Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Mayhem in the Morgue | First Day

Episode Date: August 24, 2025

Welcome to the debut episode of Mayhem in the Morgue — an unfiltered, insightful look into the world of forensic pathology, hosted by veteran medical examiner Dr. Kendall Crowns. With more than 35 years of experience in death investigation, Dr. Crowns brings a unique perspective shaped by countless real-world cases. In this premiere episode, Dr. Crowns rewinds to his very first day on a forensic pathology rotation during medical school, when a potential homicide call spiraled into something far more bizarre: a fatal case of autoerotic asphyxia. What followed was a crash course in death, dignity, and the unpredictable mechanics of a Wiffle ball bat. It’s chaotic, educational, and a vivid example of just how strange real life — and death — can be.   Highlights: ● (0:00) Welcome to Mayhem in the Morgue ● (0:30) First day on the job — and straight into the deep end ● (2:00) A supposed homicide takes a wildly unexpected turn ● (4:30) “Cut him down, Kendall”: initiation by rope ● (5:30) Rookie mistakes and awkward landings ● (6:45) Lessons you never forget ---   About the Host: Dr. Kendall Crowns Dr. Kendall Crowns is a nationally recognized forensic pathologist and a frequent contributor to Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. His career has taken him from tornado-ravaged Kansas, to the blood-streaked banks of the Mississippi, gang-torn Chicago, and the meth-fueled madness of Texas. With thousands of autopsies under his belt, he brings unparalleled insight into the strange, grisly, and sometimes absurd world of death investigation. About the Show Mayhem in the Morgue takes listeners deep into the bloody, bizarre, and often unbelievable realities of forensic pathology. Each week, Dr. Crowns shares gritty stories from the morgue, the crime scene, and the courtroom. Expect gallows humor, hard truths, and cases that range from unsettling to unforgettable — think decomposing feet with no bodies, courtroom bombshells, and the kinds of deaths that even seasoned pathologists can’t quite explain. If you think you’ve heard it all… you haven’t. Connect & Learn More You can learn more about Dr. Kendall Crowns on LinkedIn, catch him regularly on Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, and be sure to follow Mayhem in the Morgue wherever you get your podcasts. 📣 Mayhem in the Morgue,  - follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave us a review.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hi, guys. Nancy Grace here. And right now, I want to introduce you to a podcast you're going to love Mayhem in the morgue with our friend and colleague, Dr. Kendall Crowns, chief medical examiner, Tarrant County, that's Fort Worth, Texas, never a lack of business in that morgue. He is the esteemed lecturer in the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU, with literally thousands of death investigations under his belt.

He has spent a career reading silent evidence left on the body from blunt force trauma to the smallest trace that points investigators in the right direction. Crowns explains how the morgue holds answers to crimes. No one else can decipher. Follow Mayhem in the Morg. You can find wherever you get your podcasts. And now here is our friend, Dr. Kendall Crowns. Welcome to Mayhem in the Morg with your host, Dr. Kendall Crowns.

So today's episode is First Day. So everybody has first days, right? We all have a first day of work. first day of school, et cetera, et cetera. So today I'm going to talk about one of my first days in my career. So I was on my last rotation of medical school. I was one month away from graduating. And the rotation I had chosen to take was in forensic pathology, which was what I wanted to do as a career. And I arrived at the medical examiner's office, walks through the front doors, and I was met by the entire staff, the medical examiners, the death investigators, the clerks, everybody. They gave me

a little cubicle in the death investigator's office where I could put all my stuff. So I set up and I got ready for my day. About midday, a call came in and it was a possible homicide. The chief of death investigator Bill says to me, Hey, let's check this one out. You're coming with me. I was super excited. I get to go to a homicide scene on my very first day of my medical school rotation. This is super cool.

So we head out and we go to this apartment complex where the death had occurred. So this rotation was in my hometown. I had grown up there, lived there for close to 28 years. So this was an apartment complex. I had driven past hundreds of times over the years. Just kind of nondescript. It was on this way to an old arcade I used to go to to play video games and play pool at

when I was in high school and college. So we get there and the homicide detectives have already been there and they were waiting for us. They were waiting in the dead guy's kitchen. And so when we walk in, they're sitting in the kitchen and they've made sandwiches from the dead guy's refrigerator and they're sitting there eating him. And they said to Bill, they go, hey Bill, this is in the homicide.

This is some stupid pervert. Go check them out. And so we head on down the hallway to the dead guy room. When we get in there, there's porn all over the bed. Now, this is the days before the internet. So it's paper porn. Nothing on the computer, no cell phones back then, just paper porn. That guy's in his closet, and he's hanged. So at this point, I had read about hangings before this day. Hangings are usually, you know, guy hanged from a ceiling. He can be suspended. He can be sitting down. It can be a number of things. But he's just kind of hanged. But this one was different.

So how is it different? So he's hanged with a white nylon rope that's about his neck, tied with a hangman's noose with 13 coils, but then he's also completely naked. He has clothespins on his nipples, and a wiffle ball bat jammed up his butt. He's leaning against this large blue plastic barrel. Also, the rope itself had an intricate mechanism associated with it. The rope went up to the ceiling, through an islet, then over a beam that then went to another islet that was attached to the wall, that then attached to the side of the barrel that he was sitting against. The piece attached to the barrel had kind of an intricate fail-safe mechanism or a tripwire mechanism that was attached to the side of the barrel. So essentially it was an escape mechanism.

One thing to note also is the beam itself had multiple grooves on it from the rope. So he had done this a number of times before and been successful. His fail-safe mechanism was if he passed out, he'd fall off the barrel. It would trip the fail-safe and cause the roof to become loose and completely fall off, causing the tension to be release from the dead guy's neck and his blood flow and his oxygen would be restored and he wouldn't die. But on this day, instead of falling off the barrel, he kind of leaned back onto the barrel so the failstaff never fired and he died. He didn't expect to end up dead. So I'm looking at this. I'm just overwhelmed. There's porn. There's a naked guy. There's a wiffle ball bat. There's all this

stuff going on. It's just sensory overwhelming to me. Never seen anything like this before. Totally didn't understand. It's a hanging, but what's going on? So I said to Bill, uh what's going on bill and bill nonchalantly says to me oh this is just autoerotic asphyxia at that point i had never heard of autoerotic asphyxia before and i just was like autoerotic what he goes autoerotic asphyxia what they're doing is they're masturbating and they hang themselves because they think the decreased oxygen to their brain will increase the pleasure and so sometimes when they're doing it they accidentally end up dying so i'm standing there just kind of overwhelmed taking this all in I didn't even know what questions to ask at this point, because this is just totally confusing.

So the homicide detectives come down the hallway, and they go, hey, Bill, who's the new guy? Who's the rookie? And Bill says, oh, this is Kendall Crowns. He's our medical student. He's rotating him with us this month. And the detectives say, okay, have the new guy cut him down. Have the rookie cut him down. And Bill goes, hey, that's a great idea.

He pulls a pocket knife out of his pocket. And he hands it to me and goes, cut him down, Kendall. And I'm like, yeah, all right, I'll do that. This is cool. I'm doing forensics, you know? So I crawl up on this barrel. I'm standing on it. Beryl's about four foot off the ground.

I grab hold of that rope with one hand, and I start cutting with my other. I am not the strongest person in the world, and there is no way, even on a good day, I could hold a 180-pound naked guy with one hand. But I'll continue. So I'm cutting, I'm cutting, I'm cutting, and I'm getting through this rope.

I'm getting close to the end, and in my peripheral vision, I notice the homicides detectives are stepping backwards, and they're kind of laughing, and Bill's stepping backwards, he's kind of laughing. I mean, they all know what's going to happen, of course. You know what's going to happen at this point. I didn't, for whatever reason that day,

it was so laser-focused on this rope that I couldn't even think of what was going to happen once I got to the end. So I keep cutting him, I get to the end. I cut through that rope, and all of a sudden, bam, I'm holding an 180-pound naked guy with one hand on a wobbly barrel, and 180-pound naked guy falls to the ground like a sack of potatoes,

and I come falling right on top of him. I land on him with my elbow right into his abdomen. So if I'm hitting him with my elbow on his abdomen, you know where the rest of me is in relation to the rest of him. So, ew. But anyway, my elbow digs into his abdomen and creates pressure, and that pressure that's created forces that wiffleball bat out of his button across the room. I roll off of him, and I jump to my feet, and I'm like, I'm okay, I'm okay. No one cared if I was okay at that point because they were all too busy laughing. They were bent over laughing so hard.

So once everybody calmed down, we got out a body bag and we rolled him into the body bag, and Bill said to me, yeah, You're picking that bat up, buddy. Handed me a pair of gloves, thankfully. And I walked over and I picked up that bat and I threw it in the body bag. We zipped him up. Homicide detectives left probably tell everybody about what happened about the stupid medical student. And we waited for body transport. Body transport showed up.

They picked up the body. Bill told them the story. They all got a good laugh. I had back to the medical examiner's office. And the dead guy was later autopsied. He was found. His cause of death was hanging. Manor death was accident.

We'll go into why that is on another episode. But anyway, and then that day came to an end. So at the end of the goal, I learned a very important lesson. I can't hold a 180-pound naked guy while balancing on a barrel. Never have done it again in the rest of my career. Very important lesson. I always look back on it, and I always think, thank goodness of Internet and cell phones weren't around back then,

because if they had been, I would have been a viral sensation that probably would still be going on for the next 100 years. So that brings us to the end of the episode. I hope you learned something. Hope you were entertained. Until the next time.