Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Unraveling the Mystery of 40 Skulls, A Grim Revelation

Episode Date: September 17, 2023

The FBI's investigation into James Knott's Kentucky home reveals a shocking discovery: 40 human skulls, femurs, hip bones, and spinal cords used as decorations. In response to this disturbing find, Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack delve deep into the complex and unsettling world of how human remains are treated, examining the blurred boundaries between respect and violation. Through personal stories, including that of a mortician's questionable actions and a chilling account of James Knott's home adorned with human skulls, the duo grapples with society's morbid fascinations. Additionally, they explore historical figures like William Burke and contemporary controversies surrounding Harvard Medical School. The episode culminates in a somber reflection on the trade of human trophies in our digital age, and discussion of ethical dilemmas surrounding these issues, prompting us to question our society's values and the importance of respecting the dignity of the deceased. Subscribe to Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan : Apple Podcasts Spotify iHeart Time-codes: [00:00:20] - Joseph Scott Morgan gives an overview of his experience as a death investigator, introducing the episode's story about a man who worked for a prestigious institution and drove a car with vanity plate hinting at death [00:04:00] - Joe Scott narrates a shocking tale of a mortician's twisted expression of love, and argues that the dead are the most defenseless and that those in the mortuary industry should honor the dead. [00:06:20] - Dave Mack introduces the story of James Knott, a man in Kentucky whose home was raided by the FBI, leading to the discovery of 40 human skulls and other bones used as decorations. [00:07:44] - Insight into the intricate and complex process of dissecting human brains and spinal cords is shared. [00:10:13] - Joe's passion for history and architecture leads to a discussion on ossuaries in Portugal and Milan, Italy. [00:13:00] - Joe recounts the chilling response of James Knott to FBI agents during a warrant execution and raises questions about Knott's motives and activities, speculating on the possibility of him being a necrophile, grave robber, serial killer, or trafficker in human remains. [00:15:20] - A Harvard medical school bag's discovery thickens the plot around Knott. [00:16:37] - Dave probes the enigma of preparing human remains for display, including cleaning and sourcing the remains.  [00:19:40] - How can one acquire so many skulls? Joe presents his theories and also discusses methods of cleaning bones, including using bleach or a heating process.  [00:23:20] - Joseph Scott Morgan delves into the history of William Burke and William Hare, two serial killers known for selling bodies for medical dissections, and explains the prohibition against human dissections in medical schools during that period, leading to a market for human remains. [00:25:37] - The debate steers towards the legality and ethics of anatomical gifts, and the trust issues surrounding anatomical donations. Harvard Medical School's involvement in this case raises questions. 00:27:12] Morgan explains how certain individuals, including Cecil Lodge, former head of the Harvard Medical School Anatomical Gift Program, allegedly brokered human remains. [00:28:06] - A step-by-step journey through the body dissection process in medical schools. [00:29:38] - The morbid market of body parts as "souvenirs" is put under the spotlight. Dave highlights the modern-day horror of trading human trophies on social media. [00:32:00] - Joe Scott contemplates the future repercussions of the episode's revelations on industry regulations.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. As a former death investigator, there's any number of names I've been called over the years. I think that people have a real discomfort with death. They have a real discomfort around things involving the dead. And it's almost comical many times. I guess the first one I remember is, hey, you're just like Quincy. And to bring it up to more modern times, probably Dexter.

People will refer to me as Dexter. Hey, you're just like Dexter. And of course, I always say, no, I'm not. I'm not a serial killer. But traditionally, I guess the one thing that people have equated me with, because it's that imagery that comes to mind, is the Grim Reaper. That's pretty horrible in and of itself, if you think about it. Today, we're going to talk about a man that actually rode around in a car. And he worked for a very prestigious institution. And the car that he rode around in,

it had a vanity plate. And on that vanity plate were the letters G-R-I-M-R. Now, I don't know what that means to you, but it sounds suspiciously like the Reaper himself. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Dave, we were talking about names just a while ago, and isn't it interesting when you get involved in whatever your career track is, there are some monikers, I guess, that are hung on you. There's maybe people forget your name. I don't know. Did people ever refer to you as the radio guy? Oh, buddy. Still, you get called all kinds of things. And I've wondered that about you because when I explain who you are, most of them already know who you are because they've seen you on TV over the last

10, 15 years. So they know you do something with criminal stuff. And then when I try to explain, he's a professor, try to lay it all out there. And ultimately it comes back to the dude deals with bones and DNA. And I don't really know how to explain it, but these people that we're going to be talking about today, and I say people because we got start with one, but boy, what is it? Scratch a liar, find a thief. You know, I've never heard that before. Really? I've heard about pulling the thread on the sweater and the whole thing comes unraveled, but scratch, give it to me again. Scratch a liar, find a thief. Scratch a liar, find a thief. Wow. Okay. I'm following that one

away. I hope you don't have that copyrighted. I got it from Ray, the movie Ray, about Ray Charles. Oh, holy smokes. Okay. Well, there you go. But bottom lining it, this goes to the heart and soul of human beings and how we treat people when they're alive and when they're dead and the efforts we go to be respectful. What we're going to be talking about today, if nothing else, is the most disrespectful thing I can think of happening to somebody without their family knowing or anybody

else. It's a story I didn't think I would ever see, Joe. I'm going to be honest with you. I know crazy stuff happens, but when you start mentioning Harvard, I tend to, I don't know, the level goes up. How do you measure respect for the dead? On an interesting little aside, there was a story that came out many years ago. And if you remember, I don't know if you remember the old newspaper insert magazine that would come out in the Sunday papers called Parade. When you open the Sunday paper, the coupons fall out and Parade falls out. And there was a feature article in there about a mortician that lived in, I think it was Mississippi. And her family had owned this mortuary for years and years. But there was this old gentleman that she regarded in a fatherly way,

and he had no family members. And he worked around the funeral home. Her family was apparently gone, her dad, and genuinely loved this man, really loved him. It was really creepy because what she had done is that when this guy died, she had him embalmed there in the facility that she owned. And Dave, she took his body and stood him up in the corner of her home and left him there. Festoon didn't his son to go to meeting, the article talked about how she would have to touch up his makeup every now and then. But there was this image of her sitting on, you know how they take those fisheye lens images on these magazines, and she was seated on her sofa and over her left or right shoulder

is this guy's corpse in the background. And people had allowed this to go on. Now, I can't say that that's necessarily disrespectful, but certain people, when you begin to think about how you honor the dead, how you take care of them, because let's face it, we can get off into a spiritual realm here and say that the dead are no longer people. I think their families would argue that they still are because that body, that shell, that remains is still representative of that individual and the life that they lived. And how you treat those remains, arguably, if you want to think about the dead are the most

defenseless, right? I mean, there's nothing they can do if you try to violate them in any way. And so there's this built-in trust that people that work in the mortuary industry and those that are in the anatomical gift industry, it's kind of unspoken. You know that you're supposed to honor the dead. And in this case, it would seem at least that wasn't the case. In this particular case, this is where the FBI, when the FBI does a raid, oftentimes the search warrant is always very specific as to what they're after. In particular, the man, James Knott, living in Kentucky, FBI comes to raid his place. Now, he is a man who has a little bit of a record. I don't want to dismiss it, but he did have past history with crime, and he was not allowed to own a gun. When the FBI or local authorities think you are a convicted felon who is not allowed to have a gun and something pops up on their radar, they're going to go look.

And so the FBI raids this home of Mr. James Knott in Bullitt County, Kentucky, and what they find, 40 human skulls. But that's not all. They find spinal cords that are being used as decorations. They find femurs and hip bones. And I don't know because I've never handled these, but Joe Scott Morgan, I'm going to be willing to bet that femurs, from a bone standpoint, are pretty thick and big when it comes to human beings. Oh, boy. You've got the pelvis and the hip. So if you're thinking about those, they're very robust. They're saying spinal cords. But my suspicion is here that we're talking about vertebra. You know, they're saying this guy had spinal cords, and I'm not saying that he couldn't. As a matter of fact, I've got to say probably in the morgue when we do detailed dissections on bodies, and we'll do it for any number of reasons, any kind of trauma that an individual may have sustained as a result of a motor vehicle accident, certainly with gunshot wounds, certain diseases. One of the most difficult procedures

that you can do in the morgue is the removal of the brain and the spinal cord, and get this, leave it intact. And you have to go in anteriorly. So what that means is that once you have removed the organs out of the body, you go down the midline of the anterior aspect or the front of the spine. Okay. So you're only going to see the front of the spine if you're obviously looking at the interior of the body. And to do that dissection with a bone saw is very difficult. And so you can actually take out a spinal cord intact. It's a very, very tedious process in order to do this.

And they will be retained many times in a jar, for instance, and they'll be preserved. And what's really kind of creepy about it when you see it is that with the spinal cord itself, it's attached to the brain stem. And if you've ever seen a brain with a spinal cord attached, Dave, it looks like something from outer space because it's like the brain has this long, long tail attached to it. And I've seen these in jars, for instance. I've actually removed a few and put them into jars, completely intact. And as they age and they're there in that glass and kind of floating, It looks like some type of snake, some alien type of snake, just kind of wrapped and coiled in that environment. And it sits there and you're waiting for it to reveal its secrets. make no mistake i love to travel truly do i value it more than just about anything else i mean

money's great you gotta have money in order to. But if you're talking about a big fancy house and a big fancy car, I'm going to take travel day in and day out because you just learn so much. And there's a couple of places I've always wanted to go. And it's part of who I am. It's what I do. But there's two places. One is in Portugal and the other is in Milan, Italy. And I'm not going to Milan to see fashion. I've always wanted to go and see what's referred to as an ossuary. And it's actually referred to as the San Bernardino alla Ossa in Milan. And there is another one, this ossuary, that is in Portugal, in Evora, and it's called the Chapel of Bones. And what has happened over the centuries is that the monks that take care of the remains, which are buried underground,

they create ossuaries. And ossuaries are these little areas that have nothing but stacked skeletal remains. And the one in Portugal is quite beautiful. It's actually a chapel with an altar that has been created for worship underground. And it's quite striking when you see it. I've always wanted to enter this place and just see what it's like. But here's what I can't imagine, Dave. You're a FBI agent and you're sent out to execute a warrant. And the guy that comes to the door has wild hair, wild eyes.

He answers the door and you ask him, hey, who's here in the house with you? And his response is, only my dead friends. And that's the response that the FBI agents got from James Knott. I'm thinking they were just glad that he didn't look at them and say, you're next. The whole thing about the FBI doing a search warrant and being surprised, don't necessarily know that I believe that. I know they were there as part of a gun investigation, but as we started peeling this onion, there's so much more to this. And all I could think of, A, is it legal? And B, if it's not illegal, why? Listen, no offense to Bullitt County, Kentucky. I'm sure it's a lovely place.

I'd go visit Bullitt County, Kentucky. But you're talking about one man in this location, this James Knott, that has been identified by the FBI, and he's got all of these remains that are inside of his home. I mean, you've got remains that has a scarf wrapped around the circumference of the skull. He's got another skull that is apparently immediately adjacent either on or in his bed, Dave, where he slept. The question is this, is this guy a necrophile? Does he rob graves? Or is it something darker than that? If you can imagine, is he a serial killer or is he trafficking in human remains? I don't know. It seems like he took a lot of pride in this, but yeah, they found a lot of weapons in there. But what's interesting, I didn't charge him with anything related to the human remains, Dave.

You mentioned one of the skulls being on or near the bed. I actually spent some time on this because my first thought was, if this skull is attached to something else and is laying there on the pillow under the covers, we might just not do this show. I don't think I could handle it. But what they did find, and you mentioned the decorations and things like that, the reality of this is I don't think their first thought, the FBI, was we've got a massive serial killer on our hands who is crazy, past Dahmer and Bundy. I don't think they thought that because as part of a bigger investigation, the FBI was not just aware of the trafficking in human remains or is that what you

call the bones? I mean, in this particular case? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's what they're referred to as. And Harvard in particular has been in the news in the last couple of months over some scandals. So as we move forward here, I wanted to give you an idea of what the FBI found. The man had AK-47 with loaded magazines, dummy grenades, two plates of body armor, loaded.38 special revolver, black powder primers, elastic blasting caps, a detonation cord, inert grenade components. And you have to ask, well, was there anything else in the mix of all this, the bones, the skulls, the spinal cords, and the weapons, a Harvard Medical School bag? You talk about putting two and two together, you begin to think, first off, I don't know, maybe there are Harvard-trained physicians in Bullock County, Kentucky. Maybe there are. Maybe there's former faculty members. Maybe there's people that donate. I think one of the first

questions that I would ask this fella is, how did you come into possession of this bag and why is it here? Because when you start to see all of these anatomical specimens, and that's really what they are, they are anatomical specimens, each and every single item there, whether it's one of the skulls, the spinal column slash cords, the femurs, the hip bones, all of these sorts of things, you begin to think, well, you've got these specimens here. Is this in some way affiliated with Harvard Medical School? And how did you come into possession of this bag? I mean, the AK-47s are really intriguing. You're a previously convicted felon. You're not supposed to have any of this stuff. But dude, we've got to talk about the

human remains. How did you come into possession of them? And I think that that's when this takes a turn, Dave. And I wanted to know from you, Joe, when one gets human remains like this, where he's able to use them as decorations, they had to have been scrubbed, cleaned. I don't know where they came from right now. So I'm just assuming that they've been cleaned up because I don't know what a non-cleaned up skull would look like. I'm really out of my depth here, Joe. What are we talking about? Are we talking about bones that have gone through somebody's dishwasher? Have they come out of a lab? How do they use these at Harvard? What is the purpose of having skeletal remains where this guy could have 40 skulls? With skulls in particular, when you're talking about a gross anatomy lab, previous institution

I was at, we had a gross anatomy lab and I spent a lot of time in there with my students. And we'd have generally, I don't know, five, six, sometimes eight bodies that were in there that the students from several different departments within the university would utilize to do gross anatomy with. Trust me when I say the dissections are extensive. And you want them to be extensive, Dave, because these people are going to go into the medical arts and you want them to understand just, I mean, in as minute detail as possible, every nuance of human anatomy and how everything works. It's not just the anatomy, it intact, we don't have all of those

details. You will not find a fully intact skull out of a medical school because what do you have to do? Well, you have to open the head, take the brain out. And you cannot appreciate neuroanatomy as it applies specifically to the brain without eviscerating the brain from the skull. So if that's the case, were the skulls completely intact? Did they have a saw incision, which is referred to, the incision is actually referred to as a circumferential incision, which is a fancy way of saying the incision goes all the way around the skull. So if he's got intact skulls, that's one of the ways, you know, somebody asked me, is this a real human skull? If I see the skull cap is still on there or what's referred to as the calvarium, it becomes a calvarium when you pop the cap off of the skull.

If I see something that is intact and somebody's got it up on a shelf or something like that, I'm going to look at it and I'm going to say, well, if that's intact, why would you have an intact skull? Because you know that it probably is not part of a gross anatomy class. There's a higher likelihood, unless you're collecting human remains, there's a higher likelihood that it's probably a mock-up that just looks like bone. Because most of the time, the students have to pop the caps, these calvariums off of them to take the brain out in order to examine it. There's no other way to get the brain out, okay, is what it comes down to. When it is said by the FBI that he had 40 human skulls, you begin to think, well, my word, how did you get these? And what state were they in? It's an interesting thing. Unless the people in Bullitt

County, Kentucky had went out to the local cemetery and looked around, they had a bunch of holes in the ground. There's got to be some other explanation for this guy being in possession of these skulls. 40 of them. This guy's only 39 years old. How do you collect that many skulls in that period of time in your life? And what's the purpose for you having them? And back to your point about how do you get these bones clean, there's any number of ways that you get them clean. People have used bleach over the years. Forensic anthropologists actually use a technique that is not for the squeamish. If we have, say, for instance, bones that come to us out of the field, and and the tissue there might be some decomposing tissue that's still on there they will essentially slowly heat that bone inside of a pot

with water or chemical mixture inside of it and the soft tissue will fall away and so that what you're left with is raw bone, just pure bone. If you've got medical students that are utilizing bone as a tool for understanding anatomy, they're not very skilled with tools at this point. And you're going to get a lot of tool marks on these bones. You'll see scalpel scrapings, for instance. You'll see where they've used scissors to cut away tendons and those sorts of things. And if you closely examine it, you can see that somebody has done something to these bones. I know that as we move forward, I don't want to make light of this, but Joe,

I don't know any other way when you've got a man who's got 40 skulls on his property and he's made decorations out of them. I would think, and I mean this, if that's your thing to, uh, that you like this type of imagery and around you, that you would just buy plastic, that it would hold up longer. And this seems to be more from a shock value standpoint. And when I saw the guy's mugshot, my first, second, and third thought was, hey, man, don't rule out the possibility that he is a serial killer. Well, here's the thing, Dave. There's a certain level of comfort that an individual has, develops with this. There's almost a callous that develops, I think, psychologically to being around human remains. I'll give you, for instance, when I spent hours

and hours in the morgue and it was my daily routine, I'd go in, I'd have a cup of coffee or soda or something like that, and I'll be standing at the counter writing, there'd be bodies laid out in there. If I just grabbed John Q. Public and said, hey, I want you to come to work with me. I'll go through the drive-thru, buy you a cup of coffee, and you can come and talk to me at the counter. And I've got bodies laid out in there. You think that person's going to listen to anything I have to say? They're not going to sit there and calmly drink their coffee. And for me, it goes to this idea that you become very comfortable in this environment. You don't give it a second thought because it's part of the world that you occupy. So when you're talking

about this gentleman from up in Kentucky, you begin to think, how in the world do you get to this level of comfort at this point in your life where you are actually sleeping with a human skull in your bed. I'm going to throw out a couple of names to you, Dave. The names actually come from a few years back. William Burke and William Hare. And these guys were from Scotland. And they were a pair of serial killers. And they kind of had an interesting, let's say, modus operandi.

They were killing people in order to create a market for anatomical gifts. And these gifts of these bodies of these people that they were killing were going to a gentleman that was highly respected and highly regarded by the name of Dr. Robert Knox. But the problem was this. When you worked in medical schools back during that period of time, there was a prohibition against doing human dissections. And so there was a real market, and this happened a lot. There were several cases. There's even a very infamous case that occurred in Georgia where they went in under, many years ago, went under one of the old buildings at the Medical College of Georgia. It's no longer called that now, where they found an area where bones had been dumped. were doing dissections on human remains that were provided to them by grave robbers. They would do them by candlelight just so that they could understand human anatomy. But the reason I bring this up is that actually one of the center points of this investigation

that the FBI is conducting involves a man. And Dave, his email handle that he actually used was William Burke. James Knott, the Kentucky man that had the 40 skulls, he was the one using William Burke as a Facebook Messenger name. And he was the one, according to the FBI and their paperwork, that's who actually was using that name. And his contact was Jeremy Pauley. Jeremy Pauley being from Pennsylvania, as you start looking at these things, these people were all using Facebook Messenger, Joe. You've got James Knott with the 40 Skulls in Kentucky and his contact, Jeremy, in Pennsylvania.

That's where that investigation begins to really open up to, because ultimately, who had that Harvard Medical School bag and how did it end up in Kentucky at the home of James Knott? That's an excellent question because, you know, now you're getting into the area of anatomical gifts. Who in the world is going to have access to human remains? Well, it's the people that put their hands on the human remains. What's the quickest way to facilitate that if you're looking to actually distribute these among people? Well, if you sign a will and you say, okay, I want my body to go to X, okay? I want it to go to, I don't know, there's people that actually donate their bodies to the body farm in Tennessee. I've had people ask me about that,

something I wouldn't want to do, but people do that. But there are a large number of people that say, for instance, they want their body donated for medical science. And it's certainly admirable, I think, because the body is going to be used in order to teach people so that they can go out and become future practitioners in the medical arts. And you begin to think about this, there's a certain level of trust that comes along with these donations. And it would appear that how Harvard kind of weaves its way into this whole drama. There was a fellow by the name of Cecil Lodge, who's formerly, he headed up the Harvard Medical School Anatomical Gift Program. So there's your point of

contact. And what was happening, apparently, was Lodge has been allegedly using, I don't want to say Facebook marketplace, but he's been utilizing Facebook as a way to broker human remains. And individuals that are tied into here, you've got this fellow in Pennsylvania that's brokering or that the remains are coming to them. There's an individual in Arkansas that is a funeral director. They're acquiring things like skin, dissected out hands, feet, all these sorts of things that you normally use so that people can do detailed dissections. Let me kind of explain to you how this works, because I think a lot of folks might believe that when a body is used by medical school to teach gross anatomy, they're

going to take that body and keep it stored forever and ever. Amen. That's not what happens. Here's how the process goes. So let's just say the Cecil Lodge fellow has a body that is donated to Harvard Medical School. And I'm sure that there are many alumni that have donated their body, particularly those that came through the medical school. And let's face it, Dave, those are very powerful people, can you imagine? So an individual says, OK, I want my dad's body, my mom's body to go to Harvard Medical School. It was their wish. Maybe the individual before they passed on signed an agreement making their body an anatomical gift. Well, Lodge takes the body.

It will actually pass before the medical school students, the incoming freshmen. Well, I say incoming freshmen. They're not referred to as freshmen. They're referred to as first years. And that's when you take gross anatomy in medical school, that first year. You got to start at the baseline here. And they do their dissection. There might be two or three of these students on one body working as a team.

And they'll work with this body perhaps through an entire semester and in some cases through an entire year. Well, what happens to the body after that? Do they go and have a funeral service? No. Most of the time, those bodies are then taken to a facility where there's a standing agreement where those bodies will then be cremated. That's not what happened. So after these bodies would have gone through these detailed dissections at Harvard, apparently things changed. They weren't going out to be cremated. These bodies were being retained. And allegedly what has happened is that parts of these bodies were being brokered to individuals that Lodge has allegedly been networked with throughout the country.

It goes out to these individuals, and then these individuals have people that are interested in purchasing interesting souvenirs, body parts, skulls, spinal columns, a pelvis, a thigh bone, or femur, anything that just kind of piques their interest. There are people that will take the small elements of a hand, for instance, say the digits off of a finger and make necklaces out of these things. There are people that make human teeth necklaces out of these things. Most of the time it doesn't happen here in the U.S., but if that's where your imagination runs to, it's being fueled by these individuals that participate in this kind of behavior. We have people that we trust with the last vet.

This is my mom. You know, this is my dad. This is my wife. And you're at the funeral home at my emotionally weakest moment. Maybe we have decided to do cremation. I expect this to be all of my loved one. I don't expect for you. You're already charging me a bundle to do this job. And now you're going to take my mom's skull and sell it to some guy so he can make a vase out of it in Kentucky? No.

Here's what we actually have. We have James Knott at the 40 Skull Man. We have the Pennsylvania guy, Jeremy Pauly. We have the head of the Harvard, the former Moore guy at Harvard. This whole, and Candace Chapman out of Little Rock. All of these people playing a role in taking body parts that were not intended to be a lamp and they're moving them around the country. And it's not just small. It's not just Joe Scott and Dave needing a femur for a lucky stick. This is a whole big thing using social media to reach other like-minded individuals to create these trophies, these things,

and to move them around the country. It's a big group. Yeah, it is. And to this day, there are essentially Mr. Lodge, along with his wife, Denise, who is also involved in this. There are five other people that you've named. They have only been charged at this point in time and not convicted. And right now, we're going to wait and see what happens with this case

because it's going to impact, I think, Dave, in the long run. It's going to impact policy as it applies to all of these other groups, all of these people that you allow into that circle within the anatomical gift environment and within mortuaries that are trusted with taking care of the dead, but more importantly, taking care of their memories and their families. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.