Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Headless, Handless Body Found In Suitcases in 1998 Finally Identified! Son Charged!

Episode Date: June 14, 2026

In February 1998 the dismembered remains of an elderly man were found in Tuscarawas County, Ohio. The remains were in two suitcases found days apart and investigators determined all of the remains belonged to the same individual. The hands and head were not in either suitcase, preventing identification of the remains. The case went cold. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack take a look at what happened over 30 years and how Othram was able to identify the remains and in the process, identify the person who put the remains in the suitcases.  Host: Joseph Scott MorganCo-Host: Dave Mack         Transcribe Highlights00:00.29 Introduction - Retirement 05:11.00 Dismembered remains found  10:35.78 Remains were "fresh" 15:16.46 Coroner would have been alerted 20:11.67 Body Bag becomes evidence  25:22.09 Forensic anthropology 30:07.00 Victim was in his 90s 36:22.81 DNA - Othram, identified remains 39:58.10 Son Collected Dad social security and pension 45:55.32 ConclusionSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Quality facts that Joseph's Got More. I was having a discussion with my wife not too long ago regarding our retirement and thinking about, you know, what monies there are. You know, how do you access it? How do you know how much you have? It's one thing relative to, like, personal investments and all that. That's not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about Social Security, right? Because it's something I've never really thought about, you know, at all. And I know I've got a lot of great friends that are drawing their Social Security right now, that listen to us faithfully. And first off, if you've made to retirement, God bless you, I'm happy for you. I think it's a great thing. I long for that someday. But, you know, they put you on that graph, right?

You go into the guts of the program and it will show you how much you, you have earned to this point. It's a bit disheartening, I think, because when you look at it, you can go back and see when you started working, right? And I thought, oh, my Lord, man, I've been at this for a long, long time. And it's a grind, didn't it? Every single day, you've got to get up, you're going to go in.

And I'm like you guys. I've had jobs that I've had. hated. I've had jobs that I have, me, and then there are other jobs I'm just like super excited to go into. But can you imagine, can you imagine working your entire life? And finally you get to the point where you've still got viable health and you get an opportunity maybe to enjoy a few of those fruits. Just maybe. As a matter of fact, you get into your 90s, which is a great accomplishment. But you die. Not unexpected. But then what happens to you afterwards? Well, I'll give you a hint. That's a security that you work for for all those years.

Continued to be collected in your absence. And no, it wasn't. by your spouse. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Bodybacks. Brother Dave, I've gotten now where when I meet people, you know, I go to these social functions at the university. And because I represent Jack State on all these platforms, they're mentioned very frequently, certainly on all the television stuff that I do. So I go out and I meet a lot of alumni. I love hanging out with our alumni.

I met alumni that graduated from Jack State. The oldest one I met was somebody that graduated in 1948. And we're not a huge school. We're just a tiny regional university. But, you know, I talked to them about how they've been retired. They're living on a lake somewhere. You know, they've got their boat or they're just taking it easy around the house. And yeah, you know, it comes with, you know, physical problems and ailments as everybody

gets them, you get older. But many times I find myself saying, wow, I wonder, I wonder what that's like. I wonder what that's like not to have to go and work for the man, you know, or do one of these things. And this case came across our desk. And I thought about this gentleman and our principal here in this case. And wow, what a what a way to end, huh? Well, here's your bottom line, Joe. I sent the note to you on this story. It's about a father and son Lawrence Drotleff. Lawrence is 93 years old. His son, who is 53, is living with him at the time and working. Now at 93 years old, the senior Mr. Dr. He's not working. He is full on retired at 93. And by the way, Joe, you mentioned Social Security. He's drawing Social Security and he's drawing a pension from where he had worked.

So in his retirement years, you know, he's got two different checks coming in every month. He has his adult son living with him, hopefully sharing the bills, you know. So the problem is this, is that senior Drotleff, is that how we're going to pronounce his name. Yeah, yeah, sure. I was hoping because that's what it looked like to me. No disrespect. I mean, that's, you know, to the Drottler family, but this is what we got. So we'll go with that.

There you go. The problem here is that I want to get this right, but there are three different things. So let me just give you the opening line here, Joe. You ready? Version number one, February 1998, the remains of a man were found in Ohio. Hikers located a suitcase and bag near Interstate 77 in Dover Township. inside were the dismembered remains of an elderly man. Man's heightened weight estimated to be 5-8 to 5-10 and 160 pounds, give or take.

Investigators believe that only a few days had elapsed since the man's death. That's version one, okay, just found by hikers. Version two, February, 1998, children playing in the woods in Dover Township, discovered a suitcase, containing the dismembered remains of a man. Days later. Days later. An additional remains were found in a second suitcase. Authorities determine the remains belong to one person, but they're unable to identify the elderly victim

due to the absence of the head and hands. That's version two. Now, version three is this. And I know this seems weird that you could have, these are big differences in how the remains were found, big differences. The case began in February 98 when authorities receive a complaint now, receive a complaint regarding a suitcase found by a group of children on Winkler Hill Road in Dover Township, containing unidentified male body parts, including a pelvis and part of one leg.

One week later, a second suitcase containing a torso was found along a Bolt's Orchard Road in Jefferson Township. Despite the recovery of a body, authorities unable to determine the identity of the victim or a potential suspect. Joe, we start with hikers finding two bags. Then we have children playing find a suitcase and then days later another bag. And then we have again found and a week later found more. But this time no head, no hands. So, three different versions of the same thing. Hang on one second, brother, Dave. I've got to make a comment here because we do realize that there are a finite number of human remains.

And so I began to think about this, you know, the distribution of these remains. And is there any chance that the stories got all jumbled up, you know, like a nest, a fishing line? And you can't see where one ends and one begins. these are these separate distinct events? You know, we've got hikers and little kids. Little kids seem to be the common thread here. And can little kids be hikers? Yes, I suppose they can.

But when I think about hikers, I live really over in Georgia. I live within five miles of the Appalachian Trail. I have a kind of a vision in my mind of what hikers look like. Right. And they don't look like little kids. So in this area, this area is kind of in eastern Ohio. In at least by my view of it, it's kind of a rural area. You know, it's not teeming with folks.

So, yeah, I mean, I guess people could be hiking in that area. But wow, to recover three. And you've got those are, as you and I have discussed on body bags, those are three individual scenes. You know, if you think about the disbursement of the remains. Yeah. Multiple, going back to the finder. This is something that I have learned in working with Joe over the last several years,

looking at the finder because it means something, all right? In this case, when I started looking for the finder and found the different versions of what took place, and by the way, each one of the stories that I told you, each version was printed in a legitimate news report from television, print, what have you. And it's all from 1998. Granted, that is 28 years ago. But the case went cold, Joe, because they had the body parts in two different containers. But the only thing they really knew, elderly man, 58 to 510, 160 pounds, that's it.

And because that was all they really had at the time, the case went cold. and it remained cold. Now, the reason we're talking about it today is because of our friends at Othrum and the work that Othram is doing just remarkable. Yeah. And something that they could not identify who this guy, who this person was. And we're talking days. You know, it was mentioned that when the body parts were found, Joe,

based on what was observed, they were fairly fresh remains. Death had only occurred recently. Yeah. And most of the time, Dave, in these dismemberment cases, you know, we talk about the, I don't know, not the, we talk about how it's a common occurrence, it seems as though. Getting more. Yeah. Yeah. My lord, I don't want, you know, a podcast expert on dismemberments on my gravestone, all right? But it seems like it's headed that way.

But there's so many of them now. But yeah, when you look at this and you look at these cases, you know, most of the time with what really caught my eye about this case is that from a forensic standpoint, when you're discussing dismemberment, most of the time, the remaining. are really degraded. But you know, in every statement that has come up about this case, they're saying that these are in fact fresh remains. So again, I go back to whoever did this, their ability to kind of assess the world around them and having some kind of awareness. This sounds like somebody got really lucky because the thing went cold.

but why do you go to all of the trouble? Why do you go to all of the trouble to take a saw, cut up a body, and place it in individual elements, and then distribute them, but yet they're found. That seems to run contrary to all of that work, unless, unless,

possibly. There's some other kind of attachment. Close your eyes. And you can hear the entire world. Come alive. 2026 FIFA World Cup is on. And you can stream it all live on TSN Radio. From the opening kickoff to the final celebration.

Every match, every moment. Listen to FIFA World Cup on TSN Radio. Here's Canada to the lift off. Available on IHeartRadio. Go out to my garage. I go into my closet. I'm looking at everything I have. I've got black plastic bags.

I've got a couple old suitcases. Hmm. What shall I use? It's gruesome enough when you're talking about dismemberment to think about, you know, having to do that. All right. But then how do you make a decision? on the conveyance, you know, like, or the, what's it called receptacle? How do you make a decision about the receptacle?

You know, there's a, there's a big difference between a plastic garbage bag and a suitcase, right? I mean, to me, there is. I know that sounds rather obvious. And, you know, I'm not being tongue in cheek here. I'm just saying if you're looking at this from an assessment standpoint of, from an investigative standpoint, what compels you to go with those? Why, do you run out of suitcases? Are we shy on plastic bags? Or did you say, yeah, I still got a couple of good suitcases.

I want to travel. I'm going to use these old ones. And then I'm going to fill in the blanks with the black plastic garbage bags. It's an interesting, it's an interesting conundrum. It's something I've never really thought of in all of these cases that we've covered of dismemberment. Kind of odd. Let me ask you about the actual. finding, okay, Joe, what happens

when a call comes in to headquarters, to police, that we have a suitcase that has body parts in it. And I'm going to guess that the person gets the 911 operator or the police, whoever got the call, said, stop touching it. Leave it where it

is. Do not move. I mean, just stop. And so with that call, I would imagine the first thing is send up patrol car out, verify, that's what we have. Yeah. And once it's verified, what goes next? When do you come out there as the death investigator?

When do you actually come out? Yeah. Yeah, immediately. And in Ohio, which, by the way, if I've got any Ohio natives out there, you guys have a fine corner system there. As corner system goes, corner systems go, Ohio has one of the best in the country. I've trained, trained many of them. Over the years, I don't do it currently, but years ago I did.

And just a great group of folks, they would have the sheriff's office would have alerted the corner almost immediately because here's the thing. They're going to get their CID out there because this is obviously something that is that implies a homicide. You got dismemberment. My first stopping off point in my mind as a cop is going to be homicide. But also, there's no rescue here. There's no attempt to save a lie for anything like that. You've got to call the coroner. I think somebody that just graduated from the police academy last week and they throw them on the road, they're like, yeah, we got to call the corner.

So they would be out there pretty quickly. Here's logistically, here's the weird thing for me. Because, you know, we've got these scenarios, which you did a fantastic job of breaking this down because you said, see how kind of complex this sort of thing is. Do you come across one set of remains and then you go out and you search that area? I cannot imagine that the local police and the sheriff, they've got a lot of resources because of kind of the isolated nature of it. But you go out there and you look in eccentricly.

So you start where the suitcase is. And if you imagine like a big swirl, you know, kind of extending out eccentricly from the center, you go out and you look. And there's just at some point in time, you're, you know, you're thinking, okay, there's nothing else out here. I've got this one bag or I've got this one suitcase. There's kind of a funny little aside that I see on in social media every now, and then particularly in the church. true crime community where they'll say there'll be a picture of a black plastic bag on the side of the road. You know, like some work team has come by and cleaned of trash.

And the meme reads like, my true crime superpowers have been activated. I wonder what's in that bag, you know, because you're looking at it and you're thinking, is there anything else? So if you leave from that initial scene and you've got that one set of whatever it might be, well, if you're on patrol, I would have to imagine that, you know, your head is always on the swivel. You're trying to decide, you know, where's the rest of him? Because I can tell you, Dave, once they got into the morgue, they would realize that, well, they're shy a few parts, if you know what I mean. Well, and that was actually something that had to do with problems in

identification, apparently, even though it was 98, and even though we were a couple of years removed from the O.J. Simpson trial that was all about DNA, you know, there still were problems identifying the body. And the head and the hands were missing. I've tried to determine did they ever find them, and they didn't. But Joe, when you're looking at the remains. Yeah. You've got them in the suitcase and possibly a bag. After you have done the search around the body, around the remains and you've determined

we got nothing else out here, do you then, how are the remains transported? I mean, in a suitcase, they're going to be sloshing around or whatever else. It's already been opened. I mean, there's going to be insect activity. There's going to be a lot going on with this. How are they going to transport the suitcase and the back from where it's, found to the lab? Simply put, you're going to put it in a body bag.

Okay. You're going to put it in a body bag, and it's an excellent question because I can see why, you know, how people will, you know, it looks the facility of it. You think I can facilitate this by merely grabbing the handle on the, on the suitcase and continue to use it as conveyance. Here's the problem. that suitcase is now part of criminal investigation. So it's no longer a receptacle for human remains.

I'd like to go back just for a second and think about something we talked about last week with Celeste Revis. And that is, I think I mentioned this, it's the only time in my experience as a death investigator or as commentator, where a body bag has now become a piece of evidence. And they're actually swabbing. You know, they talked about in Revis's autopsy report, they're swabbing each one of the six nylon handles. Right. Wovean nylon handles on that.

Now, yeah, you might think, and you'd be dead on accurate, that the handle that in 98, we could not necessarily get touched DNA, but even just touching that bag by the handle, well, that's a specific point of contact with a perpetrator who's going to grab it. So you can't, you might look at it and think that it has the utility. It's kind of like saying, yeah,

I found a body in the trunk of a car. The keys are in the ignition. We found it as investigators. I think I'll just hop in the, car, it's got gas in it, motor operates, and I'm going to drive it to the police, you know, to the police garage. Well, they, no, no, no. Uh-uh.

No, you keep that in a static position the best you can and you load it up and you convey it there. Because that car, that car that I'm using in that example, it's just like the suitcase. Or those bags. Those bags are smooth, non-poorous plastic surfaces. we can fume those bags, look for fingerprints on the outside of the bags. But here's the problem. If you ain't got fingerprints in APHIS, then, you know, my old saying, it ain't worth a gunpowder blow it to hell. Because, yeah, you might hope that sooner or later somebody will be printed that comes back in the system,

the automatic, automated fingerprint system that we have. And we've had it for years and years. But if you're not in system, any unknown fingerprints that you collect at that moment, Tom, it's not going to help you. But you have to treat it as though it can help you in the future. It's kind of like the remains. Those people back in 98 had no idea, you know, what science, what science would hold for us and try to understand, you know, kind of the journey that the person and the body. body has been on. And that's a major thing

to try and unlock. But I can tell you who actually has the keys. It's our friend, David Middleman, in the Woodlands, Texas. Pride month, Toronto. Pride is an opportunity for you to create your own space,

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We have a ton to celebrate Toronto. Happy Pride. IHeart Radio. It's well known my version to Jigsaw puzzles. I was never good at it. I never had the patience for it. But, you know, in life sometimes you're forced to do. things like that that you might not want to do but you got to do them you know just like you're going

to put a jigsaw puzzle together with your family on Saturday afternoon it's raining outside you know dad's going to bite the bullet and you're going to sit down and do it even though I felt like throwing the pieces across the room because it's just too overwhelming in my work life though I kind of pride I took a lot of pride in trying to piece things together not just intellectually but also from an entry standpoint. Dave, you know what one of the problems is when you get a dismembered body? And they were very specific. I'm going to ask you to call up the numbers that you stated earlier.

Did they or did they not give us a specific height? Or it was, the range was very tight. It looked like to me. What was that? 5-8 to 5'10 and 160 pounds, give or take. Yeah. So you figure, we know from the movie Jerry McGuire, the little boy says, you know, the average human head weighs about 10 pounds.

Did you know that that's actually accurate? That little statement, you know, that little boy, I love that movie, by the way. That statement that that kid made in that movie is pretty accurate. Of course, it's going to vary from person to person. But I'm thinking about stature from an anthropology standpoint. He said, well, Morgan, these are fresh remains. Why would you even bring up? anthropology. Well, here's the reason. Anthropologists set the goal standard when it comes to measurement of the human form. And they have very specific calculus that they use in order to come up with the link. You have to have the big thing that you use in anthropology, at least to my way. And granted, I am not a graduate level anthropologist. I'm a forensic scientist. But, you know, I play one on TV. I love forensic anthropology. I always have one of the key elements to

to anthropology assessment day are actually the femur, the long bones in the body. And so, but in this case, we're missing the head. All right. So how big was his head? I like to think I've got a head that is a lot larger than most. If you look at it, I can't get a good hat size for my head. Everything I have to expand it completely out. My wife says, well, it's full of brains.

I think it's because my brain, my head's full of BS most of the time. But my head is dimensionally is essentially if you want to think about it from, you know, the chin to the crown, it's probably longer than most. So if you're trying to nail down a height, because, you know, stature is essential to trying to go about and talk about it. We've got an elderly guy. We think that he's 5-8 to 5-10 and he might weigh 160 pounds. pounds, 160 pounds is very specific. That also gives me a lot of information about status of the body. Because, you know, just going back to, again, Celeste Rivas, and she's contained, right?

Just like this case, they came up. The number for her weight, if I'm not mistaken, was like in the 60s, I think is where it was. But her body was so degraded and it had become, you know, let's face it, it had had a liquefied. You don't have that here. So you're able to get an idea of overall weight, but you're going to have to calculate, well, how much would a body weigh without hands? How much would it weigh without a head? Do you know how we weigh bodies in the morgue, Dave? No idea. I've told you this. There used to be, I'm thinking back, there used to be this contraption that you could wheel in beside the body.

and you would have to factor in the weight of a stainless steel tray with a body. And it's a wint system. And you hook straps underneath and you wind it up, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click like that. And you press the button and it gives you the weight of that thing that's being held. You subtract for the weight of a stainless steel tray and that gives you the body weight. and they still have the same thing now where you push the body with a gurney now and a tray perhaps onto a weighted system. It's like weigh in a truck. You know, you push it up on this platform.

There's an indwelling scale in there. And that's how we weigh the body. And you can get accurate, you can get accurate weights of the physical remains that you have. just follow me here. However, you can take that number all you want, but you have to factor in all those things, Dave, that you're absent. You know, we're talking about hands. We're talking about a head. And Lord only knows what else might be missing. All right. Now, we've got to get this buddy identified. And you've got to find out how did he die? Right. I mean, there has to be he didn't just get cut up and thrown in a suitcase, he died first. And how are you going to go about trying to identify

that? Because you mentioned Celeste Revis, we have had that identification, you know, of how she possibly died. And so did they do the same thing with the 93-year-old man? You know what? This is, I'm so glad you asked this about this case. With this, this is, um, Physicians love to use the term a diagnosis of exclusion. And I always use the example of, and God bless people that have this condition, but people that have lupus. Lupus presents in so many different ways, right? You know, you have all these factors that surround it. It's a miserable disease to have.

And, you know, doctors have to check off everything else in the world before they arrive on lupus. Okay. Well, here's the problem with an elderly gentleman that is missing his head and he's chopped bits. One of the big things that we look at here is, you know, what happened to his head? Okay. Does he have a gunshot wound to the back of the head? Do you sustain a blow to the back of the head? No, you can't make that assessment.

What you can do is you come back. have the heart, and that's probably my first stop on this little journey of the autopsy, you're going to see what his heart look like. Well, let me tell you what his heart's going to look like. He's in his 90s, okay? And many people, there's a term that I absolutely hate that doctors use both in practice out in general practice when they have a patient die. And also, medical examiner corner community has been guilty of this too. They will list the primary cause of death as sequela is the term. And it's very, it's a bizarre term. So they'll say sequela. And what they mean by that is they're kind of throwing their arms up in the air, their hands up in there and saying,

you know, God called is essentially what they're saying. And that applies most of the time with people that are aged. You'll also get, and I think that this is, probably a bit more intellectually honest. Some physicians will say circumstances associated with advanced age, or I've actually seen them in the top line on a death certificate, just put advanced age because you don't necessarily have a lot to hang your hat on. If you're looking for somebody, for instance, that, and what we'll see in the morgue with somebody who's had a classic heart attack,

like an MI, myocardial infarction. You'll, when you do that dissection on the heart, first off, you'll see, well, how blocked are their associated cardiac vessels, or coronary vessels? And then is there any evidence of previous MI or heart attacks? And then do you have any evidence of something that's fresh? And sometimes those little evidences of fresh heart event, you know, are striking. You know, you can back it up because what this means is that when the cornered arteries get blocked, that heart muscle, the myocardium, which the heart is one gigantic muscle,

if oxygenated blood is shut off from that area, then the muscle dies. In that area that are affected wherever that blockage is, it dies. And so, you know, they'll talk about lots of times that, you know, heart, you're, you know, you've only got 85%. You're functioning at 85% or what that means is that you've got 85% of your heart that's still doing the work that it would have done when you were disease free 100%. And so it's having to make up. And that can lead eventually to, you know, cardiac failure.

So when you're making a diagnosis like this and this is kind of a complex thing to do, this is not, this is not like you don't want to give. this case to somebody that's fresh out of training. All right. It's a bit nuanced. It requires a bit of finesse, you know, when you're looking at everything because you really have to do the mental gymnastics. If just simply by missing the head, some people will say, well, that makes it a lot easier.

Well, maybe so. But are you, are you satisfied as the person's going to sign the death certificate of signing this? Just, just pay attention to what I'm saying. Are you comfortable? enough with a dismembered body to say, yeah, this is natural and not homicide. Just think about that just for a second because, you know, that's the road you're going to go down. And in this particular case, they're faced with this decision, Dave. And that's, it's an important one because

if this person died naturally, they wouldn't have hacked themselves up and put themselves into a suitcase and a separate bag. So one has to look at it as this person at the, at the, very least was abused as a corpse. Okay? Yes. Yeah. Now, when I get down to this nitty gritty here, I want to point something out, friends, and we've talked about this on the show on multiple occasions, it bears repeating now.

1998, February 98, they did run DNA. They did get DNA from the corpse. You know, they were able to create the profile. Problem is, if that DNA profile is not in a system anywhere, you have nothing. to compare it to. Nothing. And so because of that, the case went cold and it sat there for years and years and years. But this is where, and we started off at the very beginning part of this as an authorum event, because there are now ways of taking this DNA and finding relatives, building a family tree. And this genetic genealogy has been very effective.

effective in solving a number of very high-profile crimes. And used here, the investigation was able to identify the remains. And once identifying the remains, they know what Paul Harvey used to call the arrest of the story. The problem is you're left with believing a story I don't necessarily believe, Joseph Scott Morgan, but I'm not the investigator or the judge. I know, right. Look, I share, I share, I share your, uh, your concern over this because it's like, I would not want to be in this position.

Because, you know, if I'm, if I'm living up in this Dover Township area in Ohio, I got questions, okay? I mean, I got a lot of questions. So you're telling me that back in 98 that you guys recovered a dismembered body in multiple, in bags and suitcase and, and, and, and. And we're still, you know, missing elements of the body. And you're going to, this is not a homicide, you know, convince me. Well, David, it turns out as a result of DNA testing, all roads lead back to family, right?

And through that testing, through that testing that was conducted by our good friends down in the Woodlands, Texas, of course, we're talking about Authrum. they have a patented program that they use that's called a forensic grade genome sequencing. And it's something that is unique to David Middleman and Kristen down there in those parts. And of course, as you know, anybody that wants answers are going to go there. You know, kind of the unveiling of these things that have been a mystery for years and years and years. when you look at this, they were able to determine that this gentleman, this gentleman, he's got a living son. And you had mentioned him off the, at the top of the show. Dave, we're talking about a fellow who is now well up into his 70s, I believe.

He's 81. He's 81. Oh, he's 81. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Let me do the arithmetic. Yeah, he'd be 81 years of age. he's just shy. Well, I'll say shy. Shy by a decade. This family lives a long time. Yeah, apparently. But you think about it.

He's shy by a decade of his dad's age when his dad was essentially cut up. I find that very interesting. And gee whiz, I wonder if the cops had questions for him, Dave. You know, Joe, because, again, you go back to at the time this occurred, they could not identify the remains. And so without a family member coming forward and saying, hey, my 93-year-old dad is missing. Help me find him with nobody saying that out loud. The case went cold and remained cold. And the closest that investigators came to finding out what happened was in 2010, Joe. In 2010, The, in 2010, it was discovered that Larry Droliffe was collecting his father's social security.

Larry's father would have been, if he were alive in 2010, well, golly G. Wisbe, he would have been 105 years old, 106, okay? He was born in 1904. Social Security is going, there's, no, man, who's getting this check? Because it's not a 106-year-old man, okay? So in 2010... This guy would have had a full awareness of the end of World War I. Oh, yeah. To frame it out.

He would have seen the doughboys come home from France. He might, Joe, in 1904, he was born, which means, wow, not only he would have been at the parades. when Johnny came marching home. He would have been there waving the flag. You're right. He would have been right. Like just shy of the cusp of eligibility. Right. He gives you an idea how old this guy is. He would have been too old to serve in World War II. Yes. Yeah. He would have been far too. And Dave, haven't we heard about these cases in recent years? Yeah. You know, where they've gone back and they've audited these things. There are people on the on the rolls out there that are against Social Security and the age that stated, you know, people are like 140 years old or something like this.

But they caught this one. And please, you know, tell me a little bit more about this. Yeah, bottom line being the bottom line. In 2010, they isolated the Social Security stuff and they stopped payments on it. Now, I don't know the intricacies to this because I haven't dug into that part of the investigation. It just, we are focusing on the identity of the human remains that were found and the fact that his son collected, his Social Security. And by the way, Larry Drotliff collected his father's pension too. The total amount of benefits this guy collected over about $250,000, nearly a quarter million dollars in benefits

he collected. But going back to 1998, February 1998, remains found in a suitcase and a bag. And once the body was truly identified as being the victim here that we've been talking about when it was Larry Drottliff his father was called Lawrence not Larry I apologize when Lawrence was positively identified they reopened this case in 2023 Joe and started looking at things in 2024 the investigation came down where they had enough to send it to author them and you know we've talked about how it takes time it's not like you just send what you have to Arthur and they come out in ding, ding, ding, here's your name. It takes so much time because you send stuff to Authrum, they break it down.

They send back the information to the law enforcement. Law enforcement has to go back out in the field in a lot of cases, doing more interviews, trying to find more people, and it takes time to build out this tree. And in this case, it took about two and a half years. But they finally did come down to, wait a minute, we know who the sun is. and once they identified the son, they identified the biological remains of Lawrence A. Drotliffe. His son, Larry Drotliff, is called in.

Larry is now 81, by the way, and they sit him down and they say, Larry, these remains of your dad. Tell it, you know, we already nailed you for collecting his stuff. So talk to us, man. How did your dad end up in that suitcase? And that's when Larry Drottliff actually admitted. But Joe, here's his story.

Larry Drottliff claims that he's 53 years old when he comes home from work. And he's living with his elderly father who is 93. And he walks in the door and dad is dead. Now, you have to believe Larry Drottliff in this. Found my dad dead. And yeah, I wanted to collect his benefits. So I hacked up his body. I put his body in the suitcase.

I put his remains in the bag. And by the way, I also took some other parts of his remains that you can't find. And I threw those in a dump. I put them in bags like trash and threw him in a dumpster near where I work in 1998. So here we are. It's, you know, 2026. And he's admitting 28 years ago, I disposed to my father's head and hands in a dumpster near where I work. You ain't finding those.

no no no way you're left with believing him that he came home and found his 93 year old dad dead and joe i've met some 93 year old people yeah that were you you wonder how they're still alive barely breathing and i've met i learned how to shoot pool from a man who was 93 years old john jennings taught me how to shoot he was not he was 93 when i met him and it's amazing you never know it you know the level of somebody's vitality and and and and You know, the beauty of it also is the history that they bring along with them. Yes. I'm sure that in this dad's mind, you know, he had no way of seeing, you know, what the future held, obviously.

I don't know how malevolent the son was, you know, during this period of time. There's no excuse for the abuse of a corpse. And then you go to the moral level of it, the abuse of your father's. corpse. I was talking with Kimmy about this case yesterday. And me and my wife had the most lovely conversations. We were sitting there and you were thinking, and this has happened before, how in the world does someone take a saw to your parents' remains? I don't know. And look, guys, there's many things that I don't understand. I can't do the arithmetic on it. If he's used a hand saw, Joe, he used to hand saw. Joe. He used to handsaw.

saw on this guy's body. And he had him in a place that he could do this and never be detected. If you've got two guys that are living together, an elderly father, who's going to miss him? If by that age and there's a high probability, a lot of his friends have already passed on, you know, are there other family members out there that want to know, you know, what happened to our uncle? You know, where is he? I don't know.

You just kind of wandered off. It would require an ongoing, an ongoing effort, I think, on the part of the sun to keep up the secrecy. And, of course, after a while, guess what? People stop asking questions. The beauty of it is this. Now, with the technology we have, questions that seemed unanswerable in the past are now. just a keystroke away. That's why I urge all of you all.

Just like in this case, to go to dna solves.com. That's our friends at Othram. Check out their website. Look through all of those cases. There might be something you want to throw a few bucks to. They don't want thousands of dollars from you guys. Just a few bucks sent their way. We could flip the switch on getting these gigantic mysteries brought to,

a resolution. That's dna solves.com. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body bags. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.