Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: The Murders of Tylee and JJ: The DNA Solution

Episode Date: August 2, 2022

Tylee Ryan and J.J. Vallow’s bodies are discovered on June 9, 2020, on the property of Chad Daybell in Rexburg, Idaho. After months of missing person investigations, complicated circumstances surrounding their disappearance, and a string of suspicious deaths, police have charged Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell in the horrific murders of Tylee Ryan and J.J. Vallow.  In this episode of Body Bags, forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan and Jackie Howard discuss the complex case against Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell in the murders of Tylee Ryan and J.J Vallow. They also discuss the striking differences between the ways in which Tylee and J.J 's bodies were treated post-mortem, complications of processing the crime scene, and the request to allow for forensic DNA testing on the evidence collected by the state of Idaho. Subscribe to Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan : Apple Podcasts Spotify iHeart Show Notes: 1:00 - Introducing the deaths of Tylee Ryan and Joshua Jaxon “J.J.” Vallow 1:54 - Sections 1: A brief history of the confusing events that led to finding the remains of Tylee and J.J. buried on the property of Chad Daybell 5:29 - The mysterious death of Tammy Daybell 8:03 - Cause of death: natural causes, a seemingly inaccurate determination for a physically active woman who was in good health 10:32 - Searching for physical evidence of the cause of death in an exhumed embalmed body 12:00 - How authorities located the remains of Tylee and J.J.  15:41 - The striking differences between the treatment of Tylee and J.J.'s bodies 18:32 - Section 2: Processing the crime scene 20:57 -  Examining the evidence on the tape and plastic bag encasing J.J. Vallow 22:17 - The problem with cutting open a bag containing remains at the crime scene 24:07- Recovery of Tylee’s remains 28:24 - Individualization of evidence: examining every bone fragment of a dismembered body 30:16 - Section three: Forensic DNA testing on the evidence recovered at Daybell’s property by the state’s crime scene unit  33:40 - Specific evidence found at the crime scene 39:30 - Consumptive testing: setting a dangerous precedent by allowing third-party observers  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. As a death investigator, there are no other deaths that impact you more than the death of a child. You can't get past it. Some people would say that it's almost a trite saying, but I don't know that there are any truer words. I'm still haunted by cases from my career involving the deaths of little ones. The deaths of Tylee and JJ have haunted us now for months as we continue to look into this investigation of Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell. But something has come to light recently relative to DNA testing.

And today, we're going to explore that. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. I keep going around and around and around with this case, and the more doors that are opened, the more confused I am relative to what we have as far as causal factors of death, what we have as far as tiebacks relative to specific types of evidence that are out there. And I got to tell you, I'm confused at this point in time. Joining me today is Jackie Howard, executive producer of Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Jackie, we've been on this journey together for a while. Are you as frustrated as I am? I am, Joe. And to be able to understand what's going on with this case right now, we need to back up and look at the history. Lori Vallow has been married several times, and that's very germane to this case at the moment. Lori Daybell divorced her

first husband, then married Joe Ryan. That is Tylee's dad. They divorced, and Joe Ryan died, reportedly of natural causes. Next, Lori marries Charles Vallow. Lori and Charles adopts JJ. JJ is the biological son of Charles's nephew. Charles and Lori get a divorce but have a contentious custody agreement. He goes to the home to see JJ and at that point he is shot by Lori's brother, Alex. He claimed it was in self-defense. Next in line is Chad Daybell, but at the time that Lori meets Chad Daybell, Chad Daybell is married to Tammy Daybell. Tammy Daybell dies in her sleep. No autopsy is done. And Chad and Lori get married on the beach in Hawaii just two weeks later. I'm going to let you take this over now, Joe, and explain to us the intricacies of Tammy Daybell's death. There was no autopsy. And ultimately, Tammy Daybell's body was exhumed as questions arose whether or not her death was truly of natural causes.

You know, the beauty of what we have here relative there is any kind of beauty, I think, is the simplicity of science. As confusing as people can make things in their own life, the messiness of it, when we're looking at death investigation, we always turn to the science. And we try to get an understanding of the world that we inhabit. Certainly, Tammy Daybell, we think about her death. We think about JJ and Tylee. And with Tammy, Tammy was, you know, and we've done a full episode of Body Bags on Tammy. And that case has always struck me as so bizarre. And not necessarily just simply her death, but what took place afterwards.

Because you have a very young woman who was in robust health that had no, and I mean no no signs of any kind of disease or pathology or anything going on as a matter of fact it's been widely reported that she was trained to participate in races and all these sorts of things that is running and she had no previous complaints but yet she's found dead by her husband chad Daybell, that fateful morning. And seemingly, the wheels began to fall off from an investigative standpoint. You've got a less than thorough investigation into her death at that moment in time. She is not autopsied, which somebody given her age range should have been autopsied, particularly with no previous medical history. Because, you know, the coroner looks at a case like this, and if you don't have an attending

physician that's treating you for some kind of disease, then it falls to the coroner to sign the death certificate. Well, what are you going to list as the cause of death in a situation like this? And in conclusion, you know, her death was listed as a very nonspecific, natural type of death. And it's anything but that. She was essentially embalmed and taken across state lines from Idaho to Utah and where she was buried. And her body was in the ground for months before somebody came to their senses and said, you know what, we've got all these other deaths that are occurring. We've got this young woman who is in pretty good health. We probably need to exhume her and take her body out

and take a look at what's happened. Let me jump in here, Joe. 40-something-year-old women do not usually die in their sleep. When it does happen, obviously the first thing you think of is some kind of heart condition, a heart attack, or something along those lines. But if that had been the case here, that would have been listed on the death certificate as the cause of death, as opposed to just natural causes, correct? Yeah, yeah, it would have been. And, you know, when we think about heart attack,

the only way to make that diagnosis is to do an autopsy. Now, you can suppose a few things, I guess. If somebody has a diagnosis of heart disease, they have a diagnosis of hypertension or any other kind of contributing factors, but we didn't have that. So in order to make a diagnosis of a heart attack, which actually is a term that is used in the general public from a medical perspective, it's called a myocardial infarction, which means that part of the myocardium of the heart has died due to insufficient blood supply, oxygenated blood supply.

So you have that little bit of heart muscle, the myocardium, that actually dies and the heart is incapable of keeping up and providing the body with the supply of blood and so the individual dies but you have to visualize that in order to make that diagnosis post-mortem this is not like you've got somebody in the hospital where you're doing diagnostic testing and all those kinds of things that go on that didn't happen here you've got somebody that you're saying that this is a cardiac-related death. They're found dead in bed. They have no previous history. And you're just going to set of circumstances to put the authorities in. And that decision was made at that critical moment in time where they just decided to release the body

and have her buried. And the reason it poses a problem is not only had you not examined internally to see what was going on with a heart or with a brain, you know, because it could have been a stroke. I guess you could make that argument. But also, once the embalming process takes place, then all the blood is gone. You know, that's the purpose of embalming. You know, you remove the blood, you replace it with embalming fluid. At that point in time, you can't do toxicology because you can't see what's going on at a chemical level in the body. All of that's gone. It's literally flushed down the drain in the mortuary. It's gone. You can't see what's going on at a chemical level in the body. All of that's gone. It's literally flushed down the drain in the mortuary. It's gone. You can't do it.

You're hoping, you know, once you have a body that has been disinterred, where it has been exhumed, which requires an order of a judge, which is no small feat, you're hoping that something physically will still present itself. Like, you know, the things we talk about, like you're looking at a an asphyxial death where perhaps there are little pinprick hemorrhages in the eyes you know for instance petechiae to see that there's evidence that there was pressure applied to the airway and that may be the reason the individual died or there's some kind of physical manifestation in the neck you know hemorrhage in the in the muscles because the embalming process is not going to wipe away that hemorrhage because it's outside of the vessels at that point in time.

It's kind of stained the muscle tissue or the interstitial tissue. And so you're hoping that you can find that or fractured hyoid. We always talk about hyoid or the cartilaginous bodies in the neck. You're hoping that there's some evidence there that you can appreciate but other than that you're not going to find anything so they've really put themselves between a rock and a hard place when it comes to tammy daybell's death the final determination in tammy daybell's death has not been publicly announced yet we do know that the autopsy is complete but again officials have not released the actual cause of death.

However, the Daybell children did tell CBS News 48 Hours that they were told that their mother died of asphyxiation. So let's move forward now, Joe, to JJ and Tylee. Their bodies were found on Chad Daybell's property. How did police go about finding the bodies? Was it cadaver dogs? Was it ground-penetrating sonar or radar? Or was it just good old-fashioned police work?

How did they find the bodies, Joe? First off, this is a missing persons case. If we can reflect back, everybody wants to know where J.J. Vallow and Tylee Ryan. And I remember covering this when it first dropped. And everybody was anxious to find these kids that just seemingly vanished off the face of the planet. Of course, Tylee went missing before J.J. did. And folks were looking for her. And then, of course, JJ went missing as well. After you've exhausted everything as investigators where you're doing a

missing persons investigation, you have to go back to that point in time. Where were they last seen? And you have to think, you know, what are the odds that these two children that are part of the same family would just kind of vaporize and disappear into thin air and there not be a connection? So what draws you back to where they were connected? And that's what led authorities to Chad Daybell's property. And it's, you know, it's in a rural area in Idaho. You could refer to it as kind of an agribased environment that's there. A lot of property. There's outbuildings adjacent to the main house. And you kind of have pasture land out there. There's kind of a communal fire ring where you can see aerial shots. You can actually see logs that people have pulled up around the fire

ring. You can imagine you're hanging out with friends and whatnot. Maybe somebody's got a guitar out. You're maybe roasting marshmallows over the fire up in that chilly environment in Idaho and just enjoying yourself. It almost has a bucolic feel to it when you begin to see it. And then the horror is kind of revealed. You know, I can remember it clears day. They'd found this disturbed upturned soil, which looked odd on the property, where you've got what appears to be sod that has been laid down over a particular area. And it's not like widespread. It's in one focal area. And they go to remove these layers of sod, dig down through the strata there, you know, in the soil. And they come across these odd stones that are beneath the surface there, and they begin

to pull those away. They're described as these flat stones. And there, lying there beneath those stones is the body of JJ. He's wrapped up. He's wrapped up in that environment. You know, some thought had gone into this because, into this because why would you put stones over the body? Well, whoever did this understood that when soil is disturbed, you can never get soil back to the way it once appeared once you've put shovel to it. So, I think at least the reason the stones were placed there was so that there would be some underpinning of the soil and it wouldn't have such a depressed

appearance to it when you begin to look at the topography of the soil and that overlying sod that had been intentionally placed there. It gives you the impression that everything is as it should be. And of course, that wasn't the case because it saw it, I think, as a dead giveaway. You know, you've got that one plot that's there that's, you know, happens to have a different appearance than everything else around you. You can never draw it back to its natural setting prior to disturbing the soil. And then they began to examine this firing area over there, which also is adjacent, and this is kind of ghastly, adjacent to where the family would bury pets. And some people have referred to it as a pet cemetery. I don't know if that's accurate or not.

But when they began to dig through the firing and dig through the areas immediately adjacent to there, they began to find fragmented bone and even some soft tissue eventually and of course that turned out to be kylie's remains she had been rendered down an attempt had been made to render her remains down in this fire and it has come out to you know at this point that not only was there an attempt to consume her remains with fire but prior to that there's an indication from the authorities they've alluded to that she was dismembered and so you've got these these bone fragments that are there and they're not just merely bone fragments when you're going through an area like this you have to understand that if you're talking about dismemberment, and I have to think that this is the case because they've mentioned this several times, they have evidence that the bones are not just merely fragmented as a result of what we refer to as heat fractures where bone comes apart because the fire is so hot. They have specific margins that they're looking at that give them an indication that a tool was

applied to the bone, to the skeletal remains. And these are going to be neater cuts. And that gives you an idea of what had taken place prior to the body being burned. There's preparation that's gone on with both of these remains. Tylee's is certainly very ghastly. But when you look at J.J. going back to his spot, where they had laid him down in the ground, there was this kind of weird memorialization. Because one of the things I didn't mention was that, yeah, he had been wrapped in plastic. Certainly, his head was. And I remember the detective talking about it about in great detail and you can see he was very disturbed when he was given he was given testimony in a preliminary hearing about how much tape there was there was a tremendous amount of duct tape that was involved in the in the wrapping of his body but they also had taken some kind of blanket and laid over his

body before they put the stones and that gives you an idea i think at least that's what we refer to as memorialization of the dead his body was treated differently than tyler's and tyler's was there was an attempt to completely eradicate any evidence of her existence but with jj there was an attempt to i don't know honor him in some way which is kind of a weird term i know but when you compare it to the way his body was treated versus tyylee's, it's quite striking. There's many times when you're an investigator and you're standing out at a scene, particularly where you've got more than one body, you're very confused for a moment. You're trying to decide, what should I do next? Am I doing everything that I need to do in order to preserve

and make note of all of the little details that are at the scene. And, you know, there are many times I've gone home after working cases where I scratched my head and said, oh, gee, did I do this? Did I do that? And this particular case relative to J.J. Vallow and Tylee Ryan, I can only imagine those investigators felt the same way because it is just, Jackie, just an overwhelming amount of evidence that they had to collect out there. Let's look at the positioning of the bodies. JJ's body and the remains of Tylee Ryan were not close together. They were in the same general vicinity, but they were not laid side by side. The recovery of JJ's body would have had to have been much simpler,

given that he was entombed, encased in plastic with duct tape wrapped almost mummy style around his body. So once the officers, the investigators opened the plastic and realized that there was a body inside and they could see the red PJs that it was reported that JJ went missing in. How did they proceed, Joe? Do they just move and lift his body into a body bag and then search the soil and ground underneath? How would they do that? Yeah, yeah. And essentially, that's what you would have to do.

With both of these cases, it's truly an excavation, if you will. And I mean that in the purest anthropological term. You're having to make sure that you account for everything that you possibly can. Talking about JJ, you never know what's going to be down in a dug grave. And it can be the slightest thing. I've worked cases where people have flicked cigarette butts down into holes before they placed the body on top of the cigarette butt. You can find evidence of shovel strikes on stone that are down there. Maybe there's a root that has been cut through.

And again, that has been cut through. And again, that has evidentiary value. And there are even cases where individuals have left behind items that may have fallen out of their pocket, if you can imagine that, while digging a hole. So, you have to account for all of that. It's not just a matter of having lifted JJ's remains out of of this dug grave and then place them in a body bag and taking them away there's a certain amount of care that has to go into this and you know one of the things that you have to think about with particularly with you know we talked about this tape and it's they've identified it as duct tape is that duct tape and they've identified it as duct tape, is that duct tape and the surfaces of these bags can in fact contain evidence that will be linkage back to individuals that are responsible for this.

Again, I reflect back to the father of modern forensics, in my opinion, is Edmond LeCard, this idea of LeCard's principle, every contact leaves a trace. Anything that you do where you're touching a surface, whether it be a plastic bag and certainly with tape, you have the potential of leaving behind trace evidence that's caught up, say for instance, on the adhesive surfaces of the tape and on the surfaces of the bags. And particularly if you've got multiple layers of bags, which kind of sounds like is one of the things that we're dealing with here. If you've encased a body bag within bag on that inner surface, the surface is exposed to the dirt and to moisture, direct exposure. You might not have a chance at getting trace evidence off that.

But that inner area, that inner layer, you could even find latent prints on the surface of the plastic itself. Remember, plastic is non-porous, so it's not as smooth as glass, but you can leave behind print there. So you have to be very, very careful and treated very carefully. One of the things that was really striking to me is,

and I found this a little bit troubling, is that the detective that was watching all this take place in his testimony, he actually stated that one of the investigators at the scene had taken out a knife and had cut the bag open at the scene, revealing JJ's face. He could see brown hair and these sorts of things. That's something that I would not advise anybody to do at the scene. There'll be plenty of time to get identification done once you get it back into a controlled environment. But the problem with cutting a bag open is that once that bag is open, first off, you don't know what you're cutting across beneath that surface. Remember,

if you're talking about multiple layers, you can disrupt evidence beneath there. And also, just to open the bag, that means you're pulling it apart and then you're in a dirty environment and anything can fall into that bag. Your own hair, for instance, if you're not prepared physically where you're wearing a Tyvek suit, for instance, and gloves and all those sorts of things where you can transfer your own evidence that you're bringing into the scene or evidence that you were there as an investigator. It's not a controlled environment. You want to try to get that body back in pristine state.

And in this case, they had to transport these bodies all the way back to Boise because that's where the bodies are examined. And you would want to essentially do an entire x-ray of the body before you ever remove anything from that body or disrupt the packaging in any way because that can a case can rise and fall dependent upon that just because you have a need to see the face that doesn't trump the importance of the value of the evidence that you might be disrupting. The recovery of Tylee's body was an entirely different matter because, as you said, Tylee's body had been dismembered and she had been burned. In fact, there was evidence of a green plastic bucket which was used to burn Tylee's head. So her body, Tylee's body, was placed into the fire and stirred,

for lack of a better way to put it. That's so disrespectful to say it that way. But in reality, that's what happened. That's the reality of what you're dealing with here. You can't church this up and make it pleasant and nice for everybody. You can't do that. The reality of whoever did this, this is dastardly dirty work that has taken place here. And so, as an investigator, when you're taking a look at the scene and you're trying to process it, again, I go back to this idea that this is from an anthropological standpoint you have to

apply you know archaeological methodologies here in doing the recovery and i think in one of the scenes i actually saw sifting stations that they had set up which are screening stations and people are kind of familiar with this you know where you have the big kind of box that has the the screening where you shake down and you can look through all the remnants that are in there. Because if you're talking about cremains, which is what burned remains are referred to as, things for the average investigator that are out there at the scene, you might see something that to you just looks like a dirt clod. But for the experienced anthropologist that's out helping you with a recovery, they can certainly see the difference between, and I'm talking about just eyeballing it, that's how good these people are. They can tell the difference between a dirt clod, for instance, and a bit of human bone. It's

amazing when you're around folks in this field, and this is what they spend years and years learning to do and working their way through. So you look at these circumstances and you see what has been left behind. You have to take care. And in several of the photographs, you can see these aerial shots that they have. They've dug down several layers, but not real, real deep. This is not a deep, deep burial, you know, where you think about a grave, you know, the standard is six feet deep. It's not like that.

But you can tell in some of the progressions of the photos because they're taken over time you see the investigators are standing there and it's getting deeper and deeper but not not to the level of like you know up to their mid thigh or anything it wasn't that deep but you have to take down every layer and this is this is the strata stratified and you have to look at each bit of strata and collect everything that you can to this issue with the bucket, which is chilling, to say the very least. That might be one of the few items that you have could potentially give you an indication of what type of accelerant was used if they were applying some type of gas or something like a fuel like this to initiate the fire. And that bucket, as horrific as it is, might hold a key to tying back chemically to any kind of accelerant that was applied to this area. Because I don't know that they didn't recover any type of clothing. I don't know if they did or not because many times we rely on

clothing looking for accelerants and we can take those and have those tested and that sort of thing to see what type of fuel had been applied to that area. The bucket is going to be critical though and to your point this attempt at rendering is absolutely horrific because there's this issue of contact and melting and all these sorts of things that have kind of co-mingled with Tylee's remains. When this case is in court, the jury's going to hear that, and it's going to be absolutely horrific, I think. It's going to be something that these people, certainly on this jury, have never heard of before, have never seen, have never thought that

somebody could do this to another human being and it's going to be quite striking it's going to be very very powerful but they have to make sure that everything they've collected out that scene all that bit of fragmented bone that they've talked about a lot that they've collected it because even the most minuscule bit of bone that's out there. You have to examine it individually and it will have individual characteristics. And this goes back to the thought about dismemberment. With dismemberment, you have to understand that there will be tool marks. And if you have tool marks, that means that someone picked up an instrument and used it to take apart this body. And that tool mark will be a specific tie back to a type of tool, whether it's a saw was a crushing kind of blow that you might see with an ax or if it was a sawing, which, you know, there's a number of saws and they're very distinctive.

Their teeth have hacksaws that are going to look completely different than, say, lumber saws or limb saws, those sorts of things. And again, those are specific tiebacks that are it's a concept that we talk about in forensics all the time called individualization of evidence and so they've taken their time with this this is one of the reasons it's taken so long for this case to finally make it to the point where we're right on the verge of trial perhaps everything that you said Joe, leads us to the filing made by prosecutors asking for DNA testing on evidence found at the recovery scene of the bodies. Finally, there may be an answer to who killed J.J. and Kylie. There's an old saying that people talk about paralysis through analysis. You can overthink things many times. And when you have bits of evidence that have to be analyzed, have to be examined, because you remember, we have to keep in mind that every bit of evidence, forensic evidence or potential evidence that's at a scene are little breadcrumbs that lead back to what actually happened.

Remember, we weren't there to witness these horrible events. The evidence is going to actually point us in that particular direction to give us an indication of what may have happened and more importantly, who may have been involved. And I think that that's what they're looking at here. The prosecution in the case against Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell has requested that a judge allow forensic DNA testing on evidence recovered from this scene. Now, Joe, with the way that we are in society today with NCIS, CSI, and Criminal Minds, all of the forensic investigative shows that are very popular these days people have the idea that the minute evidence is recovered that it's automatically sent to the lab and tested for everything possible that's not the case in fact prosecutors had not really requested anything be

tested before now why well we have to go back i think in 2021 there was a request and the defense has has kind of fought that they fought that all along the way because they knew they have known for some time that the evidence that prosecution the state okay because this is now people have a hard time i want to break this down very briefly. This is the state's evidence. It's the state's evidence. It's not the defense's evidence. This is the evidence that the state has gone out vis-a-vis their crime scene unit and they have collected. This is the evidence that has been collected at autopsy, at examination.

All these items have been collected by the state. So when the defense sees this, they finding, you're going to get one shot at it because it's so minuscule, in my opinion, at least. It's so minuscule that simply by testing that bit of evidence, it's going to eradicate the evidence at that point. Essentially, at the end, you're just going to have a finding through the testing, whether it's DNA or fiber evidence or whatever the case might be, or potentially even fingerprint evidence. And so it's going to be consumptive testing. That evidence will no longer exist to be tested again. That's what the defense is putting forth. That's what the state is stating is going to happen. And they have waited some time to do this. I am, I think, like many people,

struck by the fact that it hasn't been done to this point. Again, back to this idea of individualization, these are specific tiebacks, scientific tiebacks to everybody that had contact with these bodies who was involved in these events leading up to the death. And one of the things that comes to mind is, and one of the things that's the most striking for me, is they've talked about these dry, dark spots that are on the handles of both a pickaxe and on the handle of a shovel. And I don't know the size. Hang on right there a second, Joe. Let's detail what you're talking about here.

Prosecutors want to send for testing hairs found on duct tape inside the body bag that was used to transport J.J. Vallow's body, fingerprint details on the adhesive side of the tape, dark spots on the handles of a shovel and a pickaxe recovered from the Daybell property, swabs from J.J.'s fingernails that were obtained during his autopsy. Those are the things you're referencing. Yeah, it is. Let's kind of go through these and think about what each of these means. People talk a lot about DNA.

It's not all going to necessarily be DNA. It can be things of other evidentiary value. I think the duct tape is a fine example of this. Because not only what we have found out is not only are there potential latent prints that are left behind on the tape. Latent prints means that it's potentially either an invisible print or if you think about the adhesive. And everybody at home, you can do this yourself. But if you have a piece of tape, take a piece of tape and go to the adherent side, the sticky side, and roll your finger, the pad of your finger over that adherent, the adhesive side. And when you pull it away, you can actually see that there is a fingerprint that is left there. That's what we refer to as a plastic print. It's not a typical print that has been left behind

by fatty lipids, which, you know, if you go to a non-pore surface like a mirror and you put your fingers on that surface, you'll leave behind a print there that is there because of a transfer from the kind of the fatty residue that's seeping through on the pads of your fingers. With this, in the adhesive of the tape, and I can only imagine that might be what they're talking about, you're going to have an impression that has been left behind that is going to be a visible print perhaps. The trick is how do you examine that print without destroying it? And are they going to be able to do that? They've talked about that. I know, for instance, I don't know if they've identified some type of item that is within that impression that has been left behind.

Certainly, you could have perhaps a skin cell that is left there in that adhesive. And then you're left with this idea, well, do I examine the print or do I extricate that bit of biological tissue to do a DNA? And you're going to have to sacrifice one in order to do the other, perhaps. Maybe it's only a partial print, but yet you have some kind of biological item that's in there, say, for instance, like skin or tissue or something, or even blood. I'm going to have to destroy that in order to compromise one thing to get the other. Then you think about JJ's fingernails, and this was quite horrible, I know. Remember, he had been entombed, to use the term that was used earlier, but he's interred in this grave that has been dug, and he's been down for a while. We're talking

from, I think, September. I can't remember the exact number of months, but it was a protracted period of time. They went missing in September, I know. His nails were still intact, which is not uncommon, but they have evidence that they've recovered from beneath the nails. And what happens at autopsy when we do nail examinations is that you do two things. You look for tissue that's caught beneath the nail where you have skin cells that are perhaps caught up. You have tissue that is rolled up beneath there. Again, if it's skin or any kind of tissue, you can perhaps, you can get a biological sample from that. And then we do nail clippings. So the nails would have been clipped at that point and collected and held onto. They still have all of that. That's something that has been captured that they're

trying to determine what to do with it. And so that's quite striking. I think in this case, we have to think about, they found apparently going back to the tape, a hair or hairs that are caught up in the tape. The question is, whose hair is it? It's one thing you would have an expectation that you would have JJ's hair that may be on the tape. But if it's another hair, is that hair viable? And what's the point of origin? Is it a head hair? Is it a pubic hair? Is it an arm hair that has been pulled off? And when you begin to look at the morphology of the hair, that is the examination of the nature of the hair, you can kind of identify that in one big grouping.

But then you begin to think about DNA examination of the hair. Is it a bulb? Do you actually have it yanked out from the base, from the root, if you will? And that's a much more rich area in order to harvest dna from or is it merely a broken shaft that's a bit less specific because you're going to have to do mitochondrial dna on the shaft of a hair so the idea is to track that hair back to try to find that point of origin now if chad daybell who has been charged in this case, and there's indications that Alex Cox was involved in this, I think that the defense is going to say, well, we would expect to find hair from Chad Daybell or Alex Cox because both of these men were in JJ's life. And this is kind of an arbitrary finding.

They're going to try to paint it like that it's an expected finding you know you have a commingling of DNA perhaps but I think that the fact that it's caught up in that tape and that tape was used to bind him up is it's going to be very very powerful the biggest issue with this testing is that once it's done it's done there will not be another opportunity to conduct a test if any error is made obviously they're wanting to find the possibility of finding out who was present at the time the murders took place however once this testing is done it is done all possibilities of any future testing are lost yeah there's no do-over there's no do-over whatsoever even the prosecution the state is that's what they're stating this is going to be has stated that they want representatives

there for this testing. I think the folks at the state crime lab said, you know, no, no, that's not going to happen. One individual did at least. And people have stated relative to the DNA testing that they would like an observer there, maybe a third party to do it. I think somebody has even put forth this idea that you get an independent lab to examine that, and that's not going to happen. Because as I stated, what did I state earlier? I stated that this is the state's evidence. There's a reason that the people of Idaho pay to have a state crime lab. It is the tool that the state uses in order to process evidence. It is, to the best of my knowledge, a certified lab.

So that means that it meets all of the standards. So what are you saying that they're going to do something nefarious to the evidence? I don't think that that would be the case. You want a third party to come in. I think that that might be reasonable. But one of the problems is that you run the risk of cross-contamination. The more people that are involved in this thing, the more damage that can be done. So those are very interesting questions that the court is

going to have to deal with, the judge is going to have to deal with. And I think that it can be a dangerous precedent, if you will, because if they move forward and they say, okay, well, we're going to deviate from what the norm is here, from what our standard is, then that means that this case would be impactful, not just obviously on everybody that's involved, but any other cases that move forward in the state of Idaho relative to criminal prosecution. They say, well, you know, they got it done. We want to have this done as well. And it literally becomes a true nightmare, not just from an administration standpoint,

but certainly from getting to the truth. So this case is going to resonate. Both of these cases will resonate in Idaho and maybe across the country for years and years to come. You brought up the state officials saying, no, we really don't want anybody there observing and the fact of the matter is joe is that they're worried about human error they're worried about being distracted since this is the only opportunity to do this testing

any distractions can lead to human error so unless this person who is watching stands still, doesn't move, doesn't talk, that's the only way to eliminate the possibility they're worried about human error. Yeah, they are. They are. You have to think about, well, what would that person's role be that would be there?

Would they be participating in the testing or would they just be an observer? Do they make comment? Again, you're talking about error and being distracted. And look, from a medical legal standpoint, I've been involved in cases, autopsies, for instance, where we've had third parties that are present in the autopsy suite. I think famously one of the cases that comes to mind in recent years is Epstein's case. Remember, Dr. Bodden was physically present. He was a representative for the family that was there during is Epstein's case. Remember, Dr. Bodden was physically present. He was a representative for the family that was there during Jeffrey Epstein's autopsy. And of course,

that was a case that they suspected as being suicide, but yet he was there. He was physically in the autopsy suite. He made his own observations in that environment, but he was not there in an official capacity representing the state he was representing the family and in this particular case we're talking not about a case that is involving a suicide we're talking about a criminal case where you have these delicate tests that are having to be done this is not like an autopsy that's very don't give me don't mistake me autopsies are delicate all right but when you're talking about dealing with microscopic evidence and molecular evidence to put a finer point on it, you don't want any distractions. There's too much resting on this.

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