Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Medical Mystery or Murder - Investigating the Hartsfield Case

Episode Date: June 18, 2023

In this episode of Body Bags, hosts Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack unravel the strange circumstances surrounding the death of Joseph Hartsfield. They discuss the critical role of trust in marital relationships, the behavior of Sarah Hartsfield, Joseph's wife and her disturbing past; insulin misuse, and the disturbing possibility of a premeditated murder disguised as natural death.  Subscribe to Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan : Apple Podcasts Spotify iHeart   Time-codes:  00:00 - Introduction. 00:20 - Importance of trust in managing chronic health conditions within marriage. 01:35 - Introduction to Joseph Hartsfield's mysterious death and the connection to his diabetes. 04:00 - Deep dive into the daily management of diabetes and the role of self-advocacy. 06:30 - Examination of Sarah Hartsfield's unusual reactions following her husband's death that sparked initial suspicions. 09:40 - Review of the Hartsfield case, spotlighting Sarah's delayed response, her past, and insulin complications. 16:30 - Types and causes of diabetes, with autopsy revealing the presence of multiple insulin pens. 21:20 - Investigation into the possibility of an intentional insulin overdose leading to homicide. 24:10 - Reasons behind Hartsfield's comatose state and the complexity of his case. 26:15 - Sarah Hartsfield's background and the escalating pattern of violence in her relationships. 30:25 - Hartsfield's suspicious death and the possibility of a planned act. 31:10 - Challenges faced by law enforcement when investigating potential homicides disguised as natural deaths and 'angels of death'. 32:15 - Critical role of medical examiners in complex cases. The podcast concludes. 32:35 - Outro.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. There's a reason I think that people emphasize in any discussion that they have about marriage. They emphasize the word trust. Why is that? Some people can look at it from the perspective of being faithful to your spouse. Some people might consider, well, do I trust this individual? Do they trust me with the finances? While others perhaps have an expected level of trust when it comes to confidence, that you can rely on that person, that you can depend upon them when times

are really bad. And they do get dark. They do get dark, as many people can attest to. Trust goes even further. What about that kind of trust that you have to have when it comes to your health? When it comes to your existence? Today, we're going to have a discussion about trust, how much trust you put in a person to watch after you and consider your well-being. We're going to talk about a homicide that has alleged to have been committed by something

that seems very benign. We're going to talk about the death of Joseph Hartsfield. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Dave Mack, my friend, crime reporter with Crime Online. It's amazing to me. I've worked in medical legal death investigation for many years, and I know that most people think that the lion's share of deaths that we handle are homicides, and it's not. That's something the police do. We handle all the homicides, but we also handle everything else. And to be a really good medical legal death investigator, you have to want to understand the mechanisms of natural disease pathology. And what I mean by that is that those things that bring about death from a natural perspective

and heart disease is the first thing that comes to mind, but it's amazing nowadays how many people are diabetic. When I first saw this story, Joe, my first question was how this transpired, how long it took, what goes into the complications surrounding insulin. I mean, we know people die from diabetes. My grandfather was diabetic, and after having his leg amputated and other things, he continued to go down a path that eventually led to his death. In this case, Sarah Hartsfield and her husband, Joseph, we have insulin as being part of the death. Am I right in saying that?

Yeah, you're absolutely right. How? How can something that's supposed to be a lifesaver turn into a mechanism of death? It's almost as though when an individual is diagnosed with diabetes, they are, first off, it's not a death sentence It's something that You know Given modern medicine That people can

Can live with And can have robust lives You just got to be really careful With what you're Putting into your body Life in moderation I think It really draws people back

To being centered In their life With what they consume How much they consume. And also, how are you going to regulate it? And you know, there's a number of ways that you regulate it because the idea here is that the individual that is faced with this diagnosis is now in a position for the rest of their lives that they're going to have to monitor their blood sugar levels. And this is done in a number of ways. We've seen people that do the finger sticks.

That's been done for years and years where you get that sample of blood and it goes onto a meter. There's actually indwelling monitors that you can have that are placed in these out of view locations on the body that will send signals to either a meter that you keep on your person or maybe in your home or even on your phone. There's actually apps for this now, and it will set off an alarm if your insulin levels begin to spike or to drop down desperately. What the individuals are faced with is not just the diagnosis,

but they're faced with the fact that they're going to learn a lot about medicine. Whereas, you know, some people, you know, they know that they have a disease and they have to maintain a particular healthy lifestyle, but now you're kind of playing junior chemist. You're having to keep all of these things in balance at a molecular level. And it's a daunting task for anyone. The condition itself is so very subtle in many ways that many folks don't realize that they're about to have some kind of symptom that's going to pop up and is really going to wreak havoc in their life. So they have to be aware. They have to be sitting on go ready to interdict on their own behalf. That's what it comes down to. You have to, I hate to use the term, advocate for yourself. It's not about that. It's about, you know,

treat yourself in those moments and people go through education programs and that sort of thing to do it. So, the fact that Mr. Hartsfield was in this position, it's not something that he had just come to this point in his life. It's something that he had been having to be monitored for a number of years, probably. And he's relying on his wife to help him out. He was 46 years old, Joseph was. And you mentioned it wasn't something that just popped up one day. He actually had been living with it for a while. And Sarah was kind of brought into the fold here of managing his diabetes. When you look at this case, the death of Joseph Hartsfield in and of itself was not suspicious. It was when the police looked into his wife, how she was reacting, because her reactions weren't something they

were familiar with. And do you take into account the people closest to the victim and how they are acting, reacting to the situation that's going on? Yeah, you do. It kind of integrates itself into your interactions with the family to kind of begin to understand what are their responses to these horrible events. And look, not one size fits all with families and the way they react to death. I've mentioned before that I've seen people become almost catatonic. Literally, they've got the thousand-yard stare. They won't respond to you. They're numb on a very deep level. And other people, I've seen people shrug their

shoulders and laugh. If you can imagine that, and it does happen. Then you have people that show what psychologists and people like that will say an appropriate amount of grief. And I don't know how you really take the measure of that necessarily, but you get this feeling, I think, when you're an investigator and you begin to watch people. You have other cases that you judge these individuals based upon what have been the reactions of subjects that I have told these things to in the past. When you're discussing this with them, you kind of measure it by that benchmark, taking into account whatever the relationship is to this person? Is it something, for instance, where you have a family member that comes to a home and finds their elderly parent has passed away? What's their level of expression with that? One of the most glaring things that you hear is, I just talked to them the other day, they seemed fine. Or she had asked me to come over, but I

didn't have enough time and they're weeping over that. You get those kinds of responses. And you take all of those factors into consideration. Couple that with things like their reaction when they see the body. Maybe they're in the room with you as you're examining the body. That does happen. What were their responses immediately upon finding the individual? What were the steps that you took? Did they wait a long time? Did they respond immediately to finding the individual down? Did they call other people?

And this happens sometimes. You'll have family members that will discover their loved one's deceased, and they won't call 911. They'll actually call a sister or brother or an aunt or an uncle before they'll ever call 911. And they have to be told by one of these peripheral actors and saying, you need to get off the phone and call 911 and have them come to the scene. You don't know if that's because they were delaying, perhaps, that contact with people that could provide life-saving measures, or if this is just a normal reaction, you don't normally call 911. You call people in your immediate circle that are going to comfort you and advise you and those sorts of things.

Joseph Hartsfield died as a direct result of insulin, as complications is how it was worded, complications from an insulin issue. They started looking into it. Wait a minute. Sarah was not acting the way they thought was appropriate to the situation. And the sheriff looks into it and says, wait a minute. How many hours did you wait before you called for help with him? It's not like diabetes just showed up yesterday.

So they knew from a very early standpoint that something was not quite right. Mr. Hartsville actually had an alarm that would go off. There was an indicator that there was something wrong. And of course, the police believed that there was something sinister going on. I guess probably my favorite Indiana Jones movie is probably The Last Crusade. I love the spiritual element of it. I certainly love it when they finally make their way into the chamber and the villain drinks from the wrong chalice and the old knight is sitting there. And as the guy kind of melts away, he looks at Indiana Jones and he says he chose poorly. I think about that in the case of Mr. Hartsfield's passing. There is something that's kind of ominous about this person that

he made a choice to marry the person of Sarah Hartsfield. I'd say that he probably, Dave, he probably chose poorly. Sarah Hartsfield and Joseph Hartsfield got together about the same age. They had different backgrounds, in particular with Sarah Hartsfield. When you look at the partners up until the time that she and Joseph Hartsfield got together in February of 2022, they met online, by the way, something that in the last 20 years has become a real thing. But when you meet online, oftentimes you don't know a lot about the background of the individual. You only know what they let you in on, what they tell you about. And that's a little different than when you're dating somebody and you have know a little bit about their background. Geographically, might be from the same area.

You have some common interests and common background, and you can share a lot of these things. Well, they met online, and maybe she was able to spin a story of her background because Sarah Hartsfield had five husbands. Things started in the mid-'90s. From husband number one to husband number five and a fiancé, there seemed to be an escalation of pain inflicted on the partner. In her first marriage, there was some domestic abuse. She actually was

arrested in the first year of that marriage, her first husband, for biting. Charges were dropped later, but that's the start of her marriage career. When you go through the years of her dating and all the way to 2018, where now she's on husband number three and a half, number four and engaged to a guy, David Bragg. At the time, she was known as Sarah Donahue and she shot and killed David Bragg during an argument that got physical. She claimed self-defense. No charges were ever filed. That case has since been reopened. So we go to Sarah Hartsfield, married to Joseph Hartsfield. He dies and the police find out that he is bad shape for a number of hours. She doesn't call for help. She doesn't call 911.

She has been living with this man with diabetes for over a year, day in and day out, helping him manage his diabetes. But she allowed the man to suffer for hours before ever calling for help. And that's where the sheriff said things just didn't add up. But the sheriff said, if the hospital didn't call us, our officers didn't get involved, make good decisions, we would not be here, and potentially she could have gotten away with murder. Because it was at the very beginning beginning the hospital staff going to the deputy saying hey man there's something not right here and the deputy looking into it then they start following her

background and they see this escalation from domestic violence in her first marriage to killing a man with a gun and now you've got another dead guy, this time from insulin. So they opened the case. They started digging in. How can you tell that somebody has died from complications due to insulin? What does diabetes do to a person, and how does it lead to this type of death? Excellent question, and this is all going to be revealed at autopsy because the medical examiner in this case conducted their examination. They're seeing something that has actually occurred that could be indicative of more than meets the eye. Here's one of the problems that I have with the way this case was initially handled. For years, we've seen images of a vial of insulin. It's a separate vial. It looks like just kind of any other injectable that you

might see, say, at an emergency room or doctor's office or anywhere. And then you take what people refer to as an insulin needle. It's a very fine point because it just goes into what's referred to as sub-Q fat, which is that layer of fat that's just below the skin. And as the insulin is injected, it's kind of gradually absorbed into the system and becomes part and parcel of regulating the metabolism. Because that's one of the things that's going on. Insulin is actually a hormone. It's produced by the pancreas and these little islets. They don't function correctly for any number of reasons. You can have kind of type 1 diabetes that people come into, refer to many times as juvenile diabetes. And then you have type 2, which comes along and

it can result from any number of factors. Obesity is one of those things that comes into play. Certain people have indicated that there might be a connection with some of the foods that we ingest nowadays as opposed to in the past. Some people think that that's because our food is so highly processed now that that might be one of the issues that comes up. There are certain medications that some believe that bring about diabetes as well that we take. But at autopsy, you would draw blood and there will be tests that are done and conducted. The medical examiner saw something in there that gave them an indication that he was in a critical state as far as his diabetes. One of the things that was indicated at the scene that I really have trouble with is that, Dave, there were what are referred to as insulin pens.

For folks that have never seen one, they actually do look like pens with a cap on them. Okay. And it's got a graduated dial on it that tells you the number of units that you're going to inject into that sub-Q fatty area, generally around the stomach. You can dial up the amount of insulin you're going to take in. Dave, there were eight of these on his nightstand, and they weren't collected at that time. Well, we'd want to expect a fine. Well, for one, you have to keep insulin refrigerated, man. And that's, I mean, it's stable up to a point.

Now, I guess if you were living in a house, you'd get the temperature at 62 degrees perhaps. Even then, you don't want to run the risk. I've gone out to many scenes over the course of my career, and you know what the most common location is you'll find insulin stored in? In a refrigerator? Take a wild guess. Butter. Yeah, you're absolutely right. You nailed it.

You nailed it. Yeah, actually in the butter container. And the reason is, is that many times it's at eye level, depending upon obviously the configuration of the refrigerator, but it's right there. Diabetics, they'll keep their butter and their insulin side by side. But what you do is that you can visualize it and you can see it at eye level with the old vials you can see how much insulin you have remaining okay it's a fragile medication and something that you and so i couldn't really understand why it was there would he stockpile them after they were being used perhaps you know

just to keep kind of understand the pacing at which he was using it you know when do i need to reorder submit the request for a refill at this point in time? If a cop shows up at a scene, say it's a young uniformed officer, which, by the way, you're not going to call the medical examiner necessarily immediately as soon as you find somebody deceased, particularly if they've got a longstanding medical history. I've taken any number of calls over the phone from family members that awake in the morning, they find their loved one deceased, and a young police officer will be dispatched as a result of 9-11 being called. And they'll be at the scene and they'll say, well, yeah, Investigator Morgan, I see this medication out here. The wife is telling me, got a long history

of diabetes or heart disease, or he's being treated for all these other things. If the medical examiner is working another case, they might say, well, we're going to have the funeral home bring the body by the ME's office before the funeral home for preparation. We'll draw talks on them, do an external exam, and then release them from the medical examiner's office. And in some cases, they'll release the body directly from the scene. Generally, that requires a visit by the ME investigator or the coroner to come out and take a look. So, I found that quite fascinating in this case. She's also got an alarm on her phone, Dave, that went off. Here's the thing about it. If you're connected electronically to a sensor that is giving you readings on the person that essentially have agreed to take care of

through this marriage contract, and you're not taking care of them, that's suspicious in and of itself. When they begin to kind of dig into her behaviors, how long it took her to call 9-11, you have this kind of active and passive events that happen many times with alleged homicides. If we think about kind of in an active phase, that's an individual that picks up an instrument and can bludgeon somebody to death or shoot them, or as this accused, Ms. Hartsville, had done years before with this other individual she was involved with, and she shot him. That's an active event, okay? Then you have these more passive things, because you can kind of, if you're questioning these types of people, you can kind of look at them and go, well, the alarm goes off all the time, which he actually stated.

It goes off all the time, and I really wasn't paying real close attention to this. And yeah, I've gotten up and given him some juice. I try to offer him some jam, these sorts of things. So, now you're thinking from an investigative standpoint, does this marry up with what would be considered their norm? Yeah, the alarm goes off all the time. I've gotten nowhere. I ignore it. Or is it something that is darker where you're purposing to weaponize insulin or the use of insulin? I'm really stuck on the eight pins on the nightstand. And we've got

the hospital calling, in this particular case with Joseph Hartsfield, the hospital calls the sheriff's department and says, hey, we've got a suspicious illness. Joseph Hartsfield had not died yet. The hospital called and said, we have a suspicious illness. And because his insulin levels were extremely high, what would happen with somebody who is insulin dependent diabetic if they were given too much insulin over a period of time the individual's going down a very dark path and i i literally mean that you can wind up in a coma as a result of it where where everything kind of shuts down. And

when you've got somebody that has, they go into hypoglycemia. That means their sugar is dropping precipitously. You'll see them where they'll get irritable. They can get double vision many times. They're sweating profusely. They're kind of disoriented to time and space. They're dizzy. A little bit of confusion. And they get the shakes too pretty bad. But when you get up into that upper range, and sometimes that can be moderated just by, I don't know if you've ever heard, there are diabetics who will carry like a pack of mints perhaps in their pocket. And if they feel their blood sugar is beginning to drop, they'll pop a mint in their pocket and if they feel their their blood sugar is beginning to to drop you know they'll pop a mint in their mouth and it'll give them just enough

sugar to kind of readjust some people use things like raisins for instance if they don't want to use some kind of highly refined sugar but when you start to get off into this severe level of hypoglycemia they get into a state which is referred to as insulin shock. It's very dangerous because it can lead to, you can have seizures. They certainly can't focus on anything. You'll have like slurred speech. They have their uneven gait. It's hard for them to actually ambulate, to walk, that sort of thing. And then finally, they'll go into an unconscious state. And then that, again, goes into this area of being comatose. And that's essentially what had happened with Mr. Hartsfield at this point in time. He kind of was in this vegetative state in the hospital. And at that point, you begin to try to understand why suddenly is this fellow who's obviously been dealing with diabetes

for a protracted period of time, why is it that suddenly he kind of falls off the cliff? There's been no prior indication that his medication needed to be adjusted or anything like this. So why now? And when you begin to dig into this as a medical investigator, you begin to see that there are some other that you don't really know if they're homicides. And how do we define a homicide? We always have to return back to that. And I will, on my podcast, I will always

remind you of that. And that is, if we're talking about a homicide, that is the death of an individual at the hand of another. And that's very simple. It's a very simple way of understanding this. And you're not sitting in judgment as a court of law would, you're merely stating a fact that there is at least an indication that this individual may have died at the hand of another. But in a case like Mr. Hartsfield's death, this is something that's going to require a bit more rigor. It's going to require a bit more digging into as opposed to something that might be more trauma-related like a gunshot wound or a knifing. This alleged murder, and again, alleged because she has not been convicted and she says she's not guilty. My bad decision was picking bad husbands.

That's what she actually has said, paraphrasing. But when I was looking back at this, she was in the army. And so it's her first husband. Well, his best friend also in the army was Sarah Hartsfield's second husband. Okay. So the first two marriages of her life were military. Well, I wondered about when people in the military have an affair, aren't there issues they deal with with the Army that goes beyond just regular, we're getting a divorce because he or she cheated? Yeah, they do. And I think a lot of it comes down to whether or not JAG, who's the judge advocate general, is actually going to charge somebody. Because did you know, Dave, you can actually be charged with adultery as an offense in the military. And there's a lot of reasons why it is. It falls under what's called

Article 134. If you engage in adulterous behavior while you're in the military under Uniform Code of Military Justice, you can be charged. And there's apparently in her history, there's multiple episodes of this. You're held to this kind of higher standard. And there's a lot of jokes that are made, faithfulness and being in the military and choices that people make, particularly when they're young. But this is a harsh, cold reality that I don't think many people are aware of. It's not like being in a civilian world. It's a completely different justice system. And there's evidence that she, they, Ms. Hartsfield, as she's known now, was never interdicted for this behavior, perhaps, in the military. I really wonder if that may have played a role because she wound up, according to reports, retiring from the military.

That means that she made it through to the end where she received what's referred to as a DD-214, which means that you have served, you've served honorably, and you're there, therefore, honorably discharged from the military. She was an enlisted person. That begs the question, and also these domestic violence issues that have arisen. And this has been a problem in the military, you know, over the years. You have people that don't get along well. They wind up fighting. There might be children involved.

And the military looks at this, or has in the past looked at it as kind of a cohesion issue. If an individual winds up committing adultery or winds up involved in domestic abuse, that disrupts the form and function of the military, you know, how it's going to operate. Because if you've got spouses that are engaged in adulterous behavior, particularly if it's between two individuals that are currently serving, that creates a problem with unit cohesion, problems with people getting along, being able to serve alongside one another, particularly if you're called to go fight. It's a very dangerous set of circumstances.

And it seems as though that Ms. Hartsfield, she lived kind of on the edge throughout her life. In this particular case where you've got a suspicious illness and later deemed a suspicious death, do you, as a forensic individual, as you look into the case right in front of you, you're looking at a person who was in a really bad way physically for a number of hours before the person who has sworn to love, honor, and cherish calls for help. Do you not peel back that onion and start going, okay, husband number one, husband number two, three, four. Oh, wait a minute. We've got a fiance in here who's also dead. There's like an escalation of starting down here where you have a fight in the second marriage that leads to somebody spending the night in jail to a fiance being shot in what is at first determined to be self-defense, but later it's like, well, maybe not. And now we actually have somebody who has gone from suspicious illness to suspicious death. That wasn't just pulling out a gun and shooting and saying it was self-defense.

That had to have been planned. Yeah, allegedly it would have had to have been planned. Yeah, allegedly, it would have had to have been planned. And it's certainly something that there's been evidence of other people that have done this over the years that have used this methodology to bring about the death of an individual that is in their charge, if you will. And so, yeah, it's easy to, I think that it's very easy to kind of utilize that as a tool of death, if you will. And it's very passive, isn't it? It's very kind of camouflaged.

This individual that has this disease is at the mercy of individuals that they're trusting, right? And so, in law enforcement investigations, you don't necessarily go out looking for this type of modality when it comes to a cause of death. Obviously, the fallback position for everybody, and I'm guilty of it too, you think about this huge level of violence, right? How many violent cases have we covered on body bags? Certainly more than anything that's, let's say, where a medical condition could be utilized as a weapon. There are a number of cases that are out there where people are, particularly in the medical field, where people refer to, and I know you've heard this over the course of your career,

I know you've heard this term angels of death, where individuals are in clinical settings where they take people's lives by using medication to facilitate this, or even worse, where they fail to render aid. And you'll see that happen as well. And it's a very, you know, you talk about peeling the onion, and it's very difficult to conduct an investigation when you don't necessarily have this level of sophistication when it comes to medical conditions and understanding disease pathology. And that's why it's so very important that the medical examiner get involved in these cases and the coroner's office get involved in these cases. Because a case like this, Dave, is going to require a deep dive that not many are equipped to deal with.

I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. This is an iHeart Podcast.