October 26, 2023 • 32 mins
Two horrific murders shake a university town to its core, as Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom fall prey to a monstrous crime. In a dilapidated house in East Knoxville, Tennessee, the young couple are kidnapped and tortured in an environment that can only be described as hellish. In this gripping episode, Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack unravel the gruesome details, chilling forensics, and unfathomable cruelty behind the case. With firsthand experience and unsettling revelations, they bring you closer to understanding the harrowing ordeal these victims went through. The episode delves into forensic complexities, offers insights into the minds of the perpetrators, and discusses the pivotal moments that led to their capture. Brace yourselves for a haunting journey through one of the darkest chapters of true crime.
Time-coded Highlights:
00:00:20 — Joseph Scott Morgan sets the stage for the episode’s chilling focus: two horrific murders in a university town, considered among the most horrifying covered by Morgan.
00:01:20 — The names of the victims, Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, are introduced alongside the setting—a rundown house in East Knoxville.
00:01:40 — Joseph Scott Morgan discloses his personal involvement in covering the Eric Boyd trial.
00:03:00 — A visceral account of the kidnapping and the setting is provided by Dave Mack.
00:04:40 — It's revealed that the atrocities committed against Channon and Christopher are akin to acts of “Satan himself."
00:07:31 — The suffering endured by Christopher Newsom, including torture and being set on fire, is hauntingly detailed by Dave Mack.
00:08:04 — The agonizing torment Channon Christian went through is elaborated upon by Joseph Scott Morgan.
00:08:46 — The seclusion and inaccessibility of railway tracks as common dumping grounds for victims are discussed.
00:10:02 — Dave Mack specifies that Christopher was not killed at the house but was later taken to the railway tracks.
00:10:54 — Dave Mack reveals that unusual activities at the house on the night of the crime were noticed by a dump truck driver.
00:11:27 — Treatment of the victims is equated to "torture," akin to how prisoners of war are treated.
00:15:04 — The crime scene’s dehumanizing aspects and the extreme physical abuse suffered by the victims are dissected.
00:23:05 — Psychological manipulation used on the victim by promising release is exposed.
00:30:27 — The discovery of the female victim's body in a garbage can, constricted into a fetal position, adds another layer of horror to the narrative.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Bodybags with Joseph Scott Morgan. For those that attend college,
when you're there and you first leave home, your life
is totally centered in that environment. For many people, it's
(00:29):
the first time they ever leave home and you're around
new people, you're around new experiences. I don't know, let's
face it, you're the captain of the ship at that
point in time. It's terrifying, but it is equally thrilling.
It's challenging, but it's an exciting time, and you know,
it's kind of rote to say that you need to
enjoy it because you'll never be in this situation again.
(00:51):
Kind of in the academic pubble, if you will. But
on Bodybags today, I want to talk about a case,
actually two cases that occurred in a university town, and
I would have to say that, even by my assessment,
probably two of the most horrific deaths that I've ever
covered in the news media. Today, we're going to go
(01:14):
back in time and we're going to talk about the
homicide of Shannon Christian and Christopher Newsom in a little
rundown house in East Knoxville, Tennessee. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan,
and this is Bodybacks. Dave. I got a full disclosure here.
I got to tell you why I wanted to do
(01:35):
this case. It was back in twenty eighteen that Eric
Boyd was finally indicted. He was one of several people,
a member of a crew, if you will, that perpetrated
this horrible double homicide. And it wasn't Dave. And we're
going to get into this. It wasn't merely a homicide.
And I know that, I hope that doesn't sound too
terribly dismissive, but he was actually convicted in twenty nineteen.
(01:59):
And the reason to talk about this case, first off,
it's guy certainly has forensic value, but it affected me.
As you know, I cover things on television shows. I'm
a talking head on many of these platforms, and I
happen to cover this one for the entire time there
board case, and to me, it didn't get a lot
of traction, but yet it was one of the most
(02:20):
horrible cases with the details. I'll put it to you
this way. The people that I was covering the case with,
who are many of them are seasoned defense and prosecutor
prosecuting attorneys. They recoiled.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
This is the story that began on January sixth, two
thousand and seven. Let me just give you the story
very quickly, and then we'll get into who Eric Boyd is.
It was on the night of Saturday, January sixth, two
thousand and seven, Christopher Newsom and his girlfriend Channing Christian.
Her name is spelled c cha n n O N
Channing Christian. Christopher was twenty three, Channon was twenty one,
(02:59):
and they were just enjoying each other's company before they
left to go to their friend's house for this birthday party.
As a matter of fact, Christopher Newsom was standing outside
Shannon's fore runner. She was in the front seat, in
the driver's seat, and he's standing there at her door
talking to her. They had a place to be, but
they were comfortable just with one another. It's after twelve
(03:19):
thirty five in the morning, because we know that according
to phone records, Shannon spoke to her mother at twelve
thirty five that morning, you know, Saturday night, Sunday morning,
twelve thirty five am, where Shannon told her mom that
they were going to visit a friend, watch some movies,
and be home later. And we know that sometime after
(03:39):
twelve thirty five am, these four men in that parking lot,
approached with guns drawn, shoved Christopher Newsom in the car
and took off. They kidnapped them at gunpoint and took
them to this rundown rental house where they held this
young couple against their will and did the most heinous,
(04:02):
horrific crimes. That's what this group of men and a
woman by the way, did to this young couple.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Yeah, they had entered into this confederacy of evil. And
backing up a little bit, my understanding at the time
is that with this crew, they were being searched for
by a drug dealer at some point in time, and
it has been offered up. One of the explanations for
them targeting these just beautiful kids was that they just
(04:32):
happened to be there. They just happened to be there.
It was a crime of opportunity. And with both Shannon
and Christopher, they're at or forced into Shannon's vehicle which
was actually her forerunner, and made to drive to this location.
Which now, when you talk to people in Knoxville, and
(04:56):
this happened in East Knoxville, Tennessee, there's a name now
now that is just synonymous with evil because of what
happened in this little house, and the name of the
street is called Chipman Street, and it was this tiny
white framed house. It looks like you if you had
more than two people in this place, you were going
to have to shoehorn everybody else in there. It was
a tight, confined space where the amazing thing is that
(05:21):
there was so much trauma inflicted upon the shown couple
that there had to have been screams day.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
The other part of this is when they were abducted.
When they were and they were abducted as a couple,
they were in her car, but the four men show
up with guns. There was another car following behind them.
As these four men with guns pushed them into the
car and immediately subdued them and took off. There was
another car following them that night, and that's the car
(05:50):
that actually later on is where Eric Boyd comes into play.
It we'll explain in a minute. But the bottom line
on all of this is that while it was a
crime of opportunity, this group of thugs had a plan.
They needed another vehicle to go about their drug business.
You said they were looking that a drug dealer or
something might have been looking for them. They needed a
car that was not something anyone knew they had this
(06:11):
forerunner fit that bill. So they get them back to
this rundown place on Chipman Street and immediately they tied
them up, they blindfold them. They take them to this
residence while they're blindfolded, so they don't know where they are.
The home was rented by Lamaricus Davidson Christopher Newsom. Even
though we don't know even to this day, there are
(06:33):
certain things still not known about this. But what we
do know is shortly after the abduction, Christopher Newsom was
taken from the Chipman Street home, tied up and shot
three times. His body was thrown on some railroad tracks.
They put a comforter or a blanket of something over
his head. He had a sweatshir wrapped around his face.
And we'll get into the very specific about those shots
because they actually mean something. I've got a question for
(06:55):
you about it, Joe. But then they lit him on fire. Okay,
that was Christopher's death. Prior to his death, he was beaten, raped, traumatized,
and I don't know if they made him listen to
the same things happening to his girlfriend, because she too
was raped multiple times, beaten about the head, and Whereas
(07:16):
Christopher was allowed to die after a few hours, she
was not.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
She wasn't allowed to die, She was not given that
release to escape the pain that faced her and her agony.
Shannon's agony went on. It went on for another twenty
four hours while she was at the mercy of people
that just kind of randomly dropped into her life. I've
(08:00):
worked a lot of cases along what are referred to
as railway beds, which is kind of the area that
immediately surrounds railroad tracks and certainly in the middle of tracks.
I've had all manner deaths that have occurred, and I
think the reason people are found dead around tracks with
some level of frequency, Dave, is that they're isolated. They're
(08:23):
hard to get to. Many times you have to walk
some distance to get down to the railway bed that's
in there. And yeah, I mean people have them that
pass outside of their homes, but there are long stretches
of railway where there's no homes around it. It's isolated.
There's generally foliage that's all the way around it, so
it's going to obscure anything that you do. But this
(08:46):
I do know, the surfaces that surround them. The environment
is very hostile. There's broken glass, a lot of filled
gravel that's laying around, broken vegetation, thorns, nails, discarded railway
to break things that come off of trains, not to
mention the remnants that people leave behind out there. So
(09:07):
it's a very austere environment, and certainly I think that
it was in this case, and this is where Christopher
Newsom was found.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
They didn't kill Christopher Newsom at the house and then
drag him up there and throp him on the railroad track.
In reality, Christopher Newsom was not killed at that house.
He was actually tortured. He was again raped with objects
and beyond, because they had actual proof. He had to
have heard what was happening to his girlfriend. Even blindfolded,
(09:37):
you could still hear. Surely they weren't just focused on
him and attacking him alone. And so he's now being walked.
They walk him from the car to these railroad tracks.
And oddly enough, there was a dump truck guy who
actually noticed the activity going on at the house this night,
odd traffic for that time of night, seeing lights on
that weren't usually on cars coming in and out, And
(10:00):
as Christopher Newsom was being taken away from the house
and taken to the railroad tracks. It was noted that
he was barefoot.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
I'm glad you also used the t word a little
while ago, torture, because that's what this comes down to.
This is the same way that you would treat, say,
for instance, a prisoner of war, where you strip them down,
you're humiliating them, you're dehumanizing them. And certainly you couple
that with what's being done in an adjacent area to Shannon,
(10:31):
and I agree with you. I think that probably there
was an element of torture that was involved. I think
from an auditory standpoint. Let's face it, he's a young man.
He loves this young lady and can you imagine not
being able to protect her. And you're surrounded by savagery
at this point in time, and there's nothing that you
(10:52):
can do to mute it any way or certainly interdict it.
You're at gunpoint they walk you out of the house.
There has to be a feeling that comes over an
individual as they're headed out this way that this is
not going to end up. Well, maybe you're so stunned
that you don't have true grasp of reality at that
point in time. Part of me hopes that was the case.
(11:14):
But this I do know. When they got him out there,
and I got to tell you, one of the findings
is that when they did his post mortem examination, they
noted that he actually had a sock stuffed in his mouth.
With any kind of object that is placed into the mouth,
particularly something that is as expandable as some type of
(11:37):
cloth sock, you have a chance that this thing is
going to expand in your oral cavity. And when that
begins to happen. First off, he's been traumatized, so he
is shallow breathing already, just taking into little gulps of
air as best he can, trying to catch his breath.
He's got a sock stuffed in his mouth, probably to
(11:59):
keep him I'll use that word again, so that he's
not going to scream out, he's not going to alert anybody.
And as they walk him to this location out in
the middle of the tracks. And trust me, these people
have been to this area before. They've been out there
to these tracks to Lord only knows do whatever it
(12:20):
is that they were doing. The medical examiner described Christopher's
death from this perspective. Now he dies of multiple gunshot wounds.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Let me back up to something.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah. Sure.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
As you mentioned, when the body was found, the body
was tied with a belt around the ankles and a
shoelace around the left wrist, and that was positioned behind
Newsom's back. His head and face had been wrapped with
what appeared to be a sweatshirt. Another shoelace had been
wrapped around his head and mouth to keep that sock
gag together. And there were again now the visible bullet holes. Okay,
(12:56):
when they looked at him when they first found it,
they saw the one bullet wound to the right side
of his head, but there were more bullet wounds than
just that one.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
This brings us to an interesting point. I think when
you think about the binding that's going on here, let's
face it. We had mentioned how this was a crime.
I hate to use the word crime because it is
so inadequate to what we're talking about, but it is
a crime, nonetheless, And when you think about a crime
(13:26):
of opportunity, they were not very well prepared. And I
really wonder for the perpetrators as they took this young
man out there and they've now got him bound up,
they've got this shirt around his face, and you know
why they had a shirtground his face, so they'd have
to look at him. That's why they have shirtground his face.
(13:47):
They've gagged him. They don't want to hear him. You're
on this kind of continuum of dehumanization. You've taken away
his voice, you've taken away his person in a visual sense,
and you're dehumanizing him. You really wonder how long they
lingered over the body to think we've already committed something
really heinous here. We've raped this young man and maybe
(14:09):
have done insertions of foreign objects. His bottom side was
just ravaged, according to the medical examiner, tremendous amount of hemorrhage, tearing,
this sort of thing. Are they standing there contemplating thinking
do we want to go forward with this? Because now
if we take the next step, we've committed a homicide.
But like you had said, he does wind up sustaining
(14:32):
three gunshot wounds. These were not and you know, Chris
Rhu was a tall He was a tall kid. He
was a robust country boy what he came down to.
So when they did execute him, and let's make no
bones about this, this is an execution. It's a torture
and an execution. He shot three times there's two rounds
that are more latterly oriented in his head. But what
(14:55):
the medical examiner pointed out is kind of fascinating, said
that the coup de gra if you will, the final
fatal shot entered the back of his head, had a
downward trajectory. So I use the term asymmetrical many times
when I talk about victims versus perpetrators. You've got an
(15:16):
individual that is in a dominant role, that is standing
above him. We have three ways that will classify gunshot ones.
Some people will say they're four, but let's just keep
it simple. We'll say three. We've got contact, We've got
intermediate range, and then we've got indeterminate range. Some people
say distant. I like to say indeterminate. So indeterminate means
(15:36):
there's no soot deposition, there's nothing, You're not going to
have a muzzle abrasion or anything like that. Intermediate range
means that you will have some powder deposition around the defect,
which is the bullet hole the entrance. And then the
next step is contact, and you can have a contact
and some people classified as a loose contact or press
(15:59):
contact or contact. Those terms are used interchangeably. So when
the doctor is examining this wound on the back of
this young man's head, she says that this is a
contact gunshot wound. She opened that it's consistent with somebody
having been standing directly over him. He was either kneeling
(16:23):
or laying down. They took the weapon and placed it
directly to the back of his head and discharged the weapon.
So what you have is the tip of that weapon
actually making contact with his hair, his skin, everything. There.
You'll have a little bit of searing because you know,
if you see a fire and fired at night, you'll
see a little bit of flame coming out. There's a
lot of heat escaping, now a lot of hot gas.
(16:45):
You'll get a little bit of a crispy edge around there,
and then you'll have soot deposition that will also occur.
And many times you'll get fractures in the skull that
are related to the projectile, but they are just as
much related to this hot gas being injected into the skull.
And what is we all know what hot air does.
(17:06):
Hard air expands, right, so as it expands, many times
you'll see a fracturing of a skull with these press
contact gunshot ones. This I do know this young man
who loved this young woman, died blinded by a T shirt,
gagged by a sock, and bound up, left in the
(17:26):
midst of a complex of train tracks, executed all alone,
and then as they left his body there, they set
it ablaze. It's horrific as Christopher Newsom's death was, there
(17:58):
is one saving element here that I have to emphasize,
just in case any of my listeners are curious. When
the friends of pathologists did their examination, it was determined
that at the time of his death, or at the
time that his body was sent ablaze, he was not alive.
(18:19):
So that means that they would have done an extensive
examination on his lungs to see if there was any
fire debris in his lungs, if he had inhalated anything.
That apparently was not the case. But I do know this.
You were discussing this Dave when they did the rape kit,
and people might not understand that. Yes, rape kits are
performed on males as well. I've done many of them
(18:39):
over the course of my career. They were not able
to recover any biological sample, and what I mean is
any kind of similar fluid, any kind of sperm, anything
from that had been deposited on or within his body,
and it's certainly plausible that he could have destroyed that.
But Dave, as bad as Chris's death was, while he
(19:02):
was being led away and you know, eventually killed, Shannon
has been left back on Chipman Street. She's still alive
at this point.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
I know that from the timeline that I was able
to pull together because I was kind of curious about
when they separated him, when they pulled him away to
kill him, get him out of because you know what,
at that point, he hadn't been damaged so much that
he couldn't become a threat to them. Again, big country boy,
an athlete, works in carpentry. He was not going to
be a passive figure if given half a chance, and
they were afraid of that. That's why they had to
(19:35):
strip him down, make him walk barefoot on the railroad
tracks to humanize him, kill him, and light him on fire.
But at one point thirty that morning, an employee of
a business located on next to the Shipman Street home
set testified that he saw a fore erunner. Shannon owned
and drove a fore Runner. We know that was the
card that they were kidnapped and carjacked in as employees
(19:57):
saw the car four Runner parked with its parking lights
on in front of the Chipman Street house. Behind that
was a white car that was also seen earlier behind
the fore Runner when they took off and brought him over.
The white car later identified as the white Pontiac belonging
to Eric Boyd's cousin. Lights were on in the home
and the employee testified there appeared to be a lot
(20:17):
of activity in the house. This is at one thirty
in the morning. The reason I point that out is
as you try to figure out, we know she was
alone in the house without him. We know that he
was taken, but we don't know exactly when he was taken.
We do know this that an employee testified that he
saw four black men drive by in the Forerunner. He
saw the vehicle again at six forty five am park
(20:39):
near the house on Shipman Street. At about seven forty
five that morning, a railroad employee working on a nearby
railroad things saw smoke near the tracks, and it wasn't
that Seeing smokes near the track wasn't enough to make
somebody go check it out, apparently because it was several
hours another five hours before they showed up and actually
(21:00):
discovered body was reported on the tracks at twelve twenty
four PM. Now, the reason I point that out is
from we know, you know, in a twelve hour window.
We know that Shannon's talking to her mom at twelve
thirty five, and then we don't know from there twelve
twenty four when his body, when Christian's body is found
on the tracks. So that's a twelve hour window for
(21:20):
him from beginning to end, however, and we don't know
when We know that the fire was on at six
forty five, so again a number of hours for him.
For Christian Newsom, however, Shannon was going through something that
was not letting up.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
You had mentioned a promise of hope, that there was
an inkling of hope. At one point in TOM, one
of her attackers actually paused long enough to tell her
that they were going to let her go. They were
going to let her go with the promise that she
would not say anything to anybody. And who knows what
the inner workings of that person's mind were at that
(21:58):
point in TOM. Why would you tell this to her?
But we do know that she had been sexually assaulted
in multiple ways throughout this period of time which she
was being held in captivity to include vaginally, rectly, and orally,
and there is a tremendous amount of evidence that is
discovered at autopsy per the forensic pathologist of this, one
(22:22):
of the most layering bits here is that when the
examination on Shannon's body was conducted, particularly relative to her mouth,
she had been assaulted so brutally this oral soodomy that
had taken place that it had actually ripped away multiple
(22:43):
layers of tissue within her oral cavity. The way you
can appreciate this at autopsy day and we have to
be able to discern and we have to do this
for the court. The court wants to know this, the
public needs to know this is that we have to
establish if these injuries did in fact occur worthy something
that she had before she was kidnapped, Had she sustained
(23:06):
some kind of oral trauma, and if that's the case,
then you would note, particularly when you took sections of
the tissue from the mouth, you would see that there
was healing going on. The next phase to that is
the most critical phase for this is that you assess
is this fresh and the reason and the way you
kind of delineate that particularly when you're doing a microscopic
(23:28):
examination of the oral tissues that you're going to look
and you're going to note that there is recent hemorrhage.
There's no healing that's going on in there. So you
know that this trauma that she's sustaining in her mouth,
which is extensive, is immediately adjacent to this sexual assault
that she's undergoing, and it go through for hours following this,
(23:52):
just on and on and on, and this is not
even touching the assaults that took place in the other
regions of her body.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
So you can actually determine if a wound is fresh
within a day two days. I mean, you mentioned could
these injuries have taken place before this happened. I mean,
I know that we're going to talk about a dream world,
weird sequence of events here, but a defense team could
then stand up and say, look, yeah, my guy was
there when something happened, but she was already like that
(24:22):
when they kidnapped her. She was already liked that she
had all these injuries when they were carjacked.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
A defense attorney worth their salt. I have to say
this because if defense attorneys do their job, they have
a specific job. They have to do, and they would
ask and this is a dangerous question to ask to
a forensic pathologist on the stand, because a forensic pathologist
is the court qualified expert that's sitting there. So when
you ask this question, you're taking a risk. Doctor in
(24:52):
your opinion, is there any indication that these injuries may
have occurred prior to her being taken In some circumstances,
defense attorneys might attempt to impugne the character of her
boyfriend as well, because they're attempting to defend, and that
just it just makes people's blood boil. But you know,
(25:13):
defense attorneys will do that and they will ask that question.
But here's flipside of that. If you ask a forensic
pathologist that question, they are going to answer it, and
you will not be pleased with the answer because what
they will say is that, no, these are the indicators
that we look for in the process of healing, and
you can see them sometimes within twelve to fifteen hours
(25:37):
after an injury has occurred, and certainly within twenty four hours,
and more and more and more the further you move
away from the injury, the pathologists will say, oh, no,
there was no healing here. This is something that happened
in the immediate and it is immediately adjacent to her death.
Her body never had a chance to recover from any
(25:58):
of this, and she wound up this traumatized.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
And after being that traumatized in every way one can
be brutalized sexually. These criminals used bleach. They poured bleach
down her throat. They scrubbed her body with bleach with
brushes so hard that even this cleaning using the bleach
damaged her private parts. Yes, which goes to how sick
(26:23):
these individuals were. They were not cleaning her to clean her.
They were trying to get rid of evidence.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Right, And this is important to remember. If you've ever
been in your laundry room, you've had to bleach anything.
You bleach, You splashed bleach on something, and of course
you don't want to get on your clothes. You know
how many times we use bleach and my wife gets
on to me about this. Don't spray that bleach on
you've got your good shirt on, or you got this shirt.
You're going to ruin that shirt. That's the effect that
bleach has. But when it comes in contact with our skin,
(26:51):
bleach burns. It's not some kind of benign substance that
gets on to us. And one thing that you would
see in the these so called cleaned areas. I hate
to use that term because it implies something with the
human being. They're trying to clean themselves. Now they're trying
to destroy evidence. Day. That's what this comes down to.
You would actually see an inflammatory response to an already
(27:16):
traumatized area, the cells, the membranes, you would see this.
There would be an inflammation dependent upon how how long
she lived. And she did live.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
She was alive with the bleach going into the open
cuts on her body that we're still bleeding. They're pouring
bleach in her mouth, They're pouring bleach all over her
body into open wounds that were bleeding. They're scrubbing these
with bleach, again, not to clean her, but to destroy evidence. Yes,
and she's alive the whole time, and by the way,
(27:46):
saying I don't want to die, telling these people I
do not want to die. I don't want to die.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
The level of inhumanity that this reaches when you begin
to really kind of try to process this case is
something that none of us can perhaps feature I hope
none of us can. But it's one of those things
that you begin to see the extent to which this
goes their attempt to destroy the evidence. But after all
of this is done to Shannon, they still have a problem.
(28:14):
They have a living, breathing witness at this point. Remember
she's still capable at this point in time to vocalize
to plead for her life. I don't want to die,
and I'm thinking all the time. She's probably somewhere in
her mind she's thinking about Christopher. So what do you
do with her? Well, the next thing they do is
(28:35):
they actually take a white plastic bag and put it
over her head.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Trash bag.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
I've got the impression that it's either a household trash
bag more than likely placed it over her head and
then contained her within two other bags and then place
her inside of garbage can. And here's the thing about
it is she is contained and dound within this garbage
(29:02):
can to the point where she's contracted so that she's
in And the forensic pathologists described it like this, that
she was in a forced fetal position. So just imagine
a fetal position. We all know this, where you have
a baby with the arms pulled in and their head
is down toward their knees. She's being down forced. This
is grown one in the bottom of this thing, and
(29:24):
she's contained in bags, and so she's down in this position,
so that she is in this contracted position, placed into
this small space and covered. So not only are you
in a covered environment in the sense that the space
that you're in is very small and with limited oxygen.
(29:45):
By the way, now you're even further compromising her ability
to uptake oxygen because she's got a bag of her head,
she's contained within other plastic bags. These things are not permeable.
You're not going to be able to receive oxygen. They
don't breathe all right, and she's left essentially to die. Now,
there's two things that we need to think about when
(30:06):
it comes to her cause of death. The manner of
death obviously is a homicide. This is an asphixial death.
But this is what we refer to as a positional asphixia.
I think in the past I've mentioned positional assixia deaths before,
but it's literally in a position so that you are
so tightly compromised in the attitude that your body is
(30:29):
in that your chest can no longer rise and fall.
You can't expand to uptake oxygen or to excel, and
even if you do exhale, you're going to be rebreathing
the same air. One hope I think in these circumstances
is that this led to the condition which we refer
to as anoxia, which can make the person kind of
(30:52):
loopy or drunk to a certain degree. The brain is
being slowly depleted of oxygen, and that she was in
some way numb to it. But Dave, she was alive
when they put her in the bottom of that thing.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
When you say positional asphyxiation, and that's what she died of,
being asphyxiated. But we know that she lived. Not They
can't guarantee us a certain time, right, But if she
had been discovered in time, could she have survived?
Speaker 1 (31:18):
She probably could have. Perhaps, and I'm not even talking
on the psychological side. She would have borne scars from
this for years to come, just the mere exposure to
the bleach. But here's the one saving grace, Dave, here's
the one saving grace because these perpetrators, these criminals, now,
because this whole crew has been convicted, decided to contain
(31:44):
her body. They left behind the biggest clue of all.
There was specific DNA that tied these perpetrators. Tied that
evidence that Shannon's broken body was able to give up
to the forensic scientist and it revealed who actually perpetrated
this crime. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is bodybags
Bodybags with Joseph Scott Morgan. For those that attend college,
when you're there and you first leave home, your life
is totally centered in that environment. For many people, it's
(00:29):
the first time they ever leave home and you're around
new people, you're around new experiences. I don't know, let's
face it, you're the captain of the ship at that
point in time. It's terrifying, but it is equally thrilling.
It's challenging, but it's an exciting time, and you know,
it's kind of rote to say that you need to
enjoy it because you'll never be in this situation again.
(00:51):
Kind of in the academic pubble, if you will. But
on Bodybags today, I want to talk about a case,
actually two cases that occurred in a university town, and
I would have to say that, even by my assessment,
probably two of the most horrific deaths that I've ever
covered in the news media. Today, we're going to go
(01:14):
back in time and we're going to talk about the
homicide of Shannon Christian and Christopher Newsom in a little
rundown house in East Knoxville, Tennessee. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan,
and this is Bodybacks. Dave. I got a full disclosure here.
I got to tell you why I wanted to do
(01:35):
this case. It was back in twenty eighteen that Eric
Boyd was finally indicted. He was one of several people,
a member of a crew, if you will, that perpetrated
this horrible double homicide. And it wasn't Dave. And we're
going to get into this. It wasn't merely a homicide.
And I know that, I hope that doesn't sound too
terribly dismissive, but he was actually convicted in twenty nineteen.
(01:59):
And the reason to talk about this case, first off,
it's guy certainly has forensic value, but it affected me.
As you know, I cover things on television shows. I'm
a talking head on many of these platforms, and I
happen to cover this one for the entire time there
board case, and to me, it didn't get a lot
of traction, but yet it was one of the most
(02:20):
horrible cases with the details. I'll put it to you
this way. The people that I was covering the case with,
who are many of them are seasoned defense and prosecutor
prosecuting attorneys. They recoiled.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
This is the story that began on January sixth, two
thousand and seven. Let me just give you the story
very quickly, and then we'll get into who Eric Boyd is.
It was on the night of Saturday, January sixth, two
thousand and seven, Christopher Newsom and his girlfriend Channing Christian.
Her name is spelled c cha n n O N
Channing Christian. Christopher was twenty three, Channon was twenty one,
(02:59):
and they were just enjoying each other's company before they
left to go to their friend's house for this birthday party.
As a matter of fact, Christopher Newsom was standing outside
Shannon's fore runner. She was in the front seat, in
the driver's seat, and he's standing there at her door
talking to her. They had a place to be, but
they were comfortable just with one another. It's after twelve
(03:19):
thirty five in the morning, because we know that according
to phone records, Shannon spoke to her mother at twelve
thirty five that morning, you know, Saturday night, Sunday morning,
twelve thirty five am, where Shannon told her mom that
they were going to visit a friend, watch some movies,
and be home later. And we know that sometime after
(03:39):
twelve thirty five am, these four men in that parking lot,
approached with guns drawn, shoved Christopher Newsom in the car
and took off. They kidnapped them at gunpoint and took
them to this rundown rental house where they held this
young couple against their will and did the most heinous,
(04:02):
horrific crimes. That's what this group of men and a
woman by the way, did to this young couple.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Yeah, they had entered into this confederacy of evil. And
backing up a little bit, my understanding at the time
is that with this crew, they were being searched for
by a drug dealer at some point in time, and
it has been offered up. One of the explanations for
them targeting these just beautiful kids was that they just
(04:32):
happened to be there. They just happened to be there.
It was a crime of opportunity. And with both Shannon
and Christopher, they're at or forced into Shannon's vehicle which
was actually her forerunner, and made to drive to this location.
Which now, when you talk to people in Knoxville, and
(04:56):
this happened in East Knoxville, Tennessee, there's a name now
now that is just synonymous with evil because of what
happened in this little house, and the name of the
street is called Chipman Street, and it was this tiny
white framed house. It looks like you if you had
more than two people in this place, you were going
to have to shoehorn everybody else in there. It was
a tight, confined space where the amazing thing is that
(05:21):
there was so much trauma inflicted upon the shown couple
that there had to have been screams day.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
The other part of this is when they were abducted.
When they were and they were abducted as a couple,
they were in her car, but the four men show
up with guns. There was another car following behind them.
As these four men with guns pushed them into the
car and immediately subdued them and took off. There was
another car following them that night, and that's the car
(05:50):
that actually later on is where Eric Boyd comes into play.
It we'll explain in a minute. But the bottom line
on all of this is that while it was a
crime of opportunity, this group of thugs had a plan.
They needed another vehicle to go about their drug business.
You said they were looking that a drug dealer or
something might have been looking for them. They needed a
car that was not something anyone knew they had this
(06:11):
forerunner fit that bill. So they get them back to
this rundown place on Chipman Street and immediately they tied
them up, they blindfold them. They take them to this
residence while they're blindfolded, so they don't know where they are.
The home was rented by Lamaricus Davidson Christopher Newsom. Even
though we don't know even to this day, there are
(06:33):
certain things still not known about this. But what we
do know is shortly after the abduction, Christopher Newsom was
taken from the Chipman Street home, tied up and shot
three times. His body was thrown on some railroad tracks.
They put a comforter or a blanket of something over
his head. He had a sweatshir wrapped around his face.
And we'll get into the very specific about those shots
because they actually mean something. I've got a question for
(06:55):
you about it, Joe. But then they lit him on fire. Okay,
that was Christopher's death. Prior to his death, he was beaten, raped, traumatized,
and I don't know if they made him listen to
the same things happening to his girlfriend, because she too
was raped multiple times, beaten about the head, and Whereas
(07:16):
Christopher was allowed to die after a few hours, she
was not.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
She wasn't allowed to die, She was not given that
release to escape the pain that faced her and her agony.
Shannon's agony went on. It went on for another twenty
four hours while she was at the mercy of people
that just kind of randomly dropped into her life. I've
(08:00):
worked a lot of cases along what are referred to
as railway beds, which is kind of the area that
immediately surrounds railroad tracks and certainly in the middle of tracks.
I've had all manner deaths that have occurred, and I
think the reason people are found dead around tracks with
some level of frequency, Dave, is that they're isolated. They're
(08:23):
hard to get to. Many times you have to walk
some distance to get down to the railway bed that's
in there. And yeah, I mean people have them that
pass outside of their homes, but there are long stretches
of railway where there's no homes around it. It's isolated.
There's generally foliage that's all the way around it, so
it's going to obscure anything that you do. But this
(08:46):
I do know, the surfaces that surround them. The environment
is very hostile. There's broken glass, a lot of filled
gravel that's laying around, broken vegetation, thorns, nails, discarded railway
to break things that come off of trains, not to
mention the remnants that people leave behind out there. So
(09:07):
it's a very austere environment, and certainly I think that
it was in this case, and this is where Christopher
Newsom was found.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
They didn't kill Christopher Newsom at the house and then
drag him up there and throp him on the railroad track.
In reality, Christopher Newsom was not killed at that house.
He was actually tortured. He was again raped with objects
and beyond, because they had actual proof. He had to
have heard what was happening to his girlfriend. Even blindfolded,
(09:37):
you could still hear. Surely they weren't just focused on
him and attacking him alone. And so he's now being walked.
They walk him from the car to these railroad tracks.
And oddly enough, there was a dump truck guy who
actually noticed the activity going on at the house this night,
odd traffic for that time of night, seeing lights on
that weren't usually on cars coming in and out, And
(10:00):
as Christopher Newsom was being taken away from the house
and taken to the railroad tracks. It was noted that
he was barefoot.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
I'm glad you also used the t word a little
while ago, torture, because that's what this comes down to.
This is the same way that you would treat, say,
for instance, a prisoner of war, where you strip them down,
you're humiliating them, you're dehumanizing them. And certainly you couple
that with what's being done in an adjacent area to Shannon,
(10:31):
and I agree with you. I think that probably there
was an element of torture that was involved. I think
from an auditory standpoint. Let's face it, he's a young man.
He loves this young lady and can you imagine not
being able to protect her. And you're surrounded by savagery
at this point in time, and there's nothing that you
(10:52):
can do to mute it any way or certainly interdict it.
You're at gunpoint they walk you out of the house.
There has to be a feeling that comes over an
individual as they're headed out this way that this is
not going to end up. Well, maybe you're so stunned
that you don't have true grasp of reality at that
point in time. Part of me hopes that was the case.
(11:14):
But this I do know. When they got him out there,
and I got to tell you, one of the findings
is that when they did his post mortem examination, they
noted that he actually had a sock stuffed in his mouth.
With any kind of object that is placed into the mouth,
particularly something that is as expandable as some type of
(11:37):
cloth sock, you have a chance that this thing is
going to expand in your oral cavity. And when that
begins to happen. First off, he's been traumatized, so he
is shallow breathing already, just taking into little gulps of
air as best he can, trying to catch his breath.
He's got a sock stuffed in his mouth, probably to
(11:59):
keep him I'll use that word again, so that he's
not going to scream out, he's not going to alert anybody.
And as they walk him to this location out in
the middle of the tracks. And trust me, these people
have been to this area before. They've been out there
to these tracks to Lord only knows do whatever it
(12:20):
is that they were doing. The medical examiner described Christopher's
death from this perspective. Now he dies of multiple gunshot wounds.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Let me back up to something.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah. Sure.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
As you mentioned, when the body was found, the body
was tied with a belt around the ankles and a
shoelace around the left wrist, and that was positioned behind
Newsom's back. His head and face had been wrapped with
what appeared to be a sweatshirt. Another shoelace had been
wrapped around his head and mouth to keep that sock
gag together. And there were again now the visible bullet holes. Okay,
(12:56):
when they looked at him when they first found it,
they saw the one bullet wound to the right side
of his head, but there were more bullet wounds than
just that one.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
This brings us to an interesting point. I think when
you think about the binding that's going on here, let's
face it. We had mentioned how this was a crime.
I hate to use the word crime because it is
so inadequate to what we're talking about, but it is
a crime, nonetheless, And when you think about a crime
(13:26):
of opportunity, they were not very well prepared. And I
really wonder for the perpetrators as they took this young
man out there and they've now got him bound up,
they've got this shirt around his face, and you know
why they had a shirtground his face, so they'd have
to look at him. That's why they have shirtground his face.
(13:47):
They've gagged him. They don't want to hear him. You're
on this kind of continuum of dehumanization. You've taken away
his voice, you've taken away his person in a visual sense,
and you're dehumanizing him. You really wonder how long they
lingered over the body to think we've already committed something
really heinous here. We've raped this young man and maybe
(14:09):
have done insertions of foreign objects. His bottom side was
just ravaged, according to the medical examiner, tremendous amount of hemorrhage, tearing,
this sort of thing. Are they standing there contemplating thinking
do we want to go forward with this? Because now
if we take the next step, we've committed a homicide.
But like you had said, he does wind up sustaining
(14:32):
three gunshot wounds. These were not and you know, Chris
Rhu was a tall He was a tall kid. He
was a robust country boy what he came down to.
So when they did execute him, and let's make no
bones about this, this is an execution. It's a torture
and an execution. He shot three times there's two rounds
that are more latterly oriented in his head. But what
(14:55):
the medical examiner pointed out is kind of fascinating, said
that the coup de gra if you will, the final
fatal shot entered the back of his head, had a
downward trajectory. So I use the term asymmetrical many times
when I talk about victims versus perpetrators. You've got an
(15:16):
individual that is in a dominant role, that is standing
above him. We have three ways that will classify gunshot ones.
Some people will say they're four, but let's just keep
it simple. We'll say three. We've got contact, We've got
intermediate range, and then we've got indeterminate range. Some people
say distant. I like to say indeterminate. So indeterminate means
(15:36):
there's no soot deposition, there's nothing, You're not going to
have a muzzle abrasion or anything like that. Intermediate range
means that you will have some powder deposition around the defect,
which is the bullet hole the entrance. And then the
next step is contact, and you can have a contact
and some people classified as a loose contact or press
(15:59):
contact or contact. Those terms are used interchangeably. So when
the doctor is examining this wound on the back of
this young man's head, she says that this is a
contact gunshot wound. She opened that it's consistent with somebody
having been standing directly over him. He was either kneeling
(16:23):
or laying down. They took the weapon and placed it
directly to the back of his head and discharged the weapon.
So what you have is the tip of that weapon
actually making contact with his hair, his skin, everything. There.
You'll have a little bit of searing because you know,
if you see a fire and fired at night, you'll
see a little bit of flame coming out. There's a
lot of heat escaping, now a lot of hot gas.
(16:45):
You'll get a little bit of a crispy edge around there,
and then you'll have soot deposition that will also occur.
And many times you'll get fractures in the skull that
are related to the projectile, but they are just as
much related to this hot gas being injected into the skull.
And what is we all know what hot air does.
(17:06):
Hard air expands, right, so as it expands, many times
you'll see a fracturing of a skull with these press
contact gunshot ones. This I do know this young man
who loved this young woman, died blinded by a T shirt,
gagged by a sock, and bound up, left in the
(17:26):
midst of a complex of train tracks, executed all alone,
and then as they left his body there, they set
it ablaze. It's horrific as Christopher Newsom's death was, there
(17:58):
is one saving element here that I have to emphasize,
just in case any of my listeners are curious. When
the friends of pathologists did their examination, it was determined
that at the time of his death, or at the
time that his body was sent ablaze, he was not alive.
(18:19):
So that means that they would have done an extensive
examination on his lungs to see if there was any
fire debris in his lungs, if he had inhalated anything.
That apparently was not the case. But I do know this.
You were discussing this Dave when they did the rape kit,
and people might not understand that. Yes, rape kits are
performed on males as well. I've done many of them
(18:39):
over the course of my career. They were not able
to recover any biological sample, and what I mean is
any kind of similar fluid, any kind of sperm, anything
from that had been deposited on or within his body,
and it's certainly plausible that he could have destroyed that.
But Dave, as bad as Chris's death was, while he
(19:02):
was being led away and you know, eventually killed, Shannon
has been left back on Chipman Street. She's still alive
at this point.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
I know that from the timeline that I was able
to pull together because I was kind of curious about
when they separated him, when they pulled him away to
kill him, get him out of because you know what,
at that point, he hadn't been damaged so much that
he couldn't become a threat to them. Again, big country boy,
an athlete, works in carpentry. He was not going to
be a passive figure if given half a chance, and
they were afraid of that. That's why they had to
(19:35):
strip him down, make him walk barefoot on the railroad
tracks to humanize him, kill him, and light him on fire.
But at one point thirty that morning, an employee of
a business located on next to the Shipman Street home
set testified that he saw a fore erunner. Shannon owned
and drove a fore Runner. We know that was the
card that they were kidnapped and carjacked in as employees
(19:57):
saw the car four Runner parked with its parking lights
on in front of the Chipman Street house. Behind that
was a white car that was also seen earlier behind
the fore Runner when they took off and brought him over.
The white car later identified as the white Pontiac belonging
to Eric Boyd's cousin. Lights were on in the home
and the employee testified there appeared to be a lot
(20:17):
of activity in the house. This is at one thirty
in the morning. The reason I point that out is
as you try to figure out, we know she was
alone in the house without him. We know that he
was taken, but we don't know exactly when he was taken.
We do know this that an employee testified that he
saw four black men drive by in the Forerunner. He
saw the vehicle again at six forty five am park
(20:39):
near the house on Shipman Street. At about seven forty
five that morning, a railroad employee working on a nearby
railroad things saw smoke near the tracks, and it wasn't
that Seeing smokes near the track wasn't enough to make
somebody go check it out, apparently because it was several
hours another five hours before they showed up and actually
(21:00):
discovered body was reported on the tracks at twelve twenty
four PM. Now, the reason I point that out is
from we know, you know, in a twelve hour window.
We know that Shannon's talking to her mom at twelve
thirty five, and then we don't know from there twelve
twenty four when his body, when Christian's body is found
on the tracks. So that's a twelve hour window for
(21:20):
him from beginning to end, however, and we don't know
when We know that the fire was on at six
forty five, so again a number of hours for him.
For Christian Newsom, however, Shannon was going through something that
was not letting up.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
You had mentioned a promise of hope, that there was
an inkling of hope. At one point in TOM, one
of her attackers actually paused long enough to tell her
that they were going to let her go. They were
going to let her go with the promise that she
would not say anything to anybody. And who knows what
the inner workings of that person's mind were at that
(21:58):
point in TOM. Why would you tell this to her?
But we do know that she had been sexually assaulted
in multiple ways throughout this period of time which she
was being held in captivity to include vaginally, rectly, and orally,
and there is a tremendous amount of evidence that is
discovered at autopsy per the forensic pathologist of this, one
(22:22):
of the most layering bits here is that when the
examination on Shannon's body was conducted, particularly relative to her mouth,
she had been assaulted so brutally this oral soodomy that
had taken place that it had actually ripped away multiple
(22:43):
layers of tissue within her oral cavity. The way you
can appreciate this at autopsy day and we have to
be able to discern and we have to do this
for the court. The court wants to know this, the
public needs to know this is that we have to
establish if these injuries did in fact occur worthy something
that she had before she was kidnapped, Had she sustained
(23:06):
some kind of oral trauma, and if that's the case,
then you would note, particularly when you took sections of
the tissue from the mouth, you would see that there
was healing going on. The next phase to that is
the most critical phase for this is that you assess
is this fresh and the reason and the way you
kind of delineate that particularly when you're doing a microscopic
(23:28):
examination of the oral tissues that you're going to look
and you're going to note that there is recent hemorrhage.
There's no healing that's going on in there. So you
know that this trauma that she's sustaining in her mouth,
which is extensive, is immediately adjacent to this sexual assault
that she's undergoing, and it go through for hours following this,
(23:52):
just on and on and on, and this is not
even touching the assaults that took place in the other
regions of her body.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
So you can actually determine if a wound is fresh
within a day two days. I mean, you mentioned could
these injuries have taken place before this happened. I mean,
I know that we're going to talk about a dream world,
weird sequence of events here, but a defense team could
then stand up and say, look, yeah, my guy was
there when something happened, but she was already like that
(24:22):
when they kidnapped her. She was already liked that she
had all these injuries when they were carjacked.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
A defense attorney worth their salt. I have to say
this because if defense attorneys do their job, they have
a specific job. They have to do, and they would
ask and this is a dangerous question to ask to
a forensic pathologist on the stand, because a forensic pathologist
is the court qualified expert that's sitting there. So when
you ask this question, you're taking a risk. Doctor in
(24:52):
your opinion, is there any indication that these injuries may
have occurred prior to her being taken In some circumstances,
defense attorneys might attempt to impugne the character of her
boyfriend as well, because they're attempting to defend, and that
just it just makes people's blood boil. But you know,
(25:13):
defense attorneys will do that and they will ask that question.
But here's flipside of that. If you ask a forensic
pathologist that question, they are going to answer it, and
you will not be pleased with the answer because what
they will say is that, no, these are the indicators
that we look for in the process of healing, and
you can see them sometimes within twelve to fifteen hours
(25:37):
after an injury has occurred, and certainly within twenty four hours,
and more and more and more the further you move
away from the injury, the pathologists will say, oh, no,
there was no healing here. This is something that happened
in the immediate and it is immediately adjacent to her death.
Her body never had a chance to recover from any
(25:58):
of this, and she wound up this traumatized.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
And after being that traumatized in every way one can
be brutalized sexually. These criminals used bleach. They poured bleach
down her throat. They scrubbed her body with bleach with
brushes so hard that even this cleaning using the bleach
damaged her private parts. Yes, which goes to how sick
(26:23):
these individuals were. They were not cleaning her to clean her.
They were trying to get rid of evidence.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Right, And this is important to remember. If you've ever
been in your laundry room, you've had to bleach anything.
You bleach, You splashed bleach on something, and of course
you don't want to get on your clothes. You know
how many times we use bleach and my wife gets
on to me about this. Don't spray that bleach on
you've got your good shirt on, or you got this shirt.
You're going to ruin that shirt. That's the effect that
bleach has. But when it comes in contact with our skin,
(26:51):
bleach burns. It's not some kind of benign substance that
gets on to us. And one thing that you would
see in the these so called cleaned areas. I hate
to use that term because it implies something with the
human being. They're trying to clean themselves. Now they're trying
to destroy evidence. Day. That's what this comes down to.
You would actually see an inflammatory response to an already
(27:16):
traumatized area, the cells, the membranes, you would see this.
There would be an inflammation dependent upon how how long
she lived. And she did live.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
She was alive with the bleach going into the open
cuts on her body that we're still bleeding. They're pouring
bleach in her mouth, They're pouring bleach all over her
body into open wounds that were bleeding. They're scrubbing these
with bleach, again, not to clean her, but to destroy evidence. Yes,
and she's alive the whole time, and by the way,
(27:46):
saying I don't want to die, telling these people I
do not want to die. I don't want to die.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
The level of inhumanity that this reaches when you begin
to really kind of try to process this case is
something that none of us can perhaps feature I hope
none of us can. But it's one of those things
that you begin to see the extent to which this
goes their attempt to destroy the evidence. But after all
of this is done to Shannon, they still have a problem.
(28:14):
They have a living, breathing witness at this point. Remember
she's still capable at this point in time to vocalize
to plead for her life. I don't want to die,
and I'm thinking all the time. She's probably somewhere in
her mind she's thinking about Christopher. So what do you
do with her? Well, the next thing they do is
(28:35):
they actually take a white plastic bag and put it
over her head.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Trash bag.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
I've got the impression that it's either a household trash
bag more than likely placed it over her head and
then contained her within two other bags and then place
her inside of garbage can. And here's the thing about
it is she is contained and dound within this garbage
(29:02):
can to the point where she's contracted so that she's
in And the forensic pathologists described it like this, that
she was in a forced fetal position. So just imagine
a fetal position. We all know this, where you have
a baby with the arms pulled in and their head
is down toward their knees. She's being down forced. This
is grown one in the bottom of this thing, and
(29:24):
she's contained in bags, and so she's down in this position,
so that she is in this contracted position, placed into
this small space and covered. So not only are you
in a covered environment in the sense that the space
that you're in is very small and with limited oxygen.
(29:45):
By the way, now you're even further compromising her ability
to uptake oxygen because she's got a bag of her head,
she's contained within other plastic bags. These things are not permeable.
You're not going to be able to receive oxygen. They
don't breathe all right, and she's left essentially to die. Now,
there's two things that we need to think about when
(30:06):
it comes to her cause of death. The manner of
death obviously is a homicide. This is an asphixial death.
But this is what we refer to as a positional asphixia.
I think in the past I've mentioned positional assixia deaths before,
but it's literally in a position so that you are
so tightly compromised in the attitude that your body is
(30:29):
in that your chest can no longer rise and fall.
You can't expand to uptake oxygen or to excel, and
even if you do exhale, you're going to be rebreathing
the same air. One hope I think in these circumstances
is that this led to the condition which we refer
to as anoxia, which can make the person kind of
(30:52):
loopy or drunk to a certain degree. The brain is
being slowly depleted of oxygen, and that she was in
some way numb to it. But Dave, she was alive
when they put her in the bottom of that thing.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
When you say positional asphyxiation, and that's what she died of,
being asphyxiated. But we know that she lived. Not They
can't guarantee us a certain time, right, But if she
had been discovered in time, could she have survived?
Speaker 1 (31:18):
She probably could have. Perhaps, and I'm not even talking
on the psychological side. She would have borne scars from
this for years to come, just the mere exposure to
the bleach. But here's the one saving grace, Dave, here's
the one saving grace because these perpetrators, these criminals, now,
because this whole crew has been convicted, decided to contain
(31:44):
her body. They left behind the biggest clue of all.
There was specific DNA that tied these perpetrators. Tied that
evidence that Shannon's broken body was able to give up
to the forensic scientist and it revealed who actually perpetrated
this crime. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is bodybags
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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