Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags | Sweet Grandmother Has Arm Torn Off During Carjacking, But Where is the Blood

Episode Date: January 21, 2024

The last thing Linda Frickey heard as she lay beaten, bruised, with her arm ripped off her body, was a friendly voice saying, "we'll pray for you," The 73-year-old woman was the victim of a carjacking that was pre-planned by a group of 4 thugs in New Orleans, the oldest only 17 years old. Join Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack as they go behind the headlines on the story of a loving grandmother that died in a gruesome way, with her arm torn off her body. But witnesses ask; Where's the blood?     Transcript Highlights   00:01:29 Talk about Grandmothers  00:04:45 Joe doesn’t want his hometown tarnished   00:05:31 Discussion about Carjacking  00:08:37 Talk about 18-year-old taking a life  00:10:20 Joe talks about living in this area of NOLA  00:11:08 Discussion about witnesses  00:13:45 Talk about ringleader John Honore  00:15:38 Talk about being dragged two blocks   00:21:00 Talk about criminals attacked woman from behind  00:22:44 Discussion of being stuck, drug down the block   00:24:59 Discussion having arm ripped off your body  00:27:21 Talk about how witness covered her body  00:29:24 Discussion of damage done to police officer drug in similar way  00:31:48 Talk about the last thing Mrs. Frickey heard was “we’re praying for you  00:34:07 Discussion of what happened to the blood?  00:40:48 Talk about determining cause of death  00:45:37 Talk about how Mrs. Frickey was beaten in car, then drug down street  00:48:18 Discussion about CCTV cameras  00:49:44 Suspect has been sentenced to prison   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. My grandmother. Her name was Pearl. Pearl Morgan was her name. And she essentially raised me. She taught me everything I knew about our family history. The history of where our family had come from, the branches of our family that had settled throughout Mississippi and South Louisiana.

And I embraced that, even as a small child, learning from her. I learned the value of having a meal cooked by her, and certainly now at this stage in my life, I miss that almost more than anything I can imagine. And her kitchen always had a particular life of its own, because that's where the family gathered. Her sisters would come by every day to eat lunch there. She had four of them. Her brother couldn't show up because, well, he was a homicide victim and I was named after him.

But my grandmother left something with me that I shall never forget. And that was the soothing, gentle touch of her hand. Whether it was me being sick or needing comforting during tough times with my parents not around. But I remember the way her hands looked. I remember the way they felt when she would tell me that everything was going to be okay. Today, I'm going to talk about another grandmother. A grandmother from my hometown of New Orleans, Louisiana. A lady who died quite arguably one of the most brutal deaths that we can possibly imagine. And she was loved by her children and her grandchildren. That lady's name is Linda Fricke.

I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Matters. Dave, I don't normally do this, but I kind of gave myself a chill. I was sitting here, and I was thinking about my grandmother and it, it draws up such emotion for me, um, that when you live, you live a life that is a good life and those that are around you love you more than gold. You deserve better than to be robbed of that life and taken away from those who have so much value

placed in you and the life that you live and what you've done for them. And I could not, I've debated about this case for several weeks. We've talked about it previously. I didn't know if I wanted to cover it, but I just feel compelled to say something because I'm afraid that this is going to be forgotten. And I don't want this to be forgotten because it is so horrible. It is a stain on my hometown. And there's a lot that goes on down there that I know it's very dangerous, but this, even, even with all of the violence that weaves itself in and out of New Orleans now, this case, my God, Dave, this case just, it stands out. I don't know of anything more horrific than this.

You know, Joe, so many times in a crime story, it's the killer that gets the attention, not the victim. The victim gets lost in the shuffle. And you talking about your own grandmother with such respect and love and dignity. Linda Fricke has children and grandchildren that speak of her that way, with love and respect. At 73 years old, Linda Fricke was carjacked in New Orleans.

Prosecutors say it was not a spur-of-the-moment decision. It was a planned crime. Four teenagers, 17-year-old John Honoree and three girls between the ages of 15 and 17, conspired to steal Ms. Fricke's SUV. Each of the four had a role to play in the carjacking. Honoree served as the leader of the gang, the main aggressor, the getaway driver. He pepper sprayed, punched, kicked, and stomped in the face of a 73-year-old woman. He then is tasked with being the getaway driver. So he drives going down the road, but he sees Linda Fricke as holding on, like she doesn't want to let go of her car. She can't let go. Her arm has gotten tangled in to

the seatbelt. And so Henri is punching and kicking and doing everything he can to get her to fall off the car. She can't fall off the car. After two blocks of dragging the 73-year-old woman down the road, punching, kicking, and screaming at her because she can't get loose, in an effort to get her off the car, he jumps a curb and hits a utility pole guy wire that severs Ricky's arm, freeing her from the SUV. And you'll hear our friend Nancy Grace say this sometimes. And if you take a criminal law course, even at an undergraduate level, or a constitutional law course, they will use the term that an event so shocked the conscience of the court. I submit to

you that this was one of those cases that not only shocked the conscience of Orleans Parish Court and the prosecutor's office, but also it sent shockwaves through the city. And this is a city that unfortunately many times is numb to crime. Um, the fact that this, this literally made people for, for a moment, at least stop and draw breath and, you know, have to do a double take. Because when you, you know, when you, when you think that things are absolutely horrific, you better hold on. Because there is always another gear that, particularly where human depravity comes in. Well, you're talking about a 73-year-old victim. You're looking at a victim of all victims, Joe. You're looking at a woman who was doing nothing to anybody. Nothing, nothing at all.

And just breathing. And these are, you know, where this occurred, uh, this was actually, uh, a location that, um, that I'm, I'm very familiar with in the city. Uh, it was near Scott drive in Bienville and it's not, it's not in the French Quarter, just so everybody understands that. This area of the city, in Atlanta, they call the middle part of the city Midtown. In New Orleans, they call it Mid-City. And so you're not in the Central Business District. You're not in the Vaucourie, which is the old term that was used for the French Quarter. You're not in the wealthy area of town where the oil millionaires and the Mannings live and all this. This is truly the original working class area.

The streets are laid out in perfect grids. There's a lot of old neighborhoods. There was a huge Italian population. As a matter of fact, I wish I could take you here. One of my favorite restaurants in the world is a place called La Uza's. And La Uza's is this old-fashioned Italian restaurant that I up this area of town that, you know, it's seen good times, it's seen bad times. And, you know, even when I was there and I lived not too far away from where this actually occurred, when I first started college, I lived in Midtown, myself and my roommate. It was dangerous then. I was mugged, you know, before in that area, but it's like being in any big city. And, you know, as a young man, I was really shocked. Now, as an older guy, it's like, it's not that shocking. It's going to happen. If you stay in these locations, you run the risk of that happening. But there was

nothing like this. It just, it hadn't happened. And when we began to kind of fill in the blanks here, I think that many of our listeners, Dave, are going to sit back and you're going to scratch your head and you're going to think, how in the world could a teenager, a group of teenagers, get to the point where they are so depraved that they're incapable of showing mercy? They're incapable of showing mercy. And it just boggles the mind. Let me tell you something else. It's not just the family of Linda Fricke that had to go through this, but, Dave, there were witnesses. There were witnesses to this event that were screaming out for these carjackers to stop.

Just stop. Let's back up for just a second right there. It's a carjacking that takes place in front of witnesses in an area that, as you've described, an area you are intimately familiar with. You know these streets. You know that it's not Rodeo Drive. Would it be called a rough and tumble neighborhood, Joe? I guess it could be in certain areas of Mid-City.

Okay. But there's a quaintness to it too. All right, now Linda Fricke is in her car, right? Yes. Driving down the road. There is a group of young people, teens. I don't want to call him the leader. Uh,

John Henri. I'm so glad you explained to me how to, and how to pronounce his name because I thought what an odd name. There is no honor in this person. John Henri. He's 18 years old. He is not the only person involved. He's the one person who had every opportunity in the world to stop at any

time to stop the madness. But he took the wheel and ran with it from the very beginning. Let me stop you right here because this is kind of the way the thing went down. And this is what makes it all the more shocking. These four teens were in it's, it's Henri and it's, it's three compatriots here. And the other three are females. Right. I was going to point out that I don't want to appear sexist, but that doesn't strike me as a normal occurrence. I don't know if it is mathematically. Maybe it is.

Maybe there are in big cities all over the United States of America, groups of four people, one guy and three girls committing crimes, physically violent crimes that lead to death. I don't know. It just sounds odd to me. Maybe that's the old sexist in me coming out. Oh, I don't think there's anything sexist about it. It's just the reality that people gravitate toward one another and somebody is going to wind up being a leader in that group. And I think that it probably was Henri. But, you know, Linda Fricke had actually gone into a store and she was picking

up some items and just kind of, let me, let me just kind of set, set the, the way this looks when, when you're in New Orleans, it's kind of, I've always compared it to like a miniature Manhattan in a sense that there's no off-street parking hardly at all. People that live in town are heavily dependent upon public transportation. The streets are old and if you park, you have to park on the street if you can find a spot. And I've done this many times. You pull up next to the curb and I don't know if you've ever seen these in older towns, Dave. The curbs will have, you'll have a poured concrete curb, and along the leading edge on the top, there's a metal strip that runs down the length of it to keep the curb intact. And these are everywhere.

They're all over the place. We used to call them tire poppers because if you clip the thing, it'll pop your tire. But, and you have to be aware of that. But Dave, you know, they've got CCTV in regards to this, and you can actually see two of the individuals walking down the street, heading toward the car. And then you've got a third, and then there's Henri. And so Henri actually shows up close to the end and he accosts Linda. Now, let's just think about just for a second, you're bent over, your back is to the sidewalk, you're bent over and you're putting something in your car. Look, are you actually thinking you're going to be robbed or carjacked or assaulted?

No, that's not what you're thinking. You're thinking, I've been coming here to this area maybe my entire adult life. Nothing's ever happened to me. Or I've got enough situational awareness that I can kind of see my way around. I can tell you at this age in my life, I don't have the same situational awareness that I did when I was 25. I just don't. And so your skills begin to drop down a little bit, particularly in an urban environment like this. She was essentially

attacked while she's in this very vulnerable position. And my friend, I got to tell you, after she was attacked, the initial attack was only the beginning. The one thing that's really hard to take the measure of when you're a citizen and you're just going about your everyday life, just pretend for a moment that you're out and you're going for a walk. Maybe you're jogging. Maybe you're out, you know, taking your dog outdoors so that they can do their business. But just imagine, you suddenly, without any provocation, you have no idea that it's going to happen. You look up, and arguably the most horrific thing

that you've ever borne witness to, literally, plays out right in front of you. And that's what actually happened there. There was, uh, a young lady who her and her husband live adjacent to where the carjacking, uh, took place, uh, Leanne and Mark, uh, NASCAR, uh, Leanne, I think had been out, um, doing some, uh, some running or jogging that's associated with her yoga that she daily does. And she saw this car going down the road. And can you imagine? She hears a woman.

The sound of her voice pierces the air in broad daylight, mind you, in broad daylight and says, please stop, please stop. And when she looks up, Dave, 72 year old Linda Fricke is being drug down the road. And the only thing that is keeping her attached to the car is her arm that is trapped in the seatbelt as she's in. They can't even close the door. Henri is driving the car is her arm that is trapped in the seat belt as she's in they can't even close the door Henri is driving the car by the way can't even close the door and this lady that had been out in her yard with her husband actually witnessed this thing occur and I can't remember you need to refresh my memory I can't remember how far need to refresh my memory. I can't remember. How far was it that she was drugged?

I can't recall. I think I told you just a second or two ago. Two blocks. Two blocks. I don't even know if any of us can fathom. I mean, I've certainly stumbled on the sidewalk. I've fallen. I've never had my car slip out of gear and drive away with me attached to it. How much more so can you imagine being trapped in your car and being drug outside of it for two blocks? How does that even happen? You have to back up to that too and realize that before that happened, you mentioned she's leaning over her car to put stuff in her car. Henri gets in and starts beating her. He catches her off guard and is beating her.

I can't get past that. I'm having trouble there, Joe, because you've got an 18-year-old man with three girls, and he gets in the car and beats the 73-year-old woman. She can't even get out of the car and beats the 73 year old woman. She can't even get out of the car fast enough before they're going down the road because her arm is stuck is hung up in the,

uh, the, the seatbelt sling. And as they're going down the road, you mentioned the weight of the car and just slipping out of gear for a little bit. I have had that happen. I actually have had,

yes. And maybe 20 feet and in that 20 feet i watched the life go behind i mean you know your life passes because you can't stop a car is really heavy friends and once they get moving they don't stop and you're one person you don't stick your leg out it's not a go-kart when you're a kid a car is two tons of moving ballistic missile and you're talking about getting speed you're one person. You don't stick your leg out. It's not a go-kart when you're a kid. A car is two tons of moving ballistic missile. And you're talking about getting speed. You're talking about being 73 years old. You've just been beaten up by surprise.

And now you're being drugged down the street. You're being drugged. Your arm is... The only reason you're not falling off the car is because your arm is hung up. Your legs are dragging. Your body, your torso, everything is dragging at some point in time. And the only thing holding you in is the seatbelt that has got like a sling on your arm. Yeah, let me stop here and ask you this question.

And forgive my language, y'all, but I've got to ask this question to my friend Dave. Dave, do you think that if this had been a grown-ass man, Mr.e would have attempted to do this no way you're talking about a 72 73 year old grandma yeah and you're gonna attack her from the rear like this and it takes you got let's call it a crew because it is a crew yeah it's a it's a it's a carjacking crew he's got three others that don't say, oh, stop and run away. No, no, no. They pile in. They, they pile in to Linda's car on top of it.

Right. And they know there's a plan. He's merely the first one in, but you're right. They all three pile in. They're all equal criminals. The fact that they're not all being treated the same bothers me a lot because you're right, Joe, at no time. Did any of them say, stop, we can't do this. Stop. Please. you're right joe at no time did any of them say stop we can't do this stop please you're hurting her stop nobody did you know the only people who

did that were the people outside horrifically standing by watching this happen screaming please stop while the 73 year old grandma is saying please stop please you know when you mentioned that a minute ago woman out for her jog after her yoga, here's the pleading of a grandma, a 73 year old woman being drugged to her death. And there's people in the car that could stop it. Not one of them has the, can make it happen. It can make it stop. An 18 year old man did it. Yeah.

And it goes, you know, it goes back to this idea of, you know, you begin to think how morally bankrupt would you have to be in order to engage in this kind of behavior where you're not capable of showing any kind of, any kind of mercy, uh, for, for this poor woman, some, some level of empathy, because certainly in a car like this, and it's not a big car, uh, you could certainly hear her screaming. You would have to have an awareness of what happened. But this is what I do know. And, you know, per the witnesses, the car travels two blocks downrange from where they're stopped.

And Linda's arm is caught in, you know, you called it a sling. And I think that's kind of accurate because the belt, and I've had this happen before on cases that I've worked, but not like this. These were accidental events. Dave, make no mistake, this is no accident. Her arm was caught, and it gives the impression that it is caught up to the shoulder. And all the while, according to witnesses, her clothing is being twisted as well because she's spinning kind of outside, almost like she's in a tumble dryer. And we have to factor this in as well as she's going over the surface, as she's going over this hard concrete surface, Dave,

and it's picking up speed, man. She's bouncing along. She doesn't have the benefit of sitting in a car seat. She's not safely buckled in. She's outside the cabin of this car, and every, and trust me, if New Orleans roads are not smooth, they're horrible, as a matter of fact, notorious for potholes and bumps, and they're always shifting because everything's below sea level.

It's the most uneven environment that you could ever be in. And she's being drug along the surface. And I can't even imagine what would be going through her mind. But this car is just out of control. Well, it's under his control, under Henri's control, for two blocks. And here's the thing. Witnesses see this as the car is traveling. The car actually hops the curb, Dave. Hops the curb, and it doesn't stop. He's still got the door open and kicking her in the head and i'm gonna tell you and i gotta tell you i know you well enough to know this is going to make the blood vessels on the side of your neck

poke out it he was heard to say you gonna die screaming just let that sink in just for a second. And he's kicking her in the head. So he's assaulting her with his foot, blunt force trauma to the head. We have to think that at least by this time, her shoulder's at least dislocated as he's now hopping the curb. But that's not where this ends. Where it ends is that he passes by, Dave, a utility pole,

and if any of us, many of us can identify with this, you have a utility pole, and they'll have this kind of galvanized steel cable that comes down from them that kind of anchors them in place. Apparently, what had happened is as the car passed by, the utility pole guide wire actually tore her arm off, ripped it away, cut it off. They're saying torn along with that, it strips every bit of the clothing off of her body. And she winds up, Dave, you know, we think about how helpless she was in those moments right before this finality here. And there she is, Dave, lying in the middle

of the road, absent an arm, her car disappearing down the road, and she's nude. The force of the scene actually ripped her clothes off. It's a final indignity, Dave. And for the witnesses, one of these ladies had run back into her home. I don't know about you, but I know that it would be me. I'd be frozen in the yard. I couldn't believe what my eyes were telling me. Ran into the home and grabbed a pink cover that she had. She called it pink. Ran out

beside Linda as she lay in the street, nude. Covered her with this pink covering and looked at her. And the final thing that Linda Fricky heard was them saying, we're praying. A case like this, from a forensics perspective, you would believe that we would have a very specific cause of death. And I'm sure that many of you all that are listening to Dave and I right now are thinking, well, I know precisely what killed her. Well, I've got to tell you, this is such a dynamic event, Dave, that it's one of these things kind of, you know, kind of you make a choice. There's a list of things that you can kind of call upon to say what the cause of death is.

I wanted to ask you about this because there was a story out of Florida a couple years ago where a police officer was being drugged he was uh right and he was holding on to the driver's side door as the criminal took off and and because of body cam footage you could actually see him holding on and from cct cameras how he was able to hold himself up this is a man who's in shape and everything else and uh what i noticed in that compared to this okay right right right an in-shape police officer wearing his uniform and having shoes and all that that being drug as far as he was which was not a whole lot further than than miss freaky was his shoes the soles have been worn all the way down to the, to where it cut into his feet. The asphalt was cut.

You can see bone on his feet. That's how bad that is. It showed where other parts where he had lost his balance briefly and was drug along the pavement where it scraped skin off just, you know, and it ripped clothing first and the skin right with, I mean, and it showed his, he was out of work for a year or so recovering from and he survived he did not get beaten ahead

of time he did not uh have his arm tore off he got you know he actually did finally get off the car but i was thinking about that when you were describing what this 73 year old grandmother went through after getting beaten in the car by the 18 year old john henry beats her and he keeps beating her that's the whole thing he keeps beating she can't get out fast enough he's beating her and beating her as they're going on the road she can't get out of his way she can't she's hung up in this uh the seat belt she can't get up he's still beating her he's and i like pictures. The other three women, they're cheerleading him on. But I'm thinking about that police officer and how the damage that he had to his legs and feet, how much worse it was for a 73 year old grandmother, not in the best shape of her life.

You know, I mean, my goodness, I'm not in the shape I was 10 years ago. And all I can picture is when you talk about the neighbor bringing a blanket out, just right after seeing such a horrific thing, at least there is some humanity to leave her with a little sense of dignity about herself in this horrific time. Oh, and you know, I was, I'm glad you said this day because I was thinking about this, uh, before we started taping today. And I remember, you know, there would be days when we would go into the morgue and there would be so many bodies that we would have to do many times. You'd walk in and each, you know, you have sometimes you'll, in some of the morgues I

worked in, you had multiple tables that were pushed up to the sinks. I think the biggest one I ever worked in, we had like eight bodies on movable trays that were sitting there and each body was waiting to be autopsied. And then there were more in the cooler that had to come out and be autopsied that day. So you would just start going down the line. And in that environment, it gets, there's redundancy with it. There's tedium with it sometimes. But Dave, even in that environment, you would stand over, you know, Ms. Fricke's remains

and you would look at them and this would give even the most hardened medical legal personnel pause because as you see her laid there before you and the trauma that she had sustained, you mentioned the police officer down in Florida, and this is an excellent point. Linda would have had what's referred to as road rash, literally. People hear that and they don't really know what it is, but when you're, uh, when you're on this, this surface and you can imagine like a poured asphalt or, or, uh, you know, some kind of cement surface and you're being drug across it, you're going to have these deep, you're going to have superficial and

you're going to have even deeper abraded areas where your skin is actually being peeled off. And the dynamics of this event, Dave, it sounds as though, man, that she is almost spinning on her axis, you know, like this. So it's not just going to be like on the back or on the side or on the abdomen. You're going to have evidence of this because they went for two blocks and she's alive. She's alive. Remember what I said? They said they heard her say, please stop. Please. She's begging for her life. That was one of the things that came up in court. You could she's alive remember remember what i said they said they heard her say please stop please she's begging for her life that was one of the things that came up in court you could have stopped anytime anytime anytime this you could have stopped in the car when you realized it was an

old woman you could have stopped yeah any of the three women could have could have jumped out and stopped they could have stopped anything could have happened that didn't happen. And that's where you want to know where evil lives in the heart of this soul that could do this. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. You know, you think, well, if he has a grandma, would he have done this to his grandma? Yeah.

You know, and that gives you pause. But when an interesting point was made, you remember how I mentioned the lady that came out with a blanket? Right. Yeah, it was a pin. Yeah, to try to aid her. One of the things that she recalled, and this is very powerful, she sits there and she says, I was looking at her and I was thinking, where's the blood? Because the one thing she did recognize that I'm revealing right now is that Linda's arm, along with her clothing, had been torn away. Torn away.

And you would think that you would see a copious amount of blood pouring from her body. Even, even if she was not still alive, there is a report that said that she was not deceased immediately, that they're, you know, she's still there. And, and they literally watched her pass away in the middle of this dirty street in mid city, New Orleans. And, you know, they're hovering over her telling her that we're, we're praying for you, but her arm was actually torn away, but she wasn't presenting with a lot of blood. And, you know, this, this trial, the sentencing just has wrapped up and we'll get to that in a moment for Henri. The other individuals, the other three individuals, have previously been sentenced because they pled guilty immediately. Not Henri. Not Henri. He did

not. He did not. He wanted to go to trial, and his trial wound up lasting one day. But the pathologist for the Orleans Parish Coroner's Office testified in this case, Dave. And let me, if you'll permit me, just let me tell you what her primary injuries were. First off, they classified her death, the immediate cause of death, as blunt force injuries or blunt force trauma. And that does make sense because she's being pummeled, you know, going down the road, being drug along, but her, her aorta is torn, which is, if you'll think about your heart, the position of your heart off of the very top of your heart, the largest vessel in the human body, the root of it is in the top of the heart. Essentially, it comes off and kind of arches down. Um, one of the things we'd look for in autopsy, and particularly in car accidents,

is the most fragile part of the aorta is what's referred to as the aortic arch. It's very fragile. So where it actually makes the curve, where it's going to drop down and travels down the spine and then eventually splits into the femoral arteries and all that, that's one of the most fragile spots, particularly in car accidents

or blunt force trauma to the chest. And so you can get this ripping that takes place there. And in addition to that, Linda suffered a fractured collarbone. Makes sense if you're driving up on a curb and she's being drug along, you can imagine. I've broken my collarbone before, very painful. She also had multiple fractured ribs, which again goes along with blunt force trauma where she's being banged around. And then finally, she had fractured vertebral bodies as well. So she's, all of this is, is occurring. This dynamic is occurring all in her upper body. That doesn't mean there's not injuries to her lower body. But back to the aorta, remember what I said about the lady not seeing any blood?

You recall that? When she got there and she's looking down, can you imagine looking down and you see this location where Linda's arm used to be? You know, the one that used to hold her grandchildren. And she's thinking, I can only imagine there's no blood here. And I think, personally, that the reason she didn't see a lot of blood is probably due to the fact that she had this ruptured aorta. And when you get a ruptured aorta and your heart is still pumping,

your chest cavity is literally filling up with blood. Now this, to me, if you're seeking some shred of comfort or mercy when you hear this horrible tale of Linda's death, you're thinking that if the aorta is compromised, if it's blown out or torn, perhaps, just perhaps, she's sinking away. She's sinking away and she's losing consciousness. She didn't have to feel the pain because I can tell you, Dave, I don't know of anything that could potentially be more painful than this with these multiple broken bones and certainly an arm that's been torn away. Okay. I'm thinking where you said there was,

the woman didn't see blood. She's expecting to see blood. I expect to see blood. Then you mentioned the aorta. So the blood is in the chest cavity, but it's not going to come out from where the arm, it's not going to come out from other parts of the body that have been damaged. Is it because the blood isn't,

the heart's not pumping anymore. It's just can't come out. Right. of the body that have been damaged. Is it because the blood isn't, the heart's not pumping anymore. It's just can't come out. Right. That's, that's my theory. And, and what happens. That actually makes sense though, Joe. It really does. I couldn't figure that out when you told me earlier that the question was, where's the blood?

She covered her with a pink blanket, but where's the blood? And that with that, whatever that tear was in her aorta is pumping out blood. First off, it'll go into the pericardial sac, perhaps, that surrounds the heart. And that's called a tamponade. But if other elements within the anatomy are ripped away, that her chest would be filling with blood. Her lungs would literally be floating in blood. And, you know, when you do a case like this and you open the body at autopsy, it is not uncommon to see the lungs actually floating in the chest in blood. And this is one of the reasons, like, when you, if you've ever seen somebody that has to go into the emergency room and they have what's referred to as like a flail chest, like a blunt impact in a car accident,

one of the things that will occur is that in between, in the intercostal spaces, in the chest, that's the muscle in between the ribs, they'll cut a hole in there and they'll put a tube and the tube will drain out all of that blood because one of the things that happens is that you're suffocating because your lungs can't expand to take on more air. And of course, they'll have to surgically repair this if it's possible. Aorta is a very tricky thing. So you would have to have a cardiothoracic surgeon standing by right there in order to facilitate this to save her life. And my only hope here, Dave, is that she didn't feel any more pain than she had already. I'm hoping that she didn't suffer, is what I'm saying, any more than she had to.

Because God knows her family suffered. Her family suffered, her family suffered in, you know, those people that bore witness to this suffered. When it comes down to having to make a decision on, uh, what cause of death really was. Yeah. Um, do you have to go through each injury and kind of build a timetable of when it took place so that you can get to, because you can certainly suffer a lot, a lot of injuries in a, in like this. I mean, you, you're suffering injuries when you're getting beaten in the front of the

car. Any one of those, any one of those shots to her head or body could have been, could have caused her death. Right. Right. And I'm just wondering, do you have to build that timeline of injury from the very first injury to the very last one and decide which one of these was the fatal one or how many were fatal, I guess? This is a fantastic question because in forensics, one of the things that investigators will ask us to do is sequence injuries.

You know, what injuries came first? But from our perspective, in our analysis from a scientific standpoint, we're thinking, which injuries are the most impactful? What's going to have the highest probability of bringing about death? What is the most catastrophic thing that she suffered? And I'm very interested in the fact that the aorta was listed. And I'm not surprised because out of all of my years of working in the morgue and certainly investigating cases out on the streets, aortas are one of those things that is, it's almost 100% surety that you're going to die. If you can't be medevaced in some way to a hospital that has the level of treatment, trauma treatment that would be available, uh,

that could stem this, you don't have any chance whatsoever of surviving. And certainly that's the case with Linda Fricke. But do they know when that happened? Do they know when that happened? Do they know when that happened? Because I know we've got video. We have video of the beating that took place in the car. We've got different camera angles going from the very beginning to the end, which is, I cannot imagine how horrific that was and is for the family,

as well as you've mentioned the witnesses several times, and I'm glad sometimes we forget that. Yeah. Family hurts those closest hurt. But when you're a part of something, you cannot affect change. You cannot help this person. It's done. And you're just what you become a victim of the crime by extension.

Yes. And I'm just curious, you know, in that we get to see all of this as you put it together. Could that have happened early on or at the end? I think that if you're, this could be one of two things. This could either be what's referred to as a torquing or torsion injury where she's twisted to the point that the aorta would tear. My suspicion is that she probably sustained literal blunt force trauma. Perhaps if people at home will put your fingertips right on top of your sternum, like really near the top, that approximates the area where your aorta sits. So she was impacted, say for instance, on that curb when he jumped the curb. That could be

when this started. And remember her arm was not, according to what the witnesses were saying, was not torn away until after he hit that post or after he hit that guide wire, I guess is how we could actually call it. And it was clipped away and her clothing was all twisted up in there along with the arm as well. And, and so, but yeah, to say that it actually happened at this precise moment that I think that that would be very, very difficult. It's not, you know, if you had somebody, like if you had a static event with like a shooting and you had it on video and you could see the shooting where somebody is actually struck in the chest and they died and you opened their body and they were clipped in the order you could say it then, but everything. So even though we have CCTV footage, you can't see what's going on internally.

And they were not able to appreciate that until they got her to the morgue, even though you knew that it was going to be bad based on what you were seeing externally. So what happens now, Joe, when you have something like this, where it gets to this point where you're you, you've got this laundry list of medical issues. When you go to court, do you have to explain all of these things to a jury so they understand? Do they have to know what happened from the very beginning of the attack till the very end? Or can you game plan it differently? No,

I think in this case and my understanding, this is what the prosecutor did. They laid this thing out very, very precisely. And the two key witnesses here are going to be those eyewitnesses, the man and the woman. There were other ones, but there were two in particular that are constantly quoted in the news. And of course, the forensic pathologist. I think that the fact that such horror could be painted, and I can only imagine, and maybe I'm just kind of projecting here, but when that forensic pathologist begins to give her testimony in this trial, and that is coupled with what the lion's share, many people don't leave New Orleans.

They're New Orleanians through and through. These people have lived. They're very familiar with this area of town. It's not like New Orleans is this gigantic place. They know where Mid-City is. They know where Scott Boulevard is. All right. They know where Bienville is. Just like you did when you were explaining it to me.

Even though you've been gone from there for years, you were able to explain to me where we were talking about. And that's, that's part of being from New Orleans, um, and understanding the, uh, the fine detail that, because they know all those people in the jury, they know what the streets are like. They know what those curbs are like. Uh, they know what violence is like. They know what those curbs are like. They know what violence is like. They've borne witness to it or had family members. But I don't know that any of them walked into that court thinking that they were going to see something so barbaric. And that's really the only way. I think, you know, one level, this would make Romans blush. You know, when you think about what that neighborhood had to bear witness to with Ms. Fricke's murder. And in this particular case, I think that I'm hoping, Dave,

and I try to really be very positive about these sorts of things because, look, I could chime in and be just as negative as everybody else. I'm hoping that Ms. Fricke's death will actually be a moment in time where people will look back and say, we can do better than this. We're going to do better than this. We're going to keep control over our kids. We're going to know where they're at. And we're going to try to teach them right from wrong. Because I've got to tell you, Dave, if this is the direction that we're all going in, it's very, very grim.

I think that it's important to note that John Henri was actually found guilty after a one-day trial of second-degree murder. And he has been sentenced to spend at least the next 25 years in prison in Angola. The only reason he was spared the death penalty was that he was 17 years old when he committed this homicide. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Matters. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. is body matter. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.