Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags: Dead in Carlton Reserve

Episode Date: October 22, 2021

The confirmation is in. The human remains found in Florida's Carlton Reserve is the body of fugitive Brian Laundrie, the person of interest in the murder of Gabby Petito. The Laundrie family attorney says his clients are grieving. Brian Laundrie reportedly told his parents that he was going hiking in the Carlton Reserve. That was September 13th. He had not been seen since. The FBI confirming that dental comparisons were used to make the identification. Death scene investigator Joseph Scott Morgan walks us through the process of how an identification is made. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. You know, the thing about swamps is that they reclaim everything. It doesn't matter if it's a plant or an animal. In the case we're going to talk about today, a human. I was born and raised in Louisiana. I've been around swamps my entire life. I started out my career as a medical legal death investigator in New Orleans. And just when you think you've seen it all, you never know what's going to show up.

Today, we've found Brian Laundrie. I'm Joe Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Back with me again today is my friend Jackie Howard, executive producer of Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Jackie, have you ever seen anything like this? They have Brian Laundrie. What do we know up to this point? Well, Joe, we know the remains found in the Carleton Reserve do belong to fugitive Brian Laundrie. The FBI made that announcement today. This all began when Chris and Roberta Laundrie, Brian's parents,

headed to Carleton Reserve to search for their son. About 30 minutes into their search, they came upon a white dry bag and a backpack that contained items that reportedly belonged to Brian Laundrie. As they turned those articles over to law enforcement, As they turned those articles over to law enforcement, as they turned those articles over to law enforcement, they were informed that partial remains had been found. Jackie, I got to tell you, one of the most striking things about this whole case

is that the parents were out there. I don't know that I ever recall a case where, you know, maybe I've had cases in the past where the family actually found a person. And the dad walks up on all of these so-called items. And that's something I want to address, that term items. Items can be defined very, very broadly. And as soon as I heard the term item, it was quickly followed thereafter by saying the medical examiner was on the way.

And then the van rolled up. Let me tell you something about medical examiners and coroners. Medical examiners and coroners do not, and I repeat, do not show up at a scene unless they are specifically invited. And let me tell you why. They serve no purpose out there unless there is a body. So that means that these items that they found, and I think that's kind of a broad way of saying that not only had they found the backpack and the waterproof bag, but they had also found at least part of a body. Now, we don't know how much because later on it came out that it's partial remain. That means that it's incomplete. But, you know, with the EME out

there, the first thing we saw occurred as soon as they showed up, they started throwing this tent up out there. And at first, you know, I think a lot of folks were looking at this thinking, well, you know what, maybe the tent is on top of where the body was. No, it wasn't. It wasn't. That was like a control area where they could bring these items back to and examine them because you could see tables in there. Trust me, you're not going to put tables on top of a deceased person. You're just not going to do that. So they were actually leaving the tent and going out to the exact location where the body was found. Now, this is a problem. It's a major problem because they say partial human remain.

Well, what does that mean? Well, they're seeing something out there that is indicative of the fact that this body has become somehow, and I'm going to throw a word out here that some of you may not have heard, the body might be disarticulated. And when bodies begin to decompose, they actually become much easier, essentially, at the joints to pull apart. That's why when scavengers show up, you know, like dogs and possums and raccoons and this sort of thing, coyotes, they can literally grab hold of an ankle and begin to tug. And that leg at the knee will actually become disarticulated. Sometimes the foot becomes disarticulated, the arms, so forth and so on.

And that's a problem in that these remains could very well be scattered. Now, any number of times I've been on scenes where you walk up and there is the core of the body, if you will, that's a real popular term nowadays. I'm going to work on my core, but think about your chest and your abdomen, that central part. It's called the axilla, the axilla skeleton. That is where your spine is, your rib cage, pelvis, these sorts of things. Sometimes that will remain intact. But the limbs, the feet, the hands, the humerus, you know, these longer bones, sometimes they're gone. Sometimes they're still intact, but they'll be scattered. They'll be scattered about.

And if this is scavenger activity, generally animals don't go too far away with it. It's interesting that you say that, Joe, because what was found in the Carlton Reserve were skeletal remains, bones. What does that tell you? Yeah, well, that doesn't surprise me at all because, you know, why you have skeletal remains, I know a lot of people are going to think, yeah, I've heard people talk about alligators. I've heard people talk about other things. Let me tell you why. This is basic biology. That area is so hot.

It is so humid, so very wet that the tissue that rests on our bones in life, as you begin to decompose, it has a process that it goes through. And it's what we call environmentally dependent. So the rate at which a body actually decomposes is dictated by environmental conditions. And in this case, specifically heat, you think about any experiment that you conducted when you were a kid in school, it all started with heat, didn't it? Had a Bunsen burner, alcohol burner, you had to fire that thing up. And it speeds this process up. So the hotter things are, the body begins to come apart. So what that tells me is that they're dealing with skeletal remains and they don't have a complete skeleton.

When they talk about partial remains, is that a quantitative phrase at all? I mean, are we talking about if you had a hand, a finger, as opposed to 90% of a body, no matter what it is, it's still going to be called partial remains? I think that that's an excellent question. And I'm glad you asked that because I think that if they're saying partial remains, it's not simply going to be that maybe one hand has been compromised or maybe you're missing the foot up to the ankle. No, that's not what we're talking about. They're talking about that there is a significant portion of this body that is absent from the central portion that they have recovered. And again, I go back to spine, ribs, pelvis, perhaps a skull.

Folks might be surprised to learn that many times a skull is hard to recover because if animals do come along, particularly dogs, dogs love skulls. I've had any number of cases over my career where dogs have drugged skulls up into the backyards of folks. Can you imagine walking out in your backyard and your dog is out there playing with a human skull? It's happened. It's happened a number of times. And so that in and of itself is troubling because if you think that you're dealing with an incomplete set of remains, all kinds of other problems begin to arise from that because you cannot evaluate the body or the skeletonized remains in their totality. And that's what we do in forensic pathology and medical legal death investigation. We look at the body in its totality. That is, all systems

are impacted, all systems are affected, and it begins to paint the picture. They have Braunwn laundry, at least part of a body. You know, when that first came up in the news, an area where the police had intensely been searching for a protracted period of time. We're talking about weeks and days, hours and hours of man time that have been spent out in this marsh. I want to continue to discuss, you know, how exactly do you go about examining a skeleton versus, say, a partially intact body? And when I say partially intact, just understand this. What I mean is that we're talking about soft tissue. I'm talking about skin. I'm talking about skin. I'm

talking about muscle. I'm talking about the organs, all right? And if you have a totally skeletonized body, then that creates a myriad of problems because you don't have points of reference. All points of reference relative to things like, well, I'll give you a good one. Hemorrhage. Let's say somebody has sustained an injury to their neck. I don't know. I'm just speculating here. Let's say that they've been choked in some way, maybe throttled like we remember with Gabby. Or they've had a ligature around their neck.

Guess what? If the body's skeletonized, there's not going to be any evidence of that. You're not going to see hemorrhage in that particular case. And so it makes a real daunting challenge for the forensic pathologist that is going to begin to examine this body and try to determine exactly what brought about the cause of death. Okay, wait a minute, Joe. You're brought about the cause of death. Okay, wait a minute, Joe. You're talking about the cause of death right there. How is this difference between whether it's bones or soft tissue, how is that going to

play into the identification of the body? Well, you know, that's a good point because let's just say that you do have a body that is partially decomposed. And we do know this. We do know that Brian Laundrie had some tattoos on his body. Now, something that our listeners might not understand is that as skin begins to deteriorate, it takes on this kind of tanned appearance. It almost has the appearance of leather in many circumstances, and that's right on target. I'll tell you why, because the skin becomes dehydrated.

But it also gets kind of murky. It's hard to appreciate special features. With tattoos specifically, we do something that's called skin scraping at autopsy, where we actually take the leading edge of a scalpel blade and we don't slice, we actually kind of scrape down the surface of the skin and knock off that top layer of epidermis that has begun to deteriorate and decompose. And down at the dermis, down at the dermal level, you actually begin to appreciate, once

again, the manifest image of a tattoo that's beneath that. Isn't that amazing? And you can photograph it, and it can be used as a specific identifier. So that's the difference between having skin, tissue on the body, as opposed to having a skeletonized body. And again, you're not going to have signs of hemorrhage anywhere if the body is absent the tissue to appreciate it. All you're left with are these kind of bony prominences and skeletal features that are left behind.

Now, you know, with the skeleton itself, you know, what kind of trauma could we be looking at? Well, if there's a depressed skull fracture, if you do, in fact, have a skull, remember we're talking about they're saying partial or main. If you do have a skull, you can look for things like defects. And defects is, again, another one of the $10 words that doctors like to use, and it means hole. It means something that's not supposed to be there, all right?

So you can have a defect in the skull that might be indicative of, say, for instance, a gunshot wound, or maybe someone has taken a blunt instrument and driven it into the skull. And that creates what's referred to as a depressed skull fracture. Now, you can have evidence of that and you can kind of, you know, I don't know, you can kind of evaluate that in its context and say, okay, I think within a reasonable certainty that this very well might be what brought about the cause of death. But again, you're not going to have the associated hemorrhage with it. And here's the question. Here's the big question. Did the injuries that you're seeing on that skeleton, did they occur

anti-mortem, which means before death, or did they occur post-mortem? Because all kinds of things can happen to a body after it's been out there, particularly for this long. Animal activity, weather. I've actually had cases where branches have fallen off of trees and crushed underlying deceased persons that were decomposing. So you have to factor in all of these elements. And that's what makes this so complicated. You know, we begin to think about poor little Gabby that was found out there in the Tetons. her body, as horrible as this was,

her body is going to have been relatively intact compared to what we're talking about right now. Because that environment out in Tetons, as wild and rugged as it is, as all the predators everybody was talking about, it ain't got nothing on South Florida Swamp. Because it's not just the animals. It is the weather. And that is the biggest fight, the environmental conditions. And it can compromise any evaluation that's going to go forward relative to the forensic pathologist. And the one other person I haven't mentioned, and that's the forensic anthropologist,

because trust me, they will have an individual out there that specializes in the examination of human skeletal remains. They're going to be out there and, you know, folks will say, well, why do you need an anthropologist at the scene? I thought they were only in the lab. Look, being in a lab as a forensic anthropologist is only part of the job. In talking about the conditions there in the swamp, what is that going to mean for the possibility of finding any other remains? We know the medical examiner was there the day that the remains were found. Back again the next day, we know that they're looking for more remains. Given what you just described, what's the possibility? There's a good possibility because if the remains are scattered,

and this happens as a result of scavenger activity, which I would probably suspect, they're going to be out in kind of a perimeter around the body. You know, I always use the analogy of a wagon wheel with a hub and the spokes going out. Just imagine that with a body there and these scavengers walk out with these remains. They don't carry them very far because most of the animals that would scavenge a body have burrows nearby. So they'll try to carry them back to their burrows or they'll drop them right outside of it. Now, this is what you're going to see more than likely. They would probably bring

the cadaver dog back out there. So, don't be shocked if you see that on the news. They're bringing a cadaver dog back out there and they will go back to that central location where the primary portion of those remains were found. And they will kind of go out in a radiating pattern from that central point and continue to work those dogs out to look for anything. And I'm talking about even the smallest bones of the hand. Those dogs have the ability to pick up on that. They'll pick up on a scent. Now, look, come on, let's face it.

There is no way in God's green earth they're going to recover every single bit of these remains, particularly if animals have been at it. Because some things, they'll just vanish. And to be quite blunt with you, some of these are actually consumed by these animals. So you're not going to get the full picture. Okay. So then at what point do they say enough is enough and stop the search? You know, there's only so far that you can go working these animals and also working the personnel that you have out there. They'll break off into teams and again, radiating out. They'll walk off generally in two pair and they'll begin to kind of go

shoulder to shoulder and walk in straight lines where they begin to search the soil and they'll be very, very careful, very careful because you're getting into a season now where you're losing some leaves on those trees down there. Things could be covered up. So they'll have to turn over objects on the ground to see if there's anything beneath them. And they don't automatically pick it up. What they do is they flag it. They'll put a little orange flag right next to it. And then the photographer will come out. They'll take photographs of it. And you know what else they're going to do? They'll measure it. They'll take photographs of it. And you know what else they're going to do?

They'll measure it. They'll actually go back to that central location where the body was initially found. And they'll take a tape measure. And they'll go out and they will measure the distance from that actual central location out to where that remain is found. And at the end of the day, you can actually take this and plot it on a computer and give you an idea of how far out these remains are distributed. You're not going to recover everything. That's almost an empirical impossibility. You know, unless something odd has happened where you're talking about a dismembered body, which I don't think that we're dealing with right here. You're dealing with a body that has

been subject to the environment in which it has been found. So back to the skeleton versus partial remains. If you don't have soft tissue to pull DNA from, if you only have bone and if it's been out in the elements for a while and animals have been able to get to it, more than likely there will not be any bone marrow left. Am I correct? And can you still get DNA? Yeah, of course you can. You can still get DNA. From the bones? Yeah, you can. You can bore down into the bones and recover DNA many times if there's still viable marrow. You said a lot. Not all of these bones

are going to be compromised, Jackie. Not every single one of them. Some of them will still be intact. So you're not going to have the DNA that is completely compromised that's out there still contained in the bones. And one thing we're forgetting about, one of the most viable sources of DNA are going to be the teeth. And there's dentition in dwelling. And what that means are the teeth are still present. It's fancy talk that doctors use. If the dentition is still present, and that's why they phrase it, if the teeth are still present, they can actually extract one of the teeth. Generally, it's going to be a molar, something that's kind of robust, and they will bore down into it.

They have these little tiny drills that they go into the tooth. And, you know, the tooth has multiple layers anatomically, the way it's set up. What you want to get down to is the pulp of the tooth. And therein, therein that pulp is actually contained the DNA. And I've described it many times. Bones are kind of like a leather briefcase that you store information in. A tooth is almost like a titanium briefcase that you store information in. They're very resilient. You can go back to the Egyptians and still find teeth there that were mummified.

So it's a valuable source. And one other thing I kind of wanted to point out, many times in these skeletal remains, you will still find actual hair attached to the skull. Again, if in fact it is there, sometimes it's not necessarily on the scalp. It's underlying a skull on the ground in the dirt. So you have to be very careful when you recover it. But you can certainly get partial DNA, maybe from a hair shaft, but you can go in if there is a root, a viable root that's still there, maybe you can go in there and collect it. They're going to look, they're going to put a full court press on this. I can tell you where they're not going to get DNA.

They're not going to get it from blood because it's not going to be available. I mean, that's logic. And all the soft tissue, as you pointed out, Jackie, soft tissue is gone. You're not going to go into muscle. You're not going to go into the muscle to glean any kind of DNA sample because more than likely it's not there. None of the soft tissue is there. I really want to continue this conversation regarding what are the next steps, you know, relative to this partial skeletal remain that's been found. What are we looking at relative to all of this?

What are we looking at, Joe? Because we do now know that the remains found in the Carlton Reserve belong to Brian Laundrie. They used a dental comparison between the skull that was recovered and dental records of Brian Laundrie to confirm identity. Now we just need to find out why he died. Cause of death is going to be the big question. That's what everybody's going to be scratching their head over. And they're going to be turning to these scientists and asking that question. There'll be some really hard questions to ask. And folks that aren't used to asking these kind of questions, they're going to get an education. Because I got to tell you, if you

have nothing, and I'm talking about tissue sample to base these findings on, you're going to be really hard. Because right now, it's going to be very, very difficult to make this determination. If you're talking about bone, you are reliant upon the hope that you're going to be able to find some kind of trauma to the bone that is prior to death, anti-mortem, that is gunshot wounds, knife wounds, those sorts of things that might leave marks on the bone that is prior to death, anti-mortem, that is gunshot wounds, knife wounds, those sorts of things that might leave marks on the bone that are going to point back to a specific direction. And the skull, in my opinion, is the key to all of this.

Because let's face it, most people that die, particularly young people that die in sudden events like this, many times the head and the neck are involved. So that's important. If you don't have tissue surrounding that area, then you're relying on the bony underlying surfaces. Well, what are we looking for? We're looking for gunshot wounds. We're looking for fractured skulls or fractured necks to give us some kind of indication. And I know folks are going to ask this question. It seems like it always keeps cropping up in this bizarre set of circumstances. What about the hyoid? What about the hyoid?

You know what? I don't know that in my entire career I ever came across a set of skeletal remains where hyoid was actually recovered. You know why? Because the hyoid, you know why? Because the hyoid is actually surrounded by soft tissue. I go back to what I've said before. It's the only non-articulated bone in the body. So if scavengers get to the area in the neck, when they take the throat out, for instance, they're going to haul that hyoid off with them. It vanishes. It disappears. It's a very fragile puncture. You're not even going to have an opportunity to examine

it. And that's just a possibility for all. I know it's sitting there, but if I were a betting man, I'd say that it probably isn't, particularly given this harsh environment that they're out there in. Talking about circumstantial evidence, another big piece of this is there are a lot of cases out there where people come across bodies in the woods. And it's quite chilling when you think about it. Can you imagine coming upon a skeleton or skeletonized remains and looking down adjacent to the body, laying on the ground there is a rusty handgun. And many times people will go out into the woods and they'll take their lives. And that weapon is laying there. Now, that would be maybe one of the grandest pieces of evidence that you could find from

a circumstantial perspective that you could actually have a forensic tieback with that weapon because it'll have a serial number on it. You could ID who possessed that weapon, where the individual tie back with that weapon because it'll have a serial number on it. You could ID who possessed that weapon, where the individual would have acquired that weapon from. And you also begin to look for evidence that the weapon has been fired. If it's a semi-automatic pistol, how many rounds are still existent in the magazine? Is there a live round still in the chamber? Is there an ejected shell casing laying around there? I got to tell you, one of the things that that FBI evidence response team is doing out there, in addition to looking for skeletal remains, there's somebody right now that is absolutely sweating to death, I can guarantee

you, walking through those woods, and they've got a set of headphones on, and they have got a metal detector walking before them or moving before them, sweeping back and forth and back and forth, waiting for any kind of little hit on a metallic body that might be adjacent to that body that will tie back to perhaps giving you answers from a circumstantial perspective, of course. So if we can't use what you can physically see on bones or soft tissue, as in a bullet wound or ligature marks, what about the tox screens? You talk about the tox screens a lot. How much do you have to have to get a tox screen?

Do you have to have blood? Can you get it from the tissue? What? Yeah. Well, that's the million-dollar question. I'll go ahead and reveal you a little inside secret here. Typically, if we don't have blood or vitreous, which is the fluid in the eye or urine, with decomposed bodies, many times they'll take the liver. They'll take a sample of the liver and put it in a centrifuge, which is one of these devices that spins around and liquefies things.

And they liquefy it down to the point where they can draw it up and they'll run a tox screen on it. Remember, the liver is one of the most toxic organs in the body. It's like a gigantic filter. So it retains a lot of stuff. But in this case, Jackie, they're talking about skeletal remains. So you're not going to be able to turn to that. So that leaves us with what's remaining is circumstantial evidence. You know, if this is, say, for instance, a drug OD, all right,

then maybe there'll be a pill vial nearby. Maybe there'll be a hypodermic needle that's still existent there that you could take a look at and kind of ascertain. Now, this is something that was utilized to bring about an individual's death. And of course, you're going to have to backtrack with this. You know, if you got a pill vial, you have to go back and talk to the doctor that prescribed it. If it's some kind of illicit drug, good luck with that. Now, if the syringe is there, you can actually analyze the syringe. Sometimes they're kind of protective of the content.

Maybe you can get some semblance of something that's contained therein. And I'm thinking, of course, the first thing that comes to mind is heroin. But I don't know of any involvement with that. And then other circumstantial evidence that we look for for causal factors, particularly someone that's out alone in the woods like this one of the things i'd be looking for is perhaps a length of rope tied to a tree you say well why why would you say that well here's why because many times i want you to listen very very carefully what i'm about to say because most people can't believe this actually happens do you know that many times people will hang themselves in trees and they're not found for a protracted period of time?

Guess what happens to the body? The body, by virtue of gravity, remember gravity is a constant force in our world. Gravity pulls on that body that's hanging from that noose. And guess what happens? The head literally comes off. It comes off and the body crashes to the ground below the noose, and guess what happens? The head literally comes off. It comes off and the body crashes to the ground below the noose. And so that automatically gives you a circumstance where, say for instance, a disarticulated head can be taken off by a scavenger. The rest of the body

can be scavenged. And if the investigators are not looking up, if they're only looking down, then that's a piece of evidence that they could potentially miss. So are you telling me then that if it is only skeletal remains, that it's not possible to do a tox screen? Yeah. If it is only skeletal remains, it would, I cannot imagine any circumstance where you would be able to draw up any kind of viable sample for toxicological analysis. I just don't see how that would be possible because there's not going to be any evidence. Unless it's some kind of peripheral test that someone else is aware of, and I am not on bone,

you're not going to be able to find any evidence of this. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is body backs. You're listening to an I heart podcast.