August 29, 2023 • 32 mins
Lovetta Armstead and her young daughter Jazzmen face a nightmarish reality: they are murdered in cold blood by Gary Green within the walls of their own home, the very space that should be their sanctuary. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack delve into the complexities of this chilling case, from Lovetta's thwarted plans to escape her malevolent partner to the unsettling psychology driving Green's actions. The episode uncovers letters that reveal Lovetta's intentions to leave her husband and the twisted psychology behind Green's devastating actions. With commentary on sharp and incised wounds, duct tape restraints, and a myriad of forensic evidence, this episode serves as a haunting yet informative dive into the harsh realities that forensic professionals confront in their quest for justice.
Time codes:
00:00:20 — Joseph Scott Morgan sets the tone with personal anecdotes about death and introduces the spine-chilling family murder case.
00:03:00 — Dave Mack provides further context on the Armstead family and the malevolent Gary Green.
00:05:00 — Mack shares Lovetta Armstead’s gut-wrenching letters that reveal her desire to escape from Green; one particular letter outlines his calculated intentions to annihilate his family.
00:08:23 — Sharp force injuries are explained by Morgan, introducing listeners to the intricacies of homicidal drowning.
00:09:16 — Discussion of the brevity of Gary Green and Lovetta Armstead's marriage and the circumstances that led up to the fatal event.
00:10:24 — Morgan elaborates on the calculated tactics employed by Green, emphasizing his control over the fatal situation.
00:13:24 — The sequence of the murders is discussed by Morgan, suggesting the chilling possibility that Jazzmen was made to witness her mother’s murder.
00:15:42 — Incised wounds versus stab wounds are clarified, enlightening listeners on how these affect the body differently.
00:16:20 — The aftermath of a stabbing is graphically detailed, spotlighting the ensuing blood and damage.
00:18:40 — Jazzmen’s autopsy details are revealed, including the heartbreaking signs that she struggled until her last breath.
00:21:00 — The complexities of determining fatal stab wounds.
00:24:36 — Joe Scott discusses the frightful reality of internal bleeding, especially in cases involving multiple stab wounds.
00:27:01 — Causes of death like hypoxia and signs of drowning are detailed by Morgan, rounding out the episode’s comprehensive forensic analysis.
00:30:39 — Joseph Scott Morgan comments on the chilling aftermath and Gary Green’s actions post-crime, wrapping up the episode with a look at the ultimate consequences.
00:32:20 — A recount of the dreadful discovery made by the surviving siblings.
00:32:40 — The timeline of the crime’s aftermath, including Gary Green’s eventual death sentence.
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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. Think back, just for
a moment, think back to a time before you ever
knew death. Now, remember that moment in your life when
(00:29):
death first visited you. Maybe you were at a bedside
watching over a family member, or maybe you received a
phone call. It's something that marks you. I still remember
the first time it happened with me and an aunt
that I loved very very much, and she died as
a result of a car accident, and it's my earliest memory,
(00:52):
true earliest memory of death. But just imagine for a moment,
your young child, your mother is your world. You've got
a baby's sister, and you've been brought home, been brought
home to that place that you've always known peace. You're
nine years old. Your toys are there, your room is there.
(01:13):
Everything that defines you as a family is kind of
in that environment. And the person that has just killed
your mother makes you kneel before her body to bear
witness to all that remains. Today on Bodybacks, we're going
to talk about one of the darker cases that I've
come across, and we're going to talk about a mother
(01:36):
who tried to make a family. You know, a very
fractured environment.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Lavina Armstrong's attempt to leave her marriage ended in violence.
Husband Gary Green stabbed his wife multiple times with two
different knives. When Armstead was dead, Green grabbed his six
year old stepdaughter, Jasmine Montgomery, and bound her hands together
behind her back with duck tape. Montgomery then drowned the
girl in the bathtub. Green showered in the same tub, dressed,
(02:06):
and went to pick up his two step sons from church.
Back at the house, the older boy was stabbed in
the stomach. The younger boy was able to talk Green
out of killing them, but not before Green forced them
to look at the dead bodies of their mother and
little sister.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybags, Dave. We
talk about death on the show. That's what we do.
I hate to be so morose because of our relationship
that we have. I know how much you love your mama.
I love my mama. I've talked about having been the
(02:46):
child of a single mother, and you look at your
mother and she holds up the world that you live in.
She is that foundation, she's your at less. Essentially, potentially,
in my case, the man in my family's life walked
out there. I can't imagine the depths of sorrow and horror.
I can't imagine that that the small child experienced when
(03:10):
he saw his mother and his little sister lating dead
on that floor in that house, and this monster standing
right over his shoulder.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
It just makes you shudder to think of what people
are capable of. Gary Green was married to Levita Armstead.
She has three children. Jerome Armstead is twelve, Jared Armstead
is nine, Jasmine Montgomery is six, and Levita had decided
it was time to annul the marriage based on what
(03:40):
we know. There was more than just physical abuse, psychological abuse,
and we know that Gary Green was not psychologically healthy.
Not throwing that in there as an excuse for what
took place, merely pointing it out to the level of
hell that he put his wife, Levita, and the children Jerome,
Jarrett and Jasmine on a daily basis. They had to
(04:01):
be walking on Hl's Joe.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yeah, I got to tell you, Gary Green, when you
see this guy, the first term that comes to mind
for me is ogre. He is a big, hulking mass.
I mean, he is a big man and you look
at him and you think, how easy is it to
just maybe intimidate for somebody like him, a grown man,
(04:24):
how much more so this woman that he's into a
marriage with, that he's supposed to be her protector, right,
And then these babies. You think about them, and how
intimidating is this. Many of us have been on the
receiving end of verbal abuse and physical abuse and that
sort of thing over the years, and you see somebody,
this hulking person that is able to do this, this
(04:46):
life that they led. You're right to say this. I
think that it was probably a hellish existence.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Well, we know that there were two letters written by
Levita Armstead explaining to Gary Green why she wanted to
do what she wanted to do with regard to her
family and protecting everybody. And in those letters she wrote,
and I'm trying to she said. She told him, I
love you, but I have to do what's best for me.
(05:13):
And hers was this tone of love, of caring about
she was caring about his feelings and how he thought.
And he wrote a letter to her and when you
read it, it's not love, it's anger. It's a rambling
expression that he believed Armstead and her children were involved
in some kind of plot against him. He also laid
(05:35):
out exactly what he planned to do to his wife,
Levita and those three children. What he was going to
do was end it all and then take his own life.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Joe. Yeah, and one of the most dangerous times to
be around someone that has this level of discord in
their life, has this potential for anger. And you hear
this a lot. You know, I've worked a lot of
suicides over the course of my career, and you begin
to kind of develop a kind of a standard profile
(06:07):
when it comes to this. There's one thing for somebody
to maybe think about what the world would be like
without them. Then you've got another level where they might
make a comment, well, I'm just going to take my life.
Then you've got this kind of third phase that they
go into where now they have planned in a case
(06:28):
like this, where you've got a planned or at least
it's intimated that there is a plan in place for
a murder suicide, and they begin to specifically explain how
they're going to go about doing this. That means that
in the front end of their mind they are actually
formulating that and that's when it gets dangerous. And this
(06:51):
is what psychiatrists and psychologists actually refer to as suicidal
ideation and homicidal ideation. And you add this other component
to it that's called vocalization. You can kind of understand
what that means. So not only you thinking it now,
you're saying that this intimidating thing in little kids like this.
(07:11):
I don't know about you, but when I was a
little kid, I didn't think about the end of things.
Everything seemed like it was going to go on forever
and ever. You know, now that I've gotten a little
bit longer in the tooth in my life, you know
that there is a terminus that's approaching all of us.
You don't think that way when you're a little kid.
And so if he ever threatened these kids with that,
it may have been more abstract. They may have just thought, well,
(07:32):
he's going to hurt us, you know, he's going to
hit us, or he's going to yell at us again,
or maybe he's going to hurt mama again. But at
the end of the day, it wasn't this monster that
killed himself, but he reigned hell down on his family
and brought two lives to an end. A combination of
(08:08):
sharp force injuries, which means any injury that is generated
with an edged weapon. We think about knives, meat cleavers, axes,
and machete. If it has an edge on it that
can generate a sharp force injury, it could be your
grandpa's pocket knife that's been passed down for generations. I've
had homicides committed with pocket knives. But you've got a
(08:29):
combination of that and Dave. In this particular case, we've
also got the added element of homicidal drowning. That's something
that you don't commonly come across because it requires so
much exertion. It requires so much effort on the part
of the perpetrator. And like I said, this guy is
(08:50):
so big, and when you're talking about kids, when you're
talking about say a woman that might be physically weaker
than him, it can be pulled off, but it's not
going to be pulled off without some kind of fight.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
I want to point a couple things out very quickly here. One,
Levita and Green had not been married very long. It'd
only been a matter of months. And that's why the
term annulment is used. Is not thrown around in a
silly way. It is an annulment, meaning that married long
enough to do the divorce she had already seen enough
in a very short period of time that she wanted
(09:21):
it over for the safety of herself but her children
more than anything else. Also, when the act took place,
the boys were at church and Levita and Jasmine were
at home with Green. Then he goes to the church
and picks up the boys and brings them back. Joe,
I mean, what kind of person.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah, and that's one of the things that you begin
to think about. It's one thing when you have and
I've worked these cases where you'll have sharp force injuries,
for instance, and the person comes running out of the
home and there's some kind of fevered mental state and
they're screaming in their blood covered. That's not what happened here, Dave.
This is kind of and calculated, isn't it. And that
(10:01):
adds the level because Levita has sustained multiple stab wounds,
the number is astronomical. In addition to that, there is
water involved. So you've got blood and water because these victims,
the little girl in particular, has been drowned Jasmine, So
you've got blood that is potentially covering this fellow, and
(10:26):
then you've got bathwater that has splashed all over him.
He would be covered from head to toe. So from
an evidentiary standpoint, when you begin to think if he
has calculated this out in his brain where he wants
to pull this thing off and perpetrate it, well, he's
got the mama and her daughter separated from the two boys, right,
(10:47):
so he's not gonna have to deal with a larger
group of people. The boys are at church during that
period of time. He has taken this opportunity to perpetrate
this horrible crime on Levita, and in addition of that, Jasmine.
Well it's a mess, It's an absolute mess. So what
does he have to do before he goes and picks
(11:08):
up these boys?
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Can we back up a minute, Joe, because I'm all right,
we know that he's got two and he has to
control the entire situation. Six year olds are fast. Six
year old girls are really fast. And I was looking
at this trying to figure out how did he do this?
How was he able to be this? He didn't have
LaVita tied down in the bed and just start stabbing away.
They were in a fight, and I wondered the whole
(11:31):
time what was going on with Jasmine? That Jasmine had
duct tape, her hands were duct tape behind her back.
We know he's brandishing the weapon and threatening. I'm wondering
if he made Jasmine witness what he was doing to
her mother, because what he did to her mother was
multiple I don't know how many times. And I wondered
(11:51):
they were in this fight because Levita actually was able
to stab Gary Green twice during their fight. He broke
a knife on her and had to get another one.
This was not some I've already got her down and
I'm stabbing.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
This was a fight. Yes, It's not some kind of
stealthy attack, and that goes through the viciousness of it.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
LaVita was trying to save not just her life, but
think about it. She knows her daughters are here, and
she knows the boys at some point they're going to
come home. Now we know that he had to have
killed LaVita first based on this.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Yeah, he would have had to. He would have attacked her.
I don't know if the little girl may have been
in another room when all of this initiated. But here's
the thing. We know that he killed her, the mother, Levita,
and did he actually make Jasmine sit there through this
(12:46):
event and bear witness to what he was doing to
the mother perhaps, but as you rightly stated, we've got
multiple edged weapons that are involved in this where he's
been stabbed, so he's leak blood. And then you take
that and you compare it to the injuries that Levita
(13:07):
has sustained. And I'll look, man, I'll go ahead. What
I'm going to tell you is that this number I'm
about to tell you is going to be shocking. Levita
was stabbed thirty times, Dave thirty. Just let that sink
in and anybody in the sound of my voice, think
about what it would take to hold a knife and
(13:28):
almost like a sewing machine, an old fashioned sewing machine,
drop that knife thirty times into somebody the will that
it takes to do that, because you know you're passing
through multiple layers of tissue when you're doing this. And
so she's been injured grievously. And the one thing that
we know about stab ones is that they generate a
(13:49):
tremendous amount of blood. Copious. We use that term quite
a bit. When you go on to a scene where
there has been a stabbing event, those scenes are the bloodiest.
And I think that a lot of it has to
do with your compromising the structural integrity of the circulatory system.
And so you're opening up these large, gaping injuries, and
(14:12):
they're not all going to be the same because some
of these can be what are referred to as classic
stab wounds, while others will be referred to as incized wounds.
For instance, like our teeth, our frontal teeth are referred
to as incisors. And it goes back to an original
definition of bladed. So are edged, so they're used for cutting,
(14:33):
and so insized wound means that if you in size
an area, just like surgery, that means you're taking the
edge of the weapon and drawing it across the skin.
So it's always the rule of thumb for us is
that insized wounds are longer than deep, and then stab
wounds are deeper than long, and so you're going to
(14:55):
go deeper into the tissue with a stab wound. Say,
if you stab someone in the chest and withdraw the NYE.
Now you may or may not hit a major organ,
that's possible, but you are going to hit some kind
of vessel structure that's in there, whether it's an artery
or a vein. Maybe sometimes you'll clip both of them
along the way. Along the track, because stab wins have tracks,
(15:15):
just like bullets have tracks, So you're going to damage
that tissue in there, and the scene would just be
covered in blood. And that's what's so fascinating that after
he had perpetrated this crime, if this child is restrained,
or if he restrained her in order to get her
to the bathtub, he would have just been covered in
(15:36):
her mother's blood. So not only does is she disoriented
because there would have been a lot of screaming, there
would have been a lot of banging, there would have
been a lot of carrying on. Her terror level is rising.
Now she's got duct tape over her mouth, and she's
already shallow breathing already the only way she can breathe
is through her nose. He doesn't want her to scream,
and she's born witness to this, and he is just
(15:59):
covered in blood. So he grabs her and when he does,
he's got water in the bathtub and he begins to
submerge Jasmine. And the last thing that she has seen, Dave,
is this image for her of her mother splayed out
in that house with blood. You can just imagine maybe
the last words coming out of her mouth is don't
(16:21):
hurt my baby. Maybe she calls out her name Jasmine,
because mom has no idea what's going to happen. She
doesn't live to tell the tale, and she knows in
her mind. Trust me, mamas know where their kids are.
She knows that her babies or her other two babies
are at church. She's thinking, what's he going to do?
No wonder. She fought like a tiger in the midst
of this because she knew this horrible event was taking place,
(16:44):
and she is that last line of defense.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Dave.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
If he even attempted to wash his hands off in
any way when he's grabbing Jasmine, which I doubt that
he would have, and even though she would have been
in the bathtub, there's still going to be transfer of
her own mother's blood to her in some way. That's
the thing about death. Everywhere death is present, there will
(17:06):
be a trace left behind. One of the most terrific
(17:29):
aspects to this family being completely destroyed is that when
the forensic pathologist, doctor Meredith Lawn, was examining Jasmine's body
that autopsy, she made note of the fact that she
saw the Jasmin's ankles Jasmine's wrist were bound with duct
(17:50):
tape imagine that if you will, you're six years old
and you're restrained to the point where you can't move.
In kind of this little final note, she looks at
Jazz's little cheek on the left side and there is
adhesive that has been left behind by duct tape. We
can appreciate this because lots of us have used duct
tape over the years. You know that when you peel
(18:11):
it back, there is that residue that remains. And she
probably would have seen some blood. That is Levita's blood.
The blood of this child's mother would have been on
the body in some form, maybe minute, but it would
have been there. As she's conducting this examination, she's taking
a look at Jasmine and her broken little body there,
(18:32):
and she's noting that there are fatiki little blood vessels
have burst in her eyes and overlined the thiamus, which
is an organ that is situated beneath the breastbone in
the body, and as we get older, it kind of
decreases in size. But in a little child like Jasmine,
very dominiont of six years old, when her little chest
(18:54):
would have been opened up at autopsy, that thyamus would
have been very visible and it was covered with petiki
as well. There were petiki all over the long stay,
over the epiclottis, which is that flap that kind of
covers the windpipe if you will. They were everywhere, and
that means that's this child struggle Dave in the wake
(19:16):
of what had just happened.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Joe, I'm looking at both of these the victims here
with Levita and Jasmine. Now we have Lavida stabbed thirty times.
Now did that number come from Gary Green saying I
stabbed her thirty times? Were they counted? And then the
second part here when it comes to Jasmine asphyxiated and drowned?
(19:38):
All right, So how do we know how is it
possible for somebody to be stabbed thirty times in the
case of Levita and not one of those stab wounds
actually be fatal? And how is it possible to determine
was Jasmine asphyxiated or drowned or was it a combination
of both.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
It's an excellent question, and I'm so glad you asked that,
because it confusing, because this is a layer case. I
know I always fall back to gunshot wounds. There's a
simplicity in gunshot wounds. Okay, some people would argue that
I'm Morgan, You're out of your mind. But there's a
simplicity to gunshot ones. But when you look at just
stab wounds alone, or let's say sharp force injury wounds,
(20:17):
there is a real complicating factor. Every time you stab someone,
there's no guarantee you're going to strike a critical area.
You can pass an eye through interstitial tissue that is
just maybe subkey fat. You'll have these superficial wounds in
the arms, in the hands, maybe lateral chest, maybe even
(20:39):
the neck that are not necessarily fatal. But you've got
this combination of all these. And the trick is when
you're examining at autopsy the body of someone that has
been stabbed. First off, you have to clean the body
very very thoroughly externally. You document it in its pristine state,
where you have blood crusted clothing. You've got these injuries
(21:01):
that are crusted with blood, but you're not truly going
to be able to appreciate the injuries, so you have
to clean it very very thoroughly and then go back
one by one and try to count the number of wounds,
and you have to orient them anatomically. You have to
stay there's a stab woond to the apex of the
left shoulder, or there is a stab woone that's more
(21:23):
medial than it is lateral relative to the left shoulder blade,
and you have to do anatomical measurements. That's all of
the external stuff. And then one of the other things
that you're going to be looking for is you begin
to get into the dissection, is do any of these
stab wounds or let me say it this way, how
many of these stab wounds actually have hemorrhage? Because I
(21:45):
know a lot of folks are probably thinking, well, every
stab wound would have hemorrhage. No, it wouldn't because if
stab winds have occurred post mortem, you're not going to
have hemorrhage in those areas. So it's important to try
to determine where the most hemorrhage is and what organ
systems are affected. I mean, you've got a stab women
that's going into the lung, for instance, there's a high
(22:05):
probability that that's going to be lethal. If you've got
multiple of them, that probability increases the heart, the neck,
any of the vessels in the neck, that sort of thing,
and there'll be a lot of bruising associated with this. Too,
because you know this, when you stab someone, this is
not just merely an action that is solely involving that
(22:27):
edged weapon passing through the tissue. It involves a kind
of a slamming down or an insertion, a forceful insertion
of this blade. So if the person is still alive,
you can get word referred to as hilt bruises that
surround actually the insized area where that area around the
injury itself has hemorrhage. This is one on one combat,
(22:50):
Let's face it, Dave, You'll have bruises all over the
body many times because people are being punched and pummeled
and kicked in addition to being stabbed. So it's they're very,
very complex, these stab woond cases.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Are they not overlapping? I mean, are they not interconnected?
I'm just picturing if you're stabbing that there's going to
be a general area where the stab wounds are going
to be. Yeah, I'm just kind of picturing a circle
in just these whole stab because it's all happening so fast,
and I'm thinking, aren't some of these going to blur together?
Or one ends here, the other one starts here, but
then they intersect here? And how do you separate, because
(23:24):
that's the goal here at autops he has to figure
out exactly what happened. But how long would it take
you if none of the actual stab wounds inny and
of themselves is fatal. How long does it take for
somebody to bleed to death?
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Well, again that's depended upon which vessels are clipped. And
many times, and this is one part that's really horrific.
Many times you can have multiple stab wounds and you're
not going to be bleeding externally. Imagine that. Guess where
the blood is going, and particularly if you have stab
wounds to the chest, well, it's filling the chest. I've
(24:00):
participated in an autopsy before man where we've had individuals
that have been stabbed in the heart and the lungs
and they lived, but the entire time they're living, it's
not much much of a life. They're bleeding out internally.
So there is this pressure that is building in what's
referred to as the plural spaces around the lungs, and
(24:21):
the lungs are essentially their ability to expand is being
compromised greatly. Not to mention, there's probably a stab wound
to one of them. So it's even further complicated by that,
and all the while the chest cavity is filling up
with blood. That's one of the reasons when people are
shot in the chest and stabbed, when they get them
to the emergency room, there will be a little incision
(24:43):
that is made in between the ribs and there will
be a drain that is inserted in there. And what
are they doing, Well, they're draining blood out of the
chest because you've got what's referred to as plurally fusion,
and it literally begins, you know, people say it drowns
the lungs. It's really a pressure event that's complicating the
(25:05):
lungs ability to expand and refill with air. So they
have to relieve that pressure and to get them into
surgery so they can close that area. And this is
how complicated it is. If you want the person to survive,
you've also got to hang units of blood on them
because they've lost blood. It's a real race against the clock.
In this particular case, we know.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
That Levita is stabbed thirty times or more, she's bleeding out,
she's dying, and Gary Green then moves on to his stepdaughter,
six year old Jasmine, and we know based on duct
tape with her hands behind her back. We know this.
We also know, as we mentioned earlier, asphyxiated and drowned.
(25:46):
And my question really, I don't know how far to
go with this, but I'm thinking, was he trying to
strangle her first? Was he trying, you know, putting his
hands on around her neck and then sticking here underwater
or was it simultaneous. Can you figure that out?
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Yeah, you can figure it out. I know one thing
that kind of popped in mind for me when I
was reading the physician's autopsy report. The cause of death
is actually going to be hypoxia, which is a lack
of oxygen, and you can create that event into one
of two ways. You can either be drowned. There's other ways,
but in this case, there's one of two ways. You
(26:23):
can either drown or you can inhibit their ability to
breathe outside of water. You can cover their airway, you
can compress their neck maybe with your hands or ligature.
So I think that you've got this going on both levels. However,
she was producing and this is noted by the physician
(26:43):
that's doing the examination. She's producing this kind of pink
froth that's coming from her nose and her mouth, and
many times we see that associated with drowning, and you
see it with drug odes too, But you'll get this.
We call it frothy, admitous cone that's coming out of
the mouth and it will rise up, and it's really
(27:04):
kind of this strange event that occurs. I've been present.
Started my career in New Orleans, so I had a
lot of water related deaths, drownings, and when you pull
the body out of the water, many times, all of
a sudden, when you're laying the deceased on their back,
this cone begins to appear out of their nose in
their mouth and it's bubbling. People will think about the
(27:26):
head of a poorly poored beer they showed on television,
you know where you have beer, and it's this glorious thing.
They say, you know, you don't want this gigantic head
of white froth on the beer. It's like that only
in the case of a drowning victim. And in some
poisonings and some ods it'll be pink tinged. And that's
that hemorrhagic event that's going on in the lungs. The
(27:48):
lungs are screaming, they're crying out for air and it's
just it's not on the way. So this thing presents
as well, and she makes note of that. The physician
does in addition to the petikii and the or those
little blood vessels that are bursting. And many times this
is happening as a result of just the strain of
this lack of oxygenation. You're struggling for air in some way,
(28:11):
the airways being compromised. And you see it a lot
in strangulations, where you have these little pinprick hemorrhages that
are taking place in the eyes. It's one of the
things that we'd look for in cases of strangulation, and
you'll see those presenting and it's quite striking. When you
observe them and you make note of it, you know
that there's something has gone on relative to the airway
(28:33):
being compromised.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
According to the autopsy report on Jasmine, she had a
hemorrhage on her brain. And I'm trying to figure out
how that could happen in the bathtub, assuming that's where
she died, Assuming that he put her in the tub
and was trying to drown her in chokery asphyxiator, how
does she end up with a hemorrhage on her brain.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Well, there's a fight that's going on. She's got little
scrapes and scratches that are covering her body. Oh and
by the way, in addition to the duct tape, there
was a telephone cord that had been tied in a
knot around her ankles as well.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
I forgot to mention that that actually matters when you
think about it. It wasn't why she didn't run. It's
because she was tied up. Her legs were tied up
so she couldn't run.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
No, she couldn't. There's no way and why you would
have to restrain a six year old to that point.
You've got her contained in this specific area.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
He has destroyed Levita, he has destroyed Jasmine. He actually
takes a shower where he killed Jasmine. In that same
shower tub, he washes himself off, gets dressed, and goes
to church, picks up the boys, and comes home. Now,
to give you an idea, when they walk in the house,
Levita is in the bedroom with the You know how
a master bedroom has a master bath. Well, that's where
(29:47):
the murder of Levita and Jasmine took place, was in
the bathroom master bedroom and that door is locked. When
Gary Green left, he locked that door. So when the
boys come home, they are told that their mother wanted
him to take them someplace else. He tells Jerome go
take a bath or shower, and so he goes in there.
They don't know that Levita and Jasmine are dead at
(30:09):
this moment, and so Jerome goes to the bath and
to shower, and he hears screaming coming from outside. He
gets out of the tub and that's when he finds
out that Jarrett has been stabbed and Gary Green is
holding a knife to his throat and threatening both boys, saying,
you know he's going to kill them both. These two boys,
(30:32):
nine and twelve years old are able to convince this
monster who has just killed his wife and his stepdaughter,
these little boys are able to convince him to spare
their lives. Don't kill us. We're too young to die.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
Yeah, too young to die. What kind of fortitude does
that take in that moment? What level of bravery?
Speaker 3 (30:54):
And I should mention that he actually the boys don't
know what has happened to their mom and sister at
that point, and we're too young to die. Gary says, Okay,
you're not going to die today. By the way, I
need you to go back here to your mother's room.
He unlocks, the door opens up, and that's when the
boys see their mom and their sister. They see mom
in the bedroom, they see the sister on the floor
(31:15):
of the bathroom, and that's when.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
They see the devastation.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
They testified to this at trial.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
The destruction of this precious family actually took place in
September two thousand and nine, and it's been since that
time that gear Green has roughly been incarcerated and has
been sitting on death row in Huntsville, Texas. That is
until March seventh, twenty twenty three, when gear Green died
(31:43):
by the lethal injection at seven o seven pm. I'm
Josephcott Morgan and this is body Backs
Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. Think back, just for
a moment, think back to a time before you ever
knew death. Now, remember that moment in your life when
(00:29):
death first visited you. Maybe you were at a bedside
watching over a family member, or maybe you received a
phone call. It's something that marks you. I still remember
the first time it happened with me and an aunt
that I loved very very much, and she died as
a result of a car accident, and it's my earliest memory,
(00:52):
true earliest memory of death. But just imagine for a moment,
your young child, your mother is your world. You've got
a baby's sister, and you've been brought home, been brought
home to that place that you've always known peace. You're
nine years old. Your toys are there, your room is there.
(01:13):
Everything that defines you as a family is kind of
in that environment. And the person that has just killed
your mother makes you kneel before her body to bear
witness to all that remains. Today on Bodybacks, we're going
to talk about one of the darker cases that I've
come across, and we're going to talk about a mother
(01:36):
who tried to make a family. You know, a very
fractured environment.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Lavina Armstrong's attempt to leave her marriage ended in violence.
Husband Gary Green stabbed his wife multiple times with two
different knives. When Armstead was dead, Green grabbed his six
year old stepdaughter, Jasmine Montgomery, and bound her hands together
behind her back with duck tape. Montgomery then drowned the
girl in the bathtub. Green showered in the same tub, dressed,
(02:06):
and went to pick up his two step sons from church.
Back at the house, the older boy was stabbed in
the stomach. The younger boy was able to talk Green
out of killing them, but not before Green forced them
to look at the dead bodies of their mother and
little sister.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybags, Dave. We
talk about death on the show. That's what we do.
I hate to be so morose because of our relationship
that we have. I know how much you love your mama.
I love my mama. I've talked about having been the
(02:46):
child of a single mother, and you look at your
mother and she holds up the world that you live in.
She is that foundation, she's your at less. Essentially, potentially,
in my case, the man in my family's life walked
out there. I can't imagine the depths of sorrow and horror.
I can't imagine that that the small child experienced when
(03:10):
he saw his mother and his little sister lating dead
on that floor in that house, and this monster standing
right over his shoulder.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
It just makes you shudder to think of what people
are capable of. Gary Green was married to Levita Armstead.
She has three children. Jerome Armstead is twelve, Jared Armstead
is nine, Jasmine Montgomery is six, and Levita had decided
it was time to annul the marriage based on what
(03:40):
we know. There was more than just physical abuse, psychological abuse,
and we know that Gary Green was not psychologically healthy.
Not throwing that in there as an excuse for what
took place, merely pointing it out to the level of
hell that he put his wife, Levita, and the children Jerome,
Jarrett and Jasmine on a daily basis. They had to
(04:01):
be walking on Hl's Joe.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yeah, I got to tell you, Gary Green, when you
see this guy, the first term that comes to mind
for me is ogre. He is a big, hulking mass.
I mean, he is a big man and you look
at him and you think, how easy is it to
just maybe intimidate for somebody like him, a grown man,
(04:24):
how much more so this woman that he's into a
marriage with, that he's supposed to be her protector, right,
And then these babies. You think about them, and how
intimidating is this. Many of us have been on the
receiving end of verbal abuse and physical abuse and that
sort of thing over the years, and you see somebody,
this hulking person that is able to do this, this
(04:46):
life that they led. You're right to say this. I
think that it was probably a hellish existence.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Well, we know that there were two letters written by
Levita Armstead explaining to Gary Green why she wanted to
do what she wanted to do with regard to her
family and protecting everybody. And in those letters she wrote,
and I'm trying to she said. She told him, I
love you, but I have to do what's best for me.
(05:13):
And hers was this tone of love, of caring about
she was caring about his feelings and how he thought.
And he wrote a letter to her and when you
read it, it's not love, it's anger. It's a rambling
expression that he believed Armstead and her children were involved
in some kind of plot against him. He also laid
(05:35):
out exactly what he planned to do to his wife,
Levita and those three children. What he was going to
do was end it all and then take his own life.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Joe. Yeah, and one of the most dangerous times to
be around someone that has this level of discord in
their life, has this potential for anger. And you hear
this a lot. You know, I've worked a lot of
suicides over the course of my career, and you begin
to kind of develop a kind of a standard profile
(06:07):
when it comes to this. There's one thing for somebody
to maybe think about what the world would be like
without them. Then you've got another level where they might
make a comment, well, I'm just going to take my life.
Then you've got this kind of third phase that they
go into where now they have planned in a case
(06:28):
like this, where you've got a planned or at least
it's intimated that there is a plan in place for
a murder suicide, and they begin to specifically explain how
they're going to go about doing this. That means that
in the front end of their mind they are actually
formulating that and that's when it gets dangerous. And this
(06:51):
is what psychiatrists and psychologists actually refer to as suicidal
ideation and homicidal ideation. And you add this other component
to it that's called vocalization. You can kind of understand
what that means. So not only you thinking it now,
you're saying that this intimidating thing in little kids like this.
(07:11):
I don't know about you, but when I was a
little kid, I didn't think about the end of things.
Everything seemed like it was going to go on forever
and ever. You know, now that I've gotten a little
bit longer in the tooth in my life, you know
that there is a terminus that's approaching all of us.
You don't think that way when you're a little kid.
And so if he ever threatened these kids with that,
it may have been more abstract. They may have just thought, well,
(07:32):
he's going to hurt us, you know, he's going to
hit us, or he's going to yell at us again,
or maybe he's going to hurt mama again. But at
the end of the day, it wasn't this monster that
killed himself, but he reigned hell down on his family
and brought two lives to an end. A combination of
(08:08):
sharp force injuries, which means any injury that is generated
with an edged weapon. We think about knives, meat cleavers, axes,
and machete. If it has an edge on it that
can generate a sharp force injury, it could be your
grandpa's pocket knife that's been passed down for generations. I've
had homicides committed with pocket knives. But you've got a
(08:29):
combination of that and Dave. In this particular case, we've
also got the added element of homicidal drowning. That's something
that you don't commonly come across because it requires so
much exertion. It requires so much effort on the part
of the perpetrator. And like I said, this guy is
(08:50):
so big, and when you're talking about kids, when you're
talking about say a woman that might be physically weaker
than him, it can be pulled off, but it's not
going to be pulled off without some kind of fight.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
I want to point a couple things out very quickly here. One,
Levita and Green had not been married very long. It'd
only been a matter of months. And that's why the
term annulment is used. Is not thrown around in a
silly way. It is an annulment, meaning that married long
enough to do the divorce she had already seen enough
in a very short period of time that she wanted
(09:21):
it over for the safety of herself but her children
more than anything else. Also, when the act took place,
the boys were at church and Levita and Jasmine were
at home with Green. Then he goes to the church
and picks up the boys and brings them back. Joe,
I mean, what kind of person.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah, and that's one of the things that you begin
to think about. It's one thing when you have and
I've worked these cases where you'll have sharp force injuries,
for instance, and the person comes running out of the
home and there's some kind of fevered mental state and
they're screaming in their blood covered. That's not what happened here, Dave.
This is kind of and calculated, isn't it. And that
(10:01):
adds the level because Levita has sustained multiple stab wounds,
the number is astronomical. In addition to that, there is
water involved. So you've got blood and water because these victims,
the little girl in particular, has been drowned Jasmine, So
you've got blood that is potentially covering this fellow, and
(10:26):
then you've got bathwater that has splashed all over him.
He would be covered from head to toe. So from
an evidentiary standpoint, when you begin to think if he
has calculated this out in his brain where he wants
to pull this thing off and perpetrate it, well, he's
got the mama and her daughter separated from the two boys, right,
(10:47):
so he's not gonna have to deal with a larger
group of people. The boys are at church during that
period of time. He has taken this opportunity to perpetrate
this horrible crime on Levita, and in addition of that, Jasmine.
Well it's a mess, It's an absolute mess. So what
does he have to do before he goes and picks
(11:08):
up these boys?
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Can we back up a minute, Joe, because I'm all right,
we know that he's got two and he has to
control the entire situation. Six year olds are fast. Six
year old girls are really fast. And I was looking
at this trying to figure out how did he do this?
How was he able to be this? He didn't have
LaVita tied down in the bed and just start stabbing away.
They were in a fight, and I wondered the whole
(11:31):
time what was going on with Jasmine? That Jasmine had
duct tape, her hands were duct tape behind her back.
We know he's brandishing the weapon and threatening. I'm wondering
if he made Jasmine witness what he was doing to
her mother, because what he did to her mother was
multiple I don't know how many times. And I wondered
(11:51):
they were in this fight because Levita actually was able
to stab Gary Green twice during their fight. He broke
a knife on her and had to get another one.
This was not some I've already got her down and
I'm stabbing.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
This was a fight. Yes, It's not some kind of
stealthy attack, and that goes through the viciousness of it.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
LaVita was trying to save not just her life, but
think about it. She knows her daughters are here, and
she knows the boys at some point they're going to
come home. Now we know that he had to have
killed LaVita first based on this.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Yeah, he would have had to. He would have attacked her.
I don't know if the little girl may have been
in another room when all of this initiated. But here's
the thing. We know that he killed her, the mother, Levita,
and did he actually make Jasmine sit there through this
(12:46):
event and bear witness to what he was doing to
the mother perhaps, but as you rightly stated, we've got
multiple edged weapons that are involved in this where he's
been stabbed, so he's leak blood. And then you take
that and you compare it to the injuries that Levita
(13:07):
has sustained. And I'll look, man, I'll go ahead. What
I'm going to tell you is that this number I'm
about to tell you is going to be shocking. Levita
was stabbed thirty times, Dave thirty. Just let that sink
in and anybody in the sound of my voice, think
about what it would take to hold a knife and
(13:28):
almost like a sewing machine, an old fashioned sewing machine,
drop that knife thirty times into somebody the will that
it takes to do that, because you know you're passing
through multiple layers of tissue when you're doing this. And
so she's been injured grievously. And the one thing that
we know about stab ones is that they generate a
(13:49):
tremendous amount of blood. Copious. We use that term quite
a bit. When you go on to a scene where
there has been a stabbing event, those scenes are the bloodiest.
And I think that a lot of it has to
do with your compromising the structural integrity of the circulatory system.
And so you're opening up these large, gaping injuries, and
(14:12):
they're not all going to be the same because some
of these can be what are referred to as classic
stab wounds, while others will be referred to as incized wounds.
For instance, like our teeth, our frontal teeth are referred
to as incisors. And it goes back to an original
definition of bladed. So are edged, so they're used for cutting,
(14:33):
and so insized wound means that if you in size
an area, just like surgery, that means you're taking the
edge of the weapon and drawing it across the skin.
So it's always the rule of thumb for us is
that insized wounds are longer than deep, and then stab
wounds are deeper than long, and so you're going to
(14:55):
go deeper into the tissue with a stab wound. Say,
if you stab someone in the chest and withdraw the NYE.
Now you may or may not hit a major organ,
that's possible, but you are going to hit some kind
of vessel structure that's in there, whether it's an artery
or a vein. Maybe sometimes you'll clip both of them
along the way. Along the track, because stab wins have tracks,
(15:15):
just like bullets have tracks, So you're going to damage
that tissue in there, and the scene would just be
covered in blood. And that's what's so fascinating that after
he had perpetrated this crime, if this child is restrained,
or if he restrained her in order to get her
to the bathtub, he would have just been covered in
(15:36):
her mother's blood. So not only does is she disoriented
because there would have been a lot of screaming, there
would have been a lot of banging, there would have
been a lot of carrying on. Her terror level is rising.
Now she's got duct tape over her mouth, and she's
already shallow breathing already the only way she can breathe
is through her nose. He doesn't want her to scream,
and she's born witness to this, and he is just
(15:59):
covered in blood. So he grabs her and when he does,
he's got water in the bathtub and he begins to
submerge Jasmine. And the last thing that she has seen, Dave,
is this image for her of her mother splayed out
in that house with blood. You can just imagine maybe
the last words coming out of her mouth is don't
(16:21):
hurt my baby. Maybe she calls out her name Jasmine,
because mom has no idea what's going to happen. She
doesn't live to tell the tale, and she knows in
her mind. Trust me, mamas know where their kids are.
She knows that her babies or her other two babies
are at church. She's thinking, what's he going to do?
No wonder. She fought like a tiger in the midst
of this because she knew this horrible event was taking place,
(16:44):
and she is that last line of defense.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Dave.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
If he even attempted to wash his hands off in
any way when he's grabbing Jasmine, which I doubt that
he would have, and even though she would have been
in the bathtub, there's still going to be transfer of
her own mother's blood to her in some way. That's
the thing about death. Everywhere death is present, there will
(17:06):
be a trace left behind. One of the most terrific
(17:29):
aspects to this family being completely destroyed is that when
the forensic pathologist, doctor Meredith Lawn, was examining Jasmine's body
that autopsy, she made note of the fact that she
saw the Jasmin's ankles Jasmine's wrist were bound with duct
(17:50):
tape imagine that if you will, you're six years old
and you're restrained to the point where you can't move.
In kind of this little final note, she looks at
Jazz's little cheek on the left side and there is
adhesive that has been left behind by duct tape. We
can appreciate this because lots of us have used duct
tape over the years. You know that when you peel
(18:11):
it back, there is that residue that remains. And she
probably would have seen some blood. That is Levita's blood.
The blood of this child's mother would have been on
the body in some form, maybe minute, but it would
have been there. As she's conducting this examination, she's taking
a look at Jasmine and her broken little body there,
(18:32):
and she's noting that there are fatiki little blood vessels
have burst in her eyes and overlined the thiamus, which
is an organ that is situated beneath the breastbone in
the body, and as we get older, it kind of
decreases in size. But in a little child like Jasmine,
very dominiont of six years old, when her little chest
(18:54):
would have been opened up at autopsy, that thyamus would
have been very visible and it was covered with petiki
as well. There were petiki all over the long stay,
over the epiclottis, which is that flap that kind of
covers the windpipe if you will. They were everywhere, and
that means that's this child struggle Dave in the wake
(19:16):
of what had just happened.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Joe, I'm looking at both of these the victims here
with Levita and Jasmine. Now we have Lavida stabbed thirty times.
Now did that number come from Gary Green saying I
stabbed her thirty times? Were they counted? And then the
second part here when it comes to Jasmine asphyxiated and drowned?
(19:38):
All right, So how do we know how is it
possible for somebody to be stabbed thirty times in the
case of Levita and not one of those stab wounds
actually be fatal? And how is it possible to determine
was Jasmine asphyxiated or drowned or was it a combination
of both.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
It's an excellent question, and I'm so glad you asked that,
because it confusing, because this is a layer case. I
know I always fall back to gunshot wounds. There's a
simplicity in gunshot wounds. Okay, some people would argue that
I'm Morgan, You're out of your mind. But there's a
simplicity to gunshot ones. But when you look at just
stab wounds alone, or let's say sharp force injury wounds,
(20:17):
there is a real complicating factor. Every time you stab someone,
there's no guarantee you're going to strike a critical area.
You can pass an eye through interstitial tissue that is
just maybe subkey fat. You'll have these superficial wounds in
the arms, in the hands, maybe lateral chest, maybe even
(20:39):
the neck that are not necessarily fatal. But you've got
this combination of all these. And the trick is when
you're examining at autopsy the body of someone that has
been stabbed. First off, you have to clean the body
very very thoroughly externally. You document it in its pristine state,
where you have blood crusted clothing. You've got these injuries
(21:01):
that are crusted with blood, but you're not truly going
to be able to appreciate the injuries, so you have
to clean it very very thoroughly and then go back
one by one and try to count the number of wounds,
and you have to orient them anatomically. You have to
stay there's a stab woond to the apex of the
left shoulder, or there is a stab woone that's more
(21:23):
medial than it is lateral relative to the left shoulder blade,
and you have to do anatomical measurements. That's all of
the external stuff. And then one of the other things
that you're going to be looking for is you begin
to get into the dissection, is do any of these
stab wounds or let me say it this way, how
many of these stab wounds actually have hemorrhage? Because I
(21:45):
know a lot of folks are probably thinking, well, every
stab wound would have hemorrhage. No, it wouldn't because if
stab winds have occurred post mortem, you're not going to
have hemorrhage in those areas. So it's important to try
to determine where the most hemorrhage is and what organ
systems are affected. I mean, you've got a stab women
that's going into the lung, for instance, there's a high
(22:05):
probability that that's going to be lethal. If you've got
multiple of them, that probability increases the heart, the neck,
any of the vessels in the neck, that sort of thing,
and there'll be a lot of bruising associated with this. Too,
because you know this, when you stab someone, this is
not just merely an action that is solely involving that
(22:27):
edged weapon passing through the tissue. It involves a kind
of a slamming down or an insertion, a forceful insertion
of this blade. So if the person is still alive,
you can get word referred to as hilt bruises that
surround actually the insized area where that area around the
injury itself has hemorrhage. This is one on one combat,
(22:50):
Let's face it, Dave, You'll have bruises all over the
body many times because people are being punched and pummeled
and kicked in addition to being stabbed. So it's they're very,
very complex, these stab woond cases.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Are they not overlapping? I mean, are they not interconnected?
I'm just picturing if you're stabbing that there's going to
be a general area where the stab wounds are going
to be. Yeah, I'm just kind of picturing a circle
in just these whole stab because it's all happening so fast,
and I'm thinking, aren't some of these going to blur together?
Or one ends here, the other one starts here, but
then they intersect here? And how do you separate, because
(23:24):
that's the goal here at autops he has to figure
out exactly what happened. But how long would it take
you if none of the actual stab wounds inny and
of themselves is fatal. How long does it take for
somebody to bleed to death?
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Well, again that's depended upon which vessels are clipped. And
many times, and this is one part that's really horrific.
Many times you can have multiple stab wounds and you're
not going to be bleeding externally. Imagine that. Guess where
the blood is going, and particularly if you have stab
wounds to the chest, well, it's filling the chest. I've
(24:00):
participated in an autopsy before man where we've had individuals
that have been stabbed in the heart and the lungs
and they lived, but the entire time they're living, it's
not much much of a life. They're bleeding out internally.
So there is this pressure that is building in what's
referred to as the plural spaces around the lungs, and
(24:21):
the lungs are essentially their ability to expand is being
compromised greatly. Not to mention, there's probably a stab wound
to one of them. So it's even further complicated by that,
and all the while the chest cavity is filling up
with blood. That's one of the reasons when people are
shot in the chest and stabbed, when they get them
to the emergency room, there will be a little incision
(24:43):
that is made in between the ribs and there will
be a drain that is inserted in there. And what
are they doing, Well, they're draining blood out of the
chest because you've got what's referred to as plurally fusion,
and it literally begins, you know, people say it drowns
the lungs. It's really a pressure event that's complicating the
(25:05):
lungs ability to expand and refill with air. So they
have to relieve that pressure and to get them into
surgery so they can close that area. And this is
how complicated it is. If you want the person to survive,
you've also got to hang units of blood on them
because they've lost blood. It's a real race against the clock.
In this particular case, we know.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
That Levita is stabbed thirty times or more, she's bleeding out,
she's dying, and Gary Green then moves on to his stepdaughter,
six year old Jasmine, and we know based on duct
tape with her hands behind her back. We know this.
We also know, as we mentioned earlier, asphyxiated and drowned.
(25:46):
And my question really, I don't know how far to
go with this, but I'm thinking, was he trying to
strangle her first? Was he trying, you know, putting his
hands on around her neck and then sticking here underwater
or was it simultaneous. Can you figure that out?
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Yeah, you can figure it out. I know one thing
that kind of popped in mind for me when I
was reading the physician's autopsy report. The cause of death
is actually going to be hypoxia, which is a lack
of oxygen, and you can create that event into one
of two ways. You can either be drowned. There's other ways,
but in this case, there's one of two ways. You
(26:23):
can either drown or you can inhibit their ability to
breathe outside of water. You can cover their airway, you
can compress their neck maybe with your hands or ligature.
So I think that you've got this going on both levels. However,
she was producing and this is noted by the physician
(26:43):
that's doing the examination. She's producing this kind of pink
froth that's coming from her nose and her mouth, and
many times we see that associated with drowning, and you
see it with drug odes too, But you'll get this.
We call it frothy, admitous cone that's coming out of
the mouth and it will rise up, and it's really
(27:04):
kind of this strange event that occurs. I've been present.
Started my career in New Orleans, so I had a
lot of water related deaths, drownings, and when you pull
the body out of the water, many times, all of
a sudden, when you're laying the deceased on their back,
this cone begins to appear out of their nose in
their mouth and it's bubbling. People will think about the
(27:26):
head of a poorly poored beer they showed on television,
you know where you have beer, and it's this glorious thing.
They say, you know, you don't want this gigantic head
of white froth on the beer. It's like that only
in the case of a drowning victim. And in some
poisonings and some ods it'll be pink tinged. And that's
that hemorrhagic event that's going on in the lungs. The
(27:48):
lungs are screaming, they're crying out for air and it's
just it's not on the way. So this thing presents
as well, and she makes note of that. The physician
does in addition to the petikii and the or those
little blood vessels that are bursting. And many times this
is happening as a result of just the strain of
this lack of oxygenation. You're struggling for air in some way,
(28:11):
the airways being compromised. And you see it a lot
in strangulations, where you have these little pinprick hemorrhages that
are taking place in the eyes. It's one of the
things that we'd look for in cases of strangulation, and
you'll see those presenting and it's quite striking. When you
observe them and you make note of it, you know
that there's something has gone on relative to the airway
(28:33):
being compromised.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
According to the autopsy report on Jasmine, she had a
hemorrhage on her brain. And I'm trying to figure out
how that could happen in the bathtub, assuming that's where
she died, Assuming that he put her in the tub
and was trying to drown her in chokery asphyxiator, how
does she end up with a hemorrhage on her brain.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Well, there's a fight that's going on. She's got little
scrapes and scratches that are covering her body. Oh and
by the way, in addition to the duct tape, there
was a telephone cord that had been tied in a
knot around her ankles as well.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
I forgot to mention that that actually matters when you
think about it. It wasn't why she didn't run. It's
because she was tied up. Her legs were tied up
so she couldn't run.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
No, she couldn't. There's no way and why you would
have to restrain a six year old to that point.
You've got her contained in this specific area.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
He has destroyed Levita, he has destroyed Jasmine. He actually
takes a shower where he killed Jasmine. In that same
shower tub, he washes himself off, gets dressed, and goes
to church, picks up the boys, and comes home. Now,
to give you an idea, when they walk in the house,
Levita is in the bedroom with the You know how
a master bedroom has a master bath. Well, that's where
(29:47):
the murder of Levita and Jasmine took place, was in
the bathroom master bedroom and that door is locked. When
Gary Green left, he locked that door. So when the
boys come home, they are told that their mother wanted
him to take them someplace else. He tells Jerome go
take a bath or shower, and so he goes in there.
They don't know that Levita and Jasmine are dead at
(30:09):
this moment, and so Jerome goes to the bath and
to shower, and he hears screaming coming from outside. He
gets out of the tub and that's when he finds
out that Jarrett has been stabbed and Gary Green is
holding a knife to his throat and threatening both boys, saying,
you know he's going to kill them both. These two boys,
(30:32):
nine and twelve years old are able to convince this
monster who has just killed his wife and his stepdaughter,
these little boys are able to convince him to spare
their lives. Don't kill us. We're too young to die.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
Yeah, too young to die. What kind of fortitude does
that take in that moment? What level of bravery?
Speaker 3 (30:54):
And I should mention that he actually the boys don't
know what has happened to their mom and sister at
that point, and we're too young to die. Gary says, Okay,
you're not going to die today. By the way, I
need you to go back here to your mother's room.
He unlocks, the door opens up, and that's when the
boys see their mom and their sister. They see mom
in the bedroom, they see the sister on the floor
(31:15):
of the bathroom, and that's when.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
They see the devastation.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
They testified to this at trial.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
The destruction of this precious family actually took place in
September two thousand and nine, and it's been since that
time that gear Green has roughly been incarcerated and has
been sitting on death row in Huntsville, Texas. That is
until March seventh, twenty twenty three, when gear Green died
(31:43):
by the lethal injection at seven o seven pm. I'm
Josephcott Morgan and this is body Backs
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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