a living
at it, I think my dream job probably would have
been to have been a history professor. Nowadays, there's just
(00:22):
too much politics attached to it. But I love going
to historic sites because you go there and you see things,
and it breathes life into those that are long since deead.
A few years ago, I had an opportunity for the
(00:43):
very first time in my adult life to visit Philadelphia,
and the reason I really wanted to go was all
about Ben Franklin. He's probably my favorite character from American history.
Just I love his story. I love the fact that
he was living on the streets in the freezing cold
(01:06):
in Boston and then in Philly, and he just kind
of set his own rules man lived his life. But
you know, one of the most interesting things that I
saw in Philly was not I don't know, Constitutional Hall
or you know, or even the Liberty Bell, which was
kind of cool, you know. The coolest thing I saw
(01:27):
was the site of Ben Franklin's Privy, which I was
fascinated by. And actually it's just a big block of
stone that says that Ben Franklin's privy was here, and
privy for those that don't know, that's essentially the outhouse.
But what they did when they excavated that spot, they
(01:52):
found all manner of items. And there's actually a display
case that actually shows these items that were pulled from
the privy of this brilliant man. And I don't know
one side forgive me for being coarse here. I thought
how many thoughts did he have during those periods of
time when he felt nature's call and he's sitting out
(02:16):
there in the cold, but just considering life. But you
know it contained within that privy were bits of evidence
of life, porcelain dolls, broken crockery and pottery, utensils, buttons,
just tons of stuff. Can you imagine? And there are
(02:40):
people that do this, that go out and dig up
all privies and dig through and try to find what
still remains. It's a great area to preserve things in.
But you know, recently there was a fine in a
(03:01):
not too dissimilar from a privy, an old abandoned will
where something else was found, something that goes back years
and years. Matter of fact, it was a person and
our dear friends at Authorm Labs helped solve a one
(03:22):
hundred year plus mystery. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
is body Bags. You know, Dave, I went to Philly
for the very first time. A place I have never been,
and I've had many friends up there that have asked
me to come is Canada. I've never been to Canada.
(03:45):
There are few sites that I've always wanted to go to.
I've always wanted to go to see Quebec City, which
is like this. It's upriver from Montreal. It's like one
of the original settlements that the French had up there.
Thing it is supposed to This place is so beautiful,
cobblestone streets, it's it's high and bluffs and it's literally
(04:05):
like stepping back in tom But I got to tell you,
I've never been. I've never the town of Saskatoon, in
says Catchewan, has never been on my bucket list. But boy, Dave,
did they find something interesting down an old well in Sassic.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Funny.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
You know, you get these guys that are working at
the site of where a hotel had been, and they're
clearing it out to build something else, and they come
across an old well and they start digging, and in
the well, not all the way at the bottom, but
in the well they find a barrel and the barrel
(04:47):
is hung up.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
And so.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
I don't know the process that construction workers go through
when they find something like this, yeah, but I do
know that they don't just start willy nilly knocking stuff down.
They are aware that this could mean something, so they
stop and they reach out. Sure enough, inside this barrel
in two thousand and six is a burlap bag, and
(05:16):
again burlap bag inside a barrel that's down a well,
and inside the burlap bag the well preserved remains of
a female. As they start looking at this, they're going, Okay,
this is not recent, all right, now, I don't know,
and I'm hoping you can fill me in here, because
(05:38):
my first thought was if I'm a construction guy and
you've got decomposed remains. Now when we say fairly well preserved,
for the fact that they are fairly decomposed, you know,
I'm just wondering, how do you come to how old
are these remains? I mean, am I looking at something
that even if it's all bones, there's still some clothing
(05:58):
and hair and there's all kinds of things in here.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
And I'm just.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
Wondering, where do you start. Where do you start with
a body in a well, Joe?
Speaker 1 (06:06):
You start with a barrel, I think. And okay, let
me ask you. Let me ask you a question. When's
the last time you actually came across a barrel that
other than former whiskey barrels that have been from Jack
(06:27):
Daniel's distillery or whatever that had been cut into and
people and they've got that great bourbon smell to them inside,
and people use them as planters in their yard. I
got to confess something I've never seen, like a barrel
for utility at this stage in my life. I think
I recall seeing them and they were really old when
(06:48):
I saw them when I was a kid in a
feed store that my grandpa used to go to that
I would go, you know, we'd buy stuff for his
horses and his mules and whatnot. I'd seen them there.
But they have there's a particular way that barrels were
manufactured and made. I'm assuming that there is some type
(07:10):
of identifying mark on this thing somewhere, and we have
to also assume that it was essentially cobble together with nails,
all right, and you've probably got two bands that go
around the outside to kind of hold it in here.
This wood has been specially treated to form it into
(07:32):
a barrel like shape. These things are not These things
are not like straight up and down like a perfect cylinder.
They have almost like a bowfin construction to them. I
say bowfen. That's a ballistic reference to the way projectiles
are actually shaped, where it kind of tapers at the end,
but this tapers on the top. Was the lid still there?
(07:54):
Because those are going to have nails in it, you know,
And that's the way, you know. I guess they could
use wooden pegs, but I think that by the time
and we're going to get to time here, by the
time this period rolls around, you're going to be using
probably iron nails in here. You're not going to be
using aluminum nails. And I'm fascinated by this, the ability
(08:18):
for something, particularly something that is organic like this a
human remain, that it would still it would be this
well preserved in this environment. And not only that, I
was thinking about something else that you said. You said
that the barrel had not gone all the way down.
(08:41):
The measurement that they give is actually two meters down,
and for those that don't work. In the metric system,
two meters is essentially just over six feet in depth,
so I'm roughly six feet It all depends on which
liquor store walking out of. You know, they catch me
on the camera with the you know, with the measuring
(09:03):
tape at the door. You know, they're that's a joke
in certain laughter here laugh track. But anyway, when you
when you walk out six feet tall, I don't know,
not necessarily an advertised man, but it ain't it ain't
that deep.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
A lot of guys in the working out of a
liquor store, Joe are ten feet tall and bulletproof. So yeah,
they say, yeah, yeah, it is kind of they're only
talking is six feet down the well a barrow with
a body inside. Obviously somebody did not want this body found, right, Yeah,
And they were successful enough that it's two thousand and
(09:39):
six before we even know there is a body and
they have to call an excavation team out.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
That's the part they got me where does not even begin?
Speaker 1 (09:46):
I think it got lodged. And I'd also like to
know something that has not been revealed is the composition
of the walls of this thing, if they are, if
there is like almost maybe I it could be brick
or maybe cobblestone that is built in a cylinder essentially
around you know, Dave, this is my thought. We need
(10:09):
to know the diameter of the well itself to get
an idea, and you know, we kind of got it
in our mind. I think I wonder, I really wonder
if the thing had been lower in the well over
the years and as a water table rose, that maybe
it floated up and then got here's a technical term here,
(10:29):
wampy jawed in there and got you know, kind of
in a diagonal diagonal posture, and maybe it was caught
on one end and the top end it kind of
got wedged, and maybe the water water table never rose
high again enough and receded enough to bring it down
to the bottom. These are fascinating perspectives, and yeah, you
(10:50):
know you're right when you when you find something like
this and a tip of the cap to the to
the construction workers that they stopped. I got to tell you,
I'm going to chase a rabbit here just for a second,
please indulge me. But the one of the most on
tragic stories I think that is from around the area
(11:12):
where we live in the community of Oxford, Alabama, is
when they were building a strip mall, and you probably
remember this story. They went into an area behind where
the strip mall is being torn down. They never consulted
an archaeologist, and they remember they tore in to the hill,
(11:36):
I mean, cut this thing and this thing is massive,
cut the thing in half, and they it was a
Native American mound. Can you imagine that? And so you know,
retrospectively the Creek nation, who you know, essentially occupied this area.
They're kind of upset about this, you know, and no
telling how many ancestral remains artifacts. It would have been
(11:57):
really rich. You could learn a lot about the area
that's gone. Man, So now you've got it. You're using
this as backfield dirt so that you can build a
Ross's or TJ Max or target, which all exists in
this mall, the strip mall. Was it really worth it?
I mean, couldn't you have taken it? Couldn't you brought
dirt in from somewhere else? But in this case they
(12:18):
actually paused and said, you know what, we probably need
to get hold of the authorities. There's probably going to
have to be an archaeologist that's going to come out
there and low and behold, that's what happened, Dave anthropologist.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
I liked it.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Yeah, I know, isn't that cool? Yeah? And this guy,
this guy is actually pretty written out. He's he's been
practicing for a long time. He's been at the University
of Saskatchewan for a protracted period of time. They've got
a lot of Indigenous remains that he examines. But he's
a forensic anthropologist, so he's handling also homicide cases, you know,
(12:55):
burned bodies, buried bodies, clandestine graves, all these sorts of things,
all through that region and probably all over Canada. I mean,
this guy, Dave. This guy got his phc in nineteen
seventy nine. He's been in the field for a little
while right now.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Okay, his name is Ernie Walker.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
And the first thing I thought of, Joe was when
you ex Okay, we were talking one day on the
show about how you find a forensic anthropologist or a
person of this expertise because the police just don't have
him in a rolodex. You know, you don't know it
makes it you think they do. I mean I did
until you told me they didn't.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
I really did. I thought I just kind of assume
there's you know.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Let me see. No, I just didn't know that it
was allowed me to redirect. Yeah, okay, I no, no, no, no.
This is and people don't understand this. I tell my
kids all the time at university. Look, when you get
out into practice, you need to identify where there is
a forensic odentologist, a dentist, forensic anthropologist, a forensic entomologist,
(13:58):
because it's like you don't want to have the need
for one of these people on the day that you
discover something you need to go out and buy them coffee.
You know, when you settle into your desk and establish
a relationship with them, say hey, doc, you know what
we might need you at some point in time. Can
I get your contact information? Just can we develop a
(14:21):
relationship and I you know, Saskatoon is a rather large
city by Canadian standards. It's up in an isolated area,
but rather isolated. But you know, you've got this guy
that's there, he has availability, You're going to want to
bring him in on this because, let's face it, you
(14:42):
can have all the forensic pathologists that you want, all right,
but when you're talking about human remains that have been
down there for I don't know, roughly close to a century.
We think, all right, dude, uh, you're going to want
somebody that deals in something other than still viable tissue
(15:05):
or even decomposing tissue. You're going to have to have
somebody that's gonna be able to read skeletal remains. And
boy did he do a bang up job, Dave.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
You know, when I think about that, I'm thinking about
somebody who is working with very sharp, small instruments. Okay,
almost dainty, that's what I picture. But then this is
what he said. Yeah, Ernie Walker said, my colleagues and
I used heavy equipment, had some excavation around the well
(15:34):
and took it apart, board by board. And here's the
kicker to what Ernie Walker, the forensic anthropolgy. I'm thinking
a forensic anthropologist on an x graator. Okay, that's what
I'm picturing him on this big yellow talka toy, you know,
and but then taking it. But then, you know, going
from this huge machine to board by board.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Bored by the word bitcha.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
And he says, unknown, could the individual that dropped it
a piece of cribbing of the well had broken loose
and blocked the barrel from going all the way down
to the bottom.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Holy smokes, what are the odds? Okay, here's another question
for you. If if it had not been caught up
on that cribbing, all right, I wonder if they would
have found it or if it would have just been
down there and that would have just eradicated it. You know,
with excavators, you know, you go, hey, let me give
(16:35):
you another good example of using an excavator at a
scene where you know that you have a body. You
remember our episode of Richard the Third, you know, the
king that was killed and the king and the car park.
Remember they started out with front end loaders out there
(16:55):
tearing because they had to tear that that car park
to pieces. And you have to have a sensibility about
you as a scientist, say, okay, boys, shut her down,
hand me my pick, hand me my shovel. Then after
you get done in the pick and shovel phase and
the sifter phase, okay, hand me my dental tools. Now
(17:16):
in my tiny little brush, all right. So it kind
of works this way. But that's why of these people
go through such intense training throughout their life. That's why.
And it's not just a training. It's like getting in
a batting cage, swinging a golf club. It's practice, practice, practice,
you learn. You learn to understand what you're dealing with.
(17:37):
You have to understand the geology as well as the geography,
the topography. Something that I talk about my Clandestine Burials
class Dave is also hydrology. Hydrology plays a huge role
in this case, the movement of water over an area.
How it affects how many you know, over a century,
(17:57):
how many times has sesked and flooded, how many times
has the water table risen and dropped? You know? And
have there been sewer lines that have been laid in
around this thing over the years. You know, this is
a time when we get to the specific date, this
is a time where well, people didn't have indoor plumbing.
(18:20):
We got a well, right, you've got to go out
and pump the water out of the well. My grandmother
used to tell me about that. Oh, you go out
to you have to go out to the you know,
to the outhouse to use use the privy. Okay, you're
not going in the house, so you've got to have
you've got to have sewer lines and water lines and
all that stuff. Did that affect anything in this environment,
(18:44):
and so you have all of these considerations running through
your mind. You've got the stratification of dirt, multiple layers
in there, and just to be able to work your
way through it. But you know, the one saving grace here,
The one saving grace, and I'm going to use this
term because I dropped it on you a few moments ago,
is that this body was not in a vault or
(19:09):
in a mausoleum. It wasn't even in a casket. It
was in an old oaken barrel dropped down a well.
But yet it was still what we refer to as
an intunement. Okay, So Dave, I'm going to go ahead
(19:40):
and tell our friends something about myself. I am obviously
a long standing massochist. And here's why this is not
the dating game.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
And I'm not Jim Lang so.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Well, I'm a masochist in the sense that I'm a
Saints fan. Okay, I'm a long standing Saints fan, and
I don't care how bad my boys play. I don't
care if they're in the cellar, which they are right now,
or you know, Drew Brees is leading them to the
(20:14):
two thousand and nine Super Bowl. I don't care. I
am faithful to the core when it comes to my Saints.
I love them, I love my hometown, and I love
that team.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
You know, I love Chuck when he played for the
same Oh.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Boy, yeah, we're in the glasses. Yeah, wasn't that something.
And you know, Kenny Stabler actually finished his career. Couldn't
walk that a dreamed fluid off of his knees, never
went through contact practice, that's how bad of shape he
was in. Uh yeah, don't get me started. I know
all the history. You know, my mother was actually at
the first Saints home game and on the kickoff they
(20:48):
were playing the Los Angeles Rams the kicking the Saints
received a kickoff, and maybe this is a bad thing,
but their first kickoff that they received, they ran it
back for a touchdown. That's how that's how they're their
franchise established itself. And then it all just kind of
went limited to the side of the mountain at that
(21:11):
point in time. But you know the thing about it is,
I've got the reason I'm brought up to Saints. I
have got one of I don't know if you have
one of these. I'm pretty sure you do, because you're
a dude. If you go into your chest of drawers.
There's probably a T shirt that out of all the
T shirts that you possess, it's old, it's ratty, but
(21:31):
it's soft, and it's one of these things that you
I don't know. I've got this T shirt that is ancient.
It's a Saint shirt and for some reason, I put
this thing on and I just feel comforted by it. Now.
I don't know if it would require a forensic archivist
clothing arkifast to date this probably not, But in this
particular case in Saskatoon, they brought in. They brought in
(21:55):
a forensic clothing expert, which is fascinating to me.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Absolutely, somebody work in Hollywood on movies or something.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
I mean, it.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Really does, it really does, and I would assume that
within that field there's utility for that. You know, if
you're going to do costuming, you know you're doing period pieces.
These people have to understand how people dressed. I hate
these movies where they try to portray people in older
you know, older in ancient ages and they put them
(22:26):
in in accurate costumes. I know, accurate costumes are probably
very expensive, but in this case, they brought this person
in when they discovered that they had remains that they're
dealing with. They've just tod date, just to date the
clothing to try to understand the circle of the clothing,
(22:47):
what was the origin of it. And not only was
there a tire that was still remaining, but Dave, they
also had a lap back, which I think plays in
to the narrative of this kick.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
Well, all right, so we've got a body or remains
in a burlac bag inside a barrel thrown down a
well that didn't make.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
It all the way to the bottom.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
They get it out and as we documented excavating and
then bored by board and pulling it out.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Do you take the body then out? What do you do?
Speaker 3 (23:30):
I mean, I'm going to assume they're not leaving this
barrel hanging there, that at some point they've pulled the
body out, the remains out of the barrel. How did
they get the barrel out of the ground and then
get the remains and what do they take them? They're
not going to do an autopsy or look at it.
They're spread it on the grass.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Well, okay, let me let me go this way with you. Okay,
let me just tell you how Josep Scott More. We
want to do it all right, And I can't guarantee
that they did it this way. If in the watchword
here is containment. Yeah, if you have if you have
a vessel, which we're going to call this barrel of vessel,
(24:08):
and that just means a container of something. If you
have this vessel that the body has been contained in
and apparently has been contained in for a long long time,
I'm not going to do anything to disrupt the remains
any more than I have to. Now. The question is
had the thing completely fallen apart? Was it still partially together?
(24:31):
Because even the components of that barrel, from a forensic standpoint,
each component that may have fallen away went deeper has
got value. It's you know, in this case is no
different than any other case. You have to collect every
bit of evidence. And can I tell you I want
to tell you a real quick story about being in
(24:54):
a space like this. You know, one of the most
terrifying cases I have ever worked. And I say terrifying.
It had nothing to do with the actual remains, like
it was some kind of scary thing. It wasn't monsters
or anything like this. There was a case in Atlanta
years ago where the city came by and they were
(25:17):
inspecting either gas or waterlines in a particular area, and
they had an indication that there was a manhole beneath
the surface of the street and seeing had been and
I think this is completely forbidden, but they still did it.
This thing. We calculated the thing had been asshalted over
at least seven times. So these guys they had to
(25:43):
break through that strata of asshalt and then they found
the manhole cover where they popped it off and guess what.
There was a woman's body in the bottom of this
manhole and it had been dismembered and placed into plastic backs.
(26:03):
Plastics still existed. I had to go down in this thing.
And the scary thing about going down into a manhole,
other than if you're claust phobic, it's not a cool
place to be, is that you know, the lower you
descend in this thing, the less oxygen there is. And
there have been people that have gone into these things
(26:23):
and suffocated before, even with a lid open on this thing.
So I was like, and I had this in the
back of my mind, Listen, if there's anybody out there
that can work up a worst case scenario, I'm chief
among centers. You know, my wife says, I've got a
mind that has an incalpable amount of trivia. It's because
(26:46):
I read all the time. I'd be great on a
trivia team. But you know, I'd read, you know, over
the years about these sorts of things, and there are
cases out there where people have had to go into manholes.
Manholes over the years have been a great, well, I
say great, that's not a good word to use, have
been a preferred location, particularly in big cities, for dumping
(27:08):
bodies because the course of nature is just going to
take over. The body's going to break down, and they'll
just slap the lid on top of it. And particularly
if they're aware of the manhole in the location of it,
and they know that they live around the area, they
know nobody ever comes out here. I want to see
work crews out here. I've got it. I've killed somebody.
I'm going to dump them down down into this manhole.
(27:31):
And so for me, that was terrifying, and that was
a really painstaking thing. We did not have an anthropologist
out there.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
I had you have to go in head first. Did
they like hold you by a rope around your feet
and drag it in. I mean, I think it's halfway
down there. You had to be cussing going. I went
to so many years in college, hub boyd.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
This kind of worked. Isn't there somebody there? Anybody something
can come down here?
Speaker 1 (27:52):
There was something that was kind of intellectually stimulating about it,
I have to say, because and again it's being a
death investigator. The odd road of a death investigator is
going to take you to many unique locations along your journey,
and that's just one of them. For me, it was
and I hadn't really thought about that until we started chatting,
(28:16):
but collecting those remains because those bags had actually erupted
down there and had torn over a period of time.
But it was in this real kind of mucky, muddy
bottom down there, and you could actually see the little
turn valves you know, that were still there. They're made
out of cast iron or aluminum or something where you
(28:38):
could go down there and manage like whatever pipes. We're
going through. This area shows you how much I know
about plumbing, but you know, to be able to access
all the stuff down there. And when this body in
the bottom of this thing had landed, you could tell
it was like it impacted really hard. I think that
probably the bag initially got torn by the initial drop.
(28:59):
That's why the case up in Saskatoon is kind of interesting,
because if this thing got cock eyed going down the well, dude,
this thing may have been preserved to a great degree.
And they're actually saying the body was in a barrel,
So do you still have containment with the remains and
the barrel is the structural integrity of the thing has
(29:22):
not been compromised to the point where you couldn't maybe
remove it in one piece. Now, for all I know
they went in and did. But the the problem is
is if you take if you take that body out
of that barrel, if you take it out of the barrel,
there are so many fine components of the human skeleton
(29:45):
that you start losing the bones of the hands, the
bones of the feet really really quickly. And don't even
get me started on for tebral bodies. Oh and by
the way, what's really important the hyoid bone, the fact
that you would have a preserved, perhaps historic hyoid bones
still in place, because that's something you can actually appreciate.
(30:05):
They might give you clues.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
I want to ask you something as we're talking about
this in the well and the body and we know
it's old, we don't know how old. They're trying to
figure this out. And you mentioned the forensic coming in
and looking at the clothing and the threads and the
things like that, and having that type of expertise you
told me about the.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Case of Huey P. Long.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
Yeah, yeah, and how that that came into play with
that as well, with that type of forensic.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Uh thread count. I mean, I don't even know.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Listen, I knew nothing. Listen. I've got to I've got
to proclaim my ignorance here. And I was a very
young investigator when this happened. There was a guy named
Bill Stars. If you had a chance, check him out.
I think I think Ductor Stars our professor Stars has
passed on now. He was at George Washington University. He
did the exhumation on Huey P. Loong's uh assassin. Who's
(31:01):
a guy named doctor Weiss. If you don't know who
who E. Pen Long was. He was a populist governor
in Louisiana and he was assassinated in the hallway in
the main hallway in the old Capitol building in Baton Rouge.
And this guy had a beef with him doctor Weiss did.
As a matter of fact, they think that Hughey may
(31:23):
have actually been shot by one of his bodyguards by accident.
But heugh I think, if I remember correctly, Weiss had
a compact pocket thirty two caliber automatic, which you don't
come across those very often anymore, and shot. He shot
Governor Long and struck him in the abdom and he
(31:43):
lingered for a few days. But they killed Weiss's graveyard dead. Well.
The family had questions about the specific injuries. Also, they
wanted to know if it was actually Wiss in the
grave because there was all kinds of political injury back then.
But Bill Starrs also did something else famous that you
might be aware of, Dave, And I wasn't part of this.
I wish I could have been. He exhumed Jesse James's
(32:06):
body and he's the way that actually proved that Jesse
James was in fact buried in his grave. Wow, and
you can see those now, listen. It's nothing, I mean,
go online. You can look it up and see the
exhammation of Jesse James is out there. And doctor our
professor Stars and Professor Stars got involved in a lot
of these well. He gets involved in the Huey P.
Long case, and I'm a very young death investigator, and
(32:30):
we brought some of those remains. I think back to
our facility where I was working in Metro New Orleans
and did some imaging and things like that. But the
person I was fascinated by is they had this lady
that was that worked for the Smithsonian and this was
her job. Her job was examining clothing and they brought
(32:52):
her in on the Weiss case to examine, you know,
Weiss's clothing, and she was looking for things like, well,
obviously manufacture markers, thread counts, what was there any type
of blend, you know, relative to the clothing. Were there
any types of special dyes that were used, because they're
(33:13):
going to go if you're going to go to the
to the trouble to dig up somebody, you're going to
have all hands on deck because there's a lot of
eyes on this. I remember at the time the news
news media was in a frenzy in the state of Louisiana.
It was a big deal. But they actually used one
of these people in this case in Saskatoon where they
(33:35):
bring in this clothing archivist who's got apparently a background
in forensics, and here we're dealing with a body that
is completely unidentified. Wis you kind of knew that it
was going to be him, But in this case, you
don't know what you're dealing with. Dude, you have no idea.
So every bit of data that you can glean, by
(33:57):
the way being contained not just in a barrel, but
actually in a burlap sack. And for folks that don't
know what burlap is, it's actually made out of the
ute plant jute, and it's very resilient as a matter
of fact, for any biblical scholar, you don't have to
be a scholar. You may have read about the term
of people that they talk about grieving. There's a couple
(34:21):
of verses in the Bible they talk about putting on
sackcloth and ashes. Well, sackcloth is actually burr lap. And
you mentioned something. I'll go ahead and let you say this.
There's a modern case right now that's in the news
that actually involves burlap as well. And Dave take it away, which.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Case is that?
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Is that the crazy one we've been dealing with out
there on the beach forever.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Yeah, you'll go beach man, yeah, list man.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
Yeah, And it's just crazy because that burlap sack thing
they came into play where there was could have been
a fisherman because the carry oysters and these things. Yeah,
I mean, we actually did an entire episode on where
the these burlap type sacks could have come from up there,
because they were found near the bodies, or under the
bodies or on the bodies. And it's like, I mean,
(35:08):
the craziness that goes into covering a case. You have
no idea, but the Long Island serial Killer, I still
haven't found an answer for the burlap sacks.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
That were part of that investigation.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Yeah, and it's this really cheap to manufacture, but back
then everybody used burlap. I mean, you would put feed
in there, you would put corn in their flour. You
can imagine, and they're very resilient, just like hemp is
very resilient. You know, you use these naturally occurring fibers
and it would last a long long time. And you know,
(35:42):
and I'm thinking about this case, why would why would
somebody essentially and they didn't mind, you, Dave. They did
not say this body was wrapped in burlap. They said
this lady was placed into a burlap sack. And then
placed into a barrel. Why not just place her into
(36:04):
a barrel? Why use a sack? I wonder, I wonder
if the sack was intended for maybe absorption or maybe
to mask something, or is the individual so intimately involved
with the person We've talked about this before. As grotesque
(36:26):
as this is, was this some kind of weird desth route,
like they're memorializing the dead that goes to a personal relationship, Like, right,
you know that you would take this much, this much time,
and by the way, commit a homicide and take this
much time with an individual, place them into a sack,
place them into a barrel, I guess, nail down the
(36:51):
lid of the barrel, walk out to a well on
this property at the hotel, right, and just drop it
down in there and walk away from it. It's a
fascinating dynamic looking back at it. Look, if you're an
(37:16):
investigator and you show up at a scene and there's
an abandoned well, Huh, you got a body in a barrel?
You got to the body in the barrel is in
case in a sack. You know, because the anthropologist tells
you that this is a female, they're thinking she's maybe
in her early thirties to mid thirties, and we can
(37:38):
get into that how they would determine that. But they're
also seeing what has been noted as fatal trauma to
her body. Well, if you're saying fatal trauma, you're not
looking for at this point in time, you're not looking
for contusions or bruises on the body. They're seeing something
dave on the skeleton that gives you an idea that
(38:02):
this lady was subjected to pretty brutal violence. I think
in this case, what kind of fatal trauma can you
identify on a body? And they give the indication that
this is some kind of repeated trauma. So I'm thinking
that this is evidenced on the skull more than likely. Again,
(38:22):
that's a very you know, I was talking about memorialization.
This is an intimate thing because if this was like
a bludgeoning that's up close and personal, you know, it's
I always talk about that how bludgeonings and sharp force
injuries are. It's intimate. You know, there's no way to
get past it's very very intimate. And bludgeonings in particular
(38:45):
are rage filled. So who could a thirty something year
old woman aggravate to the point where they're going to
start striking her multiple times on the head, to the
point where they're going to killer. I think that's that's
a big question here. And you know, you can look
(39:07):
at things in the modern sense and say, well, if
you can do that, and you can attach you know,
the idea of the intimacy, you begin to narrow down
the field as far as suspects go. But dude, what
happens when there's no more suspects? I mean, because look,
she's been gone a long long time. Who out there
(39:27):
could have had anything to do with her demise? If
they're not still living and breathing, how are you going
to track this down? And that's that's one of the
big things that these investigators faced with, Dave.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
And they still have to identify who the victim is.
They still don't know who she is.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
And for all these years, nearly twenty years, okay, we don't,
they just called her the woman in the well And
it was this past July. Okay, Now that's how fast
this moved. Our friends at author them, have they have
been able to use their abilities? And I would hope,
(40:08):
I would hope everyone that has certain abilities, certain mental
ability or whatever your ability in life is I hope
and pray that if you have something that is so
special and so specific, that you actually do use it
for good. Because without the work they're doing, we wouldn't
know so many things. This woman would not have a name.
(40:29):
She has a name now by the way.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Yeah, Joe.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
None of her family, none of her descendants, knew anything,
and we now know. She was born in eighteen eighty one,
one of five children in and she was born in
Michigan in the US.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
In nineteen oh.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
Two, she moved to Duluth, Minnesota with her mother and
two brothers. A marriage certificate shows that she married Charles
Spence in Saint Louis, Minnesota in nineteen oh four, So
at the age of twenty three, she marries Charles Spence
and gives birth to their daughter, Idella. In nineteen oh five.
(41:10):
February nineteen sixteen, Alice gives birth to a daughter who
died that same day. The nineteen sixteen census shows Alice, Charles,
and Idella living in Saskatoon. By the way, they moved
to sas Saskatoon in nineteen thirteen. I meant to say
that apologize, So they moved from Minnesota or from Michigan,
(41:33):
Canada in nineteen thirteen. Nineteen sixteen, the census shows Alice,
Charles and Idella living in Saskatoon. Now, there's a newspaper
article that came out in nineteen eighteen that details how
the Spence House was destroyed by fire while the family
was away. In nineteen twenty one, Joe, the census lists
(41:56):
Charles as living with his daughter Idella and a house
keeper and her son. Charles died of heart attack in
May of nineteen twenty three. So let me focus real
quick here on Idella, the daughter born in nineteen oh five.
Idella died in nineteen ninety five at the age of ninety,
(42:17):
and all her relatives knew her granddaughters and her great
They only knew that Grandma Idella was orphaned at seventeen,
and that's all they knew. She wouldn't talk about anything
before she was seventeen. And when you think of it, yeah,
now police believe. And this is why the family is
(42:38):
like if we'd only known, you know, because when Idella died,
the woman in the well was eleven years away from
being found and the family knew nothing of Idella's mother.
They knew nothing of Idella's father because she didn't tell
them anything about it.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
But what we do have is the police eleon this.
Speaker 3 (42:57):
Between nineteen sixteen and nineteen eighteen, Alice Spence was killed
and based on that fire in the house when their
sofas away from home. Yep, what do you think maybe
based on the bur lab sack being placed and by
the way, they lived a block away from where this
well was.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
And the well was actually part of an old hotel.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
Was yes, it was, and it was the well was
used by that hotel. So if it's an active well
being used, you know, pumping water up out of it,
and you drop something down in there, it's not going
to be discovered put in you know.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
No, Yeah, unless unless the actual return on the well
is blocked in some way. And apparently I guess it
was never blocked. No, apparently, not water out of it.
But here's an interesting thing that the anthropologist brought up, Dave,
and I'm fascinated by this aspect, was that he opined
that the level of preservation in this body, first off,
(43:54):
it was pretty striking. According to him, he said that
he felt as though that the level of press preservation
of the body can be tied directly to both a
combination of water and get this gasoline that was apparently
permeating this area. And I'm thinking, you know, one of
(44:14):
the things I'm thinking, I've just been teaching a section
in my Clandestine Burials class about the bog bodies that
you find in Denmark and some in Great Britain and
other locations, and they're found in peat bogs. Well, that's
that is what's referred to. We all know what aerobics is,
you know, like aerobic exercise taken on oxygen. I wonder
(44:35):
if this created almost an aerobic environment that promotes preservation.
I'm not saying to a great extent. You know, obviously
her soft tissues are probably gone, but he's saying this
as a preservative. I'm wondering if the alcohol are the
gasoline factors into this? And where's a gasoline? I mean,
(44:58):
gasoline is something that has to be refined. It's not
just like naturally occurring in that area. And you do
have petroleum, and I think Sasktchewan is known, you know
as a petroleum producer. I don't know, it's it's an
interesting it's interesting I think to speculate about. But the
fact that she was in fact finally identified, and that
(45:22):
they have what sounds like homicidal trauma. One of the
things another aspect of this, Dave, is they the Canadian
authorities are refusing they they're refusing to name the suspect
because now get this, they say he's not here to
defend himself. No kidding, no kidding. Yeah, yeah, I would
(45:44):
say he's not here to defend himself. And I'm thinking,
you know, so I may. I don't know, maybe their
brain stretches much further than now. I just don't understand
what considerations there are. But we do have a name
of the victim, and of course on bodybacks, that's what
we're all about. We're we're about the dead and speaking
for the dead. I'm just glad that this was brought
to a conclusion by our friends at AUTHRAM and I
(46:08):
got to tell you this. It's and you and I
talked about this just a few seconds ago off air.
And it's an amazing world that we live in now.
It's sometimes it's a very scary place, but technology nowadays
is kind of amazing. And we live in a world
where sometimes the actual deaths, the cases they take time
(46:33):
to solve, and sometimes those cases, well, they have to
catch up with science, and in this case, that's what
our friends at AUTHRAM employed. If you have an interest
in wanting to help, wanting to help a family out
there that, like Alice's family, didn't even know who she was,
(46:56):
and you want to help them draw conclusion to a
dark secret, maybe get those answers that they've been longing for.
Check out dnasolves dot com. Visit their website. You can
go there and you can contribute. You pick a case,
you can help fund this and they have a trigger point.
I think it's roughly seven to seven thousand dollars and
(47:17):
if they hit that goal, they'll flip the switch and
they'll start to work. But they have them listed there.
That's a DNA solves dot com. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
and this is Bodybacks
Quody balance with Joseph's gotten More my Lord. I love history.
If I thought that I could have made a living
at it, I think my dream job probably would have
been to have been a history professor. Nowadays, there's just
(00:22):
too much politics attached to it. But I love going
to historic sites because you go there and you see things,
and it breathes life into those that are long since deead.
A few years ago, I had an opportunity for the
(00:43):
very first time in my adult life to visit Philadelphia,
and the reason I really wanted to go was all
about Ben Franklin. He's probably my favorite character from American history.
Just I love his story. I love the fact that
he was living on the streets in the freezing cold
(01:06):
in Boston and then in Philly, and he just kind
of set his own rules man lived his life. But
you know, one of the most interesting things that I
saw in Philly was not I don't know, Constitutional Hall
or you know, or even the Liberty Bell, which was
kind of cool, you know. The coolest thing I saw
(01:27):
was the site of Ben Franklin's Privy, which I was
fascinated by. And actually it's just a big block of
stone that says that Ben Franklin's privy was here, and
privy for those that don't know, that's essentially the outhouse.
But what they did when they excavated that spot, they
(01:52):
found all manner of items. And there's actually a display
case that actually shows these items that were pulled from
the privy of this brilliant man. And I don't know
one side forgive me for being coarse here. I thought
how many thoughts did he have during those periods of
time when he felt nature's call and he's sitting out
(02:16):
there in the cold, but just considering life. But you
know it contained within that privy were bits of evidence
of life, porcelain dolls, broken crockery and pottery, utensils, buttons,
just tons of stuff. Can you imagine? And there are
(02:40):
people that do this, that go out and dig up
all privies and dig through and try to find what
still remains. It's a great area to preserve things in.
But you know, recently there was a fine in a
(03:01):
not too dissimilar from a privy, an old abandoned will
where something else was found, something that goes back years
and years. Matter of fact, it was a person and
our dear friends at Authorm Labs helped solve a one
(03:22):
hundred year plus mystery. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
is body Bags. You know, Dave, I went to Philly
for the very first time. A place I have never been,
and I've had many friends up there that have asked
me to come is Canada. I've never been to Canada.
(03:45):
There are few sites that I've always wanted to go to.
I've always wanted to go to see Quebec City, which
is like this. It's upriver from Montreal. It's like one
of the original settlements that the French had up there.
Thing it is supposed to This place is so beautiful,
cobblestone streets, it's it's high and bluffs and it's literally
(04:05):
like stepping back in tom But I got to tell you,
I've never been. I've never the town of Saskatoon, in
says Catchewan, has never been on my bucket list. But boy, Dave,
did they find something interesting down an old well in Sassic.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Funny.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
You know, you get these guys that are working at
the site of where a hotel had been, and they're
clearing it out to build something else, and they come
across an old well and they start digging, and in
the well, not all the way at the bottom, but
in the well they find a barrel and the barrel
(04:47):
is hung up.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
And so.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
I don't know the process that construction workers go through
when they find something like this, yeah, but I do
know that they don't just start willy nilly knocking stuff down.
They are aware that this could mean something, so they
stop and they reach out. Sure enough, inside this barrel
in two thousand and six is a burlap bag, and
(05:16):
again burlap bag inside a barrel that's down a well,
and inside the burlap bag the well preserved remains of
a female. As they start looking at this, they're going, Okay,
this is not recent, all right, now, I don't know,
and I'm hoping you can fill me in here, because
(05:38):
my first thought was if I'm a construction guy and
you've got decomposed remains. Now when we say fairly well preserved,
for the fact that they are fairly decomposed, you know,
I'm just wondering, how do you come to how old
are these remains? I mean, am I looking at something
that even if it's all bones, there's still some clothing
(05:58):
and hair and there's all kinds of things in here.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
And I'm just.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
Wondering, where do you start. Where do you start with
a body in a well, Joe?
Speaker 1 (06:06):
You start with a barrel, I think. And okay, let
me ask you. Let me ask you a question. When's
the last time you actually came across a barrel that
other than former whiskey barrels that have been from Jack
(06:27):
Daniel's distillery or whatever that had been cut into and
people and they've got that great bourbon smell to them inside,
and people use them as planters in their yard. I
got to confess something I've never seen, like a barrel
for utility at this stage in my life. I think
I recall seeing them and they were really old when
(06:48):
I saw them when I was a kid in a
feed store that my grandpa used to go to that
I would go, you know, we'd buy stuff for his
horses and his mules and whatnot. I'd seen them there.
But they have there's a particular way that barrels were
manufactured and made. I'm assuming that there is some type
(07:10):
of identifying mark on this thing somewhere, and we have
to also assume that it was essentially cobble together with nails,
all right, and you've probably got two bands that go
around the outside to kind of hold it in here.
This wood has been specially treated to form it into
(07:32):
a barrel like shape. These things are not These things
are not like straight up and down like a perfect cylinder.
They have almost like a bowfin construction to them. I
say bowfen. That's a ballistic reference to the way projectiles
are actually shaped, where it kind of tapers at the end,
but this tapers on the top. Was the lid still there?
(07:54):
Because those are going to have nails in it, you know,
And that's the way, you know. I guess they could
use wooden pegs, but I think that by the time
and we're going to get to time here, by the
time this period rolls around, you're going to be using
probably iron nails in here. You're not going to be
using aluminum nails. And I'm fascinated by this, the ability
(08:18):
for something, particularly something that is organic like this a
human remain, that it would still it would be this
well preserved in this environment. And not only that, I
was thinking about something else that you said. You said
that the barrel had not gone all the way down.
(08:41):
The measurement that they give is actually two meters down,
and for those that don't work. In the metric system,
two meters is essentially just over six feet in depth,
so I'm roughly six feet It all depends on which
liquor store walking out of. You know, they catch me
on the camera with the you know, with the measuring
(09:03):
tape at the door. You know, they're that's a joke
in certain laughter here laugh track. But anyway, when you
when you walk out six feet tall, I don't know,
not necessarily an advertised man, but it ain't it ain't
that deep.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
A lot of guys in the working out of a
liquor store, Joe are ten feet tall and bulletproof. So yeah,
they say, yeah, yeah, it is kind of they're only
talking is six feet down the well a barrow with
a body inside. Obviously somebody did not want this body found, right, Yeah,
And they were successful enough that it's two thousand and
(09:39):
six before we even know there is a body and
they have to call an excavation team out.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
That's the part they got me where does not even begin?
Speaker 1 (09:46):
I think it got lodged. And I'd also like to
know something that has not been revealed is the composition
of the walls of this thing, if they are, if
there is like almost maybe I it could be brick
or maybe cobblestone that is built in a cylinder essentially
around you know, Dave, this is my thought. We need
(10:09):
to know the diameter of the well itself to get
an idea, and you know, we kind of got it
in our mind. I think I wonder, I really wonder
if the thing had been lower in the well over
the years and as a water table rose, that maybe
it floated up and then got here's a technical term here,
(10:29):
wampy jawed in there and got you know, kind of
in a diagonal diagonal posture, and maybe it was caught
on one end and the top end it kind of
got wedged, and maybe the water water table never rose
high again enough and receded enough to bring it down
to the bottom. These are fascinating perspectives, and yeah, you
(10:50):
know you're right when you when you find something like
this and a tip of the cap to the to
the construction workers that they stopped. I got to tell you,
I'm going to chase a rabbit here just for a second,
please indulge me. But the one of the most on
tragic stories I think that is from around the area
(11:12):
where we live in the community of Oxford, Alabama, is
when they were building a strip mall, and you probably
remember this story. They went into an area behind where
the strip mall is being torn down. They never consulted
an archaeologist, and they remember they tore in to the hill,
(11:36):
I mean, cut this thing and this thing is massive,
cut the thing in half, and they it was a
Native American mound. Can you imagine that? And so you know,
retrospectively the Creek nation, who you know, essentially occupied this area.
They're kind of upset about this, you know, and no
telling how many ancestral remains artifacts. It would have been
(11:57):
really rich. You could learn a lot about the area
that's gone. Man, So now you've got it. You're using
this as backfield dirt so that you can build a
Ross's or TJ Max or target, which all exists in
this mall, the strip mall. Was it really worth it?
I mean, couldn't you have taken it? Couldn't you brought
dirt in from somewhere else? But in this case they
(12:18):
actually paused and said, you know what, we probably need
to get hold of the authorities. There's probably going to
have to be an archaeologist that's going to come out
there and low and behold, that's what happened, Dave anthropologist.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
I liked it.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Yeah, I know, isn't that cool? Yeah? And this guy,
this guy is actually pretty written out. He's he's been
practicing for a long time. He's been at the University
of Saskatchewan for a protracted period of time. They've got
a lot of Indigenous remains that he examines. But he's
a forensic anthropologist, so he's handling also homicide cases, you know,
(12:55):
burned bodies, buried bodies, clandestine graves, all these sorts of things,
all through that region and probably all over Canada. I mean,
this guy, Dave. This guy got his phc in nineteen
seventy nine. He's been in the field for a little
while right now.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Okay, his name is Ernie Walker.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
And the first thing I thought of, Joe was when
you ex Okay, we were talking one day on the
show about how you find a forensic anthropologist or a
person of this expertise because the police just don't have
him in a rolodex. You know, you don't know it
makes it you think they do. I mean I did
until you told me they didn't.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
I really did. I thought I just kind of assume
there's you know.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Let me see. No, I just didn't know that it
was allowed me to redirect. Yeah, okay, I no, no, no, no.
This is and people don't understand this. I tell my
kids all the time at university. Look, when you get
out into practice, you need to identify where there is
a forensic odentologist, a dentist, forensic anthropologist, a forensic entomologist,
(13:58):
because it's like you don't want to have the need
for one of these people on the day that you
discover something you need to go out and buy them coffee.
You know, when you settle into your desk and establish
a relationship with them, say hey, doc, you know what
we might need you at some point in time. Can
I get your contact information? Just can we develop a
(14:21):
relationship and I you know, Saskatoon is a rather large
city by Canadian standards. It's up in an isolated area,
but rather isolated. But you know, you've got this guy
that's there, he has availability, You're going to want to
bring him in on this because, let's face it, you
(14:42):
can have all the forensic pathologists that you want, all right,
but when you're talking about human remains that have been
down there for I don't know, roughly close to a century.
We think, all right, dude, uh, you're going to want
somebody that deals in something other than still viable tissue
(15:05):
or even decomposing tissue. You're going to have to have
somebody that's gonna be able to read skeletal remains. And
boy did he do a bang up job, Dave.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
You know, when I think about that, I'm thinking about
somebody who is working with very sharp, small instruments. Okay,
almost dainty, that's what I picture. But then this is
what he said. Yeah, Ernie Walker said, my colleagues and
I used heavy equipment, had some excavation around the well
(15:34):
and took it apart, board by board. And here's the
kicker to what Ernie Walker, the forensic anthropolgy. I'm thinking
a forensic anthropologist on an x graator. Okay, that's what
I'm picturing him on this big yellow talka toy, you know,
and but then taking it. But then, you know, going
from this huge machine to board by board.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Bored by the word bitcha.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
And he says, unknown, could the individual that dropped it
a piece of cribbing of the well had broken loose
and blocked the barrel from going all the way down
to the bottom.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Holy smokes, what are the odds? Okay, here's another question
for you. If if it had not been caught up
on that cribbing, all right, I wonder if they would
have found it or if it would have just been
down there and that would have just eradicated it. You know,
with excavators, you know, you go, hey, let me give
(16:35):
you another good example of using an excavator at a
scene where you know that you have a body. You
remember our episode of Richard the Third, you know, the
king that was killed and the king and the car park.
Remember they started out with front end loaders out there
(16:55):
tearing because they had to tear that that car park
to pieces. And you have to have a sensibility about
you as a scientist, say, okay, boys, shut her down,
hand me my pick, hand me my shovel. Then after
you get done in the pick and shovel phase and
the sifter phase, okay, hand me my dental tools. Now
(17:16):
in my tiny little brush, all right. So it kind
of works this way. But that's why of these people
go through such intense training throughout their life. That's why.
And it's not just a training. It's like getting in
a batting cage, swinging a golf club. It's practice, practice, practice,
you learn. You learn to understand what you're dealing with.
(17:37):
You have to understand the geology as well as the geography,
the topography. Something that I talk about my Clandestine Burials
class Dave is also hydrology. Hydrology plays a huge role
in this case, the movement of water over an area.
How it affects how many you know, over a century,
(17:57):
how many times has sesked and flooded, how many times
has the water table risen and dropped? You know? And
have there been sewer lines that have been laid in
around this thing over the years. You know, this is
a time when we get to the specific date, this
is a time where well, people didn't have indoor plumbing.
(18:20):
We got a well, right, you've got to go out
and pump the water out of the well. My grandmother
used to tell me about that. Oh, you go out
to you have to go out to the you know,
to the outhouse to use use the privy. Okay, you're
not going in the house, so you've got to have
you've got to have sewer lines and water lines and
all that stuff. Did that affect anything in this environment,
(18:44):
and so you have all of these considerations running through
your mind. You've got the stratification of dirt, multiple layers
in there, and just to be able to work your
way through it. But you know, the one saving grace here,
The one saving grace, and I'm going to use this
term because I dropped it on you a few moments ago,
is that this body was not in a vault or
(19:09):
in a mausoleum. It wasn't even in a casket. It
was in an old oaken barrel dropped down a well.
But yet it was still what we refer to as
an intunement. Okay, So Dave, I'm going to go ahead
(19:40):
and tell our friends something about myself. I am obviously
a long standing massochist. And here's why this is not
the dating game.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
And I'm not Jim Lang so.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Well, I'm a masochist in the sense that I'm a
Saints fan. Okay, I'm a long standing Saints fan, and
I don't care how bad my boys play. I don't
care if they're in the cellar, which they are right now,
or you know, Drew Brees is leading them to the
(20:14):
two thousand and nine Super Bowl. I don't care. I
am faithful to the core when it comes to my Saints.
I love them, I love my hometown, and I love
that team.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
You know, I love Chuck when he played for the
same Oh.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Boy, yeah, we're in the glasses. Yeah, wasn't that something.
And you know, Kenny Stabler actually finished his career. Couldn't
walk that a dreamed fluid off of his knees, never
went through contact practice, that's how bad of shape he
was in. Uh yeah, don't get me started. I know
all the history. You know, my mother was actually at
the first Saints home game and on the kickoff they
(20:48):
were playing the Los Angeles Rams the kicking the Saints
received a kickoff, and maybe this is a bad thing,
but their first kickoff that they received, they ran it
back for a touchdown. That's how that's how they're their
franchise established itself. And then it all just kind of
went limited to the side of the mountain at that
(21:11):
point in time. But you know the thing about it is,
I've got the reason I'm brought up to Saints. I
have got one of I don't know if you have
one of these. I'm pretty sure you do, because you're
a dude. If you go into your chest of drawers.
There's probably a T shirt that out of all the
T shirts that you possess, it's old, it's ratty, but
(21:31):
it's soft, and it's one of these things that you
I don't know. I've got this T shirt that is ancient.
It's a Saint shirt and for some reason, I put
this thing on and I just feel comforted by it. Now.
I don't know if it would require a forensic archivist
clothing arkifast to date this probably not, But in this
particular case in Saskatoon, they brought in. They brought in
(21:55):
a forensic clothing expert, which is fascinating to me.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Absolutely, somebody work in Hollywood on movies or something.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
I mean, it.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Really does, it really does, and I would assume that
within that field there's utility for that. You know, if
you're going to do costuming, you know you're doing period pieces.
These people have to understand how people dressed. I hate
these movies where they try to portray people in older
you know, older in ancient ages and they put them
(22:26):
in in accurate costumes. I know, accurate costumes are probably
very expensive, but in this case, they brought this person
in when they discovered that they had remains that they're
dealing with. They've just tod date, just to date the
clothing to try to understand the circle of the clothing,
(22:47):
what was the origin of it. And not only was
there a tire that was still remaining, but Dave, they
also had a lap back, which I think plays in
to the narrative of this kick.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
Well, all right, so we've got a body or remains
in a burlac bag inside a barrel thrown down a
well that didn't make.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
It all the way to the bottom.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
They get it out and as we documented excavating and
then bored by board and pulling it out.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Do you take the body then out? What do you do?
Speaker 3 (23:30):
I mean, I'm going to assume they're not leaving this
barrel hanging there, that at some point they've pulled the
body out, the remains out of the barrel. How did
they get the barrel out of the ground and then
get the remains and what do they take them? They're
not going to do an autopsy or look at it.
They're spread it on the grass.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Well, okay, let me let me go this way with you. Okay,
let me just tell you how Josep Scott More. We
want to do it all right, And I can't guarantee
that they did it this way. If in the watchword
here is containment. Yeah, if you have if you have
a vessel, which we're going to call this barrel of vessel,
(24:08):
and that just means a container of something. If you
have this vessel that the body has been contained in
and apparently has been contained in for a long long time,
I'm not going to do anything to disrupt the remains
any more than I have to. Now. The question is
had the thing completely fallen apart? Was it still partially together?
(24:31):
Because even the components of that barrel, from a forensic standpoint,
each component that may have fallen away went deeper has
got value. It's you know, in this case is no
different than any other case. You have to collect every
bit of evidence. And can I tell you I want
to tell you a real quick story about being in
(24:54):
a space like this. You know, one of the most
terrifying cases I have ever worked. And I say terrifying.
It had nothing to do with the actual remains, like
it was some kind of scary thing. It wasn't monsters
or anything like this. There was a case in Atlanta
years ago where the city came by and they were
(25:17):
inspecting either gas or waterlines in a particular area, and
they had an indication that there was a manhole beneath
the surface of the street and seeing had been and
I think this is completely forbidden, but they still did it.
This thing. We calculated the thing had been asshalted over
at least seven times. So these guys they had to
(25:43):
break through that strata of asshalt and then they found
the manhole cover where they popped it off and guess what.
There was a woman's body in the bottom of this
manhole and it had been dismembered and placed into plastic backs.
(26:03):
Plastics still existed. I had to go down in this thing.
And the scary thing about going down into a manhole,
other than if you're claust phobic, it's not a cool
place to be, is that you know, the lower you
descend in this thing, the less oxygen there is. And
there have been people that have gone into these things
(26:23):
and suffocated before, even with a lid open on this thing.
So I was like, and I had this in the
back of my mind, Listen, if there's anybody out there
that can work up a worst case scenario, I'm chief
among centers. You know, my wife says, I've got a
mind that has an incalpable amount of trivia. It's because
(26:46):
I read all the time. I'd be great on a
trivia team. But you know, I'd read, you know, over
the years about these sorts of things, and there are
cases out there where people have had to go into manholes.
Manholes over the years have been a great, well, I
say great, that's not a good word to use, have
been a preferred location, particularly in big cities, for dumping
(27:08):
bodies because the course of nature is just going to
take over. The body's going to break down, and they'll
just slap the lid on top of it. And particularly
if they're aware of the manhole in the location of it,
and they know that they live around the area, they
know nobody ever comes out here. I want to see
work crews out here. I've got it. I've killed somebody.
I'm going to dump them down down into this manhole.
(27:31):
And so for me, that was terrifying, and that was
a really painstaking thing. We did not have an anthropologist
out there.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
I had you have to go in head first. Did
they like hold you by a rope around your feet
and drag it in. I mean, I think it's halfway
down there. You had to be cussing going. I went
to so many years in college, hub boyd.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
This kind of worked. Isn't there somebody there? Anybody something
can come down here?
Speaker 1 (27:52):
There was something that was kind of intellectually stimulating about it,
I have to say, because and again it's being a
death investigator. The odd road of a death investigator is
going to take you to many unique locations along your journey,
and that's just one of them. For me, it was
and I hadn't really thought about that until we started chatting,
(28:16):
but collecting those remains because those bags had actually erupted
down there and had torn over a period of time.
But it was in this real kind of mucky, muddy
bottom down there, and you could actually see the little
turn valves you know, that were still there. They're made
out of cast iron or aluminum or something where you
(28:38):
could go down there and manage like whatever pipes. We're
going through. This area shows you how much I know
about plumbing, but you know, to be able to access
all the stuff down there. And when this body in
the bottom of this thing had landed, you could tell
it was like it impacted really hard. I think that
probably the bag initially got torn by the initial drop.
(28:59):
That's why the case up in Saskatoon is kind of interesting,
because if this thing got cock eyed going down the well, dude,
this thing may have been preserved to a great degree.
And they're actually saying the body was in a barrel,
So do you still have containment with the remains and
the barrel is the structural integrity of the thing has
(29:22):
not been compromised to the point where you couldn't maybe
remove it in one piece. Now, for all I know
they went in and did. But the the problem is
is if you take if you take that body out
of that barrel, if you take it out of the barrel,
there are so many fine components of the human skeleton
(29:45):
that you start losing the bones of the hands, the
bones of the feet really really quickly. And don't even
get me started on for tebral bodies. Oh and by
the way, what's really important the hyoid bone, the fact
that you would have a preserved, perhaps historic hyoid bones
still in place, because that's something you can actually appreciate.
(30:05):
They might give you clues.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
I want to ask you something as we're talking about
this in the well and the body and we know
it's old, we don't know how old. They're trying to
figure this out. And you mentioned the forensic coming in
and looking at the clothing and the threads and the
things like that, and having that type of expertise you
told me about the.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Case of Huey P. Long.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
Yeah, yeah, and how that that came into play with
that as well, with that type of forensic.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Uh thread count. I mean, I don't even know.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Listen, I knew nothing. Listen. I've got to I've got
to proclaim my ignorance here. And I was a very
young investigator when this happened. There was a guy named
Bill Stars. If you had a chance, check him out.
I think I think Ductor Stars our professor Stars has
passed on now. He was at George Washington University. He
did the exhumation on Huey P. Loong's uh assassin. Who's
(31:01):
a guy named doctor Weiss. If you don't know who
who E. Pen Long was. He was a populist governor
in Louisiana and he was assassinated in the hallway in
the main hallway in the old Capitol building in Baton Rouge.
And this guy had a beef with him doctor Weiss did.
As a matter of fact, they think that Hughey may
(31:23):
have actually been shot by one of his bodyguards by accident.
But heugh I think, if I remember correctly, Weiss had
a compact pocket thirty two caliber automatic, which you don't
come across those very often anymore, and shot. He shot
Governor Long and struck him in the abdom and he
(31:43):
lingered for a few days. But they killed Weiss's graveyard dead. Well.
The family had questions about the specific injuries. Also, they
wanted to know if it was actually Wiss in the
grave because there was all kinds of political injury back then.
But Bill Starrs also did something else famous that you
might be aware of, Dave, And I wasn't part of this.
I wish I could have been. He exhumed Jesse James's
(32:06):
body and he's the way that actually proved that Jesse
James was in fact buried in his grave. Wow, and
you can see those now, listen. It's nothing, I mean,
go online. You can look it up and see the
exhammation of Jesse James is out there. And doctor our
professor Stars and Professor Stars got involved in a lot
of these well. He gets involved in the Huey P.
Long case, and I'm a very young death investigator, and
(32:30):
we brought some of those remains. I think back to
our facility where I was working in Metro New Orleans
and did some imaging and things like that. But the
person I was fascinated by is they had this lady
that was that worked for the Smithsonian and this was
her job. Her job was examining clothing and they brought
(32:52):
her in on the Weiss case to examine, you know,
Weiss's clothing, and she was looking for things like, well,
obviously manufacture markers, thread counts, what was there any type
of blend, you know, relative to the clothing. Were there
any types of special dyes that were used, because they're
(33:13):
going to go if you're going to go to the
to the trouble to dig up somebody, you're going to
have all hands on deck because there's a lot of
eyes on this. I remember at the time the news
news media was in a frenzy in the state of Louisiana.
It was a big deal. But they actually used one
of these people in this case in Saskatoon where they
(33:35):
bring in this clothing archivist who's got apparently a background
in forensics, and here we're dealing with a body that
is completely unidentified. Wis you kind of knew that it
was going to be him, But in this case, you
don't know what you're dealing with. Dude, you have no idea.
So every bit of data that you can glean, by
(33:57):
the way being contained not just in a barrel, but
actually in a burlap sack. And for folks that don't
know what burlap is, it's actually made out of the
ute plant jute, and it's very resilient as a matter
of fact, for any biblical scholar, you don't have to
be a scholar. You may have read about the term
of people that they talk about grieving. There's a couple
(34:21):
of verses in the Bible they talk about putting on
sackcloth and ashes. Well, sackcloth is actually burr lap. And
you mentioned something. I'll go ahead and let you say this.
There's a modern case right now that's in the news
that actually involves burlap as well. And Dave take it away, which.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Case is that?
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Is that the crazy one we've been dealing with out
there on the beach forever.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Yeah, you'll go beach man, yeah, list man.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
Yeah, And it's just crazy because that burlap sack thing
they came into play where there was could have been
a fisherman because the carry oysters and these things. Yeah,
I mean, we actually did an entire episode on where
the these burlap type sacks could have come from up there,
because they were found near the bodies, or under the
bodies or on the bodies. And it's like, I mean,
(35:08):
the craziness that goes into covering a case. You have
no idea, but the Long Island serial Killer, I still
haven't found an answer for the burlap sacks.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
That were part of that investigation.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Yeah, and it's this really cheap to manufacture, but back
then everybody used burlap. I mean, you would put feed
in there, you would put corn in their flour. You
can imagine, and they're very resilient, just like hemp is
very resilient. You know, you use these naturally occurring fibers
and it would last a long long time. And you know,
(35:42):
and I'm thinking about this case, why would why would
somebody essentially and they didn't mind, you, Dave. They did
not say this body was wrapped in burlap. They said
this lady was placed into a burlap sack. And then
placed into a barrel. Why not just place her into
(36:04):
a barrel? Why use a sack? I wonder, I wonder
if the sack was intended for maybe absorption or maybe
to mask something, or is the individual so intimately involved
with the person We've talked about this before. As grotesque
(36:26):
as this is, was this some kind of weird desth route,
like they're memorializing the dead that goes to a personal relationship, Like, right,
you know that you would take this much, this much time,
and by the way, commit a homicide and take this
much time with an individual, place them into a sack,
place them into a barrel, I guess, nail down the
(36:51):
lid of the barrel, walk out to a well on
this property at the hotel, right, and just drop it
down in there and walk away from it. It's a
fascinating dynamic looking back at it. Look, if you're an
(37:16):
investigator and you show up at a scene and there's
an abandoned well, Huh, you got a body in a barrel?
You got to the body in the barrel is in
case in a sack. You know, because the anthropologist tells
you that this is a female, they're thinking she's maybe
in her early thirties to mid thirties, and we can
(37:38):
get into that how they would determine that. But they're
also seeing what has been noted as fatal trauma to
her body. Well, if you're saying fatal trauma, you're not
looking for at this point in time, you're not looking
for contusions or bruises on the body. They're seeing something
dave on the skeleton that gives you an idea that
(38:02):
this lady was subjected to pretty brutal violence. I think
in this case, what kind of fatal trauma can you
identify on a body? And they give the indication that
this is some kind of repeated trauma. So I'm thinking
that this is evidenced on the skull more than likely. Again,
(38:22):
that's a very you know, I was talking about memorialization.
This is an intimate thing because if this was like
a bludgeoning that's up close and personal, you know, it's
I always talk about that how bludgeonings and sharp force
injuries are. It's intimate. You know, there's no way to
get past it's very very intimate. And bludgeonings in particular
(38:45):
are rage filled. So who could a thirty something year
old woman aggravate to the point where they're going to
start striking her multiple times on the head, to the
point where they're going to killer. I think that's that's
a big question here. And you know, you can look
(39:07):
at things in the modern sense and say, well, if
you can do that, and you can attach you know,
the idea of the intimacy, you begin to narrow down
the field as far as suspects go. But dude, what
happens when there's no more suspects? I mean, because look,
she's been gone a long long time. Who out there
(39:27):
could have had anything to do with her demise? If
they're not still living and breathing, how are you going
to track this down? And that's that's one of the
big things that these investigators faced with, Dave.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
And they still have to identify who the victim is.
They still don't know who she is.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
And for all these years, nearly twenty years, okay, we don't,
they just called her the woman in the well And
it was this past July. Okay, Now that's how fast
this moved. Our friends at author them, have they have
been able to use their abilities? And I would hope,
(40:08):
I would hope everyone that has certain abilities, certain mental
ability or whatever your ability in life is I hope
and pray that if you have something that is so
special and so specific, that you actually do use it
for good. Because without the work they're doing, we wouldn't
know so many things. This woman would not have a name.
(40:29):
She has a name now by the way.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Yeah, Joe.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
None of her family, none of her descendants, knew anything,
and we now know. She was born in eighteen eighty one,
one of five children in and she was born in
Michigan in the US.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
In nineteen oh.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
Two, she moved to Duluth, Minnesota with her mother and
two brothers. A marriage certificate shows that she married Charles
Spence in Saint Louis, Minnesota in nineteen oh four, So
at the age of twenty three, she marries Charles Spence
and gives birth to their daughter, Idella. In nineteen oh five.
(41:10):
February nineteen sixteen, Alice gives birth to a daughter who
died that same day. The nineteen sixteen census shows Alice, Charles,
and Idella living in Saskatoon. By the way, they moved
to sas Saskatoon in nineteen thirteen. I meant to say
that apologize, So they moved from Minnesota or from Michigan,
(41:33):
Canada in nineteen thirteen. Nineteen sixteen, the census shows Alice,
Charles and Idella living in Saskatoon. Now, there's a newspaper
article that came out in nineteen eighteen that details how
the Spence House was destroyed by fire while the family
was away. In nineteen twenty one, Joe, the census lists
(41:56):
Charles as living with his daughter Idella and a house
keeper and her son. Charles died of heart attack in
May of nineteen twenty three. So let me focus real
quick here on Idella, the daughter born in nineteen oh five.
Idella died in nineteen ninety five at the age of ninety,
(42:17):
and all her relatives knew her granddaughters and her great
They only knew that Grandma Idella was orphaned at seventeen,
and that's all they knew. She wouldn't talk about anything
before she was seventeen. And when you think of it, yeah,
now police believe. And this is why the family is
(42:38):
like if we'd only known, you know, because when Idella died,
the woman in the well was eleven years away from
being found and the family knew nothing of Idella's mother.
They knew nothing of Idella's father because she didn't tell
them anything about it.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
But what we do have is the police eleon this.
Speaker 3 (42:57):
Between nineteen sixteen and nineteen eighteen, Alice Spence was killed
and based on that fire in the house when their
sofas away from home. Yep, what do you think maybe
based on the bur lab sack being placed and by
the way, they lived a block away from where this
well was.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
And the well was actually part of an old hotel.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
Was yes, it was, and it was the well was
used by that hotel. So if it's an active well
being used, you know, pumping water up out of it,
and you drop something down in there, it's not going
to be discovered put in you know.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
No, Yeah, unless unless the actual return on the well
is blocked in some way. And apparently I guess it
was never blocked. No, apparently, not water out of it.
But here's an interesting thing that the anthropologist brought up, Dave,
and I'm fascinated by this aspect, was that he opined
that the level of preservation in this body, first off,
(43:54):
it was pretty striking. According to him, he said that
he felt as though that the level of press preservation
of the body can be tied directly to both a
combination of water and get this gasoline that was apparently
permeating this area. And I'm thinking, you know, one of
(44:14):
the things I'm thinking, I've just been teaching a section
in my Clandestine Burials class about the bog bodies that
you find in Denmark and some in Great Britain and
other locations, and they're found in peat bogs. Well, that's
that is what's referred to. We all know what aerobics is,
you know, like aerobic exercise taken on oxygen. I wonder
(44:35):
if this created almost an aerobic environment that promotes preservation.
I'm not saying to a great extent. You know, obviously
her soft tissues are probably gone, but he's saying this
as a preservative. I'm wondering if the alcohol are the
gasoline factors into this? And where's a gasoline? I mean,
(44:58):
gasoline is something that has to be refined. It's not
just like naturally occurring in that area. And you do
have petroleum, and I think Sasktchewan is known, you know
as a petroleum producer. I don't know, it's it's an
interesting it's interesting I think to speculate about. But the
fact that she was in fact finally identified, and that
(45:22):
they have what sounds like homicidal trauma. One of the
things another aspect of this, Dave, is they the Canadian
authorities are refusing they they're refusing to name the suspect
because now get this, they say he's not here to
defend himself. No kidding, no kidding. Yeah, yeah, I would
(45:44):
say he's not here to defend himself. And I'm thinking,
you know, so I may. I don't know, maybe their
brain stretches much further than now. I just don't understand
what considerations there are. But we do have a name
of the victim, and of course on bodybacks, that's what
we're all about. We're we're about the dead and speaking
for the dead. I'm just glad that this was brought
to a conclusion by our friends at AUTHRAM and I
(46:08):
got to tell you this. It's and you and I
talked about this just a few seconds ago off air.
And it's an amazing world that we live in now.
It's sometimes it's a very scary place, but technology nowadays
is kind of amazing. And we live in a world
where sometimes the actual deaths, the cases they take time
(46:33):
to solve, and sometimes those cases, well, they have to
catch up with science, and in this case, that's what
our friends at AUTHRAM employed. If you have an interest
in wanting to help, wanting to help a family out
there that, like Alice's family, didn't even know who she was,
(46:56):
and you want to help them draw conclusion to a
dark secret, maybe get those answers that they've been longing for.
Check out dnasolves dot com. Visit their website. You can
go there and you can contribute. You pick a case,
you can help fund this and they have a trigger point.
I think it's roughly seven to seven thousand dollars and
(47:17):
if they hit that goal, they'll flip the switch and
they'll start to work. But they have them listed there.
That's a DNA solves dot com. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
and this is Bodybacks
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
Popular Podcasts
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
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.