Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: DEATH OF INNOCENCE - MOM STUFFED IN TUB, BABIES IN TRUNK

Episode Date: August 25, 2024

Markayla Johnson moves with her two children, 4-year-old Miracle and 7-month-old Messiah, to Charlotte, North Carolina to be with her boyfriend, Benjamin Taylor.  Within weeks of arriving from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, her family realizes they haven't seen her like they would normally expect. Reaching out to check on Markayla, the family get text messages from her phone, but there is something wrong. The messages don't sound like Markayla. After going to the apartment and finding nobody home, the family of Markayla Johnson report her and the children missing. On this episode of Body Bags, Joseph Scott Morgan walks you through the apartment that is now a crime scene and explain what police found when they opened the plastic tub filled with air fresheners......and Markayla Johnson. But where are the children?          Transcription Highlights 00:00.01 Introduction - Names of deadly drugs04:59.53 Discussion of Markayla and children move to Charlotte07:06.46 Discussion of text messages10:53.00 Joe Talks about finding a body12:22.00 Discussion of evidence of children16:59.24 Talk about smell of decomposing bodies22:06.34 Discussion of methodology of suffocation25:35.12 Talk about smell of decomposition from trunk30:17.86 Discussion of triple homicide34:53.71 Discussion of small bruises around mouth39:49.39 Discussion secure scene45:37.10 Benjamin Taylor being held without bondSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Body Facts with Joseph Scott Moore China Girl Dance Fever Friend Goodfellas Great Bear Tango and Cash, Jackpot.

Seemingly innocuous words. And they're words that perhaps in any other circumstance might give you the warm fuzzies. But did you know that those names are tied to arguably one of the most insidious drugs that's out there? Fentanyl. And daily we see reports of individuals that die as a result of overdosing on fentanyl. But today, we're going to talk about this drug and how it was actually weaponized to

commit a triple murder. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. It's hard to imagine, Dave, how an individual can be so disconnected from their own humanity that they not only murder their loved one, their love interest, if you will, but take it so far Their loved one, their love interest, if you will, but.

Take it so far that they would. Murder two very. Young children as well. How is it that that this happens? I know that, you know, and that's that question is kind of rhetorical. People have used it for years and years. I, you know, work at the medical examiner's office, Dave, I had to be very careful about asking myself that question. And do you know why, Dave?

Do you know why I would have to be careful about asking myself that question? Why? question why because to try to process that is so incredibly crippling for an investigator that if you go out and you begin to view every homicide that you work in that sense where and it's this it's this weird instance where you try to remain as humane as you can while you're observing all of these horrible things set before you. But if you don't have on your clinical hat as you are processing a scene and trying to investigate things and you're seeing things that other people can't even begin to imagine. It will literally drive you to madness. And I think that that's what happens for many people in the general public when they hear about the horrific cases such as the ones we're going to talk about in this episode today. I think that it drives

us all collectively to a numbness, perhaps, because we will move on to another horrible case that will be equally as tragic as this. And unfortunately, these precious lives that were lost will, as far as the media is concerned, they'll be forgotten. After a period of time, we move on to the next case or cases. It's hard, though. It's hard to make sense of it. I'm glad that I still have the ability to grieve, I think. And when it comes to these cases out of Charlotte, North Carolina today, I got to tell you, it makes my stomach churn, absolutely churn that someone is out there

like this that could perpetrate this kind of crime. You know, Joe, we're talking about a horrific story that started off pretty nice. Markayla Johnson is 22 years old. She has two children. She has a seven-month-old little boy named Messiah Johnson and a four-year-old little girl named Miracle Johnson. She meets Ben Taylor and they decide to date for a while and things are going good. And Ben talks her into moving in with him

in Charlotte, North Carolina. Now, Markayla lives in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. That's a good distance, a good drive from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina to Charlotte, North Carolina. But Markayla, man, she's smitten, so she decides to do it. She moves in with Ben Taylor. Now, that happened in the fall of last year. By January, communication with Markayla started slowing down,

and after January 20th nobody in the family remembers talking to her or seeing her and in February they all started getting really nervous because the only thing they were getting from Markayla were text messages from her phone now it's enough to kind of make you go hey Markayla but then you read the text and you go that's that's not something she would say I don't think this is her and that's what was happening they were all getting these kind of messages Joe that they that they were from her phone, but they didn't think it was her. Yeah, I was going to ask you about that because I have a, there's a tone.

Isn't it weird to talk about text messages relative to a tone? But there are certain things that when Kim and I go back and forth with text, there's just a particular way that we have of speaking to one another vis-a-vis text. And if you're close with your family, which Markayla was, they were vested in her. They were looking out for her well-being. But when you receive a text, there's certain things that you look for as far as clues go and how things are – even sentence structure itself. Right. Where you can pick up on it. And isn't that interesting? The world that we live in now, it doesn't – we think back to, say, a voicemail, for instance people and people still do but you know the way you talk

to people this sort of thing now text actually has a tonality to it where you can begin to pick up it's like how they wouldn't say that i know how you and i communicate via text so i would know if i would know if your wife wrote me i would know if kim wrote me a text versus you because i know how you and i communicate yeah yeah and we're very we're very, we have kind of a, it's a short hand, I guess that we have, you know, and we kind of go back and forth like that. And I think this applies. And I think that anybody that's hearing our comments right now would agree with that, that you have a way that you speak with certain people in your life.

And can you imagine being a family member that you haven't talked to this loved one in some time? You haven't physically seen them presenting themselves before your eyes and these precious babies as well. And you want to talk to them. But yet the text that you're getting back and forth, it's just not the way this person arrives. If you remember Gabby Petito's case, remember how that's how we targeted

when she actually died because of the text messages that they were getting. Anyway, the same thing happened here, and the family finally had their fill. Throughout the month of February, they looked and couldn't find anything. They were getting weird texts. And so on March 3rd, they go to the police. They file a missing person report for 22-year-old Markayla and her two children, a 4 old and three and seven months old. That's got to be a shocking day. I cannot imagine having to do that.

But they file the report and police, they hop on it, Joe. They don't wait. On March 5th, police go with the family to Benjamin Taylor's apartment where Markayla was living. And detectives are there with them. Now, they don't have a search warrant. They don't have any way to get in. They don't have a search warrant. They knock on the door. This is a welfare check.

Yeah. And nobody answers the door. The security guys from around the building, they actually can open the door. They've got a key. Master key opens it. But there's a chain on the door. And it's chained, so they can't open the door they've got a key master key opens it but there's a chain on the door and it's changed so they can't open the door so they they back out and it was one of those times where they're frustrated because they know something's going on and they tell the family we have to do this the

right way we can't bust the door down because nobody's answering our calls here so they back up march 6 detectives do obtain. They start looking just so you know, they went to work. They filed paperwork. They wanted to get a search warrant. So they were trying to put their stuff together to be able to get into that apartment. And so March 6th, they actually obtained surveillance video showing Benjamin Taylor leaving the state on a bus surveillance video on March 6th. So now they are there March 3rd banging on the reporting a missing March 5th. They're banging on the door on March 6th. They find the video of Benjamin Taylor leaving. And now March 8th, the cops issue the full on missing persons alert. Big problem here. March 15th, a week later,

they obtained a search warrant for the apartment, Joe. Have you ever gone on a search warrant where doing a beyond the welfare check where you think there might be somebody in there? Yes. Yes, I have. And it was as a result of a search warrant that was being executed, I got one of the biggest surprises of my life. It was the only time during my career, out of all the thousands of bodies that I'd been around, that I was actually a person that discovered a body. That had never happened to me.

Yeah, yeah. I found another person, another victim in the house. There was a decedent that we had that was decomposing in one room. And to be perfectly honest with you, and I know this is horrible, but there was another smell in the house. And I remember going about the house, looking through the house, and I found a carpet rolled up. And there was a grown man rolled up in the carpet as well, and I found it. And that had never happened to me. And understand my position as a medical legal death investigator, we do find bodies. It does happen. But most of the time,

it's in the wake of police having found the bodies or family members having found the bodies, that was the one time where I actually found a body. And so, yes, I have been on cases like this where this occurs. But I want to go back just for a second because I think that as a result of the investigation, all the way back on March 3rd, the police had determined that Markayla's phone had actually been turned off. You know, we were talking about the text. Her phone had been turned off at that moment, Tom. And why, you know, why would that be, you know, that she would turn off her phone? And then you couple that with this information going back where this these texts

that don't sound like her you know and suddenly she just kind of drops off of the face of the planet dave You know, Dave, coming from the combined years of experience that you and I have at one singular occupation, and that is being a daddy and grandpas as well. Think about this just for a second. Let's go down the list. If we are in an environment where we are taking care of our kids or grandkids, there will be evidence of that. We're not talking about adult behavior. We will have evidence of our efforts with our children or our grandchildren. There will be something around that will indicate if and let me give you a clue here i'll throw that i'll make this an easy one all right so if you're looking in a car for instance and you know that there are little kids in a family what's the first thing

you're going to look for in a car where you're dealing with little kids. Car seats, blankets, and sippy cups. Yeah, and Cheerios also all over the floor. Always, always. And guess what? Markela's car is actually in the parking lot at the apartment complex. Guess what ain't there? There's nothing in that car to indicate that this car was transporting children. And I think that that's a big red flag for the police and the family.

You've got a family now that they're helping to search because nobody knew Markayla and her children were not in the apartment. That's the kick here. This is Benjamin Taylor's apartment. You've got to remember that. This was not Markayla's apartment. It was his. She had moved in with her boyfriend. She's from South Carolina. This was not Markayla's apartment. It was his. She had moved in with her boyfriend. She's from South Carolina.

This was his place. So immediately saying her car's in the parking lot and there's nothing in it indicating there were children. You have her phone has now been turned off and there's no sign of anybody inside the apartment. Even on a welfare check, the police can't just bash down the door they have to go and follow the steps because hey man what if somebody is sound asleep you know we had that um during the kansas city chiefs this past yeah they died outside but they couldn't go barging in for no reason they had the guy who said he was asleep didn't hear anything so here we have police that are doing work. I think I don't want to go too over the top on this, but Joe, I'm thinking about the police knew something bad had gone on and they immediately started looking for it.

They need to sit back and wait because they actually found on March 6th, they found proof that Benjamin Taylor was not in town. And that to me was meaning the cops are on this. And once they got into that place, once they got into that apartment, Joe, you're in a place that the air conditioning is kicked on at 62 degrees. And there's air fresheners all over the place and candles that have been burned. What does that tell you, Mr. Investigator, walking into the apartment of a man who has his girlfriend and two small children living with him? Yeah. And take it another step. You've got a fellow whose name is on the lease of this property. And he, look, when you're a man and you have a property and you invite this young mother, she's 22 years old and she's got two babies.

You're there saying, okay, I'm going to provide a home for you. All right. Now, he's nowhere to be found. They have evidence that he's, you know, taking a bus across the state, across the states. We'll get to that in a second. But, and she's nowhere to be found. You walk into an environment where there are air fresheners everywhere. It reminds me, again, Hollywood reference here.

For those that have ever seen the movie Seven, there's that classic shot in there where there are those little pine tree air fresheners hanging all in an apartment. And that was to mask, obviously, a smell. And let me tell you something. You can't. People think that you can. You cannot mask the odor of decomposition, no matter how hard you try. It defeats everything

in its wake. It's always been comical. And I hate to use the term comical, but when you see the movie Silence of the Lambs and they take the Vicks Vaporub and put it beneath their nose. Like that's going to help. Yeah, it doesn't help because you have to smell decomp along with Vicks Vaporub and put it beneath their nose. Like that's going to help. Yeah, it doesn't help because you have to smell decomp along with Vicks Vaporub. Nothing will defeat the smell of decomposing bodies. Gets on your clothes too, doesn't it, Joe? I say again?

Gets on your clothes. It does. Yeah, and it gets in your hair. I wrote about that in my memoir where I was in a cooler working the deaths of a boat that had capsized, and we were slowly bringing in bodies. We had 16 people that died, and I literally wound up having to shave my head and my mustache, shaved it off, and threw away my clothes after days and days of being in the same environment over and over again.

It's amazing. I've always felt as though that the smell of death is almost emblematic of death itself, and it kind of hangs on you. And it's there, and it's representative of broader things, and we can have a deeper discussion about that later. Now, do different people, I know we have the smell of decomposition, but are there subtle differences between what my body decomposing would be like versus yours? No, no, not really. And maybe someday there will be some kind of spectrum that could be actualized relative to that. But no, for me, the dead are the dead, and the smell is equally offensive. Now, different environments can dictate how the person at the rate at which they decompose. And, of course, further advancement of that is going to be worse.

And listen, the further down it goes, actually, believe it or not, it begins to diminish at some point in time. You know, and I've gone into environments where we have bodies that have skeletonized, where there's not that much of an odor that remains. It's kind of a musky odor. But when you're at this height like this, when bodies are discovered within a few weeks, it assaults everything in the environment, everybody that's there. And I've worked with colleagues that just cannot remain indoors with the dead in a decomposing environment. You have to kind of – you have to sally forth with it because you're the only person that's there to do the work that has to be done. And listen, when her body is actually discovered in this environment, Dave, if I'm not mistaken, she's found in a big plastic bin, is she not? That's what I was going to tell you the in this particular case we know there's candles

that have been burning there's air fresheners and the air conditioner has been set down to 62 degrees they can't find anybody that you know you got to remember they know benjamin taylor's not in the state but they're looking for markayla johnson and her two children usually when you find the mother you find the children you find the children you find the mother not in this case they did not find the children joe they found markayla johnson's body she had been dead and put into a plastic tub and there were diapers placed around her head she had cords tied around her body as well and i'm trying to think when you talk about plastic bags i'm sorry i should have mentioned that already but plastic bags over her head with cords around her neck and the diapers over her face as

well i don't know what the point of was with that i'm trying to figure that part out the diapers over her face as well. I don't know what the point of was with that. I'm trying to figure that part out, the diaper over the head. I can't figure that out. Well, it's, I think that, first off, I think that we have to go to this idea of face covering. And anytime you have face covering, and this is nothing, this is not new data for anybody that's out there that's heard this. Anytime as investigators, we see a victim with their face covered, we know that there's an intimate probably involved in this. Because psychologists have opined for years and years that the perpetrator cannot bear to look into the eyes of the dead because they have an intimate relationship with them. They can't stand to look at the face of the dead if they are in relationship with this person. And if you're talking about the intensity of a relationship where you have two people that are cohabitating together, how much more so you would, and then

to layer it, because, you know, you think about a plastic bag, these sorts of things. I think that the utility of a plastic bag here and the restraint goes to, I would think that police would have thought at that moment in time that she may have been suffocated because plastic bags have been used as a methodology of suffocation with a restrained person. That's something that has been perpetrated in the past, and it's something that is known. But, you know, that's not all they found in her particular case. And we can get into her autopsy in a moment. I think that it's important to understand that those children were not found in that

apartment. And additionally, you know, we talked about the car seats in the car. There were no toys around either. There was no sign. As you and I know, how many Legos have you stepped on in your life? Dude, there's some. I walked in the hallway earlier, in my hallway. Yeah.

Yeah. Anybody who has children of any age under 12, you've got toys in the hall. You've got them scattered somewhere. You're going to hurt your foot if you walk barefoot, which I don't anymore. And there's nothing. There's no sign of that, Joe. All you've got to sign up in this apartment is a sign that nobody lives there, that nobody has been there for a while.

Now, remember, the last time anybody remembers even talking, really talking to Markayla was January 20th. We're now two months later. We're in the middle of March, March 15th. And where are the kids? Where is her four-year-old and seven-month-old? They're not able to take care of themselves, and they're not with their mother.

Where are they? We have to go back to this car that's out in the parking lot. And as it turns out, it's actually his car that's out there. And there's no evidence that he's been conveying kids in this car. We talked about the absence of the car seats, for instance. And that's something as an investigator you're going to look for. But they opened the trunk of this car, Dave, out in the parking lot at this apartment complex. And both of those babies are found wrapped in blankets out there in the parking lot in that guy's car. They're wrapped in plastic bags and then placed in gym bags. Jesus.

A four-year-old and a seven-month-old, okay? With names like Miracle and Messiah, you've got a 22-year-old mother who had some forethought into naming her children. Because she was young. She was a young mother. Had her first child when she was 18. 22 years old. 22 years old. She's got a four-year-old and a seven-month-old that she's taking care of. And she

goes all in with Benjamin Taylor. She moves from her home in South Carolina and moves in with him around Christmas. And before the new year even gets through, it's the first full month, nobody can find her. And now, we know Markayla's dead in the house. She's got it wrapped in a bag and stuffed in a plastic

trunk with a diaper overhead. Now we find the two children in the trunk of Benjamin Taylor's car. Now they know Benjamin Taylor has left town in a bag and stuffed in a plastic trunk with a diaper overhead. Now we find the two children in the trunk of Benjamin Taylor's car. Now they know Benjamin Taylor has left town in a bus. They know he's nowhere to be found when they don't know how long the children have been there. They still are trying to figure all that out. But Joe, how do you figure out how they died? You don't know how long they've been there, how long decomposition has been going. How do you figure all of those things out?

Well, you know, one of the problems that you encounter, too, with this is going to be weather. We're talking about Charlotte, North Carolina. We're in the colder months now. You know, last time they're spoken with is back in January. And now you have this cooling that takes place in that region of the country, it's not going to – decomposition is not going to be at the same rate it would be in the summertime. But still, decomposition is going on. I'm really wondering because, you know, the wrapping of the bodies where you have them in these plastic bags, there's blankets that are there as well. I'm thinking, was the odor of decomposition knocked down to such a point that if someone parks adjacent to the car, they can't smell it?

Because I have been adjacent to a car with a body in the trunk, and you can smell the body in the trunk before the trunk is opened. Again, that goes back to a case where we had to get a warrant for the car and the trunk is popped and we could verify what we were smelling once the trunk opened up. So I really wonder how many people had walked past that car. Did they not smell it? Did they ignore it? Or was there just no odor at all? I can guarantee you this. When they did finally open the trunk, there would have been a furious odor that would have come out at that point in time.

You would have known what you were dealing with. Can you imagine the horror of the police? Because no one wants an ending like this. There is still hope that these babies could be alive. I would think that maybe even in some way, the investigators may have thought that maybe these kids were dropped off with somebody that could provide care for them. That maybe, maybe some way they didn't see him on video with the kids. Maybe he had kids with him when he took off. But I can tell you, all their worst nightmares came true when that trunk was finally opened. These precious babies, Dave.

We begin to think about what they maybe have had to endure, allegedly at the hands of this man who, let's face it, if you're a man and you take on the responsibility of providing a roof over somebody's head and they have kids, you're responsible for those kids. I mean, I've got to say it plainly right here. And that trust has been – to say that it's been violated is a gross understatement. Benjamin Taylor has a history of domestic violence, Joe, against women that live with him, love him, care for him. He has a history so much so that he had he knew he's not getting out of jail again. That's how bad his back record is with women beating them. I guess I can say that. Right. He's been convicted of domestic violence. So, Benjamin Taylor. I expected the cause of death and how the three died. You know, mom and I can't.

Look, Joe, whenever we're talking about men and women, people fight. They do stupid things to one another. What can a seven-month-old do to anybody? What can a four-year-old do to anybody? What can a four-year-old do to anybody? I don't understand it. It's almost like these children and their mother, by the way, are just disposable. But when you consider when they were able to get their bodies back to the medical examiner's office there in Charlotte. When you have bodies that are, first off, they're hidden away, they're out of view,

and they're obscured in some way, they're wrapped in something. It was one of the most chilling things for me because when you bring a body in, you're trying to be as clinical and squared away in your mind as you possibly can be because every time you unfold a layer relative to some kind of covering, like a blanket or a plastic bag, you don't know what's going to be hiding underneath it. And there's almost, you can, at least I could, I could feel the tension rise in my stomach every time I did this. And I wouldn't know the people. You know, it's just a case that I happen to be working at that point in time. But you never know what each layer is going to reveal when you get there. And most of the time when you have a case involving a triple homicide, you think about

was it done in an expeditious manner? Okay. Was somebody executed, shot in the back of the head? Okay. Dave, there's no evidence of that. There's no evidence of a stabbing here. So you're seeing the bodies where they have face coverings on. I think with mom, she's restrained and tied, and she has a bag over her head.

Maybe you're going to think that this is a suffocation, perhaps. And maybe it was. But this is what they discovered with her when they were able to examine her body. They didn't note any trauma, but the toxicology revealed everything for them. They were able to find a heavy concentration of fentanyl actually in her liver. And that's one of the central areas where this drug is processed. And you're so far down the line here relative to decompositional changes that one of the things that we will do in the morgue with, say, an organ like the liver, we will take it and we'll spin it down and liquefy it.

And it will be literally drawn up and it will be analyzed. And you can find a substance like fentanyl. You can find cocaine as well and these other things in the liver. And that's what they would have had to have done at this point due to decompositional changes they found that in her system as well as well as narcan which is fascinating to me because I don't it's almost like the kitchen sink is being thrown at her perhaps in a poisoning like this it sounded to me like it was an overdose he tried to save her and she he couldn't bring her back like they were using drugs he tried to use narcan to bring her back from an overdose and when she died he being uh whatever he took

the path of least resistance and wrapped her up left her in the bag said everything so nobody could find it right away so he'd have plenty of time to get away and then uh you've got him putting the babies in the in the trunk of his car. And how did they die, Joe? If we know how they died, then that might help understand a little bit because she's dead. The Narcan makes me think maybe he didn't kill her on purpose, but the two children are dead. And I don't picture a four-year-old and a seven-month-old using drugs and needing Narcan from an overdose. No, and I think that you've really hit on something here. And look, we don't know yet.

We're going to find out as this process works its way through the system with her, if this is ever going to be alluded to. And I'm hoping that, and look, the defense will do what the defense will do in this case. I see an attack on the horizon relative to her and her character, perhaps. Maybe that is what happened. But these babies, we worked or we covered, rather. You remember this case out of New York, I guess it was last year,

where these kids were in a daycare, and they were exposed to fentanyl. Do you recall that? I remember that now. Yeah, they were in a daycare. And they both died. They were on their mat naps. There was fentanyl underneath the flooring. And it was being processed in this location.

Oh, my word. So, you begin to think about that. But how do you, but we do have a clue here, Dave, because when Miracle's body, who's four, when Miracle Johnson's body was examined, the medical examiner found small bruises around her mouth and her jaw. And, oh, my gosh, this is so horrific. I'm thinking that this child may have been force-fed fentanyl, Dave, and given an OD of this drug, and it wouldn't take much. I mean, just a few grains of this stuff can certainly kill an adult, how much

more so, you know, a small child. And this child, this baby takes this on board. And in order to ensure that this child ingested it, perhaps, just perhaps, her mouth was held closed because what they did find were small bruises around the mouth and the jaw. And it's almost, and the medical examiner opined that it was as if an adult had squeezed the mouth shut. We get this in child abuse cases as well with where children are suffocated many times, the frenulum, which is a little

connective tissue between the upper and the lower lips between those structures and the gum. And you'll get these little braided areas there where the tissue is actually torn. I'm wondering what they found relative to those insults as well. Did those exist? But there's some evidence apparently that the child's mouth had been held closed. And then we go to, and this is, again, they found fentanyl in the system. I'm sure that they probably had to render down the liver in that case as well to find this. Talking about a Messiah in the seven-month-old. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, with Messiah, what's fascinating about this is that they're saying that this seven-month-old actually had not just fentanyl, but the seven-month-old had cocaine in their system. And, okay, now, Joe, they have yet to release Miracle's autopsy report yet. Yes. And I'm wondering why that is.

You mentioned that Miracle had other signs, you know, on her face and what have you, and her hands were tied. Right. But with the case of Messiah, again, a seven month old little boy. And the autopsy says he has fentanyl and cocaine. How would a child get, I mean, seven months old, they're crawling and rolling. I mean, they, how do they get that?

I mean, unless it's in injected, can they find out if it was injected or these bodies going to be too uh yeah i feel like i'm not talking about no that's okay no it's it's one of the realities that we deal with uh you would you would look for that we abbreviate it i call it npws those are needle puncture wounds is actually what's used uh but that's more difficult to detect as decomposition continues on. Now, can they figure out when they died? Can they get a time? Not an absolute pinpoint time at which they died. You can look at the degree of decomposition and kind of pick up on the idea that they have been down.

You can bracket the time. And I would imagine that the closest they would be able to come is probably weeks. That's going to be about as narrow. So, if someone is going back chronologically and looking at a specific date, no, no. Unless you had videography of him actually perpetrating the crime that's timestamped, there's no way to do that. I think that they give us far too much credit in forensics for being able to narrow it down times. We can't narrow it down that far. But with the youngest child, it's almost like they had a cocktail on board because it wasn't just fentanyl. There was also cocaine, which is stimulant, the polar opposite of fentanyl. And, you know, we've talked about the death of John Belushi with Speedball. And that was a combination of heroin and cocaine. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid, and it's, I don't know, it's 100 times more powerful than morphine to frame that for you.

You combine that with cocaine, and that is a recipe for disaster. And not only that, the child had diphenhydramine in their system, which is the ingredient in Benadryl that makes you sleepy. And they had melatonin. This child had melatonin in their system as well. So you've got all of these forces that are at work in this tiny, tiny little body, Dave, that have resulted in a death here. So now you guys have to figure out. We know last time anybody talked to Markayla was January 20th. We know there was communication from her phone for some time after that, but they do not believe it was from her.

By the way, when we mentioned earlier that police were able to find out on March 6th that Benjamin Taylor had left town, I want to be crystal clear. They're not saying he left town March 6th. What they're saying is on that date, they were able to find surveillance video of him leaving on a bus, leaving the state. Don't know when that was. It could have been January 21st. Okay, we don't know. They haven't put that out there yet. I spent half the day looking for that going, come on, you got to tell me something here. Um, so we don't know what day they turned that up. We'll find out

he was found. Benjamin Taylor was tracked down after the, uh, the Markela was found by the way, they found Markela's body and did not find the children right away. Think about that for just a minute, Joe. What do you do as an investigator? You've got the mother. You know there's two children around here. You have to go home not knowing because they did not find them that day. They had to come back the next day and look again. Do you put police or investigators at the scene so

nobody messes with the apartment or the car? Does the car get taken to the police station? Do they leave it in the parking lot? What goes on to secure the scenes when you've got two people missing and the one person you were looking for now is dead? Yeah, in the immediate, you would lock down that apartment. And in an ideal situation, you would have an officer at that site securing that location as long as you possibly could, particularly with these missing kids, because you don't know you know, from your senses, okay, that maybe you smell decomposition from the car. Remember, if you go into that trunk of the car, when you think about a warrant, you're going to, because that's considered to be like a hidden space, okay? So, if there's an acute event where you can hear somebody, you know, inside the trunk, banging around the trunk, you can pop that thing open because that's an emergent issue. But if you have to go into a hidden space, into a car, you're going to have to get a warrant in order to do that.

And I'm really wondering if that's not what took place. And particularly if you suspect that those children's bodies might be in there, you want to treat that car as delicately as you possibly can. Because understand this, that car is a pivot point in this case because you can put the babies in there, obviously. You have this car that he owned and you can put him adjacent to that car. You suspect that he may have had something to do with them being placed inside that car. So there might be any different types of evidence that are contained in there. So what would you do? You would flatbed that car into an evidence garage, probably there in Charlotte, and you would process that car completely all the way through.

You would expect to find evidence of DNA of all members of this family. They're living together. So it would be expected you would find some essence of the children within the car, say in the back seats. You would maybe on the front seat, mom's DNA there and certainly his, the owner's. But then you would take great care to open up the trunk because for all you know, you might have latent prints that are still there, particularly on the underside where it is protected from the elements. And also, you had mentioned plastic, Dave, with these babies. Plastic is a non-poor surface. So if, in fact, you have these plastic coverings on the bodies and you can lift a print off of those plastic coverings that are covering those bodies,

that's why you have to be so delicate with this. You can put him handling those bodies that are wrapped in bags. That's why you have to take such great care with this. Now that we have the results from the autopsy, we know that Benjamin Taylor has been extradited back. He was caught, by the way, and he was caught, believe it or not, in Southern California right there at the border with Mexico. They suspected that he had the means to get across the border and go away. He didn't make it. He already has been back in Charlotte in Mecklenburg County Jail. He's being held without bond due to his previous

track record of domestic violence and his laundry list of crimes. It's go back to 2007. This is a 34-year-old man. Again, remember, Markayla was 22 years old. Her children were four years old and seven months old, Joe. So what do we wait for now? They're not giving him bond. No, he's going to be held without bond. He's back in custody. He was extradited actually from Imperial County, California, which does in fact border, as you mentioned, Mexico. And he's now back in Charlotte, North Carolina, where there'll be a series of hearings that will take place. And he is, in fact, being held without bond. It's a horrible case. Absolutely.

It makes everything else pale when you think about the lives that have been diminished here and lost as a result of this, and not just the lives of these precious babies and this mother, but also Michaela's family that are grieving their loss. We're going to stay on top of this case, and we'll probably do a follow-up as time goes by. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Packs. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.