November 14, 2024 • 54 mins
Jillian Kelley, 39, and Veronica Butler, 27, disappeared in late March while on a trip from Hugoton, Kansas, to pick up Butler’s children. Their abandoned car was found 3-miles from their intended location and there are signs of struggle near and in the vehicle. On April 14, nearly two weeks after they went missing, investigators discovered their bodies sealed inside a freezer and buried under concrete in a remote area of a leased field. Joseph Scott Morgan will explain the details of Jillian Kelley's autopsy, what it is like to find two bodies in one location, buried together, and what new information is known after going over the autopsy report.
Transcript Highlights
00:00:11.31. Introduction - update Kansas Moms
00:01:31.84 Jillian Kelley Autopsy
00:03:18.70 Explanation of custody arrangements
00:06:47.31 Autopsy room
00:11:28.26 Freezer with bodies inside dropped into a hole that is 10 feet deep
00:16:12.44 Looking at the tracks around the area where freezer was buried
00:21:31.67 Opening the freezer in the lab
00:26:29.62 Know idea of what type of evidence will be recovered
00:31:30.98 Veronica Butler Autopsy expected later, Jillian Kelley Autopsy now
00:36:02.75 Veronica Butler body on top of Kelley. Bodies removed
00:41:04.70.Kelley has defensive wounds, grabbed blade of knife with her hand
00:46:03.01 Difficult to determine the order of when injuries occurred
00:51:02.87 Injury with hemorrhage
00:54:54.03 Conclusion: another update when Veronica Butler autopsy released
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Bodybags, but Joseph's gotten more. Have you ever gotten a
phone call in the middle of the night and not
work related, but you have somebody that at least counts
you as a friend and they say, hey, can you
(00:23):
help me out with something? Unfortunately, I've had that call
that has come to me from jails every now and
then with friends that made really bad decisions, primarily involving
an alcohol.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
However, today.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
On body Backs, we're going to talk about case actually
cases that so caught the attention of America, not merely
because it was one lady helping out another, but the
absolute gruesome nature of their murders was something that most
(01:09):
of the people around the United States could not begin
to comprehend. This is a follow up to an earlier
episode of body Bags, I think from back in April
of twenty four, but today we have more information. Today
(01:32):
we have the autopsy report of Jillian Dolores.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Kelly.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Is body Bags. Dave.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
I know you. I know you better than you might think.
I know that if you've got a friend and they
called you up to say can you help me with something?
You're the dude that would hop in your shoes, grab
your keys, and head out to your car and go
do this. How much more so if maybe it was
(02:09):
where you're put in almost a custodial position with people
that have, you know, kind of a fragile existence, perhaps
they're really down and out, and the court says, we
trust you to take care of this person. I know
that you would do that. I even think that maybe
(02:29):
you have done that, Joe.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
You know, I have been the person that gets the
call in the middle of the night, and I don't
mind it. It's actually an honor and a privilege to
be that person. It is inconvenient, you do looselyep, but
it is an honor to be there for somebody when
if they feel like the guy nowhere else to turn,
because you earn the right to share the truth with them. Then.
(02:52):
But I've had the opportunity to be every aspect of
the case we're.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Dealing with to day.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
With Jilly and Kelly's autops I'm gonna tell you what
this woman is, the Saint Joe. Jillian Kelly is married
to her pastor husband. They got married in twenty two
thousand and two. They have four children. Jillian Kelly works
with children in the church. She's the church secretary. Just
a wonderful woman. Veronica Butler has supervised visitation with her children.
(03:19):
Veronica Butler and Wrangler Rickman have two children. Tiffany Adams
is Wrangler Rickman's mom. That makes her the paternal grandparents
to Veronica Butler's children. Veronica Butler had trouble in her
life in the past, enough so that she lost custody
of her children to Tiffany Adams. But now she's righted
(03:40):
her life. She's in church, she's engaged, she's got a job,
she went back to school. Her life is on track.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Man.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
Veronica Butler's doing good, so good. In fact, she's going
back to court and they're going to award her custody
of her children. She's getting her children back. She's excited,
but she's still at this moment has custody every I mean,
she has a supervised visitors with her children every Saturday.
And Tiffany Adams was not about to give up Cutseydy
(04:07):
of those children to Ronica Butler. She didn't care if
that's her mom. She wanted the children and that was it.
So Tiffany Adams calls the woman who regularly supervises visitation
for Veronica Butler and cancels it. Tiffany Adams tells her,
we aren't gonna need you this time. I'll call you
when we need you again. Then she calls Veronica Butler
and says, hey, Veronica, the court liaison, the supervisor of
(04:30):
visitation just canceled. I don't know what we'll do, and
Butler says, that's okay. I've got somebody. She goes to
Jillian Kelly at church. Jillian says, sure, I'll go. They're
not buddies or palas, but they're friendly, and Jillian says.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Sure, I'll beat the guy. I'll go with you.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
So Veronica Butler gets Jillian Kelly and here they go.
They are going to meet to get the children on
March thirtieth. That is what they're going to do. It's
arranged for them to meet at this well, it's a
close tog station now, but that's where they were going
to meet to exchange the children. Bronica Butler would pick
them up there and she and Jillian would take Kendall
(05:07):
and the other child and go to the birthday party
that was planned for Kendall. Well, they never showed up
at the birthday party and the family starts calling, hey,
Bronicum and Jillian never showed up with the kids, what's
going on. That's when we first got this story. These
two Kansas moms going to pick up the kids, never
(05:28):
arrived with them. What happened.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
I've covered so many cases and work so many cases
over my career where people did not realize that that
moment tom when they walked out of the door they
looked into the eyes of their spouse or to their
precious babies, that that was going to be the last
(05:54):
time they ever saw them. And how much more so
not seeing the future, not knowing that your life is
going to end literally at the hands of a mob
on a dirty, dusty road and a panhandle of Oklahoma.
(06:30):
I'm born witness to some let's just say, odd and
disturbing things in the autopsy suite. And you never, and
I mean this with everything that's in me, you never
know what's going to happen when you open a bodybag.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Period.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
You really you don't know what has been brought in
from the field. Because many times, in my case, I'd
work at night as an investigator, I'd be the autopsy
assistant during the day and it might not be my case.
I may have read over a thumbnail description, but Dave,
when you come into an autopsy room and there has
(07:12):
been a gigantic deep freezer that has been brought from
a scene that still has straps on it, you suspect,
as an investigator at scene, that what you're going to
have in there is going to be very bad. But
when you open when you open that door and you
(07:33):
look inside of there, there are things in my brain
right now that I'm recalling as I'm talking right now,
I can still see those images. I can still get
hit and even after all these years, I can still
get hit in the face with that smell that emanates
from the sealed area, which in effect is a casket
(07:55):
for not just one, but for two women. Dave, it's
it's a monumental undertaking. And I think people many times
are shocked that we don't open things, it seems and
remove the items. If you have that body or bodies contained,
(08:16):
it's best to keep them contained, okay, And then you
bring them to a location that is well lighted. You've
got primo photography. You document the steps of opening up
this thing. And let me tell you one more thing
that would have been done prior to them ever, undoing
these large yellow straps that are on the outside this
(08:41):
freezer would have been thoroughly externally printed, dusted for prints,
looking for any kind of latent contact prints. It's a
sight to behold because you never know, never know what's
going to be contained inside out of any box like this.
(09:03):
I've had coffins I've had, I have had not a freezer.
I've had a refrigerator where the shells removed. I've had
blocks of concrete that have contained human remains where you have.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
To chisel it away.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
I've had cars where I've had multiple people killed in it.
And I used to think, being in charge, you're literally
if you're the investigator, you're in charge of the bodies.
And we all came to a consensus at the scene
that it would be better not to remove the bodies
from the car, but have them flat bedded to the
state crime lab and you cover it with a tarp,
(09:36):
and you know, like you have this horrible thought in
your brain that you're literally transporting bodies you're in I remember,
in particularly I eighty five in Atlanta, removing a car
to a local lot that had five people inside of it.
And all we had it covered with was a blue
crash tarp on the back of a flatbed. And you know,
(10:00):
as an investigator, you think your worst nightmare is that
the tarp is going to fly off, and here you're
gonna have, you know, bodies. If anybody's ever driven through
the hellscape that is the highway system in Atlanta, you
can get caught up in traffic. They don't they don't
move out of the way for a wrecker, they don't
move out of the way for cops most of the time.
But how much more so than the record and the
(10:20):
thing comes off. Can you imagine you've got kids, you know,
and you kind of look and you know it's even
to this day when I see things going down the
road that are strapped down on the back of a car,
like a freezer or something, I'm always thinking, I wonder
if that's empty. I wonder if it's empty. And I've
had a few times in my life since being on
(10:41):
the streets where I've seen police escorting flatbed trucks and
they've got a tarp over them, and I know what's
under the tar. The civilians stone around you. But you
you want to maintain that pristine nature.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
I was going to ask you when all right?
Speaker 4 (10:57):
When they got there in the in this particular case,
investigators determined where Tad Cullum, that is, the boyfriend of
Tiffany Adams, had dug the hole and everything ahead of time,
and they found the bodies at the scene. They were
ten feet down, okay, a ten feet deep hole had
been dug. The freezer was placed at well, some items
(11:19):
were thrown in, A phone and some other items of
evidence were thrown into the hole. Then the freezer was
dumped in there. Then cement block and everything else was
then thrown into the hole and then dirt and everything
else mashed down when they got it dug up. You
said that they're not going to they're not going to
take anything out right then, but they still have to
(11:41):
identify what is in the freezer, even though they believe
it to be Veronica Butler and Jilly and Kelly but well,
they're not going to do a big examine.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
And at the scene, just full disclosure here. They did
briefly open it at the scene, so they cracked, You
cracked the side of it, and there had been tape
that was adherent on the outside. It's you know, when
this thing is brought to the me. Even in the
(12:11):
report section of the autopsy report. And when I say
report section, it's actually the medical Legal investigations subheading in
the report, they allude to the fact that tape was
no longer there, So that leads me to believe it
had been taped shut at some point in time. Now
they had to strap this thing down. But yeah, so
they they would have lifted this thing at the scene,
(12:34):
peaked over the edge into the cooler or the freezer
to assess what was in there, because you know, you
don't necessarily know, you have your suspicions. Okay, And here's
another thing, and I know this sounds really far field,
but if this scene was booby trapped in some way,
I mean, you're talking about a double homicide. Okay, it's
(12:57):
not beyond the pail to think that someone that was
willing to commit this kind of homicide would you know,
perhaps uh, put other people at risk. All right, you
don't know. You never know what you're going to get,
you know, when you open any door.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Whether it's every Yeah, to me.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
It's terrifying. I've had friends that have that have gone
on to booby trapped scenes where people have committed suicide
and they booby trapped with weapons. I have one friend
it's almost shot in the in the chest with a
three to eight deer rifle because he opened a closet
and it had a trigger on it, a line trigger
tension thing. No, and he happened to be the round
(13:37):
actually passed in front of him. So my my paranoia,
I guess, is that the right term is not unwarranted.
I look at all of these things as if because
I want to go home at the end of the day.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
So you guys, get the breezer back in and you
get it. You're afraid as you're getting ready to.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Do Yeah, wow, yeah, I know it's terrifying, and.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
I was terrified by what was inside.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Not not a bomb.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Body, listen, man, Look, I don't put anything past anybody
that'll commit a homicide, particularly of a stranger and then
a mother, if they're willing to eradicate them off the
face of the plant. My life means nothing to them whatsoever, Okay,
(14:20):
or my colleagues that might be there. And that's just
like one of the little boxes that you want to
tick and check at that point in time and try
to understand that. But once you get past that. You
have to take due care because, Dave, this freezer, this
deep freeze, had been it had the utility of a coffin, right,
(14:43):
actually a casket it was. Yeah, and then I don't know,
I don't know the answer to this question. I'm just
throwing this out there, all right. Let me give you
the dimensions on this just so that you and our
friends can appreciate it. So, not only did they have
this rather large freezer, okay, but you'd mentioned something just
(15:08):
a second ago, there was a slab of concrete that
was placed on top of it.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Dave.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Let me give you the dimensions. Are you ready, brother, yep? Okay,
The dimensions of the slab of concrete are ninety two inches.
Keep in mind, six feet tall is seventy two inches, okay,
by sixty inches okay?
Speaker 2 (15:33):
All right?
Speaker 1 (15:34):
That's with linked with and the depth of this thing.
The thickness of it, dude, the slab is eight inches
in thickness.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Holy moly, do you realize what.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Kind of equipment you would have to have in place
in order to move a slab like that? I mean,
you could have I don't know, maybe you could have
a bunch of really a bunch of robust country boys
that could, you know, put to dig their hands into
it and drop it down. But I'm not thinking that.
(16:06):
I'm thinking this is something First off, you have to
acquire it. Where do you even find a slab of
that size that's bigger, that's actually bigger than a slab
that you would find on top of a standard grave site,
you know, if you go to the two huge to
the cemetery. Yeah, and you're walking along and they've got
the big slabs that are laid down the ground. There's
a headstone, there's that's bigger than that. This is something
(16:28):
that you would only see probably in construction, all right,
and it's that's one of the most striking things, you know,
when they would have gotten out to that scene, to
the grave site and begun to assess this scene. And
remember this is a give or take. Hang on, I've
(16:49):
got to review this real quick because yeah, you're talking
two weeks down range, right, we don't know what the
weather was like. They went missing back in March. They're
found in April. I know what I would be really
interested in knowing is, first off, what type of tracks
(17:09):
are around the gravesite, because if you're talking about front
and loader or skid.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Steer or a skid steer or somebody.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
It's going to be very distinctive. It's not going to
look like tire tracks, dude, And you're talking about carrying
a tremendous amount of weight, not that those things aren't
made for that, but if you think about that and
the pressure that's going to be applied directly on those tires,
the supporting element of that vehicle and pressing it down
into the dirt, if you're carrying a heavy load, you're
(17:39):
going to get come away with really good impressions from that.
And that's very specific to that piece of equipment. This
isn't just like a truck Papa's truck driving down a
country road. This is something that's very specific. And why
would you have a skid steer out in the middle
of a field like this.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Well, actually it was the area that it was.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
It was about fifty feet from the dam and there
was like a shed area out there that Tad had
been working on and he notified the owner of the
property that he was leasing part of it from that
he was going to be doing some work out there.
You know that he was going to be burying some
ce men he had told him that. Then this is
two days before the bodies were the two days before
(18:21):
Veronica Butler and Jillian Kelly went missing. He tells the
guy that owns the place, you know, the work he's doing.
Then after they go missing, he tells the owner, Yeah,
I'm a suspect. They're missing, and you're a suspect, really,
And that's why this fell apart so quick, because I dude, you.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Know, in your brain, okay, let's just say you're.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Going to tell anybody you're a suspect.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Well, I'm thinking let's go back before that, because you know,
this is one of those moments where you say, does
your mind work? You know, you're sitting there and you're
thinking about this, So you're leasing, not purchasing your leasing property.
Guess what happens to Lisa's Lisa's runout. Yeah, the property
own you know, still retains this. So if he's going
(19:03):
to go in I don't know and drop a crop
of whatever it is they grow in Oklahoma, weed or
corn or whatever it is, and all of a sudden
his plow gets hung up on the lip of this thing.
Do you not do you in what universe? Do you
think that this is not going to be discovered. My
thought was, and this is so horrific, but I'm going
(19:26):
to go ahead and say it, because this is what
we talk about on body bags.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Did did they have.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Plans perhaps to passively render these bodies down inside of
this thing, come back later when the heat was off,
draw it up, or take out those remains and dispose
of them in some other way. I toyed with that idea,
you know, because I can't. I can't make sense of it,
(19:56):
you know, just the leasing element alone. But you know,
if you're using a skitzteer like this, it's not going
to take too long to facilitate a big hole in
the ground, if you will. And that's certainly what happened.
And again, Dave, as we mentioned earlier, what does this
go to, Well, it goes to I don't know, something
(20:18):
called premeditation, yep.
Speaker 4 (20:21):
And that's the killer on all of this. It's the
fact that this was planned out, thought out, and they
thought this was the best they could come up with.
By the way, the location of the bodies in the
freezer eight miles from where the car was stopped, okay,
eight miles from where they were abducted, is that's how
this was all planned out, Joe. Now they've got the
(20:44):
freezer out and you're now transporting it. It's taped, it's tarped,
and everything else. It gets back to the lab and
other than a cursory, perfunctory look to see there are
two bodies on the inside that two bodies were looking
for and shutting it. They don't know if there's anything
else in there. They don't know if this freezer has
(21:05):
other things, other people even they just know they saw
two bodies that the women they're looking for. And so
back of the lab when you open it up, we
know that they've been in there for two weeks at least,
you know, because we know when they went missing, and
we know when they found the freezer.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
So there you go.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
They were killed the day they were abducted, apparently, is
what it appears. Based on the road, based on the
blood at the scene in the road, based on the
blood in the vehicle where the vehicle came to rest
one thousand feet from the road, Take two and two,
they were dead.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
And the broken of the broken hammer, which is a
nice a nice touch, right.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
Yeah, chances are if they break a hammer beating you,
you're not surviving that beating.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
No, you're not.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
But once they get them back to the crime lab
or the where do they take these to do an
autopsy with the state.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Yeah, they're going to go in and it's dependent the
Oklahoma does not have corners, all right, and this is
where they have. Yeah, they have, they have, and it's
a fine office. They actually have a state medical examiner.
So the state is kind of regionalized, all right. And
you've got the Central Division, the Eastern Division. I think
the Eastern Division is based in Tulsa, and of course
(22:19):
the Central divisions in Oklahoma City.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
You know what, I just remembered.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
What's up?
Speaker 3 (22:23):
Though?
Speaker 4 (22:24):
You have told me how good they are in Oklahoma
in the system they use.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
I just remember.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
It just came to mind that you've bragged about how
good they are before.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Well, I'm a big fan of medical examiner systems, particularly statewide,
that are not administered by police or the law enforcement agency.
If you have a a state medical examiner that is
administered primarily by the Health Department, it turns out better
(22:53):
for everybody. Because you know, for us in my world,
and uh, we're not merely interested in homicides. We do,
as a matter of fact, we handle more natural deaths,
so that you know, that feeds directly into the mission
of Public Health and state the State Health Department, and
we work you know, they work with the police, they
(23:14):
have investigators and all that, but their job is different.
So in most places, I can't speak specifically, but I
would imagine that they might have a separate decomp room,
which many facilities I have been, and we kind of
break it down like this where you have a clean,
clean area and then a decomp area, and even the
(23:37):
bodies are stored separately. You don't have decomp bodies most
of the time the main cooler with fresh dead and
you can do more in that environment. Anthropologists generally has
a space in there so that they can do their exams,
which are mind blowing that we can talk about another time.
But you have that environment there that has to be controlled.
(24:00):
And when you go into this thing, everybody that is
in this room, Dave, they appreciate the fragility of everything
that is contained not just within the freezer but also externally.
So kind of the cast of characters you're going to
have in there is probably going to be the lead investigator.
You're going to have maybe a couple of medical, legal
(24:21):
death investigators and an autopsy assistant in there, the primary
or the medical examiner, the forensic pathologists directing everything, and
then there will there's a high probability you're going to
have a crimsne tech there as well. And so what
will happen is that one of the emmy investigators will
take photographs for the medical examiner, but the crimsing investigator
(24:46):
will also take photographs, but for their purposes. It's for
their reference. Okay, so you've got two sets of photography.
Many times with a case that's going on like this,
not always the time. Sometimes you'll have people that have
this kind of sharing, you know, of of the images
back and forth. No, it's on you. You take the
photographs today. But you know, the doctors, like cops are
(25:09):
not necessarily interested in taking pictures of organs or the
detailed anatomy. And there is a specific practice called medical
photography that you get really good at because you have
to understand anatomy. And I'm not I'm not sliding uh
police police photographers, but in our world, in the medical
(25:30):
legal world, you need a specific skill set in order
to appreciate what the physician is talking about, like if
he says or she says, I want police take a
photograph of the right greater horn of the highwaid bone. Wow,
the crumbsing detective is not necessarily going to know what
they're talking about.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Yeah, they're just not going to do it now. The
you know, I've seen, you know, uh forends of pathologists
that will give almost a primal grunt and point. I
used to work with with one forensic pathologist in the
past that would use his knife to point at everybody.
It carry a huge Bosher knife and it was always
covered in blood and he would he had this kind
of primal grunting thing that he would go and he
(26:11):
had very interesting personality to say the least, but that's
how he would direct you. But if you have somebody
that's familiar with human anatomy and all of those anatomical
points or landmarks that we're looking for not just externally
but internally when the body is open. So that's kind
of the cast characters here. And you don't know what
(26:33):
type of evidence is going to be recovered. And let's
just say because at this point when you open up,
when you open up this this freezer, you don't know
what the cause of death is. You have no idea.
That's why you're doing the autopsy. So when you open
(26:53):
this up, you could find things like ballistic evidence in there,
or if there is a projectile inside of the body.
I've seen I've seen medical examiners do two things. I've
seen them actually, in the case of a projectile, remove
it and they take a diamond tipped a diamond tipped
(27:14):
pen and yes, that's what I said. And they go
to the base of a projectile that's removed and they
will actually initially on the bottom and that indicates that
I'm the one that removed it, and they'll include that
in there. And then I've seen them take other bits
of evidence, including ballistic evidence, and turn it over directly
to a detective or to a crime scene technician that's
(27:37):
present at the autopsy. It's a weird kind of orchestration
that has to go on. And with this particular case cases,
this is dense material dave Scientifically, from a forensics perspective,
this is about as complex as things can get because
you're introducing something into the environment that is not it's
(28:02):
an unknown relative to the container itself. How are you
going to manage this and how are you going to
manage it so you don't screw it up, because if
you screw it up with really doing the big bold
opening of the thing, you can eradicate evidence because.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
You only get one shotages you can and redo it.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
You're absolutely no do overs, no mulligans. If you're a golfer,
you don't get to do it over because once it's gone,
it's gone. If there is even a hair, you know,
keep in mind with any kind of freezer refrigerator, Uh,
there's a big kind of rubber plastic foam gasket.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Right.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Well, okay, so let's pretend that somebody is has killed
someone and they want to put them into this. We've
already stated how deep this thing is, all right, how
deep this this freezer is. Well, you're leaning over the side.
Guess what you're coming in contact with your clothing. You're
(28:58):
coming in contact with the gasket that goes around there.
Guess what you can pick up on that gasket. Well,
any kind of fiber, evidence, hair, anything, you're shedding skin
that could be the perpetrator or at least the person
that was in concert with the perpetrator that is placing
that body down into that. So you have to even
(29:20):
be careful in that area because that freezer. First off,
the freezer is unique, the brand, it's going to have
a serial number. It's probably in most of those things
have got like a you know what I'm talking about,
it's got that kind of aluminum tag thing that's bolted
what it is, Yeah, and where it was manufactured even
and it probably in those little coating numbers they have.
(29:42):
I hope that somebody will correct me if I'm wrong,
but in those little they probably had the batch that
the thing came off the line with it. You know,
you can look at that number and go back to
the factory, frigid are or whoever it is and say, hey,
I've got this number. When did the thin come off
the line? Where did it go to? When it came
off line? When to big box store? A you go
to them and say, hey, I've got this. You receive dispatch.
(30:06):
Do you know who bought this?
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Well?
Speaker 3 (30:07):
Our record served.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
I don't go back that far because I have to think.
My big question is is this freezer viable? Does it
still work or is it just something that they had
laying out back. Well, if it was laying out back,
freezer's not something you just walk by and ignore. Just
imagine the power of some witness that might have been
peripheral to the peripheral to these people. Prosecution puts them
(30:29):
on the on the stand and said, mister Smith, have
you ever seen a freezer similar to the one pictured
here in the image that you're taking a look at
in the past when you've come over for picnics or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I've I've seen one like that. It was out back
of the bar, and they'd had it for years, and
I never could understand what they were keeping that thing.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
For, keeping it for a makeshift cast.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Yeah, you just you never know. So I hope I'm
painting an effective picture here as to how critical all
of this is. And I'm so glad it thrills me
to my core that you said that you get one
shot at it, Dave. You know, because once you crack
this thing open, you're bearing witness to something that the
line share of people in their entire life, they live
(31:13):
five lifetimes, they're not going to see anything like what
was revealed when that door was open the day. Okay,
(31:34):
I want all of our friends to understand what I'm
about to do here, because we don't get cases like
this most of the time. Just this past week, I
came into possession of the autopsy report from Kelly, and
I kind of want to break this down, break it
(31:57):
down for those that might be curious, and I'll kind
of we'll go through the highlights of it and talk
about it. With this proviso, there is a high probability
that within the next couple of weeks of this recording,
we're going to uh receive the second autopsy on Miss Butler,
will receive that autopsy report. It's at that point in
(32:20):
time we'll revisit and you know, kind of go through
that autopsy as well, because Dave, the physical findings you
know that you have described here, Remember how we've talked
about before, the dead do in fact have a tail
to tell, and it can be told in many ways.
I think probably the first thing that you're going to
look at when you have this kind of miniature and
(32:42):
I want to call it, this miniature crime scene that.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Literally literally is delivered.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
To to the medical examiner's office, when your initial viewing
of this of the interior of the scene, this this
is like viewing two bodies laying on the floor in
a standalone home that have been executed, but yet that
dynamic is now brought into the autopsy suite. And so
when we crack that door open and we look within
(33:11):
this thing, the first thing I'm going to try to
piece together here is, well, what position are they in?
I think that that's probably one of the biggest tells. Dave.
Speaker 4 (33:22):
All Right, So when they open it up, they look
in and they see there's dirt, there's fluid, there's straw,
and there are two bodies, and they can tell right
off that Veronica Butler is on top of Jilly and Kelly.
Jilly and Kelly have been put in first, Veronica Butler
(33:44):
put on top of her. Does that tell you, as
an investigator anything?
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Well, here's the thing, and you can kind of.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
Extrapolate some thoughts about this. I believe.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
You could say that they were killed roughly at the
same time and then essentially discarded into this container. Okay,
I think probably one of the more chilling views of this,
because I still I don't know if there's any way
(34:22):
you could ever convince me that miss Kelly was the
target here, the primary target. Some people could perhaps say
that miss Kelly did die first, and because there's so
much hatred and anger directed at the target who is
(34:45):
Veronica Butler. You really wonder and I'm sure that this
is something that is it has been explored and is
continuing to be explored. I wonder if missus Butler, in
order to terrify her in some way, if she was
forced to watch Miss Kelly die. Miss Kelly died pretty quickly,
(35:08):
and I can go into that here shortly and then
following that Miss Butler is killed and her body is placed,
and I think placed is kind of a misstatement there.
I'm just going to say, tossed a side like rubbish
into this container. I think my big question is sequencing.
(35:29):
I don't know that we will ever be able to
address the specific sequence unless one of this, you know,
this kind of twisted confederacy rolls over on somebody else
that begins to, you know, as they say, sing like
a bird. Because I can tell you, I can tell
you that. Well, I'll tell you this though. This thing's
going to be tried in Oklahoma, and Bubba Oklahoma's got
(35:53):
death penalty and they are not shy about using it.
Speaker 4 (35:56):
So they don't have to negotiate anything. They've already got.
They already have enough evidence Joe for all of the
involvement of these people, the pre planning that went into it,
the first aborted attempt to drop an anvil on Veronica
Butler's car while she's driving. Now you've got them there
together with Jillian Kelly, wrong place, wrong time, being a
nice woman. She ends up dead in a freezer. Now
(36:19):
they got to remove Veronica to get to Jillian Kelly.
They have to take Veronica Butler's body out of the freezer.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Yes, yeah, what do you do to do that? Because
they get in there for two weeks? Man, Yeah, you
get a big group of people.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
First off, you're going to document the bodies thoroughly inside.
I'm talking about not just the measurements of the body,
but the measurements of the interior. And this is kind
of interesting. I was giving us a think if you've
got any kind of like dynamic blood deposition that's inside
of that.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Okay, what do you mean by that?
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Well, remember we got a broken hammer, right, yeah, And
I'm not saying that. I think you don't know, you've
got a lot of commingle trauma here. I think with
miss Kelly, I don't know if the hammer's been used
on her as a means to kill her. It appears
(37:14):
based upon what I'm seeing that a sharp edged instrument
was used. They don't talk about lacerations, and as we've
talked about previously on bodybags, lacerations are generated by blunt
force trauma. And so that is the skin being struck
with something and baseball, bat ball, pen hammer, claw hammer,
(37:36):
a lamp, I don't you know, whatever it might be.
The skin literally tears and that creates a lacerational laceration.
Is not and let me repeat, is not a cut.
That's not what they're saying about. Miss Kelly. Miss Kelly
has and hold on to your hat here, Dave, Miss
(37:56):
Kelly alone and again keeping him on. She's not who
we would believe to be the primary target day she
stabbed or cut. She has sixteen sharp for use injuries sixteen. Okay,
she's not the primary and she's not the primary. So
I'm very interested to see what Miss Butler's autopsy will reveal,
(38:22):
because you know they're going to they would have been
doing a dual assessment at this point in time. My
suspicion is is that though we have Miss Kelly's autopsy
report released first, there's a high probability that they did
Miss Butler's autopsy Secondly, I don't know why it would
(38:43):
take longer to get her autopsy out to the public
unless maybe there is more trauma with her body that
required further assessment. I'm still not completely ignored wearing the
hammer you know that was found, because I don't know
(39:03):
what Miss Butler's injuries are at this time when I
see what they did. Though to Miss Kelly, nothing and
I mean nothing is off the table. And just so
let me break this down further relative to the injuries.
So with Miss Kelly, we're talking about nine stab wounds.
(39:26):
That means these are penetrating wounds where the knife is
being driven in to an individual stabbing. Okay, then we
have seven incized wounds. So just think about cutting an object.
If you've got vegetables, like they're on cutting board, Okay,
you can say they're being chopped, but they're actually being
(39:47):
incized or sliced. Well, in sized injuries are slices, Okay.
So the general the rule of thumb here is that
stab wounds are are deeper but more narrow, and in
sized wounds are longer and shallow.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Now, I've seen in sized ones where they're really really deep,
but those are outliers, okay, for for our purposes. And
on top of this, she's got two more insized wounds
that are that are noted that well, they're in the
they're in the description of the but they're they're very distinctive.
(40:30):
And David, this is a big tail here. Miss Kelly
actually has actually has defensive wounds on her hand. Oh wow,
where she's grabbed the blade. She's actually grabbed the blade
and the blade has been drug through her finger and
it's on both hands. I think one of the one
(40:51):
of the insized injuries is the left index finger, okay,
and then the one on the right hand is actually
the right thumb. These are not stab wounds to the hands.
This is indicative of her trying to defend herself and
placing her hands up in a defensive posture, almost like
a boxer, and as the knife is coming, you grab
(41:14):
it and then the knife is withdrawn and it cuts
that surface. Now, her injuries primarily are lateral and posterior lateral,
which means on the side and then to the rear.
And Dave, there's nothing other than the hands. The hands
are separate. There's nothing on her injury.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Wise where.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
These insized injuries extend below the level of the shoulder blades,
so this is all up top. Well, what does that
tell me? That tells me that whoever did this was
in close proximity to her, And he said, Morgan, it's
kind of obvious. No, it's not, because you can have
somebody that's running away and being stabbed and they might
(41:58):
random stab These things are concentrated day and they're really
concentrated heavily on the neck.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
Okay, they were kill shots. They were trying to kill.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
Yeah, they're they're going right, They're going right for the spine.
And and I'm not going to say luckily here, I'm
going to say, how can I phrase this mercifully? I
hope her her spinal cord is essentially severed. Where if
(42:30):
if you'll feel the back of your head, Okay, find
that kind of protuberant area that's on the back of
your skull, that bump, that huge bump that's actually referred
to as the occipital protuberance or the ox a. Put
it's part of the brain, it's part of the skull bone.
Well that houses right there, that houses where our cerebellum is,
(42:54):
which is separate from the cerebrum, the cerebellum. Your brain
stem passes through there. That's literally where your spinal cord begins.
Dave her her spinal cord probably at about the C one,
which is referred to as the atlas. The atlas is
the first vertebral body to call it atlas, because it's
like Atlas holding up the world. Her spinal cord is
(43:17):
cut right there, and the doctor has actually rendered an
opinion here that this is a non viable insult that
she has sustained. Uh mean, yeah, it's incompatible what the
term they'd love to use, is incompatible with life because
you're you're now going into at that level, that that
(43:37):
cervical level, you're going in affecting the autonomic nervous system.
What does that mean, Well, your ability to breathe, your heart,
to function, uh, to sense those sorts of things. We
can only hope that that that was the case, uh
for you know, for for miss miss Kelly, and you know,
(44:00):
under these circumstances. I think that when you know, you
begin to do an assessment like this, and she they
would have done this with with both of these bodies. Okay,
when her body is removed from this freezer, immediate. You can't.
You could, but you're not going to be very effective
(44:21):
her body. When her body is removed, the first thing
you're gonna do is X ray the body. People think
about bullets many times, leaving that kind of lead storm,
you know, the little particular bits of lead. Dave, did
you know that when you stab somebody, particularly if you're
striking bone over and over again, the blade will actually
(44:41):
shere a bit. And I've recovered I've actually recovered the
tips of blades buried in vertebral bodies where they've been
it's been kind of snapped off. And so you would
X ray that, And how powerful is that image? You know?
And when you put up blood the images from an
autopsy report, sometimes they'll say no, no, no, no, no,
(45:05):
can't use those, they're too prejudicial. You use an image
of an X ray and you show, well, here's a
bit of steel or it's radio opaque. Rather that's showing up.
This is tied back to a knife. This gives you
an idea of placement, and you're not having to look
through gore. You're just looking at standard X ray, you know,
(45:26):
like you would get for pneumonia or head injury or
neck injury or broken arm. It's the same thing. So
there's no gore involved with it, and it's very it's very,
very powerful, so you have to be very careful. The
only way though, I think that one of the big
questions here is when you read an autopsy report, you're
(45:50):
thinking that perhaps perhaps you can sequence these injuries. It's
really really hard to sequence, you know, sequence an injury.
And what I mean by that is the order in
which these these insults or you know, we're struck, you know.
(46:16):
And what they'll do when you get when you get
a knife wound like this, they'll assign a random number.
And that random number that you see is not indicative
of the order in which it occurred. It's merely there
as a guardrail to say, I've identified this one, and
(46:38):
this is what we're calling it number one. And like,
for instance, the first one that she sustained that they're
calling wound number one is a horizontal in sized wound
to the posterior lower head, which means, if you again
put your hand back here below the occy put David
(46:59):
knife was drug over the surface of her scalp right there, okay,
and it's literally about ten centimeters below the top of
the head, you know, which I think translates to roughly,
I want to say, about three inches, you know, down
the back of her head. So and it's it's that's
(47:19):
the distance below and it's about seven seven centimeters in length.
It's three centimeters deep.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
This is this is a deep.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
Wound, Okay, that's passing through not just the hair and
skin and sub continuous fat, it's going all the way
through that little layer of muscle and also striking you know,
striking the underlying bone. And one of the interesting things
they found out about this day, just this wound alone.
(47:49):
This is how complex this is. Just this wound alone
generated three separate knife markings on the surface of the bone. Dave, Okay,
that's how ferocious this was. And they're talking about how
the lower oxy put or the eccipital protuberance was actually chipped.
Do you realize how hard it is to chip a bone.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
It's so.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
It requires a tremendous amount of power and directed force.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
So this goes to.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
The idea that I think she would have been attacked
while laying probably in a prone position, so she's on
her belly. They talked about how her clothes are soiled. Well,
if you've got somebody and I had quoted, i'd use
this term earlier with you. I think in the Bible
there's a couple of times where they say the people
(48:41):
fell upon an individual, and when they fall upon an injury,
that means that's an attack. Okay, So they fell upon
this poor woman. I don't know if they've got multiple
people holding her down, but the individual would have been
exerting their downward weight on her back. Hence, that explains
why you don't have injuries that are going any further
south than the shoulder blades, because they're not going to
(49:03):
stab themselves. Okay, they're going to stab up okay or not, they're.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
Going to be mean.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 4 (49:10):
Now I couldn't figure that out when I was reading
over this before we started taping.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
I'm going through this going what in the world. I
couldn't figure that out.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
So it's a tight cluster that's in here, and you know,
we're talking about multiple injuries, and it looks like some
of these might be misstrikes. Like if you're if you're
trying to drive the knife down, Let's say you're focused
on on the on the spinal column itself, and you
have or you know, in their mind the brain. Okay,
(49:38):
but you're striking the spinal column. This is not like
some spy movie where some assassin walks up behind somebody
and takes an ice pick or a knife and just
kind of pushes it up through the bottom. You know
that classic scene from Goodfellas in the back seat with
the ice pick. That's a concentrated, specific area. This is
(49:59):
a frenzied event, Dave, again, I think you can translate
that into a lot of anger, you know, And why
would this precious woman have this much anger directed at
her when she's you know, she's she's this you know,
this angel on earth that's trying to help, that's trying
to help help Miss Butler along the way. So you know,
(50:22):
we've got we've got sixteen sharp force injuries that run,
you know, essentially from north to south. These things are
highly complex. They're going through multiple, multiple areas of interest.
Many of these things do in fact come along with hemorrhage.
(50:45):
And as we've discussed in the past, you know, if
you have an injury and there's indwelling in dwelling hemorrhage
associated with it, then we know we know that the
individual's heart is still beating, okay, that the blood is
coursing through their veins, and because that it's a trauma response.
(51:06):
When you clip a vessel, even a capillary like that,
a capillary bed, you're going to bleed out into that area.
So the doctor is actually seen with many of these,
is actually seeing presentation of hemorrhage along the way. And
one of the more ghastly issues with this is that
(51:26):
I hate to even really say.
Speaker 2 (51:28):
This, but.
Speaker 1 (51:30):
Dave, four of her cervical vertebras are involved in this attack.
You've got C two, C three, C four, C five. Okay,
you've got the bony. If you've ever seen a spinal
p hower a vertebral process, it's got these little horns
that stick off of it. They've in a couple of
(51:53):
spots those horns have been broken off. Just featured that
just for a second.
Speaker 3 (51:59):
So this attack is absolutely vicious aget and.
Speaker 1 (52:05):
She's not even the intended target, David. That's I think
that that's my my big, my big.
Speaker 2 (52:13):
Takeaway with this.
Speaker 1 (52:15):
She's also got you know, these kind of like she's
got a superficial in sized wound that's on the top
of left shoulder. There's there's no associated hemorrhage with that wound.
That's a post tornum post mortem injury. But that's on
the top. And then if you if you go down
slightly on the posterior left shoulder, so we're talking about
(52:38):
the left, you take your left hand, put it on
top of your shoulder. That's the top of your left
left shoulder. If you go behind its slightly dropped down
just below that area. Uh, you've got another shoulder injury
and the posterior left shoulder where there is hemorrhage. So
(52:58):
they've been they've they spent quite a bit of time
driving this knife both into her body, uh, slicing her body,
and you know, as a you know, kind of an
added bit here meeting her parry, which is you know,
(53:19):
when you a sword term, you know, if you're going
to parry, it's like a defensive moon move. She's pairying
with her hands, so they've sliced her hands as well
defensively on her parties defensively. So you've got all of
these injuries that are specifically you know, tied tied back,
you know, to to this poor woman and what led
(53:41):
to her death. I think, you know, I'm hoping, I'm
hoping against hope, Dave, that she did not experience the
level of pain that could potentially be associated with all
of these insults to her body. I'm hoping against hope
that that strike that we talked about that was like
(54:02):
C one C two region there, that it was a
fatal blow and that she didn't sense anything. But either
way that you look at this case, the level of
brutality that is involved in this thing, you find it
very difficult to plumb the depths of it because it
(54:24):
is so very extensive. We're going to wait and see
what the autopsy of Veronica Butler reveals, but I can
tell you this, whatever happened out there in that desolate area,
it's the stuff of nightmares and things that we cannot
(54:44):
even begin to fathom. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this
is Bodybots.
Bodybags, but Joseph's gotten more. Have you ever gotten a
phone call in the middle of the night and not
work related, but you have somebody that at least counts
you as a friend and they say, hey, can you
(00:23):
help me out with something? Unfortunately, I've had that call
that has come to me from jails every now and
then with friends that made really bad decisions, primarily involving
an alcohol.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
However, today.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
On body Backs, we're going to talk about case actually
cases that so caught the attention of America, not merely
because it was one lady helping out another, but the
absolute gruesome nature of their murders was something that most
(01:09):
of the people around the United States could not begin
to comprehend. This is a follow up to an earlier
episode of body Bags, I think from back in April
of twenty four, but today we have more information. Today
(01:32):
we have the autopsy report of Jillian Dolores.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Kelly.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Is body Bags. Dave.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
I know you. I know you better than you might think.
I know that if you've got a friend and they
called you up to say can you help me with something?
You're the dude that would hop in your shoes, grab
your keys, and head out to your car and go
do this. How much more so if maybe it was
(02:09):
where you're put in almost a custodial position with people
that have, you know, kind of a fragile existence, perhaps
they're really down and out, and the court says, we
trust you to take care of this person. I know
that you would do that. I even think that maybe
(02:29):
you have done that, Joe.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
You know, I have been the person that gets the
call in the middle of the night, and I don't
mind it. It's actually an honor and a privilege to
be that person. It is inconvenient, you do looselyep, but
it is an honor to be there for somebody when
if they feel like the guy nowhere else to turn,
because you earn the right to share the truth with them. Then.
(02:52):
But I've had the opportunity to be every aspect of
the case we're.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Dealing with to day.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
With Jilly and Kelly's autops I'm gonna tell you what
this woman is, the Saint Joe. Jillian Kelly is married
to her pastor husband. They got married in twenty two
thousand and two. They have four children. Jillian Kelly works
with children in the church. She's the church secretary. Just
a wonderful woman. Veronica Butler has supervised visitation with her children.
(03:19):
Veronica Butler and Wrangler Rickman have two children. Tiffany Adams
is Wrangler Rickman's mom. That makes her the paternal grandparents
to Veronica Butler's children. Veronica Butler had trouble in her
life in the past, enough so that she lost custody
of her children to Tiffany Adams. But now she's righted
(03:40):
her life. She's in church, she's engaged, she's got a job,
she went back to school. Her life is on track.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Man.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
Veronica Butler's doing good, so good. In fact, she's going
back to court and they're going to award her custody
of her children. She's getting her children back. She's excited,
but she's still at this moment has custody every I mean,
she has a supervised visitors with her children every Saturday.
And Tiffany Adams was not about to give up Cutseydy
(04:07):
of those children to Ronica Butler. She didn't care if
that's her mom. She wanted the children and that was it.
So Tiffany Adams calls the woman who regularly supervises visitation
for Veronica Butler and cancels it. Tiffany Adams tells her,
we aren't gonna need you this time. I'll call you
when we need you again. Then she calls Veronica Butler
and says, hey, Veronica, the court liaison, the supervisor of
(04:30):
visitation just canceled. I don't know what we'll do, and
Butler says, that's okay. I've got somebody. She goes to
Jillian Kelly at church. Jillian says, sure, I'll go. They're
not buddies or palas, but they're friendly, and Jillian says.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Sure, I'll beat the guy. I'll go with you.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
So Veronica Butler gets Jillian Kelly and here they go.
They are going to meet to get the children on
March thirtieth. That is what they're going to do. It's
arranged for them to meet at this well, it's a
close tog station now, but that's where they were going
to meet to exchange the children. Bronica Butler would pick
them up there and she and Jillian would take Kendall
(05:07):
and the other child and go to the birthday party
that was planned for Kendall. Well, they never showed up
at the birthday party and the family starts calling, hey,
Bronicum and Jillian never showed up with the kids, what's
going on. That's when we first got this story. These
two Kansas moms going to pick up the kids, never
(05:28):
arrived with them. What happened.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
I've covered so many cases and work so many cases
over my career where people did not realize that that
moment tom when they walked out of the door they
looked into the eyes of their spouse or to their
precious babies, that that was going to be the last
(05:54):
time they ever saw them. And how much more so
not seeing the future, not knowing that your life is
going to end literally at the hands of a mob
on a dirty, dusty road and a panhandle of Oklahoma.
(06:30):
I'm born witness to some let's just say, odd and
disturbing things in the autopsy suite. And you never, and
I mean this with everything that's in me, you never
know what's going to happen when you open a bodybag.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Period.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
You really you don't know what has been brought in
from the field. Because many times, in my case, I'd
work at night as an investigator, I'd be the autopsy
assistant during the day and it might not be my case.
I may have read over a thumbnail description, but Dave,
when you come into an autopsy room and there has
(07:12):
been a gigantic deep freezer that has been brought from
a scene that still has straps on it, you suspect,
as an investigator at scene, that what you're going to
have in there is going to be very bad. But
when you open when you open that door and you
(07:33):
look inside of there, there are things in my brain
right now that I'm recalling as I'm talking right now,
I can still see those images. I can still get
hit and even after all these years, I can still
get hit in the face with that smell that emanates
from the sealed area, which in effect is a casket
(07:55):
for not just one, but for two women. Dave, it's
it's a monumental undertaking. And I think people many times
are shocked that we don't open things, it seems and
remove the items. If you have that body or bodies contained,
(08:16):
it's best to keep them contained, okay, And then you
bring them to a location that is well lighted. You've
got primo photography. You document the steps of opening up
this thing. And let me tell you one more thing
that would have been done prior to them ever, undoing
these large yellow straps that are on the outside this
(08:41):
freezer would have been thoroughly externally printed, dusted for prints,
looking for any kind of latent contact prints. It's a
sight to behold because you never know, never know what's
going to be contained inside out of any box like this.
(09:03):
I've had coffins I've had, I have had not a freezer.
I've had a refrigerator where the shells removed. I've had
blocks of concrete that have contained human remains where you have.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
To chisel it away.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
I've had cars where I've had multiple people killed in it.
And I used to think, being in charge, you're literally
if you're the investigator, you're in charge of the bodies.
And we all came to a consensus at the scene
that it would be better not to remove the bodies
from the car, but have them flat bedded to the
state crime lab and you cover it with a tarp,
(09:36):
and you know, like you have this horrible thought in
your brain that you're literally transporting bodies you're in I remember,
in particularly I eighty five in Atlanta, removing a car
to a local lot that had five people inside of it.
And all we had it covered with was a blue
crash tarp on the back of a flatbed. And you know,
(10:00):
as an investigator, you think your worst nightmare is that
the tarp is going to fly off, and here you're
gonna have, you know, bodies. If anybody's ever driven through
the hellscape that is the highway system in Atlanta, you
can get caught up in traffic. They don't they don't
move out of the way for a wrecker, they don't
move out of the way for cops most of the time.
But how much more so than the record and the
(10:20):
thing comes off. Can you imagine you've got kids, you know,
and you kind of look and you know it's even
to this day when I see things going down the
road that are strapped down on the back of a car,
like a freezer or something, I'm always thinking, I wonder
if that's empty. I wonder if it's empty. And I've
had a few times in my life since being on
(10:41):
the streets where I've seen police escorting flatbed trucks and
they've got a tarp over them, and I know what's
under the tar. The civilians stone around you. But you
you want to maintain that pristine nature.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
I was going to ask you when all right?
Speaker 4 (10:57):
When they got there in the in this particular case,
investigators determined where Tad Cullum, that is, the boyfriend of
Tiffany Adams, had dug the hole and everything ahead of time,
and they found the bodies at the scene. They were
ten feet down, okay, a ten feet deep hole had
been dug. The freezer was placed at well, some items
(11:19):
were thrown in, A phone and some other items of
evidence were thrown into the hole. Then the freezer was
dumped in there. Then cement block and everything else was
then thrown into the hole and then dirt and everything
else mashed down when they got it dug up. You
said that they're not going to they're not going to
take anything out right then, but they still have to
(11:41):
identify what is in the freezer, even though they believe
it to be Veronica Butler and Jilly and Kelly but well,
they're not going to do a big examine.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
And at the scene, just full disclosure here. They did
briefly open it at the scene, so they cracked, You
cracked the side of it, and there had been tape
that was adherent on the outside. It's you know, when
this thing is brought to the me. Even in the
(12:11):
report section of the autopsy report. And when I say
report section, it's actually the medical Legal investigations subheading in
the report, they allude to the fact that tape was
no longer there, So that leads me to believe it
had been taped shut at some point in time. Now
they had to strap this thing down. But yeah, so
they they would have lifted this thing at the scene,
(12:34):
peaked over the edge into the cooler or the freezer
to assess what was in there, because you know, you
don't necessarily know, you have your suspicions. Okay, And here's
another thing, and I know this sounds really far field,
but if this scene was booby trapped in some way,
I mean, you're talking about a double homicide. Okay, it's
(12:57):
not beyond the pail to think that someone that was
willing to commit this kind of homicide would you know,
perhaps uh, put other people at risk. All right, you
don't know. You never know what you're going to get,
you know, when you open any door.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Whether it's every Yeah, to me.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
It's terrifying. I've had friends that have that have gone
on to booby trapped scenes where people have committed suicide
and they booby trapped with weapons. I have one friend
it's almost shot in the in the chest with a
three to eight deer rifle because he opened a closet
and it had a trigger on it, a line trigger
tension thing. No, and he happened to be the round
(13:37):
actually passed in front of him. So my my paranoia,
I guess, is that the right term is not unwarranted.
I look at all of these things as if because
I want to go home at the end of the day.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
So you guys, get the breezer back in and you
get it. You're afraid as you're getting ready to.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Do Yeah, wow, yeah, I know it's terrifying, and.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
I was terrified by what was inside.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Not not a bomb.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Body, listen, man, Look, I don't put anything past anybody
that'll commit a homicide, particularly of a stranger and then
a mother, if they're willing to eradicate them off the
face of the plant. My life means nothing to them whatsoever, Okay,
(14:20):
or my colleagues that might be there. And that's just
like one of the little boxes that you want to
tick and check at that point in time and try
to understand that. But once you get past that. You
have to take due care because, Dave, this freezer, this
deep freeze, had been it had the utility of a coffin, right,
(14:43):
actually a casket it was. Yeah, and then I don't know,
I don't know the answer to this question. I'm just
throwing this out there, all right. Let me give you
the dimensions on this just so that you and our
friends can appreciate it. So, not only did they have
this rather large freezer, okay, but you'd mentioned something just
(15:08):
a second ago, there was a slab of concrete that
was placed on top of it.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Dave.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Let me give you the dimensions. Are you ready, brother, yep? Okay,
The dimensions of the slab of concrete are ninety two inches.
Keep in mind, six feet tall is seventy two inches, okay,
by sixty inches okay?
Speaker 2 (15:33):
All right?
Speaker 1 (15:34):
That's with linked with and the depth of this thing.
The thickness of it, dude, the slab is eight inches
in thickness.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Holy moly, do you realize what.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Kind of equipment you would have to have in place
in order to move a slab like that? I mean,
you could have I don't know, maybe you could have
a bunch of really a bunch of robust country boys
that could, you know, put to dig their hands into
it and drop it down. But I'm not thinking that.
(16:06):
I'm thinking this is something First off, you have to
acquire it. Where do you even find a slab of
that size that's bigger, that's actually bigger than a slab
that you would find on top of a standard grave site,
you know, if you go to the two huge to
the cemetery. Yeah, and you're walking along and they've got
the big slabs that are laid down the ground. There's
a headstone, there's that's bigger than that. This is something
(16:28):
that you would only see probably in construction, all right,
and it's that's one of the most striking things, you know,
when they would have gotten out to that scene, to
the grave site and begun to assess this scene. And
remember this is a give or take. Hang on, I've
(16:49):
got to review this real quick because yeah, you're talking
two weeks down range, right, we don't know what the
weather was like. They went missing back in March. They're
found in April. I know what I would be really
interested in knowing is, first off, what type of tracks
(17:09):
are around the gravesite, because if you're talking about front
and loader or skid.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Steer or a skid steer or somebody.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
It's going to be very distinctive. It's not going to
look like tire tracks, dude, And you're talking about carrying
a tremendous amount of weight, not that those things aren't
made for that, but if you think about that and
the pressure that's going to be applied directly on those tires,
the supporting element of that vehicle and pressing it down
into the dirt, if you're carrying a heavy load, you're
(17:39):
going to get come away with really good impressions from that.
And that's very specific to that piece of equipment. This
isn't just like a truck Papa's truck driving down a
country road. This is something that's very specific. And why
would you have a skid steer out in the middle
of a field like this.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Well, actually it was the area that it was.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
It was about fifty feet from the dam and there
was like a shed area out there that Tad had
been working on and he notified the owner of the
property that he was leasing part of it from that
he was going to be doing some work out there.
You know that he was going to be burying some
ce men he had told him that. Then this is
two days before the bodies were the two days before
(18:21):
Veronica Butler and Jillian Kelly went missing. He tells the
guy that owns the place, you know, the work he's doing.
Then after they go missing, he tells the owner, Yeah,
I'm a suspect. They're missing, and you're a suspect, really,
And that's why this fell apart so quick, because I dude, you.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Know, in your brain, okay, let's just say you're.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Going to tell anybody you're a suspect.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Well, I'm thinking let's go back before that, because you know,
this is one of those moments where you say, does
your mind work? You know, you're sitting there and you're
thinking about this, So you're leasing, not purchasing your leasing property.
Guess what happens to Lisa's Lisa's runout. Yeah, the property
own you know, still retains this. So if he's going
(19:03):
to go in I don't know and drop a crop
of whatever it is they grow in Oklahoma, weed or
corn or whatever it is, and all of a sudden
his plow gets hung up on the lip of this thing.
Do you not do you in what universe? Do you
think that this is not going to be discovered. My
thought was, and this is so horrific, but I'm going
(19:26):
to go ahead and say it, because this is what
we talk about on body bags.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Did did they have.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Plans perhaps to passively render these bodies down inside of
this thing, come back later when the heat was off,
draw it up, or take out those remains and dispose
of them in some other way. I toyed with that idea,
you know, because I can't. I can't make sense of it,
(19:56):
you know, just the leasing element alone. But you know,
if you're using a skitzteer like this, it's not going
to take too long to facilitate a big hole in
the ground, if you will. And that's certainly what happened.
And again, Dave, as we mentioned earlier, what does this
go to, Well, it goes to I don't know, something
(20:18):
called premeditation, yep.
Speaker 4 (20:21):
And that's the killer on all of this. It's the
fact that this was planned out, thought out, and they
thought this was the best they could come up with.
By the way, the location of the bodies in the
freezer eight miles from where the car was stopped, okay,
eight miles from where they were abducted, is that's how
this was all planned out, Joe. Now they've got the
(20:44):
freezer out and you're now transporting it. It's taped, it's tarped,
and everything else. It gets back to the lab and
other than a cursory, perfunctory look to see there are
two bodies on the inside that two bodies were looking
for and shutting it. They don't know if there's anything
else in there. They don't know if this freezer has
(21:05):
other things, other people even they just know they saw
two bodies that the women they're looking for. And so
back of the lab when you open it up, we
know that they've been in there for two weeks at least,
you know, because we know when they went missing, and
we know when they found the freezer.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
So there you go.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
They were killed the day they were abducted, apparently, is
what it appears. Based on the road, based on the
blood at the scene in the road, based on the
blood in the vehicle where the vehicle came to rest
one thousand feet from the road, Take two and two,
they were dead.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
And the broken of the broken hammer, which is a
nice a nice touch, right.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
Yeah, chances are if they break a hammer beating you,
you're not surviving that beating.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
No, you're not.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
But once they get them back to the crime lab
or the where do they take these to do an
autopsy with the state.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Yeah, they're going to go in and it's dependent the
Oklahoma does not have corners, all right, and this is
where they have. Yeah, they have, they have, and it's
a fine office. They actually have a state medical examiner.
So the state is kind of regionalized, all right. And
you've got the Central Division, the Eastern Division. I think
the Eastern Division is based in Tulsa, and of course
(22:19):
the Central divisions in Oklahoma City.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
You know what, I just remembered.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
What's up?
Speaker 3 (22:23):
Though?
Speaker 4 (22:24):
You have told me how good they are in Oklahoma
in the system they use.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
I just remember.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
It just came to mind that you've bragged about how
good they are before.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Well, I'm a big fan of medical examiner systems, particularly statewide,
that are not administered by police or the law enforcement agency.
If you have a a state medical examiner that is
administered primarily by the Health Department, it turns out better
(22:53):
for everybody. Because you know, for us in my world,
and uh, we're not merely interested in homicides. We do,
as a matter of fact, we handle more natural deaths,
so that you know, that feeds directly into the mission
of Public Health and state the State Health Department, and
we work you know, they work with the police, they
(23:14):
have investigators and all that, but their job is different.
So in most places, I can't speak specifically, but I
would imagine that they might have a separate decomp room,
which many facilities I have been, and we kind of
break it down like this where you have a clean,
clean area and then a decomp area, and even the
(23:37):
bodies are stored separately. You don't have decomp bodies most
of the time the main cooler with fresh dead and
you can do more in that environment. Anthropologists generally has
a space in there so that they can do their exams,
which are mind blowing that we can talk about another time.
But you have that environment there that has to be controlled.
(24:00):
And when you go into this thing, everybody that is
in this room, Dave, they appreciate the fragility of everything
that is contained not just within the freezer but also externally.
So kind of the cast of characters you're going to
have in there is probably going to be the lead investigator.
You're going to have maybe a couple of medical, legal
(24:21):
death investigators and an autopsy assistant in there, the primary
or the medical examiner, the forensic pathologists directing everything, and
then there will there's a high probability you're going to
have a crimsne tech there as well. And so what
will happen is that one of the emmy investigators will
take photographs for the medical examiner, but the crimsing investigator
(24:46):
will also take photographs, but for their purposes. It's for
their reference. Okay, so you've got two sets of photography.
Many times with a case that's going on like this,
not always the time. Sometimes you'll have people that have
this kind of sharing, you know, of of the images
back and forth. No, it's on you. You take the
photographs today. But you know, the doctors, like cops are
(25:09):
not necessarily interested in taking pictures of organs or the
detailed anatomy. And there is a specific practice called medical
photography that you get really good at because you have
to understand anatomy. And I'm not I'm not sliding uh
police police photographers, but in our world, in the medical
(25:30):
legal world, you need a specific skill set in order
to appreciate what the physician is talking about, like if
he says or she says, I want police take a
photograph of the right greater horn of the highwaid bone. Wow,
the crumbsing detective is not necessarily going to know what
they're talking about.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Yeah, they're just not going to do it now. The
you know, I've seen, you know, uh forends of pathologists
that will give almost a primal grunt and point. I
used to work with with one forensic pathologist in the
past that would use his knife to point at everybody.
It carry a huge Bosher knife and it was always
covered in blood and he would he had this kind
of primal grunting thing that he would go and he
(26:11):
had very interesting personality to say the least, but that's
how he would direct you. But if you have somebody
that's familiar with human anatomy and all of those anatomical
points or landmarks that we're looking for not just externally
but internally when the body is open. So that's kind
of the cast characters here. And you don't know what
(26:33):
type of evidence is going to be recovered. And let's
just say because at this point when you open up,
when you open up this this freezer, you don't know
what the cause of death is. You have no idea.
That's why you're doing the autopsy. So when you open
(26:53):
this up, you could find things like ballistic evidence in there,
or if there is a projectile inside of the body.
I've seen I've seen medical examiners do two things. I've
seen them actually, in the case of a projectile, remove
it and they take a diamond tipped a diamond tipped
(27:14):
pen and yes, that's what I said. And they go
to the base of a projectile that's removed and they
will actually initially on the bottom and that indicates that
I'm the one that removed it, and they'll include that
in there. And then I've seen them take other bits
of evidence, including ballistic evidence, and turn it over directly
to a detective or to a crime scene technician that's
(27:37):
present at the autopsy. It's a weird kind of orchestration
that has to go on. And with this particular case cases,
this is dense material dave Scientifically, from a forensics perspective,
this is about as complex as things can get because
you're introducing something into the environment that is not it's
(28:02):
an unknown relative to the container itself. How are you
going to manage this and how are you going to
manage it so you don't screw it up, because if
you screw it up with really doing the big bold
opening of the thing, you can eradicate evidence because.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
You only get one shotages you can and redo it.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
You're absolutely no do overs, no mulligans. If you're a golfer,
you don't get to do it over because once it's gone,
it's gone. If there is even a hair, you know,
keep in mind with any kind of freezer refrigerator, Uh,
there's a big kind of rubber plastic foam gasket.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Right.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Well, okay, so let's pretend that somebody is has killed
someone and they want to put them into this. We've
already stated how deep this thing is, all right, how
deep this this freezer is. Well, you're leaning over the side.
Guess what you're coming in contact with your clothing. You're
(28:58):
coming in contact with the gasket that goes around there.
Guess what you can pick up on that gasket. Well,
any kind of fiber, evidence, hair, anything, you're shedding skin
that could be the perpetrator or at least the person
that was in concert with the perpetrator that is placing
that body down into that. So you have to even
(29:20):
be careful in that area because that freezer. First off,
the freezer is unique, the brand, it's going to have
a serial number. It's probably in most of those things
have got like a you know what I'm talking about,
it's got that kind of aluminum tag thing that's bolted
what it is, Yeah, and where it was manufactured even
and it probably in those little coating numbers they have.
(29:42):
I hope that somebody will correct me if I'm wrong,
but in those little they probably had the batch that
the thing came off the line with it. You know,
you can look at that number and go back to
the factory, frigid are or whoever it is and say, hey,
I've got this number. When did the thin come off
the line? Where did it go to? When it came
off line? When to big box store? A you go
to them and say, hey, I've got this. You receive dispatch.
(30:06):
Do you know who bought this?
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Well?
Speaker 3 (30:07):
Our record served.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
I don't go back that far because I have to think.
My big question is is this freezer viable? Does it
still work or is it just something that they had
laying out back. Well, if it was laying out back,
freezer's not something you just walk by and ignore. Just
imagine the power of some witness that might have been
peripheral to the peripheral to these people. Prosecution puts them
(30:29):
on the on the stand and said, mister Smith, have
you ever seen a freezer similar to the one pictured
here in the image that you're taking a look at
in the past when you've come over for picnics or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I've I've seen one like that. It was out back
of the bar, and they'd had it for years, and
I never could understand what they were keeping that thing.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
For, keeping it for a makeshift cast.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Yeah, you just you never know. So I hope I'm
painting an effective picture here as to how critical all
of this is. And I'm so glad it thrills me
to my core that you said that you get one
shot at it, Dave. You know, because once you crack
this thing open, you're bearing witness to something that the
line share of people in their entire life, they live
(31:13):
five lifetimes, they're not going to see anything like what
was revealed when that door was open the day. Okay,
(31:34):
I want all of our friends to understand what I'm
about to do here, because we don't get cases like
this most of the time. Just this past week, I
came into possession of the autopsy report from Kelly, and
I kind of want to break this down, break it
(31:57):
down for those that might be curious, and I'll kind
of we'll go through the highlights of it and talk
about it. With this proviso, there is a high probability
that within the next couple of weeks of this recording,
we're going to uh receive the second autopsy on Miss Butler,
will receive that autopsy report. It's at that point in
(32:20):
time we'll revisit and you know, kind of go through
that autopsy as well, because Dave, the physical findings you
know that you have described here, Remember how we've talked
about before, the dead do in fact have a tail
to tell, and it can be told in many ways.
I think probably the first thing that you're going to
look at when you have this kind of miniature and
(32:42):
I want to call it, this miniature crime scene that.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Literally literally is delivered.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
To to the medical examiner's office, when your initial viewing
of this of the interior of the scene, this this
is like viewing two bodies laying on the floor in
a standalone home that have been executed, but yet that
dynamic is now brought into the autopsy suite. And so
when we crack that door open and we look within
(33:11):
this thing, the first thing I'm going to try to
piece together here is, well, what position are they in?
I think that that's probably one of the biggest tells. Dave.
Speaker 4 (33:22):
All Right, So when they open it up, they look
in and they see there's dirt, there's fluid, there's straw,
and there are two bodies, and they can tell right
off that Veronica Butler is on top of Jilly and Kelly.
Jilly and Kelly have been put in first, Veronica Butler
(33:44):
put on top of her. Does that tell you, as
an investigator anything?
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Well, here's the thing, and you can kind of.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
Extrapolate some thoughts about this. I believe.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
You could say that they were killed roughly at the
same time and then essentially discarded into this container. Okay,
I think probably one of the more chilling views of this,
because I still I don't know if there's any way
(34:22):
you could ever convince me that miss Kelly was the
target here, the primary target. Some people could perhaps say
that miss Kelly did die first, and because there's so
much hatred and anger directed at the target who is
(34:45):
Veronica Butler. You really wonder and I'm sure that this
is something that is it has been explored and is
continuing to be explored. I wonder if missus Butler, in
order to terrify her in some way, if she was
forced to watch Miss Kelly die. Miss Kelly died pretty quickly,
(35:08):
and I can go into that here shortly and then
following that Miss Butler is killed and her body is placed,
and I think placed is kind of a misstatement there.
I'm just going to say, tossed a side like rubbish
into this container. I think my big question is sequencing.
(35:29):
I don't know that we will ever be able to
address the specific sequence unless one of this, you know,
this kind of twisted confederacy rolls over on somebody else
that begins to, you know, as they say, sing like
a bird. Because I can tell you, I can tell
you that. Well, I'll tell you this though. This thing's
going to be tried in Oklahoma, and Bubba Oklahoma's got
(35:53):
death penalty and they are not shy about using it.
Speaker 4 (35:56):
So they don't have to negotiate anything. They've already got.
They already have enough evidence Joe for all of the
involvement of these people, the pre planning that went into it,
the first aborted attempt to drop an anvil on Veronica
Butler's car while she's driving. Now you've got them there
together with Jillian Kelly, wrong place, wrong time, being a
nice woman. She ends up dead in a freezer. Now
(36:19):
they got to remove Veronica to get to Jillian Kelly.
They have to take Veronica Butler's body out of the freezer.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Yes, yeah, what do you do to do that? Because
they get in there for two weeks? Man, Yeah, you
get a big group of people.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
First off, you're going to document the bodies thoroughly inside.
I'm talking about not just the measurements of the body,
but the measurements of the interior. And this is kind
of interesting. I was giving us a think if you've
got any kind of like dynamic blood deposition that's inside
of that.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Okay, what do you mean by that?
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Well, remember we got a broken hammer, right, yeah, And
I'm not saying that. I think you don't know, you've
got a lot of commingle trauma here. I think with
miss Kelly, I don't know if the hammer's been used
on her as a means to kill her. It appears
(37:14):
based upon what I'm seeing that a sharp edged instrument
was used. They don't talk about lacerations, and as we've
talked about previously on bodybags, lacerations are generated by blunt
force trauma. And so that is the skin being struck
with something and baseball, bat ball, pen hammer, claw hammer,
(37:36):
a lamp, I don't you know, whatever it might be.
The skin literally tears and that creates a lacerational laceration.
Is not and let me repeat, is not a cut.
That's not what they're saying about. Miss Kelly. Miss Kelly
has and hold on to your hat here, Dave, Miss
(37:56):
Kelly alone and again keeping him on. She's not who
we would believe to be the primary target day she
stabbed or cut. She has sixteen sharp for use injuries sixteen. Okay,
she's not the primary and she's not the primary. So
I'm very interested to see what Miss Butler's autopsy will reveal,
(38:22):
because you know they're going to they would have been
doing a dual assessment at this point in time. My
suspicion is is that though we have Miss Kelly's autopsy
report released first, there's a high probability that they did
Miss Butler's autopsy Secondly, I don't know why it would
(38:43):
take longer to get her autopsy out to the public
unless maybe there is more trauma with her body that
required further assessment. I'm still not completely ignored wearing the
hammer you know that was found, because I don't know
(39:03):
what Miss Butler's injuries are at this time when I
see what they did. Though to Miss Kelly, nothing and
I mean nothing is off the table. And just so
let me break this down further relative to the injuries.
So with Miss Kelly, we're talking about nine stab wounds.
(39:26):
That means these are penetrating wounds where the knife is
being driven in to an individual stabbing. Okay, then we
have seven incized wounds. So just think about cutting an object.
If you've got vegetables, like they're on cutting board, Okay,
you can say they're being chopped, but they're actually being
(39:47):
incized or sliced. Well, in sized injuries are slices, Okay.
So the general the rule of thumb here is that
stab wounds are are deeper but more narrow, and in
sized wounds are longer and shallow.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Now, I've seen in sized ones where they're really really deep,
but those are outliers, okay, for for our purposes. And
on top of this, she's got two more insized wounds
that are that are noted that well, they're in the
they're in the description of the but they're they're very distinctive.
(40:30):
And David, this is a big tail here. Miss Kelly
actually has actually has defensive wounds on her hand. Oh wow,
where she's grabbed the blade. She's actually grabbed the blade
and the blade has been drug through her finger and
it's on both hands. I think one of the one
(40:51):
of the insized injuries is the left index finger, okay,
and then the one on the right hand is actually
the right thumb. These are not stab wounds to the hands.
This is indicative of her trying to defend herself and
placing her hands up in a defensive posture, almost like
a boxer, and as the knife is coming, you grab
(41:14):
it and then the knife is withdrawn and it cuts
that surface. Now, her injuries primarily are lateral and posterior lateral,
which means on the side and then to the rear.
And Dave, there's nothing other than the hands. The hands
are separate. There's nothing on her injury.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Wise where.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
These insized injuries extend below the level of the shoulder blades,
so this is all up top. Well, what does that
tell me? That tells me that whoever did this was
in close proximity to her, And he said, Morgan, it's
kind of obvious. No, it's not, because you can have
somebody that's running away and being stabbed and they might
(41:58):
random stab These things are concentrated day and they're really
concentrated heavily on the neck.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
Okay, they were kill shots. They were trying to kill.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
Yeah, they're they're going right, They're going right for the spine.
And and I'm not going to say luckily here, I'm
going to say, how can I phrase this mercifully? I
hope her her spinal cord is essentially severed. Where if
(42:30):
if you'll feel the back of your head, Okay, find
that kind of protuberant area that's on the back of
your skull, that bump, that huge bump that's actually referred
to as the occipital protuberance or the ox a. Put
it's part of the brain, it's part of the skull bone.
Well that houses right there, that houses where our cerebellum is,
(42:54):
which is separate from the cerebrum, the cerebellum. Your brain
stem passes through there. That's literally where your spinal cord begins.
Dave her her spinal cord probably at about the C one,
which is referred to as the atlas. The atlas is
the first vertebral body to call it atlas, because it's
like Atlas holding up the world. Her spinal cord is
(43:17):
cut right there, and the doctor has actually rendered an
opinion here that this is a non viable insult that
she has sustained. Uh mean, yeah, it's incompatible what the
term they'd love to use, is incompatible with life because
you're you're now going into at that level, that that
(43:37):
cervical level, you're going in affecting the autonomic nervous system.
What does that mean, Well, your ability to breathe, your heart,
to function, uh, to sense those sorts of things. We
can only hope that that that was the case, uh
for you know, for for miss miss Kelly, and you know,
(44:00):
under these circumstances. I think that when you know, you
begin to do an assessment like this, and she they
would have done this with with both of these bodies. Okay,
when her body is removed from this freezer, immediate. You can't.
You could, but you're not going to be very effective
(44:21):
her body. When her body is removed, the first thing
you're gonna do is X ray the body. People think
about bullets many times, leaving that kind of lead storm,
you know, the little particular bits of lead. Dave, did
you know that when you stab somebody, particularly if you're
striking bone over and over again, the blade will actually
(44:41):
shere a bit. And I've recovered I've actually recovered the
tips of blades buried in vertebral bodies where they've been
it's been kind of snapped off. And so you would
X ray that, And how powerful is that image? You know?
And when you put up blood the images from an
autopsy report, sometimes they'll say no, no, no, no, no,
(45:05):
can't use those, they're too prejudicial. You use an image
of an X ray and you show, well, here's a
bit of steel or it's radio opaque. Rather that's showing up.
This is tied back to a knife. This gives you
an idea of placement, and you're not having to look
through gore. You're just looking at standard X ray, you know,
(45:26):
like you would get for pneumonia or head injury or
neck injury or broken arm. It's the same thing. So
there's no gore involved with it, and it's very it's very,
very powerful, so you have to be very careful. The
only way though, I think that one of the big
questions here is when you read an autopsy report, you're
(45:50):
thinking that perhaps perhaps you can sequence these injuries. It's
really really hard to sequence, you know, sequence an injury.
And what I mean by that is the order in
which these these insults or you know, we're struck, you know.
(46:16):
And what they'll do when you get when you get
a knife wound like this, they'll assign a random number.
And that random number that you see is not indicative
of the order in which it occurred. It's merely there
as a guardrail to say, I've identified this one, and
(46:38):
this is what we're calling it number one. And like,
for instance, the first one that she sustained that they're
calling wound number one is a horizontal in sized wound
to the posterior lower head, which means, if you again
put your hand back here below the occy put David
(46:59):
knife was drug over the surface of her scalp right there, okay,
and it's literally about ten centimeters below the top of
the head, you know, which I think translates to roughly,
I want to say, about three inches, you know, down
the back of her head. So and it's it's that's
(47:19):
the distance below and it's about seven seven centimeters in length.
It's three centimeters deep.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
This is this is a deep.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
Wound, Okay, that's passing through not just the hair and
skin and sub continuous fat, it's going all the way
through that little layer of muscle and also striking you know,
striking the underlying bone. And one of the interesting things
they found out about this day, just this wound alone.
(47:49):
This is how complex this is. Just this wound alone
generated three separate knife markings on the surface of the bone. Dave, Okay,
that's how ferocious this was. And they're talking about how
the lower oxy put or the eccipital protuberance was actually chipped.
Do you realize how hard it is to chip a bone.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
It's so.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
It requires a tremendous amount of power and directed force.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
So this goes to.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
The idea that I think she would have been attacked
while laying probably in a prone position, so she's on
her belly. They talked about how her clothes are soiled. Well,
if you've got somebody and I had quoted, i'd use
this term earlier with you. I think in the Bible
there's a couple of times where they say the people
(48:41):
fell upon an individual, and when they fall upon an injury,
that means that's an attack. Okay, So they fell upon
this poor woman. I don't know if they've got multiple
people holding her down, but the individual would have been
exerting their downward weight on her back. Hence, that explains
why you don't have injuries that are going any further
south than the shoulder blades, because they're not going to
(49:03):
stab themselves. Okay, they're going to stab up okay or not, they're.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
Going to be mean.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 4 (49:10):
Now I couldn't figure that out when I was reading
over this before we started taping.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
I'm going through this going what in the world. I
couldn't figure that out.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
So it's a tight cluster that's in here, and you know,
we're talking about multiple injuries, and it looks like some
of these might be misstrikes. Like if you're if you're
trying to drive the knife down, Let's say you're focused
on on the on the spinal column itself, and you
have or you know, in their mind the brain. Okay,
(49:38):
but you're striking the spinal column. This is not like
some spy movie where some assassin walks up behind somebody
and takes an ice pick or a knife and just
kind of pushes it up through the bottom. You know
that classic scene from Goodfellas in the back seat with
the ice pick. That's a concentrated, specific area. This is
(49:59):
a frenzied event, Dave, again, I think you can translate
that into a lot of anger, you know, And why
would this precious woman have this much anger directed at
her when she's you know, she's she's this you know,
this angel on earth that's trying to help, that's trying
to help help Miss Butler along the way. So you know,
(50:22):
we've got we've got sixteen sharp force injuries that run,
you know, essentially from north to south. These things are
highly complex. They're going through multiple, multiple areas of interest.
Many of these things do in fact come along with hemorrhage.
(50:45):
And as we've discussed in the past, you know, if
you have an injury and there's indwelling in dwelling hemorrhage
associated with it, then we know we know that the
individual's heart is still beating, okay, that the blood is
coursing through their veins, and because that it's a trauma response.
(51:06):
When you clip a vessel, even a capillary like that,
a capillary bed, you're going to bleed out into that area.
So the doctor is actually seen with many of these,
is actually seeing presentation of hemorrhage along the way. And
one of the more ghastly issues with this is that
(51:26):
I hate to even really say.
Speaker 2 (51:28):
This, but.
Speaker 1 (51:30):
Dave, four of her cervical vertebras are involved in this attack.
You've got C two, C three, C four, C five. Okay,
you've got the bony. If you've ever seen a spinal
p hower a vertebral process, it's got these little horns
that stick off of it. They've in a couple of
(51:53):
spots those horns have been broken off. Just featured that
just for a second.
Speaker 3 (51:59):
So this attack is absolutely vicious aget and.
Speaker 1 (52:05):
She's not even the intended target, David. That's I think
that that's my my big, my big.
Speaker 2 (52:13):
Takeaway with this.
Speaker 1 (52:15):
She's also got you know, these kind of like she's
got a superficial in sized wound that's on the top
of left shoulder. There's there's no associated hemorrhage with that wound.
That's a post tornum post mortem injury. But that's on
the top. And then if you if you go down
slightly on the posterior left shoulder, so we're talking about
(52:38):
the left, you take your left hand, put it on
top of your shoulder. That's the top of your left
left shoulder. If you go behind its slightly dropped down
just below that area. Uh, you've got another shoulder injury
and the posterior left shoulder where there is hemorrhage. So
(52:58):
they've been they've they spent quite a bit of time
driving this knife both into her body, uh, slicing her body,
and you know, as a you know, kind of an
added bit here meeting her parry, which is you know,
(53:19):
when you a sword term, you know, if you're going
to parry, it's like a defensive moon move. She's pairying
with her hands, so they've sliced her hands as well
defensively on her parties defensively. So you've got all of
these injuries that are specifically you know, tied tied back,
you know, to to this poor woman and what led
(53:41):
to her death. I think, you know, I'm hoping, I'm
hoping against hope, Dave, that she did not experience the
level of pain that could potentially be associated with all
of these insults to her body. I'm hoping against hope
that that strike that we talked about that was like
(54:02):
C one C two region there, that it was a
fatal blow and that she didn't sense anything. But either
way that you look at this case, the level of
brutality that is involved in this thing, you find it
very difficult to plumb the depths of it because it
(54:24):
is so very extensive. We're going to wait and see
what the autopsy of Veronica Butler reveals, but I can
tell you this, whatever happened out there in that desolate area,
it's the stuff of nightmares and things that we cannot
(54:44):
even begin to fathom. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this
is Bodybots.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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