Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Decompositional Changes -Deciphering COD

Episode Date: June 15, 2025

Joseph Scott Morgan puts on his teachers cap and explains decompositional changes and what really happens in the first minutes, hours, and days after death and tells the story of a rookie cop doing a simple welfare check calls for backup after finding a victim dead in his tv chair. The still wet behind the ears cop thinks the victim was killed with a hatchet, but all of the blood and body fluid appearing on the victims' shirt is not from a hatchet, the man had a heart attack. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack talk about the disintegration of body tissues after death, known as decomposition as well as the two processes of Decomposition and how important these processes will be in the upcoming trial of Bryan Kohberger for the murders of four college students in Idaho.            Transcript Highlights00:03.14 Introduction  01:34.93 Professor Morgan is ready to teach  04:44.28 Reason for understanding decomposition  09:51.60 Can't always see it, but you can smell it 14:43.12 People dying on toilets 19:01.43 Disintegration, breaking down what is organic 24:31.13 Autolysis and Putrefaction  29:35.64 Body decomposing 34:59.98 Rigor mortis leaves, body becomes flaccid 40:12.40 Toes and fingers dry out 44:32.69 Natural Death looks like a murder 45:35.23 Conclusion See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Vax with Joseph Scott Moore. For the general public, I think that what defines my profession, the first thing that pops onto the radar is not necessarily injuries, you know, horrible trauma, sadness, grief, all those sorts of things. The one question that people seem to ask me all the time is, how is it that you deal with being around decomposing human remains? That's not necessarily a one size fits all question. It is something that I learned to do over a protracted period of time. Now don't misunderstand me.

I never got completely used to it. I think that all of you out there would probably think that I was an absolute lunatic if I said that I had However, you do build up somewhat of a callous to it after a time but today we're going to discuss human decomposition and I'm going to kind of give you an insight from my perspective of death investigation So hold on to your hats because class is in

with Professor Morgan. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags. Brother Dave, good to be back with you, man. Well, I've been on a world tour, man, all over Europe and hitting spots in Paris and, and Amsterdam and Liverpool. I was going to ask you if you met any liver poodleians. I did, you know, yeah, I did meet a few liver poodleians,

puddleians, puddleians, poodleians. You know, the documentary called the Beatles, the complete Beatles and Jerry and the pacemakers, he called them liver puddle ins. Yeah. And let's see who else was it? Was it Herman and the Hermits at same, uh, very cross Peter, no, very cross. The mercy. No.

Um, who's that? That was not Peter noon in the Herman's Hermits. It was. Fairly pacemakers across the mayor's. Sherry and the pacemakers. Yeah. I actually sat out and drank a pint next to the Mersey river out there with Rod Kimmy. And it was a glorious, glorious, sunshiny day, gentle breeze blowing in off water.

And when I say, and look, we're, we're back home in South. It's like, I don't know what 80% humidity out there, dude, we had to wear sweatshirts and that's in, you know, we're in June. And they were saying, oh, isn't this nice warm weather? I'm thinking, I don't know. Wow. But it was enjoyable. It was refreshing. I'm glad to be back home and certainly glad to be back with you, brother Dave. I've missed being on the air with you and spent time over in CrimeCon, CrimeCon UK in London. So that was a blast.

And we're gonna talk about that more in another episode. But I thought coming back, we continue our series of forensic education with your humble host here and try to go down this line. But yeah. I gotta tell you something. We had a show today, um, on Nancy grace.

And we were talking about the, the Holly Bobo case. And in this discussion that, uh, Nancy and I were having, we were talking about blood in the garage. Holly Bobo was kid, a 20 year old kidnapped from her own home in Tennessee, um, by a couple of ruffians and she was actually in her garage carport getting ready to get in her car to go to school 7 45 in the morning when she was taken. Okay. Yeah.

And there were two different spots of blood in the garage and Nancy was asking, what did that mean? And I thought, I'm not the right guy to answer this, but I do know because of Joe, you know, and so I actually broke it all down and I said, well, a forensic person would say, and I was like, this blood droplet is different than this blood smear, right? And it was really cool to be able to bring that to the discussion because then, you know, it means something. Everything that you talk about on this show with regard to crime and it's body bags,

but it actually helps all of us to have a better understanding of when the crime happens, how does it get solved? Ultimately, you and I talk about the victims every day and how do you, it's never about closure, but it is about finding some resolution, some finality and finding the justice that that person and their family deserves. And it all comes together forensically. You have to prove it. You know, you can actually convict a person of murder without ever having a dead body. Yeah, you can.

Yeah. The blood, the blood, the blood, for instance, many times it's representative of the corpus delicti, which means the body of the case. And so, um, and I think I've said this before, the more blood you have, and, uh, scientists love to use the term copious. Always like that copious amounts of blood, copious amounts of blood, uh, you know, huge volume of blood, which, and again, here, here's another, uh, term or phrase they like to use, uh, incompatibility with life. Yeah.

No, that's, that's one of those things you spill so much blood, you know, that, uh, and depending upon the person, you know, you have a finite amount of blood in your body and even that finite amount have a finite amount of blood in your body. And even that finite amount that within the ranges of blood that you have within your body is going to dictate whether or not you're going to survive or not. You know, whether it's going to be sufficient to the task of providing your cells with oxygenated blood supply. So, but you know, with decomposition, we discuss blood in decomposition and blood in fact because

it is an element, a complex element. Blood is not a stand-alone substance. It's a compound of many things and blood itself does decompose. All I have to tell you is, listen, if you've ever had like a rotten bit of meat in your refrigerator, say for instance, you forgot the roast that was wrapped in cellophane, it was in the back of your refrigerator, you say, oh look, a roast, and you pull it out and some of that seeps out onto the floor.

It's one of the foulest substances known to man. It's not necessarily just the, you know, that element of the roast that is decomposing, it's that liquid that's contained therein, which is blood, and it changes color, it's got an awful, awful scent to it. And we'll go into that in this particular episode of Body Bags. But yeah, it's part and parcel of what we do. People, I wanna go back just for a second though, because many times people say,

I don't see how in the world you bear staying locked up world, you bear staying locked up in a room, which I have, with a decomposing body. And how can you do what you have to do scientifically as far as assessments go and dwell that environment with that? And it's, you know how, let me, let me just throw this out to you, Dave. Do you have any idea how I adjusted my mindset to it? Any idea whatsoever? How? What did I do? I looked at it.

I looked at decomposition as a normal biological process, almost like birth. And I've been present for the birth of my children. And people will go on and on about what a beautiful thing birth is. It is a beautiful thing, you know, when new life comes about. However, it's an ugly thing too. If you've never been present for a birth and you see what occurs in the midst of all of

this, it's a very bloody affair. But that's a natural biological process. I've always tried to understand it from that perspective. If I could ever get my, because look, death investigators have bad days too, obviously. It's like you're standing there, you don't want to be around a decomposing body, but I have to, you always kind of have to anchor yourself in the thought that, okay, if I'm going to be here,

I'm going to set my feet in stone. I'm going to understand this as a normal biological process. I have to get past the odor and the things that you see that surround the body in order to find the truth. And of course in science, that's all I'm interested in. I'm not interested in all this other peripheral stuff that a lot of people go after in the criminal justice system. That stuff to me is outside my wheelhouse.

I like to understand what science is trying to tell me and listen, decomposition and human brains, Dave, is one of the finest teachers that's out there. Now it happens quick, doesn't it? I mean, when, when we, from the moment we die, our body starts decomposing right away. Isn't that correct? Yeah, it does. You can't, yeah, in small ways. You can't see it. You can't smell it. But yeah, at a cellular level, the cells begin to essentially break down. And you're not going to necessarily see it immediately. And we're going to get into another episode where we're going to be talking about immediate kind of postmortem changes, but we're kind of taking a

broad view, you're not going to get like within, within minutes of death, you're not going to have a foul odor emanating from the body that's associated with decomposition. Now you can't have a foul odor that's emanating from human remains, say for instance, if they soil themselves during the themselves during the throes of death. And that does in fact happen. It doesn't happen every time. A lot of people say, well, doesn't that happen every single time?

I thought that wasn't it. I learned it wasn't, but for the longest time, I thought that when a person died, everything just let go. The sphincter should come loose and there you go. Merry Christmas. Yeah. I'm glad you actually mentioned that because that, you know, when you get that, that release, say for instance, of an individual's bowels, many times that will take some time to occur.

And you mentioned the sphincter muscle specifically. You have to have that area of the tissue begin to break down so that that tension is no longer there. And if there is feces in the bowel, it can release and that does happen. You'll have bladder release as many times. Lots of times bladder releases happen. I found when they're in the perimortum, say when they're in the throes of death, that will occur. Um, but.

You know, you, you don't have it every single time. I think a lot of people labor under this idea that it occurs in every single event like this and it just doesn't. Isn't that because part of its biology that we're all different. I mean, like Elvis, when Elvis died, we know that he had an impacted colon. Isn't that what that was called? Uh, yeah, yeah. He, um, and a lot of that had to do with these kind of opiate based

strikes, what you'll find constipated all the time. He was, yeah, he was. And people that are addicted to things like heroin and morphine, uh, and also any kind of opioid, even if it's a, some kind of synthetic, you know, thing that has been created in a lab, it'll essentially lock up the bowels. And I've done autopsies on individuals or participating autopsies on individuals that are heroin ODs. And you'll have their entire large bowel with fecal impaction. And it's a miserable existence because they can't pass anything

and plus most of the time they don't eat healthy foods anyway that keep the system rolling and they're not hydrated either which plays a big role into it. So it doesn't happen every single time but interesting fact about Elvis with his death, I know that you're going to know this, but I think his last words were I'm going to the bathroom to read. I think it's what he told his girlfriend at the time. Ginger Alden. Yeah. I knew you'd know that.

So he's on the toilet, or as my granny used to say, on the commode. He's on the commode and he dies. And did you know that there is a significant number of people, such a significant number of people that are found dead on toilets that we actually have a term, a kind of a euphemistic term that we use in death investigation called toilet sign. And here's why, um, many folks that do die while seated on the toilet,

they have mistaken, uh, this urgency to go to the bathroom that that is masking an MI. They're actually having a heart attack. So they will go to the bathroom, sit on the toilet and many times the strain of being on the toilet, and many times the strain of being on the toilet will push them over the edge. So yeah, we literally have, I can't tell you, it's a countless number. At first, you know, when I was a young investigator, I didn't think it was a real thing. And the older guys had told me that it was a real thing.

And so, you know, how older guys, you know, they talk to us knuckleheads that are young. You don't believe anything until it's proven to you. Trust me. I've got a 23 year old son. And so when it's demonstrated, you say, Oh my gosh, they were right. You know, yeah, I've, I've been catching all these cases, these they're natural deaths, but I've been catching these cases with individuals on toilets. And so, yeah, it's legitimate. I don't know that there's ever been a definitive scientific study about toilet sign, but it's a real thing. It's something that we talk

about and we talked about it for years and years in the field. And you know, we'll just say, yeah, we have a toilet sign case today. Wow. So yeah. And that, that, that's a real thing that does happen. Well, one of the things that when we start talking about decomposition. And I didn't, when you first mentioned wanting to do this, do you realize that those of us who follow crime, report on crime, cover crimes, that most of us only know the scientific aspect of things when people like you are talking on a crime show,

because most of us are not in an academic area. We're not taking your class at school. This is the only way we find out is by you sharing your knowledge because I don't know what happens. I mean, I really don't. I know that the minute I die, that everything stops living because I'm dead. Obviously, if you're not living, you're dying, which means you're heading back to dirt eventually. Yeah. That's all I know. I don't know the speed that it happens. I would think it'd be very quickly.

Uh, you know, in a broad sense, it, look, everything is environmentally dependent. It, you know, and I've mentioned this countless times on our program where we're referring to the biggest factors heat. I've gone out on scenes, man, where I've had multiple bodies in a location that all died as a result of one case in particular had, uh, uh, I think it was four guys that had transported dope from Mexico. They were in a van and they were tasked with meeting person.

They were going to do the exchange with in a warehouse area in Atlanta. Uh, actually not too far from six flags, Atlanta and a industrial park. And, um, all four of these guys were shot in the van through the windows and killed. And the dope was taken. We didn't find their bodies for two months. And they were just parked under a tree. And it's actually a conversion van.

It was over there. And no one, some guy decided to walk back there and smoke a cigarette. And when he did, he catches a whiff. Well, when I opened the door of that van, when got there liquid came pouring out of the van and that was decomposition fluid and so they'd been there for two months. I've had them even worse than that where bodies will they don't turn into puddles necessarily but the skin becomes very soft and spongy.

It's much like a sponge. And you can feel it kind of when you place your hands on the decomposing tissue, it feels like, it feels almost like the crackling of bubble wrap many times. And that's because the cells in that area, in some of these cases, they kind of expand with these decompositional gases that are contained within that area and you can almost feel it crackle beneath your fingertips. I've had friends that have said that, and this has never happened to me, but I've had people that have said that bodies, when they go to pull on them, literally come apart at joints. Now that's never happened with me.

I've had the manifestation of what's referred to as skin slippage, and you'll hear this in trials. Many times they'll talk about skin slippage, for instance, and that's where the epidermis, that top layer of skin, even down to the dermis, below the epidermis, that top layer of skin, even down to the dermis below the epidermis, will literally peel off in your hand. But that takes time. It takes a certain amount of time. There's almost like this kind of tenderizing factor, if you will, give me a little attitude there with that,

that has to take place. Eventually the bodies will in fact dry out but before they dry out There's a whole process that occurs before you ever get to that mark I think it's important to understand that, you know, decomposition can mean a variety of different things to folks. You know, when I was a kid, I had to build a composting bin in the backyard. My mother loves gardening. She always has. So everywhere she's lived, she's had a composting bin. What does that mean? Well, in the composting bin, you're going to throw organic materials in there. I remember her putting coffee grounds and eggshells and everything else, and not to mention all of the leaves from the previous

fall. You have to turn it. You have to turn it. Some people put earthworms in there, all kinds of things going, but you're, you're trying to break down that organic substance that's in there. Um, and it creates this rich, you know, kind of rich dirt. And it's interesting, Dave, that you said a few moments ago that we, that we turn, you know, we turn into dust. And there's that old Bible verse that,

what was it, from dust you came and from dust you shall return. And that is truly the definition of what happens. It just takes some time. It's not some kind of fantastical movie event. You have to be down for a long time. But what kicks this whole thing off is heat, heat and absence of life. But kind of the functional definition for decomposition, how do you define it? Well, it's the disintegration of body tissues after death is known as decomposition. And I'd mentioned to you just a moment ago

that one of my favorite characters in Looney Tunes, in the Looney Tunes universe is the Martian. That, you know, he's got the disintegrator ray that he uses and of course, Bugs always turns it around on him. I don't think any good Bugs Bunny cartoons ever were made after probably about 1970, by the way, just my thoughts. But anyway, you know, what does disintegration mean? Well, we know what integrated is. That means to blend, right? Or if you have integrated circuits, you know, for instance, if you're talking,

if you're speaking to somebody that's like an electrical engineer, well, we're, we're actually integrated. All of our systems are integrated. Well, once that spark of life has left the body and you no longer have this process of keeping cells oxygenated, you have cellular respiration that's going on, these things over a period of time will actually begin to pull apart and they naturally fall apart. And so that's part of the process and it's something that you have to understand.

All right, so as you're going through this entire process All right. So as you're going through this entire process to, I guess I'm approaching it a little bit different and trying to think about the decomposition because it's not something I'm used to talking about. When you're talking about the roast in the refrigerator, things like that, opening up bad meat from the store and you get that whiff, you know that you're getting something bad. So when you're talking about this beginning stages here, the, where it's

starting to break down, what does that tell you when you're coming in as an investigator and looking at things as you're studying that individual? Because all the time we want to know, well, we always want to know the motive, why did this happen? Right. But when, when, when did this happen? You know, you and I have talked about that. You've got to tell me exactly when this person died, Joe, I need to know.

Was it before or after dinner? Did they dinner at 10 o'clock or eight o'clock? And sometimes those things can't be told by the contents of your stomach. There's got to be more. Yeah, you're right. And if you're looking for me or any of my colleagues tell you, and I'm saying you in the universal sense, Dave, that when somebody actually died, it's an empirical impossibility. Anybody that tells you that the can is lying. And so, you know, in the short term, and that's a micro, a micro

examination, you know, when, and we'll talk about this on another episode. Um, even in that sense, we, the best we can do is some people say they can do it in three, you know, within a three hour window. Uh, most of the time, I think it's going to be about four to five. If you cover all your bases, when you get something, yeah. If you know other things surrounding it, because you know, we build that timeline and as we're building the timeline of activity, you can take all that into consideration and narrow it down even further based on what you're seeing in the physical realm of the, of the actual decomposition.

So not just blindly finding a body on the street. Right. Yeah. If you can kind of, well, here's the word, integrate some of those circumstantial findings. Yeah, you've got a better shot, but broadly, when we're talking about decomposition very broadly, that's hard to do. It's very difficult to, particularly if you have a body that, and we, listen, we use terms like early decomposition, moderate decomposition, and advanced decomposition, and then you'll have skeletonization. So you've got kind of that spectrum of four things there. When one of the things that you have to consider is that there's actually two processes

of decomposition going on. And kind of the way in my simple mind, the way I like to look at it, you have autolytic changes and auto means self, right? So you have autolysis that goes on, which is kind of the body breaking down from within. And if you think about it from the perspective of a body literally digesting itself, that's autolysis. Everything that is contained within life when you have cellular respiration on the systems are firing ceases to be at that point in time. The body begins to, from an enzyme standpoint, begins to digest itself.

Then you have putrefaction that goes on. And then in very broad terms, you begin to think about changes that are produced by the action of bacteria and microorganisms. And that can come like in an external manifestation. And then you have, if you think about even more broadly, you have the introduction of animals or even insects that are attacking the body externally. And then, you know,

and that's gonna promote decomposition. So there's, you've got a lot to kind of consider when you come across a body that's bloated and rotting and kind of, you know, coming apart. One of the things that's always fascinated me and my students at JSU, I'll ask them this question and of course I'll get this resounding, uh, sound, you know, when I give it to them. If you've ever seen one of these steakhouse commercials where they'll say, we've got beautiful dry aged beef or we do wet aging process, you know what they're talking about. They're tenderizing those steaks that they have through the process

of decomposition. You can have dry aged, which if you go to, if one of my goals in life is to try to get a reservation at Luger steak house in Manhattan, it's supposed to be the best steak in the world. Because I think I know where the best steak in the world is and that's Charlie's steak house in New Orleans. So I want to see what Luger's. Uh-oh. But they have a basement set up. We have just set a goal for body bags. You and I, you've got to take me to Charlie's in New Orleans.

I'll take you to Charlie's. Yeah. I will take you to Charlie's and, uh, and one of the best, best dining experiences I've ever had, but with Charlie's, Charlie's uses, I think they used to use a dry aging method. The thing about it is with that, they're talking about they get this fine cut of beef. We don't like to think about this sort of thing, but aged beef is far better to eat than say for instance, if you take it right off the hoof.

You have to let it decompose. And they don't use the term decompose. They say age. It's much more mellow. It's like an aged whiskey or wine, a vintage wine. They try to put it in those terms, but what it comes down to is decomposing so that we can eat it, so that it's tender for us to eat. So we're really not talking about getting fresh meat.

We're talking about getting, I mean, I'm kind of grossed out by that. Yo, I didn't know that. I really did. I thought if I go down here to where they've got this, there's a bunch of cattle out here and they've got some pretty fat ones to look good. Yeah. And if I was to get that one, skin that you take care of the hide. I want that, turn that into a steak.

I'd like to have that tomorrow morning with my eggs. That's not going to be worth eating compared to some that's- Well, I'm not saying it's probably edible, but it's not going to match up to Charlie's or from rumor has it to Luger's in Manhattan because they have aged that beef. Well, in terms of human decomposition, there's an aging process that goes on. And if it's not controlled, which in the sense of when people are eating beef, that's a controlled environment. If a body is left out, say in the wild or even in a house, and the body is not refrigerated, the body is going to do what bodies do. And look, this can be stemmed through the process of what mortuary scientists do. And that is infuse the body or profuse the body with embalming fluid and they cease that

process of or slow it down, the compositional process. It kind of freezes it for that moment. And with decomposition though, you have to get there early in order to stop it. Because this I can tell you, with decomposition, once it starts, it's like a barreling freight train. It's really hard to get the handle on it. a barreling freight train. It's really hard to get the handle on it. Okay, and so when you hear people say, well, and this is non-traum related, you have some elderly person that has been

not found for a week or two weeks in a home, and the mortuary says, well, you're gonna have to have a closed casket. People say, well, why would you have to have a closed casket? Well, because the body's been decomposing for that period of time, maybe under the most adverse conditions you can imagine where there's no air con that's operating. Maybe they're subject to, I don't know, flies and everything else that's in it. There's no amount of restorative work, I guess there is, you'd have to pay a lot

of money, but there's really no amount of restorative work that you can go in and you can patch this person up so that they're presentable for an open casket. So the absence of an open casket does not necessarily mean that this is a trauma related event. Many times it can be decompositional related. Okay, let me back to just on decomposition. When you're talking 24 to 36 hours, you're going to start seeing outward signs of the decomposition of the body, right? Yes. Okay. In that first 24 hours, and in particular, I'm thinking about, um, in Idaho,

yeah, in Moscow, Idaho, where the four college students were murdered. And we believe based on the information, which I really want to talk to you about that timeline, but what we understand is that, uh, sometime between four and four 30 in the morning, all four of the students were murdered by knife and, but their bodies were not found by law enforcement until eight hours later. All right. Is there going to be, I mean, is there going to be significant changes in the body during that eight hour time period?

Not in the broad sense, but in a macro sense that we're talking about here real broadly where you're gonna have bloating and all those things that are commonly associated with decomposition. You're not gonna have it in there. However, I think that it's key that we come back and address that, the Idaho killings,

when we discuss the micro, the micro sense of decomposition and those changes, within that 11 hour framework you're not going to see, or 11 to 12 hour framework, you're not going to see much happen. It's with, how can I say this, with an external manifestation which can be appreciated with the unaided eye, you know, where you're examining the body. However, within the 24 to 36 hour, and again, these brackets of time are very, very broad. One of the things that will happen and something that kind of manifests itself, everybody that's listening to me will take your right hand and place it above the level of your pelvis on the right side of your abdomen.

That approximates the area where your appendix is. No one can really explain it, but one of the things that we see manifested in decomposition, like an external manifestation, is that that area, you'll get a focal area of greenish discoloration that will occur there. And it truly is. It turns kind of a green color. And that many times, doesn't happen every case, but many times it'll be, you know, that's generally about 24 to 36 hours. Well, Morgan, why is that important? Well, it's important because if I have that manifestation that is occurring, that's a marker in time. Okay? So if I look at the body and I have no other information, if I'm just visually eyeballing

the body and I see this greenish coloration on the abdomen, I can say, wow, this might be an indication this person's been down at least 24 to 36 hours. And you roll that into the idea that maybe their limbs are flaccid and flaccid means flexible, okay, Or bendable. Uh, well that means that Riger's already left the body. Okay. So I gotta know. Yeah. Because I like many people don't know how quickly does Riger rigor mortis set in and how quickly does it let go?

Because we all know of stories that we've told. As a matter of fact, we had one not that long ago where two gentlemen. Killed the third guy that they were having a three-way party with and went to get a tub at home Depot or wherever. And when they came back, the guy was stiff and they had to break his legs and beat him, you know, his body to make it soft enough to get in the tub. If they just waited, how long would they have to wait for the body to release again?

24 to 36 hours. 24 to 30, 36 hours. And, uh, it's going to remain fixed. And that's the one thing I never can understand about people that, that, uh, desecrate bodies beyond what they've already been desecrated where they get you know axes and these sorts of things and you know try to chop the legs off or whatever if you wait and again obviously time plays a factor because anybody that brings death upon another person they're not wanting to

hang around and be patient about it. The bodies become flaccid again. They become what's termed malleable again. So that you can bend them, you can contract them, all of it. Roger Morris doesn't hang around forever and ever, amen. It's just not one of those things that occurs, particularly in an unembalmed state. So it will leave. It dissipates over a period of time. But when you're looking out over, kind of broadly over this spectrum of death

with decomposition, you look for other signs as you march down that timeline. Like after you get beyond that greenish discoloration that takes place on the abdomen, you're talking about 36 to 48 hours, the body will become or start to distend, which means you'll see the first signs of bloating. The abdomen begins to swell up. Well, and the face will swell too. You'll see the face beginning to kind of swell. If a person has had their appendix out,

is there still a greenish type of color? Yeah, it manifests down there. And I don't know why it is because it's kind of the, at that end where you have the verna was the called the verna form appendix, uh, sound there. Verna form is like, I think it's the Latin word for worm is actually what it translates into. Um, it, it will still manifest down that area, even, you know, if an individual is absent,

their appendix and it's down in that, that area. I don't know if it, because it's on the opposite end of the large bowel from where, you know, the rectum is. Okay. So it's kind of looped all the way around there. And, you know, that's where the food that's being digested in the, you know, in the small intestine dumps into that part of the intestine, the lower right side, if you're talking about the right side of the person's body, and then it traverses, uh, from the ascending, uh, uh, large bowel to the,

uh, uh, where it, it, uh, crosses over into the descending bowel and eventually is eliminated from the body. I don't know if that plays a role into it. But you know you couple that and you go to another stage where you've got this kind of slight bloating that's going on and with and particularly the facial notice it you'll get kind of the face will have a swollen appearance and you'll also see the first signs of something. Here's another term that they use in butchery with beef. It doesn't mean the same thing, but we use this term called marbling.

And marbling, if you imagine, if you've got a spiderweb that would normally be, I don't know, spiderwebs are gray, white. If you imagine a black spider web superimposed upon a body, and it's got these kind of weird lines that run all over the place, it's black, dark, dark black. Well, that's like blood that is decomposing in the vessels and it's showing through the face. So you'll see it first manifest kind of around the jowls and the cheeks and that sort of

thing, the neck. And that'll extend out as time goes by. So you'll have these kind of curved linear lines that run all over the body. And that's actually what we refer to as marbling. But again, Dave, that brings us back to this benchmark this benchmarking of time. That's, you know, you're going to talk about top end. That's, that's going to take about 48 hours, you know, with an unattended body that's found ideally in a protected environment, you know, like in a house, um, where, you know,

you don't have any kind of postmortem feasting that's going on with animals or things like that. And again, the more of these little markers that we can get as death investigators, it allows us through science and the natural biological process to tell the story of the dead. I know a lot of people are fans of dried fruit that are listening out there. I see it everywhere I go, you know, in various grocery stores and this sort of thing. I've never really developed a taste for it. It's kind of like when I was a kid, I don't know about you, Dave, but when I was a kid, I was made to eat beef liver.

I can't do it anymore. The reason I can't do it anymore is that beef liver looks just like human liver to me, you know, and I participated in all those autopsies for all those years. But with the dried fruit, one of the things I think about when I see it is a term that we refer to as desiccation because they call it desiccated, you know, it's dried, you know. And desiccation or the drying of limbs and particularly our appendages like our feet, your toes, feet, fingers, and your hands, the more peripheral you are to that kind of center core in a body, the higher the probability is that area is going to dry out and that's what desiccation is.

So if you couple that with the bloating that you see and the next step that you move on to is going to be manifested in the idea that the extremities and I'm talking about if you'll just touch your fingertips or tips of your toes right now, those areas out of every other location of the body will become dry first. And so the fingers, the fingers actually take on an appearance like, you know, when you're little and your mom tells you, you know, let me look at your hands, how long you've been in the pool. You get this kind of shriveled appearance here. That's basically the way it looks.

The only difference is, is that with the tips of fingers and decomposition, and this happens to the nose as well, it'll turn kind of a black discoloration and it's dried out. There's no more moisture left in that environment. And so if we benchmark that time, you're talking about probably about 48 to 60 hours downrange after death at that point in time when you're kind of pacing yourself through the scene. That's why it's important at a scene that you, you don't want to miss anything, but at the scene, particularly for the purposes of contextualizing things, it's important to be able to see, to see it for what it is, you know, at the scene and

be able to document that you observed that there, you know, before you remove the body, um, at, you know, at the scene and take, take the body to the coroner's office, the medical examiner's office, where it's going to be examined. You mentioned about the nose and all I'm thinking is Michael Jackson. Yeah. Had so many surgeries on his nose. He had a prosthetic end. Can I tell you, uh, there are a couple of times, a couple of images I have seen of him over the years where it actually made my

mind drift back to people that, that I that I, when I examined their bodies, their nose had that same appearance. It's kind of dried and it gives it a, I don't know how to say it, a very diminutive appearance. It's not robust and full like you see in life. Fingers in particular, fingers are really creepy on the dead because when you see they're shriveled, they're shriveled at the ends, they almost have like a claw-like manifestation. What's really interesting as finger shrivel and toe shrivel, the abdomen actually begins to bloat. So you've got this kind of juxtaposition and with the bloating of the abdomen, you're talking 72 hours, that

begins to happen so the body is swelling and what's happening is all this gas is building up in the body and as it builds up, one of the foulest substances known to man begins to exude from the body and it generally will, any orifice in the body, it'll come through and you see it a lot in the nose, the mouth and it's called purging. So you've got this cellular substance where the cells are breaking down and it's a combination of blood and other elements and it creates this flow. And I think I had shown this image to you, Dave, of this fellow that was seated in a chair,

and he's swollen, bloated. And you know that guy, Dave, in life? He only weighed about 160 pounds. Oh my. But when you see him. I thought that was a 200 pound man that had been shot in the chest. I know, and all of the blood that you see on his chest,

everything that you see on his chest is not blood. Well, it's blood in it. That's actually purge fluid or decon fluid. Yeah, and it's pouring, it's coming out of his nose and his mouth. You're talking about the picture with the guy sitting in the chair, like a TV chair? Yeah.

Wow, okay, just so y'all know, and I'm not gonna include this on, I'm not gonna show you guys this picture for that, but it's in this presentation and I opened the page and Joe explains these things to me ahead of time. I mean, it's not going to make me look like a total dummy. And I opened that picture. I'm not kidding.

I thought the guy had been shot because of, and that he was discovered a day or two later. I didn't realize that this was a fairly small guy and natural causes. I've got a fascinating story that goes along with that because there was a very young police officer that called my office the day that he was the first person to show up. It was a welfare check they'd gone out on and the guy lived alone. He had been divorced for a while and he was, I think he was like in his late 50s and he was working.

You know, you've seen the image, he's still wearing t-shirt, blue jeans and work boots and he sat in his chair and had a heart attack and died. He was working. You've seen the image. He's still wearing t-shirt, blue jeans, and work boots. And he sat down in his chair and had a heart attack and died. Well, the young cop, and I'm not judging this guy because I would have thought the same thing. He called me from a landline at that time, this was many years ago, and said, yeah, we need you out here immediately. I think we've got a guy that has been beaten to death.

And he even said at that time, someone may have used a hatchet on him or an axe. When you see this, it's so grotesque and over the top, that's what you're thinking. Your mind automatically goes to that because where could all this staining come from? It's even contrasted by the fact the guy's wearing a white t-shirt. The guy has no trauma to his body. That's all decom fluid that it's, it is one of the most disgusting substances known to man. And once it makes contact with anything you're wearing, your clothing or anything like that, go ahead and start the bonfire and burn those clothes

because you'll never, they're unusable after that point. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan. And this is Body Pack. This is an iHeart Podcast.