May 26, 2026 • 48 mins
When Katherine Torbick failed to show up for work and friends could not get her to reply to calls and texts, police were called to do a "well-being" check. Officers were made aware of a recent domestic violence incident at the home involving Katherine and Kevin Motykie. Katherine ended her relationship with Motykie and he had a pending arrest warrant for aggravated domestic battery involving Katherine at the time police arrive at the home. Police forced entry into the residence and found Katherine Torbick, dead, with multiple signs of trauma. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack take an in-depth look at the crime scene as well as a digital recording found in Kevin Motykie's pocket, a recording that captures the entire 7-hour assault from beginning with Motykie putting handcuffs on Torbick all the way to Katherine's final breath.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quality bus.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
But Joseph Scott.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
More, imagine spending your life dedicated to taking care of others.
There are so many nurses out there that do this
day after day after day, year after year, and even
(00:25):
decade after decade. Their goal is It's not just an occupation,
because trust me, it has to be a calling. All
you got to do is change a few bedpands, put
in a few catheters, have somebody throw up on you. You
don't hang around most of the time for the money
(00:45):
by itself. You have to want to be there. Today,
we're going to talk about one such person. And not
only is this person dedicated to taking care of others,
she's also dedicated to her twelve year old son. Oh
(01:06):
and by the way, she's a single mother. And just
like everybody else, single mothers get lonely and they want companionship.
And in this particular case, those relationships, and one relationship
in particular, ended all of her hopes and dreams, including
(01:28):
those of a son who was hoping to be with
his mother for as long as he possibly could be.
But now she's gone. Today we're going to talk about
the case of Catherine Torbick. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
this is body Bats.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Dave.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
When I heard about this case, and it's just been
within the last few days, it really kind of pricked
my heart, if you will, because I see a woman
that's forty three years old. She's had a career now
as a nurse. She's had to go through all of
(02:12):
the struggles of taking care of a twelve year old son,
raising him on her own. But yet you know, she,
like I stated, she wants companionship. She wants to feel
wanted and needed and no sorts of things. And the
story that I'm hearing thus far, at least relative to her,
(02:34):
is that her life has ended arguably, i'd say, in
one of the most horrific ways that I think that
you and I have covered on body Bags. Some of
the details are just absolutely beyond the pale. And I
don't know, I don't really know where to start with
(02:54):
this other yeah, yeah, No.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
As a heads up, look, this is a domestic violent situation.
If that triggers you in some way, be careful because
that's what this story is about. It's a heinous crime,
it's a heinous murder. Catherine Torbick is dead, her twelve
year old son will grow up without a mother. And
we have to say alleged because this story is happening
(03:17):
as we speak. This just happened, and we're dealing with
a woman who has you mentioned a minute ago. This
is the one who works three jobs. Okay, she works
as a nurse and then works at a metaspa. She
does a lot of things to provide for her and
her twelve year old son. She's been with a man
(03:39):
with We'll get into his background in a little bit,
but I say a man air quotes because men, real men,
don't beat the woman they love, and this man allegedly
did that. Kevin Monichi. In March of this year, Kevin
Modichi attacked Catherine so bad that it ended up in
(04:06):
an ending of their tenure relationship. So based on that,
you would think, okay, they had a warrant for his arrest, Joe.
A warrant was already issued March sixteenth for Kevin Monnicky.
Somehow they couldn't find him. So in April, and this
(04:27):
is going to be a little a little catchy here,
Kevin Monickee and Catherine were living together. They'd been living
together for a while and this house technically was his
is my understanding now, they had established a residence together
and as a family, and after this fight that happened
(04:48):
in March, Monikey was supposed to stay away. She had
an order of protection. But from what we know now,
he may have been back in that house as soon
as Arch twenty second. So that's your setup that leads
to one of the most horrific stories we're going to
have to talk about, and that is the beating, the torture,
(05:12):
seven hours and all of it, Joe, all of this
death of Catherine Torbett recorded on audio.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yeah, hang on, I've got to try to understand something here,
because we're talking about the same domicile, right, and we've
got she's in dwellingness with her son. And look, I
understand she would not want to move from that location
with the child. But yet there's an individual here that
she has some kind of restraining order on and this
(05:47):
is his domicile or his name is on it. This
seems like this is inviting trouble. And I'm saying that
I don't know in the most reserved way that I
possibly can, given given what we have been told, as
far as the evidence reveals the trans victim.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
But you know, Joe, I'm glad you mentioned that, because
you know this is a problem that happens in relationships
like this, where domestic violence occurs, and the victim of
the domestic violence. Well, where's she's supposed to go with
her twelve year old son. She's been living with this
guy in this house for many years. She has a
right to, I guess live there. I'm not sure legally
(06:28):
what happens with that, but I do know this. You know,
we were on Nancy Grace the other day doing this
story and one of Kat's friends was on the show
and she said that she encouraged Kat move out of
the house. Yeah, get out of his house, is what
she said. And I mean, how do you deal with that, Joe,
How does a woman who is already working three jobs
(06:49):
to cover things just move out?
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Nobody has that kind of cash.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
No, they don't. And we're talking about the greater Chicago area.
I think they're in Schomberg, Illinois, just outside of Chicago.
And yeah, I would assume that there are other places
that she could move to. However, she's already Again, I'm
not an attorney in this. I'm just thinking about this
from the perspective of an investigation. Right, You've got a
(07:16):
twelve year old son who I'm sure is established in
a school. You've already got a relations pre existing relationship
where you know your mail is coming, you know, to
put it in very just kind of concrete terms, your
mail is coming to this location, all right, Your credit cards,
everything that kind of defines your life is all centered
around this area, and all of a sudden it kind
(07:37):
of blows up. And I say that in a sense
that back in you know, we talked about this instance
that occurred back in March where you have this violent
event that took place, which you know resulted in some
really horrific things even back then, and that brings us
(07:58):
forward now, you know, to May. And of course it's
all ended in tragy, and like you had stated, this
is not an uncommon occurrence. This does, in fact happen regularly.
How many times on body backs have we talked about,
Dave that the most, well, at least I've said it.
I've said it. You know, the old adage is you're
(08:21):
more at risk with the person you're in bed next
to than you ever will be in some kind of
you know, scenario where there's a stranger that emerges out
of a dark alley. You know, those cases are the exception.
It's the people that you're under the roof with because
(08:41):
you know, you think about the dynamic that occurs just
in any kind of relationship. It doesn't have to be
a romantic relationship. It can be any kind of relationship.
You can have really good times together. But because you're
in one another's business all the time, because you're living
in approximate, you're approximating each other, that's kind of a
stew for violence to occur. You know, passions get high,
(09:05):
these sorts of things. But David, I've got to tell
you this, the thing that kind of separates this out
for me is the fact that the idea is that
you don't the violence that we're talking about does not
sound like that this is something that just occurred. This
(09:26):
sounds like some kind of indwelling event where you have
an individual that has in fact been attacked and attacked
in a very brutal way, and apparently there's a history
of it here.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
That's actually Joe.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
That's why I wanted to mention right at the beginning
that prior to the event, that prior to the murder
of Catherine Torviik there was about five weeks earlier, a
beating that nearly took her life, a beating that her lover,
her boyfriend of ten years, said, right a note saying goodbye.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
To your son. Think about that.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
I'm going to kill you, but I want you to
write a note to your son. That's how harsh that
one was, and mentioning that kind of to set the
stage for what took place.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
That is on again.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
I'm going to go back to this show. The reason
we know so much about the beating death of Catherine Torbick,
is because the suspect, the alleged killer, recorded the entire
event seven hours long, Joe, seven hours from the beginning
(10:36):
to the very end, where on this recording you hear
as Catherine Trobrick took her last breath, what she is
begging him and you and I talked about this off
the air, based on the thing she is saying to him.
It happened before. This wasn't the first time, March wasn't
the first time. This is a ten year relationship that
(10:58):
I'm willing to guess when violent early and stayed that
way and just escalated as we how many times have
we done shows about domestic violence that lead to death.
You can't fix what's really broken on the inside.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
No, you can't. And I think the real point here
from an investigative standpoint, and we kind of have some
breadcrumbs here is the idea that who in the world
sets them up, sets themselves up to record something, and
in this case went on for allegedly seven hours at
(11:35):
this point in tom how many other times, brother Dave,
have things been taped, been recorded, been viewed, been fantasized over.
Because it's not just the fact that you can hear
her last words on this earth. It's not just the
fact that maybe you can even since in the audio
(11:58):
when she's taken her last breath. It's the idea that
there is some kind of presiding evil here, some kind
of compelling force that would drive an individual to want
to document the end of an otherwise beautiful life. You know,
(12:24):
when we begin to talk about injuries, as we do
so many times, you know, I'm kind of having a
hard time taking a measure and having to scale some
of this stuff to try to understand it. And one
of the problems I'm running into just in my thought process,
or let me put it to this way, I'm not
(12:45):
the one that actually has to scale it. I'm trying
to explain it. But the people that are going to
have to explain this as they go to trial with
this thing at some point in time, I would assume,
and they're having to sit on a stand and just
trying to understand it. And it makes sense. Dave. There's
a potential that there's going to be a lot of
overlying and overlapping injuries here, stuff that might might actually
(13:06):
be coming from the from the past. And I think
that that's going to be.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Are you saying that some of those injuries from the
March beating might be present in the April murder?
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely again, Yeah I know. And so you know,
by the if we think about, like if we're talking
about impact injuries where somebody has been kicked, bludgeoned, that
sort of thing, and yeah, I said bludgeoned, you can
you can actually believe it or not externally you can
recover from that. Let's say this back in March were May. Now, yeah,
(13:41):
you've had sufficient man, and we talked about stages of contusions,
remember that we may have. I think we did an
entire episode on blunt force trauma.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
Yeah, we did, because I reference it all the time
when you say things on this show, I have to
go back in research, but I don't want to be
like a Dummian plot a dictionary. But half the time
as what I'm doing.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
On he well, I'm going to get you that agree.
In forensic science, you're pretty saying just trust me. So, yeah,
when you're thinking about this, you see these these bruises,
and we use this. We use this in child abuse
cases and elder abuse cases as well. And that's not
the only application here, because you can have them in
ongoing living what we call living forensic pathology. So if
(14:21):
you've got if you have a mother like this that's
in a domestic abuse situation and she finally has the
courage to step forward and go to somebody and say, look,
this is what's happened to me, this is what's happened
to me, or you know, pick your antomical location. You
can actually see kind of the progression of healing in
(14:43):
these bruises. However, if this has been an ongoing thing
where she's been lacerated in any way, and again that's
associated with blunt force trauma where she's punched, the skin tears,
now that's not something that would have completely gone away.
I would think since March if there's any kind of
facial injuries that may have left scarring. Here's another thing
(15:05):
people don't think about, and I've seen this in cases
where you have DV victims that they will have clumps
of their hair pulled out as well. Well. The hair
does not have sufficient amount of time. If you've got
a focal area of hair that's been ripped out, there's
not sufficient amount of time for that hair to have
caught up with everything else. That's why when these examinations
(15:29):
are being done and I'm thinking about my friends that
are they're called saying nurses, some of the biggest heroes
out there, sexual assault nurse examiners. That's one of the
things that they do. They don't just do rape kits.
For instance, they do a full body examination on a
victim to check and they'll look for things like the hairline.
They'll check the back of the neck and see if
(15:49):
there is any points of impact back there, anything's been
ripped away, skin that's been ubraided in any way, because
you know, sometimes you'll have there is a case, kind
of this infamous case that I was peripherally involved in
where someone was using a cheese greater or handheld cheese
grater to torture somebody with where you're just kind of
(16:10):
peeling almost like you're creating lemons. Zest if you will.
And so this kind of thing happens, and it has
to be documented, it has to be read. And so
the dynamics of reading something in the living all right,
from a forensic standpoint, is completely different than dealing with
it in the morgue. In the post warm state. However,
(16:31):
you have to be able to go back and be
able to appreciate what has previously happened, because, as we've
talked about, any kind of insult that you have with
the dead, it's frozen in that moment time. It's no
longer going to continue to heal, it's no longer going
to continue. Here's the term that's used a lot in medicine.
It's not going to resolve. Resolved means to begin to
(16:52):
vanish away. That's that's frozen in time, dude. And so
you have these underlying injuries that are that are actually
being overlapped perhaps by current injuries or those injuries that
were approximating going into the Perry mortem in the post
mortem phase and so it takes a keen eye, a
(17:17):
quick story. A guy that lived with his bed ridden,
for lack of a better term, common law wife, and
common law really doesn't exist in this jurisdiction I'm referring to.
But he had been beating her for years with a broken,
(17:37):
broken dryer belt, you know. And I don't know if
you've ever seen a belt off of a dryer, but yeah,
it kind of looks like a fan belt. It's only
more it's only more robust. Well, she was bedridden, she
couldn't get up out of bed, and she was totally
dependent upon him raging now colic every time he came home,
got angry.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Okay, she's bedridden, Yeah, and protect her, so I can't,
you know, And he beats her with a dryer belt.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Yeah, and we found it hidden up on the it's
like the shelf where you keep detergents, how ironic, right
over the washer and dryer. And so anytime you get drunk,
he'd come in and he beat her. And Dave, if
you've ever heard the term somebody being beaten to a
pulp before, well I think that most people have. She
had been struck with this thing and it's very heavy
(18:24):
for so many times that you had these overlapping injuries
all over her body, and they had a very particular
pattern where you could tell this belt had been broken
and it probably was broken through where on the dryer.
But he knew, he knew the utility of this thing,
so as he would beat her, he would overlap these
(18:45):
old injuries and back to bloody pulp, right, we went through.
I think that at the time we counted like it
was right at it was just over two hundred individual
lash marks that he had put on her, and of
course they were in various states of resolve. Right, But
(19:06):
I remember the forensic pathologist making an incision into one
of these sites. And the reason it stands out to me,
I've never heard of forensic pathologists say this in the
autopsy suite. He said, I've never seen anything like this.
So anytime forensic pathologist says I've never seen anything like this,
guess what I want to see. I want to know
(19:28):
what you're talking about. So when he made the incision,
liquefied fact came out of that injury, and she had
been sustaining these injuries and people, you know, we hear
a lot about DV right all the time, and people
just kind of blow it off. Friends, You cannot imagine
the world out there and what people go through the horror.
(19:51):
You know, people will just kind of gloss over it
many times. But when you see these injuries that occur
over and over again, and people are subject to these
all the time. Now, I don't know, I don't necessarily
know that, you know, in the case of Catherine, if
this has been something that has gone on this long. However,
(20:15):
one of the things that draws my interest here is
the fact that these individuals work together for such a
protracted period of time. There is obviously a history. I
don't know if there are peaks and valleys with this thing.
Have there been previous previous attacks, because you know, one
(20:35):
of the things that DV perpetrators will do is they'll
say they go through this it's and sociologists have this
cycle that they'll show with are it's more like criminologists.
They'll show the cycle of domestic violence. And one of
the things is there's like an attack, okay, and then
you go through this kind of phase where they have
(20:57):
this I don't know, this epiphanal moment where they say, oh,
I'm sorry, and you know, they're heaping love upon the victim.
They'll even get them flowers to take them out to dinner,
and they'll be sugary sweet, and then all of a sudden,
there goes this kind of dormancy and then boom, violence
just erupts again. And this just can you imagine that cycle? Well,
(21:19):
living in that day after day after day after day
after day, and with all of these injuries that DV
victims sustain, you can see this pattern. It's one of
the things we look for in the Morgan I think, Dave,
if I'm hearing correctly, there's a lot to go through
with Catherine's injuries.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Look, that's why I wanted to put it out at
the very beginning that this the beating death of Catherine Torbick,
wasn't a one off, okay, because we have to let
it be known that there was at least one beating
that took place five six weeks earlier. We don't know
what really transpired before, and then we'll probably hear about
(22:01):
that later. What we do know is that Catherine Torbick
just let right down the list of a couple of
the things, So you know who we're talking about, mother
of a twelve year old son from a previous relationship.
She's a GI nurse at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital, had
been there for over twenty years. Over twenty years as
a GI nurse. She'd been in a relationship with Kevin
(22:22):
Monickey for ten years. Her friends say that caring for
people was her second nature. Now, when somebody says that's
their second nature about somebody else, that's a pretty big
indicator of what type person kat Torbick was. Now, the
evidence that we're going to be sharing with you actually
(22:43):
comes from a digital recorder that was in the pocket
of the man who allegedly killed her, and that would
be Kevin Montikey. Now, Joe, just so you know, Kevin
Monickeye was no angel who just lost his cookies one night.
Do need to know that Kevin Mondikey had a record
going back to the late eighties. And that record started
(23:06):
with your basic runnings with the law, you know, speeding
traffic stuff, then oh, stealing, getting off on certain things.
But there were several times in his life where there
was somebody had gone to court and had gotten an
order of protection from this man from Kevin Monnicky. One
was his own brother, Kevin Monikeye has a brother who
lives in California and his brother, Kevin. Monikee's brother is
(23:31):
a medical doctor. He opened up a medspa in Chicago,
and Kevin Monikey was given not ownership, but he was
given an opportunity to partner in this medspa. Right, what
Kevin did was steal money allegedly reportedly yeah, and he
(23:54):
he took money and destroyed the business. And we're talking
half million dollars show. Okay, So the brother, you know,
the brother's trying to work it out with him because
then you know Kevin is his brother, but Kevin wasn't playing.
So brother and brother go into court. And this is
a couple of years ago. Guess who was on the
stand in Kevin Mondokey's defense in this civil this case
(24:18):
between brothers.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
It's not Kevin Motikie.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
She went to court and said, you know, yeah, so
just letting you know, Kevin Mondickie had a record for
being physical and threatening toward others, including his brother, after
he stole money from his brother, and Kat was still
willing to back him up time and time again. So
after the beating in March, that led to what we're
(24:42):
talking about today. Kevin Monicky was not supposed to be
in the house. Doesn't matter if it's his or not.
He wasn't supposed to be around Kat torbick Order's son
at that point. He was supposed to be gone.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Now.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Police claimed Joe that from March sixteenth until the time
Kevin Monicky was arrested, that they attempted to make contact
with him forty times. Forty times in a thirty day period.
The police said they actively sought to find Kevin MOTTICKI
(25:14):
and based on some evidence that came out that we
aren't privy to, we don't know exactly what the evidence is,
but on that digital recorder there was more than just
seven hours of beating that leads to murder. There was
actually evidence on that recording device that Kevin Motticky was
back in that home with Kat a couple of days
(25:37):
after the beating. By March twenty second. I believe that
he did exactly what you explained a minute ago. I'm
really sorry that it happened, but you know, the domestic
violence purpatures have a way of spinning things. It's ultimately
they're really sorry. I can't believe what happened to I
got to overcome with whatever, and then they played the
(25:57):
victim card. You know, I'm just really worried that I'm
going to lose you. You're just so beautiful, and I
know the other guys are, you know. And then well
I never wanted to do that, but you know, my
buttons and you were pushing my buttons.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
You know.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
They spin it from I'm really sorry to it was
really your fault.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Well it sounds sounds a heck a lot like bron laundry. Yeah,
you know, and it really does, you know, Yeah, exhibit one.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
At you right right, you know, and Gabby Patito. I
wish Kat Torbick had paid closer attention to that. But
what we do know, Joe, because Kevin, because of Kevin
Monicky and this recording device, Yeah, we now know what
he did to Kat. And I have to ask you
(26:42):
this question. Yeah, when you're examining somebody, one of the
things that we heard on this tape was Kat begging,
begging Kevin to not put the handcuffs on. Based on
the action described by police in their reports of what
took place on the audio tape that they're describing, it
(27:05):
sounded to me like they were describing something that had
happened before and she knew what it could lead to.
Is there a way that you can examine her wrists? Yeah,
and find out if being handcuffs were a part of
her life.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Yeah you can. And again this is something that can resolve.
And handcuffs are very they're interesting and I'm not talking
about zip ties here all right, which you see, you
see police use to facilitate, particularly if they've got a
lot of people that they're you know, they're hooking up
talking about the rigidity of the surface of a handcuff. Okay,
(27:42):
and you know there's a way like I'll give you
for instance, when when folks go through the academy, for instance,
they they're actually prompted to learn how much space you know,
to to give in handcuff because they know that the
tighter the handcuff. First off, you can injure them in
(28:03):
the immediate but after prolonged you know, prolonged restraint, you
can cause you can cause some pretty serious damage. All right,
How long is this person going to be cuffed? And
how tight they are? How tight these cuffs are restraining
the wrist. So what happens is you will get like
this circumferential Uh, it can. It can be both an
(28:26):
abraided area, which is you know, like skinning your knee right,
you're taking off that top layer of skin, and it
can also be a circumferential contusion, like if you just
imagine a circuit like a bruise going all the way around,
and sometimes it will last. I would lean more into
an abraided area. Perhaps if it's intense enough, you can
(28:47):
create scarring. So you would have to look and I
would imagine in a case like this, they would take
a lot of time examining points of restraint on a body.
Well where are those Well, you think about the wrist
and the ankles. Those are the two locations that you're
thinking about whenever you're talking about a restraint case, whether
(29:09):
it's something that occurs while law enforcement is restraining somebody,
or if you've got somebody that's engaged in this kind
of behavior, So you want to try to understand that
and again going back into the history of it to
try to understand it from that perspective as well. That's
going to be very very important and anything that might
(29:30):
happen as an adjunct to that restraining And what I
mean by that is that were there any other focal
areas on the body, because if you've got somebody that
engages in let's just say it's sadistic behavior, there are
certain areas they will return to on the body because
they if this is being done in a sadistic way,
(29:54):
there are certain areas that the sadist will in fact
focus on if they like putting cigarette butts out on people,
if they like striking in a particular area, because for
whatever reason in their mind, they're living out this fantasy.
And you can go back and you can kind of
see this, you know, over the various surfaces of the body.
(30:15):
You know. One of the things I'm thinking about is like,
you have people that love to torture feet, and that
can be any number of things. You know, you got
people that'll you know, tickle people that's not necessarily torture,
but you think about sticking pins, for instance, and the
soles of the feet.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
Sometimes you say things. All I can think of is,
you didn't make that up. You saw this somewhere on somebody.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Yeah, I seen it, yeah, or colleague of mine has
seen it. And there's you know, and the thing about it, brothers,
there's nothing new under the sun. You know, we talk
about these cases, and it has been done before, and unfortunately,
it will be done again. The only difference is is
(30:58):
that in Catherine's case, there will never be another time
because now she's dead. Injuries point the way to scientific discovery,
(31:21):
at least in my world. They do in the world
of medical legal death investigation, because it is through examination
of injuries, both old and new, that we can begin
to kind of breathe life in the dead. Okay, just
so you understand that, I think that all of our
friends understand that, Dave and my lord, if you know,
(31:44):
if a story could be told, what a grim, gruesome
story this is, my friend.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
When we were looking over the report from the police
that broke down the recording. I mean, you know a
lot of times when when you have to put a
case together, Joe, when you're explaining it to me, you're
talking about what you saw, you know, at the scene
of the crime, how things were disturbed, and then what
(32:11):
actions you saw displayed on the body. In this case,
the medical examiner actually has a live a description and
then if I meant it, of what took place this recording. Friends,
just so you know, we don't know to what we
just know it's called a digital recording. At first, I
(32:31):
wondered how it came about, but you know, we all
have recording devices on us all the time, in our
cell phones. But I think there's something else at work,
maybe that you've talked about people keeping trophies show. Yes,
I think he actually recorded this so he could play
it back later. I think that this was because at
first I thought it was unintentional. You know, you bumped
(32:53):
the wrong button and all of a sudden, you're recording stuff.
And that's what I thought at first. But based on
what took place, I believe that they're going to find
out the March beating probably also recorded as well, But
in this case, it begins with an argument. You hear
the argument taking place between Kevin Mondicky and the woman
(33:16):
who he has just beaten to a bloody Paul five
weeks earlier, who's now trying to see another person. That
was the one thing her friends Joe were so excited
about that Kat actually was moving on. She was done
with Kevin Mondicky and beatings and everything else. She had
actually gone out with another man. And this other man
(33:39):
came into play because he was the one who picked
her with the phone and said to the police.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Would you please check on her? I'm concerned.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
And that's where this fight slash argument began between Kevin Mondicky.
He accused Kat of cheating on him, but they were
no longer a couple in her mind, so she wasn't
cheating on him. She was trying to get her life back,
and that's where it started. And on this tape, it
begins with a very loud argument Joe. And as it
(34:07):
is described in the police report, we hear Kat begging,
don't put the handcuffs on me. Don't put the handcuffs
on me, And the way they described it, I told you,
I think that it was something he did to her
before and she knew what could happen to her if
he got the cuffs on her. And now we know
that he did get the cuffs on her, because they
(34:29):
described him taking her over to the couch Joe for
the beating to begin the abuse.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Seven hours of torture.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
And if he's and here's the thing about it, I'm
thinking about what the forensic pathologist is seeing before him
on the table, you know, in the autopsy suite you
actually have, and my lord, I would hate to have
to listen to seven hours of this. I've had to
do cases where I've had to listener recordings before really yeah,
(34:57):
and of things that have gone on. And because you're
trying to pick up on snippets.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Are they usually indirect like from a surveillances.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Yeah, most of the time they have been. I did
have videography. I did have a videography case one time
where somebody was documenting torture. Yeah. But to look at
the transcript and try to marry up because there are
a lot of things that are not said. There are
things that are heard, perhaps screams, grunts, groans, those sorts
(35:30):
of things are impacts too, that's another thing. And you
have a transcript of this, and then you're standing here
with Catherine's body on his table and you're seeing evidence
of this, you know, literally laid out before you, and
you're looking on all of the surface surfaces, you're looking anterior,
you're looking posterior, checking her head, all these sorts of things.
(35:54):
And if you kind of marry that up with you know,
with a transcript and I'm assuming the saying will be transcribed, uh,
it would it would have to be for court, and
what what are we seeing manifested before us? And also
here's the here's the other kind of really dark part.
(36:17):
This how close was she at any moment in time
to death? And she's pulled back from the edge because
the one thing I do know is that there are
marks on her neck, Are there not, Dave, She's got
marks on her neck.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
And well the other thing we know, Joe, that the
marks on her neck. But okay, we know that according
to this recording, that MONICKI while he is sexually assaulting
her and beating her. Remember that's what's taking place. It's
a rape and abuse that goes on for hours. But
Monikey used duct tape on her to to prevent her
(36:56):
from being able to move around. So he's using duct tape.
And I've tried, and you know, to figure out what's
going on here in her head that I mean, she's
she can't get away, she can't get out.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
He's got duct tape on her.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
Monicky makes repeated threats that he's going to kill her,
and she's gone through this before. I remember in the
march beating it got so bad. He's I'm going to
kill you, but you're going to write a letter to
your son. Well, he's back to that old trick and
you mentioned the the the injuries. According to the audio
tape described by police, there were injuries from him tightening
(37:33):
his grip on her neck, loosening it, and tightening it.
How would you see that, Joe, What would that look like?
Speaker 1 (37:38):
Well, there's going to be multiple overlying marks depending upon
the ligature that you're using. I've mentioned this case before.
I had a serial killer that had utilized the same
methodology using wire where he would pick up victims and
he would drug them, generally with some kind of opiate
(38:00):
based substance, and then he would use a garrot around
their neck and you could see where he would tighten
it as he's sexually assaulting them, then loosen it and
reposition the garrot, tighten it again. And so you've got
this this kind of complex of these marks that communicate
(38:22):
or overlap with one another, you know, like this, And
I know the difficulty with this is trying to understand,
trying to understand what you know, which came first. And
we've talked a lot on bodybacks about sequencing, how it's
very difficult for us to sequence trauma, whether it's stab
wounds or gunshot wounds, and this sort of thing. I
(38:42):
think you could probably say the same thing about a
ligature unless the ligature is left in place after death,
and so you have a starting point there, right, so
you have evidence of the ligature in place. I don't
necessarily know that that's the case here, but there will
be marking is left behind. And depending upon how the
(39:02):
structures of the neck are impacted. And we're talking about uh,
you know famously the strap muscles that you know that
run parallel uh to uh to the cartilaginous bodies here
in the neck, you know, the area that you know
commonly refer to in parlance the modern you know, and
everyday talk as the wind pipe, if you will. There's
(39:24):
multiple little cartilaginous members in here. You can kind of
see it strapped across there. Sometimes those will fracture. If
it's not you're not going to fracture the hyoid with
with the ligature. Pausing on that just for a moment,
all right, Uh, that would be something that would be
accomplished through manual manual strangulation. So you're going to have
(39:48):
very complex areas of hemorrhage depending upon the way back.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Of can you claim that to me?
Speaker 3 (39:53):
Because we've all we've all heard of the hyoid, very
thin bone that indicates a strangling has taken place. But
I just kind of assumed that if you were regardless
of the method of the strangulation, that that that the
hyoid bone would be damaged.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
No, not the case.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
No, No, because hyoid bone, even if you let's say,
for instance, it's a you're throttling somebody or using a
c clamp, it's almost always with a ligature. Let me
back up. With a ligature, the ligature is the highoid
will always remain superior to the ligature unless you've got
(40:36):
this really dynamic event where the ligature slips and it
goes really really high. Because the highroid is positioned so
far north, so far north in the neck. It's literally
again it's that anchorage for the base of the tongue.
It holds the tongue in place, and the only non
articulating bone in the body, that means it doesn't communicate
(40:58):
with any other skeletal element in the body, is just
sitting there in soft tissue and it holds it in place.
It's horseshoe shaped, so you really have to go north
of that north of that area. Most of time with ligatures,
they're going to be they're going to be probably at
least an inch up to an inch south if you will,
(41:22):
of the hyoid, so you're not going to come near it. Now.
The thing about it is is that back to these
ligature marks, they're going to be very complex and they'll
overlap over and over and over again, dependent upon how
long the torture lasts. And that's the kind of you know,
chilling part of this because with every mark, with every
(41:44):
contact point along the neck, you get a sense that
that's a bit more torture. It's been marked in time
by the physical remnant of this. The evidence of this,
the abrasion, the deep furrow, dependent upon what of literature
is used. If we used say a piece of wire,
(42:05):
it's like if you're talking about piano wire, okay, that
furrow is going to be very very deep, but it's
gonna be very narrow and wit. Whereas if you use
a belt, you know, physical science dictates that it's not
going to be really really deep, but it'll be really wide, okay,
so you can cover more surface area. So the nature
(42:26):
of literature plays into this. I'm curious if they found
the literature at the at the scene and what other
implements that they may have found that may have had
utility leading up to Catherine's death. I'm fascinated by this
dynamic of how she was found though found in the house.
(42:49):
Wasn't she on the sofa? She was still on the sofa, right.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
Yeah, she was still on the sofa where most of
the attack took place. What we understand now and again,
now remember where the very beginning of this case, it
hasn't gone to trial. I mean, we just got an arrest,
and so what we're going on what the police have
filed in public stuff that you have to as part
of the case.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
But yeah, she was found on the couch.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
And when police when they found Kevin Modikey, he was
in the garage. Now, I want to back up something
that took place in the last minutes of this tape,
this digital recording, Joe. Yeah, because as sad as this is,
Monikey records right up to her death. Okay, you can
(43:35):
hear her in the last minutes of this tape. She's gagging,
she's begging, I mean she's begging, let me see my son, please,
let me see him all the time. And this guy
he tells her, your son's gonna be better off without you,
and then MONNICKI tells her. You know, he all along,
he saw you're gonna die. I'm gonna kill you, but
he says it's not gonna take too long, about thirty seconds,
(43:56):
and then I'm gonna go kill myself and it it
just it's all on this. It's all a matter of record. Okay,
it's all recorded, and you can hear her body, her
blast breath, and then you know, he goes to the
garage and when police get there, he's so out of
(44:17):
his mind on drugs and alcohol that you know, he
claims he.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
Doesn't know anything.
Speaker 3 (44:21):
But the one thing that we do have going for
us in this case, Joe, is that seven hour recording.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Yeah, it's one of the biggest pieces of evidence. And
to give you up, I think to try to understand
the depth and breadth of pravity here, uh, not that
we already don't have enough. Let me back up just
for a second. I've got I've got to tell you something.
(44:49):
I even made mentioned of this my life when when
I was prepping to do this, when I saw this
image of her. H she's got this appearance. It's almost hypnotic.
It's like captivating. And the thing that you're drawn to
with Catherine are her eyes. I mean, it's they're striking,
(45:11):
and I can't really describe it. I had to urge anybody,
any of our friends out there, go take a look
at images of her in life. But what we're hearing
to this point is that she apparently, at some point
in time during this fight for her life, the perpetrator
allegedly tried to remove her eye or eyes. And that's
(45:39):
going to be a big tell here because one of
the things that unless some type of instruments used, like
a sharp instrument, this is going to be a very
blunted event. Most of the time, when people try to
gouge an eye, it starts with the thumb, and they're
going to try to find a point of leverage in
the within inside of the orbit so that they let me.
Speaker 3 (46:00):
Even make it worse, he actually stuck his fingers in
her mouth and then tried to gouge your eyes out.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
Yeah, and that's part of the torture, isn't it. You know,
because he's not just having attempted to choke her out
multiple times. Now, he's kind of taking away her voice.
All you hear are grunts and groans probably, and then
probably taking a thumb and pressing it down within the
(46:29):
orbit to try to gouge it out. Now, there's gonna
be significant physical evidence that's left behind as a result
of that. You're gonna see if this was done in life,
which I'm assuming that it was, You're gonna see major
areas of contusion. There'll be real deep bruising in this area.
It's a lot of soft tissue. Some of the vessels
in the eye. Eyes will probably have erupted and hemorrhage
(46:53):
as well. And in totality. You know when you look
at the imagery that will be generated at autopsy, and
certainly it's the scene as well, and then you have
this bizarre narration. Now I don't it's ghastly that goes
along with this, and then everything that the pathologist will
(47:17):
say about what she went through and endured for seven hours,
it's going to be something that will haunt anybody that
is in this courtroom for years and years to come.
The one thing I do know is that it's not
just going to be the people there in that courtroom.
(47:41):
It's going to be a twelve year old boy that
no longer has a mama. It's going to be all
of her extended family. It's gonna be her patience that
she's probably developed relationships with over the years, all the
doctors colleagues forever, those bonds are broken and all we're
left with is one of the most horrible stories that
(48:02):
Brother Dave and I have covered. And sometimes I promise
you this, my friends, We're going to keep you up
to date in this case as things begin to develop.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybags
Quality bus.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
But Joseph Scott.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
More, imagine spending your life dedicated to taking care of others.
There are so many nurses out there that do this
day after day after day, year after year, and even
(00:25):
decade after decade. Their goal is It's not just an occupation,
because trust me, it has to be a calling. All
you got to do is change a few bedpands, put
in a few catheters, have somebody throw up on you. You
don't hang around most of the time for the money
(00:45):
by itself. You have to want to be there. Today,
we're going to talk about one such person. And not
only is this person dedicated to taking care of others,
she's also dedicated to her twelve year old son. Oh
(01:06):
and by the way, she's a single mother. And just
like everybody else, single mothers get lonely and they want companionship.
And in this particular case, those relationships, and one relationship
in particular, ended all of her hopes and dreams, including
(01:28):
those of a son who was hoping to be with
his mother for as long as he possibly could be.
But now she's gone. Today we're going to talk about
the case of Catherine Torbick. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
this is body Bats.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Dave.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
When I heard about this case, and it's just been
within the last few days, it really kind of pricked
my heart, if you will, because I see a woman
that's forty three years old. She's had a career now
as a nurse. She's had to go through all of
(02:12):
the struggles of taking care of a twelve year old son,
raising him on her own. But yet you know, she,
like I stated, she wants companionship. She wants to feel
wanted and needed and no sorts of things. And the
story that I'm hearing thus far, at least relative to her,
(02:34):
is that her life has ended arguably, i'd say, in
one of the most horrific ways that I think that
you and I have covered on body Bags. Some of
the details are just absolutely beyond the pale. And I
don't know, I don't really know where to start with
(02:54):
this other yeah, yeah, No.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
As a heads up, look, this is a domestic violent situation.
If that triggers you in some way, be careful because
that's what this story is about. It's a heinous crime,
it's a heinous murder. Catherine Torbick is dead, her twelve
year old son will grow up without a mother. And
we have to say alleged because this story is happening
(03:17):
as we speak. This just happened, and we're dealing with
a woman who has you mentioned a minute ago. This
is the one who works three jobs. Okay, she works
as a nurse and then works at a metaspa. She
does a lot of things to provide for her and
her twelve year old son. She's been with a man
(03:39):
with We'll get into his background in a little bit,
but I say a man air quotes because men, real men,
don't beat the woman they love, and this man allegedly
did that. Kevin Monichi. In March of this year, Kevin
Modichi attacked Catherine so bad that it ended up in
(04:06):
an ending of their tenure relationship. So based on that,
you would think, okay, they had a warrant for his arrest, Joe.
A warrant was already issued March sixteenth for Kevin Monnicky.
Somehow they couldn't find him. So in April, and this
(04:27):
is going to be a little a little catchy here,
Kevin Monickee and Catherine were living together. They'd been living
together for a while and this house technically was his
is my understanding now, they had established a residence together
and as a family, and after this fight that happened
(04:48):
in March, Monikey was supposed to stay away. She had
an order of protection. But from what we know now,
he may have been back in that house as soon
as Arch twenty second. So that's your setup that leads
to one of the most horrific stories we're going to
have to talk about, and that is the beating, the torture,
(05:12):
seven hours and all of it, Joe, all of this
death of Catherine Torbett recorded on audio.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yeah, hang on, I've got to try to understand something here,
because we're talking about the same domicile, right, and we've
got she's in dwellingness with her son. And look, I
understand she would not want to move from that location
with the child. But yet there's an individual here that
she has some kind of restraining order on and this
(05:47):
is his domicile or his name is on it. This
seems like this is inviting trouble. And I'm saying that
I don't know in the most reserved way that I
possibly can, given given what we have been told, as
far as the evidence reveals the trans victim.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
But you know, Joe, I'm glad you mentioned that, because
you know this is a problem that happens in relationships
like this, where domestic violence occurs, and the victim of
the domestic violence. Well, where's she's supposed to go with
her twelve year old son. She's been living with this
guy in this house for many years. She has a
right to, I guess live there. I'm not sure legally
(06:28):
what happens with that, but I do know this. You know,
we were on Nancy Grace the other day doing this
story and one of Kat's friends was on the show
and she said that she encouraged Kat move out of
the house. Yeah, get out of his house, is what
she said. And I mean, how do you deal with that, Joe,
How does a woman who is already working three jobs
(06:49):
to cover things just move out?
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Nobody has that kind of cash.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
No, they don't. And we're talking about the greater Chicago area.
I think they're in Schomberg, Illinois, just outside of Chicago.
And yeah, I would assume that there are other places
that she could move to. However, she's already Again, I'm
not an attorney in this. I'm just thinking about this
from the perspective of an investigation. Right, You've got a
(07:16):
twelve year old son who I'm sure is established in
a school. You've already got a relations pre existing relationship
where you know your mail is coming, you know, to
put it in very just kind of concrete terms, your
mail is coming to this location, all right, Your credit cards,
everything that kind of defines your life is all centered
around this area, and all of a sudden it kind
(07:37):
of blows up. And I say that in a sense
that back in you know, we talked about this instance
that occurred back in March where you have this violent
event that took place, which you know resulted in some
really horrific things even back then, and that brings us
(07:58):
forward now, you know, to May. And of course it's
all ended in tragy, and like you had stated, this
is not an uncommon occurrence. This does, in fact happen regularly.
How many times on body backs have we talked about,
Dave that the most, well, at least I've said it.
I've said it. You know, the old adage is you're
(08:21):
more at risk with the person you're in bed next
to than you ever will be in some kind of
you know, scenario where there's a stranger that emerges out
of a dark alley. You know, those cases are the exception.
It's the people that you're under the roof with because
(08:41):
you know, you think about the dynamic that occurs just
in any kind of relationship. It doesn't have to be
a romantic relationship. It can be any kind of relationship.
You can have really good times together. But because you're
in one another's business all the time, because you're living
in approximate, you're approximating each other, that's kind of a
stew for violence to occur. You know, passions get high,
(09:05):
these sorts of things. But David, I've got to tell
you this, the thing that kind of separates this out
for me is the fact that the idea is that
you don't the violence that we're talking about does not
sound like that this is something that just occurred. This
(09:26):
sounds like some kind of indwelling event where you have
an individual that has in fact been attacked and attacked
in a very brutal way, and apparently there's a history
of it here.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
That's actually Joe.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
That's why I wanted to mention right at the beginning
that prior to the event, that prior to the murder
of Catherine Torviik there was about five weeks earlier, a
beating that nearly took her life, a beating that her lover,
her boyfriend of ten years, said, right a note saying goodbye.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
To your son. Think about that.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
I'm going to kill you, but I want you to
write a note to your son. That's how harsh that
one was, and mentioning that kind of to set the
stage for what took place.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
That is on again.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
I'm going to go back to this show. The reason
we know so much about the beating death of Catherine Torbick,
is because the suspect, the alleged killer, recorded the entire
event seven hours long, Joe, seven hours from the beginning
(10:36):
to the very end, where on this recording you hear
as Catherine Trobrick took her last breath, what she is
begging him and you and I talked about this off
the air, based on the thing she is saying to him.
It happened before. This wasn't the first time, March wasn't
the first time. This is a ten year relationship that
(10:58):
I'm willing to guess when violent early and stayed that
way and just escalated as we how many times have
we done shows about domestic violence that lead to death.
You can't fix what's really broken on the inside.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
No, you can't. And I think the real point here
from an investigative standpoint, and we kind of have some
breadcrumbs here is the idea that who in the world
sets them up, sets themselves up to record something, and
in this case went on for allegedly seven hours at
(11:35):
this point in tom how many other times, brother Dave,
have things been taped, been recorded, been viewed, been fantasized over.
Because it's not just the fact that you can hear
her last words on this earth. It's not just the
fact that maybe you can even since in the audio
(11:58):
when she's taken her last breath. It's the idea that
there is some kind of presiding evil here, some kind
of compelling force that would drive an individual to want
to document the end of an otherwise beautiful life. You know,
(12:24):
when we begin to talk about injuries, as we do
so many times, you know, I'm kind of having a
hard time taking a measure and having to scale some
of this stuff to try to understand it. And one
of the problems I'm running into just in my thought process,
or let me put it to this way, I'm not
(12:45):
the one that actually has to scale it. I'm trying
to explain it. But the people that are going to
have to explain this as they go to trial with
this thing at some point in time, I would assume,
and they're having to sit on a stand and just
trying to understand it. And it makes sense. Dave. There's
a potential that there's going to be a lot of
overlying and overlapping injuries here, stuff that might might actually
(13:06):
be coming from the from the past. And I think
that that's going to be.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Are you saying that some of those injuries from the
March beating might be present in the April murder?
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely again, Yeah I know. And so you know,
by the if we think about, like if we're talking
about impact injuries where somebody has been kicked, bludgeoned, that
sort of thing, and yeah, I said bludgeoned, you can
you can actually believe it or not externally you can
recover from that. Let's say this back in March were May. Now, yeah,
(13:41):
you've had sufficient man, and we talked about stages of contusions,
remember that we may have. I think we did an
entire episode on blunt force trauma.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
Yeah, we did, because I reference it all the time
when you say things on this show, I have to
go back in research, but I don't want to be
like a Dummian plot a dictionary. But half the time
as what I'm doing.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
On he well, I'm going to get you that agree.
In forensic science, you're pretty saying just trust me. So, yeah,
when you're thinking about this, you see these these bruises,
and we use this. We use this in child abuse
cases and elder abuse cases as well. And that's not
the only application here, because you can have them in
ongoing living what we call living forensic pathology. So if
(14:21):
you've got if you have a mother like this that's
in a domestic abuse situation and she finally has the
courage to step forward and go to somebody and say, look,
this is what's happened to me, this is what's happened
to me, or you know, pick your antomical location. You
can actually see kind of the progression of healing in
(14:43):
these bruises. However, if this has been an ongoing thing
where she's been lacerated in any way, and again that's
associated with blunt force trauma where she's punched, the skin tears,
now that's not something that would have completely gone away.
I would think since March if there's any kind of
facial injuries that may have left scarring. Here's another thing
(15:05):
people don't think about, and I've seen this in cases
where you have DV victims that they will have clumps
of their hair pulled out as well. Well. The hair
does not have sufficient amount of time. If you've got
a focal area of hair that's been ripped out, there's
not sufficient amount of time for that hair to have
caught up with everything else. That's why when these examinations
(15:29):
are being done and I'm thinking about my friends that
are they're called saying nurses, some of the biggest heroes
out there, sexual assault nurse examiners. That's one of the
things that they do. They don't just do rape kits.
For instance, they do a full body examination on a
victim to check and they'll look for things like the hairline.
They'll check the back of the neck and see if
(15:49):
there is any points of impact back there, anything's been
ripped away, skin that's been ubraided in any way, because
you know, sometimes you'll have there is a case, kind
of this infamous case that I was peripherally involved in
where someone was using a cheese greater or handheld cheese
grater to torture somebody with where you're just kind of
(16:10):
peeling almost like you're creating lemons. Zest if you will.
And so this kind of thing happens, and it has
to be documented, it has to be read. And so
the dynamics of reading something in the living all right,
from a forensic standpoint, is completely different than dealing with
it in the morgue. In the post warm state. However,
(16:31):
you have to be able to go back and be
able to appreciate what has previously happened, because, as we've
talked about, any kind of insult that you have with
the dead, it's frozen in that moment time. It's no
longer going to continue to heal, it's no longer going
to continue. Here's the term that's used a lot in medicine.
It's not going to resolve. Resolved means to begin to
(16:52):
vanish away. That's that's frozen in time, dude. And so
you have these underlying injuries that are that are actually
being overlapped perhaps by current injuries or those injuries that
were approximating going into the Perry mortem in the post
mortem phase and so it takes a keen eye, a
(17:17):
quick story. A guy that lived with his bed ridden,
for lack of a better term, common law wife, and
common law really doesn't exist in this jurisdiction I'm referring to.
But he had been beating her for years with a broken,
(17:37):
broken dryer belt, you know. And I don't know if
you've ever seen a belt off of a dryer, but yeah,
it kind of looks like a fan belt. It's only
more it's only more robust. Well, she was bedridden, she
couldn't get up out of bed, and she was totally
dependent upon him raging now colic every time he came home,
got angry.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Okay, she's bedridden, Yeah, and protect her, so I can't,
you know, And he beats her with a dryer belt.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Yeah, and we found it hidden up on the it's
like the shelf where you keep detergents, how ironic, right
over the washer and dryer. And so anytime you get drunk,
he'd come in and he beat her. And Dave, if
you've ever heard the term somebody being beaten to a
pulp before, well I think that most people have. She
had been struck with this thing and it's very heavy
(18:24):
for so many times that you had these overlapping injuries
all over her body, and they had a very particular
pattern where you could tell this belt had been broken
and it probably was broken through where on the dryer.
But he knew, he knew the utility of this thing,
so as he would beat her, he would overlap these
(18:45):
old injuries and back to bloody pulp, right, we went through.
I think that at the time we counted like it
was right at it was just over two hundred individual
lash marks that he had put on her, and of
course they were in various states of resolve. Right, But
(19:06):
I remember the forensic pathologist making an incision into one
of these sites. And the reason it stands out to me,
I've never heard of forensic pathologists say this in the
autopsy suite. He said, I've never seen anything like this.
So anytime forensic pathologist says I've never seen anything like this,
guess what I want to see. I want to know
(19:28):
what you're talking about. So when he made the incision,
liquefied fact came out of that injury, and she had
been sustaining these injuries and people, you know, we hear
a lot about DV right all the time, and people
just kind of blow it off. Friends, You cannot imagine
the world out there and what people go through the horror.
(19:51):
You know, people will just kind of gloss over it
many times. But when you see these injuries that occur
over and over again, and people are subject to these
all the time. Now, I don't know, I don't necessarily
know that, you know, in the case of Catherine, if
this has been something that has gone on this long. However,
(20:15):
one of the things that draws my interest here is
the fact that these individuals work together for such a
protracted period of time. There is obviously a history. I
don't know if there are peaks and valleys with this thing.
Have there been previous previous attacks, because you know, one
(20:35):
of the things that DV perpetrators will do is they'll
say they go through this it's and sociologists have this
cycle that they'll show with are it's more like criminologists.
They'll show the cycle of domestic violence. And one of
the things is there's like an attack, okay, and then
you go through this kind of phase where they have
(20:57):
this I don't know, this epiphanal moment where they say, oh,
I'm sorry, and you know, they're heaping love upon the victim.
They'll even get them flowers to take them out to dinner,
and they'll be sugary sweet, and then all of a sudden,
there goes this kind of dormancy and then boom, violence
just erupts again. And this just can you imagine that cycle? Well,
(21:19):
living in that day after day after day after day
after day, and with all of these injuries that DV
victims sustain, you can see this pattern. It's one of
the things we look for in the Morgan I think, Dave,
if I'm hearing correctly, there's a lot to go through
with Catherine's injuries.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Look, that's why I wanted to put it out at
the very beginning that this the beating death of Catherine Torbick,
wasn't a one off, okay, because we have to let
it be known that there was at least one beating
that took place five six weeks earlier. We don't know
what really transpired before, and then we'll probably hear about
(22:01):
that later. What we do know is that Catherine Torbick
just let right down the list of a couple of
the things, So you know who we're talking about, mother
of a twelve year old son from a previous relationship.
She's a GI nurse at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital, had
been there for over twenty years. Over twenty years as
a GI nurse. She'd been in a relationship with Kevin
(22:22):
Monickey for ten years. Her friends say that caring for
people was her second nature. Now, when somebody says that's
their second nature about somebody else, that's a pretty big
indicator of what type person kat Torbick was. Now, the
evidence that we're going to be sharing with you actually
(22:43):
comes from a digital recorder that was in the pocket
of the man who allegedly killed her, and that would
be Kevin Montikey. Now, Joe, just so you know, Kevin
Monickeye was no angel who just lost his cookies one night.
Do need to know that Kevin Mondikey had a record
going back to the late eighties. And that record started
(23:06):
with your basic runnings with the law, you know, speeding
traffic stuff, then oh, stealing, getting off on certain things.
But there were several times in his life where there
was somebody had gone to court and had gotten an
order of protection from this man from Kevin Monnicky. One
was his own brother, Kevin Monikeye has a brother who
lives in California and his brother, Kevin. Monikee's brother is
(23:31):
a medical doctor. He opened up a medspa in Chicago,
and Kevin Monikey was given not ownership, but he was
given an opportunity to partner in this medspa. Right, what
Kevin did was steal money allegedly reportedly yeah, and he
(23:54):
he took money and destroyed the business. And we're talking
half million dollars show. Okay, So the brother, you know,
the brother's trying to work it out with him because
then you know Kevin is his brother, but Kevin wasn't playing.
So brother and brother go into court. And this is
a couple of years ago. Guess who was on the
stand in Kevin Mondokey's defense in this civil this case
(24:18):
between brothers.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
It's not Kevin Motikie.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
She went to court and said, you know, yeah, so
just letting you know, Kevin Mondickie had a record for
being physical and threatening toward others, including his brother, after
he stole money from his brother, and Kat was still
willing to back him up time and time again. So
after the beating in March, that led to what we're
(24:42):
talking about today. Kevin Monicky was not supposed to be
in the house. Doesn't matter if it's his or not.
He wasn't supposed to be around Kat torbick Order's son
at that point. He was supposed to be gone.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Now.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Police claimed Joe that from March sixteenth until the time
Kevin Monicky was arrested, that they attempted to make contact
with him forty times. Forty times in a thirty day period.
The police said they actively sought to find Kevin MOTTICKI
(25:14):
and based on some evidence that came out that we
aren't privy to, we don't know exactly what the evidence is,
but on that digital recorder there was more than just
seven hours of beating that leads to murder. There was
actually evidence on that recording device that Kevin Motticky was
back in that home with Kat a couple of days
(25:37):
after the beating. By March twenty second. I believe that
he did exactly what you explained a minute ago. I'm
really sorry that it happened, but you know, the domestic
violence purpatures have a way of spinning things. It's ultimately
they're really sorry. I can't believe what happened to I
got to overcome with whatever, and then they played the
(25:57):
victim card. You know, I'm just really worried that I'm
going to lose you. You're just so beautiful, and I
know the other guys are, you know. And then well
I never wanted to do that, but you know, my
buttons and you were pushing my buttons.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
You know.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
They spin it from I'm really sorry to it was
really your fault.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Well it sounds sounds a heck a lot like bron laundry. Yeah,
you know, and it really does, you know, Yeah, exhibit one.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
At you right right, you know, and Gabby Patito. I
wish Kat Torbick had paid closer attention to that. But
what we do know, Joe, because Kevin, because of Kevin
Monicky and this recording device, Yeah, we now know what
he did to Kat. And I have to ask you
(26:42):
this question. Yeah, when you're examining somebody, one of the
things that we heard on this tape was Kat begging,
begging Kevin to not put the handcuffs on. Based on
the action described by police in their reports of what
took place on the audio tape that they're describing, it
(27:05):
sounded to me like they were describing something that had
happened before and she knew what it could lead to.
Is there a way that you can examine her wrists? Yeah,
and find out if being handcuffs were a part of
her life.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Yeah you can. And again this is something that can resolve.
And handcuffs are very they're interesting and I'm not talking
about zip ties here all right, which you see, you
see police use to facilitate, particularly if they've got a
lot of people that they're you know, they're hooking up
talking about the rigidity of the surface of a handcuff. Okay,
(27:42):
and you know there's a way like I'll give you
for instance, when when folks go through the academy, for instance,
they they're actually prompted to learn how much space you know,
to to give in handcuff because they know that the
tighter the handcuff. First off, you can injure them in
(28:03):
the immediate but after prolonged you know, prolonged restraint, you
can cause you can cause some pretty serious damage. All right,
How long is this person going to be cuffed? And
how tight they are? How tight these cuffs are restraining
the wrist. So what happens is you will get like
this circumferential Uh, it can. It can be both an
(28:26):
abraided area, which is you know, like skinning your knee right,
you're taking off that top layer of skin, and it
can also be a circumferential contusion, like if you just
imagine a circuit like a bruise going all the way around,
and sometimes it will last. I would lean more into
an abraided area. Perhaps if it's intense enough, you can
(28:47):
create scarring. So you would have to look and I
would imagine in a case like this, they would take
a lot of time examining points of restraint on a body.
Well where are those Well, you think about the wrist
and the ankles. Those are the two locations that you're
thinking about whenever you're talking about a restraint case, whether
(29:09):
it's something that occurs while law enforcement is restraining somebody,
or if you've got somebody that's engaged in this kind
of behavior, So you want to try to understand that
and again going back into the history of it to
try to understand it from that perspective as well. That's
going to be very very important and anything that might
(29:30):
happen as an adjunct to that restraining And what I
mean by that is that were there any other focal
areas on the body, because if you've got somebody that
engages in let's just say it's sadistic behavior, there are
certain areas they will return to on the body because
they if this is being done in a sadistic way,
(29:54):
there are certain areas that the sadist will in fact
focus on if they like putting cigarette butts out on people,
if they like striking in a particular area, because for
whatever reason in their mind, they're living out this fantasy.
And you can go back and you can kind of
see this, you know, over the various surfaces of the body.
(30:15):
You know. One of the things I'm thinking about is like,
you have people that love to torture feet, and that
can be any number of things. You know, you got
people that'll you know, tickle people that's not necessarily torture,
but you think about sticking pins, for instance, and the
soles of the feet.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
Sometimes you say things. All I can think of is,
you didn't make that up. You saw this somewhere on somebody.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Yeah, I seen it, yeah, or colleague of mine has
seen it. And there's you know, and the thing about it, brothers,
there's nothing new under the sun. You know, we talk
about these cases, and it has been done before, and unfortunately,
it will be done again. The only difference is is
(30:58):
that in Catherine's case, there will never be another time
because now she's dead. Injuries point the way to scientific discovery,
(31:21):
at least in my world. They do in the world
of medical legal death investigation, because it is through examination
of injuries, both old and new, that we can begin
to kind of breathe life in the dead. Okay, just
so you understand that, I think that all of our
friends understand that, Dave and my lord, if you know,
(31:44):
if a story could be told, what a grim, gruesome
story this is, my friend.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
When we were looking over the report from the police
that broke down the recording. I mean, you know a
lot of times when when you have to put a
case together, Joe, when you're explaining it to me, you're
talking about what you saw, you know, at the scene
of the crime, how things were disturbed, and then what
(32:11):
actions you saw displayed on the body. In this case,
the medical examiner actually has a live a description and
then if I meant it, of what took place this recording. Friends,
just so you know, we don't know to what we
just know it's called a digital recording. At first, I
(32:31):
wondered how it came about, but you know, we all
have recording devices on us all the time, in our
cell phones. But I think there's something else at work,
maybe that you've talked about people keeping trophies show. Yes,
I think he actually recorded this so he could play
it back later. I think that this was because at
first I thought it was unintentional. You know, you bumped
(32:53):
the wrong button and all of a sudden, you're recording stuff.
And that's what I thought at first. But based on
what took place, I believe that they're going to find
out the March beating probably also recorded as well, But
in this case, it begins with an argument. You hear
the argument taking place between Kevin Mondicky and the woman
(33:16):
who he has just beaten to a bloody Paul five
weeks earlier, who's now trying to see another person. That
was the one thing her friends Joe were so excited
about that Kat actually was moving on. She was done
with Kevin Mondicky and beatings and everything else. She had
actually gone out with another man. And this other man
(33:39):
came into play because he was the one who picked
her with the phone and said to the police.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Would you please check on her? I'm concerned.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
And that's where this fight slash argument began between Kevin Mondicky.
He accused Kat of cheating on him, but they were
no longer a couple in her mind, so she wasn't
cheating on him. She was trying to get her life back,
and that's where it started. And on this tape, it
begins with a very loud argument Joe. And as it
(34:07):
is described in the police report, we hear Kat begging,
don't put the handcuffs on me. Don't put the handcuffs
on me, And the way they described it, I told you,
I think that it was something he did to her
before and she knew what could happen to her if
he got the cuffs on her. And now we know
that he did get the cuffs on her, because they
(34:29):
described him taking her over to the couch Joe for
the beating to begin the abuse.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Seven hours of torture.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
And if he's and here's the thing about it, I'm
thinking about what the forensic pathologist is seeing before him
on the table, you know, in the autopsy suite you
actually have, and my lord, I would hate to have
to listen to seven hours of this. I've had to
do cases where I've had to listener recordings before really yeah,
(34:57):
and of things that have gone on. And because you're
trying to pick up on snippets.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Are they usually indirect like from a surveillances.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Yeah, most of the time they have been. I did
have videography. I did have a videography case one time
where somebody was documenting torture. Yeah. But to look at
the transcript and try to marry up because there are
a lot of things that are not said. There are
things that are heard, perhaps screams, grunts, groans, those sorts
(35:30):
of things are impacts too, that's another thing. And you
have a transcript of this, and then you're standing here
with Catherine's body on his table and you're seeing evidence
of this, you know, literally laid out before you, and
you're looking on all of the surface surfaces, you're looking anterior,
you're looking posterior, checking her head, all these sorts of things.
(35:54):
And if you kind of marry that up with you know,
with a transcript and I'm assuming the saying will be transcribed, uh,
it would it would have to be for court, and
what what are we seeing manifested before us? And also
here's the here's the other kind of really dark part.
(36:17):
This how close was she at any moment in time
to death? And she's pulled back from the edge because
the one thing I do know is that there are
marks on her neck, Are there not, Dave, She's got
marks on her neck.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
And well the other thing we know, Joe, that the
marks on her neck. But okay, we know that according
to this recording, that MONICKI while he is sexually assaulting
her and beating her. Remember that's what's taking place. It's
a rape and abuse that goes on for hours. But
Monikey used duct tape on her to to prevent her
(36:56):
from being able to move around. So he's using duct tape.
And I've tried, and you know, to figure out what's
going on here in her head that I mean, she's
she can't get away, she can't get out.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
He's got duct tape on her.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
Monicky makes repeated threats that he's going to kill her,
and she's gone through this before. I remember in the
march beating it got so bad. He's I'm going to
kill you, but you're going to write a letter to
your son. Well, he's back to that old trick and
you mentioned the the the injuries. According to the audio
tape described by police, there were injuries from him tightening
(37:33):
his grip on her neck, loosening it, and tightening it.
How would you see that, Joe, What would that look like?
Speaker 1 (37:38):
Well, there's going to be multiple overlying marks depending upon
the ligature that you're using. I've mentioned this case before.
I had a serial killer that had utilized the same
methodology using wire where he would pick up victims and
he would drug them, generally with some kind of opiate
(38:00):
based substance, and then he would use a garrot around
their neck and you could see where he would tighten
it as he's sexually assaulting them, then loosen it and
reposition the garrot, tighten it again. And so you've got
this this kind of complex of these marks that communicate
(38:22):
or overlap with one another, you know, like this, And
I know the difficulty with this is trying to understand,
trying to understand what you know, which came first. And
we've talked a lot on bodybacks about sequencing, how it's
very difficult for us to sequence trauma, whether it's stab
wounds or gunshot wounds, and this sort of thing. I
(38:42):
think you could probably say the same thing about a
ligature unless the ligature is left in place after death,
and so you have a starting point there, right, so
you have evidence of the ligature in place. I don't
necessarily know that that's the case here, but there will
be marking is left behind. And depending upon how the
(39:02):
structures of the neck are impacted. And we're talking about uh,
you know famously the strap muscles that you know that
run parallel uh to uh to the cartilaginous bodies here
in the neck, you know, the area that you know
commonly refer to in parlance the modern you know, and
everyday talk as the wind pipe, if you will. There's
(39:24):
multiple little cartilaginous members in here. You can kind of
see it strapped across there. Sometimes those will fracture. If
it's not you're not going to fracture the hyoid with
with the ligature. Pausing on that just for a moment,
all right, Uh, that would be something that would be
accomplished through manual manual strangulation. So you're going to have
(39:48):
very complex areas of hemorrhage depending upon the way back.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Of can you claim that to me?
Speaker 3 (39:53):
Because we've all we've all heard of the hyoid, very
thin bone that indicates a strangling has taken place. But
I just kind of assumed that if you were regardless
of the method of the strangulation, that that that the
hyoid bone would be damaged.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
No, not the case.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
No, No, because hyoid bone, even if you let's say,
for instance, it's a you're throttling somebody or using a
c clamp, it's almost always with a ligature. Let me
back up. With a ligature, the ligature is the highoid
will always remain superior to the ligature unless you've got
(40:36):
this really dynamic event where the ligature slips and it
goes really really high. Because the highroid is positioned so
far north, so far north in the neck. It's literally
again it's that anchorage for the base of the tongue.
It holds the tongue in place, and the only non
articulating bone in the body, that means it doesn't communicate
(40:58):
with any other skeletal element in the body, is just
sitting there in soft tissue and it holds it in place.
It's horseshoe shaped, so you really have to go north
of that north of that area. Most of time with ligatures,
they're going to be they're going to be probably at
least an inch up to an inch south if you will,
(41:22):
of the hyoid, so you're not going to come near it. Now.
The thing about it is is that back to these
ligature marks, they're going to be very complex and they'll
overlap over and over and over again, dependent upon how
long the torture lasts. And that's the kind of you know,
chilling part of this because with every mark, with every
(41:44):
contact point along the neck, you get a sense that
that's a bit more torture. It's been marked in time
by the physical remnant of this. The evidence of this,
the abrasion, the deep furrow, dependent upon what of literature
is used. If we used say a piece of wire,
(42:05):
it's like if you're talking about piano wire, okay, that
furrow is going to be very very deep, but it's
gonna be very narrow and wit. Whereas if you use
a belt, you know, physical science dictates that it's not
going to be really really deep, but it'll be really wide, okay,
so you can cover more surface area. So the nature
(42:26):
of literature plays into this. I'm curious if they found
the literature at the at the scene and what other
implements that they may have found that may have had
utility leading up to Catherine's death. I'm fascinated by this
dynamic of how she was found though found in the house.
(42:49):
Wasn't she on the sofa? She was still on the sofa, right.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
Yeah, she was still on the sofa where most of
the attack took place. What we understand now and again,
now remember where the very beginning of this case, it
hasn't gone to trial. I mean, we just got an arrest,
and so what we're going on what the police have
filed in public stuff that you have to as part
of the case.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
But yeah, she was found on the couch.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
And when police when they found Kevin Modikey, he was
in the garage. Now, I want to back up something
that took place in the last minutes of this tape,
this digital recording, Joe. Yeah, because as sad as this is,
Monikey records right up to her death. Okay, you can
(43:35):
hear her in the last minutes of this tape. She's gagging,
she's begging, I mean she's begging, let me see my son, please,
let me see him all the time. And this guy
he tells her, your son's gonna be better off without you,
and then MONNICKI tells her. You know, he all along,
he saw you're gonna die. I'm gonna kill you, but
he says it's not gonna take too long, about thirty seconds,
(43:56):
and then I'm gonna go kill myself and it it
just it's all on this. It's all a matter of record. Okay,
it's all recorded, and you can hear her body, her
blast breath, and then you know, he goes to the
garage and when police get there, he's so out of
(44:17):
his mind on drugs and alcohol that you know, he
claims he.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
Doesn't know anything.
Speaker 3 (44:21):
But the one thing that we do have going for
us in this case, Joe, is that seven hour recording.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Yeah, it's one of the biggest pieces of evidence. And
to give you up, I think to try to understand
the depth and breadth of pravity here, uh, not that
we already don't have enough. Let me back up just
for a second. I've got I've got to tell you something.
(44:49):
I even made mentioned of this my life when when
I was prepping to do this, when I saw this
image of her. H she's got this appearance. It's almost hypnotic.
It's like captivating. And the thing that you're drawn to
with Catherine are her eyes. I mean, it's they're striking,
(45:11):
and I can't really describe it. I had to urge anybody,
any of our friends out there, go take a look
at images of her in life. But what we're hearing
to this point is that she apparently, at some point
in time during this fight for her life, the perpetrator
allegedly tried to remove her eye or eyes. And that's
(45:39):
going to be a big tell here because one of
the things that unless some type of instruments used, like
a sharp instrument, this is going to be a very
blunted event. Most of the time, when people try to
gouge an eye, it starts with the thumb, and they're
going to try to find a point of leverage in
the within inside of the orbit so that they let me.
Speaker 3 (46:00):
Even make it worse, he actually stuck his fingers in
her mouth and then tried to gouge your eyes out.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
Yeah, and that's part of the torture, isn't it. You know,
because he's not just having attempted to choke her out
multiple times. Now, he's kind of taking away her voice.
All you hear are grunts and groans probably, and then
probably taking a thumb and pressing it down within the
(46:29):
orbit to try to gouge it out. Now, there's gonna
be significant physical evidence that's left behind as a result
of that. You're gonna see if this was done in life,
which I'm assuming that it was, You're gonna see major
areas of contusion. There'll be real deep bruising in this area.
It's a lot of soft tissue. Some of the vessels
in the eye. Eyes will probably have erupted and hemorrhage
(46:53):
as well. And in totality. You know when you look
at the imagery that will be generated at autopsy, and
certainly it's the scene as well, and then you have
this bizarre narration. Now I don't it's ghastly that goes
along with this, and then everything that the pathologist will
(47:17):
say about what she went through and endured for seven hours,
it's going to be something that will haunt anybody that
is in this courtroom for years and years to come.
The one thing I do know is that it's not
just going to be the people there in that courtroom.
(47:41):
It's going to be a twelve year old boy that
no longer has a mama. It's going to be all
of her extended family. It's gonna be her patience that
she's probably developed relationships with over the years, all the
doctors colleagues forever, those bonds are broken and all we're
left with is one of the most horrible stories that
(48:02):
Brother Dave and I have covered. And sometimes I promise
you this, my friends, We're going to keep you up
to date in this case as things begin to develop.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybags
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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