Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Kidnapped, Beaten, Injected w Fentanyl, Dumped off Bridge - Who Killed Matthew Wh

Episode Date: April 12, 2026

Matthew Whisman was always too trusting of his cousins, even when they were mean to him. On the last night of his life, Matthew Whisman was beaten senseless, forced to take a bath to wash off evidence, fed his "last supper", injected with fentanyl and dumped over a bridge. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack investigate the timeline to find out why Matthew was missing for three months before anyone reported him missing.              Transcript Highlights 00:00.09 Introduction - family 03:09.23 Matthew was very trusting 08:03.38 Text messages show Matthew helping police in shooting into a house 14:02.61 Suspects make Matthew wash himself  19:14.43 Last Supper 23:35.13 Torture/kidnap/poison homicide  28:34.17 Mom reports Matthew missing 32:52.57 Body in water for 5 months 38:24.95 ConclusionSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Body facts, but Joseph's Got More. When you're growing up and going into manhood, one of the things that, at least I found myself doing through my, I don't know, maturation process. It feels weird saying that. Connecting the word mature with me is a bit of a stretch. however, I would often ask myself, you know, just like Mr. Lobowski did, in the big

Lobosky, Sir Wood is a man. And I've thought about that. I thought about that a lot. You know, what defines you as a man? And I think a lot of us think that being a man means that you have a certain amount of masculine power, that you can wield it at will, and that you have the ability to not only build, but to destroy. But you know, for me, it has always been the level of mercy and control I can give to others

that I don't really know. Just think about that just for a second. if you have the ability to literally crush someone that has some kind of deficit when compared to yourself, the measure of the man is to show mercy, to show grace, and maybe even give them hope. Today we're going to discuss a case that might be one of the most sinister things I have come across in the news in some time. And as I always say, that's saying a lot. But today, we're there, my friends. Today I want to talk about a young man.

A young man who has probably got some mental disabilities that was at the mercy of not just one male, notice I didn't say men, but two, that chose to do one of the most horrific things that I've read about in some time to this poor defenseless kid. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is bodybacks. Brother Dave, I was sickened by this when I read it.

I used terms like plumbing the depths, you know, that we can't take the measure of. House of privity has no basement. I say those things all the time. They're wrote. People get tired of hearing it. But I'm beginning to come up or I'm beginning to fail at coming up with other descriptors here, other than right now, I think the only word that really suffices is evil at this point in time. Here is the nutshell, gang, and this is what we're going to break down for you.

Three males are charged with killing Matthew Wiseman. Now, Matthew was a man of, he's 25, 24, rather. And he did graduate from high school in 2018. Matthew Wiseman grew up to be a wonderful young man. very trusting. He trusted his cousins because they were his cousins. And even though they were mean to him, and when I say mean, I'm not just talking Joe about they played jokes on him and pranks on him. I'm talking about they were abusive towards him physically, verbally, in any other way they possibly could. These cousins, Alexander Wiseman, 18, and Jeremy Absher, 26,

their half brothers and first cousins of Matthew Wiseman, the victim. The third man is a person named Stephen Gaddis. Stephen Gaddis is 28, and he is not related to any of the other three. But Matthew Wiseman went missing in April, Joe, but was not reported missing until July. That's part of the problem right off the bat. the other part of the problem is that during that time between April and July, there were a lot of stories being told about where he was. You know, where did Matthew go?

Well, you know, he checked into the Water Street Rescue Mission in Lancaster. We're up in Pennsylvania, by the way, along the Pennsylvania, Maryland border a lot of the time, Southern Pennsylvania. Someone dropped him off at a rehab facility in Philadelphia was another one. And then there was the third one. This third rumor that was circulating around was somebody jumped him and threw him off a cliff. Now, Joe, of all of the options here for rumors, option three was the closest, believe it or not. But it wasn't just someone.

It was his two cousins and Steve and Gaddis. What they did to Matthew Wiseman is the stuff of nightmares and without reason. See, Matthew was aware of a... drive-by-house shooting that took place. He knew that Stephen Gattis did it. And police got Matthew Wiseman to work with them, you know, to tell the truth, Matthew. Now, Joe, I don't know the rules of law when it comes to this. I don't know if police can talk to somebody who is, I don't know the rules, I guess.

but Matthew Wiseman at 24 was working with police to solve this crime. You shoot into a house. You shouldn't into an occupied dwelling. You can kill somebody. It happens. Yeah, I don't think there's any legal proviso. If someone is an emancipated adult and, you know, that they've been deemed either by the state or, you know, some medical facility. that they can live independently.

And there's nothing to say that he could not have lived independently. Yeah. He, you know, look, in the public, where there's nobody out there that is perfected, you know, that you're going to come across on the street. Everybody has got some type of deficit, okay? Even the seemingly most healthy among us, all right? It all depends on to what degree they are.

Now, if the police were to take some, someone that they were they'd have to be aware of it that they could leverage because of some kind of mental incapacity I could see that there would be problems with that but no I don't think that it would it would it would diminish their ability to cooperate and provide you know provide legitimate information to them I mean we're talking about shooting day right you know they're going to try to they're going to try you know when you approach somebody on street, if you're an investigator, it's not like there's been a battery of psychological testing that's been done before you go in and say, maybe we have a conversation

with you. Right. You never know where those conversations are going to lead. Well, yeah. You know, somebody willfully gives up information, man. That's a nugget, dude. And Matthew did. And on his phone, Joe, there were text messages between Matthew.

And I'm assuming, because they didn't say who, but I'm assuming it was. the law enforcement, investigators, you know. And in these text messages, Matthew is sharing information. And it was those messages, the idea that he was going to tell the truth that led to his demise. And I really, you know, you pointed out the depth of depravity, you know, and how far we go down. You got a 24-year-old man, Matthew Wiseman, his cousins, Alexander, and at Wiseman, Jeremy Abcher and Stephen Gattis. They're all together, and they take Matthew's phone.

Stephen Gattis looks on the phone, sees text messages that Matthew is telling cops what happened, and that sets in action everything that we're going to tell you about now. It begins with Matthew Wiseman telling police the truth in text form. That's what led to. I'm sorry. So this goes back. No. This goes back all the way to, what is it, January,

24th the shooting took place in Maryland. Is that accurate? Yes. And he knew at that moment in time that these or this one individual is connected to it. So this is not something that, you know, this is something that information he had held on to for some time. Yeah. And you really wonder what's going on in the minds of individuals that, you know, is it festering in their brain the entire time? Because, you know, you've got a perpetrator that has shot, has fired a weapon that is involved.

involved in a shooting and is it festering, you know, is it festering right beneath the surface? But in it, isn't it curious how the target, you know, for this is somebody, it's not the most, it's not the strongest among us, right? Right. But it's the weakest. And they're probably seeing this young man as literally the weakest link. I really wonder how many other people were threatened along the way that may have had knowledge of this, Dave. Oh, wow.

There's no telling. Based on what we know now, there's no telling. So you've got the shooting in January 2024. You've got investigators doing their thing. And here we are. It's April. And they get, they being the two cousins and Gattis get Matthew alone, find out that he is telling police the truth. That happens the first week of April.

Okay. Now, Joe. I think one of the big questions here, Dave, is, if this poor young man is communicating on his phone and there are text messages. How does one go about compelling said young man to open his phone and display what he has been talking about in confidence to the police? This is, in fact, where the story begins to take a very, very brutal turn. You know, Dave, police investigators go to all kinds of links to take phones nowadays because they are, you know, as well stated, they're, their crime scenes that exist in our pockets. I like to refer to cell phones in that manner now because they tell everything that we're doing and they see everything, they hear everything.

And they spend a lot of time, cops spend a lot of time, you know, getting warrants and those. things to get phones open. And how many of these cases have we covered over the years? Wow. You know, relative to, you know, crime stories, you know, that you and I both appear on where we're, you know, we, you know, it's almost like a race against the clock, you know, and they want to get to this data. But in this case, Dave, it would seem that no warrant was required because we're not talking about

police that are trying to elicit information. We're talking about really nefarious people here that are trying to extract information from this poor young man, right? Oh, yeah. Matthew Wiseman, our victim, he was at the East Drun. Is it Drewmore Township? Drummore, yeah. In Pennsylvania, it's about 65 miles west of Philadelphia.

That's where his cousins have been living. They're together on the night of April 3rd. 24, about three months after the shooting into an occupied dwelling. Jeremy Absher and Stephen Gaddis get hold of Matthew's phone and they find a text message thread where Matthew Wiseman indicates he's cooperating with police that are investigating Gaddis and the shooting of a house. Now, Pam Wiseman is Matthew's mom and she pointed out that Matthew has learning disability and even though he had been beaten mercilessly by his cousins in the past, he still trusted him.

It's what my daughter Hannah calls goldfish. Just being a goldfish, meaning no matter what happens, blow it off, move on. If it's bad, just forget it and move on, that kind of thinking. And that's how Matthew went through life a lot. So on this night on April 3rd, 2024, Stephen Gaddis and the two other men who were 25 and 17 at the time, drag Matthew Wiseman into a bathroom. And Joe, they beat him senseless. And then force him to take a shower to wash away any evidence.

Have you ever heard of that? I've heard of victims being forced to take showers. Most of the time, though, it's in relation to sexual assaults. And, you know, we could get to. down this road relative to individuals that sit there in very granular detail telling the victims what areas of the body to wash, how to go about it, these sorts of things taking their time to do it.

However, in a standard beating, what are you gonna do, wash off contusions, wash off abrasions, you know, that's that's that's that serves no purpose at the end i mean i guess you could if he's bleeding profusely which now we and i got to be honest with you we will never know right you know we we just won't and we're going to tell you why in just second but the the lunacy of this unless unless there was some kind of other component involved here and i go back to my earlier statement because the only time I've ever heard about someone being forced to clean themselves at the hands of their attacker is in a sexual circumstance.

Now, this gets really dark, darker, if you can imagine, it gets, you know, that specter begins to raise its head. And I would think that that's a question investigators would ask, you know what? You know, why would you require this young man to wash himself? Yeah. Because certainly even you, speaking to a suspect, even you understand that if you have bruises beneath your skin, it's not like you've written on your skin with a ballpoint pen, dear heart. It doesn't wash off. So what's your purpose in having him wash himself? I mean, are you thinking about becoming a DNA scientist?

That's it. That's what you're doing. You're thinking contact DNA here, aren't you? Touch DNA. now they're idiots. That's what they are. And so for whatever reason, they believe that by compelling this young man to wash himself, that they're going to get rid of any kind of evidence there.

I have a lot more questions just about this little piece of it, because I got to tell you, Dave, the cases I've covered, I've never heard of this. So it implies that there. It applies that there's something, there's more depth here or there's something else that's beneath the surface, if you will. That's what I was wondering. I was hoping you had a insight different than the only thing I'm thinking. But at any rate, they did this. And we know this because of the rest of the story.

Gaddis, after he takes the bath, after he's been beaten, senseless, they then, they all three take Matthew downstairs. And they sit him at a table. And Gattis leans down and tells Matthew Wiseman, how would you feel if it's your last supper? Sitting there looking at a meal in front of him, how would you feel if it's your last supper? Matthew Wiseman knew in that moment what was going to happen

because he started to weep. And excuse me, but just so that I understand, his own blood relatives are there. Yep. His first time. They're bearing witness to this. Those that come from his own genetic pool are there. And here's one more if you like that one.

They've probably been around. this kid their entire life. Oh, yeah. Like brothers. They know, they understand his limits, if you will, intellectually. But here you go. And here they are. You know, an absence of bravery is glaring here.

I think an absence of what it means to be a true man is here. Because, you know, anybody can go back. killing those things that are defenseless, right? It really, really, you know, takes someone that has the will, the free will, to say, no, I'm not going, not only am I not going to participate, I'm not going to allow it to happen, but yet here we are. And this monster standing over this young man telling him this, and then he begins to weep, you know, and I think about that, we're taping this literally in the middle of Holy

week. And, you know, I get to thinking, it makes me think about the last supper. You know, and this kid understood, you know, what he was looking at. Let me tell you what else he understood. He understood that he knew this guy was already involved in a shooting. Right. He knows that this guy really has no boundaries. And boy, did he ever find out that this is not the only degree to which he would go. It's not just a veil thread, is it, Dave? Oh, Joe. After the last supper, Stephen Gattis loads up two syringes with fentanyl, and then the three men forced Wiseman into a vehicle. Now, Joe, they inject him. I say they, but it's really Stephen Gaddis who injects Matthew Whistman with this lethal dose of fentanyl.

He's already been beaten senseless, remember? So he's got injuries. He's beaten to a pulp. He knows what's coming. He doesn't know how. But then he is injected. They hold him down, you know, on Stephen Gaddis' command, hold him down, pull up his shirt sleeve, and jab needles into him and shoot him full of fentanyl.

And then drag his. body. They wait until he dies. He's got no pulse left. And by the way, Joe, is that when you know somebody's dead, no pulse? I mean, yeah. Yeah. It's one of the seven cardinal signs of death. We've got seven of them and that's at the top of the heap. Lack of, they're pulseless, lack of respiration. I think I can go through the rest of them. But if you don't have a pulse, you can be brought back, right? I mean, if you have to have somebody that's standing there with a crash cart to make. Not with fentanyl, right? And I think, but however, with fentanyl on board, it's a lost cause. You know, you can see the nose of the ship, proverbially dipping beneath the surface. There's, you know, check yourself here. All hope is lost at this point in time.

There's no way you could actually bring them back from the edge. And here's the thing, Dave, when, you know, when it has stated, and the police have stated this, that it was two syringes loaded up with fentanyl. That's very nonspecific, right? Yeah. We don't know what the dosage was. But as you and I know, just with fentanyl alone, and this is obviously, this has been put into some kind of liquid medium, okay? We know that relative to lethal dosages of fentanyl, if you get, you know, if you just take seven, I think it's seven grains of salt.

Is it seven or six? That represents, each one of those little grains represents in total a lethal dosage of fentanyl. That's how strong the stuff is, and this guy's got two syringes. Now, we'll never actually know the actual dosage here. But, you know, this is, I don't know, I don't know, maybe they're rationalizing it in their brain that, yeah, well, we beat him up, so we're going to put him out of his misery. Oh, and by the way, we're going to solve this problem that we have of somebody that has a direct tie to the police. but out of all things you could do, this would seem to be one of the glaring red flags

that would put the police onto you even with a heavier hand. Because now your primary, this is not like the movies, you know, where you think that, well, if we get rid of this guy

that has rolled over on us to the cops, all of our problems are going to disappear. No, you've just called down hell upon you at that point in time. Because now they're going to double their efforts because they know that this kid, that they've, whatever format this quote-unquote deal is, whatever it takes, you know, they're going to now redouble what they were doing and they're going to put the pressure. So now it's not, it's not, and it's not necessarily on the principle, this gattis character, they're going to go after the two cousins now. And that's how all these things work.

You know, we always hear, Dave, that one person can keep a secret. And that is, that is a God's honest truth, all right? You get three people in a group, your chances are almost nil that you're going to be able to keep a secret like this. And particularly when it rises to the level of now an individual is not just involved in a shooting in Maryland. Okay. Now they have involved themselves in a sure enough homicide. And brother, it's not any kind of homicide. This is a torture homicide.

This is a kidnap homicide. This is a poison homicide that involves desecration of human remains and tampering with evidence. So after they inject this kid with what we believe were two boluses of fentany. Remember, they're saying that there were two syringes here. They inject this kid with this. And, you know, he would have slipped off pretty quickly into this almost comatose state. They didn't take him out in a field and bury him. I didn't drop him on the hospital ramp.

They subjected him to nature. They went to a bridge, Dave. And this bridge goes over a creek. And this is in like far southeast Maryland and Pennsylvania and push this young man's mortal remains over the edge of the bridge, hoping, I guess, that no one would ever find him and deposited him there and then just got back in their car and drove off, man. But now, you mentioned something right before the break, Joe, and I kind of need to go back. to it because I get you with conspiracy to commit murder, aggravated assault. We've documented those. Kidnaving, obviously.

Intimidation of a witness because that's what started all of this. But did you say abuse of a corpse? Did you say something along those lines? I did. And I don't even know that those charges exist. However, in my mind as an advocate for the dead that you and I have taken this mantle on and we shall bear it for the length of the life of the show. These remains were desecrated.

They were desecrated. They were abused because they're accepted things that we do that separate us from animals, the way we treat our dead. And this ain't one of them, brother. You take this young man and you toss him over a guardrail on a bridge out in the middle of nowhere, and he's subjected.

He's got a mama back home. He's got a mama. back home that loved him and had loved him since the moment he entered this world and he had value he had value he had more value than three thugs that are just going to allow him to float his mortal remains float down this creek subjected to nature to animals to the blistering sun and have him decomposing there. It's just not the way it's done. It's not the way it's done in an acceptable society.

And I think that this really goes to the extent, for me at least, you know, death is a mirror. It's truly a mirror on our society. It shows the reflection of who we really are. And what I mean by that, the way we treat our dead, who are the least among us, okay is a reflection of

who we are as people you know they talk about that with prisoners and all that stuff but when it gets down to it and I know people will say off the cuff well the dead have no more problems no you're right I guess they don't we have a problem we have a problem

because we're incapable of honoring our dead or certain groups of us are and those individuals to me those are some of the most I don't know how to say it They are some of the most rotten to the core individuals that you can possibly ever come across because they'll go to any links just to save their own hide. And that's what this comes down to is the ultimate selfish behavior.

And that's kind of an understatement in a day. Well, they injected him with fentanyl caused his death and then throw his remains over the side of a bridge into the water. And then go on like nothing happened. You know, that's, he's, so the thing is, and Matthew Wiseman goes missing, okay, nobody knows where he is. Rumors start floating, as I mentioned earlier, that, you know, that he's been, he's at a rescue mission, he's in rehab, whatever, just things are thrown out there. But finally, his mother, she's had her, she's had her fill of excuses and stories about where her adult son is. And, you know, when you're being told by cousins and, you know, relatives where he is, you know, I think he's over here or there. You kind of believe it because you want to.

But then at a certain point, a mama knows this is not normal. Three months is too long. And she no longer listening to the stories that are being told, she goes to the police. So already he's gone three months. We know he's in the creek, but she doesn't. Police begin the investigation. And I think they're able to get a good idea of what happened early on, Joe, based on who's involved. here.

You know, who were Matthew's friends? Who were the people he hung out with? So, police break him down and they find out what happened. They find out from Stephen Yaddis. He ends up over time telling the truth. But when the body of Matthew is found, it's August 8th. he's tossed into this creek in April, April 3rd. Joe, what condition would a body be that had been injected with fentanyl having been?

And I'm curious, does a beating before you die, is that going to cause you to decompose differently than if you were not beaten to a pulp before you were? Excellent question. Yeah. The way it causes rapid development of decomposition is if there are any open wounds. Okay. That's like it's like ringing the dinner bell, if you will, at a microbial level and also at just from local fauna. And what I'm talking about is flies. Because if you have open areas, like if you, you know, and as we've talked about,

I think we did a whole segment on, we did an entire episode on blunt force trauma. If I haven't, we're going to. We did. So blunt force trauma creates laceration. So you're being beaten. That's more than likely the type of injury you're going to sustain that leads to an open wound. And if that's the case, then all the little nasties get into that open wound. The body is no longer intact, okay, externally.

And that can prompt early onset of decomposition, particularly in that. specific area where the trauma took place. Okay. Now, I don't know necessarily how far out that would extend, but it's going to increase probability. Now, you have a body that's been placed in an aquatic environment. And by the way, this body of water that he is placed into is actually called the Conow Wingo Creek.

And interestingly enough, it's not a very very... long creek and it rest entirely inside of Maryland. There's like a couple of state roads across it, but guess what it dumps into? It dumps into this Susquehanna River, which is a major waterway. Yeah. And, you know, obviously that's going to be their end game, you know, to get him into this major waterway and that they would have been, you know, fully aware of, you know, relative to, you know, having lived in that area. And of course, you know, the, the Susquehanna actually feeds in

to the Chesapeake. Right. You know, and so then you get into that area. So, you know, as crow flies, you're really not that far from Baltimore, you know, headed northbound. Wow. You know, toward where this creek is.

Maybe that was their end game. But along the way, the body, just in, let's see, we're talking April, April, May, June, July, we're talking five months down range. The body is going to be in such a state that one of the big questions would be, I think, could you still appreciate the injuries that were perpetrated against him, you know, in that house where he was beaten, remember he's made to take the shower or all that sort of stuff? Maybe I would think it all depends on how over the top they were.

were there lacerations, which comes as a result of blunt force trauma, potentially. But it's going to be very, very difficult. Now, if he sustained any kind of broken bones, like did they kick him in the ribs, punch him in the ribs, did they break his jaw, did they knock a tooth out, any of that kind of thing? Did they stomp on him anywhere? Yeah, you could still appreciate those breaks. Here's another thing, because, you know, the big, obviously he did not die as a result of the beating.

Okay, because what did they do? They said, well, after he was beaten, take shower. Yeah. Then the last. Whatever else went on, you know, adjacent to that beating. One of the things we'd look for with injections is something called NPWs. And nurses use this terminology all the time. And it's an abbreviation.

We abbreviate a lot of things in medicine. So that stands for needle, puncture, wound. Okay. So if you're jabbed with a needle, if it's fresh, we look, and particularly with drug addicts that are injecting into their arms, we look for NPWs by milking the arm. We start at the very top of by the shoulder and run our hand down very tightly down the length of the arm. And we look for little blood dots to appear. If there's a fresh NPW, you're not going to have a shot at that here. You're not.

And even where we suspect these, most of the time, we'll do it. an incision into the NBW to see how far it extends. Now, I remember Thomas Noguchi talking about, you know, using that term, the terminology to find the needle puncture wound on John Belushi. Yeah, he did. And he probably, if I remember correctly, I wonder if he did it with Marilyn Monroe as well because that was when he was young, you know. And one of the things that people have talked about, I still think she was probably killed

with suppository, but one of the things you would look for. also you can do this with the ankles too. Oh, wow. You know, just this is the same principle, you know, because people will inject in the ankles, drug abusers will, because you don't, you know, it's not like you're going to see them. If their skin popping, I guess it'd be very hard to get a vein up, you know. But anyway, I'm digressing.

It's just, that's one of the things that we look for. And all this stuff is compromised now because we're five months down range, right? And you've been subjected to summertime in an aquatic environment. and it's very, very humid. And yes, Pennsylvania and Maryland get very, very hot in summertime. Okay. So all of this is going on with the body. And the body is also bouncing off of rocks and anything else that's in the water.

So it's been, it's sustaining post-mortem trauma. And so that's one of the things that's at issue, you know, in this case. So you're heavily reliant upon eyewitness testimony. and if anyone is willing to cop to this. And Dave, I think, according to what you're saying, this individual did, in fact, roll over on this case. Thankfully, you know, it didn't, I didn't think it would happen, but it did. Investigators just did a great job.

They were able to, you know, we mentioned early on who the suspects are. Okay, the suspects were two of Matthew Wiseman's cousins. His first cousin, Alexander Wade Wiseman, 18 years old, Jeremy Wayne Absher, another cousin. at 26. Stephen Gattis not related, 28. He seems to be the ring leader. And once police,

once they found his body, police meaning, they were able to sit down and start the interview process and try, you know, building a timeline. You know, where was Matthew? They were able to determine by interviews with the suspects.

Jeremy Absher admits to certain details of what took place during questioning of to what happened to Matthew. Alexander Wiseman confirmed that there was a plan to kill Matthew. The plan included using fentanyl and body disposal. Once they got those commitments from the two first cousins, the investigators knew Gaddis was the key. They knew that without him, none of this would have happened.

And they ended up, Joe. Again, go back to April 3rd, Matthew Wiseman, given his last supper, beaten, and killed, tossed like nothing. His body is, he's reported missing in July, body found in August. In October, they finally bring charges against all three suspects with murder, kidnapping, witness intimidation, and some other crimes that go along to it. And we've just now, in the last days, gotten a guilty plea out of Stephen Gaddis. Joe, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit third degree murder, aggravated assault, kidnapping, and intimidation of a witness.

Well, I don't know. You know, in just these few minutes that we're talking about this young man's life, this is not the sum total of his life. And I'm talking about the victim. I don't care about the perpetrators. Yeah. This is not the sum total of his life. Somewhere along the way, he brought joy. Somewhere along the way, he brought happiness.

Those are two different things, by the way. Right now, I'm hoping that he is at peace as well as his mother. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Bodybacks. This is an I-Heart podcast, guaranteed human.