Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan : The Children in the Basement - Suicide or Murder

Episode Date: October 13, 2024

Lisa Snyder calls 911 after discovering her 8-year-old son Connor and 4-year-old daughter, Brinley, hanging in the basement. When EMTs arrive, the children are still hanging....and still ALIVE. Today on Body Bags, Joseph Scott Morgan will share his personal experiences with hangings and explains what is to be learned from the scene as Dave Mack takes a look what the mother claims and what the facts of the case prove. Murder or Suicide, the deaths of Conner and Brinley Snyder. Transcript Highlights 00:20.99 Introduction 01:39.59 Two Children found hanging in basement  04:19.14 Suicidal ideation with vocalization 09:37.34 Discussion of death by hanging 14:59.93 Children were hanging but still alive 19:49.57 Not an accident 24:50.58 8-year-old Connor has dexterity issues 29:02.38 Children fully aware of what was happening to them 33:28.72 Description of what would have taken place if Snyder is telling the truth 38:24.73 Struggling with issues Crisis line 988 39:05.42 ConclusionSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Moore. I can't really speak for little girls, but for little boys, having formerly been a little boy, one of the coolest things I used to like to do is to build a fort. And it could either be a fort outdoors, or if you had a few dining room table chairs, in my case, that my granny would let me use, all it took was to take those chairs to a special area of the house and throw a blanket over them. That's a rudimentary fort. And you can have all kinds of going on

in your mind. You can be under attack. You can set up defensive positions. Or you can just sit there. And be in that space. When all hell is breaking loose in your family. And you just want a quiet, quiet place to escape to. We're going to talk about a case. Actually, it's a disservice to say that

we're going to talk about two cases. Both connected. Both in life and in death. And in blood. Today, we're going to talk about two little kids that were found hanging in their mother's basement. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Dave, there's one location I lived in when I was nine, ten. And for those of you that know something about my background, my family history,

I'd love to escape. I love doing two things. I love to escape into books, which I spend a lot of time doing. And I love to go out to the woods and there's a peace that exists there. But, you know, for some, you know, for some kids, I didn't grow up with a basement, but I've often imagined if you could get away, you would want to go to a basement, perhaps some quiet, dark area where you could, you know, pretend that the rest of the world is not happening. If you know what I mean, that you freeze that moment, Tom, you're seeking that place of peace. And in today's cases, and Dave, I want you to admonish me if I say that in singular, these are cases, it's not just a singular death. We've got two precious little babies that have died and they have died. We'll go ahead and tell you right now, that have died. And they have died.

We'll go ahead and tell you right now. They have died at the hand of their convicted mother now. And this was, this is, I have to admit, this case was not on my radar. And it popped up. And I think you and I have some pretty strong feelings about this going forward. When it happened September of 2019, it happened on my oldest son's birthday, September 23rd, 2019. Oh. And I remember the case when it happened because it was horrific,

but even from the very beginning, when you hear a story and the headline is two children, eight and four, found unconscious in their basement. Trying to remember the actual phraseology that was used because the children were found hanging in the basement. And the immediate impact on that is what happened before that led up to this was no one paying attention. Was this an older child that killed a younger child and then tried to kill himself? I mean, there are so many different things to take off with. Yeah. And when you hear particularly mental health professionals and they talk in these very clinical terms about the taking of one's own life, there's two kind of markers that you look for and you listen to.

And I've had to listen to a lot of psychiatrists and psychologists and social workers over the course of my career when I was investigating suicides. And keep in mind, I'm not saying that we don't give as much attention to homicides. We do. But with a suicide in my world, medical legal world, we're kind of the we're the lead detectives. We're the lead investigators in those because there's nothing to prosecute. So you have to go back and talk to all of those that are in inner circle. So these terms, these markers that you that you hear about, and this goes to what you just revealed, is the idea of they'll ask suicidal ideation, does that exist? That is the individual thinking about it.

And then they'll say suicidal ideation with vocalization. So there's kind of this gulf that apparently takes place in the brain where you've got an individual who's been thinking about it, but now they say it. And that's like this kind of threshold that they cross over. And you get beyond the saying, and they begin. It's one thing for somebody to say, I don't feel like going on. It's another thing for somebody to say, I don't feel like going on, so I'm going to do X, X, and X in order to facilitate that. That takes it to another level beyond that. And so you have to assess these cases when you're going out.

And, you know, the underlying theme, and I know I've talked to you about this over our time together, Dave, is that every death, every death is a homicide until proven otherwise. And so we're going to, when you have a suicide, I want to, and you're being presented with this. If I lived in a perfect world and I'm an investigator, I'm showing up, I don't want the police. I don't want a crime scene tech. I don't want even the 911 operator that's dispatching me to a scene. I would rather them just say it's a death. Don't tell me that it's a suicide because to say a suicide, you're assuming something. And you do that at your own peril. I've actually had that happen to me where I just assumed that something was a suicide and it turned out to be different. And from an investigative standpoint, that's your Achilles

heel because there are certain things you have to do in homicides you're not necessarily going to do in a suicide investigation. So, your vision is colored automatically. You know, the way your brain is wired, I'm working this as suicide, I'm working this as suicide, all along could be something else. And how much more so with a double hanging, which is something that is so beyond the pale of my experience. I'm not talking about everybody else. You can go out there and you can find these outlier cases.

And I know that they exist. But from my experience, have I ever had murder suicides? Yeah. Oh, yeah. They occur regularly. We'll hear about them in the news. Interestingly enough, when you hear about somebody that goes in and, you know, like kills their whole family and then kills himself. Isn't it interesting how it only makes it through one news cycle, essentially?

And these are big, big deals in whatever jurisdiction it is. You've got multiple deaths in one location. So it's really easy, I think, for some people intellectually to brush things off. But I always feel like that there's a suspect and that's I'm jaded and hardened to this. I always assume as an investigator that people are lying to me and that what I'm not going to allow my lying eyes to dictate to me. You know, perception is one thing. But can I prove it scientifically? Back to the bigger question. Have I ever had kids, in my experience as a medical legal death investigator, at this age? We're talking eight and four? No, I have not. I've not had these kinds of events that have occurred in my experience where I've had a child that has committed suicide and certainly not some kind of double event that's so off the beam, if this were a real thing, okay, if it were real, this is the kind, these are the kind of cases, Dave, that people that do research on, they would write papers about this.

Okay. A double suicide of an eight and a four-year-old. Just let that seep down into your groundwater just for a second and begin to think about that. What are the odds you're going to have two kids that are going to simultaneously make a decision like that and end their lives? And listen, this is not like we're not talking, Dave, about a firearm who, you know, we have to say, you know, what eight and four-year-old are going to be able to wield a weapon. Now, have I ever worked accidental shootings with kids?

Yes. Yes. That's a thing. It happens with some frequency. Okay. But we're talking about something that's really complex here, Dave. We're talking about with hangings, you have to, first off, identify a ligature, a suitable ligature. Then you have to calculate, is this going to be sufficient to the task at hand? Like if I'm looking to take my life,

all right, where do I tie it off? How do I secure the knot where I'm anchoring the thing? Then how do I tie a noose? Which to this day, I've tried to understand. I remember there was a case many years ago where I had a guy that had tied an authentic hangman's noose. You generally don't see those. Okay. Where it's actually wrapped around 13 times. And I took a piece of rope and tried to do that. And I'm not a Navy guy, so I don't do well with knots. And I couldn't duplicate it. It's something that has to be practiced. I'm not saying that's what happened here, but you have to be able to understand form and function. And this is really higher level thinking when you begin to think about it or

consider it, you know, you're talking about placing a noose around your neck. Oh, and here's the other thing. How are you going to get up high enough to do it? Oh, well,

we have to find a couple of chairs that we're talking about an eight and a four year old. And you and I, we're both daddies and granddaddies. We know what a distinct difference in height exists between an eight and a four-year-old, and you and I, we're both daddies and granddaddies. We know what a distinct difference in height exists between an eight and a four-year-old, particularly between a little boy and a little girl. How are we going to be able to assess that at this age? So, automatically, bells and whistles are going off in my brain. And thank the Lord above, all right?

Thank the Lord above that in this case, these authorities that were out on the scene, Boba, they were like, something stinks in the state of Denmark here. You know, something smells bad about this case. This is not as one of the forensic pathologists I used to work with, he said this all the time and it kind of stuck in my lexicon. He says, this is not as advertised. And so that, you know, you're telling me that it's a suicide. All right. You're telling me it's suicide. I ain't buying it. I'm just not buying it.

Dave, you got me fired up with this case. I can't. It's so bizarre. I really need you to rein me in, draw me back down. I was actually concerned about doing it, Joe. Well, it's just, man, it gets me. I'll get up on a soapbox and also just please bring me back to reality here and let's orient everybody as to what's going on here we're starting with the 9-1-1 call there's a lot of information that gets packed in at the beginning when you have in this case mom calls 9-1-1 and says i found

my children downstairs in the basement hanging. And there are several things that didn't take place after that that really bother me. And I need your firsthand take on this for me personally, Joe. And I'm going to assume that others need the same thing. Because from that 911 call and from what we learned after the fact is that when EMTs arrived, these children were still hanging. And all I could think of is my first reaction would be if I were to come downstairs and see not one child, but two small children, an eight-year-old and a four-year-old hanging my first thought would be to cut them down yeah yeah it would be and i gotta tell you i

i don't give two hoots in hell about how fragile you are as a mama okay just let me lay that groundwork these are babies. They're suspended in the air. Why is it that you are not moving heaven and hell to get over there to release this pressure from their neck? And they would still be warm. Oh, let me tell you something. Not only would they still be warm, but these kids lived three days afterwards. Dave, they were still alive.

You have evidence or firsthand accounts from the EMTs that arrived who could describe the scene as they see it, as opposed to what they would have seen if it had been me. They would have come into a train wreck. I would have had both children on the ground trying to do whatever I could because that's what everybody I know in my entire life would have done. But that didn't happen here. And so my multi-pronged question for you is one, have you ever had a child commit suicide that you had to work? And child, I'm talking under 10. Have you ever had a child hanging and have you ever, ever heard of somebody finding a child in this situation and not taking them down? Yeah, let me break this down. So in answer to the question, part A, I have never worked, me personally, I'm sure I have colleagues out there that have,

I've never worked a case involving a child 10 and under that committed suicide. I know that they exist. I know that they've happened. It hasn't happened in my world. All right. Number two, children hanging. Yes, I have. And probably two of the most tragic cases I've ever had.

And they still haunt me to this day. I had, I think this child was 11, and this was in Atlanta. His mom was cracked out. He was left in charge of all of his siblings, and it was right after one of the Batman movies had come out. And he, they had no television. This was in the wintertime. There was no heat in the house. I'll never forget this as long as I lived.

This child, he had an old jump rope, you know, the cloth kind of rope thing. They're real inexpensive. And what he would do was they had this house was really old and had huge closets and he would tie off the jump rope and he would put on his Batman mask and make a cape out of a towel. And he would swing from inside of the closet on the outside and bounce back and forth. And he would have all the little kids on the floor watching him, and he'd entertain them. Well, he did this, and he got twisted in that rope and suspension hanging with this thing.

And he died in front of his little siblings and the mother was out walking the stroll and this lady that lived down the street heard a child crying in the middle of the street and the child's only wearing a diaper and i memory fails me i think this was like in febru February in Atlanta, Dave, which is rather cool. This baby is walking down the street crying. And this little old lady comes out. And she knew about the house. She knew bad things were going on.

And she finds this little precious child walking down the road. She goes and scoops her up. And little baby's crying. And she goes in the house and finds the other kids in total. You know, they're in total disarray and this child is hanging. That was the first one that comes to mind. Second one, I had a child that I actually assisted on autopsy on. I didn't work the scene, but one of my colleagues did.

And this was a kid that was on top of a tire swing and you know, how kids will get on top of a tire swing, put their feet on the tire and then swing back and forth and kind of do, uh, uh, you know, move gyrate the, the rope and it, And his mother drove up and it had wrapped. He had slipped off and the tire had pendulumed around his body. And he hung like that. So, yeah, those happen. But, Dave, those are extreme cases where these are accidental events that occur. I've had adults that have accidentally hung themselves,

and that happens. I mean, it truly does. And generally, they get twisted up in court somehow, or it's just blind fate that creates these things. But that's not what we're talking about here, Dave. These two babies, the children, by the way, of Lisa Snyder, were found hanging by dog leads in the basement, which for me is, you know, dog leads are generally, I found, and she purchased these, I think, from Walmart, if I'm not mistaken, or had purchased them online. She ordered them the day before and picked them up the morning of.

Yeah. And these things are generally, you can, a twisted wire of a certain gauge. The lower the number of the gauge, the bigger in diameter something is. It's counterintuitive many times. Anyway, and they're coated with rubber or some kind of rubberized plastic, you know, that kind of, it's like a, almost like a conduit, you know, that, you know, that, that, uh, uh, that, you know, contains these things, but she had bought these things and these have been used, uh, in order to facilitate the hanging of both of these children, Dave. Joe, when looking at a case like this, where you have two people dead from hanging and in this scenario eight-year-old and four-year-old

when mom calls police calls 9-1-1 and describes it um she went upstairs to call 9-1-1 the the hanging took place in the basement she never returned back downstairs she calls calls 911 and never goes back down. Now, would this be a tip off to investigators that this is not in the norm? And would it be enough for them to actually say it out loud? Something's wrong here. Oh, yeah. Yeah, not. I would expect her to stand and deliver at that moment in time if i ask her a direct question why and you know i hate the why question let's see how

could i phrase this why didn't you cut them down yeah why didn't you cut them down what was what was going through your mind what what was it that was so more important that you stay up here as opposed to going down there? And let me go ahead and tell you, ma'am, beforehand, fear don't count. She actually had an answer, Joe. Yeah, I got to hear it, Dave. She said that she tried. Tried to do what? She tried to get him down.

Four-year-old brinley little girl beautiful little thing uh four-year-old brinley i think weighed uh under 40 pounds right okay and she mom didn't have the strength to get her down um connor eight years old was a big boy. He weighed just South of 150 pounds. And when she couldn't get Brindley, she immediately just said, well, I can't get him. That's the story she told. That's what she said. And I think about the mother's stories we've heard, you know, mothers lifting cars off

babies and things like that. Yeah. This internal, this, I, the motherhood strength is not just physical, it's emotional, psychological, it's every type of strength. Yeah. It'll trump just about anything

that's out there. And also response, response, response toward other individuals that are coming into the sphere of their children too. You know, things that moms will do,

they'll get in between their kids and a pit bull. Right. And you don't think, you know, as, you know, you know, things that moms will do. They'll get in between their kids and a pit bull. Right. And you don't think, you know, as, you know, you're here and you're thinking, well, I don't want to be subjected to the pain of it. All that stuff falls away when you're talking about your babies. You'll do anything. Yep. You know, and where is that here? And I think for investigators, you know, when they're hearing this, and I'm sure that some of these investigators are moms and dads, when they're hearing this, and I'm sure that some of these investigators are moms and dads, and they're thinking, you know, what's wrong here? Why is it

that you have not done something? And, you know, I do know this. I do know that the son, he had asked if he could go down into the basement and build a fort. And he had taken two chairs down there, um, to facilitate this. You know,

when you mentioned that earlier, the building a fort. Yeah. My grandson, Braylon. Yeah. Has been in that mode. Oh yeah.

Yeah. He will build a ford out of anything and that's what struck me as well when you were talking about that earlier i thought yep he's in that zone of uh and has been you know yeah i i don't you know you you think about connor um who's this eight-year-old kid he's he's, we know that he has issues. And very specifically, the issues of disability for him. He has a speech issue. He has dexterity issues.

And these are things that he's growing with. And he is a big boy. I mentioned he's eight years old. He's 150 pounds. This is a jovial child, Joe. But mom, mom claimed from the very beginning he was bullied at school, bullied on the bus, did not want to go to school, hated going to school. She laid out all the reasons and even said he didn't want to die alone. Her eight-year-old son, bullied at school,

hates school, wants to die, doesn't want to die alone. Yeah. Let's break that down real quick because here's the deal. For every kid that is actually bullied, that's truly being bullied in an environment. Well, first off, by virtue of this, and I know that this probably doesn't matter to Lisa Snyder at this point in time. She's got more problems on her hands. But it diminishes everybody else that or every other child that's going through this kind of thing, right? And so it's almost like that that's a default position many times, bullying. And you can say that, you know, and it really doesn't require much of a deep dive. You know, you say, oh, bully.

Okay, well, let's roll with that. That superficiality many times kind of clouds the judgment when you're trying to do an investigation. Clouds the judgment when you're reporting it. Yeah, exactly. And so she's, by virtue of that, it's my opinion that she's trying to put the police off scent. You know, she's giving them, you know, I've got to tell you, Dave, there's something that happens when you work the death of a child. And I know this to be a fact in my world of investigations.

Most of the time, parents, particularly in the immediate, one or two things happens. They're either nonverbal or they're screaming so loud and it's unintelligible that you can't make sense out of it there is no middle ground most of the time you don't have somebody that when they're talking to you and you're asking them about a death of a child where you know they've got that very kind of flat thing that's going on uh where calm collected you know they have kind of all the plot line is there or as they say in hollywood the through line is there you know you you don't have that and so investigators would pick up on that and then you go back to to the idea that these you know you couple that with this explanation and then these children are, still hanging when she goes down there.

And here's another little thing. Those chairs that I mentioned, they're turned over. And that goes to staging. It goes to staging because you can take – I mean, how much effort does it take? Well, if I take the chair and I lay it on its side like this, it's going to look like they kicked the chair out from under them. You know, in some grand thing, you know, like the scene with Brooks in Shawshank Redemption, you know, where he kicks, you know, kicks the rocks it back and forth and that's kind of the classic thing. You're going to tell me that an eight and a four-year-old

child did this and the chairs are both lying there and yeah, it would be horrific, but I would think it would be a greater horror if you have to look back and say, I didn't do a damn thing about this to rescue my children from death.

So, you know, for me, I think working a case like this, I'll have more questions than answers. Because here's the thing. This would not have been a painless death. This would have been something that these children would have been fully aware of, that the last bit of oxygen was leaving their body. Their brain is screaming. It's on fire. Their chest, no longer capable of rising and falling. They can't take it in because all the while, all the while, that noose created by a dog

lead is growing tighter and tighter around their necks simultaneously while the weight of their body draws them down. And there would be an awareness there. It would not be a merciful death. But I have to say, Lisa Snyder is faced with a certain reality of prison. brother let me kind of break this down for you let me tell you what this person lisa snyder

has said about her children all right in. In this case, first off, she's told investigators that she thought that her children wanted to kill themselves. Just, you know, think about that. Then she says that her child was bullied at school, Connor specifically. She claims that Connor, again, we go back to, you know, when I was talking about ideation and with vocalization,

she claims that he had vocalized about taking his life. Okay. And then she says, and this is a very profound statement here. When you think about it, that, um, he didn't want to die alone.

You know, that's, that's the kind of thing you hear. Like if somebody's, you know, suffering from some kind of horrible terminal illness, I don't want to be alone, you know,

in my bed when I pass on. I want my loved ones around me or something. He's this eight-year-old is actually vocalizing this to her. And here's the other piece to this that kind of it's almost like she's building out this narrative. this narrative, she says that Connor did not like to go into the basement alone. Ergo, he's going to bring his four-year-old sister down there to accompany him. And of course, for her and her mind, I'm assuming

this is her line of logic here. She's trying to give the police a rationale for what she wound up bearing witness to when she went down there and saw both of her kids suspended in the basement. You know, you think about, well, how does this work? We're not talking about two adults that have entered into, and these cases do happen. I've actually worked a couple of these, where you have two adults that have entered into a suicide pact. But that generally involves like an OD. It smacks of what we used to refer to as a final exit death, which are kind of detailed in this book that was written years ago. You have all those, but it goes to kind of a higher level thinking, something you don't expect from an eight-year-old child.

And here's the other thing. We're talking about a child that police discovered, and he's been diagnosed with apraxia. And he has a difficult time vocalizing things. His thought pattern doesn't marry up to others, but he's a jovial kid. And here's the other thing, Dave. He's also got dexterity issues that kind of accompanies apraxia. He has limited motor ability or it's compromised.

It's not the same as, say, children on a normal developmental scale. And so the fact that you go just at a baseline, Dave, at a baseline. Why this is so absurd is you think about, again, the tying of everything, the facilitation of moving chairs. And then he would have had to have, if this were the case, he would have had to have taken his little sister, gotten her up on a chair, put a noose around her neck, and then kicked the chair out from under her or pushed her swinging out away from her and pulled it down, whatever the case might be.

How do you explain that if this kid has this handicap, essentially? How do you do that? Oh, and by the way, after this eight-year-old bears witness to what this horrible thing that he is alleged to have committed, then he's going to get on the chair and do the same thing. How does it – please explain to me, the chair and do the same thing. How does it please explain to me? And this is obviously rhetorical. Please explain to me how exactly does that happen? Oh, OK.

Well, here's the other thing. You've got two siblings, one eight and one four. They look at one another and they go, OK, we've got the nooses set up. One, two, three, go. Is that the other option that I have here? See, that's what really makes this so absurd. There's so much planning in my experience with suicidal hangings that takes place. I just, I'm not buying it.

I'm not buying it. No matter how hard you try to sell this to me. That's what it's so absurd. But, David, as if this couldn't get any darker, please, I'm begging you. I've already heard this line about she had mentioned to somebody that, and I'm paraphrasing here, I just couldn't do it anymore. I didn't want to do it anymore. Whatever the case might be, cry me a river. But this thing really took another dark turn here, didn't it? Well, you know, in today's world, there's always a digital footprint that has to be looked at. And as police were searching, they found out that Lisa Snyder had done a number of things online. She looked up topics such as carbon monoxide,

hanging yourself, effective ways of hanging a person. She searched episodes of the TV show. I almost got away with it, which is fascinating to me because in each one of those cases, they didn't get away with it. You're not really going to learn how to get away with it. You're going to learn how they got caught.

But the other thing that pops up in this authorities recovered digital evidence that revealed photos and conversations regarding sexually explicit messages about the dog performing sexual acts on Snyder. There you have it right there. Bestiality.

And holy moly, Joe, you've got a woman accused of killing her two children, ages eight and four, and add bestiality to it all. She's going to have a great time in prison i think yeah because you know look uh i know people judge folks that are in that are in prison and people are in for a number of reasons you know there's many paths that lead there uh but let me tell you something uh a group of people that do exist in prison, and just let this sink in. There are mamas in prison. There are mamas in prison

that lament every day the decisions that they have made that have separated them from their precious babies on the outside. Okay? They sit there and they think about that. Now, Lisa Snyder, who has now been found guilty, okay, in a court of law in Pennsylvania, she's going to march herself into that prison. And the prison population is fully aware of what a new inmate has done. They have ways of finding out. that she, in fact, destroyed these two precious babies because she was tired of it.

Where you have that portion of that population that every day would long to wrap their arms around their babies that are on the outside while they're in. Think she's going to have a tough road ahead of her. Listen, folks, if any of you are struggling with issues or you have friends that are struggling with issues, all you have to do is call 988. That's 988. There's a lifeline. It's a suicide and crisis lifeline. Please don't sit back. You're not alone. There's hope. There's help. Again, that's 988. Just reach out. There's help available. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Packs. This is an iHeart Podcast.