April 15, 2026 • 39 mins
Janice Randle was 30 and the mother of two girls when she was murdered at home in her bed in Graham, Washington. Her 18-month-old daughter, Kourtney, slept in a crib next to her mother's bed and was unharmed. Janice and her estranged husband, James Randle, were separated and headed for divorce at the time of her death. James Randle told investigators Janice may have died from a drug overdose, citing a past history of painkiller use, but autopsy results revealed there were no drugs in her system. Investigators had little evidence to go on and the case went cold for decades. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack look at the case from a time before the murder took place and examine how the daughters of Janice Randle revived the case with investigators, leading to an arrest nearly 34 years after the murder!
Transcribe Highlights
00:00.12 Intro - early years of parenting
04:21.05 Janice Randle found in bed, dead
09:40.34 why leave 18-month old alive....
15:15.29 Two daughters at time of death, 14 years and 18 months
20:10.78 Are contusions defense wounds?
24:59.38 No drugs in Janice system
30:32.86 Injuries from smothering
35:04.84 Daughters went to police
39:12.62 Conclusion
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body diners. But Joseph's gotten more. You know. I got
to tell you, I don't know if there's anything more
precious in the world for this old parent, at least
than those early years. And I'm thinking really the first
year that you are a parent, and to have your
(00:27):
baby in the room with you, you know, after you've brought
them home and you're with them twenty four to seven.
Particularly my wife's case, she was with our children twenty
four to seven. And not only are you with them
and you're changing diapers and you're bathing and you're holding them,
(00:48):
which is again one of the most precious things out there,
but actually to have them in the crib in your room. Yeah,
there's a lot of sleepless nights, there's a lot of
getting up and down. But you know, some of the
sweetest moments are when you have that rocker that's in
the room with you and you pick them up and
(01:10):
maybe you've got a bottle and they just go back
to sleep. I don't know if there's any moment in
your life where you can soothe a child like that,
soothe anybody but your own child. That's really something special.
But let's take that precious moment and just think for
(01:32):
a second, Just think for a second, Well, what kind
of parent would sneak into a bedroom and kill the
other parent, leaving a precious young one and the crip
(01:53):
defend for themselves. Today on bodybacks, now we're going to
discuss such a case, a case that is as cold
blooded as they get. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
is Bodybags. I remember being terrified coming coming from the
(02:19):
hospital home with my kids, Dave. I don't know if
you remember.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
That, yes, but I do.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
It's still it's it's still in my brain. But yeah,
the you know, those moments in time we were thinking,
am I doing this right? You know? Am I doing
any of this right? Are they actually? You know? I
think I remember feeling the joy of Wow, they survived
through the night and I was here.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Right, And that's not an uncommon occurrence for most of
us thinking that way.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
You know, it's terrified, man.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
When it got I was worse for me with my grandson.
When my children were young and I was young, I
didn't know what I didn't know, and so I was
older when Brailn came along, the first time I had
him alone in the vehicle with me. Yeah, I as
I was pulling out of the driveway, I freaked. I
(03:17):
went they got to remember, I raised my own they've
got their own kids, and I'm with Brailn for the
very first time alone in the car and they're trusting
me to make it to the store and back. You know,
it was the weirdest shock feeling for me. But when
I saw this story, my first thing was an eighteen
month old child in a crib. Little girl is at
(03:41):
eighteen months, That's my gosh. I think Hannah stayed in
our room for a lot longer than that. You know,
I don't remember when she actually I know when I
was younger, I got him out of there quick, but
not with Hannah to being the last one, being the baby.
She stayed in our room a lot a long time.
But eighteen months in the crib is in the room
staying with mama. And what happened in that bedroom, what
(04:06):
we were told and what police believed or thought at
first November nineteen ninety two, Even now, I don't know
who made the call, Joe. I don't know who discovered
the body of a mother named Janice Randall, thirty years old.
I don't know who discovered her body. I don't know
(04:27):
who called the police. I spent a lot of time
looking for this Joe, but somebody did find her and
when police showed up, the police were told by Janis's
estranged husband that she had a drug problem, had used
drugs in the past, and it was probably an overdose. Now, Joe,
(04:53):
you have pointed out on numerous occasions that deceased people
do not brew any bruises and things that they had
before they died. That's one thing, But you don't bruise
after the fact. So if somebody is doing life saving measures,
none of that causes bruising that you would see, right, No,
(05:15):
because nothing shoulders.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
No, No, it doesn't. And even I've had David, Actually,
I've actually had bodies that were killed in an upstairs
bedroom by a person that was smaller than the victim,
and the perpetrator drugged the body down a flight of stairs,
(05:40):
and you could see where there were impact injuries post
mortem impact injuries, and generally what it is is if
the skin catches like the edge of the tread of
the staircase, or they're on a carpeted surface, you'll get
a braid areas, but there won't be any associated hemorrhage.
(06:03):
It'll just be kind of a well we would refer
to it as a postmum insult, and there's no associated
hemorrhage at all. So if you have something that's kind
of profound, it doesn't even have to be profound. You know,
I've gone out and seen uh, you know, finger what
what would marry up with a hand on a throat
(06:23):
and you could see the tips of the fingers where
they were pressed in, say like in a sea clamp.
But that was happening in the anti mortem or the
peri mortem state literally, as they say, in the throes
of death. But no, no, not not with the deceased.
You know, you're you're not going to see any kind
of insults even I'll put it. I'll even go a
(06:46):
step further. If you were to take a body and
make some kind of half hearted attempt to really traumatize
body with like a sharp force injury or shooting a
dead body, it's you're not going to have hemorrhage. You'll
just have a cavitation there. You'll have a hole that's
in the body with no associated morrhage.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Wow. See, those are the things that a lot of
us don't know and it comes from just not just
lack of knowledge. But what got my attention on this
story is as I was peeling the onion. Our victim
is thirty years old. She has a fourteen year old daughter,
and she has the eighteen month old daughter in the
crib in the bedroom with her. And when she is
(07:28):
found on November the eighth, she has bruising on her body,
fresh bruising that investigators believe happened possibly the day or
night before her body was found. Right, we have an
ex husband or no, an estranged husband. They are separated,
they are heading for divorce, but the estranged husband is
(07:49):
the one who gives them the drug addict theory, the
overdose theory. But Joe, that's cleared up with an autopsy, right.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Well, you would think that it is. And in this case,
here's here's the thing about this case that's such a mystery,
and that it has been open now an open, an
open case for thirty years. Her talks panel came back negative.
So there's nothing to underpin underpin that statement. But yet
(08:23):
they felt they being the authorities, and this would have
been the you know, the you know, the corner medical
examiner and of course the police they left us, and
of course this is out of Everett County, Washington. They
believed in this case that this in fact was a homicide,
(08:44):
but they just they just never could. According to them,
they didn't have enough information to directly connect anybody. And look,
we people know us well to know where I'm going
with this, because what do we always say, anytime you
have a mother like this that's deceased, you don't have
(09:10):
some wild eyed killer that's on the loose. She's asleep
in her bed, she's got her eighteen month old daughter
in the crib. Who's going to What in the world
has she done to anybody? Now, you could attribute it
to maybe something random. You can say, well, you have
this person just walked into the house and decided to
(09:33):
eradicate this poor woman. But if that's the case, why
in the world would you leave an eighteen month old alive?
So you begin to look at the nature of this case,
and automatically, I can tell you where my eyes are
going to drift to. I'm going to look for anybody
to send the intimate space with her. And here's one
(09:54):
other thing I don't know about you, but did you
ever notice that I noticed with my wife there's a
period of time when children are really really young, and
mothers many times tend to kind of shut down, really
shut it down as to who can have access to
(10:14):
them and those children many times because there's this protection
thing that comes on, which as well it should, because
you don't trust anybody that's on the outside circle. So
who is going to have knowledge that she's in the house,
who's going to have knowledge of where she sleeps, Who's
going to have enough anger directed at her? And this
is per you know, the authorities there relative to you know,
(10:40):
that have knowledge of this case. They're whittling down the
number of suspects. And I got to tell you, Dave,
I don't know what happened in this particular case, but
you're looking at it and you're thinking, well, you know, wow,
I would think that those people that are in her
intimate circle. I don't want to mention any name, but
his initials are, you know, the estranged husband. I'm going
(11:03):
to be looking really really hard at this individual, wondering
why was he you know, was he not in bracelets
at that moment?
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Tom?
Speaker 1 (11:10):
What amount of evidence, what specific evidence could you be
absent that would not compel you to want to put
the bracelets on him. I just I don't understand it.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
And that's what I was wondering with you. I was
hoping that you were going to be able to tell
me what they didn't have. But as I was looking
at this case, Joe, I couldn't figure out why they
weren't looking directly at the exit soon to be excited
the estranged husband. But you know, in our country, a
(11:41):
person is innocent until proven guilty. Yes, and just because
you don't like somebody. And by the way, this guy's
not a likable guy. I can tell you this now
because it's public record. But he was actually charged with
the domestic violence charge again Janice Yep in the months
(12:03):
before her death. He was convicted of it later. And
so I guess I'm sitting here going you've got a
spotlight on this guy. Did he really need to leaving?
Is there a problem, Joe, when you have an intimate
like this, who is they are strange? He's not living
in the home right now, they're not currently cohabitating, and
(12:24):
the person is dead. But because they are still married,
you know, there is a reasonable expectation that his DNA
as we look at it now, but body fluid hair blood,
that all those things would be present in the home
because you know, they had a relationship, they were together,
so you can't find an unfamiliar thing there and say, oh,
(12:45):
it's him, you know, because it's expected that his body
would be in that house.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Yeah, yeah, you're right, and you're thinking, well, you have
all of these connections from physical evidence that you know,
and I would imagine that did factor into all of
this day. It factored into the fact that they couldn't
hang charges on him at that particular time, just based
upon trace evidence. Where are you going to look at Well,
then you know, you kind of drop back and you
(13:13):
hope that more information is going to develop. Did he
have key to the house? Was there any signs of
fourth century struggle? Did it give the appearance that perhaps
just perhaps someone came in and you know, maybe turned
over some furniture, something broken. And I got to tell you,
whatever happened back there in nineteen ninety two, for whatever reason,
(13:37):
the police it left them at the end of the
road with no answers. What a thing, What a circumstance
(14:00):
to grow up with, Dave. You imagine you're eighteen months old.
I doubt that if you had any memory whatsoever of
your mama. It would be greatly diminished. Really, yeah, and
I can't imagine that there would be something there but
that you know, you've been told as a child, which
(14:25):
is I guess it comes down to being the party line.
I don't know if that's right to say, but you
know the you know, well, yeah, your mother loved you
very much. Yeah, and you know she had she had
some problems, you know, in the past, and we believed
that that's what led to it. But certainly, Dave, as
(14:46):
the child gets older, she certainly has an awareness that
her mother's case has been ruled as a homicide. And
let here if you like that one, let me give
you another one. Imagine having knowledge that maybe you had
been in the room as a child in a crib
and a perpetrator passed between you and your mother who
(15:08):
was mere feet away and ended her life. But yet
the persons still out on the street, right. I got
to tell you, man, that would that'd be horrible. It
would It would be a horror movie as far as
I'm concerned.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Janis Randall had two daughters at the time of her death.
Her oldest daughter was fourteen years old. Her name Katie Waken.
When Janice Randall was murdered, her eighteen month old daughter,
Courtney Lewis was in the crib. When when you have
(15:42):
your own children, you share stories about your mom, your dad,
your upbringing, you know, especially as you try to relate
to them. Why you know, well, when I was your agent,
I did that. I got a spoon, shoved, you know,
any number of things. So I'm being nicer to you
than what I got kind of thing, you know. But
we all tell stories about our parents, and when your
parents have passed the way, you tell different stories. But
(16:03):
in this case, when Courtney Lewis got to this park,
because you remember, now this happened thirty four year in
nineteen ninety two, she's eighteen months old at the time. Okay,
so she's now in her thirties and she has her
own children and she wants to tell them about her mom.
But the really thing she onling knows to tell them
(16:24):
is that while I was eighteen months old when my
mom was killed, and I was in the room. So
Courtney Lewis actually started the investigation on her own and
working with her half sister, Katie Waken. It's the two
daughters that actually made this case. They worked really hard
because they believed the murderer was very close to them
(16:45):
once they started looking at things. I'm going to go
back and remind you that we do have a suspect
in custody and his name is James Robert Randall. He
is the estranged husband of Janice Randall, who told police
it was a drug overdose. You mentioned we got to
(17:09):
get this out there because we got to start working
on Joe. He has lived his life for the past
thirty four years, walking around doing his own thing. He
actually looks like a caveman when you see pictures of him.
He looks like he's homeless, almost, you know. And he
was actually in a rest home, in a nursing home
when they came to arrest him. And yet in nineteen
(17:31):
ninety two, the so called man beat his wife enough
that he was actually charged with the domestic violence case
and was found guilty after her death. And they still
couldn't put the racelets on him, as you said back then.
And I have to wonder when police actually hear from him, Oh,
she had a drug problem and it's probably a drug overdose.
You said. They got the autopsy panel back, there's nothing
(17:53):
on that no drugs, and she shows signs that she
was beaten. Y.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Yeah, she had, she had bruises on her body. Now,
the problem is in this particular case, they're not really
giving us a lot of information at this point because
we don't have the autopsy report that is out there,
(18:19):
that is being h that's being examined, and probably a
lot more thoroughly now. So it would be really important
to be able to age age those contusions, as we
were talking about earlier with when you have a case
involving this kind of intimate violence. Now she was just
(18:44):
so folks know, she was not like found on the
bedroom floor or in the uh, you know, the the
associated you know, master bathroom, you know, or anything like that.
She's found on the bed. So whoever killed her, and
remember they've classified this as a homicide, I can't stress
(19:04):
that enough got either on or in the bed with
her and facilitated this. I would think that just based
upon what they were seeing on her body at that
time and by the way it was documented in the
autopsy at that time. This is not something that they
(19:27):
had this epiphanal moment where all this data was suddenly
ginned up. This is something they've had for years. You've
got direct evidence of trauma on her body. The key here, though,
is trying to understand and interpret where that trauma is
actually located. Because if we're thinking that we don't have
a bludgeoning, which is a beating, we don't have a stabbing,
(19:53):
we obviously don't have a shooting, because they would have
had evidence of that and talked about it. Well, Dave,
that kind of puts us into two categories, two things
that are very difficult to kind of size up. Number One,
(20:13):
you might be looking at, say some type of this
fhixial death, Well, if it's in a six yiald death.
One of the things I have to ask these contusions
that they're alluding to, are they present in locations like
would be associated with defensive injuries on the arms, the
back of the hands, those sorts of things, or are
(20:33):
these contusions what we refer to, say, for instance, like circumferential,
which means do they go around the neck, like if
you're throttling somebody or you're using a ligature of some kind.
Is there mouth trauma which I'll get to in just
a moment. And also the big thing, and I know
(20:55):
our listeners have and our friends have heard us talk
about this before. But did you have any evidence whatsoever
of petikii and in those soft spaces in the eyes
and on the on the surface of the gums, because
that's going to be that's going to be a real
tell here. Did you know also, did you know that
(21:16):
you can see petiki not just in the eyes and
around the lips. Do you know that you can actually
see it in the lungs as well. People don't know that,
so when you ok, yeah, yeah, so they'll go into
like a congestive failure, you don't see it every time.
It's just like you don't see petiki in the eyes
every time, but it is a big tail force. But
(21:37):
you'll see them sometimes in the soft tissues of the
neck that are internal the back of the tongue. I've
seen them manifest in a lot of different areas. I
think a lot of it has to do with an
individual's anatomy and kind of the fragile nature of your
own kind of capillary beds in there that are being
backed up because you don't have free flow of blood
(21:59):
and so the vessel's rupture. So the second one I
would come to here as a possibility their rulingness as
a homicide. Well, where there drugs on board? Well, we've
already been told that the panel that they would have
been looking for that, where they would have searched her
(22:20):
her blood, her urine, her vitreous, or bile, it came
back negative. And here's one more thing, Dave, I think
that that's that's that's relevant to all this. They knew
what type of drug to look for, because what was
being told to the investigators to begin with is that
(22:41):
she had an addiction problem, not to some type of
illicit substance, but she had an addiction problem involving painkillers. Well,
painkillers to me mean some type of opiate drug, whether
it's a naturally occurring opiate, a morphine or something like that,
or is it some kind of synthetic opiate that's created
(23:03):
in a laboratory somewhere like Phizer or one of these places. Well, Dave,
that's that's something that we screen for. It's it's not like,
you know, we don't pay attention to prescription mets, particularly
those that are commonly prescribed. And let me tell you
what else. If I've got a husband is stranged or not,
(23:24):
and he's putting forth this information and he is. He's
saying to me, well, it could be O D because
she had a problem with painkillers. And next question I'm
going to ask, is okay, uh we type painkillers? What
are we talking about here? You know, I want to
know or you know, are we talking about like Oxy's.
(23:44):
Is that what we're looking at here? Or is it
some other brand that's out there that could have been
prescribed her. Guess what else I'm going to do. I'm
going to track down who are treating physician, is right,
And once I track them down, he and I are
going to have a conversation. I'm going to say, hey, doc, look,
I know she's had a problem in the past with
(24:05):
trying to you know, stem whatever pain she's experienced. I
don't know it's back pain, leg pain, neck pain. It
could at least doctors will prescribe me anything, and even
back in ninety two that were prescribing anything and everything
for people here, take some medicine, go away, you know.
So I want to know who her primary was. I
want to know who her obg y N is because again,
(24:27):
this is a thread that's being given by somebody that
is in her intimate circle. And the husband is going
to know. I mean, I know what my wife takes,
you know, I know if she's got any kind of
physical problems, I know if she's got a dependency which
don't go too far filled with that, can you does
not have a dependency on so but but you're going
(24:48):
to have that intimate, intimate information in your brain, and.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
You would also know when the autopsy comes back and
there's nothing in their system that the guy's lying, I mean,
flat out the one guy who we know eat her
is lying about the drugs because she doesn't have any
drugs in her system. I mean, at what point they
changed the whole thing from possible overdose to homicide and
(25:11):
they flipped the script on that pretty quick, Joe, It
wasn't like dangling in the air for decades, but not
having an arrest. That made me wonder, well, do they
think there's still a possibility that something else happened that
it wasn't as you know, that is.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
The big question I've got. I've got some information I'm
going to pass along to our friends here that you know,
it's going to be something that I've never talked about before.
So I'll I'm just going to tease that. But I
want you to know before I go into that, there
is one other thing that you're going to check with
(25:49):
a suspected quote unquote OD. If she's not injecting. If
she's not injecting, we have to assume she's taking some
kind of oral medication. Well, if it's an OD, guess
what you're going to find. It's not just you're looking
for toxicology.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Here.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
At autopsy, we remove the stomach. What do we do
with the stomach. Well, at autopsy, there's a procedure that
we do where we tie off the stomach where the
esophagus dumps into the stomach, and then we tie off
where the stomach dumps into the small intestine, and we
(26:30):
completely dissect out the stomach. We remove it so that
it's not ruptured at all. We have a basin that
we go over to and we try to be very
very careful, and then within that basin we actually open
the stomach. Well, what are we looking for? Well, take
a while, guess we're looking for gas or content. If
there's anything in that gas or content that would give
(26:50):
us pause, we're going to make note of it. But
more than likely, if you're saying if you're saying that
this was, in fact in your opinion, an od. Not
only we're gonna do blood from the heart, urine from
the bladder, vitreous from the eyes, and bile from the liver,
we're also going to do gastric content. And if there's
(27:13):
pills there, not only would you look for them in
the laboratory testing, you could physically see them. Apparently they
didn't see anything. But I got a little knowledge I'm
going to drop on you now, Okay, I kind of
(27:40):
tea you sed that a little bit, David. I'm gonna
all you gather around classes in session. I'm going to
tell you something here that I've never talked about before
on an episode of Body Backs, and it has to
do with a little bit of tissue that is contained
inside of our mouth, and as a matter of fact, specifically,
(28:01):
it is one strip of little tissue that actually connects
our lips to our gums, and those two bits of
tissue are actually referred to as the friendulum, or if
you've got two, I guess it'd be friendly lie. I'm
not sure. I've got a couple of people out there
that gig me on my English every now and then,
(28:22):
so I'm sure I'll probably hear something about that. But
the friendulum is a tiny is a tiny bit of tissue,
and I want all of our listeners right now, just
take the tip of your tongue and roll it. Put
it between your lip it could be lower or upper
and your gum, and run it back and forth and
(28:43):
you'll feel it feels like a little curtain there. It's
real thin. Well, this area only gets traumatized in very
specific ways, and I'm wondering if, in fact this case,
in this case, this area was examined like really carefully.
(29:05):
The first group of people that generally have this area
they're mouth traumatized are folks that have been either in
a fistfight or boxers. A matter of fact, sometimes it's
referred to as a boxer's laceration. And what happens is
is that when you're struck in the mouth, when you're
(29:26):
struck in the mouth and there is this friction that
occurs between that connective tissue and the pressure that's being
exerted for just a second, and it literally moves externally.
It moves your lip from one side to the other,
whether it's your lower or you're upper, and that little
veil little you know that little curtain right there actually rips,
(29:50):
So the frenula are commonly checked. Now, the other group
of people that you have this happen with going to
be individuals that are many times suffocated or smothered. Now,
let's think about a couple of ways this happens. You know,
(30:13):
when you think about smothering, and I always think about
my grandmother when I hear the term smothering. There's an
old adage that's kind of Southern, I guess. In one way,
my granny used to say if she was really really hot,
she'd always say, I'm about smothered death. In here, of course,
we smother gravy on our mashed potatoes or on our
(30:34):
rice as well, or on our biscuits. But this is
a totally different type of smothering. So smothering is a
subcategory of asphyxia. Okay, it can be done in a
couple of different ways. Well, many times it's done just
with a bare hand. And do you know where you
see these cases a lot? Dave. You see them with
(30:57):
people that murder kids, like small kids, like babies, because
it's almost undetectable. Babies don't have the means to defend themselves,
and so this is something that people think that they
can do and they'll get away with it. And even
there have been you know, it's not me saying it
for the very first time. Many people think that smothering
(31:18):
is the perfect homicide, right, and that's been regurgitated over
and over over the years. Well, one of the things
you look for in small children is if they suddenly die.
I'll look at this on Sid's cases. Even because Sid's
cases many times you'll see babies that are very congested,
they appear to be in congestive failure. They'll be kind
(31:39):
of purple in color. So the first thing I'm thinking is,
I'm not going to think this is a SIDS. SIDS
is a diagnosis of exclusion. I'm going to look for
some kind of physical trauma that has occurred. Well, I'll
check the frenula and I'm going to see if those
have been ruptured anyway. I'm also going to check for
associated petiki. You normally don't see petiti in Sid's cases. Well,
(32:02):
that this can either be accomplished, like I said, with
a hand, a bare hand, or the classic that people
think about, Dave is a pillow. A pillow being placed
over the face is still a violent act. And I
know that goes without saying, but when you think about it,
I think all of us that are out there can
(32:27):
remember what it's like not being able to catch our breath.
You know, whether you're underwater in the pool, or whether
you know you're the little you're the little kid and
all the other kids are playing pigpile and you're on
the bottom, or whatever the case might be, you know
what it's like not to be able to get your breath.
The same thing applies with smothering. You know, the head
(32:48):
will twist back and forth, and this happens in fact,
when somebody puts a pillo over somebody's face, they will
And there have been cases day where you have individuals
that are infirmed to the point where they're almost catatonic.
But there's this primal thing if they if they somebody
(33:11):
attempts to smother them, you'll see them kind of raise
up and fight. It's kind of a reactive kind of
vent with their hands. And that's worth I think literally
could his nest. Yeah, Wow, what a powerful scene that
would chief when he goes out through the wall. Oh
my god, the movie. I can't watch that movie very often.
(33:31):
It beautiful movie, well done.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
We were talking about it. It shows him fighting while he's
had at the bottomy and you know he's.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
A bottom lizzed. Yeah he is. He is out and
you're going to fight. And they got that. They got
that right in that movie. They don't get a lot
right most of the time. But you know, I really wonder, Dave,
I really wonder in this particular case, if if, maybe,
if you're absent any kind of markings on the neck,
but yet she's got bruises. I wonder if maybe smothering,
(34:05):
some type of suffocation of form of suffocation may have
been the means by what she died. Dave.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
Wow, Well, I will tell you Joe that as we
move forward with this story. And the reason the reason
Joe reached out to do this is because this started
in nineteen ninety two with a mother an eighteen month
old baby in a crib next to her dies her
(34:31):
a strange husband claims it's a drug overdose. Talk string
comes back nothing. Cops immediately go no, this is a homicide,
but they don't have an arrest, and here we are,
all these years later wondering, well, what about the daughters.
Then we find out that It really was that eighteen
month old baby in the crib who had questions about
her own mama and needed to know more than what
(34:52):
she had been told by family about who her mama was,
and she wanted to know. So she got with the
girl who was fourteen when her mother died. Think about that.
That's a rough time to lose mama, you know. And
it was the two daughters that actually went to the
police and shared information they had heard in their families.
And it was the police that went, you know what,
(35:15):
we might have a case. Police went back and you
know what they found out, Joseph Scott Morgan. They found
out that two different family members were willing to sit
down with them and share with police that the estranged
husband of Janice Randall, their brother, said he killed her.
(35:41):
That he told his siblings that he killed her. Now
that's enough for police to go, Okay, now we've got
a first hand confession, you know, made to this individual
who's a little relative. We have the autops who are
board that purely says is this was a homicide. And
(36:01):
now we've got where James Randall told his brother, how
he staged the crime scene. Remember the very beginning of
this Joe, when you were talking about the crime scene
staged and James Randall told his brother how he did it.
So police were able to give that information because those
two sisters would not give up on their mama. That
am mouth old baby in the crib in their bedroom
(36:23):
while her mother was killed. Actually, it is one of
the reasons we have in arrest now.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Yeah, you're right. And as a result of one of
those admissions that he made, and this is this is
a quote relative to the comments that the brother had made,
he said he told her that he had put a
this quote, had told her that he had put a
(36:49):
pillow over his wife, Janet's head, and said with regards
to the murder quote, just know it was me the
prosecute or alleged and that that was a comment that
that was stated to ka r O Channel seven out
in Washington. News nations reporting this as well, So they
(37:13):
think that there was a violent struggle within this environment.
I think my question is how was this missed? And
the prosecutor made a statement that I found kind of
curious and said, this just goes to show you how
hard work and new technology can bring about can bring
(37:36):
about conclusions in the cases. Day one of the other
reasons I want to do this case is it's not
an author case. It's a cold case. And no, it's
not new technology. It comes down to the love of
a daughter who went her entire life without her mama.
(37:58):
It comes down to her tenacity and her sister's tenacity,
never taking no and always wanting to put out that
little flame probably in her brain that was always burning,
wondering and knowing that the authority said it's a homicide.
(38:20):
But the who was always the big question. Well, now
the prosecutors think that they know who. Now, no one
has been tried, no one has been convicted. But let's
see how this develops. Let's see how this develops as
far as the fortunes of the accused go. When he
(38:42):
is picked up out of his wheelchair placed against the
wall in a nursing home, asking what's this all about,
and they do, in fact put the bracelets on him.
Oh and by the bye, just so you know, his
bond has actually been set at one million dollars. I'm
(39:05):
Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body back
Body diners. But Joseph's gotten more. You know. I got
to tell you, I don't know if there's anything more
precious in the world for this old parent, at least
than those early years. And I'm thinking really the first
year that you are a parent, and to have your
(00:27):
baby in the room with you, you know, after you've brought
them home and you're with them twenty four to seven.
Particularly my wife's case, she was with our children twenty
four to seven. And not only are you with them
and you're changing diapers and you're bathing and you're holding them,
(00:48):
which is again one of the most precious things out there,
but actually to have them in the crib in your room. Yeah,
there's a lot of sleepless nights, there's a lot of
getting up and down. But you know, some of the
sweetest moments are when you have that rocker that's in
the room with you and you pick them up and
(01:10):
maybe you've got a bottle and they just go back
to sleep. I don't know if there's any moment in
your life where you can soothe a child like that,
soothe anybody but your own child. That's really something special.
But let's take that precious moment and just think for
(01:32):
a second, Just think for a second, Well, what kind
of parent would sneak into a bedroom and kill the
other parent, leaving a precious young one and the crip
(01:53):
defend for themselves. Today on bodybacks, now we're going to
discuss such a case, a case that is as cold
blooded as they get. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
is Bodybags. I remember being terrified coming coming from the
(02:19):
hospital home with my kids, Dave. I don't know if
you remember.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
That, yes, but I do.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
It's still it's it's still in my brain. But yeah,
the you know, those moments in time we were thinking,
am I doing this right? You know? Am I doing
any of this right? Are they actually? You know? I
think I remember feeling the joy of Wow, they survived
through the night and I was here.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Right, And that's not an uncommon occurrence for most of
us thinking that way.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
You know, it's terrified, man.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
When it got I was worse for me with my grandson.
When my children were young and I was young, I
didn't know what I didn't know, and so I was
older when Brailn came along, the first time I had
him alone in the vehicle with me. Yeah, I as
I was pulling out of the driveway, I freaked. I
(03:17):
went they got to remember, I raised my own they've
got their own kids, and I'm with Brailn for the
very first time alone in the car and they're trusting
me to make it to the store and back. You know,
it was the weirdest shock feeling for me. But when
I saw this story, my first thing was an eighteen
month old child in a crib. Little girl is at
(03:41):
eighteen months, That's my gosh. I think Hannah stayed in
our room for a lot longer than that. You know,
I don't remember when she actually I know when I
was younger, I got him out of there quick, but
not with Hannah to being the last one, being the baby.
She stayed in our room a lot a long time.
But eighteen months in the crib is in the room
staying with mama. And what happened in that bedroom, what
(04:06):
we were told and what police believed or thought at
first November nineteen ninety two, Even now, I don't know
who made the call, Joe. I don't know who discovered
the body of a mother named Janice Randall, thirty years old.
I don't know who discovered her body. I don't know
(04:27):
who called the police. I spent a lot of time
looking for this Joe, but somebody did find her and
when police showed up, the police were told by Janis's
estranged husband that she had a drug problem, had used
drugs in the past, and it was probably an overdose. Now, Joe,
(04:53):
you have pointed out on numerous occasions that deceased people
do not brew any bruises and things that they had
before they died. That's one thing, But you don't bruise
after the fact. So if somebody is doing life saving measures,
none of that causes bruising that you would see, right, No,
(05:15):
because nothing shoulders.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
No, No, it doesn't. And even I've had David, Actually,
I've actually had bodies that were killed in an upstairs
bedroom by a person that was smaller than the victim,
and the perpetrator drugged the body down a flight of stairs,
(05:40):
and you could see where there were impact injuries post
mortem impact injuries, and generally what it is is if
the skin catches like the edge of the tread of
the staircase, or they're on a carpeted surface, you'll get
a braid areas, but there won't be any associated hemorrhage.
(06:03):
It'll just be kind of a well we would refer
to it as a postmum insult, and there's no associated
hemorrhage at all. So if you have something that's kind
of profound, it doesn't even have to be profound. You know,
I've gone out and seen uh, you know, finger what
what would marry up with a hand on a throat
(06:23):
and you could see the tips of the fingers where
they were pressed in, say like in a sea clamp.
But that was happening in the anti mortem or the
peri mortem state literally, as they say, in the throes
of death. But no, no, not not with the deceased.
You know, you're you're not going to see any kind
of insults even I'll put it. I'll even go a
(06:46):
step further. If you were to take a body and
make some kind of half hearted attempt to really traumatize
body with like a sharp force injury or shooting a
dead body, it's you're not going to have hemorrhage. You'll
just have a cavitation there. You'll have a hole that's
in the body with no associated morrhage.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Wow. See, those are the things that a lot of
us don't know and it comes from just not just
lack of knowledge. But what got my attention on this
story is as I was peeling the onion. Our victim
is thirty years old. She has a fourteen year old daughter,
and she has the eighteen month old daughter in the
crib in the bedroom with her. And when she is
(07:28):
found on November the eighth, she has bruising on her body,
fresh bruising that investigators believe happened possibly the day or
night before her body was found. Right, we have an
ex husband or no, an estranged husband. They are separated,
they are heading for divorce, but the estranged husband is
(07:49):
the one who gives them the drug addict theory, the
overdose theory. But Joe, that's cleared up with an autopsy, right.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Well, you would think that it is. And in this case,
here's here's the thing about this case that's such a mystery,
and that it has been open now an open, an
open case for thirty years. Her talks panel came back negative.
So there's nothing to underpin underpin that statement. But yet
(08:23):
they felt they being the authorities, and this would have
been the you know, the you know, the corner medical
examiner and of course the police they left us, and
of course this is out of Everett County, Washington. They
believed in this case that this in fact was a homicide,
(08:44):
but they just they just never could. According to them,
they didn't have enough information to directly connect anybody. And look,
we people know us well to know where I'm going
with this, because what do we always say, anytime you
have a mother like this that's deceased, you don't have
(09:10):
some wild eyed killer that's on the loose. She's asleep
in her bed, she's got her eighteen month old daughter
in the crib. Who's going to What in the world
has she done to anybody? Now, you could attribute it
to maybe something random. You can say, well, you have
this person just walked into the house and decided to
(09:33):
eradicate this poor woman. But if that's the case, why
in the world would you leave an eighteen month old alive?
So you begin to look at the nature of this case,
and automatically, I can tell you where my eyes are
going to drift to. I'm going to look for anybody
to send the intimate space with her. And here's one
(09:54):
other thing I don't know about you, but did you
ever notice that I noticed with my wife there's a
period of time when children are really really young, and
mothers many times tend to kind of shut down, really
shut it down as to who can have access to
(10:14):
them and those children many times because there's this protection
thing that comes on, which as well it should, because
you don't trust anybody that's on the outside circle. So
who is going to have knowledge that she's in the house,
who's going to have knowledge of where she sleeps, Who's
going to have enough anger directed at her? And this
is per you know, the authorities there relative to you know,
(10:40):
that have knowledge of this case. They're whittling down the
number of suspects. And I got to tell you, Dave,
I don't know what happened in this particular case, but
you're looking at it and you're thinking, well, you know, wow,
I would think that those people that are in her
intimate circle. I don't want to mention any name, but
his initials are, you know, the estranged husband. I'm going
(11:03):
to be looking really really hard at this individual, wondering
why was he you know, was he not in bracelets
at that moment?
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Tom?
Speaker 1 (11:10):
What amount of evidence, what specific evidence could you be
absent that would not compel you to want to put
the bracelets on him. I just I don't understand it.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
And that's what I was wondering with you. I was
hoping that you were going to be able to tell
me what they didn't have. But as I was looking
at this case, Joe, I couldn't figure out why they
weren't looking directly at the exit soon to be excited
the estranged husband. But you know, in our country, a
(11:41):
person is innocent until proven guilty. Yes, and just because
you don't like somebody. And by the way, this guy's
not a likable guy. I can tell you this now
because it's public record. But he was actually charged with
the domestic violence charge again Janice Yep in the months
(12:03):
before her death. He was convicted of it later. And
so I guess I'm sitting here going you've got a
spotlight on this guy. Did he really need to leaving?
Is there a problem, Joe, when you have an intimate
like this, who is they are strange? He's not living
in the home right now, they're not currently cohabitating, and
(12:24):
the person is dead. But because they are still married,
you know, there is a reasonable expectation that his DNA
as we look at it now, but body fluid hair blood,
that all those things would be present in the home
because you know, they had a relationship, they were together,
so you can't find an unfamiliar thing there and say, oh,
(12:45):
it's him, you know, because it's expected that his body
would be in that house.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Yeah, yeah, you're right, and you're thinking, well, you have
all of these connections from physical evidence that you know,
and I would imagine that did factor into all of
this day. It factored into the fact that they couldn't
hang charges on him at that particular time, just based
upon trace evidence. Where are you going to look at Well,
then you know, you kind of drop back and you
(13:13):
hope that more information is going to develop. Did he
have key to the house? Was there any signs of
fourth century struggle? Did it give the appearance that perhaps
just perhaps someone came in and you know, maybe turned
over some furniture, something broken. And I got to tell you,
whatever happened back there in nineteen ninety two, for whatever reason,
(13:37):
the police it left them at the end of the
road with no answers. What a thing, What a circumstance
(14:00):
to grow up with, Dave. You imagine you're eighteen months old.
I doubt that if you had any memory whatsoever of
your mama. It would be greatly diminished. Really, yeah, and
I can't imagine that there would be something there but
that you know, you've been told as a child, which
(14:25):
is I guess it comes down to being the party line.
I don't know if that's right to say, but you
know the you know, well, yeah, your mother loved you
very much. Yeah, and you know she had she had
some problems, you know, in the past, and we believed
that that's what led to it. But certainly, Dave, as
(14:46):
the child gets older, she certainly has an awareness that
her mother's case has been ruled as a homicide. And
let here if you like that one, let me give
you another one. Imagine having knowledge that maybe you had
been in the room as a child in a crib
and a perpetrator passed between you and your mother who
(15:08):
was mere feet away and ended her life. But yet
the persons still out on the street, right. I got
to tell you, man, that would that'd be horrible. It
would It would be a horror movie as far as
I'm concerned.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Janis Randall had two daughters at the time of her death.
Her oldest daughter was fourteen years old. Her name Katie Waken.
When Janice Randall was murdered, her eighteen month old daughter,
Courtney Lewis was in the crib. When when you have
(15:42):
your own children, you share stories about your mom, your dad,
your upbringing, you know, especially as you try to relate
to them. Why you know, well, when I was your agent,
I did that. I got a spoon, shoved, you know,
any number of things. So I'm being nicer to you
than what I got kind of thing, you know. But
we all tell stories about our parents, and when your
parents have passed the way, you tell different stories. But
(16:03):
in this case, when Courtney Lewis got to this park,
because you remember, now this happened thirty four year in
nineteen ninety two, she's eighteen months old at the time. Okay,
so she's now in her thirties and she has her
own children and she wants to tell them about her mom.
But the really thing she onling knows to tell them
(16:24):
is that while I was eighteen months old when my
mom was killed, and I was in the room. So
Courtney Lewis actually started the investigation on her own and
working with her half sister, Katie Waken. It's the two
daughters that actually made this case. They worked really hard
because they believed the murderer was very close to them
(16:45):
once they started looking at things. I'm going to go
back and remind you that we do have a suspect
in custody and his name is James Robert Randall. He
is the estranged husband of Janice Randall, who told police
it was a drug overdose. You mentioned we got to
(17:09):
get this out there because we got to start working
on Joe. He has lived his life for the past
thirty four years, walking around doing his own thing. He
actually looks like a caveman when you see pictures of him.
He looks like he's homeless, almost, you know. And he
was actually in a rest home, in a nursing home
when they came to arrest him. And yet in nineteen
(17:31):
ninety two, the so called man beat his wife enough
that he was actually charged with the domestic violence case
and was found guilty after her death. And they still
couldn't put the racelets on him, as you said back then.
And I have to wonder when police actually hear from him, Oh,
she had a drug problem and it's probably a drug overdose.
You said. They got the autopsy panel back, there's nothing
(17:53):
on that no drugs, and she shows signs that she
was beaten. Y.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Yeah, she had, she had bruises on her body. Now,
the problem is in this particular case, they're not really
giving us a lot of information at this point because
we don't have the autopsy report that is out there,
(18:19):
that is being h that's being examined, and probably a
lot more thoroughly now. So it would be really important
to be able to age age those contusions, as we
were talking about earlier with when you have a case
involving this kind of intimate violence. Now she was just
(18:44):
so folks know, she was not like found on the
bedroom floor or in the uh, you know, the the
associated you know, master bathroom, you know, or anything like that.
She's found on the bed. So whoever killed her, and
remember they've classified this as a homicide, I can't stress
(19:04):
that enough got either on or in the bed with
her and facilitated this. I would think that just based
upon what they were seeing on her body at that
time and by the way it was documented in the
autopsy at that time. This is not something that they
(19:27):
had this epiphanal moment where all this data was suddenly
ginned up. This is something they've had for years. You've
got direct evidence of trauma on her body. The key here, though,
is trying to understand and interpret where that trauma is
actually located. Because if we're thinking that we don't have
a bludgeoning, which is a beating, we don't have a stabbing,
(19:53):
we obviously don't have a shooting, because they would have
had evidence of that and talked about it. Well, Dave,
that kind of puts us into two categories, two things
that are very difficult to kind of size up. Number One,
(20:13):
you might be looking at, say some type of this
fhixial death, Well, if it's in a six yiald death.
One of the things I have to ask these contusions
that they're alluding to, are they present in locations like
would be associated with defensive injuries on the arms, the
back of the hands, those sorts of things, or are
(20:33):
these contusions what we refer to, say, for instance, like circumferential,
which means do they go around the neck, like if
you're throttling somebody or you're using a ligature of some kind.
Is there mouth trauma which I'll get to in just
a moment. And also the big thing, and I know
(20:55):
our listeners have and our friends have heard us talk
about this before. But did you have any evidence whatsoever
of petikii and in those soft spaces in the eyes
and on the on the surface of the gums, because
that's going to be that's going to be a real
tell here. Did you know also, did you know that
(21:16):
you can see petiki not just in the eyes and
around the lips. Do you know that you can actually
see it in the lungs as well. People don't know that,
so when you ok, yeah, yeah, so they'll go into
like a congestive failure, you don't see it every time.
It's just like you don't see petiki in the eyes
every time, but it is a big tail force. But
(21:37):
you'll see them sometimes in the soft tissues of the
neck that are internal the back of the tongue. I've
seen them manifest in a lot of different areas. I
think a lot of it has to do with an
individual's anatomy and kind of the fragile nature of your
own kind of capillary beds in there that are being
backed up because you don't have free flow of blood
(21:59):
and so the vessel's rupture. So the second one I
would come to here as a possibility their rulingness as
a homicide. Well, where there drugs on board? Well, we've
already been told that the panel that they would have
been looking for that, where they would have searched her
(22:20):
her blood, her urine, her vitreous, or bile, it came
back negative. And here's one more thing, Dave, I think
that that's that's that's relevant to all this. They knew
what type of drug to look for, because what was
being told to the investigators to begin with is that
(22:41):
she had an addiction problem, not to some type of
illicit substance, but she had an addiction problem involving painkillers. Well,
painkillers to me mean some type of opiate drug, whether
it's a naturally occurring opiate, a morphine or something like that,
or is it some kind of synthetic opiate that's created
(23:03):
in a laboratory somewhere like Phizer or one of these places. Well, Dave,
that's that's something that we screen for. It's it's not like,
you know, we don't pay attention to prescription mets, particularly
those that are commonly prescribed. And let me tell you
what else. If I've got a husband is stranged or not,
(23:24):
and he's putting forth this information and he is. He's
saying to me, well, it could be O D because
she had a problem with painkillers. And next question I'm
going to ask, is okay, uh we type painkillers? What
are we talking about here? You know, I want to
know or you know, are we talking about like Oxy's.
(23:44):
Is that what we're looking at here? Or is it
some other brand that's out there that could have been
prescribed her. Guess what else I'm going to do. I'm
going to track down who are treating physician, is right,
And once I track them down, he and I are
going to have a conversation. I'm going to say, hey, doc, look,
I know she's had a problem in the past with
(24:05):
trying to you know, stem whatever pain she's experienced. I
don't know it's back pain, leg pain, neck pain. It
could at least doctors will prescribe me anything, and even
back in ninety two that were prescribing anything and everything
for people here, take some medicine, go away, you know.
So I want to know who her primary was. I
want to know who her obg y N is because again,
(24:27):
this is a thread that's being given by somebody that
is in her intimate circle. And the husband is going
to know. I mean, I know what my wife takes,
you know, I know if she's got any kind of
physical problems, I know if she's got a dependency which
don't go too far filled with that, can you does
not have a dependency on so but but you're going
(24:48):
to have that intimate, intimate information in your brain, and.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
You would also know when the autopsy comes back and
there's nothing in their system that the guy's lying, I mean,
flat out the one guy who we know eat her
is lying about the drugs because she doesn't have any
drugs in her system. I mean, at what point they
changed the whole thing from possible overdose to homicide and
(25:11):
they flipped the script on that pretty quick, Joe, It
wasn't like dangling in the air for decades, but not
having an arrest. That made me wonder, well, do they
think there's still a possibility that something else happened that
it wasn't as you know, that is.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
The big question I've got. I've got some information I'm
going to pass along to our friends here that you know,
it's going to be something that I've never talked about before.
So I'll I'm just going to tease that. But I
want you to know before I go into that, there
is one other thing that you're going to check with
(25:49):
a suspected quote unquote OD. If she's not injecting. If
she's not injecting, we have to assume she's taking some
kind of oral medication. Well, if it's an OD, guess
what you're going to find. It's not just you're looking
for toxicology.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Here.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
At autopsy, we remove the stomach. What do we do
with the stomach. Well, at autopsy, there's a procedure that
we do where we tie off the stomach where the
esophagus dumps into the stomach, and then we tie off
where the stomach dumps into the small intestine, and we
(26:30):
completely dissect out the stomach. We remove it so that
it's not ruptured at all. We have a basin that
we go over to and we try to be very
very careful, and then within that basin we actually open
the stomach. Well, what are we looking for? Well, take
a while, guess we're looking for gas or content. If
there's anything in that gas or content that would give
(26:50):
us pause, we're going to make note of it. But
more than likely, if you're saying if you're saying that
this was, in fact in your opinion, an od. Not
only we're gonna do blood from the heart, urine from
the bladder, vitreous from the eyes, and bile from the liver,
we're also going to do gastric content. And if there's
(27:13):
pills there, not only would you look for them in
the laboratory testing, you could physically see them. Apparently they
didn't see anything. But I got a little knowledge I'm
going to drop on you now, Okay, I kind of
(27:40):
tea you sed that a little bit, David. I'm gonna
all you gather around classes in session. I'm going to
tell you something here that I've never talked about before
on an episode of Body Backs, and it has to
do with a little bit of tissue that is contained
inside of our mouth, and as a matter of fact, specifically,
(28:01):
it is one strip of little tissue that actually connects
our lips to our gums, and those two bits of
tissue are actually referred to as the friendulum, or if
you've got two, I guess it'd be friendly lie. I'm
not sure. I've got a couple of people out there
that gig me on my English every now and then,
(28:22):
so I'm sure I'll probably hear something about that. But
the friendulum is a tiny is a tiny bit of tissue,
and I want all of our listeners right now, just
take the tip of your tongue and roll it. Put
it between your lip it could be lower or upper
and your gum, and run it back and forth and
(28:43):
you'll feel it feels like a little curtain there. It's
real thin. Well, this area only gets traumatized in very
specific ways, and I'm wondering if, in fact this case,
in this case, this area was examined like really carefully.
(29:05):
The first group of people that generally have this area
they're mouth traumatized are folks that have been either in
a fistfight or boxers. A matter of fact, sometimes it's
referred to as a boxer's laceration. And what happens is
is that when you're struck in the mouth, when you're
(29:26):
struck in the mouth and there is this friction that
occurs between that connective tissue and the pressure that's being
exerted for just a second, and it literally moves externally.
It moves your lip from one side to the other,
whether it's your lower or you're upper, and that little
veil little you know that little curtain right there actually rips,
(29:50):
So the frenula are commonly checked. Now, the other group
of people that you have this happen with going to
be individuals that are many times suffocated or smothered. Now,
let's think about a couple of ways this happens. You know,
(30:13):
when you think about smothering, and I always think about
my grandmother when I hear the term smothering. There's an
old adage that's kind of Southern, I guess. In one way,
my granny used to say if she was really really hot,
she'd always say, I'm about smothered death. In here, of course,
we smother gravy on our mashed potatoes or on our
(30:34):
rice as well, or on our biscuits. But this is
a totally different type of smothering. So smothering is a
subcategory of asphyxia. Okay, it can be done in a
couple of different ways. Well, many times it's done just
with a bare hand. And do you know where you
see these cases a lot? Dave. You see them with
(30:57):
people that murder kids, like small kids, like babies, because
it's almost undetectable. Babies don't have the means to defend themselves,
and so this is something that people think that they
can do and they'll get away with it. And even
there have been you know, it's not me saying it
for the very first time. Many people think that smothering
(31:18):
is the perfect homicide, right, and that's been regurgitated over
and over over the years. Well, one of the things
you look for in small children is if they suddenly die.
I'll look at this on Sid's cases. Even because Sid's
cases many times you'll see babies that are very congested,
they appear to be in congestive failure. They'll be kind
(31:39):
of purple in color. So the first thing I'm thinking is,
I'm not going to think this is a SIDS. SIDS
is a diagnosis of exclusion. I'm going to look for
some kind of physical trauma that has occurred. Well, I'll
check the frenula and I'm going to see if those
have been ruptured anyway. I'm also going to check for
associated petiki. You normally don't see petiti in Sid's cases. Well,
(32:02):
that this can either be accomplished, like I said, with
a hand, a bare hand, or the classic that people
think about, Dave is a pillow. A pillow being placed
over the face is still a violent act. And I
know that goes without saying, but when you think about it,
I think all of us that are out there can
(32:27):
remember what it's like not being able to catch our breath.
You know, whether you're underwater in the pool, or whether
you know you're the little you're the little kid and
all the other kids are playing pigpile and you're on
the bottom, or whatever the case might be, you know
what it's like not to be able to get your breath.
The same thing applies with smothering. You know, the head
(32:48):
will twist back and forth, and this happens in fact,
when somebody puts a pillo over somebody's face, they will
And there have been cases day where you have individuals
that are infirmed to the point where they're almost catatonic.
But there's this primal thing if they if they somebody
(33:11):
attempts to smother them, you'll see them kind of raise
up and fight. It's kind of a reactive kind of
vent with their hands. And that's worth I think literally
could his nest. Yeah, Wow, what a powerful scene that
would chief when he goes out through the wall. Oh
my god, the movie. I can't watch that movie very often.
(33:31):
It beautiful movie, well done.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
We were talking about it. It shows him fighting while he's
had at the bottomy and you know he's.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
A bottom lizzed. Yeah he is. He is out and
you're going to fight. And they got that. They got
that right in that movie. They don't get a lot
right most of the time. But you know, I really wonder, Dave,
I really wonder in this particular case, if if, maybe,
if you're absent any kind of markings on the neck,
but yet she's got bruises. I wonder if maybe smothering,
(34:05):
some type of suffocation of form of suffocation may have
been the means by what she died. Dave.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
Wow, Well, I will tell you Joe that as we
move forward with this story. And the reason the reason
Joe reached out to do this is because this started
in nineteen ninety two with a mother an eighteen month
old baby in a crib next to her dies her
(34:31):
a strange husband claims it's a drug overdose. Talk string
comes back nothing. Cops immediately go no, this is a homicide,
but they don't have an arrest, and here we are,
all these years later wondering, well, what about the daughters.
Then we find out that It really was that eighteen
month old baby in the crib who had questions about
her own mama and needed to know more than what
(34:52):
she had been told by family about who her mama was,
and she wanted to know. So she got with the
girl who was fourteen when her mother died. Think about that.
That's a rough time to lose mama, you know. And
it was the two daughters that actually went to the
police and shared information they had heard in their families.
And it was the police that went, you know what,
(35:15):
we might have a case. Police went back and you
know what they found out, Joseph Scott Morgan. They found
out that two different family members were willing to sit
down with them and share with police that the estranged
husband of Janice Randall, their brother, said he killed her.
(35:41):
That he told his siblings that he killed her. Now
that's enough for police to go, Okay, now we've got
a first hand confession, you know, made to this individual
who's a little relative. We have the autops who are
board that purely says is this was a homicide. And
(36:01):
now we've got where James Randall told his brother, how
he staged the crime scene. Remember the very beginning of
this Joe, when you were talking about the crime scene
staged and James Randall told his brother how he did it.
So police were able to give that information because those
two sisters would not give up on their mama. That
am mouth old baby in the crib in their bedroom
(36:23):
while her mother was killed. Actually, it is one of
the reasons we have in arrest now.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Yeah, you're right. And as a result of one of
those admissions that he made, and this is this is
a quote relative to the comments that the brother had made,
he said he told her that he had put a
this quote, had told her that he had put a
(36:49):
pillow over his wife, Janet's head, and said with regards
to the murder quote, just know it was me the
prosecute or alleged and that that was a comment that
that was stated to ka r O Channel seven out
in Washington. News nations reporting this as well, So they
(37:13):
think that there was a violent struggle within this environment.
I think my question is how was this missed? And
the prosecutor made a statement that I found kind of
curious and said, this just goes to show you how
hard work and new technology can bring about can bring
(37:36):
about conclusions in the cases. Day one of the other
reasons I want to do this case is it's not
an author case. It's a cold case. And no, it's
not new technology. It comes down to the love of
a daughter who went her entire life without her mama.
(37:58):
It comes down to her tenacity and her sister's tenacity,
never taking no and always wanting to put out that
little flame probably in her brain that was always burning,
wondering and knowing that the authority said it's a homicide.
(38:20):
But the who was always the big question. Well, now
the prosecutors think that they know who. Now, no one
has been tried, no one has been convicted. But let's
see how this develops. Let's see how this develops as
far as the fortunes of the accused go. When he
(38:42):
is picked up out of his wheelchair placed against the
wall in a nursing home, asking what's this all about,
and they do, in fact put the bracelets on him.
Oh and by the bye, just so you know, his
bond has actually been set at one million dollars. I'm
(39:05):
Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body back
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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