Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: The Unexplained Death of Stephen Smith

Episode Date: April 2, 2023

Stephen Smith died mysteriously in 2015 in South Carolina. Though his death was initially ruled a hit-and-run, it has more recently gained attention following the 2021 murders of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh, which lead to the reopening of his case two years ago. The Murdaugh family was mentioned in the initial investigation, but no charges were filed. Smith was found dead with a large gash on his forehead, a partially dislocated shoulder, and cuts and bruises on his hand. Authorities initially thought Smith had been shot, but no bullet or fragments were found. In March 2023, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) officially ruled Smith's death as a homicide. In this episode of Body Bags, forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan and reporter Dave Mack discuss what types of injuries one sustains when hit by a vehicle, why Joe and Dave think the perpetrator was likely a local, exhumation, mirror strikes, and more.  Subscribe to Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan : Apple Podcasts Spotify iHeart Show Notes: 0:00 - Intro 1:26 - Encountering unexpected road obstacles 4:30 - Open homicide with lots to still investigate 6:45 - What happens when you call 911? 11:10 - Misidentifying a gunshot wound as a hit and run 13:00 - Joe describes types of injuries and evidence left on a vehicle when it strikes a pedestrian 20:40 -  Why Joe and Dave think the perpetrator was likely a local 22:10 - Besides head trauma, what other physical damage would you expect to see in a hit and run case? 23:40 - What is a mirror strike? 27:25 -  Exhumation and its challenges 34:00 - The importance of thorough examination including high-quality imaging and analysis  38:25 - OutroSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. I'm not one to believe in ghosts, but many times when you're driving down the road, particularly down here in the deep south, one of the things that comes to mind when you're in a car by yourself late at night, you wonder what's out there. You wonder what might be approaching you. Can you imagine being on your way to work one day? You look up and you see something in the middle of the road and you're not really sure what that might be. And then all of a sudden you swerve at the last second and you think to yourself, what did I just see? And your brain is going to another place other than human

remains. The case that we're going to talk about today involves human remains. It actually involves the body of a young man, a young man that has been in the news quite a bit recently. We're going to talk about his death. We're going to talk about his discovery in the middle of a lonely two-lane blacktop in the low country of South Carolina. We're going to talk about the death of Stephen Smith. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. My buddy Dave Mack, he's a senior reporter with Crime Online. Dave, you ever have those moments where you're driving down the road and you think you catch something in your eye line and you're not really sure what it is, and then you have to do a double take and think, I can't believe I just saw what I saw. I have so many questions for you about the death of Stephen Smith. I can't imagine going down the road, early morning hours, you're just getting your day started, a cup of coffee

in your hand, and you come upon something in the road that obviously ought not be there. And all I could think of is the panic. And you're not exactly sure. So, you have to stop your car and check on whatever it is. You're compelled to do that at any number of levels. And I've actually encountered this working as a death investigator where I'll be talking to somebody, interviewing them out on the scene of a person found in the roadway, they almost always say, I can't believe this is happening. I can't believe this is happening because I think there's something in our brain where we want to make that thing that we have discovered something other than human. We don't want to see a fellow human being lying there before us. It's one of the most horrific things that you can

imagine. In our minds, we're thinking, yeah, this is probably a deer because that's the most common thing that we encounter. And then you might think, well, it might be a pet. I've encountered any number of things over the years that have crossed my path in the middle of the road, particularly down in South Louisiana. I've seen hogs in the middle of the road. I've actually seen alligator that have been hit. That doesn't happen a lot, but it's a ferocious kind of thing relative to the damage it can do to your car because the bodies of these alligators are so low. I've seen two of them in the middle of the road, good-sized ones, as a matter of fact, and I can only imagine the person

that ran over them. It was quite a shock. But you're trying to think of something other than human, and then once it hits you, and can you imagine pulling over on the side of the road It was quite a shock. But you're trying to think of something other than human. And then once it hits you, and can you imagine pulling over on the side of the road in that darkness? And you're trying to think, what do I do? What do I say next? How do I respond to this? Do I run up to this individual and see if, in fact, they are alive?

Maybe it's someone that's inebriated and somebody pushed them out of the vehicle and dumped them on the side of the road. Maybe it's somebody that's in trouble, somebody that's in crisis. But that confirmatory moment after you've initially seen it and then you have to go back and validate it, I think, in your mind, that's a hard thing. And then when people are hit with that reality, it's certainly something that stays with you for the rest of your life. This was categorized as a hit and run, an unsolved crime of a hit and run. Let me stop you right there. People need to understand something. Stephen Smith's case is not simply a hit and run. This is an open homicide, period, end of story.

There's no debate on that. You have an individual that is dead at the hand of another person. And in a very tight definition, that's how we define homicide. You're not making judgment about anyone when you say that. I don't like the term murder because it's a lawyer's word. It's a theatrical word almost. And yeah, it's on the books in many states. But when you talk about homicide, it's much more clinical. You begin to think about homicide, death at the hand of another. I guess it could potentially be ruled as an accident at some point in time, but at its base element, if what they are saying is accurate relative to the authorities, you have an individual that was driving a vehicle and they struck someone

and they left. That's where the hit and run comes in. But from a medical legal perspective, this is going to be a homicide. And this is an open case. And now we're seven, eight years down range from when this actually happened back in 2015. We hear the term cold case thrown around. I think about my dear sister, Cheryl McCollum, and her podcast, Zone 7. That's what she deals with. You get seven years down range from a case and you don't have any leads in it. Many instances that would be considered cold, but I think that this case is far from cold at this point. There's a lot here from an evidentiary standpoint that you can look to to kind of understand what happened in the world of trying to bring justice for anybody. That's not my bailiwick. I'm interested in the science of things, the forensics behind it. And if that winds up bringing about justice, then that's fine.

But the dynamics of this thing are fascinating. There's enough there that we can begin to kind of unwrap this thing and kind of talk about a little bit more. Okay. You find a body in the middle of the road. How do you go from that to determining that it was a hit and run and nothing else, his body was found in the middle of the road. And I'm curious, what happens from that moment, Joe, when the 911 operator gets the call of a body in the road, what do they do? Do they call you? Do they call police? That's an excellent question because I think that most people would think that. Retrospectively, they would think you're going to call the coroner.

No, you have to validate that the individual is, in fact, deceased. So, the first person that's going to show up, first responders, they're going to roll out on this. So, when that 911 call is initiated, there's a switch that's flipped. What you'll get most of the time is there will be a local fire station that will be alerted, and they have a first responder unit that will roll out. And generally, it looks like a smaller fire truck, not necessarily like an ambulance, but a smaller fire truck. The individuals on that truck will not only be firefighters, but they'll also be EMTs. That's why they get dual certification in firefighting. So, you'll have an EMT on there. Sometimes you'll have a paramedic, which is the top end of emergency response certification if you become a paramedic. And they would roll out to the scene and they're going to

do an initial assessment. Of course, the police are rolling there at the same time. You've got an individual that's deceased in the middle of the road. They're going to want to see this as well. So you've got all these people kind of rolling up there. And EMTs are a big part of what we do in medical legal death investigation because they're the first eyes on the scene. They see things in a very unvarnished manner. Before they roll up, the body is in a pristine state. So, what's their job? Well, their job there is not to investigate. Their job is to save lives. I've had them save my life before. When they roll out, they're going to be the first group of people that are going to see

this. And you know what's very curious about this, Dave, is that when the EMTs first showed up where Stephen Smith was found out there on that lonely country road, they took one look at him. And some reports are saying that the EMTs initially thought that he looked like he had sustained a gunshot wound. I find that curious because when they did that initial assessment, they apparently looked at his head. And his head, from their perspective out on the scene, when they flashed their flashlights on him, they had the

lights on their truck on, which are brilliant, very, very bright. They're seeing such trauma to this young man's head, his skull, that they're thinking, oh my God, we're dealing with a gunshot wound where someone has been left in the middle of the road with a GSW to their head. There was something about the way he looked that their mind didn't go to pedestrian struck by a vehicle, Dave. Their mind went to gunshot wound. I'm absolutely fascinated by that. Of course, they later determined that not only did he have trauma to his head, but he also had trauma to his upper extremities, his arm and his hands. I think there was a dislocated shoulder, that sort of thing. There was just something that didn't quite integrate into their thinking here. Keep in mind, these EMTs, they see a lot more than we can ever imagine because they roll out on everything. They roll out on all these motor vehicle accidents that don't wind up as a fatality, but yet they see

trauma. And they're constantly assessing and what the medical profession refers to as triaging patients, doing that initial assessment, determining what's wrong with them. In Stephen Smith's case, I think that they were really shocked to see him in the state that he was in and certainly the level of head trauma he had sustained. Then how different would it be for those investigators to determine when they are told by first responders, looks like gunshot wound to the head? As investigators, we look for feedback from the EMTs. The common question is, what do you think, doc?

What do you think? Because the investigators, they want an immediate assessment as to what you're looking at. After the coroner arrived out there at the scene and speaking with the accident investigators, the police officers that were out there, they concluded that this was a hit and run, that it wasn't a gunshot wound. I think that afterwards, when they got Stevens' remains to the forensic pathologist and the forensic pathologist did the assessment, they ruled out gunshot wound at that time. Back to the scene, there's just certain things that we look for. There's certain elements along the way that we try to understand about the dynamics of a motor vehicle versus a human being.

No witnesses. Just perhaps Stephen Smith. We don't know what he saw, what he experienced right before his life ended out there. And of course, the person that was driving the vehicle, that person is out there somewhere, according to authorities. I think that the answers, perhaps, or the lack of answers, are going to rest in what was found or wasn't found at the scene. As you mentioned, there are no witnesses to this. We have the police or investigators rather saying it was a hit and run. We have a body, a 19-year-old man found in the middle of the road, not on the side. He is in the middle of the road.

It's the middle of the night. He had apparently been walking because his car was found about three miles away out of gas. So assuming that Stephen Smith is walking down the middle of the road and he's hit, I've got questions about what you expect as an investigator on the scene. Would his body taking on a vehicle, would it just crumple and end up right there in the road or would it not be pushed in a different direction? By the way, I think it's important to know

there are no skid marks here because the impact was such and so quick. You mentioned it was dark, didn't see him to the last second, no skid marks and apparently not a whole lot of broken glass or anything like that, but his body is found in the road. Is that what you would expect? And what kind of damage would you expect to vehicle or human or both? Let's take this example of a vehicle striking a pedestrian.

Our listeners on Body Bags are pretty bright people. You guys like science. You like to delve into science. You wouldn't be here if you didn't. And to understand the dynamics of a motor vehicle striking a human, just like humans, cars come in all different shapes and sizes. Close your eyes and think about a full-size pickup truck. And I'm talking about a full-size pickup truck, which we've got a lot of in the South, sometimes these things can be rather big, particularly if there's some type of aftermarket additions to these things, where you've got brush bumpers on the front of it. That's that big thing that sits forward of the grill. You've got a certain level of height to them that can be adjusted with a lift kit on a truck. Maybe it's got big mirrors on the side that kind of protrude

out. Conversely, you begin to think about a four-door family's got big mirrors on the side that kind of protrude out. Conversely, you begin to think about a four-door family sedan that's going down the road. Well, that configuration is completely different. Maybe you've got kind of a sloping front end that almost looks like a shovel on the front. It's not blunted like a pickup truck is. And we could go on and on and on relative to all of the configurations. But let's just take those two examples and the dynamics that are going to occur between a human body being struck by either one of those platforms. Think about the truck. Many times with a truck, you will see an initial impact dependent upon the orientation of the

victim to the oncoming vehicle. You will get an initial impact. Just the energy itself will push that body downrange forward of the vehicle just for an instant. And then you'll have that occur with these bodies many times what we refer to as rollover injuries. So, there's two separate things here. You've got the initial point of impact. We look for things like bumper marks. If you imagine a mannequin being positioned in the middle of the road in an upright, fully erect position, and a vehicle is coming along, that first point of contact with the leading edge of that vehicle and the human remains or the human body is probably going to be the thigh, might be the lower legs. In the case of a truck, if it's elevated, you might get a grill strike that takes place on the upper torso.

I've even seen grill impressions on the sides of faces where people see it's coming and kind of at a primal level, they turn in one instant. But you're going to have this kind of full-on flush strike and you'll get these multiple points of contact. If it's an elevated vehicle, many times you'll get these, what I refer to as rollover injuries. And if you'll think about clothes in a tumble dryer, the body, as it hits the ground or the roadway in front of it, the vehicle will then roll over the body. You can't stop a big vehicle on a dime. That's why you have skid marks.

So you'll have individuals that will be struck and then the car actually rolls over them. And these injuries that you get look like the person's essentially in a tumble dryer, but yet they're having this tremendous pressure that's being applied to the body. And you'll get these weird looking abrasions all over the body. They'll be kind of curvilinear depending upon the position of the body and the dynamics of the tires, and then the undercarriage of the car as well. We go out to scenes and you have these ferocious injuries on bodies. We'll get beneath the vehicle, and it's nothing to get beneath the vehicle and see all kind of distribution of tissue beneath the undercarriage of the car.

I've seen bone, brain, skin. I could just go on and on about everything I found beneath the car. You'll find fabric from vehicles that's kind of deposited underneath the car. You'll see it on the inner portion of the wheel wells. Dynamic blood deposition as well because you're talking about something that's just shy of high velocity. It's a high-end, medium-velocity spatter that's taking place. So, you'll see a lot that's going on beneath the car. And also, you'll have road dirt, you'll have rubber, you'll have all these items from the car that are transferred to the body, Dave. It's nothing to find a tire impression on a body. I've seen this time and time again,

and it's glaring. You can actually take a photo of it and kind of closely qualify it relative to a particular make of tire. If you can imagine that, you can even see some evidence of wear patterns on tires. That's with a big truck. If we go to a car, like a low sedan, what happens is that when a body is struck, and I'm talking about full flush, I'm not talking about a glancing blow here, but full flush, you'll have an individual that will have bumper marks, particularly if it's a low profile, you'll see breakage many times in the lower limbs in addition to external contusions and abrasions. And what happens is that the body is essentially pitched up in the air, Dave, and will impact many times on the hood or on the windshield where the glass will crack. You'll get blood deposition on top of the car. They'll roll over the top of the vehicle. You'll see blood sometimes deposited on the

roof of the car and then off of the back. And those injuries are very unique in and of themselves. And you'll get transfer on the front of the car as well. If anybody has ever struck an animal with your car, you can many times go out and look at the headlights on your car or the grill, and you'll see tufts of hair that are caught in there. If you were to pluck those hairs out from a morphological standpoint, you can actually identify the species relative to that. Well, we found human hair in grills before.

You certainly find other types of tissue. If we're going with the idea that Stephen Smith was struck by a vehicle, there's no doubt in my mind that there would have been some kind of deposition onto the surface of that vehicle that would have given you evidence of Stephen Smith's person, his physical person. There would have been something left behind on that car. And of course, since they never were able to go and find a vehicle that was associated with this case, that evidence now is long since gone. The only thing that you really have now are recollections where you go back and say, yeah, you know what? He showed up to work one day in the windshield on his car. car had a big, massive tape on it.

He said, what happened? He said, oh, man, this truck came by and it threw a rock and splintered my window. And then all of a sudden it was repaired. They get out there really quick to repair these sorts of things sometimes. So you would have had a vehicle in the same area that would have been moving around. It would have had significant damage to it. So you would think with the kind of damage you just described, whether it's a truck or a sedan, whatever, there would be damage to the vehicle that from an investigative standpoint, looking at the area this happened,

the time that it happened, I know we cannot assume, but based on that, you would think it would be somebody familiar with the area because who else would be driving around there in the middle of the night, in the middle of July? It's not a major thoroughfare. The fella that made the call, I mean, God bless him wherever he is today because he had to witness this horrible thing. He said, well, this is what we call the road. Essentially, you get a flavor from him that it's out in the middle of nowhere. This is in kind of the nether region out here. You're not going to have streetlights. Anybody that's on this road, I guess you could be lost and be on

the road, but more than likely, you know the lay of the land. This is a thoroughfare that you go up and down on a regular basis. You would think that the individual would be a local. And let me tell you something, I've got a lot of friends that have been down in the low country recently in the media, and the one thing they come back and say is that, wow, these houses are really, really far apart down here. You get a lot of city dwellers that go down there to cover these cases, and they're shocked by how underpopulated the area is. It's a low populated area. And so you've got huge gaps of distances between homes. So automatically, you begin to think the most obvious thing. This is somebody

that would have struck him in this vehicle that was probably tied to that region. We know that he has blunt force trauma to his head. What other damage on his body would you expect to see, Joe, if he were hit by a vehicle? As we mentioned, first responders said, looked like a gunshot wound to the head. This is the odd thing, Dave, about this case. What we know about it through media reports and this sort of thing, that the injuries he sustained were essentially concentrated in his head, his hands, and he's got a dislocated shoulder. That's an odd grouping. It's obviously all upper body.

But we have to think about, is that all you've got if you're standing erect in the center of the road? If that's the case, then why aren't there bumper marks? Why aren't there widespread fracturing, which there would have been? You get busted ribs. People will sustain many times what's referred to as a flail chest, which is essentially where the rib cage kind of fractures along the periphery. And the breastplate, essentially, to put it in practical terms, kind of floating there. You got punctured lungs.

You got fractured pelvis. You got fractured legs, bilaterally many times. The femurs, the upper bones in the legs. Fibs will be fractured. Certainly, the ankles will be fractured. You get fractured arms, but hands? Hands and head. And that's really the damage that they've talked about. That's an interesting configuration when you're doing an assessment on injuries.

I think that the forensic pathologist actually opined that this was probably a mirror strike. What do you mean by a mirror strike, Joe? Well, a mirror strike would be if Stephen was standing on the shoulder of the road and you've got a big extended mirror, because I can't imagine just like a tiny kind of molded mirror that's built into the side of a car. I can't imagine it would do this kind of damage. And that's one of the reasons I'm thinking truck. If you're going with mirror strike, then that means the mirror would have to be kind of in an elevated position, high, extending out. It would have to be sufficient in size and mass in order to deliver this kind of force that would create a head injury so severe that when the EMTs rolled out initially, what did they call it, Dave?

What did they call it? They called it a gunshot wound. And not just a gunshot wound. They were probably thinking, oh, my God, look at the destruction of this guy's head. It's so massive, it looks like his head has been shattered by a firearm. These EMTs, they would have seen gunshot wounds before. And that was immediately what their brain kind of flew to. When you're assessing this out at the scene and you're looking at this, you would think, how could a mirror do

this? How could a mirror strike accomplish this? Just like any element of a vehicle, depending upon the manufacturing and kind of how it's put together, is going to leave a distinct trauma-induced impression. And if people will just for a second consider side mirrors on big trucks, it doesn't just have to be a pickup truck. Let's just use like a tractor trailer rig. People have seen those big side mirrors. If you think about that, now that would be too high, I think, to consider. But just to get the word picture in your mind here relative to a mirror and how it kind of extends out, and you look at kind of how it's shaped, it's got two support bars, looks kind of like a big D sticking

off of the side of a vehicle, and it's got the flap that is, in fact, the mirror, that would leave a pattern, particularly if it's textured in any way. So, if you're struck in the side of the head with it, is there an overlying kind of a braided pattern and contusion that's associated with that that would give you pause to think, this kind of looks like a mirror, this might explain it all. So, you've explained the head strike with a mirror. What about the hands? How'd the hands get traumatized? How'd the shoulder get dislocated? All of this must factor into your thinking. And why are there no other injuries? This is the other problem, Dave. The other big problem that arises in this is that we look not just for skid marks, which shows an awareness on

the part of the driver. They're going to apply the brakes. We're going to look for a debris field. The way vehicles are made nowadays, let's face it, it's not like your granny's 1957 Chevy going down the road. A lot of fiberglass, and it's going to shatter at some level, particularly if you're talking about a high velocity kind of event where you're striking a human being. There's no debris, Dave. How's that possible? There's no debris at the scene where you've got bits of plastic, you've got bits of trim that are torn off, you've got these other elements that might be lying about. And my gosh, if it was a mirror strike, you're going to have to go a long way around the barn to convince me that that mirror would not have become detached. And if it didn't become detached completely, my gosh, it's going

to be hanging off the side of that car. And guess what else, Dave? It's going to have something that's associated with Stephen Smith and his person on it. Probably blood, tissue, maybe even hair. If you didn't think we had enough to talk about with Stephen Smith, the latest chapter in this years-long investigation, suddenly a new word, a new term enters the lexicon of many people out there that have not considered this in the past or maybe have not heard about it. I've had phone calls, I've had emails, people wanting me to explain what this is, and the word is exhumation. You pointed out early on, this is a homicide investigation. There have been many, many questions about this particular death. It is an unsolved crime. And during the recent attention placed on the Murdaugh family due to Alec Murdaugh's trial, some information came out.

And we are not privy to that information that caused them to reopen the investigation into the death of Stephen Smith. It is now an ongoing investigation. Well, Stephen Smith's mother, Sandy, she just does not believe the story. She's never bought into the hit and run story. So she set up a GoFundMe account to raise money to do an independent exhumation and autopsy of Stephen Smith. Eight years after the fact, now we're at that word exhumation. I've heard the word before, but I cannot imagine eight years after the fact what we would expect to determine from the body of Stephen Smith. I don't know what it could bring forth at this point. The thing I want to see them exhume at this point right now is the records. I want to see them

hire a board-certified forensic pathologist first off, board-certified, not someone that just merely says they're practicing forensic pathology. There's a lot certified, not someone that just merely says they're practicing forensic pathology. There's a lot of those types that are out there. I want somebody that's board certified forensic pathologist that's got years under their belt. It's hard to explain. And let me try to compare it to some other medical practice. Let's just say, for instance, you've got an individual who is a brain surgeon, okay? They've had the finest training. They've gone through a residency, the whole nine yards, and they deal with trauma, perhaps, or they deal with some type of mass that's related in the brain, and they're going to try to remove that. But then

you've got an odd case in neurosurgery where you've got somebody that has an item that they've been impaled upon in their brain. I want somebody that has a background in extricating things from skulls that are piercing through brain. I just don't want any neurosurgeon. Do you understand what I'm saying? In this particular case, if you're talking about a forensic pathologist, I don't want just simply a board-certified forensic pathologist. I want somebody that has a lot of experience with exhumations. Somebody that has looked at the dead this far down the road after they have been buried. But before they exhume Stephen Smith's body, I'm hoping that they can gather all of the records associated with the initial autopsy.

And I'm talking about everything, Dave. I'm talking about the autopsy report. I'm talking about tox. I want to know what he had in his system very specifically, not just in qualitative. We say, yeah, he had this in the system. No, no, no. I want quantitative. I want to know exactly what you found and in what amounts he had it in his system. Here's the big thing. I won't see any x-rays. Most forensic pathology facilities are now equipped with portable x-ray. It's really old technology, something that everybody should have that's doing autopsies.

I want to see them give these radiographs over to a consulting forensic pathologist and have them review everything before they ever put shovel to dirt here. Now, in order to get his body exhumed, this is not a light undertaking. This is something where you actually have to get what's referred to as an order of exhumation. If you did not have this legal gatekeeper in place, can you imagine what a chaotic circumstance it would be? got a notion to wanting to have some grave cracked open, they could just go out and say, well, I want my great-great-grandfather's remains exhumed. I want them brought back out so we can all take a look. It'd be total chaos. So, they have an order of exhumation. And many times, these are not granted. It's at the judge's discretion. So, this thing under South Carolina law, there is actually a statute for this. They have to go and treat for this. They have to say, listen, we want this done. We're submitting the paperwork, and then the judge will make the final ruling as to whether

or not an exhumation is going to take place. Once the exhumation has taken place, or the order is given, they'll go out, and it's in reverse order of the way they bury somebody. They're going to have to take that top layer of dirt off. If there is a slab on top of the ground, if you're not familiar, the concrete slab just kind of sits there. It would have to be removed. They'd have to dig down, get the dirt out from beneath it, and then they get down to the vault. If you've never been involved in exhumations, which I've been involved in a number of them over

the course of my career, once you get that top layer of dirt removed, you get down to the vault. The vault is placed in the ground. For those that have never seen this before, you don't just dig a hole and place a casket in the ground. It's not the way it works. You dig the hole, which is, in fact, six feet deep. And then you place this big concrete box in the ground. And then the casket is actually lowered into the box. You've seen people using the straps at burials, that sort of thing.

It goes down into the ground. Straps are removed. And then they put the box. You've seen people using the straps at burials, that sort of thing. It goes down into the ground, straps are removed. And then they put the cap, there's a cap that goes on top of the vault. What you've got is essentially a box in a box. You've got the casket containing the body inside of another box, which is the vault. Vault is sealed, covered with dirt. If there's a slab stone that's placed there, it's placed and then you have a headstone that marks where the grave is. Some of the things that you encounter along the way, the water table rising and falling. We're talking about the low country, Dave. And what does the low country have? It's famous for water. It's one of the things that makes it so mysterious and beautiful. Along with that, you have a water table that rises and falls. Many times that's dictated by the Atlantic Ocean that's just stones throw away.

You get a lot of rain down there. They have flooding. So, if you're in a non-protected space like that, you'll get seepage into the grave area and it will also get into the vault. Ergo, if it gets into the vault, it's sitting in there with the casket. Sometimes if the casket is not high quality, you'll get water inside the casket. So you've got the body just kind of free floating inside of the casket. I don't know that that's happened. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's as dry as the day that they placed Stephen Smith's body in the ground. However, it's something that would not surprise me if it had happened. And if that happens, then the remains inside are going to be compromised greatly. You're going to have

all kinds of incidents that occur with moisture. You'll have mold that sets in. It can destroy clothing that might be there. Not that the clothing that is contained therein would be relevant to the case, but the clothing that the body is dressed in would be super saturated with water, and that's going to promote bacterial growth because when the water comes in, it brings all the little microscopic nasties with them that it introduces into that environment. So, you're fighting that, not to mention just years. I've actually participated in cases today. I'll never forget. I had a case where a guy was dressed in an all-white suit, white tie, white socks, white shoes, white vest, and he looked the same as he did the day that he was put in the ground 20 years earlier

he had a carnation that they'd put in his lapel the underlying white material was stained red the carnation was dried but you could still appreciate he had a little bit of mold growing on his face but other than that he was like in pristine condition that gives you an idea as to how well this body was preserved and when the bodies are embalmed, they're there for a long time. If you've ever wondered what it feels like when you tap a body that has been embalmed, it kind of has the same texture as an overinflated leather basketball. That's the best way I can describe it. It doesn't have a foul odor.

It's got kind of a sickly sweet odor. I think a lot of that comes along with the fluids that they use to do that. Here's the problem with Steven. I don't know if he was viewable. I would think that as a result of the head trauma, he probably wasn't. So, his body would have been traumatized. And anytime a body is traumatized, that is going to speed decomposition even in the face of embalming. So, you're going to have these kind of compromised areas relative to the tissue. Can't be as well preserved if a body is intact and then embalmed. That's going to be a consideration here. I've participated in exhumations that have

actually taken place in barns. I've gone to old funeral homes to examine bodies as a result of exhumations. His body has got to go to a state-of-the-art facility. Top-line photography, top-line x-ray and imaging equipment. Some places actually have CT now. You want it well lit. You want to have every instrument known to man that's at your disposal. If you're the forensic pathologist in their team, you want a really good photographer. You cannot do this haphazardly. You can't just go to whatever location is convenient to do the examination. We talked about the amount of money that she had raised, that the GoFundMe had raised. That amount, the last calculation I heard was above $60,000. You're well above what you would need in order to facilitate this kind of examination.

They're going to have to do full body x-rays on Stephen's body, Dave, from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. If there's anything to be found, it's going to rest in those areas. I'm very curious about the extremities. I'd like to see what was going on with them. With forensics, as I always say, your negative findings are just as important as your positive findings. An absence of trauma to the legs, an absence of

fractures in the legs, you'll be able to kind of check off the list that he was not standing fully erect when he was struck by this vehicle. If he wasn't standing fully erect when he was struck by this vehicle, can you validate this idea of a mirror strike? And if the mirror strike is not part and parcel of this, then how did he sustain the head trauma? How did he sustain the injuries to his hands and to his shoulder? I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. This is an iHeart Podcast.