August 22, 2023 • 28 mins
When law enforcement takes aim at Roy McGrath, the incident leaves behind not only a dead man but a perplexing forensic puzzle. The complex details of this case, including McGrath's alleged financial misdeeds, his relationship with Governor Larry Hogan, and a controversial severance package, set the stage for a dramatic investigation. Hosts Joe Scott Morgan and Dave Mack explore McGrath's political career, high-end fugitive lifestyle, and the fascinating forensics behind his demise. From the discovery of McGrath's SUV outside of Knoxville to the intricate process of examining gunshot wounds at the morgue, this episode dives deep into the truth and uncertainty that permeate the world of forensic science. A tale of bullets, lies, and a pursuit for truth, it's a story that's as complex as the wound tracks left behind.
Time codes:
[00:00:00] Joseph Scott Morgan introduces the episode's topic, exploring law enforcement shootings and who investigates these incidents. He mentions the case of Roy McGrath, who was in the national spotlight and was being searched for by the FBI and U.S. Marshals.
[00:01:40] The critical question is asked: who polices the police?
[00:02:00] Joe Scott and Dave discuss the background of Roy McGrath, including his alleged financial misdeeds.
[00:03:40] The controversial severance package from the Maryland Environmental Service (MES) involving Roy McGrath is unveiled.
[00:08:41] Dave explains McGrath's reaction to the news of his fraudulent activities being exposed.
[00:09:40] The challenge of evading modern law enforcement agencies with advanced technology.
[00:12:17] Discussion about the suspect's escape, his property in Florida, and the fact that he had no plans of appearing in court.
[00:15:25] The dramatic scene unfolds where the FBI locates McGrath outside of Knoxville, raising questions about potential risks to bystanders.
[00:18:20] The case's complexity is explored, particularly the two separate wound tracks from simultaneous gunfire.
[00:23:22] An explanation of the process of examining gunshot wounds, illuminating hidden details.
[00:24:26] Morgan delves into the 'lead storm' concept, fragmenting lead that helps determine bullet trajectory.
[00:26:29] The difficulty in determining McGrath's cause of death is discussed, despite there being a gunshot wound.
[00:28:40] The concept of "acoustic shadows" is introduced as are questions about the process of reconstructing the event, touching on potential legal aspects.
[00:30:08] Morgan concludes, emphasizing the value of truth and uncertainty.
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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. When we as private
citizens get into an event that involves firearms, and in
(00:30):
certain circumstances we might have to discharge a firearm and
injure or kill another citizen, we can pretty much guarantee
that the police will investigate that incident. But what happens
when law enforcement shoots someone who investigates that and particularly
(00:50):
when you add an additional layer someone that is wanted,
someone that is in the national spotlight, someone that the
FBI and the US marshals have been searching for for
weeks upon weeks. Today we're going to talk about the
(01:11):
death of Roy McGrath. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
is Bodybacks Dave mac so many people and you hear
it over and over and over again. Nowadays you hear
people say, well, who police is the police? And that's
(01:32):
a big question, isn't it. You think about when people
are shot that sort of thing by the police, you
know who investigates those events. And we've got an interesting
case to talk about today. And some people may have
heard about it. I had heard about it, but I'd
heard about it not from the perspective of this gentleman dying.
I'd heard about this gentleman, Roy McGrath, the subject of
(01:56):
our conversation today. I'd heard about him Upsot wisconding with
a tremendous amount of money and perhaps trust that may
have been misplaced in this particular case, Joe.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
As children, we're told don't tell a lie. You're going
to have to keep repeating that lie and other lies
to cover up for the original lie. It makes good sense.
The thing is, some people don't learn that lesson, and
oftentimes they end up in politics. Roy McGrath is somebody
who did not learn that lesson. Apparently, when Governor Larry
Hogan appointed Roy McGrath to be his chief of staff
(02:32):
in Junior twenty twenty didn't surprise anybody. They'd been friends
and political allies since nineteen ninety two. I mean Roy
McGrath actually was still in college when he worked on
the nineteen ninety two campaign for Larry Hogan, when Hogan
was running against Stenny Hoyer for a congressional seat. Now,
they lost that election, but they remained friends and worked
(02:53):
together over the years. When Larry Hogan became Governor Larry Hogan,
he appointed Roy McGrath to head up the Maryland Environmental
Service THEMES. It's a job that pays over two hundred
thirty thousand dollars a year, so McGrath heads that up
for a couple of years. Larry Hogan needs a new
chief of staff, so the Governor of Maryland announces that
Roy McGrath is his new chief of staff. He begins
(03:15):
June first, twenty twenty. Nobody shocked at that. What the
shock happened was a couple of months later, Baltimore Sun
starts looking into a severance package that Roy McGrath got
when he left the MAS, the Maryland Environmental Service. Because
when you are fired from a job, you oftentimes are
given a severance package, but you don't get a severance
(03:36):
package when you quit. And yet Roy McGrath received a
very healthy severance package, a golden parachute when he left THEMES.
And that's what caught the attention of this investigative reporter
with the Baltimore Sun. When he got the severance package.
He got it by telling the Maryland Environmental Service Board
of Directors that the governor, Governor Larry Hogan approved the
(03:58):
severance package. Mean, roy McGrath is telling the Governor the
board approved this. It was their decision a lie. He
also had a lot of paperwork and everything else that
he fraudulently cooked up to back up his life when
everything exploded. In August of twenty twenty, Governor Larry Hogan
accepts Roy McGrath's resignation. He asked for a massive audit
(04:22):
of the Maryland Environmental Service and charges followed. McGrath was
charged with embezzlement, he was charged with fraud. He was
charged with a number of things and was slated to
go to trial in March of twenty twenty three. He
didn't show up. That's where we are today in this story.
(04:43):
As we begin, Roy McGrath is on the run.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Well, it all comes down to this, and I think
even Bill Clinton said this number of years ago. There's
an old dog that sits up on a porch and
he chases the car for a long long time. What
do you do when you finally catch the car? And
that's then Roy McGrath was in. He's got the money.
Now what does he do going on the lamb. I've
(05:25):
always wondered what the origin of that term is. I
probably ought to look that up, David. I'm not really
sure because I used to get it confused. I would
hear people say going on the lamb, and I thought
that they were saying going on the land, and I'm thinking, well,
that doesn't really make sense. I've heard people say take
it on the heel, take it on the hoof, get
out of here, leave, extricate yourself. But either way, you've
(05:47):
got a guy that's got a great big target on
his back because he's essentially staring Roy McGrath. That is,
he's staring at a failure to appear for a court hearing,
and he was supposed to show up, and you decide
not to do that. Instead, you decide to blast out
of town. And this is not like he's some nobody
(06:09):
that can just kind of blend into the scenery. This
is a guy that has already been in the news.
He's been seen standing at the podium next to pretty
high profile officials.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
The governor of the state, the governor of the.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
State of Maryland. The thought is, how in the world
are you going to try to fly under the radar
at this point in time. It's quite amazing when you
begin to think about I would think from my perspective
that you're going to do the best you can try
to get out of the country because other than that,
you're going to have the authorities looking for you. Dave.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
So Larry Hogan now has this guy he's trusted for
over twenty years. He puts him in a position of power,
actually two great positions, because Larry Hogan assigned him to
the Maryland Environmental Service, a job that paid him a
buttload of money that he brings him on as chief
of staff. Larry Hogan put a lot into this relationship
and Roy McGrath truly benefited. But in the end, Larry
Hogan said, well, we're gonna have to have a forensic
(07:05):
audit because the Baltimore Sun, the newspaper article came out.
So McGrath reads this article and realizes, oh my gosh,
they know everything he didn't know.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
That isn't that something? And that that's a trigger point
relative to what are you going to do? What is
this person going to do now when they're faced with
this and so, for from the perspective of an investigation,
when you're trying to track somebody down, you try to
understand what is it in the timeline that they're going
to do? What did they do once that information came
(07:36):
to them and that literally that cold cup of coffee
hit them. They realized at that moment Tom that they're
going to have to either turn themselves in and come
clean or get a defense attorney and say nothing, or
they're going to have to bolt. And McGrath chose to both.
And I guess it's the young the little boy that's
(07:57):
still within me. I was a big fan of Marshall,
Matt Dylan when I used to watch Gunsmoke, and you
think about the Marshall in town us Marshall. But they
have the premiere, the premiere fugitive squad that's out there,
and of course the FBI has a fugitive squad as well,
And so how are you going to elude these individuals
when you're trying because they have every bit of technology
(08:19):
that's out there, And first off, you're going to look
at bank accounts. You're going to try to understand what
is this person trying to subsist off of financially, because
you can't use a credit card that has your name
on it if you're going to try to get out
of the country and they have flagged you because they
know for a fact that you're wanted, because you've failed
(08:42):
to show up. Now you're not going to be able
to try to bolt out of the country. So you
can't buy a ticket necessarily to get out. You can't
use your passport because it's been flagged. And so I
guess at the end you think about it, well, you're
going to have to pay in cash, and how are
you going to convey your self about if I was
trying to fly under the radar, I don't think I'd
(09:06):
go out and buy an escalade or some high profile
car to try to fly under the radar. But this
kind of fits. And as an investigator, you're looking at
the profile that this person has, even in the state
of flight, if you will, this individual still by virtue
of the fact that we know that he bought this
(09:27):
high end vehicle to try to escape with, he couldn't escape,
that he couldn't escape the idea that he was living
beyond his means. You had mentioned earlier the idea of
golden parachute. Golden parachute is associated with people that essentially
leave big companies. You think about CEOs, and that was
another part. He wanted to be regarded in this environmental
(09:49):
company as a CEO. So now you've got a suspect
that views himself as something other than what he is,
which is a servant that has kind of a quasi
private job that's kind of meld together government and private interest.
He's not the CEO of motor manufacturer. He's not CEO
(10:12):
of Craft.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
And Maryland Environmental Service. Why it was part private park
government it was. It was a government appointed position. He
was appointed by the governor of the State of Maryland.
But he actually kind of like the whole idea that
some people will say that this rich guy was born
on third base but thinks he hit a triple. That's
kind of how it became for Roy McGrath. But here's
(10:33):
what happened when he goes on the run. You mentioned
on the LAMB when he takes off, he was in Florida.
He and his wife had they bought property in Florida,
so he had money from somewhere.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
You've got to be specific about where in Florida because
it's not like it look no offense to my friends
in PCB and Panama City. I love going to Panama City. Okay,
he's in Naples. I mean he might as well be
on that's like the American riviera down there. I mean
that's where like the really wealthy people go, I've been
there before. Here you have this alleged perpetrator at this
(11:04):
point in time that has gone on the lamb, and
he's doing it in a luxury vehicle, and he's also
shown up. It's not like he's taking off to Chicago
and kind of blending in on the South Side or something.
That's not what's going on. It's not like Fugitive you
know the movie. He's actually in Naples. So you've got
somebody that's fitting this profile. And how desperate is he
(11:26):
And from what I understand, McGrath was known to have weapons,
and so if that's the case, and the investigators that
are trying to track him down already have this awareness
that they could be in danger and some of their
agents can be in danger when they're trying to track
this guy down as well.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
And that's the first thing they did. They got in Naples, Florida,
they meet with his wife and what was his plan?
He didn't show up for his court day to day?
What was his plan? Because if your plan is to
be in court and your plan was to fly, you
would have airline ticket reservation paid for all these things.
Would already be done ahead of time. You have to
plan to go to court, have to plan on a
(12:04):
place to stay. All that would have been arranged. So
they show up in Naples floor to add his six
hundred and seventy five thousand dollars house. The day he's
supposed to be in court. He's not there his wife
so I thought he's flying out this morning. Of course
he did, and she doesn't know where he is, so
she says, and we track him later. He's in the
Cadillac Escalade. And the next thing we find out is that,
(12:24):
of course he had no plans of ever being in court.
That's important. Roy McGrath had no plans of being in
court the day court was in session. He had no
plane reservation, he had no vehicle resume. You know, he
had nothing there Where he did have a plan was
to elude. And how he ended up in Knoxville, Tennessee.
(12:47):
Joe Scott Morgan is anybody's guests, But.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
I do know this. I do know that Roy McGrath
pulled into a parking lot and his vehicle was surrounded.
He was never going to leave that parking lot, a lot,
either by his own hand or perhaps at the hand
of the police. The FBI Task Force had actually located
(13:27):
McGrath and this escalade vehicle that he's riding around. It's
a rather large suv. It stands out like a sore thumb.
They know what he's driving. They have identified this thing
just outside of Knoxville, and it's in a parking lot
that's shared by both a Costco warehouse store and a
(13:47):
Sonic which is fascinating to me because if he was
headed to Costco, you got to have a card, right
if you're going to purchase anything, which is kind of interesting.
But when you think about it, all of the people
that might be circulating throughout that area it's in the evening,
who could come into harm's way, and they set up
a perimeter around him and from this event, this kind
(14:10):
of surrounding him, getting him in a position where they
have him corralled. This is where the story takes this
incredible turn because from a forensics perspective, this case involves gunfire,
that it is such a rare thing that you would
get an event that would occur like this, that this
(14:33):
is the type of a scene that after you processed it,
after the dust will settle, you would actually write an
academic paper about and present it. That's how unusual this is.
So just imagine, Dave. You've got this task force that
is surrounding his vehicle. He seated in the driver's seat.
(14:55):
They know that he has a weapon. Okay, they being
in the task force, they're giving him directions. Now when
you think about the police officers or the law enforcement officers,
the agents that are standing there, they're kind of creating
a perimeter around this thing. He stopped and they're telling him,
show your hands. And instead of showing his hands, they
(15:19):
can clearly see him take a weapon that he has
in his possession and raise it. Okay. Now, this is
all happening in the blink of an eye. And as
he raises this weapon in his right hand, he places
the muzzle of this weapon to his right temple. So
follow me here. He discharges this weapon now to his left.
(15:42):
If you think about you're sitting in the driver's seat
of a vehicle, there's an agent who has a weapon
trained on the grath. He sees this weapon being raised,
and all he can think of is I am going
to be in the direct line of fire. Because what
a lot of people I don't understand is that when
(16:02):
you discharge a weapon, even if an individual is discharging
this weapon into the right aspect of their head, that
bullet can actually travel through the head, through the window
of a vehicle and strike someone that's there. So for
this individual to put a weapon to his head and
there is a law enforcement officer to the left, that
(16:24):
law enforcement officer sees that as a threat. So guess
what he's going to try to do. He's going to
try to neutralize that threat. And this is where this
gets really interesting. At the same time Roy McGrath began
to put pressure on that trigger and began to apply
the correct pounds of pressure to actuate that hammer inside
(16:46):
that weapon, that FBI agent was raising his weapon and
concurrently placing pressure on his trigger. And guess what. These
two individuals fired these weapons simultaneously, and it was simultaneously
to the point, like I said, the twinkling of an eye.
Mcgrass round that he discharged into his head entered on
(17:10):
the right aspect of the head, traveled across his both
hemispheres of his brain. Now, the FBI agent fired at
McGrath and struck him in the left cheek, and from
what we can surmise, the trajectory of this round traveled
through the left cheek and actually wound up passing through
(17:32):
the cranial vault. Because what's fascinating is that you can
see on the passenger side of the vehicle, the passenger
window is blown out. You can see the cube safety
glass that is blown out and laying all about fragmented
on the ground. It gives you an indication that there
was a projectile that passed through there. One of the
(17:53):
problems that they encountered with the McGrath case, and it
took several months post death to try to determine what
manner of death this was going to be. Was it
going to be a suicide or was it going to
be a homicide. These two individuals firing at the same
time created two separate wound tracks traveling in opposite directions,
(18:17):
which is fascinating when you begin to think about it.
And most of the time when we're dealing with two
separate bullet tracks, one of the things that we're looking
for is to see if there's indwelling hemorrhage. I'll give
you for instance, if McGrath had fired his weapon and
it created a wound track, there would be hemorrhage in
dwelling in that now, after McGrath had fired his weapon.
(18:40):
Let's just say that the agent fired his weapon after
McGrath had ceased to breathe, that he was deceased, there
would be no hemorrhage in the wind track. What they
wound up discovering in this case is quite the conundrum
because both of these rounds apparently created woond tracks that
had indwelling hemorrhage, and both rounds traveled through areas of
(19:06):
the head that would be incompatible with life.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
All right, So he's going this way and the bullet
from them the officer is coming to the opposite direction.
Is it possible two things? Is it possible that those
tracks could have crossed?
Speaker 1 (19:23):
It is possible.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Yeah, as you're dissecting this injury post mortem and you're
looking at the brain and you're looking at all this
and putting it back together, and I'm kind of probably
confusing Iron Man and television programming with what I'm visioning
in my head of putting bullets back together and all that.
But in reality, doesn't head wound that it becomes fatal?
(19:44):
Isn't it something that isn't always immediately fatal? I mean,
you get a shot to the head and the person's
never going to recover from it, but they live a
little while, a half hour or so.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
I'm so glad that you mentioned this because let me
tell you what happens after this, and this kind of
further muddies the waters. They grab McGrath out of the vehicle,
and he still got what's referred to as agonal respirations,
which means his chest is it's rising and falling, all right.
So it hasn't impacted kind of the primal brain back
at our brain stem that functions to regulate the autonomic
(20:16):
nervous system. We don't have to think to make our
heartbeat right, we don't have to think to breathe. Those
are things that naturally occur. So his chest is still
rising and falling, his heart is still beating, and you
have them taking life saving measures in order to stabilize
him along the way. Now, at some point in time,
(20:36):
he probably did arrest, but I'm not saying he was arrested.
I'm saying he arrested at some point in time because
they're doing compressions and they're probably putting in an amboo bag,
which is the bag that they squeeze to blow oxygen
into your lungs. That he actually was pronounced dead at
a hospital almost I think it was right at twenty
seven minutes down range from when the the event actually
(21:00):
took place. So they had an ambulance crew Johnny on
the spot there and they're trying to resuscitate this guy
to get him to the hospital. But you know, when
an individual sustains this catastrophic kind of injury like this,
there's really not a lot of hope for them, and
not to mention, you've got two of them. So at
the morgue, what's fascinating is that these two gunshot wounds,
(21:25):
there's a high probability that the rounds themselves would have
fragmented at least to a minor degree. So the most
important thing that we can do is actually take X
rays prior to ever doing the dissection. And it can
be quite messy because you'll have a lot of clotted blood.
They'll be blood and brain matter extruding that's referred to
(21:47):
as extruding from both of these defects, and you might
have multiple defects. Here's the thing as well, they haven't
released fully released the autopsy report yet and so you
can have these extruding and at the scene. One of
the things that we do as investigators, if there's brain
matter left at the scene, we have to go out
and collect that. People don't think about that, but we
actually collect that brain matter and X ray it many
(22:09):
times separately because what are we looking for. Well, we
might be looking for bone fragments, and we all might
also be looking for little bits of lead that are
contained in there, anything that's radio opaque, and we'll try
to pick that out. Just imagine any X ray that
you've ever seen, and say, for instance, have you ever
seen someone that had an X ray done and they
were wearing a ring and you see the image that's
(22:32):
radio opaque. When you see you actually see the ring,
that metallic body that's there. It's kind of fascinating when
you think about it. But many times, when you have
these rounds that pass through that create what's referred to
as a lead storm, and you'll see these bits of
fragmented lead that are left behind in their trail, and
they're there and you can actually get an idea of
(22:54):
the trajectory of the round. It is a bona fide
mess when you have two rounds that could be communicating
the tracks actually could be communicating or there's so much
trauma when you begin to think about the fragmenting bone,
because it's not just the round that's passing through there.
When that round strikes what's referred to as the external
(23:16):
table of the skull, the skull is literally fragmented and
blown apart. So now you've created you don't just have
shrapnel from the projectile itself. Now you've got bone shrapnel.
You've got these little bitty sharp pieces of bone that
are floating around through the brain as well. And it's
very devastating. And I'm sure that probably the round that
(23:37):
the FBI was using was probably some type of holowpoint round.
So if you've got save, for instance, I don't know,
forty forty five caliber side arm that they're using, and
it's holow point if it expands, if the bullet actually expands,
because it's kind of they call it holow point, it's
kind of cupped out in the center when it expands.
(23:57):
You might have a round that might be forty caliber
when it's intact, okay, before it's fired, but if it expands,
it can expand out to fifty caliber. Because it creates
this it almost looks like a little mushroom opening up
and it expands and you're trying the purpose of the
bullet is to destroy as much tissue as it can.
(24:18):
Here's the problem, and this is what was so very
curious about the release that the medical examiner made in
Roy McGrath's case. They could not make a determination as
to how they wanted to rule this. Now, you know
that your cause of death is obviously going to be gunshowing.
But you know, we've only got five things to choose
(24:39):
from Dave, as we've talked about on bodybacks before. We've
either got a natural death, we've got accidental deaths, we've
got undetermined deaths, or we've got homicide or suicide. And
they couldn't make a determination about it. So right now
they have left his manner of death as actually undetermined,
(25:00):
which is kind of fascinating. They couldn't settle on an
actual manner how they were going to classify this death.
Sooner or later, the autopsy report will in fact be released,
and also the authorities will be compelled at some point
in time to make a final determination. An added part
to this that many people might not consider is that
(25:23):
early on we talked about on this episode, when a
private citizen engages in gun play, you're going to be
investigated by the police. Well, if the police in your
local jurisdiction shoots somebody, they will be investigated. They'll probably
be investigated by the state police, and.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
They're going to be investigated to prove that it was
a justifiable shooting. Even when we and I look at
it and go it obviously is justifiable, they still have
to pull at every knit because they never know who's
going to file the lawsuit against them.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Yeah, you're right, But here's the big question, the bigger question,
who investigates the FEDS when they shoot somebody? And what's
fascinating when you go back and read these reports, the
FBI is investigating itself.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
I'm really having trouble with the idea that two people
that they're not sitting right next to one another, there
is distance. Roy McGrath is holding a gun to his head.
They're stippling from the shot. He pulls the trigger. The
FBI agent is pulling the trigger on his gun, and
we can't determine who did it first.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
It would be very difficult to do, I think, because
it was apparently a simultaneous event. What I would be
fascinated to hear is was there an open mic out there?
I don't know that the FEDS are necessarily compelled to
wear body cams, but I wonder if any of the
local police officers were out there, and wouldn't that be fascinating.
(26:49):
Even going back to the Kennedy assassination, one of the
things that you think about are these acoustic I think
they call them acoustic shadows where you've got overlapping time
the open mic in Dallas that day when Kennedy was shot,
you know, and you're trying to make sense of these
overlapping sounds, And wouldn't that be fascinating to try to
(27:10):
explore this is their audio that could be kind of
taken apart and begin to understand it. I don't know
that they're going to go that far with this case.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
But when you're expanding and when you're looking at all
of this Joe and you're trying to put it all
back together to explain it in a courtroom if there
is a lawsuit, how do you sit down, as a
from a forensic standpoint and say, here, the bullet went
this way and exploded out here and took out the
back window. Here's the bullet that came from this one.
And know we can't determine which was the fatal shot
(27:40):
because they were both fatal.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
I would answer your question by saying this, Dave. It's
the same thing that my granny taught me when I
was little, and that is to tell the truth. Sometimes
you have no definitive answer. All you can say is simply,
I don't know, and from a scientific standpoint, there's no
shame in that. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is bodybags.
(28:28):
H
Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. When we as private
citizens get into an event that involves firearms, and in
(00:30):
certain circumstances we might have to discharge a firearm and
injure or kill another citizen, we can pretty much guarantee
that the police will investigate that incident. But what happens
when law enforcement shoots someone who investigates that and particularly
(00:50):
when you add an additional layer someone that is wanted,
someone that is in the national spotlight, someone that the
FBI and the US marshals have been searching for for
weeks upon weeks. Today we're going to talk about the
(01:11):
death of Roy McGrath. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
is Bodybacks Dave mac so many people and you hear
it over and over and over again. Nowadays you hear
people say, well, who police is the police? And that's
(01:32):
a big question, isn't it. You think about when people
are shot that sort of thing by the police, you
know who investigates those events. And we've got an interesting
case to talk about today. And some people may have
heard about it. I had heard about it, but I'd
heard about it not from the perspective of this gentleman dying.
I'd heard about this gentleman, Roy McGrath, the subject of
(01:56):
our conversation today. I'd heard about him Upsot wisconding with
a tremendous amount of money and perhaps trust that may
have been misplaced in this particular case, Joe.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
As children, we're told don't tell a lie. You're going
to have to keep repeating that lie and other lies
to cover up for the original lie. It makes good sense.
The thing is, some people don't learn that lesson, and
oftentimes they end up in politics. Roy McGrath is somebody
who did not learn that lesson. Apparently, when Governor Larry
Hogan appointed Roy McGrath to be his chief of staff
(02:32):
in Junior twenty twenty didn't surprise anybody. They'd been friends
and political allies since nineteen ninety two. I mean Roy
McGrath actually was still in college when he worked on
the nineteen ninety two campaign for Larry Hogan, when Hogan
was running against Stenny Hoyer for a congressional seat. Now,
they lost that election, but they remained friends and worked
(02:53):
together over the years. When Larry Hogan became Governor Larry Hogan,
he appointed Roy McGrath to head up the Maryland Environmental
Service THEMES. It's a job that pays over two hundred
thirty thousand dollars a year, so McGrath heads that up
for a couple of years. Larry Hogan needs a new
chief of staff, so the Governor of Maryland announces that
Roy McGrath is his new chief of staff. He begins
(03:15):
June first, twenty twenty. Nobody shocked at that. What the
shock happened was a couple of months later, Baltimore Sun
starts looking into a severance package that Roy McGrath got
when he left the MAS, the Maryland Environmental Service. Because
when you are fired from a job, you oftentimes are
given a severance package, but you don't get a severance
(03:36):
package when you quit. And yet Roy McGrath received a
very healthy severance package, a golden parachute when he left THEMES.
And that's what caught the attention of this investigative reporter
with the Baltimore Sun. When he got the severance package.
He got it by telling the Maryland Environmental Service Board
of Directors that the governor, Governor Larry Hogan approved the
(03:58):
severance package. Mean, roy McGrath is telling the Governor the
board approved this. It was their decision a lie. He
also had a lot of paperwork and everything else that
he fraudulently cooked up to back up his life when
everything exploded. In August of twenty twenty, Governor Larry Hogan
accepts Roy McGrath's resignation. He asked for a massive audit
(04:22):
of the Maryland Environmental Service and charges followed. McGrath was
charged with embezzlement, he was charged with fraud. He was
charged with a number of things and was slated to
go to trial in March of twenty twenty three. He
didn't show up. That's where we are today in this story.
(04:43):
As we begin, Roy McGrath is on the run.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Well, it all comes down to this, and I think
even Bill Clinton said this number of years ago. There's
an old dog that sits up on a porch and
he chases the car for a long long time. What
do you do when you finally catch the car? And
that's then Roy McGrath was in. He's got the money.
Now what does he do going on the lamb. I've
(05:25):
always wondered what the origin of that term is. I
probably ought to look that up, David. I'm not really
sure because I used to get it confused. I would
hear people say going on the lamb, and I thought
that they were saying going on the land, and I'm thinking, well,
that doesn't really make sense. I've heard people say take
it on the heel, take it on the hoof, get
out of here, leave, extricate yourself. But either way, you've
(05:47):
got a guy that's got a great big target on
his back because he's essentially staring Roy McGrath. That is,
he's staring at a failure to appear for a court hearing,
and he was supposed to show up, and you decide
not to do that. Instead, you decide to blast out
of town. And this is not like he's some nobody
(06:09):
that can just kind of blend into the scenery. This
is a guy that has already been in the news.
He's been seen standing at the podium next to pretty
high profile officials.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
The governor of the state, the governor of the.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
State of Maryland. The thought is, how in the world
are you going to try to fly under the radar
at this point in time. It's quite amazing when you
begin to think about I would think from my perspective
that you're going to do the best you can try
to get out of the country because other than that,
you're going to have the authorities looking for you. Dave.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
So Larry Hogan now has this guy he's trusted for
over twenty years. He puts him in a position of power,
actually two great positions, because Larry Hogan assigned him to
the Maryland Environmental Service, a job that paid him a
buttload of money that he brings him on as chief
of staff. Larry Hogan put a lot into this relationship
and Roy McGrath truly benefited. But in the end, Larry
Hogan said, well, we're gonna have to have a forensic
(07:05):
audit because the Baltimore Sun, the newspaper article came out.
So McGrath reads this article and realizes, oh my gosh,
they know everything he didn't know.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
That isn't that something? And that that's a trigger point
relative to what are you going to do? What is
this person going to do now when they're faced with
this and so, for from the perspective of an investigation,
when you're trying to track somebody down, you try to
understand what is it in the timeline that they're going
to do? What did they do once that information came
(07:36):
to them and that literally that cold cup of coffee
hit them. They realized at that moment Tom that they're
going to have to either turn themselves in and come
clean or get a defense attorney and say nothing, or
they're going to have to bolt. And McGrath chose to both.
And I guess it's the young the little boy that's
(07:57):
still within me. I was a big fan of Marshall,
Matt Dylan when I used to watch Gunsmoke, and you
think about the Marshall in town us Marshall. But they
have the premiere, the premiere fugitive squad that's out there,
and of course the FBI has a fugitive squad as well,
And so how are you going to elude these individuals
when you're trying because they have every bit of technology
(08:19):
that's out there, And first off, you're going to look
at bank accounts. You're going to try to understand what
is this person trying to subsist off of financially, because
you can't use a credit card that has your name
on it if you're going to try to get out
of the country and they have flagged you because they
know for a fact that you're wanted, because you've failed
(08:42):
to show up. Now you're not going to be able
to try to bolt out of the country. So you
can't buy a ticket necessarily to get out. You can't
use your passport because it's been flagged. And so I
guess at the end you think about it, well, you're
going to have to pay in cash, and how are
you going to convey your self about if I was
trying to fly under the radar, I don't think I'd
(09:06):
go out and buy an escalade or some high profile
car to try to fly under the radar. But this
kind of fits. And as an investigator, you're looking at
the profile that this person has, even in the state
of flight, if you will, this individual still by virtue
of the fact that we know that he bought this
(09:27):
high end vehicle to try to escape with, he couldn't escape,
that he couldn't escape the idea that he was living
beyond his means. You had mentioned earlier the idea of
golden parachute. Golden parachute is associated with people that essentially
leave big companies. You think about CEOs, and that was
another part. He wanted to be regarded in this environmental
(09:49):
company as a CEO. So now you've got a suspect
that views himself as something other than what he is,
which is a servant that has kind of a quasi
private job that's kind of meld together government and private interest.
He's not the CEO of motor manufacturer. He's not CEO
(10:12):
of Craft.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
And Maryland Environmental Service. Why it was part private park
government it was. It was a government appointed position. He
was appointed by the governor of the State of Maryland.
But he actually kind of like the whole idea that
some people will say that this rich guy was born
on third base but thinks he hit a triple. That's
kind of how it became for Roy McGrath. But here's
(10:33):
what happened when he goes on the run. You mentioned
on the LAMB when he takes off, he was in Florida.
He and his wife had they bought property in Florida,
so he had money from somewhere.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
You've got to be specific about where in Florida because
it's not like it look no offense to my friends
in PCB and Panama City. I love going to Panama City. Okay,
he's in Naples. I mean he might as well be
on that's like the American riviera down there. I mean
that's where like the really wealthy people go, I've been
there before. Here you have this alleged perpetrator at this
(11:04):
point in time that has gone on the lamb, and
he's doing it in a luxury vehicle, and he's also
shown up. It's not like he's taking off to Chicago
and kind of blending in on the South Side or something.
That's not what's going on. It's not like Fugitive you
know the movie. He's actually in Naples. So you've got
somebody that's fitting this profile. And how desperate is he
(11:26):
And from what I understand, McGrath was known to have weapons,
and so if that's the case, and the investigators that
are trying to track him down already have this awareness
that they could be in danger and some of their
agents can be in danger when they're trying to track
this guy down as well.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
And that's the first thing they did. They got in Naples, Florida,
they meet with his wife and what was his plan?
He didn't show up for his court day to day?
What was his plan? Because if your plan is to
be in court and your plan was to fly, you
would have airline ticket reservation paid for all these things.
Would already be done ahead of time. You have to
plan to go to court, have to plan on a
(12:04):
place to stay. All that would have been arranged. So
they show up in Naples floor to add his six
hundred and seventy five thousand dollars house. The day he's
supposed to be in court. He's not there his wife
so I thought he's flying out this morning. Of course
he did, and she doesn't know where he is, so
she says, and we track him later. He's in the
Cadillac Escalade. And the next thing we find out is that,
(12:24):
of course he had no plans of ever being in court.
That's important. Roy McGrath had no plans of being in
court the day court was in session. He had no
plane reservation, he had no vehicle resume. You know, he
had nothing there Where he did have a plan was
to elude. And how he ended up in Knoxville, Tennessee.
(12:47):
Joe Scott Morgan is anybody's guests, But.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
I do know this. I do know that Roy McGrath
pulled into a parking lot and his vehicle was surrounded.
He was never going to leave that parking lot, a lot,
either by his own hand or perhaps at the hand
of the police. The FBI Task Force had actually located
(13:27):
McGrath and this escalade vehicle that he's riding around. It's
a rather large suv. It stands out like a sore thumb.
They know what he's driving. They have identified this thing
just outside of Knoxville, and it's in a parking lot
that's shared by both a Costco warehouse store and a
(13:47):
Sonic which is fascinating to me because if he was
headed to Costco, you got to have a card, right
if you're going to purchase anything, which is kind of interesting.
But when you think about it, all of the people
that might be circulating throughout that area it's in the evening,
who could come into harm's way, and they set up
a perimeter around him and from this event, this kind
(14:10):
of surrounding him, getting him in a position where they
have him corralled. This is where the story takes this
incredible turn because from a forensics perspective, this case involves gunfire,
that it is such a rare thing that you would
get an event that would occur like this, that this
(14:33):
is the type of a scene that after you processed it,
after the dust will settle, you would actually write an
academic paper about and present it. That's how unusual this is.
So just imagine, Dave. You've got this task force that
is surrounding his vehicle. He seated in the driver's seat.
(14:55):
They know that he has a weapon. Okay, they being
in the task force, they're giving him directions. Now when
you think about the police officers or the law enforcement officers,
the agents that are standing there, they're kind of creating
a perimeter around this thing. He stopped and they're telling him,
show your hands. And instead of showing his hands, they
(15:19):
can clearly see him take a weapon that he has
in his possession and raise it. Okay. Now, this is
all happening in the blink of an eye. And as
he raises this weapon in his right hand, he places
the muzzle of this weapon to his right temple. So
follow me here. He discharges this weapon now to his left.
(15:42):
If you think about you're sitting in the driver's seat
of a vehicle, there's an agent who has a weapon
trained on the grath. He sees this weapon being raised,
and all he can think of is I am going
to be in the direct line of fire. Because what
a lot of people I don't understand is that when
(16:02):
you discharge a weapon, even if an individual is discharging
this weapon into the right aspect of their head, that
bullet can actually travel through the head, through the window
of a vehicle and strike someone that's there. So for
this individual to put a weapon to his head and
there is a law enforcement officer to the left, that
(16:24):
law enforcement officer sees that as a threat. So guess
what he's going to try to do. He's going to
try to neutralize that threat. And this is where this
gets really interesting. At the same time Roy McGrath began
to put pressure on that trigger and began to apply
the correct pounds of pressure to actuate that hammer inside
(16:46):
that weapon, that FBI agent was raising his weapon and
concurrently placing pressure on his trigger. And guess what. These
two individuals fired these weapons simultaneously, and it was simultaneously
to the point, like I said, the twinkling of an eye.
Mcgrass round that he discharged into his head entered on
(17:10):
the right aspect of the head, traveled across his both
hemispheres of his brain. Now, the FBI agent fired at
McGrath and struck him in the left cheek, and from
what we can surmise, the trajectory of this round traveled
through the left cheek and actually wound up passing through
(17:32):
the cranial vault. Because what's fascinating is that you can
see on the passenger side of the vehicle, the passenger
window is blown out. You can see the cube safety
glass that is blown out and laying all about fragmented
on the ground. It gives you an indication that there
was a projectile that passed through there. One of the
(17:53):
problems that they encountered with the McGrath case, and it
took several months post death to try to determine what
manner of death this was going to be. Was it
going to be a suicide or was it going to
be a homicide. These two individuals firing at the same
time created two separate wound tracks traveling in opposite directions,
(18:17):
which is fascinating when you begin to think about it.
And most of the time when we're dealing with two
separate bullet tracks, one of the things that we're looking
for is to see if there's indwelling hemorrhage. I'll give
you for instance, if McGrath had fired his weapon and
it created a wound track, there would be hemorrhage in
dwelling in that now, after McGrath had fired his weapon.
(18:40):
Let's just say that the agent fired his weapon after
McGrath had ceased to breathe, that he was deceased, there
would be no hemorrhage in the wind track. What they
wound up discovering in this case is quite the conundrum
because both of these rounds apparently created woond tracks that
had indwelling hemorrhage, and both rounds traveled through areas of
(19:06):
the head that would be incompatible with life.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
All right, So he's going this way and the bullet
from them the officer is coming to the opposite direction.
Is it possible two things? Is it possible that those
tracks could have crossed?
Speaker 1 (19:23):
It is possible.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Yeah, as you're dissecting this injury post mortem and you're
looking at the brain and you're looking at all this
and putting it back together, and I'm kind of probably
confusing Iron Man and television programming with what I'm visioning
in my head of putting bullets back together and all that.
But in reality, doesn't head wound that it becomes fatal?
(19:44):
Isn't it something that isn't always immediately fatal? I mean,
you get a shot to the head and the person's
never going to recover from it, but they live a
little while, a half hour or so.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
I'm so glad that you mentioned this because let me
tell you what happens after this, and this kind of
further muddies the waters. They grab McGrath out of the vehicle,
and he still got what's referred to as agonal respirations,
which means his chest is it's rising and falling, all right.
So it hasn't impacted kind of the primal brain back
at our brain stem that functions to regulate the autonomic
(20:16):
nervous system. We don't have to think to make our
heartbeat right, we don't have to think to breathe. Those
are things that naturally occur. So his chest is still
rising and falling, his heart is still beating, and you
have them taking life saving measures in order to stabilize
him along the way. Now, at some point in time,
(20:36):
he probably did arrest, but I'm not saying he was arrested.
I'm saying he arrested at some point in time because
they're doing compressions and they're probably putting in an amboo bag,
which is the bag that they squeeze to blow oxygen
into your lungs. That he actually was pronounced dead at
a hospital almost I think it was right at twenty
seven minutes down range from when the the event actually
(21:00):
took place. So they had an ambulance crew Johnny on
the spot there and they're trying to resuscitate this guy
to get him to the hospital. But you know, when
an individual sustains this catastrophic kind of injury like this,
there's really not a lot of hope for them, and
not to mention, you've got two of them. So at
the morgue, what's fascinating is that these two gunshot wounds,
(21:25):
there's a high probability that the rounds themselves would have
fragmented at least to a minor degree. So the most
important thing that we can do is actually take X
rays prior to ever doing the dissection. And it can
be quite messy because you'll have a lot of clotted blood.
They'll be blood and brain matter extruding that's referred to
(21:47):
as extruding from both of these defects, and you might
have multiple defects. Here's the thing as well, they haven't
released fully released the autopsy report yet and so you
can have these extruding and at the scene. One of
the things that we do as investigators, if there's brain
matter left at the scene, we have to go out
and collect that. People don't think about that, but we
actually collect that brain matter and X ray it many
(22:09):
times separately because what are we looking for. Well, we
might be looking for bone fragments, and we all might
also be looking for little bits of lead that are
contained in there, anything that's radio opaque, and we'll try
to pick that out. Just imagine any X ray that
you've ever seen, and say, for instance, have you ever
seen someone that had an X ray done and they
were wearing a ring and you see the image that's
(22:32):
radio opaque. When you see you actually see the ring,
that metallic body that's there. It's kind of fascinating when
you think about it. But many times, when you have
these rounds that pass through that create what's referred to
as a lead storm, and you'll see these bits of
fragmented lead that are left behind in their trail, and
they're there and you can actually get an idea of
(22:54):
the trajectory of the round. It is a bona fide
mess when you have two rounds that could be communicating
the tracks actually could be communicating or there's so much
trauma when you begin to think about the fragmenting bone,
because it's not just the round that's passing through there.
When that round strikes what's referred to as the external
(23:16):
table of the skull, the skull is literally fragmented and
blown apart. So now you've created you don't just have
shrapnel from the projectile itself. Now you've got bone shrapnel.
You've got these little bitty sharp pieces of bone that
are floating around through the brain as well. And it's
very devastating. And I'm sure that probably the round that
(23:37):
the FBI was using was probably some type of holowpoint round.
So if you've got save, for instance, I don't know,
forty forty five caliber side arm that they're using, and
it's holow point if it expands, if the bullet actually expands,
because it's kind of they call it holow point, it's
kind of cupped out in the center when it expands.
(23:57):
You might have a round that might be forty caliber
when it's intact, okay, before it's fired, but if it expands,
it can expand out to fifty caliber. Because it creates
this it almost looks like a little mushroom opening up
and it expands and you're trying the purpose of the
bullet is to destroy as much tissue as it can.
(24:18):
Here's the problem, and this is what was so very
curious about the release that the medical examiner made in
Roy McGrath's case. They could not make a determination as
to how they wanted to rule this. Now, you know
that your cause of death is obviously going to be gunshowing.
But you know, we've only got five things to choose
(24:39):
from Dave, as we've talked about on bodybacks before. We've
either got a natural death, we've got accidental deaths, we've
got undetermined deaths, or we've got homicide or suicide. And
they couldn't make a determination about it. So right now
they have left his manner of death as actually undetermined,
(25:00):
which is kind of fascinating. They couldn't settle on an
actual manner how they were going to classify this death.
Sooner or later, the autopsy report will in fact be released,
and also the authorities will be compelled at some point
in time to make a final determination. An added part
to this that many people might not consider is that
(25:23):
early on we talked about on this episode, when a
private citizen engages in gun play, you're going to be
investigated by the police. Well, if the police in your
local jurisdiction shoots somebody, they will be investigated. They'll probably
be investigated by the state police, and.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
They're going to be investigated to prove that it was
a justifiable shooting. Even when we and I look at
it and go it obviously is justifiable, they still have
to pull at every knit because they never know who's
going to file the lawsuit against them.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Yeah, you're right, But here's the big question, the bigger question,
who investigates the FEDS when they shoot somebody? And what's
fascinating when you go back and read these reports, the
FBI is investigating itself.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
I'm really having trouble with the idea that two people
that they're not sitting right next to one another, there
is distance. Roy McGrath is holding a gun to his head.
They're stippling from the shot. He pulls the trigger. The
FBI agent is pulling the trigger on his gun, and
we can't determine who did it first.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
It would be very difficult to do, I think, because
it was apparently a simultaneous event. What I would be
fascinated to hear is was there an open mic out there?
I don't know that the FEDS are necessarily compelled to
wear body cams, but I wonder if any of the
local police officers were out there, and wouldn't that be fascinating.
(26:49):
Even going back to the Kennedy assassination, one of the
things that you think about are these acoustic I think
they call them acoustic shadows where you've got overlapping time
the open mic in Dallas that day when Kennedy was shot,
you know, and you're trying to make sense of these
overlapping sounds, And wouldn't that be fascinating to try to
(27:10):
explore this is their audio that could be kind of
taken apart and begin to understand it. I don't know
that they're going to go that far with this case.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
But when you're expanding and when you're looking at all
of this Joe and you're trying to put it all
back together to explain it in a courtroom if there
is a lawsuit, how do you sit down, as a
from a forensic standpoint and say, here, the bullet went
this way and exploded out here and took out the
back window. Here's the bullet that came from this one.
And know we can't determine which was the fatal shot
(27:40):
because they were both fatal.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
I would answer your question by saying this, Dave. It's
the same thing that my granny taught me when I
was little, and that is to tell the truth. Sometimes
you have no definitive answer. All you can say is simply,
I don't know, and from a scientific standpoint, there's no
shame in that. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is bodybags.
(28:28):
H
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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