October 10, 2023 • 36 mins
Suzanne Morphew, a 49-year-old mother of two from Chaffee County, Colorado, disappears under mysterious and suspicious circumstances. Initially reported missing following a supposed bike ride on Mother's Day, her case quickly gains national media attention. With each passing day, the urgency to find the truth escalates. In this episode, Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack meticulously examine the Suzanne Morphew case through a forensic lens. Morgan delves into expert insights, discussing the roles of apex predators, decay patterns, and dental records in Suzanne's identification. Dave Mack scrutinizes the media coverage and evaluates the initial theories surrounding the case. From weather impediments affecting search efforts to perplexing clues that challenge conventional theories, this episode offers an exhaustive exploration of a case that continues to confound investigators.
Time-coded Highlights:
00:02:00 — Introduction to the episode's focus on the forensics surrounding the Suzanne Morphew case.
00:02:40 — Dave Mack talks about the Morphew case, which he has been covering since Suzanne went missing.
00:04:20 — Mack delves into the initial theory that Suzanne went for a bike ride and subsequently vanished.
00:05:00 — Barry Morphew's theory of a mountain lion attack as a possible cause of Suzanne's disappearance is discussed.
00:05:20 — Joseph Scott Morgan explains the behavior patterns of apex predators and how they could be linked to this case.
00:08:20 — Questioning the absence of evidence supporting the apex predator theory where Suzanne's bike was found.
00:09:03 — The notion of a human predator being involved in Suzanne's disappearance is raised.
00:10:29 — Morgan talks about the discovery of Suzanne's helmet and the absence of trauma evidence within it.
00:12:58 — Joe Scott Morgan says that the circumstances surrounding Suzanne's discovery are unlike anything he has seen before.
00:14:04 — Morgan elaborates on the legal concept of corpus delecti and its relevance to this case.
00:16:14 — The implications of the burial site being a shallow grave are discussed.
00:19:21 — Dave Mack notes that investigators weren't looking for Suzanne when her remains were found.
00:22:23 — A vivid picture is painted about the potential skeletal disbursement of Suzanne's remains.
00:32:12 — Challenges in determining the cause of death in the absence of soft tissue are covered.
00:34:42 — Joe Scott Morgan wraps up the episode, questioning the preparation and speed involved in hiding Suzanne Morphew's body.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Buddybacks with Joseph Scott Morgan. When you're in academics, in
my area of academics, forensics in particular, in order to
kind of validate yourself, I guess professionally, one of the
(00:29):
things that's required is that you go to meetings. We
always have meetings, right, You have these meetings that you
attend with colleagues from all over the country, all over
the world, and you listen to papers. Saying you listen
to papers, it's kind of odd, but you do. You
listen to studies that have been conducted by colleagues in
different areas. And one of the coolest meetings that you
(00:52):
can ever go to is the American Academy of Forensic Science.
And several years back I attended the AAFS conference, I
think it was WOW in New Orleans all those years ago,
and I went to a talk by a forensic odentologist.
This guy was from out West, and as you know,
odentologists not only examined the human mouth in order to
(01:15):
determine identity, but they also examined bodies for bite marks.
And this was an unusual talk because he was talking
about an attack. But the attack that he was talking
about had nothing to do with the attacker being a human.
You see, this odentologist was from Colorado and the case
(01:37):
that he was talking about happened to be one of
the most ghastly cases I've ever seen in a presentation,
and it had to do with a jogger who was
attacked by a mountain lion. Don't know that I've ever
seen like, don't know that I've ever seen injuries like that,
but I do know this. During the course of that talk,
given all the horrible things I'd seen, the one thing
(01:58):
that never came up was a mountain digging a shallow grave. Today,
we're going to talk about the forensics surrounding the Suzanne
Morphew case. I'm Joseph gott Morgan and this is Bodybacks. Well,
we're back in the sut We're back from crime con
(02:20):
and boy, what news did we come home to the
Susanne Morphy case. And look, we've been talking on different
platforms for I don't know loath these many years months.
Did you see this coming? Did you even expect to
get this news?
Speaker 2 (02:36):
No, not even close. And Joe, as you mentioned, we
have been on this since it happened, since Suzanne Moorefew
went missing that first day we have been on this
case happened on Mother's Day. When a mother goes missing
on Mother's Day, that is going to be a huge
flag up in the air. Every all hands on deck,
and we have been ever since. It's like many many cases,
(02:59):
they get more play in the media. If you've got pictures.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Look.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Suzanne Morphew is a very attractive forty nine year old
woman and her husband an attractive man, Barry. They've got
two beautiful daughters. They've been married twenty five years. This
is a scenario where hey, man Barry is obvious, is
at work that day, she goes for a bike ride
and goes missing on the outside looking in. This is
(03:24):
a horrible accident of something. She's been abducted, she has
been attacked. I mean, what happened to Suzanne Morphew. And
we weren't the only ones. Joe, Holy Moly. There was
a football team size of reporters around the country that
headed to Colorado when this first happened, and the whole
thought was where is she?
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Yeah, and she just seemingly vanished into thin air. It
had been put out there that on Mother's Day she
was going for a bike ride and you would think
that there would be something to kind of hang your
intellectual hat on with that, And soon we actually found
found out that they had recovered a bike. I think
(04:05):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Know who suggested she was on a bike ride. I
don't know if that came from Barry Morphew, from the
next door neighbor or whomever. All we know is that
Barry Morphew was out of town on business, a construction job,
and Suzanne. He couldn't reach Suzanne by the phone, and
so I guess he called a neighbor. Would you look
(04:26):
in steev see her? And then is her bike there? No,
her bike's not there. She must have gone on a
bike ride. So they're checking the bike trail and that's
where they find a bike. And deputies found the bike.
And I actually I told you this little while ago.
I was watching the video because I wanted to know
Barry's demeanor when they find the bike and it's already dark.
As Barry gets there on site, he asked basic questions,
(04:49):
where's where did you find it? What condition was the
bike end? And with Joe twenty eight seconds after he
gets out of his truck, he says, could it have
been a mountain lion attacking her on her bike. That
was twenty eight seconds into Barry Morphew as part of
the investigation, could a mountain lion grab a bike rider
and drag their body to where we can't find it?
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Well, this is the thing about and a mountain lion
out there here this term apex predator that's thrown around
down in my area of the country. The apex predator
in our area are certainly alligators, I think, or where
I come from. They're kind of the top of the heap,
and they have a particular way that they're if they're
going to attack something, it's kind of ingrained into their
(05:30):
DNA as to how they go about it. And out
in that area, I would think that a mountain lion
would be at the top. They would be the apex
predator out in that region. I guess you could argue
that a bear would be. Here's kind of the curious
thing that I learned, and I think back to that
talk that I sat in all those years ago, and
the way it was described to me is that most
(05:53):
of the time when these things attack, they love to
attack from a height. The way this is kind of
structured out my understanding at least as best as I can,
is that they will sit perhaps on like a rocky outcropping,
and they will wait until a prey like prey come
(06:14):
through their particular area, their hunting grounds, and they sit
there very quietly and they wait until the prey passes them,
and the next thing you know, they're on the back
of this thing, whatever it is that they're after. That's
the way this lady was attacked out in Colorado, who
was actually a jogger that was running through the woods
through a they had like a one of those outdoor
(06:35):
running paths that goes through the tree line and it's
real lovely to see, and they showed images of the
and it was the only thing about it. It's had
a big rock out cropping where this thing kind of
sat up above, and that's the way they attacked. I
can't imagine, and I guess it could happen. I'm not
an animal behaviorist, but there are cars that are going
by in that area because it's a jacent hill road
(06:57):
where this bicycle was found kind of down in a
gull that sort of thing. I can't imagine there would
be a place for a mountain lion to sit there
and wait, and it's very disruptive right when that hunting area,
you know, with cars going by and all of that stuff. Now,
this is a very you know, you're south of Gunnison, Colorado.
Here it is desolate and it's beautiful, but it's desolate.
(07:18):
You're just south of where the ski slopes are and
all that sort of stuff. Beautiful countryside, but very isolated.
So this thing is sitting adjacent to the roadway waiting
for a bicyclist to come by. And I don't necessarily
know that Mountain Lion would have been my first choice.
I mean, to each his own. But if you're checking
off the list and you're thinking Apex predator, I guess
(07:38):
that could happen.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
I don't think it was anybody's first list, Joe. I
think you're right. I think the deputies that look at
one another like where is this coming from? And one
thing I looked at right when this happened as we
were investigating, is that a Mountain Lion's very territorial and
they don't share. They actually have this is my area,
and you don't come here, they go find another area.
(08:01):
They're very spread out in this entire area that we're
talking about. Here miles upon miles upon miles. There's only
three mountain lions in this whole area. And I dare
say they're not going against their hunting style by hunting
in a ravine, in a ditch on gravel and bushes.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
I just I can't feature that, and I can only
imagine their rain just got to be massive that they
cover that they have laid their claim to. So they're
out there protecting what is theirs. Here's the problem is
that when this bike is discovered, there's no evidence that
an attack has necessarily taken place relative to this apex predator.
(08:41):
All you got is singularly a bike, and it's distinctly hers.
Apparently it's it's a bike that she had used, Susanne,
that is, And so that gives you pause. And I
think that the next thing you talk about apex predators,
first thing comes to mind from me, aside from a
wild beast is going to be another beast, and that's
(09:02):
a human being. So are we talking about somebody that
had snatched her while she was out riding the bike?
Who would be that bold in order to do that?
And how did you get her off the bike? Did
their bump her get her off the road, maybe take
the bike and discard it off in this kind of
unseen area. I don't know, but it just it struck
(09:23):
me as very odd at the time. I have to
say it.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Struck everybody that way, and which is why there was
this huge investigation. You know right away, Joe, when we
look at the timeline here breaking it down, May tenth
is when she disappeared. On May eleventh, search efforts are ongoing.
They brought out the drones, they brought out a cent
tracking dogs. Family of Suzanne offers up two hundred thousand
(09:46):
dollars in reward money on the fourteenth. We're talking less
than a week into it. They're offering up two hundred
thousand dollars for information that doesn't usually happen that quickly.
So in trying to get this information, Joe, very quickly,
within a couple of days, we start finding things. On
May fifteenth, some personal items of Suzanne Morpheus were found
in and around the search area. That May seventeenth, the
(10:10):
Sheriffs Dive and Rescue team search waters and water sites
and things like that. I guess there's a normal pathway
to searching an outdoor area. Of the groups that you
call in you know, from volunteers searching the ground, drones
in the air, horseback dogs, things like that, and they
went everywhere. Nothing was found in terms of her. They
found her helmet.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Yeah, and that's yeah, they found the helmet. When you
think about kind of the intimate nature and I'm talking
about this from a physical standpoint of a bike helmet,
it's in direct contact with obviously the head, but that
layer beneath their the scalp, you have the hair, and
if there's any kind of trauma that might be associated
(10:51):
with the head where you have an open wound, you'll
have blood contained within that helmet. I don't see haven't
heard over the course of this investigation that when this
helmet was discovered that there was any necessarily any kind
of evidence biological evidence like that, you know, that would
indicate trauma, you know, where you've got a tremendous amount
(11:13):
of blood or something like that that's kind of staining
the interior of this thing side. I'd have a real
hard time putting that together.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
I think when the search, I don't want to say
it ended, because I don't think they ever stopped looking,
but the active searches of actually, let's partner up and
go and walk this area. They were really worried about
the weather turning on them, and it did because of
the area they live in, as you mentioned, they pipe
in the sunshine. This case didn't necessarily go cold, but
(11:42):
it actually when nothing turned up, When no body turned
up and the police kept saying, surely we're going to
find something, and nothing was found. All of a sudden,
you've got the weather turning and then saying, well, we'll
have a better shot after the snow melts again. And
here we are a couple of years later, and we
finally get the story that, as you mentioned right at
(12:03):
the very beginning, after a couple of years of waiting,
now there's a body. What are we going to find Joe?
Speaker 1 (12:10):
For real?
Speaker 2 (12:11):
After all this time, what can we possibly expect to
find of Susdane Morphew.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Well, obviously, after so much time and so much exposure,
in let's face it dave in a very very harsh environment,
there's not going to be an intact body. But here's
what I do know. The location where she was found,
the circumstances in which she was found defy anything that
to date I have covered on bodybacks as a death investigator.
(13:00):
When you have a body that has been left behind,
if you will, in whatever state condition that it is,
it's not just the perpetrator that you're trying to outwit
your fighting nature. In Susan Morphy's case, Dave I got
to say, I think that I don't know of any
(13:21):
case where you have so many issues that investigators are
facing where every single element within nature is fighting against
you to eradicate anything that is left behind that is
the remains of Susan Morphew.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
All right, Joe, when we get down to the nitty
gritty here, the shallow grave that seems to pop up
in stories like this, we have somebody, there is no
has been no trial so far. There has been unarrest
made previously, but then that was before trial that was
thrown out, and so we're really back at square one.
(13:58):
I wondered at the time, how do you move forward
on a trial about a murder if you don't have
a body?
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Yeah, it's difficult. And we've used this term before. I
think I like saying it corpus delecti, which is the
body of the crime, and it's been applied over the years.
How do you prosecute something the prosecution would always want
to have that because that is singularly the biggest piece
of evidence that you have, because the body is telling
(14:24):
you things. But in this particular case, now Dave, we
can confirm that we do in fact have a corpus DELECTI,
we do in fact have the remains of Susan Morpheir.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
And that actually was the reason I guess they didn't
move forward previously was that they have a case, but
we don't have the body. So now we have the body,
and we know that the body was found. And I
don't want to refer to Susanne Morphew as it, but
we are talking about what the remains of the person
(14:56):
that she used to be, the physical remains her remain.
We're discarded in a shallow grave, having dug a hole
in the desert. I've dug holes in a lot of
different places because I'm a guy, and when guys are
little boys, we dig. I don't know why.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
We do that. Yeah, I don't understand it either, but
we do. That's part of what we do. That's the
nature of it. And you said a lot I think
regarding this from an environmental standpoint, where Suzanne's remains are
actually found, the composition of the soil out there is
to say that it is tightly packed is understatement. And
(15:34):
here's what's fascinating. According to what I'm hearing right now,
the area in which the remains were found, it's not
like it's in a grove of trees necessarily, you're talking
about a low growth brush, which there is a lot
of out there, and it's sparse. There's not like a
like when you think about eastern forest where you've got
(15:55):
this blanket of pine straw or leaves or something like that,
where things you think would be easily concealed. You're not
dealing with an environment like that. You're dealing in an
area that's it's almost desert like I think to a
certain degree, tightly packed sandy clay kind of composition.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Of the soil.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
And here's the important thing that the police when they
first let this news out, they stated that this was
in fact a shallow Now that's a very specific identifier, Dave,
very specific. They're not saying a well doug grave. They're
not saying that it was deep. They're saying shallow, and
(16:35):
shallow implies a couple of things to me.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
In a hurry.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Yes, specifically, you're rushed. I mean, just think about anything
you do in life where you're unprepared. Okay, you're unprepared,
and really dig deep when you're unprepared, and it doesn't
matter what your pursuit is. So there is for me,
there's two things that come into play. You're in a rush,
and you might not have the tools that you would
(17:01):
need at hand in order to defeat this obstacle, which
is in fact the ground, the earth, in order to
facilitate a deep grave. Maybe you're up against toime, whoever
did this, whoever dug this grave, because I can assure you, Dave,
they're calling it a grave. And how do we define
a grave. Well, they're going to have the Colorado Bureau
(17:22):
of Investigation that's out there working this thing. I would
imagine that they're going to have people out there that
have a background at I don't know if it's at
a doctoral level, but they'll have people that are out
there on site, have a background in clandestine graves and
the processing of clandestine graves. They might even have a
forensic anthropologist out there. And when we define a grave,
(17:44):
we begin to think about it from the perspective of
a grave is outlined in the earth, so it actually
has margins to it. Sometimes those margins can be very sharp.
Sometimes those the dimensions of it can be very robust. However,
when you think about a shallow grave, you think, well,
how do we accomplish this? What tools would we need?
(18:07):
And if you're talking about hand tools, well, just on
the surface of it, I think that in order to
really have one in place, you're going to need probably
a shovel and maybe a pick axe out in this environment.
And what comes along with that, Well, when you begin
to create this hole in the earth that has never
been there before, it's going to require the individual a
(18:29):
lot of heavy lifting relative to how much work goes
into this, and you're going to have tools strikes that
are on the earth. As a matter of fact, if
there's like a rock what we refer to is like
a deciduous rock that's kind of sitting free in the earth,
and you come down on that rock with either a shovel.
I mean, we've all been in our backyard and you've
been digging a hole and you strike something underneath the earth,
(18:51):
and that rock is left behind. Guess what it leaves behind.
On the surface of that rock, it leads beyond tool mark,
And if they went out there and during their excavation
of this area recovered any rocks, for instance, that have
tool strikes on them, trust me, buddy, they've recovered these things.
The trick is, are you going to be able to
marry up a tool, whether it's a pickaxe or shovel
(19:13):
that might match up to any kind of tool mark
that's on a rock perhaps, So that's going to be
interesting to see as time goes forward.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
At the time they found Suzanne Morphew in the shallow grave,
investigators were not looking for Suzanne Morphew. They were investigating
something else. And based on the shallow grave, and I'm
in my head seeing that there had to have been
a hump in the ground when they were out there looking.
(19:41):
Shallow grave means that they did not have room to
actually really conceal the body, and investigators looking for something
else see disturbed area over here, and I'm thinking it
might be kind of like when you're a kid and
you try to bury something in the backyard and you
know there is a hump. It's like you can't dig
it deep enough, which I'm guessing that's what had to
(20:01):
have happened here. But a grave that is like that, Joe,
wouldn't body still be exposed to all of the elements
of a body being left almost on top of the surface.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Yeah, yeah, And I got to tell you, I disagree
with the idea of there being a hump. And this
is an important part to this because when you think
about digging a grave, most people think when you fill
this thing in with the body, you have a mound
that has created a hump. But here's what happens. You
might come across earth that has never had a tool
(20:36):
put to it in thousands of years. Perhaps it's just
it's pristine. Now you're creating this defect in the earth,
and guess what happens. You can never compact that soil
back to the original form that it was in. You
place a body into this area, and yeah, for a while,
it will have this kind of raised appearance to it.
(20:58):
But let me tell you what happens. Then then the
area begins to cave in. One of the things they're
going to notice is that it is not a kind
of a humped area or a mounded area. It's a
sunken area day and all of the vegetation around it.
Perhaps I don't know, we're talking about a three year cycle.
Now because Suzanne's been missing for three years. What happens
(21:19):
is the vegetation actually changes around that area. It's demarcated,
like if there were like little scrub plants that are
an indigenous flora that are in there, their life within
that area, they're possessive relative to the plants is pulled out,
you've disturbed that area. It's disturbed soil, and it's disturbed
plant life. So it's going to look different than say,
(21:42):
for instance, something that has been remained untouched for thousands
of years. It will stand out. But here's the thing, day,
there's something more sinister about this because they wouldn't have
seen a hump, they wouldn't have seen a mound. What
they would have seen is a depressed whole and in
no longer contained the intact remains of Susan Morphear. If
(22:23):
people at home will just envision in your mind, just
for a second, envision an old fashioned wagon wheel. Okay,
where you've got that central hub that's the shallow grave.
The hub is the shallow grave, and all the little
spokes that come off of the old wagon wheel. That's
going to be body dispersement or skeletal dispersement. So from
(22:44):
that point in time where the body was buried, the
body began to decay. And as it began to decay,
even early on, the animal life in that particular area
that is indigenous to that area, scavengers in particular, it
will be in the wind, they will pick it up
almost instantaneously. The spectrum that the wildlife work on relative
(23:08):
to their sense of smell is beyond anything that we
can actually imagine. They live and die by the smell
within their environment, and so they would have picked up
on this very quickly if there was any effort, and
I can assume that there probably was, since we have
a grave, there would have been an effort to bury
or cover up. That's not going to defeat the sense
(23:29):
of smell that inhabits this area on the part of
these indigenous animals.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Are you going to be able to tell whether or
not the body was dismembered before going in? I mean,
is that a possibility that they would pick up the
parts and run with them, as opposed to the body
naturally being torn apart by wild animals.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Yeah, And it comes back to the skill set that
I've talked about many times on our show unfortunately, and
that is tool marks. If there was a dismemberment that
had taken place, you would see evidence of that on
the bones. Now, one of the things that you will
see on the bones, on skeletal remains, and you see
in all cases, I don't know about this case in particular,
because they have not released everything yet, you would see
(24:12):
carnivore activity. We can see things like any type of
animal if you're talking about raccoons, possums, any kind of
you kind of ground dwelling animals that burrow, that sort
of thing that are indigenous to that area. They leave
behind specific markings on the surface of bone. You can
look at it and get an idea what species was
(24:35):
feasting essentially on skeletal remains because there's actually a little
scrape and tooth marks on there. And the fact that
her body has been allegedly dispersed over a seventy five
yard radius tells me also that they have not recovered everything.
There's two hundred and six bones in human body, and
just think of it this way. The smaller the bone,
(24:57):
the higher the probability is you won't recover it. And
I know the big thing that everybody wants to know
about is a hyoid bone in susan morphuse case. Those
bones are so fine and there's a term that we
use called grassisle, which means delicate, and it doesn't matter
if it's male or female. With the hyoid bone, it
is so very fine, and it's that indicator that you
(25:19):
look forward see if there has been a strangulation event
where it's fractured. It would be one of at the
top of the list to kind of vanish disappear, because
it's something that a small animal can make off with,
and they would take this away. If they found a
hyoid out there, I would be genuinely surprised that they
had the small bones of the hands and of the feet.
(25:43):
Those are going to be items that will be again
dispersed all over the place. Animals will literally take remain
skeletal remains to their burrows and take them underground, and
certain things are just never recovered. And each little bit
of human bone tells a story. And it's kind of
an obvious thing to say, but the more of the
(26:04):
constituted body that you can have, you're going to increase
the likelihood that you're going to get some ideas to
what happened. To this individual and to any individual, not
just the remains of Susan more few.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
So what about birds coming into play, because I see
them in my neighborhood flying around with pieces of food.
They're flying around.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
We've got scavenger animals that are out there. You think
about crows in particular, and not to mention the big
scavenger animals like buzzards and those sorts of things that
are out there. Here's a kind of an interesting little
side that I've actually born witness to. I worked the
case many years ago, and this has been proven out
in the literature as well. I worked the case many
years ago where we had had a clandestine grave and
(26:48):
most of the hair was gone, and Dave, there were
anthropologists that checked the bird nest and we had two
or three bird nests in that area where we had
young officers that were willing to climb up a tree,
and two out of the three bird nests that they
found had human hair in the bird nest that they
had nested with. And so animals nature makes use of
(27:09):
what is at hand. And just think you're a bird
in the springtime, you're trying to build a nest to
welcome hatchlings. And that sort of thing. This is prime,
it's one of the things that would be taken back.
I was truly amazed that from the moment in time
that we knew that they had a human remain that
(27:31):
was out there. And granted, I know I'm going to
get this number wrong. I won't give the specific number,
but I will say it was more than twenty miles
away from her home, the body of Susanne Morphew. It
was a great distance away from her home. They have
this body in this isolated area, You think about, what
are the odds that they're going to find her in
(27:52):
the first place, And then they did find her, And
from the moment that they did find her, until we
had a positive identifications really quick, really quick, And what
can we kind of surmise from that, Well, it first
came out that Suzanne's remains have been identified, I think
with dental identification. That tells us something very significant there, Dave,
(28:16):
and then it was confirmed. I think further confirmatory evidence
was the fact that they found port for the application
of cancer drugs.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Let me ask you you forty five miles. I looked
it up, just forty five miles between her home and
where her remains were found. But does the fact they
identified her body by the byer teeth that does not
indicate a full skull, but at least indicates partial right
at least.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Yeah, it does. And that's significant because when we think
of our skull, I think most people think of the
totality of our skull relative to the jaw. And the
cranium teeth that you have in your lower jaw are
called mangelary teeth because that's de mandible, and then the
upper that you have those are called maxillary teeth. So
(29:03):
you have the maxillary teeth up top and then the
mangulary teeth down below. Here's the thing about it is
that the jaw becomes disarticulated pretty quickly in decomposition. That
is also in concert with scavenger activity. The fact that
they were able to get her body identified from dental
(29:25):
is quite fascinating to me. So that tells me that
they have at least one component of the skull. I
don't know if they have both the mangelary teeth as
well as the maxillary teeth, but they had enough dental
evidence there to turn this around pretty quickly. And if
you and this is horrible, I know but when you
(29:46):
look at this woman, you see that beautiful smile. She
smiles in almost every one of her images. That she
had this beautiful set of teeth. You know that she's
had dental care. And that's significant because people will say things, well,
why don't you just use DNA to get a body identified? Well,
why don't you just use dentistry to get Okay, we will,
but here's the problem. First off, you have to have
an idea of who the person might be, and then
(30:09):
if that's the case, you have to have something in
the anti mortem state, which is before death, to compare
it to with what you have in the post mortem state. Obviously,
they've got dental records and the way bodies are identified
through dental examination. First off, there's actually a dental chart
that is created for the dead. Teeth that are absent
(30:30):
are just as significant as teeth that are present. The
trick is you have to determine where those teeth absent
in life. Let's say you've got I don't know, your
third molar, You've got your wisdom teeth that have been removed,
and I know there's so many people in the audience
that have had their wisdom teeth removed. Well, you are
different if you've had your wisdom teeth removed as opposed
(30:54):
to the rest of the population that still has this.
So check that box. Then you think about cavities, Well,
how many restorations have they have? What doctor did these
types of restorations? Did they use a particular type of
methodology or a particular technique that is unique to that doctor.
You look at the planes of the teeth, how are
they rotated, how are they pitched? And that's determined on
(31:17):
X ray any kind of what's referred to as carryous dentation.
Maybe you've got a cavity that's never been repaired, or
maybe you've got capped teeth. Many people have cap teeth. Now,
so all of these things come into play that are
very unique to a particular individual. When you begin to
look at the teeth and try to determine who they are,
(31:38):
that significant and then you couple that day it's a
confirmatory thing when you think about we know that Suzanne
Morphew fought cancer, and so she's even got a cancer
port that is in dwelling. Well, this thing is made
out of plastic and guess what, buddy, plastic takes a
long time to degrade and decompose.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
So on top of all of what you just named, Joe,
as ways to identify is there going to be enough
left of Suzanne Morphew's remains to determine a cause of death.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
In a perfect world, what we would want would be
soft tissue. And I can tell you I'd be very
surprised if there was any soft tissue left after three
years and such an austere environment in which she was found,
Because you know, we look for various types of trauma
on the surface focal areas of hemorrhage. We look for
injuries that have occurred like cuts or maybe puncture wounds
(32:34):
or gunshot wounds. Absent soft tissue, you really have to
be heavily depended upon bone at that point, Tom, in
a case like this, well what are you looking for? Well?
Are there any cracked ribs? And if those ribs are cracked,
did it happen in life in the anti mortem state?
Is this a pre existing injury that had healed or
(32:55):
was it in the peri mortem state, which is that
area between life and death where life is leaving you.
Can you recover all of the ribs? Did you recover
the sternum which is breastbone. Is there a hole in sternum?
And I think what everybody's really curious about was there
damage to the skull. Remember, we've got some element of
the skull, they've got a dental id Dave. I don't
(33:16):
think they did this based on a singular tooth that
they found out there. So with the skull with skeletal remains,
that's going to be your biggest tell if you have
one that's intact. So what are you looking for? Did
depress skull fracture? You're looking for perhaps evidence of a
gunshot one, But beyond that, it's really going to be
difficult to come up with a definitive cause of death
(33:38):
unless you have something that's really presenting on the skeletal remains,
because if you're thinking about, say, for instance, a strangulation,
how are you going to make that determination? Well, we've
already talked about the hyoid bone. If they found it,
which I hope they did, was it intact? Is there
evidence that it fractured? Not every hyoid bone fractures with asphyxiation.
(33:58):
There's no soft tissue to see the hemorrh Because we're
so far down the tracks, I'd be very shocked if
any soft tissue existed, though to make that determination.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
Is there any possibility that the person who did this,
the person who murdered Suzanne, where if you actually has
had her body someplace else for the last couple of
years and only in the last six months decided to
take the body out and bury it in a shallow grave.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
That is a fantastic question, and it's something that I
thought about before we decided to lay down this track.
I suppose that it would be within the realm of possibility, However,
highly unlikely. It seems to me that if this is
the way I would look at it as an investigator.
If you've had a body that you have been holding
back for a protracted period of time, doesn't it seem
(34:50):
logical that if you finally decided to take the remain
and bury it after all this period of time, that
you would first off, show it prepared tool wise to
take that body to the spot that you've identified, and
I mean really prep the grave, get down into that soil,
really dig it out, make it deep, make it so
(35:13):
that it is not shallow, and really hide that body
away at a sufficient depth to where it's not going
to be discovered. And I don't see that necessarily happening.
This implies, and we go back to our earlier point.
This implies to me that this was done, perhaps with speed,
(35:33):
But I do know this. As the days begin to unfold,
we will anxiously be waiting to see what further information
Susanne morphuse remains can offer up. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan,
and this is body bags
Buddybacks with Joseph Scott Morgan. When you're in academics, in
my area of academics, forensics in particular, in order to
kind of validate yourself, I guess professionally, one of the
(00:29):
things that's required is that you go to meetings. We
always have meetings, right, You have these meetings that you
attend with colleagues from all over the country, all over
the world, and you listen to papers. Saying you listen
to papers, it's kind of odd, but you do. You
listen to studies that have been conducted by colleagues in
different areas. And one of the coolest meetings that you
(00:52):
can ever go to is the American Academy of Forensic Science.
And several years back I attended the AAFS conference, I
think it was WOW in New Orleans all those years ago,
and I went to a talk by a forensic odentologist.
This guy was from out West, and as you know,
odentologists not only examined the human mouth in order to
(01:15):
determine identity, but they also examined bodies for bite marks.
And this was an unusual talk because he was talking
about an attack. But the attack that he was talking
about had nothing to do with the attacker being a human.
You see, this odentologist was from Colorado and the case
(01:37):
that he was talking about happened to be one of
the most ghastly cases I've ever seen in a presentation,
and it had to do with a jogger who was
attacked by a mountain lion. Don't know that I've ever
seen like, don't know that I've ever seen injuries like that,
but I do know this. During the course of that talk,
given all the horrible things I'd seen, the one thing
(01:58):
that never came up was a mountain digging a shallow grave. Today,
we're going to talk about the forensics surrounding the Suzanne
Morphew case. I'm Joseph gott Morgan and this is Bodybacks. Well,
we're back in the sut We're back from crime con
(02:20):
and boy, what news did we come home to the
Susanne Morphy case. And look, we've been talking on different
platforms for I don't know loath these many years months.
Did you see this coming? Did you even expect to
get this news?
Speaker 2 (02:36):
No, not even close. And Joe, as you mentioned, we
have been on this since it happened, since Suzanne Moorefew
went missing that first day we have been on this
case happened on Mother's Day. When a mother goes missing
on Mother's Day, that is going to be a huge
flag up in the air. Every all hands on deck,
and we have been ever since. It's like many many cases,
(02:59):
they get more play in the media. If you've got pictures.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Look.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Suzanne Morphew is a very attractive forty nine year old
woman and her husband an attractive man, Barry. They've got
two beautiful daughters. They've been married twenty five years. This
is a scenario where hey, man Barry is obvious, is
at work that day, she goes for a bike ride
and goes missing on the outside looking in. This is
(03:24):
a horrible accident of something. She's been abducted, she has
been attacked. I mean, what happened to Suzanne Morphew. And
we weren't the only ones. Joe, Holy Moly. There was
a football team size of reporters around the country that
headed to Colorado when this first happened, and the whole
thought was where is she?
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Yeah, and she just seemingly vanished into thin air. It
had been put out there that on Mother's Day she
was going for a bike ride and you would think
that there would be something to kind of hang your
intellectual hat on with that, And soon we actually found
found out that they had recovered a bike. I think
(04:05):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Know who suggested she was on a bike ride. I
don't know if that came from Barry Morphew, from the
next door neighbor or whomever. All we know is that
Barry Morphew was out of town on business, a construction job,
and Suzanne. He couldn't reach Suzanne by the phone, and
so I guess he called a neighbor. Would you look
(04:26):
in steev see her? And then is her bike there? No,
her bike's not there. She must have gone on a
bike ride. So they're checking the bike trail and that's
where they find a bike. And deputies found the bike.
And I actually I told you this little while ago.
I was watching the video because I wanted to know
Barry's demeanor when they find the bike and it's already dark.
As Barry gets there on site, he asked basic questions,
(04:49):
where's where did you find it? What condition was the
bike end? And with Joe twenty eight seconds after he
gets out of his truck, he says, could it have
been a mountain lion attacking her on her bike. That
was twenty eight seconds into Barry Morphew as part of
the investigation, could a mountain lion grab a bike rider
and drag their body to where we can't find it?
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Well, this is the thing about and a mountain lion
out there here this term apex predator that's thrown around
down in my area of the country. The apex predator
in our area are certainly alligators, I think, or where
I come from. They're kind of the top of the heap,
and they have a particular way that they're if they're
going to attack something, it's kind of ingrained into their
(05:30):
DNA as to how they go about it. And out
in that area, I would think that a mountain lion
would be at the top. They would be the apex
predator out in that region. I guess you could argue
that a bear would be. Here's kind of the curious
thing that I learned, and I think back to that
talk that I sat in all those years ago, and
the way it was described to me is that most
(05:53):
of the time when these things attack, they love to
attack from a height. The way this is kind of
structured out my understanding at least as best as I can,
is that they will sit perhaps on like a rocky outcropping,
and they will wait until a prey like prey come
(06:14):
through their particular area, their hunting grounds, and they sit
there very quietly and they wait until the prey passes them,
and the next thing you know, they're on the back
of this thing, whatever it is that they're after. That's
the way this lady was attacked out in Colorado, who
was actually a jogger that was running through the woods
through a they had like a one of those outdoor
(06:35):
running paths that goes through the tree line and it's
real lovely to see, and they showed images of the
and it was the only thing about it. It's had
a big rock out cropping where this thing kind of
sat up above, and that's the way they attacked. I
can't imagine, and I guess it could happen. I'm not
an animal behaviorist, but there are cars that are going
by in that area because it's a jacent hill road
(06:57):
where this bicycle was found kind of down in a
gull that sort of thing. I can't imagine there would
be a place for a mountain lion to sit there
and wait, and it's very disruptive right when that hunting area,
you know, with cars going by and all of that stuff. Now,
this is a very you know, you're south of Gunnison, Colorado.
Here it is desolate and it's beautiful, but it's desolate.
(07:18):
You're just south of where the ski slopes are and
all that sort of stuff. Beautiful countryside, but very isolated.
So this thing is sitting adjacent to the roadway waiting
for a bicyclist to come by. And I don't necessarily
know that Mountain Lion would have been my first choice.
I mean, to each his own. But if you're checking
off the list and you're thinking Apex predator, I guess
(07:38):
that could happen.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
I don't think it was anybody's first list, Joe. I
think you're right. I think the deputies that look at
one another like where is this coming from? And one
thing I looked at right when this happened as we
were investigating, is that a Mountain Lion's very territorial and
they don't share. They actually have this is my area,
and you don't come here, they go find another area.
(08:01):
They're very spread out in this entire area that we're
talking about. Here miles upon miles upon miles. There's only
three mountain lions in this whole area. And I dare
say they're not going against their hunting style by hunting
in a ravine, in a ditch on gravel and bushes.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
I just I can't feature that, and I can only
imagine their rain just got to be massive that they
cover that they have laid their claim to. So they're
out there protecting what is theirs. Here's the problem is
that when this bike is discovered, there's no evidence that
an attack has necessarily taken place relative to this apex predator.
(08:41):
All you got is singularly a bike, and it's distinctly hers.
Apparently it's it's a bike that she had used, Susanne,
that is, And so that gives you pause. And I
think that the next thing you talk about apex predators,
first thing comes to mind from me, aside from a
wild beast is going to be another beast, and that's
(09:02):
a human being. So are we talking about somebody that
had snatched her while she was out riding the bike?
Who would be that bold in order to do that?
And how did you get her off the bike? Did
their bump her get her off the road, maybe take
the bike and discard it off in this kind of
unseen area. I don't know, but it just it struck
(09:23):
me as very odd at the time. I have to
say it.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Struck everybody that way, and which is why there was
this huge investigation. You know right away, Joe, when we
look at the timeline here breaking it down, May tenth
is when she disappeared. On May eleventh, search efforts are ongoing.
They brought out the drones, they brought out a cent
tracking dogs. Family of Suzanne offers up two hundred thousand
(09:46):
dollars in reward money on the fourteenth. We're talking less
than a week into it. They're offering up two hundred
thousand dollars for information that doesn't usually happen that quickly.
So in trying to get this information, Joe, very quickly,
within a couple of days, we start finding things. On
May fifteenth, some personal items of Suzanne Morpheus were found
in and around the search area. That May seventeenth, the
(10:10):
Sheriffs Dive and Rescue team search waters and water sites
and things like that. I guess there's a normal pathway
to searching an outdoor area. Of the groups that you
call in you know, from volunteers searching the ground, drones
in the air, horseback dogs, things like that, and they
went everywhere. Nothing was found in terms of her. They
found her helmet.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Yeah, and that's yeah, they found the helmet. When you
think about kind of the intimate nature and I'm talking
about this from a physical standpoint of a bike helmet,
it's in direct contact with obviously the head, but that
layer beneath their the scalp, you have the hair, and
if there's any kind of trauma that might be associated
(10:51):
with the head where you have an open wound, you'll
have blood contained within that helmet. I don't see haven't
heard over the course of this investigation that when this
helmet was discovered that there was any necessarily any kind
of evidence biological evidence like that, you know, that would
indicate trauma, you know, where you've got a tremendous amount
(11:13):
of blood or something like that that's kind of staining
the interior of this thing side. I'd have a real
hard time putting that together.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
I think when the search, I don't want to say
it ended, because I don't think they ever stopped looking,
but the active searches of actually, let's partner up and
go and walk this area. They were really worried about
the weather turning on them, and it did because of
the area they live in, as you mentioned, they pipe
in the sunshine. This case didn't necessarily go cold, but
(11:42):
it actually when nothing turned up, When no body turned
up and the police kept saying, surely we're going to
find something, and nothing was found. All of a sudden,
you've got the weather turning and then saying, well, we'll
have a better shot after the snow melts again. And
here we are a couple of years later, and we
finally get the story that, as you mentioned right at
(12:03):
the very beginning, after a couple of years of waiting,
now there's a body. What are we going to find Joe?
Speaker 1 (12:10):
For real?
Speaker 2 (12:11):
After all this time, what can we possibly expect to
find of Susdane Morphew.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Well, obviously, after so much time and so much exposure,
in let's face it dave in a very very harsh environment,
there's not going to be an intact body. But here's
what I do know. The location where she was found,
the circumstances in which she was found defy anything that
to date I have covered on bodybacks as a death investigator.
(13:00):
When you have a body that has been left behind,
if you will, in whatever state condition that it is,
it's not just the perpetrator that you're trying to outwit
your fighting nature. In Susan Morphy's case, Dave I got
to say, I think that I don't know of any
(13:21):
case where you have so many issues that investigators are
facing where every single element within nature is fighting against
you to eradicate anything that is left behind that is
the remains of Susan Morphew.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
All right, Joe, when we get down to the nitty
gritty here, the shallow grave that seems to pop up
in stories like this, we have somebody, there is no
has been no trial so far. There has been unarrest
made previously, but then that was before trial that was
thrown out, and so we're really back at square one.
(13:58):
I wondered at the time, how do you move forward
on a trial about a murder if you don't have
a body?
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Yeah, it's difficult. And we've used this term before. I
think I like saying it corpus delecti, which is the
body of the crime, and it's been applied over the years.
How do you prosecute something the prosecution would always want
to have that because that is singularly the biggest piece
of evidence that you have, because the body is telling
(14:24):
you things. But in this particular case, now Dave, we
can confirm that we do in fact have a corpus DELECTI,
we do in fact have the remains of Susan Morpheir.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
And that actually was the reason I guess they didn't
move forward previously was that they have a case, but
we don't have the body. So now we have the body,
and we know that the body was found. And I
don't want to refer to Susanne Morphew as it, but
we are talking about what the remains of the person
(14:56):
that she used to be, the physical remains her remain.
We're discarded in a shallow grave, having dug a hole
in the desert. I've dug holes in a lot of
different places because I'm a guy, and when guys are
little boys, we dig. I don't know why.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
We do that. Yeah, I don't understand it either, but
we do. That's part of what we do. That's the
nature of it. And you said a lot I think
regarding this from an environmental standpoint, where Suzanne's remains are
actually found, the composition of the soil out there is
to say that it is tightly packed is understatement. And
(15:34):
here's what's fascinating. According to what I'm hearing right now,
the area in which the remains were found, it's not
like it's in a grove of trees necessarily, you're talking
about a low growth brush, which there is a lot
of out there, and it's sparse. There's not like a
like when you think about eastern forest where you've got
(15:55):
this blanket of pine straw or leaves or something like that,
where things you think would be easily concealed. You're not
dealing with an environment like that. You're dealing in an
area that's it's almost desert like I think to a
certain degree, tightly packed sandy clay kind of composition.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Of the soil.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
And here's the important thing that the police when they
first let this news out, they stated that this was
in fact a shallow Now that's a very specific identifier, Dave,
very specific. They're not saying a well doug grave. They're
not saying that it was deep. They're saying shallow, and
(16:35):
shallow implies a couple of things to me.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
In a hurry.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Yes, specifically, you're rushed. I mean, just think about anything
you do in life where you're unprepared. Okay, you're unprepared,
and really dig deep when you're unprepared, and it doesn't
matter what your pursuit is. So there is for me,
there's two things that come into play. You're in a rush,
and you might not have the tools that you would
(17:01):
need at hand in order to defeat this obstacle, which
is in fact the ground, the earth, in order to
facilitate a deep grave. Maybe you're up against toime, whoever
did this, whoever dug this grave, because I can assure you, Dave,
they're calling it a grave. And how do we define
a grave. Well, they're going to have the Colorado Bureau
(17:22):
of Investigation that's out there working this thing. I would
imagine that they're going to have people out there that
have a background at I don't know if it's at
a doctoral level, but they'll have people that are out
there on site, have a background in clandestine graves and
the processing of clandestine graves. They might even have a
forensic anthropologist out there. And when we define a grave,
(17:44):
we begin to think about it from the perspective of
a grave is outlined in the earth, so it actually
has margins to it. Sometimes those margins can be very sharp.
Sometimes those the dimensions of it can be very robust. However,
when you think about a shallow grave, you think, well,
how do we accomplish this? What tools would we need?
(18:07):
And if you're talking about hand tools, well, just on
the surface of it, I think that in order to
really have one in place, you're going to need probably
a shovel and maybe a pick axe out in this environment.
And what comes along with that, Well, when you begin
to create this hole in the earth that has never
been there before, it's going to require the individual a
(18:29):
lot of heavy lifting relative to how much work goes
into this, and you're going to have tools strikes that
are on the earth. As a matter of fact, if
there's like a rock what we refer to is like
a deciduous rock that's kind of sitting free in the earth,
and you come down on that rock with either a shovel.
I mean, we've all been in our backyard and you've
been digging a hole and you strike something underneath the earth,
(18:51):
and that rock is left behind. Guess what it leaves behind.
On the surface of that rock, it leads beyond tool mark,
And if they went out there and during their excavation
of this area recovered any rocks, for instance, that have
tool strikes on them, trust me, buddy, they've recovered these things.
The trick is, are you going to be able to
marry up a tool, whether it's a pickaxe or shovel
(19:13):
that might match up to any kind of tool mark
that's on a rock perhaps, So that's going to be
interesting to see as time goes forward.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
At the time they found Suzanne Morphew in the shallow grave,
investigators were not looking for Suzanne Morphew. They were investigating
something else. And based on the shallow grave, and I'm
in my head seeing that there had to have been
a hump in the ground when they were out there looking.
(19:41):
Shallow grave means that they did not have room to
actually really conceal the body, and investigators looking for something
else see disturbed area over here, and I'm thinking it
might be kind of like when you're a kid and
you try to bury something in the backyard and you
know there is a hump. It's like you can't dig
it deep enough, which I'm guessing that's what had to
(20:01):
have happened here. But a grave that is like that, Joe,
wouldn't body still be exposed to all of the elements
of a body being left almost on top of the surface.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Yeah, yeah, And I got to tell you, I disagree
with the idea of there being a hump. And this
is an important part to this because when you think
about digging a grave, most people think when you fill
this thing in with the body, you have a mound
that has created a hump. But here's what happens. You
might come across earth that has never had a tool
(20:36):
put to it in thousands of years. Perhaps it's just
it's pristine. Now you're creating this defect in the earth,
and guess what happens. You can never compact that soil
back to the original form that it was in. You
place a body into this area, and yeah, for a while,
it will have this kind of raised appearance to it.
(20:58):
But let me tell you what happens. Then then the
area begins to cave in. One of the things they're
going to notice is that it is not a kind
of a humped area or a mounded area. It's a
sunken area day and all of the vegetation around it.
Perhaps I don't know, we're talking about a three year cycle.
Now because Suzanne's been missing for three years. What happens
(21:19):
is the vegetation actually changes around that area. It's demarcated,
like if there were like little scrub plants that are
an indigenous flora that are in there, their life within
that area, they're possessive relative to the plants is pulled out,
you've disturbed that area. It's disturbed soil, and it's disturbed
plant life. So it's going to look different than say,
(21:42):
for instance, something that has been remained untouched for thousands
of years. It will stand out. But here's the thing, day,
there's something more sinister about this because they wouldn't have
seen a hump, they wouldn't have seen a mound. What
they would have seen is a depressed whole and in
no longer contained the intact remains of Susan Morphear. If
(22:23):
people at home will just envision in your mind, just
for a second, envision an old fashioned wagon wheel. Okay,
where you've got that central hub that's the shallow grave.
The hub is the shallow grave, and all the little
spokes that come off of the old wagon wheel. That's
going to be body dispersement or skeletal dispersement. So from
(22:44):
that point in time where the body was buried, the
body began to decay. And as it began to decay,
even early on, the animal life in that particular area
that is indigenous to that area, scavengers in particular, it
will be in the wind, they will pick it up
almost instantaneously. The spectrum that the wildlife work on relative
(23:08):
to their sense of smell is beyond anything that we
can actually imagine. They live and die by the smell
within their environment, and so they would have picked up
on this very quickly if there was any effort, and
I can assume that there probably was, since we have
a grave, there would have been an effort to bury
or cover up. That's not going to defeat the sense
(23:29):
of smell that inhabits this area on the part of
these indigenous animals.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Are you going to be able to tell whether or
not the body was dismembered before going in? I mean,
is that a possibility that they would pick up the
parts and run with them, as opposed to the body
naturally being torn apart by wild animals.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Yeah, And it comes back to the skill set that
I've talked about many times on our show unfortunately, and
that is tool marks. If there was a dismemberment that
had taken place, you would see evidence of that on
the bones. Now, one of the things that you will
see on the bones, on skeletal remains, and you see
in all cases, I don't know about this case in particular,
because they have not released everything yet, you would see
(24:12):
carnivore activity. We can see things like any type of
animal if you're talking about raccoons, possums, any kind of
you kind of ground dwelling animals that burrow, that sort
of thing that are indigenous to that area. They leave
behind specific markings on the surface of bone. You can
look at it and get an idea what species was
(24:35):
feasting essentially on skeletal remains because there's actually a little
scrape and tooth marks on there. And the fact that
her body has been allegedly dispersed over a seventy five
yard radius tells me also that they have not recovered everything.
There's two hundred and six bones in human body, and
just think of it this way. The smaller the bone,
(24:57):
the higher the probability is you won't recover it. And
I know the big thing that everybody wants to know
about is a hyoid bone in susan morphuse case. Those
bones are so fine and there's a term that we
use called grassisle, which means delicate, and it doesn't matter
if it's male or female. With the hyoid bone, it
is so very fine, and it's that indicator that you
(25:19):
look forward see if there has been a strangulation event
where it's fractured. It would be one of at the
top of the list to kind of vanish disappear, because
it's something that a small animal can make off with,
and they would take this away. If they found a
hyoid out there, I would be genuinely surprised that they
had the small bones of the hands and of the feet.
(25:43):
Those are going to be items that will be again
dispersed all over the place. Animals will literally take remain
skeletal remains to their burrows and take them underground, and
certain things are just never recovered. And each little bit
of human bone tells a story. And it's kind of
an obvious thing to say, but the more of the
(26:04):
constituted body that you can have, you're going to increase
the likelihood that you're going to get some ideas to
what happened. To this individual and to any individual, not
just the remains of Susan more few.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
So what about birds coming into play, because I see
them in my neighborhood flying around with pieces of food.
They're flying around.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
We've got scavenger animals that are out there. You think
about crows in particular, and not to mention the big
scavenger animals like buzzards and those sorts of things that
are out there. Here's a kind of an interesting little
side that I've actually born witness to. I worked the
case many years ago, and this has been proven out
in the literature as well. I worked the case many
years ago where we had had a clandestine grave and
(26:48):
most of the hair was gone, and Dave, there were
anthropologists that checked the bird nest and we had two
or three bird nests in that area where we had
young officers that were willing to climb up a tree,
and two out of the three bird nests that they
found had human hair in the bird nest that they
had nested with. And so animals nature makes use of
(27:09):
what is at hand. And just think you're a bird
in the springtime, you're trying to build a nest to
welcome hatchlings. And that sort of thing. This is prime,
it's one of the things that would be taken back.
I was truly amazed that from the moment in time
that we knew that they had a human remain that
(27:31):
was out there. And granted, I know I'm going to
get this number wrong. I won't give the specific number,
but I will say it was more than twenty miles
away from her home, the body of Susanne Morphew. It
was a great distance away from her home. They have
this body in this isolated area, You think about, what
are the odds that they're going to find her in
(27:52):
the first place, And then they did find her, And
from the moment that they did find her, until we
had a positive identifications really quick, really quick, And what
can we kind of surmise from that, Well, it first
came out that Suzanne's remains have been identified, I think
with dental identification. That tells us something very significant there, Dave,
(28:16):
and then it was confirmed. I think further confirmatory evidence
was the fact that they found port for the application
of cancer drugs.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Let me ask you you forty five miles. I looked
it up, just forty five miles between her home and
where her remains were found. But does the fact they
identified her body by the byer teeth that does not
indicate a full skull, but at least indicates partial right
at least.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Yeah, it does. And that's significant because when we think
of our skull, I think most people think of the
totality of our skull relative to the jaw. And the
cranium teeth that you have in your lower jaw are
called mangelary teeth because that's de mandible, and then the
upper that you have those are called maxillary teeth. So
(29:03):
you have the maxillary teeth up top and then the
mangulary teeth down below. Here's the thing about it is
that the jaw becomes disarticulated pretty quickly in decomposition. That
is also in concert with scavenger activity. The fact that
they were able to get her body identified from dental
(29:25):
is quite fascinating to me. So that tells me that
they have at least one component of the skull. I
don't know if they have both the mangelary teeth as
well as the maxillary teeth, but they had enough dental
evidence there to turn this around pretty quickly. And if
you and this is horrible, I know but when you
(29:46):
look at this woman, you see that beautiful smile. She
smiles in almost every one of her images. That she
had this beautiful set of teeth. You know that she's
had dental care. And that's significant because people will say things, well,
why don't you just use DNA to get a body identified? Well,
why don't you just use dentistry to get Okay, we will,
but here's the problem. First off, you have to have
an idea of who the person might be, and then
(30:09):
if that's the case, you have to have something in
the anti mortem state, which is before death, to compare
it to with what you have in the post mortem state. Obviously,
they've got dental records and the way bodies are identified
through dental examination. First off, there's actually a dental chart
that is created for the dead. Teeth that are absent
(30:30):
are just as significant as teeth that are present. The
trick is you have to determine where those teeth absent
in life. Let's say you've got I don't know, your
third molar, You've got your wisdom teeth that have been removed,
and I know there's so many people in the audience
that have had their wisdom teeth removed. Well, you are
different if you've had your wisdom teeth removed as opposed
(30:54):
to the rest of the population that still has this.
So check that box. Then you think about cavities, Well,
how many restorations have they have? What doctor did these
types of restorations? Did they use a particular type of
methodology or a particular technique that is unique to that doctor.
You look at the planes of the teeth, how are
they rotated, how are they pitched? And that's determined on
(31:17):
X ray any kind of what's referred to as carryous dentation.
Maybe you've got a cavity that's never been repaired, or
maybe you've got capped teeth. Many people have cap teeth. Now,
so all of these things come into play that are
very unique to a particular individual. When you begin to
look at the teeth and try to determine who they are,
(31:38):
that significant and then you couple that day it's a
confirmatory thing when you think about we know that Suzanne
Morphew fought cancer, and so she's even got a cancer
port that is in dwelling. Well, this thing is made
out of plastic and guess what, buddy, plastic takes a
long time to degrade and decompose.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
So on top of all of what you just named, Joe,
as ways to identify is there going to be enough
left of Suzanne Morphew's remains to determine a cause of death.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
In a perfect world, what we would want would be
soft tissue. And I can tell you I'd be very
surprised if there was any soft tissue left after three
years and such an austere environment in which she was found,
Because you know, we look for various types of trauma
on the surface focal areas of hemorrhage. We look for
injuries that have occurred like cuts or maybe puncture wounds
(32:34):
or gunshot wounds. Absent soft tissue, you really have to
be heavily depended upon bone at that point, Tom, in
a case like this, well what are you looking for? Well?
Are there any cracked ribs? And if those ribs are cracked,
did it happen in life in the anti mortem state?
Is this a pre existing injury that had healed or
(32:55):
was it in the peri mortem state, which is that
area between life and death where life is leaving you.
Can you recover all of the ribs? Did you recover
the sternum which is breastbone. Is there a hole in sternum?
And I think what everybody's really curious about was there
damage to the skull. Remember, we've got some element of
the skull, they've got a dental id Dave. I don't
(33:16):
think they did this based on a singular tooth that
they found out there. So with the skull with skeletal remains,
that's going to be your biggest tell if you have
one that's intact. So what are you looking for? Did
depress skull fracture? You're looking for perhaps evidence of a
gunshot one, But beyond that, it's really going to be
difficult to come up with a definitive cause of death
(33:38):
unless you have something that's really presenting on the skeletal remains,
because if you're thinking about, say, for instance, a strangulation,
how are you going to make that determination? Well, we've
already talked about the hyoid bone. If they found it,
which I hope they did, was it intact? Is there
evidence that it fractured? Not every hyoid bone fractures with asphyxiation.
(33:58):
There's no soft tissue to see the hemorrh Because we're
so far down the tracks, I'd be very shocked if
any soft tissue existed, though to make that determination.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
Is there any possibility that the person who did this,
the person who murdered Suzanne, where if you actually has
had her body someplace else for the last couple of
years and only in the last six months decided to
take the body out and bury it in a shallow grave.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
That is a fantastic question, and it's something that I
thought about before we decided to lay down this track.
I suppose that it would be within the realm of possibility, However,
highly unlikely. It seems to me that if this is
the way I would look at it as an investigator.
If you've had a body that you have been holding
back for a protracted period of time, doesn't it seem
(34:50):
logical that if you finally decided to take the remain
and bury it after all this period of time, that
you would first off, show it prepared tool wise to
take that body to the spot that you've identified, and
I mean really prep the grave, get down into that soil,
really dig it out, make it deep, make it so
(35:13):
that it is not shallow, and really hide that body
away at a sufficient depth to where it's not going
to be discovered. And I don't see that necessarily happening.
This implies, and we go back to our earlier point.
This implies to me that this was done, perhaps with speed,
(35:33):
But I do know this. As the days begin to unfold,
we will anxiously be waiting to see what further information
Susanne morphuse remains can offer up. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan,
and this is body bags
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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