October 21, 2025 • 48 mins
On September 13, 1964, Catherine Blackburn is - bludgeoned, raped, and tortured. A crime so heinous the local coroner said "We're dealing with a sadistic sex maniac." Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack look at a murder that happened in 1964 and when unsolved until 2025. Joe explains the injuries that include: fractured skull, stab wound in her neck, slashed throat, and heated steak knives on a gas stove used to burn "shapes into her lips and chest". Catherine Blackburn bled to death, and her case went unsolved for more than 60 years.
Transcribe Highlights
00:01.55 Introduction
03:34.72 Exhumation - Tammy Daybell
08:17.05 Monster waiting around the corner
13:23.15 Coroner said whoever did this was a "sadistic sex maniac"
18:21.88 Mutiple areas of hemorrhage
23:40.19 Victim was targeted
28:41.02 Underlying impression of a name became a lead
33:01.64 Forensic detective got into the case in 2018
39:94.96 Exhuming the body of a suspect
43:30.97 Burglars going into private areas
48:36.67 Case Solved, 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):
Bodybuts with Joseph S gotten more. A long, long time
ago there was a king in England. His name was
Charles First, and I've actually spoken about him on bodybacks
before he was beheaded. He was beheaded at the order
(00:22):
of Parliament, who was loosely controlled by a fellow named
Oliver Cromwell Well. In the wake of the deposing of
Charles First his subsequent execution, Cromwell elevated to the position
of Lord Protector, did away for a short period of
(00:45):
time with the monarchy. But as with many things in
life and death, it never remains the same because a
few years later, Charles First's son, who had been living
in exile, Charles a Second, ascended back to power, and
when he did, Cromwell had been dead, already buried in
(01:08):
a crypt. The remainder of those that had deposed the
king were arrested, tried, drawn and quartered, disemboweled while they
were alive, as a matter of fact, and then came
to Cromwell. They disinterred his body and took his head,
(01:29):
cut it off and stuck it on a spike for
all to see. The reason I'm telling you this is
that I guess other than just maybe vengeance in some
way a warning maybe to others there was really no
need to dig old Olie up, but they did. I
(01:52):
don't know how much evidence it provided of anything. But
today on body Bags, we're going to find out if
dead men do in fact tell tales, because I think
they might. And the tale that I have to tell
you today is something that would make even Charles the
(02:14):
Second quiver. I'm Joseph Scott Moore and this is bodybacks.
I've been a part of several exhamations over the course
of my career, and it's it's an odd thing to
(02:40):
be present for. I have to say there's a bit
of excitement that goes along with it. There're certainly scientific curiosity,
and then there's this little hobgoblin that always lived in
the back of my brain, you know, kind of fearful
of what we were going to find when we cracked
that casket opened and heard inside for the first time,
(03:01):
because you never know what you're going to find.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Dave, is this like something you did on a regular basis?
Speaker 1 (03:07):
It's something probably I would be involved in. It seemed
to work out where I was at least involved in
one per year, maybe even two.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
And to get another then happens that easy. They got
to go to court and everything else. You got to
really prove what you're doing and why to make that happen.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
I know, I always reference this case because cases near
and dear to mahar is Tammy Davell, you know, and
that's that's a glaring example of this and it you know,
it takes. You have to have the full force of
law in order to do it. It's often said that judges.
Judges hate cracking open grapes. It's just not their things.
So when you go before the judge to get an
(03:46):
order of exhumation, it has to be something that is robust.
It has to be something that is proven to be
a need, an urgent need. In order to prove something
you just randomly go about digging up grace because that
that gets into a really dark area called desecration. At
(04:08):
that point. Wow, and how many somebody just had the word, Yeah,
I know, how many times have you and I covered
cases like about desecration and abuse of corpses. So you're working.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
You made us do it a gain last week?
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Yeah, Lord, have mercy. I had to take my brain
out and scrub it with comment. Yeah, so it's this one.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
This is this case today, Joe, when you talk about
solving and I mean solving a case that goes back
sixty one years. Yeah, and all of the machinations that
went into this. I had the chance to look over
the case. And because we start at the end, you know,
this cold case has been solved. But there's a twist
(04:49):
to the excimation on this one. Not a common thing
that happens with regard to solving a cold case like this.
But the guy that they actually found and when I'm
not trying to bury the lead, but he was never
on the radar, Joe. You're talking about technology that wasn't
even a glint in nineteen sixty four, a guy who
(05:13):
was a criminal, but not even a suspect in this crime,
which is a heinous crime on a wonderful woman who
was fifty years old and merely tried to rent the
apartment upstairs in her house. That's all she was trying
to do, Joe. She's a poor woman at a factory
and she just was renting that room.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
That's it. Yeah, And ye what happened to her you're
going to.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Have to cover because it's pretty substantial, and it took
technology from now from today to actually find out who
killed her in nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Yeah, isn't that something. The reason I was drawn to
this case is the fact that it reminded me the
victim here, this victim. It actually reminded me a little
bit of my wife's grandmother, in the sense that she
was not a victim of a homicide, but in a
(06:09):
sense that she was a person that worked in a factory,
took care of her family, had a great job, actually
worked for and here's a name from the past. She
worked for the Lily Tulip cup manufacturer company, if you
remember Lily Tulip. And interestingly enough, when she retired, she
worked there for years and years, and there was a
(06:31):
group of these ladies that all worked on the assembly
line together and they called them. They would meet for
coffee and they called their group the Wilted Lilies. Was
in the of the group. But she worked at this factory,
and in addition to that, she rented properties. She had
multiple homes or multiple dwellings in Springfield, Missouri, And so
(06:54):
she was doing everything she could to support her family
and make away for them and building up, you know,
kind of a nest egg for her family. Kimmy's grandmother
was one of the most generous ladies you'll ever come,
and just kind hearted as she can be. And you
can kind of see how if this lady was as
(07:16):
much like my wife's grandmother as I believe that she
probably was, she's probably very trusting soul. Everybody around there
really loved her. As a matter of fact, she was
considered to be everyone's, if I'm not mistaken, everyone's favorite
aunt day and that says a lot. I had And
(07:36):
this lady's name, by the ways, Catherine Blackburn, and I
had a special affinity for aunts in my life, Ladies
that never married, you know, just like this lady. She
was all about her family and they had great love
and affection. But you know, the thing about it is
is that people that are very trusting, many times they
(07:59):
don't have an awareness that there is some monster that
is waiting just around the corner to do some of
the most horrible things. And we're going to detail these
things in this episode that one can possibly even fathom.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Dave, Yeah, you mentioned how her family looked at her,
and I got a quote. Our aunt Kate loved her faith,
family and friends. She was a daughter, sister, aunt, and
neighbor Katherine Blackburn, you are not forgotten. That's kind of
a poignant closing on everything this family went through for
(08:35):
sixty one years. Yep. And you know, I'm thinking about
there was an eighty one year old woman at the
ceremony this past week when they announced the conclusion of
this crime that began in nineteen sixty four. She's an
eighty one year old woman. Now, she was twenty when
(08:56):
she saw her Aunt Katherine. She was the woman who
discovered Aunt Catherine. And imagine how her life has been
from the age of twenty young woman at the beginning
of adulthood to now being an eighty one year old
senior citizen. Oh yeah, and thinking back to this, I
(09:18):
just can't imagine what this would do to your life.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
It would be crushing because you know this lady Catherine
that had been such part of their life, and you know,
you can imagine what she would do. You know, she's
probably there for every single holiday, probably hosted holidays at
her home, meals, you know, just everything and probably oh
(09:42):
my lord, you've got nieces and nephews. You know you're
going to get a Christmas present from Aunt Catherine. You
know that kind of endearing person that she was. Everybody
looked forward to seeing her and being and for this woman,
as you'd mentioned, that bore witness to this, that actually
found her aunt's body, discovered her. It's impossible to plumb
(10:07):
the depths of horror because you know when you and
even as a death investigator, you will walk on and
we don't we don't try to display that professionally. But
there's sometimes when you'll walk onto a scene, Dave, and
you're you're standing there at all that you're standing and
staring at all that remains of an individual where they
have just been brutalized and ripped the shreds, and you
(10:30):
can't take the measure of it. Many times you're trying
to explain it in your brain because you know, the
thing about it, Dave, is that you look at someone's
body and you see it twisted and bent and broken
and burned and scarred and just ripped the shreds, and
the first question that comes to mind is not many times,
(10:52):
who did this to them? But you look at the
victim and you'll say, what in the world did this
person do to deserve this? And the really horrible thing
about this is that, brother, it ain't about what did
they do to deserve it. It's about the fact that
(11:13):
evil just kind of floats around in the air many times,
and you never know whose shoulders it's going to land upon.
(11:35):
There's two words that kind of popped mind when it
comes to descriptors of individuals that are sexual deviance. And
you've either got an individual that is a masochist who
(11:56):
enjoys pain being inflicted upon themselves, or you have an
individual who is a sadist who derives pleasure from watching
pain being inflicted upon someone else, and many times the
sadist is actually involved in inflicting the pain. The reason
(12:18):
I bring this up is that many years ago there
was a movie that came out, and it was actually
in two thousand and it's a movie called Quills, and
it had some of my favorite actors, namely Michael Caine
was in there. By the way, do you know how
you say Michael Cain in a Cockney accent? You actually
(12:42):
say the word my cocaine and it goes like this
Michael Kaine. So there you go. That's in Cockney. That's
the extent of my imitations, but it had Michael Caine
in it. In the name of the movie. It also
had Jeffrey Rush, and many of us might remember Jeffrey Rush.
It's fantastic in Kate Winslet. Anyway, the name of the
was Quills and it was about I think Waqui, Yeah, Woaquin.
(13:04):
Phoenix was in it too, and he portrayed a young
priest in it, and it had to do with the incarceration,
temporary incarceration of the Marquis de Sade. And you begin
to see how depraved he was in this movie, you know,
and it's it's a fictionalized version, but if you go
(13:26):
along you read some of the companion text and some
stuff that he was involved in, you begin to see
why modern psychologists psychiatrists began to pull that term. And
now it's an application for people that are just so
bent and so evil, and a lot of it roots
out of this and Dave in this particular case, the
(13:46):
coroner back then, based upon the injuries that he observed
on Catherine's body, said that whoever did this was a
sadistic sex maniac. And I know that that sounds very
early nineteen sixties in the way that he but he's
(14:07):
just telling the telling the truth. At that point in time,
the things that he saw that had been perpetrated upon
this poor woman were stuff that I think that most
of us, I hope that most of us couldn't even
begin to fathom.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Dave Well, and the timing it happened. When you have
a fifty year old woman who is living by herself,
and she's trying to rent the apartment upstairs, and she's
actually on the phone with her sister when the person
who's coming to look at the apartment shows up, and
(14:40):
she gets off the phone in a hurry. Hey got
to go, got to get the door. And so yeah,
if you can imagine what that must have been like
for the sister later on, you know, to know that
she hung up the phone and then answered the door
and let Satan in you know, flesh come into her home.
And based on what took place, I'm curious, Joe, because
(15:01):
we know some of the injuries. But I'm thinking that
because this was not a weeping willow of a woman.
This is a woman who actually was the fore woman
of the mohawk factory. Okay, I'm thinking she was. Yeah,
I'm thinking she probably knew her way around, how to
tell people what to do and things like that, and
she wouldn't be the kind of person you'd mess with.
(15:22):
So when this person comes to look at the apartment upstairs,
I'm thinking that it was a bum rush. I'm thinking
he got inside the house and attacked her quickly. What
do you think?
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Yeah, absolutely, I think that that's probably what happened. And
she's probably kind of inviting. And plus Luke, I mean,
she's she's looking at at, you know, renting a room.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
And I mean to tell you the apartment was upstairs, okay, yeah, yeah,
and that's where this took place.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yeah, and she she and dwelled the same structure, and
so the apartment is upstairs. And listen, I mean even
back then, you know, people are going to be you know,
they're going to want to know who the individual is.
It's going to be living under the same roof with him, right,
And you had mentioned that that this was probably a
bum rush. He gets her up there, or she leads
(16:10):
him up there, you know, because you can imagine what
it's like. She's leading the way, she's going upstaircase. She's saying,
the room's right this way, follow me, you know, and
as he you know, is trailing behind her, behind her
up there. This is when I believe that the attack
started up in this room, and there is kind of
(16:34):
kind of a gap in time here relative to how
long this may have took place. I can tell you
this and if this gives you a little hint, a
little hint and insight into timing. Dave, there's one comment,
and I'll go ahead and pull back the curtain just
we bid here. There's one comment that is made by
(16:57):
the corner in this case. This individual said that her
torturing that involved heated kitchen knives went on for hours.
So from the point that he makes contact with her
at the house and they adjourn upstairs to take a
(17:21):
look at the space, that's when all hell broke loose
and Dave, I got to tell you, brother, it wasn't
an immediate death. She lingered. She lingered while she was
enduring torture. And there's there is multiple evidence of torture
over the totality of her body. I mean, it's almost
(17:44):
like no surface area was not involved in this.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
It's not where she was struck in the head. And
that she was sexually assaulted. Wow, she was unconscious. How
can that be told?
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Joe? Well, I think that Okay, here's how it can
be told. First off, if she is struck in the head,
when there's trauma to the head, you've got you've got
kind of three levels. There's and you know, some people
might take exception, but in my simple mind, this is
the way I measure it. So you've got multiple areas
(18:22):
of where hemorrhage can begin to set in. If if
you've got, say, for instance, a skull fracture, you can
have what's referred to as an epidural skull fracture or
epidural hemorrhage, which the epidural hemorrhage is the dura covers
the brain. It's like the sack that the brain floats in,
(18:44):
and the brain and the spinal cord which are all attacked,
all attached. Are a watch with cerebral spinal fluid. Do
you remember, like if if you've ever taken a first
day class, people will say, don't if you see blood
coming out of the ear, that significant. But if you
see clear fluid coming out of the ear, that's an
(19:05):
indication that the interior of skull has been impacted and
probably the dura has been erupted and so therefore the
CSF fluid that's redundant. But the cs fluid was literally
pouring out of the external ear canal, and that's one
of the things you look for with head injuries. So
(19:26):
you can still be in that unconscious state and still
be very much alive. You're just unconscious. And I don't
know that she would have been completely unconscious for the
totality of it. I don't know that there's really any
way you could tell that, because you know, I don't
(19:47):
think that people continue to torture individuals unless they're getting
some kind of reaction from them. Now, you might have
a pain response in the unconscious state because you've got
an individual that has obviously beaten Catherine, but Dave, he's
he is also going to either an adjacent gas stove,
(20:12):
which it sounds like it was probably down it and
heating what they describe as steak knives, and then returning,
returning the steak knives back upstairs, and he's burning them
with her, or he's burning her with these And here's
(20:32):
the interesting thing he was now again this is from
the reports from the time, he's actually creating shapes. That's
a fascinating turn of a phrase there, He's creating shapes
with a heated blade and he's making these quote unquote
shapes on both her lips and her chest. And I'm
(20:57):
fascinated by this because those are two you've got three areas.
You got three areas, particularly the female form. They're highly
sexualized the mouth, the breast, and their bottom, okay, and
so any kind of trauma that's being inflicted in those
particular areas, as opposed to being burned up and down
(21:19):
the arms, for instance, is not as telling I think
as burning of the lips and certainly burning of the
breast perhaps, And that's what they're alluding to. You've got
a big surface area there you can push the hot
blade into it, and the idea that he's creating shapes
that's not something that that implies that. Just imagine if
(21:42):
you could envision a steak knife in your mind where
the blade obviously comes to a tip. You can heat
it up and then you could I could actually, and
Lord forgive me, I was sitting here thinking about how
this was done. You could create a flower shape with
this over and over again, just trying to do it
in a circular pattern. So they're saying that he's actually
creating these images on her body with a hot a
(22:06):
hot knife blade. He's also slashed her throat, and if
I remember correctly, in addition to that, he stabbed her
in the neck, slashed her throat. And they're saying that
this went on for a protracted period of time. Oh
(22:30):
and by the way, he's raping her the entire time,
off and on. So this, whoever this is, is like
in a highly frenzied state at this point in time.
That gives us an indication I think investigatively that he
was probably watching her, and they don't really say. And
(22:53):
this is curious, you know, because back in the day,
where do we find out about available apartments. Well, you
got to go to the local newspaper, right or I
guess they could have like I guess, I don't know,
back on bulletin board, Yeah, bulletin board. Or they had
those little you remember, the little penny magazines that you
could get like at the at the grocery store and
whatnot that are adjacent to the aisles, and they'll have ads,
(23:14):
like local ads in them. There's you know, they've got
coupons in them and things like that. But he he
would have targeted her. Now they're up in Albany, New
York and Albany is not a small place, of course,
it's the you know, it's the governmental hub of the
state of New York. Certainly you have all of this
area around there. He's targeted her specifically, he's aware of her,
(23:39):
and somehow she got onto his radar.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Day Oh, I can think, Joe, now what we know
about the suspect. I agree with you one hundred and
ten percent because after talk about a weird way of
going about this, because and I don't want to be dismissive,
(24:03):
and I apologize. If you're a family member, I hope
you realize the care we have taken on this because
it is so devastating emotionally. We all have a family
member that fits this profile. I think we all have
that aunt who didn't get married, that is in her
late forties and early fifties and still very active, and
(24:24):
she's the funny one usually and you know, the one
you look for my aunt Carolyn. I mean, I'm thinking
about you know, And so when I wanted to find
out about the guy that did this, and it wasn't easy,
but once I did, then Joe, then I realized when
(24:44):
you were saying he was watching, maybe it might have
gone further than that, it might have been that he
had the floor plan. He might have had that place
not just staked out, but he knew where the room was,
knew where the kitchen was, and knew how much time
he would have because what did he have to know?
He'd be familiar enough with her patterns, her day today
(25:04):
work and to know that there wasn't somebody coming home.
This wasn't happens since he had to know that this
was a single woman who did not have children or
a husband coming in, and that he could be there
long enough to do everything he wanted to do and
to incapacitate her, because it wasn't until a coworker came
(25:28):
by and to pick her up to go to work,
and she didn't come to the door and didn't seem
to be home, and the coworker calls her sister and says, hey,
you know, go check on your sister. I don't know
what's going on. And so that's where the niece, who
now is eighty one, goes with her mother, Caroline, Catherine's
sister rather and they go to check on her, and
(25:48):
that's who found her. It wasn't the police, it was
her sister and her niece, and he knew all that,
he knew he was going.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
To be undisturbed. I'm really wondering, I'm really wondering if
I'd like to know who previously occupied the space as well.
Was this someone that was known to the perpetrator like perhaps, well,
first off, he'd have to know that there was a vacancy.
Maybe he asked somebody and said, yeah, you know, I
(26:18):
just moved out of this place where my buddy just
moved out of this place. It's available, it's run by
this really nice lady that's there. And all you have
to do is that, you know, a sadist like this
is not looking for a roof over their head. They're
looking for their next victim, and unfortunately, in the case
of Catherine Blackburn, he found one. So, you know, Dug,
(26:55):
you brought out an interesting point that you know, her
coworker saw, no, didn't see hide in her hair of
her as they say, right, And when she alerted the sister,
the sister, Catherine's sister went over there with her daughter
into the niece, whose name by the way, Sandy, got
over there and when they discovered her, they immediately alerted
(27:20):
the police. The police when they arrived, they found actually
dave alledger that was there at Catherine's home and it
had the name Robert Broadhead. Uh. And they found that
through tracing indentions.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
You know. I thought that was fascinating that to me,
because you know, that's not I thought when they said
there was a the name was in a ledger, right,
I thought that it was just the receipt, you know,
that was staying and it was right there. And then
I looked deeper and that was where they actually saw
that something had been written there, but didn't know what
it was because it didn't show us that They did
the old you know, number two pencil and you know,
(27:55):
it's great out yeah, and got it that way, and
it's like I wanted something that we did they do
that with the kids. Do they teach kids that at school?
Speaker 1 (28:04):
I don't know if they do or not, but it's certainly,
you know, because you can look at something and see
see that there is an underlying impression. And that's actually
one of the things that I teach a section on
question documents my Intro class at JSU, my Intro Forensics class,
because we go over the practice of question document examination
and there's tracings that are like that, and this seems
(28:27):
kind of a rudimentary, kind of primitive form of doing this,
but if you see it, you have to raise it. Nowadays,
we would use alternative lighting where you can blast the
area with you know, polarized light, or you can do infrared,
and you can actually raised raise an indentation. You would
never have to touch the paper with like a number
two pencel. But it's still the same, it's still the
(28:48):
same principle and it's it's admissible. It's admissible in court.
But you know, the name that came up with was
Robert Broadhead, and this gives you an idea as to
where the police were back in sixty four day. They
found nobody in the area that was associated with its name.
As a matter of fact, they were and this fascinating
(29:10):
to me, absolutely fascinating. There was a they were at
such a dead end and had no leads that they
they inserted or emplaced a hidden microphone in Catherine's casket
so that if there was somebody that was there at visitation,
(29:33):
which you can see some sexual deviant doing this, taking
pride in what they had done. If anybody were to
make a spontaneous confession, standing at the casket. They actually
had the casket miked up back in nineteen sixty four.
I was fascinated by that, man.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
I saw that in their reports and I was going, Okay, well,
in a casket, you can hide it because you know,
you're even on an open casket, you only keep the
waste up. So you've got plenty of you know, high
about everything. And I wonder what they did here. You know,
there's been this is something that not the only time
that police have done something like that, and.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
So this was obviously a practice that went on. I'm
not saying that it doesn't go on today, but it's
kind of an interesting way. And you know, you have
to were they were desperate. But you know the thing
about it, Dave, is what's really cool about this case,
and I'm saying cool in a scientific way, is that
the answer to the big question who was this actually
(30:33):
rested right beneath Catherine's body at the scene, and that
is the information that they were so seeking. And listen,
I'm not sliding the people in the past that it's
the past. It's what it's the way they were limited
by the type of technology they had. But I will
(30:54):
give them a tip of the cap here because they
found there was a handkerchief found beneath beneath her body,
and back then they tested that handkerchief and actually found
remnant of semen. Now, we have to understand it that
(31:16):
we did not have DNA technology back then. The idea
in nineteen sixty four that we could have used DNA
in order to, you know, kind of integrate into crime
solving was something that you know, I don't know that
anybody it had occurred to anybody. Maybe it had, but
you know, one of the things that you would look
for with seminal deposition and zerologists. Zerology is a section
(31:41):
within crime labs that has housed the DNA section now
for a long long time. Soerology deals with not just blood,
but semen, urine, VC's, stomach contents, you name it, saliva.
There's a certain percentage of the population and male population
that are secrets, and so with secrets in saliva, the saliva, feces,
(32:08):
and semen, you can find red blood cells. And one
of the things that they would do is if an
individual and I can't remember the percentage, it seems like
it's forty maybe forty thirty five, forty percent population or secrets.
If you get lucky and you get one of the
secrets that has left behind seminal deposition, you can actually
(32:29):
check that semen sample for red blood cells, and if
you can get a red blood cell, you can type
the blood. But even then with ABO grouping, you're kind
of you're kind of limited. You know, apause aneg B
pause bnag opause ONEG and then you you've got apause
(32:50):
a you know, so forth and so on, So you're
kind of limited. Uh, the rarest, of course, I think
it's ab neg if I'm not mistaken, and so that
that was That's how limited it is. But Dave, they
held onto that sample for years and years, and this
was a cold case, and it wasn't until actually a
(33:10):
college along with a forensics detective and Albany Pde got
involved in this case, Dave, back in twenty eighteen. I
think it was this forensics detective that was assigned to
look into a cold case. Her name was Melissa Moury.
(33:30):
And again a big tip of cap to her because
she took this to a professor that ran the cold
case analysis center at College's Saint Rose. Her name is
doctor Christina Lane. Took this sample there and they began
to work this case to try to determine who exactly
(33:51):
was this. So the kids get this cold case and
they began working it well. As it turned out, they
had the seminal sample that they could do a comparison
with Day.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
In that shocking that they were able to take a
piece of evidence from nineteen sixty one four and now
again twenty eighteen they start working it. But you know,
it's interesting how the field of genetic genealogy has grown
with DNA. I was looking through the amount of time
and effort because again twenty eighteen they actually had and
(34:22):
they're right there, they're right on the cusp of figuring
this out, but no solution yet. In twenty twenty three,
the Cold Case Analysis Center at Saint Rose was given
a grant from Seasons of Justice. It's a nonprofit that
funds efforts to further investigate cold cases using DNA, and
(34:42):
they actually copped up ninety seven hundred dollars. They believed
in what they were doing at Saint Rose so much,
and that's where actually Authorm was involved that this all
developed into a genetic genealogy case. Joseph Scott Morgan that
you and I have talked about on this show of
you using some of the smartest people in the world
(35:03):
to create these opportunities. Now, to take some Joe, it's
a handkerchief underneath the person's body. In nineteen sixty four,
they have no They've talked to everybody, they had a
list of possible suspects. Okay, they had them, checked them
all out, they all had alibis, they had nothing. But
(35:25):
then they have this DNA and a detective starts working it,
and the science gets involved, and the next thing you know,
you've got students that are involved. You know, I can't
imagine the educational value of this for them career wise
of watching this take place and still twenty eighteen until now.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
And listen, here's another way that you know, the police
are disadvantaged that if you have a group of let's say,
scholars or college kids that are being directed by scholars.
You know, I think that a lot of people labor
under this idea that cops have all the time in
the world to work cases, and they don't. And I
(36:13):
got called in to consult on a case that was
up in Pennsylvania several years ago in the cases from
nineteen seventy and I remember going to speak with the
detectives from the cold case Squad to the Pennsylvania State
Police and I'm not putting words in their mouth, but
(36:34):
this case was from nineteen seventy days, all right, that
they had. They have a limited number of members on
this squad. Okay, they have more recent cold cases that
they're trying to get solved. And you know the thing
about it is the longer time goes by, the more
faded memories get, the more compromised evidence can get. And
(36:56):
you know, you don't have unlimited resources. However, if you
put a group of students that are being directed by
a scholar and you have consultation with a police department,
that's a lot of brain power. And it's a lot
of enthusiasm too. You know, when you get older and
you're in proudly, you're not quite as enthusiastic. But I've
seen a room light up, you know, in a cold
(37:19):
case class I teach at Jack State. You know, these
kids their eyes like suddenly burst open and they're they're like,
we're going to be you know, analyzing a cold case.
You know, what can we put together? And suddenly their
brain is stimulated and you put a bunch of energetic
kids along with a professor that's motivated, and there are
(37:41):
not too many mountains you can't climb, you know, with
that kind of energy. But they're focused on that one case.
Whereas you know, how many other cold cases have there
been in Albany, New York's it's nineteen sixty four, man,
you know, it just it builds up over time. But yeah,
they did have this biological evidence and believe it or not. Well,
that's really fascinating about this is most of the time
(38:05):
when you and I cover cases, they are cold cases.
Many times we will be examining cases that involve remains
of unknown individuals and they'll have to go back and
backtrack determine who the person is. They get genetic material
from that individual, you've got a body, or you have
(38:28):
what remains of a body, and they're able to get
them identified. That's not what happened in this case, Dave.
We knew who Catherine Blackburn was. They've always known who
she was. The question was who was her perpetrator. Well,
because of the genetic material that had been left behind
and their efforts there and the preservation loathed these many
(38:52):
years later, Dave, they had so much data that they
had built up, and they had gotten down to the
brass hacks of everything. They they got an order of
exhumation and they exhumed the body of who they thought
was a suspect, David.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
That had to have been an intense battle. I mean,
we started off the show talking about how difficult it is.
It's not something that judges are just due. And now
you're talking about in this case, the person is a suspect.
It was never a suspect in life. He's now dead.
(39:32):
Think about that. Now you're going to tell me this
guy that you never thought he was never on your list, Joe,
and now you're saying he is. Okay, you had a
chance to talk to him for however many years before
he died. Now he's been dead for twenty five years,
and you want to go dig him up. Okay, let
me see what you got. Okay, I'm looking at your evidence.
(39:52):
All right, here's the shovel, boys, let's go dig him up.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
You know, well, you know the thing about it. It
turns out this guy's name is actually Joseph Nolwaski and
he had been Don't no one delude yourself into thinking
this guy is an airy haired little angel. All right, Hell,
he's got a long he had a long history of scumbaggery,
(40:15):
all right, that you can fall back onto here starting
I don't know, starting back in actually I think nineteen fifteen,
he had nineteen fifties, eighteen years old. Hey, yeah, he was.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Yeah, you know, we mentioned briefly about had he been
watching Catherine, had he been scoping out her place? You know,
because he was there for a long time, torturing her.
And this guy was a career criminal, and at one point,
can I give you the greatest hits our killer of
(40:51):
what he did? I mean, sure, after he gets caught
nineteen fifty he gets caught burglarizing a house within a
fifteen year old, he's only eighteen, goes to jail, he
ends joining the US military. Now, a lot of times
judges back then you got a young man going astray.
Here's your choice, boys, you got five years in the pen,
or go in the military. Goes in the military, gets
(41:12):
out in nineteen fifty eight, and from then until nineteen
sixty one, apparently, according to his neighbors, he didn't do anything.
He didn't have a job, didn't work, young man doesn't work.
He's now thirty three at the time of the murder
of Catherine. But this is a guy who from nineteen
sixty one till nineteen seventy three, he's committing armed robberies.
(41:37):
He's breaking into homes. They even caught him with a
kit in the mid sixties where he had two switchblade knives,
burglary tools like a crowbar and an alcohol torch, and
detailed floor plans of private homes and businesses in Rochester, Syracuse,
Buffalo detailed of private homes. That's why I say this
(42:04):
guy was the kind of guy that thought things through.
He knew who lived there, he knew what her lifestyle
was like. And that's why I think based on that,
I bet he had a lay, had a floor plan
for that house.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
They probably did. Yeah, can anyone hear say modus operandi? Yeah? Yeah,
I mean, you know they throw that term around, you know,
m O. But yeah, Dave, I mean, he he had
an m That's why, you know, the big question is
had he scoped her out to the point where he
knew her comings and goings And it's not like he's
she You know, her and her family are longtime residents
(42:37):
of Allby. You know, they've they've got an established family
history there, they're known about town, and he's he's not
unfamiliar with this area's fully familiar with it. Who say
he wouldn't have crossed paths with any of her relatives
and probably her maybe at the grocery store or wherever
it was. And you know, he's at his core, he's
(42:59):
a p editor. And predators stalk their prey, you know,
and they're looking for opportunities. And I've always had a
there's always this kind of creepy little thing that goes on,
I think with people that commit burglaries, because I don't
think that they all go in to necessarily, what a
weird word, huh, burglarize a home. I think a lot
(43:22):
of it is going in when no one is there
and viewing the home, going into private areas and digging
through private things and just observing. And I think that
there's an indwelling. It's not just thievery. There's like an
indwelling sexual sickness to it in many of the cases.
(43:43):
And they just say that they are burglarizing homes. And
you can burglarize a home without stealing anything, but you know,
and in Catherine's case, here's another point. There was nothing stolen.
There was nothing stolen whatsoever except thank you, thank you
so much, or absolutely right, except for her life, the
most valuable thing that was inside of that dwelling. Dave,
(44:06):
what happens, what happens with this case after this?
Speaker 2 (44:08):
Okay? Nine years after he kills Catherine. Nine years later,
he attacks a seventy four year old lady in Schonnected
in New York, who woke up in her bed May sixteen,
nineteen seventy three, covered in blood and confused. She calls police.
She's taken to the hospital with a fractured skull, cuts
to her back and face. The hatchet wielding attacker left
(44:31):
two clues at the scene, Joe a gold crown, dental crown,
and a glove. Now, he almost got away with this,
but here's the problem. He got drunk and went driving.
He takes the police on a wild chase, and of course,
you know what you want to piss off cops. Make
them chase you, Yeah, make them get into a high
speed pursuit, or even worse, make them run after you.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
Well, it's like the quote from Chris Rock. He said,
if the police have to chase you, they're bringing an
ass kicking whim.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
So there you go, that's exactly what happens. Yeah, so
anyway you look at it, when he's intoxicated, they get
him for leaving the scene of an accent at other
traffic violations, then resisting arrest, and by the way, possession
of a dangerous weapon a knife with a four and
a half inch plate. And by the way, they're looking
in the car, Now, what do we have here? A
(45:20):
hatchet with blood on it. That's how they got him
for the Schenectady attack. By the way, it was a
town councilman named fred Isabella. The town counselman, also a dentist,
was called in to take a look at the gold
(45:42):
crown and matched it up to his.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Tooth, and he cat it back to him. Yeah, it's
like a kind of living odentology, you know, as opposed
to forensical Well, it is forensic odontology. It's just that
most of the time is practiced on the dead. But here,
you know, you've got an individual that literally marries up
a restration on a tooth of crown and marries it
up to the guy that's the perpetrator. Again seventy three.
(46:06):
You don't have DNA to work with. But you know
those are that's physical evidence that was accepted well enough
in court that you know, that's that's a you know,
that's that's a nail in your coffin.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
He went to prison, He got three to fifteen years,
he served seven. He got out in nineteen eighty. So
we know what he did to Catherine in nineteen sixty four,
We know what he did to the lady in s
Connecteddy in seventy three. He does go to prison, but
when he gets out in nineteen eighty, apparently Joe he
learned a lesson and flew under the radar until he
(46:39):
died in nineteen ninety eight. So he's that's why they
had to go dig him up once they were able
to narrow down.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
Yeah, and that's and that's significant here because you know,
when you think about it, he's he's no longer to
be found anywhere. Once you start to dig into this
genetic tree, if you will. What's the old game or
I guess it's magic eight balls? What is it? It says?
(47:11):
All signs point to yes. When they begin to process this,
they have an idea that this is who it is.
But guess what, we ain't got nothing to compare it to. Hey, boys,
break out the picks and shovels. Here we go, you know,
and off to the graveyard they go. They disturb this guy,
dig him up, Dave, take him to the lab and
(47:35):
take DNA samples off of his body, and bingo, they
got the perpetrator. They got the perpetrator, and Catherine Blackburn's
homicide all the way from nineteen sixty four loath these
many years later. And the reason we're reporting on this
and discussing this case is the fact that this has
just been cleared after all of this time, and this
(47:57):
proves that, you know, I think for a long long
time in the cold case world it was kind of
helpless and hopeless many times. But you know, the thing
about it, Dave, is that with genetic material, those those
days of being kind of overwhelmed that there are so
many cases out there that will never get solved. This
(48:18):
is proof that if you do what you're supposed to do,
even back in nineteen sixty four, like these brave people
did back then, they process that scene, they collected the evidence.
They didn't know, they had no idea that all the
way in twenty twenty five, that that handkerchief that they
picked up at that scene would be the answer to
(48:41):
clear one of the most heinous homicides off the books.
In Albany, New York. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
is bodybags
Bodybuts with Joseph S gotten more. A long, long time
ago there was a king in England. His name was
Charles First, and I've actually spoken about him on bodybacks
before he was beheaded. He was beheaded at the order
(00:22):
of Parliament, who was loosely controlled by a fellow named
Oliver Cromwell Well. In the wake of the deposing of
Charles First his subsequent execution, Cromwell elevated to the position
of Lord Protector, did away for a short period of
(00:45):
time with the monarchy. But as with many things in
life and death, it never remains the same because a
few years later, Charles First's son, who had been living
in exile, Charles a Second, ascended back to power, and
when he did, Cromwell had been dead, already buried in
(01:08):
a crypt. The remainder of those that had deposed the
king were arrested, tried, drawn and quartered, disemboweled while they
were alive, as a matter of fact, and then came
to Cromwell. They disinterred his body and took his head,
(01:29):
cut it off and stuck it on a spike for
all to see. The reason I'm telling you this is
that I guess other than just maybe vengeance in some
way a warning maybe to others there was really no
need to dig old Olie up, but they did. I
(01:52):
don't know how much evidence it provided of anything. But
today on body Bags, we're going to find out if
dead men do in fact tell tales, because I think
they might. And the tale that I have to tell
you today is something that would make even Charles the
(02:14):
Second quiver. I'm Joseph Scott Moore and this is bodybacks.
I've been a part of several exhamations over the course
of my career, and it's it's an odd thing to
(02:40):
be present for. I have to say there's a bit
of excitement that goes along with it. There're certainly scientific curiosity,
and then there's this little hobgoblin that always lived in
the back of my brain, you know, kind of fearful
of what we were going to find when we cracked
that casket opened and heard inside for the first time,
(03:01):
because you never know what you're going to find.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Dave, is this like something you did on a regular basis?
Speaker 1 (03:07):
It's something probably I would be involved in. It seemed
to work out where I was at least involved in
one per year, maybe even two.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
And to get another then happens that easy. They got
to go to court and everything else. You got to
really prove what you're doing and why to make that happen.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
I know, I always reference this case because cases near
and dear to mahar is Tammy Davell, you know, and
that's that's a glaring example of this and it you know,
it takes. You have to have the full force of
law in order to do it. It's often said that judges.
Judges hate cracking open grapes. It's just not their things.
So when you go before the judge to get an
(03:46):
order of exhumation, it has to be something that is robust.
It has to be something that is proven to be
a need, an urgent need. In order to prove something
you just randomly go about digging up grace because that
that gets into a really dark area called desecration. At
(04:08):
that point. Wow, and how many somebody just had the word, Yeah,
I know, how many times have you and I covered
cases like about desecration and abuse of corpses. So you're working.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
You made us do it a gain last week?
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Yeah, Lord, have mercy. I had to take my brain
out and scrub it with comment. Yeah, so it's this one.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
This is this case today, Joe, when you talk about
solving and I mean solving a case that goes back
sixty one years. Yeah, and all of the machinations that
went into this. I had the chance to look over
the case. And because we start at the end, you know,
this cold case has been solved. But there's a twist
(04:49):
to the excimation on this one. Not a common thing
that happens with regard to solving a cold case like this.
But the guy that they actually found and when I'm
not trying to bury the lead, but he was never
on the radar, Joe. You're talking about technology that wasn't
even a glint in nineteen sixty four, a guy who
(05:13):
was a criminal, but not even a suspect in this crime,
which is a heinous crime on a wonderful woman who
was fifty years old and merely tried to rent the
apartment upstairs in her house. That's all she was trying
to do, Joe. She's a poor woman at a factory
and she just was renting that room.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
That's it. Yeah, And ye what happened to her you're
going to.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Have to cover because it's pretty substantial, and it took
technology from now from today to actually find out who
killed her in nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Yeah, isn't that something. The reason I was drawn to
this case is the fact that it reminded me the
victim here, this victim. It actually reminded me a little
bit of my wife's grandmother, in the sense that she
was not a victim of a homicide, but in a
(06:09):
sense that she was a person that worked in a factory,
took care of her family, had a great job, actually
worked for and here's a name from the past. She
worked for the Lily Tulip cup manufacturer company, if you
remember Lily Tulip. And interestingly enough, when she retired, she
worked there for years and years, and there was a
(06:31):
group of these ladies that all worked on the assembly
line together and they called them. They would meet for
coffee and they called their group the Wilted Lilies. Was
in the of the group. But she worked at this factory,
and in addition to that, she rented properties. She had
multiple homes or multiple dwellings in Springfield, Missouri, And so
(06:54):
she was doing everything she could to support her family
and make away for them and building up, you know,
kind of a nest egg for her family. Kimmy's grandmother
was one of the most generous ladies you'll ever come,
and just kind hearted as she can be. And you
can kind of see how if this lady was as
(07:16):
much like my wife's grandmother as I believe that she
probably was, she's probably very trusting soul. Everybody around there
really loved her. As a matter of fact, she was
considered to be everyone's, if I'm not mistaken, everyone's favorite
aunt day and that says a lot. I had And
(07:36):
this lady's name, by the ways, Catherine Blackburn, and I
had a special affinity for aunts in my life, Ladies
that never married, you know, just like this lady. She
was all about her family and they had great love
and affection. But you know, the thing about it is
is that people that are very trusting, many times they
(07:59):
don't have an awareness that there is some monster that
is waiting just around the corner to do some of
the most horrible things. And we're going to detail these
things in this episode that one can possibly even fathom.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Dave, Yeah, you mentioned how her family looked at her,
and I got a quote. Our aunt Kate loved her faith,
family and friends. She was a daughter, sister, aunt, and
neighbor Katherine Blackburn, you are not forgotten. That's kind of
a poignant closing on everything this family went through for
(08:35):
sixty one years. Yep. And you know, I'm thinking about
there was an eighty one year old woman at the
ceremony this past week when they announced the conclusion of
this crime that began in nineteen sixty four. She's an
eighty one year old woman. Now, she was twenty when
(08:56):
she saw her Aunt Katherine. She was the woman who
discovered Aunt Catherine. And imagine how her life has been
from the age of twenty young woman at the beginning
of adulthood to now being an eighty one year old
senior citizen. Oh yeah, and thinking back to this, I
(09:18):
just can't imagine what this would do to your life.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
It would be crushing because you know this lady Catherine
that had been such part of their life, and you know,
you can imagine what she would do. You know, she's
probably there for every single holiday, probably hosted holidays at
her home, meals, you know, just everything and probably oh
(09:42):
my lord, you've got nieces and nephews. You know you're
going to get a Christmas present from Aunt Catherine. You
know that kind of endearing person that she was. Everybody
looked forward to seeing her and being and for this woman,
as you'd mentioned, that bore witness to this, that actually
found her aunt's body, discovered her. It's impossible to plumb
(10:07):
the depths of horror because you know when you and
even as a death investigator, you will walk on and
we don't we don't try to display that professionally. But
there's sometimes when you'll walk onto a scene, Dave, and
you're you're standing there at all that you're standing and
staring at all that remains of an individual where they
have just been brutalized and ripped the shreds, and you
(10:30):
can't take the measure of it. Many times you're trying
to explain it in your brain because you know, the
thing about it, Dave, is that you look at someone's
body and you see it twisted and bent and broken
and burned and scarred and just ripped the shreds, and
the first question that comes to mind is not many times,
(10:52):
who did this to them? But you look at the
victim and you'll say, what in the world did this
person do to deserve this? And the really horrible thing
about this is that, brother, it ain't about what did
they do to deserve it. It's about the fact that
(11:13):
evil just kind of floats around in the air many times,
and you never know whose shoulders it's going to land upon.
(11:35):
There's two words that kind of popped mind when it
comes to descriptors of individuals that are sexual deviance. And
you've either got an individual that is a masochist who
(11:56):
enjoys pain being inflicted upon themselves, or you have an
individual who is a sadist who derives pleasure from watching
pain being inflicted upon someone else, and many times the
sadist is actually involved in inflicting the pain. The reason
(12:18):
I bring this up is that many years ago there
was a movie that came out, and it was actually
in two thousand and it's a movie called Quills, and
it had some of my favorite actors, namely Michael Caine
was in there. By the way, do you know how
you say Michael Cain in a Cockney accent? You actually
(12:42):
say the word my cocaine and it goes like this
Michael Kaine. So there you go. That's in Cockney. That's
the extent of my imitations, but it had Michael Caine
in it. In the name of the movie. It also
had Jeffrey Rush, and many of us might remember Jeffrey Rush.
It's fantastic in Kate Winslet. Anyway, the name of the
was Quills and it was about I think Waqui, Yeah, Woaquin.
(13:04):
Phoenix was in it too, and he portrayed a young
priest in it, and it had to do with the incarceration,
temporary incarceration of the Marquis de Sade. And you begin
to see how depraved he was in this movie, you know,
and it's it's a fictionalized version, but if you go
(13:26):
along you read some of the companion text and some
stuff that he was involved in, you begin to see
why modern psychologists psychiatrists began to pull that term. And
now it's an application for people that are just so
bent and so evil, and a lot of it roots
out of this and Dave in this particular case, the
(13:46):
coroner back then, based upon the injuries that he observed
on Catherine's body, said that whoever did this was a
sadistic sex maniac. And I know that that sounds very
early nineteen sixties in the way that he but he's
(14:07):
just telling the telling the truth. At that point in time,
the things that he saw that had been perpetrated upon
this poor woman were stuff that I think that most
of us, I hope that most of us couldn't even
begin to fathom.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Dave Well, and the timing it happened. When you have
a fifty year old woman who is living by herself,
and she's trying to rent the apartment upstairs, and she's
actually on the phone with her sister when the person
who's coming to look at the apartment shows up, and
(14:40):
she gets off the phone in a hurry. Hey got
to go, got to get the door. And so yeah,
if you can imagine what that must have been like
for the sister later on, you know, to know that
she hung up the phone and then answered the door
and let Satan in you know, flesh come into her home.
And based on what took place, I'm curious, Joe, because
(15:01):
we know some of the injuries. But I'm thinking that
because this was not a weeping willow of a woman.
This is a woman who actually was the fore woman
of the mohawk factory. Okay, I'm thinking she was. Yeah,
I'm thinking she probably knew her way around, how to
tell people what to do and things like that, and
she wouldn't be the kind of person you'd mess with.
(15:22):
So when this person comes to look at the apartment upstairs,
I'm thinking that it was a bum rush. I'm thinking
he got inside the house and attacked her quickly. What
do you think?
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Yeah, absolutely, I think that that's probably what happened. And
she's probably kind of inviting. And plus Luke, I mean,
she's she's looking at at, you know, renting a room.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
And I mean to tell you the apartment was upstairs, okay, yeah, yeah,
and that's where this took place.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yeah, and she she and dwelled the same structure, and
so the apartment is upstairs. And listen, I mean even
back then, you know, people are going to be you know,
they're going to want to know who the individual is.
It's going to be living under the same roof with him, right,
And you had mentioned that that this was probably a
bum rush. He gets her up there, or she leads
(16:10):
him up there, you know, because you can imagine what
it's like. She's leading the way, she's going upstaircase. She's saying,
the room's right this way, follow me, you know, and
as he you know, is trailing behind her, behind her
up there. This is when I believe that the attack
started up in this room, and there is kind of
(16:34):
kind of a gap in time here relative to how
long this may have took place. I can tell you
this and if this gives you a little hint, a
little hint and insight into timing. Dave, there's one comment,
and I'll go ahead and pull back the curtain just
we bid here. There's one comment that is made by
(16:57):
the corner in this case. This individual said that her
torturing that involved heated kitchen knives went on for hours.
So from the point that he makes contact with her
at the house and they adjourn upstairs to take a
(17:21):
look at the space, that's when all hell broke loose
and Dave, I got to tell you, brother, it wasn't
an immediate death. She lingered. She lingered while she was
enduring torture. And there's there is multiple evidence of torture
over the totality of her body. I mean, it's almost
(17:44):
like no surface area was not involved in this.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
It's not where she was struck in the head. And
that she was sexually assaulted. Wow, she was unconscious. How
can that be told?
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Joe? Well, I think that Okay, here's how it can
be told. First off, if she is struck in the head,
when there's trauma to the head, you've got you've got
kind of three levels. There's and you know, some people
might take exception, but in my simple mind, this is
the way I measure it. So you've got multiple areas
(18:22):
of where hemorrhage can begin to set in. If if
you've got, say, for instance, a skull fracture, you can
have what's referred to as an epidural skull fracture or
epidural hemorrhage, which the epidural hemorrhage is the dura covers
the brain. It's like the sack that the brain floats in,
(18:44):
and the brain and the spinal cord which are all attacked,
all attached. Are a watch with cerebral spinal fluid. Do
you remember, like if if you've ever taken a first
day class, people will say, don't if you see blood
coming out of the ear, that significant. But if you
see clear fluid coming out of the ear, that's an
(19:05):
indication that the interior of skull has been impacted and
probably the dura has been erupted and so therefore the
CSF fluid that's redundant. But the cs fluid was literally
pouring out of the external ear canal, and that's one
of the things you look for with head injuries. So
(19:26):
you can still be in that unconscious state and still
be very much alive. You're just unconscious. And I don't
know that she would have been completely unconscious for the
totality of it. I don't know that there's really any
way you could tell that, because you know, I don't
(19:47):
think that people continue to torture individuals unless they're getting
some kind of reaction from them. Now, you might have
a pain response in the unconscious state because you've got
an individual that has obviously beaten Catherine, but Dave, he's
he is also going to either an adjacent gas stove,
(20:12):
which it sounds like it was probably down it and
heating what they describe as steak knives, and then returning,
returning the steak knives back upstairs, and he's burning them
with her, or he's burning her with these And here's
(20:32):
the interesting thing he was now again this is from
the reports from the time, he's actually creating shapes. That's
a fascinating turn of a phrase there, He's creating shapes
with a heated blade and he's making these quote unquote
shapes on both her lips and her chest. And I'm
(20:57):
fascinated by this because those are two you've got three areas.
You got three areas, particularly the female form. They're highly
sexualized the mouth, the breast, and their bottom, okay, and
so any kind of trauma that's being inflicted in those
particular areas, as opposed to being burned up and down
(21:19):
the arms, for instance, is not as telling I think
as burning of the lips and certainly burning of the
breast perhaps, And that's what they're alluding to. You've got
a big surface area there you can push the hot
blade into it, and the idea that he's creating shapes
that's not something that that implies that. Just imagine if
(21:42):
you could envision a steak knife in your mind where
the blade obviously comes to a tip. You can heat
it up and then you could I could actually, and
Lord forgive me, I was sitting here thinking about how
this was done. You could create a flower shape with
this over and over again, just trying to do it
in a circular pattern. So they're saying that he's actually
creating these images on her body with a hot a
(22:06):
hot knife blade. He's also slashed her throat, and if
I remember correctly, in addition to that, he stabbed her
in the neck, slashed her throat. And they're saying that
this went on for a protracted period of time. Oh
(22:30):
and by the way, he's raping her the entire time,
off and on. So this, whoever this is, is like
in a highly frenzied state at this point in time.
That gives us an indication I think investigatively that he
was probably watching her, and they don't really say. And
(22:53):
this is curious, you know, because back in the day,
where do we find out about available apartments. Well, you
got to go to the local newspaper, right or I
guess they could have like I guess, I don't know,
back on bulletin board, Yeah, bulletin board. Or they had
those little you remember, the little penny magazines that you
could get like at the at the grocery store and
whatnot that are adjacent to the aisles, and they'll have ads,
(23:14):
like local ads in them. There's you know, they've got
coupons in them and things like that. But he he
would have targeted her. Now they're up in Albany, New
York and Albany is not a small place, of course,
it's the you know, it's the governmental hub of the
state of New York. Certainly you have all of this
area around there. He's targeted her specifically, he's aware of her,
(23:39):
and somehow she got onto his radar.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Day Oh, I can think, Joe, now what we know
about the suspect. I agree with you one hundred and
ten percent because after talk about a weird way of
going about this, because and I don't want to be dismissive,
(24:03):
and I apologize. If you're a family member, I hope
you realize the care we have taken on this because
it is so devastating emotionally. We all have a family
member that fits this profile. I think we all have
that aunt who didn't get married, that is in her
late forties and early fifties and still very active, and
(24:24):
she's the funny one usually and you know, the one
you look for my aunt Carolyn. I mean, I'm thinking
about you know, And so when I wanted to find
out about the guy that did this, and it wasn't easy,
but once I did, then Joe, then I realized when
(24:44):
you were saying he was watching, maybe it might have
gone further than that, it might have been that he
had the floor plan. He might have had that place
not just staked out, but he knew where the room was,
knew where the kitchen was, and knew how much time
he would have because what did he have to know?
He'd be familiar enough with her patterns, her day today
(25:04):
work and to know that there wasn't somebody coming home.
This wasn't happens since he had to know that this
was a single woman who did not have children or
a husband coming in, and that he could be there
long enough to do everything he wanted to do and
to incapacitate her, because it wasn't until a coworker came
(25:28):
by and to pick her up to go to work,
and she didn't come to the door and didn't seem
to be home, and the coworker calls her sister and says, hey,
you know, go check on your sister. I don't know
what's going on. And so that's where the niece, who
now is eighty one, goes with her mother, Caroline, Catherine's
sister rather and they go to check on her, and
(25:48):
that's who found her. It wasn't the police, it was
her sister and her niece, and he knew all that,
he knew he was going.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
To be undisturbed. I'm really wondering, I'm really wondering if
I'd like to know who previously occupied the space as well.
Was this someone that was known to the perpetrator like perhaps, well,
first off, he'd have to know that there was a vacancy.
Maybe he asked somebody and said, yeah, you know, I
(26:18):
just moved out of this place where my buddy just
moved out of this place. It's available, it's run by
this really nice lady that's there. And all you have
to do is that, you know, a sadist like this
is not looking for a roof over their head. They're
looking for their next victim, and unfortunately, in the case
of Catherine Blackburn, he found one. So, you know, Dug,
(26:55):
you brought out an interesting point that you know, her
coworker saw, no, didn't see hide in her hair of
her as they say, right, And when she alerted the sister,
the sister, Catherine's sister went over there with her daughter
into the niece, whose name by the way, Sandy, got
over there and when they discovered her, they immediately alerted
(27:20):
the police. The police when they arrived, they found actually
dave alledger that was there at Catherine's home and it
had the name Robert Broadhead. Uh. And they found that
through tracing indentions.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
You know. I thought that was fascinating that to me,
because you know, that's not I thought when they said
there was a the name was in a ledger, right,
I thought that it was just the receipt, you know,
that was staying and it was right there. And then
I looked deeper and that was where they actually saw
that something had been written there, but didn't know what
it was because it didn't show us that They did
the old you know, number two pencil and you know,
(27:55):
it's great out yeah, and got it that way, and
it's like I wanted something that we did they do
that with the kids. Do they teach kids that at school?
Speaker 1 (28:04):
I don't know if they do or not, but it's certainly,
you know, because you can look at something and see
see that there is an underlying impression. And that's actually
one of the things that I teach a section on
question documents my Intro class at JSU, my Intro Forensics class,
because we go over the practice of question document examination
and there's tracings that are like that, and this seems
(28:27):
kind of a rudimentary, kind of primitive form of doing this,
but if you see it, you have to raise it. Nowadays,
we would use alternative lighting where you can blast the
area with you know, polarized light, or you can do infrared,
and you can actually raised raise an indentation. You would
never have to touch the paper with like a number
two pencel. But it's still the same, it's still the
(28:48):
same principle and it's it's admissible. It's admissible in court.
But you know, the name that came up with was
Robert Broadhead, and this gives you an idea as to
where the police were back in sixty four day. They
found nobody in the area that was associated with its name.
As a matter of fact, they were and this fascinating
(29:10):
to me, absolutely fascinating. There was a they were at
such a dead end and had no leads that they
they inserted or emplaced a hidden microphone in Catherine's casket
so that if there was somebody that was there at visitation,
(29:33):
which you can see some sexual deviant doing this, taking
pride in what they had done. If anybody were to
make a spontaneous confession, standing at the casket. They actually
had the casket miked up back in nineteen sixty four.
I was fascinated by that, man.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
I saw that in their reports and I was going, Okay, well,
in a casket, you can hide it because you know,
you're even on an open casket, you only keep the
waste up. So you've got plenty of you know, high
about everything. And I wonder what they did here. You know,
there's been this is something that not the only time
that police have done something like that, and.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
So this was obviously a practice that went on. I'm
not saying that it doesn't go on today, but it's
kind of an interesting way. And you know, you have
to were they were desperate. But you know the thing
about it, Dave, is what's really cool about this case,
and I'm saying cool in a scientific way, is that
the answer to the big question who was this actually
(30:33):
rested right beneath Catherine's body at the scene, and that
is the information that they were so seeking. And listen,
I'm not sliding the people in the past that it's
the past. It's what it's the way they were limited
by the type of technology they had. But I will
(30:54):
give them a tip of the cap here because they
found there was a handkerchief found beneath beneath her body,
and back then they tested that handkerchief and actually found
remnant of semen. Now, we have to understand it that
(31:16):
we did not have DNA technology back then. The idea
in nineteen sixty four that we could have used DNA
in order to, you know, kind of integrate into crime
solving was something that you know, I don't know that
anybody it had occurred to anybody. Maybe it had, but
you know, one of the things that you would look
for with seminal deposition and zerologists. Zerology is a section
(31:41):
within crime labs that has housed the DNA section now
for a long long time. Soerology deals with not just blood,
but semen, urine, VC's, stomach contents, you name it, saliva.
There's a certain percentage of the population and male population
that are secrets, and so with secrets in saliva, the saliva, feces,
(32:08):
and semen, you can find red blood cells. And one
of the things that they would do is if an
individual and I can't remember the percentage, it seems like
it's forty maybe forty thirty five, forty percent population or secrets.
If you get lucky and you get one of the
secrets that has left behind seminal deposition, you can actually
(32:29):
check that semen sample for red blood cells, and if
you can get a red blood cell, you can type
the blood. But even then with ABO grouping, you're kind
of you're kind of limited. You know, apause aneg B
pause bnag opause ONEG and then you you've got apause
(32:50):
a you know, so forth and so on, So you're
kind of limited. Uh, the rarest, of course, I think
it's ab neg if I'm not mistaken, and so that
that was That's how limited it is. But Dave, they
held onto that sample for years and years, and this
was a cold case, and it wasn't until actually a
(33:10):
college along with a forensics detective and Albany Pde got
involved in this case, Dave, back in twenty eighteen. I
think it was this forensics detective that was assigned to
look into a cold case. Her name was Melissa Moury.
(33:30):
And again a big tip of cap to her because
she took this to a professor that ran the cold
case analysis center at College's Saint Rose. Her name is
doctor Christina Lane. Took this sample there and they began
to work this case to try to determine who exactly
(33:51):
was this. So the kids get this cold case and
they began working it well. As it turned out, they
had the seminal sample that they could do a comparison
with Day.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
In that shocking that they were able to take a
piece of evidence from nineteen sixty one four and now
again twenty eighteen they start working it. But you know,
it's interesting how the field of genetic genealogy has grown
with DNA. I was looking through the amount of time
and effort because again twenty eighteen they actually had and
(34:22):
they're right there, they're right on the cusp of figuring
this out, but no solution yet. In twenty twenty three,
the Cold Case Analysis Center at Saint Rose was given
a grant from Seasons of Justice. It's a nonprofit that
funds efforts to further investigate cold cases using DNA, and
(34:42):
they actually copped up ninety seven hundred dollars. They believed
in what they were doing at Saint Rose so much,
and that's where actually Authorm was involved that this all
developed into a genetic genealogy case. Joseph Scott Morgan that
you and I have talked about on this show of
you using some of the smartest people in the world
(35:03):
to create these opportunities. Now, to take some Joe, it's
a handkerchief underneath the person's body. In nineteen sixty four,
they have no They've talked to everybody, they had a
list of possible suspects. Okay, they had them, checked them
all out, they all had alibis, they had nothing. But
(35:25):
then they have this DNA and a detective starts working it,
and the science gets involved, and the next thing you know,
you've got students that are involved. You know, I can't
imagine the educational value of this for them career wise
of watching this take place and still twenty eighteen until now.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
And listen, here's another way that you know, the police
are disadvantaged that if you have a group of let's say,
scholars or college kids that are being directed by scholars.
You know, I think that a lot of people labor
under this idea that cops have all the time in
the world to work cases, and they don't. And I
(36:13):
got called in to consult on a case that was
up in Pennsylvania several years ago in the cases from
nineteen seventy and I remember going to speak with the
detectives from the cold case Squad to the Pennsylvania State
Police and I'm not putting words in their mouth, but
(36:34):
this case was from nineteen seventy days, all right, that
they had. They have a limited number of members on
this squad. Okay, they have more recent cold cases that
they're trying to get solved. And you know the thing
about it is the longer time goes by, the more
faded memories get, the more compromised evidence can get. And
(36:56):
you know, you don't have unlimited resources. However, if you
put a group of students that are being directed by
a scholar and you have consultation with a police department,
that's a lot of brain power. And it's a lot
of enthusiasm too. You know, when you get older and
you're in proudly, you're not quite as enthusiastic. But I've
seen a room light up, you know, in a cold
(37:19):
case class I teach at Jack State. You know, these
kids their eyes like suddenly burst open and they're they're like,
we're going to be you know, analyzing a cold case.
You know, what can we put together? And suddenly their
brain is stimulated and you put a bunch of energetic
kids along with a professor that's motivated, and there are
(37:41):
not too many mountains you can't climb, you know, with
that kind of energy. But they're focused on that one case.
Whereas you know, how many other cold cases have there
been in Albany, New York's it's nineteen sixty four, man,
you know, it just it builds up over time. But yeah,
they did have this biological evidence and believe it or not. Well,
that's really fascinating about this is most of the time
(38:05):
when you and I cover cases, they are cold cases.
Many times we will be examining cases that involve remains
of unknown individuals and they'll have to go back and
backtrack determine who the person is. They get genetic material
from that individual, you've got a body, or you have
(38:28):
what remains of a body, and they're able to get
them identified. That's not what happened in this case, Dave.
We knew who Catherine Blackburn was. They've always known who
she was. The question was who was her perpetrator. Well,
because of the genetic material that had been left behind
and their efforts there and the preservation loathed these many
(38:52):
years later, Dave, they had so much data that they
had built up, and they had gotten down to the
brass hacks of everything. They they got an order of
exhumation and they exhumed the body of who they thought
was a suspect, David.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
That had to have been an intense battle. I mean,
we started off the show talking about how difficult it is.
It's not something that judges are just due. And now
you're talking about in this case, the person is a suspect.
It was never a suspect in life. He's now dead.
(39:32):
Think about that. Now you're going to tell me this
guy that you never thought he was never on your list, Joe,
and now you're saying he is. Okay, you had a
chance to talk to him for however many years before
he died. Now he's been dead for twenty five years,
and you want to go dig him up. Okay, let
me see what you got. Okay, I'm looking at your evidence.
(39:52):
All right, here's the shovel, boys, let's go dig him up.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
You know, well, you know the thing about it. It
turns out this guy's name is actually Joseph Nolwaski and
he had been Don't no one delude yourself into thinking
this guy is an airy haired little angel. All right, Hell,
he's got a long he had a long history of scumbaggery,
(40:15):
all right, that you can fall back onto here starting
I don't know, starting back in actually I think nineteen fifteen,
he had nineteen fifties, eighteen years old. Hey, yeah, he was.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Yeah, you know, we mentioned briefly about had he been
watching Catherine, had he been scoping out her place? You know,
because he was there for a long time, torturing her.
And this guy was a career criminal, and at one point,
can I give you the greatest hits our killer of
(40:51):
what he did? I mean, sure, after he gets caught
nineteen fifty he gets caught burglarizing a house within a
fifteen year old, he's only eighteen, goes to jail, he
ends joining the US military. Now, a lot of times
judges back then you got a young man going astray.
Here's your choice, boys, you got five years in the pen,
or go in the military. Goes in the military, gets
(41:12):
out in nineteen fifty eight, and from then until nineteen
sixty one, apparently, according to his neighbors, he didn't do anything.
He didn't have a job, didn't work, young man doesn't work.
He's now thirty three at the time of the murder
of Catherine. But this is a guy who from nineteen
sixty one till nineteen seventy three, he's committing armed robberies.
(41:37):
He's breaking into homes. They even caught him with a
kit in the mid sixties where he had two switchblade knives,
burglary tools like a crowbar and an alcohol torch, and
detailed floor plans of private homes and businesses in Rochester, Syracuse,
Buffalo detailed of private homes. That's why I say this
(42:04):
guy was the kind of guy that thought things through.
He knew who lived there, he knew what her lifestyle
was like. And that's why I think based on that,
I bet he had a lay, had a floor plan
for that house.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
They probably did. Yeah, can anyone hear say modus operandi? Yeah? Yeah,
I mean, you know they throw that term around, you know,
m O. But yeah, Dave, I mean, he he had
an m That's why, you know, the big question is
had he scoped her out to the point where he
knew her comings and goings And it's not like he's
she You know, her and her family are longtime residents
(42:37):
of Allby. You know, they've they've got an established family
history there, they're known about town, and he's he's not
unfamiliar with this area's fully familiar with it. Who say
he wouldn't have crossed paths with any of her relatives
and probably her maybe at the grocery store or wherever
it was. And you know, he's at his core, he's
(42:59):
a p editor. And predators stalk their prey, you know,
and they're looking for opportunities. And I've always had a
there's always this kind of creepy little thing that goes on,
I think with people that commit burglaries, because I don't
think that they all go in to necessarily, what a
weird word, huh, burglarize a home. I think a lot
(43:22):
of it is going in when no one is there
and viewing the home, going into private areas and digging
through private things and just observing. And I think that
there's an indwelling. It's not just thievery. There's like an
indwelling sexual sickness to it in many of the cases.
(43:43):
And they just say that they are burglarizing homes. And
you can burglarize a home without stealing anything, but you know,
and in Catherine's case, here's another point. There was nothing stolen.
There was nothing stolen whatsoever except thank you, thank you
so much, or absolutely right, except for her life, the
most valuable thing that was inside of that dwelling. Dave,
(44:06):
what happens, what happens with this case after this?
Speaker 2 (44:08):
Okay? Nine years after he kills Catherine. Nine years later,
he attacks a seventy four year old lady in Schonnected
in New York, who woke up in her bed May sixteen,
nineteen seventy three, covered in blood and confused. She calls police.
She's taken to the hospital with a fractured skull, cuts
to her back and face. The hatchet wielding attacker left
(44:31):
two clues at the scene, Joe a gold crown, dental crown,
and a glove. Now, he almost got away with this,
but here's the problem. He got drunk and went driving.
He takes the police on a wild chase, and of course,
you know what you want to piss off cops. Make
them chase you, Yeah, make them get into a high
speed pursuit, or even worse, make them run after you.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
Well, it's like the quote from Chris Rock. He said,
if the police have to chase you, they're bringing an
ass kicking whim.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
So there you go, that's exactly what happens. Yeah, so
anyway you look at it, when he's intoxicated, they get
him for leaving the scene of an accent at other
traffic violations, then resisting arrest, and by the way, possession
of a dangerous weapon a knife with a four and
a half inch plate. And by the way, they're looking
in the car, Now, what do we have here? A
(45:20):
hatchet with blood on it. That's how they got him
for the Schenectady attack. By the way, it was a
town councilman named fred Isabella. The town counselman, also a dentist,
was called in to take a look at the gold
(45:42):
crown and matched it up to his.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Tooth, and he cat it back to him. Yeah, it's
like a kind of living odentology, you know, as opposed
to forensical Well, it is forensic odontology. It's just that
most of the time is practiced on the dead. But here,
you know, you've got an individual that literally marries up
a restration on a tooth of crown and marries it
up to the guy that's the perpetrator. Again seventy three.
(46:06):
You don't have DNA to work with. But you know
those are that's physical evidence that was accepted well enough
in court that you know, that's that's a you know,
that's that's a nail in your coffin.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
He went to prison, He got three to fifteen years,
he served seven. He got out in nineteen eighty. So
we know what he did to Catherine in nineteen sixty four,
We know what he did to the lady in s
Connecteddy in seventy three. He does go to prison, but
when he gets out in nineteen eighty, apparently Joe he
learned a lesson and flew under the radar until he
(46:39):
died in nineteen ninety eight. So he's that's why they
had to go dig him up once they were able
to narrow down.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
Yeah, and that's and that's significant here because you know,
when you think about it, he's he's no longer to
be found anywhere. Once you start to dig into this
genetic tree, if you will. What's the old game or
I guess it's magic eight balls? What is it? It says?
(47:11):
All signs point to yes. When they begin to process this,
they have an idea that this is who it is.
But guess what, we ain't got nothing to compare it to. Hey, boys,
break out the picks and shovels. Here we go, you know,
and off to the graveyard they go. They disturb this guy,
dig him up, Dave, take him to the lab and
(47:35):
take DNA samples off of his body, and bingo, they
got the perpetrator. They got the perpetrator, and Catherine Blackburn's
homicide all the way from nineteen sixty four loath these
many years later. And the reason we're reporting on this
and discussing this case is the fact that this has
just been cleared after all of this time, and this
(47:57):
proves that, you know, I think for a long long
time in the cold case world it was kind of
helpless and hopeless many times. But you know, the thing
about it, Dave, is that with genetic material, those those
days of being kind of overwhelmed that there are so
many cases out there that will never get solved. This
(48:18):
is proof that if you do what you're supposed to do,
even back in nineteen sixty four, like these brave people
did back then, they process that scene, they collected the evidence.
They didn't know, they had no idea that all the
way in twenty twenty five, that that handkerchief that they
picked up at that scene would be the answer to
(48:41):
clear one of the most heinous homicides off the books.
In Albany, New York. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
is bodybags
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
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.
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!