Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags With Joseph Scott Morgan: An Unhappy Anniversary - The Death of Emily Jean Schwartz

Episode Date: March 16, 2025

On a camping trip to celebrate their one-year wedding anniversary, Joseph Ferlazzo, 42, and his wife, Emily Jean Schwartz, 22, got into an argument. This much is understood. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss the case and the evidence that will reveal who is telling the truth—the prosecution or the defense. The defense claims the couple argued, and Emily stormed out of the converted bus, never to be seen again. Prosecutors allege that Ferlazzo shot his wife twice in the head and dismembered her on the bus.   Transcribe highlights 00:00.00 Introduction  03:29.92 Sharing camping stories 08:00.53 Husband twice as old as wife 14:20.33 Returns home without wife 19:16.42 Relax by getting away 24:26.58 Wife is supposedly in the woods, alone for days 28:35.69 Husband claims he is the victim 33:06.37 Dismembering the body 37:49.67 Father's wife died, never charged 41:25.68 ConclusionSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Facts with Joseph Scott Moore. Since my kids were little, my wife has been insistent upon camping. And I could, you know, regale you with all manner of stories about our camping trips. And generally they involve rain. I've never been one for tent camping. I'm an old soldier, so I had a bivouac and that sort of thing over the years. And it was more of a necessary evil for me.

Now, I don't mind going renting a cabin in an isolated area. You know, I don't even mind necessarily going out in a camper, perhaps. Tent camping, though, it's just work. It's so much work. Some people live for it. Not my thing. But today we're going to talk about someone, a couple that did apparently enjoy camping with a camper. And it's not like a regular camper that was customized. As a matter of fact, the camper looks much like the transportation buses that we have on campus. Kind of short,

uh, going from a stop to stop along the circle at Jacksville State, dropping off students. But they had converted it into an actual camper, sleeping area, kitchen, bathroom, with all of the appointments that you would expect for comfort on the road. But the only problem is, is that the trip that they were taking would end up with one of them dead and dismembered. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Body bags. Dave Mack, have you ever had your kids come to you and say, Dad, I want to go tent camping. I want to go tent camping. I want to lay on the dirt. And we're going to cook out by the fire and we're going to sing songs.

And they never bought into it at all. July 4th, 1998. Yeah. Really? And it was, Hannah was still a baby. Yeah. But LaDonna's father had just passed away on May 5th of 98. And so we decide, you guys want to go camping?

We're going to go camping. And we were tent camping. Okay. Yeah. We had the big tent. We went out out there did the fishing and everything else and had it fire and it's about nine o'clock at night and the area we were camping in it was not rural it was not roughing camp it was the campsites and things but also it did have a communal area an area where you could go and bathe it had you know it was a walking distance where our tent was pitched and so i went up there to do that

because I was filthy from setting up the tent because all my kids were young then, you know, four kids and one that was only six months old. Okay. And so here we are, daddy Dave. And I came back from the shower and I'm like, I feel like a new man. I'm like a whole family out here in the woods. How cool is this? And I get there and I see the kids running from the van. We had my truck, and we had my wife's minivan. I see them running from the tent to the van. I'm like, what in the world? And I get there.

I said, it's 9 o'clock at night. Got to love Alabama summer. And I said, what is wrong with you guys? Why are you? I look inside, and LaDonna's got the baby. And the air's running. The van is on. Windows are up. the air is running.

And like, it's too hot in that tent. Dad is just too hot. I'm like, there's no way this is ridiculous. Come on. I'm not kidding. So I opened up the flap. I said, well, you got to make sure these flaps are open in the window. You know, I get in there and I'm not kidding.

It was an oven. It was so bad. I poked my head in there and went, ah, we're out. We went home. I'm not kidding. We drove home and we're filthy and sweaty because the kids, it was crazy. The thing is, on the way home, because it's a holiday weekend, we get stopped pulling off the highway to come towards our home. They've got one of these police identification stops.

Oh, my Lord. At the UI checkpoint. And so I pull up there. My kids are out. We all look like we have been, you know, because I loaded them up. I mean, I had just walked out of the shower from there. I'm like, get in the van. Let's go.

I left my truck and everything's sitting up there. We're riding. I mean, we looked like we had been, oh, it was bad. It was so bad. Yeah. You never know what's going to happen on one of these trips because many times the environment does in fact dictate, you know, the behaviors of everybody there. If you're not all on the same sheet of music, it can be the worst experience in your life.

But then again, you can have those moments that flash in, and it's pure joy. That's why I bought a bugger home, just so you know. There you go. We call it the tenement on wheels. The kid hated it. Hated that thing. That's another day, another story. But at least I didn't get mad, shoot him in the head, and cut him up.

You know? Yeah, no kidding. This is the craziest thing I've ever heard of, Joe. Yeah, it is. A couple of those on there. Anniversary. This is anniversary camping, Joe. This is anniversary camping.

They've been married one year. Yeah, you would think that this would be embroidered with joy upon every step along the way. But this really did turn into an absolute nightmare with this young couple that, again, celebrating a one-year anniversary. And arguably, Dave, they live in a region of the country that I have always wanted to visit, and that is Upper New England. I've never had a chance. I've been to Boston many times. I love Boston. One of the few big cities in America I would actually say that

about. But I've never gotten up to see the beauty that is up toward the Canadian border in either Vermont or New Hampshire. And in this particular case, they're from Vermont, I believe, if that's accurate. And they were heading out on the road to celebrate. And there's so much around you. I was talking to Kim that we were going to cover this case. And she said, wow, this sounds like Gabby Petito. And I was like, well, kind of, but it wasn't like a cross country trip. This is an area that they're domiciled in. It's not like they've set out on the road, on the road with Charles Kuralt, remember? They're not out on the road to discover America. This is kind of their home country,

you know, the area up there. And I've always heard about how beautiful it is. But to visit such horror and truly, Dave, I guess out of all the cases we've covered this past month, this might be one of the most horrific because I couldn't I couldn't fathom what had taken place in this converted van. And it's a converted bus, actually, to be more accurate. It's a converted bus. And I'm thinking- Pictures I've seen look pretty good. They do look good.

And it looks like it's squared away. But Dave, can you kind of fill in the blanks relative to some of the information about the couple? Because that's one of the things that age, I think, plays into this for me. I'm hearing about the age. And so I'm kind of thinking, are we coming from two different worlds here or what's going on?

I'm trying to figure this out. Okay. First things first. You know what? There is an age gap here. Joseph Ferlazzo is 41 at the time, his wife 22. So she's half his age. That's part one. The problem with it, though, isn't so much the age difference as it is the domestic violence issues that existed in their couplehood. OK, I'm not going to say that it began the minute

they got married. I'm not going to say that at all because it doesn't happen like that. If you we we tend to give a bit of a disclaimer because this does deal with domestic violence. And there is a domestic violence hotline that we will give to you at the end of the show. But this was something that those close to the relationship could see coming. They knew that this couple fought a lot. You know, she seems like a wonderful person. Just everybody loves her. Her dream was to become a cosmetologist to make people feel good about themselves. It was something she had dealt with in her life where she didn't always feel the best about herself. And here comes Joseph Ferlazzo.

And I think he played upon that. I think he was able to wrangle her any, you know, a lot of domestic violence. Men who commit domestic violence, they control every situation and gaslight their partner to the point where the other person thinks they're always wrong. Whatever they've done is wrong and they deserve whatever bad comes their way. And in this particular case, they've been married for one year and they go on their camping thing. But Joseph for lots. Oh, comes home and her parents say, well, well, what's up with Emily? Where, where's Emily? You know, you guys went on a camping trip to celebrate your one year anniversary of being married and you come home without her, what happened? He tells his mother-in-law or it was Emily's stepmother. And, uh, she, her name's Prudy Schwartz. Cause I wanted to share this with

you. Prudy Schwartz says he came in and just said that he got, they got into an argument and she ran off. So you're out camping your wife, you get into an argument so bad with your wife that she just takes off and runs away and you come home without her. This that's what he actually came home with by himself. She ran off after an argument. Who thinks that's going to work? I have no idea. And let me say something. In addition to this, she may have had a low self imageimage, but she's a lovely young woman.

Yep. Absolutely beautiful. And a smile, you know, one of these thousand watt smiles, it looks like. And I think that you're right about. He looks horrible. He looks like somebody that should have married a blind person. Yeah. Or someone that lives under a bridge and eats billy goats.

He's horrible. And he probably he probably is an individual that perhaps, as you had mentioned, gaslighting. She's revealed this to him about herself. And I can just hear the conversation. Well, I'm the best you'll ever get. You better be counting your lucky stars. And I think that a lot of these people that perpetrate, you know, domestic violence on their partners like this, they have that ability and they can diminish people. They can demean people. There are folks right now that are within the sound of my voice that are either going through that right now or perhaps have encountered that in the past where you're you feel completely diminished and worthless. And then you have an ogre like this that enters your life, you know, and just further exacerbates these, you know, these images, these self-image issues that you have.

And, you know, he he's certainly the ugly one in this case, ugly for a number of reasons, not just physical appearance, but what he winds up perpetrating, Dave. The thought is and here's another, kind of going back to camping. If you want to control somebody, you get them in a camper. If you have sinister plans that you're looking to perpetrate, get them in a camper. Maybe it's something you've worked hard on. You're a control freak. You're a gas lighter. No one's going to hear anything. You're there. It's not like you're on a plane flying somewhere. It's not like you're going to some fancy resort to celebrate your first

anniversary. No, you've planned this because in this, I believe, as we'll reveal, there is planning that goes in to this horrific crime. He has the ability to control her movements where they're destined to. And I think probably in the end, where he would take her life. You know, I know that there are outward signs. I think probably through behavior, perhaps, of people that have been abused and mistreated in their behaviors. You know, they don't do well with large groups of people. If they're in the presence of their abuser, they will put on a show or act for that person so that they're behaving in a manner that they think is acceptable to the person that's in

control of them. But then there are the other things. In this particular case, Dave, there is a record of domestic abuse. And from what I understand, Emily actually presented in the past with injuries on her body. Is that accurate? The family actually talked about this, that whenoseph ferlazzo uh they they go camping in vermont he returns home to new hampshire without his wife and tells the family that she stormed off and that's why they called police um they didn't find out right away either i don't know if i mentioned that it was like 48 hours before he even told them that she started you know he's been home two days and doesn't bother to tell anybody. When mom or stepmom starts checking up, he then says, yeah, she stormed off. We got into a fight and she calls the police.

It's her. That's one of the things. That's one of the things that my wife had mentioned about this case. And with the similarity to the Petito case, you know, because of this, the dead air, if you will. You know, no one knows what's going on. And isn't that isn't that fascinating? I often wonder, how does that actually happen? I think actually it goes to this idea of they're trying to figure out what they're going to do next.

Right. And so they'll stammer and they'll stumble on their words and that sort of thing. But, yeah, I mean, I don't know that anybody could have anticipated the storm that was coming. That's where Prudy Schwartz, the stepmom, says, who waits two and a half days to even tell anybody their significant other is missing? Even if you have to wait 48 hours to call the cops, you tell family something. And you know what? That actually was probably the most honest thing I've ever heard anybody say. What she is saying is, look, you killed somebody. All right. You at least tell your family what's going on.

You know, you don't lie to everybody close to you while you figure out what you're going to tell is your story. But in this case, he doesn't tell anybody that she's gone. OK, if you believe his story, I mean, to believe his story, one has to believe that they were camping for their one year anniversary, having a romantic time. And for whatever reason, they got into an argument. And even though you're still in the honeymoon phase in your first year of marriage, I mean, if you're not, you married the wrong person. And in this case, he comes home and doesn't tell anybody that she left, that he doesn't know where she she is it's the most ridiculous thing but you know he's probably pulled off so many other lies in his life and the the worst part is to find out

that the family you mentioned she presented the family mentioned that while police had been called and by the way police are oftentimes called to loud arguments that are not physical they haven't turned physical yet. Right. In this case, the family said they saw the cuts and bruises. They saw the marks. They saw the things that they knew they believed were from her husband. You know, first, it's so weird to have two different LaDonna things in the first in the show.

When we first got married, LaDonna had been a career person and had always, you know, had a career. And so we decided to raise our children with her at home. It's something she wanted to do. I backed that. So we were single income household, but she was so used to doing things during the day that she would move furniture all day long, moving it from one point. I mean, I'd come home and trip over something. And I was like Dick Van Dyke in the Hasek because it was never in the same way two days in a row. And but the thing is, she also bruised very easy. So we're at church, been married about three months.

And the ladies group at church pulled LaDonna aside when we got to church one day. And they sat her down and said, you're going to tell us what's going on. We see the bruises. What is he doing to you? They were not tolerating it. Holy smokes. Yeah. And it was like, I didn't

find this out until after the church service, but yeah, I freaked out. I'm like, what? You know, stop moving furniture, you know? But you know, the thing is like, why don't people do that? You know, in our case, it was very innocent and explainable. And thank God her mother was like, no, it's, that's the way she's always been. But if you care about somebody, step in the gap. Somebody needed to be there for her. If you're going to tell me that after she's dead that you saw this coming and you did nothing, come on. Yeah, we had a case recently. I think we covered it last week where the grandparents or the grandfather had seen

something, remember, and didn't report it. And of course, the child wound up deceased. I'm amazed by this, you know, that because, look, you know, it's one of these circumstances, you get one shot at protecting somebody and you might not want to be embarrassed, but it would be better to be embarrassed and be sure that nothing had happened as opposed to, well, them going on a vacation and never coming back. And so you, yeah, you think about the price that has to be paid. And yeah, it's a tough bit of business, you know, to even have this discussion, I think, for many people that are in the midst of these sorts of things. Here's another bit to this with Ferlazza's story, which is so super bizarre. You know how I told you I wanted to go and visit Vermont and New Hampshire?

People out there that are listening to us, don't take this the wrong way. I don't want to be around people. I really don't. It's not that I dislike everybody that I come across, but if I'm going to go and get away, I want to get away and I don't want to be bothered. You know, I think ideally it would either be a small little shack on the beach or maybe up in the north woods, quiet. You know, my dog there having a fire, reading a book, nice bottle of wine. Y'all have to understand the reason for that is because in your professional life, you're constantly on. You have to. Always, yeah.

When you're doing an appearance on network television doing the podcast doing the other shows that you do and by the way being a professor at a college and being a teaching professor you've got to constantly be on your game in front of other people and engaging and after giving so much of yourself for a while you do need that time to be alone and recharge your battery. So I understand it a hundred percent. I've been around Joe and his wife enough to know he loves people, but you got to get away too. Well, I find, I find now when I do finally get a bit of quiet time,

I choose to sit in my chair and I go to sleep and then I forget it. So that I've, we went through that battle one time. I told LaDonna, I would rather live in the bat cave. I really would like to have a million. I'd like to have a mile-long driveway that just drops off into the woods where you don't even know where it went. And you'll find Dave the next day when I show up at work. Well, I wonder about this relative to Ferlazzo. He's saying that this young woman who, by the way, when it comes to marriage and, um, I view myself and I, you know, I don't care if I offend anybody by saying this, I view myself as my wife's protector. I'm a fierce protector of my wife. Um, and so you're telling me that this young woman suddenly, out of nowhere, literally walks off into the wilderness in arguably, not in the entirety of America, but I would say probably east of the Mississippi River, one of the single most isolated areas.

And we're talking seriously rural. East of the Mississippi River. You're saying, just so that I get this straight, Mr. Filosofi, you're saying that she just up after an argument decided to wander off and leaving everything behind. That's hard to fathom for me. If I'm sitting there and I'm listening to this individual and I'm interviewing him from an investigative standpoint and he's telling me the story. It just doesn't add up because either either, you know, that something horrific has happened to her or you're one of the biggest beast on the face of the planet, absent any kind

of compassion and love, which this is all about. Remember, they're going on the celebration of their first anniversary. You're telling me that you are going to go home abandoning the person that you have stated that you love more than anybody in the world. You're supposed to love more than yourself, by the way. And you're going to leave her up there in this wilderness? It just doesn't make sense, Dave. No, and the part about it that when he says that she ran off, you know, you're saying she ran off into the woods. And I think you're accurate in that assessment.

That's what he claims to believe. But he actually spins it around, okay? When nobody believes the story of her just getting lost because, you know, she's not an idiot, smart person, early 20s in good health. She would have been able to find civilization. Right. She's been gone two days by the time he even reports or two and a half days. But well, before her family reports are missing, he never did. And so the idea that she's out there wandering around aimlessly doesn't hold water either. So they're like, what happened now? That's when they start turning the screws.

That's when they bring him in and say, excuse me, Joseph for a lot. So you're 41 years old. You married a girl half your age. Come on in and talk to us now. Now you're going to actually and this is what I always picture happening, Joe. And you correct me if I'm wrong. I always picture people like this. Men that are like this towards are so weak. They are not the kind of guy that has friends because they're horrible people. They're all about controlling another person who they deem weaker. And that's how they get their jollies or whatever in life. Now, this type of individual is going to have to sit down with some real men. And if a woman is investigating this as a detective as well,

she's going to be able to stand right in his face. They're going to get the best and worst out of this guy in no time. Is that a fair assessment of how that interview is going to take place? Yes, it's very, very true. And they, you know, the old adage about good cop, bad cop. And if you've got a group of investigators that are working this, this thing is scripted before they ever begin to talk to him. They'll say, okay, I'm going to observe. I'm going to ask the questions. And the person that is asking the questions will pretty much stay on task unless they have prearranged for them to suddenly interrupt

because you're trying to elicit a response. Because, you know, you don't, initially, you don't know where this young woman is. Okay. She's, she's out in the wilderness for all, you know, you just want to know where she is. And you try to, I think in many of these quote unquote missing persons cases, you try to appeal to their humanity. But here's the problem. If you're absent humanity and compassion, what in the hell are you appealing to? Well, we hit a jackpot here, Dave. With this particular case, I'm proud to say that once again, we have another person, an accused perpetrator, who is trying to use the famous I blacked out defense. And, you know, I love the fact that you talked about putting the screws to him. This idea of, you know, we're going to get some answers from you.

And if we have to stay here all day, you're going to stand up and answer for what has happened to Emily. And here's the thing. When Emily, or all that remained of Emily, is finally discovered, I'm just amazed that, first off, the police could contain themselves to the point where they didn't feel like their heads were going to explode or that they were going to create bodily harm. Because what they wound up finding relative to Emily would shock the most stalwart among us to your absolute core. He finally admits that he did in fact kill her. However, yeah. I got to ask you something because in that interview room, you and I've watched these and you've seen the end results of these, but when they start talking and they listen

to him, you know, they get the story. Okay. You guys got into an argument and, and she left. They've, they're talking to him about his story. And it obviously doesn't hold water for what you just explained a minute ago. I mean, what kind of man is going to let, in this particular case, a much younger woman leave and be on her own in the woods? I mean, are you a real man to do that? And I would imagine that alone would cause him to go, look, we got into a fight, but it's not my fault. And because that's what he did. it's not my fault and because that's what he did it's

not my fault she was the aggressor we hadn't we don't know what the argument was about by the way i don't think he ever copped to making up anything but she was the aggressor he was the punching bag he's the victim joe yeah have you seen these two have you seen the image this guy towers over her like bigfoot this guy i mean she's diminutive, you know, long, pretty blonde hair. And he stands over her. I don't know. He's two feet taller than her. He almost looks like. And OK, so let me get this straight. And I'm not saying that somebody that is short of stature cannot be an aggressor. All right. We all know that that's not the case. However, OK, you're a grown man and you're saying she's the aggressor. Yeah. He talks he talks about she initiated the

physical violence relative to, I think, throwing candles at him, hurling insults at him, all these sorts of things. And she lays down on the sofa, apparently, at some point in time. And if I remember correctly, she says something like, OK, that's it. He claims, Dave, that she reached beneath the throw pillow on the sofa, emerged with a handgun, points it at him, and mysteriously, he winds up, he discovers that he is holding a Glock pistol with a suppressor screwed onto the end of it. And as it gets into the throes of uber violence, he dispatches her and kills her. That's the story you're going with. Well, that's the one that he ran with. That's his defense story.

And it gets better after that, doesn't it? Well, yeah. Well, I'm trying to get to that point with him where he's actually saying this, you know, and he's able to make this up. And it goes back to that gaslighting thing where no matter what happens, he's projecting everything onto her. And so you have to assume that he had planted the Glock because who has a Glock with a silencer that's not planning on killing somebody? Think about that for a minute. I have plenty of people that I know that have guns. I don't know any that have a silencer.

Well, they're easy. They are easy to get. It requires, if you're going to get one, you have to get a particular, there's a special form that you have to fill out and there's a waiting period to get one. the end of it. In other words, the end of the barrel has to be threaded in order to accommodate screwing on the suppressor. And it has to, the suppressor has to actually fit the weapon. Well, he has all of these components, Dave. All right. And it's that weapon that actually ended Emily's life. The other part to this is that he remains with her body in this van, this camper that they've created out of a bus, sleeps with her remains in the bus for many hours, gets up the next morning, goes and has breakfast with his sister. All the while, Emily's body is in the van. It's at some point in time that he acquires or has already, I believe, has already a saw. And it's the saw and the knives out of the knife block in their little kitchenette that are

used in order to cut Emily's body into eight separate pieces. And he was prepared with, he was prepared with black garbage bags as well to place her body in. And it's not like this guy took her body after he had dismembered it and then went out into the woods and decided to place each individual bag in an unseen location. Maybe he buried it. Maybe he took it to a body. No, no, no, no. He takes all of her remains and then goes into the bathroom of their van slash camper and retains them. Then he gets bleach and tries to clean up the scene. You know, it's when you begin to take the toll of what this guy did,

it's really amazing. And there's Dave, there's one piece of evidence that they found. There were eight bags. Actually, there was one piece of evidence that they found in one of these bags that completely changed the story. Do you remember the pillow that I was talking about she was laying on? Yeah. Yeah. She had her head

resting on this pillow, right? Well, he claims that she that it's something like out of a spy movie or something. She, you know, sticks her hand under the pillow and produces a weapon and then threatens him. And then, you know, she says something like, this is it, you know, or you're dead or whatever it is. Yeah. That pillow comes into play. You know why it comes into play? Because he took that pillow comes into play. You know why it comes into play? Because he took that pillow.

He put it over this beautiful young woman's head and then takes that Glock pistol equipped with a suppressor and fire through the pillow into her skull and kills her dead right there while she was apparently laying on the sofa on her phone. This is a threat. That's a big time threat, Joe. That is a big time threat. They can kill you. Oh, boy. I'll tell you what. It's amazing, isn't it?

This might be one of the most gutless things that I have heard of in some time. It's bad enough that he did this to her after having, you know, maltreated her for so long with domestic abuse. It's not enough just to kill her. Now he's got to dismember her remains and ride around with them in a bus and then lie about it to the people

that loved her. This is like the ultimate insult, Dave. If it's a defense thing where you're, you know, you're afraid for your life and you're having to shoot somebody. And again, your, your wife in this case, why would you shoot them twice in the head? I mean, wouldn't one time be enough if you were, if you were afraid for your life with her laying on the couch and playing on her phone where it's scaring you to death and you're shooting just to try to back her off, you know, in fear that she's going to, I guess, psychically kill you.

And he shoots her twice in the head. Then do you think that maybe he because we know that he chopped her up. But unless you have planned on this, unless you know a good bit about bit about human anatomy it's not an easy task to cut up a body we've covered this many times yes we have easy and it's not clean either and you know he had laid out you know plastic bags on the floor of this thing in order to facilitate that hence he had to go back and bleach but you know there's one big piece that I forgot to tell you about, Dave. We know that he dispatched her with this Glock pistol. But after having laid around in this converted bus with her remains, I mean, after hours, he decides with these knives from the knife block, he takes one, Dave, and he stabs her body.

I think it was like upwards of 15 times in a postmortem state. This is before he ever begins his dismemberment. Now, you go and you tell me, can we take the measure of how polluted this guy's mind would be? And, you know, those stab wounds, because you're, you know, I'm kind of stating the obvious here. You're stabbing a corpse. When you would examine those wounds, and I can only, can you imagine being the pathologist and you're, you're there and you're, you've got bags. There were six bags containing human remains. So you're opening, gently opening each bag and you're taking out. And what we do with dismembered remains is that we will try, we don't, you can't rearticulate a body, but you lay it out on a table. We do the same thing with skeletal remains as well in the board.

You lay the body out as best you can in its correct anatomical orientation. And that way you can kind of appreciate where everything is. And as simplistic as it sounds, one of the things you're also trying to do is see if you're missing anything. Because there are dismemberment cases where people will take trophies. And it's kind of absurd. No, it's not. There's really nothing off limits in the world of death investigation. There is no absurdity that's too absurd. You have to consider all of this. But can you imagine being that pathologist and you're looking at this body. You have the consider all of this. But can you imagine being that pathologist and you're looking at this body?

You have the head and probably the head's the first thing you're going to go to. And you see that she's been tapped twice in the head. Okay, I've seen that before. But then you go to look at these other injuries. And I'm not talking about the areas of dismemberment where you're disarticulating the body. I'm talking about knife wounds. And you're sitting there and say, my God, every one of these knife wounds is postmortem. There's no hemorrhage in them whatsoever.

It's, you know, you look at this and you try to drink all of this in, everything that he tried to do with her body, but he couldn't seal the deal at the end as far as just trying to, I don't know, in some way, discard her body or place her body, get as much distance from him and the body, the mortal remains as he possibly can. I have a real hard time understanding that. And, you know, we've had cases like this where people will kill individuals and then bury them in their own backyard. Dave, you know, I was thinking about something along the lines of Palazzo Jr. and his father. You know, they when he come up with the crazy story like he did and later confessing and it did come up in court, by the way, the defense did not want his confession to police to be entered in.

But again, remember, he claimed self-defense. You know, it was in 2009. OK, now this happened in 2021. So we're talking four years ago. But in 2009, 12 years before Joseph Ferlazzo Jr. is accused of shooting his wife twice in the head on a camping trip and cutting her body up. Joseph Ferlazzo Sr., Joseph Jr.'s dad, well, he owned massage parlors in Reading, Pennsylvania, and his wife managed it. Her name is Yong Hee Lim Ferlazzo. Well, his salon had been raided earlier by cops, you know, because of prostitution going on at the salon.

And he comes home from the grocery store in the midst of all this criminal activity. And his wife, Younghee Lim Ferrazzo, has been killed with a knife. She's been stabbed to death. And he was the only, you know, because it happened when nobody's home. He comes home from the grocery store late at night and finds his wife dead. And they never convicted him for it, Joseph Ferlazzo Sr. So 12 years later, his own son, his wife ends up dead. And I'm wondering, he shot her twice in the head. Did he stab her in some kind of tribute to what his father did, allegedly, to his stepmother? Just a thought. Wow.

And that's an amazing piece to this. Isn't it interesting how if an individual, maybe even someone much younger, had borne witness to that level of violence, do they become numb to it? I have no idea. You know, we've talked a lot about control relative to this case, control and gaslighting and those sorts of things. When you look at a case like this and you have a subject that would go to all of this trouble relative to, obviously, the murder and then the dismemberment and not want to get rid of the body. You have to think that there's something else going on here.

That's why I believe that many people that hang on to remains, burying them in their backyard, putting them in the basement, putting them in a crawl space, putting them up in the attic, which does happen. I was thinking of Gacy putting those murder victims under the house. Under the house, yeah. John Wayne Gacy did that with, I don't know, it was what, 30, approximately 30 young men. I think that that control element continues on after death. They still have the desire to control the circumstances in their life, to control those that they've always had control over, even in death. And yeah, you could say, well, Morgan, it's part of not wanting to get caught, that you can kind of dictate the comings and goings. But I think it's something much deeper.

It's a matter of individuals that want to say in their own way that I am in control of the world around me and I defy anybody to find me guilty or maybe just accuse me. But in this case, Joseph Forlazzo was in fact found guilty. And now he'll spend probably the rest of his days in jail. Please hear me right. If you or anyone that you know is suffering in a relationship involving domestic abuse, I urge you with everything that is within me, to reach out for help. And there is help.

You can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233. That's 1-800-799-7233. Or go to thehotline.org That's thehotline.org I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags.

This is an iHeart Podcast.