August 3, 2023 • 26 mins
11-year-old Martha Guzman's life is brutally cut short within a mere 30-minute timeframe at the hands of her mother's ex-boyfriend. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack delve deep into the harrowing details of Martha's murder, highlighting the tumultuous relationship casting a shadow over Martha’s domestic life and the implications it had on her mother's choices. Joe Scott draws attention to poignant details, in particular Martha’s painted fingernails. He further educates listeners on the chilling realities of wrist injuries and the dreadful intimidation wielded by knives.
Time-codes:
[00:00:20] - Joseph Scott Morgan introduces the idea of time's fleeting nature and introduces the case of an 11-year-old girl whose life was taken within a 30-minute window.
[00:01:32] - The heart-wrenching reveal of Martha Guzman’s murder.
[00:08:06] -Dave Mack discusses Martha Guzman's home life, filled with chaos, alcohol, and abuse caused by her mother's boyfriend, Miguel Ruiz Lobo. Despite being only 11 years old, Martha recognized the toxicity of the relationship and convinced her mother to make the difficult decision to ask Lobo to leave.
[00:09:00] - The perils of an unstable household with an abusive partner and Martha's mother’s desperate attempt for a restraining order.
[00:10:22] - The gruesome details of the crime scene, along with a discussion about the shocking amount of blood resulting from sharp force injuries and the size disparity between the perpetrator and victim.
[00:13:00] - Dave Mack and Joe Scott discuss how Miguel Ruiz Lobo attempted to blame Martha for her own injuries, claiming self-harm to stage her death as a suicide.
[00:16:18] - Joseph Scott Morgan describes the horrifying moment a mother discovers her child's lifeless body and her desperate attempts to save the child. He talks about the mother's actions in the moment and the grim reality of the situation.
[00:17:23] - Morgan recalls haunting memories, noting Martha’s painted nails.
[00:23:51] - Discussion about the use of a knife as a means of terrorizing someone and an explanation of how it can be pressed against the skin to create a slight abrasion.
[00:24:48] - Morgan explains the critical function of wrist tendons.
[00:26:17] - Joe Scott and Dave touch on the nine-year-long journey to obtain justice for the victim, Martha Guzman. Joe Scott Morgan informs the audience of the outcome, bringing closure to this tragic case.
[00:26:40] - The episode ends with a strong message urging anyone dealing with domestic abuse to seek help. Joseph Scott Morgan provides the National Domestic Violence Hotline number (1-800-799-SAFE) as a resource for those in need of assistance.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. It's been said that
the most precious thing that any of us possess is time.
You can't add it to your life. I suppose you
(00:30):
can waste it, but it's something that you can never
get back. We measure our lives by the clock. How
long do I have to get to work? How long
before I don't know my favorite program comes on? How
much longer is this lecture going to last? When it
comes to my students at college. But we take its measure.
(00:51):
We look at the clock on the wall. Perhaps we
look at our phones constantly. There's always kind of an awareness,
isn't there? But I want to give you a specific
time today, specific time that involves the life of an
eleven year old little girl. That specific time is roughly
thirty minutes. That's eighteen hundred seconds. Think about that, just
(01:14):
for a moment. A life that has been lived from
birth until the age of eleven, and then within a
thirty minute window, she is no more. Today we're going
to talk about one of the most gruesome murders that
we've covered in sometime. We're going to talk about the
butchering of an eleven year old girl in Miami, Marthakuseman,
(01:38):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body Bags, Dave.
How frequently do you look at the clock? I mean
everything you do. I don't see how you do everything
you do because you work with Nancy Grace and my lord,
the stuff that she has to do. It's so the
material is so dense, it moves so quickly. I'm not
(01:59):
going to say I'm an afterthought, but you know, compared
to Nancy, I move at a glacial pace, and I
can't I know you've spent a lot of time looking
at the clock, don't you trying to do the next
thing in your life?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Everything? And it's one of the weirdest things about being
married to somebody in the media is the spouse either
has to understand that life is built on a clock
or you can't be together. It really is that simple,
because the reality is I live on a clock. You
live on a clock too, with classes and schedules, and
(02:32):
you're booked on every show known to mankind. If there's
a forensic, if there's a drop of blood somewhere, hey
called Joe Scott Morgan. It's pretty cool that is that way.
But you're right time is precious.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yeah, and I'm not complaining about that, But you're right,
Tom is precious, and it is I don't know if
we can call it a commodity. I actually think it is. Look,
I can tell you that from a life having been
lived spent with the dead as I have, it's right
in my face. I use it to time since death.
When was the last time someone took their medication? How
(03:04):
long did this type of injury take in order for
someone to die? When was the last time they were
seen alive? But from a more philosophical standpoint, I look
at a body that's laying there before me, and I
think this is an example of a clock stopping and
(03:26):
no one saw it coming.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
You don't think of an eleven year old as dying
a heinous way and then having the person that perpetrated
the crime being so cowardly as to try to blame
it on the eleven year old victim, which is exactly
what happened with Martha Gouseman at eleven years old. The
question was it suicide or murder? I'm not kidding, that
(03:49):
was a real question. But Joe, as we take a
look at some of these not even all, just some
of the injuries on Martha Gouseman, the pain level a
loan would have been prevented her from doing anything else.
I'm wondering, how what does it take to inflict this
type of carnage on someone. I don't know if that's
(04:11):
the right term or not.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Really a lot to examine in this case. Day, But
back to something you said deflection in this particular case
from an investigative standpoint, the little eleven year old who
is butchered in this case, I don't know any other
way to really put it. How is it that you
assigned blame to an eleven year old. What we have
come to find out is that the perpetrator in this case,
(04:36):
he claimed that this young girl had a history of
self inflicting cuts or self harm. And for folks out
there that are not really aware of what that means
is that many times individuals get so involved, I think
(04:58):
in that space between their ears and they're grieving, I
think internally they're dealing with emotional pain, sadness, they've got
anger that's going on, maybe they're stressed out, and sometimes
they begin to inflict non suicidal injuries upon themselves. And
I've seen these manifested in cases that wind up turning
(05:21):
into suicides. And you'll see histories of these where you
can actually begin to read old scars on the body.
These kind of you call them superficial, but many times
they'll have these deep scratches, for instance, on their wrists,
on the backs of their legs, where they're taking an
item like the tip of a knife blade and they're
just kind of dragging it along. And it's unknown what
(05:46):
type of relief I think that they get from those
stressors that are in their life. But there is a
thread that runs through this behavior where the idea of
inflicted self pain I think numbs them to the pain
that they're feeling internally. And for an investigator, when you
(06:08):
have this idea that's put forward that yet this young
girl who's only eleven would begin to harm herself in
this way and then it's going to escalate to this
kind of butchery. You look at what you're seeing the scene,
you're saying, Wow, this goes way beyond anything that I
could imagine that she's kind of superficially doing. You're taking
(06:31):
like a leap, You've jumped over an intermediate step here.
When you're talking about, say, for instance, maybe she would
try an attempted suicide. Now you've gone to this area
where she's inflicted so much damage to your body that
it can't be explained. I think one of the really
important things here, Dave is try to understand her home life,
what was going on with her.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Well, this is one of those scenarios that plays itself
out in homes across the United States of America. We
have eleven year old Martha Goose, whose mother Mario Alvaringa,
and Miguel Rui's Lobo. They had been involved in a
relationship for long enough time that they actually lived together
for a while as a family unit. You had, you know, mom,
(07:15):
the stepdad, and Martha right there in the mix. But
home life was chaotic. Home life was filled with alcohol,
It was filled with physical abuse, verbal abuse. It was
not a happy, peaceful home life. And you know, it's amazing, Joe,
how children can see through to the truth in relationships
(07:37):
a lot quicker than a lot of adults because we
sugarcoat things. We try to balance out the pros and
the cons and what's good and bad, and what her
mother couldn't see, Martha could. Martha could see crystal clear
that this man Miguel Rui's Lobo was not good for them.
He was not good to her mother. He wasn't good
to her, and Martha made that no to her mother. Martha,
(08:02):
at eleven years old, convinced her adult mother this guy's
bad news. So finally Martha's mom said get out, get out,
and he thought getting out. He didn't want to leave
getting a place to go first of all, but he
did leave, and he had been gone for a couple
of months. That's what makes this so traumatic. On top
(08:23):
of how bad it is, there's an additional level of
bad Joe. We've got an eleven year old girl that
her mom makes a great decision for me. I'm sure
you know what I bet I Mai felt so good.
I bet mom felt so good about this decision. Our
life is moving forward. There was a lot of there's
still chaos, but it wasn't overwhelming to her family, and
her daughter wasn't upset about it like it had been.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
You get this one element out of the environment, the boyfriend.
I'm never a fan of the boyfriend. In this circumstance,
when you've got a single mother, she's got this young
girl she's raising, it creates a very unstable environment many
times when there's no commitment on the part of the
mail perhaps and he's abusing them and emotionally abusing them
(09:05):
from what could be surmised. You know, they lived in
this little apartment in Little Havana in Miami, which Little
Havannah is a really cool place if you've never been there.
It's a neat place to go and see the old
guy's playing Domino's and watching them hand roll cigars and
those sorts of things. I love it down there. But
you know, they lived in this environment for this period
(09:26):
of time. And what is really heartbreaking about this, I
think at least, is that we know that there was
evil that was lurking just around the corner in this case,
and the mother of Martha actually went to the court
and asked for restraining order, and of course, as in
(09:49):
many cases, it was not granted. Writers throw around the
(10:12):
term blood bath with some frequency. It's been used as
a literary device for years and years. I can tell you,
as I have told my listeners before, sharp horse injuries
are the single most bloody thing you can work as
an investigator at a scene, and blood tells a lot
at the scene. The tough thing Dave, is that many
(10:35):
times blood can obscure things upon your initial viewing. Sometimes
you're not going to get all of the information that
you need to do an assessment because blood's kind of
blocking the way. It'll tell a story, but sometimes it'll
mask things.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Joe, when we set the table here to understand what happened,
and you mentioned all the blood because a knife was
used in this attack. But I don't know if you're aware, Joe,
and I don't know that I pointed it out in
looking at this, but Miguel Rui's Lobo was not a
small man. He was six feet four inches tall and
two hundred and twenty pounds. When Martha, he knew Martha
(11:13):
would be at home alone because he knew their schedule.
He knew Mom would be gone, Martha would be home alone,
and so he shows up at the door. You mentioned
a minute ago that Mom had filed for restraining order
but it was denied, so kind of assuming there was
a lot of negativity here.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
But somehow he actually knows the location of a hidden key, Dave.
He actually knew the location to a hidden key that
he recovered. And you know what, Dave, this can be
appreciated on a surveillance tape from outside the apparent apartment.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Yeah, they had to identify when did it take place. Okay,
just so you know that mom didn't get home till
about two twenty eight that afternoon, and we have on video,
we have Miguel Rui's Lobo at the door.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Within the details. As an investigator, many times that's where
the answer lies. And this is a good point here,
I think, because you're trying to understand this, how do
you get access to this? And one of the points
that you brought out a few moments ago. Give me
that number again for his size six twenty. That's like
the size light, but he could with that kind of size,
(12:24):
he could be a linebacker in the NFL sixty four
to twenty from the autopsy, Dave, this little.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Eleven year old girl.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
And when I say little, pay attention to that, because Dave,
she was only four foot eight and weighed at the
time of her autopsy sixty pounds day sixty pounds. So
this guy has got access via key that he knew
was hidden. He comes in and what's she going to say?
Speaker 3 (12:51):
What she could?
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Can you imagine having this raging bull come in at
you at that age.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
You know, one of the things that was shown in
court was the fact that a neighbor's video camera, surveillance
camera did seek Miguel Rui's logo approaching the apartment at
ten twenty eight am, and he left the apartment at
eleven AM. Now, Mom didn't get home until two twenty eight,
(13:17):
and no one else enters between the time here, so
we actually know I don't know another way to explain
how somebody else went in there and did this. Now,
the idea of what Mom walked into is still shocking
to me. As Mom walks in at two twenty eight
in the afternoon, she has met with a sight of
destruction of her child. Her daughter, her baby at eleven
(13:42):
years old, has been so hurt, so damaged. He slashed
her throat and tried to stage it to look like
a suicide. I don't know if he really thought it
would work. To blame this on the child just boggles
my mind.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Yeah, the fact that he's going to blame this on
self harm is really astounding to me. And to back
up just a moment, when the mother arrives back home. Now,
remember just let's set the table here just for a second.
Peace is settled upon this apartment. Again, he's out of
the picture, Dave. He's out of the picture now. Granted
(14:22):
she couldn't get the restraining order, and this psychopath has
shown back up, and she's not there to protect her daughter,
protect her daughter. Her daughter's eleven years old. I was
staying at home, I think, by myself when I was eight.
You can imagine that in today's times. But to think
that your life is back on track, You're going to
make a better life for you and your daughter, and
(14:44):
to walk in to this horror show that the mother
walks into and when she initially stated what she saw,
it came out in Spanish, and essentially what she saw
lying curled in a fetal position on the floor was
her baby girl. And Dave, this's knife that you had
(15:04):
mentioned just a moment ago, was buried in her neck,
buried in her neck, sticking out, protruding, and there's blood everywhere.
And you can imagine, I can imagine, at least because
I've seen it happen. There's a thing within humans where
we have to confirm things through touch. It's very basic,
(15:24):
rudimentary need that we have. It's a tactile thing. And
what you'll see many times with these events that are
just the most horrific thing you can see. When you're
interviewing the individual that has first made contact or found
the individual, particularly like a parent, they will be covered
themselves in blood. They'll have it on the hands, all
(15:45):
the contact surfaces. They'll embrace the child. They don't care.
It's almost like they can't see the blood for that
moment in time. All they see is this child that
they have done their best with, that they've attempted to
take care of all of it, and they are just
super saturated with But can you imagine not being able
to see that what you're seeing is your lifeless baby
(16:07):
and you're trying at every turn to breathe life back
into them. And she even went so far as to
say that she flung the knife aside. So here we
have this mother that is bearing witness to this. She
wraps her hand around the handle of that knife that's
buried to the hilt in this baby's neck, and she
throws it to the side because she knows that this
(16:29):
is what's created the injury, and she's trying to revive
her daughter. And she was able to call nine to eleven,
but by this time Dave it's too late. I would
imagine that considering these injuries, Dave that the child had
little or no blood.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Left in her body.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
There are certain things that stay with you when you
see the dead, because those elements, beyond the trauma that
maybe they sustained, it gives you an insight into their life,
the life that had previously been vital, that was being lived.
And in Martha Gooseman's case, life rest in her fingernails.
(17:30):
And I know that sounds like an odd comment, but
for those of you that are parents of young girls,
they cross over the threshold, you know, where they're no
longer babies. They're your baby. You don't want them to
grow up, but they have this desire to paint their fingernails.
I remember when my daughter was that age, and the
(17:50):
first time I saw her with painting fingernails, I was thinking,
Old Lord, help me. But you know, with Martha, her
fingernails were painted green. It was a color that she chose.
Perhaps maybe her mom sat down with her and said,
maybe I'm going to give you a manicure, and maybe
she decided to paint her fingernails for the first time,
or maybe Martha got the green fingernail polish and said,
(18:13):
when mom comes home, I'm going to show her what
I did. But there they were, and the medical examiner
actually examined those fingernails and made note of it in
their autopsy report.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
When looking at this, I think about mom coming in shocked,
she grabs a knife right out of her daughter's neck
throws it. Does that actually damage the injury when you're
trying to figure out what happened to place it all together,
because I know you kind of have to put together
a timeline of the injuries, and removing it like that,
(18:44):
does that cause problems later?
Speaker 1 (18:46):
It's an excellent question. Our preference would be a weapon
stay in place, because what that does for us is
that we and I say us, in the medical legal community,
as horrific as this is, the body would come into
the medical examiner's office in this case down in Dade County,
and you would, ideally you would like to take an
X ray. And we've talked about X rays before, but
(19:08):
just so people understand again, you take what are called
ap which is straight on looking down on the body,
and then you take lateral, which is self explanatory. You
take one from the side, and if you take those
X rays you can get an idea of the position
of the weapon in the neck and the angle of
the weapon as well, and if you remove it, you
(19:32):
can do damage. If I were to pose that question
to that mother at that moment in tom she would
probably say, you and your evidentiary evidence can both go
to hell. I don't care. I wan want to, and
she was doing what she had to do, and there's
no excuse. Many times when Paul I've been on scenes
(19:52):
where police have done this, they should know better. And
it wasn't as an attempt to save somebody's life. And
even in life, you leave it in if the person
is still living and breathing. They say a surgeons say,
don't remove the item because you're gonna do more damage.
But in this particular case, you know, you got to
work with what you have.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
From the standpoint mom at two twenty eight, now we
know this attack took place, and at thirty minute window
the arrival of the murderer, we know the exit of
the murderer. I'm praying Joe that this little girl that
she was knocked unconscious or something. I don't know if
there's a way to find that out, but I hope
in my heart of hearts that somehow this little girl
(20:31):
didn't have to just put I hope he wasn't terrorizing her.
Do we have any indication from the injury sustained. I
know we've got multiple injuries. One I know we had
an injury to a wrist that he tried to stage
to make it look like she was cutting a wrist,
but it went all the way to the bone. But
my question, is it possible to determine when death occurred
(20:52):
or when a lack of consciousness began.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
That's really hard to determine because these hemorrhages, most of
them had with the exception of the wrist, these injuries
had in dwelling hemorrhage, which is an indication that she
was alive for a period of time. And here's one
more thing that's quite revealing as well. When the perpetrator
was arrested Lobo. When he was arrested, he had scratches
(21:17):
on his face and those green fingernails I mentioned they
come into play in this particular case. Because it's great
that you've got this CCTV footage, particularly from a timing standpoint,
I don't know in recent memory, if I recall a
case where you have it this tight. We're talking about
thirty minute window, and that's pretty significant in these case.
You know, all these cases we coverage, sometimes that window
(21:40):
is gigantic and it's hard to whittle it down. But
in this particular case, you got thirty minute window where
this was all perpetrated and you see him going in,
you see him coming out. So not only do you
have that digital footprint, but also you've got a dynamic
here where this precious little angel is fighting back for
her life. And remember what we said, six foot four
(22:02):
day six four, two hundred and twenty pounds and this
maybe sixty pounds. She fought so much that she scratched him.
And when they did the examination on her at the morgue,
the me did the nail clippings, which is what we do.
We clipped the nails and we scraped the nails, and
when they did that, they found skin cells beneath her nails,
and I would imagine there were some RBC's or red
(22:25):
blood cells as well, and from that they were able
to take a swab from him and compare the DNA
that was beneath her fingernails and that that they have
in that known sample. Because you have to have you
have an unknown you compare it to a known and
they required him to give a DNA sample and it
married up. So there's a very difficult time that the
(22:49):
defense would have in this particular case of marrying these
two things or trying to dismiss them, okay, because the
physical evidence is so very overwhelming in this case.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Well, there was one thing that was said, and they
talked about her injuries included several stabbing through her throat.
There was what is called a knife scrape that were found.
Again the little girl's four feet tall. Okay, what is
a knife scrape?
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Well, a scrape is where it literally means this. It's
where the knife is drug across the skin and it
can also you can find knife scrapes and tool marks
like on the floor and it will marry up to this. Now,
you can use this as a means of terrorizing somebody, Okay,
whether you're applying it to the surface of their skin.
(23:34):
I've seen people take knives that were so tightly pressed
against the surface of the skin that it leaves a
slight abrasion there because it's being pressed down so tightly.
Then you can threaten and terrorize people by taking a
knife and scraping it across the surface. Say, if you
have her pin down in a particular position, remember you've
(23:55):
got this hulking form that's on top of her. But
you know what's really kind of tell in this case, Dave,
is that these post mortem injuries that came about on
her body relative to her wrist, most people equate the
slicing of the wrist with a self inflicted injury. And
that's where we go back to this idea of self
(24:15):
harm and these sorts of things that she was alleged
to have been engaging in in life by Lobos. Our
wrist if you just consider everybody, look at your wrist
right now, and you can actually see your tendons move.
If you just you're looking at the palmer aspect of
your hands, if you flex them back and forth, you
can see your tendons move just beneath the surface of
(24:37):
the skin. They act as pulleys, and they actuate several
movements within our hands. And one of the things that
are actuated here is our ability to grip. So if
you think about gripping a knife or a spoon or
a fork or whatever, once those tendons are sliced, you
don't have that ability to to facilitate that any longer
(25:01):
the physical ability has left you. So if you're trying
to convince me, and I'm using the universal.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
You not you, Dave.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
But if you're using the universal, if you're a defendant
and you're trying to convince me that, yeah, she sliced
her wrist and then oh, by the way, she took
the knife and stabbed herself several times and then buried
it in her throat. You're gonna have to go a
long way to sell me that, because that's not what
the case was. And as it turned out, he inflicted
those wounds on her wrist after he had killed her
(25:31):
to give the impression and I quote impression that she
had done this to herself if things were not bad
enough in this particular case. It took nine long years
to get a conviction in this case, with as much
evidence as they had pointing to Miguil Ruiz Lobo, but finally,
(25:52):
as of May first, twenty twenty three, he was convicted
and a week later he was sentenced to life terms
in prison. If you are anyone in your family, friends,
whoever it might be, are dealing with domestic abuse, you
need to reach out. You need to get help. There's
a phone number you can call. It's one eight hundred
(26:15):
seven nine nine Safe sa FE. There are people there
at the National Domestic Violence Hotline that can help you. Again,
that number is one eight hundred seven ninety nine Safe
seven two three three. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
(26:38):
is Bodybags
Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. It's been said that
the most precious thing that any of us possess is time.
You can't add it to your life. I suppose you
(00:30):
can waste it, but it's something that you can never
get back. We measure our lives by the clock. How
long do I have to get to work? How long
before I don't know my favorite program comes on? How
much longer is this lecture going to last? When it
comes to my students at college. But we take its measure.
(00:51):
We look at the clock on the wall. Perhaps we
look at our phones constantly. There's always kind of an awareness,
isn't there? But I want to give you a specific
time today, specific time that involves the life of an
eleven year old little girl. That specific time is roughly
thirty minutes. That's eighteen hundred seconds. Think about that, just
(01:14):
for a moment. A life that has been lived from
birth until the age of eleven, and then within a
thirty minute window, she is no more. Today we're going
to talk about one of the most gruesome murders that
we've covered in sometime. We're going to talk about the
butchering of an eleven year old girl in Miami, Marthakuseman,
(01:38):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body Bags, Dave.
How frequently do you look at the clock? I mean
everything you do. I don't see how you do everything
you do because you work with Nancy Grace and my lord,
the stuff that she has to do. It's so the
material is so dense, it moves so quickly. I'm not
(01:59):
going to say I'm an afterthought, but you know, compared
to Nancy, I move at a glacial pace, and I
can't I know you've spent a lot of time looking
at the clock, don't you trying to do the next
thing in your life?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Everything? And it's one of the weirdest things about being
married to somebody in the media is the spouse either
has to understand that life is built on a clock
or you can't be together. It really is that simple,
because the reality is I live on a clock. You
live on a clock too, with classes and schedules, and
(02:32):
you're booked on every show known to mankind. If there's
a forensic, if there's a drop of blood somewhere, hey
called Joe Scott Morgan. It's pretty cool that is that way.
But you're right time is precious.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yeah, and I'm not complaining about that, But you're right,
Tom is precious, and it is I don't know if
we can call it a commodity. I actually think it is. Look,
I can tell you that from a life having been
lived spent with the dead as I have, it's right
in my face. I use it to time since death.
When was the last time someone took their medication? How
(03:04):
long did this type of injury take in order for
someone to die? When was the last time they were
seen alive? But from a more philosophical standpoint, I look
at a body that's laying there before me, and I
think this is an example of a clock stopping and
(03:26):
no one saw it coming.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
You don't think of an eleven year old as dying
a heinous way and then having the person that perpetrated
the crime being so cowardly as to try to blame
it on the eleven year old victim, which is exactly
what happened with Martha Gouseman at eleven years old. The
question was it suicide or murder? I'm not kidding, that
(03:49):
was a real question. But Joe, as we take a
look at some of these not even all, just some
of the injuries on Martha Gouseman, the pain level a
loan would have been prevented her from doing anything else.
I'm wondering, how what does it take to inflict this
type of carnage on someone. I don't know if that's
(04:11):
the right term or not.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Really a lot to examine in this case. Day, But
back to something you said deflection in this particular case
from an investigative standpoint, the little eleven year old who
is butchered in this case, I don't know any other
way to really put it. How is it that you
assigned blame to an eleven year old. What we have
come to find out is that the perpetrator in this case,
(04:36):
he claimed that this young girl had a history of
self inflicting cuts or self harm. And for folks out
there that are not really aware of what that means
is that many times individuals get so involved, I think
(04:58):
in that space between their ears and they're grieving, I
think internally they're dealing with emotional pain, sadness, they've got
anger that's going on, maybe they're stressed out, and sometimes
they begin to inflict non suicidal injuries upon themselves. And
I've seen these manifested in cases that wind up turning
(05:21):
into suicides. And you'll see histories of these where you
can actually begin to read old scars on the body.
These kind of you call them superficial, but many times
they'll have these deep scratches, for instance, on their wrists,
on the backs of their legs, where they're taking an
item like the tip of a knife blade and they're
just kind of dragging it along. And it's unknown what
(05:46):
type of relief I think that they get from those
stressors that are in their life. But there is a
thread that runs through this behavior where the idea of
inflicted self pain I think numbs them to the pain
that they're feeling internally. And for an investigator, when you
(06:08):
have this idea that's put forward that yet this young
girl who's only eleven would begin to harm herself in
this way and then it's going to escalate to this
kind of butchery. You look at what you're seeing the scene,
you're saying, Wow, this goes way beyond anything that I
could imagine that she's kind of superficially doing. You're taking
(06:31):
like a leap, You've jumped over an intermediate step here.
When you're talking about, say, for instance, maybe she would
try an attempted suicide. Now you've gone to this area
where she's inflicted so much damage to your body that
it can't be explained. I think one of the really
important things here, Dave is try to understand her home life,
what was going on with her.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Well, this is one of those scenarios that plays itself
out in homes across the United States of America. We
have eleven year old Martha Goose, whose mother Mario Alvaringa,
and Miguel Rui's Lobo. They had been involved in a
relationship for long enough time that they actually lived together
for a while as a family unit. You had, you know, mom,
(07:15):
the stepdad, and Martha right there in the mix. But
home life was chaotic. Home life was filled with alcohol,
It was filled with physical abuse, verbal abuse. It was
not a happy, peaceful home life. And you know, it's amazing, Joe,
how children can see through to the truth in relationships
(07:37):
a lot quicker than a lot of adults because we
sugarcoat things. We try to balance out the pros and
the cons and what's good and bad, and what her
mother couldn't see, Martha could. Martha could see crystal clear
that this man Miguel Rui's Lobo was not good for them.
He was not good to her mother. He wasn't good
to her, and Martha made that no to her mother. Martha,
(08:02):
at eleven years old, convinced her adult mother this guy's
bad news. So finally Martha's mom said get out, get out,
and he thought getting out. He didn't want to leave
getting a place to go first of all, but he
did leave, and he had been gone for a couple
of months. That's what makes this so traumatic. On top
(08:23):
of how bad it is, there's an additional level of
bad Joe. We've got an eleven year old girl that
her mom makes a great decision for me. I'm sure
you know what I bet I Mai felt so good.
I bet mom felt so good about this decision. Our
life is moving forward. There was a lot of there's
still chaos, but it wasn't overwhelming to her family, and
her daughter wasn't upset about it like it had been.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
You get this one element out of the environment, the boyfriend.
I'm never a fan of the boyfriend. In this circumstance,
when you've got a single mother, she's got this young
girl she's raising, it creates a very unstable environment many
times when there's no commitment on the part of the
mail perhaps and he's abusing them and emotionally abusing them
(09:05):
from what could be surmised. You know, they lived in
this little apartment in Little Havana in Miami, which Little
Havannah is a really cool place if you've never been there.
It's a neat place to go and see the old
guy's playing Domino's and watching them hand roll cigars and
those sorts of things. I love it down there. But
you know, they lived in this environment for this period
(09:26):
of time. And what is really heartbreaking about this, I
think at least, is that we know that there was
evil that was lurking just around the corner in this case,
and the mother of Martha actually went to the court
and asked for restraining order, and of course, as in
(09:49):
many cases, it was not granted. Writers throw around the
(10:12):
term blood bath with some frequency. It's been used as
a literary device for years and years. I can tell you,
as I have told my listeners before, sharp horse injuries
are the single most bloody thing you can work as
an investigator at a scene, and blood tells a lot
at the scene. The tough thing Dave, is that many
(10:35):
times blood can obscure things upon your initial viewing. Sometimes
you're not going to get all of the information that
you need to do an assessment because blood's kind of
blocking the way. It'll tell a story, but sometimes it'll
mask things.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Joe, when we set the table here to understand what happened,
and you mentioned all the blood because a knife was
used in this attack. But I don't know if you're aware, Joe,
and I don't know that I pointed it out in
looking at this, but Miguel Rui's Lobo was not a
small man. He was six feet four inches tall and
two hundred and twenty pounds. When Martha, he knew Martha
(11:13):
would be at home alone because he knew their schedule.
He knew Mom would be gone, Martha would be home alone,
and so he shows up at the door. You mentioned
a minute ago that Mom had filed for restraining order
but it was denied, so kind of assuming there was
a lot of negativity here.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
But somehow he actually knows the location of a hidden key, Dave.
He actually knew the location to a hidden key that
he recovered. And you know what, Dave, this can be
appreciated on a surveillance tape from outside the apparent apartment.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Yeah, they had to identify when did it take place. Okay,
just so you know that mom didn't get home till
about two twenty eight that afternoon, and we have on video,
we have Miguel Rui's Lobo at the door.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Within the details. As an investigator, many times that's where
the answer lies. And this is a good point here,
I think, because you're trying to understand this, how do
you get access to this? And one of the points
that you brought out a few moments ago. Give me
that number again for his size six twenty. That's like
the size light, but he could with that kind of size,
(12:24):
he could be a linebacker in the NFL sixty four
to twenty from the autopsy, Dave, this little.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Eleven year old girl.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
And when I say little, pay attention to that, because Dave,
she was only four foot eight and weighed at the
time of her autopsy sixty pounds day sixty pounds. So
this guy has got access via key that he knew
was hidden. He comes in and what's she going to say?
Speaker 3 (12:51):
What she could?
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Can you imagine having this raging bull come in at
you at that age.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
You know, one of the things that was shown in
court was the fact that a neighbor's video camera, surveillance
camera did seek Miguel Rui's logo approaching the apartment at
ten twenty eight am, and he left the apartment at
eleven AM. Now, Mom didn't get home until two twenty eight,
(13:17):
and no one else enters between the time here, so
we actually know I don't know another way to explain
how somebody else went in there and did this. Now,
the idea of what Mom walked into is still shocking
to me. As Mom walks in at two twenty eight
in the afternoon, she has met with a sight of
destruction of her child. Her daughter, her baby at eleven
(13:42):
years old, has been so hurt, so damaged. He slashed
her throat and tried to stage it to look like
a suicide. I don't know if he really thought it
would work. To blame this on the child just boggles
my mind.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Yeah, the fact that he's going to blame this on
self harm is really astounding to me. And to back
up just a moment, when the mother arrives back home. Now,
remember just let's set the table here just for a second.
Peace is settled upon this apartment. Again, he's out of
the picture, Dave. He's out of the picture now. Granted
(14:22):
she couldn't get the restraining order, and this psychopath has
shown back up, and she's not there to protect her daughter,
protect her daughter. Her daughter's eleven years old. I was
staying at home, I think, by myself when I was eight.
You can imagine that in today's times. But to think
that your life is back on track, You're going to
make a better life for you and your daughter, and
(14:44):
to walk in to this horror show that the mother
walks into and when she initially stated what she saw,
it came out in Spanish, and essentially what she saw
lying curled in a fetal position on the floor was
her baby girl. And Dave, this's knife that you had
(15:04):
mentioned just a moment ago, was buried in her neck,
buried in her neck, sticking out, protruding, and there's blood everywhere.
And you can imagine, I can imagine, at least because
I've seen it happen. There's a thing within humans where
we have to confirm things through touch. It's very basic,
(15:24):
rudimentary need that we have. It's a tactile thing. And
what you'll see many times with these events that are
just the most horrific thing you can see. When you're
interviewing the individual that has first made contact or found
the individual, particularly like a parent, they will be covered
themselves in blood. They'll have it on the hands, all
(15:45):
the contact surfaces. They'll embrace the child. They don't care.
It's almost like they can't see the blood for that
moment in time. All they see is this child that
they have done their best with, that they've attempted to
take care of all of it, and they are just
super saturated with But can you imagine not being able
to see that what you're seeing is your lifeless baby
(16:07):
and you're trying at every turn to breathe life back
into them. And she even went so far as to
say that she flung the knife aside. So here we
have this mother that is bearing witness to this. She
wraps her hand around the handle of that knife that's
buried to the hilt in this baby's neck, and she
throws it to the side because she knows that this
(16:29):
is what's created the injury, and she's trying to revive
her daughter. And she was able to call nine to eleven,
but by this time Dave it's too late. I would
imagine that considering these injuries, Dave that the child had
little or no blood.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Left in her body.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
There are certain things that stay with you when you
see the dead, because those elements, beyond the trauma that
maybe they sustained, it gives you an insight into their life,
the life that had previously been vital, that was being lived.
And in Martha Gooseman's case, life rest in her fingernails.
(17:30):
And I know that sounds like an odd comment, but
for those of you that are parents of young girls,
they cross over the threshold, you know, where they're no
longer babies. They're your baby. You don't want them to
grow up, but they have this desire to paint their fingernails.
I remember when my daughter was that age, and the
(17:50):
first time I saw her with painting fingernails, I was thinking,
Old Lord, help me. But you know, with Martha, her
fingernails were painted green. It was a color that she chose.
Perhaps maybe her mom sat down with her and said,
maybe I'm going to give you a manicure, and maybe
she decided to paint her fingernails for the first time,
or maybe Martha got the green fingernail polish and said,
(18:13):
when mom comes home, I'm going to show her what
I did. But there they were, and the medical examiner
actually examined those fingernails and made note of it in
their autopsy report.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
When looking at this, I think about mom coming in shocked,
she grabs a knife right out of her daughter's neck
throws it. Does that actually damage the injury when you're
trying to figure out what happened to place it all together,
because I know you kind of have to put together
a timeline of the injuries, and removing it like that,
(18:44):
does that cause problems later?
Speaker 1 (18:46):
It's an excellent question. Our preference would be a weapon
stay in place, because what that does for us is
that we and I say us, in the medical legal community,
as horrific as this is, the body would come into
the medical examiner's office in this case down in Dade County,
and you would, ideally you would like to take an
X ray. And we've talked about X rays before, but
(19:08):
just so people understand again, you take what are called
ap which is straight on looking down on the body,
and then you take lateral, which is self explanatory. You
take one from the side, and if you take those
X rays you can get an idea of the position
of the weapon in the neck and the angle of
the weapon as well, and if you remove it, you
(19:32):
can do damage. If I were to pose that question
to that mother at that moment in tom she would
probably say, you and your evidentiary evidence can both go
to hell. I don't care. I wan want to, and
she was doing what she had to do, and there's
no excuse. Many times when Paul I've been on scenes
(19:52):
where police have done this, they should know better. And
it wasn't as an attempt to save somebody's life. And
even in life, you leave it in if the person
is still living and breathing. They say a surgeons say,
don't remove the item because you're gonna do more damage.
But in this particular case, you know, you got to
work with what you have.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
From the standpoint mom at two twenty eight, now we
know this attack took place, and at thirty minute window
the arrival of the murderer, we know the exit of
the murderer. I'm praying Joe that this little girl that
she was knocked unconscious or something. I don't know if
there's a way to find that out, but I hope
in my heart of hearts that somehow this little girl
(20:31):
didn't have to just put I hope he wasn't terrorizing her.
Do we have any indication from the injury sustained. I
know we've got multiple injuries. One I know we had
an injury to a wrist that he tried to stage
to make it look like she was cutting a wrist,
but it went all the way to the bone. But
my question, is it possible to determine when death occurred
(20:52):
or when a lack of consciousness began.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
That's really hard to determine because these hemorrhages, most of
them had with the exception of the wrist, these injuries
had in dwelling hemorrhage, which is an indication that she
was alive for a period of time. And here's one
more thing that's quite revealing as well. When the perpetrator
was arrested Lobo. When he was arrested, he had scratches
(21:17):
on his face and those green fingernails I mentioned they
come into play in this particular case. Because it's great
that you've got this CCTV footage, particularly from a timing standpoint,
I don't know in recent memory, if I recall a
case where you have it this tight. We're talking about
thirty minute window, and that's pretty significant in these case.
You know, all these cases we coverage, sometimes that window
(21:40):
is gigantic and it's hard to whittle it down. But
in this particular case, you got thirty minute window where
this was all perpetrated and you see him going in,
you see him coming out. So not only do you
have that digital footprint, but also you've got a dynamic
here where this precious little angel is fighting back for
her life. And remember what we said, six foot four
(22:02):
day six four, two hundred and twenty pounds and this
maybe sixty pounds. She fought so much that she scratched him.
And when they did the examination on her at the morgue,
the me did the nail clippings, which is what we do.
We clipped the nails and we scraped the nails, and
when they did that, they found skin cells beneath her nails,
and I would imagine there were some RBC's or red
(22:25):
blood cells as well, and from that they were able
to take a swab from him and compare the DNA
that was beneath her fingernails and that that they have
in that known sample. Because you have to have you
have an unknown you compare it to a known and
they required him to give a DNA sample and it
married up. So there's a very difficult time that the
(22:49):
defense would have in this particular case of marrying these
two things or trying to dismiss them, okay, because the
physical evidence is so very overwhelming in this case.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Well, there was one thing that was said, and they
talked about her injuries included several stabbing through her throat.
There was what is called a knife scrape that were found.
Again the little girl's four feet tall. Okay, what is
a knife scrape?
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Well, a scrape is where it literally means this. It's
where the knife is drug across the skin and it
can also you can find knife scrapes and tool marks
like on the floor and it will marry up to this. Now,
you can use this as a means of terrorizing somebody, Okay,
whether you're applying it to the surface of their skin.
(23:34):
I've seen people take knives that were so tightly pressed
against the surface of the skin that it leaves a
slight abrasion there because it's being pressed down so tightly.
Then you can threaten and terrorize people by taking a
knife and scraping it across the surface. Say, if you
have her pin down in a particular position, remember you've
(23:55):
got this hulking form that's on top of her. But
you know what's really kind of tell in this case, Dave,
is that these post mortem injuries that came about on
her body relative to her wrist, most people equate the
slicing of the wrist with a self inflicted injury. And
that's where we go back to this idea of self
(24:15):
harm and these sorts of things that she was alleged
to have been engaging in in life by Lobos. Our
wrist if you just consider everybody, look at your wrist
right now, and you can actually see your tendons move.
If you just you're looking at the palmer aspect of
your hands, if you flex them back and forth, you
can see your tendons move just beneath the surface of
(24:37):
the skin. They act as pulleys, and they actuate several
movements within our hands. And one of the things that
are actuated here is our ability to grip. So if
you think about gripping a knife or a spoon or
a fork or whatever, once those tendons are sliced, you
don't have that ability to to facilitate that any longer
(25:01):
the physical ability has left you. So if you're trying
to convince me, and I'm using the universal.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
You not you, Dave.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
But if you're using the universal, if you're a defendant
and you're trying to convince me that, yeah, she sliced
her wrist and then oh, by the way, she took
the knife and stabbed herself several times and then buried
it in her throat. You're gonna have to go a
long way to sell me that, because that's not what
the case was. And as it turned out, he inflicted
those wounds on her wrist after he had killed her
(25:31):
to give the impression and I quote impression that she
had done this to herself if things were not bad
enough in this particular case. It took nine long years
to get a conviction in this case, with as much
evidence as they had pointing to Miguil Ruiz Lobo, but finally,
(25:52):
as of May first, twenty twenty three, he was convicted
and a week later he was sentenced to life terms
in prison. If you are anyone in your family, friends,
whoever it might be, are dealing with domestic abuse, you
need to reach out. You need to get help. There's
a phone number you can call. It's one eight hundred
(26:15):
seven nine nine Safe sa FE. There are people there
at the National Domestic Violence Hotline that can help you. Again,
that number is one eight hundred seven ninety nine Safe
seven two three three. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
(26:38):
is Bodybags
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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