June 17, 2025 • 44 mins
A Fertility Clinic Bomber's Manifesto Mentions Staged Suicide Murder 1,200 Miles Away. Lars Nelson calls 911 to report the suicide of his girlfriend, Sophie Tinney. He gives the 911 operator a lot of information and is standing outside to talk to police. When officers arrive they notice that 27-year-old Sophie Tinney is dead from what appears to be a gunshot wound. But they aren't sure it is a suicide. It appears she has three bullet wounds to her head. 1200 miles south of Fox Hollow Island Washington is Palm Springs, California, home to a fertility clinic where 25-year-old Guy Edward Bartkus, tries to "live stream" his bombing of the clinic. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack talk about the staged suicide death of Sophie Tinney, her boyfriend, Lars Nelson, as well as Guy Edward Bartkus who left a manifesto behind that mentions the death of Sophie Tinney. The time has come to answer the question; what or who is an "Anti-Natalist"?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body dunters. But Joseph's gotten more the stories of her
families that would come to me in the wake of
a death investigation, and they would say they had so
much to live for, or that next week he was
(00:22):
starting a new job and he was robbed of his
life by this other person. The idea that someone had
prepared their entire life to continue to live a better life,
perhaps seemingly grateful for every second that they have on
(00:46):
this earth, every breath that they take in to their lungs.
So many of those bodies over so many years from me,
I stood over and.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Thought, what if?
Speaker 1 (00:58):
What if they had survived car accidents, homicides, natural disease
or cancer robs you of everything. But you know, on
the flip side of that, I've recently discovered there are
a group of people that kind of put a fine
point on a concept that is oldest time, the idea
(01:25):
that you live in a vacuum and that nothing matters.
I think they call it the past century. They call
it nihilism. At the end of the day, it's pure selfishness. Today,
we're going to have a discussion about arguably one of
the most bizarre cases we've come across in some time,
(01:48):
we're going to talk about the idea and let this
sink in of anti natalism. I'm Joseph Scott and this
is bodybags, Dave. Look back in January, I got to
(02:15):
tell you, and you were there. You were there for
my family. You were there for you know, supporting my
wife and me through prayers and just asking is there
anything else I can do? And I remember laying in
a hospital bed in Birmingham, Alabama, hoping that I would
(02:36):
breathe air again. That was outside of that institution. Because
I got to tell you, there were some dark moments, brother,
I had really felt like I was going to die,
and I remember clutching onto every thread of opportunity I had.
And you know, you're so drugged out, you know, with
post surgical stuff and everything, and you don't really know
(02:58):
you're in this kind of twilight zone. But the one
thing I knew is that I wanted to get out
of that hospital bed. I wanted to be able to
hug my grandbabies, hug my kids, love my wife, sit
here and one of the greatest things I do right
now at this point in my life is sit here
several times a week with the man that I considered
(03:19):
to be one of the best friends I've ever had,
Dave Mac and.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Just talk.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
And just talk. We're not staring at phones, We're just
having conversations. And I remember how precious life seemed to
me at that period of time. And I don't know.
I come across cases like we're going to delve in
today and it's like somebody widen up a piece of
used notebook paper and throw it in the trash pail.
(03:46):
I'm get shocked by it. I'm absolutely shocked.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
I will tell you when you know, we didn't talk
a lot about you being sick because, to be honest
with your friends, we didn't know what was going on
and what was going to happen. It went from being
something that we thought was one thing and ended up
being a thousand times worse and had been misdiagnosed with you,
(04:10):
and that's why there was It was shocking.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
For all of us.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
I know I speak for everyone, because they called me
and talked to me and texted me, and I would
tell you and Kim. I would tell Kim more than
you because you were out of it. But I was like, y'all,
please understand the people in our world that we do
business with. Are not asking about business, They're saying, what can.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
We do for you?
Speaker 3 (04:32):
I mean, it was really nice to see that the
people you believe are your friends and people who care
about you as an individual actually do And seeing that
side of everyone, I was like, all right, now we
got that part. Let's get this. What can we do?
And there was so nothing. It was just the craziest
part of prayer. That granted, for those who are believers,
(04:53):
prayer is everything, and we oftentimes say it's the only
thing you can do, and it's like, well it is.
This is the most powerful thing you can do. There
is nothing. You cannot lift that rock and change anything.
But we're dealing with people now, Joe, that you and
I both have over the last several months have thought
where did they come up with this idea that you know, okay,
(05:16):
you were and now it's a movement of sorts that
my mom and dad are to blame for me being born.
I never asked to be born, and it's an actual thing.
I mean, as a punchline to a joke, I get it,
But seriousness in life, when you start labeling yourself. I
am a strict vegan and natalist and I have to
(05:36):
look up this stuff and.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Go, what did you make up today?
Speaker 1 (05:39):
You know? What are you?
Speaker 2 (05:40):
And my thing is, my.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Heart hurts for people who really feel like this Joe,
because I'm thinking, how do you get up out of bed?
How do you approach life when you to be honest,
why are you a vegan if you didn't even want
to be born? I mean, why are you worrying about?
Speaker 2 (05:57):
What?
Speaker 1 (05:58):
I mean? You know, people that choose to be vegan,
I think that they go that route because they think
they're being healthy. And so it seems those two things
seem to cancel out. If you're if you're so you know,
down in the mouth over the fact that you that
you're currently in existence and that you had no control
over that decision, the two things don't seem that they
(06:21):
can't occupy. You know, It's like it's like Isaac Newton.
You know, these two things can't occupy the same space.
And so you know, you think about this, where does
your mind work? And I think that it does work.
It's just and listen, this is for many years we
worked we worked cases based on a book called Final Exit.
(06:45):
You and I are going to do an entire episode
on Final Exit because it's mind blowing. And final Exit
is something that kind of grew out of a movement
back in the eighties. A guy named Derek Humphrey wrote
a book called Final Exit and he and there was
another book to the wrote prior to that, but he
talked about they don't refer to it as suicide. It's
referred to as self deliverance. And he talked about.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
His wife self deliverance.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yeah, self deliverance, aiding, aiding his wife and her journey
into the unknown because and listen, no, look, she had
she had terminal bone cancer, which is one of the
most painful things you can go through. But from that
sprung this idea of what they term as self deliverance.
(07:35):
And you know, it's it's you think about it. I think,
in your rational mind, you think you don't want somebody
to to suffer, you know, and watch them have the dwindles,
all right, But then it expanded out to you've got
people now that are saying, and had for a while
(07:58):
and I guess it still exists. They're suffering from chronic
fatigue syndrome. So they use that as a rationalization to
go to their families and say, I want to end
my life. I have chronic fatigue syndrome. You don't understand,
I'm always tired, and so there's a recipe for it.
Because Humphrey wrote this book called Final Exit, so you
(08:18):
had this kind of underlying current that kind of developed
relative to this. And the reason i'm you know, I've
got this kind of rambling preamble here is the fact
that this is kind of a culmination in what I
saw developing back in the eighties as a death investigator,
you know, because now we jump from self deliverance as
(08:39):
a result of being in extreme pain, which you know,
I can't really judge anybody because, you know, thank the
good Lord, I haven't had to go through bone cancer.
I don't know what that's like. But then I have
this pop onto our radar where you have people rationalized
(09:00):
causing the end of their life because they didn't ask
to be born. And so it was just it's one
of these things that's so super bizarre to me. And
here's here's the other thing. When Final Exit came up,
there were like I had colleagues all over the country
(09:20):
at medical examiners and corners offices that were catching these cases.
And the reason we knew that they were these. First off,
there would be a copy of the book at the house.
And secondly, they had actually stuck to the recipe that
this author had recommended, and there were multiple methodologies for
painless death, but he had that he and look, YouTube
(09:42):
had to take all this stuff down. These things were
being demonstrated on YouTube.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Wow, is this when the Gregorkian thing was really good?
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Yeah? It kind of paralleled that period of time, and
so it was one of these weird times to be
a death investigator. And look, you know, we're all about
evident and what we're looking forward to seeing, and there
were certain signs that you would look for if you
had a suicide and you're thinking that, okay, is this
(10:14):
a final exit? That was one of the questions we'd
always ask ourselves, is this a final exit case as
opposed to some other methodology, because suicide is as old
as time as well. I mean, people have taken their
lives for ages and ages and ages. But there's a
recipe that was applied. My thought is, because we saw
the widespread use of this, Dave and this terrifies me. Brother,
(10:37):
this idea of anti natalism. I'm wondering if this thing
is going to go viral. That's and the culture that
we live in now with social media and how people
get knocked around on social media a lot, and we
live these you know, there's the old quote about the
(10:58):
bridge living life a quiet desperation, you know, where people
are so isolated by these damn phones and they're they're
living in their own world, and it does I can
only imagine it must seem very hopeless many times. But
I hope that this is not going to be This
isn't a precursor to something much more sinister than just
(11:21):
the cases we're going to talk about today.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Today, Sophie Tenney, twenty seven years old, is living with
a guy named Lars Nelson, and they're living in Washington,
State of Washington, on an island called Fox Island, and
six point thirty on a Sunday morning, Lars Neilson calls
nine to one one and says, I have a death
(11:45):
gunshot wound. He's fairly calm, sounds a little nervous, but
he reports it as a suicide. And that's where this
all begins, with the so called suicide. I say so
called because the reason we're doing this story large Nilsen
has been arrested and charged in the murder of Sophie Tenny.
(12:10):
Sophie Tenney was very active in the movement that Joe
was just talking about and believed that I have the
words are failing me. But she believed that there's so
much pain in life, desperation and things like that that
(12:35):
to foist that onto some person by having them born
was just.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Unforgivable, immoral.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
I think, yeah, and that's the adjustment you have to write.
Because I don't know, I'm not a philosopher. Is this
circular logic? I don't understand because what I'm they are
anti moralist, but yet they haven't a xablished set of
morals because this is a moral violation based upon the
fact that they had no choice in being born. Please
(13:08):
understand this. You had no choice in being born. And
so it's that it's that underlying thesis that is being
used as a rationale to literally day and correct me
if I'm wrong. The story I'm hearing is that she
had asked that her life be taken from.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Her, and that's actually going to be the investigation. That's
actually Joe right where we are. The reason we're doing
this story, other than it appears to be a staged
suicide other than that which we've you're going to have
to you've guess you guys explaining to do Joseph because okay, right,
But in reality, according to what we are hearing about
(13:56):
the victim, Sophie Tenny.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
That she was had a lot of power over her.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Boyfriend Laars Nilsen, and according to her family members that
she could pretty much get him to do whatever, and
that based on some things. Because believe it or not,
this is also tied to a bombing that took place
a month after her death. So we're gonna have to
(14:25):
tile this together. And I really wish we had Bethany
or Karen in one of our psychs or Angel Arnold.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
What is it the Nancy always says, I need a
psychiatry drink. Yeah, and you know you kind of feel
like this. But what it comes down to, and always
keep this in the forefront of your mind relative to
our content here on bodybacks, is aside from all of
the emotional stuff, aside aside from all of the hyperbole,
(14:58):
what in fact does the science tell us our old friend,
the Finder, Dave. We've talked about the Finder, and I
(15:22):
know we repeat it over and over again. I got
to tell you one thing I do not like, and
sometimes you don't have any choice in it, and most
of the time you don't, is that when you roll
up on the scene and I've got a finder or
(15:42):
a civilian that's out of the scene and they look
at me and they tell me they committed suicide, this
is a suicide. Well, I guess part of me is
an investigator from a practicality standpoint, likes it when they
tell me that because it automatically deflects me to go
down another road or changes the course of my investigation.
(16:05):
Because if you're telling me from the beginning that you believe,
as the finder of this individual, that this is a suicide,
I'm going to have further questions. And again, we have
to keep in mind the idea that in this principle,
and I'll keep hammering this this home as long as
(16:26):
they allow me to do the show, every death is
a homicide until we prove otherwise.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Thank you for saying that, you know, I know, I
really appreciate I never thought about that, Joe. I have
been following and reporting and investigating crimes for the better
part of my adult life, and it never occurred to
me that that is how you, as a death investigator,
has to approach the scene that every death is a
(16:55):
murder until proven otherwise.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Yeah, and let me explain why, very briefly, is that. Look,
if I start out at what I think many people
would view as the most complex kind of death investation
investigation to conduct, and not just forensically, but just from
a legal standpoint. If I start off at that level,
(17:18):
assuming my working assumption is scientifically that this is the
death at the hand of another the definition of homicide,
there's a high probability I am not going to miss
evidence as it relates to other manners, you know, suicide, accident, natural, undetermined.
So if I start off at that level with a homicide,
(17:41):
then I'm guaranteed to probably hit every note along the
way as far as evidence, collection of observations, documentation, all
that stuff that we do. And in this case, I
would imagine that when the cops finally may contact with
Lars Nelson at the scene, they're left scratching their head.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Dave Well, Lars Neilson calls nine to one one six
point thirty in the morning, reports a death, and he
explains to the nine to one one operator, you know,
they ask the general questions, you know, if you're breathing,
can you tell what's going on? He actually does tell them, no,
she is not, she's dead, and he explains that he
(18:27):
has that there's a gun, it's laying on the bed,
he's taken it's unloaded, he took the magazine out. And
there are so many things that nine one one operators
have to get from an information standpoint to pass along
to the officers that are going to be responding to
a scene, because, hey, you don't know if what you're being.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Told is the truth.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
You're told there's a dead body and there's gunshot, so
where's the gun? Who's got the gun? And they get
those things cleared up, and so as police arrived Joe,
and this is where it always gets interesting to me.
Now after doing this show with you, I'm wondering what
they're walking into they've already been told or that, you know,
(19:09):
if you believe.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
The call, there was a suicide.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
So I'm going to expect based on that gunshot wound
to the head, That's what I'm going to expect it.
And normally when I would say gunshot wound to the head,
it's a suicide, I'm expecting one bullet to the head.
One shot. But that's not what happened here, Joe. Now,
as a death investigator, if you're told something like suicide,
(19:32):
if you're told something gunshot wound to the head and
you're investigating, are you expecting to see more than one
shot to the head.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
No, No, you're you're not. I had a memory just
now you had mentioned this. One of the most simple
cases of suicide investigation I ever worked was three guys
that had gotten drunk and they used a forty five
caliber semi automatic handgun in order to play Russian Roulette
(20:07):
and the no and the first guy, obviously, I don't
know if he won or lost, but he's no longer
with us. Uh. That's very simplistic, all right, on one level.
But if you show up at a scene and there
was an old forensic pathologist that used to use this term,
and I love this, I kind of hung onto it.
(20:28):
And again it goes back to the reporter. He would say,
is this as advertised? And that's that statement that he
would make was always amazing to me. First off, it
showed that he had he had some miles on his tires,
you know that, because he had probably been and you
you get sucked in, particularly as a young investigator, young
(20:50):
forensic pathologist early on in your career, you get you
have to get beat up a little bit in mis
cases or misdiagnoses in order to perfect your craft. And
so his his big thing is this as advertised and
with Lars Nelson when the cops arrived, Dave, she's got
and I don't again another you know one of my
(21:12):
I don't know? Is it a packadilla. One of the
things that I don't like is to call gunshot ones
gunshot ones. I don't like saying that until I can
have an official diagnosis at the morgue. Because defects or
holes in a body are they are They're merely that
(21:33):
they're holes. How how can you confirm that it is
in fact a gunshot one? Just because there is a
weapon there, just because you've got spent casings there, does
not necessarily mean that it is a gunshot one.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
That takes us think to a story we did the
other day about the manner, and we were talking about
the the decay that as a and you described. You
showed me a picture and it looked like a guy
had been shot dad in his share and you're like heay,
that's a natural death, and I'm thinking, there's no way
this can be a natural death. He's playing a joke
on me. So I started looking at the picture to
(22:08):
see overlays and everything else. Ye, because then I have
learned now that nothing is as it appears, and in
this case it's not.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Yeah, And if you have people that are intent on
deceiving you, gee, I wonder if there's people out there
like that in this case, you know, the police when
they're being told by Nelson allegedly that this is a
self inflicted gunshot. One case, well, just at the scene,
(22:38):
they begin to examine the victim's body and she's got
three defects, actually four three that apparently according to the
medical examiner later on these three there's three defects that
are in fact entrance ones. Okay, then you've got a
(23:02):
fourth that's an exit. Now let me just let me
lay the groundwork here, because many times the people that
are bent on taking their own life, they by firearm.
Did you know that they will test fire weapon? Okay,
they'll test fire weapon. I've had people that have test
fired weapons once and twice before they self inflict. And
(23:26):
so that's not uncommon come out to a scene of
a suicide and you might have multiple spent casings laying around.
You have one hole, that's not what you're dealing with here.
You've got three what they're calling entrance wounds now, and
you've got an exit through the body, which that round
apparently lodged in the adjacent wall. Now they have not
(23:51):
to this point, the police have not been forthcoming with
the specifics as far as the forensic go. But this
is what we're hearing. First off, they don't like the
fact that this is a throw and through gunshot wound
and that the round is lodged in a wall. And
the reason they don't like that is because of the
(24:12):
position of the body, the probability of where this round
would have actually wound up if she was in a like,
in a particular position. So what they're saying, I think
is that the body has been staged in some way,
because they're actually using the term she was in an
unnatural position?
Speaker 2 (24:31):
What does that actually mean? I mean, I know what
I'm thinking, But.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Well, I had a case many years ago of of
a hooker and her pimp that killed a little old
lady and cleaned her up and redressed her and Dave
just like in a vampire movie. After they had redressed her,
they crossed her arms like you see in presentation at
a funeral home. People don't die like that. Some people have.
(24:57):
The majority of people don't die when their arms crossed.
When you tell me that it's kind of in an
unnatural position, that's odd, all right. I think in a
simple mind, people want to go to great links to say, Okay, well,
gee whiz, what can I do in order to make
this look like this is something, as my old colleague
(25:18):
you say, other than as advertised, you know, and so
what you know? The weapon is away from her body,
it's not adjacent to her. Now I think, am I
correct day that Nelson said that he had moved the
weapon and actually cleared the weapon as that accurate?
Speaker 2 (25:36):
He did.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
He that's what he said to the nine one one
dispatch office. And for someone who understands guns and has
a respect for them, I can understand why an individual
would do that. I would not, to be honest with you,
I if I came upon something like that, I would
be outside, as Lars Nelson was outside of the house
(25:59):
when he calls nine on one. He's not inside with
the body. He goes outside. Now I would do that.
I would be outside and I would describe what I
had seen, But I wouldn't go back in, mainly because
I don't want to mess with anything. I want you
to be able to investigate. And when he's describing basically
that he has taken this weapon and he's cleared it,
taking the magazine out and everything else, I'm thinking, why
(26:21):
did you get all that effort? I mean, what's the
point of that. So it does kind of make things
for me a little suspect, but maybe not.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Like I said, hey, listen, there's another clue here. They're
also saying that the blood deposition, the blood spatter is
not in what they would consider to be consistent with
this kind of death if it were in fact a suicide.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
To the head. Joe, I mean, come on, now, listen
to that.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Okay, Yeah, you're right, And that's assuming that all of
them are to the head. I'm assuming that they are,
because again, they haven't like narrowed that down to this point.
There are people, Dave and I've I had one case
in particular that was quite infamous where I had a
guy that shot himself with a shotgun and didn't kill himself.
(27:21):
He blew his chin off in the tip of his
nose and wandered around the house bleeding profusely, and then
came back and placed the shotgun over his heart the
muzzle and actuated the trigger with his thumb and killed himself.
So it does happen where people are shot multiple times
in an attempted suicide, because you get people that will
(27:45):
pull away at the last moment. I've actually had two
of those kind of cases where they'll kind of retract,
you know, at the last moment, anticipating the blast, or
maybe they've said, this is a stupid choice that I'm
making and they just didn't get out of the way
of it, and then they have to go ahead and
finish themselves off if they're capable. So to say that, well,
(28:07):
you know, all suicides involve a single gunshot woe, it's
not completely true, because you do have those cases where
people are shot multiple times. Some person might try to
shoot themselves in the abdomen, for instance, in an attempt
and they realize that didn't work, so they place the
weapon too their heads. Some people don't want to disfigure
their face or their head, so you'll have these people
(28:28):
that you know, and aside from being incredibly painful, if
you take an abdominal around or shot to the chest
that's non fatal, it's markedly painful. And they go ahead
and you know, pull the real and proverbial trigger and
take their own life with a gsw ahead. So you
(28:50):
can't say, you cannot say empirically that there are cases
out there that all cases involve a single gunshot woe.
But when you've got three, when you've got three, you're
going to have to go a long way to sell
this to me that it's something again other than advertised.
(29:26):
My wife, Kimmy has me wrapped. I rarely, if ever
tell her no for anything. All Right, we're on this
kind of journey together. We have fun. We have fun
every single day, even in bad times. We purpose to
have fun. I rarely ever tell her no. But Brother Dave,
(29:48):
I got to tell you, if Kimmy walked up to
me and said that she wanted me to do what
Lars Nelson did to this victim, I think I'm shutting
things down at this point. My understanding is is that
there's connectivity between a request on her part and how
(30:09):
the thing wound up according to him, at this point in.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
Time, well, according to him, as well as her family,
her mother, there was a history of look, if you
or someone you know feels like there's nothing left in life,
you know that you're going to take it out and
you want to be gone. You know that's not the end,
(30:34):
all the don't take your own life. We'll have the
number up and things like that. But friends come on.
This is one of those times where the family as
soon as she's gone and Lars Neilson claims it was
a suicide. That we start hearing because police right off
the bat said he doesn't look like a suicide. It
does not look What he's describing and what we're seeing
(30:55):
are two different things. So they start talking to family
members and find out that there had been a number
of calls reaching out for help, and her mother described
talking to her for six hours on the phone one
day and calling and asking police to do a welfare
check the next day. On Sophie Tenny And you know,
(31:19):
Sophie Tenny was very published, twenty seven years old. She's
very public about her feelings about being a really charged
up vegan.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
And is it natalist? Is that how you say that
term Joe.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Natalist, natal like baby yeah, yeah, anti natalism yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
And so.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
It truly out there that she was very aggressive in
this mental health issue. But her mother said she could
get Lars Nilson to do anything anything she wanted. Lars
Nilson would do anything to make her happy. And that
is a pretty powerful statement coming from a mother about
her daughter when her daughter is dead and the suspect here,
(32:05):
you know, is the boyfriend. And to me, that was
very powerful to me because as a parent, I know
how I would feel about my children, you know, and
I know what you and I have seen over the
years in dealing with family members who have a loved
one that has gone that nobody wants to accept suicide
(32:25):
as a end result.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
And yet we have the.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
Family saying, well, you know, she was she had a
lot of odd ideas, and she had some serious mental
health issues, and there was a record of these things.
And anyway, Lars Nelson, you mentioned how Kimmy can you rarely.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Tell her no?
Speaker 3 (32:45):
Well, Lars Neilson never told Sophie no, apparently, and according
to family and friends, he would have done this. And
there was a suggestion that maybe they had a pact
that Sophie and Lars had a pact of murder suicide.
I'll kill myself, you kill yourself kind of thing, and
that maybe that's what happened that Larry's you know, took
(33:07):
her out first and was supposed to take himself out
and didn't.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
I don't know that's the case.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
It's just something that is being thrown out there as
a possibility.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yeah, and and it does, it does happen. It's I think,
you know, murder suicides happened with great frequency. But do
you ever notice something, Dave. And if it's not somebody,
it's same as suicides. If it's if they're not famous,
it it only makes it through maybe you know, one
(33:37):
or two cycles. Even these tragic cases where a parent
will kill all of their kids and killed themselves, and
we're talking about a mass homicide coupled with with a suicide,
it only make it through like one or two news
cycles and then it's gone. This one is different, This
is completely different because look from everything we're here, this
(34:01):
is not a suicide.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
And hey, can I have one quick thing, Joe. There
was a comment here that the victim's parents and we're
talking about Sophie Tenny's parents told deputies that she and Nelson,
Sophie Tenny and Lars Nilson were quote co dependent, and
that she had a history of mental illness suicidal ideation.
(34:25):
The woman's mother said that she had spent six hours
on the phone with her daughter the friday before all
this happened, and the woman allegedly said Nelson would help
end her suffering.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
This is what mom.
Speaker 3 (34:37):
Told deputies, and that's where the deputies came up with
the idea that it's possible that he did help her,
he assisted in taking her own life. That's where that's
coming from. Anyone you think I made that up, It
wasn't a thought I had. This actually came from discussions
between the mom and the actual deputies. But Joe, this
(34:57):
ideation of you know that it's immoral to have a
child because of all the pain and suffering that exists
in the world today, and it wasn't something just shared
by Sophie Tenney. There are other people who believe that
and talk openly about it. The Internet is a crazy
(35:20):
place for crazy things to be said out loud, and
these were things said out loud, and Sophie Tenny's death
occurs what April twentieth right, Yes, And a couple of
weeks later in Palm Springs, California, there is a bomb
(35:41):
that goes off at an IVF clinic, a fertility clinic
in Palm Springs, and the guy who did it was
trying to live stream this bombing. Did you know that
he failed at the live stream, but he was trying
to live stream blowing up a building.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Yeah, and he succeeded. There were people hurt, the facing
of this building gets taken out, and he used a
modium nitrate which is very similar to the fertilizer bomb
though Timothy McVeigh used. And when you see this thing,
(36:25):
if you and I yeah, and I encourage anybody. I
encourage anybody that is not familiar with the case involving
guy Barkas in Palm Springs to go take a look
at the images here and see see what this looks like.
(36:46):
But he had left behind a manifesto. And again, this
happened a month after Lars Nelson has allegedly killed Sophie.
And what's so fascinating, Dave, is that in the manifesto,
in the manifesto that Barcus wrote prior to you know
(37:08):
him vaporizing himself and injuring other people at the IVF clinic.
She's mentioned in it, or at least they believe he
alludes to this idea that there is this couple up
in Washington State where they were anti natalist. He he
(37:31):
used another term in addition to anti natalism. Let's see
if I can recall what it was. But there's there
are other terms that this guy has utilized, and this
this kind of underlying I don't know what it is,
a code uh or that they're living by now. And
(37:55):
he stated uh. He stated that that he wanted he
wanted an end to essentially the potential for new life.
Just let that sink in for a moment. It's it's
one thing, you know, if you want to vaporize yourself,
(38:16):
and you know, but it's not it's not just it's
not just a matter of taking your own life or
injuring these people at this clinic. You're making a statement
here about because you know they've got they've got like
frozen embryos in the place. This is a place where
couples that are childiss go for hope. I mean, how
(38:39):
many people have you and I encountered in our life
that can't get pregnant. It's heartbreaking because you know, these
people be really good parents and it just doesn't happen
for them. And this idea that they're trying to and
I think that this is where he's coming from. I
don't know there they're trying to engineer science and that
(39:00):
shouldn't happen. And his other term for this, Dave, I
love how these things are kind of manufactured out within there.
Pro mortalism is this current and the underlying the underlying
view on the part of Barcas that wrote the Manifesto
is that that death is better than life. That so
(39:21):
the mortality as opposed to immortality that I guess the
peace that comes along with self inflicting and ending your
life is far better than existing in the world in
which you currently find yourself inhabiting. And it's a it's
a desperately dangerous view in my in my view at least,
(39:45):
because you've got so many people that are so or
that perceive themselves to be so fragile out there, and
that you have a construct that's floating around out there
where people can get a hold of this One of
my biggest worries about this case, and I really hope
that the FEDS are looking into this. Were any of
(40:07):
these people networked with one another that expends that extends
out further than just them. Because it's one thing to
have a boyfriend who is easily influenced. You've got this
issue of quote unquote codependency, and he takes the life
of his lover. All right, It's something completely different when
(40:30):
you talk about a guy that gets his hands on
a modium nitrate. By the way, the guy that supplied
him with it was hiding in Europe. They had to
go arrest him. I think they arrested him in Poland. Wow,
and that gave this fellow, you know, the ammonium nitrate.
How far out did the tentacles of this thing stretch?
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Dave?
Speaker 1 (40:54):
It's really dangerous when you think about it. Are there
other people out there that, Look, I don't care about myself,
I don't care about my fellow humans surrounding me, I
don't care about my family. I'm going to try to
take out as many people as I possibly can in
one fail swoop. And I do think that that's that's
the real tragedy here.
Speaker 3 (41:14):
One of the things I did was I wrote down
the motivation and I know that the motivation for a
crime is not I guess it's not important in black
and white. It's important to me because I'd like to
I kind of like to know why somebody did something,
and in this particular case, I feel like we have
to know why because Brett, I believe this could be
(41:37):
the start of something that is just going to escalate,
because there are so many people whose entire lives are
built to a very small world. It's a it's a
big world, but sitting in the palm of your hand,
and that if you're negative, you can feed negativity, you
can find more people. You know, a lot of times
we feel like we are kind of all alone in
(41:59):
our thoughts. But now you're all alone in your thoughts.
But there's millions of other people around the world that
are alone in their thoughts, and they're going to help
you isolate even more and reinforce your belief that somehow
this pro mortalist ideology arguing that life and I wrote
this down because I'm really having trouble with this, Joe,
(42:22):
life should be ended as soon as possible, because it
only results in suffering and death. The belief that having
children is unethical, It only exposes more people to future
suffering and death. That's the motivation for trying to blow
up a fertility clinic. That's the motivation for getting your
(42:46):
boyfriend to enter into a murder suicide packed. I mean, Joe,
this is a dangerous it's very dangerous ideology.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
It's markedly dangerous, Dave. And you know it's one thing
to talk or maybe right about these things. But to
now you have interjected action into the national conversation. You
have demonstrated that the possibility exists that you can move
(43:21):
forward with your thoughts about life, even if it means
taking the lives of others. My friends, listen, if you
or anybody I'm begging, I'm pleading with you has any
(43:45):
kind of suicidal thoughts, they're having trouble in their life,
you suspect that there is a problem, or maybe you
are struggling right now. I urge you, with all that
is within me, to please reach out. There's help. National
helpline for crises, particularly as it applies to suicide is
(44:07):
simply three numbers. Are you ready? Nine eight eight. There
are people on duty that can talk to you and
that can get you help, and that we'll just listen.
But please don't sit there in isolation. Reach out if
you're troubled. Nine eight eight I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
(44:32):
this is body Backs.
Body dunters. But Joseph's gotten more the stories of her
families that would come to me in the wake of
a death investigation, and they would say they had so
much to live for, or that next week he was
(00:22):
starting a new job and he was robbed of his
life by this other person. The idea that someone had
prepared their entire life to continue to live a better life,
perhaps seemingly grateful for every second that they have on
(00:46):
this earth, every breath that they take in to their lungs.
So many of those bodies over so many years from me,
I stood over and.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Thought, what if?
Speaker 1 (00:58):
What if they had survived car accidents, homicides, natural disease
or cancer robs you of everything. But you know, on
the flip side of that, I've recently discovered there are
a group of people that kind of put a fine
point on a concept that is oldest time, the idea
(01:25):
that you live in a vacuum and that nothing matters.
I think they call it the past century. They call
it nihilism. At the end of the day, it's pure selfishness. Today,
we're going to have a discussion about arguably one of
the most bizarre cases we've come across in some time,
(01:48):
we're going to talk about the idea and let this
sink in of anti natalism. I'm Joseph Scott and this
is bodybags, Dave. Look back in January, I got to
(02:15):
tell you, and you were there. You were there for
my family. You were there for you know, supporting my
wife and me through prayers and just asking is there
anything else I can do? And I remember laying in
a hospital bed in Birmingham, Alabama, hoping that I would
(02:36):
breathe air again. That was outside of that institution. Because
I got to tell you, there were some dark moments, brother,
I had really felt like I was going to die,
and I remember clutching onto every thread of opportunity I had.
And you know, you're so drugged out, you know, with
post surgical stuff and everything, and you don't really know
(02:58):
you're in this kind of twilight zone. But the one
thing I knew is that I wanted to get out
of that hospital bed. I wanted to be able to
hug my grandbabies, hug my kids, love my wife, sit
here and one of the greatest things I do right
now at this point in my life is sit here
several times a week with the man that I considered
(03:19):
to be one of the best friends I've ever had,
Dave Mac and.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Just talk.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
And just talk. We're not staring at phones, We're just
having conversations. And I remember how precious life seemed to
me at that period of time. And I don't know.
I come across cases like we're going to delve in
today and it's like somebody widen up a piece of
used notebook paper and throw it in the trash pail.
(03:46):
I'm get shocked by it. I'm absolutely shocked.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
I will tell you when you know, we didn't talk
a lot about you being sick because, to be honest
with your friends, we didn't know what was going on
and what was going to happen. It went from being
something that we thought was one thing and ended up
being a thousand times worse and had been misdiagnosed with you,
(04:10):
and that's why there was It was shocking.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
For all of us.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
I know I speak for everyone, because they called me
and talked to me and texted me, and I would
tell you and Kim. I would tell Kim more than
you because you were out of it. But I was like, y'all,
please understand the people in our world that we do
business with. Are not asking about business, They're saying, what can.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
We do for you?
Speaker 3 (04:32):
I mean, it was really nice to see that the
people you believe are your friends and people who care
about you as an individual actually do And seeing that
side of everyone, I was like, all right, now we
got that part. Let's get this. What can we do?
And there was so nothing. It was just the craziest
part of prayer. That granted, for those who are believers,
(04:53):
prayer is everything, and we oftentimes say it's the only
thing you can do, and it's like, well it is.
This is the most powerful thing you can do. There
is nothing. You cannot lift that rock and change anything.
But we're dealing with people now, Joe, that you and
I both have over the last several months have thought
where did they come up with this idea that you know, okay,
(05:16):
you were and now it's a movement of sorts that
my mom and dad are to blame for me being born.
I never asked to be born, and it's an actual thing.
I mean, as a punchline to a joke, I get it,
But seriousness in life, when you start labeling yourself. I
am a strict vegan and natalist and I have to
(05:36):
look up this stuff and.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Go, what did you make up today?
Speaker 1 (05:39):
You know? What are you?
Speaker 2 (05:40):
And my thing is, my.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Heart hurts for people who really feel like this Joe,
because I'm thinking, how do you get up out of bed?
How do you approach life when you to be honest,
why are you a vegan if you didn't even want
to be born? I mean, why are you worrying about?
Speaker 2 (05:57):
What?
Speaker 1 (05:58):
I mean? You know, people that choose to be vegan,
I think that they go that route because they think
they're being healthy. And so it seems those two things
seem to cancel out. If you're if you're so you know,
down in the mouth over the fact that you that
you're currently in existence and that you had no control
over that decision, the two things don't seem that they
(06:21):
can't occupy. You know, It's like it's like Isaac Newton.
You know, these two things can't occupy the same space.
And so you know, you think about this, where does
your mind work? And I think that it does work.
It's just and listen, this is for many years we
worked we worked cases based on a book called Final Exit.
(06:45):
You and I are going to do an entire episode
on Final Exit because it's mind blowing. And final Exit
is something that kind of grew out of a movement
back in the eighties. A guy named Derek Humphrey wrote
a book called Final Exit and he and there was
another book to the wrote prior to that, but he
talked about they don't refer to it as suicide. It's
referred to as self deliverance. And he talked about.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
His wife self deliverance.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yeah, self deliverance, aiding, aiding his wife and her journey
into the unknown because and listen, no, look, she had
she had terminal bone cancer, which is one of the
most painful things you can go through. But from that
sprung this idea of what they term as self deliverance.
(07:35):
And you know, it's it's you think about it. I think,
in your rational mind, you think you don't want somebody
to to suffer, you know, and watch them have the dwindles,
all right, But then it expanded out to you've got
people now that are saying, and had for a while
(07:58):
and I guess it still exists. They're suffering from chronic
fatigue syndrome. So they use that as a rationalization to
go to their families and say, I want to end
my life. I have chronic fatigue syndrome. You don't understand,
I'm always tired, and so there's a recipe for it.
Because Humphrey wrote this book called Final Exit, so you
(08:18):
had this kind of underlying current that kind of developed
relative to this. And the reason i'm you know, I've
got this kind of rambling preamble here is the fact
that this is kind of a culmination in what I
saw developing back in the eighties as a death investigator,
you know, because now we jump from self deliverance as
(08:39):
a result of being in extreme pain, which you know,
I can't really judge anybody because, you know, thank the
good Lord, I haven't had to go through bone cancer.
I don't know what that's like. But then I have
this pop onto our radar where you have people rationalized
(09:00):
causing the end of their life because they didn't ask
to be born. And so it was just it's one
of these things that's so super bizarre to me. And
here's here's the other thing. When Final Exit came up,
there were like I had colleagues all over the country
(09:20):
at medical examiners and corners offices that were catching these cases.
And the reason we knew that they were these. First off,
there would be a copy of the book at the house.
And secondly, they had actually stuck to the recipe that
this author had recommended, and there were multiple methodologies for
painless death, but he had that he and look, YouTube
(09:42):
had to take all this stuff down. These things were
being demonstrated on YouTube.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Wow, is this when the Gregorkian thing was really good?
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Yeah? It kind of paralleled that period of time, and
so it was one of these weird times to be
a death investigator. And look, you know, we're all about
evident and what we're looking forward to seeing, and there
were certain signs that you would look for if you
had a suicide and you're thinking that, okay, is this
(10:14):
a final exit? That was one of the questions we'd
always ask ourselves, is this a final exit case as
opposed to some other methodology, because suicide is as old
as time as well. I mean, people have taken their
lives for ages and ages and ages. But there's a
recipe that was applied. My thought is, because we saw
the widespread use of this, Dave and this terrifies me. Brother,
(10:37):
this idea of anti natalism. I'm wondering if this thing
is going to go viral. That's and the culture that
we live in now with social media and how people
get knocked around on social media a lot, and we
live these you know, there's the old quote about the
(10:58):
bridge living life a quiet desperation, you know, where people
are so isolated by these damn phones and they're they're
living in their own world, and it does I can
only imagine it must seem very hopeless many times. But
I hope that this is not going to be This
isn't a precursor to something much more sinister than just
(11:21):
the cases we're going to talk about today.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Today, Sophie Tenney, twenty seven years old, is living with
a guy named Lars Nelson, and they're living in Washington,
State of Washington, on an island called Fox Island, and
six point thirty on a Sunday morning, Lars Neilson calls
nine to one one and says, I have a death
(11:45):
gunshot wound. He's fairly calm, sounds a little nervous, but
he reports it as a suicide. And that's where this
all begins, with the so called suicide. I say so
called because the reason we're doing this story large Nilsen
has been arrested and charged in the murder of Sophie Tenny.
(12:10):
Sophie Tenney was very active in the movement that Joe
was just talking about and believed that I have the
words are failing me. But she believed that there's so
much pain in life, desperation and things like that that
(12:35):
to foist that onto some person by having them born
was just.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Unforgivable, immoral.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
I think, yeah, and that's the adjustment you have to write.
Because I don't know, I'm not a philosopher. Is this
circular logic? I don't understand because what I'm they are
anti moralist, but yet they haven't a xablished set of
morals because this is a moral violation based upon the
fact that they had no choice in being born. Please
(13:08):
understand this. You had no choice in being born. And
so it's that it's that underlying thesis that is being
used as a rationale to literally day and correct me
if I'm wrong. The story I'm hearing is that she
had asked that her life be taken from.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Her, and that's actually going to be the investigation. That's
actually Joe right where we are. The reason we're doing
this story, other than it appears to be a staged
suicide other than that which we've you're going to have
to you've guess you guys explaining to do Joseph because okay, right,
But in reality, according to what we are hearing about
(13:56):
the victim, Sophie Tenny.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
That she was had a lot of power over her.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Boyfriend Laars Nilsen, and according to her family members that
she could pretty much get him to do whatever, and
that based on some things. Because believe it or not,
this is also tied to a bombing that took place
a month after her death. So we're gonna have to
(14:25):
tile this together. And I really wish we had Bethany
or Karen in one of our psychs or Angel Arnold.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
What is it the Nancy always says, I need a
psychiatry drink. Yeah, and you know you kind of feel
like this. But what it comes down to, and always
keep this in the forefront of your mind relative to
our content here on bodybacks, is aside from all of
the emotional stuff, aside aside from all of the hyperbole,
(14:58):
what in fact does the science tell us our old friend,
the Finder, Dave. We've talked about the Finder, and I
(15:22):
know we repeat it over and over again. I got
to tell you one thing I do not like, and
sometimes you don't have any choice in it, and most
of the time you don't, is that when you roll
up on the scene and I've got a finder or
(15:42):
a civilian that's out of the scene and they look
at me and they tell me they committed suicide, this
is a suicide. Well, I guess part of me is
an investigator from a practicality standpoint, likes it when they
tell me that because it automatically deflects me to go
down another road or changes the course of my investigation.
(16:05):
Because if you're telling me from the beginning that you believe,
as the finder of this individual, that this is a suicide,
I'm going to have further questions. And again, we have
to keep in mind the idea that in this principle,
and I'll keep hammering this this home as long as
(16:26):
they allow me to do the show, every death is
a homicide until we prove otherwise.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Thank you for saying that, you know, I know, I
really appreciate I never thought about that, Joe. I have
been following and reporting and investigating crimes for the better
part of my adult life, and it never occurred to
me that that is how you, as a death investigator,
has to approach the scene that every death is a
(16:55):
murder until proven otherwise.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Yeah, and let me explain why, very briefly, is that. Look,
if I start out at what I think many people
would view as the most complex kind of death investation
investigation to conduct, and not just forensically, but just from
a legal standpoint. If I start off at that level,
(17:18):
assuming my working assumption is scientifically that this is the
death at the hand of another the definition of homicide,
there's a high probability I am not going to miss
evidence as it relates to other manners, you know, suicide, accident, natural, undetermined.
So if I start off at that level with a homicide,
(17:41):
then I'm guaranteed to probably hit every note along the
way as far as evidence, collection of observations, documentation, all
that stuff that we do. And in this case, I
would imagine that when the cops finally may contact with
Lars Nelson at the scene, they're left scratching their head.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Dave Well, Lars Neilson calls nine to one one six
point thirty in the morning, reports a death, and he
explains to the nine to one one operator, you know,
they ask the general questions, you know, if you're breathing,
can you tell what's going on? He actually does tell them, no,
she is not, she's dead, and he explains that he
(18:27):
has that there's a gun, it's laying on the bed,
he's taken it's unloaded, he took the magazine out. And
there are so many things that nine one one operators
have to get from an information standpoint to pass along
to the officers that are going to be responding to
a scene, because, hey, you don't know if what you're being.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Told is the truth.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
You're told there's a dead body and there's gunshot, so
where's the gun? Who's got the gun? And they get
those things cleared up, and so as police arrived Joe,
and this is where it always gets interesting to me.
Now after doing this show with you, I'm wondering what
they're walking into they've already been told or that, you know,
(19:09):
if you believe.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
The call, there was a suicide.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
So I'm going to expect based on that gunshot wound
to the head, That's what I'm going to expect it.
And normally when I would say gunshot wound to the head,
it's a suicide, I'm expecting one bullet to the head.
One shot. But that's not what happened here, Joe. Now,
as a death investigator, if you're told something like suicide,
(19:32):
if you're told something gunshot wound to the head and
you're investigating, are you expecting to see more than one
shot to the head.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
No, No, you're you're not. I had a memory just
now you had mentioned this. One of the most simple
cases of suicide investigation I ever worked was three guys
that had gotten drunk and they used a forty five
caliber semi automatic handgun in order to play Russian Roulette
(20:07):
and the no and the first guy, obviously, I don't
know if he won or lost, but he's no longer
with us. Uh. That's very simplistic, all right, on one level.
But if you show up at a scene and there
was an old forensic pathologist that used to use this term,
and I love this, I kind of hung onto it.
(20:28):
And again it goes back to the reporter. He would say,
is this as advertised? And that's that statement that he
would make was always amazing to me. First off, it
showed that he had he had some miles on his tires,
you know that, because he had probably been and you
you get sucked in, particularly as a young investigator, young
(20:50):
forensic pathologist early on in your career, you get you
have to get beat up a little bit in mis
cases or misdiagnoses in order to perfect your craft. And
so his his big thing is this as advertised and
with Lars Nelson when the cops arrived, Dave, she's got
and I don't again another you know one of my
(21:12):
I don't know? Is it a packadilla. One of the
things that I don't like is to call gunshot ones
gunshot ones. I don't like saying that until I can
have an official diagnosis at the morgue. Because defects or
holes in a body are they are They're merely that
(21:33):
they're holes. How how can you confirm that it is
in fact a gunshot one? Just because there is a
weapon there, just because you've got spent casings there, does
not necessarily mean that it is a gunshot one.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
That takes us think to a story we did the
other day about the manner, and we were talking about
the the decay that as a and you described. You
showed me a picture and it looked like a guy
had been shot dad in his share and you're like heay,
that's a natural death, and I'm thinking, there's no way
this can be a natural death. He's playing a joke
on me. So I started looking at the picture to
(22:08):
see overlays and everything else. Ye, because then I have
learned now that nothing is as it appears, and in
this case it's not.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Yeah, And if you have people that are intent on
deceiving you, gee, I wonder if there's people out there
like that in this case, you know, the police when
they're being told by Nelson allegedly that this is a
self inflicted gunshot. One case, well, just at the scene,
(22:38):
they begin to examine the victim's body and she's got
three defects, actually four three that apparently according to the
medical examiner later on these three there's three defects that
are in fact entrance ones. Okay, then you've got a
(23:02):
fourth that's an exit. Now let me just let me
lay the groundwork here, because many times the people that
are bent on taking their own life, they by firearm.
Did you know that they will test fire weapon? Okay,
they'll test fire weapon. I've had people that have test
fired weapons once and twice before they self inflict. And
(23:26):
so that's not uncommon come out to a scene of
a suicide and you might have multiple spent casings laying around.
You have one hole, that's not what you're dealing with here.
You've got three what they're calling entrance wounds now, and
you've got an exit through the body, which that round
apparently lodged in the adjacent wall. Now they have not
(23:51):
to this point, the police have not been forthcoming with
the specifics as far as the forensic go. But this
is what we're hearing. First off, they don't like the
fact that this is a throw and through gunshot wound
and that the round is lodged in a wall. And
the reason they don't like that is because of the
(24:12):
position of the body, the probability of where this round
would have actually wound up if she was in a like,
in a particular position. So what they're saying, I think
is that the body has been staged in some way,
because they're actually using the term she was in an
unnatural position?
Speaker 2 (24:31):
What does that actually mean? I mean, I know what
I'm thinking, But.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Well, I had a case many years ago of of
a hooker and her pimp that killed a little old
lady and cleaned her up and redressed her and Dave
just like in a vampire movie. After they had redressed her,
they crossed her arms like you see in presentation at
a funeral home. People don't die like that. Some people have.
(24:57):
The majority of people don't die when their arms crossed.
When you tell me that it's kind of in an
unnatural position, that's odd, all right. I think in a
simple mind, people want to go to great links to say, Okay, well,
gee whiz, what can I do in order to make
this look like this is something, as my old colleague
(25:18):
you say, other than as advertised, you know, and so
what you know? The weapon is away from her body,
it's not adjacent to her. Now I think, am I
correct day that Nelson said that he had moved the
weapon and actually cleared the weapon as that accurate?
Speaker 2 (25:36):
He did.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
He that's what he said to the nine one one
dispatch office. And for someone who understands guns and has
a respect for them, I can understand why an individual
would do that. I would not, to be honest with you,
I if I came upon something like that, I would
be outside, as Lars Nelson was outside of the house
(25:59):
when he calls nine on one. He's not inside with
the body. He goes outside. Now I would do that.
I would be outside and I would describe what I
had seen, But I wouldn't go back in, mainly because
I don't want to mess with anything. I want you
to be able to investigate. And when he's describing basically
that he has taken this weapon and he's cleared it,
taking the magazine out and everything else, I'm thinking, why
(26:21):
did you get all that effort? I mean, what's the
point of that. So it does kind of make things
for me a little suspect, but maybe not.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Like I said, hey, listen, there's another clue here. They're
also saying that the blood deposition, the blood spatter is
not in what they would consider to be consistent with
this kind of death if it were in fact a suicide.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
To the head. Joe, I mean, come on, now, listen
to that.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Okay, Yeah, you're right, And that's assuming that all of
them are to the head. I'm assuming that they are,
because again, they haven't like narrowed that down to this point.
There are people, Dave and I've I had one case
in particular that was quite infamous where I had a
guy that shot himself with a shotgun and didn't kill himself.
(27:21):
He blew his chin off in the tip of his
nose and wandered around the house bleeding profusely, and then
came back and placed the shotgun over his heart the
muzzle and actuated the trigger with his thumb and killed himself.
So it does happen where people are shot multiple times
in an attempted suicide, because you get people that will
(27:45):
pull away at the last moment. I've actually had two
of those kind of cases where they'll kind of retract,
you know, at the last moment, anticipating the blast, or
maybe they've said, this is a stupid choice that I'm
making and they just didn't get out of the way
of it, and then they have to go ahead and
finish themselves off if they're capable. So to say that, well,
(28:07):
you know, all suicides involve a single gunshot woe, it's
not completely true, because you do have those cases where
people are shot multiple times. Some person might try to
shoot themselves in the abdomen, for instance, in an attempt
and they realize that didn't work, so they place the
weapon too their heads. Some people don't want to disfigure
their face or their head, so you'll have these people
(28:28):
that you know, and aside from being incredibly painful, if
you take an abdominal around or shot to the chest
that's non fatal, it's markedly painful. And they go ahead
and you know, pull the real and proverbial trigger and
take their own life with a gsw ahead. So you
(28:50):
can't say, you cannot say empirically that there are cases
out there that all cases involve a single gunshot woe.
But when you've got three, when you've got three, you're
going to have to go a long way to sell
this to me that it's something again other than advertised.
(29:26):
My wife, Kimmy has me wrapped. I rarely, if ever
tell her no for anything. All Right, we're on this
kind of journey together. We have fun. We have fun
every single day, even in bad times. We purpose to
have fun. I rarely ever tell her no. But Brother Dave,
(29:48):
I got to tell you, if Kimmy walked up to
me and said that she wanted me to do what
Lars Nelson did to this victim, I think I'm shutting
things down at this point. My understanding is is that
there's connectivity between a request on her part and how
(30:09):
the thing wound up according to him, at this point in.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
Time, well, according to him, as well as her family,
her mother, there was a history of look, if you
or someone you know feels like there's nothing left in life,
you know that you're going to take it out and
you want to be gone. You know that's not the end,
(30:34):
all the don't take your own life. We'll have the
number up and things like that. But friends come on.
This is one of those times where the family as
soon as she's gone and Lars Neilson claims it was
a suicide. That we start hearing because police right off
the bat said he doesn't look like a suicide. It
does not look What he's describing and what we're seeing
(30:55):
are two different things. So they start talking to family
members and find out that there had been a number
of calls reaching out for help, and her mother described
talking to her for six hours on the phone one
day and calling and asking police to do a welfare
check the next day. On Sophie Tenny And you know,
(31:19):
Sophie Tenny was very published, twenty seven years old. She's
very public about her feelings about being a really charged
up vegan.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
And is it natalist? Is that how you say that
term Joe.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Natalist, natal like baby yeah, yeah, anti natalism yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
And so.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
It truly out there that she was very aggressive in
this mental health issue. But her mother said she could
get Lars Nilson to do anything anything she wanted. Lars
Nilson would do anything to make her happy. And that
is a pretty powerful statement coming from a mother about
her daughter when her daughter is dead and the suspect here,
(32:05):
you know, is the boyfriend. And to me, that was
very powerful to me because as a parent, I know
how I would feel about my children, you know, and
I know what you and I have seen over the
years in dealing with family members who have a loved
one that has gone that nobody wants to accept suicide
(32:25):
as a end result.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
And yet we have the.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
Family saying, well, you know, she was she had a
lot of odd ideas, and she had some serious mental
health issues, and there was a record of these things.
And anyway, Lars Nelson, you mentioned how Kimmy can you rarely.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Tell her no?
Speaker 3 (32:45):
Well, Lars Neilson never told Sophie no, apparently, and according
to family and friends, he would have done this. And
there was a suggestion that maybe they had a pact
that Sophie and Lars had a pact of murder suicide.
I'll kill myself, you kill yourself kind of thing, and
that maybe that's what happened that Larry's you know, took
(33:07):
her out first and was supposed to take himself out
and didn't.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
I don't know that's the case.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
It's just something that is being thrown out there as
a possibility.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yeah, and and it does, it does happen. It's I think,
you know, murder suicides happened with great frequency. But do
you ever notice something, Dave. And if it's not somebody,
it's same as suicides. If it's if they're not famous,
it it only makes it through maybe you know, one
(33:37):
or two cycles. Even these tragic cases where a parent
will kill all of their kids and killed themselves, and
we're talking about a mass homicide coupled with with a suicide,
it only make it through like one or two news
cycles and then it's gone. This one is different, This
is completely different because look from everything we're here, this
(34:01):
is not a suicide.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
And hey, can I have one quick thing, Joe. There
was a comment here that the victim's parents and we're
talking about Sophie Tenny's parents told deputies that she and Nelson,
Sophie Tenny and Lars Nilson were quote co dependent, and
that she had a history of mental illness suicidal ideation.
(34:25):
The woman's mother said that she had spent six hours
on the phone with her daughter the friday before all
this happened, and the woman allegedly said Nelson would help
end her suffering.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
This is what mom.
Speaker 3 (34:37):
Told deputies, and that's where the deputies came up with
the idea that it's possible that he did help her,
he assisted in taking her own life. That's where that's
coming from. Anyone you think I made that up, It
wasn't a thought I had. This actually came from discussions
between the mom and the actual deputies. But Joe, this
(34:57):
ideation of you know that it's immoral to have a
child because of all the pain and suffering that exists
in the world today, and it wasn't something just shared
by Sophie Tenney. There are other people who believe that
and talk openly about it. The Internet is a crazy
(35:20):
place for crazy things to be said out loud, and
these were things said out loud, and Sophie Tenny's death
occurs what April twentieth right, Yes, And a couple of
weeks later in Palm Springs, California, there is a bomb
(35:41):
that goes off at an IVF clinic, a fertility clinic
in Palm Springs, and the guy who did it was
trying to live stream this bombing. Did you know that
he failed at the live stream, but he was trying
to live stream blowing up a building.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Yeah, and he succeeded. There were people hurt, the facing
of this building gets taken out, and he used a
modium nitrate which is very similar to the fertilizer bomb
though Timothy McVeigh used. And when you see this thing,
(36:25):
if you and I yeah, and I encourage anybody. I
encourage anybody that is not familiar with the case involving
guy Barkas in Palm Springs to go take a look
at the images here and see see what this looks like.
(36:46):
But he had left behind a manifesto. And again, this
happened a month after Lars Nelson has allegedly killed Sophie.
And what's so fascinating, Dave, is that in the manifesto,
in the manifesto that Barcus wrote prior to you know
(37:08):
him vaporizing himself and injuring other people at the IVF clinic.
She's mentioned in it, or at least they believe he
alludes to this idea that there is this couple up
in Washington State where they were anti natalist. He he
(37:31):
used another term in addition to anti natalism. Let's see
if I can recall what it was. But there's there
are other terms that this guy has utilized, and this
this kind of underlying I don't know what it is,
a code uh or that they're living by now. And
(37:55):
he stated uh. He stated that that he wanted he
wanted an end to essentially the potential for new life.
Just let that sink in for a moment. It's it's
one thing, you know, if you want to vaporize yourself,
(38:16):
and you know, but it's not it's not just it's
not just a matter of taking your own life or
injuring these people at this clinic. You're making a statement
here about because you know they've got they've got like
frozen embryos in the place. This is a place where
couples that are childiss go for hope. I mean, how
(38:39):
many people have you and I encountered in our life
that can't get pregnant. It's heartbreaking because you know, these
people be really good parents and it just doesn't happen
for them. And this idea that they're trying to and
I think that this is where he's coming from. I
don't know there they're trying to engineer science and that
(39:00):
shouldn't happen. And his other term for this, Dave, I
love how these things are kind of manufactured out within there.
Pro mortalism is this current and the underlying the underlying
view on the part of Barcas that wrote the Manifesto
is that that death is better than life. That so
(39:21):
the mortality as opposed to immortality that I guess the
peace that comes along with self inflicting and ending your
life is far better than existing in the world in
which you currently find yourself inhabiting. And it's a it's
a desperately dangerous view in my in my view at least,
(39:45):
because you've got so many people that are so or
that perceive themselves to be so fragile out there, and
that you have a construct that's floating around out there
where people can get a hold of this One of
my biggest worries about this case, and I really hope
that the FEDS are looking into this. Were any of
(40:07):
these people networked with one another that expends that extends
out further than just them. Because it's one thing to
have a boyfriend who is easily influenced. You've got this
issue of quote unquote codependency, and he takes the life
of his lover. All right, It's something completely different when
(40:30):
you talk about a guy that gets his hands on
a modium nitrate. By the way, the guy that supplied
him with it was hiding in Europe. They had to
go arrest him. I think they arrested him in Poland. Wow,
and that gave this fellow, you know, the ammonium nitrate.
How far out did the tentacles of this thing stretch?
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Dave?
Speaker 1 (40:54):
It's really dangerous when you think about it. Are there
other people out there that, Look, I don't care about myself,
I don't care about my fellow humans surrounding me, I
don't care about my family. I'm going to try to
take out as many people as I possibly can in
one fail swoop. And I do think that that's that's
the real tragedy here.
Speaker 3 (41:14):
One of the things I did was I wrote down
the motivation and I know that the motivation for a
crime is not I guess it's not important in black
and white. It's important to me because I'd like to
I kind of like to know why somebody did something,
and in this particular case, I feel like we have
to know why because Brett, I believe this could be
(41:37):
the start of something that is just going to escalate,
because there are so many people whose entire lives are
built to a very small world. It's a it's a
big world, but sitting in the palm of your hand,
and that if you're negative, you can feed negativity, you
can find more people. You know, a lot of times
we feel like we are kind of all alone in
(41:59):
our thoughts. But now you're all alone in your thoughts.
But there's millions of other people around the world that
are alone in their thoughts, and they're going to help
you isolate even more and reinforce your belief that somehow
this pro mortalist ideology arguing that life and I wrote
this down because I'm really having trouble with this, Joe,
(42:22):
life should be ended as soon as possible, because it
only results in suffering and death. The belief that having
children is unethical, It only exposes more people to future
suffering and death. That's the motivation for trying to blow
up a fertility clinic. That's the motivation for getting your
(42:46):
boyfriend to enter into a murder suicide packed. I mean, Joe,
this is a dangerous it's very dangerous ideology.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
It's markedly dangerous, Dave. And you know it's one thing
to talk or maybe right about these things. But to
now you have interjected action into the national conversation. You
have demonstrated that the possibility exists that you can move
(43:21):
forward with your thoughts about life, even if it means
taking the lives of others. My friends, listen, if you
or anybody I'm begging, I'm pleading with you has any
(43:45):
kind of suicidal thoughts, they're having trouble in their life,
you suspect that there is a problem, or maybe you
are struggling right now. I urge you, with all that
is within me, to please reach out. There's help. National
helpline for crises, particularly as it applies to suicide is
(44:07):
simply three numbers. Are you ready? Nine eight eight. There
are people on duty that can talk to you and
that can get you help, and that we'll just listen.
But please don't sit there in isolation. Reach out if
you're troubled. Nine eight eight I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
(44:32):
this is body Backs.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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