Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Police follow trail of blood, find gorgeous mom bludgeoned dead with office tape gun

Episode Date: April 23, 2019

David Dooley was convicted of murder and tampering with evidence in the 2012 death of Michelle Mockbee...killed in her office at work.He stood trial for the murder a second time. Was he convicted, or did he get to walk free?Nancy's expert panel weighs in:Joseph Scott Morgan, forensics expert, author of "Blood Beneath My Feet" Dr. Bethany Marshall, Los Angeles psycho analystAshley Willcott, Atlanta juvenile judge & lawyerRobyn Walensky, Crime Stories reporter, author of "Beautiful Life?: The CSI Behind the Casey Anthony Trial & My Observations"   Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. And I just walked in her office and I think somebody killed somebody upstairs in her office. Okay. What makes you think somebody killed somebody? She's laying there on the ground, covered up, and there's blood all over the floor in the office. Okay. What's the address there? 73-83 Empire Drive. Okay. Is it somebody that worked there? Yeah. It looks like her name is Michelle McAbee. She usually comes in early on Mondays. And they've got her whole body covered with plastic and that.

So you can't see her head or anything. And it is obvious she's dead, right? Yes, ma'am. Okay, what's your name? Ed Yuska, Y-U-S-K-A. Okay, how long has it been since somebody was in there? Was it Friday? What time did you get in?

Five o'clock we had people come in. Usually Michelle on Mondays gets here at seven o'clock. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. What happened to Michelle Mottby, a gorgeous young mother of two, found dead at the laboratory where she worked? The mystery intensifies. Mottby leaving behind two little girls ages 7 and 10.

Joining me, an all-star panel, Joseph Scott Morgan, professor of forensics at Jacksonville State University and author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon. Renowned California psychoanalyst, Dr. Bethany Marshall, judge, lawyer, anchor. You can find her at AshleyWilcott.com and CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter Robin Walensky, the author of Beautiful Life, CSI Behind the Casey Anthony Trial.

Robin Walensky, they find this young mom of two covered in blood in a pool of blood at her workplace. My very first question is, where was her husband? Husband is at home with the girls. Mommy is at work where she is the HR, human resources manager at Thermo Fisher Scientific. Nancy, this is a company. She's the HR manager. A lot of men that work there. She does the payroll and she organizes all the personnel matters. She is not involved in the science or the packing at the company. So in HR, you get a lot of enemies. We all know that. To Dr. Bethany Marshall, L.A. psychoanalyst, HR, the dreaded two syllables in every corporation. Ew. Human resources.

When they come down the hall, everybody look busy and start smiling. Because everything is awesome. Everything is cool when you're part of a team. That's what happens when HR strolls in. So Ms. Mockbee, Michelle, 16 years in HR at Thermo Fisher Scientific, a biotech company. HR, why does everybody hate HR so much? HR is the person to whom anybody who has a dispute with another employee reports their dissatisfaction. HR is like mommy in a big dysfunctional work family. HR knows where all the body's buried, knows all the secrets. HR, the person who works in HR can really get you in trouble if she's not on your side.

So I actually have a few patients who are in HR and they really struggle with mental health issues because they're always reprimanding people. They're the person that if somebody's fired, they prepare the final paperwork, they have to sit in the room, they have to escort the person to, you know, pack up their belongings before they leave the building. They take to sit in the room. They have to escort the person to, you know, pack up their belongings before they leave the building. They take the key card and the keys. It's a very stressful position for the person in HR. And also they're very alienated from people in the company because everybody's afraid of them. Well, I was about to say, it's not that they're bad people. Everyone's afraid of them. You see HR heading toward you, you're not, you don't think they're bad people everyone's afraid of them you see hr heading toward you you're not you don't think they're gonna say hey you want to go get a cup of coffee oh no no no no no and now

you know you just breathe a sigh of relief when they keep on walking um but you know that's interesting somebody way up on high decides to fire hatchet job somebody and then it's on hr to do the deed and you're right they know where all the bodies are buried they know everybody's secrets uh i mean you know uh let's just take for example in the recent past all the complaints of sex harassment hr has probably been knowing about those for years and they will probably reprimand the person. And they'll probably fuss at the person. They'll probably make them take leave or make them go to some kind of a sensitivity class.

And then they walk by in the hall. They're like, mm-hmm. I mean, how can you even look at people when you know all the stuff about them? And the HR employees can't tell. They're at least not supposed to tell, what they know. So they carry it around with them. Michelle might be in that position. She's found in a pool of blood.

What else can we learn from the 911 call? So there were people there yesterday? No, no, nobody was in here yesterday at all. Okay, so this morning, and so the last time somebody would have been there would have been last Friday? Friday, yeah. Nate would have left around 8 o'clock at night. Okay, so it looks like a homicide, correct? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Was that her office?

No, it's not. She's on the outside. We have a mezzanine. Well, the blood is right by her office door. It looks like she never got in her office. So she couldn't have jumped? No, ma'am. Yeah, she's looking to lay in place, face down, her hands. Okay, I don't want anybody to touch anything, okay? Don't even let anybody up. Hands tied behind her back? I think so. Oh, she's no shoes on. Like you said, and I had somebody covered her body with plastic or something. Okay, and you said there's blood outside the office door? Yes, ma'am. A big pile of blood.

Is there any weapons laying around that you can see? No, ma'am. Uh-oh. When you have the victim with their hands tied behind their back, and remember, this is just not a story. This is real. This beautiful young mom with two little girls making her living in an HR division of a biotech company, never misses work, steadfast, comes home to her children, no drama, no running around, no secret affairs, no embezzling nothing like this and she ends up dead to joseph scott morgan professor forensics jacksonville state university

everything changed when i heard the words her hands were tied behind her back that changes who the killer is yeah it does it changes the rattle and hum of the way you look at this thing. And, you know, what would be the purpose behind binding this poor woman in her place of business? One of the things that you think about is potentially there's some kind of gain, some kind of robbery that's in progress at that point in time where you're trying to restrain her, to keep her from thwarting your efforts to do what you have to do as a perpetrator, it really kicks it up to a different level, Nancy. The aspect of Michelle Mockbee's hands being tied behind her back

before she was murdered does lead cops into an entirely different direction. What more can we learn from that 911 call? and then the women's bathroom and the men's bathroom goes in there. Then we see more blood that was by the door leading to the mezzanine. When I opened up the mezzanine, I looked at her right, and there she's laying. Okay, you two are the only two that have been upstairs, correct? Yes, ma'am. Okay, whatever you do, like I said, don't let anybody else go upstairs. Keep everybody from going up there. Is there other access up there other than where they'll have to walk past you? Yes, there is.

It's there's another stairwell. Okay, can you send us Can you send that maintenance man maybe to keep them keep anybody from going upstairs? Sure. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I'll be and make sure nobody comes up on stairs by the lobby to go up here and in the lobby and just don't let nobody up the stairs. This message mezzanine you said it's an outside mezzanine? No, no, it's inside. It's inside?

Yes. And she's been having any trouble at work with anyone? No, not that I know of, no, ma'am. Not getting any calls or hadn't said anything about anything? No. And we were looking for people, other victims, the perpetrator, or any obvious signs of evidence. Okay. When you walked in the hallway, did you see, you said you saw blood on the, well, you said in the hallway on the floor?

In front of the door, there was blood going up to the door and then we just basically followed the blood to see if there was an effect blood belonged to another victim and we went through and then you could see uh blood looked to be small blood stains on the carpet okay do you see any blood on the walls or any vertical circle? I don't remember seeing any. Okay. You are hearing what Sheriff's Deputy Anthony Lusty describes to the other cops he sees on the scene. With me, Robin Walensky, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter, Ashley Wolcott, judge, lawyer, anchor, California psychoanalyst, Dr. Bethany Marshall, and forensics expert and author, Joe Scott Morgan. To Ashley Wilcott, you know, we were talking earlier about the fact that she has been in HR for all this time and the secrets she must know on the majority of people that work there at the biotech company. The fact that her hands were tied behind her back,

add another detail to this, a subtle but significant detail. The big picture is she's been murdered. But who would come in with the items necessary to bind someone, possibly torture them. That gives a different significance and meaning to the clues on the scene, Ashley. And what's your take on the fact that she had been in HR for so long? Well, a couple of things. Number one, the fact that she'd been in HR for so long, she knows not only all of the individuals's names who work for the company,

she knows everything about them in terms of their payroll, what they make, if they're working or not, all of those things. That's her job responsibility. She has knowledge and a specialized knowledge about everybody in that company. Second, as to the binding behind the hands behind her back, yes, I agree. That's premeditation right there. Somebody knew what they were doing. They wanted to incapacitate her. So it's not just a fit of rage. Uh-oh, I'm going to kill this person. It's I'm going to incapacitate this person. Perhaps they did that to keep her so she couldn't escape or do anything while they asked her questions, who knows what they did to her, before they actually murdered her.

To me, that is so significant, that one little detail to say premeditation plan. Take a listen as Sheriff Stallworth describes for us the blood evidence. hallway and into the office area there appeared to be a large spot red spot at the kind of at the base of a wall if you will I would consider it to be a fairly decent sized amount and then there was looking further into the office area one of the doors to the offices looked like it had had fresh primarks that were not consistent with any other door in the area. Two areas that I felt like stood out to me to be, and this again, this is kind of on the fly, but two areas that I felt like were important to protect. You know, I want to talk to you, Joe Scott Morgan, forensics expert,

author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon, how apropos in this case, what was the cause of death of Michelle Mockbee? Nancy, this is a particularly brutal case because at the end of the day, her cause of death was as a result of bludgeoning, otherwise known as blunt force trauma. That means that a heavy object was used to literally beat this poor woman to death, Nancy. That's why there is so much, there's just a copious amount of blood. There's a lot of impacts that have occurred all over the surface of her body. so it was a particularly brutal death. You know, to Dr. Bethany Marshall, L.A. psychoanalyst, a bludgeoning death is somewhat akin to a stabbing death or a strangulation,

not asphyxiation in the smothering sense, but ligature or manual, particularly manual strangulation, in that the perpetrator is extremely close to the victim and is really face to face, inches away from the victim's face. At the time, a bludgeoning requires very close contact, at the very least, arm's length. Nancy, when I hear about this crime, this homicide, that her hands were tied behind her back. There's a certain overkill quality. I feel that whoever did this was quite premeditated, obviously wanted her gone, but did not know how to kill her. I mean, it could be one of two things, a rage attack, or it could be that the person who wanted her gone didn't know how to do it in a better way. It's not a very good who's at the lower echelons of society, somebody who doesn't think ahead before murdering her to prepare a dump site for the body. It's just

like catches her by surprise and then does it in whatever way comes to his mind in that particular moment. Nancy, go ahead. One thing I'd like to add here with the binding of the hands that kind of reaches out to me, someone there literally might be an element of torture involved in this, in the fact that you have this individual restraint, the fact that she struck so many times and so brutally, this may have been an attempt to, you know, direct anger at her, or it could have been an attempt to extract information from her as this thing began to escalate. And finally, she winds up dead. She died of blunt force trauma. That's true,

Joe Scott Morgan. But the medical examiner also notes cuts on her wrists. What does that mean? I mean, this certainly was no suicide. So why would the perp have cut her wrists? I don't know. You know, it goes back to this other idea of how the depth of these cuts, the orientation of these cuts, was it meant to inflict further pain on this poor woman? Or were the restraints so tight that maybe in an attempt to restrain her, her wrists were cut? That's a question that I don't know that I can necessarily answer, but it certainly

leaves a lot to the imagination. Dr. Bethany Marshall, L.A. psychoanalyst, familiarity breeds contempt. That much contempt that you would bind her, cut her wrists possibly with the bindings and bludgeon her dead? Well, I agree with Joe Scott Morgan that maybe the perpetrator was trying to extract information from her. We're talking about the fact that she's in HR. She knows, as Ashley Wilcott said, she has very specialized knowledge about everybody in the company. Whoever did this bound her hands first and then began to bludgeon her.

Was this perpetrator trying to get her to talk? Was this perpetrator trying to find out if she knew that he had committed some kind of crime or had done something in the company that would get him into trouble. And then it just either got out of hand or escalated. Or maybe, maybe she said, look, I have something about you in my file. We have a file on you. And he felt that if he killed her, that he could also get expungunge whatever was in his record at the company. Speaking of co-workers and familiarity breeding contempt, turns out that Michelle Mockbee's husband also worked at Thermo Fisher. In fact, Dan Mockbee, the second in command supervisor at Thermo Fisher and we learned he had a $700,000 insurance policy on who else but his wife Michelle. Okay, what makes you think somebody killed somebody? She's laying there on the ground covered up and there's blood all over the floor in the office.

Okay, what's the address there? 7383 Empire Drive. Okay, is it somebody that worked there? Yeah, it looks like her name is Michelle Mockaby. She usually comes in early on Mondays. And they got her like her whole body's covered with plastic in that. You can't see her head or anything. And it is obvious. She's dead, right?

Yes, sir. Yes, ma'am. Okay, what's your name? Jessica. Why you ask a okay? How long has it been since somebody was in there? Was it Friday or? What time did you get in?

Five o'clock we had people come in. Usually Michelle on Mondays gets here at seven o'clock. Who bludgeoned Michelle Mockbee dead on the one morning a week she comes in early when no one else would be around at the time she gets in? Joining me right now, Ashley Wilcott, judge, lawyer, anchor. You can find her at AshleyWilcott.com. What about it, Ashley? What about motive? Let's talk about motive.

Follow the money. How many times do we see that that's the motive? And speaking of money, is it true, Ashley Wil see that that's the motive? And speaking of money, is it true, Ashley Wilcott, that while the husband got nearly a million dollars life insurance policy, he still hadn't paid off her headstone? You know, that's what they're saying. Isn't that crazy? That's a lot of money to get. Why in the world would you not take care of your deceased wife first? Begs a question, doesn't it? $700,000 as a result of this. So again, I'm just going to say it might add to the motive. Well, I remember Dr. Bethany Marshall, California psychoanalyst,

a murder case I tried. It's a very, very difficult case where a millionaire, this is what happened. He hit his head, his wife in the head. Then he set the house on fire. Then he crawls out a window. It's like 2 o'clock in the morning, as I recall. He's fully dressed, shoes, belt, pants, shirt, wallet, glasses, the works, and goes and lays a la Romanesque in the front neighbor's yard while the house burns down. The fire department pulls up. They talk to him for about

three minutes before he goes, oh yeah, my wife's in there. Okay. And I tried every which way at trial to get in evidence that he had not paid the funeral bill. And this man had millions and wouldn't pay the funeral bill. He hated her that much. I did not get it in, by the way. It never came into evidence. But the same principle here, it doesn't prove anything. No, which is why the judge

would not let me let it in, although I thought it was valid circumstantial evidence. But in this case, the fact that he hasn't paid for the headstone, you know, it doesn't prove anything, but it might add into evidence for a jury. I think it adds, Nancy, because it shows possible contempt for the deceased. You know, Ashley Wilcott pointed out that there are players in this scenario

who can benefit in some way, perhaps financially, or where there's money involved, that would be either an employee or the husband with a life insurance policy. But there are other motivators for homicide too. There's contempt, or as we saw with Scott Peterson, he was having multiple affairs and he didn't want the unborn baby. So, you know, there's also the getting the wife out of the way because I want an idealized life away from her. And the fact that the husband did not pay for her headstone says that maybe there's a certain lack of regard or he was detached from her or wanted her out of the way for some reason. So the husband is a viable person of interest as the husband always is when a woman is found dead and vice versa. But Robin Walensky, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter, author of Beautiful Life, CSI behind the Casey Anthony trial on Amazon. Robin, what can you tell me about the falsification of work records and time cards?

So one of the people, it has to be crystal clear that at this scene, when we're hearing these 911 calls and people are calling in, there's a finite amount of people in this huge building. There's a deceased HR lady who's doing time cards on a Monday morning, as the HR people do. And then there's a janitor, and then there's the guy that you hear on the 911 call, another employee. So that's three people to my count. And the husband isn't on scene. And so this whole time card issue is, is that this janitor who is not actually an employee of the company, he owns his own janitorial services company with his wife. And this guy bills separately as an independent contractor, like you had somebody coming in and getting rid of the roaches or the bugs, and then they send you a separate bill, he's a contractor and his time card is three times what it should be. So if he's saying, well, I worked four hours a day, there's an allegation that, well, he's actually working 12 hours a day. And so he's

trying to dip in and get more money. And the HR lady who's dead on the floor knows about it. Wow. Okay, so we're looking at potential motives everywhere, and then we learn, is there a break in the case? Is there security video? Take a listen. Several truck drivers who were already parked at Thermo Fisher Scientific in the overnight hours before Michelle Mockbee died, one of them was there hours before. Here's why that was important for a minute, because there is security video that shows a man walking around an adjacent business the night before she was found dead, it was not either of those truck drivers. Take a listen to news reporter Anjanette Levy. Garland Latham used to work at the warehouse.

He was questioned about the so-called random dude in this surveillance video. He was seen walking through the parking lot just nine hours before the murder. The attorneys say detectives didn't try hard enough to identify him. You know, Joseph Scott Morgan, forensics expert, I used to tell juries, what do you want, a video? But in this case, we have a video. But what good is it? Yeah, what good is it? It's good for the defense because, you know, it's their job, Nancy, that any case that's created, obviously, by the prosecution is to poke holes in it. You always, they always want to, you know, kind of drum up this idea that what if? It could be somebody else.

There's an alternate explanation, and that's why this video is significant. It's almost like a real-life game of Clue. There were 13 employees present at the workplace the morning of Michelle Mockbee's murder. Who would have known she would be there early that Monday morning giving someone an opportunity to bludgeon her dead, leaving her there, her hands still bound behind her back. So systematically, the 13 are held. Do we even know it is one of the 13? But systematically, each one is held and questioned. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. And we were looking for people, other victims, the perpetrator, or any obvious signs of evidence.

Okay. When you walked in the hallway, did you see, you said you saw blood on the, what you said, in the hallway on the floor? In front of the door, there was blood going up to the door. And then we just basically followed the blood to see if that blood belonged to another victim. And we went through, and then you could see blood looked to be small bloodstains on the carpet. Okay.

Did you see any blood on the walls or on any vertical surface? I don't remember seeing any. We were hearing Sheriff's Deputy Anthony Lusty describing, under questioning, what he saw at the scene. And remember, the door to Michelle Mockbee's office had pry marks on it. Somebody wanted in. Somebody was after her. Was she bleeding? Is that where the trail of blood is?

Did the bludgeoning start before she got into her office? Did she get into her office, lock the door, and the door was then pried open and the bludgeoning continued. Remember, this is a young and beautiful soccer mom of two little girls. I'm looking at them right now with her in the middle of them. Everybody, all three, big, beautiful smiles. The school even says their thoughts and prayers with the family. She had been a member of the PTA, the parent Teacher Organization. Everyone in their neighborhood said they loved their daughters, they took care of them, that their family was the center of their life. She was even a Girl Scout cookie mom. I mean, Dr. Bethany Marshall, she scrubbed in sunshine. Who would do this to her? Well, we have two possible people.

We have the husband who didn't pay for the tombstone or the headstone. And we have the janitor who has falsified all of his billing. And right now it sounds like an Agatha Christie novel. Thirteen people are being held. Two people have a motivation. It does. In fact, there was a spoof on one of her novels that the twins watched with me, and it's exactly like this. Well, you say that there are two suspects. There were 13 people at the work site the morning she was murdered. And we learn also that there was a 40-foot trail of blood leading to her office, Joe Scott Morgan. So we've got 13 narrowed down to three at the office by the police. That's discounting the husband.

And Robin Olinsky tells me he has an alibi that he is at home with the children at the time. 40-foot trail of blood. What does that mean? Well, the trail itself, you have to be able to distinguish it. Are they droplets of blood or are they drag marks? Because that's going to give you an indication as to what happened. Let's just say that she was beaten in another place. The difference is, is that were these drag marks or were they droplets? If they were droplets, that trail that they're talking about is going to give an indication that she was upright and moving. The blood is dropping away from her body as she moves to and fro. If it was a drag mark, that means that there was an attempt probably to spirit the body away to another location. That means she's

incapacitated and you're dragging the blood, just like if people at home will think about dragging a dirty mop along the floor, you're leaving this long swath. This is somebody that wanted her dead, and it started outside of her office, and they began bludgeoning her outside of her office, 40 feet, that blood trill. She gets to her office, locks her door. The door is pried open. I'm curious as to where the blood trail started.

We know she got there before 6 a.m. And that really does rule out the husband because he is at home with the girls. Now, just 90 minutes later or less, her body is discovered, savagely beaten. And there are more details to the discovery of her body. Her skull was fractured in four separate places. There was a plastic bag literally soaked with her blood placed over her face. That is highly significant, Dr. Bethany Marshall. Highly significant that the killer covered her face.

Well, the killer did not want to look her in the face. The killer did not want to see her looking back at him as a witness to what he had just done. This is very common for perpetrators to put a bag over somebody's head or if they dump a body out in the woods to cover it up or cover up the face. It's as if in some ways they do not want to be seen. Also, as Joe Scott Morgan pointed out, if whoever did this bludgeoned her in one spot and then drug her 40 feet, were they trying to contain the bleeding from the most profuse spot? And there are a lot of blood vessels around the scalp, right? So if this is where she was bludgeoned, they could have tried to like stave off the bleeding, put the bag over the head, and then drag her with the least amount of blood in that trail.

Other items taken at the scene included, and this is highly, highly significant, a tape gun. A tape gun believed by law enforcement to actually be the murder weapon. That tells me a lot because the tape gun is there on the scene. The perp didn't bring it with him. So was this a crime of passion, an instant crime, a crime of the moment? We also learned her hands were not bound by zip ties or handcuffs, which would likely have been brought to the scene, but by tape, tape, packing tape, which was there on the scene, also scattered around her body. And I find this to be the single most probative evidence are time cards.

Time cards. Robin Walensky, explain the significance. Well, the significance to me is that it's very possible that there was some sort of verbal altercation, an argument between possibly the janitor and the HR lady. Perhaps they encounter each other. Maybe he knows because he's cleaning before everybody's getting to work on Monday morning that, you know, I'm going out on a limb here, and maybe there's a confrontation, because she's the HR lady, and she knows that there's a scam going on. She knows, based on the outside video security cameras

of the perimeter of this huge warehouse and building, who is coming in when with the janitor's bucket and the mop and the bags and this and that. And maybe she had the time cards in her hand coming into work early as all HR managers do. At my other places of business on Monday morning, my HR manager does my time card. And perhaps the time cards were in her hand and there was an argument and hey you're trying to scam this company well also significantly uh not not just what was at the crime scene but joe scott morgan is a forensics expert you look at what was not at the crime scene

duly the guy with the big lucrative business on the side the janitor there his time cards were missing joe scott yeah that that's a huge red flag isn't it nancy you know the idea that that out of all of those time cards uh dr bethany had mentioned how they're scattered about the floor you had mentioned how they're scattered about the floor and and out of all those cards, his are missing. So that gives us an indication that maybe these have been rifled through in order to identify a specific set. You're going in there with purpose. But he went in, just as you mentioned, this is fascinating to me, Nancy.

You talk about the tape that her hands were bound with, and also this tape gun. In forensics and in attacks like this, that tape gun, if in fact that was used as the weapon to kill her with, that's referred to as a weapon of convenience. That's not something you come prepared with. It's a reactionary event where you grab the closest thing that you can in order to facilitate these fatal blows. A deadbolt, a padlock had just been put on her office door. Had someone been stealing time cards or changing them?

Listen. We, the jury, find the defendant, David Dooley, guilty of murder under instruction number four, signed by the foreperson, tampering with physical evidence, verdict form B. We, the jury, find physical evidence, verdict form B, we the jury find the defendant, David Dooley, guilty of tampering with physical evidence under instruction number five. To this day, there is a strong contingent that claims David Dooley is innocent

and that the husband did it or that anybody did it beside David Dooley. But the jury has spoken. Nancy Grace, Crime Stories, signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.