Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - JJ and Tylee's remains found in pet cemetery on ‘CULT MOM’ Lori Vallow husband Chad Daybell property

Episode Date: July 10, 2020

The remains JJ Vallow and Tylee Ryan found in a pet cemetary on Chad Daybell's property. Today Nancy Grace talks with death scene investigator Joseph Scott Morgan on the recovery and what comes next. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. J.J. Vallow and Tylee Ryan are dead. We may have thought so all along, but now we know. We know that their remains were destroyed and buried in the backyard of cult mom Lori Vallow's new husband's home. What now? Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. With me now, a very special guest, Joseph Scott Morgan, so-called death investigator, professor of forensics, Jacksonville State University, and author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon. Joe Scott, thank you for being with us. We need an expert regarding the discovery

of the bodies of seven-year-old JJ and teen girl Tylee. Let's just start at the beginning. We know that the bodies of these two children have been buried for some time. Tylee's body has been dismembered and burned. Tell me what you believe the condition of the bodies are right now. Tylee's body specifically would be in a condition of at least moderate to advanced stages of decomposition. I'd have to probably lean more to an advanced stage. That means you've already got things like skeletonization going on. If her body was burned, wouldn't we be beyond skeletonization? Remember one of the things that's contained in this

document that was put forward is the fact that they did in fact find tissue. They allude to tissue in there. As a matter of fact, some of that tissue itself is charred along with the bone. So you're kind of in this odd position at this point in time, this many months downrange. We're talking about back in september where we have still some soft tissue and this happens regularly and we have skeletonized remains. So it's this odd combination and what is really key here and we have to understand patients is important here because it's going to take time to determine Tylee's cause of death. How hard is it to burn a human body? It's markedly difficult Nancy and let me explain to you why. Let's just think just for a second about you know we have crematories all across America

what do they require? Well you have to place a body into this enclosed area and it has a constant fuel source most these things are fueled by natural gas if you're talking about burning a body in a fire pit or a fire ring you have to provide a constant source of fuel and what's the most obvious thing well most people think gas it's not gas gas is an accelerant so it kind of blazes up which we see many times. You know people will throw gas or lighter fluid on something and it'll kind of you know kind of explode for a moment and then it burns off. That's an initiate for fire. What you need is sustainable fuel. So we're talking about applying wood in this case

to a fire pit where you can keep that heat up. The difference is, is that when you have an open fire pit, the heat itself kind of disperses into the air, okay? In a crematory, it doesn't. It stays contained in that location, and literally the body renders down. My suspicion is, is that they got about halfway down the road in trying to dispose of her of her body and they couldn't make it the rest of the way it requires a tremendous amount of fuel over a protracted period of time and the heat has to be tremendous you know in crematories we're talking about sometimes up to a thousand maybe even above,000 degrees in order to sustain this. And this is hours and hours.

Can you imagine out in a pit? And it's exposed to everything. You know, you can actually see this fire pit from the road, Nancy. It's within, it's a viewable distance, a line of sight distance. And this is problematic for the perpetrators because they have to have constant sources of fuel, wood, to apply to the the body and then you're standing over the body let's not forget of somebody that you knew this precious little child and you're having to literally render them down with fire you don't have to as you say render them down with fire you don't have to do anything when i I believe Alex Cox showed up with dead bodies, right then, Chad Daybell had the opportunity to say no. And where was the mother,

cult mom Lori Vallow, during all of this? But that's for a jury to decide. I want to talk about the bodies and what clues, what evidence, if anything, can be gained from them. To dismember a body, you know, a lot of people think about shows like programs like, what was his name? I loved him so much. Crime scene analyst that goes on a vigilante search. Dexter. Dexter, of course. That's one of the only things that got me through my pregnancy is binging on Dexter. But it's not like that. It's not an easily contained and cleanable scene. You don't finish in an hour in a 60-minute program. I can tell you that much. How difficult

is it to dismember a human body? Well, it's very difficult, Nancy, and let me explain to you why. First off, you have to have a private area, a sequestered area, if you will, in order to accomplish this task. You know, you have to go somewhere where you have privacy, and then when you get there, you got to show up with the right tools. You know, you and I have covered a lot of cases over the years, and we've covered some dismemberment cases you know we talk about bodies that have been dismembered in bathtubs out in sheds and this sort of thing well in order to accomplish that you can't be disturbed while you're doing this and then you put in the human factor to this that you know we talk a lot about the psychology behind a lot of these murders that go on

how difficult is it to stand over the remains of this precious little girl that you have known, at least peripherally, and you begin to take her body apart with some type of sharp instrument. And most of the time, when I talk about sharp instruments, I'm talking about, first off, you just don't take a saw and apply it to skin and muscle. You have to cut through that with an edged weapon, like a butcher knife or a fillet knife and that sort of thing just to get down to the bone once you've made it to that location then you have to saw now a lot of people use various methodologies I've worked cases involving chainsaws bandsaws circular saws and even old-fashioned carpentry saws but the reality is you have to get to that point

you have to know what you're going to do. This isn't like going, I hate to say this, but it's not like going to a butcher shop. You know, a butcher actually has a method to their madness. They're highly trained and skilled. People like this that have potentially never done this on a regular basis, we can only hope, and certainly involving another fellow human being, they're going to give this a lot of pause and they're going to try to have to figure this out. You got a lot of blood, you got a lot of tissue, and it's actually getting on to you if the perpetrator, from an evidentiary standpoint, that's very significant if we can get those clothes

that the individual had on. Also, this is key key Nancy, whatever kind of instrument that was used and let's kind of go down this path just for a second. If we talk about like an edged weapon okay or an edge device like a knife, every time that knife makes contact with a surface it's going to leave behind a specific signature that only correlates to that blade. Now, if we can get that knife, that's going to be key because once you get through the soft tissue with a knife, you might strike the bone. That's going to leave an impression. Now, once you use the saw to literally dismember the body at that point in time where you're cutting across bone shafts and this sort of thing the saw marks itself like the teeth on the saw

they leave their own unique identifying print as that saw goes across that bone so these teeth literally leave behind almost an impression in the bone the key here for the investigators is to get their hands on those instruments, marry it up to the marks on the bone. And I can tell you right now in Idaho and at the FBI crime lab, what they're doing is that they are analyzing this bone very, very carefully. You're going to have what are referred to as tool mark experts that deal in this sort of thing all the time. They will take these and do both gross examinations, which is where they're looking at it with the unaided eye. They're taking photographs of it, all that sort of thing.

And then they're going to look at it microscopically. And when you get down microscopically on the surface of one of these bones, it opens up an entirely different world because most people look at a mark on a piece of wood or a bone or you know a piece of furniture and they'll say well it's just a mark no when you get down to it microscopically that is a unique identifier that is unique to a particular tool the key is can they get that tool can they put it in the perpetrators hand and can they make it match up with the marks that they have on that bone? Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. I want to start with you as a death investigator, a forensics expert. We know that the location was triangulated or identified by cell phone, if not triangulated, by the brother of Colt Montelore Vallow, Alex Cox, visiting husband number five, Chad Daybell's home.

Cops then go out there. I want you, Joseph Scott Morgan, to put yourself in their shoes. You know a general area. You walk into Chad Daybell's backyard. What do you see? What do you do start just imagine if you will you are the investigator that has showed up at the scene and you've got this ping that you mentioned and this is key that is that it puts that cell phone at that location so you have to ask yourself the question if you're an investigator why are you there and why is this phone there? You know, obviously we can't say that an individual is specifically there, but we can say that phone is there and that's going to be key to this.

Can they put that hand? Hold on. Hold on. Joe Scott, we also know that the brother who had only visited Chad Daybell's place four times in his life that we know of. He also stopped after going there that day, ostensibly dropping off the dead bodies, and had a meal at Del Taco. So you know we can place in there a number of ways through GPS tracking, through possibly any tracking in his navigational guide or tool in his vehicle, his Del Taco receipt. I mean, a lot of ways other than his cell phone. But when you look out at this acre, would you consider, of course, looking with the naked eye for disturbed ground or you could use a ground disturbing radar that's pretty easy or even a dog can hit on disturbed ground you know so you can once you're at the scene there are a lot of

techniques you can use to find exactly where the graves are yeah there are and you know the first thing that came to mind were the cadaver dogs they they work on a spectrum that we can't even fathom as human beings. That is that they are uniquely trained to clue in on decomposing human remains. This is completely different than drug dogs or, you know, dogs that are used to look for exotic animals, you know, through the customs department, all that sort of thing. We're talking about cadaver dogs. These dogs are specifically trained for this purpose. And I'm glad that we have them. And they have this spectrum, you know, like we have a spectrum of vision. They have a spectrum of smell and olfactory sense that leads them. They can literally narrow this down to a particular area. And of course, in this case, if we're talking about the dogs were used just to get an idea where they are,

can you imagine? Well, these dogs are going nuts. They've got two separate locations. Remember, these bodies are found in two separate locations. But the dogs are not the ones that are going to excavate this. They simply are there in order to kind of narrow the spectrum down, narrow the possibilities down. It's at that point that you have to survey the surface of the ground before you as an investigator. They've got a forensic anthropologist out there that is good at reading what's referred to as the topography of the ground, you know, how it's kind of shaped. Because for you and I, you know, when I go out in my backyard, I don't look at the ground,

say like a geologist or a forensic anthropologist would. I just look at it. I see upturned dirt, maybe where I worked in a flower bed many, many months ago. It's not like that for them. They can recognize just by sight where soil has been disturbed. They can look at vegetation that, say, it's not equal in height to everything else. That means that it's new growth as opposed to everything else, you know, looks like it's been there for a while. So there are these certain little clues that they kind of go on. And once they get there, they'll bring out, you had mentioned ground penetrating radar.

Now, wait a minute, you're making it sound very technical. But when you go out there, just as any untrained person can, you can go out and see where there's disturbed ground or where there's been digging unless somebody concealed it very well. So what's the next thing you do? Whether you use ground-disturbing radar, which will tell you whether ground has been disturbed, even many feet below the surface, cadaver dog, or just a visual examination with your naked eye. You can see where somebody's dug up dirt. Yeah, you can. You can also see the evidence of the fire pit and look through that right you can and you can also use uh say metal metal probes to literally go into a suspected area and as you place these

metal probes into the ground the sense of actually placing the rod into the ground and what's what it's touching beneath you can see if there's resistance or non-resistance remember with soil that's undisturbed it's very tightly packed everybody can identify with this if you've ever had a shovel in your hand and you try to dig up dirt that's been there for years and years and years very difficult however if you got into an area that has been turned recently, you can take one of these metal sticks and slowly pass it into the ground, the subsurface of the ground, and it's very loose. It's easy to kind of understand there's something below there.

If you can verify it with ground penetrating radar, it'll literally give you a photo of what's beneath the ground. In many of these instances, you can actually pick up on things like human bodies. You can make out a shape of the body beneath the ground. And in many of these instances, you can actually pick up on things like human bodies. You can make out a shape of the body beneath the ground. You can see skeletal remains, this sort of thing. And so this is very important. And you have to specifically mark this area, Nancy, because once you set, once you set the parameters for this thing, you don't want to go too far field with it. You want to zero in on this location and then very, very, and I mean very carefully, begin to take those layers of soil off of the top of the ground so that you can get to what lies beneath. Let me ask you this. In the very careful

dig process, what is your understanding of how the children were found the condition of their remains well with tylee uh you know the interesting thing is that uh they're talking about that her body had been dismembered and in some manner i'm not really sure to what extent at this point, but I do know that if they're talking about dismembering, then that means that her body was essentially in multiple pieces, all right, possibly. And so you're going to have to be very careful in moving the soil away from this area because, you know, you mentioned earlier, you talked about the burning. Well, when you get down below this kind of substrata that's right there, the lower levels, you know, when you're getting down to where the body is actually kind of nested down in there, you're going to have to look for things like high deposits of carbon,

which is, you know, like burned wood, you know, these areas. And you get a sense of when the soil was kind of turned over onto the body once they dug it out. Now they might be scraping out the fire pit to put everything in there. You have to look for bits of evidence and collect everything that's around there. And most of the time when they do this on a kind of a micro scale, they'll grid off the area. You know, if people will just keep in mind this idea of like a multi-point grid and they will assign numbers to this and they'll say well i found a button in grid 1a kind of like playing battleship i found a zipper in you know 3c or i found a tooth a human tooth in this particular location our chart remains

here and in that sense you get an idea of how the body was distributed and then what was placed on top of the body were there stones on top of the body for instance and we're kind of getting reports that there may have been actually multiple layers of things to conceal the bodies that lie underneath almost like somebody took a lot of time with them we talk about jj who you know jj was not found in the same location as Tylee. And one of the things that struck me, Nancy, when I took a look at these aerial photographs, it really, and I urge everyone to go back and take a look, it's really striking. In those early iterations of these photos, you could see this gigantic pit. I'm not talking about the fire pit.

I'm talking about what looks like a really large circular pit. That turns out to be a dry pond that had been drained some time ago. Apparently, JJ's body was found immediately adjacent to that. But what makes his so different and what makes the discovery of his remains so unique is that whoever did this with him took a lot of time and a lot of care with him. We understand that the body was essentially wrapped in black plastic. It was secured with duct tape. But even within that, his head was wrapped in a separate bag. So that gives us some indications about how the body was treated.

After the body was cocooned, and I refer to this as cocooning, the body was laid in the ground, and then multiple layers of dirt, brick, stone were placed over the top and then sawed. So you have these multiple layers that are going on. This is not somebody, Nancy, that went out and kind of haphazardly dug a hole, placed this child in the hole or the child's remains. This actually gives you an idea that this had planning involved. They showed up with the tools. They showed up with what they needed to accomplish it, all the supplies. And that goes deeper here as far as motive in this case. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. With me now, a very special guest, Joseph Scott Morgan,

so-called death investigator, professor of forensics at Jacksonville State University and author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon. Joe Scott, describe when you say the burial spots were in two different locations on the same property. Describe what you observed from the aerial view. You know, when I first saw the images, I didn't think too much of the fire pit. But then I started to kind of put two and two together. They were, the authorities at the time, were digging almost immediately adjacent to the fire pit. I would say it was within, you know, I was saying earlier, maybe within 20 yards. I don't want to pin myself down on that.

But it was a very close distance, certainly close enough to facilitate burning something and then taking it over to a hole that you've dug and placing it in there. So you get this relationship between the fire pit and the hole. It's like it's something that was done hastily. It's something that was not a lot of thought went into it other than we're going to try to dismember a body. We did an ineffective job at that. We're going to try to burn a body. We've done an ineffective job at that.

Let's dig a hole and place what we have done here in there to hide all of the evidence. So when you had this drained pond that I talked about earlier, you can still see it in the aerial photography. You have the fire pit, and then at some distance, you have this drained pond area. Over there, the area is much more pristine. There's no burning that's taken place over there. It's in an area that is on the lip or on the cusp of this pond. It's not like something was kind of cast off in there.

So this tells us a lot, I think, as an investigator about the dynamic that was going on with these children specifically. I think that JJ was treated in a manner in which Tylee was not. Tylee, they literally, after death, Nancy, with Tylee, they literally tried to destroy her. The difference in the way the children's bodies were treated, to me, is psychologically a very important clue. Because I believe that Chad Daybell convinced Lori Vallow that her children were dark spirits, that they were zombies, and they had to be destroyed. And at first, she identified Tylee as being a, quote, dark spirit, and then only later, J.J.

So it seems to me that they treated Tylee, even after death, much more badly than they did JJ. But when you look at it, I see what you're saying regarding the locations of these so-called burial sites. I'm just wondering how likely it is that they will ever be able to discover a COD cause of death. And also we've talked about Tylee's body allegedly dismembered and burned but JJ was practically hermetically sealed bound in duct tape and bags what can you tell me about the discovery of JJ just seven years old body the body his body uh you know he had a bag over his head Nancy and so for me, where Tylee, her body has been really destroyed, essentially. I hate to say that, but, you know, burned and maybe dismembered and these sorts of things. But with JJ, a bag over his head, maybe he was suffocated. I don't know. But one of the

things we're going to be looking for that they are going to be looking for at autopsy is certainly the signs that maybe this was some kind of asphyxial death maybe had a bag placed over his head and he was deprived of oxygen maybe they drugged him prior to this and then placed the bag over his head and and that's going to be key I think you're out Joe Scott if they did drug him in any way would that still be in his system now yeah yeah that that's that's going to be uh difficult i think that probably one of the things they're going to have to do is take their time with the tissue that they have uh the the blood itself people don't realize this uh but

you know the blood itself gets kind of compromised through uh through the process of decomposition sometimes there will be some urine left and maybe vitreous fluid from the eyes, but it's going to be very difficult to kind of key in. You know, any kind of agent that's applied to a body, any kind of chemical, drug, that sort of thing, it has what's referred to as a lethal level. And the lethal level, if you're looking for toxicology, is going to be very,

very difficult to determine in this case because we're so far downrange from when he actually died. So that's going to be key. I think one of the things they're going to be very careful about, though, is looking for physical evidence of trauma. Was it a head strike? Was it a gunshot wound? Was it a stabbing? And some of this stuff is going to be difficult to discern just simply because of the state of the soft tissue of JJ's body. Even though he's cocooned, it's going to make it much more difficult. The reality is, even if we never discover cause of death, the case can still go forward. Killers don't get a gold star just because they managed to hide the cause of death by destroying the body. Of course, they've got a lot better chance to determine COD with JJ because his body, we think, is still intact.

Not true for Tylee, who was dismembered and burned, based on what we've been told. Now, when a body starts decomposing, it gets a lot more difficult to determine cause of death. You lose toxicology, maybe. You lose soft tissue damage, such as an asphyxiation, because the petechiae in the eye, which rupture, typically upon strangulation, smothering, hanging, that all goes away. It decomposes to a point you don't have it anymore. So if we're trying to look for COD on JJ, whose body's kind of still intact, you're

going to have to be looking for a gunshot wound, a mortal blow that crushed his skull, maybe a nick from a knife on one of his ribs. If it's anything other than that, we may never know cause of death. No, we very well may not. However, I have hope in this case. And this is why, and let me just kind of briefly mention this. When the FBI agent, they state in the documents that were released, when the FBI agent they stayed in the in the documents that were released when the FBI agent essentially cut open that bag they said we see a human head with hair and that gives us an indication that maybe maybe the soft tissue to a certain degree is still intact now if we're talking about things like yeah gunshot wounds that's going to be kind of straightforward and

it shouldn't be that compromised. Knife wounds, yeah, you'd be able to see it. But also when you get down into the muscles, say the muscles around the neck, even though they're in a state of decomposition, a really keen forensic pathologist will be able to literally dissect the tissue away on the neck and look at the muscles. We look at what are called the strap muscles around the neck to see if there's strangulation involved. And we've got layer upon layer of plastic. And listen, we've also got duct tape. What this means is that whoever applied these bags to JJ's body, there's a high likelihood that there will be latent prints on the surface of these bags. Now they will have sweated some, but even internally, you might be able to find prints

on the inner portion of the bag, the outer side, the outside, I don't know so much. But when we take a look at that duct tape, the cool thing about it, Nancy, is that it has an adherent adhesive side and that leaves behind what's referred to as a plastic print. So that means that if you touch the surface of that tape, if they collect that tape properly, which I'm sure that they have, they can actually raise a print from the underside of that tape, and it's a marvelous thing. They might can do super glue fuming, for instance, where they'll fume the entire contents of the bag. I've even been present when they super glue bodies. They fume an entire body looking for latent prints. Could you explain to everybody what you mean by the super glue? Yeah what will happen with super gluing Nancy is that super glue just like you see at any

hardware store that you pick up at any store it's actually placed into a little metal container and it's heated up and as a result of the contents or the makeup of the super glue itself it turns into a gaseous state and as it turns into a gaseous state as it's heated it has to fall right and when it falls these fatty lipid oils remember if we touch your face you get kind of oily fingers and that sort of thing you have oil on your fingers when you leave these latent or unseen prints behind on a body as those fumes fall they adhere to those oily surfaces and you can actually make out a print and once it's there and it's locked in with superglue it's not going anywhere it'll be there for years and

years so they can study this very very very carefully. If they can do that, Nancy, then there'll be a tie back to the individual that may have cocooned the body. One other thing that we can think about, if the body is preserved in the manner in which I think that it is, we might have left behind touch DNA. Now, if this was in fact Alex that was involved in this, hopefully we still have some sample of his left behind so that we can go back and compare his DNA versus maybe an unknown that's found on the bag. You know, it also be interesting, Joe Scott, is to look for fingerprints or DNA on the duct tape and the plastic bags and anything else used in the burials, but to then also ID the bag. Because, as we now buying the trash bags? There's so many forensic avenues to travel down on this case in identifying all of the evidence even down to the duct tape because somebody had to buy the supplies and I'm also wondering about the

excavation of the fire pit itself what that's going to reveal Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Joe Scott, how likely is it that we will ever get a COD? If you're asking me if I'm a betting man relative to tyler yeah i think that we will off jj i i just i just don't know about tyler nancy at this point uh and i'm i'm holding out hope but the fact that she has been down and that her body has been manipulated so much in the post-mortem state they did they went to such great lengths to just rip her to shreds I don't know if we're gonna have as much luck with her as we will with with JJ once you have these bodies okay

it is just incumbent upon the authorities to search every possible lead that they can. They have the opportunity to really explore all of the evidence that may be left behind on these bodies, Nancy. We're talking about everything from the tool marks that I mentioned earlier, to possible DNA studies, to microscopic examinations of the bones themselves relative to the skulls to see if there was any trauma there that was before death. And it's essentially that we do everything. I'm thinking right now, I'm thinking right now about another person and that's Tammy Daybell. You know, we begin to think about what a horrible job was done in that case and how they just allowed her body to be removed from the scene

without ever really doing an effective examination. And that's what's got us in this point right now. Because this has drug on for so long. Well, one thing about Tammy Daybell, at least she wasn't cremated like an earlier husband of Lori Vallow's. So, you know, at least we have a body to examine. So my question is at this juncture, if we don't have fingerprints, which I think we will have fingerprints in some way, some touch DNA, be it a hair, a piece of fiber, anything

off JJ or Tylee's body, we still have the circumstantial evidence that it's in Daybell's backyard. He had the fire pit going. The neighbors saw it, as you pointed out. And then we find Tylee's body on his property burned. And I guarantee you there'll be something in that fire pit that relates back to Tylee's body on his property burned. And I guarantee it will be something in that fire pit that relates back to Tylee's body. So that's very strong circumstantial evidence. Would you agree or disagree? And what other circumstantial evidence do you believe will be found?

Hey, listen, yeah, I agree completely. It is you know how do you how can you explain it away it is the physical evidence uh it you know it it is essential to this case because that puts her remains in that specific location if they attempted to burn her body in that fire pit which i gotta tell you i think that they did uh what other identifying factors could be there well you can find you can find clothing bits of clothing buttons zippers all these other things that would be tie backs labels to clothing that wasn't consumed a tiny bit of bone a tooth anything can relate back to Tylee and that shows that fire, the mode of concealment happened on his property. And he was standing right there stirring the fire pit. Not only that, Joe Scott Morgan, we understand

that while police were executing their search warrant and ultimately dug up the two bodies, Daybell was sitting across the street watching. And as soon as they got to the spot and started digging, he took off and they apprehended him. So he was there watching. And if he didn't know what was there, why take off? You cannot get past that this is his property. You know, these bodies just didn't miracle themselves there. They're there purposefully. All right. And that's the issue here. How can defense, any defense, explain this away? It's going to be very, very difficult to get away from this. Nancy, this is the corpus delecti here. This is the body that we're talking about. And we're placing both of these bodies there. And specifically the most egregious of this is this

idea of her body being burned in his fire pit on his property. And any kind of relevant evidence that's there, you mentioned the tooth, teeth themselves, you know, will far outlast any other element of a human form by a long shot because they're so resilient. They are not bone, contrary to what people think. They can withstand a tremendous amount of heat. Let's just say, for instance, you do find her tooth in there, and we know that in life she had beautiful, intact teeth. We've even got dental records, perhaps, anti-mortem, prior to death dental records. How do you explain that the tooth of a normally healthy child, the 17-year-old girl, was actually found in a fire pit? You cannot get past that. That is going to be the proverbial

elephant in the room in that courthouse. world just keeps spinning, and it's not the end of the world. Will it ever hit her? She's going to sit there, tick, tock, tick, tock, watching that clock, and it is not the end of the world? You think it'll ever hit her? That all this was just a way to have sex with her and get her children out of the way? The whole cult thing, the end of the world, the new Jerusalem was all BS. I got a feeling cult mom will never reconcile it because the truth will be too awful. She'll think, oh, we calculated the wrong day at the end of the world or some other BS. So she can still justify the murder of her children.

But I can tell you this much, it's not going to work with a jury. Joseph Scott Morgan, professor of forensics, Jacksonville State University and author. Thank you for being with us. We wait as justice unfolds. You're listening to an iHeart podcast.