Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Mayhem in the Morgue | Holidays

Episode Date: December 21, 2025

Content Warning: This episode discusses the deaths of individuals. If you’re sensitive to this topic, this episode may not be for you. In this episode of Mayhem in the Morgue, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kendall Crowns reflects on how celebration and death often share the same season. From Christmas music echoing through the medical examiner's office to a door-decorating contest that nearly led to suspension, he recalls the unusual ways morgue culture adapts to the holidays. Dr. Crowns also recounts a corporate holiday party that ended in homicide, explains the science behind neck injuries, and remembers the “death watch” he and his father kept while delivering newspapers to those who died alone during the most festive time of the year. Highlights • (0:00) Welcome to Mayhem in the Morgue with Dr. Kendall Crowns • (0:45) Christmas music in the morgue and a memory that tested family tolerance • (3:45) Door-decorating competitions from residency and the Rudolph controversy • (7:30) Holiday parties, the rumored poisoning case, and the politics of the potluck table • (11:00) The dangers of open bars at holiday office parties and a rivalry gone wrong • (14:00) Understanding subarachnoid hemorrhages, vertebral artery tears, and blunt-force trauma • (17:45) Decomposition and the reality of those who die unnoticed, leading to the “death watch” lessons learned on a paper route • (22:15) Closing reflections: the importance of checking in on others during the holiday season About the Host: Dr. Kendall Crowns Dr. Crowns is the Chief Medical Examiner for Travis County, Texas, and a nationally recognized forensic pathologist. He las 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 unparalleled insight 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 us a review.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Today's episode has information about the death of individuals. If this sort of thing upsets you, this is once again not the episode for you. May I suggest you read a book, something like My Travels with Charlie. Welcome to Mayhem in the Morning with your host, Dr. Kendall Crowns. Today's episode, Holidays. Merry Christmas and happy holidays from Mayhem and the Morg.

As the weather gets colder outside and the holidays are fast approaching, I thought in today's episode we could discuss some things commonly associated with this time of year. And those things are holiday celebrations and decomposition. So let's get started. Now that Thanksgiving has passed, offices all over. the U.S. are preparing for their annual holiday festivities, and medical examiner's offices are no exception. Every office and hospital I have ever worked at gets into the spirit of the season in a variety of ways. There is usually holiday music, decorating competitions, and of course

parties. Every morgue I have ever worked in has had music playing, except one, and that was the Cook County Medical Examiner's office. The chief medical examiner there said music was distracting in the the morgue and disrupted the thought process. And it was always quiet, except for the sound of people working and having discussions. And of course, the only music that ever occurred was the scream of the bone saws, grinding against the skulls. But everywhere else, music was always part of the day. And during the holidays, the music can take a more festive turn. My first holiday season in a morgue was as an autopsy tech. The hospital I worked at was a Catholic hospital, and during the holidays, they played Christmas music throughout the workday on the PA system.

In the morgue, it came through a circular speaker covered with a gray metal grate next to the clock above the chalkboard where the doctors wrote down the organ weights. I remember one particular day I was assisting on an autopsy of an individual who died of lung cancer due to their love of nicotine. During the autopsy, we were looking for metastases, and I have a very distinctive memory of a traditional rendering of Otanbaum as I was opening up an intestine at the doctor's request, cleaning out the feces, and looking for lesions. Later on that day, when we were done with the autopsy,

I remember a musical version of O'Little Town of Bethlehem playing as I was sowing the decedent back together. When I got home that evening, my mother asked me how work went, and I relayed the story that I have just discussed, including the two songs that I distinctly remembered. And when I got done with the story, She just started crying. I asked her why she was so upset, and she stated that such things should not occur with Christmas music playing.

And it was at that moment I realized that my mother really couldn't handle what I did for work. And after that, we didn't discuss the details of my work anymore. It was just too difficult for her to hear, and over the years, she would sometimes see something on TV about a case that happened in a jurisdiction I worked in, and she would call and ask me, was that one of my cases? And I would say, yes. And her response would be,

oh my. In other morgues I have worked at, as a doctor, I actually asked during the holidays for any other music than Christmas music to be played. Box of rain, shake it off, wildest dreams,

even bad blood, are always preferred to holiday songs because I just like to keep death and Santa separate in my mind. Holiday decorating is another very common thing that occurs at medical examiner's offices. People decorate their offices, or they often decorate their door. Door decorating competitions have been part of every level of my career. They can be simple placard stating Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays to elaborate designs,

depending on the artistic ability of those involved. When I was in residency at the Veterans Administration Hospital, I shared an office with two other residents. One was a second-year resident, and the other was a fourth-year or senior resident, almost ready to finish. We shared a medium-sized office that was a white-and-gray, nondescript room with a kind of light blue carpet. We each had a workstation with a microscope and a computer that was connected to the VA's computer system so we could access patient information. There was a single communal computer along one wall that had access to this crazy new thing called the World Wide Web that had a download. speed of a whopping 14.4 bits per second. In my first year residency, I spent the holidays at the

SPA Hospital in this room. And when the holiday season started, the pathology department decided that we could all decorate our doors. The second and fourth year pathology resident and I decided to participate. We came up with a plan, and the next day the second year resident came in with construction paper, and we began cutting out and crafting our design. I traced a picture. I traced a picture. of the VA hospital on a morric light table that we used for looking at old kodochrome slide, and then we obtained Xerox copies of all the ID badges of the staff pathologists, as well as our ID badges. The purpose of this was we were going to cut out the faces from each of the pictures and use them to decorate the construction paper figures that we were

making. The finished product showed Santa and two elves and a sleigh being pulled by nine tiny flying reindeer through the sky over the VA hospital. We used the face of the fourth-year resident to decorate Santa, and Santa had a whip in her hand and was whipping the reindeer. The two elves were myself and the second-year resident, and we were throwing packages out of the back of the sleigh. Glued on the reindeer bodies were the faces of the staff pathologists, with cute little antlers on their heads.

The lead reindeer, or Rudolph, was the chief of the pathologist, department, he had an extra decoration of a circular red nose glued onto his face. We were very happy with our creation and thought we were very witty. Several of staff pathologists and other employees came up and saw our decorations and thought they were very humorous. After about an hour or so, we heard the chief pathologist walking down the hallway. He was a very big man. He was from some European country that I can't remember what one it was. His voice was always very booming and he was not someone that you ever wanted to make mad because he would get incredibly angry. When he saw our door decoration, he took an instant disliking to it and said

that we were implying that he was a drunkard by placing the red nose on it. The fourth-year resident said no, it's Rudolph, you know, with his nose so bright leading the sleigh, and it had nothing to do with his proclivity towards intoxication. He didn't buy that Rudolph crap and said it was totally us taking a shot at him, and he told us to remove it, unless we would like to be suspended from the program, which none of us wanted. We quickly complied, and for the rest of the month, our decoration was Santa and his elves being pulled in a sleigh by nine tiny reindeer, with the lead reindeer Rudolph, being the headless decapitated reindeer, ghostly leading the sleigh through the night's sky, which was definitely not the story I had heard as a child. The last component of the holidays of

the morgue is the end of the year holiday party. There is always one somewhere. Some are simple events with just cookies. One time, the only person who showed up with cookies was my wife Beth, but everybody enjoyed them, and some were questionably catered, and then there are, of course, others that were potlucks. At potlucks, there would always be a wide range of food, and people who brought the food were always excellent cooks, and there would always be way too much food. It was hard to know what to eat, and it could become a political minefield because some people would get offended if you didn't eat what they brought, and then carry a grudge for the rest of the year.

One time, I was not feeling particularly hungry, so I just got a roll in some carrots and cucumber from a vegetable plate that I had brought. I have always been unsure where to sit at these affairs. I sat down at an empty table to eat, when the chief medical examiner and the chief of toxicology sat down at the table with me. After that, no one else would sit there. They both had plates full of food, and the chief started asking me questions immediately about why I had so little. Are you a vegan? Are you lactose intolerant? Gluten issues? Issues with shapes and colors of food? What is it? Why do you have so little? My answer was basically, well, no, I just didn't feel like eating anything today. He said,

interesting, that doesn't make any sense. And is that the food you brought? And I said, well, yes, it was the food I brought. And he said, that's suspicious. And then he turned and started talking to the chief toxicologist about office issues. And they forgot I was sitting there. I quickly ate my food and got out of there before the next round of questions came. It's because the incidents like that, office parties and potlocks have always been anxiety-provoking affairs for me.

At one office I worked at, one of the employees was rumored to have done prison time for having poisoned to her husband. I don't know if this was true or something older employees like to say to mess with the new guys, but at the office potluck, the first thing I would do was determine which item was hers. I would ask one of the older employees, and they would always point it out. It was usually in a gray, medium-sized, slow cooker or crock pot, often relegated to the rear of the table. It would sit there and often be some sort of soup or bean-dip concoction, slowly bubbling quietly. As soon as I identified it, I would not touch it for fear that it had been poisoned.

I never noticed if anyone else took anything from it. She always brought something for the potluck, so if no one ate it, she was evidently never discouraged by this. I do know that no employee that ever worked there died or got sick right after the potlock. I think back on this, and I wonder, did they make up this legend to convince the new employees that her food was somehow tainted? And it was actually that it was really good, and the long-term employees knew it. And by telling this to the new people, there'd be less of it taken and more food for them. And if this is true, that was an incredibly sneaky move.

We will now turn from potlucks to the the more dangerous and lethal office parties. And these are catered off-site parties with an open bar. Parties like this are usually well-received. They're outside of the office. They're catered. They're somewhere fancy. Somewhere employees don't necessarily ever get to go. So they're very exciting. And the majority of employees love these types of parties. And plus, they have an open bar. And that means free drinks for all. And people really enjoy this. But some of the employees, too much alcohol, brings out the worst in them. When they're sober and at work, they're quiet, meek, mild, kept in themselves and non-confrontational. But when they're drunk, they become loud and belligerent,

argumentative, and even sometimes violent. I had a case that's a very good example of this particular problem. It occurred at a holiday party for a big-name corporation. It was a grand, catered affair at an expensive hotel in the downtown area. There was plenty of food, refreshments, cake, and an open bar with unlimited drinks. There were two employees that had an intense rivalry over who had the most sales within their section. And at that party, they became more and more intoxicated. And things began to escalate to the point that they began shouting at each other about who could sell things the best. And this turned into a shoving match, and then punches were thrown.

Other employees tried to intervene, and then they started fighting. and the party turned into a brawl. At some point, the original combatants found each other again and continued their fight. One punched the other to his knees. And as this employee was sitting there, dazed and confused on his knees, witnesses said the other employee lined up

and kicked him in the head like a football, causing him to reel backwards into the refreshment table, landing in a cake. The table collapsed, spilling everything, and the punted employee laid unresponsive. on his back with his head and shoulders covered in cake. Someone noticed that he wasn't moving. They tried to wake him up.

They threw water on his face. They shook him. And then someone said, hey, he's not breathing. CPR was started, EMS was called, and when they arrived, they rushed into a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival. The kicker had evidently played high school football and was actually the place kicker for the team.

So his kick did carry a certain amount of punch to it. When I performed the autopsy, the deced was a well-developed, well-nourished male appearing the reported age. His face and shoulders and neck were covered in a red, green, and white frosting. His hair was matted with a thick layer of this frosting, with occasional sprinkles. There was bits of cake in his hair as well. It appeared to be a white cake. When his cranial cavity was open, there was marked subarachnoid hemorrhage at the base of his brain surrounding his brain stem and cerebellum. Let's have a quick explanation of subarachnoid hemorrhage. Subarachnoid hemorrhage is when there's hemorrhage along the arachnoid layer of the brain.

And what's the arachnoid layer? Well, the brain has three protective layers known collectively as the meninges. The outermost layer is thick and tough and is known as the dura. The middle layer is known as the arachnoid, it's thin and lacy, and the final layer is known as the pia, which is located directly on the surface of the brain. The spaces between these layers can have blood pool in them after trauma. Hemorrhage above the dura is known as epidural hemorrhage, below the dura but above the arachnoid is known as subdural hemorrhage, and below the arachnoid but above the pia is known as subarachnoid hemorrhage. We'll discuss these different types of hemorrhages on different episodes with different cases. But like I said, this case had subarachnoid

hemorrhage, meaning there was hemorrhage in the subarachnoid space between the arachnoid and the pia. So there's a number of ways that a subarachnoid hemorrhage can cause death. The hemorrhage filling the subarachnoid space causes a massive pressure increase inside the cranial cavity, and this compresses brain against the sides of the skull, causing tissue death, and it can lead to brain from lack of oxygen getting to the brain, triggering edema or swelling of the brain, which causes the brain to push into the form in magnum, pushing on the brain stem, shutting off basically your heart and respiratory drive.

When I saw this subarachnoid hemorrhage during the autopsy, it was in a specific location at the base of the brain, which is generally a sign of two different things, a ruptured bary aneurysm or a torn vertebral artery. A bary aneurysm is another topic for another episode, but basically they are weaknesses of vessels at the base of your brain that can suddenly burst for any number of reasons, resulting in hemorrhage in the subarachnoid space, but that's not what happened with this case.

He instead had what is called a vertebral artery laceration or tear caused by trauma. Before we go any further, let's discuss the vertebral arteries a little bit. There are two vertebral arteries that are branches off the subclavian artery, which is a branch off the aorta. They travel up through the neck along either side of the cervical vertebrae passing through, openings in the vertebrae known as transverse foreamina. When the arteries reach the final cervical vertebrae, cervical vertebrae number one, or the atlas, they come out of the four amina and curve around the top of it and enter the base of the skull through a somewhat circular opening

known as the form in magnum and fused together forming the basilar artery along the front of the brainstem. These vessels provide 20% of the blood flow to the brainstem and brain. Traumatic tears or lacerations of the vertebral arteries are relatively rare and are caused by trauma, ranging from severe trauma like high-speed car crashes to something minor, like coughing or sneezing. The mechanism causing this injury is extreme movements of the neck, commonly known as whiplash, which is a hyper extension or hyperflection and lateral rotation of the neck. These extreme movements twist and pull the vertebral arteries and can result in them ripping apart. When this occurs, it results in bleeding in the tissue of the neck surrounding the tear and subarachnoid hemorrhage along the base of the brain. And that was the findings seen in this case. The extreme hyper-extension from the kick tore one of the vertebral arteries, and it resulted in subarachnoid hemorrhage of the brain and brainstem.

So the cause of death was made blunt trauma of the head and neck, and the manner of death was homicide. The co-worker admitted guilt, and it never went to trial. I don't know what happened beyond this. I did learn from this that be careful what you say at an office party because you never know what will set Jerry or fill off, especially if they have a score to settle about how many paper clips you use. Finally, at this time of year, can become abundantly clear that some of us are completely alone, and there is nobody checking up on them, especially if they don't work or are retired, and this is particularly true of the elderly. When one of these individuals die, they often aren't discovered for a long. period of time, and they end up decomposing and even becoming mummified or skeletonized. The decomposition process is often how they are discovered because the smell becomes so severe

that someone that lives close by can smell them. Occasionally in apartments, they are discovered when the person living below them starts experiencing an ever-widening spot in the ceiling that begins dripping from their decomposing neighbor that has begun to liquefy. There are other findings found at the scene, unrelated to decomposition, that can be markers that the individual is dead and has been dead for a while. This is usually seen when mail builds up in the mailbox or at the door. Sadly, I didn't learn this fact as a medical examiner, but instead learned it in middle school, working at my first job as a paper boy. It was a large route that spanned several miles and included houses and apartments. My dad and I worked on the route together. 4 a.m.

every day of the year, during rain, sleet, snow, or tornadoes, we were out there. We didn't throw the papers from a car, but instead walked the route, placing the papers by the door, or behind the screen door, if it was left, unlocked. During the holiday season, one year when I was in middle school, I was trudging through the snow on the paper route. I noticed one of our more elderly customers had papers building up at her front door. I could see in the snow the only footprints coming up to the house for days were mine, and there were no others either coming in or out. I could see her Christmas tree lights, lighting up the gray, gauzy white curtains in her front window, and a light was on in a room towards the back of the house, and these lights never changed from one day to the next.

On the fifth day, when I met my dad back at the car, I said to him, Hey, Dad, Mrs. Smith, I actually don't remember her real name, doesn't seem to be picking up her papers. There's mail, filling her mailbox, and the only footprints for days have been mine. His response was, well, that's interesting. She's probably dead. I was taken aback by this, and I said, well, how is she dead? How do you know that? And he said, what you've described?

Mail overflowing, papers at the door, no activity. It sounds like someone who's dead. My dad had an education in criminal justice. He had been around law enforcement for a large part of his life. and he knew what he was talking about. When we got in the car and we drove down to the address, he got out and he walked around, rang the doorbell, knocked on the door, looked in the windows.

And when he was done, he walked back to the car, got inside and said, yeah, she's probably dead. And I said, well, what should we do? Shouldn't we call someone? And his response was, well, of course, but first we have to finish delivering the papers. She won't be getting any debtor and people need to get their papers on time.

And off we went to the next section of the route. Once we got home, he called some of his officer friends, and they did a well-being check, and sure enough, Mrs. Smith was dead and had been dead for some time. Unfortunately, this was not the only time this occurred on the paper route. We had a number of elderly customers, especially on the part of our paper route, that the majority of which were apartments. Over time, my dad and I developed a system. I would come back to the car and say, 515 has a built-up with more than five papers,

positive mailbox sign, no activity, and he would say, note it, and we'd finish up the route, and go back by later, he would check to make sure that nobody responded by checking the door knocking on it, and he would look in the windows, and he would call it in, and the next day we wouldn't be throwing the paper anymore. I eventually quit asking what they found when they entered the apartment, or the house, because it was always the same decomposed individual for days, with some variation of pet scavenging, and of course flies on the window in summertime, or something similar. And over the years, it was just a common occurrence. And in the end, we were not just the paper carriers, but we were also the local death watch for our route. And that's the thing.

It's a fairly common occurrence for someone to be found dead and decomposed at their house because no one's checking up on them. I see it almost every day at my job. So do me a favor, and just check up on your family, neighbor, or friends this holiday season, because there really aren't paper boys anymore carrying on the tradition of the Death Watch. And that brings us to the end of the episode. I hope you learned something like, careful what you say at an office party. And I hope you were entertained.

Until the next time. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.