Death Investigator

On this episode, friend of the podcast Landen Wilson joins me to talk about being a Death Investigator. He is a former Death Investigator for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and performed many autopsies during his tenure.

We also go over the unsolved murder case of Russell and Shirley Dermond, and Landen has a unique connection to the case that most people don't. He actually saw their bodies.

His personal story about an incident that ultimately led to his resignation from the GBI can be heard on both Murder Was the Case, and Ignorance Was Bliss:

Murder Was the Case, titled Headshot: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/251-headshot-part-1-death-investigator-dive-bar-w-landen/id1327969221?i=1000551708681

Ignorance Was Bliss, titled Full Evisceration: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/390-full-evisceration-with-landen-from-autopsy/id1341566170?i=1000551181208
Landen's podcast, Autopsy: https://www.autopsypod.com/

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=29802408

https://www.facebook.com/WorseThanFictionPodcast

https://twitter.com/WorseTFPodcast



Podcast Promo: The Gen-X Gamer Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-gen-x-gamer-podcast/id1516167335



Theme music by Ecdysis:

https://ecdysis66.bandcamp.com/

https://www.facebook.com/ecdysisofficial/

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Are you a gamer? Do youwant to stay up the data on the
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I cover game reviews and gaming eventsand the Ladies gaming news on the
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(00:30):
the story you are about to hearmay contain detailed descriptions of intense violence.
It will certainly be worse than fiction. Hello, my name is Less.

(01:12):
Thank you for joining me as wetake a look at a true tale of
unimaginable horror. All right, I'vegot a little bit of a different episode
for you guys today, and it'sgoing to be in a format of similar
to the schizophrenia episode that I didwith Kate will Inga and with me.

(01:33):
I have a fellow who I usedto know as Fred, your friendly death
investigator, who we've learned recently isactual name is Landon, So Landon.
It's a pleasure to have you here. Tell the people who you are and
what you do. Well. Idon't do much right now, but yeah,

(01:53):
I'm Landon. I host the podcastAutopsy, and I still use the
term your Friendly Death Investigator. I'mworking on kind of a new show,
very completely different genre, but it'snot really done yet. It's still other
things going on. But most peopleknow me from Autopsy, and yeah,

(02:15):
I kind of use it to deepdive into autopsy reports and some you may
know, some you may not know, and sort of break down how you
get to the calls and manner ofdeath. And the thinking was always,
you know, I listened to alot of true crime, or at least
I used too, and some folkswould get a lot of this stuff either

(02:37):
wrong or just slightly off key,and I was like, well, wouldn't
it be nice if there was somethingout there that sort of corrected that,
at least to some capacity. Sothat's what I try to do. Yeah,
and it's and it's great. AndI think a lot of my listeners
would really enjoy your podcast because theytend to be the the kind of people
that like a relaxed, soothing podcastthat kind of might put them in a

(03:00):
trance or something like that. AndI think that's exactly what you do.
You have a great voice for it, and uh, it's it's very lightly
produced. There are no loud suddennoises, which you know I do from
time to time, but it's it'sa very mesmerizing podcast and you find yourself
getting lost in it because it's justso soothing. Yeah, it's very I

(03:24):
guess whenever I made it, Iwasn't really looking at other like true crime
podcasts in terms of what I wantedit to sort of sound like. So
it strangely sort of took nods fromLore where if you if you guys have
ever heard the podcast Lore, it'svery kind of esthetically the same, except
mine's more mind's more true crime sortof related, but that sort of narrative

(03:49):
driven kind of a there's a softmusic kind of in the background, and
it's all more about the writing thanit necessarily is about anything else. So
what led you to create the podcast? Well, I've been listening to podcasts
since I think early or late twothousands. Was the main podcast that at

(04:12):
least I remember from back then,where like the Ricky Gervais Show and Smodcast,
Kevin Smith's podcast, and I justit was new to me completely,
like I had never heard anything likethis. I was like, oh,
this is cool, this is peopleI know, just you know, because
I grew up a dork, youknow, watching movies and listening to commentary

(04:34):
tracks, and it was basically justlike commentary tracks without a movie, is
how I saw it. Back then. I was like, this is cool.
And then more and more came along, and somehow in my head I
eventually got it. I was like, it'd be cool because first it was
like more well known people who didit, but then you started hearing from
you just again, the lores ofthe world. The you sort of saw

(04:58):
what could and what could be likea podcast. So, yes, somewhere
in there, maybe twenty fifteen,twenty sixteen, while I still was at
GBI as a death investigator, Iwanted to do I was like, it'd
be cool to do a podcast.I don't know what I would do,
and I certainly couldn't do something likeautopsy while I worked at GBI, because

(05:19):
if they ever found out I would, they wouldn't tolerate it. A little
conflict of interests there, perhaps,Yeah, And so I just didn't really
think about doing it. And thenafter the controversy at GBI and I was
gone. I was talking to afriend of mine one day and she just

(05:41):
it. I don't know if shehad ever brought it up before, but
it was the first time that Ijust remember her saying like, have you
ever thought about doing a podcast?And I was just like, of course,
I have kind of question is that? And she was like, you
know, would you like, whydon't you try to do maybe you could
do some sort of true Time becausethat's what she listened to. And by
this point I hadn't really listened theTrue Crime that much in a while,

(06:04):
and I was just kind of adamant, like, no, I don't want
to do that at all. Thatsounds like a horrible idea. And then
she was like, well, youcould do like an Emmy version of it,
or a Southeast Georgia or just aSoutheastern general take on it. And
I was like okay. And thenshe brought up and it's kind of funny

(06:25):
you asked this question considering what we'regoing to get into get into today.
She was like, hey, youremember the Russell and Shirley Derman case and
I was like, well, ofcourse. She's like, you know,
those autopsy reports are online and Iwas like, and it was one of
those moments of like, oh yeah, okay. She was because sometimes you

(06:48):
have to request these and you can'talways get a hold of them, but
every now and then offices will justrelease this stuff. And yeah, she
didn't, I don't know she didn'tand say specifically where to look for him,
but she was like, but she'slike, it's not easy to find
if you start looking. So Ijust went online and like there they were,
and I was like huh. AndI looked at it and started reading

(07:10):
through Russell's case and it was justthat moment of like, oh, okay,
I think I know what a Ithink I can make a podcast out
of just this, and just startedwriting it without really knowing exactly what it
was, and then kind of afew ideas started popping as I was writing,
and I sent it to her andshe didn't like. She was like,

(07:34):
this looks interesting, but I don'treally know she could. I could
hear it in my head, butI was sending her something on paper,
you know, and she was likeokay, She's like I see what you're
doing, but just I'll trust thatyou know what you're doing. And then
I recorded it and sent it toher and she was like, okay,
I got it. No, Andthat became autopsy nice, And for people

(07:55):
who haven't listened to Autopsy yet,I've ran your promo, I've promoted you
and my Facebook group and all that, but I'm sure, like you know,
that doesn't reach a lot of peoplethat actually listen to the show.
So describe your show for people ifif you would so, Like I said,

(08:15):
I'd basically take every episode is oneautopsy report, with like one exception
where I did one for I didtwo in one episode, but for a
very specific reason. But otherwise everyshow is taking one autopsy report, and
I sort of bookend it with likeI opened the show, where I sort

(08:37):
of set up it's it's almost howI used to have to write reports for
the GBI once upon a time,where you get a case called in and
they're giving you information and you haveto write a narrative, and that narrative
basically tells you everything that you eventuallyhand off to a doctor and they read,
and it's just everything that leads upto how they got on their table
that day. And that's sort ofwhat the first every introduction to every episode

(09:05):
sets up, kind of the who, what, where, when of where
this case happened, how they werefound, that sort of thing. And
then once you sort of have anidea of where you're at and kind of
what we're talking about, then weimmediately jump into the show proper, where
I literally just I quote the autopsyreport verbatim and in chunks and sort of

(09:30):
like go back and say, Okay, this is what they mean here,
this is what there, this iswhat this means, this is what this
means. This is what they're gettingat piece by piece, starting with the
external, and then I go intothe internal, and then hopefully the idea
being by the time I get tothe end of the kind of conclusion section
where I give the cause and mannerof death, hopefully by that point it's

(09:52):
clear why they landed at what theydid. And then the wrap up,
like I said, book ended.So the first part sets up where you're
at to get to the autopsy,we go through it, we get to
the get to the end of howwe got to cause a manner and what
that was, and then the finallittle piece of it is sort of like,
okay, and this is where thecase sets today, whether it's open

(10:16):
or closed, or if anything elsecame up and that sort of stuff,
and then we're out. And forthe people that may not know, and
it may not have inferred this yetyou were a death investigator, and a
lot of people generally I think becauseand it was the case with me before
I started listening to your podcast,I thought that only medical examiners did autopsies

(10:41):
and you had to have a youknow, yet you had to be a
doctor. And found out that's notthe case. So you were a death
investigator for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. You performed I'm sure it was probably
hundreds of autopsies. What is thatjob like for people who may not be

(11:05):
familiar with it, Well, it'sso every medical examiner's office different. I
can really only tell you how itwas with the GBI. Most emmy offices
have what's called your medical examiner investigator, and there's various terms they'll they're kind
of all interchangeable. Death investigator,medical examiner investigator, medical legal death investigator,

(11:28):
that sort of stuff. And you'reworking for a forensic pathologist, a
doctor, the medical examiner, andyou have your medical examiner, your medical
examiner investigator, and then you havewhat's called like a morgue technician or a
forensic pathology technician or they're basically yourautopsy tech, your morgu assistant. Most

(11:50):
offices keep them separate, two separatejobs, two separate skill sets. But
GBI just has, like or hadwell still has pretty horrible turnover rate.
And they got it in their headand this predates me getting there. So
GBI used to have the emmy investigatorand the autopsy tech, and they got

(12:13):
it in their head at a certainpoint like, well, maybe we can
keep staff, or at least thestaff that we do have, we can
make them do both jobs, becausewe need a warm body to be able
to do both. So they combinedthe position and called it Death Investigation Specialist.
And that's the job I applied forand was hired for, and it's
basically just combining it. I wasa trained death investigator all on the job

(12:37):
and a trained morgue technician, Andyeah, I did somewhere at least close
to, if maybe not a littleover, like maybe a thousand autopsy eviscerations
in the I started in twenty twelveand left in twenty eighteen, so yeah,
quite. You sort of average acouple of hundred, one hundred and

(13:01):
fifty two hundred a year sometimes ofthe eviscerations and then however many scenes I
responded to how many corner calls Itook. Just to sort of break that
down, I guess would be whenyou're an investigator, because I would say
maybe the autopsy most people would knowwould probably have a better idea of what
that is of. You know,people know kind of an autop you're opening

(13:24):
people up, you're taking their organsout, that sort of stuff. You're
working with a pathologist who's usually inthe room unless they have to step out,
but you're under their guidance or theirwatch, and you, the morgue
technician, take out all the organsand kind of hand them off to the
doctor and they do their more kindof meticulous works. We always kind of

(13:46):
said, you know, the techsdo the hard work and the docs do
the smart work. So that's themorg side. But the investigative side is
you'll go to scenes and again,office office is different. This was the
State Medical Examiner's office, which meantin Georgia, and Georgia's kind of complicated

(14:07):
where there's a hundred there's darn nearedlike two hundred counties in Georgia, Like
Georgia has a lot of counties,and every county has a corner, and
corners are elected officials. They're notdoctors. Rare every blue moon, maybe
one retired doctor will show up asa corner, but that doesn't even mean

(14:28):
they were a pathologist. So theyget elected. Corner goes out to a
scene if someone dies on scene andyou know, pronounces them and kind of
looks to see if they may ormay not need an autopsy, and if
they do. Most all, mostof the counties in Georgia can't afford,

(14:48):
you know, to hire a medicalexaminer or kind of pay for that kind
of stuff. So what they doinstead is GBI provides the autopsy service,
so the corner arranges to have abody transferred to one of the There's three
GBI Medical Examiner offices in Georgia currently. There used to be more, but
there's headquarters where I worked. Therewas one in Making and then there's one

(15:11):
It used to be in Savannah.Now they've just opened a new building in
Pooler, which is right out ofSavannah, and GBI does the autopsy service.
The pathologists determine the calls and mannerand then they relay that back to
the corners, and the coroners signedthe death certificate. So as an investigator,
you're talking to a lot of cornersthroughout the day. They're just calling
in the case information and you're writingup the report. But there was one

(15:35):
county that I actually had to respondto for scenes, so I was basically
the acting coroner for me and theother investigators were the acting coroners for that
county. It's not like that anymoresince I've left. I don't know exactly
how they did it, but it'schanged since I left. But whenever I
was there, I was actually havingto go out to scenes in that county.

(15:58):
So yeah, investigators, you do. You do the case calls,
you go to scenes, you talkto the doctor. You're kind of the
you're almost kind of a liaison betweenthe medical examiner and either law enforcements or
the decedent's family. So it's kindof your job to again take the reports.

(16:19):
It's your job to track down medicalrecords as needed, and just whatever
the doctor needs, they'll tell youand you'll just do your best to try
to get it. So those arekind of the two different jobs, and
at GBI, again we did both. You said that the coroner would determine
if someone I guess needs may notbe the right way to say it is

(16:45):
a candidate for an autopsy, oryou know there's a good reason, what
reasons would someone qualify for an autopsy. Well, for state of Georgia,
any homicide is an automatic autopsy.It's almost by law. Someone gets shot,
stabbed, anything, anything, aperson killed by another person, they're

(17:10):
getting an autopsy. Some suicides ifthere's questionable circumstances or just for it,
and this isn't Again, this isthe difference between a lot of some states.
You can get some states where ifsomeone commits suicide by say a firearm,
and they shoot themselves in the heador wherever, if the bullet stays

(17:30):
behind is still inside, like there'sno exit wound. Some states don't really
care about that. They'll just belike, Okay, it's a clear cut
suicide, we don't need to seeit. They'll bury it. But in
Georgia there's I don't know if it'sa written policy or whatever, but it's
like if there's a projectile still insidethe body, we don't bury bullets,
so we have to. You know, if someone even if it's a clear

(17:52):
cut suicide, they left a note, there's really no question. But if
they have a bullet in them.Still they'd have to come in just to
sort of retrieve it. And againthere's there's you know, we'd look at
a lot of hangings. What's anot crass way to say this, because
this was never a written policy forGBI. This is a I don't know

(18:15):
if I've ever like mentioned this.I had to do a case once of
I was actually out on the sceneand it seemed like a pretty clear cut
suicide. It was a hanging.He wasn't the person wasn't suspended hanging,
but they had sort of wrapped theligature around their neck and had pulled it
tight, and when I found him, they were kind of like kind of

(18:36):
almost in a sitting position, whichwe saw more often than not. But
the guy was black. But everybodywho I was talking to, his family
and all that, they were like, you know, he'd been depressed,
the sort of typical things you hearand see about like suicide. So I'm
taught I'm doing it or and takingthe information. I'm like, well,

(18:56):
this sounds pretty clear cut. AndI called the the chief, the guy
the doctor who was chief back then, and I'm just and this was my
first year on the job, soI didn't know these things. And I'm
running the case by him. Iwas like, it seems like a pretty
clear cut suicide doc. We probablydon't need to see it. And there's

(19:17):
a pause. He was like,Landing, just bring that case in and
I was like, are you sure. I was like it's pretty easy,
and he's like Landing, Landing,Um, he's you said, he's black,
and I was like, yeah,He's like Landing, this is Georgia.
We have a history. He's comingin for an exam. Bring him
in and I was like, okay, I got it. There you go.

(19:41):
So sometimes you don't know when somethingcomes in. Then that's why I
say the corner makes the determination.But sometimes they'll just call us and say,
hey, do you want us?Do you want to look at this?
We don't think it's anything, butwe just want to cross our teas
on this stuff. How did youstumble into this job? Did you did
you just kind of want to gofor it or was it something you saw

(20:02):
that there was an opening and youwent for it, or how did you
go about it? Basically? Theope, I hadn't before I started this
job. I had no idea everythingI just told you about what the job
is. I had no clue aboutany of this stuff. It never really
had never heard of it. ButI went to college in Savannah. It

(20:22):
used to be Armstrong Atlantic State University, then it became Armstrong State University.
Now it's absorbed by the Georgia SouthernUniversity System, so I don't even really
know what to call it. Butcollege in Savannah, I graduated with a
bachelor's in criminal justice. And there'snot a lot of particularly interesting careers and
criminal justice, as I found out, unless you just want to be a

(20:45):
cop, which I didn't. Butright out of college, I was a
corrections officer just for work, andI did that about a year and a
half and knew within the first fewmonths I didn't want to there was no
way I could do this forever.It was just a corrections officer to me,
was just very, very miserable.So I was looking for anything else,
and I would had been thinking aboutforensics. I went and re enrolled

(21:10):
back into online classes for like cybersecurity, cyber affairs, and security because that
was sort of forensics based as closeas I could find. And yeah,
I was just looking at job boardsand suddenly solved death investigation specialists on the
State of Georgia website, and Iwas like, well, that's I don't
know what again, I have noidea what it is, but I know
what it's not, and it's nota corrections officer, and that's the most

(21:33):
important thing at this point. SoI applied and it was like a seven
month application process from the moment Iapplied until day one on the job.
Seven months went by, and thatI started May of twenty twelve, and
yeah, still even when I gotthere, I still wasn't really sure because

(21:53):
the job description was vague. Youknow, you you'll take response to death
calls blah blah blah, and you'relike, okay, I sort of have
an idea of what that is.But then they just vaguely word like and
you'll kind of assist with eviscerations inthe morgue as needed by the doctor.
And I was like, oh,that's okay. I'm handing a doctor a

(22:14):
scalpel, you know, that's thethat's the extent of it. And then
I show up day one and they'relike and they're like, okay, we're
gonna put you in the more.You're gonna train in here for however long
you'll train until you get it basically, and I'm like get what. They're
like, you're gonna do the evisceration, and it's like what what now?
That must have been jarring to hear, like, Oh, here we're gonna

(22:37):
go hand you a very sharp instrument. You're gonna cut this person open.
Jarring's a great word it. Imean they baby step you through it.
They don't just hand you something andsay all right, go nuts. But
when you but you are around itevery day and you're seeing kind of what
you're going to eventually be getting into, and you're just like, huh,

(22:59):
I didn't know I signed up forthis. And most of the investigators who
worked there were the exact with fewexceptions, were the exact same of like,
yeah, we did not realize thiswas what we were signing up for.
And that's why I like that turnoverrate. Like GBI thought combining the
positions would help, but they alsojust vaguely worded the job description, so

(23:21):
a lot of people would get thereand be like yeah, I know,
they would just nope out of itwithin a month or so. But I
stuck with it because I'd moved uplike I was from more the Savannah area
and this was closer to Atlanta,so I'd moved up there for this job
and it wasn't really what I expected, but I was like, I'll stick
with it. And there was somegood people I worked with too, who

(23:44):
were just like, yeah, don'tjust learn to not think about it.
Learned to learn to make sure you'regetting what you need to be doing right.
And the more you focus on thatstuff, the more everything else sort
of becomes kind of routine and ajob and you don't really think about what
you're thinking about now as a newperson. And they were right. So,
yeah, I was spent several Iwas trained in the morgue first,

(24:07):
and then once I got it andhad it down pretty well, then I
went on to doing the investigative sideand being on call at night, and
I think right around the six monthmark, I was like, yeah,
this is I like this, thisis great. I can I could do
this an entire career. When yousay investigative side is something I'm not clear
about on what a death investigator does. I believe it'd be considered more forensics.

(24:33):
You don't determine like what weapon killedpeople or anything like that. Right,
No, again, it's more LIAISONIwhere you're getting called by an officer
or a coroner and they're relaying youinformation and you're sort of writing it up
and sort of writing out the narrativeof all the events that led up to

(24:56):
it, and you're asking as youget better, you know, the questions
you need to ask for different kindsof cases. But yeah, it's the
doc, the medical examiner themselves whousually determine, Okay, so this is
this is a homicide, a gunshotwound or they were stabbed and you know,

(25:17):
this looks like a serrated type woundwith the blade, and they kind
of at least with GBI, theywould kind of be adamant like, don't
don't overstep kind of when you're writingyour reports. Don't sort of overstep what
your knowledge base is. I meanthey because and they didn't want to sound
like condescending to your They're just like, you know, you're not a doc,

(25:38):
so you can't. A corner isgoing to call in and say this
is a homicide and he's got allof these gunshot wounds or blah blah blah
blah blah, But when you writeup the report, you're not going to
list those wounds as gunshot wounds,you're gonna GBI was like, you're going
to list these as defects, andthat's it, because that's all they are

(26:00):
to you. There, they area defect. A doctor will determine if
that is a gunshot wound. Evenif you can look at it at a
certain point you're good enough at thejob and you're like, yeah, that's
a gunshot wound, You're still notgoing to put it in the report because
only a doctor can make that determination, at least with GBI. One thing
that I'm sure people are wondering intheir head is the smells that you're gonna

(26:22):
come across doing this kind of work. I mean, you'll you'll be examining
bodies that are fresh and some thataren't quite so fresh. So what what's
that like? The smells? It'sit's the one thing. It's it's the
first thing I guess everybody notices,including me, when you first start.

(26:42):
You're like, yeah, you noticethe smells, And it's sort of like,
in a weird way, you're kindof almost thankful for the smells because
you work with an emmy for it, especially with someplace like GBI. I'll
say, because GIBI has this bigbureaucracy, especially and especially head quarters.
It's a very political environment, sothere's so much micromanaging, and there was

(27:06):
plenty of micromanaging with the Medical Examiner'soffice, but in terms of like higher
ups, the smells kept most peopleout of that office. If they didn't
have to be there, they wouldnot be there, and even if they
did, they would make their timeas short as possible. So you sort
of learn to appreciate the smells overtime. But when you start, yeah,
it's like even fairly fresh deceased body, some people just don't bathe correctly

(27:32):
and they have like a sour thatwas that soury, unbathed smell was usually
worse than any decomp could ever bebecause most people are like, oh,
decomposed, I don't want to that'shorrible. That's got to be the worst.
And it's like at a certain pointdecomposed bodies there you just know what
they are. Your brain just learnsto ignore it. And it's also and

(27:56):
the way I always put this isa decomposed smell is a natural smell.
Whether or not it's a good smell, your brain registers it as natural.
Um, so you know it's it'ssort of off putting it first, but
your brain's not like actively rejecting it. I mean some people can some people
might vomit, and there were quitea few people who would that would do

(28:19):
that when they'd smell it. Butthe more you did it, your brain's
just like, it's it's it's justa natural smell. It's a it's a
dead animal on the highway, it'sit's rotten eggs, like it's your your
brain sort of recognizes that. Whatthat What it doesn't recognize sometimes is you
get a deceased person who's already beenembalmed, and there's sort of a maybe

(28:42):
even if there's just a slight decomkind of smell, it's not so bad.
What's horrible is that mixes with thechemical smell from the embombing fluid,
and your brain registers that as thatis not a natural smell, and it
became very off putting, like youryour brain starts rejecting it, at least

(29:03):
mine did, where you're just like, this is not I don't like this.
It the smell is just not natural. And then kind of on top
of that, you'd have the fumes, which you need you should always have,
like a splash shield on anyway,but even it could, it'll get
under that, and some people wouldput the entire uh I forget what gas

(29:25):
masks looking things to do that stuff. I hated wearing that stuff. I
have asthma, so I anything thatwould restrict my breathing I always wore kind
of as little. I guess I'dget yelled at this day and age.
I was always wearing as little asI had to. Sometimes I wouldn't even
wear the end ninety Most times Iwouldn't even wear the end ninety five masks,

(29:45):
just because I again asthma, andI'm also mildly claustrophobic, so one
would just make the other worse.So again I got used to the smells.
They didn't really bother me so much. And that leads me into a
que that my cousin, long timesupporter of the podcast, had, How
do you scratch your nose If yournose is really itching and you've I'm assuming

(30:08):
you've got gloves on, you mighthave body fluids all over your hands.
What do you do do you justyou just elbow it as well as you
can. Basically, yeah, um, sometimes I mean if you're right,
if you're if you're elbow deep ina body. There's not a whole hell
of a lot you can do.Um, you just sort of get over

(30:29):
it and focus on getting whatever you'redoing currently done as quickly as you can.
But yeah, even if you're done, your hands are usually covered in
or I mean, you're wearing glovesand all this stuff, so but still
you're covered in blood. So it'sone of the end. You've got a
splash shield on which you if youhave a nose itch, you have to
sort of, yeah, sort ofelbow it up up the get the splash

(30:56):
shield out of your way, justa sort of barely awkwardly rub your nose
and that would alleviate it at leastenough, but you'd always have to it'd
have to really be itching for youto really stop what you're doing to do
that, because once you do that, you have to get the splash shield
back down, and then it's evenmore awkward and you might even start getting
blood everywhere. So it's one ofthose things you just it depends how bad

(31:21):
that itches you said it, mostlywill say I think it would probably be
fairly to say fair to say thatmostly homicide victims are the people who qualify
for an autopsy. What about accidentvictims, people in a car crash,
an industrial accident, things of thatnature, do they often qualify for autopsies?

(31:45):
Well, I would say, yeah, we got plenty of plenty of
homicides, but the overwhelming majority ofcases we had, and I really should
I guess, I don't know whyI didn't think about it. But yet
most of the cases we had wereoverdose cases, drug overdose because those cases,
like someone can say, oh,say on scene, yeah, we

(32:07):
have looks like an overdose, lotsof drug paraphernalia, but that's a guess
because you don't know what's in theirtalks. So they almost have to come
in just to determine, you know, exactly what killed them. Because overdose
cases, even if there is evidenceon scene of what they were using,
that doesn't nobody was there most ofthe time, nobody saw, so you

(32:30):
don't know if you don't know.So most of the cases were overdoses.
But we had plenty of homicides.But in terms of accidents we had,
if it was a motor vehicle accident, we would sort of look at it.
And this is another one of thosethings where some states may be a
little different. If we had amotor vehicle accident, usually there would be

(32:52):
charges pending, Like if there werecharges pending against somebody else and that case
was probably likely going to go tocourt one day, they would want an
autopsy. Even if it's very clearthis person died from blunt force trauma or
they were decapitated, or they justhad open wounds that they bled out from
that you could clearly see on scene. It didn't matter. It's like,

(33:13):
we need to bring that in forespecially if they died on scene. Especially
bring that in for so the doctorcan document the injuries because that's going to
be relevant to the court case oneday. But if it was like a
single vehicle, someone saw this motorcyclistlike just darting down the highway and just

(33:34):
weaving in and out, and ultimatelyhe just like nobody, like nobody,
like head on collided with him nobody. It was seemed to sort of have
been like his fault, like wherehe tried to like dart around something and
then he loses control and wipes outand winds up dying of pretty you know,
blunt force injuries that are very apparent. We wouldn't take a look at

(33:55):
something like that. They would belike, yeah, he's got massive head
trauma. Can we can see theskull fractures on scene? We all everyone
just says he was driving like abat out of hell. Nobody hit him.
There's no charges pending against anybody,So yeah, that wouldn't come in
for an exam. But on theother side of that, if you say,

(34:21):
just take that same sort of anothermotorcyclist and then that person is just
found on the side of the road, even if it looks like they hit
a tree or something, they ranoff the road and hit a tree.
If you find them kind of onthe side of the road and there's no
other cars around and nobody saw it, we might just bring that in just
again to sort of cross the teesbecause if nobody saw anything, nobody knows,

(34:45):
like there's always a chance someone couldhave ran him off the road or
something else could have went on.So if it's an unwitnessed event, you
would typically you'd bring it in justagain just to sort of take a look
and docu as needed. Um.Sort of the same with drownings. If
you see somebody like struggling and swimmingand there's a bunch of people who witness

(35:07):
somebody kind of go under and thennot come back up, and then the
body kind of someone goes in andpulls the body and the person's dead on
scene, we might not take alook at that because that's a pretty clear
cut drowning. But if nobody seesit, if someone just sees someone swim
off and then they turn around ata certain point and they're like, where

(35:29):
do you go? And then theystart looking, and soone dives in and
a body's found, that would bemore apt to come in just because nobody
really saw him go under, youdon't know exactly what happened. So it
sometimes it's a difference of witnessed andunwitnessed events. Speaking of a drowning,
and we're going to get into thisa little bit later with a with a

(35:50):
crime that we're going to go over. What about bodies that have been decomposing
in water for a while. Iwould imagine that's probably about ass as it
gets sort of it's they're almost becomesa difference between gross and kind of a
headache of a case. Decomposed bodies, especially if they're like bloated, they

(36:12):
become very cumbersome to work with theskin slippage, they're slick, they're they're
hard to maneuver there. I mean, they have skin slippage, but they
also kind of the oils that aresort of breaking down make it very hard
to sort of manipulate a body asyou're trying to work with an autopsy.
And if there's maggots or insects orthat kind of stuff, it's just one

(36:35):
more thing to have to deal with. And yeah, if they're submerged in
water pulled out that, yeah,that's just because now their clothes are soaking
wet. Sometimes, i mean decomposedbodies, their clothes are going to be
wet anyway, just because the decompfluid starts seeping out and it just soaks
the clothes. But someone that's beenunderwater, it's I guess there's not too

(36:58):
much of a difference. Like ata certain point if they're decomposed, they're
decomposed. The water might make adifference just for getting the clothing off and
that sort of stuff. It allkind of depends drowning and d comp It's
just like, well it's it's it'sd comp that's the the thing you think
about, not so much the wateryou have to deal with. I'm sure

(37:22):
that in the case of like ahouse fire or something. Would would you
typically perform an autopsy on on thevictim of a house fire. Yes,
And I'm trying to just think ofexamples. Even if it was witnessed and
somebody saw them inside and like heardthem screaming or something like that, I
think we'd still bring in that caseto look at. I mean, sometimes

(37:45):
there'd be there'd be more left behindthan others. Some people are burned beyond
recognition. It's rare that someone's charredso bad that they're like it's rare that
there's like almost nothing left. There'susually always something left and another thing that
they could be completely charred on theoutside to the point where like their limbs,
their arms and legs are just likenubs, but they could still have

(38:08):
like their organs, at least theirchest organs and probably the brain too.
But the chest and abdomen organs you'llopen up and they're still mostly intact,
unless there was like an injury,like an open wound or something where like
the flame and heat could get in. Then that might mess something up,
but most times the organs were usuallyintact. If there was a house fire,

(38:30):
and we did we did mostly houseI think most house fires did come
in if only to just to ensurethat it was either the heat that they
succumbed to or smoke inhalation, justso we'd have to always check the neck
to sort of look for sood inthe airway. Probably also want to make

(38:50):
sure because in some cases it's anarson with a murder preceding it, so
you probably also want to make surethat there's no gunshots or anything like that.
Oh, I've got a great storyfor a case like that. I
don't want to keep you here toolong, so we'll get into one of
the reasons we're here, and thatis Russell and Shirley Dermond. It's a

(39:13):
very well known unsolved double murder ofa couple elderly. I believe Russell was
eighty eight years old and Shirley waseighty seven. They owned now I believe
it was nineteen Hardy's Restaurants. Interestinglyenough, they had a son who was
murdered in the early two thousands,and the last time they were seen alive

(39:37):
was May first, twenty fourteen,and a concerned neighbor eventually goes to check
on them, and what did theyfind? They found and yet just for
listeners. This was a case downhere in Georgia. This was a case
that came to the GBI, andit was a case that I I didn't

(40:00):
do the autopsy of, but Iwas in the room for well, I
should say I didn't do the Ididn't help with the autopsy for Russell's case,
but I think I helped with Shirley, if I remember correctly. But
when they get to the scene,neighbor comes and checks on them. They
were supposed to be at like anengagement, like a party or some sort

(40:22):
of engagement they never showed up for, and someone comes to check on them.
And the house always a good alwaysliked to note the house was saved
for the garage, and that's whereRussell was found, is in the garage.
But looking through the entire rest ofthe house, like the house looked

(40:44):
immaculate, like we had we werelooking at like scene photos and that sort
of stuff. Everything. I mean, you would have just thought if you
look walked into this house that thesepeople had just stepped out for a minute
and they were coming back. Didn'tlike anything have been tough until you get
to the garage. Garage doors closedobviously, and there's Russell's body on the

(41:12):
garage floor in a kind of apool of blood kind of there was no
other blood I think in the garagesave for what was around his body.
And his head's gone, and tothis day they've never found the head.
And there was maybe I think hehad like a one of his fingers I

(41:32):
think was broken like there was kindof look like some sort of struggle type
thing had happened. But otherwise,like no other major injuries, and his
head's gone and Shirley's missing. Sohe gets brought in for an autopsy,
and yes, some some very curiousfindings were found. See it says here

(41:59):
he was taken in for autopsy onMay eighth, eighty eight year old male
found in his garage. Yet,as you said, and the autopsy it's
a bunch of gobbledee goop for somebodylike me. And I know you've covered
this on your podcast SAW. Fora complete breakdown of this, I'll refer
to your episodes on that. Butessentially what this says is, other than

(42:23):
the crush injury to his index finger, there are no other real significant injuries.
He's just his head's missing. Butthey believe because there was no significant
blood loss from from the neck.His head was cut off after he was
killed, so or are there anytheories on what may have killed him?

(42:45):
The most interesting finding at autopsy oneof the most interesting findings I ever saw
at my time there. Again,I was I didn't do the exam,
but I was. I was walkingin and out. I think I was
doing just investigative stuff that day,but this was just a when you hear

(43:06):
this kind of case, You're justlike, Okay, I need to go
look in on this and see what'sgoing on. Sounds interesting. So I'm
walking in and I'm talking to thedoctor who's working on it, and she's
I walk over and she's just sortof looking at the neck and I'm like,
hey, doc, what's going on? And she's like, and she's

(43:29):
just staring at it for a moment, and she finally just looks up and
she's like, look at this.And I was like, Doc, this
is this is beyond my this isbeyond my level of expertise. I don't
know what I'm supposed to be lookingat. She's like, look at the
wound, and she showed me andshe was like, the neck. Now,

(43:51):
there were two different wound sits onthe neck. There was one that
had that looked like maybe a dollarblade or something had been used to try
and whatever they were trying to do. There were evidence of that, but
the main injury to the neck wasa single clean cut, like the whatever

(44:14):
was used to take his head offwas so razor sharp it went through the
It was all just one clean swipeit took. It went straight through the
skin and then it even went throughlike one of the bone and she's just
like, she's like, I ampretty sure this is one clean cut.
And she she's like, let mego. She went and pulled another doctor

(44:36):
from the morgue. She's like,hey, we were down in the decomp
room, just because this was sortof a high profile and it was a
more private area. So she pulleda doctor from the morgue to come look
at it. And he looked atit and he was like, yeah,
that's what that looks like to me. And again, you never see something
like that, and you just startto wonder, like, what did that?

(44:57):
And there was no murder weapon foundon scene, And there again there's
the question of if the thing,if whatever they used, was so sharp,
why are these other injuries to theneck looks like something a dollar was
used to begin with. If theywere trying to take the head off,
what exactly were they using Why didn'tthey just use the super sharp thing to
begin with? So ultimately the docsigns it out as a cranio cerebral trauma.

(45:23):
She doesn't sign it out as likesharp forced head injury as a cause
of death because there was no hemorrhagein the wound, which at least told
her that he was dead when hishead had been taken off. So you
just start to wonder like, Okay, maybe his head was taken up.
Maybe and since his head was neverfound, you just wonder like what did

(45:45):
this? Maybe they shot him inthe head. Maybe that was they shot
him and there was still a bulletor something, so they didn't want that
evidence left behind, so they're like, okay, the head's coming off then,
or it was more of a Youalmost wonder like is it a mob
hit of some sword and that's whythey took the head. But still he

(46:05):
was dead before his head was takenoff, so you just sort of wonder
like why so yeah, it's signedout as cranio cerebral trauma, just basically
had trauma um not otherwise specified,because you don't. We don't. You
know, it wasn't necessarily the thesingle clean cut that killed him, but
we don't. We don't really knowthe rest of his body. There was

(46:27):
no other injuries to again to thebesides the crushing injury on the finger.
He had nothing else in his bodythat would have caused immediate death. So
whatever it was had to be onthe head. And since we don't have
the head, we don't really havethe answer. Was there evidence of gunpowder
found on him anywhere? Maybe Icould be getting some streams crossed. I

(46:51):
think maybe there could was may havebeen, because I've talked about this case
with um. You probably look tolead over a murder was the case.
And I don't know if he askedthat question, but I was the doctor
who one of my doctor friends whowas familiar with the case she had She

(47:14):
listened to that episode and she listenedto us talking about it, and I
want to say she like pointed outand I don't think it's listed in the
autopsy report anywhere, but I wantto say she pointed out there was some
gunshot residue somewhere on like a Ithink he was wearing a robe or something
I don't remember exactly all the clotheshe was wearing, because I didn't even
remember that. I was like,I thought he just had on like normal

(47:36):
clothes. But I think she saidhe had on a robe and there was
like some GSR somewhere on the robewhere he was found. Do they believe
that's where he was killed in thegarage or was he killed somewhere else and
brought into the garage and then becauseagain it's been emphasized in every report that
I've seen, how clean their housewas. Ye know, do they believe

(47:59):
he was killed there or killed somewhereelse and brought there to be beheaded or
do we even known? I don'tknow what's been released. Really, it's
because if he's solved, they're notgoing to release everything they have. Yeah,
if you're playing the odds, theodds would say he was probably killed
right there in the garage, becausethe moment you say he was killed somewhere

(48:22):
else and then brought here, it'slike, okay, if he's brought here
and he at least has enough bloodflow because there's blood around the body still
flowing out. So if he wasbrought from somewhere else like there, you'd
find blood somewhere else. Like it'sit's really hard to really get rid of
any of that kind of evidence.And contrary to what you might some might

(48:45):
see on late movies and TV,like, it's really hard to have sort
of a different crime scene and thendumped them somewhere else and not have some
sort of evidence left behind. Thatthat's what happened every once in a blue
moon, maybe, but with himthere was again, Yeah, the house
was immaculate. The house. Itdidn't like there's any kind of struggle or
anything anywhere else. It just lookedlike whatever happened went down in the garage

(49:10):
and as best as anyone can tellor assume, he was killed right there
in the garage and not a secondlocation. Well, that brings me to
Shirley because at the time he wasfound, she was missing and she wouldn't
be found until some time later.And I haven't described it yet, but

(49:30):
they lived in a gated community andon the banks of the is it o'coney
Oconey the Oconey Lake, pretty largelake down in Georgia between Augusta and Atlanta,
and she hadn't been found, butthey lived on the shore of this
lake. A week. What wasit ten days I believe later ten days,

(49:53):
Yeah, ten days later, afisherman finds a body floating in the
lake that was found to be Shirley, or they believed it was Shirley at
least, and so they brought herin for an autopsy. What happened with
her? So, yeah, he'sfound she's she's m Ia. They start

(50:15):
searching the area and yeah, justsort of clear up because you did that
pretty well gated community and their houseand most of the houses in this community
sort of backed up to Lake o'coney, so most of them had docks into
it, and they had a dock. They didn't have a boat, but
they had a boat house. SoI'm pretty sure there were cameras around the

(50:37):
front front gate. I'm sure therewas. This is a fair this is
a ritzy neighborhood, and yeah,it just seemed to make there was just
seemed to be no way that anybodycame in through the front gate and did
this to them and wasn't seen.So the working theorist somebody pulled the boat
up into the dock of the backof their house and got them that way,

(50:59):
And that takes more sense. Wherewhen Shirley's missing. They don't know
where. I don't know if theyhad started dredging the lake at that time.
They may have sent in divers orsomething. But she's missing there searching
the neighborhood with the fine tooth columband then yet ten days later a fisherman
finds her. She floated to thesurface, and it wasn't just like she

(51:22):
was like a half mile down fromwhere all this happened. I think I
think it was like three or fourmiles away on like another part of the
lake is where she's found weighted down. They had used cinder blocks, and
this is something that Lee questioned andI didn't have a clear answer for it.
She's weighted down, and whenever theybrought the case into us, I

(51:42):
have a recollection that we had totake those cinder blocks off of her.
So I'm I can't quite tell youexactly how she floated to the surface unless
it was just shallow with those cinderblocks still around her. But again I
recall that they were still around herwhen we were we started her exam and
getting to the exam, yeah,the cinder blocks were there was a like

(52:06):
parachord tied to the cinder blocks,and then kind of around her ankles and
calves, and I forget exactly whatall she was wearing, but what seemed
to be apparent with her was herdeath was caused by blunt force trauma to
the head. She was beaten inthe head to death essentially. And again

(52:28):
I'm pretty sure I helped with herautopsy, and we saw some like hemorrhage
inside the skull, because by thispoint she was decomposed and her brain was
basically just almost like mush matter,like, so there's not a whole lot
you can do with it, butyou can if there's blood in it.
You could still see it. Andthere was still there appeared to be some

(52:52):
traces of like hemorrhage in the mush, so it was determined. And she
also had like just massive skull fractures. So she was beaten in the head
to death essentially. And then whenthey sort of pieced everything together and the
doctor was able to look at it, his determination was it was some sort

(53:14):
of whatever the object was that theybeat her with was had like a rounded
into it. It looked like whateverit beat on her a rounded thing,
possibly a hammer. Maybe that's whatLooking at the autopsy and you know,
just knowing that people kill people withhammers all the time, I would I
would be the first thing I wouldthink of from a cylindrical. It describes

(53:37):
it as cylindrical. Yeah, yeah, it could be, yeah, But
it does note that the chords thatwere used to tie her to the center
blocks were obviously done after she waskilled. So do they know if she
was killed in the home? Isthere any evidence of that? None that

(53:58):
we ever saw, And again,you sort of have to play the odds.
You can never really say if theyat the very least beat her in
the head while still in the home, like they that the amount of damage
they did to her head, likethere would be blood somewhere and they didn't
take the time to clean up allhis blood, but they would take.

(54:20):
You know, for her to bekilled in the home and then move somewhere,
you would think there'd be blood somewhere, but there wasn't. So it's
possible, but that that would meanthey'd have to be at least mindful of
blood getting everywhere as they were movingthe body. I would assume he was
he was killed right there on scene, and then I would further assume that

(54:42):
whatever they did to her, theyprobably took her out on the boat and
beat her there, and yeah,and yeah, what you were saying.
Whenever they took the paracord off ofthe calves, the way you sort of
determine that that was after death isthe doctor kind of just takes a scalpel
and he sort of cuts in whobecause you know, the para cords pulled
tight on the skin, so wheneveryou pull it off, like it's sort

(55:05):
of it's the worm beveled bellowed orwhatever into the skin, the markings from
the parachord, and when you cutinto that, you can sort of see
if there's like hemorrhage around the area, and there didn't appear to be,
which told the doctor that this hadlikely happened after she was already dead.
So yeah, I would assume shewas killed on a boat somewhere, and

(55:28):
considering they had the parachord and theweights to sort of weigh her down,
that could have been an anticipated typething. And then that just finally leads
to like exactly what was the pointof all of this? According to the
autopsy report, here, she waswearing a short sleeved T shirt or a
short sleeved shirt, a bra,pair of pants. She was dressed as

(55:52):
you normally would be for you know, any normal day. And one thing
I've been wondering, it's not clearin this autopsy were there any defensive wounds
on like her forearms or hands oranything like that. I don't think so.
I have them kind of in frontof me. I can double check
if you want to give me asecond. Um, yeah, I didn't

(56:12):
see anything in there, it says, Um, you know, the extremities
show, no scars, nails areshort. That's about it. It's all
it says, at least as faras I can see. Yeah, I
don't. I don't recall where likehearing the docks talk about that sort of
stuff. I don't think so.It's a star. It's very likely that
she was. Probably she probably hadher back to whoever killed her, and

(56:37):
they just kind of blitzed attacked herfrom behind. Were most of the fractures
were they wear on the head?Were they'd all over or just concentrated in
an area that I'm not exactly sureof. Um, again, i'd have
to like because I don't know ifI actually even mentioned that in my episode

(56:58):
about them. I want to saythere was part of the skull that was
missing. That they never recovered.It's probably somewhere in Laco Cooney. But
in terms of like the areas,it was just to just to the head
as as near as I ever lookedinto it, and I would I would
also go as far as to andthis is just speculation, I would speculate

(57:20):
that Russell's head is probably somewhere inthat lake as well. That's that was
kind of always if you're again,if you're playing the odds, thinking just
like, okay, what are theydoing? That would be my guests as
well. But there's just a littlethings like if you're going to take his
head because say you shot him andyou didn't want them to greet you didn't
want pulling that bullet out, youwould almost say, well, if you

(57:45):
did that much, then why wouldyou throw the head in somewhere where it
could potentially be found? Even thoughvery unlikely, but still there's a potential,
Especially when they waited her down withcinder blocks, and you know it
only took ten days to find her, so it's like, yeah, they
seem to think that they whoever didthis thought it out. I mean that's

(58:07):
what everything just feels like a hitof some kind, like whoever came there.
They didn't come there to rob them. They unless there was something that
no one knew about. Yes,if there's some piece of information they had
that they were looking for, becausethat's the thing about like if if they're
just there to kill both of them, then why not kill them both un

(58:30):
scene? Yeah, Liken' Also,nothing appeared to have been taken as far
as anyone else, As far aswe know, nothing appeared to be taken,
because you're sort of having to thisis where like I sort of mentioned,
like you know, everybody's a suspectin the beginning. So I think
the kids were under because they havelike two or three kids, and they

(58:53):
were under investigation. And I meanalmost by to call there under investigation because
it's the closest ones to the victimsthat you usually investigate first, and you
can sort of see it would almostmake more sense if they had sort of
orchestrated this. Again, I'm notthrowing accusations, but if you're just playing

(59:16):
what you have, you've got someonethat broke into their home that didn't take
any Like these people are well offand that doesn't appear they took anything that
we know about, And why dothat unless like someone's telling you, hey,
you don't take any of this stuffbecause this is all our stuff.
You know. Ultimately, whatever's intheir house is going to go to the

(59:37):
kids anyway in theory, but there'salways the possibility that there was something that
they had, some valuable piece ofwhatever that they had the kids maybe would
squabble over, and someone got itin their head like I want that.
But again, if that be thecase, that doesn't really make much sense

(59:59):
either, because then one of theother kids would certain at some point would
be like, hey, where's thisitem at this because that was the only
thing. You sit there and tryto think of think your way through the
case in terms of, Okay,we're looking for a specific thing in this
house. He's not telling us whereit is, so we're going to make
an example out of him to thewife, and then she's going to tell

(01:00:21):
us. But again, you wouldstill opt to keep her on scene until
you got what you wanted, andthen you'd kill her own scene. It
just does not make sense why shewas taken from the scene and then weighted
down that day. It's it's veryvery odd. Yeah, it makes no
sense to me either, And Ididn't study this case all that deeply.

(01:00:43):
But with from everything I've seen,there's no known motivation for this. And
I floated the idea to myself thatthese people owned a lot of restaurants.
Could it have been a disgruntled employee? Could could it have been somebody was
there some mistake possibly made on theirpaycheck and they wanted revenge or something like

(01:01:04):
that. But there's no known motivationfor this at all. Yeah, and
even then, like if I hadin this part, I guess this is
more a guess on my part asfar as like the hardiest franchises go,
I think he was more in chargeof that than she was, So if
there was a disgruntled employee, theywould be more out for him. Yeah,

(01:01:25):
if you want to kill him,then you kill him. And if
she's there and you don't want towitness, okay, but then you kill
her own scene as well. Butthis weird thing of killing him, taking
his head and then taking her andthen disposing of her and likely the head
in the lake, it's just like, Okay, that's a hell of a
disgruntled employee. With if they didit, I mean, it doesn't seem

(01:01:52):
you know, a disgruntled employee.Is this sophisticated and not leaving any evidence
behind. And if they hired somelike they they got their money's worth this.
Whoever they hired must have charged apretty penny because they seemed like a
complete professional. So it's yeah,no no evidence that I've seen left behind

(01:02:13):
nothing. There's nothing, yeah forher, Like again, we don't know
what took off his head, andthere was no other It was likely whatever
just used to killed him was notthe same thing that killed her, but
there's no evidence or there's no noweapon for either that was ever found.
Yeah, and I would also thinkso. And I believe this lends toward
the gunshot theory for Russell because shewas beaten to death. He was none

(01:02:38):
well we don't know, but there'sno defensive wounds on him either, so
he was either caught by surprise orvery likely shot. I mean, it's
just there's no this is it's abaffling story. And I think that's why
it's so well known. Not onlyare they this you know, elderly rich,

(01:03:00):
a couple that own all these restaurants, but it is there's nothing,
nothing there at all. Yeah,and you just um, like I had
a thought of you take him outand then you eventually like take her out
somewhere else. Like it just itjust does not because if you're if you're

(01:03:22):
looking at this again, it's anotherthing that just that just throws any theory
sort of out the windows, Likethis seems like a professional hit. Okay,
well, if it's a professional hit, then you kill them both on
scene. You like, there's noway in the world she's just gonna you're
gonna say, Okay, we're gonnatake her out on the boat and we're

(01:03:42):
gonna try and talk her into keepingher mouth shut. It's like, no,
no one that's a professional I wouldlike to think would give anybody that
benefit of the doubt that they're goingto keep their mouth shut. And then
they're like, Okay, she's notgonna keep her mouth ut shut. Let's
just kill her now. It's like, no, if it's estional hit,
you you would take him out onboth scene. I would assume. So

(01:04:03):
much of it just doesn't make sense. Yeah, I agree on and I
guess that's where we'll leave it withRussell and Shirley Derman because I mean,
like I have to reiterate, there'sjust nothing. It's it's baffling in every
way. Yeah, and the uhand I was talking to you like the

(01:04:24):
sheriff. I don't know if he'sstill sheriff, he was sheriff or there.
This is this um just sort ofa random thing. I know,
Um, this case drives him crazyfrom what I understand, Like, I
think in his entire career he neverhas he doesn't have an unsolved murder under
his belt. And and if you'regoing to have an unsolved murder like this

(01:04:45):
one, even if he did havean other unsolved, this one takes the
cake by far in terms of justlike what what the hell was this?
Um? So, he's someone i'dsort of like to talk to. I
mean, it's an ongoing case.There's obviously stuff he could never talk about,
but I would just sort of liketo get his opinion because just because
I know it drives him crazy,and I'm sure he'd like to say a

(01:05:06):
thing or two about it. Yeah, Okay, Well we'll leave it there
for Russell and Shirley Dermond. I'vegot a couple of questions from some friends
if you don't mind answer, andso I'm love them or a little.
Uh. So, I've got afriend who's got a bone to pick with
Death Investigators, so it's not tooharsh. She's she's cool, so I'm

(01:05:28):
sure it's all in good fun.I've been a professional whipping boy in the
past, so it's fine. Yesyou have. And again I'll link to
the episodes that contain your personal storyfor both ignorance was bliss and murder was
the case. It's an interesting story. For the record, I think you
got the bad end of the dealthere. I think it was blown out

(01:05:50):
of proportion, and I just wantedto say that on record, but I've
got this is from caressa early supporterof a show. She actually donated money
for me to get a mic beforeI ever even started this. Why don't
death investigators make embalmer friendliest incisions?Seems like they just slice and dice through

(01:06:15):
any viable artery you can end balmthrough. Leave those internal karateids a little
longer. Pal to that, Iwould say, not my problem. We
would The one thing they had triedto teach us, to instill in us
was, yeah, tie off thekarateds, and if we had all the
time in the world to do that, we tried to. But we had

(01:06:41):
you know, right now, theircaseload from what I understand is insane.
Not that it was ever great whenI was there, but you know,
I would be doing four, three, four or five cases a day sometimes
and it's just kind of one afterthe other, and it's like, no,
just go, go go. Youdon't even our stitch jobs. Like
whenever we would finish the autopsy andput the organs kind of in an organ

(01:07:04):
bag and then put it back inthe chess cavity and then sort of kind
of flap the skin back over.We would only just take a needle and
sort of tack it together just tomake sure that like nothing like that the
organ bag wouldn't fall out or anything. We would never do like a very
intricate like baseball stitch or anything.So it's like, I understand, but

(01:07:26):
we just they didn't give us timeto really do anything, at least with
the GBI. We just had toomuch to do. Yeah, well that
kind of points to her second questionas well, why not sell them up
a little nicer before they go tothe funeral home? So I can't think
you answered that pretty well. Well. I would say there was, and

(01:07:48):
they got They didn't get criticized forthis at headquarters because again, headquarters is
a very political environment. So ifyou sort of go off key in any
kind of way, suddenly you've gotthree, four or five people like asking
you the same question. It's theTPS reports from off of space. You've
got ten people asking you about it. But in the regional labs, specifically

(01:08:11):
around making, they never sewed upthe bodies at all, and they did
that specifically because their funeral homes toldthem not to do it. They do
the autopsy, they I think theywould at least tie off the carotids,
but maybe not, but they'd aspiratethe body so sort of take out all
the extra fluids and everything, andthen they'd put the organ bag in the

(01:08:34):
chest and then they just sort offlapped the skin over and that was it.
They wouldn't tack it at all becauseat least their investigator down there had
talked to a lot of the funeralhomes, and the funeral home was like,
well, we have to cut that. We're gonna have to cut it
open anyway to do our job proper. So we'd almost rather you not even
bother because that's just extra holes you'reputting in the body. So I would

(01:08:55):
throw it back to them, likewhy should why do we do that at
all. If they're just going toreopen everything to do their more proper work
that they have to do, Idon't believe. I don't know if I
mentioned this, but she's a she'sa mortician, so that's yeah. And
that's sort of why I answered thatquestion that way. And her third question
not so much a bone to pick, but what does it feel like to

(01:09:17):
loaf a brain? Is it likecutting through cheesecake or flat It's let's see,
so basically asking the consistency because mostof the time the doctors did this,
butever now and then they would belike, hey, you want to
see this, And I think Idid it maybe one time in nearly seven
years, but I handled like youknow, I would always take the brain

(01:09:38):
out of the skull and hand itoff to them. So the consistency was
very like a like a sturdy gelatintype thing, so they'd have their knife
to cut into it. But ityou can cut through the brain like fairly
easy. It's not a it's notsomething you have to like really like pull
out your shoulder by any stretch tosaw through it. It's just I'm trying

(01:10:00):
to think of a good comparison likecheese is almost it's not as dense as
as like a cheese, and it'snot as I don't know, cutting bread
is a little if you ever hadto actually cut bread, it's that's even
a little like more aggravating than thebrain. Like the brain kind of holds
its form at least like a sortof a fresh brain. It's it holds

(01:10:23):
its form much better than like aloaf of breadwood. And but it's not
nearly as like dense as a pieceof cheese. So it's somewhere between bread
and cheese. And I have aquestion. You don't have to go into
specifics if you don't want to.I get it. Is there a case
that you performed an autopsy on thatreally sticks with you besides the one that

(01:10:47):
you're infamous will say for yeah,something that sticks with me. I believe
you've you've talked about it on yourpodcast, but it's been many, many
months since I've listened to it.But I was just I was just curious
if there's one that just kind ofI don't know if traumatizing is the right

(01:11:08):
word. It's just one that you'veyou haven't been able to shake. No
one case, I guess, butthere's cases that sort of stick with you
for for different reasons. Like sometimesyou'll see most people would probably think like
kid cases and though and those can, but at a certain point you if
you've seen like kid trauma cases,you're like, well, you kind of

(01:11:28):
know it to expect. But sometimesit's the story that sticks with you in
terms of like if looking at it, like a child death where the kid
was like beaten to death, yousort of look at it and you're just
like, okay, it's it's ultimatelyjust like blunt force trauma, but the
story kind of sticks with you.Insomuch as like there's this case where the

(01:11:49):
I think it wound up being themom's boyfriend because of course it was,
but history of domestics and all thisstuff, but one of the key things
about it is the mom her dad. So this good little girl's granddad was
I believe, the sheriff of thecounty. And you just sit there and

(01:12:13):
when you and this girl was beatenpretty bad, and you just sit there
and go, like, you know, a lot in all the cases where
like a kid is beaten or somethinglike that, there's as much as you
try to say, like could someonehave stepped in and help that Sometimes there
just isn't any Sometimes there's nobody.But you're like, this kid had a

(01:12:34):
granddad who was in law enforcement,who by all rights should have been paying
attention, and you're just like,how how does some of this stuff like
happen the way it does when it'slike, you know, some people don't
have the benefit of having someone thatcould step in and do it, but
this little girl did. But kindof here we are, so a case

(01:12:56):
like that. And then there's Ithink I've talked about this case on my
show before one of the discussions.I just remember she was she was technically
a teenager. I think, well, she may have been eleven or twelve,
and she came in as a hangingand you just I mean, it's
it's rare, but every now andthen you'll get a hanging case of a
child. And this girl's story wasjust all over her face. She was

(01:13:23):
wearing like she had this like kindof blonde like it kind of looked like
she had a bad blonde kind ofdie job on it. It didn't look
quite natural blonde, and the hairwas just kind of like her face was
very adolescence awkward. I would describelike it early adolescence. Her face doesn't

(01:13:44):
have much of a shape, soshe had this kind of awkward look to
her, like any kid that agewould. She had this hair that it
seemed like she was trying to dosomething with but it just wasn't working.
And then sort of the thing ontop of that was she had these contact
lenses in where they were just theywere blue, but they were very,

(01:14:05):
very cheap looking. They just lookedlike like you would not look at her
and be like, oh, she'sgot blue eyes. You would almost look
and be like, there's something wrongwith your eyes. And it just the
case when I say, you justsaw her whole story on her face.
It was like this girl didn't likeanything about herself. She didn't like her

(01:14:25):
hair, she didn't like her face. I think she had braces as well.
She didn't like her eyes. Shewas everything about her herself she didn't
like and was trying to change.And I don't know if there was like
bullying or anything involved at like schoolor anything, but ultimately she hangs herself
and I don't know if there wasa node or anything like that, but
you just sort of looked at herand you're just like, that's even though

(01:14:47):
you don't know. You'll never knowexactly what goes through someone's head. You
just sort of look and you're justlike, this girl just didn't she didn't
like who she was in the world. It's heartbreaking. Yeah, I could
imagine that would probably be something Iwould stick with me through that through through
the rest of my life. Alot of it would, I imagine.
It's a very interesting job you hadthere, sir, and I'll I'll take

(01:15:11):
no more of your time. Iappreciate you coming on here. Tell again,
Tell folks where they can find youif they so wish to listen to
your mesmerizing podcast. It's so everythingI try to keep. If you just
want a central location, you cango to autopsypod dot com. Um like

(01:15:32):
all my episodes, everything I've doneis sort of posted there Patreon if you
want to support that way is uhPatreon dot com slash autopsy Podcast everything sort
of early access at promo free,and everything I've ever done is there otherwise
any pod platform of choice. I'mkind of everywhere. It's been an absolute

(01:15:55):
pleasure talking to you. We'll haveto do this again. Maybe we'll discuss
some other strange or really brutal caseor something who knows. Yeah, this
is cool any anytime. Man,all right man, absolute pleasure, Thank
you sir. All right man,see you