July 27, 2023 • 27 mins
Stephen and Carol Baxter are discovered deceased, peacefully positioned side by side in their recliners in their seaside home on Easter morning. With the cold winds of Great Britain and the serenity of their repose, carbon monoxide poisoning is the initial suspicion. As the layers of this puzzle unfurl, new clues emerge. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack dive into the mysterious deaths of a married couple, taking listeners on a journey through the complexities of crime scene investigations, the tragic dangers of carbon monoxide, and the lethal grasp of synthetic opioids. When the toxicology report unveils the presence of fentanyl in the couple's system, the case takes a darker turn.
Time-codes:
[00:20] - Joe Scott Morgan sets the scene, discussing the unique coldness of being near the sea during cooler months. He then introduces the story of a married couple found dead in their home, initially suspected of carbon monoxide poisoning.
[01:35] - Joe Scott discusses his love for Great Britain and how its unique environment affects the inhabitants, specifically referencing the couple in question, Stephen Baxter and his wife, Carol.
[02:32] - Dave Mack describes the heartbreaking scene when the Baxter’s daughter, Ellie, finds her parents dead in their recliners. He discusses her immediate assumption of carbon monoxide poisoning and her actions to protect herself and her child.
[04:50] - Joe Scott Morgan returns to the scene, providing a more precise location of the couple's home and the characteristics of the area. He talks about the first responders' initial investigation, noting the lack of signs of forced entry or struggle, and the importance of considering all possibilities in an investigation.
[07:44] - The pivotal role of the initial reporter in a crime scene is highlighted. Joe stresses how their early observations can greatly influence the subsequent trajectory of the investigation, and shares a poignant moment when the daughter discovered her parents on Easter Sunday.
[10:00] - Morgan shares his harrowing personal experience with carbon monoxide, illuminating the silent dangers investigators face. This anecdote also serves as a potent reminder of the gas's deadly potential.
[12:20] Mack questions how investigators transition from a peaceful scene to a full-blown investigation. Joseph Scott Morgan offers invaluable knowledge on the visual indicators of carbon monoxide poisoning, the process of checking for carbon monoxide in the house, and the role of the fire service.
[15:00] - Morgan talks about the challenge investigators face when there are no signs of forced entry, external trauma, or carbon monoxide poisoning, raising the possibility of double suicide. He explains what investigators would look for at the scene, breaking down the evidential requirements that would substantiate such a claim.
[17:40] - The lethal potential of carbon monoxide is revisited, focusing on its aftermath. Morgan and Mack discuss its deadly embrace and how it can deceive even the most seasoned investigators.
[00:20:20] - The narrative zooms out, shedding light on the affluent life led by the Baxters. Their status and lifestyle add a new dimension, prompting questions of motive and involvement.
[23:16] - Morgan explains the couple's health conditions and provides a crash course on the indicators of heroin usage at a crime scene. He reveals that the toxicology report for Mr. and Mrs. Baxter showed that they had fentanyl in their systems, a potent drug that has caused many deaths.
[25:41] - The conversation expands to the societal implications of fentanyl misuse. By tracing its origins from medical utility to illicit usage, listeners are offered a broader context of the drug's devastating impact.
[26:44] - Joe Scott Morgan reveals that three people have been charged in the Baxter's deaths.
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 (00:08):
Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. There's nothing I don't
think colder than being near the sea during the cooler
months of the year. The reason I say that is
(00:30):
that it's different than being kind of inland, where many
times you feel like that you can put on just
enough clothing to make you feel more comfortable. But there's
something about being near the sea when it's cold out
or cool. It's what they refer to as that kind
of bone chilling cold. If you live near the sea
(00:52):
in the cooler months, you run your heat and you
try to make your environment as comfortable as you possibly can.
But the thing about being cool by the sea is
that it permeates everything. It comes up through the floorboards
of the house, it comes through the walls, I think.
And in our case that we're going to discuss, we've
(01:13):
got two people that were found in peaceful repose, as
they say, a married couple that seemingly died side by
side and what they thought initially was a carbon monoxide poisoning,
but as it turned out, it's something far more sinister
than a heater gone bad. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
(01:37):
this is body Bags. I'm an anglophile, I'll admit it.
I love going to Great Britain. I love exploring there.
My family has roots all over the British Isles, as
many of us do, and it just has a different
feel than anywhere else I've really been. And you get
(02:01):
that since environmentally day when you're there many times during
the year, even in the summertime, particularly in the evenings,
you have to put on a sweatshirt, perhaps just to
remain comfortable. It's got that feeling in the air, of
that coolness. I think that it's because it is an
island country. You're surrounded by the sea, the North Atlantic,
(02:22):
the North Sea, and so it's a presence that's always there.
And certainly I think that it was there in the
lives of Stephen Baxter and his wife Carol.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
It's interesting how we do perceive things. I've never been
to where you're talking about, but I'm picturing it from
all the movies and pictures and things like that, and
so I understand where you're coming from. And as we
delve into the story of a wonderful couple, they are
Stephen and his wife Carol, the Baxters. He is sixty one,
(02:54):
she is sixty four. And the reason we're doing this story.
Obviously it is called but in this particular case, it
started off one way and win another. The couple have
a twenty one year old daughter and she has a son,
little toddler. I'm picturing her. The daughter now, Ellie. She
(03:15):
comes home and she sees her mom and dad. They're
in their recliners. Now in Great Britain, they called them
something different, can't remember the actual term, but we call them,
you know, lazy boy or recliner or whatever you know.
And usually in our case we have like the man
has the big leather chair, the woman has the dainty
cloth chair. Come into my house, it's reversed. I sit
(03:38):
in the dainty cloth chair and my wife sits in
the big leathere. And so this couple, they've been married long.
They were just relaxing in the recliners and their daughter, Ellie,
comes in to check on him, and she goes over
to them and she said, hey, y'all, how you do.
I don't know how they would say how y'all doing
in Great Britain. I don't know the wording, but they
weren't doing well at that moment. Imagine coming in, do
(04:01):
you expect to see your mom and dad. You've got
their grand baby, your child, and they're both sitting in
their chairs, but they're dead. As a matter of fact, Joe,
it is explained by the daughter that they were sitting
there together and were peaceful. There were no signs of
a struggle or any pain. She immediately thought, well, it
(04:22):
has to be and you mentioned this at the beginning.
It's cold Chile and you got to turn the heat on.
She thought something went wrong with the heater and it's
got to be carbon monoxide poisoning. She immediately opens the
doors to let in the breeze. She doesn't want her
one year old toddler to get sick. She doesn't want
to get sick, assuming it's carbon monoxide. But that's where
this case begins, Joe, with a loving couple together in
(04:47):
their recliners, peacefully passing away.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
You're right, and listen when the local officials show up
at the scene. And let me paint this a little
bit more precisely. This low ca You associate Great Britain
as an island country. However, there are little islands that
are associated with Great Britain, and this is to the
(05:11):
northeast of London, so it's actually sitting north of what
would commonly be referred to as the English Channel, right
on the southern edge of the North Sea, and it's
like a little island. This is the way I pronounce it,
Mercy Island. And it's in the county of Essex, so
(05:31):
it's northeast of London. It's one of the oldest areas
of Great Britain where you think about establishment of early
settlements and that sort of thing. People have lived here
for a long long time, but this is an area
where it's primarily known for people retiring to this area.
As matter of fact, the beaches there they have those
(05:52):
have you ever seen those? And they're kind of known
for this there in this location. Those little changing huts
that you see that are like in all of the
pastell cult and so they have this and listen, it
takes a much bolder man than I to want to
go and bathe in those waters, because you're talking about
the North Sea. Can you imagine going to the beach
there and splashing about. But this is a retirement area.
(06:16):
It's quite beautiful. A lot of people seek this area
out and so it's always going to be cool about
these parts. So when the first responders show up at
the scene, their bit of information is coming from the
daughter who has discovered her mom and dad deceased, and
like you said, you're going to look around for signs
(06:38):
of fourth century or struggle. Even at a base level,
if you're not a forensics person or police officer, you
have questions that pop up in your mind. Mom and
dad are dead, but I don't see any blood. I
don't see flipped over furniture. I don't see broken glass.
All that stuff in your brain that's commonly associated with
(06:59):
this sort of thing. You don't see that going on
at this point in time.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Joe, let me ask you a quick question. When an investigators,
law enforcement, medical, when they show up to a scene
and they see this, their background information comes from the
daughter and she's telling them what she thinks. As an investigator,
do you take that with a grant of salt or
do you go, Okay, I've got to give this some power.
(07:24):
She knows what's going on, she knows how they normally are.
This doesn't fit.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
You have to be very, very careful and measured when
you do this, because, first off, as investigators where all skeptics.
People are not going to like me saying this, we
assume everybody's lying to us. You just developed that kind
of callous because you're going to have to prove this
to me. You have to check yourself when you're getting
incoming information, particularly as it applies to a circumstance like this.
(07:51):
And this is what we would refer to as the
initial reporter. This initial reporter has given you information, and
so you take to some total what you're seeing at
the scene, the information that's verbally coming from her and
her initial observations, because no one's going to have a
clear sense of things in their pristine condition as she
would have, you know, because she's listen. One of the
(08:13):
things you can validate really quickly, you know, I talked
about signs of fourth century and struggle. You go to
the door, you go to the windows, and if nothing's
knocked out, and you know that she's the daughter, she
has access to this. She's going to be the person
that has the key to the lock that will turn
it open the door. Maybe she calls out to as
they say, mom and dad, they're in Great Britain, and
(08:36):
they don't respond, And there they are, they're peacefully seated
in they're old recliners, they're that position of comfort that
they have, and you examine them and you look at them,
And I don't mean examine them in the sense of
like a clinical sense. I'm talking about a familial sense
where you know, because you're so intimately a part of
(08:58):
their lives, you know how they look, you know what
their natural appearance is, you know what their common response
would be to you. Particularly you're standing there with this
precious one year old baby. And there's actually quite a
poignant image of mister Ms Baxter standing there holding this
one year old that was taken immediately Adjason and Dave.
Here's the other part to this case. When the daughter
(09:21):
showed up on that Sunday morning, it was maybe with
a sense of joy, sense of hope. Maybe it was
in her mind a moment of celebration, because it wasn't
just any other Sunday. It was Easter Sunday. One of
(09:57):
the most terrifying days I ever experienced as a medical
legal death investigator was the day I was exposed to
carbon monoxide. I had been given all clear as myself
and to my colleagues, we had a multiple death and
event that occurred within a single family residence where we
had I don't know the number escapes me, but it
(10:19):
was over six people that were dead in this house.
And I got out there to the scene to work
the case, and the fire department had assured me that
the house had been sufficiently ventilated, and as I came
to find out a couple hours later, I was laying
on a gurney inside of a local emergency room, hooked
(10:41):
up to oxygen and having nurses come in and assess
me minute by minute to see how I was doing
because I had been exposed to carbon monoxide and it's
absolutely terrifying and it's something that for most of us
you would get an immediate response to, and Dave in
this case, that's the bit of information that came in
(11:02):
to the local responders. That would have been her first impression,
her being the daughter. I think mom and dad may
have died as a result of carbon monoxide, and there's
just certain things that you look for in those.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Cases, so the investigators take that information and begin to investigate.
Nothing looks like it was crazy. There was no sign
of a fight or anything like that. It really did look,
as their daughter said, a peaceful scenario and one that
and what is really sad there's a lot sad here.
But I thought about how as this case evolved, where
(11:37):
the daughter said that when they're passing. In the first
days following it, she mentioned several times that even though
they were gone, she had that really wonderful, peaceful last
look at them lovingly sitting together in their chairs, having
a good time as people in their sixties are doing.
And I thought how rocked her world must have been
(11:59):
when they found out what really happened, because underneath this
very serene and peaceful can call it peaceful, serene death,
but it looked like that. But investigators have to do
their job. So, Joe, what leads you from that? Seems
like an obvious answer. You've got the two bodies in
front of you, two investigators come in and like take
the bodies out of the chairs and start examining there.
(12:21):
How do you go about moving somebody in this peaceful
state and taking them back to the office or whatever
to look at them. I mean, you're not going to
do it right there.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
No, you would do an initial assessment, and those things
are going to really and I literally mean visually pop
when you think about it. I often tell my students
at Jacksonville State I'm teaching death investigation too. Imagine the
most brilliantly colored pink lollipop or popsicle piece of candy
that you've ever seen. And when you'll see that external
(12:55):
manifestation on the body of carbon monoxide uptake in the system,
it presents the skin dave, it presents in the face,
on the external surfaces end. Even when you get the
body into the morgue and you open the body, the
internal viscera will have that very pink appearance to it.
Even the blood changes color. So it's something that would
(13:17):
be quite striking that you would see initially. Now many
times you have to be very careful because in a
case like this, where you have just the fact that
she would mention this gives you an indication. First off,
she knows that there's a heat source in the house.
Because she's drawn this conclusion. You would have to check
(13:38):
that heat source within the house, and you have to
do it very carefully because, look, your people, as public
servants are going into this environment that could be toxic.
So you'll have to check the heat source and see
if all of the heating sources are functioning correctly. So
that means you have to call the Fire Service out
and with the fire Service, they actually have and many
(14:01):
of us have these in our homes. You have carbon
monoxide detectors just like fire detectors, and they go off
when sensing this poisonous gas. The fire service actually has
handheld devices that they can walk through home and they
can do an immediate assessment in this environment to see
if they're getting hits in any of these areas. And
(14:22):
I would think from an investigative standpoint, you call the
fire service out right, you're standing there and you're talking
with local investigators, and these guys walk in, they're wearing
respirators and they're checking the environment to see if there
is any indication that there's carbonoxide in the environment, and
(14:43):
they're not getting hits, and they come back out and
they report this to the investigators. The investigators suddenly have
to be able to explain that just grab onto this
just for a moment. They suddenly have to explain, Okay, well,
now we've got no signs of fourth century apparently, no
signs of external trauma. We don't have any presentation of
(15:06):
those artifacts. That's what we refer to them as on
the surface of skin relative to carbon monoxide. With the
pink color, and I've got a machine here that's telling
me that there's no level of caron monoxide in an
environment that's incompatible with life. That investigator has to take
all of that in formula and said, well, behind the
(15:27):
heck did I get to the point where I've got
two people that are sitting side by side deceased, they're dead,
And people just don't you hear these stories of people
that have been married for a long time. You hear
these in the news where you'll have one person that'll
pass away peacefully and then a couple of months later
claim the other person dies of a broken heart. And
(15:48):
that seems to happen many times, that people just give
up the will to live. But simultaneous deaths, that's just
not something that happens.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Dave, I feel so bad for their daughter discovering them
in that state. But you mentioned people don't die like that.
So you're the investigator. You're coming in showing her the
proper amount of respect because you don't want to turn
her make it even worse. But at some point she's
going to find out it's a lot worse than she thinks.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Then, as an investigator, you're thinking in your mind, well,
what could be the potential here? Am I looking at
a double suicide? Here? Is there any indication around the body,
And this is one of the things that you're going
to look for. You're going to look for any substances
that might be at the scene that would give an
indication that this is some kind of non trauma related
(16:39):
suicide where you've entered into a pack to take on
some kind of substance that is going to be toxic,
in other words, incompatible with life, and that you're going
to succumb to this. And listen, if you don't get
this right at the scene, right at that moment, then
you can lose all kinds of evidence. So you're going
(17:00):
to go through this house and very very carefully looking
for I mean everything from injectables of any kind. You're
going to go into the kitchen to see if there's
anything that has been mixed up, maybe that is sitting
in the sink, something with a white powdery residue. You're
going to look through this environment and attempt to determine
(17:23):
if in fact that there was that there's something more here,
something that doesn't quite come up to snuff, if you will,
And it's a moment in time where you have to
be able to assess it and make that determination.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Then if carbon monoxide doesn't have a smell or anything right.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
It doesn't. It gives you a pounding headache. I can
attest to that, and you'll get external manifestations initially like
bloodshot eyes and those sorts of things. And here's just
kind of on an a side here. If you are exposed
to carbon monoxide, it can still be lethal eight hours
after exposure. That's how dangerous it is. It is the
(18:04):
most common agent that we see in a gaseous form
that people actually succumbed to, and it's used. It is
actually used frequently as a means to take one's life.
You see it. You know, you hear about people that
sit in a car and with the windows rolled down
inside of a closed garage. I've actually had a man
(18:24):
that used a glass cutter to cut a hole in
a window pane of his home and had an old
truck parked just outside his window and ran a vent
ducked from a dryer. He taped it to the tailpipe
and ran it through the window and had this is
a very sad case. It just came to mind, had
(18:44):
the cremains. That means the remains of his daughter and
his wife that had died in a motor vehicle accident
years before, laying on the bed next to him, took
wet towels and sealed beneath the doors, and after he
had turned the truck on outside and just laid down
his bed and died. So you do see that as
a method for suicide, but it's something that would it
(19:08):
would stand out in this environment where you would have
perhaps the smell of natural gas in the house, which
is quite pungent. Remember, natural gas doesn't normally have a smell.
They add this so that you can pick up on
the odor of it.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
I didn't know that.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Yeah, and you can get an odor in the air
that gives you an indication that this is danger. It's
certainly something that you would you would take notice of,
and to this point that didn't come up on the
radar of the police. So our big question in the
(20:03):
case of the Baxters is what could have possibly led
to their deaths. Well, we know that both have underlying
physical conditions. They're retired, David. I don't know if you
realize this, but first off, it's not cheap to live
on this island. And interestingly enough, this couple together apparently
(20:25):
had developed a very specific of all things bathmat that
they had patented that they had sold and they became
quite wealthy off of this. So they were able to
live the life of millionaires because they actually were. So
you begin to think about this, what could have been
going on in their lives that would have brought their
lives to an end simultaneously. Is this something where there's
(20:50):
depression going on, physical illness, because sometimes that will motivate
people to take their own lives, or is it something
more sinister? And I think in this case, we've got
something that is a bit more sinister, Dave.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
And that's where as the investigators dig in, and you
mentioned this that based on the physical things that are
seen when somebody actually does have carbon monoxide poisoning, the
experts were able to pretty much eliminate that within a
matter of minutes. I imagine they played up with the
daughter for a little while to not crush her because
(21:22):
they didn't have an answer. But they didn't have an
answer as to how they died or why or who,
but they know it's probably not carbon monoxide. They did
allow Elliott or their daughter to continue thinking that until
they actually did have an answer, though. I was looking
up some things at the end, was reading in one
of the first stories right after they were found, because
I wanted to see what did their neighbors think, what
(21:45):
did the family think. Got a couple in their early
sixties and they're both gone, and overall it was a
very much loving tribute to the couple that they died
together of carbon monoxide poisoning. That's how it was kind
of reported did the day a day or two after
their passing. It was only when they actually investigated it
(22:07):
and the experts got involved that the other story came out.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
It is quite dark, very very dark. You know, you
think about, well, what would motivate someone to take these
people's lives. They were both kind of infirm. Missus Baxter
actually had in dwelling pneumonia at this particular time. What
is that, Well, she's got ongoing pneumonia and so it's
bronchial pneumonia and it's very difficult for her to breathe
(22:33):
in the first place. And we're talking about breathing here,
you know, people were talking, you know, we're throwing around
this idea of carbon monoxide asshixiation. Well, that's going to
compromise the respiratory system. Now, mister Baxter actually had a
condition that's referred to as just cardiomeg which is an
enlarged heart. And so they're not in the best of health,
(22:55):
either one of them. So it wouldn't take a lot
to in their lives, particularly if there was some kind
of agent that was applied to them, some kind of
chemical And in this particular case, you know, they listen.
When you get to a scene and you're working this thing,
you have indicators they're there. For instance, if you have
drug ods. Let's keep it simple. You think about someone
(23:18):
that's a IV heroin abuser. Well, if the OD at
the scene, you're going to find what to refer to
as their works. You'll find a tourniquet, You'll find a spoon.
Generally the underside of the bowl of the spoon will
be burned soot on the bottom of it. You'll have
maybe siline that's there. You'll have cotton swab, and you'll
have evidence of maybe yellow or white pottery substance, and
(23:42):
a syringe that they can draw something up through. You'll
have these definitive things. But listen, you're not going to
know that the heroine killed somebody until you get toxicology back.
Talking about this poor daughter, she didn't have answers at
the time. She was just kind of coming up with
these ideas is in her mind about what could have happened.
(24:03):
But boy, when the toxicology came back, were they surprised because,
as it turns out, both mister and missus Baxter had
on board fentanyl, of all things day, which is just
that absolute scourge of society right now. I mean, so
many people are losing their lives as a result of fentanyl.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
And we've had many stories this year alone about fentanyl.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
This year alone. Yeah, and she also had promethazine in
her system, which is an agent that generally they give
it counteract nausea. It has been used as a precursor
for application of anesthesia. It has that quality where it
will make you drowsy. So if you take, for instance,
promethazine and it's combined with certainly with fentanyl, it will
(24:54):
certainly be enough to push you over the edge into
that toxic range where it's a non survivable position. And
it doesn't take a lot of fentanyl to kill someone.
We've heard for years and years people will have they
know how powerful morphine is. Morphine is actually derived. It's
(25:15):
an opiate, and it's a naturally occurring thing. Okay, it's
not necessarily something that is blended up in a laboratory.
Fentanyl is actually something that is synthetic. The molecule is
similar to all other naturally occurring opiates, but this is
something that is processed that it is created. And fentyl
(25:37):
has a long history of being used as a substance
in the medical community for pain, and that's kind of
where it's the wellspring from what this thing comes from.
But now people are manufacturing it and those that have
the inclination to want to do harm. It doesn't take
very much to get this on board. The question is,
(26:01):
and the question that the police have to ask in
this particular case, is who has access to these individuals? Well,
you know, the first thing you have to think about,
and this is just part of being an investigat You
have to think about the daughter. Does she have anything
to gain by doing harm to her parents? Does she
have the opportunity to do this subject them to this substance. Well,
(26:23):
apparently they eliminated her pretty quickly. In this particular case.
As it turns out, they have in fact, at this
point in time, arrested individuals that the police are now
saying or responsible for the deaths of the Backs or so.
As this turns out, this is in fact a homicide
that was brought about by the use of funnel. The
(26:44):
question to this point, though, because this case has yet
to be adjudicated, is how did they get the substance
into their systems without them knowing about it. To this point,
three people have been tryed arched. One in particular, Luke
de Witt, has actually been charged with two counts of
(27:05):
murder as well as theft. But at this point we're
still waiting on the trial and the outcome of this case.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks
Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. There's nothing I don't
think colder than being near the sea during the cooler
months of the year. The reason I say that is
(00:30):
that it's different than being kind of inland, where many
times you feel like that you can put on just
enough clothing to make you feel more comfortable. But there's
something about being near the sea when it's cold out
or cool. It's what they refer to as that kind
of bone chilling cold. If you live near the sea
(00:52):
in the cooler months, you run your heat and you
try to make your environment as comfortable as you possibly can.
But the thing about being cool by the sea is
that it permeates everything. It comes up through the floorboards
of the house, it comes through the walls, I think.
And in our case that we're going to discuss, we've
(01:13):
got two people that were found in peaceful repose, as
they say, a married couple that seemingly died side by
side and what they thought initially was a carbon monoxide poisoning,
but as it turned out, it's something far more sinister
than a heater gone bad. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
(01:37):
this is body Bags. I'm an anglophile, I'll admit it.
I love going to Great Britain. I love exploring there.
My family has roots all over the British Isles, as
many of us do, and it just has a different
feel than anywhere else I've really been. And you get
(02:01):
that since environmentally day when you're there many times during
the year, even in the summertime, particularly in the evenings,
you have to put on a sweatshirt, perhaps just to
remain comfortable. It's got that feeling in the air, of
that coolness. I think that it's because it is an
island country. You're surrounded by the sea, the North Atlantic,
(02:22):
the North Sea, and so it's a presence that's always there.
And certainly I think that it was there in the
lives of Stephen Baxter and his wife Carol.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
It's interesting how we do perceive things. I've never been
to where you're talking about, but I'm picturing it from
all the movies and pictures and things like that, and
so I understand where you're coming from. And as we
delve into the story of a wonderful couple, they are
Stephen and his wife Carol, the Baxters. He is sixty one,
(02:54):
she is sixty four. And the reason we're doing this story.
Obviously it is called but in this particular case, it
started off one way and win another. The couple have
a twenty one year old daughter and she has a son,
little toddler. I'm picturing her. The daughter now, Ellie. She
(03:15):
comes home and she sees her mom and dad. They're
in their recliners. Now in Great Britain, they called them
something different, can't remember the actual term, but we call them,
you know, lazy boy or recliner or whatever you know.
And usually in our case we have like the man
has the big leather chair, the woman has the dainty
cloth chair. Come into my house, it's reversed. I sit
(03:38):
in the dainty cloth chair and my wife sits in
the big leathere. And so this couple, they've been married long.
They were just relaxing in the recliners and their daughter, Ellie,
comes in to check on him, and she goes over
to them and she said, hey, y'all, how you do.
I don't know how they would say how y'all doing
in Great Britain. I don't know the wording, but they
weren't doing well at that moment. Imagine coming in, do
(04:01):
you expect to see your mom and dad. You've got
their grand baby, your child, and they're both sitting in
their chairs, but they're dead. As a matter of fact, Joe,
it is explained by the daughter that they were sitting
there together and were peaceful. There were no signs of
a struggle or any pain. She immediately thought, well, it
(04:22):
has to be and you mentioned this at the beginning.
It's cold Chile and you got to turn the heat on.
She thought something went wrong with the heater and it's
got to be carbon monoxide poisoning. She immediately opens the
doors to let in the breeze. She doesn't want her
one year old toddler to get sick. She doesn't want
to get sick, assuming it's carbon monoxide. But that's where
this case begins, Joe, with a loving couple together in
(04:47):
their recliners, peacefully passing away.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
You're right, and listen when the local officials show up
at the scene. And let me paint this a little
bit more precisely. This low ca You associate Great Britain
as an island country. However, there are little islands that
are associated with Great Britain, and this is to the
(05:11):
northeast of London, so it's actually sitting north of what
would commonly be referred to as the English Channel, right
on the southern edge of the North Sea, and it's
like a little island. This is the way I pronounce it,
Mercy Island. And it's in the county of Essex, so
(05:31):
it's northeast of London. It's one of the oldest areas
of Great Britain where you think about establishment of early
settlements and that sort of thing. People have lived here
for a long long time, but this is an area
where it's primarily known for people retiring to this area.
As matter of fact, the beaches there they have those
(05:52):
have you ever seen those? And they're kind of known
for this there in this location. Those little changing huts
that you see that are like in all of the
pastell cult and so they have this and listen, it
takes a much bolder man than I to want to
go and bathe in those waters, because you're talking about
the North Sea. Can you imagine going to the beach
there and splashing about. But this is a retirement area.
(06:16):
It's quite beautiful. A lot of people seek this area
out and so it's always going to be cool about
these parts. So when the first responders show up at
the scene, their bit of information is coming from the
daughter who has discovered her mom and dad deceased, and
like you said, you're going to look around for signs
(06:38):
of fourth century or struggle. Even at a base level,
if you're not a forensics person or police officer, you
have questions that pop up in your mind. Mom and
dad are dead, but I don't see any blood. I
don't see flipped over furniture. I don't see broken glass.
All that stuff in your brain that's commonly associated with
(06:59):
this sort of thing. You don't see that going on
at this point in time.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Joe, let me ask you a quick question. When an investigators,
law enforcement, medical, when they show up to a scene
and they see this, their background information comes from the
daughter and she's telling them what she thinks. As an investigator,
do you take that with a grant of salt or
do you go, Okay, I've got to give this some power.
(07:24):
She knows what's going on, she knows how they normally are.
This doesn't fit.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
You have to be very, very careful and measured when
you do this, because, first off, as investigators where all skeptics.
People are not going to like me saying this, we
assume everybody's lying to us. You just developed that kind
of callous because you're going to have to prove this
to me. You have to check yourself when you're getting
incoming information, particularly as it applies to a circumstance like this.
(07:51):
And this is what we would refer to as the
initial reporter. This initial reporter has given you information, and
so you take to some total what you're seeing at
the scene, the information that's verbally coming from her and
her initial observations, because no one's going to have a
clear sense of things in their pristine condition as she
would have, you know, because she's listen. One of the
(08:13):
things you can validate really quickly, you know, I talked
about signs of fourth century and struggle. You go to
the door, you go to the windows, and if nothing's
knocked out, and you know that she's the daughter, she
has access to this. She's going to be the person
that has the key to the lock that will turn
it open the door. Maybe she calls out to as
they say, mom and dad, they're in Great Britain, and
(08:36):
they don't respond, And there they are, they're peacefully seated
in they're old recliners, they're that position of comfort that
they have, and you examine them and you look at them,
And I don't mean examine them in the sense of
like a clinical sense. I'm talking about a familial sense
where you know, because you're so intimately a part of
(08:58):
their lives, you know how they look, you know what
their natural appearance is, you know what their common response
would be to you. Particularly you're standing there with this
precious one year old baby. And there's actually quite a
poignant image of mister Ms Baxter standing there holding this
one year old that was taken immediately Adjason and Dave.
Here's the other part to this case. When the daughter
(09:21):
showed up on that Sunday morning, it was maybe with
a sense of joy, sense of hope. Maybe it was
in her mind a moment of celebration, because it wasn't
just any other Sunday. It was Easter Sunday. One of
(09:57):
the most terrifying days I ever experienced as a medical
legal death investigator was the day I was exposed to
carbon monoxide. I had been given all clear as myself
and to my colleagues, we had a multiple death and
event that occurred within a single family residence where we
had I don't know the number escapes me, but it
(10:19):
was over six people that were dead in this house.
And I got out there to the scene to work
the case, and the fire department had assured me that
the house had been sufficiently ventilated, and as I came
to find out a couple hours later, I was laying
on a gurney inside of a local emergency room, hooked
(10:41):
up to oxygen and having nurses come in and assess
me minute by minute to see how I was doing
because I had been exposed to carbon monoxide and it's
absolutely terrifying and it's something that for most of us
you would get an immediate response to, and Dave in
this case, that's the bit of information that came in
(11:02):
to the local responders. That would have been her first impression,
her being the daughter. I think mom and dad may
have died as a result of carbon monoxide, and there's
just certain things that you look for in those.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Cases, so the investigators take that information and begin to investigate.
Nothing looks like it was crazy. There was no sign
of a fight or anything like that. It really did look,
as their daughter said, a peaceful scenario and one that
and what is really sad there's a lot sad here.
But I thought about how as this case evolved, where
(11:37):
the daughter said that when they're passing. In the first
days following it, she mentioned several times that even though
they were gone, she had that really wonderful, peaceful last
look at them lovingly sitting together in their chairs, having
a good time as people in their sixties are doing.
And I thought how rocked her world must have been
(11:59):
when they found out what really happened, because underneath this
very serene and peaceful can call it peaceful, serene death,
but it looked like that. But investigators have to do
their job. So, Joe, what leads you from that? Seems
like an obvious answer. You've got the two bodies in
front of you, two investigators come in and like take
the bodies out of the chairs and start examining there.
(12:21):
How do you go about moving somebody in this peaceful
state and taking them back to the office or whatever
to look at them. I mean, you're not going to
do it right there.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
No, you would do an initial assessment, and those things
are going to really and I literally mean visually pop
when you think about it. I often tell my students
at Jacksonville State I'm teaching death investigation too. Imagine the
most brilliantly colored pink lollipop or popsicle piece of candy
that you've ever seen. And when you'll see that external
(12:55):
manifestation on the body of carbon monoxide uptake in the system,
it presents the skin dave, it presents in the face,
on the external surfaces end. Even when you get the
body into the morgue and you open the body, the
internal viscera will have that very pink appearance to it.
Even the blood changes color. So it's something that would
(13:17):
be quite striking that you would see initially. Now many
times you have to be very careful because in a
case like this, where you have just the fact that
she would mention this gives you an indication. First off,
she knows that there's a heat source in the house.
Because she's drawn this conclusion. You would have to check
(13:38):
that heat source within the house, and you have to
do it very carefully because, look, your people, as public
servants are going into this environment that could be toxic.
So you'll have to check the heat source and see
if all of the heating sources are functioning correctly. So
that means you have to call the Fire Service out
and with the fire Service, they actually have and many
(14:01):
of us have these in our homes. You have carbon
monoxide detectors just like fire detectors, and they go off
when sensing this poisonous gas. The fire service actually has
handheld devices that they can walk through home and they
can do an immediate assessment in this environment to see
if they're getting hits in any of these areas. And
(14:22):
I would think from an investigative standpoint, you call the
fire service out right, you're standing there and you're talking
with local investigators, and these guys walk in, they're wearing
respirators and they're checking the environment to see if there
is any indication that there's carbonoxide in the environment, and
(14:43):
they're not getting hits, and they come back out and
they report this to the investigators. The investigators suddenly have
to be able to explain that just grab onto this
just for a moment. They suddenly have to explain, Okay, well,
now we've got no signs of fourth century apparently, no
signs of external trauma. We don't have any presentation of
(15:06):
those artifacts. That's what we refer to them as on
the surface of skin relative to carbon monoxide. With the
pink color, and I've got a machine here that's telling
me that there's no level of caron monoxide in an
environment that's incompatible with life. That investigator has to take
all of that in formula and said, well, behind the
(15:27):
heck did I get to the point where I've got
two people that are sitting side by side deceased, they're dead,
And people just don't you hear these stories of people
that have been married for a long time. You hear
these in the news where you'll have one person that'll
pass away peacefully and then a couple of months later
claim the other person dies of a broken heart. And
(15:48):
that seems to happen many times, that people just give
up the will to live. But simultaneous deaths, that's just
not something that happens.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Dave, I feel so bad for their daughter discovering them
in that state. But you mentioned people don't die like that.
So you're the investigator. You're coming in showing her the
proper amount of respect because you don't want to turn
her make it even worse. But at some point she's
going to find out it's a lot worse than she thinks.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Then, as an investigator, you're thinking in your mind, well,
what could be the potential here? Am I looking at
a double suicide? Here? Is there any indication around the body,
And this is one of the things that you're going
to look for. You're going to look for any substances
that might be at the scene that would give an
indication that this is some kind of non trauma related
(16:39):
suicide where you've entered into a pack to take on
some kind of substance that is going to be toxic,
in other words, incompatible with life, and that you're going
to succumb to this. And listen, if you don't get
this right at the scene, right at that moment, then
you can lose all kinds of evidence. So you're going
(17:00):
to go through this house and very very carefully looking
for I mean everything from injectables of any kind. You're
going to go into the kitchen to see if there's
anything that has been mixed up, maybe that is sitting
in the sink, something with a white powdery residue. You're
going to look through this environment and attempt to determine
(17:23):
if in fact that there was that there's something more here,
something that doesn't quite come up to snuff, if you will,
And it's a moment in time where you have to
be able to assess it and make that determination.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Then if carbon monoxide doesn't have a smell or anything right.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
It doesn't. It gives you a pounding headache. I can
attest to that, and you'll get external manifestations initially like
bloodshot eyes and those sorts of things. And here's just
kind of on an a side here. If you are exposed
to carbon monoxide, it can still be lethal eight hours
after exposure. That's how dangerous it is. It is the
(18:04):
most common agent that we see in a gaseous form
that people actually succumbed to, and it's used. It is
actually used frequently as a means to take one's life.
You see it. You know, you hear about people that
sit in a car and with the windows rolled down
inside of a closed garage. I've actually had a man
(18:24):
that used a glass cutter to cut a hole in
a window pane of his home and had an old
truck parked just outside his window and ran a vent
ducked from a dryer. He taped it to the tailpipe
and ran it through the window and had this is
a very sad case. It just came to mind, had
(18:44):
the cremains. That means the remains of his daughter and
his wife that had died in a motor vehicle accident
years before, laying on the bed next to him, took
wet towels and sealed beneath the doors, and after he
had turned the truck on outside and just laid down
his bed and died. So you do see that as
a method for suicide, but it's something that would it
(19:08):
would stand out in this environment where you would have
perhaps the smell of natural gas in the house, which
is quite pungent. Remember, natural gas doesn't normally have a smell.
They add this so that you can pick up on
the odor of it.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
I didn't know that.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Yeah, and you can get an odor in the air
that gives you an indication that this is danger. It's
certainly something that you would you would take notice of,
and to this point that didn't come up on the
radar of the police. So our big question in the
(20:03):
case of the Baxters is what could have possibly led
to their deaths. Well, we know that both have underlying
physical conditions. They're retired, David. I don't know if you
realize this, but first off, it's not cheap to live
on this island. And interestingly enough, this couple together apparently
(20:25):
had developed a very specific of all things bathmat that
they had patented that they had sold and they became
quite wealthy off of this. So they were able to
live the life of millionaires because they actually were. So
you begin to think about this, what could have been
going on in their lives that would have brought their
lives to an end simultaneously. Is this something where there's
(20:50):
depression going on, physical illness, because sometimes that will motivate
people to take their own lives, or is it something
more sinister? And I think in this case, we've got
something that is a bit more sinister, Dave.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
And that's where as the investigators dig in, and you
mentioned this that based on the physical things that are
seen when somebody actually does have carbon monoxide poisoning, the
experts were able to pretty much eliminate that within a
matter of minutes. I imagine they played up with the
daughter for a little while to not crush her because
(21:22):
they didn't have an answer. But they didn't have an
answer as to how they died or why or who,
but they know it's probably not carbon monoxide. They did
allow Elliott or their daughter to continue thinking that until
they actually did have an answer, though. I was looking
up some things at the end, was reading in one
of the first stories right after they were found, because
I wanted to see what did their neighbors think, what
(21:45):
did the family think. Got a couple in their early
sixties and they're both gone, and overall it was a
very much loving tribute to the couple that they died
together of carbon monoxide poisoning. That's how it was kind
of reported did the day a day or two after
their passing. It was only when they actually investigated it
(22:07):
and the experts got involved that the other story came out.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
It is quite dark, very very dark. You know, you
think about, well, what would motivate someone to take these
people's lives. They were both kind of infirm. Missus Baxter
actually had in dwelling pneumonia at this particular time. What
is that, Well, she's got ongoing pneumonia and so it's
bronchial pneumonia and it's very difficult for her to breathe
(22:33):
in the first place. And we're talking about breathing here,
you know, people were talking, you know, we're throwing around
this idea of carbon monoxide asshixiation. Well, that's going to
compromise the respiratory system. Now, mister Baxter actually had a
condition that's referred to as just cardiomeg which is an
enlarged heart. And so they're not in the best of health,
(22:55):
either one of them. So it wouldn't take a lot
to in their lives, particularly if there was some kind
of agent that was applied to them, some kind of
chemical And in this particular case, you know, they listen.
When you get to a scene and you're working this thing,
you have indicators they're there. For instance, if you have
drug ods. Let's keep it simple. You think about someone
(23:18):
that's a IV heroin abuser. Well, if the OD at
the scene, you're going to find what to refer to
as their works. You'll find a tourniquet, You'll find a spoon.
Generally the underside of the bowl of the spoon will
be burned soot on the bottom of it. You'll have
maybe siline that's there. You'll have cotton swab, and you'll
have evidence of maybe yellow or white pottery substance, and
(23:42):
a syringe that they can draw something up through. You'll
have these definitive things. But listen, you're not going to
know that the heroine killed somebody until you get toxicology back.
Talking about this poor daughter, she didn't have answers at
the time. She was just kind of coming up with
these ideas is in her mind about what could have happened.
(24:03):
But boy, when the toxicology came back, were they surprised because,
as it turns out, both mister and missus Baxter had
on board fentanyl, of all things day, which is just
that absolute scourge of society right now. I mean, so
many people are losing their lives as a result of fentanyl.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
And we've had many stories this year alone about fentanyl.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
This year alone. Yeah, and she also had promethazine in
her system, which is an agent that generally they give
it counteract nausea. It has been used as a precursor
for application of anesthesia. It has that quality where it
will make you drowsy. So if you take, for instance,
promethazine and it's combined with certainly with fentanyl, it will
(24:54):
certainly be enough to push you over the edge into
that toxic range where it's a non survivable position. And
it doesn't take a lot of fentanyl to kill someone.
We've heard for years and years people will have they
know how powerful morphine is. Morphine is actually derived. It's
(25:15):
an opiate, and it's a naturally occurring thing. Okay, it's
not necessarily something that is blended up in a laboratory.
Fentanyl is actually something that is synthetic. The molecule is
similar to all other naturally occurring opiates, but this is
something that is processed that it is created. And fentyl
(25:37):
has a long history of being used as a substance
in the medical community for pain, and that's kind of
where it's the wellspring from what this thing comes from.
But now people are manufacturing it and those that have
the inclination to want to do harm. It doesn't take
very much to get this on board. The question is,
(26:01):
and the question that the police have to ask in
this particular case, is who has access to these individuals? Well,
you know, the first thing you have to think about,
and this is just part of being an investigat You
have to think about the daughter. Does she have anything
to gain by doing harm to her parents? Does she
have the opportunity to do this subject them to this substance. Well,
(26:23):
apparently they eliminated her pretty quickly. In this particular case.
As it turns out, they have in fact, at this
point in time, arrested individuals that the police are now
saying or responsible for the deaths of the Backs or so.
As this turns out, this is in fact a homicide
that was brought about by the use of funnel. The
(26:44):
question to this point, though, because this case has yet
to be adjudicated, is how did they get the substance
into their systems without them knowing about it. To this point,
three people have been tryed arched. One in particular, Luke
de Witt, has actually been charged with two counts of
(27:05):
murder as well as theft. But at this point we're
still waiting on the trial and the outcome of this case.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!