Mayhem in the Morgue | First Day

Start listening to Mayhem in the Morgue on all podcast platforms: https://link.podtrac.com/7lg1trlt

Welcome to the debut episode of Mayhem in the Morgue — an unfiltered, insightful look into the world of forensic pathology, hosted by veteran medical examiner Dr. Kendall Crowns. With more than 35 years of experience in death investigation, Dr. Crowns brings a unique perspective shaped by countless real-world cases.

In this premiere episode, Dr. Crowns rewinds to his very first day on a forensic pathology rotation during medical school, when a potential homicide call spiraled into something far more bizarre: a fatal case of autoerotic asphyxia. What followed was a crash course in death, dignity, and the unpredictable mechanics of a Wiffle ball bat. It’s chaotic, educational, and a vivid example of just how strange real life — and death — can be.

 

Highlights:

● (0:00) Welcome to Mayhem in the Morgue

● (0:30) First day on the job — and straight into the deep end

● (2:00) A supposed homicide takes a wildly unexpected turn

● (4:30) “Cut him down, Kendall”: initiation by rope

● (5:30) Rookie mistakes and awkward landings

● (6:45) Lessons you never forget

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About the Host: Dr. Kendall Crowns

Dr. Kendall Crowns is a nationally recognized forensic pathologist and a frequent contributor to Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. His career has taken him from tornado-ravaged Kansas, to the blood-streaked banks of the Mississippi, gang-torn Chicago, and the meth-fueled madness of Texas. With thousands of autopsies under his belt, he brings unparalleled insight into the strange, grisly, and sometimes absurd world of death investigation.

About the Show Mayhem in the Morgue takes listeners deep into the bloody, bizarre, and often unbelievable realities of forensic pathology. Each week, Dr. Crowns shares gritty stories from the morgue, the crime scene, and the courtroom. Expect gallows humor, hard truths, and cases that range from unsettling to unforgettable — think decomposing feet with no bodies, courtroom bombshells, and the kinds of deaths that even seasoned pathologists can’t quite explain. If you think you’ve heard it all… you haven’t.

Connect & Learn More

You can learn more about Dr. Kendall Crowns on LinkedIn, catch him regularly on Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, and be sure to follow Mayhem in the Morgue wherever you get your podcasts.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi guys, Nancy Grace here and right now, I want
to introduce you to a podcast you're going to love.
May Him in the Morgue with our friend and colleague,
doctor Kendall Crown's chief medical Examiner Terrant County. That's Fort Worth, Texas.
Never a lack of business in that morgue. He is

(00:20):
the esteemed lecturer in the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU,
with literally thousands of death investigations under his belt. He
has spent a career reading silent evidence left on the body,
from blunt force trauma to the smallest trace that points

(00:43):
investigators in the right direction. Crowns explains how the morgue
holds answers to crimes no one else can decipher. Follow
Mayhem in the Morgue. You can find it wherever you
get your podcasts, and now here is our friend, doctor
Kendall Crowns.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Welcome to Mayhem Anymore with your host, Doctor Kindle Crown.
So today's episode is first day. So everybody has first days, right,
We all have a first day of work, first day
of school, et cetera, et cetera. So today I'm going

(01:26):
to talk about one of my first days in my career.
So I was on my last rotation medical school. I
was one month away from graduating, and the rotation I
had chosen to take was in forensic pathology, which was
what I wanted to do as a career. And I
arrived at the medical Examiner's office, walked through the front doors,
and I was met by the entire staff, the medical examiners,
the death investigators, the clerks, everybody. They gave me a

(01:49):
little cubicle in the death investigator's office where I could
put all my stuff. So I set up and I
got ready for my day. About midday, a call came
in and it was possible homicide. The cheap and death
investigator Bill says to me, Hey, let's check this one out.
You're coming with me. I was super excited. I get
to go to a homicide scene on my very first

(02:10):
day of my medical school rotation. This is super cool.
So we head out and we go to this apartment
complex for the death that occurred. So this rotation was
in my hometown. I had grown up there and lived
there for close to twenty eight years, so this was
their apartment complex. I had driven past hundreds of times
over the years, just kind of nondescript. It was on
this way to an old arcade I used to go
to play video games and playpool at when I was

(02:31):
in high school and college. So we get there and
the homicide detective's already been there and they were waiting
for us. They were waiting in the dead guy's kitchen.
And so when we walk in, they're sitting in the
kitchen and they've made sandwiches from the dead guy's refrigerator
and they're sitting there eating them. And they said to Bill,
They go, hey, Bill, is it an homicide. This is
some stupid pervert. Go check him out. And so we
head on down the hallway to the dead guy's room

(02:53):
and when we get in there, there's pouring all over
the bed. Now, this is the day, is before the internet,
so it's paper porn. Nothing on the computer, no cell
phones back then, just paper porn. Dead guy's in his
closet and he's hanged. So at this point I had
read about hangings before this day. Hangings are usually, you know,
guy hag from a ceiling. He can be suspended, he
can be sitting down, it can be a number of things,
but he's just kind of hanged. But this one was different,

(03:16):
So how is it different. So he's hanged with a
white nylon rope. It's about his neck, tied with a
hangman's noose with thirteen coils. But then he's also completely naked.
He has clothes pins on his nipples and a whiffleball
bat jammed up his butt. He's leaning against this large
blue plastic barrel. Also, the rope itself had an intricate

(03:36):
mechanism associated with it. The rope went up to the
ceiling through an islet, then over a beam that then
went to another islet that was attached to the wall
that then attached to the side of the barrel that
he was sitting against. The piece attached to the barrel
had kind of an intricate failsafe mechanism or a tripwire
mechanism that was attached to the side of the barrel,
so essentially it was an escape mechanism. One thing to

(03:59):
know also is the beam itself had multiple grooves on
it from the rope, so he had done this a
number of times before and been successful. His fail safe
mechanism was if he passed out, he'd fall off the barrel,
it would trip the fail safe and cause the roupe
to become loose and completely fall off, causing the tension
to be released from the dead guy's neck and his

(04:21):
blood flow and his oxygen would be restored and he
wouldn't die. But on this day, instead of falling off
the barrel, he kind of leaned back onto the barrel,
so the fail safe never fired and he died. He
didn't expect to end up dead. So I'm looking at this,
I'm just overwhelmed. There's porn, there's a naked guy, there's
a whiffleball bat, there's all this stuff going on. It's
just sensory overwhelming to me. Never seen anything like this before.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Totally.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
He didn't understand it's a hanging. But what's going on?
So I said to Bill, uh, what's going on? Bill?
And Bill nonchalantly says to me, Oh, this is just
aerotica sixia. At that point, I had never heard about
erotica sixia before, and I just was like, autoerotic what
he goes autoerotic asicksia. What they're doing is they're masturbating

(05:05):
and they hang themselves because they think the decreased oxygen
to their brain will increase the pleasure. And so sometimes
when they're doing it, they accidentally end up dying. So
I'm standing there just kind of overwhelmed taking this all in.
I didn't even know what questions to ask at this
point because this is just totally confusing. So the homicide
detectives come down the hallway and they go, hey, Bill,

(05:25):
who's the new guy. Who's the rookie? And Bill says, oh,
this is Kendall Crowns. He's our medical student who's rotating
him with us this month. And the detectives say, okay,
have the new guy cut him down. Have the rookie
cut him down. And Bill goes, hey, that's a great idea.
He pulls a pocket knife out of his pocket and
he hands it to me and goes cut him down, Kendall.
And I'm like, yeah, all right, I'll do that. This
is cool. I'm doing forensics, you know. So I crawl
up on this barrel. I'm standing on it. Barrel's about

(05:49):
four foot off the ground. I grab hold of that
rope with one hand and I start cutting with my other.
I am not the strongest person in the world, and
there is no way, even on a good day, I
could hold one hundred and eighty pound naked guy with
one hand, but I'll continue. So I'm cutting, I'm cutting,
I'm cutting, and I'm getting through this rope. I'm getting
close to the end, and in my peripheral vision, I

(06:11):
noticed the homicide's detectives are stepping backwards and they're kind
of laughing, and Bill's stepping backwards. He's kind of laughing.
I mean, they all know what's going to happen. Of course,
you know what's going to happen at this point. I didn't.
For whatever reason that day, I was so laser focused
on this rope and I couldn't even think of what
was going to happen once I got to the end.
So I keep cutting, and I get to the end.
I cut through that rope and all of a sudden, bam,

(06:32):
I'm holding one hundred and eighty pound naked guy with
one hand on a wabbly barrel, and one hundred and
eighty pound naked guy falls to the ground like a
sack of potatoes, and I come falling right on top
of him. My land on him with my elbow right
into his abdomen. So if I'm hitting him with's my
elbow and his abdomen, you know where the rest of
me is in relation to the rest of him, so ew.
But anyway, my elbow digs into his abdomen and creates pressure,

(06:54):
and that pressure that's created forces that whiffleball bat out
of his button across the room. I roll off of
him and I jumped to my feet and I'm like, oh,
I'm okay, I'm okay. No one cared if I was
okay at that point because they were all too busy laughing.
They were bent over laughing so hard. So once everybody
calmed down, we got out a body bag and we
rolled him into the body bag and Bill said to me, yeah,

(07:15):
you're picking that bat up. Buddy handed me a pair
of gloves, thankfully, and I walked over and I picked
up that bat and I threw it in the body bag.
We zipped him up. Homicide detectives left probably tell everybody
about what happened about the stupid medical student, and we
waited for body transport. Body transport showed up, they picked
up the body, Bill told him the story. They all
got a good laugh head back to the medical examiner's office,

(07:37):
and the dead guy was later on autopsyed. He was found
his cause of death was hanging man or death was accent,
and we'll go into why that is on another episode.
But anyway, and then that day came to an end.
So at the end of the goal, I learned a
very important lesson. I can't hold one hundred and eighty
pound naked guy while balancing on a barrel. Never have
done it again in the rest of my career. Very

(07:59):
important lesson. I always look back on it, and I
always think, thank goodness of Internet and cell phones weren't
around back then, because if they had been, I would
have been a viral sensation that probably would still be
going on for the next hundred years. So that brings
us to the end of the episode. I hope you
learned something. I hope you were entertained until the next time.