July 15, 2026 • 46 mins
Karen and Dusty Spencer were married and jointly owned a successful home painting business, A-Plus Painting. Two years into the marriage and business, the relationship sours and disputes about finances become more frequent, turning violent. On December 10 during an argument, Dusty hit and choked Karen, threatening to kill her. Police were called and Dusty Spencer was arrested. Spencer called Karen from jail and told her he was going to "finish what he started" when he got out. Authorities were aware of the threat but no effective action was taken and Bail for Dusty Ray Spencer was just $5,000. Spencer bailed out. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss what happened to Karen Spencer after her husband and business partner made bail...then made good on his promise to finish what he started.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quoddy bats with Joseph Scott More. One of the most
disappointing things in my life is to start something and
not follow through. It makes me feel horrible, you know,
(00:21):
particularly if I have some goal that's out there, you know,
in the ether that I can kind of visualize. And
you know, when you're in media, you think about things
all the time. You think about, you know, what what
could I do creatively? You know that draws people in
that they want to hear what I have to say
and all of that, and when it doesn't come to fruition,
(00:42):
I always look to myself and blame myself and say
I was lazy, okay, And you know, I think that
it's a burden that many of us bear. Today, we're
going to talk about a fellow who actually used that
(01:03):
term about finishing what he is starting, and he used
it to great effect because in the end, his goal
is long term goal apparently, as stated by him, was
to murder his wife, and he succeeded. And since he
(01:29):
murdered his wife, he has had a place on death
row in the state of Florida, and his case is
in the news as we speak because he's facing down
something that he finished many years ago relative to the
person that he said he loved, she died at his hands.
(01:52):
Now there's a strong possibility that he is going to
die at the hands of the state of Florida. I'm
Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is body backs, David. I
think to say that you and I are driven is
(02:14):
an understatement where I view myself as an overachiever. I
wasn't given a lot of really good sense along the way,
a lot of great advice. I kind of learned through
failure a lot, but I just I kept on going.
(02:34):
I was not gonna sit in a mudhole in south
Road and you know kind of you know, just woe
is me. I was gonna get up and I was
gonna sult her on and I see you, know you
and I. Maybe it's unfair, but I see you and
I is on, you know, parallel paths in life. And
we are finishers, aren't we.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
The fact that you're getting all this tied into finish
what you started in one of the most despicable crimes
I've ever heard of in my life. Joe, It's pretty amazing.
It shows you the brilliance of Joseph Scott Morgan. Friends
right off the bat because Dusty ray Spencer, that's the
guy's name, Dusty Ray Spencer, thirty nine years old at
(03:15):
the time, killed his wife Karen, but he warned her. Okay,
this is a domestic violence show, and if that triggers
you in any way, you need to go ahead and
consider that's what we're going to be talking about. We're
going to be talking about a married couple who the
husband kills the wife and didn't happen the first time
(03:40):
that he bought that he beat her. Did happen the
second time he beat her. It took time, but the
whole idea that he was going to finish what he
started was recorded by a jailhouse phone. That's the part
about this Joe that shocks me as much as anything else,
because criminals know they're being recorded. I mean they're told
(04:03):
before they get on the phone to talk to somebody.
You're sitting in the county jail, you know, you're told
it's being recorded. People are going to listen, right, Yeah,
and they still say things, Yeah they do.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
You know, what is it? What's the old saying mouth
in motion before brain and gear or mind and gear.
I think some some are some are driven by some
are driven by boredom to do that. I think some
are driven by the fact that they're low IQ right,
(04:36):
and they don't have the ability to understand that there
are certain little, you know, parameters you have to exist
in they're compelled to do that. But I would like
to say that this episode today is is not about
Dusty Ray Spencer, though he will be mentioned along the way.
(04:59):
This is about care and Spencer because this is bodybags
and we we like to talk and remember the dead
and understand how their lives ended. And it's a real commentary,
isn't it. Right now, across the country there are people
(05:20):
that are protesting, making their voices heard about, you know,
the execution of Dusty Ray Spencer. Where were those people?
And you know, in nineteen ninety two, you know, when
(05:42):
Karen's life was brutally ended, were they out there saying
we're not going to stand for this anymore, that domestic
abuse is wrong. Where were they at that point in time?
Because I'll say, you know, Kieren's life, did it in
fact matter and it still matters to this day because
(06:05):
she exited this life at the hands of a bully
and a brute Joe.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
You know, a lot of the reason people are talking
about the execution of Dusty Ray Spencer is because he's
seventy four years old, and he will be the oldest
person executed in Florida. To give you a heads up,
we are recording this before his execution. By the time
you watch this, unless something happens, he'll be he'll be dead.
(06:35):
So the positively the idea, Joe, that people are all
about Dusty ray Spencer because of his age. Think about
this for just a minute. When Dusty Ray Spencer murdered
his wife, he was thirty nine years old. She was forty.
He was thirty nine. He was forty years old when
(06:58):
he was sentenced to death. Joe, he wasn't seventy four.
He's not an old guy who in a panic defending himself,
attacked somebody and they died. He was sentenced to death
in nineteen ninety two, and they're just now getting around
to carrying out that sentence. Now. I don't want to
(07:23):
hear about it. He's too old to put to death.
I think that waiting this long to carry out a
sentence is tenemount to terrorism. You know. I think you
could probably argue that you're sitting on death row come on, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
I think one of the interesting things about this case is,
and we're going to get into this, is the fact
that the Karen's teenage son witness these events. As a
matter of fact, Dave, he's the unfortunate. He did not
die at the hands of this person because of what
(08:02):
he present. He's just a kid. You know what has happened,
you know, you know, if you want to, if you
want to put on this show about chronology here relative
to you know, this fellow's age as he's you know,
he's he's staring down the death chamber. You know, I
(08:23):
go to you know, the promise that Karen's life held
at that moment in time, the promise that her son's
life held at that point in time all these years ago.
You know, when he's trying to the son is literally
trying to interdict the situation. I couldn't. I don't know
that I would have been that brave, you know, to
(08:44):
do what this kid did. And now he lives with this,
you know, in his mind, or has had to live
with it throughout his life relative to what he saw
his mama go through. And then you know, all of
the promise that you know, I think and again, I'm
going to wax sentimental here, but you know, I think
about Karen Kieren probably had thoughts when she was forty
(09:07):
years old. She's got a teenage son. She's thinking, Wow,
wouldn't be great to have grand baby someday, to get
to hold them, to get to have them sit on
my knee, for me to take them the store and
bomb stuff and make their favorite foods. What's that going
to be like? She never got to realize that day.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
No. And the thing is, Joe, when we look at
these the cases of domestic violence, they impact an entire family,
not just the person who is the victim of the
domestic violence. And you mentioned Karen's son. Now, Karen Son
was not somebody who witnessed things from afar. No, there
(09:48):
were three separate incidentss that we have to get into
when it comes to Dusty Ray Spencer and Karen and
his wife Karen. But you know what, friends, Just to
give you an idea, they together owned a painting business
and their marriage had been escalating. In the fall of
(10:10):
nineteen ninety one. It had gone from arguments to I'm
going to assume here, because I think it's a fair assumption, Joe,
that the arguments got more and more volatile, to the
point where physical actions were being taken well before Dusty
(10:34):
ray Spencer was ever put in jail after the first
physical attack, when he was arrested for assaulting Karen. I
believe that because I've never seen I've never seen a
relationship go from zero to one hundred overnight. There's usually
a progression, you know, And I believe that's what took
(10:54):
place here. And you mentioned the teenage son. He actually
was physically involved in trying to what was taking place.
But just so you know, Karen and Dusty ray Spencer
were married, they were living in the same house, and
they were partners in a painting business. So there was
(11:15):
a lot going on in this family.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Yeah, And it is a incredible dynamic when you think
about it, and you know, who knows why. People at
the end of the day will take the life of
someone that they have pledged themselves to and said at
one point in time that I love you and I'm
going to be with you for the rest of your life,
and sickness and in health, I'm going to take care
(11:39):
of you, and you're going to take care of me.
It's really hard to look back and understand how the
wheels fell off. But I think that we have a
few clues along the way, and some of it leads
back to money, some of it leads back to frustration
over that said money and maybe a life that they
were living that was just completely incompatible with joy and love.
(12:06):
H M, Brother Dave. We've we know that this tragedy
that unfolded down in Florida all those years ago has
has sent ripples, you know, through time relative to Karen's family,
(12:28):
Uh and uh you know, and and certainly the people
down in that region that were aware probably of how
dastardly uh this these crimes were committed against her and
and against her son, and there is no payoff in
the end, you know. And and you know, now now
(12:52):
we've come to that, to that point in time where
maybe he is going to have to answer. But I
think it's important for us to reflect a little bit
and talk about because this was not a one off event,
as you pointed out. Rather, this is something that escalated
relative to these attacks on Kieren.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Well, start with December tenth, nineteen ninety one, Okay, because
that's the event that started everything that transpired over the
next six weeks Okay, December tenth, nineteen ninety one, Orange County, Florida,
and this is where Dusty Ray Spencer attacks his wife Karen.
(13:34):
The argument that began the fight allegedly began over Dusty
Spencer being mad that Karen withdrew money from their business,
their painting business. I think he was just looking for
a reason. Again, based on what we know now, there
were a lot of arguments taking place and they were escalating,
(13:57):
and this one escalated to a physical comfrontation where Dusty
Ray Spencer attacked his wife Karen her teenage son home
at the time. I want you to be aware of
what took place in Joe. You're going to have to explain,
you know, to us, so that I understand when they
(14:17):
were when the argument escalated a physical violence. Spencer was
choking Karen, and he had one hand over Karen's nose
and mouth and choked her with the other in a
fit of rage. So he's covering the nose and mouth
(14:39):
and choking. That's a pretty dastardly way to try to
take somebody out. I mean, it seems to me that
if you're doing that, that you're trying to suffocate the
life out of the person you're fighting with. Is that
an incorrect assumption or is this a tickle fighte?
Speaker 1 (15:00):
No, No, you're you're right on target. And here's the thing
about it is, Dave, and I want everybody to look here.
He was looking her in the eyes while he was
doing it, okay. And if you've ever seen somebody struggle
for breath, and maybe you've helped people that were struggling
for breath during the course of your life, it's it
(15:23):
is one of those things where it's just you're compelled
to show mercy, you're compelled to provide assistance to somebody.
But when the person that you are married to is
looking in your eyes with rage hate, maybe that that
(15:45):
just kind of blackness in their eyes and they have
you see clamped, because that's what happened. He would have
had to have see clamped her with one hand, and
that means grabbing hold of her throat, okay, and you
know this area right in here and compressing it with
his hand, squeezing and oh, by the bye, let's take
(16:06):
the other hand and place it over the nose in
the mouth in order to prevent her from the uptack
up oxygen.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
This seems like a really planned attack Joe from actually
putting her in that position. It seems to me that
Spencer knew what he was doing by choking her with
one hand and covering her nose and mouth with the other.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Yeah, And you really wonder at this moment, Tom, had
it escalated to the level of what would be referred
to as a homicidal rage. Because with these domestic violence
events like this, there is this kind of creeping, sinister
thing that occurs. I gotta say this. I don't think
(16:49):
you know what's the old you know Charlie Ridge song
about we don't know what goes on behind closing. Yeah,
well that's got two set. Coin has two sides to it,
all right. I don't think Charlie was singing about domestic
violence when he was talking about that. But I will
tell you this, this thing doesn't happen in a vacuum.
He felt comfortable enough at that moment in time because
(17:12):
I think that he had probably been bullying her around,
knocking her about, threatening her, and like many domestic abuse victims,
many of them are are seeking seeking to please that individual.
It's a horrible cycle to be in because they think
if I will just say this, or if I'll do this,
(17:33):
it's going to smooth things over and eventually, you know,
they'll see the light. I don't know that that ever
actually happens. Okay, I'm a cynic. I don't believe that
because I think that when you're a monster, you're a monster.
And if you if you can do that to the
person that you allegedly love the most in this world,
(17:58):
it's a it's a it's a tough thing I think
for an individual to pull himself back from from the edge,
you know.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
And and and and be be loving and tender moving forward,
because this is and this is a progression that takes place.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
We see this kind of played out in this in
this with Kiaren with Kieren Spencer.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Day, Well, all right, this this is where Joe started
the show about finishing what you start. Okay, December tenth,
Spencer attacks his wife and he gets arrested. Okay, the
police arrests Dusty Ray Spencer, lock him down and based
(18:44):
on what happened, I mean, he got arrested for domestic violence.
But remember he's trying to kill her. Now he's in jail.
The very next day, Joe, the very next day, December eleventh,
nineteen ninety one, Dusty ray Spencer calls his wife Karen.
He's in jail. She's at home, still trying to recover
from nearly dying at his hands, and he tells her,
(19:07):
when I get out, I'm gonna finish where I started. Now, Joe,
everything's recorded. Everything is recorded, so officials new. But you
know what the judge said. Dusty ray Spence has said
his bail five thousand dollars five thousand dollars was about
(19:31):
ten percent five hundred bucks. Okay, that's what he had
to come up with to get bailed out of jail. Now,
I have been through a lot of paperwork trying to
find out, Hey, what day did Dusty ray Spencer get
bailed out and who did it? Still haven't found it,
but it's out there.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Yeah, I'm going to be I'm gonna be a smart
ass for a second and just go ahead and just say, gee,
I wonder if he went into his business account for that.
That's what I'm thinking about here. Body that wants to
put angel wings on this guy, you know, Yeah, I
wonder where he got that money from again, you know,
(20:08):
and I still think, you know, with with Karen as
his spouse, that's your next of Ken. That's the way
we look at it in death investigation, right, that's your
immediate next kin. Doesn't matter if you're legally separated, that's
still your your next kin. But they were domiciled together,
they were living together. Who bailed him out? He called
a buddy up, you know, I'll catch you back up.
(20:30):
I'll take some money out of my business account. Here,
I'll give you back the five hundred dollars. Or did
he call Karen up after he threatened her? And again
going into the cycle of you know, maybe maybe if
I bail him out, you know, he'll be kind to me,
you know, because she's still she's still thinking, you know
(20:51):
that she's with somebody that's capable of being kind, even
though he put his hands on her throat and put
his hands over her nose and her mouth and was
trying to deprive her of her life, you know. And
again I think that that's a salient point. I'd like
to know what the origin of those monies were. Who
(21:12):
went to the bondsman and said, we're going to put
this money up. We're going to get him out, and
he's going to be walking walking the streets.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
And you know what, Joe, regardless of who or what
his bill was. At five thousand dollars, again, you got
to come up with ten percent. That's just not very
much money for somebody who attempted to kill his own wife.
But you know, as we have looked at domestic violence situations,
oftentimes the attacker, the aggressor, has means of gaslighting the
(21:40):
victim and make him feel like it's their fault. You know, Karen,
it's your fault. I'm sorry. I lost it. You know
that's not me. I don't know what came over me.
I just really lost it. And now that I've had
time to think about it, I'm just mortified by my
own actions. I am so sorry. You know that's not me.
You know, that is not who I am. And I
think the stress of the business really and you know,
(22:03):
come on, Karen, you know you did take a little
bit of money out and look, we can get through this.
And Karen, it's Christmas, Okay, it's Christmas time, she said
out loud. I want my husband home for Christmas. So
he got bailed out a five thousand dollars bailed. The
judge was aware of the threats. He was aware of
what put Dusty Ray Spencer in jail and set that
(22:25):
bond low enough that he could get out for the holidays.
Andy did. But Joe, here's the catch, here's the kick,
here's the page two. During the Christmas holidays, Karen had
her fill of Dusty ray Spencer. She had her fill
of her husband. Apparently things weren't any better, and she
(22:46):
told him, you got to get out, you gotta leave.
On January fourth, nineteen ninety two, Okay, we're talking, twenty
five days after the first attack, a second attack occurs,
this time the January fourth, nineteen ninety two attack. Her
teenage Her teenage son wakes up to the sound of
(23:11):
his mother being beaten by Dusty ray Spencer, twenty five
days after he tried to suffocate her. This time he
the son finds Dusty on top of his mother. Okay,
this teenage boy finds Dusty ray Spencer on top of Karen.
(23:35):
And Dusty is using an iron. You know, an iron,
the heavy iron with a handle on it, the used
to get your shirts. He's beating Karen with the iron. Joe,
he is beating his wife with the iron. That's when
the sun intervened. He tries to get Dusty ray Spencer
(23:56):
off of Karen to stop. The beating is brisk. What
is Spence? As you do? He attacks the teenage boy
with the same iron. The beating that was going on
extended now to the teenage son and Joe between Karen
and her son. Thankfully the police were called Dusty Rays. Spencer,
(24:18):
being the coward that he is, took off running. He
lays his wife bloodied on the floor, her teenage son bloodied,
and Spencer takes off running.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Yeah, I don't guess at that moment, Tom, he was
very delusional of paranoid, right or seeing pink elephants. He
had enough, he had enough understanding in his mind that
he needed to put separation between his precious wife and
his step son and and the police to get away.
(24:49):
He had that instinct to survive at that moment, Tom.
It's not like he's delusional to the point where he
thinks that, you know, I don't know, little green men
from Mars are you know, are coming after him, or
that snakes are emerging from his wife's face and they're
out there to get him. He's oriented the time and
(25:10):
space at that moment in time and off he goes off,
he goes and Dave, you know when he beat her
using this, and this is a blunt force attack. We've talked.
I had another case a few years ago where I
had a guy that had beaten another fellow to death
in the middle of the street with actually an antique iron,
(25:32):
a kind that you had to set on like a
pot belly stuff to heat up. And the weird thing
about it, the interesting thing about it is not weird.
It's just kind of interesting from the forensic dynamics of
an iron is and most of us have one at home.
Maybe you have enough money to take your clothes to
the cleaners and say, here, press them. I'm not going
to put up with an ironing boarder or iron in
(25:53):
my house. I've got one right over here as a
matter of fact. But it's got these interesting little edges
on it, and you know, comes to point as the top,
and so you get these you get these interesting little
blunt forced lacerations relative to this iron, and it's got
this this handle on it. Okay, just think about that
(26:14):
just for a second. The way you can lift and
you can hold, and you can wield this thing. This
thing is almost if it didn't have a cord attached
to it, you could use this thing as like a
weapon of war. Right, you think about the shapes of
all of the weapons from medieval times, and you know
on the end of a large stick, if you had
(26:35):
one that was shaped like an iron, would be highly effective, right,
because of all these interesting little edges. Well, day, she
wound up as a result of being attacked by this guy.
She had to have eleven stitches in her face because again,
you know, he's going after the head. He's going you
know that that area here, this is what her identity is, right,
(26:58):
We all identify with our face visually. I know that's
a rather obvious statement. But to try to destroy and disfigure,
disfigure someone is the ultimate in I think, in disrespect
because you're going to try to take away their personages
as as their personage as a result of disfigurement. And
(27:21):
that's kind of a theme that runs through through this case.
Date brother Dave, he spencer actually bolts from the second event,
(27:42):
and he's on the radar of the police at this
point in time. You would think that somebody would want
to try to put a continue to put as much
distance between themselves and in this event, but when you're fueled,
(28:03):
when you're a bully, and you're fueled by hatred and
anger and discord and all those sorts of things. It's
like flawed, honey, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
You know this is one of those things, Joe, that
going back to where you started the show about finish
what you started. Yeah, I think that was really what
was driving Dusty race Springfield. Because you go to the
December tenth attack that is stopped and ends with Dusty
ray Spencer in jail. His first comment to his wife
(28:36):
on the phone the next day is when I get out,
I'm going to finish what I started. So everything he
does after that is to finish what he started, whether
it means sweet talking her to get him to get
bailed out of jail or whatever. But after the second attack, Joe,
I think it was well known in the community what
had happened. By this time. People know that this man
(28:58):
was given a five thousand dollar bail to get out
of jail and he tried to kill his wife second time.
But Joe, when two weeks later, fourteen days, okay, go by,
it's January eighteenth, nineteen ninety two. The part that bothers
me about all of this is that we didn't understand
(29:22):
domestic violence back in the early nineties like we do now.
Maybe we didn't talk about it as much as we
do now.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
We certainly didn't talk about it as much.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
And so I think that this case so much was wrong.
But January eighteenth, when Karen's son, Karen's teenage son, arrives
home and he hears his mom being beaten in the backyard.
(29:50):
This teenage son, who already has witnessed the attacks, he's
seen the aftermath, the disfiguring of his own mother. And
here we we are, January eighteenth, nineteen ninety two, and
Dusty ray Spencer is at it again. This time he
has Karen in the backyard, and I want to make
(30:12):
sure I get this straight, Joe. This time Dusty has
a knife. He is striking Karen in the face with
a brick. He is mashing her head on the cement
on the concrete. He is stabbing her with the knife
in her chest and he is slashing her face with
(30:35):
the knife. Karen's teenage son sees what's going on and
grabs a gun. He grabs a gun and tries to
shoot Dusty ray Spencer, but the gun misfires. Yep Spencer
takes it and beats him with the gun. The gun
stock broke Joe during this during this fight. So at
(30:58):
this point, Karen is on the ground, mortally wounded, and
she's begging Dusty ray Spencer to not hurt her son.
Stop leave Malone. Stop. That's her dying breath, Joe. It
boggles my mind that, based on the three attempts on
(31:20):
her life, the three attacks on Karen and her teenage son,
that today we have people that want to not carry
out the sentence on Dusty ray Spencer because he's old.
He should have been taken out right after the verdict.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yeah, and I guarantee you I think that probably they
are enough inmates in prison to have witnessed their mamas
be subjected to this kind of behavior. The only reason
he's still with us is because he is a quested
on death row. I think that he had been in
Jen Popp in a different story.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Okay, can you go over the autopsy fresh show becase?
I when I went through the list of the injuries,
you know, yeah, they're vague, they're very you know, multiple stabbings,
multiple slashings, blunt for strama. Can you break that down
and explain what Dusty ray Spencer inflicted on his wife, Karen.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Yeah, I think that's very important. And one more thing,
and this is one if we don't have enough already,
one of the really gruesome things about this and so
if it couldn't get any more disrespectful as she is
laying on the ground, and I think this information comes
(32:37):
from the sun. This perpetrator raised this poor woman's dressed
dress up like this and was pointing at her and
making lewd remarks, obscene remarks about her and laughing at her.
(32:58):
Just factor that into your thinking just for a second.
It's not enough, it's not enough to do what you've
just done. Now here comes the verbal assault. That's why
you know. I think that this is evidence in and
of itself that this that this had gone on for
some time. Brother, this is not something new under the sun. Okay,
(33:21):
But when you couple that with fact, and remember how
I said that there's a theme that's running here. Remember
how he attacked with the iron early on? And where
you know, where's the placement of this attack, Well, it's
here where people identify us, right, And I guarantee you,
at some point in time in their past, he looked
(33:44):
at her and beheld her as a beautiful creature.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Okay, she was a beautiful woman, Joe.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Yeah, just I've looked at my wife that way. You know,
I still do. I look at her and I say,
how how did I want up with her? You know,
some mug like this, and I you know, at some
point time he saw her as a beautiful one. But
yet now at this point he's seeking to destroy her. Dave,
(34:13):
there's one bit to this. You talked about grinding into
the concrete or pounding her face like this. One report
has him literally grabbing her by the back of her
head and driving her face into the brick wall of
the house. So that means she's upright at one point
in time, and he's smashing her face in there. So
(34:36):
she's you know, noses probably broken, eyes are probably swollen.
Then he's wielding a knife, and yeah, he did in
fact stab her multiple times. I think it was five times,
and she's got I think there were two perforating stab
wounds into her heart. Bro But he takes this knife
and he gouges her face with it, and not just that,
(34:59):
he it takes time to slash her face, which is
you know, again, this is an attempt to destroy her beauty,
to destroy her identity of who she is as a
person for years and years. She's forty years old when
she dies, Dave, for years and years from the first
time she was a little old thing and she found
(35:20):
out what a mirror was. She walked up that mirror
and looked at herself, and that's how she always identified herself, right,
And now you know this, as he's seeing her, he's
going to completely disrupt that. Nobody in the world is
going to want you. As a matter of fact, even
in death, they're not going to be able to have
an open casket for you. And you know, she's already
(35:41):
got this other insult on her face where she's been
popped in the face with this iron and disfigured her
in that manner, and other injuries associated with that initial attack.
And you know autopsy, David, this is the fascinating thing
here forensically where you're trying to and listen, this thinge
(36:05):
goes to trial, right, so when the pathologist is on
the stand, there's been so much trauma here now going
back and we think about the pathologist is going to
have to say, okay, if you look at you know,
at injuries enumerated as four five and six. Okay, uh,
(36:27):
these are more distant in the in the healing process,
or they're they're further down the line. So we see
resolved that we talked about the idea of this, these insults,
these these blunt force impact sites, the cut on her
face that require the stitches, which is a laceration. If
(36:48):
she's got any kind of contusion, it's probably has resolved,
but deep tissue dissection is going to reveal that there's
still something there, and then you have to marry that
up with what's current and what happened, you know, in
that anti mortem, perry mortem and post mortem state with
her body, because we lord only knows what he actually
(37:11):
did to her body after she was actually deceased, so
there might be post mortem injuries to her because there
was not a shut off valve with him. You know
what you think about this?
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Can I ask you something about the judge made a
comment during the sentencing that Karen through all of this
rage induced violence that happened to her. The judge said
that she was conscious, she was awake an alert during
(37:44):
all of it, to the point where you know, as
I mentioned, she was telling Dusty Ray Spencer to leave
her teenage son alone, you know, stop beating him. But
the judge said that she probably was alert for another
ten or fifteen minutes before she.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Out from lingering.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
Yeah, from the stab wounds to her heart and lung.
Is that an accurate assessment by the judge.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
Yeah, I think that it probably is. I mean, the
judge just had to pull that out of the air.
That testimony would be directly or that from an evidentiary standpoint,
those statements about her existence there that the root of
that that comes from the forensic pathologists because they're interpreting
(38:30):
these injuries that you're seeing, you know, demonstrate here and
listen to this now the judge, judge, it's amazing what
judges have to do, okay, because they see things like
back in chambers and pre trial that we don't ever see,
like all of the images. Okay, there's certain things that
will be excluded because they're too prejudicial, okay, and the
(38:53):
judge has to rule on that, right, we're not going
to allow this in. But the judge would have seen this,
and if there was in a preliminary hearing, there's a
possibility the medical examiner would have testified at prelim hearing
as well. Judge, the jury would not have heard that.
Suffice to say, though that prosecutor in Orange County would
(39:14):
have in fact laid this out. They would have had
a very definitive timeline about what he had done. Because listen,
when they're doing this stave, you have to understand relative
to a death penalty case, and this would have had
to have been qualified prior to as a death penalty case.
(39:35):
There are all these boxes that have to be ticked
along the way, and it's much more detailed, I think
to a great degree. They're going to really take their
time and they're going to lay out this narrative because
what does prosecution have to do to the judge. They
have to justify to the jury and the judge that
this event, this homicide, meets the cri materia to put
(40:02):
this individual on death row and to execute them. And
guess what, they convinced the court that that was case,
and the judge had seen this. I'm glad you brought
this up because even the judge is aware of it.
The judge is probably sitting there shaking his head saying,
Lord in Heaven, what have you? What have you done?
You know, yeah, you deserve to be on death row.
(40:23):
Because you know, when anytime there's a death penalty case,
automatically it's appealed, goes up to appeal, it jumps right
to that position is when you have a conviction, that
sentencing it's going to go to it's going to go
up on appeal. That's mandated, all right, And therein you know, look,
I you know, kudos to his attorneys. You know they've
(40:46):
kept him alive this long. But therein is the rub,
right because now they've got people that are writing articles
about how long he's been languishing in prison. Well, he's
been languishing in prison because his attorneys did such a
a stellar job at keeping him alive. Matter of fact,
(41:07):
they've gotten him to a point where he's he's you know,
he's over seventy years of age.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Now old Joe.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
Yeah, they're gonna put the needle to him. Well, I mean,
you know, it's not Karen Spencer's fault. You know, he
did this when he was thirty nine years old. You know. Uh,
there's a lot of things in life that we don't
want to be held accountable for, right, you know, on
and on and on and so the State of Florida,
(41:37):
Florida is you know, uh, they're going to move forward
with this, and I think you would you had stated
they've they've had a number of executions.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
This will be one, yeah, twenty twenty six. And you
know the thing is people are protesting, you know, saying
he's too old, and like, well, you know what if
they had executed him in a timely manner, he wouldn't
be seventy four years old, you.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
Know, right, yeah, you know it's you know, don't curse
the rain for falling. It's gonna fall, you know, I mean,
that's that's that's the nature of it. And so when
he goes into the death house, Dave there were I
was kind of I was struck by the fact that
(42:25):
now Florida has multiple options and if within I think
it's within thirty days, an inmate or an individual that
has been sentenced death, they can request that they still
be placed in the electric chair down in Florida. But
and of course that hasn't been utilized. They had a
(42:47):
couple of bad experiences with electrocutions in Florida years ago
and where and these stories just go on and on
and on relative to the electric chair. But now, from
what I understand and remember, you, and I actually did
this for our UH for one of our episodes here
(43:08):
in our home state of Alabama where we had the
first use of the nitrogen mask. Well, Florida, that's an
option now too. The nitrogen mask is an option, and
I have heard that firing squad is an option now.
So I don't know precisely how the order is going
(43:29):
to work. I can tell you that relative to what
will transpire with Spencer in the death house at at Florida,
is he's going to be administered a drug that will
(43:50):
essentially it's going to be he'll have an ivy in
and it's a sedative in at them a day. I
think his hou is pronounced and it's going to knock
him unconscious in the first few seconds. Then they're going
to recording him bromide they're going to give him and
(44:11):
it's going to be a neuro muscular blocking agent. It
kind of paralyzes the muscles at that point in time.
And then they'll give him potassium acetate and that's going
to cause cause cardiac arrest. So there's essentially three pushes
that take place, you know, and somebody is going to
have to you know, press the button to start that
(44:31):
to start those injections and you know kind of you know,
move him through that. Uh. I can tell you what
is not going to happen relative to Spenser is h
He's not going to have his face carved up with
a knife. He's not going to be beaten with a brick.
He's not going to have his face driven into the
side of a building. He's not going to have somebody
(44:53):
pull down his pants and make light of his genitalia.
You know that that's that's not going to happen to him.
That's not going to happen to him. And he's had
multiple Christmases, maybe spend them alone. I have no idea.
He's had multiple meals, he's had the ability to think
(45:14):
about life and think about what could have been. You know,
that has happened, but it didn't happen for Karen. Karen
had forty Christmases at Best Okay, and she got to
see her teenage son bore witness to him being beaten
(45:38):
to the point where this individual broke a rifle butt
over his head. She got to see that. Those were
her final memories. I wonder what Dusty's final memories will be.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is bodybags.
Quoddy bats with Joseph Scott More. One of the most
disappointing things in my life is to start something and
not follow through. It makes me feel horrible, you know,
(00:21):
particularly if I have some goal that's out there, you know,
in the ether that I can kind of visualize. And
you know, when you're in media, you think about things
all the time. You think about, you know, what what
could I do creatively? You know that draws people in
that they want to hear what I have to say
and all of that, and when it doesn't come to fruition,
(00:42):
I always look to myself and blame myself and say
I was lazy, okay, And you know, I think that
it's a burden that many of us bear. Today, we're
going to talk about a fellow who actually used that
(01:03):
term about finishing what he is starting, and he used
it to great effect because in the end, his goal
is long term goal apparently, as stated by him, was
to murder his wife, and he succeeded. And since he
(01:29):
murdered his wife, he has had a place on death
row in the state of Florida, and his case is
in the news as we speak because he's facing down
something that he finished many years ago relative to the
person that he said he loved, she died at his hands.
(01:52):
Now there's a strong possibility that he is going to
die at the hands of the state of Florida. I'm
Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is body backs, David. I
think to say that you and I are driven is
(02:14):
an understatement where I view myself as an overachiever. I
wasn't given a lot of really good sense along the way,
a lot of great advice. I kind of learned through
failure a lot, but I just I kept on going.
(02:34):
I was not gonna sit in a mudhole in south
Road and you know kind of you know, just woe
is me. I was gonna get up and I was
gonna sult her on and I see you, know you
and I. Maybe it's unfair, but I see you and
I is on, you know, parallel paths in life. And
we are finishers, aren't we.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
The fact that you're getting all this tied into finish
what you started in one of the most despicable crimes
I've ever heard of in my life. Joe, It's pretty amazing.
It shows you the brilliance of Joseph Scott Morgan. Friends
right off the bat because Dusty ray Spencer, that's the
guy's name, Dusty Ray Spencer, thirty nine years old at
(03:15):
the time, killed his wife Karen, but he warned her. Okay,
this is a domestic violence show, and if that triggers
you in any way, you need to go ahead and
consider that's what we're going to be talking about. We're
going to be talking about a married couple who the
husband kills the wife and didn't happen the first time
(03:40):
that he bought that he beat her. Did happen the
second time he beat her. It took time, but the
whole idea that he was going to finish what he
started was recorded by a jailhouse phone. That's the part
about this Joe that shocks me as much as anything else,
because criminals know they're being recorded. I mean they're told
(04:03):
before they get on the phone to talk to somebody.
You're sitting in the county jail, you know, you're told
it's being recorded. People are going to listen, right, Yeah,
and they still say things, Yeah they do.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
You know, what is it? What's the old saying mouth
in motion before brain and gear or mind and gear.
I think some some are some are driven by some
are driven by boredom to do that. I think some
are driven by the fact that they're low IQ right,
(04:36):
and they don't have the ability to understand that there
are certain little, you know, parameters you have to exist
in they're compelled to do that. But I would like
to say that this episode today is is not about
Dusty Ray Spencer, though he will be mentioned along the way.
(04:59):
This is about care and Spencer because this is bodybags
and we we like to talk and remember the dead
and understand how their lives ended. And it's a real commentary,
isn't it. Right now, across the country there are people
(05:20):
that are protesting, making their voices heard about, you know,
the execution of Dusty Ray Spencer. Where were those people?
And you know, in nineteen ninety two, you know, when
(05:42):
Karen's life was brutally ended, were they out there saying
we're not going to stand for this anymore, that domestic
abuse is wrong. Where were they at that point in time?
Because I'll say, you know, Kieren's life, did it in
fact matter and it still matters to this day because
(06:05):
she exited this life at the hands of a bully
and a brute Joe.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
You know, a lot of the reason people are talking
about the execution of Dusty Ray Spencer is because he's
seventy four years old, and he will be the oldest
person executed in Florida. To give you a heads up,
we are recording this before his execution. By the time
you watch this, unless something happens, he'll be he'll be dead.
(06:35):
So the positively the idea, Joe, that people are all
about Dusty ray Spencer because of his age. Think about
this for just a minute. When Dusty Ray Spencer murdered
his wife, he was thirty nine years old. She was forty.
He was thirty nine. He was forty years old when
(06:58):
he was sentenced to death. Joe, he wasn't seventy four.
He's not an old guy who in a panic defending himself,
attacked somebody and they died. He was sentenced to death
in nineteen ninety two, and they're just now getting around
to carrying out that sentence. Now. I don't want to
(07:23):
hear about it. He's too old to put to death.
I think that waiting this long to carry out a
sentence is tenemount to terrorism. You know. I think you
could probably argue that you're sitting on death row come on, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
I think one of the interesting things about this case is,
and we're going to get into this, is the fact
that the Karen's teenage son witness these events. As a
matter of fact, Dave, he's the unfortunate. He did not
die at the hands of this person because of what
(08:02):
he present. He's just a kid. You know what has happened,
you know, you know, if you want to, if you
want to put on this show about chronology here relative
to you know, this fellow's age as he's you know,
he's he's staring down the death chamber. You know, I
(08:23):
go to you know, the promise that Karen's life held
at that moment in time, the promise that her son's
life held at that point in time all these years ago.
You know, when he's trying to the son is literally
trying to interdict the situation. I couldn't. I don't know
that I would have been that brave, you know, to
(08:44):
do what this kid did. And now he lives with this,
you know, in his mind, or has had to live
with it throughout his life relative to what he saw
his mama go through. And then you know, all of
the promise that you know, I think and again, I'm
going to wax sentimental here, but you know, I think
about Karen Kieren probably had thoughts when she was forty
(09:07):
years old. She's got a teenage son. She's thinking, Wow,
wouldn't be great to have grand baby someday, to get
to hold them, to get to have them sit on
my knee, for me to take them the store and
bomb stuff and make their favorite foods. What's that going
to be like? She never got to realize that day.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
No. And the thing is, Joe, when we look at
these the cases of domestic violence, they impact an entire family,
not just the person who is the victim of the
domestic violence. And you mentioned Karen's son. Now, Karen Son
was not somebody who witnessed things from afar. No, there
(09:48):
were three separate incidentss that we have to get into
when it comes to Dusty Ray Spencer and Karen and
his wife Karen. But you know what, friends, Just to
give you an idea, they together owned a painting business
and their marriage had been escalating. In the fall of
(10:10):
nineteen ninety one. It had gone from arguments to I'm
going to assume here, because I think it's a fair assumption, Joe,
that the arguments got more and more volatile, to the
point where physical actions were being taken well before Dusty
(10:34):
ray Spencer was ever put in jail after the first
physical attack, when he was arrested for assaulting Karen. I
believe that because I've never seen I've never seen a
relationship go from zero to one hundred overnight. There's usually
a progression, you know, And I believe that's what took
(10:54):
place here. And you mentioned the teenage son. He actually
was physically involved in trying to what was taking place.
But just so you know, Karen and Dusty ray Spencer
were married, they were living in the same house, and
they were partners in a painting business. So there was
(11:15):
a lot going on in this family.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Yeah, And it is a incredible dynamic when you think
about it, and you know, who knows why. People at
the end of the day will take the life of
someone that they have pledged themselves to and said at
one point in time that I love you and I'm
going to be with you for the rest of your life,
and sickness and in health, I'm going to take care
(11:39):
of you, and you're going to take care of me.
It's really hard to look back and understand how the
wheels fell off. But I think that we have a
few clues along the way, and some of it leads
back to money, some of it leads back to frustration
over that said money and maybe a life that they
were living that was just completely incompatible with joy and love.
(12:06):
H M, Brother Dave. We've we know that this tragedy
that unfolded down in Florida all those years ago has
has sent ripples, you know, through time relative to Karen's family,
(12:28):
Uh and uh you know, and and certainly the people
down in that region that were aware probably of how
dastardly uh this these crimes were committed against her and
and against her son, and there is no payoff in
the end, you know. And and you know, now now
(12:52):
we've come to that, to that point in time where
maybe he is going to have to answer. But I
think it's important for us to reflect a little bit
and talk about because this was not a one off event,
as you pointed out. Rather, this is something that escalated
relative to these attacks on Kieren.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Well, start with December tenth, nineteen ninety one, Okay, because
that's the event that started everything that transpired over the
next six weeks Okay, December tenth, nineteen ninety one, Orange County, Florida,
and this is where Dusty Ray Spencer attacks his wife Karen.
(13:34):
The argument that began the fight allegedly began over Dusty
Spencer being mad that Karen withdrew money from their business,
their painting business. I think he was just looking for
a reason. Again, based on what we know now, there
were a lot of arguments taking place and they were escalating,
(13:57):
and this one escalated to a physical comfrontation where Dusty
Ray Spencer attacked his wife Karen her teenage son home
at the time. I want you to be aware of
what took place in Joe. You're going to have to explain,
you know, to us, so that I understand when they
(14:17):
were when the argument escalated a physical violence. Spencer was
choking Karen, and he had one hand over Karen's nose
and mouth and choked her with the other in a
fit of rage. So he's covering the nose and mouth
(14:39):
and choking. That's a pretty dastardly way to try to
take somebody out. I mean, it seems to me that
if you're doing that, that you're trying to suffocate the
life out of the person you're fighting with. Is that
an incorrect assumption or is this a tickle fighte?
Speaker 1 (15:00):
No, No, you're you're right on target. And here's the thing
about it is, Dave, and I want everybody to look here.
He was looking her in the eyes while he was
doing it, okay. And if you've ever seen somebody struggle
for breath, and maybe you've helped people that were struggling
for breath during the course of your life, it's it
(15:23):
is one of those things where it's just you're compelled
to show mercy, you're compelled to provide assistance to somebody.
But when the person that you are married to is
looking in your eyes with rage hate, maybe that that
(15:45):
just kind of blackness in their eyes and they have
you see clamped, because that's what happened. He would have
had to have see clamped her with one hand, and
that means grabbing hold of her throat, okay, and you
know this area right in here and compressing it with
his hand, squeezing and oh, by the bye, let's take
(16:06):
the other hand and place it over the nose in
the mouth in order to prevent her from the uptack
up oxygen.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
This seems like a really planned attack Joe from actually
putting her in that position. It seems to me that
Spencer knew what he was doing by choking her with
one hand and covering her nose and mouth with the other.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Yeah, And you really wonder at this moment, Tom, had
it escalated to the level of what would be referred
to as a homicidal rage. Because with these domestic violence
events like this, there is this kind of creeping, sinister
thing that occurs. I gotta say this. I don't think
(16:49):
you know what's the old you know Charlie Ridge song
about we don't know what goes on behind closing. Yeah,
well that's got two set. Coin has two sides to it,
all right. I don't think Charlie was singing about domestic
violence when he was talking about that. But I will
tell you this, this thing doesn't happen in a vacuum.
He felt comfortable enough at that moment in time because
(17:12):
I think that he had probably been bullying her around,
knocking her about, threatening her, and like many domestic abuse victims,
many of them are are seeking seeking to please that individual.
It's a horrible cycle to be in because they think
if I will just say this, or if I'll do this,
(17:33):
it's going to smooth things over and eventually, you know,
they'll see the light. I don't know that that ever
actually happens. Okay, I'm a cynic. I don't believe that
because I think that when you're a monster, you're a monster.
And if you if you can do that to the
person that you allegedly love the most in this world,
(17:58):
it's a it's a it's a tough thing I think
for an individual to pull himself back from from the edge,
you know.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
And and and and be be loving and tender moving forward,
because this is and this is a progression that takes place.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
We see this kind of played out in this in
this with Kiaren with Kieren Spencer.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Day, Well, all right, this this is where Joe started
the show about finishing what you start. Okay, December tenth,
Spencer attacks his wife and he gets arrested. Okay, the
police arrests Dusty Ray Spencer, lock him down and based
(18:44):
on what happened, I mean, he got arrested for domestic violence.
But remember he's trying to kill her. Now he's in jail.
The very next day, Joe, the very next day, December eleventh,
nineteen ninety one, Dusty ray Spencer calls his wife Karen.
He's in jail. She's at home, still trying to recover
from nearly dying at his hands, and he tells her,
(19:07):
when I get out, I'm gonna finish where I started. Now, Joe,
everything's recorded. Everything is recorded, so officials new. But you
know what the judge said. Dusty ray Spence has said
his bail five thousand dollars five thousand dollars was about
(19:31):
ten percent five hundred bucks. Okay, that's what he had
to come up with to get bailed out of jail. Now,
I have been through a lot of paperwork trying to
find out, Hey, what day did Dusty ray Spencer get
bailed out and who did it? Still haven't found it,
but it's out there.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Yeah, I'm going to be I'm gonna be a smart
ass for a second and just go ahead and just say, gee,
I wonder if he went into his business account for that.
That's what I'm thinking about here. Body that wants to
put angel wings on this guy, you know, Yeah, I
wonder where he got that money from again, you know,
(20:08):
and I still think, you know, with with Karen as
his spouse, that's your next of Ken. That's the way
we look at it in death investigation, right, that's your
immediate next kin. Doesn't matter if you're legally separated, that's
still your your next kin. But they were domiciled together,
they were living together. Who bailed him out? He called
a buddy up, you know, I'll catch you back up.
(20:30):
I'll take some money out of my business account. Here,
I'll give you back the five hundred dollars. Or did
he call Karen up after he threatened her? And again
going into the cycle of you know, maybe maybe if
I bail him out, you know, he'll be kind to me,
you know, because she's still she's still thinking, you know
(20:51):
that she's with somebody that's capable of being kind, even
though he put his hands on her throat and put
his hands over her nose and her mouth and was
trying to deprive her of her life, you know. And
again I think that that's a salient point. I'd like
to know what the origin of those monies were. Who
(21:12):
went to the bondsman and said, we're going to put
this money up. We're going to get him out, and
he's going to be walking walking the streets.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
And you know what, Joe, regardless of who or what
his bill was. At five thousand dollars, again, you got
to come up with ten percent. That's just not very
much money for somebody who attempted to kill his own wife.
But you know, as we have looked at domestic violence situations,
oftentimes the attacker, the aggressor, has means of gaslighting the
(21:40):
victim and make him feel like it's their fault. You know, Karen,
it's your fault. I'm sorry. I lost it. You know
that's not me. I don't know what came over me.
I just really lost it. And now that I've had
time to think about it, I'm just mortified by my
own actions. I am so sorry. You know that's not me.
You know, that is not who I am. And I
think the stress of the business really and you know,
(22:03):
come on, Karen, you know you did take a little
bit of money out and look, we can get through this.
And Karen, it's Christmas, Okay, it's Christmas time, she said
out loud. I want my husband home for Christmas. So
he got bailed out a five thousand dollars bailed. The
judge was aware of the threats. He was aware of
what put Dusty Ray Spencer in jail and set that
(22:25):
bond low enough that he could get out for the holidays.
Andy did. But Joe, here's the catch, here's the kick,
here's the page two. During the Christmas holidays, Karen had
her fill of Dusty ray Spencer. She had her fill
of her husband. Apparently things weren't any better, and she
(22:46):
told him, you got to get out, you gotta leave.
On January fourth, nineteen ninety two, Okay, we're talking, twenty
five days after the first attack, a second attack occurs,
this time the January fourth, nineteen ninety two attack. Her
teenage Her teenage son wakes up to the sound of
(23:11):
his mother being beaten by Dusty ray Spencer, twenty five
days after he tried to suffocate her. This time he
the son finds Dusty on top of his mother. Okay,
this teenage boy finds Dusty ray Spencer on top of Karen.
(23:35):
And Dusty is using an iron. You know, an iron,
the heavy iron with a handle on it, the used
to get your shirts. He's beating Karen with the iron. Joe,
he is beating his wife with the iron. That's when
the sun intervened. He tries to get Dusty ray Spencer
(23:56):
off of Karen to stop. The beating is brisk. What
is Spence? As you do? He attacks the teenage boy
with the same iron. The beating that was going on
extended now to the teenage son and Joe between Karen
and her son. Thankfully the police were called Dusty Rays. Spencer,
(24:18):
being the coward that he is, took off running. He
lays his wife bloodied on the floor, her teenage son bloodied,
and Spencer takes off running.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Yeah, I don't guess at that moment, Tom, he was
very delusional of paranoid, right or seeing pink elephants. He
had enough, he had enough understanding in his mind that
he needed to put separation between his precious wife and
his step son and and the police to get away.
(24:49):
He had that instinct to survive at that moment, Tom.
It's not like he's delusional to the point where he
thinks that, you know, I don't know, little green men
from Mars are you know, are coming after him, or
that snakes are emerging from his wife's face and they're
out there to get him. He's oriented the time and
(25:10):
space at that moment in time and off he goes off,
he goes and Dave, you know when he beat her
using this, and this is a blunt force attack. We've talked.
I had another case a few years ago where I
had a guy that had beaten another fellow to death
in the middle of the street with actually an antique iron,
(25:32):
a kind that you had to set on like a
pot belly stuff to heat up. And the weird thing
about it, the interesting thing about it is not weird.
It's just kind of interesting from the forensic dynamics of
an iron is and most of us have one at home.
Maybe you have enough money to take your clothes to
the cleaners and say, here, press them. I'm not going
to put up with an ironing boarder or iron in
(25:53):
my house. I've got one right over here as a
matter of fact. But it's got these interesting little edges
on it, and you know, comes to point as the top,
and so you get these you get these interesting little
blunt forced lacerations relative to this iron, and it's got
this this handle on it. Okay, just think about that
(26:14):
just for a second. The way you can lift and
you can hold, and you can wield this thing. This
thing is almost if it didn't have a cord attached
to it, you could use this thing as like a
weapon of war. Right, you think about the shapes of
all of the weapons from medieval times, and you know
on the end of a large stick, if you had
(26:35):
one that was shaped like an iron, would be highly effective, right,
because of all these interesting little edges. Well, day, she
wound up as a result of being attacked by this guy.
She had to have eleven stitches in her face because again,
you know, he's going after the head. He's going you
know that that area here, this is what her identity is, right,
(26:58):
We all identify with our face visually. I know that's
a rather obvious statement. But to try to destroy and disfigure,
disfigure someone is the ultimate in I think, in disrespect
because you're going to try to take away their personages
as as their personage as a result of disfigurement. And
(27:21):
that's kind of a theme that runs through through this case.
Date brother Dave, he spencer actually bolts from the second event,
(27:42):
and he's on the radar of the police at this
point in time. You would think that somebody would want
to try to put a continue to put as much
distance between themselves and in this event, but when you're fueled,
(28:03):
when you're a bully, and you're fueled by hatred and
anger and discord and all those sorts of things. It's
like flawed, honey, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
You know this is one of those things, Joe, that
going back to where you started the show about finish
what you started. Yeah, I think that was really what
was driving Dusty race Springfield. Because you go to the
December tenth attack that is stopped and ends with Dusty
ray Spencer in jail. His first comment to his wife
(28:36):
on the phone the next day is when I get out,
I'm going to finish what I started. So everything he
does after that is to finish what he started, whether
it means sweet talking her to get him to get
bailed out of jail or whatever. But after the second attack, Joe,
I think it was well known in the community what
had happened. By this time. People know that this man
(28:58):
was given a five thousand dollar bail to get out
of jail and he tried to kill his wife second time.
But Joe, when two weeks later, fourteen days, okay, go by,
it's January eighteenth, nineteen ninety two. The part that bothers
me about all of this is that we didn't understand
(29:22):
domestic violence back in the early nineties like we do now.
Maybe we didn't talk about it as much as we
do now.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
We certainly didn't talk about it as much.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
And so I think that this case so much was wrong.
But January eighteenth, when Karen's son, Karen's teenage son, arrives
home and he hears his mom being beaten in the backyard.
(29:50):
This teenage son, who already has witnessed the attacks, he's
seen the aftermath, the disfiguring of his own mother. And
here we we are, January eighteenth, nineteen ninety two, and
Dusty ray Spencer is at it again. This time he
has Karen in the backyard, and I want to make
(30:12):
sure I get this straight, Joe. This time Dusty has
a knife. He is striking Karen in the face with
a brick. He is mashing her head on the cement
on the concrete. He is stabbing her with the knife
in her chest and he is slashing her face with
(30:35):
the knife. Karen's teenage son sees what's going on and
grabs a gun. He grabs a gun and tries to
shoot Dusty ray Spencer, but the gun misfires. Yep Spencer
takes it and beats him with the gun. The gun
stock broke Joe during this during this fight. So at
(30:58):
this point, Karen is on the ground, mortally wounded, and
she's begging Dusty ray Spencer to not hurt her son.
Stop leave Malone. Stop. That's her dying breath, Joe. It
boggles my mind that, based on the three attempts on
(31:20):
her life, the three attacks on Karen and her teenage son,
that today we have people that want to not carry
out the sentence on Dusty ray Spencer because he's old.
He should have been taken out right after the verdict.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yeah, and I guarantee you I think that probably they
are enough inmates in prison to have witnessed their mamas
be subjected to this kind of behavior. The only reason
he's still with us is because he is a quested
on death row. I think that he had been in
Jen Popp in a different story.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Okay, can you go over the autopsy fresh show becase?
I when I went through the list of the injuries,
you know, yeah, they're vague, they're very you know, multiple stabbings,
multiple slashings, blunt for strama. Can you break that down
and explain what Dusty ray Spencer inflicted on his wife, Karen.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Yeah, I think that's very important. And one more thing,
and this is one if we don't have enough already,
one of the really gruesome things about this and so
if it couldn't get any more disrespectful as she is
laying on the ground, and I think this information comes
(32:37):
from the sun. This perpetrator raised this poor woman's dressed
dress up like this and was pointing at her and
making lewd remarks, obscene remarks about her and laughing at her.
(32:58):
Just factor that into your thinking just for a second.
It's not enough, it's not enough to do what you've
just done. Now here comes the verbal assault. That's why
you know. I think that this is evidence in and
of itself that this that this had gone on for
some time. Brother, this is not something new under the sun. Okay,
(33:21):
But when you couple that with fact, and remember how
I said that there's a theme that's running here. Remember
how he attacked with the iron early on? And where
you know, where's the placement of this attack, Well, it's
here where people identify us, right, And I guarantee you,
at some point in time in their past, he looked
(33:44):
at her and beheld her as a beautiful creature.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Okay, she was a beautiful woman, Joe.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Yeah, just I've looked at my wife that way. You know,
I still do. I look at her and I say,
how how did I want up with her? You know,
some mug like this, and I you know, at some
point time he saw her as a beautiful one. But
yet now at this point he's seeking to destroy her. Dave,
(34:13):
there's one bit to this. You talked about grinding into
the concrete or pounding her face like this. One report
has him literally grabbing her by the back of her
head and driving her face into the brick wall of
the house. So that means she's upright at one point
in time, and he's smashing her face in there. So
(34:36):
she's you know, noses probably broken, eyes are probably swollen.
Then he's wielding a knife, and yeah, he did in
fact stab her multiple times. I think it was five times,
and she's got I think there were two perforating stab
wounds into her heart. Bro But he takes this knife
and he gouges her face with it, and not just that,
(34:59):
he it takes time to slash her face, which is
you know, again, this is an attempt to destroy her beauty,
to destroy her identity of who she is as a
person for years and years. She's forty years old when
she dies, Dave, for years and years from the first
time she was a little old thing and she found
(35:20):
out what a mirror was. She walked up that mirror
and looked at herself, and that's how she always identified herself, right,
And now you know this, as he's seeing her, he's
going to completely disrupt that. Nobody in the world is
going to want you. As a matter of fact, even
in death, they're not going to be able to have
an open casket for you. And you know, she's already
(35:41):
got this other insult on her face where she's been
popped in the face with this iron and disfigured her
in that manner, and other injuries associated with that initial attack.
And you know autopsy, David, this is the fascinating thing
here forensically where you're trying to and listen, this thinge
(36:05):
goes to trial, right, so when the pathologist is on
the stand, there's been so much trauma here now going
back and we think about the pathologist is going to
have to say, okay, if you look at you know,
at injuries enumerated as four five and six. Okay, uh,
(36:27):
these are more distant in the in the healing process,
or they're they're further down the line. So we see
resolved that we talked about the idea of this, these insults,
these these blunt force impact sites, the cut on her
face that require the stitches, which is a laceration. If
(36:48):
she's got any kind of contusion, it's probably has resolved,
but deep tissue dissection is going to reveal that there's
still something there, and then you have to marry that
up with what's current and what happened, you know, in
that anti mortem, perry mortem and post mortem state with
her body, because we lord only knows what he actually
(37:11):
did to her body after she was actually deceased, so
there might be post mortem injuries to her because there
was not a shut off valve with him. You know
what you think about this?
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Can I ask you something about the judge made a
comment during the sentencing that Karen through all of this
rage induced violence that happened to her. The judge said
that she was conscious, she was awake an alert during
(37:44):
all of it, to the point where you know, as
I mentioned, she was telling Dusty Ray Spencer to leave
her teenage son alone, you know, stop beating him. But
the judge said that she probably was alert for another
ten or fifteen minutes before she.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Out from lingering.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
Yeah, from the stab wounds to her heart and lung.
Is that an accurate assessment by the judge.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
Yeah, I think that it probably is. I mean, the
judge just had to pull that out of the air.
That testimony would be directly or that from an evidentiary standpoint,
those statements about her existence there that the root of
that that comes from the forensic pathologists because they're interpreting
(38:30):
these injuries that you're seeing, you know, demonstrate here and
listen to this now the judge, judge, it's amazing what
judges have to do, okay, because they see things like
back in chambers and pre trial that we don't ever see,
like all of the images. Okay, there's certain things that
will be excluded because they're too prejudicial, okay, and the
(38:53):
judge has to rule on that, right, we're not going
to allow this in. But the judge would have seen this,
and if there was in a preliminary hearing, there's a
possibility the medical examiner would have testified at prelim hearing
as well. Judge, the jury would not have heard that.
Suffice to say, though that prosecutor in Orange County would
(39:14):
have in fact laid this out. They would have had
a very definitive timeline about what he had done. Because listen,
when they're doing this stave, you have to understand relative
to a death penalty case, and this would have had
to have been qualified prior to as a death penalty case.
(39:35):
There are all these boxes that have to be ticked
along the way, and it's much more detailed, I think
to a great degree. They're going to really take their
time and they're going to lay out this narrative because
what does prosecution have to do to the judge. They
have to justify to the jury and the judge that
this event, this homicide, meets the cri materia to put
(40:02):
this individual on death row and to execute them. And
guess what, they convinced the court that that was case,
and the judge had seen this. I'm glad you brought
this up because even the judge is aware of it.
The judge is probably sitting there shaking his head saying,
Lord in Heaven, what have you? What have you done?
You know, yeah, you deserve to be on death row.
(40:23):
Because you know, when anytime there's a death penalty case,
automatically it's appealed, goes up to appeal, it jumps right
to that position is when you have a conviction, that
sentencing it's going to go to it's going to go
up on appeal. That's mandated, all right, And therein you know, look,
I you know, kudos to his attorneys. You know they've
(40:46):
kept him alive this long. But therein is the rub,
right because now they've got people that are writing articles
about how long he's been languishing in prison. Well, he's
been languishing in prison because his attorneys did such a
a stellar job at keeping him alive. Matter of fact,
(41:07):
they've gotten him to a point where he's he's you know,
he's over seventy years of age.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Now old Joe.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
Yeah, they're gonna put the needle to him. Well, I mean,
you know, it's not Karen Spencer's fault. You know, he
did this when he was thirty nine years old. You know. Uh,
there's a lot of things in life that we don't
want to be held accountable for, right, you know, on
and on and on and so the State of Florida,
(41:37):
Florida is you know, uh, they're going to move forward
with this, and I think you would you had stated
they've they've had a number of executions.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
This will be one, yeah, twenty twenty six. And you
know the thing is people are protesting, you know, saying
he's too old, and like, well, you know what if
they had executed him in a timely manner, he wouldn't
be seventy four years old, you.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
Know, right, yeah, you know it's you know, don't curse
the rain for falling. It's gonna fall, you know, I mean,
that's that's that's the nature of it. And so when
he goes into the death house, Dave there were I
was kind of I was struck by the fact that
(42:25):
now Florida has multiple options and if within I think
it's within thirty days, an inmate or an individual that
has been sentenced death, they can request that they still
be placed in the electric chair down in Florida. But
and of course that hasn't been utilized. They had a
(42:47):
couple of bad experiences with electrocutions in Florida years ago
and where and these stories just go on and on
and on relative to the electric chair. But now, from
what I understand and remember, you, and I actually did
this for our UH for one of our episodes here
(43:08):
in our home state of Alabama where we had the
first use of the nitrogen mask. Well, Florida, that's an
option now too. The nitrogen mask is an option, and
I have heard that firing squad is an option now.
So I don't know precisely how the order is going
(43:29):
to work. I can tell you that relative to what
will transpire with Spencer in the death house at at Florida,
is he's going to be administered a drug that will
(43:50):
essentially it's going to be he'll have an ivy in
and it's a sedative in at them a day. I
think his hou is pronounced and it's going to knock
him unconscious in the first few seconds. Then they're going
to recording him bromide they're going to give him and
(44:11):
it's going to be a neuro muscular blocking agent. It
kind of paralyzes the muscles at that point in time.
And then they'll give him potassium acetate and that's going
to cause cause cardiac arrest. So there's essentially three pushes
that take place, you know, and somebody is going to
have to you know, press the button to start that
(44:31):
to start those injections and you know kind of you know,
move him through that. Uh. I can tell you what
is not going to happen relative to Spenser is h
He's not going to have his face carved up with
a knife. He's not going to be beaten with a brick.
He's not going to have his face driven into the
side of a building. He's not going to have somebody
(44:53):
pull down his pants and make light of his genitalia.
You know that that's that's not going to happen to him.
That's not going to happen to him. And he's had
multiple Christmases, maybe spend them alone. I have no idea.
He's had multiple meals, he's had the ability to think
(45:14):
about life and think about what could have been. You know,
that has happened, but it didn't happen for Karen. Karen
had forty Christmases at Best Okay, and she got to
see her teenage son bore witness to him being beaten
(45:38):
to the point where this individual broke a rifle butt
over his head. She got to see that. Those were
her final memories. I wonder what Dusty's final memories will be.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is bodybags.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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