November 30, 2025 • 18 mins
Listen to Mayhem in the Morgue on all podcast platforms: https://link.podtrac.com/MayhemMorgue
Content Warning: This episode contains disturbing descriptions of the death of an individual. If you’re sensitive to this topic, this episode may not be for you.
It started with a song lyric: “She was a winner that became a doggie’s dinner.” But behind that darkly humorous line lies a story stranger (and sadder) than the myth it inspired. In this episode of Mayhem in the Morgue, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kendall Crowns investigates the real story behind the tragic death of silent film star Marie Prevost, separating rumor from forensic reality. Through real cases and forensic insight, Dr. Crowns shows how devotion, biology, and the harsh realities of animal scavenging can collide in the aftermath of death.
Highlights
• (0:00) Welcome to Mayhem in the Morgue with Dr. Kendall Crowns
• (0:30) A song lyric leads Dr. Crowns down an unexpected rabbit hole
• (1:00) The real story of Marie Prevost, her silent film fame, heartbreak, and decline
• (2:15) The 1937 discovery, the truth behind the rumor, and how the book Hollywood Babylon distorted the facts
• (4:30) From myth to morgue: the forensic reality of postmortem pet scavenging
• (6:00) How hunger, instinct, and biology drive behavior in dogs, cats, and even rodents
• (7:45) The Chihuahua pack case and the nightmare scene investigators walked into
• (9:15) When pet hoarding turns horrific: 20 cats, one body, and the survival instinct at work
• (11:15) Displacement behavior and the Memphis case involving a loyal dog, a group of raccoons, and the forensic clue that revealed the truth
About the Host: Dr. Kendall Crowns
Dr. Crowns is the Chief Medical Examiner for Travis County, Texas, and a nationally recognized forensic pathologist. He las led death investigations in Travis County, Fort Worth, Chicago, and Kansas. Over his career, he has performed thousands of autopsies and testified in court hundreds of times as an expert witness. A frequent contributor to Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, Dr. Crowns brings unparalleled insight into the strange, grisly, and sometimes absurd realities of forensic pathology.
About the Show
Mayhem in the Morgue takes listeners inside the bloody, bizarre, and often unbelievable world of forensic pathology. Hosted by Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kendall Crowns, each episode delivers real-life cases from the morgue, the crime scene, and the courtroom. Expect gallows humor, hard truths, and unforgettable investigations.
Connect and Learn More
Learn more about Dr. Kendall Crowns on Linkedin. Catch him regularly on Crime Stories with Nancy Grace and follow Mayhem in the Morgue where you get your podcasts.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today's episode includes the discussion of deaths of individuals and
animal scavenging. So if this sort of thing upsets you,
I suggest you check out some other category other than
the true crime section. Welcome to Mayhem An the More
with your host, Doctor Kendall Crown. Today's episode pet Food.
(00:27):
I was listening to the radio driving somewhere when a
song came on that had the following lyric in it.
She was a winner that became a doggies dinner. The
song goes on to tell a story of a movie
star found dead and eaten by her dog. This type
of thing fascinates me. I had to find out who
wrote it and what the song was about. So when
I got home, I did an Internet search and I
(00:49):
found out the song was by an artist by the
name of Nick Low and it was entitled Mary Provost.
Now the question became, was she an actual person? Did
she actually get eaten by a dog? And what I
found out was the song was loosely based on the
life of a real person by the name of Mary Prevost.
And I might be mispronouncing her name, I don't know,
(01:09):
but I found out all about her from different websites,
articles and even a book, Yes, an actual book which
I still like to read. And now I will share
a brief summary of what I found out, just so
you can know too. She was a major star of
the Silent movies that had a tragic downfall and untimely death.
She had a career that spanned twenty years and had
(01:30):
been in one hundred and twenty one movies. Her box
office successes brought in large sums of money that helped
build studios like Universal and Warner Brothers. In the mid
to late nineteen twenties, she experienced several tragedies. Her mother
died in a car accident, she was let go from
her contract from Warner Brothers, and she got a divorced
from her husband. She became depressed and started drinking heavily
(01:52):
and bingeating to try and cope, and in nineteen twenty seven,
One More Thing Happened sound was introduced to the movies.
Her star power was waning, partially because she had gained
so much weight and the drinking, but some sources say
she also didn't have a good voice for the new
form of movies. She was getting smaller and smaller and
smaller roles, and in the late nineteen thirties, She attempted
(02:15):
to make a comeback by starving herself to lose weight.
On January twenty third, nineteen thirty seven, she was found
on a well being check in her locked apartment after
complaints of her dog incessantly barking for two days. The
crime scene photograph that is attributed to her shows her
face down in bed wearing a robe. There's a blanket
(02:37):
across the middle portion of her body, which was probably
put there by law enforcement for modesty. Her legs are
exposed and there appears to be abrasions on them. The
scene description from an article from the Los Angeles Times
dated January twenty fourth, nineteen thirty seven, describes the crime
scene as follows. She was apparently dead two days. Her
body was found clothed and face down on a folding
(02:58):
bed in her tiny kitchen. Two gas heaters were burning
under an open window. Several empty whiskey bottles lay in
the sink. The apartment was disarranged, but there was no
indication of violence or foul play. This description is typical
of an alcoholics disheveled apartment, empty bottles, a mess, etc.
(03:20):
Often they don't have anything in their refrigerator but more
alcohol no food. The article further states whining at the
bedside was her pet dog Maxie, and teeth marks on
the actress's body indicated the animal had tugged at his
mistress in an attempt to arouse her. Maxie was her
prize docsin that she owned at the time, but unlike
(03:41):
the nick Low Song and other stories about her, Maxie
had not actually eaten her. The nick Low song was
a propagation of a rumor from a book called Hollywood
Babylon by an author by the name of Kenneth Anger.
In that book, it said Maxie had made mince meat
of his mistress, and the caption for the crime scene
picture states dog these facts were actually wrong, but they
(04:03):
make for a great story. The reality was Maxi was
loyal and stood by his owner waiting for her to
get up, and never tried to eat her. All he
did was scratch at her and tugged, trying to wake
her up. And we would all like to think that
our pets would be like this, but the reality is
much different. And so today we'll be going over facts
surrounding post warm pet scavenging and discussing a few of
(04:25):
the cases I've had in my career, so let's get started.
Pets are a big part of our lives. Most of
us have a pet of some type, whether it's a
dog or a cat, or a fish or a hamster.
We all truly love our pets. But what happens when
you die and your pet is trapped with your slowly
decomposing corpse with little to know food or water, nobody's
feeding your pet, and your pet gets hungry, so very hungry.
(04:48):
What will they do? They can't operate a can opener
because they don't have thumbs, they can't call nine to
one one or door dash, and they eventually get to
a point where they have to eat something to survive,
and all they have is you. I know, you would
like to think your pet would never eat you and
would stand loyal age your side like MAXI did until
it starved to death and died, But unfortunately, your pet
(05:10):
has different ideas. Occasionally, some pets do die waiting for
their owners to wake up. They're usually the older ones
that the mild disruption in their routine ends up being
too much for them and they die. But these are
the exception. Most pets will scavenge their owners at some
point exactly how long it takes or what triggers. This
is always the question. There isn't a lot of data
(05:33):
out there that exactly answers the question, though, And this
is because like most things in forensics, you can't easily
recreate the situation and in a lab. I mean, you
can't get one hundred pet owners and then have them
die at a known time and then watch what their
pet does. It's just not possible. But there is a
lot of research that has been done evaluating cases after
the fact, looking at patterns and trends after scavenging has occurred.
(05:58):
In the medical literature, there's a great discussion of postmorum
scavenging by domesticated animals. The main focuses on dogs and cats,
which are the most common pets, but there are also
articles in which pet birds and even hamsters have been
found to have consumed their owners. The reality is, though,
I've probably seen more people consumed by their dogs than
(06:18):
any other pet, probably because dogs just don't discriminate. From
some of the theories I've read, it is felt that cats
were more likely to eat you quicker than dogs, but
dogs are more likely to eat their owners than cats.
Cats usually wait a day or so before they start
consuming their owners, whereas dogs usually have a slightly longer
waiting period of about three to seven days, and after
(06:41):
seven days the body is so decomposed that most pets
won't touch it anymore. The reason why cats are quicker
to eat their owners is because they have a higher
metabolism than dogs do, and so they need to eat faster. Also,
cats have a specific need in their diet for the
amino acid tyurine, which is only found in meat. They
have to find a source of meat to survive, and
(07:02):
that is all they're trying to do. Nothing personal, but
with cats you have to wonder if it is personal.
Cats might eat their owners faster, but ultimately the pet
that eats their owner of the fastest is reportedly pet
Hamsters are rodents. They will eat the dead owner in
less than a day. They will not only eat you,
but they will make a nest in your body cavity
(07:23):
formed out of bits and pieces of your skin, soft tissue,
and bones, and evidently they'll even sharpen their teeth on
your bones. So watch out for rodents. Another interesting fact
is if there's more than one pet involved, they're more
likely to eat you partially because there's less food available,
but also because the alpha of the group will signal
(07:45):
to the others that it's time to eat, and then
it becomes a free for all and they will all
join in and eat you together. I have a couple
examples of this. One was with a group of dogs,
chihuabas to be specific. There was five of them, and
when police made a well being check because people had
not seen the owner for weeks and the mail was
(08:06):
building up, they forced open the door, and when the
light from the outside shined into the darkened foyer, there
was a de season laying dead on the tile floor.
There were several chiuahuas eating in his face and neck,
and one standing on his chest. The one standing on
his chest reportedly looked into the light, blood covering his
face and muzzle, and started snarling and barking. Then all
(08:29):
the other chihuahuas looked up, their tiny little heads soaked
in blood, and they scattered like cockroaches. The police officers
were freaked out by this and deeply disturbed. The chiuahuas
had partially consumed the head and neck and were working
their way down the body. Police called the medical examiner's
office and bodied transport arrived and picked the body up.
(08:49):
There was enough left of the owner that we were
able to actually determine that he had died from a
heart attack. What happened to the chiuahuas no one actually knows.
The police didn't know. They didn't ever find him, They
didn't look for him. Animal control was evidently called, but
they never followed up with it, so I don't know
what happened to them. They probably went back through a
portal to Hell, which is probably where they came from originally. Anyway,
(09:10):
who knows. The guy probably didn't even own chiualas. This
is not unique to dogs either. The pac mentality takes
over with cats as well. One case I had was
an elderly lady. She was eighty five years old, a hoarder.
She had about twenty cats when she died, and she
was not found for several weeks, and when a well
being check was finally made, they found her body secured
(09:33):
in her home. She was nearly sclenized by the cats
head and neck, chest, abdomen. Even the extremities had very
little tissue left. They had even completely eaten her hands.
Now dogs will eat the bones, but usually cats stone
they're a little more discriminating, and often if they eat bones,
they'll just eat the bones of the hands because they're small.
(09:56):
This group of cats, on the other hand, actually chewed
up the bones on the floor, arm, the radius, and
alma and broke away the bone and eaten about half
of those bones on each side. What little tissue was
left of her was mummified, and there wasn't enough left
of her for us to even make a determination of
what her cause of manner death was. Her case was
closed out as the cause of death and manner death
(10:18):
were undetermined. The scene also had another odd finding at it.
There were several dead, mummified cats that had also been
scavenged by the living. It had truly become a survival
of the fittest in this house. Over the years, I
have only seen a handful of cases in which there
was a group of pets. Usually what I see is
a singular pet scavenging on their own. Again, it's usually
(10:41):
just a lonely dog, and without the pack, what pushes
the dog to finally eat you. There are a number
of theories about this. Of course, hunger is a prime
reason for some pets to eat, but it doesn't make
sense if food is available. One of the other theories
is is when you begin to decompose, your smell changes
to a more or food like odor to the dog,
(11:02):
and they begin to eat you because they don't recognize
you as you anymore, but they recognize you as food.
But after you decompose enough, they'll usually stop because the
smell just becomes so bad. The other theory is dogs
are exhibiting a displacement behavior, and what is displacement behavior
is a defense mechanism where unconscious actions are used to
(11:24):
cope with stress and anxiety. This is something seen in
humans as well. It's when you're upset about a situation
or frustrated and you start clicking your pen, chewing your fingernails,
cleaning the house, anything that stract you or help you
cope with the situation instead of outright dealing with the issue.
Dogs cope the same way we do, and when there's
a situation that they can't deal with, they can't click pens,
(11:46):
they can chew pins, or choose or scratch or wine,
lick their lips or yawn, and when their owner dies,
they have anxiety, they have grief, They mourn the loss,
and some people theorize that's when this displaced behavior arises,
and that's because you aren't acting normally because you're dead
and you're not talking to them, you're not taking care
(12:07):
of them. It is theorized that your dog will initially
try to revive you, and they'll start by licking your face,
and when they aren't getting a response, that's when the
displacement behavior kicks in and they start biting, and they
escalate the biting, nipping at your nose and your mouth
or something along those lines, and that's when it's believed
that a little blood might come out. And when the
(12:28):
blood comes out, that's when the dog's instincts take over,
because after all, their DNA is predatory wolf. They start
eating and they can't stop themselves, and they might be hungry,
or they might just be mindlessly eating because they can't
think of anything else at that point, and you taste
so good. The majority of cases in which an individual
(12:48):
is found dead indoors, the head and neck are the
main things consumed, which makes sense if they're trying to
wake you up. This information is of course all about
indoor domesticated pets. Now, if you're out and there's feral
animals or feral dogs or cats about they'll usually eat
the chest and abdomen first because they're trying to get
to the protein rich organs. But again that's not what
(13:10):
happens with domesticated animals. And those are the theories. I'm
sure there are more out there that I haven't read yet,
and maybe i'll read them one day, and maybe we'll
have this discussion again, but those are the ones that
I know of right at this moment. Really, your pet
wants you around, they love you, they don't want to
lose you, and losing you does create stress and anxiety
for them, and it may result in them eating you.
(13:32):
So it'll only eat you if it has to. And
as I have said, I have had a lot of
these types of cases over the years, probably about one
every few months. I have one case a pet scavenging
where it became a life or death issue for the dog.
The case was in Memphis. It was a hot summer
day in July. A seventy year old male who's overweight,
(13:52):
decided to go out in Moe's lawn, took his shirt off,
started Mona's lawn, and he collapsed. And that's where a
stay for several days, sitting out in the hot sun
in his sten sin yard was his dog. It was
a small to medium sized mixed breed dog, just a
mut and he was a really good dog. The family
(14:13):
loved him. Now, this elderly gentleman had lived alone. His
wife had died several years prior, and his kids would
come by and visit him periodically. His son had not
heard from him for a few days, so he went
to go check on him. When he arrived at the house,
the gate was shut. He opened up the gate and
the dog greeted him, but the dog's behavior was off.
He wasn't his usual happy self, and the dog kept
(14:34):
running towards the back of the house, so that his
Seeden's son followed him, and that's where he saw his
dad laying by the lawnmower, unresponsive. The son ran over
to him and he was greeted with a horrific scene.
His dad was skeletonized from the neck up. There was
a little tissue left on the back of the scalp,
but the rest of it the tissue was gone. No eyes,
no mouths, no ears, none of it. The rest of
(14:56):
the body showed moderate decompositional changes. There was bloatings, skin slippage,
green discoloration, but it was horrifying, and the dog sat
down next to the owner and just kind of cried.
The son called the police. Police arrived, the dog was
taken by animal control, and the body was brought to
the Medical Examiner's office and we did an autopsy. We
(15:18):
had found that the dad had died from a heart attack.
He had hypertensive cardiovaster disease and coronary athosclerosis, so he
really shouldn't have been outside mowing. But this happens a
lot in the summer. People that are out of shape
and shouldn't be doing yard work love to get out
there and work in their yard and end up dead.
So just make sure if you're going to do that,
(15:38):
that you're healthy enough to be outside work in an
your yard. And that goes for shoveling snow as well.
But the issue became did the dog eat him? And
the family called me and said, did the dog eat him?
Because if he did, we're going to have him put
down and we want to know. And I had to
make a decision. Did the dog eat him? I wasn't sure.
(15:59):
I was ensure how I was going to figure this out.
In Memphis at the time, I worked there. They had
anthropologists on staff, and what they told me is they
could figure out if an animal had eaten them by
patterns on the skull. But to do this they would
need to boil the skull. So what I had to
do was go in there and remove the skull from
what was left of the tissue, which wasn't very hard.
(16:21):
All I did was cut away the remaining musculature of
the neck and cut through the inner vertebral space of
the cervical spine and off comes ahead and neck, and
I took that to the anthropologist. They placed it in
a large steel pot something like you'd use at a restaurant,
filled it with a fluid which I don't know what
it was, and they boiled it. After a few days,
they had the skull completely cleaned up and we looked
(16:43):
at it and what we saw was incredibly interesting. The
skull actually had little parallel scratches all over it, especially
in the ocular cavities, and what these little scratches look
like were little claws. And what the answer, Holodus told
me that it was most consistent with raccoons. At the scene,
(17:05):
it was noticed there was raccoons around the house. When
I called the family and I told them what I
had found, and they told me that their dad had
actually had constant problems with raccoons. They felt the guilty
party was the raccoons. They must have eaten their dad.
So the dog was acquitted of all charges. Now, did
the dog actually consume part of him? It's hard to say,
(17:29):
but we're going to go with the happy story that
the dog did nothing and it was all the evil raccoons.
What happened to the dog in this one, well, the
son took him in and the dog lived out the
rest of his life with that family case clothed. And
that brings us to the end of the episode. I
(17:49):
hope you learned something like never trust a raccoon, and
I hope you were entertained until the next time. S
Today's episode includes the discussion of deaths of individuals and
animal scavenging. So if this sort of thing upsets you,
I suggest you check out some other category other than
the true crime section. Welcome to Mayhem An the More
with your host, Doctor Kendall Crown. Today's episode pet Food.
(00:27):
I was listening to the radio driving somewhere when a
song came on that had the following lyric in it.
She was a winner that became a doggies dinner. The
song goes on to tell a story of a movie
star found dead and eaten by her dog. This type
of thing fascinates me. I had to find out who
wrote it and what the song was about. So when
I got home, I did an Internet search and I
(00:49):
found out the song was by an artist by the
name of Nick Low and it was entitled Mary Provost.
Now the question became, was she an actual person? Did
she actually get eaten by a dog? And what I
found out was the song was loosely based on the
life of a real person by the name of Mary Prevost.
And I might be mispronouncing her name, I don't know,
(01:09):
but I found out all about her from different websites,
articles and even a book, Yes, an actual book which
I still like to read. And now I will share
a brief summary of what I found out, just so
you can know too. She was a major star of
the Silent movies that had a tragic downfall and untimely death.
She had a career that spanned twenty years and had
(01:30):
been in one hundred and twenty one movies. Her box
office successes brought in large sums of money that helped
build studios like Universal and Warner Brothers. In the mid
to late nineteen twenties, she experienced several tragedies. Her mother
died in a car accident, she was let go from
her contract from Warner Brothers, and she got a divorced
from her husband. She became depressed and started drinking heavily
(01:52):
and bingeating to try and cope, and in nineteen twenty seven,
One More Thing Happened sound was introduced to the movies.
Her star power was waning, partially because she had gained
so much weight and the drinking, but some sources say
she also didn't have a good voice for the new
form of movies. She was getting smaller and smaller and
smaller roles, and in the late nineteen thirties, She attempted
(02:15):
to make a comeback by starving herself to lose weight.
On January twenty third, nineteen thirty seven, she was found
on a well being check in her locked apartment after
complaints of her dog incessantly barking for two days. The
crime scene photograph that is attributed to her shows her
face down in bed wearing a robe. There's a blanket
(02:37):
across the middle portion of her body, which was probably
put there by law enforcement for modesty. Her legs are
exposed and there appears to be abrasions on them. The
scene description from an article from the Los Angeles Times
dated January twenty fourth, nineteen thirty seven, describes the crime
scene as follows. She was apparently dead two days. Her
body was found clothed and face down on a folding
(02:58):
bed in her tiny kitchen. Two gas heaters were burning
under an open window. Several empty whiskey bottles lay in
the sink. The apartment was disarranged, but there was no
indication of violence or foul play. This description is typical
of an alcoholics disheveled apartment, empty bottles, a mess, etc.
(03:20):
Often they don't have anything in their refrigerator but more
alcohol no food. The article further states whining at the
bedside was her pet dog Maxie, and teeth marks on
the actress's body indicated the animal had tugged at his
mistress in an attempt to arouse her. Maxie was her
prize docsin that she owned at the time, but unlike
(03:41):
the nick Low Song and other stories about her, Maxie
had not actually eaten her. The nick Low song was
a propagation of a rumor from a book called Hollywood
Babylon by an author by the name of Kenneth Anger.
In that book, it said Maxie had made mince meat
of his mistress, and the caption for the crime scene
picture states dog these facts were actually wrong, but they
(04:03):
make for a great story. The reality was Maxi was
loyal and stood by his owner waiting for her to
get up, and never tried to eat her. All he
did was scratch at her and tugged, trying to wake
her up. And we would all like to think that
our pets would be like this, but the reality is
much different. And so today we'll be going over facts
surrounding post warm pet scavenging and discussing a few of
(04:25):
the cases I've had in my career, so let's get started.
Pets are a big part of our lives. Most of
us have a pet of some type, whether it's a
dog or a cat, or a fish or a hamster.
We all truly love our pets. But what happens when
you die and your pet is trapped with your slowly
decomposing corpse with little to know food or water, nobody's
feeding your pet, and your pet gets hungry, so very hungry.
(04:48):
What will they do? They can't operate a can opener
because they don't have thumbs, they can't call nine to
one one or door dash, and they eventually get to
a point where they have to eat something to survive,
and all they have is you. I know, you would
like to think your pet would never eat you and
would stand loyal age your side like MAXI did until
it starved to death and died, But unfortunately, your pet
(05:10):
has different ideas. Occasionally, some pets do die waiting for
their owners to wake up. They're usually the older ones
that the mild disruption in their routine ends up being
too much for them and they die. But these are
the exception. Most pets will scavenge their owners at some
point exactly how long it takes or what triggers. This
is always the question. There isn't a lot of data
(05:33):
out there that exactly answers the question, though, And this
is because like most things in forensics, you can't easily
recreate the situation and in a lab. I mean, you
can't get one hundred pet owners and then have them
die at a known time and then watch what their
pet does. It's just not possible. But there is a
lot of research that has been done evaluating cases after
the fact, looking at patterns and trends after scavenging has occurred.
(05:58):
In the medical literature, there's a great discussion of postmorum
scavenging by domesticated animals. The main focuses on dogs and cats,
which are the most common pets, but there are also
articles in which pet birds and even hamsters have been
found to have consumed their owners. The reality is, though,
I've probably seen more people consumed by their dogs than
(06:18):
any other pet, probably because dogs just don't discriminate. From
some of the theories I've read, it is felt that cats
were more likely to eat you quicker than dogs, but
dogs are more likely to eat their owners than cats.
Cats usually wait a day or so before they start
consuming their owners, whereas dogs usually have a slightly longer
waiting period of about three to seven days, and after
(06:41):
seven days the body is so decomposed that most pets
won't touch it anymore. The reason why cats are quicker
to eat their owners is because they have a higher
metabolism than dogs do, and so they need to eat faster. Also,
cats have a specific need in their diet for the
amino acid tyurine, which is only found in meat. They
have to find a source of meat to survive, and
(07:02):
that is all they're trying to do. Nothing personal, but
with cats you have to wonder if it is personal.
Cats might eat their owners faster, but ultimately the pet
that eats their owner of the fastest is reportedly pet
Hamsters are rodents. They will eat the dead owner in
less than a day. They will not only eat you,
but they will make a nest in your body cavity
(07:23):
formed out of bits and pieces of your skin, soft tissue,
and bones, and evidently they'll even sharpen their teeth on
your bones. So watch out for rodents. Another interesting fact
is if there's more than one pet involved, they're more
likely to eat you partially because there's less food available,
but also because the alpha of the group will signal
(07:45):
to the others that it's time to eat, and then
it becomes a free for all and they will all
join in and eat you together. I have a couple
examples of this. One was with a group of dogs,
chihuabas to be specific. There was five of them, and
when police made a well being check because people had
not seen the owner for weeks and the mail was
(08:06):
building up, they forced open the door, and when the
light from the outside shined into the darkened foyer, there
was a de season laying dead on the tile floor.
There were several chiuahuas eating in his face and neck,
and one standing on his chest. The one standing on
his chest reportedly looked into the light, blood covering his
face and muzzle, and started snarling and barking. Then all
(08:29):
the other chihuahuas looked up, their tiny little heads soaked
in blood, and they scattered like cockroaches. The police officers
were freaked out by this and deeply disturbed. The chiuahuas
had partially consumed the head and neck and were working
their way down the body. Police called the medical examiner's
office and bodied transport arrived and picked the body up.
(08:49):
There was enough left of the owner that we were
able to actually determine that he had died from a
heart attack. What happened to the chiuahuas no one actually knows.
The police didn't know. They didn't ever find him, They
didn't look for him. Animal control was evidently called, but
they never followed up with it, so I don't know
what happened to them. They probably went back through a
portal to Hell, which is probably where they came from originally. Anyway,
(09:10):
who knows. The guy probably didn't even own chiualas. This
is not unique to dogs either. The pac mentality takes
over with cats as well. One case I had was
an elderly lady. She was eighty five years old, a hoarder.
She had about twenty cats when she died, and she
was not found for several weeks, and when a well
being check was finally made, they found her body secured
(09:33):
in her home. She was nearly sclenized by the cats
head and neck, chest, abdomen. Even the extremities had very
little tissue left. They had even completely eaten her hands.
Now dogs will eat the bones, but usually cats stone
they're a little more discriminating, and often if they eat bones,
they'll just eat the bones of the hands because they're small.
(09:56):
This group of cats, on the other hand, actually chewed
up the bones on the floor, arm, the radius, and
alma and broke away the bone and eaten about half
of those bones on each side. What little tissue was
left of her was mummified, and there wasn't enough left
of her for us to even make a determination of
what her cause of manner death was. Her case was
closed out as the cause of death and manner death
(10:18):
were undetermined. The scene also had another odd finding at it.
There were several dead, mummified cats that had also been
scavenged by the living. It had truly become a survival
of the fittest in this house. Over the years, I
have only seen a handful of cases in which there
was a group of pets. Usually what I see is
a singular pet scavenging on their own. Again, it's usually
(10:41):
just a lonely dog, and without the pack, what pushes
the dog to finally eat you. There are a number
of theories about this. Of course, hunger is a prime
reason for some pets to eat, but it doesn't make
sense if food is available. One of the other theories
is is when you begin to decompose, your smell changes
to a more or food like odor to the dog,
(11:02):
and they begin to eat you because they don't recognize
you as you anymore, but they recognize you as food.
But after you decompose enough, they'll usually stop because the
smell just becomes so bad. The other theory is dogs
are exhibiting a displacement behavior, and what is displacement behavior
is a defense mechanism where unconscious actions are used to
(11:24):
cope with stress and anxiety. This is something seen in
humans as well. It's when you're upset about a situation
or frustrated and you start clicking your pen, chewing your fingernails,
cleaning the house, anything that stract you or help you
cope with the situation instead of outright dealing with the issue.
Dogs cope the same way we do, and when there's
a situation that they can't deal with, they can't click pens,
(11:46):
they can chew pins, or choose or scratch or wine,
lick their lips or yawn, and when their owner dies,
they have anxiety, they have grief, They mourn the loss,
and some people theorize that's when this displaced behavior arises,
and that's because you aren't acting normally because you're dead
and you're not talking to them, you're not taking care
(12:07):
of them. It is theorized that your dog will initially
try to revive you, and they'll start by licking your face,
and when they aren't getting a response, that's when the
displacement behavior kicks in and they start biting, and they
escalate the biting, nipping at your nose and your mouth
or something along those lines, and that's when it's believed
that a little blood might come out. And when the
(12:28):
blood comes out, that's when the dog's instincts take over,
because after all, their DNA is predatory wolf. They start
eating and they can't stop themselves, and they might be hungry,
or they might just be mindlessly eating because they can't
think of anything else at that point, and you taste
so good. The majority of cases in which an individual
(12:48):
is found dead indoors, the head and neck are the
main things consumed, which makes sense if they're trying to
wake you up. This information is of course all about
indoor domesticated pets. Now, if you're out and there's feral
animals or feral dogs or cats about they'll usually eat
the chest and abdomen first because they're trying to get
to the protein rich organs. But again that's not what
(13:10):
happens with domesticated animals. And those are the theories. I'm
sure there are more out there that I haven't read yet,
and maybe i'll read them one day, and maybe we'll
have this discussion again, but those are the ones that
I know of right at this moment. Really, your pet
wants you around, they love you, they don't want to
lose you, and losing you does create stress and anxiety
for them, and it may result in them eating you.
(13:32):
So it'll only eat you if it has to. And
as I have said, I have had a lot of
these types of cases over the years, probably about one
every few months. I have one case a pet scavenging
where it became a life or death issue for the dog.
The case was in Memphis. It was a hot summer
day in July. A seventy year old male who's overweight,
(13:52):
decided to go out in Moe's lawn, took his shirt off,
started Mona's lawn, and he collapsed. And that's where a
stay for several days, sitting out in the hot sun
in his sten sin yard was his dog. It was
a small to medium sized mixed breed dog, just a
mut and he was a really good dog. The family
(14:13):
loved him. Now, this elderly gentleman had lived alone. His
wife had died several years prior, and his kids would
come by and visit him periodically. His son had not
heard from him for a few days, so he went
to go check on him. When he arrived at the house,
the gate was shut. He opened up the gate and
the dog greeted him, but the dog's behavior was off.
He wasn't his usual happy self, and the dog kept
(14:34):
running towards the back of the house, so that his
Seeden's son followed him, and that's where he saw his
dad laying by the lawnmower, unresponsive. The son ran over
to him and he was greeted with a horrific scene.
His dad was skeletonized from the neck up. There was
a little tissue left on the back of the scalp,
but the rest of it the tissue was gone. No eyes,
no mouths, no ears, none of it. The rest of
(14:56):
the body showed moderate decompositional changes. There was bloatings, skin slippage,
green discoloration, but it was horrifying, and the dog sat
down next to the owner and just kind of cried.
The son called the police. Police arrived, the dog was
taken by animal control, and the body was brought to
the Medical Examiner's office and we did an autopsy. We
(15:18):
had found that the dad had died from a heart attack.
He had hypertensive cardiovaster disease and coronary athosclerosis, so he
really shouldn't have been outside mowing. But this happens a
lot in the summer. People that are out of shape
and shouldn't be doing yard work love to get out
there and work in their yard and end up dead.
So just make sure if you're going to do that,
(15:38):
that you're healthy enough to be outside work in an
your yard. And that goes for shoveling snow as well.
But the issue became did the dog eat him? And
the family called me and said, did the dog eat him?
Because if he did, we're going to have him put
down and we want to know. And I had to
make a decision. Did the dog eat him? I wasn't sure.
(15:59):
I was ensure how I was going to figure this out.
In Memphis at the time, I worked there. They had
anthropologists on staff, and what they told me is they
could figure out if an animal had eaten them by
patterns on the skull. But to do this they would
need to boil the skull. So what I had to
do was go in there and remove the skull from
what was left of the tissue, which wasn't very hard.
(16:21):
All I did was cut away the remaining musculature of
the neck and cut through the inner vertebral space of
the cervical spine and off comes ahead and neck, and
I took that to the anthropologist. They placed it in
a large steel pot something like you'd use at a restaurant,
filled it with a fluid which I don't know what
it was, and they boiled it. After a few days,
they had the skull completely cleaned up and we looked
(16:43):
at it and what we saw was incredibly interesting. The
skull actually had little parallel scratches all over it, especially
in the ocular cavities, and what these little scratches look
like were little claws. And what the answer, Holodus told
me that it was most consistent with raccoons. At the scene,
(17:05):
it was noticed there was raccoons around the house. When
I called the family and I told them what I
had found, and they told me that their dad had
actually had constant problems with raccoons. They felt the guilty
party was the raccoons. They must have eaten their dad.
So the dog was acquitted of all charges. Now, did
the dog actually consume part of him? It's hard to say,
(17:29):
but we're going to go with the happy story that
the dog did nothing and it was all the evil raccoons.
What happened to the dog in this one, well, the
son took him in and the dog lived out the
rest of his life with that family case clothed. And
that brings us to the end of the episode. I
(17:49):
hope you learned something like never trust a raccoon, and
I hope you were entertained until the next time. S
Host
Nancy Grace
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