transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:01] Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. How deep down the rabbit hole do you want to go? Well, we started this journey together, and guys, we're going to finish it together. I'm back with you again, and the reason I'm back with you again is the fact that I now have before me Celeste Rivas' autopsy report from the LA County Coroner's Office. And it's quite revealing. Let's go over it together, as we always do, examine the evidence or what they have identified as evidence. And let's think about maybe what it means and what the future holds. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Well, Brother Dave, we have in, on the screens before us, we have, have all that remains, essentially, of this child's, child's life, you know, or at least what remained of her at the time when they did the examination. And again, I want to emphasize off the top, and we're going to continue to refer to Celeste as a child, because she was a child that at least to our way of thinking and what we're hearing at this point, who has been raped for probably months, and because you can't describe it any other way with a child.

Speaker 2:
[01:55] We know, Joe, the police. At the very beginning of, well, this week, when we got the information about Celeste Rivas' death and we started finding out more in the charging documents on David Anthony Burke. There were certain dates that were put out there, and one of those was September 7th, 2023. That's the date. The investigation says they know that David Anthony Burke began his sexual assaults of the child who was only 13 that day of Celeste Rivas. Now, the reason I say on that day was September 7th, 2023, Celeste turned 13 years old. I have been saying now for six months, five months, I believe their relationship began, no, that he began luring, grooming, however you want to call it, when she was 12. And I believe one of her teachers in school that actually talked to his class after she was first found to be the girl in the car and all that, said she was in my class. She was like in sixth grade and she was going to Hollywood to see Burke. So we know this is not a sexual relationship because it's not possible for an adult to have a sexual relationship with a child. You can rape a child, you can sexually assault a child, but you cannot have a sexual relationship with a child. So now that we have that out of the way, Joe, there are so many answers in the autopsy report that was released today. But there are a number of questions and I've got to ask you a couple real quick. One, the dates in this case mean a lot. As I mentioned, September 7th, 2023, that's the date they charge, you know, that Burke first had a sexual assault on Celeste. But we know that her body was recovered, found on September the 8th in the frunk of the Tesla. And that is the day that you mentioned, as we've covered this, that that's the day that they now call it her death day. That's but that's not the day she died. It's just the day they found her dead and declared her dead. But it took until December the 9th to determine a cause and manner of death. And I'm curious as to based on her remains and how they were, is that an expected normal amount of time to find out what happened? Now, we knew this was done. It was just kept under wraps. The police department wanted to under wraps while they were finishing up their investigation. And now I understand a lot of that reasoning because they've got 40 terabytes of information, Joe, that they've been breaking down. But is that two months long period of time, is that a reasonable amount of time to come up with these answers on the autopsy?

Speaker 1:
[04:54] Okay, if we're talking about a normal case, and when I say normal case, what I'm referring to are human remains that are in fact intact. And I know intact means a body in total, perhaps a non-dismembered body. I'm just talking about somebody that is relatively fresh dead. I'd say that that's a protracted period of time. All right. Now, you get the standard party line where they'll say, well, it's pending toxicology, or classically, they'll say it's pending further testing. All right. But considering what I'm reading in the Emmys report, because it's not just an autopsy report, there's an associated investigative report, there's also a toxicology report, you know, there's, it's a packet, really. I don't think it's unreasonable, because you've, well, to put it frankly, you've got a damn mess on your hands. These are never easy to assess, and any Emmy investigator that's worked for any period of time, you're going to catch these kind of cases where, and it's a real sinking feeling. I have to say, when you go out to a scene, and you know that there is some type of container, conveyance or whatever it is in front of you, because you can smell it, right? When you get there, it's the opening. It's the opening and the appreciation of what's in front of you, where you're beginning to, because when you open up a container of any kind and you have human remains in there, and you can't make heads or tails of anything that you're looking at, you know that you've got a long road ahead of you, and you know, Dave, that probably, out of all the cases you're going to handle, you have to take the most care with this, because everything, and I mean everything, is so fragile. Can I tell you one of the things that really jumped out at me to begin with? And this has nothing to do with the autopsy itself, or the report of the autopsy, but there is like a, kind of an addenda, like an autopsy, like an investigative report. And it is, it's actually an investigator's narrative. What really kind of stood out to me with this investigative narrative was the fact that they talk about opening the trunk. And when they do, you know, Dave, we've had questions, right? We've had questions. Remember, they use the term cadaver bag.

Speaker 2:
[07:47] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[07:48] This report does not identify this as a cadaver bag. This report is being generated by someone who deals with body bags every single day of their life. This is an ME investigator in Los Angeles. And trust me, they have many body bags that they deal with and that they see. They identify this as a large black body bag. We had talked about, I remember when that first info dump came up. Remember when they were using cadaver bag?

Speaker 2:
[08:22] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[08:23] I didn't really understand that vernacular. I don't know where they got that from. But the ME Investigator, who is in fact the authority here, says that they actually had a large black body bag with handles. Dave, that describes to a T the type of bag that every medical examiner corner uses across country. Now, there will be some that are white, okay? I've even seen yellow ones. Standard is generally black. So what do I mean by that? What I'm saying is that this individual that placed these remains in the bag and is in the car, spent some time going out and acquiring this specific type of bag. And this is not something that you would do on the spur of the moment, okay? This goes to preparation. And one of the big hallmarks, thus far over the last few days, last few hours that we're hearing about are things that deal with, they have a premeditative context to them, okay? You know what I'm saying? And when last we were together, my friend, you used the word lured. And again, you think about luring, you think about preparation, what are you going to do? You think about a space to contain a remain, a human remain. Maybe you're thinking about buying burn boxes and chainsaws and all these sorts of things. Oh, by the way, are you also thinking about body bags? Do you have one in your back pocket? Is this something that you got in the back of the closet? Hang on, let me run out here to the outbuilding on my property and retrieve a body bag.

Speaker 2:
[10:09] In the Hollywood Hills.

Speaker 1:
[10:12] Listen, that's not something, that's not something that you commonly have. Dave, I have got, at Jack State, I've got a cadaver lab. I don't have a stack of body bags. Matter of fact, I don't have a single one. The bodies that I receive come in a body bag from the place where we obtain the bodies from. The anatomical specimens, I don't have any body bags. I'd say I'm pretty damn qualified to have a body bag. So you're saying to me that the car that is owned by Berk and has been kept on that property, do Teslas come equipped with body bags? I guess that's one of the questions I might have. I'm being flippant here, but you can kind of see a pattern here. This is not something that, and Dave, you and I have covered, I know we go on and on, or I do at least, about dismemberments, right? Do you recall in all of these cases that you and I have covered on Body Bags where an assailant had a body bag?

Speaker 2:
[11:22] I looked it up, Joe, just because I wondered the same thing, just because we have covered. We even did a show at CrimeCon Orlando about dismemberment. I can't find one. We've had tubs and we've had plenty of other things, but we have yet to have an actual body bag.

Speaker 1:
[11:39] Trash bags?

Speaker 2:
[11:40] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[11:41] There's a trash bag involved in this as well. But no, we have a body bag here. I'm sorry, I went off on a tangent here, but I think that it's salient. This is the other thing that I know, continuing on with this line. The bag was actually opened in situ, which is the fancy way of saying, and that's terms that we use in pathology. It can mean like an injury in place or an item like a weapon in place. This is in situ, which means the bag in place inside of the frunk, I hate using that word. I don't know why, it just rolls off the tongue poorly. When they open the bag, and the ME investigator that's writing this narrative makes a very specific point, because it's a detective that opens the bag, Dave, says that he partially unzipped the bag, okay? And when he partially unzipped the bag, he saw that there was a human torso, and also that he could see the back of the head. So right there, from that perspective, we get a sense of what position Celeste's body was in, in the trunk. So she's in a prone or a chest down position in this bag, in the back of the trunk. Now the other remains apparently were placed in an adjacent bag. They're there as well. And they would have had to have been retrieved. And I can tell you this, when these remains would have been retrieved, it would have been a soupy mess. And that's the only way I can really describe it. I think I had mentioned previously that there's this, the cells begin to digest themselves. So when they digest themselves, it becomes kind of a liquid pool. All right, if you have like a contained area, it will be a pool in the bottom of the bag. All right. Or in the bottom, if you have a body in a barrel, okay, it's all, the liquid is going to seek the lowest point of gravity and you're going to have one of the most disgusting substances known to man. Now, when they get the body back and the body is in fact conveyed from the scene to the ME's office, which...

Speaker 2:
[14:15] Hold on a minute, Joe. Let me stop you right there because you and I, at the time this was happening, we were talking about it because it was being covered and we were all over, what the heck? The car, the Tesla Y containing her body, we know the last time it was moved was July 31st, and it sat in that same spot until it was moved to the impound lot on September the 5th. That body would have been sitting there breaking down inside the bag. But you mentioned before, when that vehicle was moved and brought to the tow lot, that would have changed how it would have smelled and how that movement would have caused a change. That's why it wasn't unusual that three days in, they did smell something, whereas maybe before on the street, it wasn't smelled.

Speaker 1:
[15:16] Yeah, you're absolutely right because you're disrupting this. I mean, it just kind of goes, this is, you know, there's not something magical that happens with the dead, okay? It still occupies the physical universe that we all indwell. So if you have like, if you have something that is, and again, I'm not comparing this child's remains to household items, but what I'm saying is that if you have something that is, you think that it's rotten in your refrigerator, like, I don't know, an old roast or something like that, you catch a whiff of it, okay? You pick it up and you're going to take it outside and put it in your trash can, it begins to smell worse. Well, why is that? Well, you're jostling. You're jostling this item and it's moving around. So you have the smell that kind of begins to, and this is one of the questions I think people want an answer for, is that if this vehicle is being moved around on, you know, in this neighborhood, it's not going over, you know, large areas, all right? It's not bumping down these roads. You might be protected a little bit, but once that vehicle has been moved, I'm assuming it had been flat bedded as opposed to towed. I have no idea how it made my, you know, if my money is probably flat bedded, taken to this lot, you're going over all kinds of bumps. Well, you're going to dislodge some of this liquid. You'll be able to smell it. It'll permeate the environment. And so it's not surprising that once they dump this vehicle off, that somebody is walking by and now you've stirred this up. And so they catch a whiff of it. When they're catching a whiff of it, though, is the critical time as far as, you know, contacting someone. Because even the people, can you imagine some of the cars that roll into this lot from all over LA County? I mean, really, just take a second to think about some of the foulness they see all over this place. And this stands out, okay? This really stands out to whoever it is that's passing by this vehicle at that particular time. And they've probably smelled all manner of things with vehicles that have been abandoned. It caught their attention enough to the point where they need to call the authorities out there. I think my preference would have been that they'd not have removed her remains there. And had, you know, essentially taken the car intact with her remains in it, and conveyed said remains to the ME's office. The ME's office in California, in LA, you know, it has an entire forensic lab with it. We've got criminalists, by the way, there was actually a criminalist at the scene, which is a forensic scientist. They're beyond like just a crime scene tech. All right, these people have probably advanced degrees in forensic science. They're actually working the scene there. But, you know, I've always been a big fan of, if you have a body inside of a vehicle, that you convey the vehicle back to a controlled environment where you can do photography and all that sort of stuff. But the body was conveyed from there, it's removed from the truck, frunk, and then I still have hard time saying that, and then conveyed by the driver for the ME's office, ME slash coroner, back to the office there. And that was their decision. I mean, I've had to do that before too, and whatever reason they did it, they did it. Nothing you can do about it now. And that's because, again, back to that word in situ, I like to be able to see everything in a controlled environment where I have control over comings and goings. I don't want other people out there. I want to have it all protected in that environment. And that's the best protection, right? I mean, you got a case where you've got a closed trunk lid. The body's not going anywhere because you have control over, put it back on a flatbed, take it there. But such is life. So they're gonna take the body back to the ME's office. And they're faced with a real issue here because what they know is that once they open this bag, once they open the bag, the real work begins. Because if what I'm reading is correct, there is very little left. And what is left is going to have to play a big part in telling the tale of what actually happened. To Celeste. Let's step back just for a moment and really consider what the ME Investigator saw, what they beheld, if you will, when the examination is conducted relative to the body. The ME Investigator takes a look at the body and what they're actually making note of. First off, she's clothed, or what remains of her is clothed. She's wearing a tube top. She still has underwear. She's got leggings on. There are socks. And what they're saying is that at least they observed multiple holes in the front and the back of the tube top that she was wearing, that Celeste was wearing. And this is kind of ghastly. They make note of the fact that she is missing both arms above the elbows and both legs above the knees, okay? So, underneath the body bag, remember we talked about that additional trash bag, well, underneath the body bag itself is a trash bag. Inside of the trash bag, Celeste's arms, plural, and her legs are contained therein. And they're stating, just to kind of paint the picture here, that Celeste is in obviously an advanced state of decomposition. They talk about a very foul odor, there's discoloration. Discoloration is probably going to be a black to green color, which is normally what we see in advanced states of decomposition. The body, as I mentioned, has begun to liquefy, or has liquefied to a great degree, and the skin that is still intact, you have what's referred to as skin slippage. This is something that commonly occurs with decomposition. That means that the epidermis begins to peel off. It's detaching from the underlying skin. It's very delicate, comes loose very easily. As a matter of fact, as you're manipulating the body, you're holding it, it actually will come away. It will literally stick to your gloved hand. That's how delicate this is. That's what they're seeing just upon first blush. It's interesting that they talk about her left ring and pinky fingers both appear to have been mutilated and they couldn't find them at the scene at least. And she did, in fact, have a tattoo on the inside of her right index finger with the letters SHHH, which is shh, okay? Now, what we do know about that tattoo, and Dave, correct me if I'm wrong, is that Burke actually has a similar tattoo. Is that correct?

Speaker 2:
[23:32] Yep. We've got a picture that shows the two of them holding up their finger to show the shush tattoo.

Speaker 1:
[23:39] So, you know, you've got these two tattoos that these individuals have. The body still has the tattoo on it. And interestingly enough, I find this really fascinating, Dave. I really thought that they were going to go down the road of DNA identification with her remains. They didn't do that. They actually used radiographic dental ID, where they brought in...

Speaker 2:
[24:12] Why would they do that? What would be the point of doing that?

Speaker 1:
[24:14] I don't know because I don't know if they felt as though that the tissue, which I don't think it would have been, maybe so, that the tissue would have been too degraded or it would have taken too much time to do DNA, I will say this, her lower teeth have orthodontics on them. So that's something that the orthodontia that you would have is going to be very specific. So if you have what we do with dental IDs is if you have anti-mortem dental records, you compare that with what you have before you. Then if there's any other pathology relative to the teeth, and I'm talking about any kind of malocclusions, you know, cavities, anything like that, any kind of restorations, fillings, that sort of thing, it would be kind of a quick and dirty way to do it. Listen, dental ID is what we relied on for years and years, ever before we had DNA. All right? And many people, some people would use, would they prefer that, I didn't necessarily prefer to use dental as opposed to fingerprint ID. Because dental, not everybody has fingerprints on file. Most people in America have gone to a dentist at some point in time. The trick is to try to find the dentist they went to. And in this case, they have access to her parents. And her parents are going to specifically know, first off, did she ever go to the dentist? And then secondly, if you've ever had orthodontic work done, this is very detailed information. You can go to the orthodontist. They would have already loaded up on these records. Okay? They would have gotten them, acquired them. They're going to be waiting for them back at the coroner's office. So they could make this ID pretty quickly, I would imagine. And whoever works for the LA County coroner as a dental consultant or a forensic otontologist, trust me, Dave, they get a lot of work. Okay? So they're really highly skilled at what they do. And they can knock this out pretty quickly. But it's when, you know, it's beyond that point in time where they're going to have to make a decision about how they're going to proceed with the, you know, the examination itself and how they're going to move forward, what they're going to collect, and how they're going to go about it. And also analyzing, analyzing everything that they have because there's, there are tons of, of, of evidence. Just, Dave, let me put it to you this way, brother. Just the bag itself. I find this is one thing that's so fascinating about this. A body bag, and I never have heard this before. This is a first for me. A body bag is a piece of evidence now.

Speaker 2:
[27:08] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[27:08] Okay. They actually talk about swabbing these nylon woven handles, which if you've never seen a body bag in person, there are six handles on a body bag. You've got two at the mid area, and then you've got one on each corner, and they're woven nylon. And they're swabbing these handles for DNA.

Speaker 2:
[27:28] Wow.

Speaker 1:
[27:28] Would it be there? Possibly. It could be. Because if you're touching this with an ungloved hand, the material is so coarse, it could transfer and maintain touch DNA, I would think, because if it's down in the fibers. So, you know, they're going, they've actually swabbed the body bag, which is so incredibly bizarre to me. I didn't, I never thought in my wildest dreams I'd be talking about this. But this is how deep that they've gone. They've had to swab the zipper of the body bag, okay? They've done a hair kit. And here's one more thing that they've collected, Dave. And we had mentioned this previously. They've collected insects. I knew that this was the road that we were going to go down. And it is being talked about now in the autopsy report. I suspected this before we ever got the autopsy report. And the reason is, is that these insects, from a scientific standpoint, have a very specific life cycle that they go through. And you're going from egg. This is going to develop into a maggot. They're going to shed these husks. The husk will be wherever the body has migrated to and set down for a period of time. And I think that it's really important for our friends to understand, Dave. I know you and I have talked about this. But can we please, just for a second, talk about the date which we believe that according to LA., which they believe she was killed on, what date is it? April 23rd. Now, it's my understanding, okay, that on that date or approximately that date, Burke actually leaves town, doesn't he? He goes out of town to do something like in New York or whatever it is. And he doesn't come back for a period of time. And LA is actually saying that, I still don't know how they come into this information. I have suspicions. But Dave, don't they have a specific date for the dismemberment?

Speaker 2:
[29:41] They say that, and I want to be very clear on this, that Celeste was lured to the home April 23rd and was killed on April 23rd. But her body was not dismembered until May the 5th. The reason those dates are important is because, first of all, how did they come up with them? You know, the law enforcement said, we've got proof that she showed up that time, you know, that day on April 23rd at his house. That's the last time she's seen alive. Then we have May 5th as the time that her body was dismembered. Now, part of the investigation that we had early on was that police were able to triangulate the signals of the Tesla of phones of every piece of electronics. And they had this huge board in the investigator's office showing all these different intersecting lines of electronics and people. And it was said that, and they never gave us the date, but they did say late spring in the middle of the night, Burke went on a late night run to Santa Barbara County. And when you look at the condition of that 2003, 23 Tesla Y model, you realize this is a car that had been taken almost off road, Joe, and was brought back to that neighborhood, dented, dirty, filthy, and wasn't driven regularly after May the 5th. It was parked on the street and it was moved along Bluebird. It was moved along that neighborhood, but it was not driven. It was there. And that's a really important part of this whole story because the police have information, as I mentioned earlier, 40 terabytes, Joe, 40 terabytes of information. A terabyte is a thousand gigabytes, okay? One terabyte is a thousand gigabytes. They've got 40 terabytes of information. They know what happened. And now they're just laying it out there. I've got them back from the woods. Her body's dismembered, okay? The vehicle's then moved up and down Bluebird and that's it. But the car is damaged, dirty, and stays in the neighborhood. So we know that based on what the police are telling us, they know when she died, they know when she was in that car dismembered. And I think it'll come out that they are able to place that vehicle with other cameras in the neighborhood that can see it, you know, at different times.

Speaker 1:
[32:18] Yeah, and it's just such a specific date. I'm really wondering, you know, because my first thought was, is there anybody associated with this? That has, I don't know, has potentially rolled over.

Speaker 2:
[32:32] Oh, I think somebody, oh yeah, Joe, without a doubt. Yeah. Without a doubt, as much as you and I have covered this story between this and Nancy and everything else. And by the way, when we were taping Nancy the other day, and you mentioned Brother Dave on the show, I'm the reporter on her show, and you call it out as Brother Dave. I sat there and went, oh, time to take a bow to Joseph Scott Morgan on that one, you know? Nancy even grinned a little bit. It was funny. But as much as we've covered this, as much as you've broken it down, we do have these dates and times. They've got the, this is all alleged, but this is what the police have. Somebody had to fill in the blanks for them. And we do know that, we know a couple of things, Joe, about the house that David Burke was living in. We know that there was a very tight circle of people. Neo being one of them, his best friend and manager. There was another girl and another guy. That circle was that tight. That's who was in the house. It wasn't like a roving party, like it's made out to be. There were a lot of people in and out of there, by the people who stayed there. That was very tight. And so, that's who we're dealing with. Now, when he took off and traveled, they, being law enforcement, will put all that together. But right now, we know that, according to law enforcement, Celeste was dismembered on May the 5th, and her remains were placed in that frunk of the Tesla, moved into the neighborhood, and that's it from May 5th on. But Joe, if the body was dismembered at night in a very rural area, and based on the damage to that vehicle, that didn't exist before May 5th, that existed after, wouldn't there be something left behind if they could triangulate where the Tesla was in Santa Barbara?

Speaker 1:
[34:26] Perhaps. People have asked me about this, and one of the things that I was concerned with was how much activity, if it did happen out there, in Santa Barbara County, if it did happen out there, is there a potential that you could still get a cadaver dog out there? Well, it would all depend upon the surface. I think that a lot of it is not like you have the body proper that's out there that will still be emanating the odor that cadaver dog hones in on. Because if you're just talking about remnant of blood, maybe bone dust, these sorts of things, that will have been probably washed away by now, I would imagine. I don't think that they would have a lot to go on. However, going back to insects, whatever happened, I think, probably occurred, I think the safest place for it to have occurred, is going to be in a protected dwelling where you have access to, I don't know, water, electricity, privacy, where you guarantee privacy and control. Because, you know, my thing with the body is that why not place the body in some far-reaching location where nobody will find it, why bring it back to the house? A lot of it has to do with the fact that if I can see the body, if I can visualize, actualize, whatever you want to say, if I can, then in my mind, in the mind of whoever did this, I can control it. I can control the narrative. I can control the circumstances. But once that body has been removed from the scene and taken and deposited somewhere else, all bets are off. Well, Dave, I guess the crux of everything here, if you will, is this idea of what actually happened. What actually happened to her? What was it that brought about her death? This is what I can tell you, at least that the corner slash forensic pathologist is reporting at this time. We know, and I gotta tell you, I was surprised by this. We know that she was stabbed, or at least a sharp instrument has been used. It sounds as though, because they're talking about clean margins with these two insults. In the insults that I'm referring to, you have one that is in the rib cage, and it talks about how this insult passes through what are called the intercostal space. Intercostal space references the tissue between the ribs, all right? The bony structures, okay? And it doesn't really talk about the track that it has gone into the lung. Now, this is on the left side. So, if everybody at home will take your left hand and put it approximating on your left rib cage, this goes into the side over here, and it passes through. Now, what they do say, and it's kind of fascinating, I think from a trace evidence standpoint, it's very interesting as well, that this instrument that was used, and they have not specifically named it a knife, whatever this instrument is, whatever instrument was in fact used, actually involved the ribs, that after it passed through the intercostal space, the muscle, if you will, it makes contact with bone, and they talk about that. I suspect, kind of a big reveal coming up here, that those ribs that that blade touched, they've retained those. They've retained it, and this is why they would have. Because if there is any trace element on the surface of that rib, also the markings as well, they're going to clean those ribs up, and they're going to get them into the hands of the criminalist who works as the tool mark examiner. And the tool mark examiner will microscopically, well, grossly, first off, that means looking with the unaided eye. They'll do a descriptor on these markings on the bones, whatever they are. And they're going to try to get a classification on this weapon. You know, and they can go into very specific detail about the dimensions of what could have potentially created this injury. Is it a smooth edge? Is it a serrated edge? What's the width of the blade? You think that all knife blades along the edge are the same width? They're not. They're very specific. And they have very specific identifiers on them as well. And did you know that sometimes when you use certain types of knives, depending upon the quality of them, they can actually leave remnant behind that comes off of the edge of the blade. So there's a lot here to kind of unpack. If they ever do recover a knife, Dave, that they think is a candidate to create this injury, guess what they can do? They can actually do a mold of that blade, and they can do a mold of that injury on the bone, and they can do a comparison of it. Now it's not absolute, but they can say within a reasonable scientific certainty, we can say a knife very similar to this is in fact what generated this injury. If you can put that knife into a potential perpetrator's hand, that's trouble. Now there's another injury, and I think this is probably going to be the fatal injury. If you take your right hand and place it, find the bottom of your rib cage on the front, okay? Go all the way down till you feel your soft belly adjacent to your last rib. Your hand is immediately over your liver. Now this other wound tracks right into her liver. Let me tell you why this is important. The liver is one of the most vascular organs in the human body. People that are shot in the liver, people are stabbed in the liver, do not die immediately. This would have taken a while. She would have bled out. Now, that is if that is the only injury she had. But they can't make out a lot relative to her head and neck. Now, I know that they did a neck dissection of what was left. They reflected the skin on the surface of the neck, and they're looking for hemorrhage in dwelling in whatever the underlying muscular structures are. But, you know, Dave, her skull was actually partially skeletonized. And that gives you an idea of how far downrange this is. You know, we've got the skeletonization that is a foot here, if you will. And that's going to compromise you. As a matter of fact, her skull was so advanced in decomposition, they examined the sclera, the conjunctiva. These are the various areas of the eye. Dave, they're so decomposed, I couldn't appreciate if there were any kind of petechia either. So one eye is like missing. It's really hard to assess because you're thinking about an asphyxial death as well.

Speaker 2:
[42:23] People are going to ask about the missing eye and I've seen it presented that way already, that her head was partially skeletonized and the left eye is missing. That's not actually the case. It's not an accurate assessment of what truly is there because I asked you this before we began taping. I said, could it be that he beat her so bad that he knocked her eye out before she died? And you said, no, if you actually look at this report, it really does indicate that it was just a matter of breaking down, body tissue and things break down. And so that's a natural occurrence of time.

Speaker 1:
[43:00] Yeah, it is. And that's why, and I'll give you a reference from the past. Have you ever seen movies where they'll put coins over people's eyes?

Speaker 2:
[43:13] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[43:14] Have you ever seen that in the dead? One of the reasons that happens is that just naturally, your eyes sink back into the head, all right? Now, you go really far down range with this, and eyes degrade very quickly, okay? So, and I can't explain it. Don't ask me to, but you will have bodies, remains that will be absent the eyes, and it's not necessarily trauma related. It's decompositional artifact or decompositional changes that take place, and I think that that's what we're looking at here. But you know, Dave, after it's all is said and done with that, you have, of course, the 10,000 pound elephant in the room, because now you go from those sharp force anti-mortem injuries, which did, I think, display hemorrhage, to dismemberment injuries, which have, and they distinctly state, that there are, there is no evidence of hemorrhage in these injuries, which means, indicates at least from a forensic pathology standpoint, that these are post-mortem injuries. That means that, so once whoever did this, decided to take this child's body apart, she was no longer breathing. Her heart was no longer beating. So they've used some type of instrument, where they have gone full thickness, and it's very erratic. When you see the autopsy report as to where they actually decided, they being the perpetrator, facilitator, whatever you want to call it. In this particular case, Dave, her body essentially was cut into, and let me just give you the idea here. So the right arm has been removed nine inches below the shoulder.

Speaker 2:
[45:18] Nine inches?

Speaker 1:
[45:19] Nine inches below. So what that means is that if you find your bicep, like the upper end of your bicep, where it connects onto the underlying structures and go down about two inches from that, and it all depends on how tall you are, you know, and you know, your body dimensions. But so nine inches from the top of your shoulder down her arm is where this individual decided to take a sharp instrument, a saw of some kind perhaps, and cut through that area going, transecting the shaft of the humerus, which is, if you were going to take off somebody's arm, it's the worst place you could go. And that goes to absence of skill, because anybody that's a deer hunter, anybody that's a physician, anybody that's a morgue attendant, a surgical technician, a butcher, you know that you're not going to go there. You're going to go to the joint. You're going to go to the shoulder and actually remove it, or you're going to go to the elbow. That's not what this individual did. They actually went in mid shaft and decided to cut through there. In addition to that, when you take a look, if you go over to the left arm, well, they decided to go all the way down six inches and they take the arm off there. Okay? And in addition to that, you go down to the left hand and the small finger and the ring finger are missing off of the left hand. Then you make your way down to the legs. Okay? Essentially 12 inches down on the right leg. Okay? We're talking about mid-shaft of the femur. Again, another trans-sectional cut there, which would have taken some time. Nine inches down below the hip, down below the hip joint on the left leg. And then after that, they went just below both knees and did a dissection there as well. So, you've got these components that are being taken off, and this is a very messy job. This is not something that would tie back to an individual that has some level of skill. I find it very interesting because in, from a trace evidence standpoint, Dave, and I know I pointed this out to you, and please correct me if I'm wrong, they actually found remnant of some type of plastic, blue plastic that was contained, not just around it, but they're using the term within, within this dissected area. Is that, is that correct?

Speaker 2:
[48:07] And that's why I, after you told me that, I started looking for, they said it's a blue plastic in the cut, is the way it is explained. And so I started looking for, okay, what are we talking? Are we talking about a knife, a saw that's made out of plastic that could shard off into this injured area? I don't know, but yeah, that blue plastic is really going to be, I hate to say interesting when we're talking about somebody's body.

Speaker 1:
[48:37] No, it is interesting, Dave.

Speaker 2:
[48:39] It is, because I have to wonder, you know as well as I do, everything's manufactured and you can trace everything back to where it came from. We could find out what that is and where it was bought and who paid for it.

Speaker 1:
[48:49] Yeah, and listen, they make very, it's very specific, Dave, that this plastic has been collected and it was collected again by a criminalist. Well, guess what they're going to do with that? They're going to take these items of plastic and these things, trust me, brother, these things don't wind up in there by accident. This is there because this is contact trace. Something had to happen to deposit this stuff there. So they've collected these bits of plastic. This has been turned over to the trace element people and they're going to break this thing down. As a matter of fact, I would imagine they'll look at this grossly, examine it with maybe a hand lens, examine it microscopically. I would not even be surprised if they tried to do some type of chemical testing on this to see the elements of this thing. Is there a specific fingerprint for this particular item? Does it trace back to any type of known item that's being sold out there? What could it be associated with, like you said, that might be some type of cutting instrument? I have no idea. I know that whatever instrumentality was used on the surface of these limbs, they talk about how it is a smooth, flat dissection. Well, my sense of this is that if it's smooth, and I don't know anything about the outer surface of the bone, many times if you're using a handsaw, like a non-mechanical electronic handsaw, you're going to have multiple grooves that will have been started. Because it's like cutting on wood. You jump out of this place where you start. They make this sound like it's very smooth. Now, I don't know, but if I were a betting man, I'd say that this is something that's going to be mechanical more than likely, that would have facilitated this. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags.