July 23, 2025 • 55 mins
Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss Forensic Anthropology starting with the two questions asked of Forensic Anthropologists:1. Who are they2. What happened. Joseph Scott Morgan explains what Forensic Anthropology is and how the experts in the field are able to figure out what happened in cases where only a minimum of remains are left to investigate.
Transcribe Highlights
00:10.88 Introduction- Forensic Anthropology
05:05.90 Thinking neighbor was "the" Margaret Mead
10:26.47 Forensic Anthropologists - The Body Farm
14:56.66 Training is very intense
20:01.55 Terminator the liquid guy
25:03.32 Bones that make up the human skull
30:18.10 Swampy area - what happens to bones?
35:08.07 Study of human skeletal remains
40:42.60 Suture lines in floor of skull
44:34.54 Working case of genocide
50:36.76 Gunshot wound
55:22.21 Conclusion
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body dytas, but Joseph's gotten more. It's an interesting thing,
the human skeleton. Did you know that every stage of
life that we go through is kind of marked by
our physical support system, if you will, our anatomical support system,
(00:25):
our framework, that framework that our organs rest within and
that our skin stretches over. It marks time for us.
It is a It gives off developmental signals. It talks
about disease, and I say talk as if you can
(00:47):
have a conversation with it. But if you read it right,
you can learn a lot about people through their skeletons.
And in my world, in the world of metal legal
death investigation, sometimes skeletal remains are all that we have
(01:08):
to tell the tale. I'm Josephcotten Morgan and this is
body Bags, Brother Dave. I've been excited about doing this
episode with you because I got to make a confession
right here, right now and tell you this dirty, dark
little secret about myself. I am, at my heart, a
(01:37):
amateur frustrated forensic anthropologists. I've always worked with forensic anthropologists.
I've been in their worlds, I've been in their labs,
I've been in the field with them, slapping mosquitoes and
fending off snakes. Yes, been in swampy walk, I've been
(02:00):
in a rugged terrain. But I have always been enamored
a forensic anthropologists, and every opportunity that I have, I've
always welcomed that moment when I can kind of sit
at their feet and learn because they're fascinating individuals. They're
fascinating because they have to take very very little and
(02:25):
tell a story with it. It's not like a forensic
pathologist where you still have soft tissue, you've got evidence
of trauma in the immediate with focal areas of hemorrhage
and all that stuff that we talked about on bodybags. No, no, no,
that's not what forensic anthropologists do. They have to frame
(02:48):
everything out in very broad sense, and sometimes they can
come up with detailed information, but it's just it's the
way they go about it. The tools that they have
to utilize. And I'm not talking about stuff that they
can necessarily holding their hands as far as tools, but
their intellect that those things that they bring to the
table to try to literally and just envision this for
(03:10):
a second day, to try to fill in the blanks
where soft tissue used to be. It no longer exists.
You got the framework, but you know, the shingles are
off the roof. There's no more siding on the house.
All you've got is that framework that's left behind.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
And so as we dig into this today, dig.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Hey, I see what you did there.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
I follow that all right.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
But I noticed when you were looking and sharing some
of this information with me that you had the basic
five things or ten things whatever, the very specific parts
of forensic anthropology. Yeah, so like from physical anthropology to linguistics. Yes,
(03:57):
so if we carve these out one at a time
and they're all tied together, I'm already ready to flunk
the first final because having done stuff on radio and
television dealing with crime stuff forever, it seems, and I've
never dug this deep.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
I've heard things.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Talked about, I've heard you talk about them, but like,
when you get right down to it, physical anthropology, start
right there, Joe, and tell me what is that and
what does it mean to you?
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Yeah, let's back up a little bit, because you have
you have this kind of you. If you think about
what's contained beneath the roof of the house of anthropology,
you know, you go back to people like Margaret and
Meade that were studying tribal behaviors and all that sort
of stuff. And she was real quick.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I apologize for jumping in. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Back in the day, I think I was in sixth grade,
we lived two houses down from a woman named Margaret Meade.
Really yeah, and she was really kind of secretive. You know,
she was probably in her fifties at the time. I
couldn't really tell she was old, you know, and everybody
(05:13):
over for sanction.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
But anyway, I thought, for the longest time, is that her?
You know, when her name came up in like junior
high something.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Anyway, yeah, you first hear junior high.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Yeah, it wasn't. But I would walk by her house thinking.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
What are the odds?
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Right, Yeah, I mean it's a thought. It's just you know, she's.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Part of the study of cultural anthropology and you know,
anthro it has to do with the study of mankind. Uh.
And some people will say, well, it's the study of
individual personages or it's a study of groups, and she,
you know, she's an example of kind of how that blended,
(05:54):
I think. But that's you have these multiple sections within anthropology,
and you know, one of my favorite things under the
umbrella of anthropology is actually linguistics. I'm fascinated by linguistics.
I'm fascinated by linguists that you know, can talk about
(06:15):
the origins of languages and you know, and all of
these all of these different little subtleties relative to how
we communicate with one another in the origin of you know,
of various types of languages and how we're kind of
all interconnected that people don't think about. But then you
come to physical anthropology, and beneath that umbrella you can
(06:41):
go down a couple of different roads. You have physical anthropology,
which some would say a subset of that is archaeology
and paleo which goes back, you know, into the time
of dinosaurs and all those sorts of things. But for
(07:02):
our purposes, we you know, we have forensic anthropology. And
anybody that starts off wanting to be a forensic anthropologist,
which mind you, is a very long road, you're going
to be rooted in all of those classical studies that
individuals do in anthropology. You got to really want that.
(07:23):
Because here's the thing. I have a lot of students
that come to me and they'll say, Professor Morgan, I
want to go to the body farm and work up there,
and I want to become a forensic anthropologist. I'm like,
are you sure be careful what you're what you're asking
for here, because it's going to be a very long road,
you know, to attain the level of skill that you need.
(07:45):
Most forensic anthropologists they don't hang a shingle out. It's
not like they've got a business. Okay, where you go
to and you walk into the forensic anthropologist's office and
you know, you're sitting in the outer room you're reading
I don't know, you're reading Red Book and you're waiting
for an appointment or something. It's not like that. That's
(08:08):
a different kind of doctor. You're in there consulted. And
guess what, most of them work in academia, so there's
not enough work out there to support yourself. Most people
that are forensic anthropologists work work in work in institutions
(08:30):
somewhere where they teach in addition to it, and then
assult as a forensic anthropologists.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
That's an amazing thing when you because I really did
think that you have a case and you you know
what you need in terms of looking into this, and
you know, I need a forensic anthropologist. I really did
think that you had ten of them, you know, and
you just start top of the list and you start.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Calling who's available. You know.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
It was only after doing this show for some time
that I realized that most of the people who do
this very specialized work and requiring a lot of education
in the classroom tremendous amount, and even more education out
in the field working with somebody who really knows what
they're doing, that they are lashed to a desk and
(09:16):
have to create the time to even go back out
in the field.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
It's a very difficult thing to compromse. I just thought
they were I don't know why.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Most of these people that are academic anthropologists, many of
them work in large institutions. And there's a term that
she used in academia, and you've probably heard it before,
but it bears repeating. It's called publisher parish. So they
study publisher parish. That means that you have to have
(09:46):
ongoing research where you're essentially what it comes down to.
A lot of people will hold it up and say, well,
we're we're studying for the betterment of academia, and you know, no,
you're not. You're you're studying and so that you can
get a federal grant and bring it back into the institution,
and the institution needs those moneies in order to continue
(10:06):
to function. And that's demonstrative of what's going on at
the institution. We're just putting all cards on table here.
That's the reality of it. So if you're a forensic anthropologist,
not only are you teaching classes, but you're also having
to do individual research and oh, by the bye, you're
in addition to that, you're working with a variety of
(10:26):
different law enforcement agencies. I think probably the template for that,
and the best example is doctor Bill Bass who founded
the Body Farm up in ut Up at the University
of Tennessee and Knoxville and solely for the purpose of
trying to understand how human beings decay, which is something
that most people in their wildest dreams would not think
(10:51):
about that occurring. And he created this decay lab, if
you will. And now there's several of them that are
out there institutions. One of the ones that comes to
mind is the Maple Center, which is down at the
University of Florida. You say, well, Morgan, why would you
need why would you need two of these in the South. Well,
(11:11):
first off, there's not just two. I think Western Carolina
has one as well now or they did. Did you
know that when we talk about decomposition and how remains
are naturally rendered down, the impact of the environment in Knoxville,
(11:32):
Tennessee is completely different than if we were in gains
with Florida. Those two environments are so desperately apart from
one another. You're not going to have same insects, You're
not going to have same environmental conditions. All of those
considerations have to go in and it's just like, and
I submit that a lot of the data that you
(11:52):
might collect in long term research at a place like
UT is not necessarily going to apply if you're working
a case, let's say in Bismarck, North Dakota, Okay, because
the environment is going to dictate a lot of this.
You know, just what's your insect life up there, because
it ain't going to be the same as it is,
(12:13):
you know, in smoky mountains, and it's not going to
be the same as you're going to get down in
that marshy territory down in Gainesville where it's super hot
and humid and all those sorts of things. And you
could extend it out even further. You know what about
you know because there's a very famous entomologist world were
renowned entomologists that worked at the University of Hawaii or
(12:33):
was it the University of Hawaii or the shamanat I
think anyway, it doesn't matter, but he was in Hawaii.
Well his world, if he's studying human remains, desiccation, human remains,
that world is going to be completely different than some
other locations. So you have to have a skill set
(12:55):
where I think as a forensic anthropologist, where you study
or an understanding variety of things first off and at
the most basic human anatomy, and you have to know
it like the back of your hand. Nobody intended you
have to know human anatomy. You have to be able
to Here's an interesting thing and I heard this little
(13:16):
I got to tell you the story because it always
fascinated me. There was a story that was related to
me by a friend of mine that was a forriendsic
anthropologist and had gone through the program at UT and
he did. He had to go through what was referred
too as the box test, and the box test was
(13:38):
where doctor Bass would sit on one side of the
table and the student would be on the other side
of the table and there'd be a cardboard box in
between you, and it had holes cut in either end.
You couldn't see inside the box. And doctor Bass would
insert his hand into one end of the box. Students
(14:00):
and sert their hand into the other side of the box,
and the box is filled with comingled skeletal remains, and
just by touch, just by feel, doctor Bass would pick
up that element that's contained in there. It could be
a raccoon bone, it could be a human finger, an
(14:24):
element of the hand, and just by touch you had
to tell him what it was blindly. That's how rigorous
this is. And just let that sink in just for
a second, because that's you know, when you hit that
level of where you're using kind of your tactile senses
(14:46):
to be able to and you know, it's amazing the
training that these people receive. People think about it, well,
I'm going to go to the I'm going to go
to the Body Farm, or I'm going to go to
the Maple Center. Take one of these courses. Yeah, you
can do that, and you have a foundation, you know,
for what moves forward. Because there are specialized courses that
(15:08):
civilians and law enforcement you can go to, but it's
not like going through a master's or a doctoral program,
certainly a doctoral program. When you get there, I.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Puts in the box just to mess with them.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Yeah, yeah, no, kidd. It's the prospect of that on
one level is very terrifying to me. But you have
to put on your science hat when you do that.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
I'm just thinking of the training and education it would
take to determine this is a raccoon bone and.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Not a foot a small bone from the foot.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Yeah, because we've got a billion bones in there and
some are really small, and that I mean, that just
boggles my mind that you could do that by touch.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Well. I got to tell you one of a little
interesting story. The same friend of mine who was from
Louisiana but went to ut for his masters and its
PhD uh. He used to like to take back roads home.
He stayed off of interstates. It was just this thing.
He just liked to travel, you know, through the un
(16:06):
you know, through the less populated areas of the South.
And he had made it all the way from Knoxville
and he was driving through like middle Middle Mississippi, you know,
heading home to South Louisiana and he pulled into a
filling station there and there was a guy.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
That was.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
That was the attendant, if you will, and it's a
typical kind of Southern image. You can imagine he fell
and overall sitting outside in an old broken chair, and
he greeted my friend, you know, as he drove up,
and my friend said that he noticed guy had a
necklace run around him, a leather necklace, and he looked
(16:50):
at it and he said he saw a pennant on it.
And then further closer examination, he realized that it was
not a pennant, but it was a toothpick and it
was hanging and it was a toothpick made out of bone.
And instantaneously, because of his training at UT, he knew
what that bone was. It was a vaculum. Do you
(17:11):
know what a vaculum is?
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Daved?
Speaker 1 (17:14):
A baculum is actually a bone that is are you
ready for this? That it's contained as part of the
antomical structure of certain animals, particularly raccoons, that allows them
to achieve an erection. And so it can be taken
(17:36):
and filed to a sharp point. And I'd never heard
of this before. And you can drill a hole in
one end of it hanging around your neck and use
it as a toothpick. And this fella had one of those.
It's that kind of attention to detail. I was with
the same friend of mine one day and we were
walking across a construction area to go get a cup
(17:58):
of coffee, not too far away from the Medical Examiner's office,
and construction areas if you're ever walking through I think
most people can identify with this. You see clods of
dirt built up, laying about and that sort of thing,
and you look down at the earth and to us,
we see clods of dirt. To him, it wasn't like that.
(18:20):
My friend always walked around with his head downward looking
and I heard him say hmm. And I learned a
long time ago that if this individual ever said hmm
or wow, look at that, it's something I need to
take notice of. He reaches down, picks up a clod
of dirt, cracks it in half, and he caught the
(18:43):
edge of something that was abnormal in his clod, and
he pulled out what he estimated to be an eighteen
ninety friction match holder with the carving of a or
the impression of a dog and a hunter on it.
(19:03):
Where a fellow had dropped the scene where he kept
his matches in and he could strike them, and therese
called friction matches, the old kind where you can see
somebody like flicking it with their thumb, you know, like
they're doing the movies. And I never would have seen that.
But it's that kind of training and attention to detail
that you want in any kind of forensic anthropologists you're
(19:27):
going to invite onto your death scene. I think probably
out of I don't know if you guys share this opinion,
(19:48):
but for me, out of all of the Terminator movies
with Schwarzenegger, my favorite one is the second one, you know,
with the Liquid guy. I love that movie. I'd watch it.
It's almost like a remote drop moment for me. I
watch it pretty much every time that it comes on.
First one's okay, I never really watched the other ones,
(20:12):
but there's a line in that movie involving Sarah Connor
where she is holding someone against their will and she
says to them there are two hundred I think it
was two hundred and six bones in the human body,
and she implies at least that she's going to break
(20:34):
every one of them if this individual doesn't comply to
her and that you know that ain't gonna happen, but
at any rate, she brings that up. And one of
the things that you think about with skeletal anatomy is
that it's so vast and just you know, just indulge
(20:56):
me here and think about this with with the with
the skeletal anatomy, most adults do have approximately and it
can vary, do have two hundred and six bones in
the body. Okay, babies are born with two hundred and seventy's.
(21:18):
It's one of those weird things where the older you get,
the fewer bones you have developmentally, and that kind of
interesting and that's that goes through the process of the
bones fusing and these sorts of things where you're you know,
you're developing along the way. And again, those numbers, many
(21:40):
people think that those numbers are absolutely static. Sometimes they're not.
Sometimes people will have more or fewer. But on the whole,
it's approximately two hundred and two hundred and six And
you've got two separate if you want to break it
down atomically so that we can understand it, you've got uh,
(22:06):
two axes that you work on really with the human skeleton,
you have the what's referred to as the axillary, which
is going to be kind of the mid line, that
the center part of your body. And then you have
the appendicular and those are like your attachments, like your
arms and your legs. So you've got your center core,
your trunk, which is going to be the axilla, and
(22:29):
then you're going to have the appendicular that extends out
from the bodies. So you're working in those two, those
two broad groups when you're trying to determine, you know,
what remains there are. I was thinking, David, I was
telling you before we went on air to days start
(22:50):
taping taping boy dating myself there when Brian Laundry's remained
were found down there in that swamp. I'm actually looking
at his report right now that the forensic anthropologists generated.
(23:12):
By the way, it's very well written report back.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Up very quickly.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Brian Laundry the person who killed his fiance Gabby Gabby
sorry Gabby Patito, and then drove her band that she
made for back to his parents' house in Florida, where
they had been living before they were on their trip,
and then after dodging police with help from his parents,
he then goes out into the woods camping and commits suicide.
(23:41):
But after committing suicide, the area where he did it
in that park got flooded. Yeah, okay, So the reason
I'm setting that scene is a lot of people don't
realize what the forensic anthropologist was required to do when
they got on scene. So what was different about that
(24:02):
Joe that required a very very special investigator to come
in and figure out what happened?
Speaker 2 (24:09):
I mean, he's got a gun.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
Shot in the head, right, Yeah, he does. And by
the way, it's a very atypical gunshot wound as far
as self inflicted. I've always you know, kind of raised
an eyebrow to that, but that's okay. Well, it wasn't
necessarily positioned in classic classic location as far as an
entrance wind goes. It was more up and back, which
(24:33):
you know, always intrigued me intellectually.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
You know, where would it normally be? Where would you expect?
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Well, you're you're thinking there are Let's just break it
down this way. There are four major bone groups that
compose the human skull. You got. You'll tap your forehead,
that's your frontal bone, and up above it bilaterally on
either side, you have what's referred to as the paradal
or some people will say parati heel, and it's kind
(25:02):
of a curved bone. It's on both sides and it's
high up and then below the proetal on either side. Again, bilaterally,
you have the temporal bone, okay, which is a very
thin bone. It's on either side forward of the ear.
As the prital bone sweeps back and down, it marries
(25:23):
up with the excipital bone, which is that bony protuberance
that you have on the backside. And those are like
the four major bone groups in forensics that we look at,
you know, Like if we'll I'll give you an example
why it's important. Like when we go to the scene
most of the time, if we're talking about an injury
(25:46):
to the skull, we're going to say things like he
sustained a gunshot woman or a parent gunshot wound to
the right right temple or in the right pril bone.
And it is, I don't know, five centimeters ford of
(26:06):
the top of the right ear. It's superior to the
right right miatus, which is your actually to your ear hole.
It's it's superior to that by ten ten centimeters, and
so it's all about orientation. You know where these are
with laundry in particular, if you have this baseline of
(26:33):
number of bones and again this approximation of two hundred
and six when they went out there day to this
and I'm glad you pointed this out, you know, I
completely Isn't that amazing? We talked about this case for years, right,
certainly months with gap Tito, and it's you know, for
me going you know, moving forward, and probably with you.
I hate to speak for you, but you know, it
(26:54):
begins to fade, you know, after a while, because you're
layering all these other cases on top of it. When
they went to examine or try to recover his remains,
they've they found roughly one hundred and three bones. Okay,
So that that gives you an idea, you know, you're
(27:15):
you're literally that is literally if you're thinking about two
hundred and six bones that we're supposed to have had
half of that? Okay, Now what do we mean by that? Well,
you know you've got and bones can range in size,
you know, I guess the smallest bone is probably the
state ease, which is one of those tiny little bones
(27:37):
that's inside of your ear. All right, You remember that
we learned all that in school. You know, we've got
the hammer and the anvil and all that stuff.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Just to give you an idea, Like many people listening
right now, I actually probably napped for most of that,
and then the night before I broke out the book
and memorized as best I could, took the test the
next day, and if I got a C minus, I
was the abbeys.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
My big bugaboo was always the hands and the feet.
Those the hands and feet are absolutely miracle creation of God.
They're they're so complex and so a typical cap to
any any doctor that's out there that works on hands
and feet, because it's the The anatomy is so complex,
(28:24):
the biomechanics are so complex. But you know, you have
the state ease, which is arguably the tiniest bone, and
then the longest bone, and the human bodies the femur,
which is you know where it fits into uh, into
your your hip socket if you will, extends all the
way from your hip down. So with with laundry. For example,
(28:47):
he you know, he roughly had one hundred, one hundred
and eight bones that they were covered out there. And
what made is so very difficult is that this Dave,
this was not This was not a burial, okay, And
forensic anthropologists have to work in a variety of different conditions.
(29:11):
This is a water environment, which they By the way,
if I'm not mistaken, I probably am. I think that
the forensic anthropologists either came from University of Southern Florida
or the University of Central Florida. My money's on Southern
Florida though, And she kind of led the team out there,
(29:33):
if I'm not mistaken, because FBI crime Scene Response team
was already out there. And this is very complex because
once bodies begin to decay and you're in a very
austere environment like this, the kind of rising and falling
of tide are not tied. But the water levels in
(29:53):
the swampy area are going to be dictated by rainfall.
And you know, for those of us that have you know,
spent any time in Florida, you know that they'll get
gully washers down there, that will everything will be you'll
have water standing in the streets. Well. Just and that's
in a controlled environment where you have gutter systems and
all that. Just imagine you're in the swampy area back
(30:15):
in this park day and there's nowhere for the water
to really drain to. In the immediate it just kind
of kind of floats there, okay, and then it'll drop
back down, then it'll go back up, then it'll drop
back down. So you know, in the early piece to this,
when he died, he now becomes subject to that same environment.
(30:40):
And there's even you know, and even in the report
for laundry, you know, the forensic anthropologist goes to some
length and describe that there had been you know, carnivore
activity that had been you know, feasting on his remains.
So there's no telling how many bones were essentially drug
off to some burrow somewhere, taken up in a tree,
(31:01):
which will happen the tinier bones. And it creates a
very complex environment. And some of the stuff that forensic
anthropologists do a lot of it is based on not
just what they're seeing, but what they do what they
don't see. Just let that sink in for a second.
(31:21):
You know, you think about other sciences that are out there,
and there are some that work on this idea that
you know, I'm not just looking for positive findings. I'm
looking for negative findings. And I don't mean positive and
negative relative to how you happen to feel about something
(31:41):
in a moment time. I'm talking about a presence or
an absence of something, and so that's one of the
things you know with laundry in particularly, and there have
been a lot of other cases like this too over
the years. So just because you go out to a
scene where their skeletal remains doesn't mean that the remains
are going to be completely hacked, that it will all
(32:02):
be there. And that's where the difficulty really arises as
it's applied to the skill of the forensic anthropologists. How
are they going to be able to interpret what they're finding,
how does it fit into the narrative of the death,
and what can their assessment reveal out there. I found
(32:26):
that it's better for me, in particular, that when I
am at the scene with the forensic anthropologist, no matter
how much study I've done in the past, no matter
how many cases I've worked, it's better that for that
moment in time, when I'm in that individual's presence, I'm
(32:47):
no longer an investigator. I'm a student that should keep
their mouths shut and their eyes and their ears. People
(33:11):
talk a lot about doctor Bass as well as should
because he is a giant in the field of forensic anthropology.
Uh and in forensic science, it's not just a lot
of stuff that doctor Bass has done has you know,
kind of seeped over into other practice. He's greatly influenced
forensic pathology. I think he's he's influenced the study of
(33:31):
ballistics relative to how bones interact with projectiles. Tool marks
is one of the big areas that they that they investigate.
He had one fellow on his staff for a long
time that was one of the leading experts.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
In the world on saw marks.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
And all this guy did was study the different types
of saw blades and what kind of impressions they would
generate on bone, whether it's you know, aular saw or
a hack saw. But one of the more interesting characters
in forensic anthropology is a guy that is no longer
with us, and I think he was at the University
(34:12):
of Oklahoma for a long time. It's doctor Clyde Snow
and doctor Snow who I never had an opportunity to meet.
I wish that I could have. Doctor Snow was kind
of a rotund individual that was always dressed. He always
looked like he was going on safari and smoked a
lot and he but he came up with a really
(34:36):
interesting term and I still use this to this day.
When I teach a section at jack State on forensic anthropology.
He coined the phrase. He coined the phrase, let me
get this straight straight osteobiography. And what he understood that
many people don't understand is that by the study of
(35:02):
human skeletal remains, we can learn so much about bodies,
and not just the remains that are in front of you,
but a life that had been lived prior to that.
And let me give you a kind of a one
of the the big for instances here. Let's just say
(35:23):
that you've got human remains and you're trying to determine
you're trying to do sex determination on a skeletal remain. Well,
you're not just looking at the size of the bone,
because males male's bones tends to be robust. Female bones
(35:44):
tend to be was referred to as grassisle, which means
kind of delicate. Fine, you're looking for any kind of
disease related changes. Well, if you've got a bone that
shows shows an indicatation of osteoporosis, well, odds are that's
(36:04):
not going to be a male skeletal element that's going
to be a female element because there's a huge industry
out there that's built up on treating osteoporosis. I mean,
how many times do you hear that in the news.
I knew one friend of my wife who she ate
(36:26):
ate tombs every single day because her doctor told her
that it's a great source of calcium to you know,
knock down, use something, use something to knock down the
advancement of osteoporosis. There's other diseases too, you know. You
have like if you're digging through older remains and they'll
(36:48):
have somebody died of tuberculosis, there will be these changes
that take place to bone as a result of tuberculosis.
You have cases where I know there's a current dig
that's going on over in uh and I'd mentioned this
I think in a previous episode going on over in Bristol, England,
(37:10):
and you have the bodies of children and the children
are malnourished well developmentally, that skeleton is going to demonstrate malnutrition. Okay, trauma.
I don't know about you, Dave. I think I have
(37:31):
played football. I think I I think I have broken
every one of my fingers at one point in time,
most of them I would just pop, and now I'm
paying the price for it. I've broken my hand, broken
my nose three times. You know I've had yeah, no kidding,
(37:52):
it seems like it. But you know, if you were
to strip down all that remains a Joe Scott Morgan
and you were looking at my skeleton, well, I have
an osteobiography. As a result, you're going to be able
to tell certain little things about me and the life
that I had led. Not only are you going to
(38:12):
be able to see, for instance, when my nose that
has been broken multiple times, not only going to see
evidence that it has been broken, but as time has
gone on, you're going to be able to appreciate the
You're going to be able to appreciate how long ago
this happened because the bone will begin to smooth. You
(38:35):
look at. One of the things that I'm always fascinated
by is if I ever had a skull, I would
look at the sutures on the top of the skull,
which are if you, I urge anybody right now, go
and look up picture an actual picture of a human skull,
and you'll see these kind of curvilinear lines that run
(39:00):
through the middle line of the skull and they run
on the backside of the frontal bone and back in
the acceptial area. Well, those are called suture lines. And
when we're babies and we're forming, you know that kind
of and they have interlocking teeth. Well, we'll look at
a human skull, Dave, and if those suture lines are smooth,
(39:28):
like when you run your hand over it, you can't
feel them. Sometimes they're obliterated. You know that that person
was like really advanced in age because you think about
just doing this, Just imagine this every time you raise
your eyebrows frowned. Okay, smile. The overlying skin is moving
(39:54):
and it wears on bone. Over a period of time,
it eradicates it and you'll have like we call it
sure suture obliteration. You'll also have it if you take
the tip of your tongue and stick it a roof
of your mouth. That's actually your hard palette. You've heard
(40:15):
that term before. Well, if you stripped away the skin,
the tissue off of your hard palate and you could
get down to the bone, which actually is kind of
like the floor of the skull, there's suture lines in there,
and those sutures. Well, I actually did a paper on
this years ago. You have suture line obliteration in the
(40:36):
roof of the mouth as well, and then you have
joint where you can see arthritic changes. And if anybody
has had like a gunshot wound of broken arm, even
if it's been surgically repaired, you can still see evidence
that the bone is what's called modeled. It's trying to fuse,
(40:59):
you know, back together, and you'll get you know, bones
will do that. You can have somebody that has a
severe break and they never got it treated. You'll see
some old person that's limping around, for instance, and if
you look at their like if you're talking about a
fractured femur that was never repaired by you know, by
surgery or whatever, you'll see these kind of I don't
(41:23):
really know how to describe them. You'll see these kind
of protuberances on the bone and it's it's kind of
ghastly looking where the bone is has fused back together
and the person permanently walks with a limp. Probably in
life they had a hard time, but that bone wants
to get back together and heal. And you can see
surgical interventions as well. There's any number of bones that
(41:46):
I've been on site with forensic anthropology we've recovered that
had screws in them, you know, where you'll have somebody
that had some kind of surgical repair, and this is
these are stainless steel screws back in the day. They're
probably using other types of components now to do that.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
The original Planet of the Apes when Tarlton Heston is
in the cave and he's going through the different things
that it be found in there. One was dental the
other was the heart valve, you know, and he was
describing the things that he knew of that.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
Person who has long gone. All those left. Isn't that amazing?
Speaker 1 (42:24):
I forgot all about that scene, And you're absolutely right,
and that stuff does remain behind. I think at the
Morphy case in particular, Oh wow, where the port was
found with her remains, her skeletal remains, and that stuff.
Eventually it would it's going to go away, but it'll
(42:47):
hang back. And there's certain things that you're looking for
at the scene that will give you an indication of
this individual's osteobiography. But you know, there's so many cases
over the years have have required the use of forensic
anthropologists probably. And let me give you an example, going
(43:10):
back to doctor Snow. Doctor Snow was had quite the
reputation of being you know, he was kind of a
I don't know if you use the term swashbuckler. I
don't think he was swimming off of chandeliers, but he
was a man of his time. He actually went and
can you imagine doing this, he imagine going down to
Central America in the height of all the civil wars
(43:34):
that were happening back in the eighties, and Dave he'd
go down there and exhum mass graves and be shot
at while he's down there, and he's standing on the
edge in some jungle location, you know, in Honduras or Nicaragua,
where El Salvador, wherever it is that he was, and
(43:55):
to try to make sense out of what was still
in those graves. And I think a lot of people
would say, and this goes to kind of being an anthropologist,
A lot of people will say, well, they're dead. What
difference does it make. We know that they were all
lined up and shot and pushed down a grave. But
you can learn a lot from first off, what has
been deposited in the grave. For instance, if in war
(44:18):
crimes cases, and you see this in You've seen this
in Europe over the years as well, and I would
submit to you in Southeast Asia, when people are killed
and dumped into a grave, well you need to have
a forensic anthropologists to tell you are they only killing males?
(44:44):
Are they killing males? Are they killing only females? Are
they killing the elderly? Are they trying to eradicate all
of the children in a particular village. From that, you
can begin to kind of piece together what sorts of
people you're dealing with. And when this goes, say, for instance,
(45:08):
you're working a case of you know, genocide like this,
that information would go to like a World court or
wherever it is that they try to prosecute these things
to give them an idea as to who is being
targeted in any particular case. You know, there are a
lot of cases where, particularly if you have tribal issues,
where they'll kill all the males and then kidnap all
(45:30):
the women and children and try to you know, bring
them into their own community. And so that's the type
of thing that you know that doctor Snow would do,
and then he would look, you know, he'd also try
to give them an idea. How were they killed? Is
there an indication that they had endured torture over a
protracted period of time where they're being beaten, they've got
(45:52):
multiple broken bones that occurred in life, or was this
simply they dragged them out of their homes in the
middle of the night and began to pop them in
the back of the head into a preduct grave. So
you can learn a lot. You can learn a lot
by what you're seeing physically manifesting itself out of a scene.
(46:19):
With going back to, you know, to other cases that
are out there. I had friends that worked Waco, for instance,
that were out there. Dave, you're talking just tens of
not just skeletal remains, but you're talking skeletal remains that
are skeletonized as a result of intense flame. These these
(46:45):
remains are incredibly fragile. I wrote about in my book
Blood Beneath My Feet from all those years ago where
I'd had an episode of I was going through a
real tough time in my life and really dealing with
(47:05):
certain issues with PTSD. And we had a guy on
Georgia four hundred that had run his car into the
side of a pillar of a support uh support pillar
of an overpass on George of four hundred. And I'll
never forget. It was a little Uh, I was gonna say, Texas.
It was a little Ford Ranger pickup truck. He was
on his way into work, and when he hit this
(47:28):
bridge pillar support pillar, his truck burst into flames, and
he was trying to get out of the car, and he,
you know, he succumbed and his body continued to burn.
And to give you an idea of the fragile nature
of it and what you encounter. When I was at
the scene, I went to and as was my practice,
(47:52):
i'd look inside the cap of a vehicle, even if
it had been on fire. And I'm looking around, and
this guy's hands were in let's refer to as the
pugilistic condition or posture, where the hands are drawn up
at the Everything contracts at that point in time depend
upon heat. And as I stuck my head into the cab,
(48:14):
the guy's left hand brushed against my right cheek, and
in kind of a stamp move, I grabbed like this
with my left gloved hand, and his entire arm broke
off in my hand. And when you think about the
intensity of fire, for instance, like in Waco, or you
(48:38):
think about the Twin Towers, this intense flame that's in there.
These remains become very very fragile, so you're already dealing
with something where you're trying to assess a few things. Well,
first off, you want to know who they are. We've
talked about this on body bags before. It's to me,
(48:58):
knowing who somebody is is probably more important than knowing
what caused their death, because if I can find out
who they are, I can fill in the blanks relative
to the life that they led, and maybe in some
way the police can take that information and go find
out who killed them. So you're trying to determine who
they are, and then you're trying to determine what happened
(49:21):
to them. And it's only a forensic anthropologist that really
has that skill set to deal with these very fragile,
delicate remains, and they're always fighting against the elements. That's
one of the fascinating things about the practice of forensic anthropology.
You know all those things that they do when they
go back to their lab and try to ascertain whose
(49:42):
remains they're dealing with, Who is this person? It's rather
a daunting task, Dave.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
So the forensic anthropologist is brought in going back to
brian laundry for a minute, because we find his skeletonized
remains as bones and I guess there was minimal amount
of flesh. Yeah, they take the bones and they send
them to the friends. They anthropologist, and the entire point
(50:11):
is to figure out how this person died.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
They already know who it is. I mean, I'm sure
that's part of the process.
Speaker 3 (50:17):
You have to positively identify the individual, even though you
know it is all right. But you mentioned that there
was something wrong about or not wrong, something different about
the gunshot.
Speaker 1 (50:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (50:30):
So the forensic anthropologists coming into this, are they tasked
with determining what happened? Or are they tasked with tell
us the facts of this situation of what you see
right here, not your years of experience, but just what
does the bone tell you?
Speaker 2 (50:49):
Is that what they're doing. I'm kind of curious.
Speaker 1 (50:51):
Because you said that is what they're doing. And listen,
police are sitting there and they're scratching their head, okay,
because they're trying to determine, uh, what happened to this individual.
They might suspect that there's a gunshot woman, but when
you're listening, if you're if you're talking about a remain
(51:13):
that has been exposed to harsh elements, you can have
events where the skeleton will just kind of come to pieces, okay,
and you don't know, for instance, would laundry as an example,
you don't know if this defect and we'll call it
a defect instead of a gunshot woman, because that's really
(51:34):
all that you know at that point, you've got a whole.
Is that was that whole something that occurred in life
leading up to death or is it something that occurred afterwards,
because you begin to think about, well, you've got animal activity.
You know that that's occurring out there. Was there an
(51:56):
animal that was gnawing on this on this remain? I
give you if you think that that's far fetched. I've
had in my career. I've had two cases involving involving
dogs that drug skulls up into backyards and their masters
(52:17):
went into the backyard and they were in the backyard
at both homes at the same time, at not the
same time, but two different cases. And the dog you know,
if you've ever I loved dogs, by the way, but
if you if you ever see a dog with a ball,
they'll put it between their their paws and they'll they'll
play with it and that sort of thing. Well, you
take something shaped like a ball, like a human skull,
and they're going to have it between their their their
(52:40):
forepaws like this. And in both cases, the dog had
set to gnawing on the top of the skull and
over period of time, if you know, if they kept
that skull and just kind of they break the whole
thing down eventually. Uh you know, I've got a I've
got a rescue lib door retriever and she's got incredible
(53:02):
jaw strength. I mean, she can eradicate an entire bone
in no period of time whatsoever. It's amazing what they
can do. So you have to factor all that in.
You're trying to give this information back to the police,
and the forensic anthropologies is given enough time, will arrive
at their own conclusion about not just anti mortem versus
(53:24):
post mortem, but they will also give you an idea
as to things like with gunshot wounds. They'll give you
an idea about directionality. You know, is this front to back,
is it left to right, is it from above to below?
You know, trajectory of bullets. Then you get into these
(53:48):
areas that Lord knows, Dave you and I have covered
so many of them with dismemberments, you have to be
really no pun intended as forensic anthropologies, you have to
be very sharp relat to dismemberment because you have to
understand what kind of tool could have facilitated this bone
coming apart. You know that it didn't just spontaneously come
(54:10):
apart in midshaft of a femur with a spiral saw
marks on the on the leading edges of it. This
is something that somebody took a you know, maybe they
took a bandsaw or they took a circular saw and
just ran it through the center of the thing. Well,
what type of instrument is this? So you have to
be up on tool marks to be able to assess this.
(54:32):
And also was this done in life? Was this part
of torture? Could it? You know, was some limb hacked
off while the person was still alive or was this
something that was done after the fact. So you have
to be really up your You have to really up
your game as a forensic anthropologist to not just understand
(54:54):
the bone itself or trying to classify it anatomically, but
these individuals have to be able to be able to
understand what happened to the person in death, because, for
the most part, when we die and you call in
a forensic anthropologist, our bony structures are all that remain.
(55:19):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks.
Body dytas, but Joseph's gotten more. It's an interesting thing,
the human skeleton. Did you know that every stage of
life that we go through is kind of marked by
our physical support system, if you will, our anatomical support system,
(00:25):
our framework, that framework that our organs rest within and
that our skin stretches over. It marks time for us.
It is a It gives off developmental signals. It talks
about disease, and I say talk as if you can
(00:47):
have a conversation with it. But if you read it right,
you can learn a lot about people through their skeletons.
And in my world, in the world of metal legal
death investigation, sometimes skeletal remains are all that we have
(01:08):
to tell the tale. I'm Josephcotten Morgan and this is
body Bags, Brother Dave. I've been excited about doing this
episode with you because I got to make a confession
right here, right now and tell you this dirty, dark
little secret about myself. I am, at my heart, a
(01:37):
amateur frustrated forensic anthropologists. I've always worked with forensic anthropologists.
I've been in their worlds, I've been in their labs,
I've been in the field with them, slapping mosquitoes and
fending off snakes. Yes, been in swampy walk, I've been
(02:00):
in a rugged terrain. But I have always been enamored
a forensic anthropologists, and every opportunity that I have, I've
always welcomed that moment when I can kind of sit
at their feet and learn because they're fascinating individuals. They're
fascinating because they have to take very very little and
(02:25):
tell a story with it. It's not like a forensic
pathologist where you still have soft tissue, you've got evidence
of trauma in the immediate with focal areas of hemorrhage
and all that stuff that we talked about on bodybags. No, no, no,
that's not what forensic anthropologists do. They have to frame
(02:48):
everything out in very broad sense, and sometimes they can
come up with detailed information, but it's just it's the
way they go about it. The tools that they have
to utilize. And I'm not talking about stuff that they
can necessarily holding their hands as far as tools, but
their intellect that those things that they bring to the
table to try to literally and just envision this for
(03:10):
a second day, to try to fill in the blanks
where soft tissue used to be. It no longer exists.
You got the framework, but you know, the shingles are
off the roof. There's no more siding on the house.
All you've got is that framework that's left behind.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
And so as we dig into this today, dig.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Hey, I see what you did there.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
I follow that all right.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
But I noticed when you were looking and sharing some
of this information with me that you had the basic
five things or ten things whatever, the very specific parts
of forensic anthropology. Yeah, so like from physical anthropology to linguistics. Yes,
(03:57):
so if we carve these out one at a time
and they're all tied together, I'm already ready to flunk
the first final because having done stuff on radio and
television dealing with crime stuff forever, it seems, and I've
never dug this deep.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
I've heard things.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Talked about, I've heard you talk about them, but like,
when you get right down to it, physical anthropology, start
right there, Joe, and tell me what is that and
what does it mean to you?
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Yeah, let's back up a little bit, because you have
you have this kind of you. If you think about
what's contained beneath the roof of the house of anthropology,
you know, you go back to people like Margaret and
Meade that were studying tribal behaviors and all that sort
of stuff. And she was real quick.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I apologize for jumping in. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Back in the day, I think I was in sixth grade,
we lived two houses down from a woman named Margaret Meade.
Really yeah, and she was really kind of secretive. You know,
she was probably in her fifties at the time. I
couldn't really tell she was old, you know, and everybody
(05:13):
over for sanction.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
But anyway, I thought, for the longest time, is that her?
You know, when her name came up in like junior
high something.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Anyway, yeah, you first hear junior high.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Yeah, it wasn't. But I would walk by her house thinking.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
What are the odds?
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Right, Yeah, I mean it's a thought. It's just you know, she's.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Part of the study of cultural anthropology and you know,
anthro it has to do with the study of mankind. Uh.
And some people will say, well, it's the study of
individual personages or it's a study of groups, and she,
you know, she's an example of kind of how that blended,
(05:54):
I think. But that's you have these multiple sections within anthropology,
and you know, one of my favorite things under the
umbrella of anthropology is actually linguistics. I'm fascinated by linguistics.
I'm fascinated by linguists that you know, can talk about
(06:15):
the origins of languages and you know, and all of
these all of these different little subtleties relative to how
we communicate with one another in the origin of you know,
of various types of languages and how we're kind of
all interconnected that people don't think about. But then you
come to physical anthropology, and beneath that umbrella you can
(06:41):
go down a couple of different roads. You have physical anthropology,
which some would say a subset of that is archaeology
and paleo which goes back, you know, into the time
of dinosaurs and all those sorts of things. But for
(07:02):
our purposes, we you know, we have forensic anthropology. And
anybody that starts off wanting to be a forensic anthropologist,
which mind you, is a very long road, you're going
to be rooted in all of those classical studies that
individuals do in anthropology. You got to really want that.
(07:23):
Because here's the thing. I have a lot of students
that come to me and they'll say, Professor Morgan, I
want to go to the body farm and work up there,
and I want to become a forensic anthropologist. I'm like,
are you sure be careful what you're what you're asking
for here, because it's going to be a very long road,
you know, to attain the level of skill that you need.
(07:45):
Most forensic anthropologists they don't hang a shingle out. It's
not like they've got a business. Okay, where you go
to and you walk into the forensic anthropologist's office and
you know, you're sitting in the outer room you're reading
I don't know, you're reading Red Book and you're waiting
for an appointment or something. It's not like that. That's
(08:08):
a different kind of doctor. You're in there consulted. And
guess what, most of them work in academia, so there's
not enough work out there to support yourself. Most people
that are forensic anthropologists work work in work in institutions
(08:30):
somewhere where they teach in addition to it, and then
assult as a forensic anthropologists.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
That's an amazing thing when you because I really did
think that you have a case and you you know
what you need in terms of looking into this, and
you know, I need a forensic anthropologist. I really did
think that you had ten of them, you know, and
you just start top of the list and you start.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Calling who's available. You know.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
It was only after doing this show for some time
that I realized that most of the people who do
this very specialized work and requiring a lot of education
in the classroom tremendous amount, and even more education out
in the field working with somebody who really knows what
they're doing, that they are lashed to a desk and
(09:16):
have to create the time to even go back out
in the field.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
It's a very difficult thing to compromse. I just thought
they were I don't know why.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Most of these people that are academic anthropologists, many of
them work in large institutions. And there's a term that
she used in academia, and you've probably heard it before,
but it bears repeating. It's called publisher parish. So they
study publisher parish. That means that you have to have
(09:46):
ongoing research where you're essentially what it comes down to.
A lot of people will hold it up and say, well,
we're we're studying for the betterment of academia, and you know, no,
you're not. You're you're studying and so that you can
get a federal grant and bring it back into the institution,
and the institution needs those moneies in order to continue
(10:06):
to function. And that's demonstrative of what's going on at
the institution. We're just putting all cards on table here.
That's the reality of it. So if you're a forensic anthropologist,
not only are you teaching classes, but you're also having
to do individual research and oh, by the bye, you're
in addition to that, you're working with a variety of
(10:26):
different law enforcement agencies. I think probably the template for that,
and the best example is doctor Bill Bass who founded
the Body Farm up in ut Up at the University
of Tennessee and Knoxville and solely for the purpose of
trying to understand how human beings decay, which is something
that most people in their wildest dreams would not think
(10:51):
about that occurring. And he created this decay lab, if
you will. And now there's several of them that are
out there institutions. One of the ones that comes to
mind is the Maple Center, which is down at the
University of Florida. You say, well, Morgan, why would you
need why would you need two of these in the South. Well,
(11:11):
first off, there's not just two. I think Western Carolina
has one as well now or they did. Did you
know that when we talk about decomposition and how remains
are naturally rendered down, the impact of the environment in Knoxville,
(11:32):
Tennessee is completely different than if we were in gains
with Florida. Those two environments are so desperately apart from
one another. You're not going to have same insects, You're
not going to have same environmental conditions. All of those
considerations have to go in and it's just like, and
I submit that a lot of the data that you
(11:52):
might collect in long term research at a place like
UT is not necessarily going to apply if you're working
a case, let's say in Bismarck, North Dakota, Okay, because
the environment is going to dictate a lot of this.
You know, just what's your insect life up there, because
it ain't going to be the same as it is,
(12:13):
you know, in smoky mountains, and it's not going to
be the same as you're going to get down in
that marshy territory down in Gainesville where it's super hot
and humid and all those sorts of things. And you
could extend it out even further. You know what about
you know because there's a very famous entomologist world were
renowned entomologists that worked at the University of Hawaii or
(12:33):
was it the University of Hawaii or the shamanat I
think anyway, it doesn't matter, but he was in Hawaii.
Well his world, if he's studying human remains, desiccation, human remains,
that world is going to be completely different than some
other locations. So you have to have a skill set
(12:55):
where I think as a forensic anthropologist, where you study
or an understanding variety of things first off and at
the most basic human anatomy, and you have to know
it like the back of your hand. Nobody intended you
have to know human anatomy. You have to be able
to Here's an interesting thing and I heard this little
(13:16):
I got to tell you the story because it always
fascinated me. There was a story that was related to
me by a friend of mine that was a forriendsic
anthropologist and had gone through the program at UT and
he did. He had to go through what was referred
too as the box test, and the box test was
(13:38):
where doctor Bass would sit on one side of the
table and the student would be on the other side
of the table and there'd be a cardboard box in
between you, and it had holes cut in either end.
You couldn't see inside the box. And doctor Bass would
insert his hand into one end of the box. Students
(14:00):
and sert their hand into the other side of the box,
and the box is filled with comingled skeletal remains, and
just by touch, just by feel, doctor Bass would pick
up that element that's contained in there. It could be
a raccoon bone, it could be a human finger, an
(14:24):
element of the hand, and just by touch you had
to tell him what it was blindly. That's how rigorous
this is. And just let that sink in just for
a second, because that's you know, when you hit that
level of where you're using kind of your tactile senses
(14:46):
to be able to and you know, it's amazing the
training that these people receive. People think about it, well,
I'm going to go to the I'm going to go
to the Body Farm, or I'm going to go to
the Maple Center. Take one of these courses. Yeah, you
can do that, and you have a foundation, you know,
for what moves forward. Because there are specialized courses that
(15:08):
civilians and law enforcement you can go to, but it's
not like going through a master's or a doctoral program,
certainly a doctoral program. When you get there, I.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Puts in the box just to mess with them.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Yeah, yeah, no, kidd. It's the prospect of that on
one level is very terrifying to me. But you have
to put on your science hat when you do that.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
I'm just thinking of the training and education it would
take to determine this is a raccoon bone and.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Not a foot a small bone from the foot.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Yeah, because we've got a billion bones in there and
some are really small, and that I mean, that just
boggles my mind that you could do that by touch.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Well. I got to tell you one of a little
interesting story. The same friend of mine who was from
Louisiana but went to ut for his masters and its
PhD uh. He used to like to take back roads home.
He stayed off of interstates. It was just this thing.
He just liked to travel, you know, through the un
(16:06):
you know, through the less populated areas of the South.
And he had made it all the way from Knoxville
and he was driving through like middle Middle Mississippi, you know,
heading home to South Louisiana and he pulled into a
filling station there and there was a guy.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
That was.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
That was the attendant, if you will, and it's a
typical kind of Southern image. You can imagine he fell
and overall sitting outside in an old broken chair, and
he greeted my friend, you know, as he drove up,
and my friend said that he noticed guy had a
necklace run around him, a leather necklace, and he looked
(16:50):
at it and he said he saw a pennant on it.
And then further closer examination, he realized that it was
not a pennant, but it was a toothpick and it
was hanging and it was a toothpick made out of bone.
And instantaneously, because of his training at UT, he knew
what that bone was. It was a vaculum. Do you
(17:11):
know what a vaculum is?
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Daved?
Speaker 1 (17:14):
A baculum is actually a bone that is are you
ready for this? That it's contained as part of the
antomical structure of certain animals, particularly raccoons, that allows them
to achieve an erection. And so it can be taken
(17:36):
and filed to a sharp point. And I'd never heard
of this before. And you can drill a hole in
one end of it hanging around your neck and use
it as a toothpick. And this fella had one of those.
It's that kind of attention to detail. I was with
the same friend of mine one day and we were
walking across a construction area to go get a cup
(17:58):
of coffee, not too far away from the Medical Examiner's office,
and construction areas if you're ever walking through I think
most people can identify with this. You see clods of
dirt built up, laying about and that sort of thing,
and you look down at the earth and to us,
we see clods of dirt. To him, it wasn't like that.
(18:20):
My friend always walked around with his head downward looking
and I heard him say hmm. And I learned a
long time ago that if this individual ever said hmm
or wow, look at that, it's something I need to
take notice of. He reaches down, picks up a clod
of dirt, cracks it in half, and he caught the
(18:43):
edge of something that was abnormal in his clod, and
he pulled out what he estimated to be an eighteen
ninety friction match holder with the carving of a or
the impression of a dog and a hunter on it.
(19:03):
Where a fellow had dropped the scene where he kept
his matches in and he could strike them, and therese
called friction matches, the old kind where you can see
somebody like flicking it with their thumb, you know, like
they're doing the movies. And I never would have seen that.
But it's that kind of training and attention to detail
that you want in any kind of forensic anthropologists you're
(19:27):
going to invite onto your death scene. I think probably
out of I don't know if you guys share this opinion,
(19:48):
but for me, out of all of the Terminator movies
with Schwarzenegger, my favorite one is the second one, you know,
with the Liquid guy. I love that movie. I'd watch it.
It's almost like a remote drop moment for me. I
watch it pretty much every time that it comes on.
First one's okay, I never really watched the other ones,
(20:12):
but there's a line in that movie involving Sarah Connor
where she is holding someone against their will and she
says to them there are two hundred I think it
was two hundred and six bones in the human body,
and she implies at least that she's going to break
(20:34):
every one of them if this individual doesn't comply to
her and that you know that ain't gonna happen, but
at any rate, she brings that up. And one of
the things that you think about with skeletal anatomy is
that it's so vast and just you know, just indulge
(20:56):
me here and think about this with with the with
the skeletal anatomy, most adults do have approximately and it
can vary, do have two hundred and six bones in
the body. Okay, babies are born with two hundred and seventy's.
(21:18):
It's one of those weird things where the older you get,
the fewer bones you have developmentally, and that kind of
interesting and that's that goes through the process of the
bones fusing and these sorts of things where you're you know,
you're developing along the way. And again, those numbers, many
(21:40):
people think that those numbers are absolutely static. Sometimes they're not.
Sometimes people will have more or fewer. But on the whole,
it's approximately two hundred and two hundred and six And
you've got two separate if you want to break it
down atomically so that we can understand it, you've got uh,
(22:06):
two axes that you work on really with the human skeleton,
you have the what's referred to as the axillary, which
is going to be kind of the mid line, that
the center part of your body. And then you have
the appendicular and those are like your attachments, like your
arms and your legs. So you've got your center core,
your trunk, which is going to be the axilla, and
(22:29):
then you're going to have the appendicular that extends out
from the bodies. So you're working in those two, those
two broad groups when you're trying to determine, you know,
what remains there are. I was thinking, David, I was
telling you before we went on air to days start
(22:50):
taping taping boy dating myself there when Brian Laundry's remained
were found down there in that swamp. I'm actually looking
at his report right now that the forensic anthropologists generated.
(23:12):
By the way, it's very well written report back.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Up very quickly.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Brian Laundry the person who killed his fiance Gabby Gabby
sorry Gabby Patito, and then drove her band that she
made for back to his parents' house in Florida, where
they had been living before they were on their trip,
and then after dodging police with help from his parents,
he then goes out into the woods camping and commits suicide.
(23:41):
But after committing suicide, the area where he did it
in that park got flooded. Yeah, okay, So the reason
I'm setting that scene is a lot of people don't
realize what the forensic anthropologist was required to do when
they got on scene. So what was different about that
(24:02):
Joe that required a very very special investigator to come
in and figure out what happened?
Speaker 2 (24:09):
I mean, he's got a gun.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
Shot in the head, right, Yeah, he does. And by
the way, it's a very atypical gunshot wound as far
as self inflicted. I've always you know, kind of raised
an eyebrow to that, but that's okay. Well, it wasn't
necessarily positioned in classic classic location as far as an
entrance wind goes. It was more up and back, which
(24:33):
you know, always intrigued me intellectually.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
You know, where would it normally be? Where would you expect?
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Well, you're you're thinking there are Let's just break it
down this way. There are four major bone groups that
compose the human skull. You got. You'll tap your forehead,
that's your frontal bone, and up above it bilaterally on
either side, you have what's referred to as the paradal
or some people will say parati heel, and it's kind
(25:02):
of a curved bone. It's on both sides and it's
high up and then below the proetal on either side. Again, bilaterally,
you have the temporal bone, okay, which is a very
thin bone. It's on either side forward of the ear.
As the prital bone sweeps back and down, it marries
(25:23):
up with the excipital bone, which is that bony protuberance
that you have on the backside. And those are like
the four major bone groups in forensics that we look at,
you know, Like if we'll I'll give you an example
why it's important. Like when we go to the scene
most of the time, if we're talking about an injury
(25:46):
to the skull, we're going to say things like he
sustained a gunshot woman or a parent gunshot wound to
the right right temple or in the right pril bone.
And it is, I don't know, five centimeters ford of
(26:06):
the top of the right ear. It's superior to the
right right miatus, which is your actually to your ear hole.
It's it's superior to that by ten ten centimeters, and
so it's all about orientation. You know where these are
with laundry in particular, if you have this baseline of
(26:33):
number of bones and again this approximation of two hundred
and six when they went out there day to this
and I'm glad you pointed this out, you know, I
completely Isn't that amazing? We talked about this case for years, right,
certainly months with gap Tito, and it's you know, for
me going you know, moving forward, and probably with you.
I hate to speak for you, but you know, it
(26:54):
begins to fade, you know, after a while, because you're
layering all these other cases on top of it. When
they went to examine or try to recover his remains,
they've they found roughly one hundred and three bones. Okay,
So that that gives you an idea, you know, you're
(27:15):
you're literally that is literally if you're thinking about two
hundred and six bones that we're supposed to have had
half of that? Okay, Now what do we mean by that? Well,
you know you've got and bones can range in size,
you know, I guess the smallest bone is probably the
state ease, which is one of those tiny little bones
(27:37):
that's inside of your ear. All right, You remember that
we learned all that in school. You know, we've got
the hammer and the anvil and all that stuff.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Just to give you an idea, Like many people listening
right now, I actually probably napped for most of that,
and then the night before I broke out the book
and memorized as best I could, took the test the
next day, and if I got a C minus, I
was the abbeys.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
My big bugaboo was always the hands and the feet.
Those the hands and feet are absolutely miracle creation of God.
They're they're so complex and so a typical cap to
any any doctor that's out there that works on hands
and feet, because it's the The anatomy is so complex,
(28:24):
the biomechanics are so complex. But you know, you have
the state ease, which is arguably the tiniest bone, and
then the longest bone, and the human bodies the femur,
which is you know where it fits into uh, into
your your hip socket if you will, extends all the
way from your hip down. So with with laundry. For example,
(28:47):
he you know, he roughly had one hundred, one hundred
and eight bones that they were covered out there. And
what made is so very difficult is that this Dave,
this was not This was not a burial, okay, And
forensic anthropologists have to work in a variety of different conditions.
(29:11):
This is a water environment, which they By the way,
if I'm not mistaken, I probably am. I think that
the forensic anthropologists either came from University of Southern Florida
or the University of Central Florida. My money's on Southern
Florida though, And she kind of led the team out there,
(29:33):
if I'm not mistaken, because FBI crime Scene Response team
was already out there. And this is very complex because
once bodies begin to decay and you're in a very
austere environment like this, the kind of rising and falling
of tide are not tied. But the water levels in
(29:53):
the swampy area are going to be dictated by rainfall.
And you know, for those of us that have you know,
spent any time in Florida, you know that they'll get
gully washers down there, that will everything will be you'll
have water standing in the streets. Well. Just and that's
in a controlled environment where you have gutter systems and
all that. Just imagine you're in the swampy area back
(30:15):
in this park day and there's nowhere for the water
to really drain to. In the immediate it just kind
of kind of floats there, okay, and then it'll drop
back down, then it'll go back up, then it'll drop
back down. So you know, in the early piece to this,
when he died, he now becomes subject to that same environment.
(30:40):
And there's even you know, and even in the report
for laundry, you know, the forensic anthropologist goes to some
length and describe that there had been you know, carnivore
activity that had been you know, feasting on his remains.
So there's no telling how many bones were essentially drug
off to some burrow somewhere, taken up in a tree,
(31:01):
which will happen the tinier bones. And it creates a
very complex environment. And some of the stuff that forensic
anthropologists do a lot of it is based on not
just what they're seeing, but what they do what they
don't see. Just let that sink in for a second.
(31:21):
You know, you think about other sciences that are out there,
and there are some that work on this idea that
you know, I'm not just looking for positive findings. I'm
looking for negative findings. And I don't mean positive and
negative relative to how you happen to feel about something
(31:41):
in a moment time. I'm talking about a presence or
an absence of something, and so that's one of the
things you know with laundry in particularly, and there have
been a lot of other cases like this too over
the years. So just because you go out to a
scene where their skeletal remains doesn't mean that the remains
are going to be completely hacked, that it will all
(32:02):
be there. And that's where the difficulty really arises as
it's applied to the skill of the forensic anthropologists. How
are they going to be able to interpret what they're finding,
how does it fit into the narrative of the death,
and what can their assessment reveal out there. I found
(32:26):
that it's better for me, in particular, that when I
am at the scene with the forensic anthropologist, no matter
how much study I've done in the past, no matter
how many cases I've worked, it's better that for that
moment in time, when I'm in that individual's presence, I'm
(32:47):
no longer an investigator. I'm a student that should keep
their mouths shut and their eyes and their ears. People
(33:11):
talk a lot about doctor Bass as well as should
because he is a giant in the field of forensic anthropology.
Uh and in forensic science, it's not just a lot
of stuff that doctor Bass has done has you know,
kind of seeped over into other practice. He's greatly influenced
forensic pathology. I think he's he's influenced the study of
(33:31):
ballistics relative to how bones interact with projectiles. Tool marks
is one of the big areas that they that they investigate.
He had one fellow on his staff for a long
time that was one of the leading experts.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
In the world on saw marks.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
And all this guy did was study the different types
of saw blades and what kind of impressions they would
generate on bone, whether it's you know, aular saw or
a hack saw. But one of the more interesting characters
in forensic anthropology is a guy that is no longer
with us, and I think he was at the University
(34:12):
of Oklahoma for a long time. It's doctor Clyde Snow
and doctor Snow who I never had an opportunity to meet.
I wish that I could have. Doctor Snow was kind
of a rotund individual that was always dressed. He always
looked like he was going on safari and smoked a
lot and he but he came up with a really
(34:36):
interesting term and I still use this to this day.
When I teach a section at jack State on forensic anthropology.
He coined the phrase. He coined the phrase, let me
get this straight straight osteobiography. And what he understood that
many people don't understand is that by the study of
(35:02):
human skeletal remains, we can learn so much about bodies,
and not just the remains that are in front of you,
but a life that had been lived prior to that.
And let me give you a kind of a one
of the the big for instances here. Let's just say
(35:23):
that you've got human remains and you're trying to determine
you're trying to do sex determination on a skeletal remain. Well,
you're not just looking at the size of the bone,
because males male's bones tends to be robust. Female bones
(35:44):
tend to be was referred to as grassisle, which means
kind of delicate. Fine, you're looking for any kind of
disease related changes. Well, if you've got a bone that
shows shows an indicatation of osteoporosis, well, odds are that's
(36:04):
not going to be a male skeletal element that's going
to be a female element because there's a huge industry
out there that's built up on treating osteoporosis. I mean,
how many times do you hear that in the news.
I knew one friend of my wife who she ate
(36:26):
ate tombs every single day because her doctor told her
that it's a great source of calcium to you know,
knock down, use something, use something to knock down the
advancement of osteoporosis. There's other diseases too, you know. You
have like if you're digging through older remains and they'll
(36:48):
have somebody died of tuberculosis, there will be these changes
that take place to bone as a result of tuberculosis.
You have cases where I know there's a current dig
that's going on over in uh and I'd mentioned this
I think in a previous episode going on over in Bristol, England,
(37:10):
and you have the bodies of children and the children
are malnourished well developmentally, that skeleton is going to demonstrate malnutrition. Okay, trauma.
I don't know about you, Dave. I think I have
(37:31):
played football. I think I I think I have broken
every one of my fingers at one point in time,
most of them I would just pop, and now I'm
paying the price for it. I've broken my hand, broken
my nose three times. You know I've had yeah, no kidding,
(37:52):
it seems like it. But you know, if you were
to strip down all that remains a Joe Scott Morgan
and you were looking at my skeleton, well, I have
an osteobiography. As a result, you're going to be able
to tell certain little things about me and the life
that I had led. Not only are you going to
(38:12):
be able to see, for instance, when my nose that
has been broken multiple times, not only going to see
evidence that it has been broken, but as time has
gone on, you're going to be able to appreciate the
You're going to be able to appreciate how long ago
this happened because the bone will begin to smooth. You
(38:35):
look at. One of the things that I'm always fascinated
by is if I ever had a skull, I would
look at the sutures on the top of the skull,
which are if you, I urge anybody right now, go
and look up picture an actual picture of a human skull,
and you'll see these kind of curvilinear lines that run
(39:00):
through the middle line of the skull and they run
on the backside of the frontal bone and back in
the acceptial area. Well, those are called suture lines. And
when we're babies and we're forming, you know that kind
of and they have interlocking teeth. Well, we'll look at
a human skull, Dave, and if those suture lines are smooth,
(39:28):
like when you run your hand over it, you can't
feel them. Sometimes they're obliterated. You know that that person
was like really advanced in age because you think about
just doing this, Just imagine this every time you raise
your eyebrows frowned. Okay, smile. The overlying skin is moving
(39:54):
and it wears on bone. Over a period of time,
it eradicates it and you'll have like we call it
sure suture obliteration. You'll also have it if you take
the tip of your tongue and stick it a roof
of your mouth. That's actually your hard palette. You've heard
(40:15):
that term before. Well, if you stripped away the skin,
the tissue off of your hard palate and you could
get down to the bone, which actually is kind of
like the floor of the skull, there's suture lines in there,
and those sutures. Well, I actually did a paper on
this years ago. You have suture line obliteration in the
(40:36):
roof of the mouth as well, and then you have
joint where you can see arthritic changes. And if anybody
has had like a gunshot wound of broken arm, even
if it's been surgically repaired, you can still see evidence
that the bone is what's called modeled. It's trying to fuse,
(40:59):
you know, back together, and you'll get you know, bones
will do that. You can have somebody that has a
severe break and they never got it treated. You'll see
some old person that's limping around, for instance, and if
you look at their like if you're talking about a
fractured femur that was never repaired by you know, by
surgery or whatever, you'll see these kind of I don't
(41:23):
really know how to describe them. You'll see these kind
of protuberances on the bone and it's it's kind of
ghastly looking where the bone is has fused back together
and the person permanently walks with a limp. Probably in
life they had a hard time, but that bone wants
to get back together and heal. And you can see
surgical interventions as well. There's any number of bones that
(41:46):
I've been on site with forensic anthropology we've recovered that
had screws in them, you know, where you'll have somebody
that had some kind of surgical repair, and this is
these are stainless steel screws back in the day. They're
probably using other types of components now to do that.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
The original Planet of the Apes when Tarlton Heston is
in the cave and he's going through the different things
that it be found in there. One was dental the
other was the heart valve, you know, and he was
describing the things that he knew of that.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
Person who has long gone. All those left. Isn't that amazing?
Speaker 1 (42:24):
I forgot all about that scene, And you're absolutely right,
and that stuff does remain behind. I think at the
Morphy case in particular, Oh wow, where the port was
found with her remains, her skeletal remains, and that stuff.
Eventually it would it's going to go away, but it'll
(42:47):
hang back. And there's certain things that you're looking for
at the scene that will give you an indication of
this individual's osteobiography. But you know, there's so many cases
over the years have have required the use of forensic
anthropologists probably. And let me give you an example, going
(43:10):
back to doctor Snow. Doctor Snow was had quite the
reputation of being you know, he was kind of a
I don't know if you use the term swashbuckler. I
don't think he was swimming off of chandeliers, but he
was a man of his time. He actually went and
can you imagine doing this, he imagine going down to
Central America in the height of all the civil wars
(43:34):
that were happening back in the eighties, and Dave he'd
go down there and exhum mass graves and be shot
at while he's down there, and he's standing on the
edge in some jungle location, you know, in Honduras or Nicaragua,
where El Salvador, wherever it is that he was, and
(43:55):
to try to make sense out of what was still
in those graves. And I think a lot of people
would say, and this goes to kind of being an anthropologist,
A lot of people will say, well, they're dead. What
difference does it make. We know that they were all
lined up and shot and pushed down a grave. But
you can learn a lot from first off, what has
been deposited in the grave. For instance, if in war
(44:18):
crimes cases, and you see this in You've seen this
in Europe over the years as well, and I would
submit to you in Southeast Asia, when people are killed
and dumped into a grave, well you need to have
a forensic anthropologists to tell you are they only killing males?
(44:44):
Are they killing males? Are they killing only females? Are
they killing the elderly? Are they trying to eradicate all
of the children in a particular village. From that, you
can begin to kind of piece together what sorts of
people you're dealing with. And when this goes, say, for instance,
(45:08):
you're working a case of you know, genocide like this,
that information would go to like a World court or
wherever it is that they try to prosecute these things
to give them an idea as to who is being
targeted in any particular case. You know, there are a
lot of cases where, particularly if you have tribal issues,
where they'll kill all the males and then kidnap all
(45:30):
the women and children and try to you know, bring
them into their own community. And so that's the type
of thing that you know that doctor Snow would do,
and then he would look, you know, he'd also try
to give them an idea. How were they killed? Is
there an indication that they had endured torture over a
protracted period of time where they're being beaten, they've got
(45:52):
multiple broken bones that occurred in life, or was this
simply they dragged them out of their homes in the
middle of the night and began to pop them in
the back of the head into a preduct grave. So
you can learn a lot. You can learn a lot
by what you're seeing physically manifesting itself out of a scene.
(46:19):
With going back to, you know, to other cases that
are out there. I had friends that worked Waco, for instance,
that were out there. Dave, you're talking just tens of
not just skeletal remains, but you're talking skeletal remains that
are skeletonized as a result of intense flame. These these
(46:45):
remains are incredibly fragile. I wrote about in my book
Blood Beneath My Feet from all those years ago where
I'd had an episode of I was going through a
real tough time in my life and really dealing with
(47:05):
certain issues with PTSD. And we had a guy on
Georgia four hundred that had run his car into the
side of a pillar of a support uh support pillar
of an overpass on George of four hundred. And I'll
never forget. It was a little Uh, I was gonna say, Texas.
It was a little Ford Ranger pickup truck. He was
on his way into work, and when he hit this
(47:28):
bridge pillar support pillar, his truck burst into flames, and
he was trying to get out of the car, and he,
you know, he succumbed and his body continued to burn.
And to give you an idea of the fragile nature
of it and what you encounter. When I was at
the scene, I went to and as was my practice,
(47:52):
i'd look inside the cap of a vehicle, even if
it had been on fire. And I'm looking around, and
this guy's hands were in let's refer to as the
pugilistic condition or posture, where the hands are drawn up
at the Everything contracts at that point in time depend
upon heat. And as I stuck my head into the cab,
(48:14):
the guy's left hand brushed against my right cheek, and
in kind of a stamp move, I grabbed like this
with my left gloved hand, and his entire arm broke
off in my hand. And when you think about the
intensity of fire, for instance, like in Waco, or you
(48:38):
think about the Twin Towers, this intense flame that's in there.
These remains become very very fragile, so you're already dealing
with something where you're trying to assess a few things. Well,
first off, you want to know who they are. We've
talked about this on body bags before. It's to me,
(48:58):
knowing who somebody is is probably more important than knowing
what caused their death, because if I can find out
who they are, I can fill in the blanks relative
to the life that they led, and maybe in some
way the police can take that information and go find
out who killed them. So you're trying to determine who
they are, and then you're trying to determine what happened
(49:21):
to them. And it's only a forensic anthropologist that really
has that skill set to deal with these very fragile,
delicate remains, and they're always fighting against the elements. That's
one of the fascinating things about the practice of forensic anthropology.
You know all those things that they do when they
go back to their lab and try to ascertain whose
(49:42):
remains they're dealing with, Who is this person? It's rather
a daunting task, Dave.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
So the forensic anthropologist is brought in going back to
brian laundry for a minute, because we find his skeletonized
remains as bones and I guess there was minimal amount
of flesh. Yeah, they take the bones and they send
them to the friends. They anthropologist, and the entire point
(50:11):
is to figure out how this person died.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
They already know who it is. I mean, I'm sure
that's part of the process.
Speaker 3 (50:17):
You have to positively identify the individual, even though you
know it is all right. But you mentioned that there
was something wrong about or not wrong, something different about
the gunshot.
Speaker 1 (50:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (50:30):
So the forensic anthropologists coming into this, are they tasked
with determining what happened? Or are they tasked with tell
us the facts of this situation of what you see
right here, not your years of experience, but just what
does the bone tell you?
Speaker 2 (50:49):
Is that what they're doing. I'm kind of curious.
Speaker 1 (50:51):
Because you said that is what they're doing. And listen,
police are sitting there and they're scratching their head, okay,
because they're trying to determine, uh, what happened to this individual.
They might suspect that there's a gunshot woman, but when
you're listening, if you're if you're talking about a remain
(51:13):
that has been exposed to harsh elements, you can have
events where the skeleton will just kind of come to pieces, okay,
and you don't know, for instance, would laundry as an example,
you don't know if this defect and we'll call it
a defect instead of a gunshot woman, because that's really
(51:34):
all that you know at that point, you've got a whole.
Is that was that whole something that occurred in life
leading up to death or is it something that occurred afterwards,
because you begin to think about, well, you've got animal activity.
You know that that's occurring out there. Was there an
(51:56):
animal that was gnawing on this on this remain? I
give you if you think that that's far fetched. I've
had in my career. I've had two cases involving involving
dogs that drug skulls up into backyards and their masters
(52:17):
went into the backyard and they were in the backyard
at both homes at the same time, at not the
same time, but two different cases. And the dog you know,
if you've ever I loved dogs, by the way, but
if you if you ever see a dog with a ball,
they'll put it between their their paws and they'll they'll
play with it and that sort of thing. Well, you
take something shaped like a ball, like a human skull,
and they're going to have it between their their their
(52:40):
forepaws like this. And in both cases, the dog had
set to gnawing on the top of the skull and
over period of time, if you know, if they kept
that skull and just kind of they break the whole
thing down eventually. Uh you know, I've got a I've
got a rescue lib door retriever and she's got incredible
(53:02):
jaw strength. I mean, she can eradicate an entire bone
in no period of time whatsoever. It's amazing what they
can do. So you have to factor all that in.
You're trying to give this information back to the police,
and the forensic anthropologies is given enough time, will arrive
at their own conclusion about not just anti mortem versus
(53:24):
post mortem, but they will also give you an idea
as to things like with gunshot wounds. They'll give you
an idea about directionality. You know, is this front to back,
is it left to right, is it from above to below?
You know, trajectory of bullets. Then you get into these
(53:48):
areas that Lord knows, Dave you and I have covered
so many of them with dismemberments, you have to be
really no pun intended as forensic anthropologies, you have to
be very sharp relat to dismemberment because you have to
understand what kind of tool could have facilitated this bone
coming apart. You know that it didn't just spontaneously come
(54:10):
apart in midshaft of a femur with a spiral saw
marks on the on the leading edges of it. This
is something that somebody took a you know, maybe they
took a bandsaw or they took a circular saw and
just ran it through the center of the thing. Well,
what type of instrument is this? So you have to
be up on tool marks to be able to assess this.
(54:32):
And also was this done in life? Was this part
of torture? Could it? You know, was some limb hacked
off while the person was still alive or was this
something that was done after the fact. So you have
to be really up your You have to really up
your game as a forensic anthropologist to not just understand
(54:54):
the bone itself or trying to classify it anatomically, but
these individuals have to be able to be able to
understand what happened to the person in death, because, for
the most part, when we die and you call in
a forensic anthropologist, our bony structures are all that remain.
(55:19):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.