Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags: The Detailed Death of Brian Laundrie

Episode Date: February 27, 2022

The release of autopsy and forensic reports for Brian Laundrie provides an interesting study in forensics. When Laundrie, 23, was found dead of an apparent suicide, police had been searching for him in connection to the death of his girlfriend Gabby Petito. The newly-released documents show that Laundrie’s “skeletal remains and personal effects were in plain sight and scattered upon the dirt ground.” Details also show that the area had been underwater, which could explain why investigators did not discover the remains sooner. The documents strongly indicate Laundrie died quite some time before his body was found, as there was no soft tissue left on the skeleton. There was also indication of animal activity characterized by gnawing and chewing. Investigators reportedly believe that wild dogs, coyotes, and/or vermin were among the animal predators that disturbed the remains. The medical examiner’s report shows that Brian Laundrie killed himself with a single-bullet, which entered his skull on the left side. Today on Body Bags, forensics expert and former death scene investigator Joseph Scott Morgan explains the details and the significance. 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. A few months back, the Carton Reserve gave up a big secret. It's in the reserve that the body of Brian Laundrie was found. We didn't really know what state his remains were in. There was a lot of speculation. But now, because of forensic science and what I'm about to tell you today, we've got more answers than we could have ever hoped for. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags.

Again with me today is my good friend Jackie Howard, executive producer of Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Jackie, I tell you what, I didn't think we'd ever see this day. But boy, do we have some info to impart to all our listeners this time. We do, Joe. As you and I were discussing the details that came out in this report, you said something to me that that piqued interest right off the top of the bat. And that is the fact that the autopsy report for Brian Laundrie is not one report, but five. Please explain that to me. Yeah. Yeah. Isn't that something I got to tell you when I, you know, of course I had people from all over that were shooting me the link when it first came out and I was amazed because yeah, we don't just simply have an autopsy report.

Not that that's not a great thing, but, yeah, we've got five of these reports, Jackie, and that's kind of amazing. I'm just going to kind of give you the basic rundown real quick of what we have. We have the ME investigators report, which is actually the medical legal death investigator that physically went out to the scene and observed what was out there. Remember, they're the eyes and observed what was out there. Remember, they're the eyes and the ears of the forensic pathologist. They go out and they bring in data for the pathologist so that they can make determinations. Most of the time, forensic pathologists don't go into the field. Then you have the forensic pathology report. Okay. Wait, wait. You said the investigator's report. What kind of things are on that report?

You're looking at detailed drawings of where everything is laid out, photographs. What exactly is the pathologist going to be looking at when he reads that report? Well, first off, you have to understand that the forensic pathologist doesn't physically go to the scene. You see that on television. It happens only in rare occasion. So most of the time you're going to have a medical examiner investigator, which is what I did for a living all those years,

that is going to be the eyes and the ears of the forensic pathologist out in the field. So they physically go out there and observe the environment, the environment in which the body is found. And that's important here because that lends context to the story that is being told by the environment. So in Brian Laundrie's case, you know, you've got skeletal remains, which are essentially deposited out in the swampy area. And it's kind of convoluted and confused. I'll put it to you this way. If you just had a bunch of cops and went out and randomly picked up evidence and brought it back to the morgue and handed it to the doctor and said, here, figure this out. Can you imagine what a nightmare that would be?

So the medical examiner investigator is kind of an extension of the forensic pathologist. And what they're taking a look at is, first off, the distribution of the bones. And you want to see how far out they extend in this environment. Where are they deposited? How are they deposited? Are some partially buried? Are they just laying out on the bare surface of the earth in this kind of loamy dirt that's down there with all the decomposing vegetable matter that's surrounding it? Is the ground soft? Is it hard? Does it look like there may have been a grave that was adjacent to this area? You know, all kinds of issues like that. And one of the things that really was telling for me is that this is how detailed this report is.

And I encourage all of our listeners and body bags to read this report. If you're really interested in forensics, this investigator did such a fantastic job. They even talked about the height of what the water level had been at. And you could see the, you know how many times if you have a flooded area, you'll see where the water line got up to. If you live near a river or maybe near the ocean, you can see that kind of benchmark, that staining that takes place. They made note of that. And that's significant in this case because remember what they were telling us weeks ago when they finally recovered Brian Laundrie's remains. They said that remains had been submerged. And these depths are going to vary out there. So

the ME investigator puts all of that in context. And then they make note of not only the bones and the distribution of the bones in the area that they cover, but any other items. And we have, boy, did they find items. You know, we've heard about the dry bag, you know, that was out there. They found that. They found the notebook. They found a box that the notebook was in. They even found a weapon out there.

They found, believe it or not, they found a projectile. And, you know, that projectile was actually buried beneath six inches of this loamy soil that I mentioned. You know how they found that? Well, it wasn't laying on top of the ground. That means that they went out there with metal detectors and swept the area. So, there's a lot that goes into this, into this environment. And, you know, one of the things that I was always interested in as an ME investigator, and I think it applies here, is how much cover and concealment was there out here? You know, and when you get into a swampy area, they use terms like canopy. We hear that term lots of times relative to jungle. What kind of canopy

do you have out there? How thick are the leaves above you? Is this an area that could be appreciated if you were flying over it? And it's pretty thick vegetation out there. And of course, it was all around the rim of this area where water had settled in, Jackie. Okay. That's one report. What's next? You know, after the body comes in, that's brought in by the transport service, after the ME investigator has done their part at the scene, it's at this point in time that the forensic pathologist will begin to do

what would normally be considered an autopsy. And yeah, this is an autopsy, even though you don't have a fully intact body. But the pathologist actually goes in with all of these bones and there were roughly, I think they recovered just under a hundred bones, I think. And there's just over 200 bones in the human body. So you begin to talk about smaller bones that we have in our body. Some of those things you're just not going to recover. But they did find 100 and they were significant. To have found that number of bones, Joe, would that be considered a successful recovery? A successful recovery is relative in in forensic science. You know, our fallback position is you essentially take what you can get. And if if this is what you're

presented with, then that's what you're going to move forward with. And we understand as forensic scientists that, you know, like the small bones that you find in the hand, for instance, the tips of the fingers, those sorts of things, and the feet as well, some of those things are just going to be gone. They'll either be gone as a result of being washed away by water or, you know, in cases like this where small animals are going to come along and take bones away and they'll take them back to their little burrows. Because, you know, you have to understand these bones that these animals seek out, they're protein rich.

And animals that I think most people think, you know, they look at, say, for instance, a squirrel, they might look at a raccoon or something and think, oh, well, it's so beautiful. You know, they wouldn't do anything to a human body. No, they're seeking out protein. And that's what they kind of get an infusion of with these bones. And they can sense that. And they'll take these tiny bones, something that's manageable, and take it back to their burrow and they're going to hang on to it. And we found tiny bones like that before on recovery. So the fact that they've got 100 is really significant. And even better than that is the fact that they recovered, I think, 26 pieces of skull.

And of course, what we're looking for here is cause and manner of death in this particular case. And that goes to a bigger issue when you have to account for everything that you have. And what I teach people relative to forensics is this. Negative findings, and always keep this in mind in forensic science, well, just about any kind of science, negative findings are just as important as positive findings. So, if you're absent something or, you know, maybe you're doing a test and it doesn't come out in a positive manner in which you might want it to, that means that it takes you down another path, okay? So, in this case, you'd mentioned, is it a success?

Yeah, it's a success because we've got 100 as opposed to, say, 50. So that is significant. We've got 100 bones to work with. I wish we had more, but that's what we have. And we're going to move on from there. So you have to, when the forensic pathologist takes this, they have this kind of particulate skeleton that they lay out on this big stainless steel table. And they'll go through and they will inventory every single thing they have. They'll take photographs of it. They'll take measurements of it. And just to make

sure that they can account for everything that was recovered in the field. And also to say, you know what, guys, I tell you what, we didn't recover this and this. Why don't we make another run out there? Now, the reason that's important is because now you've got a medical doctor looking who is an anatomical, not just a forensic pathologist, but most of these guys are what are referred to as anatomical pathologists. That means that they truly study the body. They will say, I'll tell you what, let's go back out one more time and see if we can find

this, this, and this. I suggest you look in these particular areas relative to where you found these particular bones. And then you go back out and you do another pass at that area. So that gives you an idea of kind of where you stand. And you can do a general overall assessment because the more sample you have, the higher the probability is that you're first off going to determine manner and cause of death. And secondly, you're going to be able to get a positive identification. And that's kind of the heart and soul of what the medical examiner

is there for. We're there for three principal reasons, the manner of death, the cause of death, and who is this person. And that's what we do in that environment. So you have the body such as it is in total from that perspective. Now, you've got this particulate skull. The fact that we have this skull that is fragmented, we'll say that, that means it's like a big puzzle is significant because that gives us an indication that something probably traumatic has happened to the skull because skulls do not just spontaneously fall apart. Even in the face of decomposition, think about how many

documentaries you may have watched on burials, ancient burials, even in the face of decomposition. Think about how many documentaries you may have watched on burials, ancient burials. Even when they recovered King Richard III's body out of the car park over in England many years ago, he'd been buried for hundreds and hundreds of years. Guess what? His skull is still intact. You can tell where a dagger had gone into the back of the skull. Skulls are very resilient. So the fact that this skull that they have is essentially particulate is significant when we begin to think about the manner of death and the causality as to what brought about their death. So that is very important.

And what will, you know, we have this forensic pathology report that essentially is an autopsy. It's going to be their examination of the bone. They're going to rule out any kind of trauma that they might see. I can tell you that based upon what I read in the forensic pathology report, there was little or no soft tissue left. However, they did state that along spinal processes, that is the vertebral bodies in the back, they did see some evidence of what's referred to as adipocere. And this is a unique thing that happens, particularly in bodies that have been in water. Old timers used to refer to it as death wax. And the best way I can really describe it is the fat during the process of decomposition

actually turns into, it gives the appearance of almost, some people describe it as cottage cheese or even cauliflower. It becomes very hard. And there were certain focal areas of that left behind. But there was no other soft tissue left on the body. So that gives you an indication that the body had, in fact, been out there for a protracted period of time. The elements played a part in this. I think that probably animal activity played a significant part in this.

And so the forensic pathologist is kind of left wanting at this point because, you know, look, I mean, it's one thing to make a fatal diagnosis, if you will, on a body that is intact with soft tissue. It's completely different if all you have are skeletal remains. It's very, very difficult. So it's at that point when I'm flipping through the report, I almost became giddy. If you can imagine looking at a report like this, because the most robust portion of this totality of paperwork that came out was actually generated by the forensic anthropologist. I was just going to ask you about that, Joe.

You and I had discussed the five different types of reports, as I mentioned earlier. So there was the forensic pathology report and the forensic anthropology report. What's the difference? Oh, yeah, it is significant. You know, forensic anthropologists, you know, and it's gone down, I guess, in lore now relative to the body farm up in Tennessee at UT, you know, with Dr. Bass and what they do, the studies that they do up there relative to human remains. And they refer to them as many times as the desiccation studies. You hear that. But essentially, they're trying to determine, you know, the rate of decomposition. Well, those are forensic anthropologists that do that. And what happens in this rendered down state is many times all you have left are skeletal remains. And we're very

unique. Even in our skeletal composition, it is unique to us. It bears the marks of growth or lack of growth, our level of nutrition, injuries that we've had. Say, for instance, we've had a broken bone, even though you might perceive that it is healed and it is very well healed. If you've had a significant fracture in your life, guess what? It's going to show up on an x-ray and it'll certainly show up in the hands of a forensic anthropologist as they are examining a bone. Say, if somebody's fractured a big bone like the femur, you'll see a little fracture line in there where it's kind of resolved and healed.

And why that is important is that that is a specific point of identification relative to these remains that are otherwise completely compromised. You're absent any other ability, perhaps, to get them identified. But if somebody's got pins or screws in their hip or their knee or their shoulder or wherever, if they got old fracture lines. I've had cases where I've had individuals that have been stabbed through the ribs. And can you imagine this? You can still see the groove where the knife might have passed through maybe 30 years earlier.

But that's a specific identifier that's unique to that person. But with this particular skeleton, I go back to what I'd said earlier. We have got this fragmented skull and who else, who else is, is better than a forensic anthropologist to actually take the skull and what, what was done is that they essentially reassembled the skull as best they could. And when that reassembly had, had, or reassemblage had taken place. Boy, was a lot revealed here because essentially it verified what a lot of people had speculated about, I think. And and it's one thing to speculate.

But when you can get scientific confirmation, as in this particular case, when you got so many people that are wondering about it, so many people that are asking questions, this is big. It's one of the biggest things to kind of rise up out of all of this data, you know, that has been recovered and examined. And so with the skull, when they finally got that particulate skull put back together, it was the biggest reveal of all because it was at that point in time that the forensic anthropologist and the forensic pathologist came together. And their conclusion is that whoever the skull belonged to, it sustained a self-inflicted gunshot wound. So, Joe, the last two reports of our five are, by their titles, pretty self-explanatory.

That is the DNA analysis report and the forensic dentistry, which is how the identification was made on Brian Laundrie. Yeah, right you are, Jackie. And I think a lot of people would just kind of gloss over this, but you have to understand this is one of the biggest points of contention, at least from my perspective, having dealt with this case since, I don't know, probably the actually the first day of the investigation, reporting on it and this sort of thing. This is significant because you got to know who the individual is. That's one of the major questions here. And so, the DNA report that the analyst generated is kind of fascinating, particularly if you're interested in DNA and how this works. What they did is not only do they have the bone that the forensic anthropologist examined, but they also had another element.

They had teeth. And so with the teeth and then the long bones, what they were able to do is to do an extraction, which means that they can go into the pulp of the tooth. They use a very fine drill and go in there and extract pulp. And it's kind of a robust area where you can harvest DNA from. And also you want to use like a larger bone if you can, pelvis or femur. In this case, I think they used the femur and removed some DNA sample from there as well. Now, this is something quite interesting here. When we were in the middle of reporting, and I had actually talked to Nancy Grace about this, Jackie,

there was one day in particular where I saw an FBI investigator go walking in the door. You know, all those video clips of them going into Brian Laundrie's parents' home. One of the things I recognized, and I think she was holding them in her right hand. I looked at that and I said, you know what? Those are DNA sample boxes she's carrying in. And I think that was kind of confirmed because what we did find out is that they went in and did buccal mucosal swabs of both Bron Lundry's mom and dad. And what that means is they go in and scrape the cheek cells out and they can do a comparison relative to the parents' DNA versus the unidentified skeletal remains that they had. And kind of going hand in hand with that, we had this forensic dentistry examination that was conducted. Some people know them as forensic odontologists. You hear them associated with bite marks and that sort of thing. But you know what?

Forensic dentists and forensic odontologists are used far more frequently relative to identification than they are most of the time with bite mark because you have so many unidentified bodies. People aren't aware of that in the public. You get a lot of decomposed bodies. And our default position traditionally has always been to go to dentistry because you have these dentists that can go in and examine the teeth. And teeth are fascinating. First off, teeth are not bone.

People think that. But these teeth that they have out at the scene, they're found in both the mandible, which is your lower jaw, okay, the mandible. And then you have them in the maxilla, which is the upper portion of your mouth. So they were able to actually extract teeth, the dentist was, and aid in the harvesting of DNA from those samples. Now, in addition to the DNA, the dentist also did a dental examination of the teeth that they had. And this is quite fascinating because you have to understand that in order to do a dental identification, you can do a perfect examination on a dead body.

All right. An unidentified dead body. But guess what you have at the end of that if you have nothing to compare it to? Well, you have a dental examination on a dead body. That's it. That's the road ends literally right there. So what you have to do from an investigative standpoint, if you suspect that it is somebody, you go to a practitioner, a dentist that has treated the suspected individual in the past,

and you get there what's referred to as anti-mortem dental records. And they actually make note of this in this report. And that's significant that they went to Brian Laundrie's private practicing dentist and retrieved his chart. And they began to talk about malocclusions and how the teeth are rotated and how they're pitched and all these sorts of things. And they compare the chart that they have with the teeth that they now have. And they were able to get a positive ID based on that. I don't know of any case that we've covered in body bags thus far that has contained this much information, I was kind of blown away relative to the amount of data that we have to go over in this case.

It is a lot, Joe, and every bit of it is fascinating. And I'm going to pinpoint one right now. You talked about the projectile that was discovered with the use of a metal detector. I was reading in the report that that projectile was found about 50 to 60 feet south of the area where the skull fragments and the handgun were found. When it comes to an investigation like this that is so painstaking, you're talking about a lot of man hours in finding that fragment. Yeah, you are. And it all comes to, listen, when you go into a scene like this, this is not a scene that you just kind of willy nilly walk onto and say, okay, you got to look over there. You got to look over there and I'll look over here and, you know, maybe we'll find something that's not how it's done. This kind of scene like this, your efforts are won or lost based on the preparation that goes into prior to even beginning to enter into a scene like this. Now,

kind of let me paint the picture because this is a hostile environment. And I don't mean hostile in the sense that you've got lions and tigers and bears on my, even though people have said there might be alligators. The fact that it's super duper hot, you've got snakes out there. The landscape is kind of always changing. It's wet. It's high humidity. You're miserable. Trust me. I've been in environments like this. But what you have to do to begin with is decide who's going to handle what. Who's going to be the photographer? Who's going to be the scribe? That means the person writing everything down. Who's going to be the person that's going to be down on their hands and knees moving layers of dirt away? Who's going to

be the person that's in charge of the little markers? They're going to put them in the ground. And so in order to do this, you have to break up into teams. And then the teams will come together and actually grid off the area. Can you imagine that? So that just imagine a gigantic plat of the land where you've essentially got these grids that are roughly two by two, two feet by two feet, can be three feet by three feet. And you work each one of those little grid squares. And most of the time in the past, I've seen people use string to string these things off and they're very, very uniformed and you only work one little section at a time. It is painstaking, but you don't want to miss anything. And if you focus, it's like anything else in life.

If you look at something big, okay. And you say, oh my God, I've got to do all this work. It's overwhelming. If you look at that one my God, I've got to do all this work, it's overwhelming. If you look at that one little section, it's easy to kind of handle. It's like the old adage, how do you eat an elephant? Well, you eat it one bite at a time. And trust me, this is the biggest elephant of all. When you have got human remains that are scattered from here to kingdom come, laying all out there in this muddy environment, and you're miserable.

So you have to be very, very ordered. And the fact that they found this spent round so far away from where the rest of the deposition of everything was, it's kind of significant, I think. It goes to the professionalism regarding the investigators, how thorough they were, because this is something you could easily pass right over. maybe working essentially in shoulder to shoulder to put it in a certain way and kind of sweeping back and forth, back and forth, gently kind of moving forward. And whenever you get a hit, you take a little flag out and you mark it and then you keep on going. You keep on going and everywhere you get a little hit, you mark it and then you go back and you carefully uncover that area. In this particular case, they were able to find this projectile buried from what I understand from the report, almost six inches beneath the top layer of soil.

Joe, can we assume by the fact that this projectile fragment was found that this would mean that there was an entrance and an exit wound? Oh, yeah. Yeah, most likely. And, you know, look, not only did we find a projectile, Jackie, they found a handgun as well. And this is where ballistics comes in. And I think, I suspect, that more than likely the FBI got on this with their lab. The weapon, I can only imagine, was probably compromised. And it was a unique weapon because

not only it's not just a standard 38 special revolver, it is a combination 38 special slash 357 Magnum revolver. It's almost like a hybrid. It's kind of an unusual weapon. And that makes it unique. It makes it unique to Brian Laundrie, maybe his family. I don't know who actually owned this weapon, but it was found there. And then more significantly is that that round that I mentioned that was, you know, roughly six inches below that top layer of dirt. Ballistically, it matched up to this weapon. That means that we've got a significant tie back to this weapon. It puts that round coming out of that particular handgun because, you know, as we've talked about many, many times on our show and as well as with Nancy,

there is a specific ballistic fingerprint that is left behind on the outer portion of those soft lead projectiles and also on the outside of a jacket that marries up to the lands and grooves inside of that barrel. So as the medical examiner told us in his report, Brian Laundrie was killed by a single gunshot to the head. What I found interesting in what was released in this report is the trajectory of the bullet. Yeah, isn't that kind of interesting? And, you know, just just to kind of give you an idea, one of the things that Yeah, isn't that kind of interesting? And, you know, just to kind of give you an idea, one of the things that we look for in any kind of gunfire-related death is to try to determine, obviously, range of fire. That's something that you hear about on a regular basis.

And we also try to determine the trajectory of the round. That means the path that it travels on. And sometimes we can estimate things like whether the round is traveling from above to below or from below to above. We take a look if it's going from front to back, those sorts of things. So it is significant that we, in fact, have this. But just so our listeners understand, the entrance wound that they were able to determine that it's entrance. And let me tell you how we do this because people say, well, how do you know that this is an entrance wound when all you have is a skull? Well, that's a great question. I'm glad you asked. When we have a skull, for instance, we're going to look for what's referred

to, and remember these words, it's called internal beveling. And if you've ever seen a beveled piece of wood that's got kind of a rounded edge to it, the beveling will always be on the interior of the skull adjacent to the entrance wound. So when you open the skull up, you look at it. And if the inner wall of the skull is beveled or kind of curved, that's an indication that the round actually entered at that point. Now, as far as the exit goes, this entrance, let me back up. The entrance is actually in the left temporal area, left temporal.

So if you'll go to your ear, your left ear, and simply move your finger forward of your left ear, okay, that's your temporal bone right there. Now, what this round does is that it travels from that entrance. It travels essentially from left to right. So we're entering the left temporal bone and we're exiting out the right parietal bone. Some people will say parietal and the parietal bone is found to the rear and above your right ear. You have one on each side, but in this case, it's going to be the right parietal bone. And it's, you know, they're matching this thing up so that it is slightly above the right ear. And it gives you kind of this odd trajectory. So if you'll just imagine a rod running from forward of your left ear and going, coming out behind your right ear,

that'll give you an idea as how this, you idea of how this round actually traveled through the skull. And, of course, it blew out the other side. Now, I know a lot of people would ask, well, you know, Morgan, you talked about how the skull is in 26 pieces, I think it was, they were covered. You know, why is it in 26 pieces? Why didn't it just, you have one hole on one side and another hole on the other side? Well, you got to understand something.

When a weapon is fired into a skull, you're not just talking about the projectile itself entering the skull, all right? Now, here's a bit of science for you. A lot of us learned this in about the seventh or eighth grade in physical science. And this is a beautiful thing, particularly when you're looking at death investigation. Now, it's not just a projectile, and this is a large projectile. It's a hunk of lead coming out of this weapon. You've also got hot expanding gas. And if you don't think that's powerful, hang on, all right? Because the bullet itself, the projectile is creating a

hole, right? It's creating a hole in the left temporal bone and followed closely behind this bullet is this really hot air. If you ever see like, you know, videos of weapons being fired at night, it looks like flames are shooting out of the end of them. Well, it is. That's some of that hot air coming out and hot air always expands. It never contracts. So it's going to expand. And when you go into what's referred to as the cranial vault, which is where our brain is housed, that's the inside of the skull,

that hot air is looking to expand. And when we were being formed, when we were in fetal development, our skull actually came together along these lines that are called suture lines. And they look like teeth that are kind of integrated. And that's one of the weaker spots of the skull. So as that hot air is expanding out into that cranial vault, all of a sudden, those suture lines blow apart. All right. That's why you have these really nasty head injuries, you know, that you see people with self and maybe people have seen these horrible images on the Internet. That's one of the reasons it happens.

Yeah, the projectile plays a large role in this. But that hot air that's expanding and more than likely it's hard to tell because there was no tissue left. More than likely, this is what we refer to as a press or a tight contact gunshot wound. So you're forming a seal over that particular area where the projectile went in. And buddy, let me tell you something, that gas wants to seek the weakest area that it can so it can do what it naturally does. And so it blows out all of those bits of skull and they just literally come apart. That's why you had it not really disintegrate. Disintegrate is not accurate, but it became particulate at that point in time and came apart.

And again, this is just like the projectile. This is a testament to how effective these investigators were. And I'm talking about the crime scene investigators. I'm not talking about detectives. I'm talking about the crime scene investigators, the people from the medical exam or how tenacious they were at the scene as they recovered that many pieces of the skull around the body. And they were able to bring that in. And if they hadn't done that, if they hadn't done that where they could take it, reconstruct it essentially, or put it back together as best they could with what they had left, you wouldn't have the answers to this.

You wouldn't know that it was from left to right and from the temporal bone to the parietal bone and the pitch of it and all those sorts of things. So they did a bang-up job with this. One more point that I found very interesting in this report, Joe, is the fact that the entrance wound is on the left side of Brian Laundrie's skull. If I am not mistaken, Brian Laundrie was right-handed. Yeah, isn't that something? And I've heard several people kind of offer up opinions about this and this sort of thing,

people that are supposed handgun experts and all this. And, you know, I don't have an explanation for that. I wish I did. I just don't. It's from an investigative standpoint, it's interesting to me. I think that my next question would be, and trust me, when I hear things like this, I don't, if I hear hoofbeats, I don't automatically think that zebra. Okay. I'm going to think horse.

So with this, I would want to explore it further. The first question I would ask his loved ones and the people in his immediate circle, was he ambidextrous? You know, did he use both his left and right hand? And then that kind of explained some things. I don't know. Maybe he only felt comfortable holding this weapon in his left hand. I don't know. I guess you can imply that there's something maybe ominous with that, that maybe people might think that someone else was holding a weapon as opposed to him.

I can't answer that. And I don't know that anybody could from a forensics standpoint. That's a question that would have to be explored further by law enforcement. But yeah, it is certainly an interesting point of order, I think, when you begin to think you do, you know, he's right-handed and that's been definitively stated that he's done everything with his right hand throughout his life. So, you know, I think as a scientist, we would want to ask, well, why suddenly at this moment in time did he decide to end his life with his left hand.

It's very important that, you know, that these remains have been recovered and that we can learn so much, I think, probably from the physical presentation of Ron Launderer's remains. But, you know, I think a lasting question that will, I don't know, ever be sufficiently answered. But you have to ask, what exactly does the scene tell us about what went on in the Carlton Reserve? Joe, we know on the scene, among the things that were recovered besides the bones was a backpack and the shoes belonging to Brian Laundrie. There was a pair of green shorts, a green belt, two slip-on shoes, a backpack, a white metal ring, and the handgun. But in addition to this, Joe, there was a second scene that included some animal remains, a handwritten note, and a hat, and that dry bag that we have talked about so often that

had the journal inside. You know, one of the most fascinating things about being a death investigator, Jackie, is the fact that we see the end, if you will, physically of an individual, all that remains, if you will. But there's a lot that we kind of learn about what was going on relative to an individual at the moment, Tom, or close, approximating the moment in time when they took their life, you know, what was, what were the last activities that they were engaged in? Um,

you know, what were they surrounded by? What was the environment like? And I have no doubt that out there in the Carlton reserve out there in that thick, thick brush, in that wet environment, that they recovered quite a bit. I think that, obviously, many people are very interested in this note. And, you know, one of the things that kind of came out in these reports was that it was a partial note. And I don't know really how to define that.

I'm hoping that the authorities will add some clarity to that, because I don't know really how to define that. I'm hoping that the authorities will add some clarity to that because I don't know if it means that the note was partially written and then he just kind of trailed off and didn't finish a note and that, you know, this dry bag that has been speculated about for some time that was physically there as well. But, you know, I think probably one of the most poignant things for me, Jackie, that kind of really struck a chord with me, not just, you know, as an investigator, but as a father, was the fact that at the scene they were covered a red hat. And that hat had the words Moab coffee roasters written on it. And when I read that and contained in the scientific report, and it would seem that it's just kind of this innocuous thing that, you know,

you just happen to find it a scene. All I could do at that moment, Tom, was reflect back to that young girl on the side of the road, weeping her in this circumstance that she suddenly found herself in that she probably didn't want to be in anymore, you know, because we've talked a lot about Brian Laundrie and God knows a lot has been written about him, hadn't it? I mean, we've got five scientific reports we're talking about today. But, you know, we haven't mentioned Gabby's name. And I'll be damned if I'm going to do this podcast today without mentioning Gabby

Patio's name, because at the end of the day, that's what this is about. The fact that she was out on the side of that road and Brian Laundrie had a hat with him, Jackie, and that hat actually had the words Moab coffee roaster written on it. And let's think back to what Moab, what significance there was to Moab. That's at that moment in time when many people felt like that if another path had been taken, this young girl would still be with us. And, you know, I think she's emblematic of a lot of young women across the country, you know, that are in these terrible relationships.

And no one knows. And if they just take another path, but that the Moab coffee roaster's hat that was there, it had a significance to me that went beyond just its evidentiary value. It was kind of this benchmark moment. And I can only imagine these investigators, these investigators out there at the scene knew what that hat meant when they saw it. It's not just something that, you know, he arbitrarily said, oh, well, I've got five different baseball caps I'm going to grab and wear it. He wore that hat out there. He knew what had happened in Moab. And it was that one moment in time.

It was that one moment in time when life could have changed. But it wound up in this. It wound up with a young girl that was found brutally throttled to death out in the wilderness in a place that she had never lived. She'd probably never been to before, dying all alone out there with nobody around her that truly loved her. And another young man decomposing in the swamp after he ends his own life. And I don't know how much more we can really make of it. The science, I think, is great, but the science doesn't really do it justice, does it? Relative to what she endured for, I don't know, that road trip that they took.

And Lord knows for how many weeks preceding, maybe even months preceding that fateful day. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Packs. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.