Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - MAYHEM IN THE MORGUE | Neighbors

Episode Date: January 18, 2026

Listen to Mayhem in the Morgue on all podcast platforms: https://link.podtrac.com/MayhemMorgue Content Warning: This episode discusses the death of an individual. If you’re sensitive tothis topic, this episode may not be for you. Proximity has a way of revealing character, especially when the walls are thin, and patience runs thinner. In this episode of Mayhem in the Morgue, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kendall Crowns reflects on neighbors whose actions left an enduring impression. From a disruptive medical school neighbor whose behavior eroded routine and focus to a volatile homeowner whose actions escalated into gunfire and a contested death investigation, Dr. Crowns traces how proximity can transform daily life. Highlights • (0:00) Welcome to Mayhem in the Morgue with Dr. Kendall Crowns • (0:45) Medical school housing and the quiet routine that made it work • (2:15) A new upstairs neighbor and the slow collapse of routine and focus • (4:45) Noise confrontation and the limits of courtesy • (6:00) Retaliation by anonymous landline calls • (10:15) Finals arrive and behaviors spiral • (13:30) Years later, a new home brings a new kind of conflict • (16:00) A routine afternoon in the backyard turns violent • (18:00) Law enforcement responds, but the behavior continues • (22:30) A familiar face arrives in the morgue • (25:00) Gunshot wound analysis and suicide determination 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. Once again, this episode has discussions of deaths of individuals. If this sort of thing upsets you, this is again, not the episode for you. Welcome to Mayhem in the morning with your host, Dr. Kendall Crowns. Today's episode, Neighbors. Neighbors. Unless you own a private island, you can't escape them.

Some are good, some are bad, and some you never know. But the really bad ones are the ones you really remember. Today, I'm going to talk about a couple of problematic neighbors that I have had over the years. When I was in medical school, I lived in an apartment complex on Rainbow Boulevard in Kansas City, Kansas. It was near some train tracks and a highway. The apartments were small, reasonably priced, and were a few blocks away from the school, and most of the people who lived there were actually medical students.

I walked from these apartments every day to go to class, and they were incredibly convenient. I can still remember my apartment number. It was 514. It was in the back corner of one section. I shared a wall with one person, and I had a neighbor across from me and one above me. Behind my apartment was a tree-covered hill that blocked out the sun,

so that wasn't really a neighbor, unless you count the feral cats and raccoons. In the years that I lived there, my neighbor across from me was non-existent. I saw her only once. She too was a medical student, but a little further along than me. She was a great neighbor.

Never there, kept to herself. When she was there, she was always quiet. During my first semester of school, my upstairs neighbor was also very quiet. He was in his final year of school, and he was never there as well. and I never heard him except maybe once or twice. And because my apartment was so quiet, I studied there a lot.

It was convenient. I could get snacks. I could nap and occasionally watch TV. And I developed quite a routine. I went home for Christmas that year, and when I returned, I had a new upstairs neighbor. I still remember his name, but because he isn't dead, maybe. I'll refer to him as Lane. Lane. Lane and I started medical school together. My class size was 175 students, which is a big group of people, and he were always busy. And due to that, I knew who he was, but I didn't know him. And his last name was also further down the alphabet than mine. And that meant we had no interaction in labs or clinical rotations. Lane wasn't always in his apartment, but when he was, Lane liked to get drunk. And when he was drunk, he liked to get drunk. He liked to get. loud, and he liked to do this at all hours of the day. I remember one time at 2 a.m., he sat on his back porch blowing a marty-graw horn for over an hour. Lane also liked to entertain strippers from a

local strip club called bazookas at his apartment. Sometimes he would be having extracurricular activities with them late at night, and it would also get awful loud. But the most annoying thing that he did was on the morning of our examinations, and that activity was he would play the song Roost by Allison Chains. If you're not familiar with Allison Chains, they are a heavy metal band that formed in Seattle in 1980s, and they're always mixed in with the grunge musical scene of the 1990s. If you're not familiar with the song Rooster,

it's a song about a soldier in the Vietnam War, and it is written by one of the members of the band by the name of Jerry Cantrell. It's a very loud, guitar, and drum-driven song, and at 7 a.m., and every test day, it would start like clockwork. I would be sitting, eating my Cheerios next to my kitchen sink, reading my panic notes that I had put together the night before to do some last-minute studying. And I would hear the opening guitar riff to the song, followed by the lyric, Ain't found a way to kill him yet.

And a few seconds later, the chorus, Here they come to snuff the rooster. You know he ain't going to die. And all the while, Lane was screaming at the top of his voice along with the song. It was obviously his pre-test ritual, and we all have those. I always like to wear a particular shirt, but for me, his was really annoying. Before that time, I thought Allison Chains were a decent band. But after this sonic torture that I endured during this time period, I've never been able to listen to them again. It was incredibly frustrating because he was so noisy and loud and irritating, often at weird and bizarre times, I just started avoiding my apartment.

I would try to study at school to just not to listen to him, but that really wasn't working for me, because I had a routine before he got there, and studying at school also had its problems as well. It wasn't always convenient. I didn't have food there, and napping in the study cubicles wasn't as comfortable. I had to do something, so I could get back to my routine. I decided I would try talking to him about the noise. I tried several times, and his response always was a pleasant. F off! Ah yes, F off. A truly educated response. I complained to the apartment manager, Polly. But there was only a very important. only so much she could do, and she wasn't always there. Finally, I took matters into my own hands. I know this is the point in a true crime story where someone ends up dead, dismembered, and disposed of

in a refrigerator, but instead of that option, I went with option B. And that was, I initially pounded on the ceiling with the handle of my broom. This was ineffective because it was often actually not loud enough for him to notice. And when he did, he would either turn up the noise or pound on his floor back. I even put a couple of holes in my ceiling pounding so hard. And when my dad came up to visit, he had to help me patch them up. After the pounding was unsuccessful, I got creative. The apartments we were living in had the same footprint. So I pretty much knew the layout of his. I knew where his bed was, where his television was, etc., etc. I found his phone number in the student directory, and this is, of course, a time before cell phones and caller ID. It was good old-fashioned

landlines. I could track where he was in his apartment, based on his thunderous footsteps. And of course, I knew the location of his phone. It was the same spot as mine, because all the phone jacks were in the same place. My diabolical plan was, when he got really loud, I waited until he was at the farthest point from his phone in his apartment, and I would call, and I could hear his phone ringing. His music would turn off or whatever activity he was participating in would cease and would walk across the floor. Thump, thump, thump, and when his footsteps would get to his phone, click, I'd hang up. I could hear him pick up the phone and say, hello, and then hang up, frustrated. The footsteps would move away from the phone, heading back to his noisy activity,

and I would call again. His phone would begin ringing, and he would run over to the phone, and just before he'd reach it, again, click, I would hang up, and sometimes sit in my apartment and laugh a little bit. After a few times, this would usually agitate him and cause him to leave his apartment in frustration. And for a little while, the noise would be completely gone, and I could study until he returned to start the cycle over. There was one occasion he even got so frustrated

that he threw his phone across his apartment, screaming about why did his phone keep ringing? And why did that person keep hanging up? Success was achieved. Were my tactics wrong? Were they a little juvenile? Yes. Yes, they were. But it was down to him or me at that point, and I was going to win. We kept this game up for most of the semester. He never took his phone off the hook, which is what I would have done if the phone kept ringing and people kept hanging up, but he didn't do it for whatever reason, and I kept calling. And he would leave longer and longer, giving me longer periods of quiet. But the one thing is, I could never stop the rooster. from arriving on test day. I just learned to adapt and be gone before the music started.

Eventually, my dad came up with a very reasonable solution. One time when he was coming up to visit me, he brought with him some gun range earmuffs. He told me this will probably take some of the edge off that noise, and it did. I started wearing them,

and it was a little easier to deal with Lane's rambunctiousness, and things continued on for a while. But then there was a turning point for Lane and Thames. school, and it had nothing to do with me and my phone calls. It was during the 1993 National Championship game for the NCAA tournament in basketball, or March Madness. Kansas University was playing the North Carolina Tar Heels, and the winner would be crowned the NCAA champion. The next day,

though, after the game, we were scheduled to have several very critical tests, but the professors said if Kansas University won, the tests would be postponed for a few days. But, but the professors, But if they lost, the tests would proceed as normal. All my classmates were a buzz with, Oh, if they win, we don't have to take the test for another few days, and we'll have more time to study. Some were like, oh, forget it, I'm going to study anyway. For me, I was really hopeful that KU would win.

And that night, I had the game on my television. But I didn't have the sound on because Lane's television was so loud, I could hear the announcers through my ceiling. I was half-heartedly studying and watching the game, but by halftime it wasn't looking good. I knew that a true fan would not have given up and would have had faith that KU would have won, but this was medical school after all,

and I couldn't fail a test. I turned off my TV, slipped on my shooting range earmuffs, and started studying. After about an hour or so, there was a sudden boom. My overhead light shook and dust fell from the ceiling onto my papers.

I took my earmuffs off to hear what was going on. I could hear Lane screaming and destroying his TV, and by the sounds of it, his apartment. Kansas University had lost, and the tests were going to happen, and Lane was not happy at all. The next morning, test day, I left before the rooster began. I don't know how he did on the tests, but I know after that he started to drink and yell more and more, and there were often loud, angry arguments with his stripper friends. And that phone, that phone just wouldn't stop effing ringing.

What the hell? The semester was ending, and we rolled into finals. On the day finals started, I had shone up to school to take the first of several tests of that day. And I heard some people talking that Lane had been pepper spray the night before the test by one of his girlfriends from the strip club. He had run out of his apartment and stuck his face in the bird bath by the pool at the apartment complex. And when I heard that, it explained the screaming that had woken me up at 3 a.m. that morning. Eventually, we finished finals. I packed up and I went home for my short summer break. I kept my apartment over the summer because my break wasn't very long.

And when I came back, my neighbor crossed the way was again still there, still quiet, still non-existent. But Lane was suddenly incredibly quiet. Did something happen over the summer? Did he change his ways? went to class that first week and I didn't see him around and I asked one of the other medical student that knew everybody's business because there's always one of those in every class. What happened to Lane? And they said, well, no one really knows. He just never came back. Later that week, I saw my apartment manager and I asked her, hey, what happened to the guy who lived above me? And she said that she didn't know. He just never came back. They couldn't find him. They called

the list of phone numbers. No one answered. And when his lease ran out, they entered into his apartment, and it appeared he just picked up all of his stuff and left, and there was trash everywhere and damaged to the apartment. And there was a phone. The base had been smashed pieces, and the receiver was broken in half. And the parts were all over the place. When I heard this, I smiled, and I thought to myself, victory. The apartment manager went on and said, he won't be getting his deposit back if he ever shows up again. I did find out that Lane's grades had been on the decline most of the semester, and he actually never showed up for the second half of finals. I guess the mixture of medical school and strippers was just a recipe for disaster.

I never heard of him again, and I don't know what happened to him. He just disappeared. One thing is, though, every time I hear the opening to rooster by Allison Chains, I changed the channel, and I think of him, and it reminds me of how irritating it was to live under him. time period. After I finished medical school, I moved to Memphis, Tennessee for residency. I had nice neighbors there for the entire time, and then we moved from Tennessee to Illinois, specifically the western suburbs of Chicago, and there we had wonderful neighbors, and we moved from there to Texas, and my new neighbor in Texas was my most unpleasant neighbor of all. At my new home in Texas, the backyard opened up into a field, the one side of the house,

face a roadway with the neighbor across the street, and the other side faced an empty lot. I really only had the one neighbor on one side. And on the day I moved in, I was talking to the builder when my new neighbor walked up. He was kind of a short, elderly man with gray white hair. He was wearing a white t-shirt, suspenders, and blue jeans. The builder said,

Hey, Doc, this is your new neighbor. And the old man turned to me, and he said, So I hear tell you're dying. Well, they call me, Doc. And I said to him, well, nice to meet you, sir, that's interesting. And they call me, Kendall. And from that moment on, that is how our relationship was. He was unpleasant and sometimes aggressive, trying to always tell Beth or me how to handle our house or our yard or things like that. He would tell us we couldn't plant trees, have a fence. He was always frustrated when we wouldn't listen to him. And when he didn't get his way, he would try to cite his own obtuse version of the HOA rules, and then, if he didn't get his way, he would write up a lengthy complaint and turn them into the HOA to try and get us in trouble. The HOA would come by and investigate, and they never found that we had any real violations. One example of this is we had a shed built that was one inch too close to the property line based on the HOA rules, and he measured this with a tape measure

and filed an aggressive complaint about our shed, wanting it destroyed, probably burned. The HOA looked at it and said the one-inch discrepancy really wasn't that important. Plus, the shed was on the other side of our fence and really didn't affect his property at all. And they told him he just needed to calm down, which made him really mad. The other thing he used to do was have loud karaoke parties late at night. And like I said, he was an old man. He was in his late 60s, early 70s, and he and his friends would become intoxicated and sing songs by the Eagles, Bob Seeger, and Cher, and carry on like they were college kids until well past midnight. And let's just say he couldn't sing, nor could his friends, and I again added a couple more songs

to my list of songs that I can't stand when they come on the radio, which includes desperado, and believe. This continued on for quite a while. During this time, I had a garden in my backyard, And one time I was out there watering my tomatoes. It was a bright summer day. The sun was shining and it was warm outside. There was a dove quietly cooing on the edge of my fence. I was focusing on the status of my plants. There were weeds in the garden and some of the tomatoes were starting to ripen.

When out of the blue there was this pop and the cooing dove fell dead at my feet. Then pop, one of my tomatoes exploded. I looked up and I could see my neighbor in his boxers and white t-shirt and bathrobe pointing a gun me and taking aim. I dropped my watering can and I ran, zigzagging in the yard. I heard another pop while I was running, but I don't know where that one went. When I got in the house, I told Beth that the neighbor was shooting at me. She called 911 and the sheriff's office responded, but we lived out in the country, so it took them probably about 20 minutes for them to get there. During that time, I looked outside and noticed he was gone. I went out there and picked up the

dead bird. I looked at the poor dead dove. He was bleeding from his chest. and I wanted to find out why he died. I cleaned the feathers off the wounds and found an entrance and exit wound consistent with a gunshot. They weren't very big, so whatever the gun was, it didn't have a lot of power or kinetic energy. Plus, the bird was still intact,

so if it had been a high-velocity rifle, the bird would have exploded. When the sheriff's officer arrived, I went out to the driveway and met her with the dead bird in my hand. I told her what had occurred, and then I showed her the dead bird and began showing her the entrance and exit wounds,

and I started telling her my theory about the gun. The officer looked at me, perplexed, and she said, Who are you? Where did you get this bird from again? And I said to her, well, actually, I'm one of the medical examiners of this county. And this is the bird that was shot by my neighbor on my fence right next to me when I was watering my tomatoes. The sheriff's officer said, well, okay, I don't need to see the dead bird,

but you can show me where this incident occurred. And I put the bird down, and we wold. walked into the backyard where my garden was. I was pointing out to her where I was standing when the bird died, and she said, where was the shooter at? I turned and I pointed at the door my neighbor had shot from. And when I did that, I saw him standing on his deck, eavesdropping on what I was saying to the sheriff's officer. And I said to her, well, that's him right there. He's the one that shot at me. And the sheriff's officer said, sir, I'd like to speak to you. His eyes got real wide, and he took off running and the sheriff's officer started yelling, excuse me, sir, I need to speak to you, and he kept

running, and he ran to his driveway, and he got in his golf cart, and began driving away at the golf cart's top speed, which wasn't very fast. The sheriff's officer ran and got into her cruiser and chased after him down the road, and she cut him off with the cruiser and got out saying, sir, I need to speak to you. It was quite the spectacle. But I didn't catch what happened next, because I went in the house. And when she got done with the interview of us, I was, and when she got done with the interview of him. She later called me and told me what the results of her interview had found. She said that he claimed to be an Air Force sniper, which didn't make a lot of sense. He claimed that he knew his way around guns, and he was using a CO2 charged air rifle and

shooting pellets, and would never have shot at me intentionally. But he closed with, because if he wanted to shoot me, he could have done it, and he wouldn't have missed, because, you know, he was a sniper. And he told her his true intention. or to just get rid of the doves because he found their cooing to be irritating, and he didn't like birds, and the birds needed to go. And she told him what he had done constituted a reckless act, and he could be charged with reckless endangerment. And she asked me what I wanted to do, and if I wanted to pursue charges.

And I told her I didn't want to pursue charges as long as he stopped with the shooting of his air rifle in my general direction, or towards my yard, because at that time I had a lot of small children who loved to play outside in the yard most of the day and I didn't want them to get hurt because I knew that air rifles were dangerous and just one well-placed pellet or BB could easily enter your body and kill you

because I had had cases like that. We didn't press charges. He stopped shooting his air rifle in my general direction. And we continued on with our armed truths. He'd occasionally call the HOA and complain about us and it went on and on like that for a few more years. Just like with Lane, though, a turning point came. It was in late March, and I was set to go back to testify in Chicago on a case.

The case was yet another gangland shooting, lots of bullets, lots of wounds, and one very dead gang member. And I had to fly back on a Sunday. Bethel drove me to the airport, and I flew out that afternoon, and was in Chicago by that evening. The next morning I got up and took a cab to the courthouse, and when I got there, I had some time to kill, so I called Beth to see how she was doing.

When she answered, she told me something weird had occurred when she was taking the kids to school that morning. The neighbor was standing at the end of our driveway. She was wearing a rumpled overcoat in her house slippers. Her hair was crazy, and she had this wild look on her face. She was shaking her fist and screaming and waving a white towel that was stained red

aggressively back and forth. Beth was attempting to back out of the driveway with our kids in the van, and one of our children said to her, why is the neighbor acting so weird? And Beth said, I don't know, but we're just going to get around her. And she maneuvered the van

and got around her and drove away, while the neighbor continued to scream and shake her fist at the car. Beth told me all of this, and I said to her, That's incredibly odd. That doesn't even make sense. I wonder what they're up to now. I'm sure we'll be getting a call from the HOA sometime this week.

Beth agreed, but she said this time it was really different, and it was exceptionally odd. I went on to testify in the case later that day, and after I got done, I was driven to the airport, boarded a plane at O'Hare, and flew home. The next morning, I got up and went to work, like I always did, arrived around 6 a.m., and I cut through the death investigator's office on my way to my office. One of the death investigators saw me, and she said, Hey, we think we got your neighbor in here late Sunday night.

And I said to her, are you kidding me? And she pulled up the file and the pictures on her computer and showed them to me. And sure enough, it was my neighbor. Wearing the same white t-shirt, same suspenders, and blue denim pants that he was wearing when I met him for that first time all those years ago. The only difference was he was laying there dead on an autopsy table. I asked her what had happened to him, and she told me the case was pending. He had evidently gotten in his wife's car, driven to the end of the street,

pulled up in the driveway of another person's house, which was for sale, got out of his car, walked along the driveway into the yard, and that's where he was found, dead, with two separate gunshot wounds of entrance to his head. The gun was at the scene, which made it seem like it was a suicide, but there were other circumstances that called the manner of death into question. And these were, when the sheriffs arrived at the scene, his wife was hysterical and screaming, and she had the HOA president and her husband sitting in her house with her.

She was carrying on and on, moaning and incredibly enraged, crying and yelling, and she kept telling the sheriff's officers that responded, she didn't want that son of a bitch doctor touching her husband. and she kept saying this over and over. The sheriff's officers were like, What doctor are you talking about? And she pointed out her window towards my house. And one of the sheriff's officers looked over and noticed

sitting in my driveway, my car. At that time, I had a very distinctive blue Mustang that I drove all the time, and all the officers knew about it. I didn't take it to the airport when I left for obvious reasons. And when the sheriff's officers saw that car. They knew who that son of a bitch doctor was. It was me. And then they both thought, Wait, this is the crazy neighbor that Dr. Crowns is all he's talking about, the one who shot at him,

and the one who does all those other crazy things. And while they were taking their notes, the neighbor's wife alleged that I had something to do with his death. And that created the issue with the manner of death. They had to rule out a homicide, a suicide in which two gunshot wounds of the head occur is unusual. In the U.S., 20,000 people die each year from gunshot wounds to the head. There is a 5% survival with these, and 3% of those people have a good quality of life. There are a few factors that come into play that determine if a person can have purposeful movement after they're shot in the head. A low-speed, small bullet will fracture the skull but lose most of its energy doing that, and the result in damage is just along the wound track.

A high-velocity bullet, on the other hand, can cause a massive wound track with a pressure wave and results in significant damage and almost always kills the individual. It's really, truly, about the velocity, so as always, speed kills. Also, if you just damage one side of your brain, the other side of the brain can be still functioning and take over and you'll survive, at least for a little while, depending on how much hemorrhage there is. So it can occur, you can shoot yourself more than once, in the head, and still be able to move around and pull the trigger again, or even survive. When I saw my boss later that morning, he questioned me about my whereabouts on Sunday and Monday. And I told him, well, you know where I was at. I was in Chicago testifying.

And my boss said it would be in my best interest to have an alibi stating where I was at on Sunday and Monday. and I said, well, wait a second, am I being blamed for something? And my boss emphasized, saying it would just be best if I could prove my whereabouts on that Sunday evening due to the allegations that were being made. I called the lawyers in Chicago and I told them my situation and how I needed a certified letter from them, verifying that I had been there on Sunday and Monday. And the lawyer said to me,

well, that's highly unusual, doctor, what kind of place are you working in? But if that's what you need, well, we can provide you with one. And they did. They sent me a letter by overnight mail, and it was fancy. It was unofficial, Cook County stationary. And I took that letter, and I gave it to my boss, who showed it to the sheriff's officers that were investigating the death. And I was able to prove I wasn't there when my neighbor killed himself. And eventually the investigation showed that he had shot himself twice.

I mean, it was two contract range wounds. And the gun was at the scene with two fired casings still in the gun. And it turned out he had been making suicidal gestures to his wife, to the point that his wife had taken away all of his guns. But she had kept hers, because it is Texas. And the gun he used was one of hers. And it was a small caliber, low-velocity firearm. So it made sense why he was able to shoot himself twice. The cause of death was made.

Gunshot wounds of the head, manner of death's suicide. Case closed. And what was on that towel, you ask? Well, she had walked down to the scene and was noticed by the people who lived in the house to be cleaning up the area where her husband had shot himself. So what was on that towel was probably some of his remains. About a year after the incident, she moved away,

and new neighbors came in and things returned to normal. And eventually we moved away as well, and now we have new neighbors too. And that whole incident has just become a distant, bizarre memory. And that brings us to the end of the episode. I hope you learned something like the call is coming from inside the house, sort of. I hope you were entertained.

Until the next time. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.