July 4, 2024 • 41 mins
Skeletal remains found near the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee don't match up with any missing person cases in Chattanooga or the surrounding area. It takes several months before the remains are positively identified. On this episode of Body Bags, Joseph Scott Morgan will take you into the field where the remains have been found and into the lab where identification takes place, and Dave Mack will look into the facts surrounding the disappearance of the 20-year-old beauty from Georgia and how she ended up as a skeleton on the side of a rural road outside Chattanooga Tennessee.
Transcript Highlights
00:00:25 Introduction of 20-year-old woman, missing
00:04:07 Discussion of geography of the case
00:07:20 Discussion of picking up body in jail
00:11:51 Talk about Fentanyl becoming drug of choice
00:16:13 Discussion of drugs and dealers
00:20:48 Discussion of reporting missing person
00:24:16 Talk about the deposition of the body
00:28:08 Discussion of trauma on the bones
00:32:32 Discussion explaining forensic anthropology at the scene
00:37:13 Discussion of being absent of clothing
00:41:40 Conclusion – Case is still open; we will follow up
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body dius, but Joseph's gotten more. I don't nobody, y'all.
But when I meet somebody for the first time, and
after I've engaged in a conversation with him, maybe a
couple of minutes, one of the things I like to
(00:22):
ask is, so, where y'all from. I don't do that
as like an insult or anything like that, or a
statement of judgment. I genuinely want to know where you're from,
because where you're from kind of dictates, you know, maybe
your life experience. I'm fascinated how people wind up in
(00:45):
certain locations. I've got a nod thing that I do
anytime I meet from somebody from California, I always ask
when I said, well, what is was your family? Like
an original California or californ when you settle her, because
those are kind of rare to come by. I'm always
fascinated by that. But one of the questions in forensics
(01:10):
that we ask many times is were you from? Or
where are they from? Referring to them. Of course, in
my profession the dead, that question gets even more complex
when you're asking that of remains that have been found
(01:38):
in a skeletal state. Today, we're going to chat about
the skeleton remains of a young lady that was last
seen at least one hundred miles away, but then she
was found in another state.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Skeleton.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body Bags Dave.
I know you're from California. I ya.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
I am from born and raised in southern California, Joe,
but like millions of others, moved away and live elsewhere.
And one of the places I have lived is in
Gwinnette County, Georgia, in Lawrenceville. Gwinette County is not in Atlanta.
It's outside of Atlanta. Lawrenceville and that are outside of Atlanta.
The reason I'm pointing that out. The story was first
(02:38):
reported as twenty year old Marie Ange Faith Martinez was
at the Atlanta courthouse waiting to be picked up by
her mother. Her mother was ten minutes away from the
courthouse in Atlanta when Marie Faith Martinez says, she has
her ride, so it doesn't somebody she doesn't know, but
she's taking a ride with this person. And mom says, Okay.
That struck me as odd because getting to the courthouse
(03:01):
in Atlanta is no small feet and if you're that
close to it. You're not giving up that unit. No,
you don't get in a car with somebody you don't know.
I'm almost there, But that's not where Marie Ange Faith
Martinez was. She was not in Atlanta at the courthouse.
She was at the Gwenette County Courthouse. That makes a
difference now for the rest of the story. The geography
really does matter here because Maury and Faith Martinez was
(03:25):
seen at the Gwenette County Courthouse. Her mother had contact
with her there, but the minute she gets into a
white truck with a man she doesn't know, all contact ceases.
Gwinett County actually has had a mall called the Gwenette
Place Mall. It was at one time one of the
largest malls in America, but over the years, like millions
(03:47):
of other malls, it trunk down to nothing and now
it's used for television shows like Stranger Things is filmed
inside what used to be the Gwinnette Place Mall. But
that's Gwenett County. That's what we're talking about here. That's
where this story starts, not in downwo Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
That means something, Yeah, yeah, it does, and it goes to.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Well, first off, you know I was talking about geography.
Just a second, she's walking out of this criminal justice complex,
which I think is kind of anytime you hear that
term that means like the courthouse and the jail and
maybe police headquarters depended upon what jurisdiction you're in. This
thing is massive, d I mean, it's absolutely massive. And
(04:28):
there's a couple of those around in the various counties
around Atlanta, and each one of them are large. I
don't know if that speaks to the level of crime,
you know, because they have to handle, you know, such
a volume. But anytime I have someone telling me that
you have an individual that is standing outside of the jail,
(04:49):
the first thing I'm going to think of is, well,
why were you there? Were you there for a court appearance?
Were you visiting somebody, or had you've been in residence there,
you know, as an inmate, And I think those are
legitimate questions. It's like I got to tell you, I've
spent a lot of time around courthouses and over the
(05:10):
course of my career, you know, either in the courtroom itself,
providing testimony, meeting with DA's office, or parish thought. I
hated working working desks inside jails. I hated it and
that I have had to do.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Okay, have you done a lot of those?
Speaker 3 (05:27):
I don't mean I'm not chasing the rabbit here, but
you know you have mentioned going into a jail too
because somebody was dead. Yeah, we're not talking about natural
causes there.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
I mean, no, you.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Can and that happens. I mean, it's like any other
kind of population really, Oh yeah, yeah, And you've got
a lot of males in there. You have older males, generally,
males that you know don't die as a result of
some kind of violent event or maybe some kind of
drug addicted event. Once you hit a certain level age wise,
(06:00):
and you're unhealthy to begin with, there's a high probability
you're gonna have a heart attack. I mean that's just
you know, you're rolling the dice. It's number and call
it heart diseases like number one killer and has been
for years.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Older dudes or older people would end up in the
infirmary or something they wouldn't in the gail.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Many times they do. But every now and then you're
going to have somebody that has undiagnosed heart ailment and
they're found cold and stiff. Now some listen, some jails
will say, uh, Yeah, we're not going to leave them
and sell. We're going to take them to the infirmary.
At this point in time, they're already deceased, you know,
whereas you look at a case like Epstein, uh, where
(06:39):
you know they thought, I guess, for whatever reason, that
he might have been salvagable. So you've got EMTs coming
into that space, which is always fascinating to me because
there's so much crap you have to carry in. I
don't carry in as a death investigator as much as
they do, but can imagine taking a defibrillator. You got
to that gurney, there's a couple of you, and dude,
(07:02):
you got to go through security. So there's got these
stops along.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Even when you're the medical guy and they know, you
still have to go through security and explain why you
need all this stuff. Meanwhile, you got a guy over
here struggling to take his last breath. Yeah, and hold on,
wait a minute. You got to go back through the
wanding area again.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Yeah, yeah, okay, here, take your gurny back. It doesn't
happen like that. They have, you know, necessarily, but it is,
and I understand it's not necessarily. I was going to
use a word absurd, it's not. But yeah, I've spent time,
you know, working cases in there. I hate it because
you feel, you know, they strip you of everything that
you have, you know, even my scene bag. Right, lots
of times I was only permitted to take certain things.
(07:43):
That's certain metal objects I couldn't have. ID have to
surrender a weapon and my badge, all that sort of stuff.
But with her, you know, you're thinking, why are you
at the jail? And that's that's where that's a thread
you want to pull on in this case, because who
is generally around courthouses and jails that are on the outside. Well,
(08:04):
you got people that are visiting people, you got people
that have court appearances, and you have people that have
been doing time, yeah you know inside of there. And
it's a county jail, so it's not like it's a prison.
There's a big difference. But you've got people that are
not necessarily at the highlight in their life, you know,
and so it's a recipe for a disaster. And that
(08:27):
was one of the big questions I had when I
heard about this poor, poor young woman, thinking, well, why
was she there in the first place. And that's something
that investigators would look at Dave.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
And that's exactly where you and I started in researching
this particular story. She's at the Gwinnett County Her mom
is on her way to pick her up at the
Gwinnett County courthouse. They're on the phone and Maury and
Faith Martinez is twenty years old. She is a bit
worldly and she's on the phone with her and she says,
(09:02):
I got a guy here that's going to give me
a ride.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
And you don't need to come.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Yikes.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Yeah, And she doesn't know this person who's going to
give her a ride, but indicates to her mother that
the guy is with a recovery program. Now, you mentioned
a minute ago about the reason somebody might be around
a courthouse, you know, being from jail or what have you.
And in this particular case, at twenty years old, her
(09:30):
mother says that that Morine Faith Martinez had had her
issues with drugs. Fentanyl in particular is mentioned. And she
gets in this white truck to take off to go
to wherever mom was on her way to pick her
up to take her home. Now, she has n't been
living at home with mom for a while. She actually
(09:50):
has been on her own doing her own thing. She
is twenty years old. She's not a child child child,
but she's not full grown, legal, twenty one year old
enough adult. Last time Mom texts her talk Store is
in that moment when she gets into the truck with
the guy. Guy she doesn't know. Mom texts her. Mom
gets a bad feeling about it, but never gets another reply.
(10:14):
The last thing she knows is that her daughter gets
into a vehicle with somebody she doesn't know, ostensibly to
take her home.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
And there you go when we consider this journey, and
make no mistake, it is a journey because this young
woman did not live with her mother. She actually lived
in another jurisdiction, in the town of Alpharetta, which is
actually in Fulton County. But yet she's been at the
courthouse in Gwinette County. As we'll find out, that was
(10:47):
only the first stop. We still have two more to go. Brother, Dave,
I gotta tell you it would be an insult to
you to say that we have problem with fentanyl in
(11:09):
this country, because even though I say it a lot,
you've heard it a lot more than everybody else because
you're a newsguy and you have to wade through. But
you know, in this case state, there's an indication that
fentanyl may be involved in this case. There is actually
one report out there that she had had some struggles
(11:30):
with fentanyl addiction.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Perhaps that is of the devil, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Boy?
Speaker 3 (11:35):
I tell you what, brother, As we delve into this,
I have a couple of questions for you, specifically and
generally about fentanyl. As a normal person growing up in
the United States of America, we have seen our share
of drugs that become popular, you know, for brief periods
of time. In particular, I think about marijuana and the
hippies and the sixties and LSD and things like that,
(11:56):
and crank, the psychedelics of the sixties and early seven ties,
and then you end up with cocaine in the mid seventies,
late seventies and through the early eighties, powder cocaine, then crack.
You know, the crack bottomed out, became the base, and
it became the drug of choice for many. Heroin has
(12:17):
always kind of lingered in the top.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Isn't that weird? With heroin? It kind of rises and falls.
And we can't forget designer drugs either. Yeah, Because I
got to tell you, I still remember the first case
that I ever had dave that involved X, and I
was like, why do you call it X? And that
was my first introduction to designer drugs. But you know,
you've heroin and opiates have always been in the background
(12:44):
all along. I think about you know, matter of fact,
if you ever watched the old movie Say Old I
love this movie Tombstone, there's a scene in that movie
where powers booth and you know, of course it's a
fictionalized version. In Tombstone, he's actually in an opium den
smoking opium. And so you've had opiates around forever and ever,
(13:08):
and they're kind of the spine in an addiction that
runs through here in fentanyl is yeah, I mean traditionally
it's been an analgesic. You know, there were fentanyl patches.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Right those people say, there's been times with going from
cocaine to crack to meth and being the street side
of things, people grabbing it. And then you had the
other side, which was heroin, and then he'll billy heroin
with oxycon and things like that, And we had all
these different things that were horrible and evil and just
(13:41):
were massively addicted from a very very short usage time.
And then for some reason fentanyl. Fentanyl shows up during
the oxycon days in terms of being prescribed by doctors,
and I remember it being the patch, the fentanyl patch
for any of you know that in my private life,
(14:02):
I help people find sobriety through recovery. And one of
the things we saw back in this time period we're
talking about two thousand early two thousands, as people were
trying to move away from oxy conton the pill, and
it was the fentanyl patch that became this for those
suffering heavy duty pain chronic you know, put this patch
(14:24):
on for a couple of days whatever. And of course,
like anything else, very short order addicts found out, well,
poke holes in it, dip it, and you know, well,
wear a couple of patches at the same time, take
a bath, to any number of things to get high.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Then it got you.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
Well if you take the pat if you separate the patch,
and you get the film, and you oh my gosh,
just the things people do. I always think, if these
people would use their intellect, creativity and drive for good,
they rule the world.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Yeah, yeah, you think that. And and but yet that
that story you know, continues.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
How addiculous pentanyl regard it.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
But if you compare yeah, and the thing about it
is is that, Dave, here's the problem. It's kind of
like crack in the sense that when and I was
around when crack first burst on the scene.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Addicted on the first hit kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Well, yeah, and here's the thing about crack that made
crack so attractive, if it can be, is that only
rich people snorted coke. With crack, you can essentially bake
it down, crack off a piece and a very small
amount will just get you blasted. Well, well, fentanyl it
(15:37):
doesn't require as much as, say, for instance, like heroin
or morphine. I think that and people say that it's
like one hundred times more powerful than morphine. So just
a couple of tiny little grains of fentyl can put
you on the moon. All right, and it's very dangerous.
You got things that are laced with it out there.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
But she is going to ask you about the fentanyl
thing with lacing and yeah, that means he's adding fentanyl
to other drugs to give it a bigger kick.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Now, yes, all right.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
Dealers are not scientists. Okay, they are not. They're not
wearing a lab coat and they're they're actually there are
people you wouldn't trust to balance your checkbook, and you're
actually buying drugs from them that being created in their
bathroom in the trailer. Okay, and that's why fentanyl was
it used by the druggies to so they could water
(16:28):
down the whatever drug they were selling and put a
little fentonyl to give it a kick.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Yeah. And the kick is is an interesting term. It
would it would give you and gives people this hide
that is unbelievable. And so once you you kind of
put that blood in the water, you've created a unique
product that is unique to the particular dealer and people
want more of it. It's like, Wow, that was that
was incredible.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
I got to assume Jay I got this from Joe
Scott Morgan. It's got the devil's smiley face on the front.
He knows what he's for him.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Yeah, yeah, And I think that it's almost like a
it's like addiction addiction with the face of a salesman,
and so it's it's one of those types of things.
And but you know, Dave, she had she our young
lady here had had been through fentanyl addiction. Apparently her
(17:22):
mother had alluded to this. We've read at least two
stories now that have alluded to this, and you have
to think about the sorts of people that It's not
like she's running down to the local doc in the
box and saying, hey, doc, you know, prescribe me some fentanyl.
And again this goes back to who picked her up
at the jail, Dave, I want to know, and let
(17:45):
me throw one more thing at you if you like
that one. She's stunning. I mean, she is physically stunning
when you see her. I'd want to know if there
was something else running deeper here, because you have this
beautiful young woman and you've got somebody out there that
maybe is providing her with these drugs, that's taking advantage
(18:07):
of her. And we're not going to go too far
down that road because I don't have any way to
validate that. But from an investigative standpoint, you want to
ask that question. And with a death investigation, particularly in
a case like this, there's not a lot left you know,
when you're doing your examination, particularly in this case, so
(18:27):
you historically you have to go back and kind of
do a retroactive kind of investigation where you're looking into
even her medical records, if she detoxed. You want a
subpoena those records and find out where was she in life,
what was her level of dependency, had she had relapsed
this before, and how long has this been going on? Dave,
she was only twenty, you know, she was not of
(18:50):
legal age to you know, to purchase alcohol or smokes.
But yet she is involved with one of the most
insidious substances in modern history. And so you have to
ask those questions, you know, when you're conducting an investigation,
I think the first place I'd like to know is
(19:11):
this person who was this individual? And they're talking about
this is kind of curious. They've talked about how a
white man as she is standing outside of the jail,
is caught on CCTV speaking with her, and then they
go on to say, well, this white male shows up
(19:32):
in a white truck, so they're able to get clarity
according to reports that it's the same guy driving the truck.
I don't know about you, but when I'm looking in
a truck, I can't really unless you know, unless I
know you, I don't necessarily know who is in the truck.
I can't even make out what race you are, what
(19:53):
your size is. Most of the time, who pays attention
to that. But they're saying that they have apparently an
image of this, and I found that interesting that still
to this point, we don't know who this person is.
We don't know where this road leads, Dave.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
And here we are. We know she goes missing from
this date. To give you some dates, she was reported
missing on August twenty eighth by her mom. She actually
was last seing August twenty first at the courthouse. Okay,
that was when she gets in the car in the
truck with the guy that she doesn't know. Mom worries
from the very beginning. Seven days later reports are missing.
(20:28):
We are dealing with a young woman who is an
adult who does not live with her mother. She lives
in a different place with a couple of guys. So
police are a little bit I don't know how they
approach this in terms of a missing person. If you
have a young teenager who goes missing but they live
with you, you know, in your family home, that's different report, yes,
(20:51):
And that's not the case here because she was on
her own, living with other people. And so when she
was reported missing, police did investigate.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Hopped on it, Joe.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
They didn't blow it off and say oh, not worried,
because they actually tracked her from Gwinnett County to an
area in Cobb County. And you're gonna have to break
this down because I don't know powers Ferry Road. But
the police were able to figure out here's where she
was really last seen or that we actually know she was,
so they followed her from Gwennette Place, Gwinnett County, to
(21:23):
Cobb County and Georgia. And then I'm gonna go ahead
because we got to get into this. She goes missing,
don't know where she is. We've lost boom, it's we
don't It's now going to be a cold case until
just outside of Chattanooga, Tennessee, one hundred miles to the north,
police find something.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
In a rural area. You know, they have found her
skeletal remains, and you know you're talking. It's Hamilton County,
which you know for Tennessee in Tennessee, and it's the
same you know, Chattanooga's actually the county seat. The geography
is kind of interesting up there because if you go
in on any of the major arteries, the roadways that
(22:07):
go in there, it's a it's notorious. Chattoogah's notorious forgetting y'
all twisted around because you've got a confluence of various
roadways that come in there. I think it's like fifty I,
fifty nine I twenty four, which you would take out
of Chattanooga to go to Nashville, for instance, and then
(22:29):
you've got one of the largest interstates in the nation,
which is seventy five, and it splits off and breaks
back to the northeast. So if you're you know, if
you're heading up north, so you've got this confluence of
all of these roadways that are up there. And the
fact that she is found now they're saying found in
(22:51):
a rural area in Hamilton County. Just because the city
of Chattanooga is there doesn't mean that outside of there
it it's densely populated. It ain't because you can get
into country really quick up there. And you know, you
think about this, well, how did you get from Gwinnette County,
(23:13):
which is on the far east side northeast of Atlanta,
all the way and you've got this phone pinging as
it is moving. I'm saying it is moving, not she
is moving, Dave. And we've learned this lesson in the past.
It is moving up seventy five at this point in time, Well,
who goes to Chattanooga and who would know? I think
(23:35):
one of the big questions is who would feel comfortable
enough seeking out a rural area to deposit a twenty
year old's body. I love Tennessee. I love going up there.
(23:58):
I've been going there since I was eight or nine.
But when you consider that up in Hamilton County, you've
got a young woman whose remains are found in a
rural location. One of the first questions I'm going to
ask is, well, what was the status of the death scene?
(24:19):
Or that's not an appropriate, appropriate comment, I don't think
because or an accurate comment, because if you say death scene, oh, ok,
that implies that the death occurred there. I guess the
proper term would be what was the deposition site like?
Because Dave, from what we understand, it's the site contained
(24:43):
skeletal remains.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
I was going to say, Joe, now I understand what
you're saying about the death scene and not knowing because
all they found from August twenty twenty three. We're talking
about the first week of January. We're not talking in
a long period of time, Joe, for a twenty year
old woman to go from standing outside the courthouse to
(25:05):
skeletonized remains. And they're found outside Chattanooga in a rural area,
and we don't know how they were found in terms
where they just piled up on top of one another.
Did somebody build a sign out of them and make
you know what was going on? We don't know. But
I got some questions, Joe. How fast does a human
body become skeletonized remains, even if the body is laid
(25:29):
outside to the elements.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Yeah, And it's, as I always say, my default position
with this is it is environmentally dependent. You have what's
referred to as a surface deposition, which is where you
take a body and essentially lay it down on the ground.
And just think of you hear this term a lot
in our line of work. You hear this term a
body dump, and that means that body dump implies that
(25:56):
somebody was moving quickly, they had a location where they're
just going to take and this happens. Hey, hey man, Look,
I've worked cases where I've had to go and I've
found skeleton remains or remnants of skeleton remains in ditches.
So what that tells me is an investigator somebody rolls
up along the road. Ditches run alongside roads, they open
(26:16):
the door and they essentially just pulled maybe an entire
human body intact, dump it in the ditch. Well that
body just by virtue of what we know about ditches.
Ditches their purpose is to drain water, right, so the
environment in that particular location is going to be dictated
by heavy rain. That's one of the reasons we didn't
(26:36):
find all of the elements of the skeleton in that
particular case, because they've got a long, long way that
they can just be washed to and you're not always
going to see it because then you've got scavenger activity
that's going to come up for a while. That body
would remain intact. But when you're talking about if it
sounds like there's not a lot of excavation going on here.
(26:58):
This sounds like a surface deposition of the body, which
implies to me the person didn't take time with the body.
It was viewed to them or by them as an inconvenience,
or they're trying to get as much distance between them.
(27:21):
Now I will go ahead and make this big reveal,
and this happens. Unfortunately, a lot in skeletal remains today
as in our case here, they can't come up with
a cause of death. They can't and the biggest generally
(27:41):
one of the biggest problems that you have in a
case like this where you can't determine cause of death
and you've got skeletal remains. This just no soft tissue,
so you can't make a diagnosis that's based on hemorrhage.
Now you can look at the body the skeletal remains
and say, well, I've got fractures here. But are those
(28:04):
fractures as a result of anti mortem trauma or is
it a post mortem event where bone snap as they
go through de ka. I can't imagine that would be
the case here because she had not been down that long,
but it was sufficient enough for skeletonization to begin, and
(28:30):
it it can. I've seen bodies go pretty quickly in
particularly humid environments where there's a lot of heat.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
You got this is very humid, Yeah, yeah, it is.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
And you're also putting in the element of scavenger activity.
You've got codes. Codes are everywhere around this area of
South We have them here, I've seen them in my yard.
They certainly have them up in Tennessee as well. You've
got wild hogs that we have a major problem with
(29:07):
in South I can't speak to Hamilton County that much,
but I do know that they're out there and they
will root on a body. And then you've got smaller animals,
you've got wild dogs too. So if any of that
was introduced into the equation, that's another factor that has
to be considered. And if you have skeletal remains and
you do have animal activity, and look, I'm going to
(29:31):
be very blunt in the body bags. You're talking about
postmartem feasting on bodies, and so there would be evidence
of that on bone as well. And you have to
be able to tell the difference between again, postmortem trauma
on the body as opposed to what happened in life
that brought about her death. She's twenty years old day.
She should not be dead. So that leads us down
(29:53):
a very sinister path, doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
And that's where could you tell from the bones if
she ingested drugs prior to death? Fittonel specifically, could we
find out from the bones.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Not simply based on bone itself. It's not in the
narrow No, it's not. And here's the problem. They have
really released so very little information that we don't really
have a a source of data as far as soft
(30:35):
tissue that may have remained.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Okay, let me ask you this show as long as
we're there, because we don't know, but your background you've done.
Every time we do the show, I find out something
different that you have done, and I love that. But
it also makes me think. When you close your eyes sometimes,
do you just immediately have a shocker, like poking you
in the side, you know, a flash memory. I'll have
(30:58):
a flash memory of growing up in something happening. I
just can't imagine what your flash memories do.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
But no, I mean yeah, And it used to be
a lot more frequent with diagnosis of PTSD, and I
went through a lot of therapy for that. But every
now and then I'll slip back into that state. There
will be something that will kick something off in my brain.
I'm past nightmares at this point in my life, so
I fortunately, by the grace of God, I don't have
(31:25):
to endure that anymore. I had really bad ones. But
every now and then you'll come across a case that
acts as a triggering mechanism because you go back and
recall things. But yeah, yeah, and but look, you know,
and as morbid as this is, and you know, everything's
on the table here. I got to reveal this, and
(31:47):
you know, I actually enjoyed the recovery of skeletal remains.
I found it. It was actually kind of peaceful because
you're you're focused on. If you doing a skeletal recovery,
it's labor intensive work. I didn't have to do anything
else when I was out there. Anything any other cases
I might catch or that might come my way, it's
(32:09):
something that would be back burner, somebody else would handle it.
I'm trying to assist a forensic anthropologist at the scene
for the recovery, and it was always fascinating to me.
It's like, I don't know. To me, it was kind
of like putting a gigantic puzzle together, and so it
would occupy my mind. And you never know when you're
(32:32):
coming over an area what's going to be revealed. And
in a case like this, where you know pretty quickly,
particularly if you have the skull, you can get an
idea many times about the age of the individual. You
can because a couple of things that we look for
we do aging, or forensic anthropologists do aging on skulls.
(32:54):
You know what brackets, and it's generally very broadly bracketed.
You do racing, which is is you determine what race
an individual is from their point of origin, and forensic
anthropologists have a way to just eyeball remains and can
ballpark it. Sometimes they're wrong. You can look for trauma
(33:18):
assessment and an interesting other thing you can look for stature,
which is kind of fascinating. And when we know that
our young lady was just over five feet tall, and
Dave she only weighed a hundred pounds, so there's you know,
she's very petite, you know, one hundred pounds. I don't know.
I think maybe I weighed one hundred pounds when I
(33:39):
was five. I don't know. I'm a big guy. Maybe
that's the case. But when you think about she's very
diminutive and would be easily handled by somebody, maybe an
individual in a truck that picked her up. But why,
what would cause what would bring about her from that
(34:03):
jail in Gwinnett County one hundred miles away to the
point where they've crossed the state line. I got to
tell you, man, one of the things that pops to
mind with me. One of the things that comes up
first is something we've already mentioned. Fentanyl, Yeah, you know,
and the fact that she's found in a rural area.
If she's in a rural area, either somebody either somebody
(34:25):
because their purpose they're going up seventy five seventy five
winds up in one spot, all right, winds up in Chattanooga.
What if? What if she's in the vehicle and fentanyl
is involved. She's been out of jail, now, she had
gone through detox. Did you know this? This is kind
of sinister. But once you detox and you attempt to
(34:47):
do the same amount of drugs that you've done prior
to detoxing, it's lethal. Man. So it would only take
a very small amount. I'm not saying that's what happened.
The investigators have to think about that.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
I would think, now, Joe, we've got bones skeletonized. That's
what word skeletonized remains. Now does that mean that there
is no flesh on the bones or is this just
a general term that is used to explain to the
public that they did recover somebody but not identifiable.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
I think that is a very insightful question, because in
our field, we will use the term completely skeletonized and
partially skeletonized, or we will say, here's the other qualifier.
We'll say we have an intact remain, and intact means
that it doesn't mean that the body hasn't decomposed, all right,
(35:40):
that's not what's being in plot here. But what it's
saying is that there are no visible bony structures. Like
when you eyeball a body, you don't have like, you know,
the one of the most prominent areas that you look
at is like the forehead, for instance, has any of
that skin the integrity that skin been compromised to the
(36:02):
point and it kind of peels back like this, Particularly
as the skin becomes dried, dried out or desiccated, you'll
see little tears in the skin. You'll have bone that
is visible, maybe the external table of the skull. All
they're saying is skeletal remains, and they're in a rural area,
(36:24):
so I have to take them on face value. I
would think that there would have to be something left.
And here's here's one other thing. I'd want to know
what the status of clothing is. That's a big If
you just have skeletal remain, Okay, that's a big difference
(36:47):
then actually finding skeletal remains still contained in clothing, because
that goes to anti mortem or prior death activity. Were
they naked and I'm saying that in general, I'm asking
that question, or did somebody strip the clothes off of
the body just after they died, because you know, being
(37:11):
absent of clothing applause a lot of things. Man, It
implies that maybe they were deprived and set loose into wilderness.
It also implies that if they're without clothing, that maybe
there was evidence on the clothing and also applause something
more sinister too, and that's sexual activity.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Right.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Was this was this a rape homicide? And I think
that's one of the things they're thinking about, Dave, What.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
About without tool marks on the actual bones? Is there
a way to determine that this body was placed in
this rural area? Again, we know we know she left
the Gwinnett County Courthouse in August. On August twenty first,
(37:57):
we know that they saw her, they being the police,
they have proof she was in Cobb County, Georgia. And
then we find her skeletonized remains one hundred miles from there,
in a rural area outside Chattanooga. And assuming she died well, no,
(38:19):
I can't even assume that I know. I don't know
where she died. I don't know how she died on
the side. We don't know anything. And we don't know
if her body we don't know if her remains were
found laid out in bones just thrown out of a car,
or if she had been taken apart, manually deconstructed and
bones piled there.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Right, we don't know.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
That's key, and you know you brought up that's one
of the questions that's always asked when you have skeletal remains,
what's the status of it? And this is how we're
going to break it down if because you know, bones
will still have Sometimes bones skelt remains will still remain articulated,
(39:04):
which means intact the soft tissue has come off, but
yet the bones are still attached together by various attachments
that structurally, Now, if you've got a set of skeletal remains,
dave where the body has where the remains are stacked,
(39:26):
Like you were saying, boy, that's that's a gruesome thought,
because that gives you an indication that the body had
been rendered down in some manner and then the bones
stacked and that's almost a ritualized thing, right, don't I
don't think we have that going on here.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
They would have said it, they would have said something, Yeah,
they I.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Think that they would have. And here's one other thing
that I think that is that they're working with here, Dave,
because if it can be shown that this is a
kidnapping or that this may have happened, guess who they've
involved at this point in time. Who the perpetrator is
(40:07):
involved in this point in time, because they've left Georgia,
they've crossed state lines at this point in time. Yeah,
the FBI is going to be up to their eyeballs
in this case. So they're going to bring in all
of the resources that they have there. But one of
the greatest resources for investigation when it comes to Skeltor
Remains is, I don't know, just over one hundred miles
(40:31):
to the east of Chattanooga, Integrate said of Tennessee, and
that's ut Body Farm. So that's the one thing about
about Tennessee when it comes from to doctor Bass, who
found founded the body Farm, he always made himself available
to law enforcement. I would not have wanted to be
(40:52):
one of his students because he's very difficult, very difficult
professor to have. However, he always made time for law enforcement,
and that I think that's been passed on through the lineage.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
There.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
They have that organization at their disposal. Right now, all
we know is that we have no cause of death.
This young woman walks out of a courthouse, and there
are very few electronic breadcrumbs to give us an idea
(41:27):
of movement other than that ping, that last ping that
they have of her or her phone traveling northbound on
I seventy five toward Hamilton County, Tennessee. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan,
and this is Body Backs
Body dius, but Joseph's gotten more. I don't nobody, y'all.
But when I meet somebody for the first time, and
after I've engaged in a conversation with him, maybe a
couple of minutes, one of the things I like to
(00:22):
ask is, so, where y'all from. I don't do that
as like an insult or anything like that, or a
statement of judgment. I genuinely want to know where you're from,
because where you're from kind of dictates, you know, maybe
your life experience. I'm fascinated how people wind up in
(00:45):
certain locations. I've got a nod thing that I do
anytime I meet from somebody from California, I always ask
when I said, well, what is was your family? Like
an original California or californ when you settle her, because
those are kind of rare to come by. I'm always
fascinated by that. But one of the questions in forensics
(01:10):
that we ask many times is were you from? Or
where are they from? Referring to them. Of course, in
my profession the dead, that question gets even more complex
when you're asking that of remains that have been found
(01:38):
in a skeletal state. Today, we're going to chat about
the skeleton remains of a young lady that was last
seen at least one hundred miles away, but then she
was found in another state.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Skeleton.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body Bags Dave.
I know you're from California. I ya.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
I am from born and raised in southern California, Joe,
but like millions of others, moved away and live elsewhere.
And one of the places I have lived is in
Gwinnette County, Georgia, in Lawrenceville. Gwinette County is not in Atlanta.
It's outside of Atlanta. Lawrenceville and that are outside of Atlanta.
The reason I'm pointing that out. The story was first
(02:38):
reported as twenty year old Marie Ange Faith Martinez was
at the Atlanta courthouse waiting to be picked up by
her mother. Her mother was ten minutes away from the
courthouse in Atlanta when Marie Faith Martinez says, she has
her ride, so it doesn't somebody she doesn't know, but
she's taking a ride with this person. And mom says, Okay.
That struck me as odd because getting to the courthouse
(03:01):
in Atlanta is no small feet and if you're that
close to it. You're not giving up that unit. No,
you don't get in a car with somebody you don't know.
I'm almost there, But that's not where Marie Ange Faith
Martinez was. She was not in Atlanta at the courthouse.
She was at the Gwenette County Courthouse. That makes a
difference now for the rest of the story. The geography
really does matter here because Maury and Faith Martinez was
(03:25):
seen at the Gwenette County Courthouse. Her mother had contact
with her there, but the minute she gets into a
white truck with a man she doesn't know, all contact ceases.
Gwinett County actually has had a mall called the Gwenette
Place Mall. It was at one time one of the
largest malls in America, but over the years, like millions
(03:47):
of other malls, it trunk down to nothing and now
it's used for television shows like Stranger Things is filmed
inside what used to be the Gwinnette Place Mall. But
that's Gwenett County. That's what we're talking about here. That's
where this story starts, not in downwo Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
That means something, Yeah, yeah, it does, and it goes to.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Well, first off, you know I was talking about geography.
Just a second, she's walking out of this criminal justice complex,
which I think is kind of anytime you hear that
term that means like the courthouse and the jail and
maybe police headquarters depended upon what jurisdiction you're in. This
thing is massive, d I mean, it's absolutely massive. And
(04:28):
there's a couple of those around in the various counties
around Atlanta, and each one of them are large. I
don't know if that speaks to the level of crime,
you know, because they have to handle, you know, such
a volume. But anytime I have someone telling me that
you have an individual that is standing outside of the jail,
(04:49):
the first thing I'm going to think of is, well,
why were you there? Were you there for a court appearance?
Were you visiting somebody, or had you've been in residence there,
you know, as an inmate, And I think those are
legitimate questions. It's like I got to tell you, I've
spent a lot of time around courthouses and over the
(05:10):
course of my career, you know, either in the courtroom itself,
providing testimony, meeting with DA's office, or parish thought. I
hated working working desks inside jails. I hated it and
that I have had to do.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Okay, have you done a lot of those?
Speaker 3 (05:27):
I don't mean I'm not chasing the rabbit here, but
you know you have mentioned going into a jail too
because somebody was dead. Yeah, we're not talking about natural
causes there.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
I mean, no, you.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Can and that happens. I mean, it's like any other
kind of population really, Oh yeah, yeah, And you've got
a lot of males in there. You have older males, generally,
males that you know don't die as a result of
some kind of violent event or maybe some kind of
drug addicted event. Once you hit a certain level age wise,
(06:00):
and you're unhealthy to begin with, there's a high probability
you're gonna have a heart attack. I mean that's just
you know, you're rolling the dice. It's number and call
it heart diseases like number one killer and has been
for years.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Older dudes or older people would end up in the
infirmary or something they wouldn't in the gail.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Many times they do. But every now and then you're
going to have somebody that has undiagnosed heart ailment and
they're found cold and stiff. Now some listen, some jails
will say, uh, Yeah, we're not going to leave them
and sell. We're going to take them to the infirmary.
At this point in time, they're already deceased, you know,
whereas you look at a case like Epstein, uh, where
(06:39):
you know they thought, I guess, for whatever reason, that
he might have been salvagable. So you've got EMTs coming
into that space, which is always fascinating to me because
there's so much crap you have to carry in. I
don't carry in as a death investigator as much as
they do, but can imagine taking a defibrillator. You got
to that gurney, there's a couple of you, and dude,
(07:02):
you got to go through security. So there's got these
stops along.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Even when you're the medical guy and they know, you
still have to go through security and explain why you
need all this stuff. Meanwhile, you got a guy over
here struggling to take his last breath. Yeah, and hold on,
wait a minute. You got to go back through the
wanding area again.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Yeah, yeah, okay, here, take your gurny back. It doesn't
happen like that. They have, you know, necessarily, but it is,
and I understand it's not necessarily. I was going to
use a word absurd, it's not. But yeah, I've spent time,
you know, working cases in there. I hate it because
you feel, you know, they strip you of everything that
you have, you know, even my scene bag. Right, lots
of times I was only permitted to take certain things.
(07:43):
That's certain metal objects I couldn't have. ID have to
surrender a weapon and my badge, all that sort of stuff.
But with her, you know, you're thinking, why are you
at the jail? And that's that's where that's a thread
you want to pull on in this case, because who
is generally around courthouses and jails that are on the outside. Well,
(08:04):
you got people that are visiting people, you got people
that have court appearances, and you have people that have
been doing time, yeah you know inside of there. And
it's a county jail, so it's not like it's a prison.
There's a big difference. But you've got people that are
not necessarily at the highlight in their life, you know,
and so it's a recipe for a disaster. And that
(08:27):
was one of the big questions I had when I
heard about this poor, poor young woman, thinking, well, why
was she there in the first place. And that's something
that investigators would look at Dave.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
And that's exactly where you and I started in researching
this particular story. She's at the Gwinnett County Her mom
is on her way to pick her up at the
Gwinnett County courthouse. They're on the phone and Maury and
Faith Martinez is twenty years old. She is a bit
worldly and she's on the phone with her and she says,
(09:02):
I got a guy here that's going to give me
a ride.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
And you don't need to come.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Yikes.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Yeah, And she doesn't know this person who's going to
give her a ride, but indicates to her mother that
the guy is with a recovery program. Now, you mentioned
a minute ago about the reason somebody might be around
a courthouse, you know, being from jail or what have you.
And in this particular case, at twenty years old, her
(09:30):
mother says that that Morine Faith Martinez had had her
issues with drugs. Fentanyl in particular is mentioned. And she
gets in this white truck to take off to go
to wherever mom was on her way to pick her
up to take her home. Now, she has n't been
living at home with mom for a while. She actually
(09:50):
has been on her own doing her own thing. She
is twenty years old. She's not a child child child,
but she's not full grown, legal, twenty one year old
enough adult. Last time Mom texts her talk Store is
in that moment when she gets into the truck with
the guy. Guy she doesn't know. Mom texts her. Mom
gets a bad feeling about it, but never gets another reply.
(10:14):
The last thing she knows is that her daughter gets
into a vehicle with somebody she doesn't know, ostensibly to
take her home.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
And there you go when we consider this journey, and
make no mistake, it is a journey because this young
woman did not live with her mother. She actually lived
in another jurisdiction, in the town of Alpharetta, which is
actually in Fulton County. But yet she's been at the
courthouse in Gwinette County. As we'll find out, that was
(10:47):
only the first stop. We still have two more to go. Brother, Dave,
I gotta tell you it would be an insult to
you to say that we have problem with fentanyl in
(11:09):
this country, because even though I say it a lot,
you've heard it a lot more than everybody else because
you're a newsguy and you have to wade through. But
you know, in this case state, there's an indication that
fentanyl may be involved in this case. There is actually
one report out there that she had had some struggles
(11:30):
with fentanyl addiction.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Perhaps that is of the devil, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Boy?
Speaker 3 (11:35):
I tell you what, brother, As we delve into this,
I have a couple of questions for you, specifically and
generally about fentanyl. As a normal person growing up in
the United States of America, we have seen our share
of drugs that become popular, you know, for brief periods
of time. In particular, I think about marijuana and the
hippies and the sixties and LSD and things like that,
(11:56):
and crank, the psychedelics of the sixties and early seven ties,
and then you end up with cocaine in the mid seventies,
late seventies and through the early eighties, powder cocaine, then crack.
You know, the crack bottomed out, became the base, and
it became the drug of choice for many. Heroin has
(12:17):
always kind of lingered in the top.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Isn't that weird? With heroin? It kind of rises and falls.
And we can't forget designer drugs either. Yeah, Because I
got to tell you, I still remember the first case
that I ever had dave that involved X, and I
was like, why do you call it X? And that
was my first introduction to designer drugs. But you know,
you've heroin and opiates have always been in the background
(12:44):
all along. I think about you know, matter of fact,
if you ever watched the old movie Say Old I
love this movie Tombstone, there's a scene in that movie
where powers booth and you know, of course it's a
fictionalized version. In Tombstone, he's actually in an opium den
smoking opium. And so you've had opiates around forever and ever,
(13:08):
and they're kind of the spine in an addiction that
runs through here in fentanyl is yeah, I mean traditionally
it's been an analgesic. You know, there were fentanyl patches.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Right those people say, there's been times with going from
cocaine to crack to meth and being the street side
of things, people grabbing it. And then you had the
other side, which was heroin, and then he'll billy heroin
with oxycon and things like that, And we had all
these different things that were horrible and evil and just
(13:41):
were massively addicted from a very very short usage time.
And then for some reason fentanyl. Fentanyl shows up during
the oxycon days in terms of being prescribed by doctors,
and I remember it being the patch, the fentanyl patch
for any of you know that in my private life,
(14:02):
I help people find sobriety through recovery. And one of
the things we saw back in this time period we're
talking about two thousand early two thousands, as people were
trying to move away from oxy conton the pill, and
it was the fentanyl patch that became this for those
suffering heavy duty pain chronic you know, put this patch
(14:24):
on for a couple of days whatever. And of course,
like anything else, very short order addicts found out, well,
poke holes in it, dip it, and you know, well,
wear a couple of patches at the same time, take
a bath, to any number of things to get high.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Then it got you.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
Well if you take the pat if you separate the patch,
and you get the film, and you oh my gosh,
just the things people do. I always think, if these
people would use their intellect, creativity and drive for good,
they rule the world.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Yeah, yeah, you think that. And and but yet that
that story you know, continues.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
How addiculous pentanyl regard it.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
But if you compare yeah, and the thing about it
is is that, Dave, here's the problem. It's kind of
like crack in the sense that when and I was
around when crack first burst on the scene.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Addicted on the first hit kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Well, yeah, and here's the thing about crack that made
crack so attractive, if it can be, is that only
rich people snorted coke. With crack, you can essentially bake
it down, crack off a piece and a very small
amount will just get you blasted. Well, well, fentanyl it
(15:37):
doesn't require as much as, say, for instance, like heroin
or morphine. I think that and people say that it's
like one hundred times more powerful than morphine. So just
a couple of tiny little grains of fentyl can put
you on the moon. All right, and it's very dangerous.
You got things that are laced with it out there.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
But she is going to ask you about the fentanyl
thing with lacing and yeah, that means he's adding fentanyl
to other drugs to give it a bigger kick.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Now, yes, all right.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
Dealers are not scientists. Okay, they are not. They're not
wearing a lab coat and they're they're actually there are
people you wouldn't trust to balance your checkbook, and you're
actually buying drugs from them that being created in their
bathroom in the trailer. Okay, and that's why fentanyl was
it used by the druggies to so they could water
(16:28):
down the whatever drug they were selling and put a
little fentonyl to give it a kick.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Yeah. And the kick is is an interesting term. It
would it would give you and gives people this hide
that is unbelievable. And so once you you kind of
put that blood in the water, you've created a unique
product that is unique to the particular dealer and people
want more of it. It's like, Wow, that was that
was incredible.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
I got to assume Jay I got this from Joe
Scott Morgan. It's got the devil's smiley face on the front.
He knows what he's for him.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Yeah, yeah, And I think that it's almost like a
it's like addiction addiction with the face of a salesman,
and so it's it's one of those types of things.
And but you know, Dave, she had she our young
lady here had had been through fentanyl addiction. Apparently her
(17:22):
mother had alluded to this. We've read at least two
stories now that have alluded to this, and you have
to think about the sorts of people that It's not
like she's running down to the local doc in the
box and saying, hey, doc, you know, prescribe me some fentanyl.
And again this goes back to who picked her up
at the jail, Dave, I want to know, and let
(17:45):
me throw one more thing at you if you like
that one. She's stunning. I mean, she is physically stunning
when you see her. I'd want to know if there
was something else running deeper here, because you have this
beautiful young woman and you've got somebody out there that
maybe is providing her with these drugs, that's taking advantage
(18:07):
of her. And we're not going to go too far
down that road because I don't have any way to
validate that. But from an investigative standpoint, you want to
ask that question. And with a death investigation, particularly in
a case like this, there's not a lot left you know,
when you're doing your examination, particularly in this case, so
(18:27):
you historically you have to go back and kind of
do a retroactive kind of investigation where you're looking into
even her medical records, if she detoxed. You want a
subpoena those records and find out where was she in life,
what was her level of dependency, had she had relapsed
this before, and how long has this been going on? Dave,
she was only twenty, you know, she was not of
(18:50):
legal age to you know, to purchase alcohol or smokes.
But yet she is involved with one of the most
insidious substances in modern history. And so you have to
ask those questions, you know, when you're conducting an investigation,
I think the first place I'd like to know is
(19:11):
this person who was this individual? And they're talking about
this is kind of curious. They've talked about how a
white man as she is standing outside of the jail,
is caught on CCTV speaking with her, and then they
go on to say, well, this white male shows up
(19:32):
in a white truck, so they're able to get clarity
according to reports that it's the same guy driving the truck.
I don't know about you, but when I'm looking in
a truck, I can't really unless you know, unless I
know you, I don't necessarily know who is in the truck.
I can't even make out what race you are, what
(19:53):
your size is. Most of the time, who pays attention
to that. But they're saying that they have apparently an
image of this, and I found that interesting that still
to this point, we don't know who this person is.
We don't know where this road leads, Dave.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
And here we are. We know she goes missing from
this date. To give you some dates, she was reported
missing on August twenty eighth by her mom. She actually
was last seing August twenty first at the courthouse. Okay,
that was when she gets in the car in the
truck with the guy that she doesn't know. Mom worries
from the very beginning. Seven days later reports are missing.
(20:28):
We are dealing with a young woman who is an
adult who does not live with her mother. She lives
in a different place with a couple of guys. So
police are a little bit I don't know how they
approach this in terms of a missing person. If you
have a young teenager who goes missing but they live
with you, you know, in your family home, that's different report, yes,
(20:51):
And that's not the case here because she was on
her own, living with other people. And so when she
was reported missing, police did investigate.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Hopped on it, Joe.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
They didn't blow it off and say oh, not worried,
because they actually tracked her from Gwinnett County to an
area in Cobb County. And you're gonna have to break
this down because I don't know powers Ferry Road. But
the police were able to figure out here's where she
was really last seen or that we actually know she was,
so they followed her from Gwennette Place, Gwinnett County, to
(21:23):
Cobb County and Georgia. And then I'm gonna go ahead
because we got to get into this. She goes missing,
don't know where she is. We've lost boom, it's we
don't It's now going to be a cold case until
just outside of Chattanooga, Tennessee, one hundred miles to the north,
police find something.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
In a rural area. You know, they have found her
skeletal remains, and you know you're talking. It's Hamilton County,
which you know for Tennessee in Tennessee, and it's the
same you know, Chattanooga's actually the county seat. The geography
is kind of interesting up there because if you go
in on any of the major arteries, the roadways that
(22:07):
go in there, it's a it's notorious. Chattoogah's notorious forgetting y'
all twisted around because you've got a confluence of various
roadways that come in there. I think it's like fifty I,
fifty nine I twenty four, which you would take out
of Chattanooga to go to Nashville, for instance, and then
(22:29):
you've got one of the largest interstates in the nation,
which is seventy five, and it splits off and breaks
back to the northeast. So if you're you know, if
you're heading up north, so you've got this confluence of
all of these roadways that are up there. And the
fact that she is found now they're saying found in
(22:51):
a rural area in Hamilton County. Just because the city
of Chattanooga is there doesn't mean that outside of there
it it's densely populated. It ain't because you can get
into country really quick up there. And you know, you
think about this, well, how did you get from Gwinnette County,
(23:13):
which is on the far east side northeast of Atlanta,
all the way and you've got this phone pinging as
it is moving. I'm saying it is moving, not she
is moving, Dave. And we've learned this lesson in the past.
It is moving up seventy five at this point in time, Well,
who goes to Chattanooga and who would know? I think
(23:35):
one of the big questions is who would feel comfortable
enough seeking out a rural area to deposit a twenty
year old's body. I love Tennessee. I love going up there.
(23:58):
I've been going there since I was eight or nine.
But when you consider that up in Hamilton County, you've
got a young woman whose remains are found in a
rural location. One of the first questions I'm going to
ask is, well, what was the status of the death scene?
(24:19):
Or that's not an appropriate, appropriate comment, I don't think
because or an accurate comment, because if you say death scene, oh, ok,
that implies that the death occurred there. I guess the
proper term would be what was the deposition site like?
Because Dave, from what we understand, it's the site contained
(24:43):
skeletal remains.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
I was going to say, Joe, now I understand what
you're saying about the death scene and not knowing because
all they found from August twenty twenty three. We're talking
about the first week of January. We're not talking in
a long period of time, Joe, for a twenty year
old woman to go from standing outside the courthouse to
(25:05):
skeletonized remains. And they're found outside Chattanooga in a rural area,
and we don't know how they were found in terms
where they just piled up on top of one another.
Did somebody build a sign out of them and make
you know what was going on? We don't know. But
I got some questions, Joe. How fast does a human
body become skeletonized remains, even if the body is laid
(25:29):
outside to the elements.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Yeah, And it's, as I always say, my default position
with this is it is environmentally dependent. You have what's
referred to as a surface deposition, which is where you
take a body and essentially lay it down on the ground.
And just think of you hear this term a lot
in our line of work. You hear this term a
body dump, and that means that body dump implies that
(25:56):
somebody was moving quickly, they had a location where they're
just going to take and this happens. Hey, hey man, Look,
I've worked cases where I've had to go and I've
found skeleton remains or remnants of skeleton remains in ditches.
So what that tells me is an investigator somebody rolls
up along the road. Ditches run alongside roads, they open
(26:16):
the door and they essentially just pulled maybe an entire
human body intact, dump it in the ditch. Well that
body just by virtue of what we know about ditches.
Ditches their purpose is to drain water, right, so the
environment in that particular location is going to be dictated
by heavy rain. That's one of the reasons we didn't
(26:36):
find all of the elements of the skeleton in that
particular case, because they've got a long, long way that
they can just be washed to and you're not always
going to see it because then you've got scavenger activity
that's going to come up for a while. That body
would remain intact. But when you're talking about if it
sounds like there's not a lot of excavation going on here.
(26:58):
This sounds like a surface deposition of the body, which
implies to me the person didn't take time with the body.
It was viewed to them or by them as an inconvenience,
or they're trying to get as much distance between them.
(27:21):
Now I will go ahead and make this big reveal,
and this happens. Unfortunately, a lot in skeletal remains today
as in our case here, they can't come up with
a cause of death. They can't and the biggest generally
(27:41):
one of the biggest problems that you have in a
case like this where you can't determine cause of death
and you've got skeletal remains. This just no soft tissue,
so you can't make a diagnosis that's based on hemorrhage.
Now you can look at the body the skeletal remains
and say, well, I've got fractures here. But are those
(28:04):
fractures as a result of anti mortem trauma or is
it a post mortem event where bone snap as they
go through de ka. I can't imagine that would be
the case here because she had not been down that long,
but it was sufficient enough for skeletonization to begin, and
(28:30):
it it can. I've seen bodies go pretty quickly in
particularly humid environments where there's a lot of heat.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
You got this is very humid, Yeah, yeah, it is.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
And you're also putting in the element of scavenger activity.
You've got codes. Codes are everywhere around this area of
South We have them here, I've seen them in my yard.
They certainly have them up in Tennessee as well. You've
got wild hogs that we have a major problem with
(29:07):
in South I can't speak to Hamilton County that much,
but I do know that they're out there and they
will root on a body. And then you've got smaller animals,
you've got wild dogs too. So if any of that
was introduced into the equation, that's another factor that has
to be considered. And if you have skeletal remains and
you do have animal activity, and look, I'm going to
(29:31):
be very blunt in the body bags. You're talking about
postmartem feasting on bodies, and so there would be evidence
of that on bone as well. And you have to
be able to tell the difference between again, postmortem trauma
on the body as opposed to what happened in life
that brought about her death. She's twenty years old day.
She should not be dead. So that leads us down
(29:53):
a very sinister path, doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
And that's where could you tell from the bones if
she ingested drugs prior to death? Fittonel specifically, could we
find out from the bones.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Not simply based on bone itself. It's not in the
narrow No, it's not. And here's the problem. They have
really released so very little information that we don't really
have a a source of data as far as soft
(30:35):
tissue that may have remained.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Okay, let me ask you this show as long as
we're there, because we don't know, but your background you've done.
Every time we do the show, I find out something
different that you have done, and I love that. But
it also makes me think. When you close your eyes sometimes,
do you just immediately have a shocker, like poking you
in the side, you know, a flash memory. I'll have
(30:58):
a flash memory of growing up in something happening. I
just can't imagine what your flash memories do.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
But no, I mean yeah, And it used to be
a lot more frequent with diagnosis of PTSD, and I
went through a lot of therapy for that. But every
now and then I'll slip back into that state. There
will be something that will kick something off in my brain.
I'm past nightmares at this point in my life, so
I fortunately, by the grace of God, I don't have
(31:25):
to endure that anymore. I had really bad ones. But
every now and then you'll come across a case that
acts as a triggering mechanism because you go back and
recall things. But yeah, yeah, and but look, you know,
and as morbid as this is, and you know, everything's
on the table here. I got to reveal this, and
(31:47):
you know, I actually enjoyed the recovery of skeletal remains.
I found it. It was actually kind of peaceful because
you're you're focused on. If you doing a skeletal recovery,
it's labor intensive work. I didn't have to do anything
else when I was out there. Anything any other cases
I might catch or that might come my way, it's
(32:09):
something that would be back burner, somebody else would handle it.
I'm trying to assist a forensic anthropologist at the scene
for the recovery, and it was always fascinating to me.
It's like, I don't know. To me, it was kind
of like putting a gigantic puzzle together, and so it
would occupy my mind. And you never know when you're
(32:32):
coming over an area what's going to be revealed. And
in a case like this, where you know pretty quickly,
particularly if you have the skull, you can get an
idea many times about the age of the individual. You
can because a couple of things that we look for
we do aging, or forensic anthropologists do aging on skulls.
(32:54):
You know what brackets, and it's generally very broadly bracketed.
You do racing, which is is you determine what race
an individual is from their point of origin, and forensic
anthropologists have a way to just eyeball remains and can
ballpark it. Sometimes they're wrong. You can look for trauma
(33:18):
assessment and an interesting other thing you can look for stature,
which is kind of fascinating. And when we know that
our young lady was just over five feet tall, and
Dave she only weighed a hundred pounds, so there's you know,
she's very petite, you know, one hundred pounds. I don't know.
I think maybe I weighed one hundred pounds when I
(33:39):
was five. I don't know. I'm a big guy. Maybe
that's the case. But when you think about she's very
diminutive and would be easily handled by somebody, maybe an
individual in a truck that picked her up. But why,
what would cause what would bring about her from that
(34:03):
jail in Gwinnett County one hundred miles away to the
point where they've crossed the state line. I got to
tell you, man, one of the things that pops to
mind with me. One of the things that comes up
first is something we've already mentioned. Fentanyl, Yeah, you know,
and the fact that she's found in a rural area.
If she's in a rural area, either somebody either somebody
(34:25):
because their purpose they're going up seventy five seventy five
winds up in one spot, all right, winds up in Chattanooga.
What if? What if she's in the vehicle and fentanyl
is involved. She's been out of jail, now, she had
gone through detox. Did you know this? This is kind
of sinister. But once you detox and you attempt to
(34:47):
do the same amount of drugs that you've done prior
to detoxing, it's lethal. Man. So it would only take
a very small amount. I'm not saying that's what happened.
The investigators have to think about that.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
I would think, now, Joe, we've got bones skeletonized. That's
what word skeletonized remains. Now does that mean that there
is no flesh on the bones or is this just
a general term that is used to explain to the
public that they did recover somebody but not identifiable.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
I think that is a very insightful question, because in
our field, we will use the term completely skeletonized and
partially skeletonized, or we will say, here's the other qualifier.
We'll say we have an intact remain, and intact means
that it doesn't mean that the body hasn't decomposed, all right,
(35:40):
that's not what's being in plot here. But what it's
saying is that there are no visible bony structures. Like
when you eyeball a body, you don't have like, you know,
the one of the most prominent areas that you look
at is like the forehead, for instance, has any of
that skin the integrity that skin been compromised to the
(36:02):
point and it kind of peels back like this, Particularly
as the skin becomes dried, dried out or desiccated, you'll
see little tears in the skin. You'll have bone that
is visible, maybe the external table of the skull. All
they're saying is skeletal remains, and they're in a rural area,
(36:24):
so I have to take them on face value. I
would think that there would have to be something left.
And here's here's one other thing. I'd want to know
what the status of clothing is. That's a big If
you just have skeletal remain, Okay, that's a big difference
(36:47):
then actually finding skeletal remains still contained in clothing, because
that goes to anti mortem or prior death activity. Were
they naked and I'm saying that in general, I'm asking
that question, or did somebody strip the clothes off of
the body just after they died, because you know, being
(37:11):
absent of clothing applause a lot of things. Man, It
implies that maybe they were deprived and set loose into wilderness.
It also implies that if they're without clothing, that maybe
there was evidence on the clothing and also applause something
more sinister too, and that's sexual activity.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Right.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Was this was this a rape homicide? And I think
that's one of the things they're thinking about, Dave, What.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
About without tool marks on the actual bones? Is there
a way to determine that this body was placed in
this rural area? Again, we know we know she left
the Gwinnett County Courthouse in August. On August twenty first,
(37:57):
we know that they saw her, they being the police,
they have proof she was in Cobb County, Georgia. And
then we find her skeletonized remains one hundred miles from there,
in a rural area outside Chattanooga. And assuming she died well, no,
(38:19):
I can't even assume that I know. I don't know
where she died. I don't know how she died on
the side. We don't know anything. And we don't know
if her body we don't know if her remains were
found laid out in bones just thrown out of a car,
or if she had been taken apart, manually deconstructed and
bones piled there.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Right, we don't know.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
That's key, and you know you brought up that's one
of the questions that's always asked when you have skeletal remains,
what's the status of it? And this is how we're
going to break it down if because you know, bones
will still have Sometimes bones skelt remains will still remain articulated,
(39:04):
which means intact the soft tissue has come off, but
yet the bones are still attached together by various attachments
that structurally, Now, if you've got a set of skeletal remains,
dave where the body has where the remains are stacked,
(39:26):
Like you were saying, boy, that's that's a gruesome thought,
because that gives you an indication that the body had
been rendered down in some manner and then the bones
stacked and that's almost a ritualized thing, right, don't I
don't think we have that going on here.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
They would have said it, they would have said something, Yeah,
they I.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Think that they would have. And here's one other thing
that I think that is that they're working with here, Dave,
because if it can be shown that this is a
kidnapping or that this may have happened, guess who they've
involved at this point in time. Who the perpetrator is
(40:07):
involved in this point in time, because they've left Georgia,
they've crossed state lines at this point in time. Yeah,
the FBI is going to be up to their eyeballs
in this case. So they're going to bring in all
of the resources that they have there. But one of
the greatest resources for investigation when it comes to Skeltor
Remains is, I don't know, just over one hundred miles
(40:31):
to the east of Chattanooga, Integrate said of Tennessee, and
that's ut Body Farm. So that's the one thing about
about Tennessee when it comes from to doctor Bass, who
found founded the body Farm, he always made himself available
to law enforcement. I would not have wanted to be
(40:52):
one of his students because he's very difficult, very difficult
professor to have. However, he always made time for law enforcement,
and that I think that's been passed on through the lineage.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
There.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
They have that organization at their disposal. Right now, all
we know is that we have no cause of death.
This young woman walks out of a courthouse, and there
are very few electronic breadcrumbs to give us an idea
(41:27):
of movement other than that ping, that last ping that
they have of her or her phone traveling northbound on
I seventy five toward Hamilton County, Tennessee. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan,
and this is Body Backs
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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