June 5, 2025 • 41 mins
Part Two of "Manner, Cause, Mechanism of Death", the death rulings of John O'Keefe, Virginia Giuffre, Dana Plato, Heidi Planck and others including one where a burglar is sent to prison for murdering someone who wasn't shot, stabbed, strangled, or even touched by the suspect who was robbing the place, and who will possibly spend the rest of his life in prison. The Karen Read Case is also discussed as to the Manner, Cause, and Mechanism of death of John O'Keefe. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack talk about cases when no body is found but evidence found at the scene is "incompatible with life" and how this is used in an investigation.
Joseph Scott Morgan goes deep into death investigation and what really matters, breaking down the four questions of Death Investigation: How? What? When? Why?
Transcribe Highlights
00:02.88 Introduction
00:56.30 Cause and Effect, Mechanism
05:00.66 Suicide Ruling in overdose death of Dana Plato
09:55.12 Needle still in the arm of overdose victims
15:58.79 Manner of death
19:02.38 Coroner decides to rule overdose deaths as homicides
23:59.02 Elderly Man Dies from heart attack meeting robber in Kitchen - Robber sent to prison
28:03.94 Heidi Planck missing, evidence found is incompatible with life
34:15.80 John O'Keefe Manner of death
39:05.80 Brain expands with no place inside skull to go
41:56.73 Conclusion
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body doings with Joseph's gotten more, How, what, when? Why?
Those questions are always asked when it comes to death investigation.
They always are, and I think that when we begin
(00:22):
to distill down the nature of death and what brought
an individual to let's say, their end, it's not necessarily
as simplistic as you might think that it is. Sometimes
it can be very complex. But the beauty of death
(00:45):
investigation is the individuals are no longer with us, and
as impatient as folks can be, sometimes we still are
afforded the ability in the medical legal community to take
our time and to really think about these sorts of things.
You know, when it comes down to cause and effect
(01:09):
and a word that many don't normally associate with death,
and that's mechanism. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is bodybacks.
I think, Dave, that when many people think of individuals
(01:34):
who had, say, for instance, participated in IVY heroin abuse,
and we give them a manner which surprisingly most of
the time is going to be ruled as an accidental death,
which for me has always been a bit lacking. I
think because you know, we've been taught for years and years,
(02:00):
little ones are always hot in school. You know drugs
are bad, just say no. Going back to Nancy Reagan,
people have been taught, they've been told. But yet a
drug o D is generally ruled as an accidental death.
But yet the individuals were actively participating in activity that
(02:21):
has a certain expected level of lethality. But the actual
cause of death might be heroin overdose. But what else
can you know kind of play into this. Well, here's
something that most people don't think about. The cause of
death is in fact heroin overdose, but the mechanism for
(02:46):
the death is actually cardio respiratory failure. And a lot
of that has to do with the fact that you know,
you know, with a drug o D like this, and
it's not just heroin, you can have it with, say,
for instance, coke, it leads to the lungs becoming very ademitous.
(03:09):
They can't process oxygen anymore. And so also there are
electrical problems with the heart and the functioning of the
heart receiving the little impulses from the brain that cause
our heart to beat in a normal rhythm. That's actually
the mechanism of death. But you know, it's one does
(03:33):
not happen without the other. So the individual would in
fact have to have injected themselves with heroin in order
to bring about this mechanism which ultimately leads to death.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
You know one thing that bothers me. Well, there's plenty,
but one in particular. And I remember with the death
of Dana Plato of different strokes. She had gone on
the Howard Stern Show and got pretty bagged up there.
She'd had her battles with drugs overtime, mostly prescription drugs,
and she went back home to Arkansas or wherever she
was living in a motor home with her boyfriend, and
(04:10):
she overdosed on hydrocodone or something along those lines, and
her death was ruled as a suicide because they said
she must have intended to kill herself by taking the pills,
because she took them regularly and knew how much it
would take to kill her. And I've always found that
an odd ruling, but it's a legal thing in the
(04:33):
state that she died, where when somebody dies of a
drug overdose, if they're a drug user, they just label
it that way. And I've oftentimes wondered about how somebody's
personal lifestyle comes into play when it comes into the
death rulings. I'm gonna put plural on that because cause
manner mechanism of death, you start looking at it like that,
and most of us don't. That changes everything because I
(04:57):
think she meant to kill herself that one in particular,
think she was trying to feel better.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
You know, suicide is just I think it's bad.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
And here's the other thing. She's not a pharmacologist, right, okay,
because if you're if you're trying to and you're trying
to tell her, you know that this level will take
you out. It's a I think maybe for her, it's
an unexpected outcome.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Remember I sing, if you smoke cigarettes, you're committing suicide.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah, some people have actually referred to that or any
any kind of activity that is detrimental to your health.
I've actually I've sat in a lecture one time, many times,
many years ago where a guy his whole the whole
theme of the lecture was passive suicide. And yeah, yeah,
(05:48):
I mean it's like, I don't eat anymore. My favorite,
the my favorite thing in the world. And I'll go
ahead and give them a shameless plug right here is
Popou's Chicken. I'm from New Orleans. I love Popeye's chicken.
They're not as good as my grannies, but I do
love their red beans and rice I make. I make
great red beans and rice. By the way, as well.
(06:10):
Used to love their dirty rice when they had it.
I could go on and on and on and sing
the praises of.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Need to get a salesperson on the phone with Popeyes
right now.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Yeah, with Popey's love that chicken for Pope's. You know,
you begin to think about that I should know better,
and particularly, you know, as many hearts as I've participated
in the dissection of where I've seen you know, uh,
significant cornary occlusion as a result of you know, taking
taking these foods on. But yet it persists, right, you know,
(06:42):
the number one killer in America's heart disease. It has
been for a long time. I think that we don't
normally think about it. We don't normally think about it.
But yet there it is. You know, it's there. Listen.
Let me let me tell you something. And I think
I even showed you an image of this some time ago. Uh.
(07:02):
There's a classic image that I took at a death
scene one time of two fellows sitting in the front
seat of a vehicle and they had done time together
in the joint in Georgia. They'd been sellies together and
one got out and he promised. They were both addicted
(07:26):
to heroin when they arrived at at the lock up
at the state prison. And of course, as many people understand,
and you know, God bless families that have to endure addiction,
you know, with their their loved ones. Heroin is not
something easy to kick. It's an absolute horror show. But
(07:49):
you know, you go into you go into lockdown, and dude,
you're going to kick it, you know, because most of
the time you're not going to have access to what
you had on the outside. But promise. And this always
kind of stuck in my brain as a death investigator
and as a human. One of the one guy told
(08:09):
his friend who was still incarcerated the day that you
get out, he was getting out like a month in advance,
the day that you get out. It's almost like that
scene of the Blues Brothers, you know, where Elwood picks
up Jake at the gate. He says, I'm going to
be out here. I'm going to be here in my car.
(08:30):
I'm going to pick you up and brother me and
you were going to Atlanta and we are going to party.
Well they did. And let me tell you something that's
really going to shock, because it still shocks me even
when I see the image, and I show this image
every semester of my class. Both of these guys, I'll
never forget. I don't know if you did this with
(08:53):
your kids, but do you remember back years ago when
the gap would Fourth of July t shirts and they
would have an American flag or something patriotical on in
front of it, and it would say like fourth of
July nineteen ninety nine or something. Well, one of these
guys was wearing one of those shirts, and he was
(09:13):
seated in the front seat. And I'll never forget. It
was a jeep Cherokee. The driver was holding a syringe.
He's dead, now, Okay, keep in mind, I'm a death investigator.
Unlike you know what my wife first said one I
told her what I did for a living. I'd tell
her about some horrible crime or some horrible case, and
(09:34):
she'd say, did they die? And it's like, honey, I
worked for the medical examiner. They were dead. This guy
sitting there in death holding a syringe. Okay. The other
fellow is in the front passenger seat, Dave, he's not
holding the syringe. The syringe is still stuck into the
(09:54):
palmer aspect of his left forearm. And there was a
big bos cap in the center of the console on
the arm rest that had cotton stuff down in it,
and they had been cooking their heroin in there and
then drawing it up and injecting. You know, the thing
(10:15):
about it is is that these two fellows, of course,
their tolerance level because they had detoxed, had dropped so
low that they decided to hit one another up with
the same boluts of drugs and they actually died. I
can still tell you where it is. The building doesn't
exist anymore. They died in the back parking lot of
(10:38):
the GE headquarters building in north west Atlanta, and it
was hidden. It was one of those places that you
wouldn't see from the road. They'd gone back there specifically
to get high. And I thought about that, and it
was so powerful at that moment time when you begin
to think about the manner and the cause of death,
(11:01):
and then you know the mechanism relative to this, because
this is their deaths. And they were both purple cyanoutic,
which would give you an indication of the scene that
they were in respiratory distress. You look at that and
you think, just for that fleeting second, you know, they
had an opportunity to pull back, and all it took
(11:22):
was that simple injection and it it drove them to
death at that at that point in time. And I
think a lot of people get confused when we begin
to talk about we begin to talk about how does
how does actually the mechanism of death work? You know,
because it's really easy for us to kind of gloss
(11:43):
over and say, well, yeah, it's a heroin od and
you don't think you don't think about that very much.
And even even in a therapeutic environment like in a
hospital when somebody comes in and they have odd on heroin,
yes they are treating them for or heroin usage, but
they're actually trying to stem what's going on with the
(12:04):
mechanism to bring them back, you know, from the brink.
They're like, if you have some kind of respiratory failure
thing going on, well, that's going to be the mechanism
that leads to the death that was initiated, which is
going to be the causal factor with heroin. But they're
actually treating the mechanism. Isn't that kind of fascinating day?
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Now, that's where narcan is used as a reversal agent.
I pe lute overdes on narcotics.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Correct, Yes, Yeah, it kind of mutes, it mutes the effect.
And there's been a lot of lives saved by it. Yeah,
there's been cops lives that have been saved, Yeah, by narcan.
There was one real recently. I actually saw it. I'd
Lord have mercy. It was terrible. This cop had been exposed.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
It was a traffic stop and he hoped he couldn't
figure out what was wrong with the person who was driving. Yeah,
and opened up something and looked like makeup. He thought
he was going to find weed or dope, some type
of dope, and it was actually.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Fentanyl and he breathed it in.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
He didn't start freaking out until after he knew he
wasn't feeling right, but on his way back to headquarters
it hit him and he had to They had to
come and save him on the side of the road.
Gave him a narc hand shot and h it was
more than one.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Yeah, it was actually and you know, and that's happened
multiple times. But you know, when you think about that. Okay,
let's let's just think about that for a second. All right,
that that event Now, I'm not I'm not here to
conflate mechanism and manner. However, the mechanism, manner and calls
(13:41):
are all kind of intertwined together. Can we go back
to man or just for a second.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Actually, I was going to ask you to please do
it again.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Let me let me just let me just throw this
out to you, brother, okay, because it'll kind of make
your head swim.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
A little bit.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
I've got another case that we'll talk about. That's fascinating too.
I think, hey, fine, very quickly.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Before we move too much for it.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Yeah, you made a comment about the guys that got
out of prison and decided they were going to get
high because they were sullies and they were looking forward
to getting hurt. Right in my private life, one of
the things that I do is I work with alcoholics
and addicts in finding sobriety, and I will never forget
a call. Several years ago, a young man had come
through the program. It was a year in patient program, okay,
(14:25):
very intense and Bible based. Graduated the program and he
went home and his first month home he went back
to heroin. It's that tempting, and he died of an overdose.
And his father called wanting us to tell graduates if
you you know, if you're going to use, don't start
(14:46):
at the level you stopped, right, And I'm like, I
understand what you're saying. Yeah, but the reality is we're
not going to tell people how to use drugs to
stay alive. We're gonna tell him don't use drugs. That's
what they've spent a year learning. I know it's an addiction.
I know that it's a self afflicted addiction. You know
it's it's the person. And whenever we start talking about this,
(15:08):
my heart breaks for the families. My heart breaks for
the people that have to deal with the aftermath of
you spend all that time in a program and you
went out and you used, You spend all that time
in prison, and you planned on getting high and you died.
That's why I just wanted to just a little PSA.
Please have a heart for those who are addicted. It
is not a choice. Nobody grows up saying I want
(15:28):
to be a junkie. Nobody says I want to go
to jail. Nobody says I want to be homeless all
for the sake of drugs. If a mother's love, a
child's love for a parent, or you know, if that
could save anyone, there would be no junkies, there would.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Be no addicts.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Absolutely, So that's why I'm glad you gave that example.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Joe. Think about it.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
You're going to chaill self for your own behavior and
your game plan is let's get high.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
It's absolutely insidious. So if you think about the police
officer that we had mentioned and this didn't happen to him, served,
But let's just say a similar set of circumstances going
back to Manor, and we know that the mechanism is
going to be a respiratory failure event coupled with cardio problems.
(16:13):
Let's just say for an instance, and I really want
not just you, Dave, but everyone out there to kind
of think about this. If you were the coroner, if
you were the medical examiner, how would you rule on
the case I'm about to tell you about where you
have a similar circumstance where the police have made a
(16:33):
stop along the roadway, okay, and they find somebody passed
out in a car, maybe they're not dead, and then
they begin trying to understand what's going on. They're searching
the vehicle and all of a sudden they open up
a package and a big puff of powder comes out.
They breathe that in Okay, there's nobody there with narcan,
(16:57):
and they die. The person in the car survives. Do
you charge that person with homicide? And that's you know,
that's one of the things that kind of when you
begin to think about I say, do you well, will
(17:17):
the medical examiner, uh, you know, present this to the
DA in such a way that the DA begins to
understand the mechanism of this event coupled with the cause,
causal factors, and how are they going to rule it.
I encourage anybody that to check this guy out. He
(17:42):
helped me out. Dave. What uh? Where? Where? What's the
name of the town in Pennsylvania where they played the
Little League World Series?
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Williams, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Well, they play the the Little League World Series there.
It's famous. It has been famous for that for years
and years. And the corner they have elected corners in
Pennsylvania and the corner up there became quite famous over
this one idea. And it's a way of looking at
(18:13):
death in the world through a particular lens. He started ruling.
I did this. He started ruling every death that was
drug related that was like from elicted drugs. He ruled
every one of those deaths in his jurisdictions as homicides,
every single one of them. And the impetus behind that,
(18:35):
from his perspective, was that these people that are addicted
to drugs, who are very vulnerable, were going to a
central location and receiving a deadly substance from an individual.
And whether or not the dealer pushed the plunger on them,
which is the way the attorney would look at that
(18:57):
was irrelevant to him. He was going to rule, as
the medical legal authority that these were all homicides. Now,
I've talked to other corners around the country over the
years since I read that article so long ago, and
they don't necessarily agree with it. First off, I think
it's more of a practical thing they in their jurisdictions,
and I think this worked out with this gentleman as well.
(19:18):
The prosecution didn't have the They didn't have I don't
know if it's the intestinal fortitude or they didn't have
the foresight relative to this to enjoin with the coroner
and say, yeah, these are homicides because in the past,
you know, anytime that you have an ode, most of
(19:39):
the time the corner slash medical examiner forensic pathologist is
going to rule that as an accidental death. That's just
the way it works.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
And so that makes sense, Joe, because how far do
you take that? I mean, do you take it to
the guy at the convenience store that sold a twelve
pack of beer to the alcoholic had got in the card,
drove down the road and crash into a tree. I mean,
you know, that's a slippery slope to go. Now. I
remember it was Williamsport, Pennsylvania. You are right, I remember that, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
And I remember it like it was yesterday because at
(20:10):
first my knee jerk goes wow, you go man. My
second was no way. But do you really get into
that nitty gritty as the medical legal death. I'm thinking manner,
you know, manner, cause mechanism, and how impactful that is
on the actual charging that takes place. Because now I'm
(20:31):
fact to I hate to keep doing this, but the
whole Karen Reid O'Keefe thing, they still don't have. They
don't have manner cause mechanism, right, they got one of
the three.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Well with mechanism, yeah, they actually do have cause of
death with that. And again going back to that with
and it's it's actually a great example, Daved. I'm glad
that you brought that up, because the mechanism with John
O'Keefe's death is not just it's it's not going to
just be simply blunt force trauma, but you have to
(21:03):
also think about the physiological response that the brain is having.
You recall from our previous episode where I was talking
about the fracture complexes that he had in his brain, Well,
that leads to a certain outcome where you will have
the brain responding to the point where the brain will
(21:26):
actually herniate and the brain is becoming very congested, and
it compromises the brain's ability to function appropriately and that
leads to death. That is that mechanism. Yeah, he sustained
blunt force trauma, but there is an underlying mechanism that's
making that happen. But another thing about it is this
(21:47):
in cases where medical examiners and corners are having to
make a determination, particularly as it applies to the difference
and the link between mechanism and cause some things are
obvious and some just not quite as clear. Many years back,
(22:22):
Dave I, along with my colleagues, worked a case involving
a young man, and this young man was breaking into
homes and either stealing from the homes, which is actually burglary,
(22:45):
or he was robbing the occupants of the home if
they were there. Okay, so you know, burglary, you break in,
you're not really having contact with people, you're stuff. You're
a thief, all right. Robbery is different, you know, with
robbery involves I think a lot of people kind of
(23:07):
missed the point with robbery. Robbery involves almost a threat
of violence. You know, when this happens, you either give
me what you have or else. Well that there's no
truer definition. In this case, this young man had broken
in to this elderly gentleman's house. And to go back,
(23:28):
this guy was a World War II veteran, he was widowed,
had lived in the same house since he got home
from World War Two, all right, and he had health problems.
The young man came in through the rear door of
the home carrying an unloaded pump shotgun. The old man
(23:55):
met him in the kitchen and this young kid took
the shotgun and racked it in the old man's face.
The old man clutched his chest and died. That kid
was charged and tried for malice murder, and he was
(24:18):
sent to the penitentiary. Now you begin to think about
that because most of the time, if a firearm is
involved and the case is ruled as a homicide, you're
going to begin to kind of contemplate, well, where are
the gunshot wounds? You know, because we're talking about the
(24:39):
cause of death in a case like that. If you're
thinking about somebody being shot with, let's you say, a buckshot,
the cause of death is going to be a gunshot wound.
And the mechanism is if they're shot in the chest,
their heart because of the traumat sustained and the lungs,
they're going to fail. And that's the mechanism. Relative to that,
(25:03):
he was never injured. The old man was never injured.
He went into a sistily, which means his heart stopped
beating because it was literally you know, I think a
lot of people would be inclined to say, well, he
was scared to death. This is one of those cases
where you can have someone that is subjected to this,
(25:24):
they're already in frail health. And that to me was
always kind of a touchstone case that I've used over
the years to teach people with, you know, because you know,
my students, particularly undergraduates, when they hear that story, they
see it as being implausible. But you know, Dave, death
comes in in all shapes and sizes, and you never
(25:46):
know how it's present, and then it's going to present
for you, And then how are you going to interpret
your findings? Not just what you find in the morgue, okay,
because many times the things are quite obvious. Sometimes they're not,
but many times they are quite obvious, but also the
circumstances surrounding the death, and that leads you down a
(26:07):
different road. Do you think weapon? Do you think gunshot? Woman?
In this case, we had weapon, no gunshot, woe, but
yet we have a dead body. Some people have actually
(26:29):
suggested that people that there needs to be a sixth
manner of death called incompatibility with life. I'll give you
an example. There was this guy a few years back
that everybody was, you know, weeping and gnashing of teeth
over that's this squirrel suit guy. You know, the guy
that puts on the squirrel suit and jumps off the mountain.
(26:51):
He's supposed to be the world champion, and he crashes
into a rock. I think it's like in the Alps
or some way. It doesn't matter. It's some huge mountain
with rocky outcroppings. Well, he's participating in an activity that
I don't know. Many people would say it's incompatible with life. Okay.
Now some people say, well, getting into an automobile is
(27:12):
kind of in No, no, no, no, no, that's not I'm
talking about gravity, dude. Okay, you knew the risk when
you engaged in this behavior. Is it's the same as suicide.
I don't know, but that category. If you compare him
and what he did to Mamma that's on her way
to church and her you know, in her land yacht
(27:33):
and she can't seal the steering wheel and she gets
tea boned. That's an accidental death. So are those two
things the same? So there's a lot of people, in
particularly insurance companies, that would love for there to be
a sixth manner of death incompatibility with life.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
For instance, I'll tell you that term.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
And it's something that I have learned doing this with
you over the last couple of years. Is sometimes there
is evidence found at a scene, and even though you
don't have a body, you have enough evidence of blood
or other body issues that are incompatible with a person
continuing to live based on what you found right here
(28:12):
in the front seat of the car. I don't have
their body, but I got enough of their body to
know they're not alive. Working on a case like that
right now out of California. The woman's been missing a
couple of years, Heidi Plank, and Heidi Plank went missing,
and they saw her on a video screen at six
point thirty walking her dog. Thirty minutes later, her dog
(28:34):
is on the twenty eighth floor by himself, and she's gone.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
Don't know where she went.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
They found her vehicle, and they found other evidence inside
the apartment that the police said is incompatible with life,
but they didn't find her body.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
So yeah, And that part of incompatibility is not so
much an action as it is, say, like jumping off
the side of a mountain in a squirrel suit came.
I didn't think that I would wake up this morning
and actually say that phrase, But here we go. That's
that compared to incompatibility with life. If you have a case,
(29:12):
say for instance, involving what's referred to as exsanguination excanguinations
of famous or the ten dollars term for bleeding out okay,
where you have copious amounts of blood that's left behind, tissue,
that sort of thing. Then you look at that even
appsent the body, and you say, well, yeah, this is
(29:32):
incompatible with life. With her having survived, there's a high
probability she's deceased. And so you try to marry that
up with how the death is going to be classified.
You know, with miss PLAINK, there's no way I don't
think that you could come up with an actual cause
(29:55):
of death. Let's say that you were going to try
to generate a death certificate for her in her absence,
in the absence of the mortal remains, the corpus DELECTI,
you're not going to have enough information because you don't
know where the trauma on her person was, you don't
(30:16):
know what generated the trauma, you don't know how the
trauma was generated itself. And so those are factors that
we would look at. And now if you could say
that a subject, not her, but just some other subject
had their throat cut okay, and you had a lot
of blood at the scene, there might be certain indications
(30:37):
you could tell, well, we've got an arterial spray pattern here,
and there's a lot of blood. It's soaked all the
way through the carpet padding, not just carpet, and there's
a high probability she did not survive this. But even
without the body, you can't say that her throat was cut.
You just know that they lost a lot of blood.
So you look at that and you think, well, back
(31:01):
to this idea with Virginia Roberts. You know, so, what
are you saying. You've given us enough information at this
point in time to say that it's a suicide. But
if it's a suicide, what's the cause behind the suicide?
What is it that has presented to you scientifically that
(31:23):
would cause you to rule this as a suicide, But
yet you have yet to release release the actual cause
of death. My suspicion is, if you'd like to hear
it is they're trying to do. I think that they're
waiting on toxicology tell you the truth. That's my opinion.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
And you know that a lot of journalists, Joe, a
lot of reporters say the wrong thing, and they're not
questioned on it because everybody you're dealing with is a reporter, journalist,
or a lawyer that now hosts a show that often
don't have the background that you you have. And when
if I were to off handedly say that Virginia Robert
S Guffrey died that her cause of death was suicide,
(32:10):
ninety percent of the people are not going to challenge that.
They're going to take that for what it is and
not even think, wait a minute, he's talking out of
his butt. He doesn't even know what he's talking about,
because that is not what caused her death. Her death
was not caused by a suicide, because suicide could be
shot in the head, hung myself, cut myself, any number
of things.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Well, you know, the problem with that is the level
these are very simple constructs, and it's the level of inexactitude.
And this is one of the things that troubles me
about that that's.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
Got to drive you nuts when you're.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
It really does, and listening, I'm not some kind of
ocd A or tentive kind of guy, you know, really,
I'm really not. But the inexactitude is the very slippery
slope we get a used in forensic practice. And I
think probably law enforcement would agree with this as well,
(33:06):
that side of the house of being sloppy, of being
inexact about what we're talking about. The lawyers make they
they feast off of that. But yet you flip that
around and you look at these inexactitudes and the problem
I think with her death in particular is that not
(33:30):
that other deaths are not important, but there's so much
of a swirl around this that you could be so
flippant that you don't delve a little bit deeper into
this and offer the public more data. Because how she died,
that is the cause of death, and how you classify
(33:51):
that death is so very important that we really can't.
You can't just leave that just kind of hanging in
the air. You have to be very very exact about this.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Because get that with her. But Joe, what about O'Keefe.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
How do you move forward with a murder trial when
you don't have all of them? Again, I don't know
how what was his manner of death? It's undetermined, and
we move forward with a murder trial. I would think
you'd have to know that.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Well, yeah you would, But if you look at you know,
talking about cause. If you look at at John O'Keefe's death,
his specific cause of death is going to be massive
head trauma. And let me break this down to you.
This is actually kind of fascinating to me. I got
to see the the forensic pathologist. I got to see
(34:43):
her autopsy sketches from you know, we use an autopsy room,
we use anatomical sketches, and there's hundreds of these things,
these diagrams that we use, and there's actually a great
one that and they demonstrated this in court where you
take off this is an ar artists rendering. It's not
his actual head, but you take off the skull cap
(35:04):
and you're looking down into the floor of the skull
and the brain is over to the side. There's another
drawing of the brain over here. And so when you're
looking down into the floor of his skull, that's what
we call the basel or area of the skull, or
like the basement. Okay, that's what it comes down to. Okay,
So when you're looking at the basement of John O'Keeffe's skull,
(35:26):
the forensic pathologist went into great detail of talking about
what we refer to as a fracture complex so when
you see John's John O'Keefe's fracture complex there too, and
they're distinctly different, but yet in their own right are lethal.
And let me break it down. When you see the
(35:47):
antier portion, there are fracture lines that are running all
over the place, okay, And it starts right above the
orbits of the eye. So one of the thinnest parts
of the brain are excuse me, one of the thinnest
parts of the skull are those little shelves that sit
(36:08):
over your eye socket. As a matter of fact, they
make up the roof of your eye sockets. And Dave,
I've actually been able to take a flashlight and have
a skull in my hand where the bottom point and
this is an actual skull where it's cut away, and
could take the flashlight and place it beneath the floor
of the skull. And that bone is so thin that
(36:29):
light illuminates up through it. You could light a room
with it as almost like a It'd be kind of muted,
but you could in a dark room you could actually see.
That's how thin it is. It's doctors like to describe
it as being eggshell like. Okay, So he's got this
complex of fractures, and there are these kind of curvel
linear patterns, and she's drawn this out. I'll never forget.
(36:51):
She's used a green ink, which I've never seen boy do,
which I thought was kind of compelling because it's real
striking when they put it up on the elmo. You know,
the the almo is the projector that they use in
the courtroom where you place an item up there and
it projects it onto the wall. Of course, now they
have an ELMO that's connected to the television screen in there,
(37:11):
so you've got that complex. He's got kind of what
sounds to me like this evulsion trauma to his right eye,
and to me, that speaks of point of impact. And
he's got bilateral raccoon eyes, which means he's got basel
or skull fractures. Anytime you see somebody with raccoon eyes,
(37:33):
either they've been struck in the head or they've had
no surgery, okay, like reconstructive no surgery. You'll get the
eyes swell up and you can actually see the edema.
I saw the image of him in the Morgan. I
think I saw one in the emergency room. And he's
got to see collar on and his eyes are very ademitous.
(37:54):
You know, they're swollen and blacken. Now those fractures patterns
in there. What that does is that literally opens up
the floor and you get seepage down behind the eyes.
The skull is closed. Okay, the brain has been traumatized
because whatever he was impacted by, whether it was her
(38:15):
car or slip and fall. The brain begins to swell
as a result of that subarachnoid and subdural trauma. And dude, unlike,
let's say you get hit in the arm with a
baseball with a hot shot, the base in the forearm. Okay,
(38:36):
now I know, because you're an old baseball guy. You
get hit with a hot shot, you drop up and
as mc granny would say, you draw a nod up
on you, and you do. You can actually feel it.
But guess what. The skin can expand those muscles as
are traumatized in there. They're filling up with blood. It's
an engorgement and it expands out. Sooner or later it's
(38:56):
going to receive. Brain can't do that. Brain can't do
that because the skull is closed. So the brain begins
to expand instead inside of this hard shell, it's looking
for someplace to go. And it's beginning to get strangled. Okay,
and it actually herniates in a few places. Well, not
only does he have that complex, but you go to
(39:18):
the back of his head, Dave, there is a significant
laceration that's in what's referred to as the horizontal plane.
And so you think about the vertical plane, horizontal plane,
vertical plane. Top of the head to the soles of
the feet, that's vertical plane. You think about horizontal plane.
(39:40):
You're talking about from your left ear or your right ear,
or from your right shoulder to your left shoulder. That's horizontal.
So this thing is literally in the horizontal plane. And
underneath it there's that laceration where he's impacted the ground.
Guess what separate fracture complex at the base of the brain. Now,
(40:00):
now it's surrounding the brain stem. The brain is swelling
because not only is the floor of the brain fractured,
now the brain has been traumatized to the brain is swelling.
It swelled. The brain swells, I think, unlike any other
organ the trauma response in the brain is amazing, and
(40:21):
it begins to swell. Well, okay, so I can say
to you definitively, I've really started chasing rabbits. I apologize,
but we can say that John O'Keefe's cause of death
is is blunt heead blunt force trauma, the head goes
(40:43):
without I don't think anybody would question that that's the
cause of the factor here. Okay, but how are you
going to rule it? Well, you had mentioned, you made
a great comment, and this is kind of the it's
the juxtaposition between the medical legal community and the proscatorial community.
(41:05):
They feel as though that with that simple cause of
death that they have, even though it has not been ruled,
it's been left ruled undetermined, they've got enough of circumstantial
evidence surrounding those events that night, they feel confident enough
that they can push through. But it's a powerful thing
(41:25):
when a forensic pathologist gets up on the stand and
they can't tell you what the actual manner of death is.
They can only state the cause. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan,
and this is bodybacks
Body doings with Joseph's gotten more, How, what, when? Why?
Those questions are always asked when it comes to death investigation.
They always are, and I think that when we begin
(00:22):
to distill down the nature of death and what brought
an individual to let's say, their end, it's not necessarily
as simplistic as you might think that it is. Sometimes
it can be very complex. But the beauty of death
(00:45):
investigation is the individuals are no longer with us, and
as impatient as folks can be, sometimes we still are
afforded the ability in the medical legal community to take
our time and to really think about these sorts of things.
You know, when it comes down to cause and effect
(01:09):
and a word that many don't normally associate with death,
and that's mechanism. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is bodybacks.
I think, Dave, that when many people think of individuals
(01:34):
who had, say, for instance, participated in IVY heroin abuse,
and we give them a manner which surprisingly most of
the time is going to be ruled as an accidental death,
which for me has always been a bit lacking. I
think because you know, we've been taught for years and years,
(02:00):
little ones are always hot in school. You know drugs
are bad, just say no. Going back to Nancy Reagan,
people have been taught, they've been told. But yet a
drug o D is generally ruled as an accidental death.
But yet the individuals were actively participating in activity that
(02:21):
has a certain expected level of lethality. But the actual
cause of death might be heroin overdose. But what else
can you know kind of play into this. Well, here's
something that most people don't think about. The cause of
death is in fact heroin overdose, but the mechanism for
(02:46):
the death is actually cardio respiratory failure. And a lot
of that has to do with the fact that you know,
you know, with a drug o D like this, and
it's not just heroin, you can have it with, say,
for instance, coke, it leads to the lungs becoming very ademitous.
(03:09):
They can't process oxygen anymore. And so also there are
electrical problems with the heart and the functioning of the
heart receiving the little impulses from the brain that cause
our heart to beat in a normal rhythm. That's actually
the mechanism of death. But you know, it's one does
(03:33):
not happen without the other. So the individual would in
fact have to have injected themselves with heroin in order
to bring about this mechanism which ultimately leads to death.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
You know one thing that bothers me. Well, there's plenty,
but one in particular. And I remember with the death
of Dana Plato of different strokes. She had gone on
the Howard Stern Show and got pretty bagged up there.
She'd had her battles with drugs overtime, mostly prescription drugs,
and she went back home to Arkansas or wherever she
was living in a motor home with her boyfriend, and
(04:10):
she overdosed on hydrocodone or something along those lines, and
her death was ruled as a suicide because they said
she must have intended to kill herself by taking the pills,
because she took them regularly and knew how much it
would take to kill her. And I've always found that
an odd ruling, but it's a legal thing in the
(04:33):
state that she died, where when somebody dies of a
drug overdose, if they're a drug user, they just label
it that way. And I've oftentimes wondered about how somebody's
personal lifestyle comes into play when it comes into the
death rulings. I'm gonna put plural on that because cause
manner mechanism of death, you start looking at it like that,
and most of us don't. That changes everything because I
(04:57):
think she meant to kill herself that one in particular,
think she was trying to feel better.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
You know, suicide is just I think it's bad.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
And here's the other thing. She's not a pharmacologist, right, okay,
because if you're if you're trying to and you're trying
to tell her, you know that this level will take
you out. It's a I think maybe for her, it's
an unexpected outcome.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Remember I sing, if you smoke cigarettes, you're committing suicide.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah, some people have actually referred to that or any
any kind of activity that is detrimental to your health.
I've actually I've sat in a lecture one time, many times,
many years ago where a guy his whole the whole
theme of the lecture was passive suicide. And yeah, yeah,
(05:48):
I mean it's like, I don't eat anymore. My favorite,
the my favorite thing in the world. And I'll go
ahead and give them a shameless plug right here is
Popou's Chicken. I'm from New Orleans. I love Popeye's chicken.
They're not as good as my grannies, but I do
love their red beans and rice I make. I make
great red beans and rice. By the way, as well.
(06:10):
Used to love their dirty rice when they had it.
I could go on and on and on and sing
the praises of.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Need to get a salesperson on the phone with Popeyes
right now.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Yeah, with Popey's love that chicken for Pope's. You know,
you begin to think about that I should know better,
and particularly, you know, as many hearts as I've participated
in the dissection of where I've seen you know, uh,
significant cornary occlusion as a result of you know, taking
taking these foods on. But yet it persists, right, you know,
(06:42):
the number one killer in America's heart disease. It has
been for a long time. I think that we don't
normally think about it. We don't normally think about it.
But yet there it is. You know, it's there. Listen.
Let me let me tell you something. And I think
I even showed you an image of this some time ago. Uh.
(07:02):
There's a classic image that I took at a death
scene one time of two fellows sitting in the front
seat of a vehicle and they had done time together
in the joint in Georgia. They'd been sellies together and
one got out and he promised. They were both addicted
(07:26):
to heroin when they arrived at at the lock up
at the state prison. And of course, as many people understand,
and you know, God bless families that have to endure addiction,
you know, with their their loved ones. Heroin is not
something easy to kick. It's an absolute horror show. But
(07:49):
you know, you go into you go into lockdown, and dude,
you're going to kick it, you know, because most of
the time you're not going to have access to what
you had on the outside. But promise. And this always
kind of stuck in my brain as a death investigator
and as a human. One of the one guy told
(08:09):
his friend who was still incarcerated the day that you
get out, he was getting out like a month in advance,
the day that you get out. It's almost like that
scene of the Blues Brothers, you know, where Elwood picks
up Jake at the gate. He says, I'm going to
be out here. I'm going to be here in my car.
(08:30):
I'm going to pick you up and brother me and
you were going to Atlanta and we are going to party.
Well they did. And let me tell you something that's
really going to shock, because it still shocks me even
when I see the image, and I show this image
every semester of my class. Both of these guys, I'll
never forget. I don't know if you did this with
(08:53):
your kids, but do you remember back years ago when
the gap would Fourth of July t shirts and they
would have an American flag or something patriotical on in
front of it, and it would say like fourth of
July nineteen ninety nine or something. Well, one of these
guys was wearing one of those shirts, and he was
(09:13):
seated in the front seat. And I'll never forget. It
was a jeep Cherokee. The driver was holding a syringe.
He's dead, now, Okay, keep in mind, I'm a death investigator.
Unlike you know what my wife first said one I
told her what I did for a living. I'd tell
her about some horrible crime or some horrible case, and
(09:34):
she'd say, did they die? And it's like, honey, I
worked for the medical examiner. They were dead. This guy
sitting there in death holding a syringe. Okay. The other
fellow is in the front passenger seat, Dave, he's not
holding the syringe. The syringe is still stuck into the
(09:54):
palmer aspect of his left forearm. And there was a
big bos cap in the center of the console on
the arm rest that had cotton stuff down in it,
and they had been cooking their heroin in there and
then drawing it up and injecting. You know, the thing
(10:15):
about it is is that these two fellows, of course,
their tolerance level because they had detoxed, had dropped so
low that they decided to hit one another up with
the same boluts of drugs and they actually died. I
can still tell you where it is. The building doesn't
exist anymore. They died in the back parking lot of
(10:38):
the GE headquarters building in north west Atlanta, and it
was hidden. It was one of those places that you
wouldn't see from the road. They'd gone back there specifically
to get high. And I thought about that, and it
was so powerful at that moment time when you begin
to think about the manner and the cause of death,
(11:01):
and then you know the mechanism relative to this, because
this is their deaths. And they were both purple cyanoutic,
which would give you an indication of the scene that
they were in respiratory distress. You look at that and
you think, just for that fleeting second, you know, they
had an opportunity to pull back, and all it took
(11:22):
was that simple injection and it it drove them to
death at that at that point in time. And I
think a lot of people get confused when we begin
to talk about we begin to talk about how does
how does actually the mechanism of death work? You know,
because it's really easy for us to kind of gloss
(11:43):
over and say, well, yeah, it's a heroin od and
you don't think you don't think about that very much.
And even even in a therapeutic environment like in a
hospital when somebody comes in and they have odd on heroin,
yes they are treating them for or heroin usage, but
they're actually trying to stem what's going on with the
(12:04):
mechanism to bring them back, you know, from the brink.
They're like, if you have some kind of respiratory failure
thing going on, well, that's going to be the mechanism
that leads to the death that was initiated, which is
going to be the causal factor with heroin. But they're
actually treating the mechanism. Isn't that kind of fascinating day?
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Now, that's where narcan is used as a reversal agent.
I pe lute overdes on narcotics.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Correct, Yes, Yeah, it kind of mutes, it mutes the effect.
And there's been a lot of lives saved by it. Yeah,
there's been cops lives that have been saved, Yeah, by narcan.
There was one real recently. I actually saw it. I'd
Lord have mercy. It was terrible. This cop had been exposed.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
It was a traffic stop and he hoped he couldn't
figure out what was wrong with the person who was driving. Yeah,
and opened up something and looked like makeup. He thought
he was going to find weed or dope, some type
of dope, and it was actually.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Fentanyl and he breathed it in.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
He didn't start freaking out until after he knew he
wasn't feeling right, but on his way back to headquarters
it hit him and he had to They had to
come and save him on the side of the road.
Gave him a narc hand shot and h it was
more than one.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Yeah, it was actually and you know, and that's happened
multiple times. But you know, when you think about that. Okay,
let's let's just think about that for a second. All right,
that that event Now, I'm not I'm not here to
conflate mechanism and manner. However, the mechanism, manner and calls
(13:41):
are all kind of intertwined together. Can we go back
to man or just for a second.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Actually, I was going to ask you to please do
it again.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Let me let me just let me just throw this
out to you, brother, okay, because it'll kind of make
your head swim.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
A little bit.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
I've got another case that we'll talk about. That's fascinating too.
I think, hey, fine, very quickly.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Before we move too much for it.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Yeah, you made a comment about the guys that got
out of prison and decided they were going to get
high because they were sullies and they were looking forward
to getting hurt. Right in my private life, one of
the things that I do is I work with alcoholics
and addicts in finding sobriety, and I will never forget
a call. Several years ago, a young man had come
through the program. It was a year in patient program, okay,
(14:25):
very intense and Bible based. Graduated the program and he
went home and his first month home he went back
to heroin. It's that tempting, and he died of an overdose.
And his father called wanting us to tell graduates if
you you know, if you're going to use, don't start
(14:46):
at the level you stopped, right, And I'm like, I
understand what you're saying. Yeah, but the reality is we're
not going to tell people how to use drugs to
stay alive. We're gonna tell him don't use drugs. That's
what they've spent a year learning. I know it's an addiction.
I know that it's a self afflicted addiction. You know
it's it's the person. And whenever we start talking about this,
(15:08):
my heart breaks for the families. My heart breaks for
the people that have to deal with the aftermath of
you spend all that time in a program and you
went out and you used, You spend all that time
in prison, and you planned on getting high and you died.
That's why I just wanted to just a little PSA.
Please have a heart for those who are addicted. It
is not a choice. Nobody grows up saying I want
(15:28):
to be a junkie. Nobody says I want to go
to jail. Nobody says I want to be homeless all
for the sake of drugs. If a mother's love, a
child's love for a parent, or you know, if that
could save anyone, there would be no junkies, there would.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Be no addicts.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Absolutely, So that's why I'm glad you gave that example.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Joe. Think about it.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
You're going to chaill self for your own behavior and
your game plan is let's get high.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
It's absolutely insidious. So if you think about the police
officer that we had mentioned and this didn't happen to him, served,
But let's just say a similar set of circumstances going
back to Manor, and we know that the mechanism is
going to be a respiratory failure event coupled with cardio problems.
(16:13):
Let's just say for an instance, and I really want
not just you, Dave, but everyone out there to kind
of think about this. If you were the coroner, if
you were the medical examiner, how would you rule on
the case I'm about to tell you about where you
have a similar circumstance where the police have made a
(16:33):
stop along the roadway, okay, and they find somebody passed
out in a car, maybe they're not dead, and then
they begin trying to understand what's going on. They're searching
the vehicle and all of a sudden they open up
a package and a big puff of powder comes out.
They breathe that in Okay, there's nobody there with narcan,
(16:57):
and they die. The person in the car survives. Do
you charge that person with homicide? And that's you know,
that's one of the things that kind of when you
begin to think about I say, do you well, will
(17:17):
the medical examiner, uh, you know, present this to the
DA in such a way that the DA begins to
understand the mechanism of this event coupled with the cause,
causal factors, and how are they going to rule it.
I encourage anybody that to check this guy out. He
(17:42):
helped me out. Dave. What uh? Where? Where? What's the
name of the town in Pennsylvania where they played the
Little League World Series?
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Williams, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Well, they play the the Little League World Series there.
It's famous. It has been famous for that for years
and years. And the corner they have elected corners in
Pennsylvania and the corner up there became quite famous over
this one idea. And it's a way of looking at
(18:13):
death in the world through a particular lens. He started ruling.
I did this. He started ruling every death that was
drug related that was like from elicted drugs. He ruled
every one of those deaths in his jurisdictions as homicides,
every single one of them. And the impetus behind that,
(18:35):
from his perspective, was that these people that are addicted
to drugs, who are very vulnerable, were going to a
central location and receiving a deadly substance from an individual.
And whether or not the dealer pushed the plunger on them,
which is the way the attorney would look at that
(18:57):
was irrelevant to him. He was going to rule, as
the medical legal authority that these were all homicides. Now,
I've talked to other corners around the country over the
years since I read that article so long ago, and
they don't necessarily agree with it. First off, I think
it's more of a practical thing they in their jurisdictions,
and I think this worked out with this gentleman as well.
(19:18):
The prosecution didn't have the They didn't have I don't
know if it's the intestinal fortitude or they didn't have
the foresight relative to this to enjoin with the coroner
and say, yeah, these are homicides because in the past,
you know, anytime that you have an ode, most of
(19:39):
the time the corner slash medical examiner forensic pathologist is
going to rule that as an accidental death. That's just
the way it works.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
And so that makes sense, Joe, because how far do
you take that? I mean, do you take it to
the guy at the convenience store that sold a twelve
pack of beer to the alcoholic had got in the card,
drove down the road and crash into a tree. I mean,
you know, that's a slippery slope to go. Now. I
remember it was Williamsport, Pennsylvania. You are right, I remember that, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
And I remember it like it was yesterday because at
(20:10):
first my knee jerk goes wow, you go man. My
second was no way. But do you really get into
that nitty gritty as the medical legal death. I'm thinking manner,
you know, manner, cause mechanism, and how impactful that is
on the actual charging that takes place. Because now I'm
(20:31):
fact to I hate to keep doing this, but the
whole Karen Reid O'Keefe thing, they still don't have. They
don't have manner cause mechanism, right, they got one of
the three.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Well with mechanism, yeah, they actually do have cause of
death with that. And again going back to that with
and it's it's actually a great example, Daved. I'm glad
that you brought that up, because the mechanism with John
O'Keefe's death is not just it's it's not going to
just be simply blunt force trauma, but you have to
(21:03):
also think about the physiological response that the brain is having.
You recall from our previous episode where I was talking
about the fracture complexes that he had in his brain, Well,
that leads to a certain outcome where you will have
the brain responding to the point where the brain will
(21:26):
actually herniate and the brain is becoming very congested, and
it compromises the brain's ability to function appropriately and that
leads to death. That is that mechanism. Yeah, he sustained
blunt force trauma, but there is an underlying mechanism that's
making that happen. But another thing about it is this
(21:47):
in cases where medical examiners and corners are having to
make a determination, particularly as it applies to the difference
and the link between mechanism and cause some things are
obvious and some just not quite as clear. Many years back,
(22:22):
Dave I, along with my colleagues, worked a case involving
a young man, and this young man was breaking into
homes and either stealing from the homes, which is actually burglary,
(22:45):
or he was robbing the occupants of the home if
they were there. Okay, so you know, burglary, you break in,
you're not really having contact with people, you're stuff. You're
a thief, all right. Robbery is different, you know, with
robbery involves I think a lot of people kind of
(23:07):
missed the point with robbery. Robbery involves almost a threat
of violence. You know, when this happens, you either give
me what you have or else. Well that there's no
truer definition. In this case, this young man had broken
in to this elderly gentleman's house. And to go back,
(23:28):
this guy was a World War II veteran, he was widowed,
had lived in the same house since he got home
from World War Two, all right, and he had health problems.
The young man came in through the rear door of
the home carrying an unloaded pump shotgun. The old man
(23:55):
met him in the kitchen and this young kid took
the shotgun and racked it in the old man's face.
The old man clutched his chest and died. That kid
was charged and tried for malice murder, and he was
(24:18):
sent to the penitentiary. Now you begin to think about
that because most of the time, if a firearm is
involved and the case is ruled as a homicide, you're
going to begin to kind of contemplate, well, where are
the gunshot wounds? You know, because we're talking about the
(24:39):
cause of death in a case like that. If you're
thinking about somebody being shot with, let's you say, a buckshot,
the cause of death is going to be a gunshot wound.
And the mechanism is if they're shot in the chest,
their heart because of the traumat sustained and the lungs,
they're going to fail. And that's the mechanism. Relative to that,
(25:03):
he was never injured. The old man was never injured.
He went into a sistily, which means his heart stopped
beating because it was literally you know, I think a
lot of people would be inclined to say, well, he
was scared to death. This is one of those cases
where you can have someone that is subjected to this,
(25:24):
they're already in frail health. And that to me was
always kind of a touchstone case that I've used over
the years to teach people with, you know, because you know,
my students, particularly undergraduates, when they hear that story, they
see it as being implausible. But you know, Dave, death
comes in in all shapes and sizes, and you never
(25:46):
know how it's present, and then it's going to present
for you, And then how are you going to interpret
your findings? Not just what you find in the morgue, okay,
because many times the things are quite obvious. Sometimes they're not,
but many times they are quite obvious, but also the
circumstances surrounding the death, and that leads you down a
(26:07):
different road. Do you think weapon? Do you think gunshot? Woman?
In this case, we had weapon, no gunshot, woe, but
yet we have a dead body. Some people have actually
(26:29):
suggested that people that there needs to be a sixth
manner of death called incompatibility with life. I'll give you
an example. There was this guy a few years back
that everybody was, you know, weeping and gnashing of teeth
over that's this squirrel suit guy. You know, the guy
that puts on the squirrel suit and jumps off the mountain.
(26:51):
He's supposed to be the world champion, and he crashes
into a rock. I think it's like in the Alps
or some way. It doesn't matter. It's some huge mountain
with rocky outcroppings. Well, he's participating in an activity that
I don't know. Many people would say it's incompatible with life. Okay.
Now some people say, well, getting into an automobile is
(27:12):
kind of in No, no, no, no, no, that's not I'm
talking about gravity, dude. Okay, you knew the risk when
you engaged in this behavior. Is it's the same as suicide.
I don't know, but that category. If you compare him
and what he did to Mamma that's on her way
to church and her you know, in her land yacht
(27:33):
and she can't seal the steering wheel and she gets
tea boned. That's an accidental death. So are those two
things the same? So there's a lot of people, in
particularly insurance companies, that would love for there to be
a sixth manner of death incompatibility with life.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
For instance, I'll tell you that term.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
And it's something that I have learned doing this with
you over the last couple of years. Is sometimes there
is evidence found at a scene, and even though you
don't have a body, you have enough evidence of blood
or other body issues that are incompatible with a person
continuing to live based on what you found right here
(28:12):
in the front seat of the car. I don't have
their body, but I got enough of their body to
know they're not alive. Working on a case like that
right now out of California. The woman's been missing a
couple of years, Heidi Plank, and Heidi Plank went missing,
and they saw her on a video screen at six
point thirty walking her dog. Thirty minutes later, her dog
(28:34):
is on the twenty eighth floor by himself, and she's gone.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
Don't know where she went.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
They found her vehicle, and they found other evidence inside
the apartment that the police said is incompatible with life,
but they didn't find her body.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
So yeah, And that part of incompatibility is not so
much an action as it is, say, like jumping off
the side of a mountain in a squirrel suit came.
I didn't think that I would wake up this morning
and actually say that phrase, But here we go. That's
that compared to incompatibility with life. If you have a case,
(29:12):
say for instance, involving what's referred to as exsanguination excanguinations
of famous or the ten dollars term for bleeding out okay,
where you have copious amounts of blood that's left behind, tissue,
that sort of thing. Then you look at that even
appsent the body, and you say, well, yeah, this is
(29:32):
incompatible with life. With her having survived, there's a high
probability she's deceased. And so you try to marry that
up with how the death is going to be classified.
You know, with miss PLAINK, there's no way I don't
think that you could come up with an actual cause
(29:55):
of death. Let's say that you were going to try
to generate a death certificate for her in her absence,
in the absence of the mortal remains, the corpus DELECTI,
you're not going to have enough information because you don't
know where the trauma on her person was, you don't
(30:16):
know what generated the trauma, you don't know how the
trauma was generated itself. And so those are factors that
we would look at. And now if you could say
that a subject, not her, but just some other subject
had their throat cut okay, and you had a lot
of blood at the scene, there might be certain indications
(30:37):
you could tell, well, we've got an arterial spray pattern here,
and there's a lot of blood. It's soaked all the
way through the carpet padding, not just carpet, and there's
a high probability she did not survive this. But even
without the body, you can't say that her throat was cut.
You just know that they lost a lot of blood.
So you look at that and you think, well, back
(31:01):
to this idea with Virginia Roberts. You know, so, what
are you saying. You've given us enough information at this
point in time to say that it's a suicide. But
if it's a suicide, what's the cause behind the suicide?
What is it that has presented to you scientifically that
(31:23):
would cause you to rule this as a suicide, But
yet you have yet to release release the actual cause
of death. My suspicion is, if you'd like to hear
it is they're trying to do. I think that they're
waiting on toxicology tell you the truth. That's my opinion.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
And you know that a lot of journalists, Joe, a
lot of reporters say the wrong thing, and they're not
questioned on it because everybody you're dealing with is a reporter, journalist,
or a lawyer that now hosts a show that often
don't have the background that you you have. And when
if I were to off handedly say that Virginia Robert
S Guffrey died that her cause of death was suicide,
(32:10):
ninety percent of the people are not going to challenge that.
They're going to take that for what it is and
not even think, wait a minute, he's talking out of
his butt. He doesn't even know what he's talking about,
because that is not what caused her death. Her death
was not caused by a suicide, because suicide could be
shot in the head, hung myself, cut myself, any number
of things.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Well, you know, the problem with that is the level
these are very simple constructs, and it's the level of inexactitude.
And this is one of the things that troubles me
about that that's.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
Got to drive you nuts when you're.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
It really does, and listening, I'm not some kind of
ocd A or tentive kind of guy, you know, really,
I'm really not. But the inexactitude is the very slippery
slope we get a used in forensic practice. And I
think probably law enforcement would agree with this as well,
(33:06):
that side of the house of being sloppy, of being
inexact about what we're talking about. The lawyers make they
they feast off of that. But yet you flip that
around and you look at these inexactitudes and the problem
I think with her death in particular is that not
(33:30):
that other deaths are not important, but there's so much
of a swirl around this that you could be so
flippant that you don't delve a little bit deeper into
this and offer the public more data. Because how she died,
that is the cause of death, and how you classify
(33:51):
that death is so very important that we really can't.
You can't just leave that just kind of hanging in
the air. You have to be very very exact about this.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Because get that with her. But Joe, what about O'Keefe.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
How do you move forward with a murder trial when
you don't have all of them? Again, I don't know
how what was his manner of death? It's undetermined, and
we move forward with a murder trial. I would think
you'd have to know that.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Well, yeah you would, But if you look at you know,
talking about cause. If you look at at John O'Keefe's death,
his specific cause of death is going to be massive
head trauma. And let me break this down to you.
This is actually kind of fascinating to me. I got
to see the the forensic pathologist. I got to see
(34:43):
her autopsy sketches from you know, we use an autopsy room,
we use anatomical sketches, and there's hundreds of these things,
these diagrams that we use, and there's actually a great
one that and they demonstrated this in court where you
take off this is an ar artists rendering. It's not
his actual head, but you take off the skull cap
(35:04):
and you're looking down into the floor of the skull
and the brain is over to the side. There's another
drawing of the brain over here. And so when you're
looking down into the floor of his skull, that's what
we call the basel or area of the skull, or
like the basement. Okay, that's what it comes down to. Okay,
So when you're looking at the basement of John O'Keeffe's skull,
(35:26):
the forensic pathologist went into great detail of talking about
what we refer to as a fracture complex so when
you see John's John O'Keefe's fracture complex there too, and
they're distinctly different, but yet in their own right are lethal.
And let me break it down. When you see the
(35:47):
antier portion, there are fracture lines that are running all
over the place, okay, And it starts right above the
orbits of the eye. So one of the thinnest parts
of the brain are excuse me, one of the thinnest
parts of the skull are those little shelves that sit
(36:08):
over your eye socket. As a matter of fact, they
make up the roof of your eye sockets. And Dave,
I've actually been able to take a flashlight and have
a skull in my hand where the bottom point and
this is an actual skull where it's cut away, and
could take the flashlight and place it beneath the floor
of the skull. And that bone is so thin that
(36:29):
light illuminates up through it. You could light a room
with it as almost like a It'd be kind of muted,
but you could in a dark room you could actually see.
That's how thin it is. It's doctors like to describe
it as being eggshell like. Okay, So he's got this
complex of fractures, and there are these kind of curvel
linear patterns, and she's drawn this out. I'll never forget.
(36:51):
She's used a green ink, which I've never seen boy do,
which I thought was kind of compelling because it's real
striking when they put it up on the elmo. You know,
the the almo is the projector that they use in
the courtroom where you place an item up there and
it projects it onto the wall. Of course, now they
have an ELMO that's connected to the television screen in there,
(37:11):
so you've got that complex. He's got kind of what
sounds to me like this evulsion trauma to his right eye,
and to me, that speaks of point of impact. And
he's got bilateral raccoon eyes, which means he's got basel
or skull fractures. Anytime you see somebody with raccoon eyes,
(37:33):
either they've been struck in the head or they've had
no surgery, okay, like reconstructive no surgery. You'll get the
eyes swell up and you can actually see the edema.
I saw the image of him in the Morgan. I
think I saw one in the emergency room. And he's
got to see collar on and his eyes are very ademitous.
(37:54):
You know, they're swollen and blacken. Now those fractures patterns
in there. What that does is that literally opens up
the floor and you get seepage down behind the eyes.
The skull is closed. Okay, the brain has been traumatized
because whatever he was impacted by, whether it was her
(38:15):
car or slip and fall. The brain begins to swell
as a result of that subarachnoid and subdural trauma. And dude, unlike,
let's say you get hit in the arm with a
baseball with a hot shot, the base in the forearm. Okay,
(38:36):
now I know, because you're an old baseball guy. You
get hit with a hot shot, you drop up and
as mc granny would say, you draw a nod up
on you, and you do. You can actually feel it.
But guess what. The skin can expand those muscles as
are traumatized in there. They're filling up with blood. It's
an engorgement and it expands out. Sooner or later it's
(38:56):
going to receive. Brain can't do that. Brain can't do
that because the skull is closed. So the brain begins
to expand instead inside of this hard shell, it's looking
for someplace to go. And it's beginning to get strangled. Okay,
and it actually herniates in a few places. Well, not
only does he have that complex, but you go to
(39:18):
the back of his head, Dave, there is a significant
laceration that's in what's referred to as the horizontal plane.
And so you think about the vertical plane, horizontal plane,
vertical plane. Top of the head to the soles of
the feet, that's vertical plane. You think about horizontal plane.
(39:40):
You're talking about from your left ear or your right ear,
or from your right shoulder to your left shoulder. That's horizontal.
So this thing is literally in the horizontal plane. And
underneath it there's that laceration where he's impacted the ground.
Guess what separate fracture complex at the base of the brain. Now,
(40:00):
now it's surrounding the brain stem. The brain is swelling
because not only is the floor of the brain fractured,
now the brain has been traumatized to the brain is swelling.
It swelled. The brain swells, I think, unlike any other
organ the trauma response in the brain is amazing, and
(40:21):
it begins to swell. Well, okay, so I can say
to you definitively, I've really started chasing rabbits. I apologize,
but we can say that John O'Keefe's cause of death
is is blunt heead blunt force trauma, the head goes
(40:43):
without I don't think anybody would question that that's the
cause of the factor here. Okay, but how are you
going to rule it? Well, you had mentioned, you made
a great comment, and this is kind of the it's
the juxtaposition between the medical legal community and the proscatorial community.
(41:05):
They feel as though that with that simple cause of
death that they have, even though it has not been ruled,
it's been left ruled undetermined, they've got enough of circumstantial
evidence surrounding those events that night, they feel confident enough
that they can push through. But it's a powerful thing
(41:25):
when a forensic pathologist gets up on the stand and
they can't tell you what the actual manner of death is.
They can only state the cause. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan,
and this is bodybacks
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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