Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: In the Cage - the Chilling Fate of Cassidy Rainwater

Episode Date: July 16, 2023

In this episode of Body Bags, hosts Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack unravel the harrowing and complex case of Cassidy Rainwater. They discuss the crime scene, the intense investigation involving local law enforcement and the FBI, the critical role of digital forensics in modern investigations, and how vital evidence found on a suspect's phone leads them to a chilling exploration of the dark web. Subscribe to Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan : Apple Podcasts Spotify iHeart Time-codes:  00:00 - Introduction. 01:15 - Cassidy Rainwater. 03:10 - Dave Mack gives us some background and an overview of the case. 05:50 - The crime scene's location in a rural and isolated area in southwest Missouri. 07:00 - The importance of digital forensics in modern investigations, particularly with photographic evidence. 10:15 - Disturbing photos found on the suspects phone. 13:00 - Disturbing content circulation in the dark web and its potential connection to the case. 16:25 - A small-town sheriff's investigator being contacted by federal agents. 19:35 - Cassidy Rainwater was found in an image suspended from a gantry crane and eviscerated. 22:45 - What could have been the possible motive for the careful labeling and preservation of Cassidy's remains? 24:30 - The process of identifying butchering marks on bones and what these marks can tell us about the tools used. 27:40 - Why were the remains preserved with a date? 29:45 - The tools and techniques one might use to dismember a body. 31:15 - What are "deer coolers"? 33:20 - A current update on the case. 33:45 - Outro.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan I coined a phrase a few years ago when I was appearing with Nancy Grace on her shows, and I've used it constantly since then. I'll state it right now just so that everyone knows, and it's a bit melodramatic, but sometimes you just can't form the words, and so you just go back and you have to use this, that the house of depravity has no basement. And what I mean by that, you see things that so shock your conscience. You hear about them, you read about them.

And when you begin to think about what cases you want to discuss. Sometimes you retract from it, but you sally forth and you do what you do. And it's that way with certainly with my career. There were certain things I didn't want to bear witness to that I didn't want to see, but I had them. And today on Body Bags, we're going to talk about the death, the homicide, the brutal homicide of a young lady named Cassidy Rainwater. And not just her death, but what we believe she endured leading up to the moment in time when people finally, investigators finally verified that they had her mortal remains, or at least all that remained of her. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. I gotta apologize to you.

I apologize for dragging you down this road, But I felt as though that we needed to chat about this case. With me is Dave Mack. He's a senior crime reporter with Crime Online. We cover a lot of things, man. This case, though, it's a bit difficult to take in. Would you agree with that? The home of depravity has no basement. Is that what you said?

The house of depravity has no basement. Is that what you said? The house of depravity has no basement. The house. This is the story that defines that. I had to look up terms used in the reporting of this to know exactly what they were talking about because these are things associated with wild animals that one might hunt, not human beings that we're supposed to care and love for.

And the story of Cassidy Rainwater, it's beyond the pale. It really is one of these stories, Joe, that you keep thinking, this has got to be made up for some kind of slasher movie. But no, it actually did happen. A 33-year-old woman needed a little bit of help. Going through all the ups and downs of life, we come through them, and she thought she had found a friend, and that friend offered her a place to stay until she could get her feet back under. He gave Cassidy Rainwater a place to stay in a loft inside his house. She was reported missing by a friend who hadn't seen her in a while. And the only person that she knew to talk to was a person she thought his name was James Phelps.

The story that James told her friend, Cora Terry, didn't add up. Cora Terry picked up the phone and made a missing persons call. My friend is missing. I don't know where she is. That's the official start of the last chapter of Cassidy Rainwater's life. Four weeks later, a picture shows up at the FBI field office, but the FBI has a tip line. In this particular case, the tip line helped bring about the case. Yeah, you're right.

And just so folks have kind of a geographic orientation to this, this case comes out of southwest Missouri. And so whoever called us in, and I'm fascinated because this is an anonymous tip, Dave. This is not like, hey, I'm so-and-so, and I'm giving you this information. It is an anonymous tip, and that's the way it's being framed. Who would have had knowledge about this? Who would have known about this? Who would have had that picture? And that's a much more, when we talk about the pictures in just a moment, that's a more ominous thing when you think about who's distributing this kind of image so that it's being consumed by someone out there.

They have it in their possession. But the field office that this was called into was the Kansas City field office, which you would probably expect would cover this region of the country. It's down near Springfield, Missouri, and it's in an isolated area to a great degree. It's very rural, a lot of farming that goes on down in that area, and certainly a lot of hunting, lots and lots of hunting. It's renowned for taking big deer, whitetail down in that area. So folks that occupy that space are going to know more of a farm-like setting or more of a rural type of world that they're going to be exposed to. And the actual setting of what turned out to be the crime scene is a place of isolation. It's wooded, thickly wooded, where if you didn't know that it was there,

you might pass by it and not have an awareness that it's there. The photographs were just a start. When we learn about what went on at that location, you can understand why a perpetrator in right now when it comes to photography and forensics, there is a specific thing that we look for in photographs. It's not like back in the days of analog photography. You would essentially take it somewhere and have images develop. My wife likes to joke. She was in college, Dave. You might remember this my wife was actually a photo mate which meant she worked

in one of those little booths that people would drive up to and drop off their film they'd have to take it and they'd take it and send it off to a lab a truck would come by pick it up and they'd process the film and those days are way behind us now at this point in time with forensics now and you talk about digital photography, particularly if you're imaging things on a phone, forensically, there's a lot of value with that phone. And things are date and time stamped relative to that. And so that's very important. And I think that that actually plays a role in certainly the case of Cassidy Rainwater.

This story of Cassidy Rainwater is every parent's nightmare. I have daughters. We have tried to warn them their whole life that there are people in this world you cannot trust. It doesn't mean we don't tell our boys that. It's just with girls. I have girls in this age group here, and I think about my precious Haley and my precious Hannah at the hands of evil that befell this woman, Cassidy Rainwater. I mentioned that it was a family friend, relative, hadn't seen Cassidy in a month. And when she tried to find out where she was, she couldn't find out. Wasn't a lot of help. And that's why she picked up the phone and called the sheriff's office.

Today, I can't find my friend. Well, they started looking. The sheriff's did. Well, we got to look for she's 33 years old. 33 year old women don't just disappear. And so as they started looking, they knew they had one contact where this friend slash relative said that she was with this guy named Phelps. When they talked to James Phelps, he said that Cassidy left for Colorado around July 25th.

He actually volunteered that date. When investigators start an investigation and they have a person that might have information about, they start making notes. And they write down everything like date and time. July 25th, about what time? And the reason is they come back later on ask that same person same question and see if they and they say was it you said it was july 23rd at 9 a.m that she took off for colorado and the suspect says yeah that's it well they know he's lying because the first he said july 25th at 12 o'clock and that's what they did with phelps they tripped him up and knew right

away they had a big case. They didn't know how big until the FBI calls in the middle of September. When they talked to Phelps, looked at his phone, what did they see? They saw pictures of Cassidy Rainwater, partially clothed in a cage, partially nude body inside a cage. The anonymous tip with photos that went into the Kansas City Bureau, the FBI, we mentioned this earlier. Where did they come from? Who sent those? Had to be somebody close to it, right? But that's what gave them, we're looking at an anonymous tip picture of the girl we're looking for in a cage, partially nude. And that's why they were like, we've got to see if these photos began on Phelps' phone.

You try to validate what they call the provenance of the photographs. Try to validate it. Not simply date and time stamp on it, but also points of origin. Is it legitimate? Is it a real photograph? Because I got to tell you, Dave, if I see a photo which these people have seen, these investigators, I got to ask myself this question, just that human part of me. Am I actually seeing something real? Or is this something from a movie set?

Because how in the world do you look at this and think, and keep in mind, those of us that are in investigations and in forensics, we're very jaded. Okay, we're very jaded and we always say nothing surprises us. However, in a case like this, if this crosses your desk as an investigator and you look at it, this is going to have you take a step back. This is kind of like a moment in time that the investigator will remember. It's so striking when you have an image of fellow human being inside of a cage that's obviously being held captive. Is she being held captive at that moment in time? Is she doing this of her own free will? You'd have to ask that question because, let's face it, you've got people that engage in all kinds of behaviors. And is this something she's doing because she's chosen to? She's engaging in it.

She's partially nude. It's very provocative. Or is she being deprived of her freedom? Is she being tortured? Anybody ever took an intro sociology class? They talk about Maslow's hierarchy. You know, those basic things that we need, clothing and shelter and food and all that. Well, just demonstrated right here,

you've got somebody that's partially clothed. Has she had clothing taken away from her? And what's the purpose of her clothing being taken away from her? Why is she being held in a cage? Why are you photographing it to begin with? Why are you actually photographing this? Well, why do we photograph things? Well, to document that. We document that thing that we're doing or that we're engaged in. Well, are you doing this in order to review it for your own pleasure or are you doing this to share it with others? And my friend, there are huge networks of people that are out there in the dark web area that feast off of this sort of thing, this kind of depravity that they will share images like this. And as an investigator, you begin to think, well, is this what happened? Did somebody, this anonymous person, maybe they had this image shared with them and suddenly they grew a conscience all of a sudden?

Even in my construct of normal, this is not normal. You know, what am I viewing here? This is something that's critical that I need to get to somebody that can do something about it. So when the investigators begin to dig into this, they know that they have Phelps there. They know that he's somebody that they need to chat with at minimum. They know that he probably has a phone and they know that they need to execute a warrant. You know, the thing about predators like this is that when they document things, and let's just say they're doing it for their own pleasure, it's not, they've gone to a lot of effort to go through all of the steps.

First off, to deprive somebody of their freedom through kidnapping, then holding them and imprisoning them, and then essentially torturing them. And all along the way, they're documenting every step. From an investigative standpoint, that's something that we can look at forensically and begin to put together a timeline. You'd mentioned earlier, her friend noticed that she was missing. Okay, from where was she missing? And when was

she last seen alive? What has happened in the meantime? This guy claims that she was staying there with him until she got back on her feet. It's interesting when police actually went to his home to conduct an initial interview, he had said that she was staying in this kind of lofted area that he had in his house. And when they observed that area, there were no belongings of hers there. You're talking about somebody that was trying to get back on her feet. Wouldn't you think that she would have some element of clothing or some type of personal item that was up there? There was nothing. Matter of fact, the police actually used the word stripped. Even if she packed up to leave.

Even if. There would still be signs she had been there. There would have to be something. It's actually the lack of evidence in this case that becomes evidence. Yeah, it does. And we've talked about that before on Body Bags. That negative findings are just as positive as or just as good rather as positive findings in an investigation because it leads you down a different road investigatively you're not

judging the road you're going down you're just saying it's a different road it's pushing you in a different direction as the investigation takes you so an absence of demonstrative evidence that somebody had existed in this location, there is a stark absence of it. And so, you're saying to us that you gave her a space in which to get back on her feet. Why is there no evidence here that she had indwelled the structure with you? What did you do with these items? All the while, the investigators, you know, formulating these questions in their mind. And then can you imagine being a sheriff's investigator in some small rural area in isolation like this, and you're looking into this case, you're trying to put it all together, and then all of a sudden, you're contacted by the feds that say, listen, we've got something for you here.

We've got something that might be connected to your jurisdiction and a lady that's currently missing. I think you're going to want to take a look. I can't even begin to imagine what those sheriff's office investigators thought when they saw these images. When I was thinking about what cases to discuss on body bags, I never thought the words cage and gantry crane were going to be part of the discussion. But my gosh, they certainly are in this case. I had never heard that term gantry crane used while dealing with human beings in a case. I had to look up what it was. Tell everybody what it is. Gantry crane, they've been around for a while, and you can actually make these things at home if you wish. As a matter of fact, there's an image that floats around out there from back in the 50s from a case involving a fellow that many

of our listeners will have heard of, and that's Ed Gein from Plainfield, Wisconsin, the original Leatherface, I think. And he was a necrophile who had also killed a woman in addition to disinterring bodies and this sort of thing and doing horrible things with bodies. But there's an image, a crime scene image, that was taken at his rural farm where he had fashioned a type of gantry crane in order to literally field dress one of his victims. And it's one of those types of images that you never forget when you see it. Because particularly those of you that are not familiar with the dressing or field dressing of a deer, the deer, when you place them on a crane like this

and you can winch it up, you can attach a winch to it, and it can either be hand-cranked or it can be electric. You winch the remains of the deer, and it's inverted because you want the blood to flow out and the body of the animal is eviscerated. That means the organs are removed. We've talked about that, I think, in my autopsy episode of body bags because evisceration is the term that we use when we remove the organs and the blood is drained at that point in time. In this particular case, apparently, what law enforcement is stating is that they actually have an image. I'll let this sink in

just for a second. They actually have an image of this poor woman, Cassidy Rainwater, we'll say her name again, Cassidy Rainwater, as she has been winched up onto a gantry crane and eviscerated. Her organs have been removed. Now, we don't know specifically what cause of death is in this particular case. But what we do know is that she was imaged inside of a cage. So we know that she was held against her will. And then there's documentation that she is deceased by virtue of the fact that they've identified the image that they have. They suspect that it is her remains. This goes to things like an abuse of a

corpse. And one more chilling thing about this is that there were her remains that were actually found labeled, according to the police, inside of a freezer, Dave. Inside of a freezer. It's the way you would mark hamburger meat if you were freezing it and you wrote on the outside, July 25th, so you'd know what day you put it in there. That's how these were labeled in that freezer. Yeah, and because of the blood evidence that they were able to find relative to this, they were able to get a specific scientific ID on Cassidy. I would imagine that this was matched through DNA. You could certainly do it at a rudimentary level with blood typing, determining if you know what her blood type is, but you're going to extend it further than that. Let me ask you a question because when you get to this point where you're talking about if this goes to trial, you can prove that these body parts or what is left is Cassidy

Rainwater. You can prove that with DNA. But as a juror, don't I need to know what happened? Don't I need to know? Just seeing a picture that could be photoshopped is one thing. Seeing the victim here, nude, partially nude inside a cage. As a juror, I've got to know how did it get from there to a body part in a freezer? So as the forensic guy, can you tell me that? Can you fill in the blanks based on just having the body parts and what you can assume or presume happened? It's very difficult because you don't know what status that those remains pass through after death or even in those moments leading up to death. Because if a body has been now, keep in mind, they've already validated this by saying that there is an image of her having been eviscerated

and she's tied to a gantry crane, her remains. Following that, after the evisceration has taken place, what happened to her organs? Okay. And we have to ask that question. What happened to her organs? And then were her remains butchered? Well, if they were butchered, which if we follow this line of logic where they're treating her remains as if you would an animal carcass, what was the purpose of the butchering? Well, if you're retaining butchered remains, it would stand to reason you want to preserve them.

You're labeling them. It's not too far down the road, I think, intellectually at least, to begin to think about is this a case of cannibalism. And I'm sure that that's been entertained by the investigators. And there has been a dive that they've gone into because they did find skeletal remains at the scene, which they have positively identified as Cassidy's remains. So, what do we look for relative to that bit of information? Well, you can't necessarily say that she was shot. You can't say that she was stabbed. You certainly can't say that she was suffocated in some way with any definition unless you actually have, they photographed a lot of things here. What if they find more photographs which demonstrate her death being brought about,

where they're actually videotaping or imaging all of these steps? Because all we know right now, we have her in a cage that was documented, and then we have these eviscerated remains. So what about the in-between, those moments leading up to her death? Is there any evidence that some method was utilized to bring about her death that we no longer have evidence of? Because when you talk about butchering of remains, one of the things that we look for, and understand this, when you work at a medical examiner's office, and this is something that people are probably not even aware of, did you

know, Dave, that we will randomly have citizens that will come off of the street and they'll have a bone in their hand? And they'll say, first off, we found this large bone on our property and we want to know what is it? What they're asking is, is this a human remain that I found on my property. Well, you begin to kind of examine the remain. And most of the time when people show up with some type of skeletal remain, and particularly if it's large, you can say, well, this is some type of hog or it's bovine, it's a beef bone. And we'll look for what are referred to as butchering marks on the bone. And you can see where a sharp force has been used in order to render the remains down to a manageable size. If you're talking about like, particularly when it comes to pigs, for instance, and they're butchered, you look for spiral markings on the ends of the

bones where they've been cut through and you get that, the spiral saw that they use to cut it down, you'll see these kind of elliptical marks on the end of the bones so we begin to look for those kinds of evidences well if you've got perpetrators that might have a history of butchering animals what type of skill set do they have what level of skill do they have do they have things like a bandsaw that they have access to is there evidence at the scene that if they do have instruments like this, do you have DNA other than an animal? You have perhaps human DNA found on the same tools that they would butcher a deer with or maybe a hog.

And that's going to be important. And that's why everything at a scene like this has to be collected and examined very, very thoroughly. And then the skeletal remains that you have left behind, if you believe that this is a case of that perhaps cannibalism was involved, you're going to look for a couple of things. First off, though they are human remains, were they butchered in a manner in which they were processed for consumption, the way that you would prepare roast, for instance, if you're a local butcher. Also on bone, one of the things that we look for are animal activity. And you can find teeth marks on bone. And you find this often with discarded animal remains where you can actually see these kind of strided marks that are left behind by teeth. I don't know if you know this, but humans leave those marks as well. If they have bone and they have chewed on it, for instance, you'll see those kinds of marks that can be, at least in a

very broad sense, identified. These might be consistent with the scraping of human teeth on a bone. So, those are all the things that have to be taken into consideration with this. And the reason we're thinking about this is for what other reason would you be preserving a human remain, particularly in the manner in which you would preserve an animal remain that you were going to be setting aside for consumption, unless perhaps you're thinking of some way to dispose of the human remains so as not to draw attention to yourself, parceling out the remains and you're going to distribute them in various locations. Well, if that's the case, why were there remains

found at the same property that were not retained, that were, as far as we know right now, skeletal remains that have been tied back to this young lady. So I think that there's very big questions that are going to be asked, certainly in court, when this case, if it does, it finally does go to trial. There's the one part about what you just said, kind of, it perks my ears a little bit here, buddy. You said preparing to get rid of these somehow, yet we know they found something in the freezer labeled July 25th, which based on what we know, that's probably the day or real close to the day in which Cassidy Rainwater was murdered and or cut up. Forensically speaking, can you determine if this was a first-time effort by the individual or if

this is something that had been done before. And the reason I ask that is we know we have two men, James Phillips and Timothy Norton. James Phillips, who Cassidy was staying with in his rented house, he called Timothy Norton and said, come here, I need you to help me hold this person in place, restrain her. And Norton restrained her for a long period of time for Phelps to do whatever it is he's going to do. And I can say that because Phelps has taken an Alford plea in this case. This doesn't sound like the first time these two have done this. What I can speak to, I think in a case of dismemberment like this, one of the things we look for is the level of skill. All right. There are several things that you look for.

First off, at the scene, do you have tools at the scene that would easily facilitate the dismemberment of animal remains or human remains? Okay. That's the first thing you're going to check off. Then, and this is important too, and I think folks might not think about this. If you have, let's say that they have been butchering deer or maybe they've got hogs that they butcher. Do you have evidence of that at the scene? And what was the level of skill that was applied during that practice?

And by extension, the remains that you recovered that turn out to be human remains, what level of skill is involved? How do we measure that? Or are you going to a joint, which would be more easily facilitated in order to kind of break down the body into base elements where you're removing parts like this? Somebody that has no level of skill, first off, they think that they're going to be able to take a saw and just saw through soft tissue. The saw is not used until the very end. You have to get through the soft tissue. What do you use to do that? Well, you have to use a sharp instrument, and I don't mean saw teeth. You would use, classically, a butcher's knife, as a matter of fact, or a fillet knife. You look to the level of skill of the person that is wielding these instruments. Is there evidence in their past that they, you know, have done this sort of thing? If you're an investigator and

you're going to go talk to some of the principals involved in the case or some of the peripherals, rather, that know these individuals, one of the first questions you would ask is, are these guys deer hunters? Do they raise hogs or cattle? Have you ever known them to butcher their own food? Do you know if they ever worked, for instance, at a slaughterhouse? Which, obviously, that would give them access to tools. It would give them access to the knowledge that's required because it's like working on an assembly line. For those of you that have never been to a slaughter required because it's like working on an assembly line. For those of you that have never been to a slaughterhouse, it's that way. You're processing a lot of animals

over that period of time. And we have places out here in the rural South we call deer coolers, and the signs pop up every year during deer season. And deer coolers are actually, it's a term that's used for individuals that have businesses set up that if you go out and you kill a deer, you don't butcher it yourself. You take it to the deer cooler and the person there will actually process the animal for you. And they'll make it out any way you want it made out. They'll cut it into steaks. They'll cut it into roast. They'll grind it up to make ground meat for you. They have very specific abilities in order to do all this. So, you're looking at the level of skill. And this goes, again, more broadly to, or more specifically to the area in which this is done. Is there a set-aside area? How long

had this individual possessed this gantry crane? Is it something that they recently bought? Or is it something that, you know, they've had for a couple of years and it's in the same spot? Because if you're using a gantry crane and you, quote-unquote, bleed an animal, well, when you open the animal up, it's going to be a huge dump of tissue, specifically blood. And then on top of the blood, when you eviscerate an animal, as you begin to dissect out the inside of the animal, those organs actually fall to the ground. Well, that's kind of this contact trace element that comes into play with the soil or the underlying surface beneath the gantry crane.

So you'll have multiple DNA from multiple animals if you're using this gantry crane to butcher animals in this location. That makes it all the more difficult if you introduce human DNA into this environment. It's a whale of an undertaking here from an investigative standpoint because how do you kind of suss out the animal DNA if it's, say, for instance, a deer that has been butchered here from human DNA? And that's something that investigators have to look at very carefully. James Phelps, who was charged with first-degree murder in the death of Cassidy

Rainwater, has entered an Alford plea in the case. We mentioned this earlier. An Alford plea does not admit guilt, but it acknowledges that prosecutors have enough evidence to convict if the case had gone to trial. Meanwhile, Timothy Norton has pled not guilty, has not taken an Alford plea, and he'll be going to trial later. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags.