Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Murder or Misfortune - The Deaths of Stephen & Carol Baxter

Episode Date: September 10, 2023

Stephen and Carol Baxter are discovered deceased, peacefully positioned side by side in their recliners in their seaside home on Easter morning. With the cold winds of Great Britain and the serenity of their repose, carbon monoxide poisoning is the initial suspicion. As the layers of this puzzle unfurl, new clues emerge. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack dive into the mysterious deaths of a married couple, taking listeners on a journey through the complexities of crime scene investigations, the tragic dangers of carbon monoxide, and the lethal grasp of synthetic opioids. When the toxicology report unveils the presence of fentanyl in the couple's system, the case takes a darker turn.  Subscribe to Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan : Apple Podcasts Spotify iHeart Time-codes: [00:20] - Joe Scott Morgan sets the scene, discussing the unique coldness of being near the sea during cooler months. He then introduces the story of a married couple found dead in their home, initially suspected of carbon monoxide poisoning. [01:35] - Joe Scott discusses his love for Great Britain and how its unique environment affects the inhabitants, specifically referencing the couple in question, Stephen Baxter and his wife, Carol. [02:32] - Dave Mack describes the heartbreaking scene when the Baxter’s daughter, Ellie, finds her parents dead in their recliners. He discusses her immediate assumption of carbon monoxide poisoning and her actions to protect herself and her child. [04:50] - Joe Scott Morgan returns to the scene, providing a more precise location of the couple's home and the characteristics of the area. He talks about the first responders' initial investigation, noting the lack of signs of forced entry or struggle, and the importance of considering all possibilities in an investigation. [07:44] - The pivotal role of the initial reporter in a crime scene is highlighted. Joe stresses how their early observations can greatly influence the subsequent trajectory of the investigation, and shares a poignant moment when the daughter discovered her parents on Easter Sunday.  [10:00] - Morgan shares his harrowing personal experience with carbon monoxide, illuminating the silent dangers investigators face. This anecdote also serves as a potent reminder of the gas's deadly potential. [12:20] Mack questions how investigators transition from a peaceful scene to a full-blown investigation. Joseph Scott Morgan offers invaluable knowledge on the visual indicators of carbon monoxide poisoning, the process of checking for carbon monoxide in the house, and the role of the fire service. [15:00] - Morgan talks about the challenge investigators face when there are no signs of forced entry, external trauma, or carbon monoxide poisoning, raising the possibility of double suicide. He explains what investigators would look for at the scene, breaking down the evidential requirements that would substantiate such a claim. [17:40] - The lethal potential of carbon monoxide is revisited, focusing on its aftermath. Morgan and Mack discuss its deadly embrace and how it can deceive even the most seasoned investigators. [00:20:20] - The narrative zooms out, shedding light on the affluent life led by the Baxters. Their status and lifestyle add a new dimension, prompting questions of motive and involvement. [23:16] - Morgan explains the couple's health conditions and provides a crash course on the indicators of heroin usage at a crime scene. He reveals that the toxicology report for Mr. and Mrs. Baxter showed that they had fentanyl in their systems, a potent drug that has caused many deaths. [25:41] - The conversation expands to the societal implications of fentanyl misuse. By tracing its origins from medical utility to illicit usage, listeners are offered a broader context of the drug's devastating impact. [26:44] - Joe Scott Morgan reveals that three people have been charged in the Baxter's deaths.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. There's nothing, I don't think, colder than being near the sea during the cooler months of the year. The reason I say that is that it's different than being kind of inland, where many times you feel like that you can put on just enough clothing to make you feel more comfortable. But there's something about being near the sea when it's cold out or cool. It's what they refer to as that kind of bone-chilling cold. If you live near the sea in the cooler months, you run your heat. And you try to make your environment as comfortable as you possibly can. But the thing about being cool by the sea is that it permeates everything. It comes up through the floorboards of the house.

It comes through the walls, I think. And in our case that we're going to discuss, we've got two people that were found in peaceful repose, as they say. A married couple that seemingly died side by side. And what they thought initially was a carbon monoxide poisoning. But as it turned out, it's something far more sinister than a heater gone bad. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. I'm an Anglophile, I'll admit it. I love going to Great Britain.

I love exploring there. My family has roots all over the British Isles, as many of us do. And it just, it has a different feel than anywhere else I've really ever been. And you get that sense environmentally, Dave, when you're there. Many times during the year, even in the summertime, particularly in the evenings, you have to put on a sweatshirt perhaps just to remain comfortable. It's got that feeling in the air, that coolness. I think that it's because it is an island country. You're surrounded by the sea, the North Atlantic, the North Sea. And so it's a presence that's always there.

And certainly I think that it was there in the lives of Stephen Baxter and his wife, Carol. It's interesting how we do perceive things. I've never been to where you're talking about, but I'm picturing it from all the movies and pictures and things like that. And so I understand where you're coming from. And as we delve into the story of a wonderful couple, they are Stephen and his wife, Carol, the Baxters. He is 61. She is 64. And the reason we're doing the story, obviously, is called body bags, but in this particular case, it started off one way and went another. The couple have a 21-year-old daughter, and she has a son, a little toddler. I'm picturing her, the daughter now, Ellie. She comes home,

and she sees her mom and dad. They're their recliners now that in great britain they called them something different can't remember the actual term but we call them you know lazy boy or recliner or whatever you know and usually in our case we have like the man has the big leather chair the woman has the dainty cloth chair come into my house it's reversed i sit in the dainty cloth chair and my wife sits in the big leather one and so this couple they've been married a long they were just relaxing in their recliners and their daughter ellie comes in to check on them and she goes over to them and she's hey how y'all how you do i don't know how they would say how y'all doing in great britain i don't know the

the wording but they weren't doing well at that moment. Imagine coming in. Do you expect to see your mom and dad? You've got their grandbaby, your child, and they're both sitting in their chairs, but they're dead. As a matter of fact, Joe, it is explained by the daughter that they were sitting there together and were peaceful. There were no signs of a struggle or any pain. She immediately thought, well, it has to be. And you mentioned this at the beginning, it's cold, chilly, and you got to turn the heat on. She thought something went wrong with the heater and it's got to be carbon monoxide poisoning. She immediately opens the doors to let in the breeze. She doesn't want her one-year-old toddler to get sick. She doesn't want to get sick, assuming it's carbon monoxide. But that's where this case begins, Joe, with a loving couple

together in their recliners, peacefully passing away. You're right. And listen, when the local officials show up at the scene, and let me paint this a little bit more precisely. This location, you associate Great Britain as an island country. However, there are little islands that are associated with Great Britain, and this is to the northeast of London. So it's actually sitting north of what would commonly be referred to as the English Channel, right on the southern edge of the North Sea. And it's like a little island. This is the way I pronounce it, Mercy Island. And it's in the county of Essex. So it's northeast of London. It's one of the oldest areas of Great Britain, where you think about establishment of early settlements and that

sort of thing. People have lived here for a long, long time. But this is an area where it's primarily known for people retiring to this area. As a matter of fact, the beaches there, they have those. Have you ever seen those? And they're kind of known for this there in this location, those little changing huts that you see that are like in all of the pastel colors. And so they have this. And listen, it takes a much bolder man than I to want to go and bathe in those waters because you're talking about the North Sea. Can you imagine going to the beach there and splashing about? But this is a retirement area.

It's quite beautiful. A lot of people seek this area out. And so it's always going to be cool about these parts. So when the first responders show up at the scene, forensics person or a police officer, you have questions that pop up in your mind. Mom and dad are dead, but I don't see any blood. I don't see flipped over furniture. I don't see broken glass. All that stuff in your brain that's commonly associated with this sort of thing, you don't see that going on at this point in time. And she's telling him what she thinks. As an investigator, do you take that with a grain of salt or do you go, OK, I've got to give this some power. She knows what's going on.

She knows how they normally are. This doesn't fit. You have to be very, very careful and measured when you do this, because first off, as investigators, we're all skeptics. People are not going to like me saying this. We assume everybody's lying to us. You just develop that kind of callous because you're going to have to prove this to me. You have to check yourself when you're getting incoming information, particularly as it applies to a circumstance like this.

And this is what we would refer to as the initial reporter. This initial reporter is giving you information. And so you take the sum total of what you're seeing at the scene, the information that's verbally coming from her and her initial observations, because no one's going to have a clear sense of things in their pristine condition as she would have. You know, because she's, listen, one of the things you can validate really quickly, you know, I talked about signs of forced entry and struggle. You go to the door, you go to the windows, and if nothing's knocked out and you know that she's the daughter, she has access to this, she's going to be the person that has the key to the lock that will turn it, open the door.

Maybe she calls out to, as they say, mom and dad there in Great Britain, and they don't respond. And there they are. They're peacefully seated in their old recliners. They're that position of comfort that they have. And you examine them and you look at them. And I don't mean examine them in the sense of like a clinical sense. I'm talking about a familial sense where, you know, because you're so intimately a part of their lives, you know how they look, You know what their natural appearance is. You know what their common response would be to you, particularly you're standing there with this precious one-year-old baby. And there's actually quite a poignant image

of Mr. and Ms. Baxter standing there holding this one-year-old that was taken immediately adjacent. And Dave, here's the other part to this case. When the daughter showed up on that Sunday morning, it was maybe with a sense of joy, sense of hope. Maybe it was in her mind a moment of celebration because it wasn't just any other Sunday. It was Easter Sunday. One of the most terrifying days I ever experienced as a medical legal death investigator was the day I was exposed to carbon monoxide. I had been given the all clear as myself and two of my colleagues. We had a multiple death event that occurred within a single family residence where we had, I don't know, the number escapes me, but it was over six people that were dead in this house. And I got out there to the scene to work the case, and the fire department had assured me that the house had been sufficiently ventilated.

And as I came to find out a couple hours later, I was laying on a gurney inside of a local emergency room, hooked up to oxygen, and having nurses come in and assess me minute by minute to see how I was doing because I'd been exposed to carbon monoxide. And it's absolutely terrifying. And it's something that for most of us, you would get an immediate response to. And Dave, in this case, that's the bit of information that came in to the local responders. That would have been her first impression,

her being the daughter. I think mom and dad may have died as a result of carbon monoxide. And there's just certain things that you look for in those cases. So the investigators take that information and begin to investigate. Nothing looks like it was crazy. There was no sign of a fight or anything like that. It really did look, as their daughter said, a peaceful scenario. And one that, and what is really sad, there's a lot of sad here, but I thought about how, as this case evolved, where the daughter said that when they're passing in the first days following it, she mentioned several times that even though they were gone, she had that really wonderful,

peaceful last look at them lovingly sitting together in their chairs, having a good time as people in their sixties are doing. And I thought how rocked her world must have been when they found out what really happened. Because underneath this very serene and peaceful, you can call it peaceful, serene death, but it looked like that. But investigators have to do their job. So, Joe, what leads you from that seems like an obvious answer. You've got the two bodies in front of you. Do investigators come in and like take the bodies out of the chairs and start examining there? How do you go about moving somebody in this peaceful state and taking them back to the office or whatever to look at them?

I mean, you're not going to do it right there. No, you would do an initial assessment. And those things are going to really, and I literally mean visually, pop when you think about it. I often tell my students at Jacksonville State, I'm teaching death investigation too, imagine the most brilliantly colored pink lollipop or popsicle piece of candy that you've ever seen. And when you'll see that external manifestation on the body of carbon monoxide uptake in the system. It presents on the skin, Dave. It presents in the face, on the external surfaces. And even when you get the body into the morgue and you open the body, the internal viscera

will have that very pink appearance to it. Even the blood changes color. So it's something that would be quite striking that you would see initially. Now, many times you have to be very careful because in a case like this, where you have just the fact that she would mention this gives you an indication. First off, she knows that there's a heat source in the house because she's drawn this conclusion. You would have to check that heat source within the house. And you have to do it very carefully because, look, your people as public servants are going into this environment that could be toxic. So you'll have to check the heat source and see if all of the heating sources

are functioning correctly. So that means you have to call the fire service out. And with the fire service, they actually have, and many of us have these in our homes, you have carbon monoxide detectors, just like fire detectors, and they go off when sensing this poisonous gas. The fire service actually has handheld devices that they can walk through a home and they can do an immediate assessment in this environment to see if they're getting hits in any of these areas. And I would think from an investigative standpoint, you call the fire service out, right? You're standing there and you're talking with local investigators.

And these guys walk in, they're wearing respirators, and they're checking the environment to see if there is any indication that there's carbon monoxide in the environment, and they're not getting hits. And they come back out and they report this to the investigators. The investigators suddenly have to be able to explain that. Just grab onto this just for a moment. They suddenly have to explain, okay, well, now we've got no signs of forced entry, apparently no signs of external trauma. We don't have any presentation of those artifacts, that's what we refer to them as, on the surface of the skin relative to carbon monoxide with the pink color. And I've got a machine here that's telling me that there's no level of carbon monoxide in the environment that's incompatible with life.

That investigator has to take all of that and formulate it and say, well, how in the heck did I get to the point where I've got two people that are sitting side by side, deceased? They're dead. And people just don't – you hear these stories of people that have been married for a long time. You hear these in the news where you'll have one person that will pass away peacefully, and then a couple of months later claim the other person dies of a broken heart. And that seems to happen many times, that people just give up the will to live. But simultaneous deaths? That's just not something that happens, Dave. I feel so bad for their daughter discovering them in that state.

But you mentioned people don't die like that. So you're the investigator. You're coming in showing her the proper amount of respect because you don't want to turn her, make it even worse. But at some point, she's going to find out it's a lot worse than she thinks. Then as an investigator, you're thinking in your mind, well, what could be the potential here? Am I looking at a double suicide here? Is there any indication around the body? And this is one of the things-trauma related suicide where you've entered into a pact to take on some kind of substance that is going to be toxic. In other words, incompatible with life and that you're going to succumb to this. And listen, if you don't get this right at the scene, right at that moment, then you can lose all kinds of evidence. So you're going to go through this house very, very carefully looking for, I mean, everything from injectables of any kind. You're going to go into the kitchen to see if there's anything that has been mixed up, maybe that is sitting in the sink, something with a white powdery residue, you're going to look through this environment and attempt

to determine if, in fact, that there's something more here, something that doesn't quite come up to snuff, if you will. And it's a moment in time where you have to be able to assess it and make that determination then. Now, carbon monoxide doesn't have a smell or anything, right? It doesn't. It gives you a pounding headache. I can attest to that. And you'll get external manifestations initially like bloodshot eyes and those sorts of things. And here's just kind of on an aside here. If you are exposed to carbon monoxide, it can still be lethal eight hours after exposure. That's how dangerous it is. It is the most common agent that we see in a gaseous form that people actually succumb to. And it's used, it is actually used frequently as a means to take one's life. You see

it, you know, you hear about people that sit in a car and with the windows rolled down inside of a closed garage. I've actually had a man that used a glass cutter to cut a hole in a window pane of his home and had an old truck parked just outside his window and ran a vent duct from a dryer. He taped it to the tailpipe and ran it through the window and had, this is a very sad case, it just came to mind, had the cremains, that means the remains of his daughter and his wife that had died in a motor vehicle accident years before, laying on the bed next to him, took wet towels and sealed beneath the doors. And after he had turned the truck on outside, just laid down on his bed and died. So you do see that as a method for suicide. But it's something that would it would stand out in this environment where you would have perhaps the smell of natural gas in the house, which is quite pungent. Remember, natural gas doesn't normally have a smell.

They add this so that you can pick up on the odor of it. I didn't know that. Yeah. And you can get an odor in the air that gives you an indication that this is danger. It's certainly something that you would take notice of. And to this point, that didn't come up on the radar of the Baxters is what could have possibly led to their deaths? Well, we know that both have underlying physical conditions. They're retired. David, I don't know if you realize this, but first off, it's not cheap to live on this

island. And interestingly enough, this couple together apparently had developed a very specific, of all things, bath mat that they had patented, that they had sold, and they became quite wealthy off of this. So they were able to live the life of millionaires because they actually were. So you begin to think about this. What could have been going on in their lives that would have brought their lives to an end simultaneously? Is this something where there's depression going on, physical illness, because sometimes that will motivate people to take their own lives? Or is it something more

sinister? And I think in this case, we've got something that is a bit more sinister, Dave. And that's where, as the investigators dig in, and you've mentioned this, that based on the physical things that are seen when somebody actually does have carbon monoxide poisoning, the experts were able to pretty much eliminate that within a matter of minutes. I imagine they played up with the daughter for a little while to not crush her because they didn't have an answer. But they didn't have an answer as to how they died or why or who, but they know it's probably not carbon monoxide. They did allow their daughter to continue thinking that until they actually did have an answer, though. I was looking up some things at the end, was reading in one of the first stories right after they were found, because I wanted to see what did their neighbors think? What did the family think?

They've got a couple in their early 60s and they're both gone. And overall, it was a very much loving tribute to the couple that they died together of carbon monoxide poisoning. That's how it was kind of reported the day or two after their passing. It was only when they actually investigated it and the experts got involved that the other story came out. It is quite dark, very, very dark. You know, you think about what would motivate someone to take these people's lives. They were both kind of infirm. Ms. Baxter actually had indwelling pneumonia at this particular time.

What is that? Well, she's got ongoing pneumonia. And so it's bronchial pneumonia. And it's very difficult for her to breathe in the first place. And we're talking about breathing here. People were talking, we're throwing around this idea of carbon monoxide asphyxiation. Well, that's going to compromise the respiratory system. And now, Mr. Baxter actually had a condition that's referred to as just cardiomeg, which is an enlarged heart. And so they're not in the best of health, either one of them. So it wouldn't take a lot to end their lives, particularly if there was some kind of agent that was applied to them, some kind of chemical. And in this particular case, you know,

they, listen, when you get to a scene and you're working this thing, you have indicators that are there. For instance, if you have drug ODs, let's keep it simple. You think about someone that's an IV heroin abuser. Well, if they OD at the scene, you're going to find what are referred to as their works. You'll find a tourniquet. You'll find a spoon. Generally, the underside of the bowl of the spoon will be burned, soot on the bottom of it. You'll have maybe saline that's there. You'll have cotton swab, and you'll have evidence of maybe yellow or white powdery substance and a syringe that they can draw something up through. You'll have these definitive things.

But listen, you're not going to know that the heroin killed somebody until you get toxicology back. Talking about this poor daughter, she didn't have answers at the time. She was just kind of coming up with these ideas in her mind about what could have happened. But boy, when the toxicology came back, were they surprised? Because as it turns out, both Mr. and Mrs. Baxter had on board fentanyl, of all things, Dave, which is just the absolute scourge of society right now. I mean, so many people are losing their lives as a result of fentanyl. And we've had many stories this year alone about fentanyl. This year alone. Yeah. And she also had promethazine in her system, which is an agent that generally they give it counteract nausea. It has been used as a precursor for

application of anesthesia. It has that quality where it will make you drowsy. So if you take, for instance, promethazine and it's combined certainly with fentanyl, it will certainly be enough to push you over the edge into that toxic range where it's a non-survivable position. And it doesn't take a lot of fentanyl to kill someone. We've heard for years and years people will have, they know how powerful morphine is. Morphine is actually derived, it's an opiate, and it's a naturally occurring thing, okay? It's not necessarily something that is blended up in a laboratory. Fentanyl is actually something that is synthetic. The molecule is similar to all other naturally occurring opiates, but this is something that is processed, that it

is created. And fentanyl has a long history of being used as a substance in the medical community for pain. And that's kind of where it's the wellspring from which this thing comes from. But now people are manufacturing it. And those that have the inclination to want to do harm, it doesn't take very much to get this on board. The question is, and the question that the police have to ask in this particular case is, who has access to these individuals? Well, you know, the first thing you have to think about, and this is just part of being an investigator, you have to think about the daughter. Does she have anything to gain by doing harm to her parents? Does she have the opportunity to do this,

subject them to this substance? Well, apparently they eliminated her pretty quickly in this particular case. As it turns out, they have, in fact, at this point in time, arrested individuals that the police are now saying are responsible for the deaths of the Baxter. So as this turns out, this is, in fact, a homicide that was brought about by the use of fentanyl. The question to this point, though, because this case has yet to be adjudicated, is how did they get the substance into their systems without them knowing about it? To this point, three people have been charged. One in particular, Luke DeWitt, has actually been charged with two counts of murder as well as theft. But at this point, we're still waiting on the trial and the outcome of this case. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. This is an iHeart Podcast.