Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: The Things Left Behind

Episode Date: February 18, 2024

The new owners of a house in Colorado are pleasantly surprised to find the previous owners left behind a working freezer in the garage. Pleasure turns to horror,  as they begin removing bags of frozen meat, and find a human head and hands! Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack explain what it will take to solve the mystery.  Transcript Highlights  00:01:27Talk about gruesome discovery  00:02:05 Discussion of yard sale  00:02:58 Talk about hoarder  00:04:10 Talk about free working freezer  00:07:36 Discussion of frozen head  00:09:23 Talk about getting more than you bargained for  00:11:21Discussion of calling 911  00:14:27Discussion about dismemberment show  00:18:17 Talk about previous homeowners  00:21:23Discussion about finding the rest of the body  00:24:28 Neighborhood people talk about coroner on site  00:27:49 Discussion about all the items that left the area  C00:30:47Discussion of wrapping the head  00:33:51Talk about investigation of body parts  00:37:43 Discussion about freezer slowing decomposition  00:39:25 We're going to need to follow up on this case. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. I've thought about in the past when I go out onto crime scenes and I see the homes of individuals. And you see them in all various conditions. You walk in and you'll see places that are absolutely impeccable in not just style, but also in how they are kept. But those seem to be the exception and not the norm, at least in my experience. I've had those where I've gone into homes that I guess I would regard in my status as mansions. But many times you walk into places

and there's been a total disregard for those things that have been, I don't know, accrued through a life. You've spent money on them, but yet they kind of lie about in trash heaps. Things broken, torn. What would, to most people, seem to be rubbish. Just kind of piled off on the sides. And you often wonder what brought this person to this state,

to indwell this type of environment. But you know, sometimes you find things hidden beneath those piles and secreted away in locations that you wouldn't normally think you would find. Things that would draw you to, I don't know, discomfort, maybe even horror. On Body Bags today, we're going to talk a little bit about a rather gruesome discovery, a gruesome discovery that has been made in far Western Colorado in Mesa County. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Dave, you ever been much of a yard sale attender? I have been. I'm glad you asked. Actually, you know what?

What? You're having one this weekend. Every day is a party. Every meal is a feast. It's just like Mardi Gras without the beads when you're at somebody's yard sale. You've got a home that has been recently sold, and the people that bought the home are flippers, house flippers. Fairly common practice. Oftentimes, they'll come into an area, and they'll buy a home that's undervalued for various reasons.

It could be damaged. It could need some repairs or things like that. In this particular case, according to a neighbor, the people who had lived in the home before might have been hoarders. There are varying degrees of hoarders. It's a guilty pleasure of mine is watching the TV show Hoarders. I actually worked a death involving the former spouse. The lady that died had been previously married to a well-known radio celebrity from the 40s and the 50s. And if anyone's ever heard of the show Sky King, which was a show that was on the radio

and then it kind of jumped over to television and she died in this home. And Dave, I swear you walk through her home and she had stacks and stacks of newspapers and there were paths that were cut all the way through the newspapers in order to get to her various living areas. It kind of made me hyperventilate in that environment. I couldn't function. She was a bit of a hoarder. Yes, she was.

And this is when people kept news. All I could think of is if you smoked, if you tip your cigarette anywhere in there, this whole place is going up. And it was an apartment. Oh, even worse. Yeah, I know. Well, in this case, we have people that they sold the home. And what I've had to do is some research on this.

Because to start right where we are, okay, the new owners come in and they're cleaning the house up. They're preparing to flip the home. And so they run an ad, social media, on Facebook, Craigslist, what have you. Hey, we got stuff in this house. Come by and get what you want. It's all free. They just need it toted off. And people did.

One of the items was a freezer. And, you know, as they were getting the freezer out to take it off site, they wanted to unload it because it was too heavy to move. And it was a working freezer. That was the catch. Hey, it's a working freezer. Come get it. Well, what do you have inside a working freezer? Frozen stuff. And there are bags of frozen meat. I don't know exactly what kind because it's been in there for a long time, but there's a bag, a black bag. It's wrapped up and they get it out and it starts to kind of unravel and fish fillets fall out and so they kind of assume well this is just old food and they get the bag up to the tail of a

pickup truck that they're going to try to put the freezer in and as they're unwrapping it more because it's coming apart a head falls out a human head falls out of the bag now you just had you know uncle ben's fish fillets fall out the next thing you're not expecting a human like you're never expecting a human head they immediately stop everything and call the police mark your calendars friends if you find a frozen head in a freezer your life now becomes the time before you found the frozen head and the time after, because you will never forget this moment in time. No. And, and I can, I can tell you most assuredly that anybody that discovers a human remain,

um, it does, it marks you at that moment in time. And I actually had this happen to me. I remember one case famously for me where I was the person that discovered a set of human remains. Remember, when you work for the medical exam, you're called out as a result of human remains that have been found. Okay. Now it could be a homicide. It could be a natural. It could be skeletal remains.

And we would always come in the aftermath. But there had been a multiple death in this residence. And I was searching through some of the remainder of the home and opened a closet. And there in the bottom of the closet were pots and pans, but they were stacked on top of a rug. And when I went to pull the rug up, there was blood. And then I pulled it up even more. And I saw the backside of a female that was in a fetal position and she had been killed and stuffed in the closet. And it, Hey brother, it got my attention. I'll have to tell you that. And I'll never forget that moment. And one thing that always stood out,

it was, I believe it was her son that had killed her. He had taken a rendering from when he was a small child of a Valentine's that he had cut out. You know, kids will do this on construction paper. And it said, I love you, mom. And that was resting on top of the pots and pans that were stuffed on top of the carpet, which contained her body. So, yeah, I mean, even as an old death investigator, I remember finding bodies. I cannot even begin to fathom this idea that you are John Q. Citizen.

Yeah. I mean, everybody's encountered rotten food in a refrigerator. And you go digging about, and you don't know what you're going to find. And all of a sudden, you take out the black bag, and the thing begins to give way. You see fish.

And all of a sudden, rolling onto the ground at your feet is a human head. Yeah, my head's still kind of reeling right now, Dave. No pun intended. My head is. I cannot imagine the price that is paid by this individual that saw this happen literally right before them as this bag gives way and this head comes rolling out. don't think that the head was the only human anatomical element that was found at the scene which again is even makes this more chilling if it could possibly be more chilling how worse can

i mean this is the old joke of where you know but then you know and so you've got the head and that makes them stop everything they're doing again you've got to remember when you set this scene this is a home that has been bought not by somebody who's moving in to start a new life this is built but bought by somebody who they're going to clear it out fix it up and resell it that's all and so people are there to get whatever free stuff they can they think they got a great deal free frozen freezer that is working and here comes the head well you call the police immediately and they come out now my question is this joe because when the police get that call are they thinking okay they think it's a frozen they think it's a frozen head in the freezer but it could be

and they started thinking fake head it could be a joke it could be any number of it could be a halloween thing yeah and then when they get there now do they pick up the phone and call you you know somebody and say can you meet us over there yeah and anytime you have any question about and i'm saying you referring to the police anytime they have a question and this happens more than i think a lot of people realize you have a question about uh some type of bit of anatomy. I like to say anatomical element because you never know what that's going to be. If there is any kind of question whatsoever, you call the coroner ME and they'll come out and they'll take a look and they'll confirm it.

So you'll see it in the state that the police see it. Well, yeah, yeah, exactly. And hopefully, you know, and here's the rub. We don't know what the people actually did with this item once it, there happens to be a person who did take pictures of the police going in and out. And that's what I wanted to ask you because other than the head, uh, again, it was wrapped in a plastic,

there was a plastic bag inside the plastic bag. This head had been wrapped several times apparently, and they were unwrapping it because they obviously it felt different. The bag felt different, but the head fell out and there were hands in there as well. Now, because the police were called as soon as the head hit and nobody touched it after that,

apparently that's, I'm guessing it was, if it's somebody like me, after I stopped screaming and crying, I would, and somebody called nine one one, you know, I wouldn't touch it.

And you would tell anybody else, don't touch that. It's evidence now. No, I could have sworn it. They found would tell anybody else, don't touch that. It's evidence now. No, I could have sworn that. They found hands. You found hands. They found hands. They found hands, yes.

That's what I'm saying. But the thing is, I don't know if it was the people that found the hands or if it was the police. I mean, we're like, you know. Yeah, because I got to tell you, even at this stage, after everything I've seen, and just as a civilian as I am now, if this is laying at my feet, I'm backing off and I'm going to tell everybody else to back off. Don't touch this any longer. I don't know what, look, if somebody is of a mind to put a head in a freezer, I don't know what else they'll put in there, you know, because I want the police to come out and secure it. And I want there to be accountability. First off, I don't want them to think I had anything to do with it.

Right. And so that's, that's an important piece to this. The thing is, I was looking over this and the people that came to get the freezer, like I said, they're there to pick up a working freezer and there was stuff in the working freezer and they saw other me and they had decided they were going to donate the freezer food to a, an animal shelter, which I think it's all well and good, but you don't know what it is. You don't know how long it's been there. I don't think this, I'm not suggesting you do that at all. I hate throwing stuff away, but you don't give away something. You don't know its origins. You just don't.

Yeah. And to be able to verify it, um, even if it's got, you know, some kind of meat stamp on it, even if it's got some kind of meat stamp on it. I don't know about giving this away to an animal shelter. They even admitted that this collection of meat, and we're not talking about the head at this point, just the meat, that it was in fact freezer burned. So maybe it was just completely unedible. I mean, I don't know about you, uh, particularly back in my bachelor days, I would buy stuff and stick it in my freezer and inevitably I'd never use it. It would wind up being freezer burned. And so, yeah, that, that happens. So would the animals actually consume this? You would. And don't do that. That's the tip. You know what your tip today on body bags if you've got meat in your freezer and you can't tell what it is don't give it to animals

rules rules to live by yeah yeah absolutely and and but you know the police are faced with a heck of a conundrum here because they're coming into this thing cold um literally no pun intended yeah They're coming in here cold. Give me a heads up next time you're going to do something like that, would you? I will. And when you have remains like this and you're trying to understand it and trying to understand the origin of this, this becomes highly complex because that signals, that signals for us from a forensics perspective that the rest of the house, the rest of that structure, Dave, is potential for a crime scene. Because we've talked and we even did a, remember, we did a special at CrimeCon about dismemberment. Remember?

Yeah. And people, I think we blew a lot of people's minds relative to this because you and I had encountered these cases. And here we are. We're back at it again. Oh, man, I forgot about us doing that. Yeah. They did look at us weird after that, too. Yeah, well, they did, but that's okay.

I'm used to it. But let me ask you this because the police always act like, you know, it's a homicide investigation. I'm going to be honest with you. Is there any other way you could look at finding a frozen head and hands? You're not finding a whole body that's frozen. You're finding parts of a human being. You're finding the head and hands. We don't hear anything about finding any other part, just head and hands.

Now, I'm asking you, how can you look at that and say, okay, do we actually have like a table and coffee where we debate how a person's head and hands could end up in the freezer and it not be a homicide? Yeah, the only reasonable explanation I could think of, and I don't even know how reasonable it is, if this was an anatomical donation that they had stolen or that someone had taken away from a medical school or a dental school. Dental schools in the past have been known to use human heads. What? Yeah, to work on teeth.

Really? Yeah, I don't know if that still occurs to this day or not, but used to years and years ago. And there are specimens like that that have been dissected out. But, you know, how do you explain the hands as well? And here's the thing. We've got, you know, I'm going back to this term element. We've got three elements, okay? And just because we're looking at this through the lens of science at this point in time time you cannot assume anything so this is what the police are faced with relative to these three elements they are faced with a

prospect that these three anatomical elements two hands and a head don't necessarily have to have the same point of origin okay doesn't mean that they came from the same body i know people are probably listening and rolling their eyes and say come come on, Morgan, be realistic. I am being realistic. You cannot assume anything because for, I mean, how many times do we talk Dave or do our call? You and I haven't covered a lot of serial cases on here, but how many times have we sat through lectures or listen to something on television? And you'll have people that will say, well, serial killers love to take trophies. You know, they love to take trophies. I don't know.

Maybe that's the case, but you cannot just simply blow it off. You cannot just simply dismiss it. You said the whole house now is a crime scene. Oh, yeah. We did hear a neighbor refer to the house as the house of hoarders. And the backyard as well. Any of the yard space as well i'm sorry go no no and that's why the new owners okay when the house was sold a week before the

house was sold the a neighbor reported that the family had a u-haul truck now i want to back up and tell you a little bit about the family that was there can i do that real quick oh absolutely yeah you had the eimer family there I-M-E-R. I-M-E-R. Bradley David Eimer and Leanne Eimer. And I looked them up. I followed the tree on Facebook because David Eimer, he died. It was COVID related. He went in in June of 2021 and never came out and died on July 7th of 2021.

They did a fundraiser online. His wife did just said, Bradley Eimer came down with COVID last month and was admitted to ICU June 27th. He passed away July 7th. Our family's trying to raise money to pay for his burial and medical. And she goes on to list. This is what she says.

Now this is in 2021. We're talking about this head being found in the working freezer in January of 2024. We're talking last month in June, July of 2021. This is what Leanne Imer wrote. We had a flood in our home a couple of months ago and have been living in a hotel since May 3rd. All right. They've been in a hotel since May 3rd. Her husband gets sick in June, dies in July. All in 2021. She said they're trying to work it out with the homeowners for insurance and contractors to complete the repairs needed. Our daughter is starting her senior year in a couple of weeks and her father's passing has just devastated her. They were the best of friends.

You know, as an investigator, you have to have, particularly if you're looking at a case where you've got all of this familial unit that is, you know, this event is concentric. So it's like right in the center. It's the bullseye when you begin to think about where the head is found, the hands are found. And so everything else that extends out from there, all the family connections, the immediate people that were occupying that dwelling. There's, I think, more than just the brother and the sister and the mother. There's probably a couple of other people. At least there's an indication of that. Where are all of these people and right now

the police to this date have not released who these remains belong to is it possible joe if if i die and you don't have and my family can't bury me they can't they try to raise ten thousand dollars to bury mr eimer and they raised about fifteen hundred i think yeah okay if they don't raise enough money to bury you, does the family ever get the body back? Can I go and just claim the body and say, can you put it in my van? I'm going to take him home for a little while. It all depends on state, state stat. Really? I was making a joke.

That's actually really thing you can. Yeah. We, you know, famously we, we had a case in Atlanta where we had a family members that lived up in the mountains in North Georgia. I'll never forget this, the night that it happened. That's the night the lights went out in Georgia. And, you know, Atlanta is not in the Blue Ridge Mountains. These people lived up in the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Georgia.

And they came and they picked up their loved one in the back of a pickup truck and covered him with a tarp. They had a burial certificate and all of them, and we had the death certificate and they weren't going across state lines with him. So we released the body to them and they had a family plot where the family all pitched in and dug the grave. So yeah, it is a possibility, but most of the time there is in most counties, there's an indigent burial fund. And so if the family does not have means in order to bury the body, and you know who the person is, that is the deceased, you can go and beg, if you will, the county, look, please aid us, and they will bury the body for you. But you're not going to get the body back immediately if that's what is going to happen.

Either way, I hope because in this particular case that we're going to be able to find the rest of the body because right now all we're left with are a pair of hands and a head. So in Mesa County, Colorado, the authorities are faced with several problems. First off, I think the biggest thing is who is this? You think about the head, the hands. We've got ways to identify the body if we have a head and hands and then they have to determine well is it possible to understand what may have been the cause of the mechanism of death well if you're limited to only hands and a head it's going to be a tough uphill battle all right well let me ask you this too because there was a report that these might have been hoarders and their varying degrees of hoarding.

We know that the yard was a mess. We know there was a lot of stuff in there that was toted off. And that's why the flippers wanted somebody people to come and get stuff. But one of the things that was described, a neighbor had taken pictures of the soon after they got police got there, determined what they really did have. They pretty much shut down the area and people showed up in hazmat suits and, uh, then white truck with a camper shell without windows showed up. That was identified as belonging to the Mesa County coroner's office.

Uh, neighbors decided the coroner's presence meant there was human remains, uh, because at first it was, um, you know, it was a doll. It was a Halloween thing, you know, but then they see the coroner and it's like,

oh my gosh, that was human. People wearing coroner jackets are starting to show up. And then the night after, this is on a Friday afternoon, on Saturday night, they're working all day Saturday, Saturday night, law enforcement returns to the house and went through with black lights. The neighbors were watching them go from room to room with the black lights. That glow is different than what you would normally see. What were they looking for with black lights, Joe?

Blood deposition. This is messy business. Yeah. Anytime you have a dismemberment, particularly when you're talking about the head, even, okay, we're going to say this from this perspective. Even if the person is dead, the head is so vascular, the neck is so vascular, you're going to have some level of seepage that's going to come out of the body. So let's just say, for instance, in an example, you shoot somebody dead, okay? Or you're left with this idea, well, what do you do in order to take apart this body

so that it's going to leave behind the least amount of mess? Well, if they're shot, you're going to have blood that comes forth from any kind of defect in the body. If they're choked out, if they're shot, you're going to have blood that, um, comes forth from any kind of defect in the body. If they're choked out, if they're suffocated, you're not going to have that manifestation. But what you will have is, um, is the deposition of blood from the process of dismemberment. And this blood is not going to be as, it's not going to be dynamic, like we've talked about high velocity blood spatter. It's not going to be like that with a gunshot wound or even medium velocity. It'll be more low. It might be passive dripping.

And that's going to give you an indication of the orientation of where the body was and the activities of the individuals that did this. Perhaps maybe even the type of where the body was, and the activities of the individuals that did this, perhaps maybe even the type of tool that was utilized to facilitate this. That's another thing that's very important here because if these people were hoarders, I'd like to know, first off, what walked out the door before these folks got to the freezer? Were there tools in the house? Can you imagine what a nightmare it would be for the cops to have to go out and try to track down everybody that had been in that house? Hey, did you happen to claim an old handsaw you saw laying around?

Did you grab an old chainsaw? Was there a limb saw? Did you have limb shears? Because those have been used in cases I've been involved in. Knives, was there a collection of knives? So anything with an edge to it like that that could facilitate a dismemberment, you got to go collect that stuff and track it down. That's what makes this case nightmarish for whoever is involved in it.

And I guess one of the big questions also,, also Dave is where's the rest of, of these remains? We still got upper and lower torso. Now, I don't know that they're necessarily intact, but why would you go to the trouble of saving a head and hands and then get rid of the rest of the body? Where is that body? Did you take it and bury it in the backyard? Did you cart it off?

And you look at that and you think, well, what type of vehicles have the people own that have lived in that, in that house that makes those cars potentially, potentially a secondary crime scene or tertiary crime scene. Holy moly. Yeah. It is endless. Holy moly. Yeah, it is so complicated. It is endless. It is endless.

And you could go nuts thinking about it if you're an investigator. I was thinking about it purely from the standpoint that they said there's all this extra meat that they were going to take to, and I thought, well, what if some of that? Hey, no, no, no. You're absolutely right. I want to know how that meat is wrapped. And even if it is wrapped, I'm not going to believe my lying eyes as, as my granny used to say, I'm going to have to confirm it for myself that anything that's packaged in

there, you know, they use the term animal meat. Now, I don't know if that means that, uh, you know, somebody had been elk hunting or deer hunting or killing antelope. You're out in Western, uh, Colorado. Um, and they had it, uh, they had it butchered atered at a, at a, you know, what we call down here in the South, a deer cooler, where you had somebody that could butcher the meat for you, or is this something else, if you know what I mean? And the head and the hands were just secondary to that. It's also fascinating to me too, that you've got fish in the bag with the head. And I thought about that and I'm thinking, well, what significance do fish have? Well, we all know what rotting fish smells like.

There is nothing that quite stinks as bad as fish. And I'm wondering if that was used in an attempt to mask the smell of decomposing human remains. I'll tell you what, six months before he died, I'm looking at a picture of Bradley Eimer holding up a big fish. He says fishing, he's got a big old cigar in his mouth. He's holding up a big fish. I'm wondering if that was the trophy, you know? Yeah, it could have been, but I think it was, it could have been one of the trophies.

I mean, it's a, I think it said, I think it said plural, like fish been one of the trophies i mean it's a i think it said i think it said plural like fish fell out of the bag and they apparently were on the surrounding the head which was contained wrapped in another piece of plastic that's yeah it was like the you know when you're wrapping up something to go in the freezer and the way it sounded to me that because there was meat that was wrapped in there and and and I know we can wonder what it was. I do think because of the way it was wrapped in the way it was identified in the way it was wrapped, that that was meat that was wrapped differently than the head was wrapped. That the head had been wrapped multiple times and that it was inside of another bag. And inside of this other bag there, you know, that the fish fell out first because

the bag was ripping had been there for a while. Yeah. You know, people talk about, about serial killers holding onto trophies. I've got another perspective on this and, um, and this has nothing to do with, uh, with a serial killer necessarily being involved. However, when you have individuals that commit a homicide, it's always amazing to me how many of these people hold on to the remains, that they don't take them away in order to dispose of them in such a manner that it's not going to connect them back to it. If you're keeping a human remain within your domicile, automatically, you know, the police are going to come looking for you if this is discovered. And why would you not create separation? I think it has a lot to do with people wanting to have possession and control

over these damning items that they want to have accountability. Because if you go and you bury that head out somewhere in the high desert out in Western Colorado or wherever, you know, they might've taken it to, um, you no longer have control over that item. It's, it's thrown to the winds of chance at that moment, Tom. Maybe you don't do a good enough job. Maybe you think you can keep it better secure there in your home. It's interesting because if you do let it out of your possession, it could be found by somebody else. But let me ask you this, Joe, because we are only dealing with a head and hands scientifically.

Yeah. First things first, what do you do? Because I, they said there was an autopsy done. And, okay, I get that. I think of autopsy, body laying out, and we got the work. But now, I mean, you have the head and hands, and that's it. Where do you start, and what kind of information are you going to be able to get from the hands and the head?

I think that since those two areas are targeted, obviously, at least that we know of, they have been taken away from the body. First place I'm going to start is doing thorough x-rays. I wonder if, first off, with the head in particular, if there is any indication of fatal trauma, and that can come in any number of ways, depending upon how soon they got that head into a frozen state, Dave, if that person was struck in the head, you're still going to have evidence of, say, hemorrhage contained inside of the head. Also, the skull itself, if they were struck with some kind of blunt object, you're going to have evidence perhaps of a hairline fracture or even a depressed skull fracture. You might even be able to appreciate if the person had raccoon eyes.

Maybe they had been so traumatized in the head that the civil ridges right through here and going back into the floor of the skull, that's been fractured. We see that. And if dependent upon, here's really something to consider as well, how much of the neck was left attached to the head. Because if you can go into the neck and do a limited dissection, because it's going to be self-limiting because of the lack of anatomy that you have. When you reflect back that tissue, are you going to be able to see hemorrhage in the soft tissue of the neck, in the muscle? Is the hyoid intact? There's that word again. You know, all those sorts of things. You want to see if their teeth have been knocked out. And, you know, and the same thing with hands,

but the head is going to be very key here when it comes to x-raying the body. If they've been tortured, you can look at the hands to see if you've got any fractures. And are those fractures related to an anti-mortem event, which means before death? Like, were they tortured? Were they hit in the hands with a hammer? Were they sliced in any way with a sharp object? Did this person try to defend themselves? There'd be evidence of that on the hands.

So there's a lot you can do with post-mortem examination. After you do the x-ray, then you're going to go in and you're actually going to do a dissection. And, you know, you're going to dissect that head. You're going to open the scalp. You're going to open the skull. You're going to take out the brain. You're going to dissect that head you're going to open the scalp you're going to open the skull you're going to take out the brain you're going to weigh it you're going to look at the eyes it would not surprise me if the eyes had been removed as well by the physician to retain them you're not you want to be able to have these specimens so that you can go back and if you can't find anything in the immediate, you can get

a consult with someone else. In a case like this, I would certainly reach out to a neuropathologist and have them look at the skull and look at the brain and render their opinion. Because sometimes this stuff doesn't appear necessarily with the unaided eye. You might have to take microscopic slides and look at it. And again, there's so many unanswered questions here. You're going to retain as much as you possibly can in a case like this, Dave. You can get DNA and all that, right? And you test the DNA against every family member. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that's certainly something. And you would probably request those living in this home, they're going to go get a buccal mucosal swab from each and every one of these people. That's going to be valuable nuclear DNA that they're going to retrieve from each one of these people. As far as harvesting DNA sample from the head, yeah, and from the hands. And there's other things too. I think it's important to remember regarding the head, unless they've all been extracted, you're going to have teeth. And do the teeth, do they have all of their teeth? Do they have what's referred to as carious dentition, which means that it is, they have rotten teeth. They've never been under dental care. Do they have restorations? Do they have what's referred to as carious dentition, which means that it is, they have rotten teeth. They've never been under dental care. Do they have restorations? Do they have caps? Do they have fillings? Do they have dental implants? Are they wearing a partial?

So the teeth are going to tell a lot about the person, the lifestyle. And then from an anthropomorphic standpoint if the skull or the head is not completely intact I mean with soft tissue they could do a facial reconstruction on the skull because it's going to be important to determine the race of the individual does does this individual the race of the head does it fit with the other racial characteristics of the individuals that live in this, in this home? Will the head continue to decompose after you put it in the freezer? Uh, it's going to be greatly slowed. What happens is, is that, you know, we talked about freezer burn a little while ago. What happens is, is that, uh, we use the term desiccation. You hear that with fruit and that sort of thing,

like desiccated dates or something like that. Essentially, all that means is that it's drying out. So over a period of time, you can have a frozen item like this, and it will literally begin to contract, kind of shrivel. The bone won't, but all of the tissue. So it might not be recognizable, but you could still appreciate hair length, hair color. Do they have eyebrows? Had they plucked their eyebrows? Um, do they, if it's a male, perhaps do they have facial hair? Uh, and you can even, you can even appreciate this far down range. even if the head has been frozen, you can appreciate things like beard stubble.

Have they shaved recently prior to death? If they do have a beard, how long is the beard? All of those little nuances in a case like this are going to be pivotal when they're trying to determine what exactly happened. But I do know this, to date, the police have not released any information giving us any indication as to, first off, who this person is. They've also not released what the cause of death is, but we do have a manner. The police and the coroner have decided that this is a homicide. We're going to need to follow up on this case.

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