Mayhem in the Morgue | Hoof Prints (Part 2)

Content Warning: This episode contains graphic descriptions of autopsy findings, field investigations, and animal-related trauma. If you’re sensitive to these topics, this episode may not be for you.

What begins as a curious question about a patterned injury turns into a full-scale ranch investigation involving a horse, a farrier, a sheriff, and one very angry Chihuahua named Pepe. In this sequel to Hoof Prints (Part1), Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kendall Crowns returns to the scene to discover what truly happened that night. The question, as always, remains the same: was is methamphetamine, alcohol, or women that caused a man to do the thing that led to his death? One perfect hoof print reveals the answer.

 

🎧 Haven’t heard Part 1 yet? Listen to Mayhem in the Morgue | Hoof Prints (Part1)

 

Highlights

• (0:00) Welcome to Mayhem in the Morgue with Dr. Kendall Crowns
• (0:30) Recap of the first hoof prints case and how this investigation began
• (1:15) A night of partying turns deadly on a Texas ranch
• (2:45) A patterned head injury raises the question: rock or hoof?
• (3:45) The farrier and the sheriff join Dr. Crowns to test the theory
• (5:30) Printing a horse’s hoof and a surprise appearance by Pepe, the angry Chihuahua
• (9:15) The perfect impression that confirms the cause of death
• (10:30) Final reflections from the field and lessons learned from the pasture

 

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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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today's episode includes information about the death of an individual.
If this sort of thing upsets you, once again, this
is not the episode for you. Welcome to Mayhem an
more with your host, Doctor Kinder Crowns today's episode hoof

(00:23):
Prints Part two. If you listened to a previous episode
of the show entitled hoof Prints Part one, you know
that I printed a donkey, determined that it was his
hoof that caused the injury resulting in an individual's death,
and I realized from this that printing hoofs can't help
in determining what caused the injury. I also learned I

(00:45):
needed a better technique forgetting the prince than I had originally.
And if you haven't heard this episode, i'd recommend you
listen to it first before you listen to this one.
Several months after the first case of printing hoofs occurred,
another opportunity came up to once again print a horse.
That is the case I will be discussing in this episode. Also,

(01:08):
this episode is another installment of was it a meth amphetamine, alcohol,
or women that caused the mail to do the thing
that caused his death? So have your answers ready by
the end of the show. Today's case was a fifty
seven year old male. He was partying with friends at
a ranch when he saw a horse out in the
field and he said to his friends, I'm going to

(01:31):
go ride me that horse. His friends were all like,
well whatever, They were all having a good time partying
and didn't care what he did. So he stumbled out
into the pasture to go ride the horse. But then
what happened next is unclear because all the witnesses were intoxicated.
The question is did he get on the horse. Was

(01:51):
he bucked off the horse and fell and struck his
hat on the ground or a rock, or he fell
off the horse, stood up and got kicked by the horse,
or he never actually got on the horse and was
kicked in his attempt to get on the horse. Nobody
was quite sure what happened, but they did know. At
some point he was found unresponsive on the ground but

(02:12):
still breathing. They called nine to one one. He was
transported to a hospital where he was diagnosed with skull
fractures subter on subarachnoid hemorrhages of the brain, which is
bleeding around the brain or under membranes associated with the brain.
He underwent a crany ectomy where they removed a portion
of his skull to allow his brain to swell, and

(02:32):
he eventually expired the following day. His body was brought
into the Medical Examiner's office the next day and an
autopsy was performed. He had extensive surgical and medical intervention.
He had a large abrasion on his head. But the
abrasion had an interesting pattern. It was a thick, partial
sea shaped curve that along the middle of it there

(02:54):
was these square lacerations. And to me, the pattern wasn't
just a rock or something on the ground. It had
to be something. And again I thought it could be
the horse's hoof or something associated with the hoof, but
it didn't look like the donkey hoof print that I had,
and I thought I could print this hoof and solve
the mystery of what caused the injury to his head.

(03:16):
In this case, I didn't perform the autopsy myself. Another
doctor did, and he felt he had a good cause
and manner death, which he did. It was Blundforce's injuries
an accident because you know, whatever happened, the horse didn't
mean to do it, or the guy just fell off.
How injury occurred really didn't matter for determining cause and
manner of death, but I wanted to know more. I
wanted to know what caused that injury to his head,

(03:38):
and I asked him if it was okay if I
went back out to the scene and printed the horse's hoof.
He of course didn't care, and he told me I
could do whatever I wanted as long as he didn't
have to be involved, but he did say he wanted
to see the results once I had them. I called
the sheriff's officer who was involved in the investigation and

(03:59):
told him about my hoof printing escapades. He laughed, said
it was a little odd, but he was interested in
seeing this done, and he said let's give it a try,
and he told me he'd call the rancher and set
things up. After a little while, he called me back
and said the rancher was okay with us coming out,
and they set up a day. And when that day
finally came to go out to the ranch, the sheriff's

(04:20):
officer picked me and a forensic photographer up to go
out to the ranch. The photographer was coming along because
one thing was it's always a must have in these
situations to document everything, even if I get kicked by
the horse, he got a document. When we arrived at
the ranch, we met the rancher. The rancher really didn't
speak very good English, but the sheriff's officer was bilingual

(04:41):
and spoke Spanish, so everything was okay. The sheriff's officer
introduced everyone, and the rancher said everything was set up
and ready to go out by one of the barns,
and he led us that direction. Unlike episode one, this
time there was an individual called a farrier there. And
what's a ferrier, you ask? A fairier is a person
who learned how to to take care of horses, especially

(05:01):
how to take care of their hoofs, trimming their hoofs,
showing their hoofs, all those type of things. They're not
necessarily a blacksmith, but they do know a lot about
horses and horse hoofs, and they especially know how to
handle a horse and keep them calm. And I thought, well,
this is much better than the last time. We don't
have to last of the horse. We don't have to

(05:22):
wrestle him to the ground and tie his legs together
so we can get the hoof print while he's trying
to kick me and kill me, and I thought this
is going to be great. When we walked up, the
ferrier was there with his assistant, who was his wife.
Beyond the rancher and the ferrier and his wife, there
were several ranch hands there as well, and they had
set up folding chairs in kind of a semicircle near

(05:45):
where the horse was. The rancher and the sheriff said
something to everyone in Spanish and everyone chuckled a little.
I wish I had spoke Spanish at that point, but unfortunately,
in high school I decided to take French. And you know,
looking back on it, it was really useless to have
taken French. I should have taken Spanish. It would have
helped me out a lot better. Maybe one day I'll

(06:05):
be in France somewhere printing hoofs on a horse that
killed a guy, and someone will say something in French,
and I'll say, hey, I know what you just said,
but that wasn't happening today. Nor do I actually ever
think I'll be in France printing hoose at least hopefully not.
But anyway, all the ranch hands had a front row
seat to this forensic circus, and they were all kind

(06:26):
of talking to one another. The ferrier could speak a
little English, and he said everything was okay and we
could get started. So I got out my equipment, my
tube of fingerprinting, my roller, my fingerprint pad, and started
spreading out the ink and getting ready to print the hoof.
The horse was completely relaxed. The ferrier was rubbing the
horse's back and his wife held the reins along the head,

(06:49):
and the horse had blinders on. One other sure sign
that you could tell he was relaxed was his penis
was completely extended, almost to the ground. It was as
long as my arm. I had literally never seen a
horse's penis before, and it was huge. Everything was just
out there in the breeze. Well, like I said, he
was calm, not moving around or anything. I don't even

(07:11):
think he knew I was there. The ferrier had one
of the horse's rear legs up on a little padded
stool and it was all set in place. The horse
wasn't moving. So I started getting ready to put the
fingerprint on, and I thought to myself, this is going
great and I'm going to get the best print ever.
And then suddenly something changed it Chihuahbah came running out

(07:34):
from behind one of the barns, and it saw me,
the photographer and the sheriff, and it instantly didn't recognize us.
He instantly became enraged with his chihwaha rage and began
charging us, barking and running as fast as he could.
And when he came up to us, he was nipping
and barking and spinning around, and he ran in this
giant circle that went under the horse, coming very close

(07:57):
to the horse's genitals. The rancher yelled out Pepe, Pepe,
and he said something that was probably like get over here,
stop that, but I couldn't tell what he was saying.
But Pepe continued to bark and nip at me and
run under the horse. And that's when I noticed something.
The horse's penis suddenly retracted and pulled up into his abdomen,
and that startled me because I knew at that moment

(08:18):
the horse was spooked because he didn't know what was
going on. Pepe was mad, and he knew Pepe. He
knew Pepe was barking and carrying on, and he knew
something was happening around him, but he couldn't see, and
that had made him nervous. And when I saw his
penis retracked into his body, I suddenly thought, oh, no,
he is he getting ready to kick And I stepped
back and I said to the sheriff, ooh, I don't

(08:40):
feel very confident here, and I don't want to get kicked.
And the sheriff said something to the ferrier, and the
ferrier and his wife talked to the horse and stroked
the horse a little bit, and then the ferrier said, no,
everything's okay, you can keep going. I still wasn't sure,
and Pepe was still running around, and the sheriff said
something again to the rancher, and the rancher walked over

(09:02):
and scooped Pepe up in his arms. Pepe never calmed down,
but at least now he wasn't running around under the
horse and biting at me. And now that Pepe was
secured and the farrier said it was okay, I figured
I could move forward. So I put fingerprint on the
horse's hoof and I placed the fingerprint paper over it
and smoothed it down. And when I pulled it off,

(09:22):
I pulled off a perfect print to the horse's hoof
with a horse shoe. It was just really a beautiful print.
It had the full shoe print and the impression of
the hoof, And so we continued and printed the other
three of the horse's hoofs, because of course we didn't
know which hoof may have been involved. And once we
were done, we cleaned the horse's hoofs off, thanked the rancher,
and loaded all our stuff back in the truck and

(09:44):
went back to the office. And looking at the prints
and comparing them to the photograph of the decedent, you
could see the hoof print. That sea shaped abrasion that
we saw was a horse's shoe, and the center square
lacerations corresponded to the nails that secured the shoe to
the hoof. We had an answer. The abrasion was a

(10:04):
hoofprint on his head. With the fractures and the hemorrhage
of the brain associated with it, the individual had more
likely than not been kicked in the head. Now, did
he fall off the horse, stand up and get kicked
in the head. Did he walk up to the horse
and get kicked in the head. Well, we don't know,
because nobody really saw what happened or could remember what
they saw, But we did have an answer. He was

(10:26):
kicked in the head. Did the change cause a manner death, No,
it does change how injury occurred, but really nothing else.
So case closed and now get out your answer sheets.
Was your answer meth, alcohol, or women? So today's answer
is there was no women involved this time. Methamphatamine shockingly

(10:46):
wasn't involved either. Everyone was just really really drunk on alcohol.
So the answer today is alcohol, and that's why nobody
could really remember what happened. And that's why he did
a stupid thing like trying to get on horse and
ride a bear back in the middle of the night
while he was drunk. What happened to the horse, you ask, Well,
nothing happened to the horse, just like the donkey. It's

(11:09):
not like it was the horse's fault that this guy
tried to ride him while drunk. And that brings us
to the end of the episode. I hope you learned
something like never show up to Pepe's house uninvited, and
I hope you were entertained until the next time.