Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: A Horrifying Discovery in the Woods - The Death of Cairo Jordan

Episode Date: November 21, 2022

On April 16th, 2022 a mushroom hunter calls 911 to tell them he’s found an abandoned suitcase in the middle of the woods. Inside the suitcase is the body of a young boy. The boy is later identified as 5-year-old Cairo Ammar Jordan from Atlanta, Georgia. He was never reported missing.  In this episode of Body Bags, forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan and Jackie Howard discuss the state of Cairo’s body when it was found, his cause of death, how police process a crime scene like this, what it’s like to discover a body, and much more. Subscribe to Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan : Apple Podcasts Spotify iHeart   Show Notes: 0:00 - Intro 1:57 - Background and overview of the case 3:10 - How did they get Cairo into the suitcase? 7:25 - The state of Cairo’s body when found 10:45 - Discovering bodies 14:55 - How do police begin processing a scene like this?  18:15 - Joe describes the tests done on evidence found 21:30 - The inside of the suitcase 27:30 - Pulling fingerprints and finding the crime scene as the perpetrator left it 31:35 - Cairo’s cause of death  35:45 - How does an electrolyte imbalance kill you? 38:10 - Viral gastroenteritis  43:10 - Wrap up  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. I don't know that there's any kind of love that really measures up to a mama's love for her babies, particularly when you don't feel good. For me, I suffered horribly with earaches when I was a child. And the only soothing to be had was in the arms of my mother, rocking me in her rocking chair and singing an old song called Down in the Valley. Kids need that. You need it when you don't feel good. There's just something about it's

best medicine on earth. But today I want to talk about a little boy, a little boy that needed soothing, a little boy that needed help, a little boy that needed healing. Today I'm going to talk about the murder of Cairo, Jordan. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. My friend Jackie Howard, executive producer of Crime Stories with Nancy Grace,

is here with me. Jackie, my heart's broken. My heart is absolutely broken over the case we're going to talk about today because I think many of us can probably identify with this little boy in the sense that he was suffering. He was certainly suffering probably far more than many of us can even begin to fathom. But I think that, like all of us, we want to be soothed. We want to be treated like we're special. We want to be assured that everything's going to be okay. In Cairo's case, I don't think that that was there for him.

The death of this little boy is really upsetting, especially when you find out with the release of the autopsy and the cause of his death that it could have been prevented. The body of this little boy was found inside a travel suitcase. It looks like about the size of a small carry-on. It is a hard-sided case. And on the front of this suitcase is the logo of the iconic sign of Welcome to Las Vegas. And this little boy's body was folded and stuffed inside this suitcase. It was dumped in the woods and his body was found by a mushroom hunter. We did not know who this little boy was. We did not know if he had been kidnapped. We did not know if his body was just

discarded by his parents. We didn't know anything about this little boy other than the fact that he stood. And we'll get into his death and the cause of his death in a second. But I want to talk about, Joe, how he was found folded up inside of a carry-on size suitcase. How do you do that? I mean, if the little boy died, and we know that rigor sets in in certain stages, so would it have to have been done like immediately when he died for it to be possible? And even then, children's joints are more flexible than adults, but I mean, that's really small to be basically folded in two. Bodies are much more malleable when they are recently deceased. And that's, in my opinion at least, that's what happened. Because there's that level of flexibility.

I'm glad you brought up the idea of Riger. And just let me kind of break this down so that folks kind of understand how Riger works. First off, it's one of the things that we use to determine post-mortem interval because there's measured time with it you know that we can kind of frame how long someone has been down relative to what's referred to as their level of rigidity that is the tension that has set in and i think many people will say well what causes this? What actually causes Riger to begin to present? Well, it's kind of an interesting dynamic that happens after death. When we're alive, you have this cellular respiration that goes on in your body, and it's constantly pumping. It's constantly

working, and it's throwing off these little balls of energy called ATP. And in death, that cellular respiration ceases, and you begin to produce ADP. And one of the byproducts of that is lactic acid. And I tell my students, listen, if you want to know what rigor mortis is like, the closest you'll ever experience it in life is if you have not worked out in some time, you go and get like a real hardy workout in. Say you begin to do some weightlifting, maybe some stretching that you're not used to. And the next morning when you wake up, how do you feel? Well, you know, throughout the classroom, they always say stiff. You know, well, the reason you feel stiff is that there is a buildup of lactic acid.

And you can take all kinds of medication to, you know, loosen up and all that sort of thing to make you feel better. But sooner or later, because you're still alive and you have cellular respiration going on, that lactic acid that you have built up in your body will be metabolized. It'll go away. All right. In the dead, that's not the case. Okay. This lactic acid builds up in the joints and it creates this rigidity or rigor mortis. If you're looking to try to understand in, you know, Cairo's case, where he was and what was going on at that particular time, his body would have still have to have been what's referred to as flaccid. That means movable, okay, loose. Because once Riger begins to set in, it's very stiff. It's very difficult to kind of manipulate the body, particularly if you're not used to dealing with dead bodies. And it's at that point in time, he could have been folded up.

Now, we don't really know, you know, when we say folded, we don't really know what that means. We don't know if he was, say, at his center center axis which if we just kind of pretend that that's the waist if he's folded over like a pair of pants that you're going to put into a suitcase we don't know if that's the case or if he was kind of balled up and placed into a fetal position and again that would be easy easy to accomplish more so than, say, folding the upper torso between the legs. It would be much more manageable to kind of ball him into a fetal position and place him into the suitcase and zip it up. And if, you know, if it were me and, you know, you were asking me just without seeing any of the any of the crime scene photos, I'd have to say that that was probably the case. So this little boy was folded and put into the suitcase and left outside. What state

would the body have been enclosed in this when he was found? Well, okay, first off, we have to say from the beginning that this rigid suitcase is going to provide some level of protection. Okay. I think that that's kind of understood. We've got him in this encasement. Now, you know, most people understand what a rigid suitcase feels like. It's called rigid for a reason.

It's not like a soft-sided thing that you can kind of easily manipulate. We know what the parameters are. And so he's encased within the structure. Now, what does that mean if you're outdoors? Well, it means that it's going to be much more difficult for large, let's say scavengers, birds, mammals, small mammals to get access to the body. So you can kind of count them out. However, it's not going to preclude insects because insects will find a way. They will find a way to get in, to get to that thing that is driving their senses nuts. They're trying to find decomposing tissue. They will go to great lengths

to make their way in there. So it would not be beyond reason to think that there may have been some larval or maggot development in this environment. It all depends on how sealed this thing truly was. There are smaller species that can get in there and kind of have an impact as well. And that's kind of what happens with what we call putrefaction. Putrefaction, if you think of it more in the terms of when it comes to decomposition, is an external force. And then you have what's called autolysis. Autolysis is almost like self-digestion. So you've got the cellular breakdown that's taking place within the body and the body kind of begins to consume itself. But you've got this odd thing that you

have to kind of factor in to your assessment, and that's that the body is kind of begins to consume itself. But you've got this odd thing that you have to kind of factor in to your assessment, and that's that the body is kind of contained and protected more so than other bodies. His body would have gone through significant decompositional changes just simply based on autolysis. So the tissue would be very, very difficult to kind of initially assess, particularly at the seam. I feel there was a statement that was made by this poor gentleman that had the unfortunate circumstance of finding this poor little baby in the suitcase. And he actually made the statement. He said he was able to look into his face and he felt like and you could hear him he was holding back tears when he said it he said I

felt like this little boy was asked me to help him so let that sink in just for a second but what we can assess from that is that when this man who's probably not used to seeing the sort of thing open that case he was able to stare into this baby's face he He could appreciate the face. So that means that the body was not that far gone to the point where the body was in some kind of liquefied state, which does happen sometimes with decomposition. So his features were probably still appreciable. And that's horrific to think of, but that's kind of the first blush. And this gentleman, this mushroom hunter that was

out there, he's actually the first person to put eyes on this discovery. So, I think that that's probably pretty significant here. And we can get into more of the detail relative to trace evidence and this sort of thing. You know, he comes across in this isolated area out in the middle of nowhere, and this is truly in the middle of nowhere this odd suitcase to begin with i mean it's it's very garish that kind of goes along with vegas right vegas is garish you know it's it's bright illuminated and here you are in rural south indiana and you're minding your business just out collecting mushrooms and you see this suitcase just sitting in the middle of a place that it does not belong. And I think that possibly if he had to do over again,

he wouldn't have wanted to have opened the thing up because this is an image that's going to live with him for the rest of his natural born days. I am not being flip here, Joe. I truly am not, and I am not meaning any disrespect. But the one thing that I have learned since I have begun my career in crime investigation, I will never open any package that I find. And I truly am not being flip. I am as serious as a heart attack, as we say in the South. I will never open any discarded package or suitcase that I find on the side of the road or anywhere for that matter, because the idea of what I'm going to find inside, I know that I could not cope with what this poor gentleman did when he opened that suitcase and found a body.

It is just heart-wrenching. He's going to be ravaged by this emotionally. This is not something that you just, you know, that you can just kind of blow off and forget. It bores down into your soul, this kind of thing. Particularly, it would be hard enough, even for me, you know, there have been cases where I've gone out where mass shootings, for instance, like where a family is completely wiped out in a house. I've actually found a body before. And you say, well, Morgan, you're a death investigator. Of course you found bodies. No, I don't. No, I don't. I show up at scenes after people have found bodies. And I still remember a case in particular where I had a kid

that had fled from his father as his father's wiping out the family. And he hid in a closet. And the father had gotten to him and shot him in the closet and closed the door. And the kid was unaccounted for. And I'm the person that found him. I'll never forget that as long as I live. And I was in the midst of all these other bodies when that happened. But that kid's body huddled in that closet out of fear.

It will stay with me in my mind's eye for the rest of my life. Can you imagine you're in this kind of semi-forested area, you know, where people hunt mushrooms. It's going to be dark essentially because that's where mushrooms grow, you know, tree covered, all that sort of stuff. And you walk up on this thing and it's kind of calling out to you. You can't help it. You got to walk over and figure out what it is maybe he jostled it a little bit and said wow this is heavy you know what's in here and he opens it up and you know he comes face to face with this little boy Every time. I don't mean sometime. I mean every time I've ever worked a case where an individual has found a body.

They have consistently said, when you ask them to kind of retell their story without fail, they will say, I couldn't believe it was happening. I can't believe this is what's going on. And I can only imagine for this man that was out just collecting mushrooms, that's what happened with him. I think that for a moment, he was stunned that what he was actually viewing there before him. But at some point in time, you got to shake it off. You got to get your phone out and you got to call 911. And I think that probably when the police showed up, they were equally stunned. How do they begin to process a scene like this? Given that the little boy was enclosed in the suitcase, are you worried as much about

the outside, like literally the area where the case was found, or you just concentrated on the suitcase itself since he was enclosed? This is so bizarre. You know that the good Lord just didn't set this case down there in the middle of the wilderness. As an investigator, I would be very interested in the periphery. What points of access do you have to this location? Is there a common path that people walk down when they're kind of, you know, traipsing through the woods out here? And we know that this gentleman's looking for mushrooms. How many other people have been out there? And we're in the middle of deer season right now, you know, and I've got friends that go to Indiana to hunt deer because it is such a

great place to hunt that have leases on property and all that sort of thing. Is this an area that hunters would go through? And then you've got game paths. There's paths that game actually take. So you have to kind of separate those things out when you begin to think about this environment. Who has access to it? What major roads are around it? Is it a place that a perpetrator might use because they feel as though it's out of sight, that it's a place that you can take an item so that no one would see it. And if that's the case, why would you leave it in plain sight once you got to this location? Was it something that was done in a hurry? Or was it something that was specifically planned?

I was looking at the photographs of this case. And one of the things that really, caught my attention i mean from jump street there's this i urge anybody to go out there and take a look there there's a photograph that obviously the police had snapped because it's got a tape measure adjacent to it and that's that's what we call you know placing a scale in the photograph so that you can get an idea of how tall the dimensions of this thing and when i was looking at the looking at the suitcase i noticed something about it first off the handle was dirty it's got one of those retractable handles on it and it was dirty it looked like it had like dry dirt or mud that was

on the handle and secondly here's the thing this thing's got wheels on it guess what there was mud on the wheels i think and this is this is kind of chilling with this precious baby's body in there like they're walking through the concourse at an airport they're walking through the woods dragging this suitcase containing this little boy's body within it like they're going to their gate to catch a plane. There's mud on these wheels. They drug it out there, set it out, and I'm assuming they set it out with the handle extended, because that's the picture that the police had of it.

And again, that's another indication, I think, of what a callous, callous, heartless act this is. When they started to process the suitcase, you just mentioned the wheels. Given what you just said, what kind of tests, I mean, would it have been very in-depth on the dirt or residue on the wheels to see where the suitcase had been? It all depends on how much value the investigative agency places in certain types of trace evidence. Some agencies will say, well, yeah, we want to go the extra step and have, say, for instance, a soil assessment conducted. And what I mean by that is in this particular area of Indiana, you're north obviously of the Ohio River and it's not too far away as crow flies, I guess. That from a geographic and a geological perspective, that layer of topsoil there is going to be distinct to that area for a lot of reasons. But when you begin to think about the local flora, that is the plants that grow in the area,

when you begin to think about how that area was formed thousands and thousands and thousands of years ago, and not just thousands of years ago, but even recently relative to sediment and those sorts of things, that soil is going to be unique to that location if you're coming out of let's say appalachia let's say that he originated in appalachia in in the mountains in a location there that that soil in in that range is going to be different than say soil that you might find in what might be considered bottom land you know when you're getting closer and closer to a river it's going to have a very distinct composition to it and so from a forensic standpoint if we can do soil sampling and take a sample from that piece of luggage, that's something that might be significant.

But are there other trace elements that are on there? These tests on soil in particular, these are what are referred to as a morphologic assessment. And what that means is that you have to examine it primarily microscopically because each sample will have a very specific appearance dependent upon the type of soil it is. Every region that you go to is unique to itself and so you begin to narrow things down. For my money this is going to play a big part in this because first off we got this baby that's you know encased in the suitcase. Well, suitcase implies travel, doesn't it?

So first off, I think in the investigator's mind, you're thinking, well, is his point of origin here in South Indiana? Well, whoever brought him here had luggage. Why did they have luggage and why did they place a little boy in it? Well, there's a high probability they may have traveled from somewhere else. So that cannot be off of the table. I have to begin to think as an investigator that I've got to broaden my investigative spectrum here and consider that this little boy may have originated from somewhere other than the local population. The investigation then turns to the inside of the suitcase. What are the investigators looking for there? Well, specific points of identity. And that's what you're looking for

to begin with. This is a labor-intensive undertaking to take this precious little angel and as it has been stated in the news fold him fold him up and we don't really know what that means maybe that originated with the police department it's an interesting descriptor though if they're saying he's folded that means that goes to points of contact on his body and the entire environment the interior environment of this case so that means that whoever did this, this is labor intensive. So they're going to be putting their hands over all of the surfaces that are found therein. When you're handling a piece of evidence like this, you need to treat it as gingerly as you would if you were trying to diffuse a bomb. Because the slightest little movement, the slightest

thing that you do that is not clearly considered and thought out, you can blow the whole case because you're going to disrupt something. Just think about fingerprints. Those things that we leave behind. With fingerprints, they're very fragile. I mean, terribly fragile. All it takes is for somebody not to be paying attention and you can eradicate a fingerprint by simply dragging your hand across a surface. Because they're there. Fingerprints present as a result of oil on the fingertips that You know, that cover our friction ridges. That leave this imprint behind.

So, and we know what it's like. You know, even on a surface. You know, in our kitchen or something that's an oily. You know, you might have a dot of oil that's there. And you just barely touch it. Well, you change the configuration of just that spilled oil. Just by introducing your finger into that. And moving it about.

Or swiping it with your hand or that sort of thing. Same principle with fingerprints. You have to be very careful. So, from the beginning when they're, you know, first getting into the suitcase and they begin to open it up, that has to be in the forefront of their minds, you know, as they're, you know, they're beginning to, you know, try to consider how they're going to handle this. My understanding is that there was plastic involved with this little boy's body, that someone had taken the time to wrap him in plastic. Well, plastic is what's referred to as kind of a smooth, non-porous surface. So there's a high probability that you can raise a print off of that. I don't know if they removed this little boy's body from the case at the scene, because that would be your first inclination. It's just,

it's the humanity within us that wants to do that to kind of secure him. Or did they leave him in there? We know the case was opened because the mushroom hunter actually said that he looked into the little boy's face and he felt as though the little boy was saying, you know, help me. That was the quote that he gave. So did they take it a step further? Did they actually remove him physically from the case at that point in time when the police were at the scene? Or did they leave him encased in there? Now, the best thing that could happen, as horrific as it sounds, is for him to remain in place, the body to remain in place in the encasement. Because that goes to the concept of the pristine nature of the evidence. If you don't remove him, then you have a higher probability of saving any of this fragile

evidence that's in there. It's not just fingerprints. It's fiber evidence, too. It's also DNA because you can have, for instance, if somebody did not use gloves in this environment, and even if they did to a certain degree, but greater so if they did not use gloves, you've got an opportunity to perhaps recover touch DNA, which comes about as a result of sloughing dead skin cells. So those could be deposited everywhere. Again, very fragile, almost like talcum powder, probably even more so than talcum powder. And then hair evidence. Say the individual that's moving this little boy around, Jocelyn,

and folding him up as they've been saying, what if they're shedding hair into this environment? And that hair is specifically identifiable back to an individual. And again, the hair can contain DNA as well. So there's a lot to consider. And you do this in this kind of austere environment at a crime scene outdoors where a guy's hunting for mushrooms, you can lose all kinds of stuff out there. So it's important that you get this bag, this suitcase, into the hands of the people at the laboratory so they can begin to do their assessment collection of all trace evidence. If they're going to have to, say, for instance, look for fingerprints,

they have to decide how they're going to do this. Are they going to dust the case? Are they going to use what's called iodine fuming, which is generally done on things, rougher surfaces like paper and wood? Are they going to do superglue? You know, we've talked about superglue before, where you warm superglue up. As it fumes up, it lands on, you know, these areas that these fatty lipids that are contained in the fingerprints that are left behind. And it freezes it forever and ever. Amen. So, you have it there where it can be assessed. So, you have to make all of these determinations. Oh, and by the way, we've got to examine this little boy's body too. So you can see how involved this is. And you don't want to do all of this at the scene outdoors. You want to try to do it back in a protected space at the coroner's office, the ME's office, and

certainly at the crime lab as well. I was really intently listening to you talking about the fingerprints inside the suitcase, because that is indeed how this little boy was identified. His mother's fingerprints were found on the trash bag inside the suitcase. But I was wondering, Joe, what happens if the trash bag, when they touched it is messed up, if it's crumbled, if it's crushed, and that's how they touched it, does that impact the findings that you get trying to pull a fingerprint? It can smudge it, yeah, desperately. I'm glad you brought that up, Jackie, because if you've, okay, the initial position that you find any item like this at a crime scene, that is more than likely the way the perpetrator left it. Okay. We have to think about that. essentially back your way out of the evidence, if you will, to try to unravel it, to understand it, go through what you think are the possibilities of how the perpetrator initiated all this and

left the scene. So, you have to kind of walk your way back through it very carefully to take everything into consideration relative to latent prints, meaning prints that are unseen. Okay. And that's important for us to remember. Where was it that she last made contact with the bag? Where did she exactly place her hands? And not just the interior bag, but also exterior. Remember the exterior has been exposed to the elements, but there still might be a chance under certain circumstances with protected areas. That brings us also, remember, think back to what I was saying just a second ago, and this thought just occurred to me. If you've got mud that's on the exterior of the case, what if maybe it was raining okay or the surface was wet and this individual slipped as they were moving this suitcase through this muddy environment this dirty environment what if just for

a second they grabbed hold of the case after they had fallen and they've got mud on their hands and they place their hands on the exterior of that case well that's not going to be a print that's left behind by the fatty lipids that naturally occur on the surface of our skin now that that's going to be a print that's that's that's transferred onto there by virtue of the dirt that's left behind. Can you pick up detail in that? Yeah. And that kind of falls into a category that we call plastic prints, which is, it's different than a latent print that you can, latent print is unseen. So this kind of immediately, you know, you look at something that's left behind where you have this medium that's like mud or oil or dirt or any number of things, grease. And you can actually look at it.

You can eyeball it and say, oh, my gosh, there's a handprint there. Or that looks like somebody put their finger there. Well, if that's protected on the outside, if that's still there, you have to be very careful with the exterior as well. Those types of prints are much more difficult to pick up detail on. It's really hard to pick up specific detail because, you know, the way print examiners actually identify prints is they're looking for what are called points. You have overall classifications, you know, loops and whirls and all those sorts of things. But within the general overall classification, you look for points of identification in there, which are called minutiae.

These tiny little things. It's what makes prints unique. You've got ending ridges. You've got pores. You've got dots. You've got deltas. There's a whole list of these things that are in there. And everybody's print is unique within that structure of the overall classification.

You can't generally pick that up on, say, a muddy print, but you can say somebody put their hand there. Cairo Jordan was found abandoned in a suitcase in a rural area. But the old death investigator within me screams the question. I want to know what brought him to this spot. It's horrible enough that he's in a suitcase, but how did he get in it? Was he deceased when he was placed in the case? Was he still alive? And if he didn't die as a result of being placed into the suitcase, what exactly brought about his death?

Here is what the medical examiner determined. The autopsy says that there is no external injuries on the body. Cairo died from an electrolyte imbalance. Now, I've had you try to explain this to me before, Joe. What is an electrolyte and how can it kill you? Electrolytes are minerals that are contained with our body that we are heavily dependent upon. You know, we've got calcium. You've got phosphates. There's a number of them that, you know, I use this term a lot. They're the guardrails, I think, for our metabolism.

And they're either positively or negatively charged. They regulate all of the various activities in our body. Okay. And, you know, you think about sodium, for instance, that's an electrolyte. And you hear a lot about sodium because it's in all of these sports drinks. You know, they're talking about electrolyte replacement, for instance. It is for sure something that needs to happen. With sports drinks, you know, we can get into that line as much as you want, but they're loaded with sugar. So electrolytes are naturally occurring in foods, for instance. You can eat a piece of avocado and replenish electrolytes as opposed to buying something off the shelf, for instance,

that's loaded with sugar and it's infused with electrolytes, but they're naturally occurring in our food sources. So once these electrolytes are kind of bled out of our system, once they're diminished, every system within our body is impacted. I'm talking about your nervous system, your heart, your lungs, your muscles with an absence of electrolytes can't repair themselves. For instance, cellular respiration can't take place. So, you know, your cells are screaming for oxygen. So when you have an electrolyte imbalance, you literally begin to starve your body. And it can lead to things, you know, on the mild side, you can have headaches, you can have dizziness, you can have lethargy, which is kind of a wasted appearance, you know, where you're tired, you can't go on. But it can also lead to more serious things where you've got like severe abdominal problems that are presenting with things like cramping so badly that it's like somebody sticking a hot poker in your belly. You can have severe headaches,

blinding headaches to the point where it's impacting your ability to communicate. Your speech becomes slurred. Vision becomes, you know, kind of fuzzy. It can lead to a stroke. And in that same conversation, when you've got a sodium depletion, for instance, it can also lead to heart attack as well. You know, like when I say heart attack, I hate using that term because it's not so broad. You can lead to this kind of electrical malfunction within your heart that causes your heart to cease beating. There's any number of things within your body that can go wrong as a result of being starved of electrolytes. Some people believe the best way to hydrate is to take on these sports drinks and boost their level of

electrolytes in their body because particularly with viral events, these electrolytes are being bled off. And I think that in this baby's circumstance, I think that that's the conclusion that they arrived at. I heard what you said, Joe. I truly did hear you. Doesn't mean I really understand it. Is it similar or could you compare it to basically being starved of water? Is it the same thing as being dehydrated? Dehydration will lead to an electrolyte imbalance.

Again, you know, water, even in its basic form, it has electrolytes in it. It's not infused or anything, but there are certain things that you can find components of water that are contained therein. Because when you say you're drinking water, people think H2O, and you are, but there's other stuff, other minerals that will be found in water that you can have. Now, that's the purpose of having an infused drink, because electrolytes are introduced into water, into this liquid. They'll be naturally occurring sometimes. And so, yeah, it leads to dehydration, particularly if you've got an ongoing illness. You know, just think, you know, many of us have had the flu, you know, most of us have had the

flu over the course of our life. And that's a viral infection. And so, we know how badly we feel. When you're sick, you don't really want to take anything on. What's the old adage? What is it? Feed a fever, starve a cold. Oh, no. Feed a cold and starve a fever. Okay. Well, you got it right then. So, you think about these things you're going to take on because your body's burning up everything, you know, when you're ill. And you have to continue to take on nourishment. And part of that nourishment are these electrolytes. And dehydration is a bad problem when you're sick, particularly with a viral infection.

There are a lot of things that come about. You think about stomach problems. You can either have it coming out of one end or the other, as people say. And every time that occurs, you become more and more diminished, particularly from a nutritional standpoint. Electrolytes kind of regulate our pH in our body, our acids and our bases, and how our pH level is in our body. And again, that's a big indicator of our level of health. It's one of the things they will check for many times at the doctor's office. You begin to think about certain other mineral levels that are in your body. If you're diminished, particularly from the level of certain vitamins you have in your body, if you're not taking things on relative to whatever kind of diet that you're on.

And when you're sick, it just magnifies the circumstances. In this little boy's case, they made a determination of viral gastroenteritis. Viral gastroenteritis did not come about as a result of an electrolyte imbalance. The electrolyte imbalance came about as a result of the viral gastroenteritis. Well, what's the origin of that? Well, we can have gastroenteritis that will, you know, if you have certain medical conditions, I think the one that really comes to mind that these, and I have friends that have Crohn's disease, for instance, and they have kind of an indwelling ongoing gastroenteritis. And when you hear itis like that, that means like an inflammation of your gut, essentially, your bowel. And it's highly inflamed. You never feel well. They have a really difficult time keeping anything down or keeping anything in their system.

Well, I got to jump in here, Joe, because I can tell you from personal experience, I had gastroenteritis when I was pregnant, and I actually had it instead of morning sickness, and I lost 16 pounds in 10 days. It's devastating. It really is, and that's what was going on with this baby. I started this conversation talking about being soothed by your mama when you're little. You're sick to your stomach. You don't feel well. And the first inclination is to, you want mama to make it all better. You want her to soothe you, to help you. Gastroenteritis, you can have, sometimes you can have a raging fever. Again, you're bleeding off electrolytes there. Certainly, you can have horrible diarrhea with this. And again, you're bleeding off electrolytes there. Certainly, you can have horrible diarrhea with this. And again, you're losing these essential nutrients out of your body via that way as well.

It can lead to vomiting. And all of this is like a perfect storm. And if it goes untreated, it can lead to a terminal event. You're going to die, particularly if you're little. You know, you're little. We're talking about a five-year-old that had this horrible condition that he wasn't receiving any relief for. It's one thing if you have the condition and you're being offered nutrients, you're being offered water, that you're going to be able to stave off dehydration and that you're going to get some type of food down you, chicken noodle soup, whatever the case might be that you can ingest that your body's going to be able to fuel itself off of where you're going to replenish what has been lost at that point in time. That didn't happen. Lots of times with gastroenteritis,

it gets so bad that you have to be taken to the hospital and they'll hang an IV on you and they'll be able to you know push these things into your system that otherwise you cannot ingest because you feel so bad he didn't he didn't have that done for him he didn't this little boy, it appears at least, was just allowed to dwindle away in excruciating pain with no comfort offered whatsoever. I mean whatsoever. And he was just allowed to die. What you're telling me, Joe, is that if this little boy had been given substances to replenish his electrolytes, that he would survive. Yeah, it was that simple. It was literally that simple.

It wouldn't have required very much at all. Not a lot of effort. Yeah, he would have been in discomfort. I mean, all of us are in discomfort when we have the flu. And this is essentially what this is, is the stomach flu. He died as a result of untreated stomach flu is what it comes about. You know, I said it's viral gastroenteritis. So you're talking about things like the norovirus, all these viruses that kind of float around out there.

And they can bring about this attack on your gut. That's what he was suffering through. And it went untreated, which is the absolute horror of this. It's one thing when somebody succumbs to a natural disease. You know, somebody dies of some horrible disease that we know is going to end in a fatal event. Gastroenteritis? Are you kidding me? That's the method that was used to end his life. He was essentially, this is what we would call probably a passive homicide. You just allow him to die as opposed to taking action that could have rendered him safe. All it

would have taken is to go to the grocery store and buy one of these damn sports drinks and just give it to him, administer it to him. But by the time he died, he was so far gone, I don't know that there's any kind of intervention that could have taken. As to the reason of why he was not given treatment, we find from the mother's social media. She posted several times that she believed that her son was trying to kill her

and was possessed by a demon. As police have issued a warrant for the mother's arrest in this little boy, Cairo's, death, and have arrested a friend of hers also, the question still remains is why this little boy had to die. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. This is an iHeart Podcast.