July 31, 2024 • 45 mins
A guest fails to check out on time at the five-star Grand Hyatt Erawan in Bangkok. When hotel workers come to clean the room, the door is locked and hotel management and security are called. The door opens up and the nightmare begins. On this episode of Body Bags Joseph Scott Morgan will explain what a body goes through when cyanide is used to kill and Dave Mack goes behind the headlines and the rumors to find out how 6 people end up dead in a hotel room, and nobody survived. No blood. No bullets. No knives. Just Cyanide.
Transcription Highlights
00:00:03.72 Introduction: Don't Drink the Kool-Aid
00:04:00.06 Discussion of cyanide death at Jonestown
00:07:25.90 Discussion of Cult taking cyanide
00:10:07.48 Discussion of getting someone to take the poison
00:12:27.13 Discussion of 6 people meeting for business
00:17:33.23 Talk about being around cyanide
00:21:22.19 Discussion of people dying in house fire, test positive for cyanide
00:25:47.21 Discussion of what people can use to take a life
00:30:33.98 Talk about variety of items with that are lethal, cyanide shows on top
00:34:40.03 Discussion trying to find cyanide
00:39:00.03 Discussion of therapeutic use of fentanyl, no medicinal use for cyanide
00:41:04.10 Discussion of symptoms of cyanide poisoning
00:44:56.39 Conclusion level of horror, dying from cyanide
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quody Doors with Joseph Scott Moore. Don't drink the koolid?
How many times have you heard people say that? And
it can be used for any number of various things
that you might be considering doing in life or people
(00:23):
that you're exposed to and they give you information. But
you know, that term never really existed at least I
don't think that it existed prior to a very specific
event that occurred down in South America in the late seventies,
(00:46):
involving a man named Jim Jones. Now how did he
get connected with that term? Well, he led a cult
and as part of this cult, he decided that the
world was coming to an end and that he was
going to take all of his fellow members with him
(01:07):
into the great beyond. And how did he do that
He used kool aid. Least with cyanide. Today, we're going
to explore a couple of cases here actually total of
six six people that in one moment their lives ended
(01:31):
in a hotel room in Thailand. And yes, this involved
cyanide as well. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is
body Bags. Hey Dave, yes, sir, don't drink the kool aid?
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Brother, oh man, whatever you do.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Yeah, don't don't do it. You know, I've often heard
people refer or use that term, and I I think
that I don't think that people. I'm gonna go down
a path here, so just bear with me. I don't
think people actually understand the depth and breadth of what
(02:15):
happened in Jonestown. And just just let me tell you
a quick story. I actually talked to a guy many
years ago that I worked with that was an old
pathologist and he has passed on, and he he went
down there. He went down there in the wake of
(02:38):
this event we're talking about nine hundred dead David. And
when he got there, the where Jonestown was located in Ghana, Ghana,
I think it's that is that is that Guyana. The
jungle that surrounded the area was so dense, you know,
there's not a lot of roads coming in, so they
(03:00):
had to bring them in in helos. And he came
in in a what would have been a huey an
old hue you remember the old Vietnam helicopters that you
see every time you hear the song Fortunate Sun played,
you know, you see you know Helo coming in doors open,
he actually told me, he said, we were almost two
(03:25):
miles out and the doors on the helo were open.
I could smell I could smell the decay. Now you're
talking about a jungle environment and you're talking about nine
hundred bodies. But just let that sink in just for
a second. And that's that came about as a result
of these people being poisoned. And we're talking about men, women,
(03:50):
and children being poisoned with cyanide and their death was horrible.
I'd like to say that it was like really really quick.
You can't say that in every case. I think a
lot of people think that it just, you know, it
just happens. But it's still it's still very very brutal.
And you know what the case case is. I hate
(04:13):
to say just singularly case because you know, I don't
want to you know, devalue anybody's life here, because each
one of these deaths associated with this case cases is
an individual. But yeah, you know, we're talking about a mass,
a mass event with six people dead.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Dave and actually adding don't drink the kool aid as
or drinking the kool aid as part of the lexicon.
Interesting little sidebar of trivia. They didn't use kool Aid.
They used a generic kool Aid called flavor Aid, and
kool Aid got mad. It's one of those little pieces
of marketing information.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Interesting they use it called again, give me.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
The flavor Aid. Flavor is a flavor Aid is a
knockoff of kool Aid. It's just a cheaper version, and
that's what they use used. But you know, it's interesting
that he, while Jim Jones, had conditioned his followers to
do this. They had had mock trials before. He conditioned
them that people were coming, they were going to be
wiped out, their children would be enslaved, and he would
(05:14):
then serve them coolly that wasn't laced. Gave them plenty
of time to go through these actions. I think it
was two or three times they had these midnight calls
where they would all gather and do this, and he
would say it was just a test.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Holy So I never knew this.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Yeah, it was a faith test because he didn't He
wanted to see what would happen if they truly did this.
Would there be an uprising, would people leave or would
they follow and do what he told them? Because you've
got to remember very quickly the reason this happened is
Jim Jones and his group were in northern California and
there were his church had become big. He was on
the city council in San Francisco. He became a real
(05:50):
player in town. But he was also a drug addict
and he had taken it to the next level in
terms of swindling people out of their life savings and
their homes and things like that. And his cult was flourishing.
But people were watching and they didn't like their family
members getting caught up in his cult. So they started
complaining to their local leaders. And so even though Jim
Jones was giving money to a lot of people, yeah,
(06:14):
they were investigating. And when he up and moved everybody
to Guyana and carved out this utopian society in the jungle,
there were family members here that were really upset and
they went to their congressman. His name was Leo Ryan.
Leo Ryan then organized a trip with some news media
and they went down to Jonestown to find out what
(06:34):
was really going on. While they were there, there's video
of this, you can see it all. While he was there,
he was given a little tour of things, and he
saw there were some things that maybe weren't too good,
but hey, the people seemed to be there voluntarily. But
that night, before they went to sleep, Leo Ryan was
given notes by people. They snuck notes to him saying
(06:54):
get me out of here, Get me out of here.
And so the next day when they were loading up
to go to the leave, Congressman got a few of
these people and they took them to the plane. But
then at the aircraft, as they're getting on the plane,
they were ambushed by some of jones henchmen. Congressman Leo
Ryan and the news guy were both murdered right there
(07:15):
on the tarmac in front of the plane, as well
as a few others, and Jim Jones announced to his people,
they're coming. The Congressman's dead, the traders are dead, and
they will be coming for us now we.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Have no choice.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
That's how he got these people to follow through on
what he had been conditioning them for in drinking the
kool aid, which wasn't even kol aid, by the way.
Of all the people that died this very horrible way.
There's audio tape of Jim Jones talking to them, and
you hear the wails of mothers watching it, holding their children.
People crying, I don't want to die. It was horrible.
(07:51):
But the one person who didn't take the kool aid
was Jim Jones. He shot himself in the head. Now
I encourage any one, please, for the love do a
little research on Jim Jones and how he took a
true belief and made it so wicked that over nine
(08:11):
hundred people were following him in death.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
You know, and I wonder, you know, particularly as we
talk about the topic at hand today, the idea that
cyanide poisoning is a real thing that has occurred for
quite a bit of time. You wonder, and this is
(08:37):
kind of maybe a broad ranging philosophical question, if that
had not occurred. We've always known that sinoid is very toxic, obviously,
but if that event in Jonestown had not occurred back then,
how many you know, how did that affect maybe that
(09:00):
come in the case we're going to talk today, you know,
because people understand the lethality of it, and did it
you know, does it influence people? You know? Moving forward?
You know, how is it that I could take out
a large number of people and be very stealthy about it.
You know, I don't think there was stealth necessarily involved
in In Jim Jones's case, it was very direct. But
(09:23):
if you wanted to facilitate something where there's not going
to be any awareness, and that's that's the thing about poisoners,
and I've always been fascinated by them in the sense
that they're.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
There.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
They want to fly under the radar to the point
where they're not going to be detected on any level.
And I think you know, you even look at like
the the infamous Talent All poisonings, you know that that occurred,
you know years ago. You know all of those people
that kind of slipped things in just for a moment.
They're not going to walk up and you know, the
(10:00):
somebody they dislike and they're going to shoot them in
the head. Now, this is there's something that is so
particularly evil about this because you have to get just
keep in mind, in order to administer something like this,
you have to be in somebody's very intimate personal space.
You have to know that they have to ingest it
(10:22):
in order for it to work, because if it's just
sitting there, though, it is dangerous, But if you can
get them to ingest it, how much more lethal and
how are you going to facilitate them ingesting it. What's
going to be the guarantee that this is going to
actually happen?
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Dave, you could just what actually, Joe, Yeah, it's so
amazing that you said that, because I'm thinking, all right,
there are when you've got six people dead and they
all know one another, and they've all gathered in this
very upscale hotel to discuss an investment. They have all
and I we searched the hotel because just because somebody
(11:02):
says it's a ritzy hotel, well that's all perspective, you know,
it's what is ritzy to you. It might not be
the same for me. So I looked at the area
of the hotel, what type it's five star, this is
top of the line. Okay, this is a nice place,
an expensive place. So these are the type of investors
and there is some discussion right now what they were
(11:24):
investing in, but my belief is that it was in
a hospital in Japan. We've got two American Vietnamese citizens
and four that are Vietnamese. So we've got a group
of people that know one another, are involved in a
business venture and maybe something's not quite going right. So
(11:47):
that's how they all come to gather in this one place,
in this ritzy hotel. And by the way, they had plans. See,
at first people thought maybe it was a suicide that
they all voluntarily got together in decided, you know, the
help up comments not coming by, let's go ahead and
do it. You know, they didn't have a doe to follow.
(12:07):
But in this case, police believe that they were there
to get some answers about their finance and they had plans.
They had plans for the following day. They were going
to be hitting the big expensive spots. They had stuff
going on. So it wasn't like they all went there
to die. So take the suicide off the table.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you have to. However, you cannot completely
dismiss the idea of suicide. But it was the individual, okay, right,
But when you have a group of people, what would
be the motivation, you know, for us to all gather
together and want accord and simultaneously take our lives that Yeah,
(12:50):
you're right, I think that they would abandon that premise
pretty quickly, and you have, but you still have to
keep that in the back of your mind. And also,
if there is a a perpetrator, a single perpetrator that
is responsible for this action? Was their intent to be suicide?
So does this turn into does this turn into a
murder suicide investigation at this point, Tom, or is it just.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
A murder or is it just you're right?
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (13:16):
But what if? What if it was a planned to er.
I'm going to kill my partners in this. I'm taking
over the whole thing, and the murderer accidentally drank from
the wrong cup. Because what we have here the delivery
method for the cyanide, which I don't, Joe, really know
what cyanide is. I don't know what it looks like
(13:37):
or if it has a smell. I don't know how
one gets it into a drink without anybody knowing. I
don't know any of that, and I'm hoping you can
shed light on it because at this point, we had
six people dead and we know it's cyanide because that's
what we've been told by police. But I know how
you would find that out. You walk into a room
there's six dead people, and you're looking at food on
(13:58):
the table that's still wrapped like it was delivered, but
you can tell they've all had a toast of some type,
They've had something to drink. How do you find out
what happened? How do you test well?
Speaker 1 (14:08):
I can tell you this from Jump Street. If you're
a death investigator or a forensic scientist and you walk
in to a room with six dead bodies and there
are no spent casings on the ground, you better tread
carefully because there might be something in there. It might
(14:29):
take your life as well. Brother Dave, I got a
question for you, man. If you were given a selection
between peanuts pecans, I say pecans, not pecans. My granny
(14:55):
used to say, pecans something you keep under the bed.
Walnuts and I don't know Philbert's, I don't know, they
go on and on an almonds. Out of that complete selection,
what what would you choose? Well? Nuts really okay?
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (15:16):
No I like one.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
I mean I really yeah. I like eating nuts. I
buy them makes nuts, you know when I'm buying them,
or you know.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Walnuts wal nuts.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Well, let me ask you something. Have have you ever
have you ever smelled I feel like you're again, I
feel like there's no, there's no I got to ask
you though, have you ever smelled?
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Well?
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Some people will say that there's an association between smelling
burnt toast and having a stroke. I don't know if
that's valid or not. I have not. Yeah, yeah, some
of people will say that. But did you know that
there's something associated with cyanide poisoning that is a particular
smell now that only forty percent of us can actually smell,
and that is that's cyanide. Sanide actually gives off the
(16:09):
smell of toasted or burnt almonds. And if kind of
kind of weird, isn't it. And so when yeah, you
think about and another yeah, and so another quick quick aside.
I think during the course of my career, I think
(16:32):
maybe I handled three cyanide related deaths over that period
of time. By the way, I was terrified by them
being in the presence of the substance, or allegedly present
in the substance, and in the presence of the substance,
and I assisted in two of the autopsies and was
(16:53):
present for another one. Do you know I could not
smell the smell, but other people in the room could
smell the smell, And so for me, yeah, yeah, only
forty They claim that only forty percent of the population
can actually smell the smell of burnt almonds as it's
associated with sinoid. I'm not saying that I couldn't take almonds,
put them in a frying pan and scorch them, and
(17:16):
you know I would be able to smell that. But
this this idea that you can pick up on the smell.
Some people say that that you can, so I was
always I've always been fascinated by that. But that is
associated with sinid poisoning, something that you can actually pick
up on. And I really wonder, going back to this
(17:36):
fine hotel inland in Thailand, if if the investigators actually
walked in, can you imagine you walk in to this room.
These people have not been seen. They did not check
out when they were supposed to.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Right And by the way, Joe, for you or me,
when we're in a hotel and the checkout time comes,
for me, it's five minutes after checkout time, they're at
the door going are you still here? Why are you
still here? But when you're when you're rich, it's a
little different. You stand out. They were there an extra day, Okay,
they gave these people an entire day beyond when they
(18:13):
were supposed to check out. That's the difference, a telling
difference between the ridge and the rest of us. They
got an extra day before the cleaning person.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
You got people knocking on my door all the time,
when when I actually when we were leaving crom Coon
in Nashville, uh you know we yeah, I had they
were banging on my door and we were we had
brought so much stuff with us, you know, for for
the and we had it all piled in our room.
But yeah, the idea that and again this goes to
timeline from an investigative standpoint, how long had these people
(18:45):
been down when they're discovered in this hotel room, and
what what's going to be, what's the status and once
they're all fine. One of the things that's always amazed
me with a massed death event is not that as
an invest skater, I'm present amongst the dead. That's a known,
that's a given, that's what you sign on for. I'm
(19:07):
always amazed by the people that are the finders that
you're the person that has the passkey, Dave. Just for
a second consider this. You're the person with the pass
key that gets into the room. Now, in this case,
I think the door was actually locked from the inside,
which is quite telling. But let's just say you're the
(19:29):
person that has to put your shoulder to the door
if you will and or take the pry bar and
crack that thing open. You imagine, just as the door
begins to open up, you suddenly realize that in a
(19:50):
hotel room, let's just think about a hotel room. We
know how big it is. We know that there are
yah We've got kind of a semi living area. We've
got a bed area, We've got a bathroom. If it's
a sweet you might have it kind of divided off.
You might have a dining area, you've got you've got
(20:10):
six dead people. What in the world do you make
of it? Because I got to tell you at a
primal level, I was not saying that passively, just a
moment ago where you can walk into this environment and
and not have that in dwelling fear. Did you know
(20:33):
that when we do autopsies on burn victims, okay that
die in house fires, did you know that sinid shows
up and their talks reports. Because it's a component, it's
a component of some manufactured furnitures that are out there,
and appointments, carpets, that sort of thing. And so when
(20:55):
we do what's referred to in when we're doing deaths
related to fires, we do what's called a carboxy hemoglobin level,
and that that gives you an idea of how much
carbon monoxide that the individual's taken on. That means that
they were breathing during the time of the fire. But
one of the little side elements that you find many
(21:17):
times are these toxic substances. So one of them will
will be cyanide. And I'll when at Jack State, when
I'm teaching, teaching my classes, particularly when it comes to
fire related deaths and fire investigations, I'll tap on these
plastic tables, these laminated tables, and tell them, you know,
everything in here, these components that you see around you.
(21:39):
If this stuff goes up in flame and you're adjacent
to it, you're going to be taking on these elements
because they're essentially vaporized at that point in time. And
so syinide is something that is around us. It's around
us at all times. It's just not in concentrated levels
where we're where we're going to take and we're going
(22:01):
to die from it, or it hasn't been unleashed as
a result of interaction with heat and that sort of thing.
But we've always known that it leaves hey listen for
years and years day people that states that utilize the
gas chamber. Sinide was the chosen methodology the nazis you cyanide?
Speaker 3 (22:24):
Okay, Well that's what I was going to ask you, Joe,
because in a lot of movies, I'm thinking, actually, you
know Captain America when they did the boot on that
back ten fifteen years ago, and when he first becomes
Captain America and he chases the Nazi out of the
room and he pulls the Nazi out of the jet
plane that is actually underwater, and he throws him up
(22:44):
on the shore and he says, you know, take one
of that tool or places. And the guy pops the
tooth and chomps down on the cyanide capsule and dies.
That's why I was curious about how long it takes
to take effect. Are there different levels of the cyanide
and the other thing, Joe? Until you mentioned it, it
didn't occur to me the fear that would strike in
(23:06):
the hearts of man to open a door find six
people dead and there's no bloodshot, there's no gun, there's
no knife. They're just laying there dead and they're not
all like sitting around a table doing a seance and
died they died where one person had almost made it
to the door, another person was on the way towards
the door, two were near the table area, and there
(23:28):
were two in the bedroom. So you've got six people
spread out dead, but no signs of being beaten. There's
no signs of a struggle, no signs of a fight.
I mean, you've got six dead people and you can't
tell anything about it. It didn't occur to me the
fear that would hit somebody, going I could die in here. Now,
what if it's a leak of some kind.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Yeah, And it's terriflying for investigators when you out on
cases like this. I may have mentioned this before, but
you know, I had a family of six or seven
that died in a home where uh, this brain surgeon
of an uncle came over to fix the wall heater
and he reversed, he reversed the fan on the thing
(24:10):
and it uh and it got cold and it it
the exhaust fan ran backwards essentially and it blew, it
blew carbon monoxide into the home. And so as we
were working this case, and to give you an idea
of the level of danger, and this is not this
(24:31):
is not syinid. This is carbon monoxide. Uh we, I
had to go to the hospital. I was in the
hospital for eight hours, I think on on oxygen. My
head was pounding, my eyes with bloodshot, and two of
my colleagues were in there. And you know, this is
after the fire department had come out and said, you know,
they used the big fans to kind of ventilate the
(24:53):
area where they you know, they use and it had
not been sufficiently ventilated. So anytime you walk in to
an environment, you can't, as an investigator, think that you're safe.
I actually had a friend of mine that walked into
a suicide with a fellow that had shot himself with
(25:16):
a pistol, and the suicide the room he had booby trapped.
It actually booba trapped with a deer rifle. And if
the if the string that was attached to the trigger
housing had not been discovered, anybody bending over the body
and manipulating a door that was immediately could have been
(25:38):
shot through the chest with his deer rifle. So, yeah,
it is evil. And you know, we talk about, you know,
with explosives, we talk about secondary devices and i'll you know,
where they draw you in. And then so my thought
is this, anybody that's willing to take either their life
or somebody else that's like your life as an investigator
has no value to them whatsoever. And that has to
(26:01):
and as cynical as that is, that has to be
your worldview because my goal at the end of the
day is to be able to go home to my
family and my kids and all that sort of thing.
You're there as an investigator, but you're not in a
You're in an environment where life has just ended. So
with that said, when we're thinking about how do you
(26:22):
get this substance? First off, how do you acquire it? Well,
it's acquired through a variety of methodologies and means yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Hey, let me ask you, Joe, just very quick. You've
got six bodies in this hotel suite. You see that
there is food on the table that's still rapid, hasn't
been eaten. You can see that drinks have been consumed.
But the people are in different areas. Where does the
investigation begin? Because I have to assume, and I don't
(26:52):
think I'm in correcting the assumption that you're going to
be calling if you're a cop, you're calling in the
detectives and the medical examiner. You've got to have somebody
in the that knows how people die, how they live,
and know what could have possibly caused this to happen.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Before you move a body.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Yeah, yeah, you do, and you'll get you'll get certain
indicators at the scene as to what you might be
dealing with when you look at the at the bodies,
because the bodies take on a certain appearance after death,
all right, when they're exposed to sign on it. We're
thinking about, interestingly enough, a condition called cyanosis, for instance,
(27:32):
which is kind of a purplish hue. We see that.
It doesn't mean it's yeah, you will actually see this
kind of purplish hue that will in the nail beds.
You want to look at that. But some of that
stuff can be confused with decomposition, and we're talking about
people that should have been checked out of the room
twenty four hours beforehand. So is what you're seeing related
(27:55):
to decompositional changes or is this actually a presentation as
a result of being exposed to syni So you have
to do that in your calculus as well. I don't know.
I think that here's the problem. First off, you don't
know what the agent is. You don't know if it's
(28:17):
if it is an agent to begin with. If this
was an accidental event, you know, we just I don't
know if you recall this, but a couple of years
ago we had these scares down in the Caribbean where
these people were dying on vacation. I think they even
did a TV series about it. But you know, the
stuff that was coming in through the ventilation system and
(28:37):
hotels and whatnot. But when you don't necessarily have a
source for this, everything should be considered. So yeah, the
Emmy would definitely need to be at the scene. They
would need to take great care as to what the
way they were handling things. I think one of my
(28:58):
biggest concerns would be is if you're dealing with a
substance like arsenic, if you're not wearing gloves, for instance,
is it transdermal? Is it something you're going to absorb? Uh?
Is is there any chance that that as a result
(29:20):
of manipulating the bodies or handling the bodies, Uh, you're
going to run a foul of anything else that's in
there because you don't know, you don't know what's in
these hidden spaces.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
So it's you mentioned arsenic, is arsenic andide.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
No, they're not. They're they're two separate things. Arsenic Is
is actually a heavy metal uh and and cyanide, of
course is not. It's compound. And so you've you've got
you've got two separate things that you're dealing with here,
but they're both. They have a certain level of lethality.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
You even look at things like strick nine poisoning. We've
heard that for years and years. You know, there are
certain religious cults denominations out there that would in the
past actually drink drink strychnine to prove their faith, you know,
these sorts of things. So you have a variety of
different things that are out there that have a level
(30:18):
of lethality to them. Sinide, though, is detectable. It's not
something that you're going to It's not something that is
stealthy in the sense that the toxicology is not going
to reveal that it was there and that it's what
led to the death. The other piece of this is
that with these folks in the hotel room, each one
(30:39):
of their autopsies, you're going to see physical manifestations of
you know, presenting on their body. Here's what you can't
get past. As you're taking this in and I think
that at this point at least we believe that this
may have been have ingested as a result of it
was transmitted to them perhaps apps through a drink of tea.
(31:03):
You would not only want to pull the tos on
them and examine whatever is going on systemically in their
circulatory system, but also those cups are going to be
essential as well if there's any residue that's left behind.
What was the level of dosage that was applied to them,
how pure was the substance, Because once it once it hits,
(31:26):
once it hits and gets into the system, it's almost
impossible to reverse this circumstance. It's almost you're in a
irrecoverable flat spin at this point of time. One of
(31:48):
the most telling pieces to these cases is, and I
think something that is quite chilling is the fact that
the chief of Police for the Bangkok Police Department, and
by the way, they were refusing to release the names
at this point in time, in regards to this event,
(32:14):
the chief of Police stated that when they entered this
hotel room, Dave that it appeared that two of the
individuals had tried to make it to the door. So
they know this is what's so chilling about. They know
that there's something going on, and that also gives you
(32:35):
an indication of positionality of the bodies at the scene.
If the chief of police is actually coming. And we're
not talking about any small place here, we're talking about Bangkok. Arguably,
I don't know where it stacks up. It's one of
the largest cities in the world. I think when this
(32:57):
person is coming out and saying that it looks like
trying to get to the door, that means that positionality
directionality they're laying as if they're trying to make it
to the door to try to get help. But that's
how quickly, that's how quickly cyanid can actually work. That
they couldn't even go to because just think how the
(33:18):
dynamic of all this would have changed if they had
made it to the door, if they had just cracked
the door, unlocked the door, and gotten out and maybe
had died in the hallway, we'd be looking at something
completely different here. But this was still all self contained.
They didn't even have the energy or the ability to
actually the door lock to get out, but they feel
(33:39):
as though that they were trying to escape, maybe trying
to get to help. How hopeless is this, Dave?
Speaker 3 (33:46):
You know, population in Bangkok is nine million, so you're
talking pretty much in New York City type. That's how
big of a city this is. And they do know
what they're doing. But the police have been very careful.
And I'm glad you've mentioned this a couple of times, Joe,
because when we're reporting on cases, we like to identify
the victims. I don't like to give them a number
or group them all together because it seems disrespectful.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
And I think about if.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
Somebody's listening right this minute and knows somebody who passed
like that, I don't want you to think we're being
that way. They just are choosing to not release the
information at this time. But what we do know, because
even most of the press is not even indicating the
gender of the individual that they suspect for doing this.
As I mentioned earlier, they do suspect that one person
(34:32):
here committed murder and then suicide. But Joe, when you
talked about they got to they were going towards the door. Yeah,
all I could think of in my head because I
don't know how this works. But how long does it
take for cyanid to react to kill somebody first of all.
(34:54):
But I'm just a regular Joe Schmoe here, and I
have to wonder if I started researching something like cyanide,
how to acquire it, how to use it. I just
it seems like something would pop up on the Internet
security stuff somewhere. You know, that somebody would know that
(35:16):
that I was searching for this stuff, and that they
would connect the dots.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
And you can't do that day you're you know.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
You know, my colleagues, not a university. We we will
equip over this every now and then and we'll say,
you know, if people could see the stuff that you know,
particularly in forensics, right that you're sourcing, you're looking for Yeah,
you were thinking, oh my god, they're thinking we're plotting
some kind of dastardly event.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
Well, Joe, if you and I talk about canoes and
going down the little Creek, all of a sudden on
social media, on Facebook, I'm going to see ads for canoes.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Yeah, you're right, So they're not listening.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Well, you know the thing about it is with sinide,
I think one of the big questions is, well, how
would you go about procuring san nod? You know, what's
the utility of it so, and that's where the police
have to start, you know, because you have to understand
the sourcing of this very highly toxic compound. I mean,
it's it is. It has such a level of lethality
(36:15):
to it, and you have to take great care when
it's being utilized. But let's say, for instance, it's used
in metallurgical pursuits for instance. Uh, you have people that
are doing jewelry that that this actually requires an application
(36:36):
of of of a use of sin node. And actually,
you know, there's there's certain like there's a color that
if you're doing like working with bronze, for instance, there's
a color that cyanide will bring out in bronze when
you're crafting it. For instance. It's been used there.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
And of course you know sinid has been used for
a long time just for poisoning. And I'm not talking
about like homicidal poisoning. I'm talking about if you're trying
to get rid of I know that it's been applied
uh for uh, let's see what was it. It's been
applied for cody codes to get rid of them. I
(37:19):
think even in Australia, people don't realize that possums are
not indigenous to Australia and the Ousie used it, I
believe to eradicate possum population down there. So it has
a lot of utility, uh and has had for a
lot of you know, over the years.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
So you can have a legitimate reason to get without
a raising attention.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Yeah, and so I would I would want to try
to source that to anybody that was working adjacent for
My first stop is probably going to be anybody that's
involved with jewelry period, because how can you justify the
acquisition of it or did you go to the black
market and pick it up right? I don't know. I
don't know what their abilities are to.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
All something like fentanyl. You know, we've heard about how
deadly fentanyl is recently and now it's there. They've told
us that simply touching it, observing through the skin, it
can be deadly. It can cause a lot of problems.
Is cyanide the same way?
Speaker 1 (38:17):
You know, Dave, I'd have to say if we if
we were going to compare fentanyl and sinide, one of
the big differences here is that fentanyl, believe it or not,
actually has u has a therapeutic use and it has
I mean for years and years. It's a precursor for
you know, things like I don't know, for anesthesia, those
(38:40):
sorts of things that we even have fentanyl patches. There
is no kind of I'm sure I'll get some pushback
on this, but there is no medicinal use for cyanide
se it's something that's used in industry. So with the
Taie Police, as they're conducting this investigation, they're going to
have to consider, first off, how this person and we
(39:04):
believe that it's one of the females that is involved
in this that facilitated this allegedly at this point in time,
it would seem that way, one of the females that
was deceased inside of the inside of the room. How
how did she source this stuff? Because I got to
(39:25):
tell you, Dave, I got to tell you that, if
in fact she got this from somebody, I'm going to
take a long, hard look at the source during the
course of this investigation, and they they might run the
risk in this particular case, as you know, being maybe
(39:47):
part and parcel of this event, you know, and you
can't you know, merely just you know, raise your shoulders
and say, well, I didn't know that this was what
she was going to use it for We're going to
have a talk, you know, with that person, And so
I think that that's something that has to be considered
here as well. Was there somebody else that may have
(40:08):
been involved in this, particularly when it comes because this
is not something like you're going to go down to
uh the hardware and say, hey, yeah, let me get
a pound of cyanide, you know. So it's it has
a very specific point of origin here, I think, and
that's that's certainly something that's going to have to be
looked at, Dave.
Speaker 3 (40:25):
If somebody mixed dinied in with my coffee and I
drank it, what would be the first sign that something
was wrong? Would I have a headache? Would I start sweating?
What would go through physiologically with me to know some
bad just happened?
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Yeah, first off, let's don't use personal pronouns with you.
I value you too much. Let's just say let's just
let's just say, okay, if somebody all right, I don't
I don't want to be involved in that conversation. But
some of the things that that you're you're going to
look for that an individual would have an indication And
(41:07):
this is something that that's quite fascinating to me because
you've got kind of a group dynamic, Dave. Can you
imagine being seated at the table, right, and you're eyeballing
one another all around the table, and all of a sudden,
you all start presenting with the symptoms. You're short of breath,
you've got a rapid, rapid heart beat. You you might
(41:30):
begin to seize as well, because seizures are one of
the things that's associated with and it's going to impact
everybody at a at a different level. There's going to
be like a malaise or a kind of a weakness.
You can have disney as three two, You can have dizziness.
So if they try to stand up and ambulate in
any way, they might begin to sway left right, There's vertigo,
(41:55):
all kinds of things, and of course there's confusion. And
isn't that horrible to think about it? With all of
these people and we're saying all this group dynamic of
six people in the room, and all of a sudden,
the room starts to spin. They're disoriented until finally unconsciousness hits.
Now understand that that with that with with exposure to
(42:19):
to the cyanide. This is happening at a cellular level
where literally cellular respiration begins to cease, and it starts
off in that tiny, tiny little context like that, and
it extends out. So that's why you you would begin
(42:40):
to get these kind of progressive symptoms that are presenting.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
One thing I did look at is said their lives
were purple, and that was one of the signs. But
I was thinking, what if there are there other signs?
I mean, does your face become red as you and
I are sitting here, do you go, hey, Dave, you're
like turning into the little girl that gets the blueberries
and Willie well.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Yes, yes, cyanosis nail beds or something that we look
at very commonly, pretty pretty quickly. And the body is
essentially and I don't mean this in a litterle term
of being strangled, your your ability to uptake oxygen is
(43:20):
being strangulated in the sense that you're turning this this
purple color. Cyanotic lips will turn purple, gumline, the gumlt
will actually turn purple. You'll see this presentation and it's it.
You know, as an investigator, one of things that always
troubled me there was even more offensive than dealing with
(43:41):
decomposed bodies or cyanotic bodies. And many times you'll get cyanotic.
You'll have people that are cyanotic that are having a
heart event as well. And again oxygen is not being
processed in the body. So we look from what's called
the nipple line up. You'll see this this kind of
eggplant color that will come on people. And for me
as an investigator, it was always like, you know, it's
(44:03):
always it was really striking to me. You know, you'd
mentioned Willy Wonka. You know, my daughter's a blueberry, you
know that sort of thing, and yeah, you get that color,
and that's a very I'm talking about the original, the
real Willy Wonka. Ye that her presentation in that movie.
If you're wondering what syonosis looks like, that's kind of
(44:25):
how it looks. And so, yeah, you would get that presentation,
i'd be And again that adds another level of horror
to this. Can you imagine you're sitting around the table,
you're having difficulty breathing, and then if you're able to
process this visually, you see your friends sitting at the table,
they're clutching their throat, they're gasping for breath and you're
(44:45):
alterning purple. Yeah, just think of the horror of that.
I don't know that you can actually measure that in
any way, David. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is
body Bags.
Quody Doors with Joseph Scott Moore. Don't drink the koolid?
How many times have you heard people say that? And
it can be used for any number of various things
that you might be considering doing in life or people
(00:23):
that you're exposed to and they give you information. But
you know, that term never really existed at least I
don't think that it existed prior to a very specific
event that occurred down in South America in the late seventies,
(00:46):
involving a man named Jim Jones. Now how did he
get connected with that term? Well, he led a cult
and as part of this cult, he decided that the
world was coming to an end and that he was
going to take all of his fellow members with him
(01:07):
into the great beyond. And how did he do that
He used kool aid. Least with cyanide. Today, we're going
to explore a couple of cases here actually total of
six six people that in one moment their lives ended
(01:31):
in a hotel room in Thailand. And yes, this involved
cyanide as well. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is
body Bags. Hey Dave, yes, sir, don't drink the kool aid?
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Brother, oh man, whatever you do.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Yeah, don't don't do it. You know, I've often heard
people refer or use that term, and I I think
that I don't think that people. I'm gonna go down
a path here, so just bear with me. I don't
think people actually understand the depth and breadth of what
(02:15):
happened in Jonestown. And just just let me tell you
a quick story. I actually talked to a guy many
years ago that I worked with that was an old
pathologist and he has passed on, and he he went
down there. He went down there in the wake of
(02:38):
this event we're talking about nine hundred dead David. And
when he got there, the where Jonestown was located in Ghana, Ghana,
I think it's that is that is that Guyana. The
jungle that surrounded the area was so dense, you know,
there's not a lot of roads coming in, so they
(03:00):
had to bring them in in helos. And he came
in in a what would have been a huey an
old hue you remember the old Vietnam helicopters that you
see every time you hear the song Fortunate Sun played,
you know, you see you know Helo coming in doors open,
he actually told me, he said, we were almost two
(03:25):
miles out and the doors on the helo were open.
I could smell I could smell the decay. Now you're
talking about a jungle environment and you're talking about nine
hundred bodies. But just let that sink in just for
a second. And that's that came about as a result
of these people being poisoned. And we're talking about men, women,
(03:50):
and children being poisoned with cyanide and their death was horrible.
I'd like to say that it was like really really quick.
You can't say that in every case. I think a
lot of people think that it just, you know, it
just happens. But it's still it's still very very brutal.
And you know what the case case is. I hate
(04:13):
to say just singularly case because you know, I don't
want to you know, devalue anybody's life here, because each
one of these deaths associated with this case cases is
an individual. But yeah, you know, we're talking about a mass,
a mass event with six people dead.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Dave and actually adding don't drink the kool aid as
or drinking the kool aid as part of the lexicon.
Interesting little sidebar of trivia. They didn't use kool Aid.
They used a generic kool Aid called flavor Aid, and
kool Aid got mad. It's one of those little pieces
of marketing information.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Interesting they use it called again, give me.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
The flavor Aid. Flavor is a flavor Aid is a
knockoff of kool Aid. It's just a cheaper version, and
that's what they use used. But you know, it's interesting
that he, while Jim Jones, had conditioned his followers to
do this. They had had mock trials before. He conditioned
them that people were coming, they were going to be
wiped out, their children would be enslaved, and he would
(05:14):
then serve them coolly that wasn't laced. Gave them plenty
of time to go through these actions. I think it
was two or three times they had these midnight calls
where they would all gather and do this, and he
would say it was just a test.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Holy So I never knew this.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Yeah, it was a faith test because he didn't He
wanted to see what would happen if they truly did this.
Would there be an uprising, would people leave or would
they follow and do what he told them? Because you've
got to remember very quickly the reason this happened is
Jim Jones and his group were in northern California and
there were his church had become big. He was on
the city council in San Francisco. He became a real
(05:50):
player in town. But he was also a drug addict
and he had taken it to the next level in
terms of swindling people out of their life savings and
their homes and things like that. And his cult was flourishing.
But people were watching and they didn't like their family
members getting caught up in his cult. So they started
complaining to their local leaders. And so even though Jim
Jones was giving money to a lot of people, yeah,
(06:14):
they were investigating. And when he up and moved everybody
to Guyana and carved out this utopian society in the jungle,
there were family members here that were really upset and
they went to their congressman. His name was Leo Ryan.
Leo Ryan then organized a trip with some news media
and they went down to Jonestown to find out what
(06:34):
was really going on. While they were there, there's video
of this, you can see it all. While he was there,
he was given a little tour of things, and he
saw there were some things that maybe weren't too good,
but hey, the people seemed to be there voluntarily. But
that night, before they went to sleep, Leo Ryan was
given notes by people. They snuck notes to him saying
(06:54):
get me out of here, Get me out of here.
And so the next day when they were loading up
to go to the leave, Congressman got a few of
these people and they took them to the plane. But
then at the aircraft, as they're getting on the plane,
they were ambushed by some of jones henchmen. Congressman Leo
Ryan and the news guy were both murdered right there
(07:15):
on the tarmac in front of the plane, as well
as a few others, and Jim Jones announced to his people,
they're coming. The Congressman's dead, the traders are dead, and
they will be coming for us now we.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Have no choice.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
That's how he got these people to follow through on
what he had been conditioning them for in drinking the
kool aid, which wasn't even kol aid, by the way.
Of all the people that died this very horrible way.
There's audio tape of Jim Jones talking to them, and
you hear the wails of mothers watching it, holding their children.
People crying, I don't want to die. It was horrible.
(07:51):
But the one person who didn't take the kool aid
was Jim Jones. He shot himself in the head. Now
I encourage any one, please, for the love do a
little research on Jim Jones and how he took a
true belief and made it so wicked that over nine
(08:11):
hundred people were following him in death.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
You know, and I wonder, you know, particularly as we
talk about the topic at hand today, the idea that
cyanide poisoning is a real thing that has occurred for
quite a bit of time. You wonder, and this is
(08:37):
kind of maybe a broad ranging philosophical question, if that
had not occurred. We've always known that sinoid is very toxic, obviously,
but if that event in Jonestown had not occurred back then,
how many you know, how did that affect maybe that
(09:00):
come in the case we're going to talk today, you know,
because people understand the lethality of it, and did it
you know, does it influence people? You know? Moving forward?
You know, how is it that I could take out
a large number of people and be very stealthy about it.
You know, I don't think there was stealth necessarily involved
in In Jim Jones's case, it was very direct. But
(09:23):
if you wanted to facilitate something where there's not going
to be any awareness, and that's that's the thing about poisoners,
and I've always been fascinated by them in the sense
that they're.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
There.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
They want to fly under the radar to the point
where they're not going to be detected on any level.
And I think you know, you even look at like
the the infamous Talent All poisonings, you know that that occurred,
you know years ago. You know all of those people
that kind of slipped things in just for a moment.
They're not going to walk up and you know, the
(10:00):
somebody they dislike and they're going to shoot them in
the head. Now, this is there's something that is so
particularly evil about this because you have to get just
keep in mind, in order to administer something like this,
you have to be in somebody's very intimate personal space.
You have to know that they have to ingest it
(10:22):
in order for it to work, because if it's just
sitting there, though, it is dangerous, But if you can
get them to ingest it, how much more lethal and
how are you going to facilitate them ingesting it. What's
going to be the guarantee that this is going to
actually happen?
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Dave, you could just what actually, Joe, Yeah, it's so
amazing that you said that, because I'm thinking, all right,
there are when you've got six people dead and they
all know one another, and they've all gathered in this
very upscale hotel to discuss an investment. They have all
and I we searched the hotel because just because somebody
(11:02):
says it's a ritzy hotel, well that's all perspective, you know,
it's what is ritzy to you. It might not be
the same for me. So I looked at the area
of the hotel, what type it's five star, this is
top of the line. Okay, this is a nice place,
an expensive place. So these are the type of investors
and there is some discussion right now what they were
(11:24):
investing in, but my belief is that it was in
a hospital in Japan. We've got two American Vietnamese citizens
and four that are Vietnamese. So we've got a group
of people that know one another, are involved in a
business venture and maybe something's not quite going right. So
(11:47):
that's how they all come to gather in this one place,
in this ritzy hotel. And by the way, they had plans. See,
at first people thought maybe it was a suicide that
they all voluntarily got together in decided, you know, the
help up comments not coming by, let's go ahead and
do it. You know, they didn't have a doe to follow.
(12:07):
But in this case, police believe that they were there
to get some answers about their finance and they had plans.
They had plans for the following day. They were going
to be hitting the big expensive spots. They had stuff
going on. So it wasn't like they all went there
to die. So take the suicide off the table.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you have to. However, you cannot completely
dismiss the idea of suicide. But it was the individual, okay, right,
But when you have a group of people, what would
be the motivation, you know, for us to all gather
together and want accord and simultaneously take our lives that Yeah,
(12:50):
you're right, I think that they would abandon that premise
pretty quickly, and you have, but you still have to
keep that in the back of your mind. And also,
if there is a a perpetrator, a single perpetrator that
is responsible for this action? Was their intent to be suicide?
So does this turn into does this turn into a
murder suicide investigation at this point, Tom, or is it just.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
A murder or is it just you're right?
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (13:16):
But what if? What if it was a planned to er.
I'm going to kill my partners in this. I'm taking
over the whole thing, and the murderer accidentally drank from
the wrong cup. Because what we have here the delivery
method for the cyanide, which I don't, Joe, really know
what cyanide is. I don't know what it looks like
(13:37):
or if it has a smell. I don't know how
one gets it into a drink without anybody knowing. I
don't know any of that, and I'm hoping you can
shed light on it because at this point, we had
six people dead and we know it's cyanide because that's
what we've been told by police. But I know how
you would find that out. You walk into a room
there's six dead people, and you're looking at food on
(13:58):
the table that's still wrapped like it was delivered, but
you can tell they've all had a toast of some type,
They've had something to drink. How do you find out
what happened? How do you test well?
Speaker 1 (14:08):
I can tell you this from Jump Street. If you're
a death investigator or a forensic scientist and you walk
in to a room with six dead bodies and there
are no spent casings on the ground, you better tread
carefully because there might be something in there. It might
(14:29):
take your life as well. Brother Dave, I got a
question for you, man. If you were given a selection
between peanuts pecans, I say pecans, not pecans. My granny
(14:55):
used to say, pecans something you keep under the bed.
Walnuts and I don't know Philbert's, I don't know, they
go on and on an almonds. Out of that complete selection,
what what would you choose? Well? Nuts really okay?
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (15:16):
No I like one.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
I mean I really yeah. I like eating nuts. I
buy them makes nuts, you know when I'm buying them,
or you know.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Walnuts wal nuts.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Well, let me ask you something. Have have you ever
have you ever smelled I feel like you're again, I
feel like there's no, there's no I got to ask
you though, have you ever smelled?
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Well?
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Some people will say that there's an association between smelling
burnt toast and having a stroke. I don't know if
that's valid or not. I have not. Yeah, yeah, some
of people will say that. But did you know that
there's something associated with cyanide poisoning that is a particular
smell now that only forty percent of us can actually smell,
and that is that's cyanide. Sanide actually gives off the
(16:09):
smell of toasted or burnt almonds. And if kind of
kind of weird, isn't it. And so when yeah, you
think about and another yeah, and so another quick quick aside.
I think during the course of my career, I think
(16:32):
maybe I handled three cyanide related deaths over that period
of time. By the way, I was terrified by them
being in the presence of the substance, or allegedly present
in the substance, and in the presence of the substance,
and I assisted in two of the autopsies and was
(16:53):
present for another one. Do you know I could not
smell the smell, but other people in the room could
smell the smell, And so for me, yeah, yeah, only
forty They claim that only forty percent of the population
can actually smell the smell of burnt almonds as it's
associated with sinoid. I'm not saying that I couldn't take almonds,
put them in a frying pan and scorch them, and
(17:16):
you know I would be able to smell that. But
this this idea that you can pick up on the smell.
Some people say that that you can, so I was
always I've always been fascinated by that. But that is
associated with sinid poisoning, something that you can actually pick
up on. And I really wonder, going back to this
(17:36):
fine hotel inland in Thailand, if if the investigators actually
walked in, can you imagine you walk in to this room.
These people have not been seen. They did not check
out when they were supposed to.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Right And by the way, Joe, for you or me,
when we're in a hotel and the checkout time comes,
for me, it's five minutes after checkout time, they're at
the door going are you still here? Why are you
still here? But when you're when you're rich, it's a
little different. You stand out. They were there an extra day, Okay,
they gave these people an entire day beyond when they
(18:13):
were supposed to check out. That's the difference, a telling
difference between the ridge and the rest of us. They
got an extra day before the cleaning person.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
You got people knocking on my door all the time,
when when I actually when we were leaving crom Coon
in Nashville, uh you know we yeah, I had they
were banging on my door and we were we had
brought so much stuff with us, you know, for for
the and we had it all piled in our room.
But yeah, the idea that and again this goes to
timeline from an investigative standpoint, how long had these people
(18:45):
been down when they're discovered in this hotel room, and
what what's going to be, what's the status and once
they're all fine. One of the things that's always amazed
me with a massed death event is not that as
an invest skater, I'm present amongst the dead. That's a known,
that's a given, that's what you sign on for. I'm
(19:07):
always amazed by the people that are the finders that
you're the person that has the passkey, Dave. Just for
a second consider this. You're the person with the pass
key that gets into the room. Now, in this case,
I think the door was actually locked from the inside,
which is quite telling. But let's just say you're the
(19:29):
person that has to put your shoulder to the door
if you will and or take the pry bar and
crack that thing open. You imagine, just as the door
begins to open up, you suddenly realize that in a
(19:50):
hotel room, let's just think about a hotel room. We
know how big it is. We know that there are
yah We've got kind of a semi living area. We've
got a bed area, We've got a bathroom. If it's
a sweet you might have it kind of divided off.
You might have a dining area, you've got you've got
(20:10):
six dead people. What in the world do you make
of it? Because I got to tell you at a
primal level, I was not saying that passively, just a
moment ago where you can walk into this environment and
and not have that in dwelling fear. Did you know
(20:33):
that when we do autopsies on burn victims, okay that
die in house fires, did you know that sinid shows
up and their talks reports. Because it's a component, it's
a component of some manufactured furnitures that are out there,
and appointments, carpets, that sort of thing. And so when
(20:55):
we do what's referred to in when we're doing deaths
related to fires, we do what's called a carboxy hemoglobin level,
and that that gives you an idea of how much
carbon monoxide that the individual's taken on. That means that
they were breathing during the time of the fire. But
one of the little side elements that you find many
(21:17):
times are these toxic substances. So one of them will
will be cyanide. And I'll when at Jack State, when
I'm teaching, teaching my classes, particularly when it comes to
fire related deaths and fire investigations, I'll tap on these
plastic tables, these laminated tables, and tell them, you know,
everything in here, these components that you see around you.
(21:39):
If this stuff goes up in flame and you're adjacent
to it, you're going to be taking on these elements
because they're essentially vaporized at that point in time. And
so syinide is something that is around us. It's around
us at all times. It's just not in concentrated levels
where we're where we're going to take and we're going
(22:01):
to die from it, or it hasn't been unleashed as
a result of interaction with heat and that sort of thing.
But we've always known that it leaves hey listen for
years and years day people that states that utilize the
gas chamber. Sinide was the chosen methodology the nazis you cyanide?
Speaker 3 (22:24):
Okay, Well that's what I was going to ask you, Joe,
because in a lot of movies, I'm thinking, actually, you
know Captain America when they did the boot on that
back ten fifteen years ago, and when he first becomes
Captain America and he chases the Nazi out of the
room and he pulls the Nazi out of the jet
plane that is actually underwater, and he throws him up
(22:44):
on the shore and he says, you know, take one
of that tool or places. And the guy pops the
tooth and chomps down on the cyanide capsule and dies.
That's why I was curious about how long it takes
to take effect. Are there different levels of the cyanide
and the other thing, Joe? Until you mentioned it, it
didn't occur to me the fear that would strike in
(23:06):
the hearts of man to open a door find six
people dead and there's no bloodshot, there's no gun, there's
no knife. They're just laying there dead and they're not
all like sitting around a table doing a seance and
died they died where one person had almost made it
to the door, another person was on the way towards
the door, two were near the table area, and there
(23:28):
were two in the bedroom. So you've got six people
spread out dead, but no signs of being beaten. There's
no signs of a struggle, no signs of a fight.
I mean, you've got six dead people and you can't
tell anything about it. It didn't occur to me the
fear that would hit somebody, going I could die in here. Now,
what if it's a leak of some kind.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Yeah, And it's terriflying for investigators when you out on
cases like this. I may have mentioned this before, but
you know, I had a family of six or seven
that died in a home where uh, this brain surgeon
of an uncle came over to fix the wall heater
and he reversed, he reversed the fan on the thing
(24:10):
and it uh and it got cold and it it
the exhaust fan ran backwards essentially and it blew, it
blew carbon monoxide into the home. And so as we
were working this case, and to give you an idea
of the level of danger, and this is not this
(24:31):
is not syinid. This is carbon monoxide. Uh we, I
had to go to the hospital. I was in the
hospital for eight hours, I think on on oxygen. My
head was pounding, my eyes with bloodshot, and two of
my colleagues were in there. And you know, this is
after the fire department had come out and said, you know,
they used the big fans to kind of ventilate the
(24:53):
area where they you know, they use and it had
not been sufficiently ventilated. So anytime you walk in to
an environment, you can't, as an investigator, think that you're safe.
I actually had a friend of mine that walked into
a suicide with a fellow that had shot himself with
(25:16):
a pistol, and the suicide the room he had booby trapped.
It actually booba trapped with a deer rifle. And if
the if the string that was attached to the trigger
housing had not been discovered, anybody bending over the body
and manipulating a door that was immediately could have been
(25:38):
shot through the chest with his deer rifle. So, yeah,
it is evil. And you know, we talk about, you know,
with explosives, we talk about secondary devices and i'll you know,
where they draw you in. And then so my thought
is this, anybody that's willing to take either their life
or somebody else that's like your life as an investigator
has no value to them whatsoever. And that has to
(26:01):
and as cynical as that is, that has to be
your worldview because my goal at the end of the
day is to be able to go home to my
family and my kids and all that sort of thing.
You're there as an investigator, but you're not in a
You're in an environment where life has just ended. So
with that said, when we're thinking about how do you
(26:22):
get this substance? First off, how do you acquire it? Well,
it's acquired through a variety of methodologies and means yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Hey, let me ask you, Joe, just very quick. You've
got six bodies in this hotel suite. You see that
there is food on the table that's still rapid, hasn't
been eaten. You can see that drinks have been consumed.
But the people are in different areas. Where does the
investigation begin? Because I have to assume, and I don't
(26:52):
think I'm in correcting the assumption that you're going to
be calling if you're a cop, you're calling in the
detectives and the medical examiner. You've got to have somebody
in the that knows how people die, how they live,
and know what could have possibly caused this to happen.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Before you move a body.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Yeah, yeah, you do, and you'll get you'll get certain
indicators at the scene as to what you might be
dealing with when you look at the at the bodies,
because the bodies take on a certain appearance after death,
all right, when they're exposed to sign on it. We're
thinking about, interestingly enough, a condition called cyanosis, for instance,
(27:32):
which is kind of a purplish hue. We see that.
It doesn't mean it's yeah, you will actually see this
kind of purplish hue that will in the nail beds.
You want to look at that. But some of that
stuff can be confused with decomposition, and we're talking about
people that should have been checked out of the room
twenty four hours beforehand. So is what you're seeing related
(27:55):
to decompositional changes or is this actually a presentation as
a result of being exposed to syni So you have
to do that in your calculus as well. I don't know.
I think that here's the problem. First off, you don't
know what the agent is. You don't know if it's
(28:17):
if it is an agent to begin with. If this
was an accidental event, you know, we just I don't
know if you recall this, but a couple of years
ago we had these scares down in the Caribbean where
these people were dying on vacation. I think they even
did a TV series about it. But you know, the
stuff that was coming in through the ventilation system and
(28:37):
hotels and whatnot. But when you don't necessarily have a
source for this, everything should be considered. So yeah, the
Emmy would definitely need to be at the scene. They
would need to take great care as to what the
way they were handling things. I think one of my
(28:58):
biggest concerns would be is if you're dealing with a
substance like arsenic, if you're not wearing gloves, for instance,
is it transdermal? Is it something you're going to absorb? Uh?
Is is there any chance that that as a result
(29:20):
of manipulating the bodies or handling the bodies, Uh, you're
going to run a foul of anything else that's in
there because you don't know, you don't know what's in
these hidden spaces.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
So it's you mentioned arsenic, is arsenic andide.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
No, they're not. They're they're two separate things. Arsenic Is
is actually a heavy metal uh and and cyanide, of
course is not. It's compound. And so you've you've got
you've got two separate things that you're dealing with here,
but they're both. They have a certain level of lethality.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
You even look at things like strick nine poisoning. We've
heard that for years and years. You know, there are
certain religious cults denominations out there that would in the
past actually drink drink strychnine to prove their faith, you know,
these sorts of things. So you have a variety of
different things that are out there that have a level
(30:18):
of lethality to them. Sinide, though, is detectable. It's not
something that you're going to It's not something that is
stealthy in the sense that the toxicology is not going
to reveal that it was there and that it's what
led to the death. The other piece of this is
that with these folks in the hotel room, each one
(30:39):
of their autopsies, you're going to see physical manifestations of
you know, presenting on their body. Here's what you can't
get past. As you're taking this in and I think
that at this point at least we believe that this
may have been have ingested as a result of it
was transmitted to them perhaps apps through a drink of tea.
(31:03):
You would not only want to pull the tos on
them and examine whatever is going on systemically in their
circulatory system, but also those cups are going to be
essential as well if there's any residue that's left behind.
What was the level of dosage that was applied to them,
how pure was the substance, Because once it once it hits,
(31:26):
once it hits and gets into the system, it's almost
impossible to reverse this circumstance. It's almost you're in a
irrecoverable flat spin at this point of time. One of
(31:48):
the most telling pieces to these cases is, and I
think something that is quite chilling is the fact that
the chief of Police for the Bangkok Police Department, and
by the way, they were refusing to release the names
at this point in time, in regards to this event,
(32:14):
the chief of Police stated that when they entered this
hotel room, Dave that it appeared that two of the
individuals had tried to make it to the door. So
they know this is what's so chilling about. They know
that there's something going on, and that also gives you
(32:35):
an indication of positionality of the bodies at the scene.
If the chief of police is actually coming. And we're
not talking about any small place here, we're talking about Bangkok. Arguably,
I don't know where it stacks up. It's one of
the largest cities in the world. I think when this
(32:57):
person is coming out and saying that it looks like
trying to get to the door, that means that positionality
directionality they're laying as if they're trying to make it
to the door to try to get help. But that's
how quickly, that's how quickly cyanid can actually work. That
they couldn't even go to because just think how the
(33:18):
dynamic of all this would have changed if they had
made it to the door, if they had just cracked
the door, unlocked the door, and gotten out and maybe
had died in the hallway, we'd be looking at something
completely different here. But this was still all self contained.
They didn't even have the energy or the ability to
actually the door lock to get out, but they feel
(33:39):
as though that they were trying to escape, maybe trying
to get to help. How hopeless is this, Dave?
Speaker 3 (33:46):
You know, population in Bangkok is nine million, so you're
talking pretty much in New York City type. That's how
big of a city this is. And they do know
what they're doing. But the police have been very careful.
And I'm glad you've mentioned this a couple of times, Joe,
because when we're reporting on cases, we like to identify
the victims. I don't like to give them a number
or group them all together because it seems disrespectful.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
And I think about if.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
Somebody's listening right this minute and knows somebody who passed
like that, I don't want you to think we're being
that way. They just are choosing to not release the
information at this time. But what we do know, because
even most of the press is not even indicating the
gender of the individual that they suspect for doing this.
As I mentioned earlier, they do suspect that one person
(34:32):
here committed murder and then suicide. But Joe, when you
talked about they got to they were going towards the door. Yeah,
all I could think of in my head because I
don't know how this works. But how long does it
take for cyanid to react to kill somebody first of all.
(34:54):
But I'm just a regular Joe Schmoe here, and I
have to wonder if I started researching something like cyanide,
how to acquire it, how to use it. I just
it seems like something would pop up on the Internet
security stuff somewhere. You know, that somebody would know that
(35:16):
that I was searching for this stuff, and that they
would connect the dots.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
And you can't do that day you're you know.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
You know, my colleagues, not a university. We we will
equip over this every now and then and we'll say,
you know, if people could see the stuff that you know,
particularly in forensics, right that you're sourcing, you're looking for Yeah,
you were thinking, oh my god, they're thinking we're plotting
some kind of dastardly event.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
Well, Joe, if you and I talk about canoes and
going down the little Creek, all of a sudden on
social media, on Facebook, I'm going to see ads for canoes.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Yeah, you're right, So they're not listening.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Well, you know the thing about it is with sinide,
I think one of the big questions is, well, how
would you go about procuring san nod? You know, what's
the utility of it so, and that's where the police
have to start, you know, because you have to understand
the sourcing of this very highly toxic compound. I mean,
it's it is. It has such a level of lethality
(36:15):
to it, and you have to take great care when
it's being utilized. But let's say, for instance, it's used
in metallurgical pursuits for instance. Uh, you have people that
are doing jewelry that that this actually requires an application
(36:36):
of of of a use of sin node. And actually,
you know, there's there's certain like there's a color that
if you're doing like working with bronze, for instance, there's
a color that cyanide will bring out in bronze when
you're crafting it. For instance. It's been used there.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
And of course you know sinid has been used for
a long time just for poisoning. And I'm not talking
about like homicidal poisoning. I'm talking about if you're trying
to get rid of I know that it's been applied
uh for uh, let's see what was it. It's been
applied for cody codes to get rid of them. I
(37:19):
think even in Australia, people don't realize that possums are
not indigenous to Australia and the Ousie used it, I
believe to eradicate possum population down there. So it has
a lot of utility, uh and has had for a
lot of you know, over the years.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
So you can have a legitimate reason to get without
a raising attention.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Yeah, and so I would I would want to try
to source that to anybody that was working adjacent for
My first stop is probably going to be anybody that's
involved with jewelry period, because how can you justify the
acquisition of it or did you go to the black
market and pick it up right? I don't know. I
don't know what their abilities are to.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
All something like fentanyl. You know, we've heard about how
deadly fentanyl is recently and now it's there. They've told
us that simply touching it, observing through the skin, it
can be deadly. It can cause a lot of problems.
Is cyanide the same way?
Speaker 1 (38:17):
You know, Dave, I'd have to say if we if
we were going to compare fentanyl and sinide, one of
the big differences here is that fentanyl, believe it or not,
actually has u has a therapeutic use and it has
I mean for years and years. It's a precursor for
you know, things like I don't know, for anesthesia, those
(38:40):
sorts of things that we even have fentanyl patches. There
is no kind of I'm sure I'll get some pushback
on this, but there is no medicinal use for cyanide
se it's something that's used in industry. So with the
Taie Police, as they're conducting this investigation, they're going to
have to consider, first off, how this person and we
(39:04):
believe that it's one of the females that is involved
in this that facilitated this allegedly at this point in time,
it would seem that way, one of the females that
was deceased inside of the inside of the room. How
how did she source this stuff? Because I got to
(39:25):
tell you, Dave, I got to tell you that, if
in fact she got this from somebody, I'm going to
take a long, hard look at the source during the
course of this investigation, and they they might run the
risk in this particular case, as you know, being maybe
(39:47):
part and parcel of this event, you know, and you
can't you know, merely just you know, raise your shoulders
and say, well, I didn't know that this was what
she was going to use it for We're going to
have a talk, you know, with that person, And so
I think that that's something that has to be considered
here as well. Was there somebody else that may have
(40:08):
been involved in this, particularly when it comes because this
is not something like you're going to go down to
uh the hardware and say, hey, yeah, let me get
a pound of cyanide, you know. So it's it has
a very specific point of origin here, I think, and
that's that's certainly something that's going to have to be
looked at, Dave.
Speaker 3 (40:25):
If somebody mixed dinied in with my coffee and I
drank it, what would be the first sign that something
was wrong? Would I have a headache? Would I start sweating?
What would go through physiologically with me to know some
bad just happened?
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Yeah, first off, let's don't use personal pronouns with you.
I value you too much. Let's just say let's just
let's just say, okay, if somebody all right, I don't
I don't want to be involved in that conversation. But
some of the things that that you're you're going to
look for that an individual would have an indication And
(41:07):
this is something that that's quite fascinating to me because
you've got kind of a group dynamic, Dave. Can you
imagine being seated at the table, right, and you're eyeballing
one another all around the table, and all of a sudden,
you all start presenting with the symptoms. You're short of breath,
you've got a rapid, rapid heart beat. You you might
(41:30):
begin to seize as well, because seizures are one of
the things that's associated with and it's going to impact
everybody at a at a different level. There's going to
be like a malaise or a kind of a weakness.
You can have disney as three two, You can have dizziness.
So if they try to stand up and ambulate in
any way, they might begin to sway left right, There's vertigo,
(41:55):
all kinds of things, and of course there's confusion. And
isn't that horrible to think about it? With all of
these people and we're saying all this group dynamic of
six people in the room, and all of a sudden,
the room starts to spin. They're disoriented until finally unconsciousness hits.
Now understand that that with that with with exposure to
(42:19):
to the cyanide. This is happening at a cellular level
where literally cellular respiration begins to cease, and it starts
off in that tiny, tiny little context like that, and
it extends out. So that's why you you would begin
(42:40):
to get these kind of progressive symptoms that are presenting.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
One thing I did look at is said their lives
were purple, and that was one of the signs. But
I was thinking, what if there are there other signs?
I mean, does your face become red as you and
I are sitting here, do you go, hey, Dave, you're
like turning into the little girl that gets the blueberries
and Willie well.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Yes, yes, cyanosis nail beds or something that we look
at very commonly, pretty pretty quickly. And the body is
essentially and I don't mean this in a litterle term
of being strangled, your your ability to uptake oxygen is
(43:20):
being strangulated in the sense that you're turning this this
purple color. Cyanotic lips will turn purple, gumline, the gumlt
will actually turn purple. You'll see this presentation and it's it.
You know, as an investigator, one of things that always
troubled me there was even more offensive than dealing with
(43:41):
decomposed bodies or cyanotic bodies. And many times you'll get cyanotic.
You'll have people that are cyanotic that are having a
heart event as well. And again oxygen is not being
processed in the body. So we look from what's called
the nipple line up. You'll see this this kind of
eggplant color that will come on people. And for me
as an investigator, it was always like, you know, it's
(44:03):
always it was really striking to me. You know, you'd
mentioned Willy Wonka. You know, my daughter's a blueberry, you
know that sort of thing, and yeah, you get that color,
and that's a very I'm talking about the original, the
real Willy Wonka. Ye that her presentation in that movie.
If you're wondering what syonosis looks like, that's kind of
(44:25):
how it looks. And so, yeah, you would get that presentation,
i'd be And again that adds another level of horror
to this. Can you imagine you're sitting around the table,
you're having difficulty breathing, and then if you're able to
process this visually, you see your friends sitting at the table,
they're clutching their throat, they're gasping for breath and you're
(44:45):
alterning purple. Yeah, just think of the horror of that.
I don't know that you can actually measure that in
any way, David. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is
body Bags.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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