Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Loved to Death -The Murder of James Nalborczyk

Episode Date: August 18, 2024

The family of James Nalborczyk reports him missing on December 21, telling police the last time they saw or talked to James was on December 7. Police investigate and visit Nalborczyk's girlfriend, Michelina Goodwin who quickly tells them she and James broke up and he left driving a company truck to a job in  West Virginia. On this episode of Body Bags, Joseph Scott Morgan will explain how Michelina Goodwin's claim that she accidentally shot her boyfriend in the back does not match the evidence. If it was an accident, why did Michelina and a friend, chop up James into little pieces, put his body parts in bags, and hide the bags in very rural areas of two counties.          Transcript Highlights 00:07.55 Introduction: Becoming a "Proctor"05:00.24 Talk about Murder of Ingrid Lyne09:47.51 Discussion of killers keeping body nearby14:23.46 Discussion of family thinks James is missing, he is dead19:20.00 Discussion of forensic evidence of weapon firing24:28.57 Talk about "drop test" on a gun29:29.26 Discussion of "accidental shooting"34:27.65 Discussion of body being wrapped in paper38:46.85 Talk about privacy law44:18.04 Discussion of two perpetrators who roll over on each other46:14.07 Conclusion - no way to make blood disappearSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Facts with Joseph Scott Moore. Years ago, I was on a task force that set up the national standards for medical legal death investigations. And it was a real honor to be a part of that task force. But as part of this, we had to become proctors. And not only did we develop the curriculum, but back then you had to have proctor or test sites where you would go and learn how to administer the test.

And this was all funded by the feds. During that period of time, I had the privilege of going to the state medical examiner's office in Maryland. And there, I got to see the inner workings of an office that has been in existence for many, many years that has quite the storied history. As a matter of fact, it was probably one of the first medical examiner, true medical examiner systems in the nation. But they've seen a thing or two over the years. But I got to tell you, working at the medical examiner, particularly in a place as busy as Maryland is, you never know what's going to roll through the door, even if that body comes in, in multiple pieces? I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Packs. Hey, Dave, this case that has been in the news this past week, it hadn't even really entered onto my radar.

And I was kind of shocked by it because it's so over the top relative to the forensic evidence and relative. Well, let's just start at the beginning. Starting from the top. Here it is. Micheline Goodwin and James Naborchik are boyfriend and girlfriend they're in a relationship and they're living together a friend named larry murphy is at their house when michelina and james get into a fight an argument in an upstairs bedroom larry murphy tries to intercede they said get out of here go downstairs leave us alone the argument continues

and then while he's downstairs larry murphy hears ashot. What happens next is why we're talking about this story. Micheline Goodwin comes down the stairs. I just shot James. Now, Larry Murphy, you've really got three choices. One, pick up the phone and call 911. Get help now. Two, call 911, tell the police this woman just killed her boyfriend. That's two.

And number three, let me grab my car keys just killed her boyfriend. That's two. And number three, let me grab my car keys, load him, and let's go. We're taking him to the hospital. We'll deal with the consequences later. None of those choices seem good to Michalina Goodwin. Here's what she wants Larry Murphy to do. I need you, Larry, to help me cut up his body, put it in bags, and let's go and get rid of it in a couple of different counties in Maryland. Rural areas that nobody will ever find his body, put it in bags and let's go and get rid of it in a couple of different counties in Maryland, rural areas that nobody will ever find his body. And that's what they do.

They don't call for help. Nothing. They do. It boggles my mind. And then the family of James Novortchik, it's coming up on Christmas is December 21st. And the family realizes nobody has spoken to or seen James in a while. And they're comparing notes and realize, hey, last time we talked to him was December 7th.

Nobody knows where he is. And it's December 21st, so let's go to the police. We haven't seen him in two weeks. We don't know where he is. Help us find James Dvorak. And that's where the missing persons case begins. Now, where do you think police are going to go first? Yeah, right back to Michalina Goodwin's house, because that's where James was living with her. Now, Joe, I don't know what's in the water. I don't know why we've had so many

stories about people getting dismembered, but it seems like a thing now. You know, maybe it's just our perception. But this idea of scattering the remains, it actually reminds me of a case. I think it was from back in 2016. And there was actually a young mother who was divorced. If I'm not mistaken, she was a nurse, and she had met a guy online. And while they were – she was going out with a date with this guy, and he was like a homeless guy. I remember. Her name was Ingrid Lynn. I don't know if you remember that case. We covered

it extensively. I was on with Nancy and then back in the HLN days and all that. But that individual actually took her out on a date and believe it or not, I know you're a big baseball person, took her to a Mariners game. That was their first day. Oh, wow. Actually, Kim and I, our first date was a Braves game. You're thinking, wow, okay, you're going to take her out to a ball game.

Then he takes her back to her home and kills her in her home and then uses a a a limb saw. I remember this. To dismember her in her bathtub. That's what I remembered. And what it has in common with this is that he he deposited her remains in various locations around the city. I'll never forget the guy that found, he went to pull his recycling bin now back from the street, back to his house, and it felt heavy. And he looked down in it and there was a bag and there was a human foot sticking up out of it. And this is in Seattle.

They really care about their ecology. You know, they make sure. And he's thinking, hey, who put real trash in here? These are recyclables. And so he's moving this thing around, and there it is. But, you know, you think about this case. They didn't just deposit her remains in Charles County. They actually went into – did I say she?

Yeah, you did. But it's okay. Look, in the game we play, Joe, anymore you might even insult somebody that's a guy that you say, you know, we can't say he or she. We're going to have to come up with they and them and stuff like that to cover these. Well, I know this.

They deposited Jimmy's remains in not just in Charles County, but also St. Mary's County. Are these far away? You know a lot about that area. No, no, no. They literally bump up against one another. And where does Baltimore sit?

Is Baltimore in one of those counties? Yeah. It's like primarily, I think, in Charles County. Okay. But, you know, like so many of these metroplex areas like this, it expands out so far. You think about Atlanta. You think about D.C. and Baltimore. It used to be where there was like this it expands out so far you think about atlanta you think about dc and baltimore it's really it used to be where there was like this dividing line and even even to and i'll probably

get called out on this but even up to like philly right it's almost like you you you kind of bounce from one to the other and you you never really know where you are yeah you know other than you cross state lines and whatnot because it's just this continuous flow. But if you're familiar with the area and you think about, well, okay, I'm not just going to sit here and deposit remains in one location. I think that what we ought to do is make an initial deposition of remains, and then we're going to migrate over to an adjacent county and deposit more there. I don't know, Dave. Let's try to get inside the skin of somebody that's doing this.

What do you think, as the layperson here, what do you think is the rationale for wanting to do that? that you know i thought about this joe that you would want to get you and the deceased parts oh as far away as you can right you want them to be hidden because you're going to so many of these times when we cover cases people admit what they've done as soon as they get caught they talk to the cops and within a matter of minutes they're you know here's the truth here's what really happened i'm why'd you bother doing it then if you're going to give up the truth so fast why did you bother doing this you took the person's life really can't you anyway that's what i'm guessing this is this is a lot of work too it is that's very morbid but this is a lot of work and i think you're right on the money here why Why, you know, why, why, why would you give up the information?

So fast. If you've done it. When you spread them everywhere, again, spread across two counties and actually two different States are involved here. You're dealing with Maryland and Virginia, I think. Yeah.

Well, yeah. And it's spread out over this huge area. Here's a, here's another thing too, for every, and I've always been fascinated by this, the idea, and you'd mentioned it just a second ago, and you've kind of got an upside and a downside here.

I found that with killers many times, they keep remains near them in some instances. And I think the reason they keep remains near them, it's a control issue. They want to know that the body is where I put it. I have, you know, that's why I think some people bury bodies in yards, in their backyard, you know, because it seems counterintuitive, right? I'm going to kill somebody, but yet I'm going to hang on to the remains. I'm going to bury them in the backyard. I had a case in South Louisiana that I

consulted on at one point in time, and a guy had killed his wife and had buried her in the backyard and had gone to Walmart and bought, I think, like 15 rose bushes. and the neighbor said later on yeah one one night we heard him working in the backyard we got up the next morning and looked over the fence and there's a rose garden where one had not been I mean the roses were not blooming wow but you know the roses were not blooming. Wow. But, you know, the roses were there. And it took them years, years to decide. Well, first off, he had the house. They couldn't get a search warrant for it. And when the new people moved in that he had sold it, I guess he thought that people had forgotten about it. They go out there and they dig up the rose garden.

Sure enough, there she is. And they went in and luminol. One of my best friends did the luminol. Oh, wow. In the basement of this place. And there was blood everywhere. He had painted, recarpeted, all this sort of stuff down there. And he couldn't.

It really does show up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so they were able to determine. They couldn't type it or anything. But they knew something horrible had happened. But in that case, okay, where I always thought they keep the body the body closer the body parts because that way they know if anybody finds anything they'll be for like in atlanta where we're dealing with christopher wolfenberger you've got him murdering allegedly murdering his wife in 1999 and cutting her all up and her skull shows up on this in an industrial

park area well if you actually think and then her other body parts show up a couple of days later. Yeah, and that's only arms and legs. We still don't know what happened to her torso. And by the way, I got to say this right now. Tip of the cap. Tip of the cap to my good friend, Cheryl McCollum. Oh, my gosh. She spent a lot of time on this case.

She sure did. And I recommend to anybody at this point in time, if you get a chance, you need to go listen to Zone 7. It was absolutely amazing. Great work on Cheryl's part. Well, you know, that Wolfenberger case, Joe, he actually, Christopher Wolfenberger, the husband of Melissa, that was a road that he drove every day to work. He worked right there. So you've got him basically putting her body in an area that he knows. Right. And that's one of the things that's interested me about that case in particular is that he worked at a glass shop. Well, what do they use at glass shops?

People don't think about this. They actually use cutting tools, and they're very fine cutting tools. And so you think about our case today with Jimmy, and you think about this idea, who had access to tools, who had the knowledge in order to actually take him apart, and where could you do it sequestered like this? But back to the idea of the deposition of remains, Dave. They did the opposite of what we were talking about. Well, I think percentage-wise, percentage-wise, okay, if you're thinking – because the only thing I could think of is that if you're going out to deposit human remains, dismembered human remains, by the way, in various locations like this, you're now upping the probability that you're going to get caught because you have these things dispersed. And so if some citizen just comes walking by, you might find one here, you might find one there.

And I think, well, maybe the rationale was, well, if we put him out all over the place, if we put him out all over the place, perhaps they'll think that these things are not related in some way. And what they don't count on and what many don't count on is that in the end, science always tells the truth. Here's the weird thing, Dave. And going back to this kind of point of order you brought up a few moments ago. If you go to all the trouble to, first off, kill someone, and then go to a lot of trouble to dismember them, why are you going to roll over on it? And from what you're telling me,

that's essentially what this woman did. Am I correct? I'm so amazed at, again, the effort, the effort it takes to do everything that Michalina Goodwin did, along with help from Larry Murphy, apparently, that they did to James Naborchik. A gun accidentally fires and kills the man and he's missing. Those are two separate things. One, we know he's dead. Two, we know he's missing. So you got two groups of people. The people who did the killing, well, the person who did the killing, she knows he's dead and the guy that helped her, he knows he's dead. But you know what? Everybody else. James is missing. His family thinks he's missed. Where did he go?

Now, first thing police do, they pull backgrounds on everybody. They know if you're not just law stuff, not just booking in jail and things. They know they talk to friends. They talk to things. They know, they talk to friends, they talk to relatives. They know if you have a drug problem, they know if you have a gambling problem, they know who you are. The people that are closest to this case, they know what they're dealing with. And they use this information because they don't believe what they're being told. Grown people don't just go missing and drop off the face of the earth for no reason. It's if it's out of character. There are some people who do leave.

There are some people who do not maintain regular contact with their family and their family doesn't report them missing. There have been a few times in my life when I have felt about this. It felt like disappearing, but I've not chosen to do that. Got to get away. Got to get away. But in this case, the family does have contact with James Naborchik on a fairly regular basis. So when they realize they haven't talked to him in several days, they've tried to find out. So they go to his girlfriend, Michalina. Where is he? Don't know. Haven't seen him. Have

you reported him missing? Have you tried to find him? Nah, we were arguing. He split up. We were breaking up any number of things. Okay. We were breaking up. Oh, wait a minute. I remember he took his work truck. See, I told him I was going to break up with him. So he took his work truck and he drove off to West Virginia singing a John Denver song. That's he's over there somewhere working. Look for the work truck. You know, that was the story. We had an argument. We broke up. He took his work truck and left the state. So that's what the investigators are left with. They have Michalina Goodwin and Larry Murphy who were there. And then they have the missing man, James Dvorak. The story they're told is he is not believable in reality because you'd be able to find him.

If that was the case, he would be talking to family. If that was the case, you guys broke up and he left. The family would know they talked to him. So he ain be talking to family. If that was the case, you guys broke up and he left, the family would know they talked to him. So he ain't talking to anybody. So the police are going to look at it a little bit closer. So they start leaning on him. Now we're talking about last time he's seen December 7th, reported missing December 21st, right before Christmas. That's a special time for every family in one way or another. And they don't know where he is. So here we are. By the time police have had their fill of following the false leads and they sit down with Micheline Goodwin,

they're going to hit her hard. They're going to really lean because they're not believing her story, Joe. Can they go into the house and find out if a gun's been fired? Can they go into a house and find out if a gun has been fired? I think that you would have to be adjacent. Let me put it to you this way. Let's say, for instance, and here's a good example. If you were standing adjacent to, let's say, a set of curtains, for instance, and you had an idea that maybe the weapon was discharged there, maybe some circumstantial evidence came up, maybe some kind of spontaneous comment came up.

Maybe. If it's discharged there and it has gotten into the fabric of the curtain or maybe adjacent to a bed where there's a comforter and you knew where to look, maybe you could find some remnant. But if a weapon is just merely fired, it would be really hard to say, yeah, well, a weapon has recently been fired here. I'm just trying to think of what they would be saying to her because a lot of us know of dna we know that this science of the forensic sciences have gotten to the point where you feel like if you were in an elevator and somebody you know somebody disturbed the ambience you know you would be able to figure out who did it by the odor i mean you would think these anymore that's what i kind of believe when I watch television and movies. It's like they can figure everything out.

They know I was there. Yeah, there are there are certain limitations scientifically, you know, but over a period of time, you know, and when I say period of time, I'm talking about in pretty short order. If you're just simply talking about a weapon being discharged, it would be very difficult to go back and say, yes, a weapon has been discharged in this room. You have to have some kind of soot or, well, powder deposition on the person, on clothing, that sort of thing to go back and say that, yes, a weapon was fired. Now, what weapon was it? And that's key because even you can say that, I don't know, you can say I work in a munitions factory or something, and you're still going to get some kind of residue on you, perhaps. And so it's all relative to the circumstances in that immediate moment.

But I could have sworn that at some point in time, this person actually stated that there was an accidental discharge of the weapon. It took them to January 18th. They leaned on her. That's what I was saying. I was thinking of the things police could tell her. You know, Michalina, you know, we have ways of finding out a gun was fired here. You know, we know all this. They knew they had a really good idea, but they didn't have any proof. They didn't have a body. They didn't have any evidence. They didn't have anything, Joe. So they bring her in, they sweater and Michalina Goodwin on on january 18th 2023 admits here's what happened we were having

an argument larry tried to involve himself we told him to go back downstairs get away and so he knows nothing to tell you and i was threatened so i grabbed a gun i wasn't going to shoot him or anything i was just doing it to protect myself. And I accidentally, the gun went off. I mean, it was just such an accident, Joe. I didn't mean to do it. I'm really sorry. Really?

Well, where did you shoot him? Did you hit him in the face? Did you wing him? Did you, you know? Oh, I shot him in the back. Okay. You accidentally shot him in the back and he died? Did you call 911? If it was an accident, did you pick up the phone and ask for help? Did you take him in the back and he died? Did you call 911?

If it was an accident, did you pick up the phone and ask for help? Did you take him to the hospital? It was an accident. If it was an accident, what did you do? Why do you take measures to try to save? Because that goes to what they call gross indifference or whatever it is. Oh, yeah. That callous indifference.

I'm sorry. To life. Where you just, you don't care. You're just going to let them, you know, suffer, you know, lying there. But I love it when people say things like, yeah, the weapon went off by accident. I love that. I never pulled the trigger. No. And listen, there are, we're talking about forensics relative to this.

You know, there are a couple of kind of tests that we in the lab, not me, but my colleagues that work in firearms examination, otherwise known as ballistics, in those sections of crime labs, they will actually do tests on weapons to determine the plausibility of any particular weapon accidentally discharging. And do you mind if I break these down for you? Because I'll tell you, I think people will be kind of interested in it. And it's kind of wild stuff. Because we hear these stories all the time. And most of the time you hear them associated with suicides, because as I've mentioned on many occasions, the suicides outpace homicides. You know, so you're going to get more self-inflicted gunshot wounds than you will gunshot wounds inflicted by another.

And people will try and families many times say, well, he accidentally shot himself. Right. Okay. Well, how does that happen? Well, there's a couple of different tests that are done. First off, there is a drop test that's actually done. So if you have a weapon where it is charged, and charging a weapon can be, say, for instance, if you think about a handgun that has,

it's a semi-automatic with a slide on it, okay? So you see it on television where people rack the slide back, and it's cocked, and it's off safety. So it's red is dead. Remember? So if the safety is red, it means dead. So what they will do is they will take the question weapon and they will drop it from a height if the weapon is charged. Okay.

And they will see if merely by dropping that weapon, if the firing pin releases and engages. Okay. And they'll do that in various heights. The recent Alec Baldwin testing, when he said the gun just fired, he didn't touch the trigger, they dropped that gun. Yeah. Yeah. They did a drop test on it. And so the chances of that happening, they're outliers.

It just doesn't happen. Now, listen, every weapon, you can have a production line of weapons, okay? Let's just say ABC Gun Corporation makes a particular type of handgun platform, and they do a run of, say, 200 weapons at one time. You can have one in there that might have a faulty trigger mechanism. You might can find it. Okay. But nine times out of 10, this is just not going to happen. So with that said, the other thing that we think about traditionally also is trigger pull.

So if everybody will think about your, if you're left or right-handed, use your index finger to place it on, you put your finger pad, the end of your index finger, your finger pad on the trigger itself. And how many times do you watch movies and whatnot, particularly people in military,

they'll talk about your handling the weapon unsafely if you have your finger inside the trigger housing. People that know how to handle weapons keep their finger outside the trigger housing, all right, until you're ready to shoot. And so what we do there is actually a weight test. This is pretty fascinating. You take the weapon and you charge it, okay? Then you hang the weapon, all right? And you place weight on that weapon. And have you ever heard the term certain amounts of pounds of pressure

that it takes to engage that trigger? Well, you add weight and that gives you the number of pounds, okay? I wonder where that came from. Yeah, that it takes to engage the trigger. And so you've heard the term, say, for instance, a hair trigger. Well, hair trigger is not – I think people say that about individuals who will say they're going to fire a weapon and maybe they fired weapons and they'll say the person has a hair trigger. It's not the person that has a hair trigger.

In the literal sense, it is the weapon. So does it have a light touch? And weapons can be actually adjusted to that. You can adjust weapons so that it takes less pounds of pull in order to initiate that firing sequence. So the lighter the touch, the lighter the touch, the fewer pounds it takes to initiate that firing sequence. So they run through all of these tests.

So in this particular case, if you have an individual who states, well, yeah, the weapon accidentally discharged, you've got three choices here. Okay. We can say she dropped the weapon and the weapon accidentally discharged. Okay. Did that happen? Not that weapon accidentally discharged. Okay. Did that happen? Not that we know of. Okay.

Does the weapon have a hair trigger? Well, we would go back and we would test the number of pounds of pressure it would take being applied to the trigger to get that sequence going. Or did she accidentally put her finger inside the trigger guard, okay, after the weapon is charged and then happen to pull the trigger, initiate the firing sequence, oh, and by the way, score a lethal shot in his back. And that's dynamically, that's what they're looking at

and kind of that's what they have to understand and see if that actually works. But as we know, in most cases like this, a case of a weapon accidentally discharging is a red herring at best. all right dave got a proposition for you all right i'm game be very careful before you make that statement particularly in regards to what i'm about to say what would it i'll say okay let me bear the burden here okay i'm the perpetrator all right your old buddy joe scott i'm i'm the perpetrator if i'm the perpetrator and you're aware that i have just quote unquote accidentally shot somebody first off two-part question here might be a two-part with multiple subsections hang on you know me i'm rather verbose so okay

so let's say i accidentally shoot somebody, all right? First off, if you're in the same structure with me, and you hear the report of a firearm going off, and you rush upstairs, it's not just me. It's you, and we've got a person on the floor either dead or dying. Why aren't you saying we got to call an ambulance and get somebody over here? Secondly, you've bought into the idea that maybe he's dead. I don't know. Can't confirm it. Or maybe just maybe it's an accident. We got to call the cops. He's dead. I don't know. Can't confirm it. Or maybe, just maybe, it's an accident.

We got to call the cops. He's dead. We can prove this. Or, hey, Dave, will you go out to the shed and grab the axe, the hatchet, maybe a saw if I need one, and help me take apart this person's body. Oh, and by the by, help me deposit it over a two-county area. Are you game? I think that's the question. What happens here?

My response is, okay, Joee it's an accident let's just call the police and get them over here and let them deal with the poor old james here because you know james is dead he's i'm gonna say he's your boyfriend but anyway the bottom line here is that you got a dead guy on the floor you were the two people in room, and I was downstairs because you wouldn't let me help in the argument. And now you want me to go and chop up the body with you. Okay, sure. No problem. This is the thing I've got to ask in regards to Michelina Goodwin.

Michelina Goodwin, yeah. And then Larry Murphy. Right. How committed of a friendship do you have to be in? Just go with me here. How committed of a friendship do you have to be in here to say, yeah, man, I'm all on board for this task. I will sit here and I will undertake this gruesome duty with you

to make sure what, you you know what kind of reward are you offering this man that he is literally going to run the risk of spending the rest of his life in prison um i mean what do you what do you have over his head? And also, are you impaired in some manner? Are you mentally impaired? Are you maybe drug addled in some way? I don't know. I'm curious about that. We find all this out by going back a minute when we were talking about

Micheline Goodwin sits down with the police. They've got no information, really, because there's only two people that know where James. Narbichek is Narbichek. They're only two people, and that is Michelina Goodwin and Larry Murphy. There's only two people know all the police know is the guy's missing. That's and he's an adult. The Michelina said he grabbed the company truck and went out of state. We were breaking up. So based on that limited information that the police have, they

really only can go after these two individuals and they break Michelina first. And that's how they find out. It's not like the police were investigating and knew that his body was somewhere other than the house. Police didn't know that. They just knew they couldn't find him anywhere. And so it's Michalina Goodwin who actually then tells police, okay, we cut him up. Wait a minute. We?

You and Mr. Murphy, you chopped him up. Where's his body? And so she takes them to the body parts and that's where we know they're strewn in remote areas of two different counties which leads you to believe they chopped them up and stopped small enough bags like doggy bags i'm guessing i'm not thinking that they they didn't roll them up in a piece of carpet and you know do those but they put them in bags, I guess, Joe. Yeah, generally what will happen is that they will be placed into individual bags like this or wrapped in some type of assorted paper.

And on an aside here, I got to tell you this. Many people might not be aware of this. Did you know that years ago, back in the morgue uh we didn't use body backs um in many cases i know the first morgue i ever worked in we actually used butcher paper you remember butcher paper it's brown and it was on a huge roll and we would wrap bodies in it and it it's made in such a manner i'm not a paper expert but it's made in such a manner. I'm not a paper expert, but it's seen them as a result of cases that I was assisting in an autopsy in where they're brought, you know, they're brought in one of my colleagues work case as the investigator. And so you, you think about this and how does that conversation go in

the vehicle as well? You know, so you're, you're writing about all through the countryside, a place that you're familiar with. Remember, you're not going – they're not driving down to the shore, you know, in Maryland, where, you know, in an environment, say, if you go to a watery environment and up there, what are they really known for in, in, in, in Maryland? A lot of wetlands. Grotesque here, but you've got a lot of wetlands,

but you've also got blue crabs. We have them in South Louisiana. Guess what they love? They're scavengers. And so you're going to deposit body parts all about the place like this. And you're riding around trying to make this decision well gee that that looks like a good spot let's drive on a little further that looks like a good spot and how long would this take how long would it take because you know this victim

is not a small man he's not a small man. And so once you get past, and I go back to this case involving Melissa Waffenberger, they still don't have her torso. The torso is the most difficult element of the body to get rid of. And particularly if you're trying to dissect it out. I don't know if folks know this. Did you know that your body, particularly torso, is broken down into quadrants? So, when you have quadrants that are generally on the front of your

body, and if you take an anatomy class, you look look at say the top left quadrant top right quadrant bottom right quadrant bottom left quadrant and you can also break that down abdominally so you have to factor that in to the equation as well as how are you going to essentially parse the body up and it becomes a genuine undertaking where they did this would have been super saturated with blood okay let me stop you there because that's what i had to ask joe we have this we have the police with no information until they sit down with mission lena goodwin and she admits to what they've done. They were not, you know, the police are not allowed to just come in your house on a fishing expedition. No, they're not.

And there's a real good reason for that. Okay. But in this case, they could not come up with a good reason to get a search warrant to go into that house because they obviously would have been able to find blood based on where she said he was shot. Yeah. And hopefully Nancy doesn't get mad at me about this. And, you know, she calls me up saying, Joe Scott, Joe Scott.

But, you know, constitutionally, the Supreme Court has ruled there is no exception. There is no exception to your rights to privacy, even when it comes to homicide investigation. The only time, okay, this is how this would work. I'm glad you brought this up. So the only time that, say for instance, you can't go searching in what are referred to as hidden places. You have to have a specific search warrant.

So if a police officer walks into a house to ascertain the safety, almost like a welfare check, like you're walking into a house, if they see blood, say, seeping out from beneath the bottom of a closet, they can open that door for the purposes of seeing if anyone is in there and they need help. And if they find a dead body, they still cannot begin to work the scene. They have to back out of the house after it's secured and made safe and make sure no one else is in harm's way, secure a search warrant warrant and then go back in and process the scene. Because if they start searching right then. It's all thrown out. Yeah.

You have to have a good. And there's multiple court cases that go to this point. And I could rattle them off. I actually teach them at the police academy every year about this particular. There's really no exceptions. Whenever I get into an argument with somebody about this particular there's just no exceptions whenever i get into an argument with somebody about this i'm always like look the reason the law is there what if there's a police officer that doesn't like dave mack yeah and he just decides i don't like what he says on the show i am and he comes into my house finding a reason

to arrest me they can't do that that's why it's not a reasonable thing you have to go before a judge you have to write down probable cause what do you think you're going to find where do you think you're going to find it where are you going to look the judge reads all that and based on the evidence that's where they say okay go ahead officer go in there and get what you got to get. But in this case, that's why I'm saying they didn't have it. They could not until Michalina Goodwin sat down with police, Joe, they couldn't go in there apparently because they didn't know they had assumptions. That was about all they had for a month. What's fascinating about this case, Dave, is that

does that rule apply to the body parts? Where she is taking you out to a location, and let's just say they threw one of the elements of the body into the ditch, okay? Immediately adjacent, it's in a public

area, it's in plain view, which is there's actually a plain view doctrine. They're not going into someone's house. You've got an alleged perpetrator who's confessing to this. I said, yeah, that's the foot right there. That's the hand right there. That's the head right there. Do they need a warrant to collect that? Probably not. They're going to process it. And just to be safe, they might get a warrant at that point in time. But if you're talking like a physical structure where the dismemberment actually took place, then that's a completely different kettle of fish because you have an expectation of privacy within your own home. So if they're developing this information and her confession would be enough to develop a warrant off of, and they could go back and process the scene, they're going to be looking for remnants of blood,

maybe impact areas that keep using the term, which is horrible, chopping. Chopping. I've never seen that before, Joe. Yeah, I know. And it's stated over and over that if you're facilitating chopping up a body, per se, are there going to be underlying strike marks? Say if you're doing it on a floor, whether it's a wooden floor, stone floor, vinyl floor, whatever, is there associated blood evidence that's left behind with this as well? And that's certainly something to consider in this particular case. You know, we had the case out in California of the agent's son, you know, the super powerful agent guy whose son is accused of killing his wife and dumping her torso in the trash dumpster.

And that, you know, he had some, he had hired some workers to take these bags away and they were like, they opened it up and like there's body parts and he goes it up, and they're like, there's body parts. And he goes, oh, it's a mannequin. It's Halloween. In this case, the police get the information from Micheline Goodwin. She tells them we took care of this. Now, they go to these different areas and get the bags.

She leads them to these remote areas. Yes. Because when we look at a map and you see a line here's uh x y here's here's charles county here's mabel county they mean something because they're different jurisdictions for police oftentimes do you have to like go out there and you know bring out the compass and you know a road crew to determine is this in the right, this county or not.

I mean, if it crosses over into a different county, I got a bag, I got a foot over here and I've got an arm over here in a different county. Do I have to call the police in all these different areas? Well, it's advisable and sheriffs were out there. However, do you know who actually processed the scene? The Maryland State Police. Okay. They have statewide jurisdiction.

But to your point, and I think this is kind of fascinating. the Maryland State Police. Okay. So, they have statewide jurisdiction. Okay. But to your point, and I think this is kind of fascinating, what they would do in a case like this is that they're going to put markers down with every bit of evidence, particularly in the deposition areas, and they're going to geographically map this area. And it's, you know, it's quite striking. You know, I think any of us can identify with this. If you're, just say you're looking, I don't know, I hate to reduce it down to this, but say you're trying to buy a new home and you go to one of these things like Zillow or one of these things,

and you're looking, well, what area of this particular geographic location are most houses selling in? And you look for that concentrated area. Take that and apply it to deposition of body parts. Or if you're looking at serial killer, which this has been done for a long time, you look at where bodies have been deposited all over the place. And people try to find these patterns and things. Right. And sometimes they marry up with common thoroughfares that a suspect might take to go do things. Say, if you're going grocery shopping or if the person is dealing drugs, for instance, areas that you would might have some kind of peripheral knowledge of. Wow. But you know, Dave, this case is certainly different in the fact that you've got two perpetrators in this case, and they essentially both roll over. What exactly was Larry Murphy, his part to this, did he wind up being charged?

He was charged, Joe. He was charged with first-degree murder, second-degree murder, burial or disposal of a body in an unauthorized place, and accessory after-the-fact murder. And one thing that came out of all of this, and I'm still a little stunned, the mess that they had it left behind i know they tried to clean it up to cover their tracks but joe it had to just have been horrible is there any way to get yes it clean after that you can't you can't get rid of it in totality you can't make it disappear, no matter how much scrubbing you do, no matter how much raking of dirt, no matter how much painting you do, perhaps, or laying down of carpet.

But I do know this. I do know this. I do know this. Both Goodwin and Murphy have at least, for the time being, disappeared from freedom. They're now incarcerated. Michalina Goodwin was actually charged and convicted and is now currently serving 61 years in the maryland state penitentiary

i'm joseph scott morgan and this is body bags this is an iheart podcast