Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Mayhem in the Morgue | BUZZ kill

Episode Date: April 26, 2026

In this episode of Mayhem in the Morgue, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kendall Crowns examines how an ordinary day outdoors can turn deadly after an encounter with bees, wasps, hornets, or fire ants. Using real forensic cases, he explains the four stages of anaphylaxis, the aggressive nature of killer bees, and how forensic pathologists determine whether an insect attack caused, contributed to, or merely complicated a person’s death. Highlights: (0:00) Welcome to Mayhem in the Morgue with Dr. Kendall Crowns (0:15) Why stinging insects can turn an ordinary summer day into a fatal emergency (1:30) Dr. Crowns’ childhood story involving yellow jackets, his brother, and a very bad idea (5:30) How stinging insects are classified and the anatomy of stingers (6:15) The Schmidt sting pain index and the varying pain of insect stings (9:00) Sting frequency, allergic reactions, and seasonal danger patterns (11:00) Case one: a fatal bee swarm after a lawn mower disturbs a nest (13:30) The difference between bees, wasps, hornets, and the threat of killer bees (19:15) The four stages of anaphylaxis and autopsy findings that help confirm a fatal reaction (24:00) Case two: a woman found covered in fire ants, and what really caused her death About the Host: Dr. Kendall Crowns is the Chief Medical Examiner for Travis County, Texas, and a nationally recognized forensic pathologist. He has led death investigations in Travis County, Fort Worth, Chicago, and Kansas. Over his career, he has performed thousands of autopsies and testified in court hundreds of times as an expert witness. A frequent contributor to Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, Dr. Crowns brings sharp medical insight and dark humor into the strange, grisly, and sometimes absurd realities of forensic pathology. About the Show: Mayhem in the Morgue takes listeners inside the bloody, bizarre, and often unbelievable world of forensic pathology. Hosted by Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kendall Crowns, each episode delivers real-life cases from the morgue, the crime scene, and the courtroom. Expect gallows humor, hard truths, and unforgettable investigations. Connect and Learn More Learn more about Dr. Kendall Crowns on Linkedin. Catch him regularly on Crime Stories with Nancy Grace and follow Mayhem in the Morgue where you get your podcasts. If you liked this episode, don’t keep it to yourself; follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Today's episode includes information about the death of individuals. If this sort of thing upsets you, may I suggest you watch a movie, maybe something like The Swarm. Welcome to Mayhem in the Morning with your host, Dr. Kendall Crowns. Today's episode, Buzzkill. As summer approaches and people are outside more doing activities in the day, nature, there is an increase in attacks by stinging insects. You know them all too well. They're the bees,

wasps, hornets, and the dreaded fire ants. These insects can make a fun summer day turn into a miserable nightmare, and for some, it can result in death. In today's episode, I'm going to be discussing deaths associated with stinging insects. So let's get started. It's interesting in the United States, a significantly greater part of the population is killed by hornets, wasps, than bees compared to snakes. For whatever reason, people are more afraid of snakes in nature than stinging insects, and when they see a snake, they run, but a hornet's nest? No. Instead, they hit it with a stick and film it on TikTok. Statistics compiled from the United States spanning the years 2011 to 2021 showed 788 people were killed by wasps, hornets, or bees, roughly averaging 72 per year,

compared to only 50 snake deaths during this time period. Probably everyone I know, including myself, has been stung at least once in their lives. For me, I've been stung multiple times, but the worst time occurred when I was around 10. It was late summer, and my dad was mowing the lawn when he hit the edge of a yellowjacket's nest. that was in the ground. The yellow jackets quickly came out and swarmed. My dad abandoned the mower, ran inside, and he only got stung twice. He waited until dark to retrieve the mower and told my brother and I to avoid this area in the yard until winter, because then the yellow jackets would all die out, and it would be safe again. Later in that week when my brother and I were alone in the house, as we often were, he said to me that he had gotten a hold of a spray that could kill the

Yellow Jackets. And then he told me, you can be a hero by going out there and killing them all. He said to me, Mom and Dad would be so impressed with that take-charge attitude, and more than likely, would reward me. I was all for this, an opportunity to prove how brave I was and get a reward. I said, give me the spray. I'll do it. In which my brother said, if you want to kill them all, you have to spray deep in the nest and show no remorse. How do I do that, I ask. He said, said with this, and he produced a large double-headed axe, the forbidden axe, that I had seen many times in the garage. It looked like a medieval weapon, and I had been told several times not to touch it. And there my brother was holding the axe in front of me, and he said first

whack the nest with this axe, and then start spraying into the gap that was created. I thought that was easy. Plus, I get to wield the axe like a Viking. I told my brother, I was all for it. He handed me the axe in the spray can. The spray can was a short, silver can with remnants of a paper label on it. But no information. I didn't think anything about it. I marched out of the house with my weapons, axe in one hand, spray can in the other. My brother didn't accompany me, but instead stayed in the house watching from a window. In my head, I thought, coward. I approached the area where the nest was, placed the spray can on the ground, took the axe with both hands and swung it, striking the nest dead center.

I could hear the yellow jackets angrily buzzing. I dropped the axe quickly and picked up the can and started spraying the first yellow jackets that came out of the gap that I had created. I sprayed them down, saturating their wings, causing them to fall out of the air. But it didn't kill them. Moore came streaming out, and I continued frantically spraying as they flew through the air. There was just too many of them, and they were mad. and they were definitely on a seek-and-destroy mission,

and their target was me. I was stung the first time on my arm, then another sting on my shoulder. I realized the spray wasn't working at this point, and I ran, dropping the spray can along the way. As I was running into the house being stung several more times, I could see my brother in the window, and he was laughing. When I got into the garage,

I brushed the remaining yellow jackets off of me, and then ran into the house. I told my brother, that spray didn't work, and he said, of course it didn't, you idiot. It was my old Ritegard deodorin spray. He then said, you better not tell Mom and Dad, because you know you weren't supposed to touch that axe.

He had me there. I cleaned up, and my brother told me to put ice on the sting sites. Luckily, I had no reaction to the stings, other than the pain and a little redness. Once again, I survived yet another one of my brother's great ideas, and unfortunately, that was not the last time I saw. succumbed to them. I never told my parents what happened, and after that, every time I smelled the smell of Rydgarde in the middle school locker room, all I could think of was those stinking yellow

jackets, and how gullible I was. Yellowjackets are part of the order of insects known as Hymenoptera. Insects in this order are common worldwide. It is the second largest order of insects with approximately 70 families and 18,000 species in North America. The only insect group that is bigger is the order colioptera, which is beetles. All stinging insects belong to this order, and the stinging insects that we're discussing today are

in three main families, and these are apidae, which are bees, Vespaday, which are wasps and hornets, and formacidae, which are fire ants. All the members of these families have some sort of stinging apparatus at the tip of their abdomen. The stinger itself is a modified

egg-laying apparatus, which means that only the female insects can sting. They puncture the skin with the hollow stinger and inject the venom. The amount of venom injected is different based on the insect. The pain caused by the sting has a rating system, which is called the Schmidt Pain Index. It was created by an American entomologist by the name of Justin O. Schmidt. He documented the varying degrees of pain he experienced from species of bees, wasps, hornets, and ants. In the course of his career, he was stung most of.

than a thousand times. He classified the sting pains on a scale of one to four, with four being the most painful. He also had very colorful descriptions of the stings for each of these insects. For level one, Schmidt described this as very mild temporary pain lasting up to five minutes. One of the descriptions of this level was for red fire ants, and it is as follows, sharp, sudden, mildly alarming, like walking across the shag carpet and reaching for the light-swain, which. Level 1 insects include fire ants, small bees with a small stinger, and small wasps. The next level is level 2, which is moderate pain, lasting up to 5 to 10 minutes. He describes a honeybee sting at this level as burning, corrosive, but you can handle it.

A flaming matchhead lands on your arm, and it is quenched with lye, and then with sulfuric acid. Insects found in this level are honeybees, yellow jackets, and bald-faced hornets. among others. Level 3 lasts longer, up to a half hour, and it feels far worse. Schmet describes the pain inflicted by an insect at this level known as the velvet ant as explosive, long-lasting, you sound insane as you scream. Hot oil from deep fryer spilling over your entire hand. Insects in this section include the velvet ant, which I've only seen here in Texas, as well as the red paper wasp. For the highest level, level four, The pain can last up to two hours and can even cause brief paralysis.

One of the descriptions at this level is from the tarantula hawk, which I have seen here in Texas when my kids caught one in a mason jar. When I saw what it was, I made them all go into the house, tipped it over, and ran as fast as I could. Schmidt described the pain from a tarantula hawk as blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair dryer has just been dropped into your bubble box. bat. Insects in this section include the bullet ant, warrior wasp, and as I said, the tarantula hawk. Needless to say, these stings from these insects can be quite painful. It just depends on what you

run into, and I know I don't want to be stung by anything above level two. There are over one million stings per year by hornets, wasps, and bees in the United States. Fire ants are in a category all by themselves, because they sting even more often, easily. exceeding a million stings per year. There's not a place you can go anywhere in the United States where you can find one of these insects, and more than two million Americans are allergic to them. Their stings account for 500,000 emergency room visits per year, with the majority only being minor reactions. In the United States, the honeybee causes the most deaths, but fire ants cause the most allergic reactions, and this is partially due to their highly aggressive tendencies and more

people running into them. Stings have a distinct seasonal pattern dictated by the insect's annual life cycle. As spring arrives and the temperatures consistently get above 50 degrees Fahrenheit, the queen emergence from dormancy and begins to lay eggs. Summer sees rapid growth of the colony, foraging activity and worker populations peak, particularly in July. New workers' take over maintaining the nests and hunting and foraging. As fall begins, especially in September, the nest reaches maximum size, activity becomes more intense, and the insects become more aggressive as the resources and foods begin to become more scarce. And because of this, the insects begin expanding their foraging territory, looking in trash cans, and that's when they also

start interacting more with human beings, and they start hovering around sugary drinks and things of that nature. By winter, most of the workers die, and the newly fertilized queens go into hibernation to start the cycle over. So as you can tell, most things peak in late summer in early fall, especially through the months of August to October. And the people stung the most are once again males, because males do a lot of stupid things. Hey, it's just who we are. And that brings us to our first case. He was an 81-year-old obese male. He had a history of diabetes that was so severe that he had bilateral below-the-knee amputations. He used to love to ride his riding lawnmower, and he had had it set up so he could still control it with just his hands. His family said he would

spend all day on it, riding around, just enjoying himself on their couple of acres of land. On this particular day in mid-September, he was out driving his lawnmower like he always did. He was actually mowing for once when he hit an underground nest of some sort of insect that came out and swarmed him and started attacking and stinging him. He started driving erratically, waving to his family in the house for help because he had no legs and he couldn't escape. He drove close to the house and went past the window, waving his hands and yelling, and his family waved back because they thought he was just having a good time. He eventually turned and fell off his lawnmower.

When the family saw that, they realized something was wrong, and when they went outside, the insects swarmed on them and started stinging them, and they realized what they had been witnessing all along was not him having fun, but him being stung. They were horrified. They dragged his body into the house and called 911, but it was too late. He was already dead. When the death investigators arrived to the scene, they got stung as well.

But they were able to identify the attackers, and it was bees. When I performed the autopsy, he had over a hundred stings on his body, and there were multiple stingers still embedded in him. They were on his hands, his armpits, his chest, his back, his abdomen, his legs. They were even inside his nose. And there were stings in his mouth along the tongue and the back of his throat. He had diffuse swelling of his body, and his mouth structures, the tongue and the throat,

remarkably swollen, constricting his airway. He also had pulmonary congestion endema with mucus plugging of the bronchye. His cause of death was anaphylactic shock due to the bee stings. Manor death accident because he didn't mean to hit the hive. Identifying the type of insect is very important in these type of cases.

Bees, wasps, and hornets can look alike, but how do you distinguish them? First off, bees are fuzzy with round bodies, whereas wasps and hornets are sleek, shiny, and hairless with narrow pinched wastes. Wasps are generally smaller and often have yellow black markings like yellow jackets, and hornets are larger, usually about two times the size of their smaller cousins the wasps, and have black-white markings or black-white or reddish-brown markings. And the thing to remember is all hornets are wasps.

But not all wasps are hornets. One of the main differences between bees, wasps, and hornets is what they eat. Bees are omnivores, but they generally collect pollen and nectar from flowers and plants for their sources of food, while wasps and hornets are predators collecting insects and other small invertebrate prey to feed to their young. And then the adults feed on nutritional liquid produced by their young. They also feed on sugary substances like nectar, fruit, and fruit juices. As far as aggression goes, hornets are the most aggressive, followed by wasps and the docile honeybees. A form of bee known as killer bees are actually more like a hornet in aggression.

The hives for bees and the nests for hornets and wasps vary in location. They can be up high like in trees or in the ground, and can be small to up to the size of a basketball. Wasps and hornet stingers are different than bees. It's more smooth with very fine, tiny, tiny bar. barbs that don't stick into the skin. It looks kind of like a knife. And wasp and hornets can sting multiple times, whereas the stinger for bees has large barbs on it, and it's associated with their internal abdominal structures. When they sting, the barbs anchor the stinger in the skin, and as the bee tries to pull away, it rips out its abdominal structures, and the bee dies. Once detached,

the stinger actually continues to pump venom. The stingers' muscles and nerves continue to rhythmically contract, injecting venom for about 45 seconds to several minutes. And because of this, bees really don't want to sting you because they know they aren't going to survive the experience, but they will if they have to defend themselves. Bees have the most species located here in the U.S., and they range in size from small, tiny, fairy bees to large carpenter bees. But when most people think of bees, they think of the honeybee, which is not native to the United States, but was introduced in the 17th century by Europeans. These bees are typically very docile,

and they only become aggressive if they feel that their hive is being attacked, but otherwise, for the most part, they don't want to sting you. The other bees that a lot of people think of were the bees associated with this case, which are killer bees, also known as Africanized honeybees. These are hybrid species created by crossing African honeybees and European honeybees. Killer bees were produced in Brazil in the late 1950s, with the goal being to create a more resilient and productive bee species that could thrive in Brazil's

tropical climate. A few of the bees escaped their laboratory home, reproduced, and now killer bees are found in many parts of the world. Killer bees are highly defensive of their hive. They swarm in great numbers and even chase potential threats up to a quarter mile from the hive, making them far more aggressive than their European counterparts. They respond to threats 10 times faster and more aggressively, and they release a pheromone which alerts other bees so they can coordinate their attack on potential threats, resulting in a swarm on a target in a matter of seconds.

It has been noted that with a swarm that can be up to 10 to 15 stings per minute, their venom is not more deadly than honeybees, but typically there's more of it because bees are involved in the attack. Killer bees look very similar to honey bees, almost the same, just maybe a little bit smaller, and have darker yellow to golden hue. The venom produced by bees is similar to that produced by wasps and hornets. It's a complex mixture of peptides, enzymes, and biologically active amines. But each venom has distinctive properties that serve as major allergens in humans. In bees, it's melaton, which makes up to 40 to 60% of the venom. It causes cells to run. It causes cells to

rupture and also causes pain and inflammation. For wasp and hornets, they have antigen 5, which is the main causative agent in allergic reactions to their stings. All the venoms have histamine in them. It causes vasodilation, leakage of fluid into the tissue, as well as itching, redness, swelling, and pain associated with the bite. It's also produced by cells in the body, known as mass cells, and is released as part of their response to the allergen, and will go into that, a little further later. It is possible to die from a direct poisoning from the venom, but this is rare. But when it does happen, it is known as toxic venom overload or a systemic toxic reaction. A high volume of stings, which is about 10 stings per pound of body weight or anything over

1,000, results in symptoms after a few minutes to hours, which includes severe burning at the injection sites, headache, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain, which progresses after days to hemolytic anemia, which means your red blood cells are rupturing. But when there is a massive venom load seen with over 500 to 1,000 stings, or 30 to 50 in a child, you can get acute kidney failure, followed by multi-organ failure and death. But that didn't happen in this case. Instead, he died from anaphylaxis. Anaphylaxis can be more. mild or severe, and goes through four stages. Stage one or mild anaphylaxis involves symptoms that occur within minutes to a few hours after the exposure to the allergen. It's usually seen with a

skin rash, redness, itching, hives, or even a runny nose. Stage two, which is moderate anaphylaxis, you begin to see widespread hives all over the body with itching and mild swelling. The lips and tongue also begin to swell, and there is difficulty swallowing. Typically, it's a lot of the body. Typically, this stage epinephrine should be administered. Stage three or anaphylactic shock is characterized by severe symptoms, usually difficulty breathing, extensive swelling, weak pulse, dizziness, and a drop in blood pressure. At this point, your own body's inflammatory response is beginning to affect your vital organs such as your lungs and heart. And it is a medical emergency. Epinephrine is usually administered, but the person experiencing this should go to the emergency room. The final stage is life,

threatening anaphylaxis, the individual loses consciousness and experiences severe airway constriction, as well as having inadequate blood flow to vital organs, and this can result in cardiac arrest and death. In this situation, the person definitely needs to go to the hospital. 50% of deaths from anaphylaxis occur within the first 30 minutes, and 75% of deaths occur within four hours. At autopsy, the findings we see are swelling of the tongue and throat structures, hyperinflated lungs, pulmonary congestion endema with mucous plugging of the airways. Microscopically, there is an increased presence of a particular cell seen in the tissue known as mass cells, which are markers of an allergic reaction. Among other things,

their role is to release mediators upon detecting a pathogen or allergen, recruiting other immune cells and also releasing histamine and tryptase. Histamine we've already talked about and it has the same effects as what occurs with the insect venom. Triptase also promotes inflammation, recruits more immune cells, and increases the number of mass cells. Triptase can be a useful marker that we use when we do laboratory testing at the time of autopsy to help prove it's actually an allergic reaction and not something else. Other markers that we can use are looking for histamine levels and IgE, which is an antibody that plays a central role in allergic reactions. With IgE, we look for

venom-specific antibodies if we know what stung them. And that's why it's important to get the actual insect involved in the incident. The laboratory tests helped confirm the fact that the person died from anaphylaxis due to the specific stinging insect found at the scene. So to get the cause of death, it's a combination of autopsy findings and laboratory tests. Finally, the last stinging insect I'm going to discuss is fire ants. Fire ants were imported from South America accidentally and introduced in the United States in the 1930s through a port in Mobile, Alabama. They likely arrived in the soil used as ballast on a cargo ship. After that, fire ants spread rapidly, and today, the territory includes Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

with sporadic occurrences occurring in Kentucky, Kansas, and Missouri. A typical fire ant colony produces large mounds and open areas and feeds mostly on young plants, insects, and seeds. They often will attack small animals such as live lizards and can kill them. The venom is different than bees, wasps, and hornets, and is primarily composed of solenopsons, which is of water-soluble alkaloid that causes burning pain, redness, swelling, and inching, and it is the main cause of allergic reactions and can result in death.

Workers usually use their mandibles to bite, anchor to the skin, and then pivot, stinging repeatedly, injecting venom in a circular pattern. When a fire ant mount is disturbed, which can be something as innocuous as footsteps, it can elicit an aggressive response. Fire ants are highly territorial and offensive, will respond immediately with a coordinated attack. When the threat is detected, they release pheromone signaling and mobilizing the colony into a massive coordinated assault. Hundreds or even thousands of ants can pour out in seconds, and their swarm behavior is designed to overwhelm

and deter threats. I have had one case where there was a massive number of fire ant bites found on the person. She was an 80-year-old female who wandered away from the nursing home that she was staying at. She had dementia and heart disease. She was dressed in pajamas, and when they found her, her body was overlying a fire ant mound. She was covered in thousands of ants and ant bites, which were these little red circular abrasions that were all over her chest, back, arms, and face. When I did her autopsy, she still had fire ants on her, and they got on my gloves and began biting and trying to sting me, but were thwarted by the layers of latex. We had to clean and scrub them off to get rid of them

before we continued with the autopsy, and I really hate fire ants. Internally, she had no signs of anaphylaxis. I had further testing done, looking for tryptase, which came back negative. But what she did have internally was the findings of heart disease. She had an enlarged heart and bad coronary arteries, So the thought was, she possibly fell onto the fire ant hill while having a heart attack and died before the ants could even attack. But the ants continued to bite her, even though she was dead. And we do see this occasionally in bodies found outside.

Ants come up and begin feeding on the body, like other scavengers. Cause a death was determined to be atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease or a heart attack. Manner was natural. So in closing, when you're out there and join the cause, the nice weather of spring, summer, and fall. Be mindful of the bees, wasps, hornets, and fire ants, just as you would a snake, because they can kill you too. And that brings us to the end of the episode. I hope you were entertained, and I hope you learned something. Until the next time.