Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: UPDATE! Mass killer, Serial killer, Hired Hitman: Damien McDaniel - 18 Dead in 14 Months

Episode Date: June 1, 2025

Birmingham, Alabama, has experienced a killing spree unlike any seen before.  In a Body Bags episode April 16, Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack covered the alleged Mass Killer / Serial Killer / Hitman, Damian McDaniel, who had been charged with 14 murders in 14 months. McDaniel has now been charged with 4 more homicides bringing the total to 18 in14 months. In this update episode, Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss the timeline of events, the difference between a "Mass Shooting" and a "Serial Killer" as well as the accusation that McDaniel was also a hired "hitman". Joe also explains what has to happen with each crime scene, even if the scene includes double-digit victims.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scappone. I gotta tell you, I really did not think I was going to be coming back to this case this soon. And for further reference, I direct you to our April 16th episode of Body Bags for the initial conversation that we had about the topic at hand. The reason that I did not think I would be returning to this topic was because we had a unique, from a crime science standpoint, a unique event happen in Birmingham. We wound up having a serial killer slash mass shooter. I've never heard of this before.

It just popped onto my radar. We had 14 people dead. Well, my friends, there's an update and I aim to give it to you right now and you're not going to believe it. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags. body bags. Damon McDaniel, we've already spent quite a bit of time talking about this person and Dave, by my count at that time, he was responsible for 14 homicides that could be laid at his feet, along with a myriad of other crimes involving people that were injured as a result of his shooting sprees. And today, I don't know, I can't remember, my days all run together.

I can't remember what day it was, but I sent you an article maybe three days ago, four days ago. He's, I hate to use the word credited, but he has now been credited with four more homicides. Dave, is this going to end? Can you give me some hope here that there's not going to be more? I have to think that this person is responsible for a goodly percentage of Birmingham's homicides. If he was not in the population, Birmingham's homicide body count would not be as high as it is. And when I say, you know, there's a term you use in statistics when you're studying them

in college and that sort of thing. And it's called, when you talk about something, an anomaly or a finding that you have doing research, you say that it's statistically significant. This is statistically significant when taking the broad view of Birmingham, Alabama and the homicides that they have in that fair city. But you got to figure that the reason we did the show a month ago was because Damian McDaniel was responsible for 14 murders in 14 months, allegedly. And we hadn't heard anything about it outside of our area. And since both of you,

you and I both work on national shows on a regular basis, it's odd that a story like this doesn't gain some traction somewhere. We have a number of cases of deaths around Lady Bird Lake in Austin, Texas. And we've done shows on that. But this, there was 14 and 14 months, and now four weeks after we're doing a show, because four new victims have been added to the count for Damian McDaniel. And sadly, one is an unborn child, Angelia Webster, Christian Norris, and the couple's unborn child, and another man named

Reginald Bryant have been added to the list of alleged victims of Damian McDaniel. Sadly, I don't think we're going to even stop there, Joe. I think there's more. Yeah. I'm just thinking, I'm just thinking, you know, I guess you, when you begin to kind of explore this idea of this mismatch and I, listen, I urge anybody to reach out to me if they've ever heard of a combo like this because I haven't. I have not come across a combo where you've got serialized homicides and that means that they take place on different dates. First off, you have to have, I think it's three or more to qualify to be a serial killer. Our man hit the jackpot because now he stands at 18 and in concert with that, he's been

involved in mass shootings. It's a real head scratcher. I'd love to know what, from the behavioral sciences unit at the FBI, I'd love to know if they've studied anything like this before. I would imagine that it has happened. It's not something that happens on... Serial killing is not something that happens on a regular basis. I know everybody thinks that it does, but the reason it splashes so big is because they're not caught as often as people think they are. But in this case, I think that the police,

the investigators have done yeoman's work in kind of connecting the dots with his movements and the movements of I think he's got colleagues that are involved in this as well that have colleagues, right? That hit me the wrong way. Sorry. Wow. Well, compatriots, I don't know. I don't know. Fellow desperadoes.

I don't know how we could classify it, Dave. I just try to figure out you have mass killers and you have serial killers and then you have other homicides. But when I look at this Joe and it's just me, I think of a mass killer as somebody who comes into a specific area and shoots up the joiner, kills a number of people in a very short window and leaves or takes their own life. Whereas a serial killer is somebody who is hunting and can take several years as we've seen in many cases where they change up the MO even you know they kill one way for a while and then go away and come back and do it differently? Yeah, they could. There's some indication out there that some people think that there's an attempt to,

I don't know, to behave the way another previous serial killer has this kind of masking that goes on. And I don't think that these people can really extend that far out to change their ways. They get very comfortable with it. Oh, and by the way, I want to tell you this. I'm going to throw something out to you here that you may not have heard this term before, and it might apply to this guy. I used the word comfortable just a second ago. Did you know that there are within, there's multiple different type, typologies of serial killers. Okay. The biggest

dividing line is that they use, okay, is going to be organized versus disorganized. And then it kind of drops down, you know, from there in kind of a pyramid shape. And, you know, you've got these little lines that are extending. Maybe think of, I don't know, if pyramid doesn't work for you, think of a Venn diagram. Here's the term, comfort killer. Comfort killer. The reason I'm saying that, these are people that have a financial motivation. So you can take somebody that is like a professional hitman, all right?

Thinking about the fellow, they just called him the Iceman, that there's been several documentaries done on him that killed multiple people, alleged that he had killed, I think he even alleged that he had something to do with Hafe, who knows. He got paid for doing what he was doing and led a normal life. I mean, he'd take his family to church every Sunday. He was a doting father, but on the side, he's out, you know, ending people's lives. So, is this an example, a subcategory example of a comfort killer who is receiving payment

for what he's doing? And that was actually in our previous episode, we had talked about this, that if you think you hated the term colleague, let me throw this out to you, that his services were engaged by somebody out there that's pulling the strings on this. And I have to assume that the police know who this person is. Because if this individual, this Damon McDaniel is being paid to end people's lives, as horrific as what he has done, if he is being paid to do this day, you realize that the person doing the pain is the one that might wind up with, what do we use in Alabama now, the nitrogen mask over their head.

In this particular case, you say the needle in the arm or is going to be sitting in the chair to have the switch thrown. That person might bear more responsibility than anybody else in this. Because I can't think of anybody, what would be the motivation behind doing this and ending so many lives in such a bold fashion. It's not like you did it in a vacuum. You know, you think back to, you know, BTK who was highly organized, highly organized serial killer and he really took his time. He was a true hunter and he would case the houses. He would, you know, watch the movements of individuals. He would follow them and he would wait and spring at the last moment.

You know, and that's generally one of the main things that I think of as kind of a template. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to step on you. What did you say? No, he, I just, when I think of BTK, I think of him being the average guy, you know, has a position in the church, is well thought of in the community. His own family doesn't know who he is. I've seen interviews with his daughter and it was just wait a minute, my whole life was a lie, you know? And you know, you mentioned him and the planning and the serialized killing and then him communicating with cops and making

it a game. It was almost a lifestyle choice for him to be this kind of a serial killer. Whereas with McDaniel in Birmingham, we're looking at on the one hand, you have a hired hitman. You know, you give him whatever money, I don't know what it costs to have somebody killed. Usually you get caught because the guy who got paid, when he gets caught, he rolls over on you and since you're the one instigated, they're going to get you too. But he was that guy. But then we've also got him in a mass killing. There's two, I think. Yes, there were two big social gatherings.

Yeah. Where he's just going to offhandedly, maybe there was one original target, but everybody else was collateral damage. And these are actual people's lives. These are people who have moms, dads, children. I mean, they're living, breathing human beings. This person decides to take money and get rid of them. And the fact that he got away with it for as long as he did. And now that he's behind bars, Joe, they're able to you mentioned this before. You said now that he is behind bars, they're going to be able to take their time investigating some of these other crimes that he is behind bars, they're going to be able to take their time investigating some of these other

Crimes that he is suspected of being involved in and that's what they did. That's how you came up with think about it Norris And Webster a Leo Angelio Webster and Christian Norris you're talking about a couple An unborn child and the last time they're seen alive is on Valentine's Day. They actually left a residence in Inslee, which is, if you're driving through Birmingham, it's just right past Spaghetti Junction, you know? Yeah. And some on the west side of town. Yeah.

And having driven in that area, I know this area. I'm picturing it in my eyes, you know, I'm picturing where they were and they're going to go to the movies, right? On their way to a movie theater, Joe, a couple expecting a child go to the movies and they don't come home. Two days later, their pods are found. Yeah. And they're in their car and people were looking for them. Dave, I got to ask you this. How many times on Valentine's Day did you and LaDonna go out for a meal? Just to celebrate, just the two of you when you didn't have kids hanging all over you. I mean, there had to have been moments like, no, because I remember with Kimmy, we would go out, we'd always make it a point to go out on valentines.

And here you're celebrating, that's the thing about this, you're celebrating new life here. All right? She's pregnant. She's pregnant. All right? And this guy walks up on the car, we're assuming, and blast away, what could these two 20-year-olds have done that they deserved the death penalty? Dave, you know, you mentioned this young couple that were out going to a movie on Valentine's Day and they run into a buzzsaw essentially just ends their life and the life of their

unborn child. There's one more individual that is, that he, Damon McDaniel has now been charged with. What do we know about that subject at this point in time? We know that one thing about McDaniel is that some of the murders he's tied to, he had a compatriot. He had somebody with him who was also involved in the murder and meaning he wasn't the sole killer. Um, and, and there are more people arrested. There's already a couple of the previous cases.

Um, and in the murder of Reginald Bryant, he was killed in the fall of 2023. He was found shot to death in the back of a home. And that was in, I'm trying to get these, the exact is November 27th of 2023. And police said at the time, Joe, that it appeared that Bryant had been targeted and approached by several suspects prior to the shooting.

And one or more of the suspects fired shots at him. That's why when I said, Damian Maxwell, I mean, McDaniel actually has other people involved in some of his murders. Lorenzo Wiley was, was charged with this as well. He's a 30 year old guy from Fairfield. Both are in custody. Obviously we know McDaniel is, but Wiley's in jail too right now. And I don't know why Reginald Bryant was in the radar of so many bad guys. I mean Joe this sounds like something out of a movie okay. This sounds like you've got detectives downtown and we got a murder and we got 20 different people that showed up to shoot him and who did? I mean that's crazy. Yeah, yeah it is. It's

absolutely nuts and you know we have to go back all the way to the first... When was this individual, Brian, when was he killed? What was the date? November 27th. November 27th. November 27th. Because it was just back in July of 2023 where McDaniel pops onto the radar, where out of all the people in the world, he walks into a fire station, Dave, and shoots the place up.

Shoots one firefighter that survives. He's been shot in the chest and the leg. But you've got this other young man who's just come off of probation. I don't mean probation like in a negative way. He just graduated from fire academy. He'd only been a firefighter for a total of a year and that includes his training. Nice guy. It's like, you know, if you walk up to a firehouse and you start shooting people, it's like,

I don't know, it's like tearing the heads off of flowers or you know, it's the most disturbing thing in that sense that what's your point here? Why in the world would you do this? Because there's no justification for killing anybody. But you know, these two guys, and we all know how hot it is in Birmingham, they would leave those bay doors open and sit there. Their big claim to fame there at this particular station, they've got a lot of elderly people that live around there. They would come in and get their sugar checked.

If they were diabetic, they'd get blood pressures taken. They'd probably just come by and just chat with these folks. They're part of the neighborhood. What would be the motivation for anybody to walk in and want to kill two firefighters? And that's how he starts out, apparently. But I'm starting to question everything at this point in time. I don't know if they were the first two now. For all I know, there may be other people that predate that July event. I don't have any inside information, but now we've got another one that had popped up with this gentleman that was shot in November, right? November, December, November of 2023.

And he wasn't on the radar initially. So how far back does this go? You know, the further back we go with this thing, the more complex it gets because, you know, initially when you have events like this that happen and you're trying to establish a timeline, you don't have the 30,000 foot altitude view at that point in Tom. You're focused right there in real time on the case that you have where you've got these individuals at a firehouse that are shot and eventually die at a hospital. It's really hard to kind of understand it from that perspective. But once this starts to kick off and they start having these random shootings, you begin to think, well, maybe these aren't as random as they could have been. One thing that's kind of fascinating about this, again, there's so much

that is, but to that point, if he has other, I'll use the term compadres, that are involved with him in doing this, Dave, I wonder how many weapons are involved. Because with serialized events, it's rare that the serial killer strays very far from what they are very familiar with. Like if they're going to use a ligature or if they're going to use a knife, if they're going to use a hammer, for instance, there's been people who've been bludgeoned to death by serial killers. Or if they're going to use a gun, you know, well first off, does he own that gun? Have they found the gun?

And even if they have, if you've got multiple other shooters, have they recovered any of those weapons as well? This is going to be so complex to try to understand the forensics in this case because of all of the gunshot wounds that are involved in this and it's not just the dead. I have actually been to the hospital to retrieve projectiles that were actually retrieved during surgery on individuals that eventually died. We actually had kind of a famous case in Atlanta where we had an individual that was shot multiple times and the surgeon extracted two projectiles out of the body and had them thrown away and incinerated, didn't retain them.

And so there was an extensive amount of training that went on in the wake of that. Also you have to retain the clothes. So everything in here is so complex. You've got people that are going to hospitals, they have evidence on their bodies, they have bullets, projectiles that have been taken out of their bodies. You have clothing, for instance, which many times when they're trying to save lives, Dave, they're just cutting it off and kind of throwing it on the ground. It's blood saturated, but it's still something that we can use because with clothing, you

can determine range of fire. If you're getting a story about what his activities were, say for instance around or in one of these clubs, how close was he when he was firing the weapon? Or how close were these other individuals that are involved with him? And so this kicks us up to a level that I dare say that in their many years of working homicides in Birmingham, Alabama, I don't know that they've ever come across something that is that extensive and this complex. So, what we do know about McDaniel, that those things that he has been involved with, where we now have 18 deceased individuals that he's been credited with. You have to go back and let's

just kind of revisit the timeline here just for a second. I'll run it down. In July of 2023, we have the firefighters that are shot at the fire station with the bay doors open, which you can imagine the whole community was shocked over this. I think anybody that would have heard about it would be shocked over it. Then you jump forward to November of 2023 and initially we had this event involving Reginald Bryant. Well, that case is credited to McDaniel as well. McDaniel and as you mentioned Dave Wiley, this 30-year-old out of Fairfield. Now just a month, month and a half later, I get, well, it's like January the 10th.

You've got a young lady who's 21, Dave, and this is in January, January the 10th, you've got a young lady who's 21, Dave, and this is in January. January the 10th, she's found lying in her driveway suffering from a gunshot wound and she's pronounced dead there at the scene. Why are you killing a 21-year-old woman in her driveway? Is there some kind of, was she targeted for some specific reason? Had he been paid to do this? Then you go to February of 2024 and we've got now four victims or three victims, including an unborn child. That was in February. You remember the Valentine's Day shooting. And then in April the 9th of 2024, we've got Anthony

Love and this is kind of an interesting one day because McDaniel went to a UPS facility and shot him. You know, you talk about being bold that they would go, he would go to this location and shoot this individual. You get the sense that as he's going along, he has no fear. This is the one case where they do make mention of the fact that this was a murder for hire at this point, Tom. Then you go to this, I don't know how else to really describe it. It's like an unlicensed bar kind of club thing. It's called Trim Settlers.

They're all over the place. They're all over the place. And every community has them. It's just a wink and a nod in certain neighborhoods. And this is one of those. It operates under the radar. You pay off a couple of cops or whoever and there you go. Horrible. Yeah.

And with this, you know, this is like the first time that we have a mass shooting and this is a, you know, you can go in, you can buy alcohol, it's called, and they referred to it at the time as the, and this is in July of 2024, the Trent Setters mass shooting. We had Stevie McGee, 39 years old. He's found dead on the sidewalk at the scene. And then you've got two others that are found inside. Markeisha Gettings, she's 39. Angela Weatherspoon, she's 56. She's dead inside of Trent's Utters. And then you've got another person that

rolls into UAB Hospital and they eventually died, Liderius Anderson. He's 24. I remember when you were talking about this the first time and I asked you, how do you deal with that? In terms of an investigation, when you have, you've got a mass shooting. We've got people over here that are dead or wounded, but then hours later, somebody comes in and they're wounded and die. I mean, they come by themselves, not through the ambulance. I wonder what that does to an investigation. Yeah. Well, what's going to be really important, Dave, one of the most,

I'm glad you asked that because one of the most important things that you can draw upon, when EMTs roll out to a scene, they have their own, some people call it a run number, some people, depending upon the pair of medical services, will call it a case number. But they're going on a run. And so when that number is generated, and they run out there, they arrive. And many times, the first responders are the first people on the scene. Sometimes they beat the cops there.

So what they see at the scene is invaluable. All right. Well, you don't have that with somebody that just comes in off of the street. So where do you get information from? What is that first point of contact? It might be a security guard that's standing, say for instance, off of the inside of, because most big cities that have emergency rooms, if you've ever noticed this,

they've got security guards that are seated inside of the waiting room. That's because you never know what's gonna happen on any given night in there. You can have fights, break out, all kinds of stuff. Well, you've got somebody that rolls in and they're bleeding, they're complaining, I've been shot, I've been shot. That's your first point of contact. And so all of the information that you're going to get is going to come from the medical staff about this guy. And he just walks in

off the street. Well, their statements are going to be critical. You know, what did he say? You know, at that point in time, you time, he dies later, Dave. If he ambulates in, he's bleeding out internally, you can't necessarily appreciate that at that point in time. Then, buddy, let me tell you, you've got to get every bit of information because he's gone now. You're not going to be able to get anything from him. So that becomes very problematic. You have to chase down every person that you can in order to try to understand what was going on at that particular time. You move beyond July and you get into August of 2024 and you've got an individual that's found inside of an apartment development by the name of Charles Herbert Moore.

He's shot unresponsive. He's pronounced dead at the scene. And you have another suspect other than McDaniel that is charged in this case. This is Charles Nance. You have September of 2024 where they discover an individual by the name of Darnett Tenney Brown, 35 years old, and she's been suffering from gunshot wound. She's found inside of a bar. Why her?

What connectivity do any of these people have with one another? And of course, in the same month, you have the Five Points South mass shooting that takes place. And again- And remember, this is the second one. We had the trendsetters. This is your second mass killing by the same alleged, same suspect. Yeah.

And at this particular place, you've got four people that are killed here, Dave, with 17 others that have been wounded. And this is like a, it's kind of confusing. A lot of stuff takes place on the outside. There's like a hookah lounge there and a cigar lounge, that sort of thing. But there is a trendsetter's bar that's immediately adjacent to this area. You've got Roderick Patterson, Taj Brooker, Carlos McCain, and Antra Holman. Four more people that are, again, to his credit.

Then, you know, you go forward, we've still got another individual, Jamarcus McIntyre. That's the next day, by the way. And yeah, in the wake of all of this chaos. And I'm thinking, because having been involved in, yeah. Let me stop. De'Entrenet Tene Brown, she's killed on September 19th. On the two days later, you have the hush lounge, five point south shooting, mass shooting, then the next day. So over a three day period of time, you've got two solo shootings and a mass shooting by the same suspect.

Jamarcus McIntyre was killed on September 22nd, 2024. So three days and all that death attributed allegedly to one person. Yeah. And in that moment of time, you know, you're just coming off of this. And I'm thinking about the investigators that have been working all night before. And then you go into the next day and you've got another one that's racked up. And I don't know if anyone has ever seen the show Homicide that was set up in Baltimore. And they had, there was a classic scene that they always showed and everything kind of revolved around that show

where you had a board, that a white board that was written and they would put a magnetic sticker, indicator next to who was up. Like who's the next detective? Anything that happens, you got the next call because you're next in line. I can only imagine in the homicide division what they're looking at in the wake of multiple shootings over a very short period of time. And there's other killings that are going on, you know, that they're having to investigate that are not associated with Damon McDaniel. You don't have enough staff to cover a lot of this. And this material, Dave, is so very dense relative to all of the data that you're trying

to collect, all of the connections that you're trying to make, all of the witness statements that you're trying to take from this. it must seem like you're absolutely drowning. If this was like a mass shooting that took place, say for instance, we had the Nashville shooter, that jumps to mind. You had Parkland, you've got all of these different shootings. As horrific as those are, you've got containment in that where it's all happening in a central location. In a couple of these cases, you have individuals where the shooters have died, they've been

shot as well or they took their own lives. That's contained. Take that, a mass shooting in one contained location, and then spread it out over a timeline where you've got multiple deaths in between other mass shootings along the way. It's enough to make your eyes water when you think about it. You have to ask the question, is it humanly possible to get every bit of evidence in a case like this? And if so, how are you going to compile all of this?

I can only imagine right now because this is an active case that's continuing to be investigated. They are literally, they're drowning in data right now. You have to understand it's not just the detectives that are working here. You do have the forensics people, the crime scene investigators that are out there, which are different than the detectives. And you're going to have the Jefferson County coroner's office that's going to have to do all of these autopsies on each one of these individuals.

You'll be drowning. Not to mention the stress that it puts on the prosecutor's office, because for every homicide that you have, it's not like you bundle these homicides together. These are individual human beings. These are victims. Individual human beings, and for each one of these individual human beings that has met their end at the hand of another, there's going to be a case number that is generated for that. There will be a charge that is specifically assigned to that individual that is for their

life and the individual that is prosecuting this thing, I can't imagine that they would have enough assistant district attorneys to go around, you know, just to work each one of these cases. So where does that leave you? You know, well, first off, I'm still not convinced that this is completely over with because apparently along the way, they made some kind of connection that even though they had him on 14 other cases something drew their eye to these other four that we now have. I'm just wondering how many more are there?

I can tell you this Dave and I are on this. We're gonna be keeping a close eye on this and I hope that anybody that is within the sound of our voice, these cases, for whatever reason, have not made it onto the national stage. We're talking about 18 homicides here that are being laid at the feet, primarily at the feet of Damon McDaniel. He hadn't been tried. He hadn't been found guilty. And his accomplices. How's this not made national news? I'm amazed.

And we can't forget about the people that sustained injuries as a result of this. The list is long. We'll keep you updated. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags.