November 4, 2021 • 36 mins
Chris Watts’ wife and daughters were missing for three days before their bodies were found on the dad's former jobsite at Anadarko. Shanann Watts was buried in a shallow grave. The girls were stuff through hatches into oil tanks. During the days before the bodies were discovered, Watts played the grieving dad, giving interviews, begging for information on his missing family. What no one knows is Chris Watts is having an affair, and no longer wants to be part of a family unit. Murder was his way out. Ultimately, he tells police where he deposited their bodies. Today on Body Bags, former death scene investigator and forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan walks us through what investigators would have found at Anadarko.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
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 (00:09):
Body backs with Joseph Scott Morgan. One of the greatest
gifts any man can be given, as a beautiful wife, too,
adoring daughters, and a child he had unborn. For years now,
(00:33):
the case of Chris Watts has puzzled many of us,
wondering what his motivation was to literally go in and
destroy this beautiful gift he had been given. My name
is Joseph Scott Morgan and this his body bags. Joining
(00:53):
me right now is my good friend Jackie Howard, producer
of crime stories. But Nancy Grace, Jackie, what can you
tell us about this case? As you said Joe, Chris
Wants and his wife, Shanan had two daughters, four year
old Mela and three year old Celeste, and Shanan was
expecting a baby boy. Shanan had been out of town
and came home and that's where things go sideways. Shannan
(01:17):
misses a doctor's appointment and when a friend goes over
to check on them, Shnan's car is still in the
driveway with the car seats in it, and Chris Watts
tells her that Nan had taken the kids on a
play date. At that point, the friend knew there was
exactly a problem because the car seats were still in
the car in the driveway. Police are called. We know now, Joe,
(01:38):
that Chris Wats strangled his wife in their bed after sex,
which leads us to wonder how was he able? Yes,
she was pregnant, but how was he able to so
easily overpower his wife. We know that she traveled, so
she was tired, she had just gotten home. She is pregnant,
and we also find out later on that over the
weeks before her murder he had been dosing her with
(02:01):
oxy codon. Any of these things alone would have taken
her strength away. What happens when you forgot all of
these things going on together? Jackie? I think the thing
comes to mind for me in regards to Shenan in
this case is a term that you hear many times,
bone weary. Can you imagine she is in the advanced
(02:24):
months of pregnancy, She's been carrying her and born son
Nko for all this time, and she's still on the
road going to sales meetings and this sort of thing,
and that even and she had in fact returned from
a sales meeting her friend to drop her off. Can
you imagine how weary she was and then to come
(02:44):
home into this environment with a husband who she was
troubled with. They didn't have a solid marriage anymore. There
were dark storm clouds on the front. And then just
think about this for a second, because we really couldn't
get real good toxicology office NaN's body. But if in
(03:05):
fact he had been dosing her with oxy con along
a way, perhaps maybe to induce a premature birth at
some point in time, but tonight plan was different. He
was going to dose her with this and then she
was going to drift off into a very very neat sleep.
And you know from the reports that we have heard,
(03:27):
they may have had intercourse just prior to this. And
this goes to this idea that he's kind of drawing
her in the entire time, trying to make her feel
safe and secure, maybe one last time. Maybe she thinks
that everything is gonna be okay, but she's not going
to have the will or the physical ability to fight back.
So when he wrapped his hands around her throat, and
(03:51):
there is evidence that she was choked on the right side,
there was some hemorrhage of her neck, she couldn't fight
a matter of fact, it took so little pressure in
order to squeeze the life out of this pregnant mama.
That we didn't even see any evidence of particular hemorrhages
in her eyes, which normally come about within a fix
(04:14):
real death. You know, this increased pressure, so that gives
you an indication perhaps of how a little pressure it
took to subdue her and eventually in her life. Jo.
We actually do not know specifically whether or not Chris
Watts dosed his wife with oxy coda on that day.
It has been suspected he told someone, a pimpal that
(04:34):
he had been writing to, that he had been trying
to poison her. But with the tissues that remained when
Shennan's body was found, but they proved that our body
was in such a state of decomposition that it's actually
an unprovable point when when you were recovered decomposed tissue,
(04:55):
it's a real uphill battle to retrieve sufficient sam one
in order to conduct toxicology examination. Just think about it.
The more compromised the body is by you know, natural
decay that's occurring out in the elements, and she was,
in fact in the elements buried in a very shallow grave.
(05:16):
Those elements that we would normally examine after death are
compromised to the point where you can't you can't really
appreciate if, in fact, there was a lethal level of
any kind of substance in her system. Now you might
be able to find out, and these are two terms
we use in forensics and forensic toxicology. You can you
(05:39):
might perhaps can qualify a substance in the body and say, yes,
we have an opiate in the system, okay, But because
a tissue so compromised, you're not necessarily going to be
able to quantify that, and that means apply a specific
number to that agent in the body. Well, why is
that important? It's important because there are what are called
(06:03):
therapeutic doses. That is, if you go to the doctor
and and they give you medicine for hurt back or
maybe a busted knee, there's a certain amount that's acceptable
to be taken into the body that is not going
to put you into a lethal range. But you can't
achieve that withoud decomposed tissue. More than likely there is
(06:24):
no blood left where you can draw it up and
and examine it in its normal state postmortem, that is
a non decomposed status. And then the tissue that's left behind,
you can't really examine it for it at least to
put a fine point on it. With those numbers, is
it a lethal level, is at a non therapeutic level?
Those things that would give us an indication that maybe
(06:45):
this was an intentional overdose. When you're looking at a
body that has been buried in a shallow grave versus
six or eight feet deep. When we think about how
people are normally buried, although yes they're normally in a coffin,
but a body that's been buried in a shallow grave
versus someone that was much deeper, what is the difference
(07:06):
that you are going to be able to say forensically?
Is there going to be a difference between a shallow
grave and a deep grave? You know, the fact that
that she Nan was buried in a shallow grave brings
all kinds of problems along with it, as opposed to
somebody digging down traditionally, which you think about, you know,
six ft deep. We've heard that term before. When you
get down into that kind of substrata what they call substrata,
(07:28):
you're just barely on the surface here, uh there. It
doesn't afford a lot of protection for the body. So
any kind of insect life that's out there. The body
may as well be on top of the ground because
for a fly that's coming by, it's nothing for the
fly since this body buried under a very thin layer
of soil. So you're you're gonna still have, for instance, uh,
(07:53):
larval development that turns into maggot. For instance, Uh, you're
gonna have burrowing animals that might not be quite as
prone to get down to six ft would you know,
just uh, just a very shallow area, they can dig
down very easily. And then you know, out in this
area you've got things like coyotes and they've got this
(08:15):
tremendous sense of smell, so it's not really going to
inhibit their ability to sense this body. And with that
comes the fact that the body will be further compromised.
It's it's just kind of logic. You know that that earth.
The deeper in the earth that you go, the body
becomes more and more protected from what's going out on
the surface and what's happening. And then you still have
(08:37):
the environmental factors. If the body is in a shallow grave,
the body is not going to be very well protected
from heat either, maybe not to the degree that you
would appreciate if the body was laying out on bare earth.
But still heat is going to impact the body and
it's going to speed up the process of decomposition. As
you said earlier, joke, there is cough and birth. Talk
to me about what that is, how that happens and
(08:59):
this date's body when she has discovered. Here's here's what
this scene would have looked like. And you know, I
had an opportunity to hear some of the comments were
made by many of the investigators that were out there
and they're still to this day. Jackie just troubled down
to to their soul over what they saw. And we're
(09:20):
just talking about Shenane's grave. Shanan, according to them, was
essentially buried in a very very shallow grave. It wasn't
There was not great effort that was taken in this.
And we we can learn a lot about an individual
based upon these this this preparation, if you will. They
(09:41):
have described her body as essentially being dumped in there
like a pile of garbage. We do know that she
was wrapping a sheet in the line on one side
of her body. It's it's not you know, when we
think about burial in a modern context, we think about
people being on or don't we We think about people,
say perhaps being laid on their back, maybe their hands crossed,
(10:05):
not thrown away like rubbish. And according to the investigators,
that's what they saw. It was. It was hurried, it
was frenzied, it was disordered. And as they began to
kind of peel away these level levels of dirt. As
they kind of began to peel away these layers of
dirt that have been quickly placed over her body, and
(10:28):
they began to pull back the sheet that she was
wrapped in, one of the things they saw was the
body of little Nico that she had been pregnant with.
And this is this gives you an indication as to
how decomposed her body was. When humans are in a
normal state, there's a certain amount of muscle tension that's
(10:51):
in the body, and just think about that relative to
a pregnancy. There's a certain amount of elasticity intention that
is occurring, say for instance, in the womb, in the uterus,
that retains a child in place. But as decomposition begins
to set in, that tension is released because muscles they
(11:15):
no longer have the same continuity and as they release.
As the body of the mother begins to decompose, this
tension that endoels a body naturally releases. The muscles are
no longer as resilient as they once were, and suddenly
we have what what what it's called a coffin birth.
(11:37):
So the baby is literally born in a post mortem state.
That means that the mother's decomposing body has the child's
body issue forth from her. It's no longer contained in
And when the investigators pulled back that sheet, they found
little Nico laying there, and they described his body as
(11:57):
being in a state of decomposition as well, you know,
no longer protected by his mother's body. Now that little fetus,
that little now born child in death is exposed to
the same elemental factors, the same decompositional factors as his
(12:17):
mother's body. And there he lay in that dirt next
to his mama's body. Knowing that Shennan had been dead
probably about twelve hours at this point, Niko would not
have been born alive. Correct, that's not possible for that
baby to have been born alive. This was something that
occurred postmortal. And keep in mind, and this really kind
(12:40):
of drives drives a point home here. And this is
why this is just one of the points along this
that makes this so gut wretch is the fact that
when Chris Watts wrapped his hands around Shannan Wats his
throat and he called is that hemorrhage in uh in
(13:02):
the muscles around her neck? As he squeezed the life
out of her, he was in effect squeezing the life
out of this unborn child. And it is a sad,
sad ending to this life. Jackie. We've talked a little
(13:40):
bit about Chanan and and little Nico. What do we
know about Celeste and Bella. Chris Watts took his children
with him in the vehicle on the way to bury
Shenan Watts, but what happened once they got to the
oil field is certainly disturbing. We know the girls, we're
(14:00):
asking what was wrong with their mother? And then he
smothered his girls one at a time. What is the
difference job between smothering a child and strangling an adult
or is there any difference? That's a good question, Jackie.
And forensics we actually were referred to both of these
(14:20):
kinds of deaths, whether it's a strangulation or suffocation as
an asphyxial death. And what that means is it's a
deprivation of oxygen. As we say in the South, things
got cut off. You know, you're cutting off the air,
the air supply, and so that's what's actually happening here.
So you're depriving these little bodies, both Celeste and Bella,
(14:45):
of their source of oxygen. And you know they're they're believing,
at least the m E is believing that this in
fact was a smothering. And you know it's floated around
for years and years. It's smothering is one of the
as difficult things to detect. And you'd be absolutely right
because you know, you think about, well, how would you
(15:06):
go about smothering, uh, smothering these children. Well, in the
case of say, for instance, we've got Celeste who's tiny,
you know she's she's only three years old. Um, you
could very simply if you're a grown man, particularly size
of their daddy. Remember he worked out all the time.
(15:27):
He took a lot of pride in displaying how what
a fantastic physique he has. They would be no match
for this man. With Celeste, there was very little evidence
of trauma on her little body, so it would be
very simple for him to take, say, for instance, the
palm of his hand or even a pillow and place
(15:49):
it over her mouth. I think that probably in these
circumstances out there, remember that the investigators believe these two
children were actually alive. In his vehicle as he is
transporting the body of his deceased wife out to her
burial spot, he could have easily placed his hand over
(16:10):
celesque face, over her nose, in her mouth and deprived
her of oxygen and she would have essentially just kind
of gone to sleep. And this is what's referred to
as an anoxic death, which means that you're literally depriving
the brain of oxygen. The brain requires oxygen in order
to do all of its functions and including keeping our
(16:33):
heart beating. Now, Bella is a completely different story, and
I'll tell you why. There's something that's very very significant
here from a forensic standpoint that gives us an indication
of what may have happened to her and what he
actually did to her. She had no evidence of batiki I,
(16:54):
and that is those little vessels that are bursting in
her eyes due to pressure. However, there is something significant,
and it has to do with her mouth. Investigators report
and the m E reports that she had a uh
some trauma to her tongue. You know, how else would
(17:14):
she get trauma to her tongue unless she's probably resisting
and not only in her tongue. But there's a little
piece of tissue that attaches our upper lip and our
lower lip to the gums, respectively, and that's referred to
as fregulum, and it's a classic thing that you look
for in suffocation or smothering. Her upper fremulum was actually
(17:37):
lacerated or torn. And if people at home will just
kind of take the tip of your tongue, put it
outside your gum and in between your lip, and you
can actually feel that little piece of connective tissue. If
there is pressure directly applied to the mouth with a hand,
for instance, and you're fighting, you're resisting, you're trying to
(17:58):
uh save your own life. If you're trying you're struggling
to get a breath, that can actually tear. And I
find it very interesting that out of out of the
essentially four lives that he ended, little Bella fought the most.
She was only four years old. Just let that sink in.
We you know, we were we were all four years
(18:19):
old at one point in time. Maybe we have children
or grandchildren that are four. You can think about the
size of a child, a little girl like this. But
she fought. And you know what, the one thing that
they found on Chris Watts at night when they interviewed him,
the one bit of evidence when they talked to him
the next day, he had a small mark on his neck.
(18:40):
And I've often wondered if that was not Bella and
just a last gasp, a desperate gasp, but try to
reach up and fend her daddy off, her father, her father,
the man that was there to protect her and love
on her and watch after her as she grew up.
She's trying to fight him off, perhaps, and she scratched
(19:01):
him on his neck, and they have evidence of this,
They took pictures of that. They've never actually linked the two,
but I've often thought about that, because she did fight back.
She fought back to the point where this tissue in
her mouth was essentially lacerated and there were little areas
of hemorrhage, which means it happened in life. Joe, you
just confused me by saying that there was no particular
(19:23):
hemorrhage in her eyes? How is that possible? And you're
gonna have to explain that to me because you've repeatedly
said that when people are smothered, that's that's one of
the first things that forensic experts look for. So how
was it possible if she was smothered that there's not
any I'll tell you why, Jackie. I'm a simple guy
(19:43):
and I kind of like word pictures, and so the
way I always try to explain uh, particular hemorrhaging is
if you you think about a water hose that's attached
to your house, and you've got a nozzle on one end,
and it's closed, and you turn up the water pressure
on this on the on this faucet outside of your house,
(20:05):
and the hose might begin to expand, but yet you
you turn it off and suddenly the water that is
trapped in there you can release it if you if
you squeeze the nozzle. There has to be sufficient amount
of time that goes by where this internal pressure is
placed on these tiny little vessels. These vessels are actually
located and what's referred to as as are capillary beds,
(20:28):
which are these tiny, tiny little vessels. You've got what
are called arterials, and you've got what are called venules.
And what happens is that most of the time with
particular hemorrhagy, if you put enough pressure on them, they're
going to literally burst. And in the little areas of
tissue that surround these vessels, that blood seeps out. It
(20:49):
seeps out into what's called interstitial tissue, and it it
presents you can't you can't make it go away. It's
not like a crime scene that you go back and
you try to clean it up. That doesn't happen. With
these little pen prick hemorrhages. It's going to be there
forever and ever. Amen. The trick here, though, is that
in all three of these cases where Chris Watts put
(21:12):
his hands on these two children, these two little precious
baby girls, and his precious wife's laying their sleep, is
that he didn't render enough pressure for long enough time,
for long enough time for these vessels to burst in
their eyes so that they can appreciate. You're not always
(21:33):
going to get these little focal areas of hemorrhage like that.
It just is not necessarily going to happen. So what
you're telling me, Joe, is that the difference in the
two is that it took less pressure and less time
to kill a child as opposed to an adult. Yeah,
and you're absolutely right, Jackie. It did take less pressure
(21:55):
and less time because they're weaker and so it it
only takes a smaller amount of time to compromise their airway,
their ability to uptake oxygen so that their brain can
still function as opposed to someone that might be more robust,
like a full grown man, an adult, if you will.
(22:16):
And you know, Shenan is not too far removed from
this category because we reflect back and think about what
we think may have been her status. We know that
she was tired, we know that she was advanced in
her month's relative to pregnancy, and also there's that specter
that she may have had some type of drug on
board that would cause her to be a weakened state,
(22:38):
cause her to be I don't know, just probably barely
semi conscious. So yeah, it's not going to take too
much to in their lives. It's such a tragedy when
(23:08):
you begin to think about these two little girls whose
lives were snuffed out by their daddy. But one of
the really puzzling and most horrific parts to this whole
story is what he did with the bodies afterwards. You're
absolutely right, Joe. Let's start at the beginning. We know
that once the little girls were dead, that he first
stuffed at their little bodies through an eight inch hatch
(23:33):
into an oil tank. Let's just start there. How do
the bodies of two little girls four and three years
old fit through an eight inch hole? Think about it.
That's about the size of a dinner plate. It's horrific,
you know. And it was it was the Ana Darko
(23:56):
old fields out there, and it's a desolate area. I
mean it is you talked about being removed. It was
removed from breast of civilization and just kind of sits
out there. It kind of rises up out of this
prairie out there. Why there, Well, he knew that it
would be isolated. This guy was familiar with this area.
He had a full awareness of what went out there.
(24:17):
And these these tanks are essentially storage tanks for raw petroleum.
He takes these two children out there, and he's got
a problem. What am I gonna do with him? Well,
he had already dug a very shallow grave for his
wife not too far away from the base of these
tanks and quickly deposited her body in that area. Now,
(24:39):
what do you do with these two children? Where there's
two tanks and these things were made very specifically. They're
kind of high. They're, you know, probably approximating maybe twenty
feet in height there. So and on top they have
these little hatches and they've got a very interesting name.
They're called thief hatches. And he popped the latch on
(25:01):
the thief hatch on each one of these tanks. And
with with Bella in particular, she's four years old, so
her body is certainly larger and more robust than her
three year old sister Celeste. How do you get her
into this hole? Well, the only way I can really
describe it it is the fact that she was actually
(25:25):
jammed down into that hole. And how do I know that?
You know, the investigators reported that one of the first
things that they noticed when they got out there to
that site, and they had been given the information that
this is where these two little angels were, they looked
at the thief hatch where Bella's body had been deposited,
and right along the rim there, some of her hair
(25:49):
was caught in that and it wasn't just like a strand.
I don't think it was like a clump of hair. Now,
how how's that accomplished? Well, her body is obviously just
think about how big eight inches is that's the diameter
on this thing. How in fact do you drive the
body of a four year old through this tiny opening? Well,
(26:11):
it was hard. And evidence of that is the fact
that her hair was left behind in the edge, which
means that it was torn away. It was ripped away
as he's jamming her down through this hole. Another thing
this demonstrated when they finally do examined Bella's body, She's
got scrapes where the edge, the metal edge of that
(26:34):
thief hatch caught hold and it left these marks on
her body. There have been broken bones. Joe, we think
about what he would have had to have done to
get Bella through that thief hatch in that inappropriate appropriate term,
considering this guy stole the life of these of these
two little precious girls. He would have had to have
(26:55):
taken Bella probably would not have needed to break bone,
but he would have of at her shoulders kind of
folded her in towards the center in order to facilitate
getting her down. She probably would have went in head first,
and as he's pressing her down through this opening, through
this sieve hatch, the metal edges of this thing called
(27:17):
hold of the tissue the skin, and it raked it away,
and it left these scratches on her body as she
fell through this thing. Finally, I'm sure that it took
a tremendous amount of force on his part to get
her down there. And looking at the drop from this
thief hatch that you're talking about, Joe, as he stepped
the bodies down, you said that most likely he would
not have had two broken bones to get the children
(27:38):
inside those hatches. But what about the drop. We don't
necessarily know how far they fell if they went right
into the contents of the oil tank, so would there
have been broken bones from the drop itself. I think
that the fact that they're falling though it is a
kind of a height. You know, we're looking at maybe
(27:59):
eighteen feet and height that they're falling from the opening
of the siezhatch. They're splashing down into a fluid environment.
So that's that's actually going to break the fall to
a certain degree, provided that they don't strike the bottom
of this tank. You know, the bare bottom you know,
I think that there's enough of a layer of fluid
(28:19):
there that kind of cradle the bodies when they hit,
So you're not going to see any kind of fracturing
or impact injuries necessarily related to this. And one other
thing you have to keep in mind, there's not going
to be any hemorrhage related to the fall either, uh,
you know, because this is a postmorn event. He had
killed these girls before you put them in there, So
I don't know that that we would ever really know,
(28:42):
and you know, not to mention the bodies were greatly compromised.
Their status was greatly compromised when it came to the
medical examiner or the corner being able to examine these
bodies once they got them back to the morgue. That
leads us to the next point in our discussion, Joe,
is what happened to the bodies of those two little
girls once they were inside those oil tanks. How caustic
(29:07):
is oil and what is it going to do to
human tissue that is left in there for any period
of time. The horrific part to this is that, first off,
when you go into this environment, this is raw petroleum
and there's a lot of stuff that comes off for
raw petroleum that we create in this world that we use.
It's not just gasoline, and it's not just lubricantness all
(29:30):
kinds of stuff that's used for. But something that's naturally
occurring is what's for two is aromatic hydrocarbons and in
this environment, in this environment to two substances stick out.
One's called talueen and another it's called benzene. And if
you've ever heard of benzene, you know that it can
(29:51):
be used to polish things with. Uh. It is very
lethal um talween as well, and it causes things to
breakdown very quickly. It eats into tissue, not to the
same degree as certain assets do, but it causes the
tissue to become greatly compromised. It softens things, It begins
(30:14):
to promote this kind of coming apart, and then you
you marry that up with natural decompositional process and these
bodies are gonna wind up and what's referred to as
kind of a macerated state, which means that the decomposition
has gotten to the point, this chemical effect has gotten
to the point where you're not the structural integrity of
(30:35):
the body. It's really hard uh the structural integrity of
the body is so compromised that assessing the body at
the autopsy is going to be quite sure. So are
you telling me, then, Joe, that their bones would have impliable.
I don't know that the bones would have necessarily been
(30:58):
pliable in this case. I know that the soft tissue
surrounding them though. Just imagine, if you will, the worst
sunburn that you've ever seen in your life, where tissue
is beginning to peel away. It's almost like a chemical
burn that's taking taking place, and you would have seen
layers and layers of tissue that would have been coming
off just by touching it. Now, it's not going to
(31:21):
necessarily appear that way initially, but when you begin to
move these bodies around, the bodies are very fragile, so
tissue will begin to fall off of the bone, if
you will. In certain cases deepened upon the length of
exposure they have to these horrible chemicals that they're that
they're found in. You know, they had to drain both
(31:42):
of these tanks when this occurred. They had to call
the e p A out because this is such a
dangerous situation. So not only did this guy murder his
children and his wife. But where he placed Bella and
Celeste is such a volatile environment that all of the workers,
(32:06):
all of the investigators, the people that work out there
that that have control over these tanks because they had
to be drained, all these people were exposed to these chemicals.
And just think about that just for a second. This
is the ultimate in a selfish act, you know, And
nobody really talks about this. These investigators that are out
there and the workers that are out there are traumatized
(32:28):
to the fact that they're they're having to extricate these
little girls out of these tanks after they know they've
been sitting out there all night long, after the tanks
have been drained, and they got to go out in
there and do that. But they've got to put on
hazmat suits in order to facilitate this. It was a
monumental undertaking. And I can tell you these investigators and workers,
(32:49):
they're gonna be scarred by this for the rest of
their life. So I've heard you talk about this case before,
and one of the things that always rings out for
me is the phrase the time degloved. I've heard you
reference that word in regards to these girls. Explain that
to me. We've got two layers of skin we commonly
(33:11):
think about. We think about the epidermists, which means tops,
the top layer. You know. It's like when you get
a blister on your hand, that's the top layer of
the skin that's rising up, filled with fluid. And then
you've got the dermists, which is that underlying surface beneath
the epidermist. It's a bit more robust, it's thicker, with
deep clubbing. It can happen in a couple of ways.
(33:33):
You find it a lot in water environments where you
have a body that's found out in a lake or
river and maybe the ocean, and that skin begins to
come away, that dermist begins to come away from from
the underlying connected tissue that you can actually peel a
an entire uh. Hands, you can actually peel the surface
(33:57):
of tissue off of a human hand. Uh. And that's
where we get this term de glove. And it's like
you're peeling a glove off of a hand. And this
can happen over the entire body. When you're talking about
exposing them to things like benzene and tallyween and this
sort of thing, the whole body can become deep gloves
so that the tissue, that outer lay of tissue becomes
(34:19):
peeled away and and you can you can actually appreciate this.
It's almost like the skin. It's just being kind of
rolled off, if you will. And you know, I've seen
this in environments when you bring bodies into the morgue
that have been exposed uh to chemicals like this, you
have to be very very careful because it's all very fragile.
(34:41):
It will come off in an instant. You can actually
take your gloved hand you have a rubber glove on
in the morgue and touch it to the surface of
these bodies and sometimes when you pull your hand away
or that tissue comes off on your gloved hands, and
it's it really magnifies this in that sense that when
they got these bodies back to the more, this is
(35:02):
something that we're having to deal with. There's a horrible
smell that comes along with this. You would probably have
to wear some type of not just regular mask, but
probably a respirator if you're going to do this examination.
And the evidence that you're talking about here is so fine, Jackie.
I mean we're talking about you know, we talked about
POTICHII or the eyes even preserved well enough that tissue
(35:23):
around the eyes so that you can see if there
are any particular images. Are you able to appreciate the
neck to the to the degree you need to to
see if there was any kind of hemorrhage relative to
manual strangulation. In of course, in Bella's case, they were
able to see this trauma to the tongue and that
little piece of tissue, the fremulum in her lip. They
(35:44):
were able to appreciate that, But a lot of other
evidence is gone. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this this
body backs
Body backs with Joseph Scott Morgan. One of the greatest
gifts any man can be given, as a beautiful wife, too,
adoring daughters, and a child he had unborn. For years now,
(00:33):
the case of Chris Watts has puzzled many of us,
wondering what his motivation was to literally go in and
destroy this beautiful gift he had been given. My name
is Joseph Scott Morgan and this his body bags. Joining
(00:53):
me right now is my good friend Jackie Howard, producer
of crime stories. But Nancy Grace, Jackie, what can you
tell us about this case? As you said Joe, Chris
Wants and his wife, Shanan had two daughters, four year
old Mela and three year old Celeste, and Shanan was
expecting a baby boy. Shanan had been out of town
and came home and that's where things go sideways. Shannan
(01:17):
misses a doctor's appointment and when a friend goes over
to check on them, Shnan's car is still in the
driveway with the car seats in it, and Chris Watts
tells her that Nan had taken the kids on a
play date. At that point, the friend knew there was
exactly a problem because the car seats were still in
the car in the driveway. Police are called. We know now, Joe,
(01:38):
that Chris Wats strangled his wife in their bed after sex,
which leads us to wonder how was he able? Yes,
she was pregnant, but how was he able to so
easily overpower his wife. We know that she traveled, so
she was tired, she had just gotten home. She is pregnant,
and we also find out later on that over the
weeks before her murder he had been dosing her with
(02:01):
oxy codon. Any of these things alone would have taken
her strength away. What happens when you forgot all of
these things going on together? Jackie? I think the thing
comes to mind for me in regards to Shenan in
this case is a term that you hear many times,
bone weary. Can you imagine she is in the advanced
(02:24):
months of pregnancy, She's been carrying her and born son
Nko for all this time, and she's still on the
road going to sales meetings and this sort of thing,
and that even and she had in fact returned from
a sales meeting her friend to drop her off. Can
you imagine how weary she was and then to come
(02:44):
home into this environment with a husband who she was
troubled with. They didn't have a solid marriage anymore. There
were dark storm clouds on the front. And then just
think about this for a second, because we really couldn't
get real good toxicology office NaN's body. But if in
(03:05):
fact he had been dosing her with oxy con along
a way, perhaps maybe to induce a premature birth at
some point in time, but tonight plan was different. He
was going to dose her with this and then she
was going to drift off into a very very neat sleep.
And you know from the reports that we have heard,
(03:27):
they may have had intercourse just prior to this. And
this goes to this idea that he's kind of drawing
her in the entire time, trying to make her feel
safe and secure, maybe one last time. Maybe she thinks
that everything is gonna be okay, but she's not going
to have the will or the physical ability to fight back.
So when he wrapped his hands around her throat, and
(03:51):
there is evidence that she was choked on the right side,
there was some hemorrhage of her neck, she couldn't fight
a matter of fact, it took so little pressure in
order to squeeze the life out of this pregnant mama.
That we didn't even see any evidence of particular hemorrhages
in her eyes, which normally come about within a fix
(04:14):
real death. You know, this increased pressure, so that gives
you an indication perhaps of how a little pressure it
took to subdue her and eventually in her life. Jo.
We actually do not know specifically whether or not Chris
Watts dosed his wife with oxy coda on that day.
It has been suspected he told someone, a pimpal that
(04:34):
he had been writing to, that he had been trying
to poison her. But with the tissues that remained when
Shennan's body was found, but they proved that our body
was in such a state of decomposition that it's actually
an unprovable point when when you were recovered decomposed tissue,
(04:55):
it's a real uphill battle to retrieve sufficient sam one
in order to conduct toxicology examination. Just think about it.
The more compromised the body is by you know, natural
decay that's occurring out in the elements, and she was,
in fact in the elements buried in a very shallow grave.
(05:16):
Those elements that we would normally examine after death are
compromised to the point where you can't you can't really
appreciate if, in fact, there was a lethal level of
any kind of substance in her system. Now you might
be able to find out, and these are two terms
we use in forensics and forensic toxicology. You can you
(05:39):
might perhaps can qualify a substance in the body and say, yes,
we have an opiate in the system, okay, But because
a tissue so compromised, you're not necessarily going to be
able to quantify that, and that means apply a specific
number to that agent in the body. Well, why is
that important? It's important because there are what are called
(06:03):
therapeutic doses. That is, if you go to the doctor
and and they give you medicine for hurt back or
maybe a busted knee, there's a certain amount that's acceptable
to be taken into the body that is not going
to put you into a lethal range. But you can't
achieve that withoud decomposed tissue. More than likely there is
(06:24):
no blood left where you can draw it up and
and examine it in its normal state postmortem, that is
a non decomposed status. And then the tissue that's left behind,
you can't really examine it for it at least to
put a fine point on it. With those numbers, is
it a lethal level, is at a non therapeutic level?
Those things that would give us an indication that maybe
(06:45):
this was an intentional overdose. When you're looking at a
body that has been buried in a shallow grave versus
six or eight feet deep. When we think about how
people are normally buried, although yes they're normally in a coffin,
but a body that's been buried in a shallow grave
versus someone that was much deeper, what is the difference
(07:06):
that you are going to be able to say forensically?
Is there going to be a difference between a shallow
grave and a deep grave? You know, the fact that
that she Nan was buried in a shallow grave brings
all kinds of problems along with it, as opposed to
somebody digging down traditionally, which you think about, you know,
six ft deep. We've heard that term before. When you
get down into that kind of substrata what they call substrata,
(07:28):
you're just barely on the surface here, uh there. It
doesn't afford a lot of protection for the body. So
any kind of insect life that's out there. The body
may as well be on top of the ground because
for a fly that's coming by, it's nothing for the
fly since this body buried under a very thin layer
of soil. So you're you're gonna still have, for instance, uh,
(07:53):
larval development that turns into maggot. For instance, Uh, you're
gonna have burrowing animals that might not be quite as
prone to get down to six ft would you know,
just uh, just a very shallow area, they can dig
down very easily. And then you know, out in this
area you've got things like coyotes and they've got this
(08:15):
tremendous sense of smell, so it's not really going to
inhibit their ability to sense this body. And with that
comes the fact that the body will be further compromised.
It's it's just kind of logic. You know that that earth.
The deeper in the earth that you go, the body
becomes more and more protected from what's going out on
the surface and what's happening. And then you still have
(08:37):
the environmental factors. If the body is in a shallow grave,
the body is not going to be very well protected
from heat either, maybe not to the degree that you
would appreciate if the body was laying out on bare earth.
But still heat is going to impact the body and
it's going to speed up the process of decomposition. As
you said earlier, joke, there is cough and birth. Talk
to me about what that is, how that happens and
(08:59):
this date's body when she has discovered. Here's here's what
this scene would have looked like. And you know, I
had an opportunity to hear some of the comments were
made by many of the investigators that were out there
and they're still to this day. Jackie just troubled down
to to their soul over what they saw. And we're
(09:20):
just talking about Shenane's grave. Shanan, according to them, was
essentially buried in a very very shallow grave. It wasn't
There was not great effort that was taken in this.
And we we can learn a lot about an individual
based upon these this this preparation, if you will. They
(09:41):
have described her body as essentially being dumped in there
like a pile of garbage. We do know that she
was wrapping a sheet in the line on one side
of her body. It's it's not you know, when we
think about burial in a modern context, we think about
people being on or don't we We think about people,
say perhaps being laid on their back, maybe their hands crossed,
(10:05):
not thrown away like rubbish. And according to the investigators,
that's what they saw. It was. It was hurried, it
was frenzied, it was disordered. And as they began to
kind of peel away these level levels of dirt. As
they kind of began to peel away these layers of
dirt that have been quickly placed over her body, and
(10:28):
they began to pull back the sheet that she was
wrapped in, one of the things they saw was the
body of little Nico that she had been pregnant with.
And this is this gives you an indication as to
how decomposed her body was. When humans are in a
normal state, there's a certain amount of muscle tension that's
(10:51):
in the body, and just think about that relative to
a pregnancy. There's a certain amount of elasticity intention that
is occurring, say for instance, in the womb, in the uterus,
that retains a child in place. But as decomposition begins
to set in, that tension is released because muscles they
(11:15):
no longer have the same continuity and as they release.
As the body of the mother begins to decompose, this
tension that endoels a body naturally releases. The muscles are
no longer as resilient as they once were, and suddenly
we have what what what it's called a coffin birth.
(11:37):
So the baby is literally born in a post mortem state.
That means that the mother's decomposing body has the child's
body issue forth from her. It's no longer contained in
And when the investigators pulled back that sheet, they found
little Nico laying there, and they described his body as
(11:57):
being in a state of decomposition as well, you know,
no longer protected by his mother's body. Now that little fetus,
that little now born child in death is exposed to
the same elemental factors, the same decompositional factors as his
(12:17):
mother's body. And there he lay in that dirt next
to his mama's body. Knowing that Shennan had been dead
probably about twelve hours at this point, Niko would not
have been born alive. Correct, that's not possible for that
baby to have been born alive. This was something that
occurred postmortal. And keep in mind, and this really kind
(12:40):
of drives drives a point home here. And this is
why this is just one of the points along this
that makes this so gut wretch is the fact that
when Chris Watts wrapped his hands around Shannan Wats his
throat and he called is that hemorrhage in uh in
(13:02):
the muscles around her neck? As he squeezed the life
out of her, he was in effect squeezing the life
out of this unborn child. And it is a sad,
sad ending to this life. Jackie. We've talked a little
(13:40):
bit about Chanan and and little Nico. What do we
know about Celeste and Bella. Chris Watts took his children
with him in the vehicle on the way to bury
Shenan Watts, but what happened once they got to the
oil field is certainly disturbing. We know the girls, we're
(14:00):
asking what was wrong with their mother? And then he
smothered his girls one at a time. What is the
difference job between smothering a child and strangling an adult
or is there any difference? That's a good question, Jackie.
And forensics we actually were referred to both of these
(14:20):
kinds of deaths, whether it's a strangulation or suffocation as
an asphyxial death. And what that means is it's a
deprivation of oxygen. As we say in the South, things
got cut off. You know, you're cutting off the air,
the air supply, and so that's what's actually happening here.
So you're depriving these little bodies, both Celeste and Bella,
(14:45):
of their source of oxygen. And you know they're they're believing,
at least the m E is believing that this in
fact was a smothering. And you know it's floated around
for years and years. It's smothering is one of the
as difficult things to detect. And you'd be absolutely right
because you know, you think about, well, how would you
(15:06):
go about smothering, uh, smothering these children. Well, in the
case of say, for instance, we've got Celeste who's tiny,
you know she's she's only three years old. Um, you
could very simply if you're a grown man, particularly size
of their daddy. Remember he worked out all the time.
(15:27):
He took a lot of pride in displaying how what
a fantastic physique he has. They would be no match
for this man. With Celeste, there was very little evidence
of trauma on her little body, so it would be
very simple for him to take, say, for instance, the
palm of his hand or even a pillow and place
(15:49):
it over her mouth. I think that probably in these
circumstances out there, remember that the investigators believe these two
children were actually alive. In his vehicle as he is
transporting the body of his deceased wife out to her
burial spot, he could have easily placed his hand over
(16:10):
celesque face, over her nose, in her mouth and deprived
her of oxygen and she would have essentially just kind
of gone to sleep. And this is what's referred to
as an anoxic death, which means that you're literally depriving
the brain of oxygen. The brain requires oxygen in order
to do all of its functions and including keeping our
(16:33):
heart beating. Now, Bella is a completely different story, and
I'll tell you why. There's something that's very very significant
here from a forensic standpoint that gives us an indication
of what may have happened to her and what he
actually did to her. She had no evidence of batiki I,
(16:54):
and that is those little vessels that are bursting in
her eyes due to pressure. However, there is something significant,
and it has to do with her mouth. Investigators report
and the m E reports that she had a uh
some trauma to her tongue. You know, how else would
(17:14):
she get trauma to her tongue unless she's probably resisting
and not only in her tongue. But there's a little
piece of tissue that attaches our upper lip and our
lower lip to the gums, respectively, and that's referred to
as fregulum, and it's a classic thing that you look
for in suffocation or smothering. Her upper fremulum was actually
(17:37):
lacerated or torn. And if people at home will just
kind of take the tip of your tongue, put it
outside your gum and in between your lip, and you
can actually feel that little piece of connective tissue. If
there is pressure directly applied to the mouth with a hand,
for instance, and you're fighting, you're resisting, you're trying to
(17:58):
uh save your own life. If you're trying you're struggling
to get a breath, that can actually tear. And I
find it very interesting that out of out of the
essentially four lives that he ended, little Bella fought the most.
She was only four years old. Just let that sink in.
We you know, we were we were all four years
(18:19):
old at one point in time. Maybe we have children
or grandchildren that are four. You can think about the
size of a child, a little girl like this. But
she fought. And you know what, the one thing that
they found on Chris Watts at night when they interviewed him,
the one bit of evidence when they talked to him
the next day, he had a small mark on his neck.
(18:40):
And I've often wondered if that was not Bella and
just a last gasp, a desperate gasp, but try to
reach up and fend her daddy off, her father, her father,
the man that was there to protect her and love
on her and watch after her as she grew up.
She's trying to fight him off, perhaps, and she scratched
(19:01):
him on his neck, and they have evidence of this,
They took pictures of that. They've never actually linked the two,
but I've often thought about that, because she did fight back.
She fought back to the point where this tissue in
her mouth was essentially lacerated and there were little areas
of hemorrhage, which means it happened in life. Joe, you
just confused me by saying that there was no particular
(19:23):
hemorrhage in her eyes? How is that possible? And you're
gonna have to explain that to me because you've repeatedly
said that when people are smothered, that's that's one of
the first things that forensic experts look for. So how
was it possible if she was smothered that there's not
any I'll tell you why, Jackie. I'm a simple guy
(19:43):
and I kind of like word pictures, and so the
way I always try to explain uh, particular hemorrhaging is
if you you think about a water hose that's attached
to your house, and you've got a nozzle on one end,
and it's closed, and you turn up the water pressure
on this on the on this faucet outside of your house,
(20:05):
and the hose might begin to expand, but yet you
you turn it off and suddenly the water that is
trapped in there you can release it if you if
you squeeze the nozzle. There has to be sufficient amount
of time that goes by where this internal pressure is
placed on these tiny little vessels. These vessels are actually
located and what's referred to as as are capillary beds,
(20:28):
which are these tiny, tiny little vessels. You've got what
are called arterials, and you've got what are called venules.
And what happens is that most of the time with
particular hemorrhagy, if you put enough pressure on them, they're
going to literally burst. And in the little areas of
tissue that surround these vessels, that blood seeps out. It
(20:49):
seeps out into what's called interstitial tissue, and it it
presents you can't you can't make it go away. It's
not like a crime scene that you go back and
you try to clean it up. That doesn't happen. With
these little pen prick hemorrhages. It's going to be there
forever and ever. Amen. The trick here, though, is that
in all three of these cases where Chris Watts put
(21:12):
his hands on these two children, these two little precious
baby girls, and his precious wife's laying their sleep, is
that he didn't render enough pressure for long enough time,
for long enough time for these vessels to burst in
their eyes so that they can appreciate. You're not always
(21:33):
going to get these little focal areas of hemorrhage like that.
It just is not necessarily going to happen. So what
you're telling me, Joe, is that the difference in the
two is that it took less pressure and less time
to kill a child as opposed to an adult. Yeah,
and you're absolutely right, Jackie. It did take less pressure
(21:55):
and less time because they're weaker and so it it
only takes a smaller amount of time to compromise their airway,
their ability to uptake oxygen so that their brain can
still function as opposed to someone that might be more robust,
like a full grown man, an adult, if you will.
(22:16):
And you know, Shenan is not too far removed from
this category because we reflect back and think about what
we think may have been her status. We know that
she was tired, we know that she was advanced in
her month's relative to pregnancy, and also there's that specter
that she may have had some type of drug on
board that would cause her to be a weakened state,
(22:38):
cause her to be I don't know, just probably barely
semi conscious. So yeah, it's not going to take too
much to in their lives. It's such a tragedy when
(23:08):
you begin to think about these two little girls whose
lives were snuffed out by their daddy. But one of
the really puzzling and most horrific parts to this whole
story is what he did with the bodies afterwards. You're
absolutely right, Joe. Let's start at the beginning. We know
that once the little girls were dead, that he first
stuffed at their little bodies through an eight inch hatch
(23:33):
into an oil tank. Let's just start there. How do
the bodies of two little girls four and three years
old fit through an eight inch hole? Think about it.
That's about the size of a dinner plate. It's horrific,
you know. And it was it was the Ana Darko
(23:56):
old fields out there, and it's a desolate area. I
mean it is you talked about being removed. It was
removed from breast of civilization and just kind of sits
out there. It kind of rises up out of this
prairie out there. Why there, Well, he knew that it
would be isolated. This guy was familiar with this area.
He had a full awareness of what went out there.
(24:17):
And these these tanks are essentially storage tanks for raw petroleum.
He takes these two children out there, and he's got
a problem. What am I gonna do with him? Well,
he had already dug a very shallow grave for his
wife not too far away from the base of these
tanks and quickly deposited her body in that area. Now,
(24:39):
what do you do with these two children? Where there's
two tanks and these things were made very specifically. They're
kind of high. They're, you know, probably approximating maybe twenty
feet in height there. So and on top they have
these little hatches and they've got a very interesting name.
They're called thief hatches. And he popped the latch on
(25:01):
the thief hatch on each one of these tanks. And
with with Bella in particular, she's four years old, so
her body is certainly larger and more robust than her
three year old sister Celeste. How do you get her
into this hole? Well, the only way I can really
describe it it is the fact that she was actually
(25:25):
jammed down into that hole. And how do I know that?
You know, the investigators reported that one of the first
things that they noticed when they got out there to
that site, and they had been given the information that
this is where these two little angels were, they looked
at the thief hatch where Bella's body had been deposited,
and right along the rim there, some of her hair
(25:49):
was caught in that and it wasn't just like a strand.
I don't think it was like a clump of hair. Now,
how how's that accomplished? Well, her body is obviously just
think about how big eight inches is that's the diameter
on this thing. How in fact do you drive the
body of a four year old through this tiny opening? Well,
(26:11):
it was hard. And evidence of that is the fact
that her hair was left behind in the edge, which
means that it was torn away. It was ripped away
as he's jamming her down through this hole. Another thing
this demonstrated when they finally do examined Bella's body, She's
got scrapes where the edge, the metal edge of that
(26:34):
thief hatch caught hold and it left these marks on
her body. There have been broken bones. Joe, we think
about what he would have had to have done to
get Bella through that thief hatch in that inappropriate appropriate term,
considering this guy stole the life of these of these
two little precious girls. He would have had to have
(26:55):
taken Bella probably would not have needed to break bone,
but he would have of at her shoulders kind of
folded her in towards the center in order to facilitate
getting her down. She probably would have went in head first,
and as he's pressing her down through this opening, through
this sieve hatch, the metal edges of this thing called
(27:17):
hold of the tissue the skin, and it raked it away,
and it left these scratches on her body as she
fell through this thing. Finally, I'm sure that it took
a tremendous amount of force on his part to get
her down there. And looking at the drop from this
thief hatch that you're talking about, Joe, as he stepped
the bodies down, you said that most likely he would
not have had two broken bones to get the children
(27:38):
inside those hatches. But what about the drop. We don't
necessarily know how far they fell if they went right
into the contents of the oil tank, so would there
have been broken bones from the drop itself. I think
that the fact that they're falling though it is a
kind of a height. You know, we're looking at maybe
(27:59):
eighteen feet and height that they're falling from the opening
of the siezhatch. They're splashing down into a fluid environment.
So that's that's actually going to break the fall to
a certain degree, provided that they don't strike the bottom
of this tank. You know, the bare bottom you know,
I think that there's enough of a layer of fluid
(28:19):
there that kind of cradle the bodies when they hit,
So you're not going to see any kind of fracturing
or impact injuries necessarily related to this. And one other
thing you have to keep in mind, there's not going
to be any hemorrhage related to the fall either, uh,
you know, because this is a postmorn event. He had
killed these girls before you put them in there, So
I don't know that that we would ever really know,
(28:42):
and you know, not to mention the bodies were greatly compromised.
Their status was greatly compromised when it came to the
medical examiner or the corner being able to examine these
bodies once they got them back to the morgue. That
leads us to the next point in our discussion, Joe,
is what happened to the bodies of those two little
girls once they were inside those oil tanks. How caustic
(29:07):
is oil and what is it going to do to
human tissue that is left in there for any period
of time. The horrific part to this is that, first off,
when you go into this environment, this is raw petroleum
and there's a lot of stuff that comes off for
raw petroleum that we create in this world that we use.
It's not just gasoline, and it's not just lubricantness all
(29:30):
kinds of stuff that's used for. But something that's naturally
occurring is what's for two is aromatic hydrocarbons and in
this environment, in this environment to two substances stick out.
One's called talueen and another it's called benzene. And if
you've ever heard of benzene, you know that it can
(29:51):
be used to polish things with. Uh. It is very
lethal um talween as well, and it causes things to
breakdown very quickly. It eats into tissue, not to the
same degree as certain assets do, but it causes the
tissue to become greatly compromised. It softens things, It begins
(30:14):
to promote this kind of coming apart, and then you
you marry that up with natural decompositional process and these
bodies are gonna wind up and what's referred to as
kind of a macerated state, which means that the decomposition
has gotten to the point, this chemical effect has gotten
to the point where you're not the structural integrity of
(30:35):
the body. It's really hard uh the structural integrity of
the body is so compromised that assessing the body at
the autopsy is going to be quite sure. So are
you telling me, then, Joe, that their bones would have impliable.
I don't know that the bones would have necessarily been
(30:58):
pliable in this case. I know that the soft tissue
surrounding them though. Just imagine, if you will, the worst
sunburn that you've ever seen in your life, where tissue
is beginning to peel away. It's almost like a chemical
burn that's taking taking place, and you would have seen
layers and layers of tissue that would have been coming
off just by touching it. Now, it's not going to
(31:21):
necessarily appear that way initially, but when you begin to
move these bodies around, the bodies are very fragile, so
tissue will begin to fall off of the bone, if
you will. In certain cases deepened upon the length of
exposure they have to these horrible chemicals that they're that
they're found in. You know, they had to drain both
(31:42):
of these tanks when this occurred. They had to call
the e p A out because this is such a
dangerous situation. So not only did this guy murder his
children and his wife. But where he placed Bella and
Celeste is such a volatile environment that all of the workers,
(32:06):
all of the investigators, the people that work out there
that that have control over these tanks because they had
to be drained, all these people were exposed to these chemicals.
And just think about that just for a second. This
is the ultimate in a selfish act, you know, And
nobody really talks about this. These investigators that are out
there and the workers that are out there are traumatized
(32:28):
to the fact that they're they're having to extricate these
little girls out of these tanks after they know they've
been sitting out there all night long, after the tanks
have been drained, and they got to go out in
there and do that. But they've got to put on
hazmat suits in order to facilitate this. It was a
monumental undertaking. And I can tell you these investigators and workers,
(32:49):
they're gonna be scarred by this for the rest of
their life. So I've heard you talk about this case before,
and one of the things that always rings out for
me is the phrase the time degloved. I've heard you
reference that word in regards to these girls. Explain that
to me. We've got two layers of skin we commonly
(33:11):
think about. We think about the epidermists, which means tops,
the top layer. You know. It's like when you get
a blister on your hand, that's the top layer of
the skin that's rising up, filled with fluid. And then
you've got the dermists, which is that underlying surface beneath
the epidermist. It's a bit more robust, it's thicker, with
deep clubbing. It can happen in a couple of ways.
(33:33):
You find it a lot in water environments where you
have a body that's found out in a lake or
river and maybe the ocean, and that skin begins to
come away, that dermist begins to come away from from
the underlying connected tissue that you can actually peel a
an entire uh. Hands, you can actually peel the surface
(33:57):
of tissue off of a human hand. Uh. And that's
where we get this term de glove. And it's like
you're peeling a glove off of a hand. And this
can happen over the entire body. When you're talking about
exposing them to things like benzene and tallyween and this
sort of thing, the whole body can become deep gloves
so that the tissue, that outer lay of tissue becomes
(34:19):
peeled away and and you can you can actually appreciate this.
It's almost like the skin. It's just being kind of
rolled off, if you will. And you know, I've seen
this in environments when you bring bodies into the morgue
that have been exposed uh to chemicals like this, you
have to be very very careful because it's all very fragile.
(34:41):
It will come off in an instant. You can actually
take your gloved hand you have a rubber glove on
in the morgue and touch it to the surface of
these bodies and sometimes when you pull your hand away
or that tissue comes off on your gloved hands, and
it's it really magnifies this in that sense that when
they got these bodies back to the more, this is
(35:02):
something that we're having to deal with. There's a horrible
smell that comes along with this. You would probably have
to wear some type of not just regular mask, but
probably a respirator if you're going to do this examination.
And the evidence that you're talking about here is so fine, Jackie.
I mean we're talking about you know, we talked about
POTICHII or the eyes even preserved well enough that tissue
(35:23):
around the eyes so that you can see if there
are any particular images. Are you able to appreciate the
neck to the to the degree you need to to
see if there was any kind of hemorrhage relative to
manual strangulation. In of course, in Bella's case, they were
able to see this trauma to the tongue and that
little piece of tissue, the fremulum in her lip. They
(35:44):
were able to appreciate that, But a lot of other
evidence is gone. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this this
body backs
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.
Amy Robach & T.J. Holmes present: Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial
Introducing… Aubrey O’Day Diddy’s former protege, television personality, platinum selling music artist, Danity Kane alum Aubrey O’Day joins veteran journalists Amy Robach and TJ Holmes to provide a unique perspective on the trial that has captivated the attention of the nation. Join them throughout the trial as they discuss, debate, and dissect every detail, every aspect of the proceedings. Aubrey will offer her opinions and expertise, as only she is qualified to do given her first-hand knowledge. From her days on Making the Band, as she emerged as the breakout star, the truth of the situation would be the opposite of the glitz and glamour. Listen throughout every minute of the trial, for this exclusive coverage. Amy Robach and TJ Holmes present Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial, an iHeartRadio podcast.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Come hang with Amy Poehler. Each week on her podcast, she'll welcome celebrities and fun people to her studio. They'll share stories about their careers, mutual friends, shared enthusiasms, and most importantly, what's been making them laugh. This podcast is not about trying to make you better or giving advice. Amy just wants to have a good time.