October 20, 2024 • 45 mins
Crystal Rasch is missing and her husband is using her bank card to purchase cleaning supplies. He also fails to report his estranged wife missing. Joseph Scott Morgan explains the cleaning materials used as well as the type of experts that have to be brought in when investigators suspect a victim has been cremated in a backyard burn pile. Dave Mack will help uncover the relationship that left Crystal Rasch identified by a single tooth and her husband in jail. The trial has yet to happen but this is the first part of the story of Crystal and Zachariah Rasch.
Transcribe Highlights
00:13.30 Introduction - back from London
01:00.71 Strangers in London tell Joe to watch for "pickpockets"
05:03.49 The married couple had separate bank accounts
09:55.96 Working a case from back to front
15:08.97 CCTV Records coupled with receipts from purchases
20:29.75 Wife missing, husband admits spending her money with her card
25:57.18 List of searches done on phone, gunshot wound to head vs chest
29:51.13 Search warrant explanation
35:07.58 Evidence found in a car, what to take out
39:31.91 Relationships between law enforcement and experts
44:02.09 Investigators find a tooth
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body Donors with Joseph Scott More. I just got back
from Great Britain. I spent most of the time that
I was over there in London, and the people over
there are just remarkably friendly. And here's why I know
(00:22):
I didn't have to do this, But on three separate
occasions I had total strangers walk up to me and
tell me to take my phone out of my back
pocket and put it inside of my jacket. And the
reason they told me that is that there were a
lot of pickpockets around and apparently this is a huge
(00:42):
thing in London, and I just didn't really think about
It's something that you don't think about here in America
that much, I guess maybe if you live in New York,
but certainly certainly not in Alabama. And I thought, how
horrible would that be to have your pocket picked and
then somebody use your credit cards to buy things that
(01:04):
they'd always wanted. Now, let's take that and think a
little bit about the case I'm going to tell you
about today. Imagine, if you will, your lady who is
estranged from your husband, hadn't been together in a while,
and then he kills you. He takes your credit cards
(01:32):
and goes out and purchases cleaning supplies with them to
clean up the mess that he created from your homicide.
That's what we're dealing with today in the case of
Crystal Rash. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body Bags.
(01:57):
Brother Dave. You ever had your pocket picked?
Speaker 2 (01:59):
You were talking about that. I thought, what a nice
group of people, because we haven't been you and I,
Joe and I live very near one another geographically speaking,
although both of us are used to being in much
bigger cities, and it's one of the things that when
you were first talking about, I thought, what a kind
thing to tell you. Except I remember being in the
(02:20):
city and I never put anything in my back pocket
in the city. I always put in my suit coat
or in my front pocket. Yeah, basic things of life
in a big city. So you're in London.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Yeah. I hope my son doesn't hear this, because every
time he goes out somewhere, tell him to put his
wallet in his front pocket, and that's your standard practice.
And he's going to hear this now because now it's
for the whole world, right, and he's going to chastise
me about it because I've been preaching to him, but
it's longer we get sorry.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
I thought that was an amazing thing that somebody would
take the time to share that with you, whether they're
you know, in that big city all the time or
not recognizing. Hey, do they call us Yanks?
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yeah, you don't hear that term very much, primarily Americans,
and they don't say it with a sneer, contrary with
some people might think everybody is just look, everywhere has
got jerks. Okay, it doesn't matter where you are. You'd
be the smallest town in the south, and you think
you're going to run into totally hospitable people and you'll
(03:19):
run into a jerk. They're everywhere. But on the whole,
I've I have yet to have a bad experience. I've
been going to London Oil England for ten years, almost
ten years. People will bend over backwards to help you
if you're lost, and it's very easy to get lost
in London because it's so massive. But yeah, it was
completely enjoyable. But you know, interestingly enough, Kim and I
(03:42):
while we were over there, we went into one of
the oldest, oldest pubs still operational in London and there
was a sign when we walk when we walked in
next to a Guinness beer ad, an old Guinness beer ad.
They had a sign adjacent to it and says take
care there are thieves about and wow, that's kind of chilling,
(04:06):
you know. And there was more than one sign like
that in the same specific of course, where this pub,
where this pub is Dave is actually located in Whitechapel
where Jack the Ripper did perpetrated all of his cases.
So I don't know, maybe there's a.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Maybe that's why maybe they're saying there, I don't know,
nefarious behavior. I will tell you the way that you
brought it in there of in this day and age,
when somebody does get a hold of your credit cards,
debit cards, they can trash you pretty quick, you know.
I actually was at I was in a college town
and had to stop and get gas and needed some
(04:43):
cash for where I was going, So I went and
used to tell her at a convenience store, and two
hours later, I get a buzz on my phone from
my bank because there's somebody six hundred miles away trying
to buy groceries and they're like, there's it's impossib this
doesn't make sense. And I was able to stop the
account shut everything down. I got hacked at that college
(05:05):
town convenience store with my teller machine, so people can
tell you quickly. And I'm glad you brought that up,
because it wasn't a stranger danger that got her and
the money. It was somebody that she had shared a
life with. And police found out that Crystal Rash and
her husband, Zachariah Rosh, they did have separate bank accounts
(05:28):
and they did not plunder each other's accounts. They were separate,
and they were kept separate that neither one had permission
from the other, even in their married life, for going
into that account. And when the police are talking with
Zachariah Rosh, that became an important part of this case
because Crystal Rush went missing and they weren't even exactly
(05:51):
sure when she vanished. How many times have we had
that on this show, Joe, where we have a story
about somebody who vanishes and the closest person and to
them doesn't bother to report them missing. Ever, it was
her husband didn't. He's the last person known to be
with her. He does a reporter missing her stepmother does.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Yeah, so we're talking, we're talking literally, I think twelve
days down range from when she was last seen. We
have to back up and say that she was last
seen or known to be alive, back on June the eleventh.
She was not reported missing until June twenty third, So
(06:33):
there's this big delay. And as we have talked about
on body bags beforehand, the longer we moved down that timeline,
the more things get diminished. As a matter of fact,
not only do things get diminished by time and where
and all those sorts of things that we look at
(06:54):
as these kind of outside factors in cases, but also
get diminished by further and nefarious activity. So if you've
got this huge gap of Tom Dave and you have
a suspect that still has control over, say, for instance,
a human remain, then it's during that period of time
(07:16):
this individual can do just about anything that they want
to do with a victim's body. And in this particular case,
there are some pretty ghastly things that have happened here,
my friend.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Let me ask you this, Joe, because yeah, you mentioned
June eleventh, that's our starting point. That's the last time
anyone remembers seeing Crystal Rush. And actually the proof is
in the pudding. She was Crystal Rosh was seen at
a thrift store with Zachariah Rosh, her husband. Now granted
he is estranged, Okay, she has filed for divorce. They
(07:50):
are not living together as husband and wife. They're in
the process of a divorce that was instigated by Crystal.
But they are seen together on surveillance cameras in the
store shopping together on June eleventh. But what gets this
whole ball rolling is that's the last time. Because as
the days go on and she doesn't have a lot
(08:12):
of contact with people, and finally her stepmother sees her car.
Her stepmother sees Crystal's car and realizes she hasn't talked
to her, not getting return calls or return message. I mean,
these little things start piling up. But when friends started
getting messages from Crystal, the messages didn't ring true. And
(08:39):
so as police get notified on the twenty third by
Crystal's stepmother can't get her. Her car's over here, I
don't know where she is. Would you do a quick
check on this for me? The police are already almost
two weeks behind the eight ball. Yeah, So they start
digging through everything and that's what led them to bringing
(08:59):
in Zachariah Raj. They wanted to know why were you shopping,
why were you buying cleaning supplies? And why are you
using Crystal's bank card? You know, that's that doesn't seem
to be the proper thing for an estranged husband to do.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
No, it doesn't. And here here's kind of an interesting
little tidbit here. If you want to kind of get
an inside peek at all this, Dave, you look back,
you know, retrospectively. I think you know, kind of conducting
this retroactive investigation where they're going back.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Is that normal?
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Really? Yeah? Yeah, it is. You have to. You have
to go back as far as you can. Because listen,
if if you're working a case that you suspect is
missing or is a homicide or both, you have to
I think in all of our minds, we began to
think about, well, what is it that connects what previous
(09:56):
events connect the victim and disappearance in their death, And
so you have to go back in that anti mortem
state and try to build that out. And sometimes it's
a daunting task, but you know, it's less daunting when
you have numbers, Dave. And here here's something a little
tidbit for all our friends. When they did a search
(10:17):
of Crystal's financial records. What really kind of stood out
is that on June the third, she had a balance
in her bank account of over nine thousand dollars. You
jump all the way forward to June twenty fourth, that's
down to twenty nine hundred dollars. Now, listen, you know,
(10:38):
you could say, well, you know, she got paid. You know,
you get paid the first of the month, and you know,
when you've got more going out than you've got coming
in and you're paying bills and whatnot, Yeah, you would
expect there to be a diminishment at funds. But that's
a pretty striking amount. So over that five dollars, Yeah
and yeah, yeah, precisely, man, So how do you account
(11:01):
for that? And the thing about it is nowadays, if
you're using a card which is easily tracked, if you're
talking about a debit card, for instance, and you're going
in and you're swiping this thing for every time. You know,
we talk a lot about cell phones, don't we, Dave,
and we forget what gets caught, It gets left in
the dust. Here is that for a long long time,
(11:21):
we've been able to track people with their financial records.
You know, you go and you utilize a debit card somewhere. Well,
every time you do a strike on one of those cards,
that literally pinpoints the location where it puts you. You
know that card is going to be in hand. Somebody
has to actually utilize that card in order to make
this happen. Now, I guess you know, you could say
(11:43):
that you know, well, maybe they were online purchases and
things like that, but still those things are trackable, and
this is I think, moving forward with this case, I
think this is going to be damning, damning information because
Dave is always been said, and I don't know that
(12:03):
it necessarily rings true, but it does. Sometimes money is
the root of all evil. Well, you know, Dave, I
(12:26):
don't know that you know that that's necessarily a true
statement that I just made. People have quoted that for
years and years. Money is the root of all evil.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
The love of money.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
It is the love of money. But there's also something
else that comes along with us. And I've said many
times that most of us are at more are at
more peril uh at the hands of the person that
we're in bed with, than we are on some stranger
and sometimes that you know, things come about anger jealousy, possessiveness,
(12:59):
you know, all those things that come around, and I
would argue, I could argue the point that they those
things rival and their ferocity probably even more than the
love of money that would drive and you know the
fact that you're stealing from a dead person after the fact,
which is you know, it's really grimmy, isn't it. You
know when you think about it, insult to injury, that
(13:22):
sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
I was going to ask you about the when police
are tracking this and they're going to start with, Okay,
we got the phone call on the twenty third, don't
We don't know where she is. And so as they
start looking back, they're going to try to find the
last time they can identify Crystal Zara Rosh being somewhere.
And so once they can identify it, we know she
(13:43):
was here, do they start going from like Juna love
now and saying, okay, where was she on the twelfth,
let's find out? Yeah, And then they hit that part
where now we don't know we know that this is
absolutely last day. Okay, Now they look at in this case,
you mentioned the bank statements and you and see where
they started and how it ended. Yet we don't have
(14:05):
any proof of life after June eleventh, and a lot
of expendors do they then break down what was he
buying and was he with anyone? Because there's surveillance video
at these places, right.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Oh yeah, there are. And that's the other thing. There's
three big components here to this case from a forensics perspective.
First off, you've got the financials, which I think is
standing alone. They're damning. And then you know we had
mentioned the text or you did specifically these text messages.
How many cases have we covered over the year's day
(14:39):
where we've got somebody that will get their hands on
somebody's mobile device and start to pretend that it's they're acting.
They're acting as the decedent, you know, trying to play
the game out if you will put people off sin.
So you're going to have digital records as far as
phone records go. And then on top of that, I
(14:59):
think that what's crucial here are going to be these
CCTV records as well. Boy, you've got individuals that are
coming in and out, and you marry that up with
the financial statements where you're going in to purchase things,
and then you've got CCTV of them actually purchasing things. Boys,
that's a that is a huge amount of evidence to
present the accused with by the police.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
You know, I was thinking about the CCTV cameras because
when you were in London, you know, at Crime Con London.
For those of you don't know, there's a show on
body bags, you know that Joe did with an incredible
it was blood spatter and everything else. It was just
really brilliant and Joe Millington, her voice is so soothing,
(15:43):
it's like a grand Yeah. I just wanted to tell her, like, hey,
what do you want me to admit to because I mean,
I'll do it. Just to hear her talk. It was amazing.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Yeah, I found myself it's the old Mike Myers thing
from Coffee Talk on SNL who said it's like but
uh you know, and so yeah, that's that's the way
Joe's voice is.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
But I thought about that with London and all the
CCTV cameras there.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
And they are everywhere.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
But Europe is a different place than the United States.
You know, everything's closer together and here in the United
States we're spread out a little bit, so we don't
have necessarily cameras on every street corner. But in every
place you're going to use a card pretty much under
surveillance because it's so cheap. Now, so you've got that.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Yeah, you've got card. Well, let's just say you go
to an ATM. Well, there's videography with that, uh and
and then you know, and they're all over banks and
then some ATM machines actually have uh, you know, CCTV
contained therein so you can see it. And there's been cases,
you know, where you've got a perpetrator using a card,
you got a clear shot of their face and you
(16:52):
know with you were comparing you know how it is
in London where you've got cameras everywhere, and you look
at the coburger k where they're just they're trying to
scrape together anything that can of the of the white Sedan,
remember that, you know, passing by stores. They did the
twenty mile loop. And in our case with Crystal, you know,
(17:14):
the thing that is going to be so damning with
this is that you've got multiple points of contact. And
that's one of the things that we look for in forensics.
We try to take as much of the data, whether
you know, we're talking about forensic toxicology we're talking about
DNA or we're talking about electronic are in financial data,
(17:35):
and we're trying to connect the dots and see if
there's any overlay with a lot of these things, you know,
kind of any kind of connectivity between these and they're
going to have a lot of this, I think. And
if you want to take it to another level, some
of the items that Zachary Rash was purchasing, we're talking about.
(17:58):
Now hold on to your head. Where's talking about cleaning
supplies and and drum roll sulfuric acid and so get that.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Is there any ration forgetting cleaning supplies and acid?
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Yeah, So when you begin to think about the nature
of sulfuric acid, it's obviously it's it's highly highly caustic,
so it will burn you, it will clean. It's used
to clean surfaces many times. And I'll tell you one
(18:35):
of the one of the utilities that it has actually
is you can take it, for instance, like if you
have a car port, right and you've got oil stains
that are on the car port, you can actually take
this stuff and apply it directly directly to that surface
in order to get to get those stains off of
(18:58):
those surfaces and it will you know, it'll be used.
It has multiple uses, you know in industry, everything from
explosives to making a paint to just tons and tons
of things. But you know, you have to think about, well,
what would have been his purpose for wanting sulphuric acid?
(19:19):
Because this is, in fact an industrial They just latch
on these words industrial cleaning agent. So it's it's so
caustic that you could actually take it, and I think
that a lot of people believe that you can take
it and you can actually render down a body with it.
Well maybe you can remove stains with it and those
(19:41):
sorts of things. So it's very very dangerous.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
I'm thinking you're getting an industrial cleaner. What did you
eat that has to be cleaned with the uric acid?
That doesn't make any sense at all. Now what we
have here is we got some facts. We've got money
being spent by you, mister Rash, which, by the way,
(20:05):
we're charging you now with spending your wife's money without
her permission. That's we don't know where she is, but
we know you spent money that you've already told us
you don't. Because that was during their interview. They brought
him in and said you know, you were spending her
money in her card and we can't find her. Did
you have permission to use her card while she's gone?
(20:26):
And he's like, no, we don't do that, and you
realize that's against the law, right, and so they charged him.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Yeah, and that's and I'm glad you brought that updated.
That's that's a salient point because if you if you have,
if you suspect somebody, and we see this played out
over and over in crimes, and I urge anybody that
follows your crime you look for for these individuals that
where the police are looking to charge them with something
(20:57):
more specific, probably more horrific, and they will on secondary
charges to hang on them just so that they can
hold them on this. But you know the fact that
this was a theft of thousands of dollars. First off,
This just the theft alone puts it into the felonious category.
So you're talking about a felony that you're being charged
(21:17):
with in most states. You know, you look at the
way it has been in the past, if you if
you steal something of value or like an item, or
if you steal steal moneies, and it's over four hundred
ninety nine dollars point ninety nine cents. That's that's a
felony count. And so every time, every time you go
(21:40):
and you withdraw, say for instance, something above that above
that level, these would be individual counts that you could
credit them with and hold them there. And so you
can present us to a magistrate and say, look, you know,
look sir, we've got we've got this individual we're charging.
He's gotten moremultipley felony offenses that were charging him with.
(22:03):
We didn't make sure he doesn't get out of jail.
And all the while, in the background, the police are
working the case of Crystal, who to this point is missing.
You have no idea what's happened to her, but what
you do know is that she's being robbed and the
individual that robbed her has gone out and purchased items
(22:26):
that would be consistent with trying to eradicate any kind
of evidence, either of the body or the spilling of blood.
And I think that those you know, you couple all
of that together. They had to hold this guy, Dave.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
You know, I was thinking about other crimes we've covered
where police ended up charging suspects with other crimes trying
to put them on ice a little bit, Yeah, to
get to the bottom of it. And what came to
mind was Haley Cummings, the little girl who went missing
in the middle of the night when he seventeen year
old babies that are watching her and her dad and
(23:02):
the babysitter of getting married. And anyway, they had them
charged with a couple of different crimes along the way,
and it was a substantial amount of time. All the while,
I thought the charges seemed to be get pushed a
little bit to keep them in jail, separated, to get
them to talk about what happened to Haley, you know,
and that never happened. We still don't know what happened
to Haley Cummings. But in this case, we've got a
(23:23):
guy who has, by his own admission, admitted to a
crime of using his wife's money, her card, her account
that he wasn't entitled to because he told them, no,
we don't she's not allowed to use mind, I'm not
supposed to use hers. So there you go. We're going
to lock up for this one. Think about that for
a little while.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Yeah, And the motivation behind this is to make sure
that you're keeping them off the streets because Okay, let's
just say we've already got this gap of tom where
Crystal's been missing, right right, I mean we viral on admission.
We talked about this in the first segment of our program,
where she has been and load these many days, and
Lord only knows what has become of her remains at
(24:05):
this point in time. Well, let's just say you get
this individual incarcerated, you don't hold them, or you decide
not to affect an arrest on him early on, where
you're just giving him more time because if he knows
where she's at, he can continue to do whatever it
is that he's doing with cleaning supplies. And so you know,
(24:29):
the more time you have where he's out walking the streets,
the colder and colder this case becomes. And that's always
a problem. But you know what, I think the police
happened upon something that would make even the strongest among
us shudder in horror. Well, Dave, I want to throw
(25:05):
a list out to you, brother and kind of get
your reaction to this. All right, So you're a cop, right,
you're a detective, and you get your hands on a
suspect's phone and you begin to break this thing down
to check out what kind of searches they've been doing
on the phone. It just bear with me now and
(25:25):
listen to this list that I'm going to give to you.
You've got on here May twenty eighth, you've got searches
relative to gunshot onounes to the chest versus the head.
All right, If that's not chilling enough, you get to
(25:46):
June eleventh, and you've got a Google search for well
a nine millimeter kill an animal if shot to the head,
and then on June the twelfth, search for carpet cleaner.
He jumped to the twenty third. Hey, here's a question
that's been posed in a search engine. Can police get
(26:08):
search warrants on Sunday? And Wisconsin? Kind of od? On
the twenty fourth of June, search queries included sulfuric acid,
including is sulphuric acid flammable? And let's finish it off
with this one June twenty fifth, the subject who you
(26:33):
now have the possession of his phone, Dave, Wisconsin, missing
person alert that was searched out. So you take that
in its totality. If you're an investigator, do you start
having that little bell go off in your brain? You
know that look we might be onto something here, you know,
I gotta tell you proofs into pudding man.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
When he looked up on June twenty third, we know
that that was the day that Crystal raw stepmother called
police and asked them to do a welfare check because
she hadn't seen her, and she had seen Crystal's car,
but no sign of Crystal. So June twenty third police
(27:16):
do a welfare check, and it's on that date that
he searches. Can police get search warrants on a Sunday
in Wisconsin? Well, June twenty third is a Sunday, So
the very day stepmom reports Crystal missing is the same
day her husband as strange though he may be actually searches.
Can they get it? Do I have basically, hey, do
(27:36):
I have time to clean up anything else before they
show up? By the way, I think police can get
a search warrant whenever a judge will sign.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
It any day, and there's always a magistrate standing boss
expressly for this purpose. And generally folks might know this,
Folks might not know this. There will be what the
way this happens? When you go to get a search warrant,
there's generally a junior assistant disc attorney that's on call.
(28:07):
So the way this works is you under their direction.
Because warrants have to be very specific, you can't just
can you tell us, explain that a little bit, Joe.
A lot of people don't know it.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Until I started actually covering a lot of crime, I
didn't realize what they I thought they could just say,
I think Joe Scott Morgan has X y Z in
his house and this is why I think it, and
the judge goes, okay, and that's not it at all.
They actually have to do some very specific crafting of
the case. The search warrant alone will tell you what
police already know.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Yeah, what they already know. It's a big revealed. The
old adage, you know, a wide net catches a lot
of fish, does not apply to a warrant. You have
to be very specific as to what you want, so
you can't just say, uh, and that's where our own
constitutional protections. You want it, I want to trust me,
you want it. You don't want somebody to say, Okay,
(29:02):
I'm writing up a search warrant for Dave max home
and we're showing up with this piece of paper. Let
us in. We're going to search your entire house. Like
you know, they can't go in pulling the walls apart
and digging into what they refer to as hidden spaces
if they're not specifically enumerated in that search warrant. You
have to say where you're going to look and what
(29:22):
you're looking for. So he has an awareness at least
that they're on to him, I think at least. And
so if you've back to what I was saying, if
you've got like a junior district attorney that's on call,
they will be on call. The police can go to
that individual and say, here, take your fantasy law degree,
(29:43):
look at this warrant that we've written up, and make
sure that it passes muster. Because once they take it
from them, they're going to take it to the judge,
last magistrate. They're going to look at it and they
will go over it and they'll say this needs to
be corrected, this needs to be need you to expand
on this, whatever the case might be, and you have
to go back, you might have to do a rewrite
(30:04):
on it. It's like it's almost like English class, only
there's a lot more at stake here. Okay, So you know,
once you get that warrant. You go in there and
you begin to search. But here's something that's really chilling, Dave,
when you begin to match these dates up. Remember what
we said, the last time Crystal was known to be
(30:28):
alive was back on jun the eleventh. Well that search,
the search for Junior eleventh, that's enumerated here. Now, if
this doesn't send a chill up and down your spine,
will a nine millimeter kill an animal if shot in
the head? Okay, that was searched the same date that
(30:51):
she was last known to be alive, you'd jump ahead
to the twelfth, and this even gives it more of
a chill. He's looking for carpet clean at that point
in Tom. So, if we're you know, if we're kind
of broadly looking at this thing trying to determine, well,
what the heck has happened here, you know, it would
lead us to believe at least that she was shot,
(31:12):
and then she was shot on a carpeted surface. Now
you think about, well, what links are you going to
have to go to to clean this mess up? Because
you know, we we have the luxury as forensics people.
We go into an environment that's kind of frozen in
tom for us. Once we've gotten everybody out of let's
say it's a standing structure like a home. Once we've
(31:35):
gotten that person out of that environment, we lock this
thing down and it's frozen. They're not going to get
back access to it. And dude, we're you know, whereas
you have somebody that flies into a fit of rage
to pull out a gun, in this case, it doesn't
it sound like flying into a fit of rage. It
sounds a bit planned to me. But in any case,
you shoot them. Well, you know, when you shoot somebody
(31:57):
like this, if you're one of these people that does this,
you don't count on the volume of blood you're going
to have. You don't count on the mess that you're
going to have. So suddenly, this individual, if he is
the person that did this, he's looking at a body.
They're at his feet and he's got this gigantic mess
(32:17):
that he's got to clean up and to boot. It's
on a carpeted surface, which makes it even more difficult.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
When looking at the dates. June eleventh, there at the
goodwill store together, seen on video together, and then after
that she's not seen again, but he is seen spending
her money. That's what landed him in jail. By the way,
he was in jail a week after she is reported missing.
She's reported missing on June twenty third, or well, that's
when they actually started looking for her, and a week
(32:47):
later her husband. They've already zeroed in on him. We've
always said they always look at the closest person to
the individual, and they lock him up on the financial
crimes using the card he wasn't entitled to and then
buying these cleaning supplies, if acid and whatnot. So it's
months later you know they're investigating. And it's interesting because
once they had him in the clink, they were able.
(33:10):
They went ahead and got a search one for the
house June twenty sixth, and there were two different trips
out to the property Joe, separated by a couple of days.
The first day they get on the property, they find
a number of cars. One in particular catches their attention.
It's a twenty twenty three Mitsubishi that I'm a little
(33:30):
confused on some of the titling here, but it was
known to be Crystal's car, and it was parked on
the property in such a way that if you were
driving by the property, you wouldn't see it.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
It's obscured from the road.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Yeah, that's kind of a hint to police. Look at
this car. Yeah, the floor in the middle of the
parking lot is not going to be their main attention.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Well, let me tell you how seriously they took it.
They loaded this car up and flatbeded it, and so
they've gone back. They've taken this car to the Wisconsin
State Police Lab where they have a forensics garage. And
so when we can take a car into a garage
like this, we have everything at our disposal, everything from
(34:18):
alternative light sources which you're talking about, like infrared, these
sorts of things where we've got these different spectrums of
light where we can analyze things, because you know, just
a regular household lighting situation is not the most ideal environment.
Certainly flashlights aren't to pick up on little nuances. You
use the light source that you have and certain things
(34:41):
will rise to the top. You might even have to
wear special glasses to look through in order to facilitate
this analysis. If you're using if you're using certain types
of light sources that we utilize in crime seene investments.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Is kind of the stuff we see on TV.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
Then yeah. You see it and they make it and
it's very dramatic, you know, Yeah, And I got to
tell you it's very boring and it's tedious.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
When you're going to til you see something explode on
the screen.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Yeah. Yeah, at that moment time, it's almost you know,
it's almost a Eureka moment, but part of you is
kind of expecting to see it, and so when you
find it, you try to remain as political and detached
as you can because you have to document this very,
very thoroughly while you have that car. And also, here's
the other thing. If you get that car in there
and you've got evidence that some type of trauma has
(35:26):
taken place in there on any level, you have to
make the decision, Well, am I going to cut this
piece of carpet out? Am I going to take the
headliner out? Am I going to take the entire seat? Dave.
I've been in courtrooms where it seems like, piece by
piece they brought an entire car into a courtroom. Of
course I'm going over the top of that, but every
internal element of the car, in the cab of the
(35:49):
car has been brought in, steering wheels, gear levers, dashboards, seats, headliners, carpeting, everything,
and so after it's been tested, you know, you try
to determine first off, what is it. If you're looking
for blood, you don't know that that's blood when you
see it. Okay, if it's blood, is it human blood
(36:10):
or animal blood? If it's human blood, then what type
of blood is it? As far as blood typing? And
then DNA wise, you go back and you try to
determine if this blood belongs to the individual. It might
be missing, and so you but you want that car
in an environment where you can really go through it
with a fine tooth comb. But you know, they had
(36:32):
something else, didn't they Dave. They didn't just have the
car that they were looking at. They found elements out.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
They found burn residue. They found burn residue in the yard.
And this is what got my attention, Joe, because of
a couple of cases that we've done. I knew right away.
You know, in a number of places around this great nation,
we have burn piles in our yards and fields and
things like that.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Yeah, but a.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Burn pile is different than a burned area. You can
tell it my house where the burn pile is right
at this particular house, they called it burn residue. Yeah,
they could tell there had been a fire here. That
to me meant not a burn pit, burn pile, but
a fire took place in this spot, not a regular
(37:20):
burn place.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
I don't know if that's true or not. It just
struck me like that.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
It's the wording is odd in this particular case. It
sounds almost like it was randomized. But here's the thing
about it, Dave, is that when they begin to kind
of sift through this area, they do begin to turn up.
Now they've reached a point now in this investigation where
they have had to reach out to a forensic anthropologist.
(37:47):
So anytime anytime you do that at a scene, first off,
you're either recovering something that you don't know what you
are recovering okay as a cop, and generally what will happen.
You'll see something odd on the ground and it's one
of those moments. It's one of those moments, and I've
been part of them several times over my career. It's
(38:08):
one of those moments where you say freeze, red light,
and everybody freezes, and you say, I don't know what
this is. And generally you'll call one of your other
colleagues over there to look at it, and somebody will
look at you and say, I don't know what that is,
but dog on, that looks like bone. It could be
charred bone. We need to call the people at the university,
(38:28):
and generally, you know, forensic anthropologists. I think a lot
of people think that these people have some kind of
standalone office that are out there. You know, Hi, you
know forensic anthropologists here. It's not the way it works.
There's not enough yet, there's not as well there.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
I'm not Joe, you're I'm not kidding. I thought that
the police knowe. Hey, we got here's the guy closest.
It's a Sunday call Bill. He's up there in Jacksonville.
He can be there in fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
It's not like these guys are not They're all. Most
of them that you come across work at a university.
So they're teaching. They're teaching, they're doing research. That's where
you're going to find most of them. Every now and
then you might find an independent person that's out there
that have kind of gone out on their own. But
there's not enough work to, you know, for forensic anthropologists
(39:16):
to be able to do these things. Lots of times
you'll find them in museums. As a matter of fact,
two of the finest in the history of the US
forensic anthropologists worked at Smithsonian and so, and that's been
portrayed in movies and that sort of thing over the years.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
You have to go to those types of people to
get them to go out into the They're going to
go up in this guy's you backyard and sift through
his dirt pile or dirt.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Let me say something. Forensic anthropologists live for this stuff.
This is what they do. Trust me, it is they wait.
You know, it's kind of like the firefighter. They're reactive.
They're sitting there and they're waiting for the alarm to
go off. But you know, here's the thing you were
talking about. We're going to call Bill, they're on call
or whatever. You do not and I mean, you do
(40:01):
not want to be in this position and say who
can we call. So most of the time with police departments,
they will already have a relationship with these individuals, with
forensic anthropologists who are going to study bones or skeletal remains.
And then you're going to have a relationship with a
forensic odentologist who is a forensic dentist. And this is
(40:23):
not somebody where you can just go into the well.
I was about to say, go into the yellow pages
that don't exist anymore. But Google search these people and
they're just around the block. You have to have these relationships,
and even with forensic odentologists, which people might find. I
don't know, some people might find this kind of off putting,
if you will. I've worked with forensic odentologists. The forensic
(40:48):
dentist that worked two in particular that were mentors of
mine that worked at LSU Dental School School of Dentistry,
that were dental professors, but being an odentist was not
their full time gig. But you know, I worked with
a guy in Atlanta that was our odentologist with the
Medical Examiner in Atlanta. Well, he's a he's a private dentist.
(41:10):
He's digging people's mouths, cleaning their teeth and filling, doing
fillings and extractions and all that stuff. Oh and by
the bye, he's also doing forensic odentology where he would
go out and examine decomposing human remains and look at
the teeth and remove the jaws and do all these
sorts of things that those guys do. So they this
case actually involves two of these individuals because they found
(41:32):
they found what turned out to be bone chips in
the area adjacent to where what was that phraseology? You
burn site, A burn site, a burned site where you're
going to have these what I like to refer to
it as you're going to have these kind of deposits
of carbon and it'll be black most of the time,
(41:55):
and you'll see this this kind of scorched area. I
think my question is was this area dugout at all?
And if it was dug out, how deep did it go? I, miss,
I actually gave you the wrong phrase.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
Investigators saw burn residue on June twenty sixth Okay, right,
it was June thirtieth. That's when they came out there
with a medical examiner and other investigators. They revisit the
burn residue and they refer to it now as the
burn site burn site.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
And so what they're going to have if they have
burn residue, it's pretty clear you're probably going to have
what appears to be at least maybe charred wood, charred leaves.
There'll be evidence on the ground on the surface area
where something hot has count contacted that area to the
point where maybe you have grass that was underlying the
(42:45):
area that is now scorched. All right, But if you're
talking about particulated bone, which sounds like what we're dealing with,
like bone chips, Dave, it would take and I know
I've mentioned this before, but just hear me out. It
would take so much time, and time is what we're
(43:06):
dealing with here. It would take so much time to
render down a human remain to the point where you
could particulate it where you only have bone chips left.
I remind our friends that you know, with a crematorium,
which is an enclosed oven that has an ongoing natural
gas supply, in order to render down an average human body,
(43:31):
we're talking fourteen hundred to eighteen hundred degrees fahrenheit, and
that's sustained. That sustained. It's the difference between and this
is so grotesque, but it is truly the difference between
cooking cooking in an oven as opposed to holding something
over an open fire and cooking it. So you would
(43:52):
and what that means is that this would have been
a labor intensive event. If they're trying to render down
the body in that spot. And most of the time,
once you've rendered down a body, many people will go
to the next length, which will mean that they're going
to try to particulate the body. They're going to try
to break it down and diminish it as greatly as
it can. But I think they've the one saving grace here.
(44:16):
Going back to our friends in forensic identology, they recovered
a tooth, didn't they.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
Find a tooth? One tooth is all they're saying they found.
But they found a tooth.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
And based on that one tooth, they were able to
affect an identification of positive identification of crystal.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
And that's where we sit today.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
They've got a tremendous amount of physical evidence in this case.
I think that the tale is left to be told
as to whether or not Zachariah Roush is going to
be found guilty or not guilty. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
(44:57):
and this is body backs
Body Donors with Joseph Scott More. I just got back
from Great Britain. I spent most of the time that
I was over there in London, and the people over
there are just remarkably friendly. And here's why I know
(00:22):
I didn't have to do this, But on three separate
occasions I had total strangers walk up to me and
tell me to take my phone out of my back
pocket and put it inside of my jacket. And the
reason they told me that is that there were a
lot of pickpockets around and apparently this is a huge
(00:42):
thing in London, and I just didn't really think about
It's something that you don't think about here in America
that much, I guess maybe if you live in New York,
but certainly certainly not in Alabama. And I thought, how
horrible would that be to have your pocket picked and
then somebody use your credit cards to buy things that
(01:04):
they'd always wanted. Now, let's take that and think a
little bit about the case I'm going to tell you
about today. Imagine, if you will, your lady who is
estranged from your husband, hadn't been together in a while,
and then he kills you. He takes your credit cards
(01:32):
and goes out and purchases cleaning supplies with them to
clean up the mess that he created from your homicide.
That's what we're dealing with today in the case of
Crystal Rash. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body Bags.
(01:57):
Brother Dave. You ever had your pocket picked?
Speaker 2 (01:59):
You were talking about that. I thought, what a nice
group of people, because we haven't been you and I,
Joe and I live very near one another geographically speaking,
although both of us are used to being in much
bigger cities, and it's one of the things that when
you were first talking about, I thought, what a kind
thing to tell you. Except I remember being in the
(02:20):
city and I never put anything in my back pocket
in the city. I always put in my suit coat
or in my front pocket. Yeah, basic things of life
in a big city. So you're in London.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Yeah. I hope my son doesn't hear this, because every
time he goes out somewhere, tell him to put his
wallet in his front pocket, and that's your standard practice.
And he's going to hear this now because now it's
for the whole world, right, and he's going to chastise
me about it because I've been preaching to him, but
it's longer we get sorry.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
I thought that was an amazing thing that somebody would
take the time to share that with you, whether they're
you know, in that big city all the time or
not recognizing. Hey, do they call us Yanks?
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yeah, you don't hear that term very much, primarily Americans,
and they don't say it with a sneer, contrary with
some people might think everybody is just look, everywhere has
got jerks. Okay, it doesn't matter where you are. You'd
be the smallest town in the south, and you think
you're going to run into totally hospitable people and you'll
(03:19):
run into a jerk. They're everywhere. But on the whole,
I've I have yet to have a bad experience. I've
been going to London Oil England for ten years, almost
ten years. People will bend over backwards to help you
if you're lost, and it's very easy to get lost
in London because it's so massive. But yeah, it was
completely enjoyable. But you know, interestingly enough, Kim and I
(03:42):
while we were over there, we went into one of
the oldest, oldest pubs still operational in London and there
was a sign when we walk when we walked in
next to a Guinness beer ad, an old Guinness beer ad.
They had a sign adjacent to it and says take
care there are thieves about and wow, that's kind of chilling,
(04:06):
you know. And there was more than one sign like
that in the same specific of course, where this pub,
where this pub is Dave is actually located in Whitechapel
where Jack the Ripper did perpetrated all of his cases.
So I don't know, maybe there's a.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Maybe that's why maybe they're saying there, I don't know,
nefarious behavior. I will tell you the way that you
brought it in there of in this day and age,
when somebody does get a hold of your credit cards,
debit cards, they can trash you pretty quick, you know.
I actually was at I was in a college town
and had to stop and get gas and needed some
(04:43):
cash for where I was going, So I went and
used to tell her at a convenience store, and two
hours later, I get a buzz on my phone from
my bank because there's somebody six hundred miles away trying
to buy groceries and they're like, there's it's impossib this
doesn't make sense. And I was able to stop the
account shut everything down. I got hacked at that college
(05:05):
town convenience store with my teller machine, so people can
tell you quickly. And I'm glad you brought that up,
because it wasn't a stranger danger that got her and
the money. It was somebody that she had shared a
life with. And police found out that Crystal Rash and
her husband, Zachariah Rosh, they did have separate bank accounts
(05:28):
and they did not plunder each other's accounts. They were separate,
and they were kept separate that neither one had permission
from the other, even in their married life, for going
into that account. And when the police are talking with
Zachariah Rosh, that became an important part of this case
because Crystal Rush went missing and they weren't even exactly
(05:51):
sure when she vanished. How many times have we had
that on this show, Joe, where we have a story
about somebody who vanishes and the closest person and to
them doesn't bother to report them missing. Ever, it was
her husband didn't. He's the last person known to be
with her. He does a reporter missing her stepmother does.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Yeah, so we're talking, we're talking literally, I think twelve
days down range from when she was last seen. We
have to back up and say that she was last
seen or known to be alive, back on June the eleventh.
She was not reported missing until June twenty third, So
(06:33):
there's this big delay. And as we have talked about
on body bags beforehand, the longer we moved down that timeline,
the more things get diminished. As a matter of fact,
not only do things get diminished by time and where
and all those sorts of things that we look at
(06:54):
as these kind of outside factors in cases, but also
get diminished by further and nefarious activity. So if you've
got this huge gap of Tom Dave and you have
a suspect that still has control over, say, for instance,
a human remain, then it's during that period of time
(07:16):
this individual can do just about anything that they want
to do with a victim's body. And in this particular case,
there are some pretty ghastly things that have happened here,
my friend.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Let me ask you this, Joe, because yeah, you mentioned
June eleventh, that's our starting point. That's the last time
anyone remembers seeing Crystal Rush. And actually the proof is
in the pudding. She was Crystal Rosh was seen at
a thrift store with Zachariah Rosh, her husband. Now granted
he is estranged, Okay, she has filed for divorce. They
(07:50):
are not living together as husband and wife. They're in
the process of a divorce that was instigated by Crystal.
But they are seen together on surveillance cameras in the
store shopping together on June eleventh. But what gets this
whole ball rolling is that's the last time. Because as
the days go on and she doesn't have a lot
(08:12):
of contact with people, and finally her stepmother sees her car.
Her stepmother sees Crystal's car and realizes she hasn't talked
to her, not getting return calls or return message. I mean,
these little things start piling up. But when friends started
getting messages from Crystal, the messages didn't ring true. And
(08:39):
so as police get notified on the twenty third by
Crystal's stepmother can't get her. Her car's over here, I
don't know where she is. Would you do a quick
check on this for me? The police are already almost
two weeks behind the eight ball. Yeah, So they start
digging through everything and that's what led them to bringing
(08:59):
in Zachariah Raj. They wanted to know why were you shopping,
why were you buying cleaning supplies? And why are you
using Crystal's bank card? You know, that's that doesn't seem
to be the proper thing for an estranged husband to do.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
No, it doesn't. And here here's kind of an interesting
little tidbit here. If you want to kind of get
an inside peek at all this, Dave, you look back,
you know, retrospectively. I think you know, kind of conducting
this retroactive investigation where they're going back.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Is that normal?
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Really? Yeah? Yeah, it is. You have to. You have
to go back as far as you can. Because listen,
if if you're working a case that you suspect is
missing or is a homicide or both, you have to
I think in all of our minds, we began to
think about, well, what is it that connects what previous
(09:56):
events connect the victim and disappearance in their death, And
so you have to go back in that anti mortem
state and try to build that out. And sometimes it's
a daunting task, but you know, it's less daunting when
you have numbers, Dave. And here here's something a little
tidbit for all our friends. When they did a search
(10:17):
of Crystal's financial records. What really kind of stood out
is that on June the third, she had a balance
in her bank account of over nine thousand dollars. You
jump all the way forward to June twenty fourth, that's
down to twenty nine hundred dollars. Now, listen, you know,
(10:38):
you could say, well, you know, she got paid. You know,
you get paid the first of the month, and you know,
when you've got more going out than you've got coming
in and you're paying bills and whatnot, Yeah, you would
expect there to be a diminishment at funds. But that's
a pretty striking amount. So over that five dollars, Yeah
and yeah, yeah, precisely, man, So how do you account
(11:01):
for that? And the thing about it is nowadays, if
you're using a card which is easily tracked, if you're
talking about a debit card, for instance, and you're going
in and you're swiping this thing for every time. You know,
we talk a lot about cell phones, don't we, Dave,
and we forget what gets caught, It gets left in
the dust. Here is that for a long long time,
(11:21):
we've been able to track people with their financial records.
You know, you go and you utilize a debit card somewhere. Well,
every time you do a strike on one of those cards,
that literally pinpoints the location where it puts you. You
know that card is going to be in hand. Somebody
has to actually utilize that card in order to make
this happen. Now, I guess you know, you could say
(11:43):
that you know, well, maybe they were online purchases and
things like that, but still those things are trackable, and
this is I think, moving forward with this case, I
think this is going to be damning, damning information because
Dave is always been said, and I don't know that
(12:03):
it necessarily rings true, but it does. Sometimes money is
the root of all evil. Well, you know, Dave, I
(12:26):
don't know that you know that that's necessarily a true
statement that I just made. People have quoted that for
years and years. Money is the root of all evil.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
The love of money.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
It is the love of money. But there's also something
else that comes along with us. And I've said many
times that most of us are at more are at
more peril uh at the hands of the person that
we're in bed with, than we are on some stranger
and sometimes that you know, things come about anger jealousy, possessiveness,
(12:59):
you know, all those things that come around, and I
would argue, I could argue the point that they those
things rival and their ferocity probably even more than the
love of money that would drive and you know the
fact that you're stealing from a dead person after the fact,
which is you know, it's really grimmy, isn't it. You
know when you think about it, insult to injury, that
(13:22):
sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
I was going to ask you about the when police
are tracking this and they're going to start with, Okay,
we got the phone call on the twenty third, don't
We don't know where she is. And so as they
start looking back, they're going to try to find the
last time they can identify Crystal Zara Rosh being somewhere.
And so once they can identify it, we know she
(13:43):
was here, do they start going from like Juna love
now and saying, okay, where was she on the twelfth,
let's find out? Yeah, And then they hit that part
where now we don't know we know that this is
absolutely last day. Okay, Now they look at in this case,
you mentioned the bank statements and you and see where
they started and how it ended. Yet we don't have
(14:05):
any proof of life after June eleventh, and a lot
of expendors do they then break down what was he
buying and was he with anyone? Because there's surveillance video
at these places, right.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Oh yeah, there are. And that's the other thing. There's
three big components here to this case from a forensics perspective.
First off, you've got the financials, which I think is
standing alone. They're damning. And then you know we had
mentioned the text or you did specifically these text messages.
How many cases have we covered over the year's day
(14:39):
where we've got somebody that will get their hands on
somebody's mobile device and start to pretend that it's they're acting.
They're acting as the decedent, you know, trying to play
the game out if you will put people off sin.
So you're going to have digital records as far as
phone records go. And then on top of that, I
(14:59):
think that what's crucial here are going to be these
CCTV records as well. Boy, you've got individuals that are
coming in and out, and you marry that up with
the financial statements where you're going in to purchase things,
and then you've got CCTV of them actually purchasing things. Boys,
that's a that is a huge amount of evidence to
present the accused with by the police.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
You know, I was thinking about the CCTV cameras because
when you were in London, you know, at Crime Con London.
For those of you don't know, there's a show on
body bags, you know that Joe did with an incredible
it was blood spatter and everything else. It was just
really brilliant and Joe Millington, her voice is so soothing,
(15:43):
it's like a grand Yeah. I just wanted to tell her, like, hey,
what do you want me to admit to because I mean,
I'll do it. Just to hear her talk. It was amazing.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Yeah, I found myself it's the old Mike Myers thing
from Coffee Talk on SNL who said it's like but
uh you know, and so yeah, that's that's the way
Joe's voice is.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
But I thought about that with London and all the
CCTV cameras there.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
And they are everywhere.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
But Europe is a different place than the United States.
You know, everything's closer together and here in the United
States we're spread out a little bit, so we don't
have necessarily cameras on every street corner. But in every
place you're going to use a card pretty much under
surveillance because it's so cheap. Now, so you've got that.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Yeah, you've got card. Well, let's just say you go
to an ATM. Well, there's videography with that, uh and
and then you know, and they're all over banks and
then some ATM machines actually have uh, you know, CCTV
contained therein so you can see it. And there's been cases,
you know, where you've got a perpetrator using a card,
you got a clear shot of their face and you
(16:52):
know with you were comparing you know how it is
in London where you've got cameras everywhere, and you look
at the coburger k where they're just they're trying to
scrape together anything that can of the of the white Sedan,
remember that, you know, passing by stores. They did the
twenty mile loop. And in our case with Crystal, you know,
(17:14):
the thing that is going to be so damning with
this is that you've got multiple points of contact. And
that's one of the things that we look for in forensics.
We try to take as much of the data, whether
you know, we're talking about forensic toxicology we're talking about
DNA or we're talking about electronic are in financial data,
(17:35):
and we're trying to connect the dots and see if
there's any overlay with a lot of these things, you know,
kind of any kind of connectivity between these and they're
going to have a lot of this, I think. And
if you want to take it to another level, some
of the items that Zachary Rash was purchasing, we're talking about.
(17:58):
Now hold on to your head. Where's talking about cleaning
supplies and and drum roll sulfuric acid and so get that.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Is there any ration forgetting cleaning supplies and acid?
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Yeah, So when you begin to think about the nature
of sulfuric acid, it's obviously it's it's highly highly caustic,
so it will burn you, it will clean. It's used
to clean surfaces many times. And I'll tell you one
(18:35):
of the one of the utilities that it has actually
is you can take it, for instance, like if you
have a car port, right and you've got oil stains
that are on the car port, you can actually take
this stuff and apply it directly directly to that surface
in order to get to get those stains off of
(18:58):
those surfaces and it will you know, it'll be used.
It has multiple uses, you know in industry, everything from
explosives to making a paint to just tons and tons
of things. But you know, you have to think about, well,
what would have been his purpose for wanting sulphuric acid?
(19:19):
Because this is, in fact an industrial They just latch
on these words industrial cleaning agent. So it's it's so
caustic that you could actually take it, and I think
that a lot of people believe that you can take
it and you can actually render down a body with it.
Well maybe you can remove stains with it and those
(19:41):
sorts of things. So it's very very dangerous.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
I'm thinking you're getting an industrial cleaner. What did you
eat that has to be cleaned with the uric acid?
That doesn't make any sense at all. Now what we
have here is we got some facts. We've got money
being spent by you, mister Rash, which, by the way,
(20:05):
we're charging you now with spending your wife's money without
her permission. That's we don't know where she is, but
we know you spent money that you've already told us
you don't. Because that was during their interview. They brought
him in and said you know, you were spending her
money in her card and we can't find her. Did
you have permission to use her card while she's gone?
(20:26):
And he's like, no, we don't do that, and you
realize that's against the law, right, and so they charged him.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Yeah, and that's and I'm glad you brought that updated.
That's that's a salient point because if you if you have,
if you suspect somebody, and we see this played out
over and over in crimes, and I urge anybody that
follows your crime you look for for these individuals that
where the police are looking to charge them with something
(20:57):
more specific, probably more horrific, and they will on secondary
charges to hang on them just so that they can
hold them on this. But you know the fact that
this was a theft of thousands of dollars. First off,
This just the theft alone puts it into the felonious category.
So you're talking about a felony that you're being charged
(21:17):
with in most states. You know, you look at the
way it has been in the past, if you if
you steal something of value or like an item, or
if you steal steal moneies, and it's over four hundred
ninety nine dollars point ninety nine cents. That's that's a
felony count. And so every time, every time you go
(21:40):
and you withdraw, say for instance, something above that above
that level, these would be individual counts that you could
credit them with and hold them there. And so you
can present us to a magistrate and say, look, you know,
look sir, we've got we've got this individual we're charging.
He's gotten moremultipley felony offenses that were charging him with.
(22:03):
We didn't make sure he doesn't get out of jail.
And all the while, in the background, the police are
working the case of Crystal, who to this point is missing.
You have no idea what's happened to her, but what
you do know is that she's being robbed and the
individual that robbed her has gone out and purchased items
(22:26):
that would be consistent with trying to eradicate any kind
of evidence, either of the body or the spilling of blood.
And I think that those you know, you couple all
of that together. They had to hold this guy, Dave.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
You know, I was thinking about other crimes we've covered
where police ended up charging suspects with other crimes trying
to put them on ice a little bit, Yeah, to
get to the bottom of it. And what came to
mind was Haley Cummings, the little girl who went missing
in the middle of the night when he seventeen year
old babies that are watching her and her dad and
(23:02):
the babysitter of getting married. And anyway, they had them
charged with a couple of different crimes along the way,
and it was a substantial amount of time. All the while,
I thought the charges seemed to be get pushed a
little bit to keep them in jail, separated, to get
them to talk about what happened to Haley, you know,
and that never happened. We still don't know what happened
to Haley Cummings. But in this case, we've got a
(23:23):
guy who has, by his own admission, admitted to a
crime of using his wife's money, her card, her account
that he wasn't entitled to because he told them, no,
we don't she's not allowed to use mind, I'm not
supposed to use hers. So there you go. We're going
to lock up for this one. Think about that for
a little while.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Yeah, And the motivation behind this is to make sure
that you're keeping them off the streets because Okay, let's
just say we've already got this gap of tom where
Crystal's been missing, right right, I mean we viral on admission.
We talked about this in the first segment of our program,
where she has been and load these many days, and
Lord only knows what has become of her remains at
(24:05):
this point in time. Well, let's just say you get
this individual incarcerated, you don't hold them, or you decide
not to affect an arrest on him early on, where
you're just giving him more time because if he knows
where she's at, he can continue to do whatever it
is that he's doing with cleaning supplies. And so you know,
(24:29):
the more time you have where he's out walking the streets,
the colder and colder this case becomes. And that's always
a problem. But you know what, I think the police
happened upon something that would make even the strongest among
us shudder in horror. Well, Dave, I want to throw
(25:05):
a list out to you, brother and kind of get
your reaction to this. All right, So you're a cop, right,
you're a detective, and you get your hands on a
suspect's phone and you begin to break this thing down
to check out what kind of searches they've been doing
on the phone. It just bear with me now and
(25:25):
listen to this list that I'm going to give to you.
You've got on here May twenty eighth, you've got searches
relative to gunshot onounes to the chest versus the head.
All right, If that's not chilling enough, you get to
(25:46):
June eleventh, and you've got a Google search for well
a nine millimeter kill an animal if shot to the head,
and then on June the twelfth, search for carpet cleaner.
He jumped to the twenty third. Hey, here's a question
that's been posed in a search engine. Can police get
(26:08):
search warrants on Sunday? And Wisconsin? Kind of od? On
the twenty fourth of June, search queries included sulfuric acid,
including is sulphuric acid flammable? And let's finish it off
with this one June twenty fifth, the subject who you
(26:33):
now have the possession of his phone, Dave, Wisconsin, missing
person alert that was searched out. So you take that
in its totality. If you're an investigator, do you start
having that little bell go off in your brain? You
know that look we might be onto something here, you know,
I gotta tell you proofs into pudding man.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
When he looked up on June twenty third, we know
that that was the day that Crystal raw stepmother called
police and asked them to do a welfare check because
she hadn't seen her, and she had seen Crystal's car,
but no sign of Crystal. So June twenty third police
(27:16):
do a welfare check, and it's on that date that
he searches. Can police get search warrants on a Sunday
in Wisconsin? Well, June twenty third is a Sunday, So
the very day stepmom reports Crystal missing is the same
day her husband as strange though he may be actually searches.
Can they get it? Do I have basically, hey, do
(27:36):
I have time to clean up anything else before they
show up? By the way, I think police can get
a search warrant whenever a judge will sign.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
It any day, and there's always a magistrate standing boss
expressly for this purpose. And generally folks might know this,
Folks might not know this. There will be what the
way this happens? When you go to get a search warrant,
there's generally a junior assistant disc attorney that's on call.
(28:07):
So the way this works is you under their direction.
Because warrants have to be very specific, you can't just
can you tell us, explain that a little bit, Joe.
A lot of people don't know it.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Until I started actually covering a lot of crime, I
didn't realize what they I thought they could just say,
I think Joe Scott Morgan has X y Z in
his house and this is why I think it, and
the judge goes, okay, and that's not it at all.
They actually have to do some very specific crafting of
the case. The search warrant alone will tell you what
police already know.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Yeah, what they already know. It's a big revealed. The
old adage, you know, a wide net catches a lot
of fish, does not apply to a warrant. You have
to be very specific as to what you want, so
you can't just say, uh, and that's where our own
constitutional protections. You want it, I want to trust me,
you want it. You don't want somebody to say, Okay,
(29:02):
I'm writing up a search warrant for Dave max home
and we're showing up with this piece of paper. Let
us in. We're going to search your entire house. Like
you know, they can't go in pulling the walls apart
and digging into what they refer to as hidden spaces
if they're not specifically enumerated in that search warrant. You
have to say where you're going to look and what
(29:22):
you're looking for. So he has an awareness at least
that they're on to him, I think at least. And
so if you've back to what I was saying, if
you've got like a junior district attorney that's on call,
they will be on call. The police can go to
that individual and say, here, take your fantasy law degree,
(29:43):
look at this warrant that we've written up, and make
sure that it passes muster. Because once they take it
from them, they're going to take it to the judge,
last magistrate. They're going to look at it and they
will go over it and they'll say this needs to
be corrected, this needs to be need you to expand
on this, whatever the case might be, and you have
to go back, you might have to do a rewrite
(30:04):
on it. It's like it's almost like English class, only
there's a lot more at stake here. Okay, So you know,
once you get that warrant. You go in there and
you begin to search. But here's something that's really chilling, Dave,
when you begin to match these dates up. Remember what
we said, the last time Crystal was known to be
(30:28):
alive was back on jun the eleventh. Well that search,
the search for Junior eleventh, that's enumerated here. Now, if
this doesn't send a chill up and down your spine,
will a nine millimeter kill an animal if shot in
the head? Okay, that was searched the same date that
(30:51):
she was last known to be alive, you'd jump ahead
to the twelfth, and this even gives it more of
a chill. He's looking for carpet clean at that point
in Tom. So, if we're you know, if we're kind
of broadly looking at this thing trying to determine, well,
what the heck has happened here, you know, it would
lead us to believe at least that she was shot,
(31:12):
and then she was shot on a carpeted surface. Now
you think about, well, what links are you going to
have to go to to clean this mess up? Because
you know, we we have the luxury as forensics people.
We go into an environment that's kind of frozen in
tom for us. Once we've gotten everybody out of let's
say it's a standing structure like a home. Once we've
(31:35):
gotten that person out of that environment, we lock this
thing down and it's frozen. They're not going to get
back access to it. And dude, we're you know, whereas
you have somebody that flies into a fit of rage
to pull out a gun, in this case, it doesn't
it sound like flying into a fit of rage. It
sounds a bit planned to me. But in any case,
you shoot them. Well, you know, when you shoot somebody
(31:57):
like this, if you're one of these people that does this,
you don't count on the volume of blood you're going
to have. You don't count on the mess that you're
going to have. So suddenly, this individual, if he is
the person that did this, he's looking at a body.
They're at his feet and he's got this gigantic mess
(32:17):
that he's got to clean up and to boot. It's
on a carpeted surface, which makes it even more difficult.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
When looking at the dates. June eleventh, there at the
goodwill store together, seen on video together, and then after
that she's not seen again, but he is seen spending
her money. That's what landed him in jail. By the way,
he was in jail a week after she is reported missing.
She's reported missing on June twenty third, or well, that's
when they actually started looking for her, and a week
(32:47):
later her husband. They've already zeroed in on him. We've
always said they always look at the closest person to
the individual, and they lock him up on the financial
crimes using the card he wasn't entitled to and then
buying these cleaning supplies, if acid and whatnot. So it's
months later you know they're investigating. And it's interesting because
once they had him in the clink, they were able.
(33:10):
They went ahead and got a search one for the
house June twenty sixth, and there were two different trips
out to the property Joe, separated by a couple of days.
The first day they get on the property, they find
a number of cars. One in particular catches their attention.
It's a twenty twenty three Mitsubishi that I'm a little
(33:30):
confused on some of the titling here, but it was
known to be Crystal's car, and it was parked on
the property in such a way that if you were
driving by the property, you wouldn't see it.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
It's obscured from the road.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Yeah, that's kind of a hint to police. Look at
this car. Yeah, the floor in the middle of the
parking lot is not going to be their main attention.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Well, let me tell you how seriously they took it.
They loaded this car up and flatbeded it, and so
they've gone back. They've taken this car to the Wisconsin
State Police Lab where they have a forensics garage. And
so when we can take a car into a garage
like this, we have everything at our disposal, everything from
(34:18):
alternative light sources which you're talking about, like infrared, these
sorts of things where we've got these different spectrums of
light where we can analyze things, because you know, just
a regular household lighting situation is not the most ideal environment.
Certainly flashlights aren't to pick up on little nuances. You
use the light source that you have and certain things
(34:41):
will rise to the top. You might even have to
wear special glasses to look through in order to facilitate
this analysis. If you're using if you're using certain types
of light sources that we utilize in crime seene investments.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Is kind of the stuff we see on TV.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
Then yeah. You see it and they make it and
it's very dramatic, you know, Yeah, And I got to
tell you it's very boring and it's tedious.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
When you're going to til you see something explode on
the screen.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Yeah. Yeah, at that moment time, it's almost you know,
it's almost a Eureka moment, but part of you is
kind of expecting to see it, and so when you
find it, you try to remain as political and detached
as you can because you have to document this very,
very thoroughly while you have that car. And also, here's
the other thing. If you get that car in there
and you've got evidence that some type of trauma has
(35:26):
taken place in there on any level, you have to
make the decision, Well, am I going to cut this
piece of carpet out? Am I going to take the
headliner out? Am I going to take the entire seat? Dave.
I've been in courtrooms where it seems like, piece by
piece they brought an entire car into a courtroom. Of
course I'm going over the top of that, but every
internal element of the car, in the cab of the
(35:49):
car has been brought in, steering wheels, gear levers, dashboards, seats, headliners, carpeting, everything,
and so after it's been tested, you know, you try
to determine first off, what is it. If you're looking
for blood, you don't know that that's blood when you
see it. Okay, if it's blood, is it human blood
(36:10):
or animal blood? If it's human blood, then what type
of blood is it? As far as blood typing? And
then DNA wise, you go back and you try to
determine if this blood belongs to the individual. It might
be missing, and so you but you want that car
in an environment where you can really go through it
with a fine tooth comb. But you know, they had
(36:32):
something else, didn't they Dave. They didn't just have the
car that they were looking at. They found elements out.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
They found burn residue. They found burn residue in the yard.
And this is what got my attention, Joe, because of
a couple of cases that we've done. I knew right away.
You know, in a number of places around this great nation,
we have burn piles in our yards and fields and
things like that.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Yeah, but a.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Burn pile is different than a burned area. You can
tell it my house where the burn pile is right
at this particular house, they called it burn residue. Yeah,
they could tell there had been a fire here. That
to me meant not a burn pit, burn pile, but
a fire took place in this spot, not a regular
(37:20):
burn place.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
I don't know if that's true or not. It just
struck me like that.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
It's the wording is odd in this particular case. It
sounds almost like it was randomized. But here's the thing
about it, Dave, is that when they begin to kind
of sift through this area, they do begin to turn up.
Now they've reached a point now in this investigation where
they have had to reach out to a forensic anthropologist.
(37:47):
So anytime anytime you do that at a scene, first off,
you're either recovering something that you don't know what you
are recovering okay as a cop, and generally what will happen.
You'll see something odd on the ground and it's one
of those moments. It's one of those moments, and I've
been part of them several times over my career. It's
(38:08):
one of those moments where you say freeze, red light,
and everybody freezes, and you say, I don't know what
this is. And generally you'll call one of your other
colleagues over there to look at it, and somebody will
look at you and say, I don't know what that is,
but dog on, that looks like bone. It could be
charred bone. We need to call the people at the university,
(38:28):
and generally, you know, forensic anthropologists. I think a lot
of people think that these people have some kind of
standalone office that are out there. You know, Hi, you
know forensic anthropologists here. It's not the way it works.
There's not enough yet, there's not as well there.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
I'm not Joe, you're I'm not kidding. I thought that
the police knowe. Hey, we got here's the guy closest.
It's a Sunday call Bill. He's up there in Jacksonville.
He can be there in fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
It's not like these guys are not They're all. Most
of them that you come across work at a university.
So they're teaching. They're teaching, they're doing research. That's where
you're going to find most of them. Every now and
then you might find an independent person that's out there
that have kind of gone out on their own. But
there's not enough work to, you know, for forensic anthropologists
(39:16):
to be able to do these things. Lots of times
you'll find them in museums. As a matter of fact,
two of the finest in the history of the US
forensic anthropologists worked at Smithsonian and so, and that's been
portrayed in movies and that sort of thing over the years.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
You have to go to those types of people to
get them to go out into the They're going to
go up in this guy's you backyard and sift through
his dirt pile or dirt.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Let me say something. Forensic anthropologists live for this stuff.
This is what they do. Trust me, it is they wait.
You know, it's kind of like the firefighter. They're reactive.
They're sitting there and they're waiting for the alarm to
go off. But you know, here's the thing you were
talking about. We're going to call Bill, they're on call
or whatever. You do not and I mean, you do
(40:01):
not want to be in this position and say who
can we call. So most of the time with police departments,
they will already have a relationship with these individuals, with
forensic anthropologists who are going to study bones or skeletal remains.
And then you're going to have a relationship with a
forensic odentologist who is a forensic dentist. And this is
(40:23):
not somebody where you can just go into the well.
I was about to say, go into the yellow pages
that don't exist anymore. But Google search these people and
they're just around the block. You have to have these relationships,
and even with forensic odentologists, which people might find. I
don't know, some people might find this kind of off putting,
if you will. I've worked with forensic odentologists. The forensic
(40:48):
dentist that worked two in particular that were mentors of
mine that worked at LSU Dental School School of Dentistry,
that were dental professors, but being an odentist was not
their full time gig. But you know, I worked with
a guy in Atlanta that was our odentologist with the
Medical Examiner in Atlanta. Well, he's a he's a private dentist.
(41:10):
He's digging people's mouths, cleaning their teeth and filling, doing
fillings and extractions and all that stuff. Oh and by
the bye, he's also doing forensic odentology where he would
go out and examine decomposing human remains and look at
the teeth and remove the jaws and do all these
sorts of things that those guys do. So they this
case actually involves two of these individuals because they found
(41:32):
they found what turned out to be bone chips in
the area adjacent to where what was that phraseology? You
burn site, A burn site, a burned site where you're
going to have these what I like to refer to
it as you're going to have these kind of deposits
of carbon and it'll be black most of the time,
(41:55):
and you'll see this this kind of scorched area. I
think my question is was this area dugout at all?
And if it was dug out, how deep did it go? I, miss,
I actually gave you the wrong phrase.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
Investigators saw burn residue on June twenty sixth Okay, right,
it was June thirtieth. That's when they came out there
with a medical examiner and other investigators. They revisit the
burn residue and they refer to it now as the
burn site burn site.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
And so what they're going to have if they have
burn residue, it's pretty clear you're probably going to have
what appears to be at least maybe charred wood, charred leaves.
There'll be evidence on the ground on the surface area
where something hot has count contacted that area to the
point where maybe you have grass that was underlying the
(42:45):
area that is now scorched. All right, But if you're
talking about particulated bone, which sounds like what we're dealing with,
like bone chips, Dave, it would take and I know
I've mentioned this before, but just hear me out. It
would take so much time, and time is what we're
(43:06):
dealing with here. It would take so much time to
render down a human remain to the point where you
could particulate it where you only have bone chips left.
I remind our friends that you know, with a crematorium,
which is an enclosed oven that has an ongoing natural
gas supply, in order to render down an average human body,
(43:31):
we're talking fourteen hundred to eighteen hundred degrees fahrenheit, and
that's sustained. That sustained. It's the difference between and this
is so grotesque, but it is truly the difference between
cooking cooking in an oven as opposed to holding something
over an open fire and cooking it. So you would
(43:52):
and what that means is that this would have been
a labor intensive event. If they're trying to render down
the body in that spot. And most of the time,
once you've rendered down a body, many people will go
to the next length, which will mean that they're going
to try to particulate the body. They're going to try
to break it down and diminish it as greatly as
it can. But I think they've the one saving grace here.
(44:16):
Going back to our friends in forensic identology, they recovered
a tooth, didn't they.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
Find a tooth? One tooth is all they're saying they found.
But they found a tooth.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
And based on that one tooth, they were able to
affect an identification of positive identification of crystal.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
And that's where we sit today.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
They've got a tremendous amount of physical evidence in this case.
I think that the tale is left to be told
as to whether or not Zachariah Roush is going to
be found guilty or not guilty. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
(44:57):
and this is body backs
Host
Nancy Grace
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