August 17, 2023 • 29 mins
Angela Rowe and her three children are executed in a night of terror, where the sanctuary of their home becomes the site of a horrifying massacre. The crime scene, locked from the inside, bears the marks of stealth and calculation, painting a grim picture of the final moments of this family's life. The bullets that ended their lives set off an intricate and multi-layered investigation. In this episode, Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack unravel the complex forensics, dissecting elements such as the significance of the murder weapon, the absence of rigor mortis, skin slippage, and even the thermostat's role at the crime scene. The name Leonard Taylor surfaces as a suspect, leading to a discussion of his self-defense claims, the chilling methodology of his crime, the calculated nature of his acts, and his execution in the Missouri State Penitentiary on February 7th, 2023.
Time codes:
00:00:20: Joe Scott Morgan introduces single motherhood's struggles and potential dangers. He reveals the focus on Angela Rowe's homicide case and her three children.
00:03:00: Dave Mack discusses the tragic outcome of Angela Rowe's case and the uncertainty surrounding the time of death.
00:05:06: Morgan explains the time lag in discovering the bodies.
00:08:28: Dave Mack questions how investigators maintain their composure and the emotional impact of dealing with child victims.
00:11:20: Joe Scott explains the process of decomposition and how it is affected by factors such as temperature, and discusses the importance of observing the thermostat at a crime scene to understand the ambient environmental temperature
00:14:40: The terms “skin slippage” and “marbling” are explained.
00:16:39: Details about the locked house and the perpetrator's escape through a window are shared.
00:18:45: The focus on building a timeline leads to the mention of Leonard Taylor, and his claim of self-defense.
00:21:40: Morgan reveals the gruesome details of the autopsy report, explaining the multiple gunshot wounds each victim sustained.
00:24:51: The disturbing scene with the children as earwitnesses is described.
00:25:34: Joseph Scott Morgan reveals that the perpetrator was witnessed discarding a revolver into a sewer, a crucial piece of evidence that was never recovered. Challenges in determining the caliber are explained due to the absence of the weapon.
00:27:13: Dave Mack questions the importance of the missing murder weapon in the eyes of the jury.
00:28:29: Circumstantial evidence such as uncollected newspapers and mail is pointed out.
00:29:46: Joe Scott Morgan reveals that on February 7th, 2023, Leonard Taylor is executed in the Missouri State Penitentiary.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Bodybags with Joseph Scott Morgan. Some folks say life is hard,
don't do anything to make it any more difficult. One
of the things that I do know from experience because
(00:29):
I was raised by a single mom for a period
of time in my life. Life is particularly difficult for
a mama who is raising babies and is trying to
make ends meet. It's particularly hard when you might feel
lonely and you feel like you need somebody in your life.
(00:53):
The problem is is that there's not a lot of
folks to choose from out there. If you've got three
kids going to take on that burden with you, it's
a big ass. But loneliness abides in that world, and
it's hard. It's important to remember that you never know
who is going to enter your life at any point
(01:15):
in time. It could be a saint, or it could
be somebody that has very very bad intentions.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Angela Raau lived with her children in a Saint Louis suburb.
Her family became worried when they hadn't heard from her
and asked police to make a welfare check. Dowards at
her home were locked, so police climbed through a window.
Angela Roau was found dead, covered by blankets. She had
been shot four times. Her three young children were also shot,
(01:46):
their bodies left lined up on a bed.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Today, we're going to talk about the execution homicides of
Angela Rowe and her three children. Alexis a Korea and Tyrese.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is body bags, single motherhood, Dave.
(02:13):
It's a tough thing, even under the best of circumstances,
to try to make ends meet and to take care
of them babies all the way to adulthood. And when
you've got kids that are arranging in age from ten
to six to five, what a thing to have to juggle,
What a dynamic to have to juggle to make sure
(02:34):
all those needs are being met.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
When you said it's a big ask, I was thinking
along the same lines. This is a woman who has
three children, she's on her own. We have a crime
scene that actually even the medical examiner or the prosecutor
rather didn't know exactly when the murders occurred. So let's
(02:57):
start there. How is it possible that you have four people,
a mom and three children are murdered and you cannot
come with any certainty of what day or time they
were actually murdered.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
You look to the science, You look to the science.
You look to the science, and sometimes there are so
many variables. And let's think about this. If you do
a scientific experiment, you can change the outcome of that
experiment by adjusting certain variables within the formatting of that experiment.
And maybe you're trying to I don't know, if you
(03:34):
want to get sinister about it. Maybe you're trying to
influence outcomes in a way that you want them to
be and you're not doing true science at that point
in time. You just kind of let the cards follow
where they may. However, what we do know is that
when it comes to things like interpretation of postmortem interval PMI,
(03:56):
there are any number of factors along the way that
are going to impact how bodies change after death. In
this particular case, in this brutal homicide involving this young
mother her and let's face it, this case, if you
(04:17):
were to qualify it numerically, they claim that if you
start to get up into the range of three and
then you go to four, you can technically begin to
use the term mass homicide. Now, let that sink in
just for a second. A mass homicide because it is
not to diminish other people that have lost loved ones
(04:38):
as a result of violence. But when you start to
rise above a single individual and you start to get
up into the three, the four, those counts like that.
If this had been say in an environment like a
public gathering place, as opposed to a home, you would
hear the media throwing around mass homicide. But this is
contained within a home, and containment within the home goes
(05:03):
to this idea of trying to measure how long someone
has been down. In a particular case, the bodies are
protected from view, so you don't have, say, as opposed
to a public place where a mass homicide will take place,
these bodies are all laying together, contained within a physical
(05:24):
structure that is in fact locked from the interior this home,
and you can't observe the bodies going through these physical changes.
You're essentially there to see what all that remains. And
in this case, which I find quite fascinating, this event
is actually occurring in November of two thousand and four.
(05:49):
These bodies of these four victims were not found until
December the third of two thousand and four, so you've
got this huge lag in time and you begin to
think about what was occurring relative to the environment in
which they were found, what was going on from a
decompositional perspective as to their placement, the internal factors that
(06:11):
are affecting the changes of the body, and also are
you losing evidence over a period of time, and so
those are all things that are considered when we're assessing
a scene. And sometimes it's that idea. The further you
move down that linear timeline, as you're heading out away
from that critical moment in which these people lost their lives,
(06:34):
everything is changing all the while, that dynamic is changing
all the while. So it has an impact as to
how you're going to assess the scene, and in this
particular case, it certainly did.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
I think, Dave, you know, I'm looking at the actual
temperatures for November twenty second November twenty third, in that
time period, we're looking out of two thousand and four
in Saint Louis, Missouri, and I'm wondering, Joe, I thought,
and it's because of television. I know this that I thought.
You guys, you go up on the scene and you
make a few notes, and yeah, they based on stomach
(07:09):
contents and whatever. This person died at nine point fifty
eight pm three weeks ago on a Tuesday. I thought
that was something you guys did. But I find out now,
of course, having been together with you for so many cases,
that there is so much more involved. From a temperature standpoint.
We know that the bodies were not fresh. Is that
(07:31):
the right term?
Speaker 1 (07:32):
No, it's a term we use. Actually, let me, I'll
go ahead and plainly stated in my own verbiage and
with many of my colleagues, we refer to the fresh dead. So, yeah,
you're absolutely right.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
They have been dead for at least a little period
of time, and you have to figure out when this occurred.
And in this particular case, day and time really mean
a lot. I wonder when you get to a crime
scene like this, how do you move forward to find
the things you need? Forensically when you're looking at a
(08:04):
mom and three children. Now, look, the mom's an adult
and she has more wounds than the children. But how
do you maintain your composure when you're looking at children
a five year old, a six year old, and a
ten year old.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
It's almost as if you stand there. First off, it's
very surreal. It's very surreal. It was always very surreal
for me. I can't speak to other investigators, all right,
but when you begin to try to take in what
you're observing relative to the victims, that part of your
humanity is looking at these children. We're talking about kids
(08:43):
that are ten and six and five that are laying
immediately adjacent to their mom's body. It's a surreal moment.
Many times it's kind of tried to say, you sold
your own and then you deal with all of that
in the aftermath. But I have found myself over the
years as a death investigator being very, very distracted when
(09:04):
you're on a case like this. If you're talking about
a singular adult, all right, and you're working the case,
it's very easy to kind of adjust your mindset to
being very clinical. But there's that one little thread of
humanity as you begin to look and you're trying to
take in everything that you're seeing, and it's almost as
(09:25):
if Dave, the angel of death, has walked through this
place and has reaped this grim harvest. Because it's hard
to set aside what you're witnessing and rely completely on
the science, and in this case, we certainly had to.
(10:01):
No scene is the same as the other ones. Keep
that in mind. As an investigator, you always have to
be clear headed. I don't like to say open minded.
There's an old phrase that I've heard many years ago says,
be where the man that claims to have an open mind,
there's a high probability his brains landed on the floor
some time ago. You have to remain objective and clear
(10:25):
minded when you walk into a scene, and certainly you
have to get past all of that, all of those
factors that would negatively influence your ability to assess the scene.
An assessment is key here because you know that when
you walk in to a scene like this and there
has been a lapse time, you've got your senses being affected.
(10:46):
There's the sense of smell, there is there visual changes,
So you've got the smell of decomposition in the air.
And that's by a factor of four. Let's keep that
in mind when you think about for each body that
is there, they're decomposing. Because they're proximity to one another,
they are decomposing at probably the same rate.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Does temperature in the room or in the building have
anything to do with the decomposition and the speed?
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Yeah, it does, it certainly does. It's like any other
organic material. If you want to preserve it, you cool
it down, or in circumstances you can freeze it. You know,
decomposition never fully stops, but you can retard its development
by application of cooler temperatures. So in this case, when
(11:39):
the investigators arrive at the scene and look, I've been
to Saint Louis over the years, many many times, and
in late November, yeah, it can get warm during that
period of time, but most of the time you need
a jacket. All right, it's going to and maybe a sweater.
It's going to be really cool. And they can have
days when it really really gets.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Cool, and in this particular case, the daytime high fifty
to fifty four.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
And when they walked in the temperature setting, I'm saying
they You know, one of the things that you observe
at a crime scene is you want to look at
the thermostat. People don't think about that, but we do.
We actually check thermostats and houses to see, first off,
that the air is functioning, and then secondly to see
what the current temperature is because that's going to give
you an indication of what's referred to as an ambient
(12:24):
environmental temperature, and that is going to directly impact the
rate at which a body decomposes, and so we're faced
with four The interior temperature in this home, I think
was probably close to about fifty degrees. Now that is
not going to that is not going to slow decomposition
down to the point where it's non existent. Remembers. That
(12:47):
doesn't happen anyway. Even if bodies are frozen. There's still
going to be something going on, but it will slow it.
What they were able to assess at the scene with
these victims is that the bodies had actually gotten to
the point where riger mortis was no longer present. Now
(13:07):
that's key because we're not just talking about body temperature,
we're talking about rigidity. And if you're out past a
marker in time, that means that you're probably past that
thirty six hour mark. If bodies become what we refer
to as flacid, which means that if you grab the
forearm or the wrist of the deceased and you attempt
(13:30):
to manipulate the arm and it just kind of easily
is moved back and forward. You can move the shoulders
because riger really sets in and the shoulders very tightly.
You can bend the legs, at the knees and all
those sorts of things. That means that certain time has
elapsed in order to facilitate that all of the lactic
acid that had built up in the joints has now
(13:52):
begun to dissipate, and so you no longer have that rigidity.
You combine that with the fact that you can visually
see that there are color changes going on in the body,
which happens with decomposing bodies. You look for things that
they're refer to as marbling, skin slippage, all of these
other things that happen over a period of time.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Joe, when you say skin slippage, what exactly is that.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Well, with skin slippage the body bodies in particular, and
this would have been the case here the bodies that
top layer of skin, the epidermis, begins to peel, it
literally begins to peel. And so when you touch the body,
even with a gloved hand, and this is probably going
(14:38):
to set some people on edge when they hear this,
but if you touch a bare arm where they're skin slippage,
you wrap your hand, your gloved hand around the wrist
and you go to move the body so you can
either place in a bag or examine the body. The
skin will almost always kind of move. That epidermis will
move away, and you'll begin to see down into the dermis.
(15:01):
And when I say move, just imagine if you've ever
been sunburned and after a period of time, you begin
to peel. Okay, that's the epidermis coming loose. Well, it
happens as a normal biological process in decomposition, and again
that's another time marker. So you have bodies that begin
to have skin slippage. You have marbling, which occurs in decomposition,
(15:26):
which is and this is kind of an interesting manifestation
you have when we say marble. Just imagine the lines
that you see in a.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Block of marble.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Okay, those little dark lines that run through it. You'll
see this marbling where the blood that is contained in
those superficial vessels has begun to actually decompose within the vessels.
The blood decomposing in those vessels will actually begin to
make them stand out externally so that you can kind
of follow them. So you get these kind of curvilinear lines,
(15:59):
if you will, run through the body, and that's actually
another sign of decomposition. So all of these things are
markers along the way. In the case of this family
with Angela Rowe, she's been shot multiple times, her children
have been executed. Okay, you begin to try to take
(16:19):
the measure of what you're seeing and you understand that
this is not something as an investigator that happened recently,
that someone was able to have access to her. And
by the way, the house was locked from the interior
and there was an open window on the back of
the house. That whoever left that house that perpetrated this
crime exited through a window and they would not have
(16:43):
been seen necessarily walking out the front door. It was
done in stealth and probably under the cover of darkness.
More than likely, you have this instance where the bodies
are there and you're trying to understand the dynamic of
what's happened. And here's the chilling thing as an investigator,
that you've got a family that has been wiped out
(17:05):
in that moment, and all along the further you move
out of time, more evidence is being lost, the physical
changes are taking place, and nothing ever appears as it
did on the day that the event occurred. Dave, you know,
(17:39):
I hate the question why I think here though, it's
more important to try to understand who would want to
eradicate a mother and her three kids. And you know
this name arose in this case, Leonard Taylor, the mother's boyfriend,
and this thread that runs through Angela Rose life seems
(17:59):
to be to this man.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Leonard Taylor, was arrested in the deaths of Angelo Rowe
and her children, but the case became a he said,
she said situation. Taylor says he was in California when
they died. Taylor left Saint Louis on November twenty sixth.
He had plane tickets to California. The reservations for that
flight were made on November twenty fifth. But then there's
(18:24):
information coming from some of Taylor's family members saying he
confessed and saying that he was seen disposing of a
gun in a sewer near family member's home. Taylor repeatedly
told police that he did not kill his girlfriend and
her children.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Why I was asking you earlier about the temperature and
what it would have to do, you know, with decomposition,
because of when the when this family was found versus
when the crime occurred, when were they killed, and building
that timeline is what detectives have to do to make
sure where they can get the right person. All I
(19:03):
can think, Joe, from a forensic standpoint, there's a lot
of pressure on you to tell the detective where's that
window that this event happened. At the time. What was
Leonard Taylor doing? He was dating Angela Rowe. He had
a relationship with her in Saint Louis. But this man
also had a wife in California, another girlfriend in Kentucky,
(19:25):
and he was juggling these relationships. Leonard Taylor, according to
his brother, claimed that Angela Rowe was coming at him
with a knife, so he shot her and more than
once because he couldn't get her to stop. That's what
his brother told us about Leonard Taylor on the night
(19:46):
this happened. So to get right down to the bottom line,
Leonard Taylor was married to Debrin Williams in California. He
called his brother from Angela Rowe's place and and told
him that he had killed Angela. He said, I didn't
mean to kill her, but she came at me with
(20:07):
a knife and I couldn't get her off of me.
He says, I shot her two or three times.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
I gotta ask were the ten year old, the six
year old and the five year old also coming at
him as well.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
I'm wondering, Joe, what were they possibly doing other than
none of this makes sense from his standpoint. You got
to remember he's telling his brother the story that he
thinks will make him look the least evil. But it's evil.
When you kill a mother and her children, you are
the definition of evil. And even if she was chasing
him with a knife and the children were all coming
(20:41):
at him with knives and his only defense was to
kill him, you'd have thought he would have had some wounds,
some injuries, but none.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Let me kind of frame this for you too. If
you think that's bad, let me throw I got another
one for you. When the examination was performed on these victims,
these victims of this massacre, it was determined that Angela,
the mother, had multiple gunshot wounds. So she's got four
(21:11):
gunshot wounes. She's got two to her left arm, one
to her chest, and I guess what people will refer
to as the coup de gras is a GSW two
her head, which they believe is what finished her off.
And that makes sense. You've got alexis, her ten year old,
(21:31):
and they've both sustained gunshot wounds to the head, and
then Tyrese, a five year old, has sustained a fatal
gunshot one to the head.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
One thing to point out, Joe, is that ten year
old Alexis was shot twice in the head, six year
old Krea was shot twice in the head, and Tyrese,
the five year old little boy was shot once. Is
there any significance to that in terms of forensics when
you look at this, does it when you're looking at
why did it take two here? Two here in one here?
Or is it just that's the way it was?
Speaker 1 (22:02):
No. I think probably the more substantive consideration we have
here is the fact that the forensics revealed that this
was either a thirty eight caliber revolver, remember I'm saying revolver,
or a three point fifty seven revolver. And when you
look at this, and you know what a standard revolver
(22:24):
holds are six rounds. Just with Angela alone, she was
shot four times, and you've got Alexis who shot twice.
You've got a Krea who shot twice. You see in
a pattern here, Now we're at six, we're at eight rounds.
And then you get up to Tyrese, the five year old,
(22:46):
he shot one more, Dave, whoever did this? When it's
not like a semi automatic weapon where you've got a
magazine that fits into the weapon people famously see these.
You've got the slide that you charge the weapon with
and fire it, and maybe you've got fourteen rounds depending
upon the weapon, you know, and it's ejecting shells. That's
not what happens with a revolver. You've got six shots,
(23:08):
so you have to literally open up the cylinder, dump
out the expended rounds, then purpose to reload the weapon
and fire it. So that makes this all the more
ghastly when you think about it. It worked many years
ago a case where three men were placed on a
(23:31):
sofa and they were all shot multiple times with the
same weapon, and it was a revolver. And I'll never forget.
They were interlocked in their arms. They were forced by
a drug game to hold to interlock their arms at
the elbows. And those were reloads as well. And here's
the image that is kind of painted. Something horrible is happening.
If this is a thirty eight caliber or it's certainly
(23:53):
a three fifty seven, which is a magnum load, you
can't get past the sound. You got these three babies, Dave,
that are listening to this. They're hearing the screams. The
mom has raised her arm, apparently because she's been shot
twice in the arm. She has an awareness that this
is the end. She screams out. And you've got these
(24:15):
three babies that are bearing witness to this. And certainly,
if they were not necessarily eyewitnesses at the time, there
were certainly earwitnesses. You can't escape the report of this
weapon contained within this home. In there, the sound travels everywhere.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
During the time that he had to reload. Who was
still alive?
Speaker 1 (24:35):
That's a question that only the sweet Lord above has
the answer for, because we don't know. But we know that,
and that adds to the level of horror here. We
know that somebody had to have been alive to bear
witness to this, because it appears that they were all
shot with the same weapon. And as it turns out,
(24:59):
the perpetrat in this case was witnessed throwing away a
revolver into sewer to get rid of it, and they
never That was one of the problems that the forensics
had is that they could never get their hands, i
think on this weapon to determine if it was a
thirty eight or three fifty seven. These rounds are akin
(25:21):
to one another in the sense of thirty eight. It
sounds counterintuitive. It's a point thirty eight caliber is smaller
than point three five seven. And when I say smaller,
the actual cartridge for the three fifty seven is bigger.
Remember I said it's a magnum. You can actually take
a thirty eight caliber round and fire it out of
(25:45):
a three point fifty seven magnum revolver. But you cannot
do that with a three fifty seven magnum and place
it into a thirty eight caliber revolver and fire it
because cartridge is too big. But these rounds, when you're
examining them in the ballistics lab, these rounds will come
apart many times, and it's hard to determine exactly what
(26:06):
caliber it is. And if the rounds are deformed, it's
hard to kind of put your finger on that.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
Now, Joe, you've been through a lot of crimes over
the years in terms of testifying and research, But when
you don't have the murder weapon as evidence, when you
don't have that, do you think sometimes we get lost
on trying to prove thirty eight three fifty seven versus
what the jury. We'll see, we don't have a gun,
we've got four dead people who shouldn't be dead, and
(26:35):
we've got one suspect to the crime and no others.
Does law enforcement get wrapped up in the gun when
it doesn't mean that much to the jury, when you
don't have the weapon, How much does it mean to
the jury?
Speaker 1 (26:47):
I think the jury's probably if you're saying that you're
dealing with a homicide. One of the things that prosecution
has to do is to try to explain to the
jury to as you had just mentioned, that you do
have these four individuals that are dead at the hand
of the accused, and that wherever that weapon is he
(27:11):
wielded it. So a lot of that you have to
combine the data that you do possess with the circumstantial
evidence that they were able to develop along the way
to try to understand this horror show, because that's at
the end, that's what it all comes down to, and
it's a combination of all of the information. You go
to someone physically setting the thermostat in the house in
(27:36):
order to drop that temperature down, and there's another little
piece to this. There were newspapers deposited in the front
yard that had not been being picked up, and that's
another thing that you look for. You know, you look
for stacked mail, You look for newspapers, that sort of
thing that are being collected. And know what, you don't
have evidence of an individual coming out of the home
collecting these things and then they disappearing from sight. That
(27:59):
means that jumps outside of the norm. That's another circumstantial
element to this. Then you think about the people that
are contained within the intimate circle. Certainly, make no bones
about it. Mister Taylor, though he had a wife in
California and he's got a girlfriend in Kentucky, he's spending
time in this home. He's cohabitating here at least for
(28:20):
some period of time. Well, he vanishes off of the
face of the planet at this moment in time and
beats feet for California, and you have to explain, well,
what was your motivation for leaving this home? And then, oh,
by the way, the four people that are domiciled there
with you at least part time all have multiple gunshot
ones and you're nowhere around and so you begin to
(28:43):
pile on those circumstances and combine that with physical evidence,
and you think about access and opportunity and motive, it
paints a very bleak picture for him, and, of course,
as it turns out, on February seventh, twenty twenty three,
Taylor was executed in Missouri State Penitentiary. I'm Joseph Scott
(29:08):
Morgan and this is bodybacks
Bodybags with Joseph Scott Morgan. Some folks say life is hard,
don't do anything to make it any more difficult. One
of the things that I do know from experience because
(00:29):
I was raised by a single mom for a period
of time in my life. Life is particularly difficult for
a mama who is raising babies and is trying to
make ends meet. It's particularly hard when you might feel
lonely and you feel like you need somebody in your life.
(00:53):
The problem is is that there's not a lot of
folks to choose from out there. If you've got three
kids going to take on that burden with you, it's
a big ass. But loneliness abides in that world, and
it's hard. It's important to remember that you never know
who is going to enter your life at any point
(01:15):
in time. It could be a saint, or it could
be somebody that has very very bad intentions.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Angela Raau lived with her children in a Saint Louis suburb.
Her family became worried when they hadn't heard from her
and asked police to make a welfare check. Dowards at
her home were locked, so police climbed through a window.
Angela Roau was found dead, covered by blankets. She had
been shot four times. Her three young children were also shot,
(01:46):
their bodies left lined up on a bed.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Today, we're going to talk about the execution homicides of
Angela Rowe and her three children. Alexis a Korea and Tyrese.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is body bags, single motherhood, Dave.
(02:13):
It's a tough thing, even under the best of circumstances,
to try to make ends meet and to take care
of them babies all the way to adulthood. And when
you've got kids that are arranging in age from ten
to six to five, what a thing to have to juggle,
What a dynamic to have to juggle to make sure
(02:34):
all those needs are being met.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
When you said it's a big ask, I was thinking
along the same lines. This is a woman who has
three children, she's on her own. We have a crime
scene that actually even the medical examiner or the prosecutor
rather didn't know exactly when the murders occurred. So let's
(02:57):
start there. How is it possible that you have four people,
a mom and three children are murdered and you cannot
come with any certainty of what day or time they
were actually murdered.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
You look to the science, You look to the science.
You look to the science, and sometimes there are so
many variables. And let's think about this. If you do
a scientific experiment, you can change the outcome of that
experiment by adjusting certain variables within the formatting of that experiment.
And maybe you're trying to I don't know, if you
(03:34):
want to get sinister about it. Maybe you're trying to
influence outcomes in a way that you want them to
be and you're not doing true science at that point
in time. You just kind of let the cards follow
where they may. However, what we do know is that
when it comes to things like interpretation of postmortem interval PMI,
(03:56):
there are any number of factors along the way that
are going to impact how bodies change after death. In
this particular case, in this brutal homicide involving this young
mother her and let's face it, this case, if you
(04:17):
were to qualify it numerically, they claim that if you
start to get up into the range of three and
then you go to four, you can technically begin to
use the term mass homicide. Now, let that sink in
just for a second. A mass homicide because it is
not to diminish other people that have lost loved ones
(04:38):
as a result of violence. But when you start to
rise above a single individual and you start to get
up into the three, the four, those counts like that.
If this had been say in an environment like a
public gathering place, as opposed to a home, you would
hear the media throwing around mass homicide. But this is
contained within a home, and containment within the home goes
(05:03):
to this idea of trying to measure how long someone
has been down. In a particular case, the bodies are
protected from view, so you don't have, say, as opposed
to a public place where a mass homicide will take place,
these bodies are all laying together, contained within a physical
(05:24):
structure that is in fact locked from the interior this home,
and you can't observe the bodies going through these physical changes.
You're essentially there to see what all that remains. And
in this case, which I find quite fascinating, this event
is actually occurring in November of two thousand and four.
(05:49):
These bodies of these four victims were not found until
December the third of two thousand and four, so you've
got this huge lag in time and you begin to
think about what was occurring relative to the environment in
which they were found, what was going on from a
decompositional perspective as to their placement, the internal factors that
(06:11):
are affecting the changes of the body, and also are
you losing evidence over a period of time, and so
those are all things that are considered when we're assessing
a scene. And sometimes it's that idea. The further you
move down that linear timeline, as you're heading out away
from that critical moment in which these people lost their lives,
(06:34):
everything is changing all the while, that dynamic is changing
all the while. So it has an impact as to
how you're going to assess the scene, and in this
particular case, it certainly did.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
I think, Dave, you know, I'm looking at the actual
temperatures for November twenty second November twenty third, in that
time period, we're looking out of two thousand and four
in Saint Louis, Missouri, and I'm wondering, Joe, I thought,
and it's because of television. I know this that I thought.
You guys, you go up on the scene and you
make a few notes, and yeah, they based on stomach
(07:09):
contents and whatever. This person died at nine point fifty
eight pm three weeks ago on a Tuesday. I thought
that was something you guys did. But I find out now,
of course, having been together with you for so many cases,
that there is so much more involved. From a temperature standpoint.
We know that the bodies were not fresh. Is that
(07:31):
the right term?
Speaker 1 (07:32):
No, it's a term we use. Actually, let me, I'll
go ahead and plainly stated in my own verbiage and
with many of my colleagues, we refer to the fresh dead. So, yeah,
you're absolutely right.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
They have been dead for at least a little period
of time, and you have to figure out when this occurred.
And in this particular case, day and time really mean
a lot. I wonder when you get to a crime
scene like this, how do you move forward to find
the things you need? Forensically when you're looking at a
(08:04):
mom and three children. Now, look, the mom's an adult
and she has more wounds than the children. But how
do you maintain your composure when you're looking at children
a five year old, a six year old, and a
ten year old.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
It's almost as if you stand there. First off, it's
very surreal. It's very surreal. It was always very surreal
for me. I can't speak to other investigators, all right,
but when you begin to try to take in what
you're observing relative to the victims, that part of your
humanity is looking at these children. We're talking about kids
(08:43):
that are ten and six and five that are laying
immediately adjacent to their mom's body. It's a surreal moment.
Many times it's kind of tried to say, you sold
your own and then you deal with all of that
in the aftermath. But I have found myself over the
years as a death investigator being very, very distracted when
(09:04):
you're on a case like this. If you're talking about
a singular adult, all right, and you're working the case,
it's very easy to kind of adjust your mindset to
being very clinical. But there's that one little thread of
humanity as you begin to look and you're trying to
take in everything that you're seeing, and it's almost as
(09:25):
if Dave, the angel of death, has walked through this
place and has reaped this grim harvest. Because it's hard
to set aside what you're witnessing and rely completely on
the science, and in this case, we certainly had to.
(10:01):
No scene is the same as the other ones. Keep
that in mind. As an investigator, you always have to
be clear headed. I don't like to say open minded.
There's an old phrase that I've heard many years ago says,
be where the man that claims to have an open mind,
there's a high probability his brains landed on the floor
some time ago. You have to remain objective and clear
(10:25):
minded when you walk into a scene, and certainly you
have to get past all of that, all of those
factors that would negatively influence your ability to assess the scene.
An assessment is key here because you know that when
you walk in to a scene like this and there
has been a lapse time, you've got your senses being affected.
(10:46):
There's the sense of smell, there is there visual changes,
So you've got the smell of decomposition in the air.
And that's by a factor of four. Let's keep that
in mind when you think about for each body that
is there, they're decomposing. Because they're proximity to one another,
they are decomposing at probably the same rate.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Does temperature in the room or in the building have
anything to do with the decomposition and the speed?
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Yeah, it does, it certainly does. It's like any other
organic material. If you want to preserve it, you cool
it down, or in circumstances you can freeze it. You know,
decomposition never fully stops, but you can retard its development
by application of cooler temperatures. So in this case, when
(11:39):
the investigators arrive at the scene and look, I've been
to Saint Louis over the years, many many times, and
in late November, yeah, it can get warm during that
period of time, but most of the time you need
a jacket. All right, it's going to and maybe a sweater.
It's going to be really cool. And they can have
days when it really really gets.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Cool, and in this particular case, the daytime high fifty
to fifty four.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
And when they walked in the temperature setting, I'm saying
they You know, one of the things that you observe
at a crime scene is you want to look at
the thermostat. People don't think about that, but we do.
We actually check thermostats and houses to see, first off,
that the air is functioning, and then secondly to see
what the current temperature is because that's going to give
you an indication of what's referred to as an ambient
(12:24):
environmental temperature, and that is going to directly impact the
rate at which a body decomposes, and so we're faced
with four The interior temperature in this home, I think
was probably close to about fifty degrees. Now that is
not going to that is not going to slow decomposition
down to the point where it's non existent. Remembers. That
(12:47):
doesn't happen anyway. Even if bodies are frozen. There's still
going to be something going on, but it will slow it.
What they were able to assess at the scene with
these victims is that the bodies had actually gotten to
the point where riger mortis was no longer present. Now
(13:07):
that's key because we're not just talking about body temperature,
we're talking about rigidity. And if you're out past a
marker in time, that means that you're probably past that
thirty six hour mark. If bodies become what we refer
to as flacid, which means that if you grab the
forearm or the wrist of the deceased and you attempt
(13:30):
to manipulate the arm and it just kind of easily
is moved back and forward. You can move the shoulders
because riger really sets in and the shoulders very tightly.
You can bend the legs, at the knees and all
those sorts of things. That means that certain time has
elapsed in order to facilitate that all of the lactic
acid that had built up in the joints has now
(13:52):
begun to dissipate, and so you no longer have that rigidity.
You combine that with the fact that you can visually
see that there are color changes going on in the body,
which happens with decomposing bodies. You look for things that
they're refer to as marbling, skin slippage, all of these
other things that happen over a period of time.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Joe, when you say skin slippage, what exactly is that.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Well, with skin slippage the body bodies in particular, and
this would have been the case here the bodies that
top layer of skin, the epidermis, begins to peel, it
literally begins to peel. And so when you touch the body,
even with a gloved hand, and this is probably going
(14:38):
to set some people on edge when they hear this,
but if you touch a bare arm where they're skin slippage,
you wrap your hand, your gloved hand around the wrist
and you go to move the body so you can
either place in a bag or examine the body. The
skin will almost always kind of move. That epidermis will
move away, and you'll begin to see down into the dermis.
(15:01):
And when I say move, just imagine if you've ever
been sunburned and after a period of time, you begin
to peel. Okay, that's the epidermis coming loose. Well, it
happens as a normal biological process in decomposition, and again
that's another time marker. So you have bodies that begin
to have skin slippage. You have marbling, which occurs in decomposition,
(15:26):
which is and this is kind of an interesting manifestation
you have when we say marble. Just imagine the lines
that you see in a.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Block of marble.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Okay, those little dark lines that run through it. You'll
see this marbling where the blood that is contained in
those superficial vessels has begun to actually decompose within the vessels.
The blood decomposing in those vessels will actually begin to
make them stand out externally so that you can kind
of follow them. So you get these kind of curvilinear lines,
(15:59):
if you will, run through the body, and that's actually
another sign of decomposition. So all of these things are
markers along the way. In the case of this family
with Angela Rowe, she's been shot multiple times, her children
have been executed. Okay, you begin to try to take
(16:19):
the measure of what you're seeing and you understand that
this is not something as an investigator that happened recently,
that someone was able to have access to her. And
by the way, the house was locked from the interior
and there was an open window on the back of
the house. That whoever left that house that perpetrated this
crime exited through a window and they would not have
(16:43):
been seen necessarily walking out the front door. It was
done in stealth and probably under the cover of darkness.
More than likely, you have this instance where the bodies
are there and you're trying to understand the dynamic of
what's happened. And here's the chilling thing as an investigator,
that you've got a family that has been wiped out
(17:05):
in that moment, and all along the further you move
out of time, more evidence is being lost, the physical
changes are taking place, and nothing ever appears as it
did on the day that the event occurred. Dave, you know,
(17:39):
I hate the question why I think here though, it's
more important to try to understand who would want to
eradicate a mother and her three kids. And you know
this name arose in this case, Leonard Taylor, the mother's boyfriend,
and this thread that runs through Angela Rose life seems
(17:59):
to be to this man.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Leonard Taylor, was arrested in the deaths of Angelo Rowe
and her children, but the case became a he said,
she said situation. Taylor says he was in California when
they died. Taylor left Saint Louis on November twenty sixth.
He had plane tickets to California. The reservations for that
flight were made on November twenty fifth. But then there's
(18:24):
information coming from some of Taylor's family members saying he
confessed and saying that he was seen disposing of a
gun in a sewer near family member's home. Taylor repeatedly
told police that he did not kill his girlfriend and
her children.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Why I was asking you earlier about the temperature and
what it would have to do, you know, with decomposition,
because of when the when this family was found versus
when the crime occurred, when were they killed, and building
that timeline is what detectives have to do to make
sure where they can get the right person. All I
(19:03):
can think, Joe, from a forensic standpoint, there's a lot
of pressure on you to tell the detective where's that
window that this event happened. At the time. What was
Leonard Taylor doing? He was dating Angela Rowe. He had
a relationship with her in Saint Louis. But this man
also had a wife in California, another girlfriend in Kentucky,
(19:25):
and he was juggling these relationships. Leonard Taylor, according to
his brother, claimed that Angela Rowe was coming at him
with a knife, so he shot her and more than
once because he couldn't get her to stop. That's what
his brother told us about Leonard Taylor on the night
(19:46):
this happened. So to get right down to the bottom line,
Leonard Taylor was married to Debrin Williams in California. He
called his brother from Angela Rowe's place and and told
him that he had killed Angela. He said, I didn't
mean to kill her, but she came at me with
(20:07):
a knife and I couldn't get her off of me.
He says, I shot her two or three times.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
I gotta ask were the ten year old, the six
year old and the five year old also coming at
him as well.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
I'm wondering, Joe, what were they possibly doing other than
none of this makes sense from his standpoint. You got
to remember he's telling his brother the story that he
thinks will make him look the least evil. But it's evil.
When you kill a mother and her children, you are
the definition of evil. And even if she was chasing
him with a knife and the children were all coming
(20:41):
at him with knives and his only defense was to
kill him, you'd have thought he would have had some wounds,
some injuries, but none.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Let me kind of frame this for you too. If
you think that's bad, let me throw I got another
one for you. When the examination was performed on these victims,
these victims of this massacre, it was determined that Angela,
the mother, had multiple gunshot wounds. So she's got four
(21:11):
gunshot wounes. She's got two to her left arm, one
to her chest, and I guess what people will refer
to as the coup de gras is a GSW two
her head, which they believe is what finished her off.
And that makes sense. You've got alexis, her ten year old,
(21:31):
and they've both sustained gunshot wounds to the head, and
then Tyrese, a five year old, has sustained a fatal
gunshot one to the head.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
One thing to point out, Joe, is that ten year
old Alexis was shot twice in the head, six year
old Krea was shot twice in the head, and Tyrese,
the five year old little boy was shot once. Is
there any significance to that in terms of forensics when
you look at this, does it when you're looking at
why did it take two here? Two here in one here?
Or is it just that's the way it was?
Speaker 1 (22:02):
No. I think probably the more substantive consideration we have
here is the fact that the forensics revealed that this
was either a thirty eight caliber revolver, remember I'm saying revolver,
or a three point fifty seven revolver. And when you
look at this, and you know what a standard revolver
(22:24):
holds are six rounds. Just with Angela alone, she was
shot four times, and you've got Alexis who shot twice.
You've got a Krea who shot twice. You see in
a pattern here, Now we're at six, we're at eight rounds.
And then you get up to Tyrese, the five year old,
(22:46):
he shot one more, Dave, whoever did this? When it's
not like a semi automatic weapon where you've got a
magazine that fits into the weapon people famously see these.
You've got the slide that you charge the weapon with
and fire it, and maybe you've got fourteen rounds depending
upon the weapon, you know, and it's ejecting shells. That's
not what happens with a revolver. You've got six shots,
(23:08):
so you have to literally open up the cylinder, dump
out the expended rounds, then purpose to reload the weapon
and fire it. So that makes this all the more
ghastly when you think about it. It worked many years
ago a case where three men were placed on a
(23:31):
sofa and they were all shot multiple times with the
same weapon, and it was a revolver. And I'll never forget.
They were interlocked in their arms. They were forced by
a drug game to hold to interlock their arms at
the elbows. And those were reloads as well. And here's
the image that is kind of painted. Something horrible is happening.
If this is a thirty eight caliber or it's certainly
(23:53):
a three fifty seven, which is a magnum load, you
can't get past the sound. You got these three babies, Dave,
that are listening to this. They're hearing the screams. The
mom has raised her arm, apparently because she's been shot
twice in the arm. She has an awareness that this
is the end. She screams out. And you've got these
(24:15):
three babies that are bearing witness to this. And certainly,
if they were not necessarily eyewitnesses at the time, there
were certainly earwitnesses. You can't escape the report of this
weapon contained within this home. In there, the sound travels everywhere.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
During the time that he had to reload. Who was
still alive?
Speaker 1 (24:35):
That's a question that only the sweet Lord above has
the answer for, because we don't know. But we know that,
and that adds to the level of horror here. We
know that somebody had to have been alive to bear
witness to this, because it appears that they were all
shot with the same weapon. And as it turns out,
(24:59):
the perpetrat in this case was witnessed throwing away a
revolver into sewer to get rid of it, and they
never That was one of the problems that the forensics
had is that they could never get their hands, i
think on this weapon to determine if it was a
thirty eight or three fifty seven. These rounds are akin
(25:21):
to one another in the sense of thirty eight. It
sounds counterintuitive. It's a point thirty eight caliber is smaller
than point three five seven. And when I say smaller,
the actual cartridge for the three fifty seven is bigger.
Remember I said it's a magnum. You can actually take
a thirty eight caliber round and fire it out of
(25:45):
a three point fifty seven magnum revolver. But you cannot
do that with a three fifty seven magnum and place
it into a thirty eight caliber revolver and fire it
because cartridge is too big. But these rounds, when you're
examining them in the ballistics lab, these rounds will come
apart many times, and it's hard to determine exactly what
(26:06):
caliber it is. And if the rounds are deformed, it's
hard to kind of put your finger on that.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
Now, Joe, you've been through a lot of crimes over
the years in terms of testifying and research, But when
you don't have the murder weapon as evidence, when you
don't have that, do you think sometimes we get lost
on trying to prove thirty eight three fifty seven versus
what the jury. We'll see, we don't have a gun,
we've got four dead people who shouldn't be dead, and
(26:35):
we've got one suspect to the crime and no others.
Does law enforcement get wrapped up in the gun when
it doesn't mean that much to the jury, when you
don't have the weapon, How much does it mean to
the jury?
Speaker 1 (26:47):
I think the jury's probably if you're saying that you're
dealing with a homicide. One of the things that prosecution
has to do is to try to explain to the
jury to as you had just mentioned, that you do
have these four individuals that are dead at the hand
of the accused, and that wherever that weapon is he
(27:11):
wielded it. So a lot of that you have to
combine the data that you do possess with the circumstantial
evidence that they were able to develop along the way
to try to understand this horror show, because that's at
the end, that's what it all comes down to, and
it's a combination of all of the information. You go
to someone physically setting the thermostat in the house in
(27:36):
order to drop that temperature down, and there's another little
piece to this. There were newspapers deposited in the front
yard that had not been being picked up, and that's
another thing that you look for. You know, you look
for stacked mail, You look for newspapers, that sort of
thing that are being collected. And know what, you don't
have evidence of an individual coming out of the home
collecting these things and then they disappearing from sight. That
(27:59):
means that jumps outside of the norm. That's another circumstantial
element to this. Then you think about the people that
are contained within the intimate circle. Certainly, make no bones
about it. Mister Taylor, though he had a wife in
California and he's got a girlfriend in Kentucky, he's spending
time in this home. He's cohabitating here at least for
(28:20):
some period of time. Well, he vanishes off of the
face of the planet at this moment in time and
beats feet for California, and you have to explain, well,
what was your motivation for leaving this home? And then, oh,
by the way, the four people that are domiciled there
with you at least part time all have multiple gunshot
ones and you're nowhere around and so you begin to
(28:43):
pile on those circumstances and combine that with physical evidence,
and you think about access and opportunity and motive, it
paints a very bleak picture for him, and, of course,
as it turns out, on February seventh, twenty twenty three,
Taylor was executed in Missouri State Penitentiary. I'm Joseph Scott
(29:08):
Morgan and this is bodybacks
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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