Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Buried Truths - The Warlocks, a Cemetery, and a Case Unsolved

Episode Date: October 29, 2023

Keith Palumbo and David Rossillo Jr. meet a grim fate in a double homicide; their bodies are discovered concealed inside a crypt within the eerie, abandoned Mount Moriah Cemetery. Unraveling the complexities of this chilling case, Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack explore the labyrinthine investigation that led authorities to the hidden burial site, thanks to a tip about Keith's disappearance and the involvement of a woman with close ties to both the Warlocks Motorcycle Club in Philadelphia and the cemetery. The episode delves into the forensic intricacies—from gunshot residue on decomposing bodies to the challenges of DNA matching—and uncovers the lengths criminals will go to hide their heinous acts. It also touches on the human stories behind the headlines, offering a gripping journey through the dark corners of crime and justice.  Subscribe to Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan : Apple Podcasts Spotify iHeart Time codes: 00:00:20 — Joseph Scott Morgan discusses his comfort around the dead and introduces the topic of a double homicide case involving an old, abandoned burial ground. 00:02:14 — Joe Scott talks about Mount Moriah, a cemetery named after a biblical location.  00:03:00 — Dave Mack introduces the victims, Keith Palumbo, a musician and tattoo artist, and David Rossillo Jr.,  who had no known connections to the Warlocks Motorcycle Club in Philadelphia.  00:04:00 — Discussion of how Keith's disappearance was reported and the significant tip that led police to start their search at the cemetery.  00:07:36 — Highlighting the logistical difficulties of the investigation, Joe Scott explains the challenges of accessing the burial site due to its depth and lack of a ladder or staircase.  00:09:00 — Dave mentions that the police were expecting to find Keith Palumbo but discovered David Rossillo Jr.'s body as well. Morgan discusses the state of Rossillo’s remains. 00:11:00 — The hosts speculate about the crypt being used as a common dumping ground by organized crime groups, raising questions about the extent of criminal activity. 00:14:48 — Discussion about the significance of the carpet found at the crime scene, and speculation on its potential connection to the body. 00:15:00 — Morgan begins to explain what forensic evidence can be obtained from a decomposing body, particularly when a gunshot wound to the head is involved. 00:17:00 — An explanation of how bruises can still be detected on a decomposing body. 00:21:31 — The process of transferring remains from a crypt to a medical examiner's wagon, with added emphasis on the importance of maintaining the integrity of the remains. 00:25:22 — The challenges the police faced in identifying the bodies, particularly David Rossillo Jr., who had not been reported missing, and the role of informants in criminal investigations, particularly within tightly-knit organizations like motorcycle clubs. 00:32:53 — Joe Scott Morgan delves into the difficulties of determining a cause of death with skeletal remains, especially if the skull is fractured or parts are missing. He elaborates on how animals can complicate an investigation.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. A question that is thrown my way time and time again when people find out what I did for a living is, Morgan, how in the world could you be around the dead so much? Doesn't it take a toll? My knee-jerk reaction is, I don't mind being around the dead. As a matter of fact, the finality of death is rather peaceful, contrary to what you see, you know, in here, perhaps. It's not like some movie where you see the dead displaying horror. It's the living that trouble me most of the time. I certainly feel less safe around the living than I do the dead. It all depends on how you look at it, and sometimes things are not as they seem.

We're going to be discussing two cases that take place at the same location, and the level of horror that is involved in this would make the strongest of us shake in our boots. Today, we're going to be discussing a double homicide where the remains were deposited in an old, abandoned burial ground. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Dave Mack, I don't know about you, I'm not afraid of graveyards and cemeteries.

As a matter of fact, I find them rather peaceful. There's actually beauty in them. There are a couple of them that I will seek out during the fall because they're so gorgeous when you can see the change in the leaves and that sort of thing. And of course, I'm always going on about how I am from New Orleans. And you begin to talk about artistry and you visit those mausoleums, those graves. They're all above ground. They're famous for having above ground graves because they'll flood if you try to bury the bodies beneath the ground. They're unbelievably gorgeous. I urge anybody that ever goes to New Orleans to take a cemetery tour

because it is something to behold, the money that has been invested in these final resting spots. But this case that cases actually that we're going to discuss involve a place called Mount Moriah, which is kind of fascinating because that in the Bible, I think that that's the location where Abraham took his son Isaac to sacrifice him. But that's what this cemetery, graveyard, burial ground, we'll get into that, was named. We need two body bags, Joe. Two body bags for today. Police were actually looking for Keith Palumbo. And when they found him, they found another man, David Rizzillo, that they weren't even looking for.

So let's back up and paint this with a very broad brush. The Warlocks Motorcycle Club in Philadelphia, according to the national organization, the charter for the Warlocks in Philadelphia was being pulled because they were too violent, just too thuggish. They had too many street thugs and were doing things the national charter didn't like. These are not weekend warriors. These are serious, serious individuals. But the bottom line is Keith Palumbo and David Rizzillo were two guys on the outside looking in when it comes to the warlocks. Keith Palumbo was a musician, tattoo artist. He comes from a big family, but a very big family that's awesomely connected. They talked every day. They messaged one another. They were in constant contact with each other. And Keith Palumbo, at the age of 36, still called his mother every day

just to make sure everything was okay. That's how tight this family was. I mentioned Keith was a well-known guitar player in the Philadelphia area, also well-known in the area as a tattoo artist. We all know how popular tattoos have become in the last 15, 20 years. So when police were called on February 10th, they were told we haven't seen him since February 6th. The interviews start taking place with family and friends. And that's where police get their first big tip. And it is when a relative says that Keith told him, if I ever go missing, start the search at the cemetery. That basically gives you two options. Keith knew that the warlocks used the cemetery as a dumping ground for people they clipped.

That's one option. Two is that maybe Keith had been threatened with winding up in the cemetery. And the cemetery in question, by the way, Mount Moriah Cemetery. As the police are putting the case together, they have the warlocks. They have the cemetery. They've got a missing person, Keith Palumbo. They need that one missing link, and they find it in a woman by the name of Donna Morelli. Donna Morelli was known to have close ties to the warlocks. She was in a longtime relationship with the former leader of the biker club, Eric Martinson. He died in 2015, but she

still had direct contact with the warlocks. Donna Morelli also lived right across the street from the cemetery. And by the way, Donna Morelli is actually a board member of the Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery. That's the nonprofit formed to clean and preserve the cemetery after it closed in 2011. So here is your direct tie between the warlocks, the cemetery, and Keith Palumbo. So the police pay a call on Donna Morelli. Donna Morelli knows something the police aren't even looking for. She knows they're going to find Keith Palumbo. She knows they're going to find something else too. So she starts negotiating and the police use this information to find out where is the crypt inside the cemetery

where they might find Heath Palumbo? So what happens next, Joe? There are not too many situations as an investigator where you're faced with these unusual circumstances where you're literally standing in the middle of an abandoned graveyard. And within the abandoned graveyard, you're actually staring down into a crypt. You had no idea the crypt was there. And it's just, it's the unusual fact that the police came into this information. If anything ever happens to me, Palumbo was quoted as saying, look in the graveyard. My Lord, they did. And when you pull the slab back, you're not, just imagine, if you will, the deepest,

darkest, blackest space that you can possibly imagine. It's obviously windowless. You're talking about an environment that is completely encased underground in brick with dirt thrown on top of it. And the dirt has been compacted for years and years. So there is not a bit of light getting into this area. The last time there was any light, and we can only assume that it may have been starlight or moonlight, was cast down into this pit was the days that these bodies had been cast down in there. Maybe they used a flashlight.

I doubt that they really even cared because, listen, when it comes to this process and how these bodies were disposed of, Palumbo and Rosello, you said something that was really key here, Dave. They were tossed away like garbage. So it's not like when you think about this crypt, you think about how respectfully the rest of these bodies were treated down there. These guys were essentially the top of the crypt was pulled back and they were dumped down in there. So the police are faced with a very interesting prospect. First off, how are they going to safely get down into this hole? Well, the fire department shows up and they provide a ladder. There's not a ladder that would go down in this thing. If there had been a ladder at some point in time in order to facilitate these bodies being taken down,

it would have been picked up and removed. Because keep in mind, you have to place this large stone slab over this opening. So there's not like a staircase that's built down. There's not a winch system or certainly an elevator or something like that to facilitate the bodies going down on the ground. I just picture you get to the bottom and there's a Crypt Keeper, just like from TV. Now that all makes sense. I never understood it. Now I get it.

Crypt Keeper is certainly a metaphorical character there for the afterlife. In this sense, you've got nothingness. You've got black, deep, dark nothingness. And when you're processing the scene, going down into the depths, because you literally are, you have to flood this area with light. So before you can do anything in this environment, because the smallest little clue down there, a ripped piece of clothing, a cigarette butt. I've actually had cases, Dave, with clandestine burials where the people were digging the hole and they flicked a cigarette butt down into the hole. And we were able to do DNA off the cigarette butt.

So you never know what you're going to find. And they think they're going to find one. They just to be crystal clear, they the police, they believe they're going to find the body of Keith Palumbo. They don't know about David Rizzolo. They only think, and they think that Keith was there maybe two months. Rizzolo, to be honest with you, he would have been almost completely skeletonized by this point. And whatever clothing, which again is a big part of this,

whatever clothing he would have had on would have essentially been a container forexisting skeletal remain. So you can have some disruption in the remains at that point in time as well. So anything that may have been in one configuration is suddenly distorted. Then on top of that, you've got this process that is going on with this now recent decompositional event where Palumbo's body is beginning to break down. We're talking about two months down the road. There still would be soft tissue. And yeah, the odor would have been incredibly foul, even though this is technically subterranean. And you're going to have consistently the ambient interior temperature in here is going to remain consistently at roughly below 70 degrees more than likely. What about humidity? Is it going to be humid?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it would. And hey, listen, this space would have been probably damp. There is no crypt, tomb, casket, or coffin that is free of moisture. People try to sell this. They try to tell you that it is, but these environments, you're underground. And keep in mind, the water table itself, as it rises and falls, and this crypt, as we know, has been there for well in excess of probably 100 years. It has experienced water damage over the years. You can just look at the bodies that were stored in there from the crime scene photos, and you can see mold and mildew and all, and the caskets are actually beginning to break down. Some of them have broken down that are in there. So yeah, the humidity is going to play a key role in this. Police went down to find Keith

Palumbo. They expect one body, fairly new, but the police aren't stupid. They know, hey man, if this was used to get rid of one guy, maybe this might be like the mob graveyard, but for the biker gang, the warlocks of Philadelphia. Yeah. And there's pre-knowledge of this, too. Remember what Keith Palumbo actually told his family. He said, if I ever go missing, look in the graveyard. Well, what the heck does that mean? Start the search at the cemetery. Yeah, start searching the cemetery. What does that mean? Did that mean that he had knowledge of this other fellow that had been dumped down in there? Or, and this is really chilling when you think about it, are there other locations throughout the cemetery? And the sheer

magnitude of this, when you begin to kind of do the calculus here, is mind-blowing. If this was, in fact, a dumping ground to get rid of bodies, and maybe it wasn't just them. Keep in mind with, and I don't want to go too far afield with this, but you can fantasize about this all you want, but let's just explore this just for a moment. The underworld is interconnected. They're not on an island. You have people doing business, very dark things, but they're still networked with one another and interconnected. Let's just say that one organized crime group got together with the other one and said, yeah, well, we use this area on a regular basis. Nobody's going to look there.

It's the perfect set of circumstances. After you get into this space and you've got all of these other cascaded bodies or previously cascaded bodies, you're thinking the damage on these coffins, did it occur as a result of somebody meddling with it? Or is it a natural event where they're just breaking down over time? Even if it's old wood, if these are old wooden caskets, which they look like, if they've been freshly cracked, you could appreciate that on the broken ends. They won't have as much weather because as they were intact prior to being broken, that

area would have kind of been protected, but you could look for fresh breaks in here. And so that would give you an idea of activity. And that's the most important thing. Someone has been down there before. Someone has an awareness. Someone had broken the seal on that crypt at some point in time and gone down there, and they would have had an awareness of it. Someone had passed through that graveyard, Dave, repeatedly looking for space to place these bodies. But still, at the end of the day, what do you do with all of this when you get it back to the medical examiner's office? And that's the question is, what did Keith Palumbo, what did his body look like after being in this crypt? Subterranean temperature, moist, about eight

weeks. We know that according to documents related to the court case that he was shot in the face. Are you still going to have enough soft tissue to find a bullet? The bullet here, I think, is probably secondary because a bullet can actually pass through the head. Here's what's key. We know that he was shot in the face. As a matter of fact, one of the reports has from one of the people that kind of rolled over on this case, they shot him on a carpeted area and rolled his body up in the carpet and actually trimmed off pieces of it. The carpet was super saturated and the police have never released the information relative to this carpet. Was it down there with the body? I think that that's a fascinating bit of forensic evidence. But back to his body, what would it reveal? Listen, even with decomposing remains, let's just say,

if you will put the tip of your finger in the center of your forehead, that soft tissue right there, if someone is shot in the center of their forehead and it's within, I don't know, probably within about eight inches, you're going to have some type of deposition on the surface of that skin. Now, will it be more difficult to see on a decomposing body? Yeah, it will be. Bodies do, in fact, they go through stages relative to the color of their skin as they are decomposing. First, you'll have this kind of reddish hue that will take place with the body. Then it'll become this kind of sickly pink color. Then it expands out into a green and then to a black. And then finally, the tissue is eradicated. He would not have hit that kind of blackened state yet. So you could still appreciate any kind of stippling or tattooing that was there on the skin. And also, if the muzzle of that weapon was close enough to the face, as we've been told

that it was fired, they would have done a detailed dissection immediately over that defect. Defect is just a fancy term for the hole, the bullet hole that's in the body. And when you reflect that, let's say that it was within, say, an inch of the forehead, there's a high possibility that you would get what's referred to as soot deposition on the external table of the skull, which means that once you pull away that soft tissue, you can actually appreciate perhaps gunpowder residue on the surface of the bone. It would still be there.

That's not going to dissipate. The skin might disappear, and obviously it would, soft tissue, but not just over this period of time. It's a foul mess to work with. Trust me, it is. And if he was shot anywhere else in the body, we know in the face, but there's multiple gunshots. There's a possibility you could still find some residue there. And also, if he was beaten down in any way, did you know, even if a body is decomposing, you can still, in the antemortem state, when we are bruised, we have these focal areas of hemorrhage. In the antemortem state, that occurs.

That means our heart is still pumping. You've got this hemorrhage that's leaching out into what's referred to as interstitial tissue. Even in decompositional phase, you can still appreciate that if you still have tissue. So they would have examined that. Finally, one of the things that they're going to try to discover with him, even before they, as we used to say in the morgue, before they put the cold steel to the body, they would have done x-rays.

And x-rays are important in any kind of autopsy you do. I don't care how benign it might seem. If you have that radiographic record of the body, that's something that will never go away. And you want to do that before you ever remove the clothing, period. Because you don't know what's hiding beneath these radio opaque things. And with these bullets, projectiles, as they pass through and they cavitate through the skull, they leave a little lead storm lots of times. And you can actually track that little lead storm and figure out what the trajectory of the round is. And that's important here because as a body begins to decompose, and particularly when you're talking

about the brain, the brain goes into almost this, doesn't have the same consistency as it does in life. It's not quite as firm. So before you ever touch the brain, like open it with the striker saw where we removed the skull cap and all that sort of thing, if you're looking at a radiographic record of this, you can still see that little lead track. If that bullet is fragmenting, you can pick up on the trajectory. So if this eyewitness is saying, yeah, I saw him shoot him in the face. He was standing three feet away from him or two feet away or six inches away from him. He had gotten Palumbo down on his knees before he shot him. Well, now you're talking about a trajectory that's going from above to below from front to back and

it's on a really pitched angle maybe Palumbo didn't look up at him when he when he was shot maybe he just kept his eyes looking straight ahead if he's on his knees at the guy's thighs as he's being shot and he's shot more in the top of the head that can be interpreted as the face or maybe they're face to face maybe he's got his chest thrown out and he whips the gun out sticks it right in his face and shoots him. That's going to give you a more front to back without as much of a pitch. So that's why the x-rays are so very important.

So months after he's been in that crib and you can still figure that out. Now, how would you get the body out? Because I'm going to assume there's going to be a fairly in-depth investigation of his body right there where it's found before they move it, right? Yeah. I got to say something here real quick. A plug for all of my friends in the fire service. I have gotten out of more tight fixes as a medical legal death investigator as a result of fire service being at a scene. And you want to know why? Police officers are very fastidious with their uniforms. The thing about firefighters, they'll look at you and it doesn't matter how dirty the task is,

they'll say, oh yeah, doc, we'll be glad to help you. What do you need? We've got a special knot that we can tie or we've got this and that that we can help you out with. We've got this brand new tool we want to use. And let me tell you, when they would have gotten Palumbo's body out, fire rescue would have been involved and it would have been just like a regular rescue. However, you're talking about a markedly decomposed body. So the body would have been bagged. When you say bagged, you mean like in the body bag? As in body bag, yeah, to completely contain the body. Here's another bit about body bags. Since we're on the topic, bodies don't go directly into body bags. What happens is we line the body bags with a clean white sheet. And the reason we

do that is that when we place the body that is recovered at the scene into the body bag that is in fact lined with a sheet, we're guaranteed to a certain degree, and it's not perfect, but to a certain degree that we can recover any kind of trace evidence that might fall off. It's not going to go anywhere. And so we can tie the sheet off around the body and then zip the body bag closed and lock it. We actually have these little plastic locks. Then the body would have been placed into a life-saving basket, essentially, like you see mountain rescues being done and all this sort of thing. And it would have been pulled up by the firefighters. There's a great shot from the scene that was put out by the DA's office.

I urge anybody to go take a look at this. And you can see firefighters looking over into the crypt. And they will have pulled them out. And then they would have transferred it to the medical examiner's wagon and off they go. And they would try to keep them level the whole way. As best you can.

You don't want to jostle any remains. Skeletal remains are still contained within clothing. We have to assume that they were. That is, if a shirt, pants, shoes, all of those items, that would have acted as kind of a containment resource for the body. So you don't, it's not like at the scene. I think people believe that we're going to do this really detailed examination of remains at the scene. That's not what we're going to do. Our goal at the scene is to try to keep bodies as intact, anatomically oriented, mind you, as we possibly can. That's not always going to be the case. But due care would have had to have

been taken with the skeletal remains to try to gently scoop beneath them while they're intact. There's a high probability that you're going to lose, say, for instance, the elements of the hand, any kind of bony structures there. The feet are highly complex structurally. So you've got bones that make up the ankle structure. And then, of course, you have the toes and everything else that's associated with that. So you want to be as careful as you can. And the clothing that would have been down there, I've seen jeans. Matter of fact, I worked a skeletal case from New Orleans many years ago where a guy went

beneath his house in 74. And this was actually profiled on Michael Bodden's autopsy show on HBO many years ago. He went beneath the house in 1974 and shot himself. And the family, they didn't discover that guy's body until like 19, I think it was like 1989. And I got called out and his, the blue jeans were still there. He still had the big wide belt that everybody wore back then. The blue jeans were flared. He could still appreciate those. He had leather shoes on and still had a mechanic shirt on that had his name. You ever seen the mechanic shirts that had the name? Still had the name where it was visible.

And there was an old.38 caliber revolver that was rusted away laying right there. The skull was even still there. So you have to be careful where the clothing is very, very fragile in this environment. You talk about humidity. It begins to break down. We know the police went down into the crypt to look for Keith Palumbo. clothing is very, very fragile in this environment. You talk about humidity. It begins to break down. We know the police went down into the crypt to look for Keith Palumbo. That's who they were there to find. That's what their investigation led them there. They had it all covered. Now, by then, they go down to the crypt and they find his body, but they find, now granted,

we have a crypt that's got plenty of other bodies in it, but those are obviously supposed to be there. But then you have these two that don't match the rest. One still has hair and skin. The other has been there for considerably longer. Now, when you think about David Rizzillo being in this crypt for that, for again, he was last seen in December of 2017. We're now in April of 2020. And police had to do DNA. They had to actually do the whole forensic thing on him.

So where do you start? You know, you've got the body on top. It was the one you were expecting to find. And based on the condition of his body, the remains, they knew they had the right guy. Of course, they did the dental testing and everything else to prove it, but they knew this was the guy we were looking for. But what in the world? This is another guy that has been dumped probably by the same people, which is why they had to get information and they started making deals with different members of the Warlocks gang because they didn't even know who they were looking at. Nobody had reported this person

missing. That was the thing with David Rizzillo. They didn't know he was even there. They didn't know he was missing. That's a problem for you. However, since the police, the investigators would know, they're kind of on a very tight spectrum here because you're talking about a motorcycle club and there are a finite number of people that could be a member or associated with that club, well, you begin to think about the police, law enforcement are always going to have informants. I don't care how secure you might think your organization is. There's always going to be somebody around that's going to rat you out. There is no honor among thieves and criminals.

You know how drug dealers get caught? By the idiots that use the drugs. They get caught with it because they're driving around high and they have what they bought for 25 bucks. Cop gives them two choices. Do you want to go to charge, maybe a felony, lose your job and everything else? Or tell me who you bought this from. Who'd you get it from? And you kind of follow the stream. Yeah. And that's what they did here. We know they did it because right at the very beginning, we know that it was Donna Morelli. Donna Morelli was the woman who was on the board to keep the cemetery up. We know that Donna Morelli was the former main lady of the club, her husband, or I don't know what they call him, but her man. He had been the head of the club and she lived right there next to it.

She was the one who gave them information about Keith Palumbo. And so now who is this other body? You're the investigator, Joe. All you have are bones in what is obviously a place where the warlocks are dumping bodies. And I think you're right when you said Keith Palumbo said, if I ever go missing, search the cemetery first because it was used as a threat or he knew. And even more sinister, did he participate? I don't know that we would ever know, but you have to entertain that because that thread investigatively can connect back to that. You look at this kind of short list of people that you have, this gentleman that they found just down there. You begin to wonder, what do you have, this gentleman that they found just down there, you begin to wonder,

what do you have to go on? Obviously, DNA. We know that they either extracted DNA probably from a tooth more than likely because teeth are, the way I've described it in my class is relative to DNA extraction. If you think about extracting DNA from, say, a softer tissue, it's like having a leather briefcase that you're taking it from. If you take it from teeth, DNA is like having a steel briefcase because it's that resilient. I mean, some of the most fantastic work that scientists are doing right now in trying to understand genetics and those sorts of things, particularly in our prehistory, come from teeth of mastodons and all those sorts of things because it's a container. It's not bone. And so they would have that. But another kind of broader strokes, there are other evidentiary clues here. You know, I'd mentioned that clothing. Well,

that clothing is going to have a specific size. It's going to have a specific manufacturer. There might be name tapes or name tags. And also, you might have a government ID. I never trust government-issued identification on anybody, particularly on a decomposed remain, a skeletal remain, because it can be placed there. I have no idea. I can't look at the ID and say that it is this person. So it's a good place to start. And see, I would have thought that had been a good one. If I was on a test, I just failed. Now I make sense, Joe. It

makes perfectly good sense that you wouldn't trust that. There have been many, many people that have been misidentified with driver's licenses that they had on them. I don't trust them. I don't trust military IDs. I've seen enough of them. They can either be forged or faked or somebody can be carrying somebody else's. It's too much of a risk. You're actually, what you're doing is you're running the risk of, and this has happened, you're running the risk of basing an identification and subsequently a notification to a family on a government, on a piece of paper. I don't want to do that. I might go to a family and say, look, we have a remain here that might be your loved one, but we have to make sure. What can you tell me about the dental history? What can you tell me about the medical history?

Is there anywhere I can go for a dental chart? Can I get a DNA sample from his familial line? And if that is the case, then I can compare what I have, the unknown, to the known. And that is the case, then I can compare what I have, the unknown to the known. And that's the most important thing. And so that's what they did with David Rizzillo, which is why it ended up going to court. As we know now, Donna Morelli actually was the source of information. She was able to plea it down, which is how it helped to find out who he was. But they did the DNA matching and everything else. But I was kind of curious because we had talked about the condition of the body for Keith Palumbo, that he was still eight weeks past, that he still had soft tissue and what have you. But with David Rizzolo, they had to depend on other ways to find out, to prove what had happened. It's one thing for somebody to say

what happened, but you can't take her word for it because, well, for crying out loud, everybody we're dealing with we know is a member of the warlocks gang here in Philadelphia. But they all claim they were not members of the they don't they were never involved in the case of the guy who they knew was a leader of the thing for years in court. They said, no, he was a probationary guy. So you can't believe anything that's being said. But what can you find out when you've got the bones, you've got the clothing, you've got this evidence, there's enough to piece two and two together and then form your line of attack. But you're going to find these bones in there and you don't know if this is where they were when they were first put down there or where they knocked around when the other body was dropped in. Are there rodents that can get into a crypt so the bones can be drug around? Yeah, most certainly. And rats in particular are attracted, particularly with exposed remain like this, because put it quite bluntly, other animal life attracts other animal life.

And so once those say, for instance, the fly, which to get into a crypt is an easy feat for a fly. And if they're smelling this, this decompositional event, they're going to be attracted to it. They have no fear of the dark. And that scent that they have, that sense rather that they have will attract them to the body and they begin their cycle. And it's a naturally occurring event. It's just like any other mammal that dies, we all go through the same process. But in that subterranean world, yeah, you'll get all kinds of varmints that will come in there and they will begin to do what they do with human remains. And you would see evidence on that. Even the skeletal remains, you'll see there's any number

of cases that are out there where you have gnaw marks on bone that's left behind. And why do they do that? Well, animals have a natural affinity for minerals. And so they're seeking out these things that they can get from bone, for instance, whether it's a calcium, they're searching for protein, anything that they can gnaw on that is at their disposal, they will seek it protein, anything that they can gnaw on that is at their disposal, they will seek it out and they will utilize it. So, yeah, the bones can be compromised to that

point. However, you're at a real, you're behind the eight ball where the skeletal remain if you're looking for a cause of death. And I think that that's probably what everybody would want to know. Here's another problem. Let's just say, just like Palumbo, he was shot in the face. Well, his head, as long as there's soft tissue around the head, you still have containment. The skull would be fragmented. It'd be fractured. As decomposition continues on in its natural state, not talking about an embalmed body, the bones literally kind of fall apart.

It's like a fracturing clay pot, okay? And they'll be cast about. Where the skeletal remain, now you're at this point where if he was shot in the face, you might be dealing with massive skull fracture that's going on. There's no more soft tissue to hold it together. We're talking multiple years down range. So it could be lying down there in multiple parts. Well, guess what? A rodent will take the smaller bits of bone, like the table of the skull, and if they've got a hole,

say, in the wall of that crypt, they will literally take that back to their nest and they'll gnaw on it. Possums do this all the time out in the woods with bone. Possums and raccoons, they'll haul bits of bone off to their little nest, their little areas where they live, and they'll feast on this. And you'll wind up missing bits of bone out there with skeletons that have been down for a protracted period of time. I think that's one of the reasons we rarely find, for instance, hyoid bones, those bones in the neck that everybody's always going on about because it's very fragile. It's very tiny.

And so that would be prime for, say, an animal to grab hold of and they haul it away. Well, if the hyoid is missing, for instance, and say just some generic case out there and you're thinking, wow, is this a homicide? Was this a strangulation or something? I need to see if it was fractured. It's not there. Well, you got to check that off the list. You can't check it. That's a problem. You can't check it. That's a problem.

You can't prove it. So with his skull, with the skeletal remains, what you're looking for is even after death, if you have the totality of the skull, you can still put it together. All right. And you'll use wax or clay kind of to seal it up many times. And you can appreciate the form of it. And you can also appreciate if there are any defects in the skull. So if he's shot in the forehead, for instance, that's going to have

internal beveling. So you think about a beveled glass, the interior of that bone is blown out and it's beveled on the inside. It's smooth on the outside. And it's just the opposite if it exits. If it exits out of the back of the head externally, you'll have external beveling, but the interior of the skull will be smooth where the hole passes through. So that's how we determine with a skeleton or with a skull, which one is the entrance versus exit. And then is it a through and through wound? You know, I've picked up skulls before and kind of shook them a little bit. And you can actually hear a projectile rattling around inside the cranial vault, which for us, we get excited about because we've got a projectile there. So you've got, in this case, combination of good old police work, going to your local biker gang and breaking it down. But when

they get down the crypt, they find what they're looking for, but they find something they didn't even know was there. And that's where the forensics really had to go into overdrive to figure out who this guy is. Even though they had a story from different individuals in the gang, in the club, they still had to prove who he was. And eventually they did. So David Rizzolo and Keith Palumbo both were able to be put to rest. That's the key to it all at the end of the day. I can't help but think, though, that with the investigators that were out there, when they found Keith Palumbo's remains, there was a certain amount of relief. Obviously, they'd been speaking with the family,

but always in the back of their mind, they're thinking, how are we going to make sense of this? Because this is the ultimate puzzle, isn't it? When you have one individual that you're looking for and suddenly, it's almost like some kind of sick bonus. You find the skeletal remains of another homicide victim. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Packs.