Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags With Joseph Scott Morgan: A Huge Problem - Body Builder Murders Ex-Wife Katie Baunach

Episode Date: December 11, 2022

Katie Baunach is last seen alive on September 29th, 2022, when she tells a friend she is going to her ex-husband's home to pick up some of her belongings. She obtained a restraining order from him the previous month after allegations he had abused one of their children. When police went to investigate the house they detected “signs of a physical struggle” and upon looking further found something much more sinister. In this episode of Body Bags, forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan and Jackie Howard discuss how luminol is used to detect blood, the difficulties of burning a body, non-specific homicidal trauma, “roid rage”, and more.   Subscribe to Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan : Apple Podcasts Spotify iHeart Show Notes: 0:00 - Intro 1:25 - Background and overview of the case 2:58 - Moving of the car 5:40 - Using luminol to detect blood  12:13 - Who invented spraying blood with luminol to see it under a black light? 14:30 - The difficulties of burning a body 20:34 - Why did the barrel smell of decay? (check) 22:18 - Moving the body 24:10 - How do you determine the cause of death for a body that had been moved multiple times? 26:50 - Non-specific homicidal trauma 30:02 - Dealing with stress 30:33 - Police find suspicious substances 34:03 - What is “roid rage” and what causes it? 40:45 - Wrap upSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. For many people, hours upon hours upon hours are spent in a gym, working out, trying to make their so-called temple a thing of beauty, something that would be admired by everyone they came in contact with, something that maybe other people desire to have for themselves. The way we appear outside doesn't necessarily mean that what we have within us is going to be very beautiful at all.

As a matter of fact, we can absolutely be rotten to the core. Today, we're going to talk about a 39-year-old mama and her death at the hands of her husband. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Jackie Howard, executive producer of Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, is joining me today. Jackie, you ever see something that has a luster to it? It's something that you think that you want, but you look back on it, I think, many times as you get older and you think,

man, thank heavens I didn't acquire that thing in my life. And unfortunately, in this case, this is something that really turned bad and very ugly after many years of marriage. Katie Bonnock was reported missing to Florida police and she had before her disappearance accused her ex-husband of physically abusing one of their children and she had gone to court to get a restraining order against him asking that the court send him for counseling. Now the night before she went missing Katie Bonnock dropped her children off at a friend's house. She was on her way to her ex-husband's home to pick up some of her things. And that was the last time Katie Bonnock was seen alive.

The next day, police officers visited Ian Bonnock, that was her ex-husband, and found that her car was still parked in his driveway. Her purse was inside and neither of the individuals expected to be at the residence, Ian or Katie, could be found. Police left and the detectives came back and found Katie Bonnock's car had been moved and detectives went for a search warrant. What can the simple movement, the moving of a car, tell you to make you so suspicious that you try to get a search warrant? Well, it implies activity. You go there and you don't get an answer at the door and suddenly things are not as they appeared upon the initial viewing. And so for investigators, that's a huge red flag, particularly when you've got a mama that's missing.

We're talking about an individual that's responsible for little lives, right? And, you know, that makes it all the more urgent. How many times do we hear about these cases where people will say, well, they're an adult, they have a decision to make, they can leave and all that sort of thing. And now the police will delay in taking a missing persons report. However, when you're talking about a mother that goes missing and there's no explanation for it whatsoever, and you've got children that are kind of out here without that support system that every child deserves from

their mother, it causes police to be a bit more sensitive to what's going on. It's more of a motivating factor. And when she's missing and they come back and the cars have been rearranged, they have to get an answer for that because they're actively looking for her at that point in time. And you begin to think, well, she's disappeared. She goes to her ex-husband's house. That's the last time she's known to be alive or at least her last destination that anyone knew of. And suddenly she just vaporizes and no one can find her anywhere. So is that enough for probable cause for a warrant to enter somebody's residence at that point in time?

And the police have to consider that. They want to go find her at that point in time. And it's at that juncture, once they get that warrant and they can enter the residence, that suddenly things don't turn out the way they expected them to. There's evidence of a struggle in the home. Her rings are found there, which are her wedding ring and her engagement ring. Who's going to remove those and have them there? You know, she was always known to wear them. Police theorize that when she went to the house, she actually took those items with her and gave them to him. You know, is it to say, I don't want these anymore. And you never know. You never know. Is that an act of provocation

at that point? Is that enough to make somebody angry to the point where they're going to do great harm to an individual? Besides the sign of a struggle that you mentioned, police also found blood in Ian Bonnock's trunk. They used luminol. That's how they found the blood, by using luminol. So as many times as you've explained this to me, Joe, I need you to tell me again. Walk me through this because I am amazed at what can be done with the chemical reaction that we can see blood after someone has tried to clean it up after a long time. Walk me through the process again. It is really fascinating. Yeah, it really is. And there's a couple of these agents that are out there that

we use in forensics. Luminol, of course, is most famously known. There's another one called Blue Star. And they act basically the same way. The principle is that those things that can no longer be seen with what we refer to in science as with the unaided eye, is the way it's generally phrased, particularly by forensic pathologists, can actually be revitalized and brought back to life. And luminol is kind of fascinating. It works in the same manner. It's a chemical fluorescence is what actually happens. And it's kind of the same principle as we see with flies, or as we say down here in the South, lightning bugs. And it's the same principle that when the agent of luminol is applied to an area that previously held blood,

and no matter how minor that deposit of blood might be, it will luminesce. And what's happening is if you think about substances called hemoglobin that's contained within our blood, hemoglobin acts as like a little vehicle that transports our RBCs, our red blood cells. Those are the oxygenated blood cells that are kind of moving through our system. And it's bound up with proteins. And one of the things with the hemoglobin is that it has traces of minerals in it. Iron, for instance, the mineral iron is found in there. And the luminol actually reacts with the iron.

And so it'll give you a snapshot, and almost literally a snapshot, because when you apply luminol to an area, you got about 30 seconds. So the point of it is to document the location of where you suspect blood is. And the photographer that's there, first off, you have to do it in the dark. Take these photographs in the dark. You have to have what's called long or extended shutter speed. The shutter has to remain open because it's trying to grab all the available light in order to document that image photographically. I think a lot of people believe that with luminol, first off, that if you apply it to the area, you're not going to be able to appreciate detail. Let me tell you something, Jackie.

You can appreciate splash patterns. You can appreciate the dynamics of blood as to the stain. Like we talk about velocity where we've got low, medium, and high velocity blood staining that goes on. You can appreciate that. You can appreciate what are called wipes and swipes, particularly wipes, because what do people try to do when you can't see blood with the unaided eye, like we just mentioned? Well, many times they've tried to wipe it up. Maybe they've tried to drag a mop through it, for instance, and you'll see these long swipes and wipes that kind of go through it, and you can pick up on that. And what does that mean? Well, it means that there was blood there, and it means that there was probably an attempt to clean it up at that point in time.

And contrary to popular opinion, just because you apply luminol to an area where you believe blood was and you can verify that there was blood there, you know that the luminol doesn't actually impact DNA to the degree that many people think. We can still recover DNA in those environments. Even though they're not the best circumstances, you can still recover viable DNA that you can use for typing. So, it's a wonderful substance. And what it does is it actually documents activity. And that's the most important thing because we're not witness to these violent events that take place. There's the old adage about blood will tell. And blood does tell. And it's interesting in the sense that it's almost

like a historic record of what had occurred in that location. And now somebody has attempted to alter it. And moving forward, they're hoping that they're going to completely disguise it. So you've got this blood that's found at the scene. And most notably, when they encountered the blood in the trunk, the ex-husband actually stated that, well, that blood was there as a result of groceries. And, well, okay, groceries, what do you mean? Are you saying that you've got leaking ground beef or leaking pot roast that was back there? And to another point, somebody says something like, well, this is not human blood. This is animal blood. Well, okay.

Well, we can make a determination about that because there's actually testing that we do relative to determination of blood within the construct of forensic serology, which is the study of blood, which is pretty dynamic. We think about everything that we can do because the steps along that continuum relative to the blood that we have at a scene, we have to think about, first off, is what we're seeing, is it blood? Because you can't just walk up and say, yeah, there's blood here. You don't. I mean, no investigator worth their salt would ever do that. I think I've said before, I've seen areas that appear to be blood that turned out to be melted chocolate. And I've seen things that I thought were chocolate that turned out to be blood. So you can't just eyeball

an area and say it's blood. So you have to test it to see if in fact it's blood. And then the next step that you go to is you test it and see if it's animal or human. And then from there, you try to narrow it down to what human that blood belongs to, if in fact it is human blood. So you go through this process of typing. And then of course, you can take it down to a really fine point where you get to DNA analysis. And you can be very, very specific with it. Years gone by, all we had was type where we would do the various blood types. But nowadays, you can put a very, very fine point on it.

This is totally off topic, but who in the world thought, hey, if I spray this chemical on blood, I'll bet I can see it under a blacklight. That's actually a pretty interesting story. And it goes back, I guess, I think if I'm not mistaken, that this kind of luminescence was first discovered all the way back, I think, in like the 1920s by a German scientist. It's like anything that kind of happens where you kind of bump up against discoveries in science and suddenly you find something like this. I can only imagine. And I'm kind of superimposing my thoughts about this relative to scientific discovery. You think about some scientist that's in a lab somewhere and he discovers this agent that he can apply to blood and it luminesces. And you think, well scientist that's in a lab somewhere and he discovers this agent that he can apply to blood and it luminesces and you think, well, that's kind of fascinating. Let's

move on to the next thing. But he documents it. And then moving forward in time, you get into like the 1930s and you've actually got a forensic scientist that looks at this and says, hey, you know what? I think that we could use this discovery from back in the 20s to actually appreciate what was happening at a crime scene. And sure enough, they did it. They began to apply it in the 30s. Of course, it wasn't something that was widely known about at that time. And it takes time for these tests to evolve over a period of time. And eventually, it just kind of got into our canon, you know, our scientific canon that this is something that you're going to apply and use. And now, you know, the everyday person knows about luminol.

So, it's another one of those great things, a mistake that turned into a great discovery. Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right. And that's it's a fantastic tool. Okay, so back to the case. When police talked to the husband about the blood that was found in this trunk, he said, she's not missing. You don't have a body. He blamed the blood as you mentioned earlier on. Oh, I brought in groceries. it could have been the meat that seeped but then he told police that he didn't believe that blood was found in the hallway when investigators continued their search they found a burn pile on the property and inside they found part of a jawbone and a tooth so we're going to have that discussion that we always have

about how hard it is to burn a body. Yeah, this is kind of interesting because before we get to the burn pile, which was recent, they found this barrel. It's like a 50-gallon oil drum that's immediately adjacent to this area. And the investigators were immediately struck by the smell of decay within this barrel that something had begun to break down. And then, of course, as you mentioned, there were bone fragments that were found. The jaw itself, which contained the tooth.

Forensic anthropologists talk about bones in a couple of ways. And one of the most fascinating is they use the term robust, particularly when it comes to male skeletal structure. They'll use the term robust, kind of tuberent, if you will, like our brow lines. And you think about the knot on the back of our head, the occiput that's back there, and our mastoid prostheses that are below our ears to the rear. In males, those tend to be very robust and heavy, dense, that sort of thing. The jaw is very robust. And it does not surprise me in the least bit that that is one of the few remnants that was actually left behind. And certainly with that tooth as well, because teeth are not bone.

They're seated in, obviously, the jawbone, the lower jaw, the mandible. You've got 32 teeth in an adult, and you'd be missing them, but you have 32 spots for teeth. And then, of course, the maxilla, the upper teeth. That's the hard palate, adjacent to the hard palate where the roof of the mouth is. And it takes a protracted period of time in order to render a body down vis-a-vis heat. And it requires a tremendous amount of attention, tending, if you will. And bone is kind of fascinating. And there's been several studies that have been done over the course of time relative to how long it takes to actually render down bone.

And it goes through a variety of processes. And one of the things that you'll see is that once heat is initially applied to bone, bone will go through a series of color changes. And the first kind of stop along that continuum is it'll turn kind of a yellow color. And what's happening is that the bone itself is beginning to render up any kind of fatty residue that's still contained in there from life and that's being consumed. And then bone, if you look at a bone that has been burned, if it's only exposed to heat for a short period of time, it'll take on this kind of yellow color. Once that is burned off, particularly you can really appreciate on the ends of the bone,

say if you take a long bone like a femur down to, say, of the observations that you make is that as the bone begins to heat up, you can have what are referred to as heat-related fractures. And this is key because when you're looking at a bone and you're trying to assess trauma, you're trying to, first off, determine is this ant-mortem or post-mortem, before death or after death? And secondly, is this fracture that you're witnessing, is this as a result of trauma that was inflicted upon this person? Or is this a heat-related fracture? Because that does happen. Many solid items out there that are subjected to fire will fracture as a result of heat. And that happens as a result of contraction or expansion. And so it'll split along those weakest spots. of begin to move beyond that heat fracturing stage, it begins to present in another way where you have the pattern becomes almost a grid-like pattern where it kind of breaks up into these little squares. And then it goes into a stage called calcination where the bone will have kind

of a calcific appearance, almost white. And you have to be very careful with it, Jackie. Very, very careful because when you pick it up, when it has hit that point, it's so absent of any kind of moisture, it's very delicate. And you can just with mere hand strength, you can actually crumble it in your hands. And then if you've done that, you've lost everything

that might have any kind of evidentiary value. Your police officers show up at a home and you're looking for a missing mother. And the best you can get are what appears to be bloodstains and a remnant of a jaw with a tooth in it. And I got to tell you, you know, as an investigator, first off, you'd have a very visceral reaction, like something horrible has happened at this point. And then I think secondly, you think, well, where do we go from here? What do we do? Because there has to be an explanation for all of this. If she's only been missing for 24 hours, why did the barrel have such a stench of decay? Because we know decomposition decomposition while it begins immediately

upon death it takes more time to have such a stench of decay right i think that many times that people will confuse when you're around a body that has been burned, tissue that has been burned. It gives off a very foul odor. I'll give you an example. If anyone's ever smelled, for instance, burned hair, it's a horrible smell. It's absolutely horrendous. And not just that, skin gives off a very vile stench as well. You combine that with the super heat and humidity of Florida, things break down pretty quickly down there in that environment. The police have not released every bit of information in this case. And I really wonder, I really wonder if this is an event where there was some maybe partial dismemberment that had taken place. Because if you're going to either use the burn barrel or the burn pile,

how do you facilitate burning the entire body and rendering it down? What I mean by that is that once you open a body up, once you begin to take a body apart, that also can accelerate the process of decomposition as well. And even in a short period of time, particularly in very hostile environmental conditions like you have in Florida with the heat and humidity and all of those factors that kind of come along with that. So you've got this kind of combination that's going on perhaps in a very short period of time down there. So the odor investigators were smelling was from the attempt to render down the body.

Now, part of the body was found in the barrel, but there were also bones found in the burn pile. So someone took a shovel or something and moved the body? I think that, yeah, that's quite possible. In just jostling the body, moving the body about, and this sort of thing, again, you're introducing these other factors into the equation when you're manipulating a body that's obviously already been deceased. You've already got evidence that there was injury because there's so much blood. And so again, the injury is going to promote, first off, it's going to promote decomposition. It will accelerate that depending upon what types of injuries there are. Are we talking about a blunt force impact injury? Are we talking about a cutting injury? And were those cuts

achieved either ante-mortem before death or post-mortem. There was evidence inside the garage. They're saying against the door, there was a fantastic struggle that apparently had gone on within the garage in that environment. So how do you explain this deposition of blood that is kind of all down the hallway. You talk about it's in the trunk of the car. You've got this evidence of struggle. You begin to think, wow, this is really scattered. Going into the mindset of what was going on, this is a very scattered, kind of frenetic, disorganized kind of event.

And it gives you a sense there is a lot of potentially anger that's involved in this, that it is something that's just run completely amok. And of course, as people are always saying, domestic situations many times turn out to be the most violent of all. So here we run into the quandary again about figuring out, determining a cause of death. If the body has been moved multiple times, one, and two, an attempt has been made to cremate the body, how are we going to discover, determine, diagnose the cause of death? Yeah, that's a big question that happens. And you'll see death certificates.

I've actually seen one very recently that are essentially signed out like this. You'll see, you know, as we've talked about before on body bags where we've got the five different manners of death. And in this case, of course, that manner of death would be classified by the medical examiner down there as a homicide. When you do not have a specific cause of death, some people will say unknown as cause of death. And that is that thing that brought about the end of this person's life. What was the primary causal factor of death? Some forensic pathologists will list it as nonspecific homicidal trauma. And that's a very broad term. They're kind of going back and reinforcing what their supposition is relative to manner of death. So they're saying, okay, it's nonspecific homicidal trauma. And you think about this when a pathologist gets on a stand and they go to testify.

The defense counsel has a field day with that. They'll make a big dramatic moment out of it before the jury and they'll say, so doctor, you have no way to say what brought about the death of this. How can you be so sure it's a homicide? Well, then it becomes a matter of just kind of logically attempting to piece this together from a scientific standpoint. Okay, if this is not a homicide, how do you explain that she has been found or the remnant of her has been found in a burn pile? Her body has been rendered down. Do you realize how long it would take for this to happen? And, of course, you go into talking about it would take hours and hours and hours.

And sustained heat of 1 of 1200 degrees Fahrenheit. Somebody would have had to be tended. It would have had to have tended the fire. And all the while, the jury's listening to this and they're thinking, oh, wow. OK, clouds are kind of parting here. And I'm seeing that probably this death is, in fact fact a homicide. But you know, you always run a risk with a case like this, because it's prosecutors trying to get this thing to the point where it's beyond a reasonable doubt. Sometimes the jury will be left scratching their head when they're back there in that little room.

So is nonspecific homicidal trauma the same thing as undetermined? Well, yes and no. You will have forensic pathologists that are out there that will say undetermined. And simply what that is, is that they're shrugging their shoulders to say, I don't know. I know it's a homicide, but I don't know what the cause of death is. When you have somebody that will write down nonspecific homicidal trauma, it's almost like you're in philosophy class at that point in time. They're going back to reinforce their original argument, which is the manner of the classification of the death, where they're saying this is, in fact, a homicide. And let me state it once more for those in the back.

This is nonspecific homicidal trauma. We know that trauma took place. We know that it brought about the death of this individual. And not only that, we know that it was the death at the hands of another. And that's essentially how you define homicide. And as a little aside here, when I teach the manners of death, I warn my classes in advance. I don't want to hear them use the term murder because murder is a lawyer's word. And you find it in the canon of law in various states.

You might hear first-degree homicide or first-degree murder. Murder has a very kind of theatrical tone to it, but homicide is very clinical. It just, from a scientific standpoint, you're saying, in fact, that it is death at the hands of another, that one person brought about the death of another. You're not necessarily judging. You're not being the judge and the jury here. You're essentially saying, I believe, based on my experience, that this death came at the hands of another individual. And that's it. You're not trying to indict anybody or impugn anybody or anything like that. You're just merely saying that this death,

and listen, there's all manner of homicides out there that you can have. Somebody comes into your home and they're threatening you with violence and you might have to shoot that individual. That's still a homicide. It's still a homicide as if you have somebody that's attacked on a darkened street in the middle of the night

and they're beating to death over the contents of their pockets. that's a homicide as well. Somebody that dies, for instance, as a result of the death penalty, how are you going to classify that? Well, that's a homicide. There's no other way to really term it. So we've only got five things that we can choose from for classification. And sometimes within those classifications, from a scientific standpoint, we don't have much more to hang our hat on scientifically other than the fact that we've got a remain that has a cremain, as we would call it, that has been rendered down. Purposefully, it would appear, and that there was a bunch of blood found in the house that would be consistent with someone having done harm to this individual. You hear the term reactionary many times. I don't know.

How do we react under certain circumstances when stress is placed upon us? You know, many times we're still paying the price many years down the road in our lives collectively as a result of decisions that we made reactively, right? And thinking about this case, this almost smacks of a reactionary event. Like I said earlier, it's very disordered, kind of disorganized. It seems frenetic. Police said there was a struggle, a great struggle in the home. Ian Bonak told police that his ex-wife came to his home. They got into an argument over another woman, but he didn't want to fight, so he went to sleep. And when he woke up, Katie was gone. So there's one inconsistency in his story. But as police searched his property and his record they found he faced a domestic battery

charge last year for strangulation now ultimately that case ended up being dropped but he was charged with strangling someone but as police continued to search his home under their warrant they found several let's say suspicious substances suspicious substances. Yeah, they did. What was found, according to the police, were a number of vials of steroids that could be injected, essentially, and these were being held illegally. Steroids have to be prescribed, and in this particular case, it's almost as if you wonder if somebody that was in possession of these number of vials that he had, was he possessing these in order for personal use or did he possess them in order to distribute? Of course, that's a question that the

prosecutor would have to answer. But we do know that the husband, in fact, was a bodybuilder. He had competed, certainly at a national level, bodybuilding. And promotion of growth of muscle many times from an artificial standpoint is purpose is. You have anabolic, which actually means growth, and then you have catabolic, which means deterioration or reduction. So with anabolic, the anabolic steroids that you would apply for muscle growth, it's actually what it is. It's synthetic testosterone. And people have success with it i mean and it's it's been used certainly therapeutically over the years for say for instance with people that have diminished issues where they're trying to attain growth or recover say diminished muscle but many times these are abused and there are tremendous side effects that come along with this. You can have them in two separate ways.

First off, with the use of the anabolic steroids, you can wind up having serious heart complications. There's adverse reaction that leads to heightened cholesterol in the system. You can also have other systemic issues that accompany abuse of it. But also, I think one of the things that people are most familiar with, I think, is this concept of what people have termed as roid rage. When anabolic steroids are introduced into the system, it impacts the limbic system in the brain. And the limbic system is not, some people call it the limbic gland, but it's not actually a gland. The system kind of ranges throughout various areas in the brain. But what it comes down to is that the centers within the brain, the limbic system,

can actually control our emotion, our ability to kind of contain ourself relative to being in a passive spot in life or maybe being highly aggressive. So we know what this means, aggressive. And there were big neon letters that flashed across the sky as soon as you said that, saying, roid rage, roid rage, roid rage. What is roid rage and what causes it? How do steroids turn you into the Incredible Hulk? It's probably the first image that that really conjures up for all of us that you're going to be stimulated to this point. And you actually see this aggression that will manifest itself through steroid abuse, particularly those that are doing it habitually. They kind of work at a very high level many times as it impacts the brain. When the anabolic steroid is applied,

not only are you going to have muscle growth and you will see results as a result of that, but it's also impacting the brain. And when people are working out, this steroid slams into the brain, slams into it at a chemical level and impacts limbic system in the brain. You have this kind of aggressive nature that will manifest itself in many, many people. And look, that's something I would think that if you're working out in the gym, many people look at the weights as something to attack. And they go after it and they've seen substantial growth from a muscle standpoint. Now, this is being promoted physiologically, you know, the reaction with the muscles. You're having growth. But also with this kind of animalistic rage that's impacting the limbic system, this is actually the primal brain.

People call it lizard brain. And even reptiles have this limbic system within their brain, and it goes to aggression that you see. And so, we have this, and it's rooted in our primal brain. As a matter of fact, they think the limbic system actually developed before our frontal brain did. You know, that gives us kind of higher function. So, it's very primal. It's very base, that sort of thing. And so if that is constantly stimulated as a result of the presence of the substance in a system, wouldn't it be difficult, even with those that you love, to kind of dial it back? If you've got this external stimulus that's coming into the system, those that you should be kind and

gentle and long-suffering with, perhaps, they're not going to have that in their life. They're going to be dealing with somebody that could potentially be a monster. So, when we talk about roid rage, we're not talking about not being able to control yourself. Correct. We're not talking about that. We're talking about this influence of a substance that comes into a system where it's not simply you've got impulse control issues, for instance, okay, which might be a naturally occurring condition that an individual has. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about somebody that takes a substance that comes into their system and it actually changes their nature, changes how they react. You see like heightened,

obviously, issues with anger that can be set off very, very easy. I mean, by the most benign type of thing that can occur, they become, and here's one that a lot of people don't really realize, it stimulates this area of the brain. The area kind of controls jealousy. So even the smallest little slight or perception of a slight that they might have can be something that just suddenly explodes relative to their perception. Like, for instance, if two people are involved in a relationship and the individual is dealing with this anabolic steroid in their system, a partner looking over to glance at another person could be in their mind perceived as though that individual is having an affair with that person. It can be that over the top. Or if you just casually say hello to somebody, it can actually trigger this ugly, ugly monster of jealousy within them. And that can lead to a very violent reaction so is it the amount of steroids used because we do know i mean we've almost everybody has seen or known someone through the years that

have had to use steroids at some point for an injury or an asthma ailment or whatever's going on with your body as a treatment? Is it the dosage? Is it the general misuse? Is it the application? What causes roid rage? When you're talking about application of steroids to treatment, there's not only anabolic steroids. There are a variety of different types of steroids that are out there. You know, you mentioned asthma. Well, that's not the same as the treatment that you would apply for that. It's not going to be the same as an anabolic steroid. They're all purposed for a different reason. All of them have their upside and they all have their downside. Unfortunately, with anabolic steroids, it's meant to enhance your ability to build muscle specifically. That's not something that you're going to apply in order to treat other

conditions. This is specifically targeted to create and encourage muscle growth in individuals. Unfortunately, the side effect with the anabolic steroid is how it impacts the brain and your ability to act and react. So, what has happened is that you've removed the governor, okay, out of your brain, that thing that kind of controls how you're going to behave, what is acceptable and how you're going to behave. The governor is off on that thing. And so, that's what makes individuals that are suffering from roid rage, as it's been termed, that's what makes them so unpredictable and so very dangerous, I think, to people, even around individuals that they love very much. It can make you angry enough that you would dismember someone that you loved and destroy their body. Yes, yeah, absolutely. It can get you to the point where you would commit a homicide.

And that's the shame in it all. It can get you to the point where you become an individual that people don't want to have anything to do with because they know that the slightest little thing can be misinterpreted. You can fly off the handle very quickly. So it compromises a lot of different areas in your life, your ability to certainly communicate with those that you're in an independent relationship with, whether it's your spouse or that loving relationship you have with your kids or kind of friendly relationship you have with those that you work with. You're unpredictable. You don't know what's going to

happen with these individuals at any moment in time. And so it's not too far of a step beyond that where you could actually take somebody's life. Ian Bonnock is 6 feet 3 inches tall. He weighs 250 pounds. And he has competed in the IFBB Masters National Bodybuilding Championship. He is now charged with the murder of his ex-wife. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags. This is an iHeart Podcast.