Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Dustin Kjersem - Dead by Bear?

Episode Date: November 3, 2024

A Montana man, Dustin Kjersem, sets off on a camping trip. When he doesn't meet up with his friend at an appointed time and location the friend goes looking for him. When the friend makes it to Dustin, he calls 911 and reports his friend is dead from a Bear Attack! Joseph Scott Morgan explains how experts determine the shocking attack that caused the death of Dustin Kjersem was not done by a bear, it was someone swinging some type of weapon in a "chopping" motion.              Transcript Highlights00:20.21 Introduction 02:00.71 Savage Death  04:56.01 Joe talking about Bear story 09:38.49 Victim is a "Man's Man" 15:01.06 The "Finder" and the "victim" both experienced          No sign of bear activity 19:48.73 Injuries so shocking it must be a Bear Attack 25:13.58 A Bear would tear down tent in an attack 30:12.97 A Bear is constantly looking for food 34:27.69 Weapon like a hatchet 39:45.60 Expect fractured, fragmented bone 43:22.39 Chopping motion would cause blood spatter 47:25.54 Conclusion - not a bear attackSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Moore. There are two places in the U.S. that I want to visit and not just visit. I want to stay. I want to stay for a couple of weeks and just kind of soak things in. And to this point in my life, I've never been able to. The first one is Maine. I've always wanted to go to Maine. I've always wanted to see it, to see if it is, in fact, as beautiful as I've imagined it to be. The rocky shoreline, you know, the evergreen forests that are there, the isolation, which sometimes is a good thing. The other place for

me though is Montana. When I hear Montana and what people say about it, and the fact that the place actually has the title Big Sky, I've always wanted to go there. And I wanted to see it at night. To see if everything. Is true. That. The clarity that you have. When you look up into the sky.

And you can see. The beautiful stars. But you know. Montana. Still to this day is a rugged and a dangerous place. Today we're going to talk about a case involving a fellow who at first glance apparently

met his end at the hand of something that was rather savage up there. And I don't mean the wildlife. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. My buddy Dave Mack's here with me. Dave, I got to tell you, you know that Kim and I, before we came to Jacksonville, Alabama, we were up in Dahlonega, Georgia, which is up in the Blue Ridge, up in the northern part.

I taught at a university up there and was up there for about a decade. And we had a little cabin that we lived in. It was perched on the side of a hill. And I guess I was probably eight miles away from the campus. You get eight miles away from anywhere in Dahlonega, Georgia, and you're out. I mean, you're out. It doesn't take that long. And the cool thing about this place was that adjacent to our property, our neighbor owned multiple rental cabins and it was on a big circle. Kim and I would take Noah and we'd go for walks every day and we'd go out with our dogs. You know, we love dogs.

And so we have rescues and we would go out with the dogs and hang out. And there was one of these cabins in particular had a great porch swing. And we'd just go sit on the porch swing and watch the dogs run up and down the hill that's adjacent to it. And, you know, it's very rugged terrain and noah was there and he had uh had a toy with him he was playing right off the front of the porch and all of a sudden have you ever had your dog there with you and they spot something they spot something or hear something that you you can't pick up on it. Squirrel?

But they do. Yeah, squirrel. And our dogs did that. They alerted, like, immediately. And they just froze. And these dogs never freeze. They're always very, you know, kinetic. And so looked over and out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw something move and I stepped down off the porch and there

my, one of my terriers was looking in the direction of the hill immediately adjacent to the cabin. And there was a full-grown eastern black bear. It was a mama. And the reason I know it was a mama is she had three of the cutest little cubs right behind her. And they're walking down the trail. Well, this is something I do know about bears. First off, mama bear is the most dangerous creature on the

face of the planet particularly when her cubs are around and all I could think of was that this thing is going to come after us and it is literally I don't know probably 10 yards away from us from the edge of the porch. And they're going around the back of the cabin. And I looked over at Kim and I remember saying, don't make any quick movements. Just sit right here. And of course, Kim says, what is it? What is it?

And the dogs are creeping toward this. And I'm like, get up off the porch, grabah and walk up the hill and around trying to take the greatest circumference that you possibly can away from this and um she reared up dave she reared up uh you are talking about the bear not kim right yeah exactly now kim has reared up on me a couple of times but this animal reared up and i you know i don't get scared very often by things i didn't have a weapon with me i'm just sitting there on the front porch minding my own business this thing reared up and her cubs walked right behind her except for one that stood there dave, stared at us, and it reared up. Oh, wow.

And I'm thinking, oh, my Lord. There's always one. What are we going to do? What are we going to do? Well, I started making loud noises, you know, flailing my arms about. Kim is like going up the hill with Noah. She's screaming at the dogs. The dogs are following, but they're still looking back over

the shoulder uh you know kind of like a lot's wife i guess but anyway they're they're trying to trying to get away and all i could think about i had this incredible terror that kind of grabbed hold of me at that moment tom right because i i wasn't asking for it. I didn't go out and seek the bear. I'm not like one of these people, and I've seen this happen, particularly if we go to the Great Smoky Mountains, to the Smoky Mountain National Park. I've actually seen people approaching bears with cameras to take photos. They don't realize how fast they are. They think that they're this big, kind of slow lumber. They're not. They don't realize how fast they are. They think that they're this big kind of slow

lumber. They're not. They can outrun a full-grown man, and they are dangerous, very dangerous. Generally, black bears, eastern black bears are not. They're a bit more passive, but they're still dangerous animals. I don't think people appreciate that. So, I've gone a long way around the barn to tell this story because when you're face to face in that space with this animal this is a wild animal you're not at a zoo this is their world you're just kind of living in it when the story came up and came across the wires that we're going to be talking about today on body bags, I thought, wow, this is something that you don't normally see. You know, you think about, you hear bear attack, and I've seen images before.

As a matter of fact, I talk about it. I teach a class in forensic odontology at Jacksonville State where I talk about bite marks and all these sorts of things. And I actually show injuries that have been generated by a variety of different animals. And the bear is always the most ghastly. I mean, it is absolutely horrible. Absolutely horrible. It's very disordered. It's random. It's vicious.

People just get shredded by these animals and so when i heard about this case and that it was an alleged bear attack i knew that we were going to have something to talk about brother well it starts with a 911 call from a friend who our victim is a 35 year old man named dustin How are we going to pronounce his last name, Joe? Yearsome. Say it again. Yearsome. Yearsome.

Okay. I think that's correct. Dustin Yearsome. And he is a man's man. I was looking up this because of the story and what we're being told. And you had a 35-year- year old man he's a father he uh but he is this guy is from montana and i'm gonna tell you when you're from montana and you're a dude and you're going camping i kind of picture all these guys like paul bunyan you know they just

i'm thinking you already live your neighborhood is probably like the great outdoors to me. I would be John Candy on the floor. I got to say this. He's not one of these Hollywood, California guys that have relocated to Montana. This guy is like, when you look him up, he's like the definition of Montana. You know, you see. And this man's man, he has plans. He's like the definition of Montana. You know, you see. And this man's man, he has plans. He's going camping. And this is what I tell city people all the time.

If you really want to know what it's like to go camping, one, you mentioned bears, Joe? Yeah. My daughter, Hannah, took Braylon, who is nine, to Gatlinburg, Tennesseeessee area for fall break they just came back the other day and while they were there they went to an area called cade's cove which is beautiful if you've never just yeah it's incredible and while they were there they saw a mama bear and her cubs out in the wild they were in their car and yet i'm listening as they're videoing this and i'm like in my head roll my head, roll your windows up. Roll your windows up.

That's too close. Roll your windows up. And it's something they will learn as they get older. But I'm hearing my daughter talking to this wild bear like it's a puppy. And I'm going, baby, you got to learn. They look sweet and all that, but this is not your pet. This is an animal granted they're probably used to seeing people more than other bears in other parts of the country but still a wild bear is a big danger oh boy it is it was just funny yeah and you see them uh

it reminds me of all those years that I was in South Louisiana. And I've actually been around people that for some reason, they wanted to go close to the edge of the water. They saw an alligator in the water. And I've had this happen a couple of times. It happened to me actually on a golf course years ago, where when you play golf in South Louisiana, all of the little retention ponds that they have there, the water, we don't have many hills down south in South Louisiana. So when you think about these obstacles that they create on golf courses to make it more difficult, water plays a big role.

Well, if you have water down there, guess who's going to wind up in the water? You're going to have alligators. And I was always fascinated by people that would approach these things. And without giving a second thought, they show no mercy whatsoever. You are food as far or a threat. Right. mercy whatsoever you are food as far or a threat right and you know i think more so a threat with a bear as opposed to food with an alligator your food dude i mean that's what you are and the fact that we have no we have no we have no sense we have no sense of fear many times around. And so when I hear anything that involves an animal attack, I'm always fascinated by this, certainly from a forensic standpoint, to try to understand it.

What happened? What do the injuries look like? Because for every animal that you have, their bite is going to be different the destruction uh that they uh that they uh they they reek uh over over an individual is going to vary you know depending upon how they are set up uh at a very you know the very primal level. So, you know, I'm thinking I hear this case about the Baratoni, and there's a lot more to this. Well, Joe, when you're going through Boy Scouts and you're learning to camp, you know, it starts at a young age, but then as you age up, you go on different camping trips as a

Boy Scout. And I learned a lot of things in scouting and one of the things that you learn when you're out off-grade camping you know uh like and that's what we're talking about today we're not talking about a camping area where you pull your car up and can plug into an outlet and all that this is uh this is camping where you look around and you find a relatively flat place to put your tent up. And they always tell you in Boy Scouts, you take all of your food and you hang it. Hang it, yeah. And by the way, that includes toothpaste.

You hang anything that has a smell. And you hang it on a branch high enough up where it can't because bears are attracted to this. You do not want a bear coming into your tent looking for your cookies. And knowing that and seeing the headline on this story that a 911 call comes in and the man says, I was supposed to meet my friend and he never showed up. So I went looking for him, found his tent, and I think he has been killed by a bear there are so many things in that 911 call or that we've been told i have not heard the call yet it hasn't been released but what i have heard about what was said on that call joe immediately my thought went to your discussion a couple of shows ago about the finder the person who finds the victim and i looked at what the

finder said what the what the person the victim was doing and you put all this together and you're thinking these people know what the outdoors is like the finder and the victim they know what it is to do real camping they know what it's like to be in the woods. They know the type of animals that are out there to do you harm. And I'm putting all that into play as I look at this and I'm thinking, bear attack, huh? When the sheriff's department gets out there, Joe, they take a look. They've been told bear attacks, so they're thinking that. But they immediately start looking in the area.

And what they don't find is any sign of bear activity. Yeah. And these people are to be a law enforcement officer in Montana. And it was actually the wildlife game people, you know, that made this assessment, you know, but I think that even your regular deputy that's on patrol out there, they encounter bears. I mean, that's the nature of living out there. And even they understand what to look for with uh, with bears. First off, you know, you're going to look and see, uh, one of the biggest things is

obviously prints. Uh, they're very distinctive. You know, when you see them, you're looking for where they refer to as scat, which is their waist, um, that's out in that area. Um, and you'll get a sense. And many times with, with bears in particular, you'll see a sense, and many times with bears in particular, you'll see, I've seen this even with Eastern black bears, where they will scratch on trees and they'll create these huge marks.

And that's another thing that's another, like, dose of reality. Wow. When you see these scratch marks that they'll make on trees and whatnot, suddenly you have this realization of what this thing can do with merely a swipe, a swipe of one of their paws. And you're talking about, and they have these retractable claws as well. I don't think that they're retractable to the level of like a cat, but you don't fully appreciate these things when you see those hands, the bear's paws rather than hands. When you see them kind of extended out and you get an idea as to how big these claws are that this thing has, we're not even talking about the teeth, man. And they are absolutely razor sharp. So one of the things that I think as an investigator that you're trying to understand

when you are trying to assess an area where an animal attack has taken place, you're not going to look for Dave to be ordered. There is not an ordered event when it comes to a wild animal attacking. And you know, when the police get out there, they get out to this site and they're looking around, you don't see things ripped to shreds. You don't see things overturned. Heck, you don't even see evidence in the dirt that there's been a scuffle, a struggle. You don't even see blood. And I got to tell you,

when it comes to an attack like that, you would see total and complete chaos. Dave, you know, a few moments ago you had mentioned the initial reporter or finder, you know, in a case. And isn't that, isn't that interesting, um, how a narrative will begin with that initial statement that the finder makes. So even though the finder might not be qualified to assess a situation, you see this with suicides a lot. I think that, um, I think that, you know, you've got a call and suicides a lot i think that um i think that you know you get a call and it's like i think that my friend my family member has uh has been you know murdered and you get out there and then you discover there's a weapon underneath the body that this person has self-inflicted as opposed to this being something else.

You walk onto a scene where you see horrible injuries on a body. I think that the mind goes to, okay, what could have generated this kind of injury? And what is there out here that could facilitate this? what could have generated this kind of injury and what, what is there out here that could facilitate this? And automatically your mind goes to bear attack because that's what inhabits this area, grizzlies and black bears, by the way, in this particular region. And so, you know, you kind of take your pick as to, you know, what, you know, you don't know what species, but automatically you didn't say

Panther attack or, you know, mountain lion attack rather, I think, um, or it was a Bobcat. Uh, you say bear. And so that gets imprinted in your brain as an investigator and you start working this thing. If you're not careful, you get tunnel vision really, really quickly because you're not looking at any other options. In this case, got to tell you, Dave, the evidence of a bear attack was greatly lacking, to say the least. His campsite is about two and a half miles up what they call Moose Creek Road. And the way it was written was up Moose Creek Road. And that's where he put his tent. Now, his friend finds him at 10 a.m. Saturday morning.

I'm going to go on the assumption because it has been said there is no cellular service there at the tent site that he sees what has taken place and he has to go back to an area to call 911. Knowing how these calls often go, the operator is asking you to give them specific information on site, but he wouldn't be on site making the 911 call. He would be away from it. So the things that the operator would need to know to pass along to law enforcement, they can't get. It's going to be, I saw this briefly, but I can't go check it now because it's two and a half miles away or whatever. Yeah, but I got to, let's take a pause here and consider the environment that we're working in. They, you know, we're looking at it, I think, probably from their perspective or from our perspective relative to being in maybe not a densely populated urban area, but populated,

certainly populated compared to Montana. Right. Like where we live or if you're in Atlanta or Birmingham or, you know, Nashville or whatever. They adjust to this, though. And so they're keen to it because this is the area in which they police. You can imagine some of these calls that a 911 operator might get up there, and they're giving you a reference.

Well, it's where the big rock ledge is hanging over the dirt road. Didn't occur to me. I'm glad you pointed that out. Yeah, exactly. And so they're thinking about this, and they know where Moose Creek Road is, and they know that there's an intersection up there of, say, an adjacent road. I think that, and it's a spot, it's a spot that other hunters go to, you know, because, you know, there's hunters, outfitters, uh, campers

and people that just want to get away. But, you know, you've got like moose Creek road and it's near Tamfery Creek road. So you've got that intersection to work on, but yeah, I mean, you're talking about going two and a half miles off the road, back up into an area and it went and it's it would seem to imply that he's been there before right you think so yep i mean because you're not going to show up there just randomly you're going to know you're going to know the area it's a select area i don't know maybe he's hunted fish trapped right that area before. Maybe it's just a good place that he likes to go and get away. Maybe he likes the fact he doesn't have cell service up there.

Could be. And based on, again, going back to the timeline here, you know, of when he was seen and what his plan was. He was already planning on being there for the overnight time, you know, Thursday night into Friday by himself. He's got a plan to meet his friend Friday afternoon and he doesn't show. I don't know when the friend, I don't know if the friend started looking for him Friday afternoon when he didn't show or if he just waited and said, well, you know, I'll go. If I don't hear from him tonight, I'll go looking in the morning. The fact they found him at 10 a.m. sounds about right to me that he would start looking in the saturday morning but joe we've

got the guy calling in a vicious bear attack or he tells 9-1-1 it looks like a bear attack which i'm gonna go out on a limb here and say if it was a bear attack the tent would not be standing up mr bear doesn't walk it's not yogi and boo-boo they're not walking into the tent killing somebody and then leaving the tent the tent is going to be torn to smithereens i would think and if they tent if the bear if a bear attack took place inside a tent there's gonna be shredded everything oh yeah it'll be completely shredded uh and you'll see uh what another thing that you're going to see that will be associated with this is the bear planting its feet solidly, rising up probably on its haunches or on its rear legs, and then swiping with the leading, you know, with the leading paw. And you'll see these kind of gouge marks in the ground where they're trying to,

you know, the animal's trying to leverage itself in order to facilitate this attack. And so with that, with that playing a part in it, you would get up there. It would seem like, it would seem like total chaos in this environment. And there would be evidence of that. But you're talking about from what we can ascertain, we've got an individual that has walked in to a site. He's found his friend. He's in what we believe is an intact tent,

which a tent for a bear is not a camper is nothing for a bear it might provide oh yeah i mean it could um it i think that it could particularly like uh for instance we you know i know that um you know we were when the kids were little we took a a pop-up camper up to what's referred to as roan mountain which is in far eastern tennessee is one of my favorite areas of the country and camped up there we had bears outside outside of our pop-up camper there with the kids in it and you have not lived until you hear the sound of, first off, a bear blowing like that. And then here's the other thing that's really chilling. Them sniffing. It's really, really loud.

And we can hear it. You can hear it outside of our camper. So, yeah, they'll rip things to shreds. And they're not ordered. You know, it's not like you're going to show up at a scene and there's been a bear attack. And everything is in – it's been staged in some way where it's very neat, you know. And it's just – it's pristine. And you've just got a trauma.

You happen to have a traumatized body lying there with ghastly injuries. And there's no other evidence that this had occurred. Which is exactly what happened here. They got there and went, no way. I mean, you know, they got to this campsite and said they, they're thinking bear, but there's something that you actually have taught me. And that is every death is treated as a homicide until you know differently. And as they're walking into this, on the one hand, they're going, okay, guy said bear attack. That'll be an obvious get.

We're going to walk up there and we're going to see the scattered remains of the campsite and the human being that is no longer with us. And they get there and don't find that they i'm going to go on an assumption here joe that they look at one another and go uh where's the finder you know where's the guy that called this in yeah because you know how how did you how did you make this assessment and And look, when you have somebody making this kind of assessment that is familiar with this area, now, I don't know if this finder has ever seen a bear attack. I have no idea. But if they're a native to that area, you have to assume that they've at least seen trash cans turned over. They've seen things torn open.

And I have. I've seen things torn open. And I have. I've seen a bear go through an area relative to food. You know, you were talking about hanging food up. I've seen picnic tables that are overturned where they're just sniffing through that huge snout that they have. You know, their sense of smell is equal to that of a dog, if not more powerful, actually, because that's how they find food. It's not like they're necessarily hunting with their eyes. They're trying to catch wind of something where they can go, and they'll eat just about anything. You know, they'll eat what they refer to as, like, Karen.

You know, the things that are left behind, they're rotting. They're not going to necessarily go out and kill a deer. But if they find a dead deer, they'll feast on it. Now, they will eat smaller animals. They'll eat grubs. They'll eat berries. You know, bears famously eat berries. You know, that's one of the things you think about.

Yogi Bear. You know, they're going to eat. They just want to eat. Think about the size of one of these things. Just think about the size of it. They're massive. All right. We're talking 400, 500 pounds.

Dude, do you realize how much gasoline you got to have in the tank to power that thing? So, it's a constant search for food. Always, always. And they'll go to any lengths to get it, particularly if they're trying to feed. Maybe they've got cubs. We don't know. So what is this? Are we talking about a single male bear that's walking around here that's just scavenging? Are we look, is this a mother bear that's trying to feed these babies that she's got?

And, you know, they're going to understand, you know, what time of year would she, would she have children on board? How old would, would the, I say children, would she have cubs on board that perhaps have yet to be born? Or does she have them trailing after her? All these things are going to come into play when you begin to assess this. And here's the key. The people that are actually doing the assessment on the scene are highly skilled because it's

not simply a deputy sheriff that's out there. The clues were discovered by the wildlife fisheries officers that showed up. Because there's one thing that they do know. They know about animal life. And they know what they're capable of. Dave, am I right? Did they do a descriptor of the injuries that this young man sustained out there at the scene? You know, Joe, they have. They actually have an autopsy report, but we haven't seen it yet. man sustained out there at the scene? You know, Joe, they have. They actually have an autopsy report, but we haven't seen it yet.

But they've referred to it, they being the sheriff and those involved in this investigation. They have referred to the autopsy report backing up their assessment that this was not a bear attack. And Joe, what they have said, I want to get this right. Okay. The, um, they don't know what sort of weapon was used, but they know it was something that was hard enough to cause significant

damage. And according to detective captain, Nate Cameraman, the victim, Dustin has multiple chop wounds. Chop wounds. That's the phrase used here. Chop wounds.

I'm thinking axe, hatchet, tomahawk, chop. You know, watching ball games when they do the tomahawk chop. Oh, yeah. Or whatever. And I know that's all politically incorrect now to say something like that but i mean i don't care i'm trying to figure out what a chop wound would look like i i've used an axe i've used a hatchet on wood not human beings but on wood and i know that sometimes it gets stuck and you have to wedge it out a little bit with using your foot and so what are we talking about with chop wounds on a human being, Joe?

Well, first off, when you strike someone with a heavy edged weapon, which if you you know, people think a machete is kind of like a big knife or it's kind of, you know, some people might view a machete because it's got a hilt guard on it and everything is like a sword. All right. It's not. Machetes are created to chop with. And famously, you know, they've been used all over the world, even in wartime relative to clearing brush. If you're trying to, you know, our guys in Vietnam, you know, had machetes because the brush is so, so you're, you're cutting. And it's a tool too. I mean, that you would use to cut sugar cane with, for instance.

And it tires you out very quickly if you've never used one. Oh yeah. Yeah. It is tiresome. But they're, they're created in a very specific manner, and the weight is on the back strap of this thing. So that when you're delivering a blow, and I think that probably a machete is the least of these as far as the damage it can do, you're trying to direct that energy that is being generated as you swing this thing down. You've got top end weight.

You've got a sharp leading edge. The one thing that you're going to see with a chop wound, with a machete, first off, it's going to be kind of long compared to a hatchet or an axe. It will be kind of shallow. Well, if you go to a hatchet, it's got more weight to it. And it is, if you've never held a hatchet, think about a hammer, okay? A hammer with a weighted blade on the end of it. Now, some people, you know, hatchets have multiple utility. I've used them many times to drive in tent stakes when we go out tent camping.

And you can flip it around on the blended edge and drive in tent stakes. You can flip it over to the other side and you can use it to chop wood, break up kindling, those sorts of things, okay? A multi-use tool And a lot of people that camp carry hatchets. Okay. Then you get up to something like an ax. Most of the time, you're not going to come across, say for instance, a two bladed ax. I think we think about that. You'd mentioned Paul, Paul Bunyan a moment ago. You know, he's famously carries a two sided or two bladed ax. Generally, you're going to have an individual blade, and it will be weighted on the back. And again, this idea is like a giant wedge being driven through the air so that when it slams down onto the target, you're going to translate to the weight of that blade and then end up that energy transferring onto the surface, you're going to have the skin that will have these really neat

kind of margins to it because you're talking about a machine-edged blade. But the other thing that you're going to get with it is that the heavier the axe, the deeper it's going to go. So you begin to impact the underlying muscle. You also begin to impact the skeletal structures below. But you know, Dave, those skeletal structures below are equally going to be, if they're struck by an edged weapon like this in a chopping motion, they will have neat edges on them as well. So you can actually see this on the markings of the bone. The bone will fracture, but it's not going to be to the point where you can't appreciate the margins of the instruments that's being used.

So you would actually look at this. As a matter of fact, one of the things that you would do with a case like this at the morgue is you're going to do initially the initial assessment externally where you're gauging these injuries and all that sort of thing. But then you'll actually dissect out the wound. And you can go down. Now, you'll have x-rays too, but you will go down and examine the bone as well as you might even cut out that bone. You'll take that bone and save it, okay, to demonstrate this in a future case, all right?

Now, if we drop back just for a second and think about a bear attack, for instance. Okay. Well, the bear attack, if you're thinking about a bear attack, and what was it? See, I mentioned just a few seconds ago, the two species of bears that they have up there. Black bear and grizzly. Black bear and grizzly.

Well, black bears, they do, black bears and grizzlies obviously use their paws to attack, all right? And you'll get these swipes at the individual. I saw an image of a guy that had gotten attacked by a grizzly at a point in time. His face was greatly disfigured and wound up having extensive plastic surgery. But the initial image that you see, you can actually pick up on the pattern because you're not, like if it's a paw or claw rather, you're not just going to have a single linear mark that's going to run on a face or on a chest.

You're going to have this times four probably. Okay. So it's like a giant rake, if you will, a very heavy, robust rake that you will see with these kind of claw marks. But that's not really what's going to do you in with a bear attack. Bear attack is actually going to be them using their jaws. Okay. Because once they swipe at you and knock you down, all right, they're going after you with their mouth.

And a bear has about, I think a grizzly bear can generate about 1,300 PSI, pounds per square inch. And to put that in perspective, that's more than a Bengal tiger. All right. Now, you can get out to alligators and crocs and great whites. Great whites, I think, go up to like 3,200 PSI. So, but what do you get when you, when you have that kind of pressure directly applied to a, to, to an area, particularly a bony structure? Well, I'll tell you what you're going to get. You're going to get fractured, fragmented bone that's beneath that. And it's, it is going to be so ghastly when you see these injuries

because the motion of an animal, if you've ever seen a dog, for instance, where they are taking apart a piece of meat, let's say you give them a steak bone and they've got it clasped between their paws. They bite into the steakbone. They're trying to get to the meat. They will bite and pull the rip. That's one of the reasons the canines are prominent. The pointy teeth that we have, you know, in our maxillary and our mandillary teeth, the canines are meant for ripping. Just take a look at the teeth of a bear sometime. You'll see those canines very prominently featured.

And so they're trying to grab hold with their paws as they've got something pinned down. Then they bite into it and they'll turn their head and rip at the same time. This is very disordered, Dave. This is chaotic when you see these kinds of injuries and a body would be covered with them. That's not what they're saying here, Dave. They're saying that these injuries that in this isolated location, two and a half miles from where his truck would have been off the beaten path back in this isolated area, somebody came after this guy with an

instrument that he could be chopped with. And what they're saying is that, I can't remember the gentleman's name that gave the press conference, but he had mentioned specifically that these were chop injuries. And the police officer that released the information, it's not him making this assessment. Dave, they took his body and had his body autopsied by a forensic pathologist, I suspect somewhere in like Bozeman or whatnot. And they took his body and had an autopsy. You've got a forensic pathologist making this assessment.

And they've documented every bit of this, Dave. And that's why we looked at the case from the standpoint of the finder saying it was a bear attack. And the actual experts saying, uh-uh, this does not show any sign of bear attack. There's nothing around the campsite. There's no sign of bear activity around this area. Here's one other thing. I got to go back to the forensics real quick. Please do.

I'm thinking about his body. Now, we know his body has been found inside the confounds of a tent. If you're chopping someone to death, now, I don't know how big the tent, it might be a yurt for all I know. Those big things, I doubt this is a yurt. However, if you've never been in a tent I doubt this is a yurt. Okay. Uh, however, if you've never been in a tent and you got too much space in there to be swinging anything around.

All right. Matter of fact, you're very confined inside of a tent. Um, whoever was a perpetrator on this and they're, you know, they were investigating this as a homicide. All right.

So let's just go ahead and put that out there yeah we know that whoever would have perpetrated this would have had significant evidence transferred to their body because from what we understand dustin's injuries involved his skull and other points along his body, but he, it's almost, it almost sounds like a disfigurement kind of thing where you've got fractured bone, this,

this instrument that they're describing, you know, the chopping and injuries that's going to, particularly when it comes to the skull, that's going to crush the skull. So you're going to have a tremendous amount of blood. There might be brain matter, that sort of thing. Here's my question. If there's no blood deposition on the surrounding walls, if you will, of the tent, where did this happen we have to assume that it didn't happen in the tent maybe it did but if i was a betting dude i'd probably say no so if they didn't see that inside the tent were there drag marks leading up to the tent was there somebody watching him as he set up camp? Did somebody follow him? You know, they saw his car being parked.

Maybe, I don't know what's going on up in that wooded area. Could it be a drug-related event where you've got, he stumbled onto the wrong group of folks that were up there trying to isolate themselves? And that has happened in the past where you just got somebody that's innocently walking through an area. It might be an area they're familiar with. Maybe they were engaged in nefarious activity and they did this. But when you begin to think about the brutality of this, we're not talking about taking, you know, a nine millimeter pistol and merely shooting somebody. No,

we're talking about engagement. And this, this man, Dustin is not someone that is lacking strength. This, as you said, he's a man's man. He works at, he's an outdoor kind of guy. Okay. He's building, he's building houses. He's not just building houses. He built house in Montana, dude.

Right. You know, he's very robust. All right. So the fact that he's up there and someone feels comfortable enough to attack this man, that's a dangerous individual that's floating around. I don't know who they are. And this goes to an idea of disfigurement, Dave. I mean, they're trying to ruin him.

This is not just merely killing him. This is wrecking him to this point. So I don't know. We're going to hold out hope that they're going to be able to track somebody down in Dustin's case and maybe come back with information that's going to help solve this. The sheriff's office up there, by the way, has put out a couple of phone numbers. Let me throw these out there to all of our friends. The first one is area code 406-582-2121. And they're saying for urgent tips, that number is 406-582-2100. That's 2-1-0-0.

So any information that you might have in regards to this man's death, his brutal, brutal death, hoping that we can get some answers and try to understand what happened and get this person in custody that did this. It's going to be very important because I don't think anybody's safe up there until this person's off the streets. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags.

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