Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags With Joseph Scott Morgan: Idaho Student Murders Part 3 Reviewing The Affidavit - Case Updates

Episode Date: January 15, 2023

  Four University of Idaho students are brutally murdered in their home in Moscow, Idaho on November 13th, 2022. Police suspect that the murder took place between 3am-4 and their bodies are discovered by a friend that same morning around noon. Investigators believe that the murder weapon was a knife of some sort. More leads have been uncovered by police and investigators in the past weeks and the hunt is still on for a primary suspect. In this episode of Body Bags, forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan and Jackie Howard continue discussing the details of this unfolding case following the 19 page affidavit detailing evidence collected so far. Joe and Jackie discuss moving evidence as big as a mattress, the KA-BAR knife sheath and matching up knife inflicted wounds, history of KA-BAR knives, and more. Subscribe to Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan : Apple Podcasts Spotify iHeart Show Notes: 0:00 - Intro 1:45 - Reopening the details of this case - 19-page affidavit dropped over the weekend. 2:30 - Multiple forms of evidence have been recovered including but not limited to  DNA, Cell Phone, CCTV Footage, Footprints, and the Knife Sheath. 4:00 -  What is Touch DNA? 7:32 - Has Blood evidence been found? 9:50 - What volume of DNA is needed to match a suspect from the evidence collected so far? 12:35 - Differentiation in wounds on the victim's bodies. 16:55 - Examining the mattresses that the bodies were found on, what they can reveal to a forensic expert. 21:45 - Proper handling of a piece of evidence as big as a person's mattress. 27:04 -  How do you match up wounds on a victim to a knife that may have been used to inflict those injuries? A KA-BAR knife sheath was found discarded on one of the victim's beds. 31:47 -  Before an Autopsy is conducted you perform an AP and a Lateral X-ray. 35:20 - History of the KA-BAR name and model. 37:07 - A footprint was discovered outside the surviving roommate's door. Investigators matched up the print to a Van skate shoe. 40:39 -  footprints can tell you about how a person walks, what part of the foot they walk on, and the persons gait. 42:00 - OutroSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. Hello, my friends. Coming to you a little bit different today. I'm actually in a hotel room in Los Angeles getting ready to do an episode of Dr. Phil. We need to talk about the affidavit today. Talk about some of the forensic aspects here. Talk about what the police might be looking for.

What they might have. And what is yet to be uncovered. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Guys, I have been on more media outlets than I can count over the past, I don't know, six weeks, I am so incredibly grateful that I have got my friend, who I consider one of my best friends in the world, Jackie Howard, the executive producer for Nancy Grace's Crime Stories. Jackie is joining me right now. She's in her studio. I'm here in LA. Jackie, wow, do we have a lot of information to go through. I don't know. I don't know that I actually thought that we would get this much out of this 19-page document that dropped, but it landed in our laps. And boy,

is it really causing a lot of people to stop and think and reconsider a lot of positions? I think it's something that you and I should have a chat about today. What do you think? Well, I think that you started out with some wonderful brownie points there, Joe, so thanks. But yes, there's a lot of information to unfold. The first thing I want to talk about, though, is how much do you think that the police learned that was not included in what was released? Well, I think you have to start off at the baseline. You know, they only require as much as is needed to get this thing before a judge to draw up an arrest warrant.

Okay, so they're not revealing everything that they have. Trust me, this is only the tip of the iceberg. And boy, what a volume of information that they have presented us with. We've got everything from DNA. We've got pings relative to the movement of Brian Kohlberger and his cell phone. We've got CCTV footage. The list goes on and on. We've got trace evidence.

You know, when you think about footprints and all of these sorts of things that have come to light. And probably, for me, what is most defining is we've got a sheath. Jackie, we've got a knife sheath. If memory serves me right, you called that saying, if they can find that sheath, they're set with DNA. And you obviously were right. So the DNA that was found was found one spot on that knife sheath. It was a K-bar, as as we know i've been talking about for

quite some time now but the sheath dna was found in one spot on the clip the snap clip i'm wondering do we know where that dna came from was it blood d DNA or is it just skin cell DNA? Hard to say. It truly is hard to say. And we don't have enough information. We do know that there is a specific linkage to the suspect. And that's important, at least at this juncture. We will find out more what the sourcing of that DNA is.

There are many people that have openly opined that this is probably going to be touch DNA. And we've talked about touch DNA before on body bags, but just kind of revisit this very, very briefly. We slough thousands and thousands of skin cells. And the reason you slough them is that they're dead. And so the DNA strand or that it's just a partial of a strand that's contained within what's referred to as touch DNA. So when you find that bit of DNA, you have to go back in the lab and kind of reconstruct the DNA. But it was sufficient enough to the task that when they did recover the DNA, they were able to develop a profile that eventually, you know, within, I don't know, 99.9998, I think, percentage points is likely him. And that's big.

But yeah, that gives us an idea that he actually had contact. He had physical contact with a sheath. Some people say, well, you know, it doesn't matter. That could come from anywhere. Okay, that's fine. Yeah, I'll give you that. It could. It could. He could have picked it up.

I've heard some people say he could have picked it up at a knife and gun show and just handled the thing. And they're calling it a button snap is actually what they're calling it. And maybe he actuated the button snap, flicking it back and forth just to see it. Okay. That's a starting spot. That's not the ending spot. Okay. And that's important here.

Well, that was my question. Because let me jump in on you. That was my question. Because let me jump in on you. That was my question. If this knife sheath belonged to Brian Kohlberger, wouldn't they have found his DNA on more spots than just that clip? Possibly. But could he have worn gloves and taken those gloves off? Or could he have manipulated that knife sheath prior to putting gloves on, wiped down the rest of the knife sheath, but forgot to wipe off that specific area? Do you see? There's so many possibilities here that we don't know the dynamic of it. We

don't know how much he's handled this thing. We don't know if the sheath is new, if this is something he just went out and picked up and bought. Why isn't there other people's DNA on this thing? Maybe there are unknowns on here. We never know at this point because they haven't given us that information. You have to figure, let's just say he went to a stall at a gun show and he bought this from somebody. Well, just think about the person that was selling it to him had to handle the thing and would have handed it over to him, would have manipulated it in some way.

Well, they don't say anything about unknowns that might be on the exterior of the sheath. They only talk about that one linkage that goes back to the accused. I think that that's significant here. And again, we don't know what the sourcing of the DNA is. I'd mentioned touch DNA. You can get DNA that derives from multiple sources. We can have sweat. You can get saliva.

You can get blood, among other things that emanate from our body, essentially. And so we don't know specifically what the source is at this particular time. And I think another big question is, is it possible that there might be blood on the sheath? Is it possible? Yeah, it is possible that there could be blood and it might not necessarily be his blood, the accused. It might be the victim's blood because it was laying there in the bed. It wasn't laying on the floor, according to what they're saying. It was laying there in the bed. So that's kind of interesting as well. Was there any other kind of transfer evidence that was found on that sheath from any of the victims in the bed? No hair, any kind of body fluids from them, including blood, anything that might be linkage to tie that back.

It's not just one person that you're considering when you're looking at unknown sample. You consider everybody that's kind of in the orbit of this environment at this particular time. And all of these are going to be key. They will develop profiles on all of these people moving forward. They're also going to talk about anybody that may have handled this sheath prior to Koberger having purchased it, if it was a recent purchase, for instance. And they will develop those as well if they find those unknown sources,

and they'll try to track those down as well. Again, what's the beauty of this, Jackie, is the fact that if you have all of these other people that have touched it, it's not just a matter of him physically touching the knife and it being there at the scene. If you have unknown DNA that you can tie back to other people that are in his peripheral past,

you can kind of track the movement of that knife through time. You know, if he went to purchase this thing, you know, you can find it. Famously, Famously, there's been a number of cases, for instance, involving sexual assault where there'd be a pair of underwear and you will actually find touch DNA on the surface of a previously packaged pair of underwear that was packaged in maybe Southeast Asia somewhere and you'll find somebody's DNA on it that handled it in a factory. Just let that sink in just for a second. So the possibilities here are kind of mind-blowing when you think about it.

What is the volume of DNA that we're talking about here, and how much would have been needed to match up with the evidence taken from his Pennsylvania home? Well, I think that that evidence from the Pennsylvania home is probably going to be very rich. If you consider that, let's just think about it. If you're talking about napkins, if you're talking about like cups that he may have placed to his lips, you know, anything that would be an intimate contact with him. And when you think about a trash bag and how we discard things, you know, in trash bags, we're

throwing stuff away and it's all kind of getting jumbled up in there. There will be quite a number of things that will come back to him. Certainly, certainly there will be things in there that will come back to his familial grouping. And again, that's significant, right? If you can tie that one bit of DNA that they found on this button snap back to this home all the way over 2,000 miles away in Pennsylvania in the Poconos, well, that's a big piece of circumstantial slash physical evidence that you have there if you're going to move forward with this and go to court with it. You know, how can you explain that away?

And it's very, very difficult. But my question is, given the amount of DNA that we are led to believe they pulled off of this sheath, it seems to be very, very small. So, does that matter? I mean, is that going to give, well, obviously it did, but is that going to give forensic investigators enough to say beyond a reasonable doubt that they matched? Oh, yeah. It's certainly more than enough. We're talking at a molecular level here. That's how strong the connectivity is.

So it takes very little. It takes very, very little, Jackie. Very, very little. And, you know, let's think about you're already, okay, we're already kind of a bit behind the eight ball with touch DNA because it's not a complete strand. Because, you know, like I said, it's coming from a dead skin cell. It's sloughing off, assuming that it is touch DNA. Of course, it could be, you know, a number of other things as well.

We don't have enough information right now. But it does not require a tremendous amount of sample in order to work back through this for these DNA scientists who are just incredibly brilliant. And the technology they have at their disposal, it's daunting when you're staring down the barrel of this as a defense team. The father of Kaylee Gonsalves has mentioned that his daughter's wounds were different than the other victims, saying that she had gouges in her body. I'm curious whether or not we would be likely to see defensive wounds on either person that could be definitively defined as they were trying to defend the other person. Well, yeah. And okay, here's something that you have to consider at this point. We don't know

what position Maddie and Kaylee were actually in in this bed. We know that they were in the bed together. And to your point, was one huddled over the other in a defensive posture attempting to defend against any kind of strikes by the accused? Is that what we're talking about? Or were they both lying in what would be considered, quote unquote, a normal sleeping posture, you know, face up, face down, or on their sides. You had mentioned earlier that it's really hard, I think, for many of us to even think that a stabbing could have taken place without one person having been aware of it. You know, how do you get past that? You know, because this is not like a gunshot wound where it's sudden and you might have, I don't know, a pretty quick death.

There would have been pain associated with it. There would have been an awareness at a very primal level. You know, you would think that a scream would have emanated a reaction of some kind. I think that it would be speculative at best for

a forensic pathologist to be able to get up on the stand and say, yeah, this person was defending the other person from an aggressor based upon the examination of the wounds. And again, these comments that the father is making, I have a difficult time kind of measuring out how much information he knows about the injuries on the other victims. Has he spoken with family members of other victims and they've described injuries to him? And he's been able to kind of compare and contrast, if you will. That's very interesting that he can make that statement. You know, and he uses the term gouges, and that's not something that's generally associated with forensic pathology. So that's not something that a forensic pathologist or a trained coroner would say. We would not say, well, they have gouge marks on them.

Now, I think a broader thought here is, was he able to see her remains at the funeral home? And if that's the case, he could be assessing this in his own way. I think famously, he made one of the early initial comments when he was giving a press conference. He alluded to this interesting construct where he said, I paid for that. I paid for that. I didn't know what he meant by that. I didn't know. Was he talking about the funeral?

Was he talking about the funeral? Did he go to the funeral home prior to his daughter's body being prepared and he saw the remains? So I don't know where this is kind of bubbling up from. And I think I'd be interested in seeing what the actual forensic pathologist has to say about this case and about everything that's connected to it in order to, you know, kind of assess these injuries. Because look, I mean, he's a dad. He's going to be very, very emotional over this. And I don't know what he is saying and what context he's saying this in. At the scene of a death, anything, and I mean anything that is, particularly in an indoor scene,

anything that is in that residence, in that structure, has value. Because you just never know. You never know where the road is going to lead from an evidentiary standpoint. With that said, I would argue that perhaps, aside from the evidence that the bodies contain, one of the most important things here are the mattresses that these bodies were found upon. Because you're going to learn a lot. You're going to learn so much from the surfaces of these mattresses. You're going to learn so much from perhaps the interior of these mattresses. It is what we would term an evidence-rich environment. Well, I had a big light bulb go off over my head, Joe, as we all watched as investigators removed those mattresses from the home.

Those mattresses, it looked like they were inside, I guess a huge evidence bag or a mattress bag or something, but they were loaded into the back of a pickup truck. And the first thing that went through my head was, that's not how Joe Scott would do it. Am I right? Yes, you're absolutely right. And this goes back to valuable, sentimental objects that were released from the scene already.

You know, so you're releasing these items from the scene that, quote-unquote, have sentimental value. Whatever that means. I have no idea what that means. But yet, you're going to keep these mattresses within the environment. And having not secured them to the point where you're going to remove them to be analyzed, because here, this is the key, pay very close attention, to be analyzed at the lab. You're going to leave them in there.

I don't understand that. Most of the time, when you're talking about mattresses that are involved in homicides like this that are arguably blood soaked. All right. Contained a tremendous amount of physical evidence. That's going out the door to the crime lab like immediately, like that night. You're going to make arrangements. They're going to be taken away. And yeah, I saw it and my jaw hit the floor. When I was looking, I was thinking, wait,

am I actually seeing this when I saw the footage of a mattress being placed into the back of a pickup truck? And granted, it appears to be in, it's enveloped in something, all right, in some kind of, you know, container of some type, a pouch, if you will, to get it to the crime lab. But you're going to put it in the back of a pickup truck. That's what we're doing now. You're not going to have a van. You're not going to have some other resource that you can place this thing in where it's protected from the elements completely and transport it to the lab at that point. I don't understand the rationale behind that because the mattresses have fragile evidence on them. You know, obviously we're talking about DNA, but we're also talking about things like hair and fiber. And we're also talking about the potential for tool marks. So what do you mean by that? Well, let's just say that these mattresses were the surface that the victims were lying upon. if the perpetrator did not land the knife strike on the body and missed,

and it went into the mattress, then now you're transferring whatever was on the surface of that knife to the interior of the mattress. So now you're getting down into the substratum of the mattress. So you've got this very dynamic environment that these attacks are occurring in. One of the biggest areas for evidence capture is going to be on their purpose was in removing them so late and after the fact. Well, in looking at the news coverage, the mattresses were not removed until about a month after the last time the investigators were last seen taking items out of the home. For that reason, and then questioning how they moved them, obviously some of these investigators are seasoned investigators,

so I'm sure that there was a plan. So how do you think, with what they encased those mattresses in, how were they hermetically sealed to make sure that nothing got in? I'm not necessarily worried about as much getting out as I am of whatever is in there being contaminated. I think we need to worry about both things, both aspects to this. We do need to worry about things certainly getting in, as you stated, Jack.

Anything from externally that could find its way inside of this pouch that might be outside of what you would expect to find in the pristine interior protected scene. All right. When you hit that door, have you got this thing secured to the point where anything on the outside is not going to find its way, you know, because the environment that you're exiting is reasonably protected, you know, within the apartment or the house as it is. But then you go into an outdoor environment with this thing, and you have to make sure that it is secured. Now, to the other point here, losing things, if it's a bloodstain, for instance, and it has saturated into the mattress,

there's a high possibility that you're going to be able to protect that to a great degree from wind and rain because you've got this covering on it. I'm really worried about fragile evidence, certainly like touch, which is if you think about touch DNA being the consistency of 10 times more fragile than say, for instance, talcum powder, that dainty and gracile, it can actually kind of blow away. Also to be considered are hair and fiber, which any of us know that have dogs or have maybe we're finding hair on ourselves. Anything that's fragile, it can either attach itself to us or it can be blown away.

And that would be a consideration as well. You don't want to lose anything that you may have captured up there in the scene. I hope that they had these pouches secured on those mattresses before they brought them downstairs. All of this is not as concerning to me, though, as the amount of time it's taken and then the conveyance in which they chose to do this with. And it goes more to the way the lawyers are going to look at this, and particularly the defense team, because they're going to take that videography that you and I both saw, and at trial, they'll

run that. They'll run that on the screen. And remember, they don't have to prove anything. They just have to kind of implant that doubt in their minds. You know, and anybody up in this region that's ever ridden around a pickup truck, they've been in the bed of a pickup truck, they know the wind blows. Anybody that's ever moved, period, moved. Yeah, anybody.

And driving down the interstate, you see mattresses and furniture on the side of the road. I mean, that was all I could think of, truly, well, almost all I can think of was, holy cow, I hope they have strapped those things down really well. Yeah, I do, too. And, you know, just the physical security of the items themselves, it's an odd thing, isn't it? Because, you know, most of the time when you're watching videography outside of crime scenes and you see the technicians walking out of the door, they're generally carrying bags. You know, you think about all the time, the thousands and thousands of hours of footage that we've seen, stuff that I've seen in real time being out on scenes. You think about, you know, paper bags that are sealed. You can see the evidence tape.

These things are sealed with. And, of course, there's other types of packaging that you can use. And then it kind of goes into the back of a van and it disappears, right? It just vanishes. That's not what happened with this. It comes out of the house and is then planted in the back of a pickup truck. And it gives you pause. It certainly does. And I'm just hoping that they haven't lost anything here. people have asked me how would you describe the forensics in this case the the one word that kind of sums it up for me is dense there's so much there's so much on so many levels that it's hard you know just to kind of sit here and wade through it all but there's certain things that we can consider.

And not everything's been revealed yet, Jackie. One of the things that I've learned from you is how you can prove that a certain gun caused a certain wound. How are you going to do that with a knife, especially a knife you've not found? Great question. And let's look at what we do have. What we do have is a sheath, okay, which I think is a monumental piece of evidence,

and it's going to play in court when this thing finally goes to trial. But along with that sheath, you get at least the beginnings of an identification. That is provided that the knife that was carried in that sheath is the same type of knife that would have come with the sheath, okay? Because you can't have a sheath and carry a different type of knife in it. That's certainly something that must be considered, all right? So, to begin with, what will happen is that the authorities, the investigators, will contact the company that manufactures this knife, in particular, specifically, K-Bar, right? And if I remember correctly, on the exterior of the sheath,

it is stamped with USMC. It's got the Marine Corps emblem on it, okay? And that is an identifier for that particular knife. There's probably somewhere on there a serial number. So, they'll contact the manufacturer and they'll say, hey, look, we're working this case. We need to get what are referred to as knowns or exemplars of this knife. So they'll ask for, you know, maybe two of these knives to come from the factory and they'll get the sheath and they'll get the knife itself. All right. And this is something that they're going to hang on to. Now, what they can do is that they can actually take a look at the injuries, at the injuries that these kids sustained. And the forensic pathologist will look at the knife

and come up with a conclusion as to whether or not this particular type of knife can generate this injury. Now, if you want to take it a step further, if there are any marks on any of the skeletal bodies within these remains, and I'm talking about ribs, sternum, spine, collarbone, any of these areas, there is a potential that the samples of these injured areas have been retained. This happens with great frequency at autopsy. So if there's what's referred to as an insulted piece of bone, that piece of bone would be removed from the body and it would be retained by the crime lab or by the ME.

And once you get that knife or a knife similar to that, you will ask a tool mark expert at the crime lab, maybe at the state crime lab, maybe with the FBI, to do a comparison. Give us an idea. What's your opinion here? Looking at this microscopically at this injury on the bone, can you look at this knife and say that this knife generated this injury? And they might can, you know, they'll come up with an opinion about it. You know, and a lot goes into it. You can talk about the shape of the blade along the long axis.

All of these blades are unique to the manufacturer. Those are things that they will explore. Now, we don't have the actual knife to compare at this time. Not saying it's not going to make an appearance, but in my experience with knife injuries, it's important to consider that depending upon the quality of the blade and the metal and the way it's forged is created, this type of blade might chip. Okay? It might chip. And if it chips, many times it'll chip within the body,

particularly if it's striking bony areas. You say, well, what can you do with that? Well, before an autopsy is conducted, one of the things that is done is you do what is called an AP and a lateral x-ray of the body. AP means if anybody that's listening, you've been to the doc's office and they make you stand to get a chest x-ray and they make you stand, put your shoulders to the wall. They're taking a chest x-ray. That's an AP. That's kind of an overall view from that perspective. And then they do a lateral. You know, when you're in the x-ray room, they make you turn and profile and they shoot you from that perspective. Well, they do a lateral. You know, when you're in the x-ray room, they make you turn and profile and they shoot you from that perspective. Well, that's a lateral. And so what do you do with those two x-rays? Well, you look at them before you do the autopsy and you say, okay,

anatomically, if I'm looking at this image and I see a little metal storm right here, it might be just to the right of the midline, maybe adjacent to the left upper lobe of the left lung. Then you flip it and you look at the lateral perspective and you can get an idea of depth so you're not going in blind. The key is can you find that metallic body and retrieve it? And if you can, if you can, there's an off chance that you can submit that to the Chrom Lab. And they could do a metallurgical analysis on that. In very simple terms, what that means is that that item has a specific chemical signature that is unique to that manufacturer. How that blade is forged, if it is an amalgam of various different types of metal, how are they folded in and all those sorts of things.

And that's kind of a chemical signature. Additionally, what happens with knife wounds, and again, we don't have the knife and we don't know at this point, but many times with sharp force injuries, the tip of the knife, the very point of it will actually break off and it will lodge. It will lodge in the body.

I've seen this happen any number of times. And most of the time, it goes back to the structural integrity of the knife as it applies to the quality of the manufacturer, you know, how they make these things. And secondly, the age of the blade. You know, how old is this blade? And then how much stress has the blade been put under? Well, let's think about what we're talking about here, right? We're talking about four victims, Jackie. Four.

All right? This knife, I think just from a structural standpoint, has been involved in a very intense attack. So the more and more these victims are stabbed, it would stand to reason that the structural integrity of the blade could begin to break down. People don't think about, you know, every time you use a blade, say in your kitchen, to cut something with, that blade, even though you may have just sharpened it, is not as sharp as it was before you used it. And you keep that progression up without sharpening the blade, even though you may have just sharpened it, is not as sharp as it was before you used it. And you keep that progression up without sharpening the blade, it blunts the blade. And as the blade gets blunted and you're still using the same amount of force, you put stress on those edges and it can begin to break down.

It'll chip. It'll chip. And sometimes those tips will break off. I just hope that they did full body x-rays prior to doing the autopsy. Let's see if for once I know more than you do, Joe. Not likely, but let's see. Come on now. Do you know where the name K-Bar came from? I do not. Whoop, whoop, whoop.

I do not. Okay. All right. You go ahead. Let me enjoy this moment. So, the name K-Bar came from the company that manufactured these knives was Union Cutlery. And the name K-Bar reportedly is derived from a story of a man who went toe-to-toe with a bear. His rifle didn't kill it, didn't inflict enough damage, and he went hand-to-toe with a bear. His rifle didn't kill it, didn't inflict

enough damage, and he went hand-to-hand and finished off the bear with his knife from Union Cutlery. Hence the name K.A. Barr came from kill a bear. Wow.

I had no idea. Plus, you're originally from East Tennessee, so you guys would pronounce bar like that, bear like that, right? Good country folks would have said bar. Well, that's actually kind of fascinating. I had to know, so I went and looked it up. And this is coming from, I'm getting this, from the website exquisitenives.com. Well, you know. So, I would believe that it's probably true. I do know that our Marines and our sailors and actually our Coasties have carried K-Bars for a long time.

Of course, the sailors and the Coasties have a different utility for them. They'll, you know, do work on decks and that sort of thing, cut rope and, you know, and do maintenance. Of course, Marine Corps, we know what the Marine Corps likes to use their K-bars for. And that's who it's most closely associated with, I think. One last thing that I want to get your take on is the footprint that was left outside the surviving roommate's door.

Yeah. What's that going to give us? A lot. And not many people are talking about it. I haven't really talked about it a lot, but I think that it's significant. And I'm kind of unclear based upon the affidavit because they used an agent, Amido Blue, that is... Wait, say that again?

Amido Blue. Okay. And, say that again? Amido Blue. Okay. And it is, it's used, it binds with protein, and it binds with protein in blood. And so, you'll use it to lift latent prints with, all right? Or to, let's say, not lift, let's say document latent prints. Latent prints can either be handprints, palm prints, but it can actually also be footprints. And in this case, that's how they recognize this. They were applying this agent to the floor and they came up with this analysis from the scene and they

established that this, this print, this print was not only did they say what the print was, as far as the shape, they used the term diamond. I think Jackie, they came back with a manufacturer and this And this is, it's a van. And for those that don't know. Which is a skater shoe. It is a skater shoe. For those

that are not familiar, if you're familiar with the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High, there's a famous scene where Sean Penn takes a pair of vans and he takes it and he slaps himself in the skull with it and says hey you know what that is that's my skull and if you reflect that's a pair of vans that's what those are they just kind of slip on they look like deck shoes really but they're they're used for for skating well why is it good grip on the bottom they do and but why is that significant well it's significant you know we talk a lot about d and, you know, the trace evidence.

But, you know, when you get these manufacturer connections as well, one of the questions I think that's real important, and I know that these guys are doing their due diligence in asking these questions, very simply put, did the suspect own a pair of vans? That seems very simplistic, but you've got to start somewhere, right? Well, if he owned a pair of vans, did he own this type of pair of vans where it has this particular pattern? And also, I don't know how robust this print was that they had raised, But here's a very interesting aspect. If it was significant enough, that print that was left behind, you might could tell something about the wear pattern. When I say wear pattern, I'm talking about maybe how old the shoes were. Was it kind of a faint kind of print? Was it something that looks

like it was generated from something that was worn down? Think about a pencil with an eraser. You know how the eraser on a brand new pencil will look, you know, like it'll have all the little curves on it. It'll be perfectly round on the top. Lopsided. But yeah, after you use it for a while, you wear

it down, it has a completely different appearance to it. It's the same thing. And also, another thing that you can analyze here is perhaps if this, how they step. Do they pronate? Do they supinate? You know, what do they- What does that mean? Do they heel strike?

Well, it all depends on do they flex their feet in? Do they walk kind of on the arch of their foot? Pigeon toe. Yeah. Well, yeah. Some people used to use term not need. You know, you roll your feet in and you strike on the inner portion of your foot. Or do you, say, list more to the outer edges of your foot or kind of roll your feet out when you walk? And then how are you a heel striker? are you a toe striker when you're walking or do you just

shuffle do you like plant your feet you know straight up and down almost like a piston and you know these people that do this the shoe analysis are amazing people and they don't get a lot of credit because it's a very it's a very fine science there's a bit of art involved in it too but that footprint is very significant, at least to my way of thinking. And I'd have to ask, if they raise the print with something, this agent

that binds with the proteins in blood, are we left to believe that this is a bloody shoe print? I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. This is an iHeart Podcast.