Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Televised Confessesion "I Killed My Parents, Buried Them in Backyard"

Episode Date: October 12, 2025

Franz and Theresia Kraus are a retired couple. In 2025 he is 92 and she is 83. The problem is that nobody has seen them in several years. Their social security checks are automatically deposited and their adult son, Lorenz Kraus, tends to other matters for them. After years of attempting to contact the couple without success, the social security office asks police to do a "welfare check" on Franz and Theresia Kraus. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack take a look at what happened when police do the welfare check and how their "loving son" Lorenz Kraus ends up on local tv confessing to killing his parents and burying their bodies in the backyard.           Transcribe Highlights 00:00.11 Introduction 01:16.21 Man buries mom and dad in backyard 04:36.12 Mountain Family Comes to big city to transport body of their loved one on a flatbed truck 08:59.11 News Anchor gets son to admit murder during interview 14:37.45 Early Luminol story 20:10.37 Body decomposing in soil will cause sinking 25:11.76 Newsman interviews murderer 30:14.33 Suffocated father 34:31.88 Admits killing in 2017 40:13.36 Skeletal remains can breakdown 44:27.65 Conclusion  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Body Facts with Joseph Scott Moore. I, for one, like the idea of having what's called a family plot. Family plot can either say that you're, maybe you have a space in a local municipal cemetery, or maybe you have a place in your church's graveyard. Or it can mean that you actually have a plot set aside for burial of your loved ones on property that perhaps has been in your family for years and years. I don't know if the word quaint quite applies here,

something I think on one level that's kind of comforting. That is if you're buried on your family's property, you'll be perpetually taken care of. Today on Bodybacks, though, we're going to talk about a fellow who literally decided to bury his mom, dad, on his own property in the backyard eight years ago after he, of course, allegedly, murder. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this

is Body Max. There's something comforting, Dave, about, I think, on one level, about perpetual care, maybe. I think it's more of a comfort to those that remain as opposed to those that are passed on because I don't think the ones that have passed on truly have an awareness of this sort of thing. I'm not going to address it spiritual, but I think scientifically, you know, they don't have

an awareness of it. But it's kind of a, maybe it's a quaint notion, like I said, you don't have these very often. And, you know, I've got to tell you a quick story. there was a place in Atlanta and you'll find this kind of interesting there was a place in Atlanta a neighborhood in Atlanta that's called actually called Cabbage Town I don't know if you've ever heard of Cabbage Town Dave but it's I bet it smells like socks well it's actually a a place where where people from Appalachia came to Atlanta to work in the mills and they came lock, stock, and barrel, and they still had

relatives that lived up in that mountainous region of North Georgia and points beyond because there was work in the big city, right? And they inhabited these, you know, quickly built wooden structures that in the south, at least we call them mill villages that are adjacent to textile mills and that sort of thing. But Cabbage Town in particular had these kind of interesting rolling features to it. You know, the hills were, I mean, the roads, you know, kind of cut off in different directions. And there were these families that had indwell these houses for a couple of generations. But they would still go back up home to see their kinfolk.

Well, we had a fellow in Atlanta that had died, right? And he had died violently in a car accident. and he was domsiled in Cabbage Town. Well, his family wanted to retrieve his remains. His family lived up in the North Georgia Mountains. His family showed up with a flatbed truck to pick up his remains. And they had signed all the proper paperwork, by the way. Really?

They wanted to handle picking him up. They didn't want a funeral home to do it. So we released the body We released the body to them And he was left in a body bag And he was strapped to the back of a flatbed truck And off they went up into the Blue Ridge Mountains Where he would be buried in the family plot

I was always fascinated by that Yeah and it wasn't my case It was one of my colleagues And it had The story was related to me It had happened late at night You know they show up Which normally happens

You know if you're in a busy medical examiner's office bodies are literally being picked up and delivered all hours of day, day and night. You worked in a funeral home for a while, I know, and it's unpredictable. So you can have a funeral home that will come from out of town. They might hit the city, you know, at midnight, one, two in the morning. They're there to pick up remains. They're going to put the remains in their hearse, typically, or their van, and haul them off. In this case, they were taking this old boy back up to the mountains, and they were going to bury him in family flight.

I love the fact that you said they got the right paperwork. Yes, they did. They had gone through and had gotten, I think it was a burial certificate. Good for them. It was required for them to have a burial certificate to bury his remains on the property, you know, because there has to be an accounting for where the body is. And, you know, they had all these measures taken care of. And it was an accidental case.

It was not like it was an ongoing homicide investigation. Well, see, you know, he has always recollects. See, that sounds like a lot of love. That's a family that has the family plot. And there's no Alfred Hitchcock movie coming out about it. It's just, you know, they're going to take care of their loved one. But what we're dealing with here is a failure to communicate. Communicate.

Yeah, you're right. You know, Joe, this loving son who when we look at his parents' ages, they were 92, Yeah, Franz Krauss was 92 and Teresa Krause, 83. Okay, that's today. That's how old they would be today. But they were killed eight years ago. They haven't been seen since August of 2017. So take away eight years and you're talking about Franz Krauss was 84.

And Teresa Krauss? 75? 75? That's not crawling in the basket, you know? Anyway, we'll talk more about their physical condition in a few minutes, but I just wanted to get this off my chest because you need to know that Lawrence Krause wrote up this two-page manifesto, so to speak, sent it to every media outlet in town, and there was an investigation happening at the house. The Social Security Administration and the bank and a few other financial institutions were concerned that they hadn't seen Mr. and Ms. Krause for eight years, and they tried to reach out to him. they tried to contact him over the years. It wasn't like it just started one day last week, you know.

Over the years, they had made several attempts to make contact with Mr. Mrs. Krausen couldn't do it. And that's when finally Social Security asked the police to go do a welfare check. And that's when they started realizing we got a bigger problem here. So I just want to be clear on this because their son, loving son, sends out this two-page manifesto, and he gets a call back from a news anchor at the local CBS affiliate in town. This news anchor has been in the business of broadcasting news for 45 years.

This ain't his first rodeo. I will tell you that if you sit down with Greg Floyd, a 45-year veteran newsman, he he's going to get out of you what he wants he's going to figure you out that's what he does he knows how to tell a story and what you do in this case is you find what that person really wants to tell and you create opportunities for them to tell it he knew that he that cross really wanted to confess and he was using this two-page manifesto of his belief system as the bait but he didn't want to confess he didn't want to see he didn't want to admit it he knows the jig is up once i do this but mr floyd

would not give in he would not he allowed him to dig a hole but he kept handing him the shovel you know it's a brilliant piece of work I hope you get a chance to watch the video like I said the news anchor's name is Greg Floyd he works for the local CBS affiliate in Albany New York WRGB Channel 6 it is it is something that should be studied by

it should be studied by everybody in broadcasting This is how you do an interview. When you have no time to prepare, he had 10 minutes to prepare for the interview of his life. And he's able to get a very intelligent guy to confess to the murder of his parents. And it's a confession on tape that will hold up in court. I think that it probably will because it wasn't elicited by the police. This is a civilian doing this. and can they use that?

Yeah, I think they will. They're certainly going to push forward with a trial in this case because this individual has in fact been charged, but it just goes to show you. You never know who's going to walk into a studio. And more than that, you never know what they might say. Deranged, which is an adjective, it's a descriptor, right, is a word that is used to describe someone. And here's a definition, I think this is actually Webster's definition, of a person, wildly irrational or uncontrolled, such as in a deranged gunman.

And, you know, we hear that term frequently in the media. I was reading an article, Dave, and in New York Post, and they used the term deranged to describe the son who went into the studio relative to, you know, what he had done, you know, and this is after the fact. Dave, we're eight years downrange from the disappearance of his parents. I don't, I think someone at the editorial, the editorial people with New York Post need to sit down with some of their reporters and have a discussion about the word deranged. Because this doesn't seem like somebody that is, in fact, deranged if they're acting in an irrational manner. I wonder if he was deranged when he was cash in the checks. What say you?

I think that I, you know, a lot of words are misapplied. They're misused. I hate the term superstar. I hate the term bravery being used for people that are not brave. They're just usually full of BS. You know,

we reward people for crazy things these days. And this guy's not deranged, right? He actually, it's interesting because this is, I wanted, the opening paragraph, and by the way, it was the CBS affiliate that actually got this news thing. It's WRGB TV. And it's not that RGB TV was the target for this guy. Lawrence Krauss sent that email out to everybody in the community, and this is the one that responded. and this is what it says in the opening paragraph.

A man admitted during a television interview last week to killing his parents and burying them in the backyard of their upstate New York home eight years ago. Then he was arrested as he left the studio. The stunning on-camera confession from Lauren's Krause, 53, came a day after police say they recovered two bodies from the home in Albany as part of an investigation that found Krause parents,

Franz and Teresa were still receiving Social Security payments despite not having been seen or heard from in years. Eight years, Joe. Eight years. I think about that. Where were you eight years ago? What were you doing? Oh, Lord. Let's see.

Where was I had, I was into my second or third year here at Jack State, you know, working as a professor, appearing on air. Doing a lot of the stuff I'm doing right now. but it wasn't quite at this tempo that I work at now. I wasn't doing a podcast eight years ago. But yeah, yeah, I mean, that's where I was. Here's the chilling thing about that. And I love the fact that you referenced time here because people think that people think these things happen in a vacuum many times.

There are cases like this. There are currently cases out there right now that we're not even aware of where you have a child perhaps that has killed their parents. parents are missing, have been missing for a while, and the child has gotten rid of remains. One way or another, you know, you and I, you know, I always harp on dismemberment, but, you know, we've covered those cases. We've covered burning, reducing the body through cremation. And in some cases like this, burial, you know, it harkened back.

I think I've mentioned this case before to a case that we consulted on. many years ago when I was with Coroner, New Orleans, there was an adjacent city where a guy had been living in the house. His wife had gone missing. His wife, and this is right out, by the way, this is right after Luminal stepped onto the stage as an instrument. And a friend of mine, one of my colleagues, was one of the first people in Louisiana to be trained up utilizing Luminol. He was a forensic scientist. And he agreed to go to this jurisdiction and apply it in the basement of the house. What happened is the guy that lived in the house, sold the house. And the cops had been watching the house for a protracted period of time. They knew, they thought that

the wife had been killed in the house. And my friend shows up and, you know, he's having to explain how to use Luminol and all that sort of thing. And I want you to know they peel the carpet back in the basement of this home and sprayed it. And this is many years later, and it just began to luminous. And you have to do this in the dark, you know, and you have to be keen. And this is back when we were using 35 millimeter photography. And you have to be very, very sensitive to the settings on your film and these sorts things, on your camera, rather.

And as it turns out, the new couple, the couple that had bought the house hadn't moved in yet, Dave. Can you imagine having a cop. show up and they said, hey, we think this guy may have killed his wife in the house you just bought. And they had a statement from the next door neighbor that from years earlier that the neighbors had said he had, they used to didn't have a rose garden. Now they have a rose garden. I want you to know they dug up the rose garden. The wife was buried there. I beg your pardon? Yeah. Yeah. I never promised you. I said what you did there. Very well done.

Yeah. And so, yeah, and so this, this does happen, you know, these ideas of concealment. And from a forensics perspective, here's kind of what you're faced with, because this is what is referred to as a clandestine grave, or some people say clandestine grave, where you're attempting to conceal a body. Now, you can't can't say necessarily that you have a homicide on your hands, but you do know, you do have somebody that is making an attempt to keep the body out of view so that no one else will find it. I guess in principle, maybe from a practice standpoint, it might be a good idea, you know, to try to do it, to try to render it down. But if you can't put distance between yourself and the body and you're still domiciled at that location, they show up and they disinterer the bodies, dig up the backyard, which you would have had to have done. They would have called a forensic anthropologist. You know, you're, they're going to be looking at you really hard

at this point because you have to ask who has access to the backyard. Who would have time in order to do this? And who would, who would kill two elderly people like this? Okay. And when we get into this, I'm curious because going to the end of the story first, I would have thought that the smell of decomposition would have been prevalent, that neighbors would have smelled. Even if you bury them a few feet deep, I would have thought that people would smell it. No, no. What I think probably it's masked greatly. And of course, this is, and it's kind of common sense.

I think, first off, have you wrapped the body? Did he wrap the body in anything? Is there any remnant? You know, we just did the case about the woman in the well. Oh, wow. They still found the burlap sack from 100 years ago that she had been wrapped in and dumped down the well. Great story. I've thought about that several times since we laid that one down.

And if he concealed their bodies or cocoon the bodies and then buried them. But a lot of this is going to be depth related. And what did he do with the stuff? soil. You know, how did he, did he do anything to, did he add soil to it? Did he go out and augment? Because, you know, you can dig a hole. Here's one of the problems with clandestine graves. In truth, I mean, clandestine burials, let me just say that. Because, again, you can, in a clandestine manner, you can get rid of a body. But when you have a clandestine burial, you're not going going to have a vault to put a body in. So what does that mean? Well, if you dig a hole and it's

just a hole in the earth, and let's say you decide to go down six feet, okay? Well, once you put that body at the bottom of that hole, you know, you talked about the smell of decomposition. You might not smell the decomposition, but one of the things that's going to be evidenced, and this is kind of cool is that if you look at a traditional image of a burial where you got earth that's mounted up, you know, and I know we've all seen this in, you know, in literature and movies and that sort of thing where you've got a mound of earth where a body has been buried beneath the ground, guess what happens? Well, the soil begins to sink. And as the body decomposes at the bottom, okay, all that tissue begins to disappear, the thing is going to sink

even more. So you don't have the framework of like a concrete vault that's stuck in the ground. Like when you put into a regular, you know, city cemetery where you drop this concrete vault in there and you put a lid over it and you pack down, you know, they got the machinery, they pack it down and all. You don't have access to that unless he's got, you know, he's got like a little skid steer or something like. like that that he can go out there if you're digging these holes by hand also you can go back behind it and you can stack gravel perhaps or rock and then bury that on top of the bodies as well but still you're going there's there's nothing like nature to pack soil if you have virgin

untouched soil maybe the soil has literally never been turned in this area now I doubt it because this is a plot where a home was built at some point in time. So you have to imagine that some earth had been moved at some point in time the distant past. It's going to change the configuration of the mound there that you have, where you have it kind of indwelling. It's going to begin to collapse in on itself. Wow. I'm amazed at the things I don't think about sometimes when we do.

get ready to do a story, you know? Yeah, yeah. It didn't occur to me. So. I don't think about them many times until I go back to a case nowadays. I don't think about it. And I'm like, oh, okay, this is something that I once knew and that, and that, you know, I was practiced at. You know, you rekindle these things in your brain.

You begin to think about them. All right. Well, in this particular case, I have to wonder, Joe, as Lawrence Krauss, like I said, they figured this out. they say they being pretty much probably accountants because nobody had seen it's just you know all but he's not a big big place it's uh see the government for the new york yeah but in from a neighborhood standpoint you know just like your neighborhood my neighborhood people ask questions and you know somebody's looking at this guy going i haven't seen his parents you're down at the bank you're dealing with somebody's going to talk okay when they don't see mom and dad in here

and they see you living off their money, somebody's, A, going to be jealous, and B, they're going to want to know what happened. And so... Yeah. And, you know, it begs a question. You know, when you're an investigator and you're working on cases like this,

who else knew the Krausses? You know, who, like, were there... Did they have any living siblings? Were there any cousins that were still alive? They're elderly, so you have to assume that their parents had passed on. But did they have any siblings? Did their siblings have any kids?

kids. According to him, they were World War II Nazi survivors. Survivors of Nazi Germany, you know, which does kind of lead you. I'm glad you pointed that out about the, did they have any other relatives? Because if they did, shame on them. Yeah. Eight years? Come on.

Eight years. Yeah. With elderly people. I hope I make it to 90 and you don't hear from me from that you don't show up and find me in my recliner, you know, skeletonized. Yeah. Yeah. And you have to, because it's one thing, okay, it's one thing if you're taking care of elderly parents, all right?

And you have dad that passes away. And there's all those, you know, kind of, and I don't necessarily think they're anecdotal stories, Dave. As a matter of fact, I recall having worked one similar to it. You know these stories that pop up in the news, I know you're aware of them, where you'll have an elderly couple that have been together for years and years and the wife will die and then the husband will die sort of, you know. shortly after or conversely, you know, it can happen like that. But what are the odds that both parents would essentially slip off the mortal coil, if you will, into the Great Beyond without even leaving a trace? Dave, a real tip of the cap here to, and I love the fact that you used the term newsman.

You don't hear that term used much anymore. This guy, he's actually an anchor. His name's Greg Floyd. I really, if I could sit down and have a cup of coffee with him, I would love. love just to sit there, ask him maybe two questions and just let him talk. I'd love to hear what his gut reaction was to all this. And being professional in media, I'm sure that, you know, he would try to keep it right down the line. But, you know, at a human level, he's sitting across, he's sitting across from this guy saying, this is the last thing I expected when I woke up this

morning. Right. You know, I can, I can only imagine the tale. And what's really fascinating about this Dave is that this case, these cases are going to go to trial. Right. He's going to be compelled to testify. And he'll be up on the stand. And it's a rare thing when you hear reporters testify. You know, so in this case, you will, you probably, because, you know, he's the one that kind of gleaned, because they're going to want him to break down. How did this work? What was your motivation for, you know, offering this guy, you know, access to you and to, you know, to your, your megaphone that you have with the media and you know and the thing about it is it's all on tape brother every bit is on tape with it well it kind of makes you when you look at the the history of

the the guy of floyd mr floyd had been in the business for 45 years okay he's not a rookie and when this two-page email comes in from somebody that they just found two bodies in the backyard and he you know he wants he wants his statement post that That's where this whole thing started with the son, the killer, the son, or the alleged killer, the admitted killer. I don't know the right word, but anyway, Lawrence Krause sends an email to all the media, newspaper, radio, TV, sends it out to everybody. And he's saying, I want this posted, you know, on your website. It's my two-page explanation of why they're in the backyard. and nobody responded and it's probably because there was probably nobody at the radio stations

there you know because they're all brought in from outside nobody you know local radio and TV are not really local anymore and so this one news place they are manned and they did have a professional in there and so he reaches out and says tell you what buddy um we'll post you'll post this on our website if you come in for an interview so it's a little trade off here, you know? You don't know if this guy's going to go, you know, David Koresh, you know, wanting to open up the seven seals before he gives you the truth. But this guy said, okay, let's do it. And so Floyd has like 10 minutes to prepare, 10 minutes. So in that 10 minutes, he knows the bodies are in the backyard and he knows they're elderly. So he's probably going to assume

they were getting some kind of payment here. Money's coming in. There's going to have, he's going to justify something. And so once he gets him in there, the son is trying to make it seem like he was doing a sonly duty a child's way of taking care of mom and dad well just because somebody's old doesn't mean they're headed for the dirt you know there are a lot of people that are very old that are living vibrant lives you know Clint Eastwood is still directing movies and he's 157 you know yeah yeah you're you're right and you know one of the one of the things that he had uh he had he had he had he had he had he had stated as his rationale. I think he's regarding this as a mercy killing, essentially, is what it comes down to. And one of the things that he had stated his rationale is his parents were, and again, I'm kind of using my own words here, that his parents were declining in health. And one of the one of the the reason cited is that his parents had had the dad had been hit at some point in time as a pedestrian and had you know could not ambulate real well um mom had had cataract surgery

now i got i got to tell you i didn't know cataract surgery was was a qualification for you know from murder, but, you know, if everybody in America that had cataract surgery, if that condemned you to death, oh, my Lord, we'd lose half the population. That's a sign, you know. That's the perspective he's coming from, Dave. I'm taking them out of their misery, Joe. My dad's not getting around like he used to him. Mom just had cataract surgery.

They're both, they're old, they're falling apart. I'm just going to help them so they can die in peace and at their own home. and again this guy's level of he needs to be a salesman but he's not he's going to be selling in prison now so yeah yeah i don't understand it and i need to know what he did how did he accomplish killing his mom and his dad well listen this is according to the interview and it's it is one of the more chilling things i've heard in some time and i've already shared this with you but I think our friends need to know, and this is, you know, actually from the local news outlet up there,

he actually confesses. And when he confesses, he tells them in this taping that he had, in fact, suffocated his father now when you say suffocate that's very specific because it's suffocation just like other ways to compromise the airway are considered to be asphyxial deaths which asphyxia means that you're depriving someone of oxygen okay so how would you go about suffocating somebody well there are any number of ways suffocation smothering you know you begin to think about using a pillow, placing a plastic bag over somebody's head, or even the hand. If they're in a debilitated state, which, you know, he's making the argument that they're physically compromised at this point in time in their lives, would you, would you hold your hand, pinch your dad's nose and hold your hand over his mouth? What kind of person

would do this to their father. And then he makes, this is the real chilling part, he kills his dad at this point in time. Then he says, and get this, Dave, that his mother laid her head on the chest of her now deceased husband. And the son stated, allegedly, that he allowed her to be with the man

for a couple of hours. And then he books the exclamation point by saying, I put her out of her misery by using a rope. So now he's suffocated his dad, allegedly, and has taken a rope, wrapped around his mama's throat, and choked the life out of her with it. Now, that's a ligature strangulation. Again, it falls under the broad category of this

affixial death. And he sees this, apparently, as a mercy killing that this was merciful. But then you have to decide at this point in time, what's going to do with mom and dad? And apparently, he lingered for some time thinking about this, maybe a couple of days, thinking about, you know, how do I dispose the remains? One of the most fascinating aspects to people that kill individuals to me, and they do it in a manner where it's unseen. This isn't some kind of public attack or something like that.

And they're trying to cover it up. I'm always amazed by the psychology of these people, Dave. This idea that they kill someone, but yet they want to keep the body near them. You know, it's almost like they're controlling the remains years after. They can keep tabs on who's coming and going, who's around the area, you know, things like that. You know, and I've often wondered,

what the psychology behind that is, you know, thinking about, can you imagine, you know, making your cup of coffee, sitting at the breakfast nook, you're looking out the window, and there, the grassy plane behind the house, I wonder, I wonder how mom and dad are doing, you know, in their subterranean dwelling that I created for them eight years earlier. it just absolutely baffles me and then to couple that with with what with the fact that this guy goes on in a broadcast and actually it missed to this day you know i i have to wonder joe breaking down how he admitted he killed them to put them out of their misery sent them home however he wanted to look at it based on the social security administration beginning the investigation and I believe they were the ones that actually asked for a welfare check because there were some question marks. And neighbors thought that Krauss had moved back to Germany.

That's what neighbors said they thought, because they hadn't seen them around, thought they went back to Germany. So I have to wonder, Social Security Administration, they're looking into financial crimes, all targeted at the son who's living in the home, can't find mom and dad. They didn't go back to Germany.

Well, where are they? And that's when all of this kind of came to fruit. to the to the forefront, but I have to ask you when you kill somebody like that, not you, but generally speaking, people die at your hand. Now, he decides

to bury them in the backyard. How long are we talking about from the time they die until the time you decomposition sets in, you've gone over rigamortis, ragamortis. Oh, yeah. And all of that. Because

they still have to be buried. They still have to be put somewhere and they're going to be decomposing. So what are we talking about from the time they die inside the house and the time he can get them in the backyard, you know, in the flower bed? What are we talking about in terms of... Well, here's

an interesting thing. I think we may have mentioned this before, but if they were, let's say that they had died I hate to box myself in with specific time, but let's just say that they had died just for grins and giggles was say that they had died and they had been in the ground for one year and you

had an indication as an investigator that they were buried back there but you didn't know where you could go in with like a methane probe you know where you're taking taking this and you're taking samples where you're sticking the probe into the ground and one of things with organic material when it decomposes it gives off methane gas and so you're looking for like a spike in in the methane something that like if you have normal or material, say if you had a composting bin, for instance, in your backyard where people will put coffee grounds and dog poop and leaves and they'll turn it periodically. You know, you would have, you would have, it would produce methane, okay?

A good example of that, I'll give you a great example of that one of the things that happens down in the swamps in New Orleans, we have, and I think this happens in Florida too, you have swamp fires and one of the things that happens with swamp fires our highways would get covered with smoke you'll have these little methane uh methane fires that'll break out in the swamp because of the decomposing organic matter and they might be in multiple places and it'll catch a blaze sometimes just spontaneously so that's the power of something decomposing there's always decomposition going on in swampy areas so if you introduce a body into, you know, this non-sealed situation, like a casketed body, you're not going

to find methane production there. But if you've buried a body like that, one of the ways that they do it, you would, you could stick a probe into the ground. But these people are not fresh dead, Dave. We're talking eight years down the road. I would, okay, you're going to have, you're going to have bone that is left behind I don't know what state the bone would necessarily be in a lot of it's going to be dependent upon the pH of the soil you know is it more acid or is it more base

you're going to have to take into consideration water flow through the area because oh wow didn't you think about the water table in Albany oh yeah because it'll rise and fall we talked about this with a well lady but you also have this even in ground burials like this. The other thing that people don't think about, you know, how we always talk about the earth just keeps on spinning and it keeps on moving.

Well, the earth is actually earth. The substrata is actually moving as well. People don't realize this. It's a process called turbation. And so the soil actually kind of, if you'll think about the slowest turning tumble dryer, you've ever seen, all right, maybe just time of bits, all right? The earth actually does, the subterranean, the strata, actually does turn like this.

And so you'll have changes in skeletal remains where it, let's just say that both mom and dad are buried in the same grave. You've got them laid out in there, and now they're reduced to skeletal remains. you can have these co-mingled remains, which is kind of a headache for those that are doing the recovery. Now, it's great, I think, investigatively, that you'll have it all concentrated there, perhaps, unless you've had some kind of subterranean burrowing animal that would get down there and, you know, extricate some bit of that that's left behind.

But they should still be there. Now, there's things that are going on with the skeletal. remains that can cause them to begin to break down more so. And a lot of that goes with the environment that they're buried in, the chemical status of the soil. You know, I'd mention, you know, what the pH level was, those sorts of things. And the other thing is, do they have any external covering, like where they cocoon and also are their clothing? Now, if you've got, let's say that you have synthetics, synthetic, you know, rayon, your polyesters, those sorts of things. If the clothing is still, that clothing is very resilient.

But if you have natural fibers, you know, things like cotton, for instance, or wool, it might tend to break down a little bit more. You might not have as much remnant, but things like zippers, buttons, medical devices, let's just say that they had had surgery. Maybe you have a subject that has had a screw put into a bone. That surgical steel is still going to be there, brother. So you'll be able to see it. I'm thinking of Charlton Heston in the cave at the beach and Planet of the Apes.

I know. Oh, my gosh. I know. You're going to, yeah, you're going to find all that there. Let me ask you about this because one of the tips that they had. Okay, it started as a financial crime with Social Security and all that. They brought cadaver dogs out to the property. And the cadaver dogs hit.

Joe, they hadn't been seen in eight years. They're buried in the background, but cadaver. Or dogs could still get a hit? Yeah, their spectrum is quite amazing. You know, what, and it might be something that you and I, obviously, because we've got a very limited all-factory spectrum, you know, compared to, compared to canines. Canines are amazing. You and I are both, you know, huge dog lovers anyway. Oh, yeah.

And so it's amazing what dogs are capable of these working dogs. So, yeah, now I don't put a lot of stock in dogs that, you know, you. You take out the lakes, you know, and put them on the bow of a boat and they allegedly can smell things. I think that's kind of a hit or miss proposition. But you give me a cadaver dog any day and run them out in the woods. Now, there have been cases where they have failed. They've walked right over bodies. I think my question would be, would those dogs that fail to smell things?

How well were they trained to begin with? You know, I think a lot of that goes to the handler and also the evaluation of the animal. you know are they are they ticking all the boxes right relative to this that's when i saw it in eight years the last time these people are seen we know they're gone and these dogs that's something yeah that they but you know here here's the real problem even though he's saying that he did this and i'm assuming that the corner slash medical examiner is going to rule their deaths at some point Tom as a homicide if they haven't already at this point. Here's the thing.

You're not going to have any tissue left behind to be able to make a diagnosis of like, you know, like he talked about having used a rope to quote unquote, doing air quotes right here, to quote unquote put his mama out of her misery. well, we would be looking for furrows in the neck, I don't know, like certain people, I won't mention their name, but their initials are Epstein. You know, where you're looking for a furrow on the surface of the neck, that's not going to be evidenced with her because that tissue is no longer going to exist at this point. The only thing you could possibly hope for is if some of the structures of the

neck may have been fractured the skeletal structures and if there's any evidence of that if you're suffocating somebody suffocation is not this um it's not quite as violent as you know taking a rope you know and like cinching it up on on an elderly woman's neck and doing that sort of thing uh if you're putting a pillow over someone's face to suffocate them or a hand or a bag or whatever it is, it's not going to leave a tremendous amount of trauma, certainly no trauma that I think, and I might be proven wrong, I've been wrong before, that, you know, that you're not going to, you know, that you're going to be able to appreciate. So I don't know, we'll keep our eye on it and, you know, kind of see what happens in this case. I know that, you know, I don't

want to put words in your mouth, but one of the reasons, you know, I pitched this case to you is it's one of the more bizarre things that we've actually had happened in recent memory. I don't know if you concur with my assessment. Before you guys think this is a slam dunk, let me share one quick side note. All right. Yeah, please. Let's just say for the sake of argument that this guy who goes on TV and confesses

that they found the financial crimes and all that. But what if? What if after everything said and done, Joe, they find out this guy's a true crime fan who wanted to start his own podcast. and this was the best way for him to launch it. But really what happened, it was a murder-suicide. His dad killed her, his mom, and then he suffocated himself. And the son was so humiliated by what had happened to his heroic parents

that he took care of their bodies. He did his, you know, and he used this as the stepping stone to launch his own career in true crime, but he didn't actually kill his parents. He did put their bodies in the backyard, but he did that out of love and devotion. He did not want the memory of his father. You know, what about something like that coming down the pike? I'm telling you, friends, if O.J. Simpson can walk out of court, a free man, other stories can work as well. It ain't a slam dunk.

I got to tell you something, Brother Dave, in the world that we live in now, confessions on television, burials in the backyard, sons that disregard the lives of their loving parents that survive. Nazi Germany, nothing nowadays surprises me. Everything is on the table. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Bodybags.