Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan:The Murdaugh Trial Autopsy Review Official Findings

Episode Date: February 25, 2023

We revisit the Murdaugh trial in which South Carolina lawyer, Alex Murdaugh, is currently facing trial for the murder of his wife Maggie, and his son Paul. As the trial continues, we are learning more information about the nature of the crimes and how exactly they played out. In this episode of Body Bags, forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan and special guest co-host  Dave Mack discuss the specifics of both Paul and Maggie’s injuries, why the prosecution uses diagrams vs. photographs when showing evidence in court, whether Paul had any defensive wounds, and much more. Subscribe to Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan : Apple Podcasts Spotify iHeart Show Notes: 0:00 - Intro 1:18 - Background and overview of the case 2:35 - Using diagrams in court vs. photographs 6:05 - Paul Murdaugh’s injuries  11:15 - The second shot to Paul Murdaugh’s head 14:50 - Paul’s face left intact 19:25 - Were there any type of defensive wounds on Paul? 20:30 - Maggie Murdaugh’s injuries 23:30 - Stippling around Maggie’s wounds 26:00 - Shot to the abdomen  29:00 - Was this overkill? 31:00 - Wrap up and outroSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. We've waited for months now trying to understand the dynamics of the injuries that were sustained by Paul and Maggie Murdaugh. And as it turns out, they're as brutal as we expected them. And today we want to try to understand exactly how their deaths came about, the sequencing of the injuries that they sustained, and precisely how long did it take for them to die. Today I'm taping from Hollywood, California, so the sound is going to be a bit different than normal, but I felt the need to hop on here and wake of Dr. Reamer's testimony in the trial.

I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Joining me today is Dave Mack, reporter with Crime Online. Dave, as I mentioned in the opening, we've been waiting some time now for the testimony of the forensic pathologist, and here we have it before us. It certainly sent a shockwave through that courthouse. The lead-up to the testimony of Dr. Ellen Reamer, As you mentioned, this is the one thing that people have really been waiting for. Alec Murdaugh is on trial for the murders of his wife and son. So Maggie and Paul, they were both murdered on June 7, 2021 on Murdaugh property. They were both murdered within minutes of one another, and they were both murdered with different weapons. There's a lot to unpack here. Dr. Reamer was testifying about

the wounds to Maggie and Paul. As we begin, I have to ask you a very specific question. I thought we're at trial. You're going to show us pictures. We're going to see the pictures of everything that's going on with Paul and Maggie Murdaugh. And what they did first, though, Dr. Reamer used poster boards of male and female diagrams. Why would that happen, Joe? When we look at autopsy photography, first off, for those that are not familiar with the trauma at all, and keep in mind, this is being used as a descriptor, as an illustrative aid for a jury that is comprised of laymen. Maybe there's a nurse on there. Maybe somebody served as an EMT at some point in time. But when you begin to get into this fine of detail when you're talking about trauma, it looks like somebody's nightmare.

You know, when you're looking at this tissue that's twisted and blown apart and you can't pick out specific anatomical landmarks. So a lot of it goes to orientation. A lot of it goes to the idea of the extent of the trauma. And Dave, I got to tell you, I've seen it done kind of both ways over the years. I've seen people demonstrate with photography and then they fall back to a diagram, an anatomical diagram. And those diagrams that they're using in court are specifically blow-ups of what's used at autopsy, where you have a silhouette, where it's drawn out, and you can kind of appreciate it. But in this case, they kind of flipped the script.

They presented this thing in court, and she's got these two diagrams up on an easel. We go with Paul's first, which these injuries are just beyond pale when you begin to consider we're talking about two shotgun blasts. And so the jury is looking, they're looking at these diagrams, which are essentially kind of like outlines of bodies, and they're seeing it from a clean perspective, okay? So when you see it from a clean perspective and you can begin when you see it from a clean perspective, and you can begin to see, okay, well, that's his shoulder, that's the side of his head, that's his chest,

this is his back, all of that stuff. And you begin to see these little defects, because she's drawing with both a red and a black marker. The red, I think, was indicative of entrance wounds, the black indicative of entrance wounds. The black indicative of exit wounds. Suddenly, the jury has an orientation to anatomy here. Okay. Then it's at that point in time, after she's gone through this, she's talking about direction of fire and she goes into great detail about all of these elements, that's when the prosecution introduces the graphic photographs, which, you know, by all of the descriptors from everyone to a person that was in the court, they were so shocking. When you compare and contrast this, they put images up of Paul throughout this case. They put images up of Maggie throughout this case. People have seen it in the

news. But now, you see what the real end result was. You see what happens when somebody is shot with a shotgun and essentially a high-powered rifle. It's not a matter of the Murdahl homicide. It's a matter of the Murdahl homicides, plural. We've got two. And you can only imagine that once you make it through just one of these deaths, Paul namely, that you're thinking, you know what, I got to say, I don't know if I can take any more. But you have to move on to Maggie then. And it just it's insulting to the senses, I think, or probably a better word is assaulting. They did go into great detail in breaking these cases down. And whether you like it or not, that's just the nature of what you have to do in court when you're talking about homicides. During the opening statements, the defense and prosecution both alluded to the injuries.

But in particular, the defense statement was very graphic about what happened to Paul about the second shot. Since you mentioned there too, you know, we've got Paul and Maggie and looking at both of these one at a time, it's believed that Paul was shot first. He was shot twice, but he was the first of them to be shot. The first was a shotgun blast to the chest. And Dr. Reamer testified that had Paul received medical attention, he could have survived that shot. So what kind of injuries are we looking at from the first blast into Paul's chest? This shotgun wound, and there is a difference. And she actually makes note of this on the stand because prosecution, when they threw to her on the stand, mentioned the term gunshot wound.

And we have to understand that this is not a gunshot wound. It's a shotgun wound. And the reason that is significantly different is it's a different type of ammunition. Instead of just one singular projectile coming downrange and striking a target, you've got multiple projectiles. And in this case, the first shotgun wound was actually from buckshot. So, if you think about this, this is the equivalent of sending multiple.32 caliber pellets into Paul's body. But you know, Dave, amazingly, this was, according to the forensic pathologist, this was a survivable injury. Can you imagine that? We're talking about the first blast. It lines up so that when this weapon is fired, it's fired into his right side, essentially, or into the right aspect of his chest and travels across the center of the body.

People refer to this as the mediastinum. And it's traveling across the body and exits out of what's called the left axilla. So, if folks at home will kind of lift their left arm and the area just below your armpit, the pellets actually pass through the left outer chest wall and back in to his left arm and out of his left arm. Now, not all of them. Not all of them did because with a shotgun wound in particular, you don't retain a lot of the energy that you do with a rifled projectile where the bullet is spinning and it gets on target and it passes through an area.

The energy expands very quickly. So you're not going to have all of the rounds pass through at the same time. They'll stop. You can actually recover some of the pellets. That's why it's so important that you do an x-ray of the body before the autopsy begins so you can count how many pellets you have. And depending upon the type of ammunition that's being used, you will have a specific count of pellets to expect to find. So you'll know that if you're missing that number, it's either still in the body or it's at the scene. The other thing that was kind of curious

I talked about was the fact that the wadding was still in the body in this particular case. And the wadding is, it's kind of like it's a cup. Some people refer to this as a shot cup. And imagine a plastic sleeve with all of the little pellets that go into it and then it's placed into the interior of the shot shell itself because like i said there's no rifling when this thing is fired that actual shot wadding comes out and it acts as kind of a container as it's traveling out of the end of the barrel the The petals deploy and it looks like a flower. And it's got it contained outside. And then all of a sudden it opens up.

And there's this blast of these little projectiles that are traveling through the air. And they actually recovered this shot cup wadding there within his body. They were able to find it. This was, according to her, a survivable injury. She talked about how Paul would have gone to surgery. They would have treated, stitched him up, debrided some of the wounds, treated him for potential infection. And it's amazing in such close proximity as this weapon was fired, it didn't tear more tissue up. He did sustain a contusion to his lung because of this concussive blast, but it didn't compromise the structural integrity of the lung. It would have

still functioned. It didn't harm the heart. That's kind of an interesting perspective when you begin to think on it, but that wasn't the only injury that he sustained. He actually had one more, Dave. This shot that we heard about during the opening, where it was very descriptive of what happened on the second shot to Paul's head. When I heard them describe this during the opening statement, it was said that it shot his brain, exploded out of his head, hit the ceiling, and the brain landed at his feet. Isn't that something? Pathologists have an interesting way of speaking

that many people are not used to. When she began to describe specifically with her language, she used the term Dave ejected. You think about pilots coming out of a plane if they hit the ejection handle. That's actually what happened. The blast that he sustained, and it wasn't, these are not very well aimed shots because if you're taking the shotgun and pointing it at his head, why are you going to shoot him in the shoulder? Well, I guess he's in motion because he's reacting to that first blast. And, you know, she even opined that he was still in an upright position when the weapon was fired. And that shot sequence was initiated. In the second shot, he was still standing up. And this blast traveled out of the barrel. And this is not, you know,

we think about buckshot, which he was shot with initially. That's generally something that is commonly associated with a tremendous amount of trauma. Buckshot, you know, you're talking about using the reason they talk about buckshot and call it that, is that you can hunt a deer with it, okay? And you think you're going to take out a large animal with this thing, but it didn't do as much disruption as the second shot which was actually going to get this bird shot so when he struck he struck in the shoulder it passes through his shoulder winds up in the side of his neck and hits

this large bone in the base of the skull that interiorly it supports the brain. It blew out the right side of his head. Here's kind of another interesting little cue to this, Dave, is that they, and I think that this probably really caught people off guard, is that they described removing Paul's brain from the scene in a bucket. Just let that sink in just a second. In a bucket. And she actually says that when the body is received at the morgue,

the brain is in a bucket. Maybe the people that are sitting in the jury box, they can't understand some of the fancy medical lingo, technical jargon. But then you think about this. Everyone knows what buckets are used for. Collecting things. Mopping. But you're bringing his brain into the morgue in a bucket? If Maggie is present when the shotgun blast initiate, and this is her child, my goodness, what in the world was going through her mind at that moment in time? Does she have an awareness where she turns she looks at the sound maybe there's a a yelp or a scream

that issues forth from paul does she even hear that does the shooter say anything at that moment in time you've suddenly got this just rain of tissue and blood that is settling in this place not to mention you know the smoke that's kind of rising up from the shotgun blast that's taking place. There would even potentially be a smell in this environment of burned gunpowder at that point in time. I don't know really the dynamic for me. It's still very confusing. There was something said during opening statements. We heard the part of the brain being ejected, hitting the ceiling and landing back at Paul's feet. But there was something else about that shot.

Paul's face was left intact. And I don't know how that's even possible, Joe. In the vernacular that we've heard for years and years, people will use terms like blowing heads clean off or blowing your face off, that sort of thing. And that's really not the case. Things don't necessarily play out like people suggest that they might. This is not like a watermelon that you're firing at where the thing kind of explodes like that. It doesn't happen. There's a level of elasticity to the human skin. Now, every now and then, you'll have enough trauma where things will completely disintegrate. But in this particular case, what she did describe, let's just say just arbitrarily, he was laying there on the ground. The blast did not involve his face to the extent where his recognizable features were disrupted. And it was concentrated on the posterior,

the backside of the head, which of course, as you and I have already stated, this ejection took place and the brain essentially exited the cranial vault, but his face would still be recognizable. And one more thing, I'm glad you mentioned this because I just got to thinking, she was asked about range of fire with Paul. And I think this plays over into Maggie as well with her injuries. Range of fire with Paul, he had stippling. And stippling means that you've got gunpowder that is unburned, that is coming out of the end of that muzzle and it's essentially embedding into the skin at a very superficial level as a matter of fact if you took a cross section of the skin where there is stippling or gunpowder you can actually see the gunpowder

microscopically you can see it so clearly that you can make out if the gunpowder is conical in shape or it has a spherical shape to it or pyramidal, because every manufacturer uses a different type of gunpowder and it's the way it's kind of shaped out, if you will. So that was there, but there was no soot, which means that soot arrives from burning gunpowder. And if you're really close, like, okay, let's back up to the stippling. Stippling was relative to range of fire. You think she's saying two to three feet that that shotgun blast would deposit that unburned gunpowder into the skin and kind of embed it. But yet there's no soot. Soot essentially drifts away outside of about 18 inches. So when you're looking at this, you're thinking she can at least

give us a theoretical construct here about how far away then that muzzle was. And these things are so dynamic, you can't necessarily pin everything to it. In this case, the weapon was not pressed directly to the sites of entrance with Paul. Were there any type of defensive wounds on Paul? No, no, nothing that there's no indication. And that's a fantastic question, Dave, because you think that if a young man and let's just suppose that it is somebody that is within their family. OK, that's doing this. If somebody points a weapon at you, you're going to fight them. You know, that's just something regular

people just don't do. You don't take a weapon and point the muzzle at somebody. So, what does that tell us? That tells us that with Paul, that there was not a level of awareness that this was occurring or he was being held at bay, you know, at a distance. You know what I'm saying? Where there's a distance from the end of that muzzle to his person, all right? That he's not fighting. He's just like submitting at that point. But the prosecutor says, were his hands up at any point in time? No, they weren't. They weren't up. So, you know, you think of somebody in a surrender pose where they're putting their hands up above their head to demonstrate that

I don't have any weapons. I'm not a threat. That's where that didn't happen. Meanwhile, we've got Maggie to get to and her setup is a totally different thing. You've got Maggie probably, here's the first shot, moves towards the sound because to the best of her knowledge, there's only Paul and Alec out there. And so she moves towards it. It's an accident. Got to figure out what's going on. The second shot would send her running. And that's what was mentioned during opening statements that she was running away.

And as a matter of fact, if I'm not mistaken, there was a question about, did she have any defensive wounds? Yes, she was running away. And so when we get to Maggie's wounds versus Paul's, we're looking at a totally different weapon. How do you transition though, Dave? How do you transition in this particular case? And, you know, my contention with this has been that a shotgun is more than sufficient to render someone dead. And it's a semi-automatic shotgun. We know that. So why would you initiate this sequence with a shotgun, have a rifle sequestered somewhere else, or maybe it's just laying, I don't know, maybe it's laying at the perpetrator's feet. They go to the trouble to put

the shotgun down, retrieve the rifle, raise it at a target that is moving away from them, and start the firing sequence, knowing that there is a probability that you might miss. The term scattergun, they just don't use that term for no reason. It's a scattergun. As it goes out of the barrel, it spreads out. And that's the beauty of a shotgun is that even if you can't aim well, you can impact a target with it, not with this rifle. That's why they're talking about sequencing of, I don't remember, Dave. I think it's either four to five shots. I think that there was one where they're talking about that there might be an entrance and a re-entry and that sort of thing.

Reamer actually explained that Maggie Murdaugh's injuries, she had five gunshot wounds from at least four gunshots. Right. And when you look at these injuries, you can actually have a round that will, say, for instance, pass through one anatomical area of the body, exit, and dependent upon position that you're in, say that you're in a position of submission where you're kind of bent at the waist, for instance, and that round enters the body, it can actually pass through, say, and just throwing this out there, it passes through the posterior chest, the back, exits the anterior chest, the front, and then maybe re-enters the abdomen. That happens. And the reason it happens, particularly

with a rifle, is because there's so much muzzle velocity involved in this thing. I mean, this is a robust round that we're talking about. There was stippling around Maggie Murdaugh's wounds. This is what kind of shocked me. I really wanted to ask you because the first two shots apparently had been fired from within three feet. A yardstick. That's it. And he's got a rifle. Yeah. How do you, how do you transition? How do you transition?

I keep asking that question. How do you go from a shotgun, which is, and it's not, what they're opining is, even though they don't have it, they're not suggesting that this is like a tactical shotgun that's got like a short barrel. They're not actually talking about that. They're implying that this is a shotgun that would be used to hunt with, and you want a long barrel. These have a long barrel, okay, because it improves your aim. You've got this robust shotgun here in your hands. You're going to fire this thing, and then after you've fired it,

and probably not emptied it because, you know, the shotgun, depending upon the configuration, it can hold five, maybe even six rounds. Well, you've only fired two times out of it. So you're going to put this thing down pick up a rifle which as you mentioned is a rifle that is set up to fire at great distances you know you think about like a and it's not the same but a 5.56 also in civilian caliber 223 which approximates what our military uses okay okay? The M4 carbine. You think about that, and it's good up to 300 yards away, Dave. I mean, you're absolutely right.

It's at a great distance. This is a.300 blackout. This is a more robust round. The diameter of it's bigger. It's closer to, it's not a.308, but it's closer in diameter to a.308. It's more robust than, say, what our military carries. And it's still got a great reach to it, but it's used as a tactical weapon where you can go into the thing. You can fire it at great distances, but you can also utilize it if you're sweeping a room in the military or, say, with the police and a SWAT team. It doesn't have a long, long barrel length most of the time. Sometimes it will, but most of the time it's more compact. So again, we go back to the utility. What were they thinking, this perpetrator? What were they thinking in this particular case? It just, it boggles the mind as far as I'm concerned.

And so you've got the first two shots fired within three feet. Maggie apparently goes down. She's on her knees. And according to Dr. Reamer, shot fired into Maggie's abdomen while she's standing causes her to lean over and fall forward. She's on her knees. Two fatal shots to the head. She's on her hands and knees. And now you're going to a kill shot. Yeah, not one, but two. And Dave, the fact that you mentioned the nature of this gunshot wound to the abdomen is, it's important to understand this. And I'm going to definitely understate this and do a disservice to this. So forgive me in advance this would have been

like getting hit in the abdomen with a 10 pound sledgehammer swung by a 300 pound man all right so when she contracts like this and goes to the ground she's in a position where she's non-ambulatory she's not moving she's had the wind knocked out of her at this point in time. I mean, can you imagine the horror at this point? Because she is alive at this point in time. There's an awareness. I keep going back to that term. There's an awareness of what's going on. You mentioned the proverbial coup de grace. Two gunshot wounds to the head with a high velocity weapon. And we get some sense of the dynamics of these injuries. And you hear the term defect in pathology. They're not talking about like something like a defective instrument or something. Defect actually means an opening or hole. So, they'll say, or it's an injury. So, instead of saying gunshot wound, they'll say defect.

So, you've got a series of defects that are in the body where she's trying, Reamer's trying to make sense. And this brings us back to what we had said earlier. If it's this difficult for the forensic pathologist to kind of figure out the sequencing of these wounds, and I think this is kind of an interesting point. How much more difficult is it going to be for a jury? Because this is, to put it frankly, it's a damn mess. I mean, it truly is. This is not like a single gunshot wound. So you've got all these different injuries that are kind of communicating with each other, entrances and exits and re-entrances. And it's very complex and complicated. That's why you need a forensic pathologist. It's not only technically sound.

I think she's done like 5,500 autopsies by her own admission, but she's having to draw this out. And that's the beauty of this. If there can be anything to that, the beauty of it is that she's able to communicate effectively with a jury, use these diagrams and show it because it's like, you're looking at the diagrams right now. And I think you'd agree with me, Dave, those diagrams are stark white. You know,

when you see those images in a court that all of a sudden they're about to get their senses blasted because they're going to see bloody gore is what they're going to see. And how do you make sense of that? But one thing that Dr. Reamer pointed out is that either of the headshots would have been fatal the moment it happened. Is this a sense of overkill that there were two shots to the head, the second shot going straight down the top of her head and coming out her shoulder? I think that it is. That's a very interesting point in this. You know, we think about overkill most of the time, and we've talked about it on Body bags before that people overkill with a blunt object people overkill with sharp force injuries with an edge weapon and there's a there's kind of the sense that they're trying to disfigure people you know what i'm saying where they're just

going in and brutalizing somebody i don't know that again, I am not a forensic psychologist. I don't want to be a forensic psychologist. If we pull this over to overkill, I don't know if it is overkill or if it is a flourish. If it's like being overly engaged in this event and you want assurance that this individual is deceased. Because here's the real indicator here. This is not like you brought a 9mm pistol and you shot somebody in the head, Dave. You have brought a weapon, the shotgun first off, but this.300 Blackout,

you've brought this.300 Blackout, which is a weapon that the murdogs were known to use to hunt hogs with wild hogs are some of the most ferocious animals that are out there why do you need that much why is it well it either is you're trying to make a point by being over the top with it. Okay? Or it's what you know. It's what you're familiar with. Because there were guns all in that house. We know that they used them to hunt with. And it's certainly something that they had at their disposal. As of this date, the Murtaugh trial continues. We'll see what happens in the coming days. We'll see what else presents itself, what other evidence is put forth by not just the prosecution, but by the defense as well.

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