Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - C.S.I. Kansas City

Episode Date: January 19, 2023

Conan talks to Allan in Missouri about working as a crime scene investigator, surprising scenes she’s investigated, and which of Conan’s team would make the most skilled investigator.

Conan O'Brien needs a fan. Want to talk to Conan? Visit teamcoco.com slash call Conan. Okay, let's get started. Hey, Alan meet Conan and Sona. Hi, Alan. Hi. How are you? I'm good, how are y'all?

Good, when I heard it was Alan, I foolishly assumed this is a man. You are not the first. How do you spell your name? It's spelled A-L-L-A-N. Oh, okay, very good. And Alan, where are you contacting us from? The Great Beyond?

Where are you right now? Oh. Are you a ghost, Alan? Turns out, yes. Oh, wow. It's a big trick. You're the least scary ghost I've ever encountered. Hi, y'all.

Oh, fantastic. Where are you right now? I'm the kindest Southern ghost. I am right now, I'm in Columbia, Missouri. I'm at my aunt's house and I live in Kansas City, Missouri. Oh, wow, I love Kansas City. Get yourself a good steak there in Kansas City.

A good barbecue. Yeah, barbecue, the meats. So close. What do you mean? No. I mean steak, yeah. No? I don't think I would say barbecue.

You think, what's closer, barbecue or steak? Barbecue. Okay, okay. First of all, I apologize and I'm terminating this interview immediately. I think as you should, I appreciate it. I just had a good steak when I was in Kansas City. I remember it very well.

I'm sorry to discount your experience. Thank you, yeah. You know what, I feel unseen right now. I was down by a railroad crossing and there was a really good steak house and I had an amazing steak, but now I guess I'm an asshole because they also have amazing barbecue.

Yeah. So screw me. Well, I wasn't gonna say it. I'm glad you said it. You guys, now I wish you would have said Kansas City and I had said tapioca pudding. You guys crush it. Kansas City, the first thing I think of is tapioca pudding.

You know what's great out here? Surprisingly enough, the granola. Turns out, fantastic. Best you can get in the world. Yeah, I'm not gonna buy that. So tell us a little bit about yourself, Alan. What do you do? I'm a crime scene investigator.

Oh, jackpot. Holy shit. I love crime. I know. I've committed some crimes and... That's unfortunate. Yeah, well, just try and catch me. Wait, I just admitted.

If you keep me talking for five minutes, you'll have everything you need. The worst criminal to see. I would fold so quickly. Oh, yeah, sure, I killed him. Yeah, just don't go looking in the back in that shed. Near the elm tree in my yard. Well, I mean, if you didn't say it,

I think Sona would probably do it in five minutes. But you would give details they'd never even asked for. Yeah, exactly. I would just be immediately saying, you know, it's harder to kill choked to death than you think. But listen, this is a serious profession. So you're a crime scene investigator.

This is, I mean, okay, I have so many questions. I figured you might. Yeah. First of all, so are you dealing with a lot of homicides? Do you go to a lot of homicide scenes? In Kansas City, we deal with violent crime mostly, yeah. Okay. Is it particularly high in Kansas City?

It's been lower in the past. Right. So at this point, yes, it's getting up there. It's getting up there, yeah. Because when I think of Kansas City, I think barbecue first, then meat, then violent time. Tapioca pudding. Yes, damn it, I forgot tapioca.

So, okay, I have so many questions. For example, when you first come on to a scene, I mean, you must have seen some crazy stuff. Just insane stuff. Is it, did it take you a while to get used to seeing people who had violently met their end? Does it, or did you quickly get used to it? I don't think you quickly get used to it.

If you quickly get used to it, then maybe you should see someone, which a lot of people do and that's fine. Right, that means you're a sociopath, I believe, yeah. No empathy, yeah, that's kind of a problem. However, there is kind of a work mode that you get into and you compartmentalize and you say, okay, I'm here to do a job and if you're conscious of it,

you're able to process it a little later time and just kind of do your job and then maybe later, you go home and go, okay, what just happened? Let me try and do this in a healthy way and not go like drink a six pack in the shower. I would just cry. I would cry all day. I would cry when I'm working.

Yeah, you cry anyway. Yeah, I do. And you also drink a six pack in the shower. You do all this and you've never seen a dead body. Okay, so we have to get into the nitty gritty here and I don't, I wanna be tasteful about this, but this is what you do and it fascinates me and I know it fascinates Sona as well.

Who cares how David feels about it? I'm sorry, David. David, I care. I care. Thank you, thank you. By the way, we've now determined I have no empathy. Yeah. So, and I'm like, what's the big deal?

I've now determined I, yeah. Watch it, Alan, okay? One push of a button and absolutely nothing happens. So you walk into a scene and is it, okay, what's the most homicides that you've encountered in one day? Um, I think three. Three in one day.

And they weren't, it's not like they all shot each other. These were separate, I was gonna say, it's cheating if they all shot each other. Right. Only happens in really old movies. What is it called? Mexican standoff. Mexican standoff, that's right.

Okay. Spider-Man, yeah. Exactly. I've always thought in those scenes in movies where people are holding guns right at each other and it's supposed to, neither one will blink. I think just, if one of you pulls the trigger, you win. Yeah, yeah.

So I don't understand those scenes. But anyway, I'm taking us away from the pot of gold we have here, which is you come upon a homicide scene. What's the first thing that you are looking for? So we will talk to the officers who responded. They will give us a bit of a rundown of what may have occurred because of the technology today. Oftentimes there's video of what happened.

So we'll watch that and try and get an idea of kind of what we're looking at. And then we will walk through the scene, look and see what we have and assess what we might need equipment-wise and all that. And then we'll start taking photographs. That's amazing when you, and this is true. I've noticed a lot.

There's video of everything now, which completely has changed the game, I would think, because more and more crimes, even if there's no video in the home, everybody's got a ring camera. People have, you know, stores, any business has a camera. There's, sometimes the city itself has put cameras everywhere.

So you can see which vehicles were in the area and- Right, well, and when you go to Home Depot and buy the tarp and the shovel and the duct tape. You know, I mean, it's kind of- That's always a bad idea. Yeah, I say, and my- Are you writing this down Conan? No, listen, oh, trust me, I've thought about this one.

You get them slowly over a long period of time. So- Oh, but are you ordering off of Amazon? No. Is that still bad? No, no, no, no. You don't go off of Amazon, you just get them very slowly. And the more that you can just, the more that you can pick up something,

like you're talking to somebody or over at their house, they say, I'm gonna go and check on the beef stew that's simmering and you just wander over and you see that they've got a shovel, and you pick it up and you put it in the back of your car. Also, you take the victim's shovel. Oh, very good. Is that what you're saying?

No, I'm saying you just, I was just saying that you need to plan a good crime as to be planned out maybe at least a year in advance. And you pick up things slowly and quietly. Also, I've had all my fingerprints burned off. I don't know if that does anything. That doesn't, I'm sorry. I know, you know what, I did it,

and then I didn't think about the DNA component. Yeah. So- Well, and you know, if you committed the crime barefoot, we could get your footprints as well. Yeah, but I'm always, when I murder, I'm always wearing bright yellow crocs. But you're also very recognizable on a camera.

And I feel like if you see a camera pointed at you, you'll start performing. Or doing bits. This is a problem now and it's that there'll be footage of, there's a guy in crocs wearing a wig and he's doing bits, oh, he's doing the string dance now. I was gonna say he's doing the string dance. He's doing the string dance and he's saying,

stick around, there might be more murder after these messages. And then you, again, I'm arrested. And this is after quietly picking up everything I need over a six year period. Yeah, yeah, I'm so sorry. I just don't think it's gonna work. Can you think of, I know it's a big question,

but can you think of one of the more surprising scenes that you've come across? Well, you know, it's funny when people ask me these kinds of questions, first they'll ask me, you know, what's the worst thing you've ever seen? And I'm like, first of all, you don't wanna know the worst thing I've ever seen, unfortunately. I'll tell you the baby version, you know, maybe, but.

Wait, it happened to a baby? I wanna know. Oh, you mean the smaller version? Oh my God, I thought you meant, I'll tell you, I don't wanna upset you, so I'll tell you something horrible about a baby. And I was like, you're the sociopath. You know what, I don't wanna upset you.

I'll tell you the thing about the baby that's selling to Acid. Oh God. At the Acid factory. Anyway, I'm sorry, go ahead, Alan, I've taken us astray once again, I apologize. You're fine, no, the fair assessment of that sentence. Yeah, so I think that some of the,

well, actually the most surprising scene that I've come across where there was an actual kind of, oh my goodness, moment was, unfortunately an elderly woman had passed away. And when there's an unattended death or something like that, or there may be drugs involved, we're gonna go and check it out. Just kind of to cover your basis

and make sure there's photographs of everything. And sometimes they can track down the drug dealer and all, anyway. So she was in her late 80s, early 90s. She was in bed with the covers up to her neck and there was a little crack pipe on her nightstand. So, not a lot of questions there. So I'm photographing everything as it was when I arrived,

which is the first part. And then you do a lot of things before you even get to the actual decedent. So then once we got to that portion, we pulled down the covers and she was completely naked. And you could tell that she had very fake boobs. And so when you pulled down that covers, it was like, oh, okay.

They're just kind of sitting there. Yeah, they don't, they don't. They didn't go to the side. They weren't kind of like, you know, because as you age, things happen, gravity, you know, listen, we're in Los Angeles right now. So no, we're quite familiar with this phenomenon. Those things don't.

I'm sure you are, but you know, it was just this little old lady in a crack pipe. I'm like, okay, whatever she's wearing her little, you know, matching pajamas or whatever little old ladies wear to bed, but you pull down the covers and holy smokes, it is not that.

Yeah, these things pop up. That's right. That's right. And you know, your eyes kind of, I don't know, I don't know a little bit. So that was the most surprising thing. Sure. No, but what I'm saying is so did she,

I mean, she was in her late early 80s, early 90s. Did she die naturally and happen to be smoking crack or was the crack, I mean, first of all, she could have been taking the crack for glaucoma. It's a- That's right. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of elderly women.

No, no one takes crack. You know what? Forget that. Yeah. That's something I just thought of. That's not what my dream is usually. That's in marijuana. Yeah.

I take- Right. Yeah, I take black tar heroin for glaucoma. For your joints? Yeah. I take it for my lumbago. No one's said lumbago in like 50 years. Conan, why are you taking so much heroin?

It's for my lumbago. Lumbago is like, literally if you made that in the 1950s, if there was a sketch, someone would like hold their back and go, oh, my lumbago. I don't know what it is. That doesn't sound real.

Yeah. Oh, man. Anyway, I took us again down a strange road. Yeah. Did you determine the cause of death? Was it just being late 80s, early 90s? It appeared to be natural in the way that, you know, she was kind of living life in the fast lane.

And, you know, maybe it caught up with her a little bit. Yeah, but caught up to her in her early 90s, I think she won. Well, that's true. I mean, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, she's got her boobies. She's got her cracks. She's in a good place.

I'd want to go like that. That's the way to go. That's a really good point, guys. I have not really done it that way. She's naked. She does crack naked. Well, that's how you do crack. I've never done crack any other way.

Everyone does crack naked. So every now and then there's a little spark or an ember and you don't want it, you know, getting on your flannels. But you want it on your skin? Burn yourself? All right. Burn your fake boobies? On the new boobs?

Yeah. What about that skin? It's not stretchy? Okay, okay, okay. Let's move off of this crime scene. I'm fascinated by all this. Have you ever had a moment that, I mean, in TV, it's always, it looks kind of normal.

And then the investigator says, wait a minute and opens the corpse's mouth. Decedence, I think you said, opens the corpse's mouth and there's a little note in there that says, ha, ha, see you next time. And then they're often running. It's never that cool and fascinating, right? It's usually pretty apparent what happened.

Yes and no. Sometimes there's, like for example, I had someone who hadn't been found for a very long time. So they were in a, you know, very far along in their decomposition. And so we couldn't, at the time, it was, we knew that he had lots and lots of health problems and he had been taking care of himself.

And this was a situation where when the body is so decomposed that you maybe can't tell if there are any injuries that could have been caused by a homicide. We want to go in and take pictures of that and just to make sure. And so we were kind of looking at him and he looked, you know, it just looked like maybe it was, it was a health related issue.

But then I stepped to the other side of the room on the other side of the bed where on the other side of his body, and there was a gun right there by his hand. So it was kind of like, okay, well, where's the gunshot wound? And so we... If the body is decomposed enough,

you probably need to take some kind of X-rays or scan to find out if there's been a bullet wound. Right, so that's gonna be the medical examiner's job. So the medical examiner investigator will come out. I said, nice job that you knew that. Well, no, I'm just inferring that that would be what would happen. Oh, okay.

Because how would... No, we actually have a machine that's like men in black that just... And then we can tell exactly where it is. It's pretty cool. That's cool. No, is it true? Do you have any kind of device that can...

Well, how do you determine? Can you determine on the scene if there's a bullet wound, even if there's an advanced state of decomposition? Well, usually the medical examiner come a response to a scene like that. And they're weirder than crime scene investigators because they touch the body and they deal with that. And so they'll get right in there

and just start mushing on the head and figure out where there may be an issue. They're animals. Is there a black light? Do you look for liquids? So I just recently, we call it an alternate light source. So you can use that terminology now. But the other day I went into work

and there was a scene that we had at a hotel and I had to go and use what is commonly known as a black light in a hotel room, which was not particularly fun. Did you just see... Because if it's a hotel and if it's not carefully maintained and cleaned regularly, you're gonna see all kinds of...

It's gonna probably look like a Jackson Pollock painting in there. It was a decent hotel and it still did not look great. How do you know which ones are fresh? Do you smell it? What do you mean? What are you talking about? What do you mean?

Which ones are fresh? We're usually Danes. How do you know which ones are fresh? Do you goad smell them? No, she's not a sommelier. No, no, no, we saw that's a really interesting question. We just take a little sample and rub it on our gums. Yeah.

The sommelier of blood and semen. I'm getting notes. Or urine. Pacific Northwest, I'm getting some oak. Getting some oak. This is a 2015 vintage. We're nicely aged. This would pair well with Chateaubriand.

With perhaps a white drug of some kind. You're very funny, Alan. She's very... You've got a great sense of humor. You've got a great sense of humor. You have to be to do this kind of thing. Yeah. You know, it's interesting.

I've always been afraid that someday I'll go be hiking in the woods or something and I'll have a heart attack or something. I'll die and they'll find me and they say he was found in an advanced state of decomposition and then someone will realize, no, he only died about two hours ago. That's just what he looks like.

That's just his face. He was very pale. His lips had turned thin, his eyes beady. His hair was distorted into a weird mop and advanced state of decomposition. And new boobs. Yeah. Well, that's why I went for the walk.

I wanted to try out my new double deets. One of our big jokes is that the people who always end up finding bodies in the woods are mushroom hunters. People who go out and hunt for mushrooms, they're in places that people don't, you know, normally walk around in. Yeah, they're rooting around.

And if, right. And then usually they will be a little decomposed. So if you're gonna go into the woods and die, might I suggest that you stay on the trail and then you might not, you know. Or a hike in a truffle rich environment. You'll be found for a trick. Well, those are pigs.

Pigs would find you in that case, I think. Oh. But after a few chomps, a few, they would probably report the crime. What if the mushroom hunters are a big network of murderers? Well, that's what I was, you know, it's so, I was thinking the exact same thing,

which was I might get into mushroom hunting. It's a fantastic alibi. We'll also, to the bigger point, commit a crime, then find the body. And then there's a reason why there's my DNA on the body, like I handled the body. Because when I first saw it, I thought maybe the person was okay.

Now I know the seventh time I find a dead body, it's gonna start to look suspicious. But this is, listen, I think I'm onto something. When I do murder, I will be truffle hunting. I will have established that it's, I'm gonna start talking about it a lot on the podcast. Okay.

Ooh, I love my truffle hunting. And then I will kill someone. And then I'll call the police and say, I was truffle hunting, found the body, they'll come and they'll say your fingerprints are on the neck. And I'll say, right, I was checking his carotid pulse to see if he was alive. I guess I'm innocent.

Yeah. Okay, don't do that voice. You just, you just checked it really hard. Yeah. Yeah, I checked his pulse very hard for two and a half minutes. You know exactly how long it takes to kill someone. Well, that'll pass out.

It takes longer than that, I think. Does it? Yeah, that's like, well, to actually cause permanent brain damage, I'll get into it later. Okay. Yeah. Do you really know that?

Sona, there was a period of time a few years ago when I was really mad at you. I have a whole notebook. If you are going to murder someone, how do you get rid of the body? Well, you know, I knew y'all would ask me that. And that is a totally fair question. I have a little trouble imparting this information

to Conan, just because I don't want to be a party to any, you know, murder that may take place. However, right now I absolve you. I will not call you into the, I will not, I absolve you and I will not bring you into the court case when I am captured. Interesting.

Okay. I have another proposal though. If we can exchange, you know, have a little quid pro quo here. I can give you some tips. If you can help me fulfill my lifelong dream of being a dead body on law and order. Oh.

Is law and order still on? Yes. Yeah. Still going here. I guess running show, yeah. Yeah. Come on. What?

You have to know someone. I mean, actors get to do it. I will do it. You know what? I can look around. I'll try and get you to be a dead body on law and order. Do I know how that happens? Do I have?

I mean, look, I know Dick Wolf. And so I could ask around. Yeah. He seems like the guy to talk to. Yeah, since he created it. Yeah. Okay, so in that case, I will tell you that the best ways

to really, you know, kind of screw things up for the people on my side is, you know, fire and water. Okay, fire. Those are going to be, and really honestly, you just have to get lucky because there's the technology now. I mean, it's just really, it's really hard to get away with it at this point.

I mean, truly. I think what beats fire? It's just got to be really intense sustained fire, like crematorium fire. Right. Yeah, and that's really hard to do, you know, so people who, you know, kill somebody and then set a fire and then, you know,

like they'll close all the doors in the car and then it just immediately goes out and then you're just left with, oh, someone tried to destroy evidence here. You know? Yeah, yeah. All right, well, all we've done is educate a lot of murderers out there, Alan.

So I don't know if you- I have a feeling it's already out there. You know, there's probably some blog that tells people how to do all of this. So I'm not too concerned. Right, and that's another thing don't do. Don't go on the internet. Yeah, you don't want to be going to buying a lot

of bad stuff, duct tape, murdering rope, which is a special kind of rope. How to bury a body, like tarp. But I've read, I mean, I've read stories where the wife or the husband went on websites. I know. How to poison and then- Search history.

Yeah. I mean, and that's embarrassing because there's other things- And you can't get rid of it. Yeah, yeah. Well, this has been- I mean, computer forensics is a whole other thing and they can figure out all your secrets.

So don't Google it, Conan. No, it's too late. Kind of. Now, I'm curious, do you have a question for me or do we already answer it? No, actually. I was wondering if you guys could kind of talk amongst yourselves and figure out,

out of the gang here, who would, do you think would make the best CSI? Oh, that's a really good question. I think you. I think I would be pretty good. I think you, because you already know so much about it. And I mean, I feel like I'd be a close second because I watched so much forensic files and snapped.

So I feel like that would qualify as- Oh. Yes. Snatched. I'm gonna say that I have a really, and this is where we may differ, I have a very strong work ethic. Okay.

And no, I think you might show up at a crime scene and go like, oh, this looks really bad. Hey, who wants Taco Bell? And then step on the body and go out to Taco Bell and then come back and you're spilling your chalupa all over the body. Your Baja Blast goes flying. Your Baja Blast explodes all over the wall.

And, you know, I think I would be there. Well, you'd be bad too, because they'd be like, oh, it's like the crime happened in two minutes. And you'd be like, more like my wedding night. And then you'd be like- Ew. It sounds like my wedding night.

It sounds like my wedding night. You gotta do the joke, right? I'm sorry. They got the job done in two minutes. Ew. It sounds like my wedding night. But you would also be really good at like taking off the sunglasses.

Yes. Before you said that joke. Yes. I had a scene where a guy was killed with a samurai sword and I was telling my mother about it. And she said, well, that sounds pretty cut and dry. And she thought she was being very funny. Right, right.

And so you could do the glasses and say, it looks pretty cut and dry to me. So your mother is David Caruso. Yeah. She likes to think of herself that way. She also watches a lot of- Yeah, I would be, if I came on the scene and you were kneeling over the body and you said,

they were dispatched with in two minutes and left a horrible scene behind. I'd say, sounds like my wedding night. Ew. There it is. And then you got it. Would there be a laugh track? That's why you do what you do.

David would be with me dressed in a black suit and he would have a little tape recorder and he would press a button and be a laugh track. Or no, the law and order. Well, that's CSI. You would have a guy who's a drone operator too, who like does that very cinematic shot after you do that.

Swoops down. Yeah. Well, Alan, I'm very impressed with you. You sound, first of all, very good at what you do. And that makes me happy and highly intelligent. And also you're really funny. Do you do improv ever just for fun? Oh, no.

Well, try it at the next crime scene, you know? Oh, well, yeah. I mean, there's a little bit of that going on. I mean, you just have to keep it a little lighthearted because otherwise we would just be drinking beer and crying in the shower. Yeah. What if it gets way too lighthearted?

You're all stand around. Well, yeah. It can. It can. It's got like seven arrows sticking out of it. And you guys are like, wow. Arrows. It looks like Custer's last stand.

Well, Alan, it was really nice. I'll keep that in mind. If I have any luck with the law and order people, we'll reach out to you. I'm sure it won't be all cracked up to be. You'd have to fly to New York. They'll probably, you'll have to do it at your own expense. I'm sure.

You'll have to lie on a phone for a long time. I would do it in a heartbeat. Oh, well, the whole point is not to have a heartbeat. So you've screwed that up. Alan, thank you so much. It was really nice meeting you. Oh, it was nice to meet you guys. Yes.

And if I am dispatched with by a murderer, I hope you're on the scene, because you'll catch them. Oh, now that is the ultimate, the ultimate honor for a crime scene in those years, someone to say. No, you should say Conan. I don't want you to die. Not, oh, what an honor. I can't wait.

I mean. No, thanks very much, Alan. You were great. Thank you. Thanks, guys. Bye. Conan O'Brien needs a fan with Conan O'Brien, Sonam of Sessian, and Matt Gorely, produced by me, Matt Gorely,

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