Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Reggie and Carol Sumner....Buried Alive

Episode Date: June 29, 2022

Murdered in a uniquely gruesome and prolonged series of events; Reggie and Carol Sumner are the helpless victims of a month-long plan carried out with the help of a familiar face. Buried alive in a pre-dug hole near the Florida/Georgia line, these two high-school sweethearts suffer their terrible end at the hands of Tiffany Cole, her boyfriend Michael James Jackson, Alan Wade, and Bruce Kent Nixon, Jr. Tiffany Cole buys a vehicle from the Sumner family and travels to Jacksonville regularly to pay down her debt. That is, until her new boyfriend,  Michael James Jackson,  hatches a plan that ends in the Sumners' deaths. After being buried alive, under hundreds of pounds of dirt, an autopsy determines that the couple's cause of death is mechanical asphyxiation (i.e. physical interference with breathing and or circulation).    In this episode of Body Bags, forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan and Jackie Howard take a closer look at these horrifying deaths.   Subscribe to Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan : Apple Podcasts Spotify iHeartSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. Throughout our lives, we face health issues off and on. And you never know what's really going to kind of finally knock you to your knees. But the beauty part of that is that sometimes when we're struggling with our health, we have an unintended angel that kind of enters into our life and promises to be with us to the day that we die. Well, that was the case with Reggie and Carol Sumner. They found one another.

They found one another and they held on to one another very, very tightly. And they were enjoying their retirement. But they were both faced with great obstacles. And the greatest obstacle was yet to come. It ended in their deaths. Today, we're going to talk about the double homicide of Reggie and Carol Sumner. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Jackie Howard, executive producer of Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, is joining me today. Jackie, what can you tell us about Reggie and Carol? Carol and Reggie Sumner reportedly met in high school and rekindled their relationship later in life.

They found each other. They wanted the same things out of the rest of their life, and they wanted to spend time together. Yet this couple was suffering through some health issues. Reggie had diabetes, and he had also had some injuries to his ankle, which required him to need the assistance of a wheelchair or cane on occasion. However, Carol was suffering through liver cancer as well as hepatitis as a result. It's this combination of health issues that will come into play a little later, Joe. So let's talk about how their health issues are impacting their life right now, their quality of life.

Cancer, health injuries injuries and diabetes. Yeah, it's a horrible set of circumstances to be faced with. You know, they were not like really, really elderly people. This couple was only 61 years old and they had a lot of years in front of them. I think that that's what they thought at one point in time. They had made this really this really warm promise to one another. It really struck me when I was doing the research on this case, how they would be with one another until the day they died, that they had promised to take care of one another. And they had gotten together back up

in South Carolina, and they felt strong enough about the relationship that they had together up there, despite their health issues, that they decided to sell everything they had up in South Carolina and move down to Jacksonville, Florida, you know, just southbound on I-95 and set up a home down there and that they would spend the rest of their days down there. And, you know, I think that one of the thoughts that came to mind, someone had quoted Reggie at one point in time as having said that the doctors felt like that the environment down in Jacksonville near the beach would be good for his condition. And he was, you know, they hadn't just said that he had diabetes. People have stated over and over and over again relative to his history that he had severe diabetes, which means he was obviously insulin dependent. It's not some kind of pre-diabetic state. That means his sugars were probably out of whack. And he had to have constant monitoring, you know, where he's taking his blood sugar

level constantly, several times a day. He's having to be treated by an endocrinologist. That's a physician that actually works with people that have diabetes. And he was on very specific medication. And toward the end of his life, Reggie had injured his ankle. And one of the big fears for people that have diabetes or any kind of injuries, particularly to their peripheral areas, you know, their hands, their feet, these sorts of things, because they don't heal quite as well. And this was a severe injury. He had actually fractured an ankle and it required him, at least for part of the time, to be wheelchair bound. So you can imagine that, you know, he's dealing with everything that's associated with diabetes, including maybe compromised eyesight, you know, fatigue, constant sleepiness, just a general malaise much of the time. And then on top of that, his wife, Carol, she is faced with this huge struggle of liver cancer.

And liver cancer is not something that somebody just kind of easily bounces back from. She's in the midst of this, of fighting this disease. And because she had developed liver cancer, it sent her into what's referred to as hepatic failure, which is where the liver begins to shut down and all the functions that everything that is required of the liver to do systemically is compromised at that point in time. She develops jaundice along with the hepatitis. And that means that she would have a yellow tinge to her skin in constant pain. There's always problems with digestion, nausea, these sorts of things associated

with this disease. And not to mention, again, in a very feeble, weakened state. I mean, both of these people are fragile as newborn kittens. As we look at their health conditions, Joe, we see the term vulnerable keep being mentioned about these two people. What is it about their conditions that make them vulnerable? Are we saying that their body is vulnerable to disease? Are we saying that these two individuals really are physically feeble and unable to defend themselves? Yeah, yeah, that's a big part of this. And, you know, you can even look at primal animal activity

and see how predators actually pick the weakest among the herd, those that they know that they can control and take down. In the Sumner's case, they were the weakest of the weak. And of course, they have things that people might want, that sort of thing. But they're compromised in the sense that if someone came into their home to attack them in any way, they would not be able to put up a fight. It would be like a grown man going head-to-head with somebody that has the strength, probably, of maybe an eight-year-old child at this point in time.

They're just living day-to-day, hour-to-hour, minute-to-minute, and probably to a great degree thankful for every second that they have on this earth because I think that they probably understood how fragile their life was. You said predator, Joe, and you really couldn't have phrased that any better because that is what happened to this couple. They met a group of predators, Tiffany Cole, Michael James Jackson, Alan Wade, Bruce Kent Nixon Jr. When the Sumners moved to Jacksonville, Florida, they sold a car to Tiffany Cole. Cole agreed to make monthly payments and often drove down to Jacksonville to make those monthly payments.

Well, in June of 2005, Cole and her new boyfriend, Michael Jackson, drove to Jacksonville to complete the paperwork on the sale of the car. And while they were there, they stayed with the Sumners at their home. And it was there that a plan to rob this couple that had been so generous to Tiffany Cole was hatched. They planned to steal money from their bank accounts. But what's more, they decided that they were not adverse to killing this couple if necessary, Joe. This goes to this thought, you know, talking about predators and the behavior of those types. They observe for a while, you know, they'll watch. They'll see if there's any danger to them.

And once they're in such an intimate environment, you know, when you're in that small, tight little circle of, you know, someone's home, you're actually sleeping in their bed, you're eating their food, you're, you know, using their bathroom facilities, all these sorts of things. The predator has the ability to walk through there and check everything, see how vulnerable, how easy it is perhaps to access the home, how easy it is to maybe take things that are just lying around. But here's the most important part. If you're a predator and you're in what's referred to as an asymmetrical relationship with a person, that means that you're dominant over someone that is weaker. You're looking at them and you can exploit things. You can see that they're, you know, I use the term feeble, and I don't mean that as a disrespecting term.

It's just that they're feeble in the sense that in their physical bodies, they're very weak. And that's something that you would catch on to very quickly. You know, you think about Carol suffering from hepatic failure due to liver cancer. And she's, anytime she takes a step, she has to grab hold of the back of the chair or brace herself against the wall. She has to measure every footfall that she has in the house, or you begin to look and see that Reggie, he doesn't move very well because of his ankle that he would rather be in the

wheelchair, kind of moving himself about the house as opposed to ambulating anywhere. And automatically, if you are of the mindset to attack someone, to take everything that they have, it's at that moment in time that bells start going off in your mind if you are the aggressor here and you know that this is an easy mark. You know, for Reggie and Carol Sumner, they lived with this false sense of security, I think. You think that you got the world kind of figured out, that you're here in this place that you've moved to for maybe to better your health and to move on with your life and adjust your life so that you can be happy and enjoy the love of one another. But that suddenly turned to horror for them. It did. They trusted Tiffany Cole, which turned out to be not a very good idea.

Tiffany Cole, Michael Jackson, Alan Wade, Bruce Kent Nixon Jr. It took a month, took one month to put their plan into action. They intended to invade the home, ask to use the phone, and then once inside, they were going to attack the family. And that's exactly what they did. But it was Wade and Nixon who the Sumners did not know, two men who knocked on the door and asked to use the phone. Once inside, they attacked the couple. The couple was bound and gagged with duct tape and from there put into the trunk of their Lincoln town car.

And meanwhile, Tiffany Cole and Michael Jackson traveled in their car, planning to deliberately get pulled over for speeding if police got too close to the Lincoln. Now, what would have these physical limitations done to the Sumners, considering they already had their own physical limitations? Well, first off, and I think that it goes without saying, you know, our fight or flight kicks in. But here's the problem. When you are physiologically compromised, like Reggie and Carol were, you might have that thought in your mind that I need to flee, that I need to get away, that I need to put distance between myself and danger. What's really horrific about this is that now you're trapped in these bodies that are riddled with disease, diabetes and cancer and these sorts of things. So, you know, you're

thinking back, I would imagine, to when you were 30 and you could have maybe put distance between yourself and in danger. But now you're in this compromised position and you can't. So you've got adrenaline pumping. Even though you can't use it to get away, your breathing becomes shallow. And one of the important points here and something we need to keep in mind is that duct tape was used on both Carol and Reggie. And so when that occurs, you know, we know that the police have used the term gagged over and over again. I don't necessarily think that this was a matter of the perpetrators having taken duct tape and put a, you know, a wad of it into their mouth and jammed it down their throat or anything like that. I think that it was a covering over their mouth, potentially their nose. I'm not sure, but certainly their eyes as well.

So now, you know, your body is demanding more oxygen because you're shallow breathing and you've got health problems and your airway is compromised to the point where you can't uptake oxygen and everything begins to fail. You know, for poor old Reggie, who's suffering from severe diabetes, I'm sure his sugars probably got out of whack. And along with diabetes also comes issues like heart disease and these sorts of things. So his cardiovascular system could have well have been compromised as well at this moment in time. It's really important. I have people ask me this question a lot. You know, when you begin to think about manners and causes of death and they don't see a natural disease that can be utilized as a means to commit homicide. But I got to tell you, it can. If somebody is compromised already and you have an awareness of that, you can push somebody to the brink where you can actually kill them vis-a-vis the indwelling disease they have. I've worked cases like that,

and it's absolutely horrific. It's not as simple as just shooting somebody or stabbing somebody because physiologically, they are compromised. They have disease on board. You can harm, do great harm to someone this way. And this idea of being in fear of your life, being confined. I mean, I don't know that many of us could ever even begin to comprehend this idea of being bound and gagged and blindfolded. You're already frail. And then you're essentially placed into the trunk of your own car. And you're completely deprived of any of your external sensory indicators here. Maybe you can smell.

Maybe you can't. But you can't see. You're having to be helped along to walk. And the next thing you know, you can feel yourself on a hard surface. You hear the trunk slam. And now you're going down a road. You're moving away from wherever it is that you felt you were safe in, and you're bumping down the road and in total and complete pitch black darkness.

One of the things that I know about diabetes, Joe, is when your sugar is high, it changes your emotions. It changes the way that you think. You become confused. You can become angry. And then when you crash, you can die from your sugar being out of range. So describe for me what he would be going through already in a panic from worrying about his wife worrying about his own life and worrying about his health you know is he going to be able to

assist her in any way so talk to me and explain about how all of that is also impacting his idea or notion of survival. Yeah. You know, and we don't, you know, when you begin to think about the timeline, when these two showed up at the door and took control of Reggie and Carol in their own home, you begin to think about this. You don't know where either Reggie or Carol were with their medications that day. And that's a critical point here because diabetics in particular

are so dependent upon their medications to maintenance their life day in and day out and to measure their sugar levels. If he becomes, say, for instance, what's referred to as hypoglycemic, which means that the sugar dips precipitously, you become lightheaded, disoriented, those sorts of things. And you have no idea. You're totally and completely confused at that moment in time. So it would impact your life greatly. It would impact your ability to make decisions, to defend yourself, this sort of thing. Now, if his sugar was going in the other way,

if it had jumped up to an unexpected level because it wasn't being maintenanced and he's in this, you know, you're going to, again, become short of breath, diaphoretic, which means you're going to be sweating a lot, feeling like you're going to pass out. Either way, it's a horrible situation to be in. And, yeah, he would not have been in a position to take care of his wife or himself at that point in time. You have to compound their situation with the fact that they are in the trunk of a car. How is that oxygen supply going to impact what is going on? And are they, in fact, getting more exhaust from the vehicle than they are oxygen. Yeah, a lot of that is going to be dependent upon how structurally intact the vehicle is, and of course, the exhaust system. I've had friends of mine that are medical legal death investigators that have worked cases where people have been placed into trunks, and they have

asphyxiated, not from the lack of fresh oxygen being able to just be present, but because there was an intrusion into that environment of carbon monoxide because there was a faulty exhaust system. And that can play a part of it. And of course, we look for that at autopsy. And there's certain things that, and they would have done this with both Carol and Reggie. And if folks at home can just think about this, think about the brightest artificial cherry pink color you've ever seen on a piece of candy or a popsicle or something like that. That's actually the color, believe it or not, that the skin of people turns that have been exposed to carbon monoxide. Even the whites of their eyes become kind of cherry pink in color. And so that's something that when we see it at autopsy,

it's a huge flag for us. We're thinking, well, they have been exposed to something. And generally, that leads back to carbon monoxide. And of course, they would do in toxicology, when they draw blood, there's a test that we call a carboxyhemoglobin level, which checks the level of carbon monoxide that an individual has in their system. You know, just out walking around, there are minimum standards that, you know, you're going to be exposed to, particularly in urban environments of exhaust and that sort of thing. But you can get up into those critical areas where it's going to compromise your system. And that's certainly something that would have played a part.

Now, when you think about them shallow breathing in this environment, if they have any other kind of associated problems with their heart, their lungs, that's going to play a part. And yeah, the quality of oxygen might not be there, but the question you have to ask is, is the trunk actually completely sealed off from available fresh air? And that is generally not the case. It's just not. It's not like you're in a plastic bag. So there would have been an air supply.

I just, I can't attest to the quality of the air that they would have breathed and how much there would have been in there. So the Sumners were forced to hand over their financial information, their PIN numbers for their bank accounts. Tiffany Cole and Michael Jackson took their jewelry and pawned it and stole other items from the Sumner's home. And again, the ATM card was used to obtain more than $1,000 in cash. Now, you would think that this would be enough. You've stolen these things from this family. You've taken them away. But that was not how this was to end. The couple was driven to South Georgia and placed in a four by six foot grave that the perpetrators had dug in advance in case it was necessary. You know, body bags, I think in a previous episode, I actually confessed to

something. I let my listeners know that I myself am claustrophobic and I cannot think of many things in this world that would terrify me any more than being closed up in a grave or to be buried alive. And unfortunately, in Reggie and Carol Sumner's case, that's what happened to them. The perpetrators decided that despite the fact that the Sumners had cooperated and give them all the information that they wanted, they'd already stolen money, jewels, and other items from the home. They decided that it was necessary to kill the summoners. But instead of shooting, strangling, bludgeoning this couple, they placed them into this grave that they dug and buried them alive, Joe. My mind is blown. I can't even begin

to imagine, number one, what was going through this couple's mind. But let's talk about what would have happened to them. How did they die? The thing that really strikes me in Reggie and Carol's case is the fact that it has come out that this grave had been dug almost two days in advance. So let's think about that just for a second. That means that there was a plan in place. There was never necessarily a plan to do anything other than have Carol and Reggie's lives end in a hand-dug hole out in this desolate area down in South Georgia, which is literally right across the border coming up out of North Florida. Jacksonville, Florida, and the border with Georgia are not that far away. But these perpetrators chose an area that was very isolated, and they

went out there two days in advance. And this just boggles mine and dug this hole that they were going to place this couple into. And part of me, you're reading this and you're learning about it and you're thinking, wow, I really wish on one level, if they were going to take them out, that they would have done it mercifully. This is probably, in my estimation at least, one of the most horrific ways an individual can die. And it's not like you're placed in an airtight coffin. Reggie and Carol Sumner were placed in a big hole in the ground with a big pile of dirt adjacent to it. They'd been bound with duct tape. Hang on a second, Joe. The

perpetrators reported that the couple had actually freed themselves from their bindings. Number one, how could they have done that? And what were the reports? Yeah, you know, the duct tape was used to bind them with. And what is duct tape? You know, what's the purpose of it? It's got a really strong adhesive on the back of it. Anybody that's got duct tape around your home can attest to this. It's certainly stronger than any kind of tape you might use, say, at Christmas time, wrap packages with. Very resilient, very fibrous.

And the adhesive is relatively strong. But let's keep in mind, this is Florida. You've got high relative humidity. You're placing it on bare skin, which means that they were sweating. And I would think probably Reggie in particular, because of his diabetes, diabetics many times when they are stressed begin to sweat profusely. And that may have led to him being able to shed these bindings. But I think probably the most chilling part of this

is that the perpetrators, when they were later interviewed, stated that both Reggie and Carol, when they opened that trunk and they found them in the back of that car, they were holding on to one another. So they had adjusted to the point where they could at least embrace. And one of the perps actually said they were praying. Maybe they were praying that they would be delivered from this. Maybe they were praying for God's mercy at that moment in time. But this I do know. Once that trunk was

open, they took this couple out of that car and they put them into this hole that had been dug two days in advance with the thought, with the thought that this is how their lives were going to end. How did their lives end, Joe? When you are buried alive, do you inhale dirt into your lungs and suffocate? Are you unable to expand your lungs and suffocate? That's two types of asphyxiation there. Am I missing something, Joe? Is there another type? I've got to tell you, when I was reading over the testimony of the medical examiner in this particular case and what his determination was, it really struck me because I'd never come across a case like this. The forensic pathologist that did the autopsy on Reggie and Carol's bodies actually came to the conclusion that they had died of mechanical asphyxia. And let me kind of break that down

because it sounds, I don't know, kind of bizarre when you begin to think about it. You think of mechanism, that sort of thing. And many times that's what it means. It means that, you know, kind of bizarre when you begin to think about it. You think of mechanism, that sort of thing. And many times that's what it means. It means that one descriptor that's famously used is say someone has a scarf and it's hanging over some type of machinery that's operating and they get pulled in by the scarf and it essentially chokes them, asphyxiates them right there. That's mechanical. And that's a classic example of that. However, you have this elderly couple that's actually placed into a grave and then dirt is placed upon their body. So think about the dirt being the mechanism here. And you've got two factors at work here. So not only were they mechanically asphyxiated, and this is more of what's referred to as a compression asphyxia,

that means when you begin to have weight placed upon you where your chest can no longer rise and fall, which if you're digging, say for instance, they did dig a deep, deep hole, that's a lot of dirt that you're going to put on their bodies. It's going to compromise their ability for their chest to rise and fall, to inhalate, to exhalate, all those sorts of things. And then you're diminishing the amount of oxygen that's in there. And to your point earlier, one of the other factors involved in this case is that when the forensic pathologist did the dissection and he began to closely look at the airway of both Carol and Reggie, not just the airway, but Jackie actually looked in the lungs, one of the things he found were

particulate bits of soil, the same soil that you would have found down there. And I can tell you what that soil looks like. It's going to be very sandy. It's going to be very, very sandy. There might be some loam mixed in with it. And that dirt that was from down there that you commonly see in Florida, those sorts of things that you walk upon when maybe you go to the beach, go on vacation with your family. That's what they had within their airways.

And at the end, that's what actually wound up killing them because they inhalated this dirt that was being piled on top of them. So it's this kind of complex event that goes on. And you couple that with all of that natural disease process, Carol's liver cancer and hepatitis and her being jauntist and all those things that come along with that. And then, of course, Reggie's diabetes and his inability to move around. He was also incontinent as well, which sometimes happens, obviously, with age, but it can happen with diabetic patients that are in a greatly physically compromised position. He's there. They're not receiving any kind of care whatsoever.

As a matter of fact, with every shovel full of dirt, there's more and more harm. There's more and more danger that is coming to rest upon them to the point where the position they were in was just completely and totally incompatible with life. And they succumbed there in a grave, lying there next to each other. We've talked in the past a lot about asphyxia, and we've talked about positional asphyxia. So, is mechanical asphyxia and positional asphyxia the same thing? No, they're not. And I'll give you a great example of positional asphyxia the same thing? No, they're not. And I'll give you a great example of positional asphyxia. And this is from my own personal experience working cases. And I've

had this happen a number of times. I say a number, several times throughout my career. And it's kind of a thread that runs through. If people are not aware of the effects that heroin has on somebody, it really depresses the respiratory system. Obviously, you get into this kind of dreamlike state. And I've had a number of heroin addicts that have set what they call their works up on a sink where they'll render down their injectable down into a liquid form. They'll draw it up after they've turned it off on their arm and they're seated on a toilet seat. They inject the heroin.

And in these cases I've worked, the heroin addict, after they have dosed themselves, will actually fall between the wall and the edge of the toilet. And in this compromised position, they can't get up. And this leads to, that's a classic example of positional asphyxia. And there's any number of other things that can happen. You'd be actually surprised how many people that are involved in car accidents die as a result of kind of a positional slash compression asphyxia many times.

You're in a position where your chest can no longer rise and fall. And it comes and it's not something that you can absolutely say positively that this is in fact positional asphyxia without having very strong evidence of it. In the event of a positional asphyxia, you have this evidence of this kind of staring you in the face where they're in such a contracted position. That means their body is positioned in such a manner which their chest can no longer rise and fall, and they can't get free of it. In Carol and Reggie's case, though, this is the mechanical asphyxia was a means to an end. If you think of that dirt being piled upon them,

them being compressed by the dirt, them inhalating the dirt, this was as if they had utilized this dirt just like somebody would use a firearm to kill them. How long would this couple have suffered, Joe? I can say this. It would have been an excruciating death. It would not have been quick. They would have been gasping for air. I equate it to someone catching a fish and bringing the fish up on the deck or the dock and seeing that fish gasping for air. You can see their lips moving, their gills expanding, and there's nothing there for them to breathe in. And they would have been attempting to squeeze every bit of oxygen out of that environment. Unfortunately, there was none to be had. And so the first thing that would have happened is, I think, more than likely they would have gone into a real state of panic. Again, if they weren't shallow breathing before then,

they're certainly shallow breathing now. And that means that quick respirations, very, very shallow. And then something happens that's referred to as anoxia at that point in time, where your brain goes into a deprived state of oxygen. So you have this even further disorientation where they're in this kind of dreamlike milky state, if you will, and they're going to lose consciousness eventually. The key here, though, is, and I don't know that it's necessarily measurable. You know, if you were to ask a forensic pathologist on the stand, you know, doctor, in your opinion, how long, in fact, did this take? I think that the physician would probably state what the literature states, that your brain can't sustain life without oxygen for any longer than three or four minutes, but it would not have been quick. It would not have been as quick as, say, for instance, if they had been executed with a pistol, perhaps.

All four of these perpetrators are now in jail for the murders of Reggie and Carol Sumner. Just this past week, Alan Wade was again sentenced, but he was taken off of death row and sentenced to life in prison. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. This is an iHeart Podcast.