October 15, 2025 • 13 mins
Content Warning: This episode contains graphic descriptions of decomposition, autopsy findings, and homicidal investigation. If you’re sensitive to these topics, this episode may not be for you.
A floating trash can on the Chicago River leads to a grisly discovery. Inside, duct tape, chains and tarps conceal a body. Nicknamed “the submarine,” the case exposed just how strange body disposal attempts can be. In this episode of Mayhem in the Morgue, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kendall Crowns recounts the investigation from his days at the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office where a body dumped in the river resurfaced in unforgettable fashion.
Highlights
- (0:00) Welcome to Mayhem in the Morgue with Dr. Kendall Crowns
- (0:15) Inside the massive Cook County morgue cooler, built for mass disaster victims
- (3:30) The dreaded trash can cases
- (4:45) The “submarine”: a duct-taped trash can pulled from the Chicago River
- (6:45) Opening the can: tarps, chains, slime, and a smell like “unwashed elephant anus”
- (8:30) After a disastrous attempt to drain the contents, the body emerges
- (10:45) Autopsy findings: blunt force trauma, cocaine use, and possible asphyxia
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, ranging from courtroom drama to deaths that even seasoned pathologists struggle to explain.
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.
📣 If you liked this episode, don’t keep it to yourself—follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave us a review.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
To Day's episode discusses the death of an individual. If
this type of thing upsets you once again, this episode
is not for you. Welcome to Mayhem in the More
with your host, Doctor Kinder Crowns to Day's episode Submarine.
(00:22):
Every day, when I was scheduled to do autopsies at
the Cook Canny Medical Exadler's office in Chicago, I would
start my cases for the day by going into the
Morgue cooler. Chicago has the biggest morgue cooler I have
ever seen. When I worked there, it reportedly held three
hundred bodies at one time. And why is it so big.
It's so big because of a catastrophe that happened in
(00:43):
Chicago on May twenty fifth, nineteen seventy nine. That is
when flight one ninety one crashed shortly after take off
at O'Hare Airport. I'm sure you've heard of this. Two
hundred and fifty eight passengers, thirteen crew members, and two
people on the ground died during this catastrophe. And because
of this, when the Cook County Institute of Forensic Medicine
was completed in nineteen eighty three, they made sure the
(01:06):
cooler could fit all the passengers and crew of a
McDonnell Douglas DC ten aircraft, plus a few extra just
in case a catastrophe of this nature ever happened again.
Like I said, the cooler was just massive. It was
seventy yards long. It was almost as long as a
football field, and the bodies were stacked six high on
fifteen foot high racks that could hold twenty four bodies apiece.
(01:28):
When you walked in, it was this huge room and
there were just bodies everywhere. The majority of the bodies
were in body bags, of course, but somewhere in these
pinewood caskets that were made by the autopsy technicians for
the purpose of the unclaimed body burials, and they would
be stacked about three high on the floor. There was
bodies in the rack systems waiting to be released to
funeral homes, and bodies on gurneys that were usually the
(01:51):
cases for the day, or ones that had just been autopsy.
Of course, this cooler was very cold. It was between
thirty six and thirty nine degrees fahrenheit, and the technicians
that had to work in there most of the day
always had on kind of winter type jackets to keep warm.
Lighting wasn't the best either it was fluorescent lighting and
the lights some were burned out, some were flickering, so
it casts this dingy glow about the cooler. It was
(02:13):
always an adventure going in there. You never knew what
you would see. And then it also could be dangerous
because occasionally a mortally obese person would be put on
one of the high spots in the rack system and
they would slide off because they'd be unstable on the
rack system, and when they come sliding off, they'd fall
to the ground from fifteen feet neither fall on the
floor or hit a gurney with another body on it,
(02:35):
and it just makes this incredible bam when it hit
the floor, and that's how you'd start your day. You'd
go into the cooler keeping an eye out for falling
bodies and looking for your cases. They would always be
lined up along this one wall with their feet exposed,
showing the toe tag with the case number on it,
and you would go walking down this line looking for
your case numbers to pull the case out to take
(02:57):
it into the morgue and start your autopsy. Anything that
was not in a body bag was usually a bad sign.
Sometimes there'd be a tupperware sitting there, and the tupperware
has always meant that that person was going to be
in multiple pieces, like dismembered or smashed in some way
in an industrial accident and turned into just a big
pile of goop. Sometimes you'd see caskets, and caskets always
(03:22):
meant it was an exhumation, of course, and that meant
the body was embalmed, or it decomposed, or it could
even be skeletonized. You never knew when you opened up
that casket what you were going to get, just like
a box of chocolates. And these could always be more
difficult cases. But the worst was the dreaded City of
Chicago rubber trash can. When you would see these black
(03:45):
or blue black for trash, blue for recycling, rubber fifty
five gallon trash cans, they would always be sitting on
top of the gurney like a monolith, staring out at you.
And wherever you were at in the cooler, you could
see that trash can and you knew whoever's case that
was was going to have a bad day. And on
(04:07):
today's episode, we'll be discussing a case that I had
that arrived in one of these fifty five gallon rubber
trash cans. It was a day in early July in Chicago.
The temperatures were rising, and so was the death toll,
like it always was. I knew that day I had
a case that was going to be in a trash
can from reading the reports before I got started, and
(04:29):
when I walked into the cooler, I could see it
at the very end of the line of bodies, sitting
on top of its gurney. I had trash can cases before,
so it wasn't new to me, but this one was
a little different. First off, it wasn't in the traditional
black or blue Sea of Chicago trash can color. This
one had a black lid in a green body, so
(04:51):
it probably came from one of the suburbs in Cook County.
The color wasn't the only thing that was different. It
was also wrapped on all sides over and over with
silver duct tape, and the tape had originally sealed the
trash can shut, concealing its unfortunate contents. It was also
wet and covered with a slippery green algae, and this
was because after the individual was wrapped in the tarp,
(05:14):
shoved in the trash can that was then covered in
duct tape. The perpetrators then drove it to a harbor
and dumped it in the South branch of the Chicago River,
the river that they famously turned green on Saint Patrick's Day.
Once the trash can hit the water, the duct tape
would have sealed it shut. It probably would have floated
for a little while before filling with the water and
(05:35):
sinking to the bottom of the river. Perfect crime, you'd think, right,
Dump the guy in trash can, seal it shut, dump
him in the river, and he sinks, never to be
found again. But the problem was as they didn't wade it.
What they didn't account for was the bacteria in your
body create gas as they're decomposing your body, and they
(05:55):
don't always need oxygen to do their job. So even
though he was in the water he was decomposing, his
body began to bloat or swell up because it was
filling with this decompositional gas. And since he was in
this semi sealed trash can, the fact that he started
to bloat up, it caused the trash can to float
back up from its murky depths of the river and
(06:18):
come back up to the surface of the water like
some sort of bizarre homemade submarine, and once it got
back up to the surface, it started floating down the
Chicago River and some fishermen spotted it. Aways. Feel bad
for the fishermen sometimes, you know, you just want to
go out there and relax, catch some fish, and then
all of a sudden, there's this damn dead guy floating
(06:38):
around that you have to deal with. And these fishermen,
of course, they didn't even know what was in this
floating trash can, but they knew it was odd, and
so they called law enforcement. When law enforcement arrived, they
pulled the trash can out of the water, and they
cut the edge of the duct tape to pull the
lid open. And when they opened the lid, they saw
something wrapped up in it, and they couldn't necessarily tell
right away that it was a human body, but then
(06:59):
they saw a foot peeking out of one of the wrappings,
and then when they saw that, they knew they had
a human body. And the body was brought into the
medical examiner's office and then the next day. Of course,
it was a sign to me. Whenever these trash cans
came in, they always put it on top of the gurny,
and this one they had left standing straight up, so
(07:19):
it was a good eight feet off the ground, maybe
eight and a half feet off the ground. And when
I saw that, I saw that duct tape and I
saw the green slime on it, and I was just like, well,
here we go. And I walked over and I thought,
how bizarre this is covered in duct tape. But like
I said, the duct tape had been cut so the
lid could be opened up. I was already dressed in
my personal protective equipment, so I climbed up on top
(07:42):
of the gurney and opened the lid to reveal what
was on the inside of the trash can. And when
I opened it up, I could see the body was
wrapped in a blue plastic tarp, and it appeared that
the tarp was secured in place with more duct tape
in multiple thin chains in a thin white nylon rope.
The trash can also caned a murky, bloody, greasy water
(08:03):
that had an odor that I could best describe as
unwashed elephant anus, which was my first band name, by
the way. The question that I had was how was
I going to get this guy out of the trash
can so I could do the autopsy? I asked one
of the autopsy technicians, mister Reid, if he could help
me with this, and his response was no no. He
(08:26):
recommended I'd take the gurney to the processing area and
tip it on its side, letting the water come out,
and then he would help me pull the body out
of the trash can. I wheeled the gurney down the
hall to the intake area. This intake area was well lit,
it was pretty wide, it had a drain on the floor,
and it had all the cleaning supplies mops, sponges, etc.
So I got everything situated and I grabbed the handle
(08:47):
of the trash can and I began slowly tipping it
to let the water drain out. And initially, while I
was tipping it, the water started spilling out, and I
thought this would work. But the problem was as I
increased the angle of the trash can to get more
of the water out, physics took over and it caused
the trash can to suddenly become incredibly heavy and I
(09:09):
couldn't control it anymore and it pitched forward suddenly, quickly
slamming down on the gurney. During this moment, instead of
letting go, I thought it could prevent the descent of
this fifty five gallon trash can full of water and
a nearly two hundred pound dead man. But inexplicably, I
never let go of the handle. I held onto it
with both hands, so as the trash can and its
(09:29):
contents fell forward, it pulled me up off the ground
and onto the side of the trash can, which I
was now on top of, and the lid came slamming
down on my head, and I witnessed from my bird's
eye view the contents come flooding out. First, the blood
tinged water came out and overflowed onto the floor, and
then the body came sliding out like some sort of
(09:52):
bizarre trash can berthing process. Thankfully, the dead guy stayed
on the gurney with his tarp wrapped around him. The bloody,
greasy water, on the the other hand, went everywhere. It
was all over the gurney, all over the floor, it
was all over me. He covered the floor with a slippery,
blood tinged goo. And mister Reid came walking out and
he was greeted by this catastrophic scene, me laying on
(10:13):
the trash can, gooey, bloody fluid everywhere, and he said,
what in the hell are you doing? What were you thinking?
In my response, astride at the top of the trash
can was I thought I had it. I climbed off
the trash can. Thankfully, like I said, I had had
my ppe on, so I didn't get soaked to the bone.
But I was a mess. I helped clean things up,
(10:36):
and then we took the body back into the morgue
and proceeded with the autopsy. After the cleanup, we took
the trash can off the gurney and we took the
body to the morgue for the autopsy. I assessed the body.
He was wrapped, like I said, in a blue plastic tarp,
secured with duct tape, multiple cheap chains, and a rope.
I removed that initial tarp, and when I took that off,
(10:56):
he was wrapped in another tan blanket, and when that
was removed, he was wrapped in a red and blue blanket.
And once that was all fully removed, we finally got
to the body. He was fully clothed. He was moderately decomposed.
He had green discolorations, marbling, and of course the bloating
that I'd described earlier. I recovered drug paraphernalia from his pockets,
(11:17):
a possible crack pipe or meth pipe, a bottle of
pills which contained xanax bars, and some other assorted pills.
When I did the autopsy, he had a massive subcalial hemorrhage,
which is hemorrhage underneath the scalp. This represented blunt force
trauma the head, so he'd been hit in the head
with something or a fist or a foot or something.
(11:38):
The rest of the autopsy didn't show a lot of
other findings. I couldn't find any signs of strangulations or
any further beating or stabbings or shooting or anything of
that nature, so he had blunt force trauma the head,
but not significant enough to have necessarily killed him. We
ran blood samples with toxicology and the results came back
as positive for cocaine, so he had been using cocaine.
(12:00):
He had been hit in the head, and there was
no real physical findings at autopsy that he appeared to
have drowned or been alive when he was in the water.
He didn't really have enough injuries to have killed him.
Plus the cocaine wasn't high enough, so more likely than not,
he had been hit in the head, incapacitated, wrapped up
in all the wrappings, and then shoved into the trash
(12:22):
can or the submarine alive. Now in all these wrappings
and in the submarine covered in duct tape, it could
have made it so he wasn't getting enough air and
he asphyxiated. I had all my findings, I had the
autopsy report, the tuxcology results, and I discussed the case
thoroughly with the senior doctors at the office, and we
all agreed the best cause of death for this case
(12:42):
would be asphyxia in the manner of death homicide. And
that's how this case was finalized. So case closed. As
I'm sitting here today, I don't even know if this
case has ever been solved because I've never gone to
trial on it. From this case, I did learn thing.
This became the last time in my career I thought
(13:03):
I had superhuman strength and could hold a dead body
or a trash can full of water and a dead
body with just my own strength. I had finally learned
my lesson. Maybe who knows, I'm still working, And that
brings us to the end of the episode. I hope
you learned something like a trash can with a dead,
(13:24):
decomposed guy full of water really smells bad and I
hope you were entertained un to open next door
To Day's episode discusses the death of an individual. If
this type of thing upsets you once again, this episode
is not for you. Welcome to Mayhem in the More
with your host, Doctor Kinder Crowns to Day's episode Submarine.
(00:22):
Every day, when I was scheduled to do autopsies at
the Cook Canny Medical Exadler's office in Chicago, I would
start my cases for the day by going into the
Morgue cooler. Chicago has the biggest morgue cooler I have
ever seen. When I worked there, it reportedly held three
hundred bodies at one time. And why is it so big.
It's so big because of a catastrophe that happened in
(00:43):
Chicago on May twenty fifth, nineteen seventy nine. That is
when flight one ninety one crashed shortly after take off
at O'Hare Airport. I'm sure you've heard of this. Two
hundred and fifty eight passengers, thirteen crew members, and two
people on the ground died during this catastrophe. And because
of this, when the Cook County Institute of Forensic Medicine
was completed in nineteen eighty three, they made sure the
(01:06):
cooler could fit all the passengers and crew of a
McDonnell Douglas DC ten aircraft, plus a few extra just
in case a catastrophe of this nature ever happened again.
Like I said, the cooler was just massive. It was
seventy yards long. It was almost as long as a
football field, and the bodies were stacked six high on
fifteen foot high racks that could hold twenty four bodies apiece.
(01:28):
When you walked in, it was this huge room and
there were just bodies everywhere. The majority of the bodies
were in body bags, of course, but somewhere in these
pinewood caskets that were made by the autopsy technicians for
the purpose of the unclaimed body burials, and they would
be stacked about three high on the floor. There was
bodies in the rack systems waiting to be released to
funeral homes, and bodies on gurneys that were usually the
(01:51):
cases for the day, or ones that had just been autopsy.
Of course, this cooler was very cold. It was between
thirty six and thirty nine degrees fahrenheit, and the technicians
that had to work in there most of the day
always had on kind of winter type jackets to keep warm.
Lighting wasn't the best either it was fluorescent lighting and
the lights some were burned out, some were flickering, so
it casts this dingy glow about the cooler. It was
(02:13):
always an adventure going in there. You never knew what
you would see. And then it also could be dangerous
because occasionally a mortally obese person would be put on
one of the high spots in the rack system and
they would slide off because they'd be unstable on the
rack system, and when they come sliding off, they'd fall
to the ground from fifteen feet neither fall on the
floor or hit a gurney with another body on it,
(02:35):
and it just makes this incredible bam when it hit
the floor, and that's how you'd start your day. You'd
go into the cooler keeping an eye out for falling
bodies and looking for your cases. They would always be
lined up along this one wall with their feet exposed,
showing the toe tag with the case number on it,
and you would go walking down this line looking for
your case numbers to pull the case out to take
(02:57):
it into the morgue and start your autopsy. Anything that
was not in a body bag was usually a bad sign.
Sometimes there'd be a tupperware sitting there, and the tupperware
has always meant that that person was going to be
in multiple pieces, like dismembered or smashed in some way
in an industrial accident and turned into just a big
pile of goop. Sometimes you'd see caskets, and caskets always
(03:22):
meant it was an exhumation, of course, and that meant
the body was embalmed, or it decomposed, or it could
even be skeletonized. You never knew when you opened up
that casket what you were going to get, just like
a box of chocolates. And these could always be more
difficult cases. But the worst was the dreaded City of
Chicago rubber trash can. When you would see these black
(03:45):
or blue black for trash, blue for recycling, rubber fifty
five gallon trash cans, they would always be sitting on
top of the gurney like a monolith, staring out at you.
And wherever you were at in the cooler, you could
see that trash can and you knew whoever's case that
was was going to have a bad day. And on
(04:07):
today's episode, we'll be discussing a case that I had
that arrived in one of these fifty five gallon rubber
trash cans. It was a day in early July in Chicago.
The temperatures were rising, and so was the death toll,
like it always was. I knew that day I had
a case that was going to be in a trash
can from reading the reports before I got started, and
(04:29):
when I walked into the cooler, I could see it
at the very end of the line of bodies, sitting
on top of its gurney. I had trash can cases before,
so it wasn't new to me, but this one was
a little different. First off, it wasn't in the traditional
black or blue Sea of Chicago trash can color. This
one had a black lid in a green body, so
(04:51):
it probably came from one of the suburbs in Cook County.
The color wasn't the only thing that was different. It
was also wrapped on all sides over and over with
silver duct tape, and the tape had originally sealed the
trash can shut, concealing its unfortunate contents. It was also
wet and covered with a slippery green algae, and this
was because after the individual was wrapped in the tarp,
(05:14):
shoved in the trash can that was then covered in
duct tape. The perpetrators then drove it to a harbor
and dumped it in the South branch of the Chicago River,
the river that they famously turned green on Saint Patrick's Day.
Once the trash can hit the water, the duct tape
would have sealed it shut. It probably would have floated
for a little while before filling with the water and
(05:35):
sinking to the bottom of the river. Perfect crime, you'd think, right,
Dump the guy in trash can, seal it shut, dump
him in the river, and he sinks, never to be
found again. But the problem was as they didn't wade it.
What they didn't account for was the bacteria in your
body create gas as they're decomposing your body, and they
(05:55):
don't always need oxygen to do their job. So even
though he was in the water he was decomposing, his
body began to bloat or swell up because it was
filling with this decompositional gas. And since he was in
this semi sealed trash can, the fact that he started
to bloat up, it caused the trash can to float
back up from its murky depths of the river and
(06:18):
come back up to the surface of the water like
some sort of bizarre homemade submarine, and once it got
back up to the surface, it started floating down the
Chicago River and some fishermen spotted it. Aways. Feel bad
for the fishermen sometimes, you know, you just want to
go out there and relax, catch some fish, and then
all of a sudden, there's this damn dead guy floating
(06:38):
around that you have to deal with. And these fishermen,
of course, they didn't even know what was in this
floating trash can, but they knew it was odd, and
so they called law enforcement. When law enforcement arrived, they
pulled the trash can out of the water, and they
cut the edge of the duct tape to pull the
lid open. And when they opened the lid, they saw
something wrapped up in it, and they couldn't necessarily tell
right away that it was a human body, but then
(06:59):
they saw a foot peeking out of one of the wrappings,
and then when they saw that, they knew they had
a human body. And the body was brought into the
medical examiner's office and then the next day. Of course,
it was a sign to me. Whenever these trash cans
came in, they always put it on top of the gurny,
and this one they had left standing straight up, so
(07:19):
it was a good eight feet off the ground, maybe
eight and a half feet off the ground. And when
I saw that, I saw that duct tape and I
saw the green slime on it, and I was just like, well,
here we go. And I walked over and I thought,
how bizarre this is covered in duct tape. But like
I said, the duct tape had been cut so the
lid could be opened up. I was already dressed in
my personal protective equipment, so I climbed up on top
(07:42):
of the gurney and opened the lid to reveal what
was on the inside of the trash can. And when
I opened it up, I could see the body was
wrapped in a blue plastic tarp, and it appeared that
the tarp was secured in place with more duct tape
in multiple thin chains in a thin white nylon rope.
The trash can also caned a murky, bloody, greasy water
(08:03):
that had an odor that I could best describe as
unwashed elephant anus, which was my first band name, by
the way. The question that I had was how was
I going to get this guy out of the trash
can so I could do the autopsy? I asked one
of the autopsy technicians, mister Reid, if he could help
me with this, and his response was no no. He
(08:26):
recommended I'd take the gurney to the processing area and
tip it on its side, letting the water come out,
and then he would help me pull the body out
of the trash can. I wheeled the gurney down the
hall to the intake area. This intake area was well lit,
it was pretty wide, it had a drain on the floor,
and it had all the cleaning supplies mops, sponges, etc.
So I got everything situated and I grabbed the handle
(08:47):
of the trash can and I began slowly tipping it
to let the water drain out. And initially, while I
was tipping it, the water started spilling out, and I
thought this would work. But the problem was as I
increased the angle of the trash can to get more
of the water out, physics took over and it caused
the trash can to suddenly become incredibly heavy and I
(09:09):
couldn't control it anymore and it pitched forward suddenly, quickly
slamming down on the gurney. During this moment, instead of
letting go, I thought it could prevent the descent of
this fifty five gallon trash can full of water and
a nearly two hundred pound dead man. But inexplicably, I
never let go of the handle. I held onto it
with both hands, so as the trash can and its
(09:29):
contents fell forward, it pulled me up off the ground
and onto the side of the trash can, which I
was now on top of, and the lid came slamming
down on my head, and I witnessed from my bird's
eye view the contents come flooding out. First, the blood
tinged water came out and overflowed onto the floor, and
then the body came sliding out like some sort of
(09:52):
bizarre trash can berthing process. Thankfully, the dead guy stayed
on the gurney with his tarp wrapped around him. The bloody,
greasy water, on the the other hand, went everywhere. It
was all over the gurney, all over the floor, it
was all over me. He covered the floor with a slippery,
blood tinged goo. And mister Reid came walking out and
he was greeted by this catastrophic scene, me laying on
(10:13):
the trash can, gooey, bloody fluid everywhere, and he said,
what in the hell are you doing? What were you thinking?
In my response, astride at the top of the trash
can was I thought I had it. I climbed off
the trash can. Thankfully, like I said, I had had
my ppe on, so I didn't get soaked to the bone.
But I was a mess. I helped clean things up,
(10:36):
and then we took the body back into the morgue
and proceeded with the autopsy. After the cleanup, we took
the trash can off the gurney and we took the
body to the morgue for the autopsy. I assessed the body.
He was wrapped, like I said, in a blue plastic tarp,
secured with duct tape, multiple cheap chains, and a rope.
I removed that initial tarp, and when I took that off,
(10:56):
he was wrapped in another tan blanket, and when that
was removed, he was wrapped in a red and blue blanket.
And once that was all fully removed, we finally got
to the body. He was fully clothed. He was moderately decomposed.
He had green discolorations, marbling, and of course the bloating
that I'd described earlier. I recovered drug paraphernalia from his pockets,
(11:17):
a possible crack pipe or meth pipe, a bottle of
pills which contained xanax bars, and some other assorted pills.
When I did the autopsy, he had a massive subcalial hemorrhage,
which is hemorrhage underneath the scalp. This represented blunt force
trauma the head, so he'd been hit in the head
with something or a fist or a foot or something.
(11:38):
The rest of the autopsy didn't show a lot of
other findings. I couldn't find any signs of strangulations or
any further beating or stabbings or shooting or anything of
that nature, so he had blunt force trauma the head,
but not significant enough to have necessarily killed him. We
ran blood samples with toxicology and the results came back
as positive for cocaine, so he had been using cocaine.
(12:00):
He had been hit in the head, and there was
no real physical findings at autopsy that he appeared to
have drowned or been alive when he was in the water.
He didn't really have enough injuries to have killed him.
Plus the cocaine wasn't high enough, so more likely than not,
he had been hit in the head, incapacitated, wrapped up
in all the wrappings, and then shoved into the trash
(12:22):
can or the submarine alive. Now in all these wrappings
and in the submarine covered in duct tape, it could
have made it so he wasn't getting enough air and
he asphyxiated. I had all my findings, I had the
autopsy report, the tuxcology results, and I discussed the case
thoroughly with the senior doctors at the office, and we
all agreed the best cause of death for this case
(12:42):
would be asphyxia in the manner of death homicide. And
that's how this case was finalized. So case closed. As
I'm sitting here today, I don't even know if this
case has ever been solved because I've never gone to
trial on it. From this case, I did learn thing.
This became the last time in my career I thought
(13:03):
I had superhuman strength and could hold a dead body
or a trash can full of water and a dead
body with just my own strength. I had finally learned
my lesson. Maybe who knows, I'm still working, And that
brings us to the end of the episode. I hope
you learned something like a trash can with a dead,
(13:24):
decomposed guy full of water really smells bad and I
hope you were entertained un to open next door
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.