Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: An Act of Betrayal - The Cantrells and Their Fight for Justice

Episode Date: December 3, 2023

In a quiet Oklahoma town, A.J. Cantrell and his wife Patsy live lives built on community and kindness. They never expect their paths to intersect with a dangerous man whose actions will disrupt their sense of peace forever. The Cantrells, beloved by their community, meet a violent end, leaving a hole in the heart of their close-knit town. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack delve deep into the tragedy, examining the chilling forensic details, the devastating impact on the community, and the 37-day manhunt that gripped the nation. Morgan leverages his expertise to discuss the mechanics of the lethal 410 shotgun used in the crime, while Mack provides harrowing firsthand accounts that highlight the complexities of the case. They also explore the psychology of violence, diving into the backstory and subsequent actions of the perpetrator, Scott Eizember. Alongside forensic science and investigative details, this episode serves as a tribute to the Cantrells, whose lives were cruelly taken. Subscribe to Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan : Apple Podcasts Spotify iHeart Time codes: 00:00:20 — Joseph Scott Morgan sets the scene, introducing the heartbreaking case that took place in a small town in Oklahoma.  00:01:20 — Generosity and kindness in a church community are explored by Morgan and Mack.  00:03:00 — Joe Scott introduces the notion of a 'wolf in sheep's clothing,' personified by Scott Eizember, who arrives in town riding on a bicycle.  00:06:00 — A romantic entanglement between Eizember and Kathy Biggs becomes the focus as Dave Mack peels back another layer of the story. 00:07:13 — The importance of examining a subject's history in a homicide case is expounded upon by Joseph Scott Morgan. He asserts that such scrutiny can offer insights into potential violent outcomes. 00:09:11 — Dave Mack introduces Scott Eizember's horrifying acts of violence, setting the tone for the deeper forensic analysis to come. 00:10:27 — Dave Mack recalls the terrifying moments leading to the Cantrells' deaths. A 410 shotgun becomes the weapon of irreversible consequence. The deadly force of a 410 shotgun is anatomized by Joseph Scott Morgan. 00:16:14 — Joseph Scott Morgan demystifies gunpowder evidence on a body, helping listeners grasp the possible range from which the shotgun was fired. He talks about using a long-arm weapon as a bludgeon during the attack on Mr. Cantrell. 00:17:11 — Dave Mack educates listeners on the difference between slicing wounds and lacerations, the latter caused by blunt force trauma.  00:18:25 — Skull fractures and the force needed to inflict them are debated by Mack and Morgan.  At 00:24:12 — Dave Mack highlights how the Wright family initially welcomed Eizember before he unleashed his violent tendencies on the Cantrells, leading to a whirlpool of tragic events. 00:25:50 —  Mack outlines Eizember's further attacks on a 16-year-old boy, a 63-year-old woman, and his ex-girlfriend, Katherine Smith, all of whom survive. 00:26:17 — Dave discusses the 37-day manhunt for Eizember, the kidnapping of Dr. and Mrs. Peebles, and how Eizember was finally apprehended. 00:29:10 — A chilling detail is revealed by Morgan—the unfired round in the weapon, suggesting that Eizember had potential for more destruction. 00:30:20 — The episode concludes with Joseph Scott Morgan confirming Scott Eizember's execution, signaling the end of a terrifying chapter for the community.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. Some of my fondest memories from childhood were getting to meet the older members of churches that I had attended. Young people always bored me. I found the older people to be quite interesting, and they had a lot of stories. Now, every church varies, but most churches are rather generous. Many people you can find in these churches will give you the shirt off their back if you're kind of down and out, and particularly if they perceive that you're doing good. I want to talk to you about a case today where it is the ultimate story involving a wolf in sheep's clothing. A wolf that descends upon a tiny little Methodist church

in a tiny little town in Oklahoma and brings hell with him. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Dave, I don't know how you feel about it, but I think that one of the characteristics of having a decent church, no church is perfect, but having a decent church, I think goes to generosity. People can pontificate all they want to and read scriptures and doing all that stuff. But if people can be generous to other people, I think, and kind and loving and not necessarily expect anything in

return. I think that's a sign of maybe health in certain ways. What do you think about that? Love thy neighbor as you love yourself. That pretty much tells you everything. That's a directive. When the Lord tells you something, you better do it. And when he says, love your neighbor, you love your neighbor. And neighbor is a plural for people that you don't know well, people you've just met, being nice, being kind, thinking of the other person first. I agree. That is the health of a church. It's amazing to me in this day and age where we have so many opportunities to share the gospel worldwide using the internet and tell it's just an amazing thing now but joe ultimately the church is not a building it's the people and how the people interact with one

another and new friends and that's how a church actually is judged is how they behave in their community with people and that's why this story it centers around extending that right hand of fellowship to somebody you just met. In this particular case, they met the devil on a bicycle, I think. It's one of those things that you never know how evil is going to show up. And that's what really struck me. One of the things that really struck me about this case, and it sounds cheesy, but it's like the devil rode into town on a bicycle is what this comes down to. He shows up. And the thing about it is when somebody is on a bicycle, you envision some kind of, you know,

the devil's going to roll into town and he's going to be in like some evil looking Mack truck or large truck with big tires on it, you know, and horns on the hood. This guy, because he's not the devil, he's a man that was very evil, shows up on a bicycle. And it almost, when you're looking from an investigative perspective and you're looking through the eyes, you know, you're trying to look at the eyes of people that are impacted by what this guy did. I don't know that there's any more passive mode of transportation other than going out for a stroll, perhaps. It's the first mode of transportation we actually have. And that's, it's so funny for most people. I include myself in this one. Our bike is one of the most important

possessions we have as an early teenager, right before you can get your freedom in a car. You know, you get that first real freedom with a bike where you tell mom and dad, I'll be back in a couple hours. I'm going to go here or there back in the day anyway. In this particular case, imagine it's a Saturday afternoon, beautiful day. And he shows up pedaling along and there's this church in the small town of Depew, Oklahoma. And it's a late day in September. A man riding a bicycle shows up and starts chatting with the guy mowing the yard. He tells him, the man I'm talking about, Scott Isamer, tells the man mowing the yard, hey, I'm bicycling across country to raise money for victims of 9-11, which not that much of an uncommon thing back in September 2002, one year after 9-11, a lot of people were raising money for different funds related to the 9-11 event.

I wouldn't raise a red flag over that if somebody told me they were doing it. No. And listen, I'm not saying that evil doesn't happen in small towns. This town roughly has a population somewhere in between about 400 and 500 people. Everybody knows one another here, all right? Right. Well, the first person Mr. Isamer finds is retired school teacher John Wright. Again, it's a Saturday and Mr. Wright's mowing the lawn at the Methodist church getting ready for services the next morning. Now, the community is described, as you said, very small town, but where everybody leaves the front door unlocked, leaves keys in the ignition, just one of those pleasant places

to live. And Isamer was able, Scott Isamer was able to take advantage of that. He tells Mr. Wright, hey, I'm doing this to raise money for 9-11. Would you mind if I pitched a tent on the backyard here at the church overnight? And Mr. Wright says, I'll go. You want better, son? Why don't you come on in and stay in the fellowship hall tonight, sleep in there in the air conditioning? It'll feel good. And that's where they met. They being Scott Isamer and the entire community of Depew, Oklahoma met on a fall day in 2002. Now, Mr. Wright had a daughter and her name was Kathy Biggs. Mr. Scott Isamer became romantically involved with Mrs. Biggs.

And that romantic relationship led for Mrs. Biggs to file for divorce. And she and Isamer moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and lived in an apartment there. Now, this is fairly quickly. Scott Isamer, obviously, he's a player. And he gets Catherine. They move to Tulsa, set up shop, less than a year. Their romance faded, and Catherine Biggs moved back home to Depew, Oklahoma. And by the way, when she got home, she filed for protective order against Scott Isamer. So now we're a year past that encounter on the bicycle at the church. That first man that he met, Mr. Wright, he marries his daughter.

A year goes by and now Ms. Wright has a protective order against Isamer. Mr. Isamer now shows up in Tulsa, or he spends time in the Tulsa County Jail for violation of the protective order. So this is not a man that has control of all of his emotional faculties. Is that a good way to phrase that? Yeah, I think that it is. It's excellent. Anytime you have an event that winds up in a homicide, and in this case, a multiple homicide, you have to look back into the history of a subject to see because most of the time, and this is one of the things that really frustrates the public, me included, when you take the long view of it, you see it tracking forward. You can see that this is not going to end well because you've got

preceding behaviors that come along with this, violent behaviors that indicate that if this person is not interdicted in some way, it's going to wind up in a real tragedy. And certainly, it did in this particular case. As a matter of fact, this little town of less than 500 people will be scarred forever and ever. I don't know why I'm still amazed after all these years that you see a circumstance where an individual is spinning out of control and then all of a sudden it winds up in a complete and total train wreck for everybody that is involved around them. And it's interesting, isn't it? It's like in the news media and whatnot, the perpetrator so many times, Dave, becomes the focus of the case. And you

really begin to forget about the victims in a case. They become, I guess, eccentric and the perpetrator is concentric to the story. And that's a real shame. And I think that that, to a great degree, after these number of years, has happened in this particular case. I agree with you. It does take you down a path that you don't want to go. I want to remember the people, the victims. But in this particular case, we have one man, Scott Isamer, and several victims. So let's start with Isamer, quick review, arrived on town on a bicycle, meets a man at the Methodist church who introduces him to his daughter. A romantic relationship blooms. The petals fall off the flower within a year, and Catherine Smith now finds herself back in the town of Depew. And she has a protection order against Scott Isamer. Isamer wants to see her again. And so he makes a plan.

His plan is to stay across the street from her house and surveil it and basically lie in wait. That's a legal term, believe it or not, lie in wait. That's exactly what Scott Eismer was doing. He waited until A.J. Cantrell and his wife Patsy left home. He sneaks into their home and watches right across the street his ex-girlfriend Catherine, her 16-year-old son, and by the way, her 63-year-old mother all live in this house. While Scott Eismer is watching the home, the Cantrells come back home earlier than he thought. He thought he had more time, but they arrive back home. This is where evil takes place, and Scott Ismer takes a.410 shotgun he finds inside

the Cantrells' home, and as they walk in the house, he shoots and kills Patsy Cantrell with the shotgun and then uses the shotgun to beat A.J. Cantrell to death. Joe, they're 70 in their 70s. Yeah, Mr. Cantrell was 76, Dave. And I kind of imagined this, that while Eisenamu was able to get one shot off on Mrs. Cantrell, on Patsy, that Mr. Cantrell was on the attack right away and went right after. That's what I'm assuming here, because Isamu was not able to get a shot off on Mr. Cantrell, but he beat him to death with a shotgun. So backing up, Joe, what kind of injuries are we looking at from a.410 shotgun? Well, first off,.410, it's not uncommon, but it's not when you think of shotguns, which are traditionally, when we think of the word caliber or the size, it's the diameter of the bore.

Shotguns are actually measured not in caliber, but in gauges. And so the lower the number of the gauge, like you have traditionally like a 20 gauge, it'll skip traditionally to 16 gauge. And then you have 12 gauge, which is very common. That's what the police carry. That's what the military carries. And then you drop down to 10 gauge, actually. A 10 gauge is something in the past that's been associated with an elephant gun because it can fire these very robust slugs, very lethal weapon. But then you have this outlier as far as a shotgun and it's measured in 0.410, which is odd. It's not a gauge, it's actually a caliber and it's the equivalent of a.41 caliber bullet.

You've heard Dirty Harry, for instance,.44 Magnum, most powerful handgun in the world, blow your head clean off. But they have measured the bore of the.410 shotgun as.41. And it can take slugs. It'll fire slugs. And it'll also fire shot as well, like birdshot in this particular case, which are tiny. If people have never seen birdshot, it looks just like BBs. Now, the BBs that are contained in each one of these rounds can come in a variety of sizes. But suffice it to say, there are a large number of BBs contained in each shell. And most of the time, a 410 shotgun is utilized. Some people refer to it as a varmint weapon.

You can actually hunt rabbit with it. People use it. Young kids are given 410 shotguns because they don't have a lot of recoil to them. They'll use them to hunt squirrel with, small game. People around farms use them to kill rats with, for instance, or snakes. Matter of fact, there's a famous weapon that's referred to as a snake charmer that's a single shot 410 shotgun. But it operates just like a regular shotgun and it's a smoothbore weapon. So when this thing is fired, and in this case, when Ms. Cantrell was actually shot, it launched a single volley of BBs into her. And the way we,

like in her case in forensics, one of the ways that we would get an idea as to how far away this weapon was from her when it was discharged, is that you would measure the circumference or the distribution of the BBs on the wound pattern as they entered the body. Most of the time we think about dispersal of gunshot residue. And, you know, lots of times you'll get soot on wounds. We talk about that. And the broader the expanse of the soot, if you're talking about like a pistol shot, gives you an approximation of distance. But with birdshot like this, you get all these little satellite wounds that are just slightly bigger than, say, the head of a pin that penetrate the body. What's so devastating about it is that you get multiple of these ripping through the body.

The wider the expanse, the further the distance is, the muzzle target distance is when the thing is discharged. And so each one of these little BBs tracks through the body on its own individual little trajectory as it, or wound track rather, as it passes through the body on its own individual little trajectory as it, or wound track rather, as it passes through the body. And it can, let's say if you're four feet away from somebody and you aim center mass with this thing, it'll initially come out as like a cylinder in the air and travel. And as it gets further and further away from the end of the muzzle, that cylinder begins to open up. And so now, instead of having a 0.41 cylinder size that's going downrange, suddenly it has in caliber, it's expanded out to maybe 0.60.

So you're talking about 0.60 inches or it can expand out to 0.70. And so as in the further and further way, the broader this expanse gets, you can have one of these rounds that'll track and it'll clip, say, the liver and maybe the spleen, the pancreas, the bowel. And these things are a nightmare for surgeons to have to work on if the person survives and they make it to the hospital because it's not like you just have a single bullet hole that's entered the body and track through. They have to find each one of these little tracks that are passing through the body. It's easily displayed on the exterior of the body. you can appreciate it. It comes, it'll actually distribute powder on the body as well. So you can get a pretty accurate reading for how far away. With this

weapon, this shoulder firing arm, because that's what it is. You fire it from the shoulder. It's a long arm. You can turn this thing around. And I find it, it's very interesting you made this assessment, Dave. When Mr. Cantrell had this awareness that his precious bride, who he's probably spent a good deal of his life with, has been shot, can you imagine? He springs into action. This weapon that's a long arm can be used as a bludgeon. That is, in fact, what occurred with this. He was beaten about his head. He had five distinct lacerations to his head. And, you know, those arise from blunt force trauma. These are going to be very jagged injuries.

One thing to review very quickly, in case you missed episode the other day where we actually talked about lacerations. Up until the other day, I thought laceration was a slicing wound. That is not what happened. Being bludgeoned is to be beaten, right? Yeah, it is. And it's when you begin to beat somebody down with this thing, every time you strike, let's say you're being the victim or the target is being struck with the butt of the weapon, that is transferring energy. The first strike, he may have been standing up. But after you're struck with the force of this thing, he's going down to his knees. And then you're in a dominant position over him.

And Dave, according to the medical examiner, this perpetrator beat 76-year-old Mr. Cantrell in the head to the point where his skull fractured. It is somewhat of a great feat to fracture a skull. Skull is very resilient. We think that skull fractures happen all the time. Well, our skull is very resilient. And so in order to introduce this kind of force into the environment, and he's probably striking the same location over and over.

And so structurally, it's becoming weaker and weaker until it finally fractures. There are also different types of skull fractures, correct? There's the linear, which is just a crack in the skull or the bones are even, but a crack. And then there's depressed, right? Yes. Yes. Yeah. So we actually refer to the skull itself, the surface of the skull as what's referred to as the external table of the skull. And it's layered and it's a fascinating structure.

If you look at the bone of the skull on cross section, it's got a matrix that lies beneath the surface. And I don't know that any engineer could create something that is as resilient as bone like this. In this particular case, the skull itself, it's created to absorb shock. So you have the external table of the skull, you have this kind of matrix that's in between it. It looks almost like a honeycomb. And then you have the internal surface of the skull that's smooth because it's adjacent to the brain. And so you have to make your way through that. And with a depressed skull fracture, like you were mentioning, literally part of that external table gives way.

So it's not just like it's fractured. It is the fact that now if it's depressed, and depressed means to be sunken in, you're driving the bone into the brain. And that bone will fragment many times and send little splinters into the brain. And in this case, A.J. Cantrell died on that floor immediately adjacent to his wife, Patsyy after she had been shot with the same weapon. I make a big deal out of learning from the dead, and I even use the term, we allow the dead to speak. In this particular case, what I'm meaning is that the injuries that you have on a body will give you an idea as to the dynamics of an event. This is the thing. No horror writer that is out there can write the injuries like a scientist can interpret them. And suddenly this thing springs to life in your mind when you begin to see the outline of the butt of a weapon, because many times the butt of the weapon will be textured. It'll have marks on it. And for every one of those strikes, you leave a mark behind to indicate that there was tremendous violence here. You see the streaking of blood. You see

how the skin is ripped and torn as a result of, as you mentioned, Dave, this laceration that arises from blunt force trauma. And then you see the other attempts that were made to strike, these abrasions where maybe Mr. Cantrell in his fighting back, he turns his head and he just kind of, the butt of the weapon just kind of scrapes across the skin. Then he realigns and the next thing you know, he's hit full force. But this is done over and over and over again. It makes me think, Dave, there his wife is laying on the floor. Don't know if she's dead yet, but her life is seeping out. And all he can think about in that instant is to get over to her and render aid. And that just was not to be in this case. You're right, Joe. When I go back over this and I'm thinking of you're living in a

small town, a community that leaves the front door unlocked and the keys, the ignition without fear. And now the worst possible thing has happened in your, your castle, the one place you're the, this is your home. And this invader has now attacked in such a horrible way. Your spouse is shot. You're getting beat. I don't know at what point Mr. Cantrell was not alert to what was going on. I'm hoping it was fairly quickly because the first hit on that gun to his head could have rendered him. It could have knocked him out, right?

I mean, he could have been unconscious. It could have knocked him out, right? I mean, he could have been unconscious. It could have. And I got to interject something here real quick, because this is a question that I get asked or was always asked by family members. And you bring it up right here. And I think that it's certainly important. People always want to know if their loved ones suffered. Just let that just kind of resonate just for a second. And I would have that question asked to me all the time. Did they suffer? Because people want to know what the status of this person that they had loved throughout their life was.

And early on in my career, I would say, no, they didn't suffer. But, you know, as time went by, I couldn't, I was not capable of dishonesty any longer. I would simply say, I don't know. In this case, I would hope that he lost consciousness, but he had an awareness and it was painful. It was very painful. And I think also the wife's death was very painful because she had an awareness. I don't think that she necessarily died immediately. I understand why people ask that.

And I think that in reality, we're asking you to tell us that our loved one didn't suffer and that it was all a big surprise shock and they had no idea. But you're right. The truth needs to have its day because you have real world consequences. And sometimes you need to face these consequences based on knowing what really transpired. So after he kills the Cantrells, after he shoots Patsy Cantrell and then beats AJ to death, Mr. Cantrell, Isamu goes across the street. His original target was his ex-girlfriend, Catherine, not necessarily her son or her mother. And again, remember, this is the family. The first person that Isamu met when he arrived in Depew, Oklahoma, was Mr. Wright, the head of this household, mowing the yard at the Methodist church.

And Mr. Wright invited Isamer into their church and into their family. And here we are a year later. Isamer has just shot Patsy Cantrell and then bludgeoned her husband, A.J. Cantrell. He's now across the street. And what does he do? He attacks. He's still got this weapon in his hand now, walking out in public with a long arm like this across the street. And you know, where I live, that wouldn't be the most uncommon thing.

But if I saw somebody walking across the street with a gun, with a shotgun, I would know who the person is and probably know the type of gun. Yeah, you probably would. And the 410 is something that is, it is small enough that I think that many people could mistake it, perhaps, if you're at a distance, not up close, but if you're at a distance, you could mistake it for perhaps a.22 caliber rifle, which again is a varmint weapon, essentially. And he's walking across the street. And Dave, here's an interesting point. When we've talked about LeCard's principle on the show, the transfer of evidence, every

contact leaves a trace. Dave, when he is exiting their home, he's transporting vis-a-vis that gun and probably himself, he's transporting biological evidence from that scene that he has attached to his person and to this weapon. Remember, this weapon was used as a bludgeon. So when he enters that home across the street, he brings that with him. Now, he goes into the home. He shoots the 16-year-old boy. He attacks 63-year-old mother and Catherine, all of the family, his ex-girlfriend Catherine Smith, is attacked as well. Now, they all survive. All three of those survive. He, right now, has just killed the Cantrells, but now he's got to get out of town, and this starts a 37-day manhunt

where Isamur is hiding out in the woods and everything else, and I'm thinking a small community like this, and this guy's able to elude capture by sleeping in the woods and everything else. And I'm thinking a small community like this, and this guy's able to elude capture by sleeping in the woods and stuff. That's just pretty odd and remarkable in and of itself. But he eventually was caught after he kidnapped a couple out of Tulsa. He gets them to drive to Texas.

And this man had a couple that he kidnapped. He carjacked this man in the car. He's a doctor, Dr. Peebles. They had a pistol stashed in this van. And they get at a certain place, and Dr. Peebles is able to shoot Isamer four or five times with the handgun. And thus ends the reign of terror by Scott Isamer. Yeah, and you know what? I've got to tell you, Dr. Peoples, we kind of

briefly mentioned the manhunt. Dave, when this manhunt occurred looking for Isamer, did you know that this was at the time, it was the longest manhunt in the history of the state of Oklahoma, that they were looking for this guy? So my thought is, is that Dr. Peoples, he had an awareness. He knew, you know, to go back to our analogy earlier, he knew that the devil had taken hold at this point in time, that he was physically riding. And I'm sure he's thinking he knows what's happened over in Depew. And so he knows that if he does not act quickly, he and his wife are going to wind up the same as the Cantrells did. Good point.

I did not think about that, Joe, but you're right. And to have the presence of mind, Dr. Peoples and his protecting himself and his wife, they actually, I'm not saying they allowed themselves to be kidnapped, but they played it just right where you got to remember, Isamu is already a killer and he's been on the run and he's willing to do anything. Yet Dr. Peebles is able to get him settled down enough that Dr. Peebles is able to pull the gun and turn it on him and actually shoot Scott Isamer. That's the amazing thing to me is that he had the presence of mind. He got this guy to cool his jets long enough for Dr. Peebles to gain the upper hand. Isamer is out fleeing and eluding during this period of time.

I think one of the big questions is what happened to that 410 shotgun? And as it turned out, he had taken it and thrown it out in the woods. And when the Oklahoma authorities finally caught up with him and he was eventually caught down, I believe, in Paris, Texas is where he had wound up. They brought him back to Oklahoma and the Oklahoma authorities were they were like, all right, well, you're being charged with this. Do you want to speak to us? He says, yeah, I'll even take you to where the weapon is. And it initially when they went out to the scene where he said it was, they didn't find it on the first day. But the second day, Dave, they did, in fact, find it. And it was lying along a creek bank.

And here's one of the chilling things. When they found that weapon, it had an unfired round in it. So it still had a chambered round that he could have used. But here's the thing about long arms like that. If you're carrying those around, there's no way to secret this weapon, particularly if you're on foot. It's at that point he's probably made this decision that he is going to kidnap somebody else. And I guess he figures he's looking for an elderly target, perhaps, and he can take them down and he can get control of them and then kind of leapfrog into the next phase of his journey.

But he left that weapon behind because he knew that it would draw attention. Here's the thing that I think would be critical here. This weapon had laid out there for weeks upon weeks. And it creates a problem forensically sometimes that if it's not handled correctly, you might not be able to pick up on some of the ballistic evidence that's left behind. And with shotguns, of course, they're smooth bore. It becomes particularly complicated. But here's the thing. In this case, we're not to be concerned if Scott Isamer is going to wreak havoc any longer. I don't think that the folks in Depew are going to have to worry if he is going to come back and do harm. Scott James Isamer was executed on Thursday, January the 12th, 2023.

He was pronounced dead, 2015 a.m. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. This is an iHeart Podcast.