Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Secrets buried under California 'house of horrors'? Mom murdered for secret online life? Facebook selfie puts girl in prison!

Episode Date: January 23, 2018

Investigators are using cadaver dogs to search for possible buried secrets in a southern California house of horrors. Nancy Grace updates the bizarre Turpin family case with psychologist Dr. Jessie Borelli, psycho analyst Dr. Bethany Marshall, forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan, and reporter Chuck Roberts. Reporter Scott Kembler joins Nancy to look at the mysterious death of Kathleen Dawn West. The 42-year-old Alabama mom was found dead outside her home near Birmingham, only partially dressed, RadarOnline.com reporter Alexis Tereszcuk shares details of a case in which a teenager was convicted of killing her friend, thanks to a Facebook selfie that revealed a key piece of evidence in the strangulation death. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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so much breaking news it's like drinking from a fire hydrant but let's get right down to it i'm nancy grace this is crime stories Thank you for being with us. With me, Dr. Bethany Marshall, L.A. psychoanalyst, Joseph Scott Morgan, forensics expert, Chuck Roberts, Crime Stories investigative reporter, Scott Kimbler, investigative reporter, and Dr. Jesse Borelli, psychologist, University of California. To all of you, thank you. Very first thing we learned that investigators are bringing in cadaver dogs. Cadaver dogs to look, to search for the remains of more children and order DNA testing on the couple's victims. That's right. Police are considering bringing in cadaver dogs to determine if there are remains of more children in this horrific home.

We also learned that the mom wanted to have even more children. What, 13's not enough? Wanted more children, and can you believe this? Because she wanted a reality show? There's so much more happening. The parents just in court facing dozens and dozens of counts of felony crimes. But first, to Chuck Roberts, Crime Stories investigative reporter. Chuck, tell me the latest on what's happening in court.

What happened? Well, the bond was set at $13 million each. As you said, they faced a lot of charges, dependent adult abuse, false imprisonment, child abuse, torture. The 2-year-old was not abused at all, the youngest of the children. So there's only 12 counts, not 13, of child abuse. But the cadaver dogs, you know, they will be, if in fact the Riverside DA wants to do this, they will be brought to every known residence, including Texas. So this investigation is just now really unfolding. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Back it up. Now I'm taking it. That is because

Joseph Scott Morgan joining me, forensics expert, professor of forensics at Jacksonville State University. Joseph Scott Morgan, these, this family, these parents have gone from home to home to home. I guess I call it a house because this was no way a home. And I recall investigating one of the homes in Texas, and the new owners, the people that bought it, said they found scratch marks and claw marks at the doors, and that the carpet was soaked with urine and feces, and they thought they just had a lot of pets. Joe Scott, it was those children clawing at the

door and the closets to get out how do cadaver dogs work explain to us how we're going back 10 years to their old homes where they used to live what could cadaver dogs possibly find after this period of time well first off i find it very interesting that the police automatically are, at least they have the idea that they have a need for a cadaver dog. I think that tells us a lot up front, Nancy. Secondly, these dogs are specifically trained. Their noses work on a very broad spectrum, and they are trained specifically to smell for hints of human decomposition, which in the parlance of dealing with dogs, humans have a very specific odor, which dogs will pick up on even going back some distance in time. Now, 10 years, I don't know how much success they will have. However, if there are bodies that are located in these dwellings,

it's going to be very interesting to find out how these bodies, if they are there, how they were disposed of and how they were kind of sequestered or hidden away from everything else. Well, I mean, think about it. Let's bring in our shrinks on this. With me, Dr. Bethany Marshall from LA, Dr. Jesse Borelli from University of California. Dr. Bethany, let's think this thing through. They have a habit of going from home to home. Why? Why would they pick up and leave? I mean, this guy is an educated engineer at one time pulling down about 150 grand a year, way, way over the national median. I mean, that's like over three times the national income for a whole family. So why pick up and leave? What are they hiding hiding what are they running from and think

about this uh jackie here in the studio wants me to throw this in this came out about bringing cadaver dogs after the siblings were rescued have one of them stated something like i used to have another little sister what happened to to her? Think about it, Bethany. Wow. Okay, Nancy, you and I have covered so many stories together where parents have killed their children and where they secrete the bodies is often so amazing. Wasn't there one story where a child was hidden above a door jam? There was another story where a child was hidden above a door jam? There was another story where a child was hidden below a stairway. You left out the Chinese restaurant.

The Chinese. Point taken. They're hidden everywhere. Everywhere. Absolutely. So let me go to a new guest joining us today. Let the hazing begin. Okay, just kidding.

Dr. Jesse Borelli psychologist joining me from University of California Dr. Jesse thank you for being with us I'd love to hear your thoughts on this yeah I think I think it's very possible that there are other children around or were other children around however these parents seem to have a knack for figuring out a way to keep their kids living on death's doorstep. And so they may be very skilled at it. And that's maybe how they liked to have their children, all of them in that near dying range in terms of their weight. So it's possible that they don't have any, that they didn't want to kill their children, but that they just wanted them to be

at that level of dependence on them. Yeah, that's a good point, Dr. Jesse. Borelli, you joining me from University of California. What about the fact that right now we have been told all of these children have been separated at least into two hospitals, if not more, one for 18 and older, one for 17 and under. Of course, when cops saw these children, they thought they were all between two and 10 years old because they were so malnutritioned. But what effect is that separation going to have on them, Dr. Jessie Borelli? I think that it's a mistake to be separating them. It's hard because our standard medical protocol involves separating adults from minors. So that's

just the way that all hospitals work in terms of psychiatric and medical treatment. But it might be a mistake in this case because these kids are not really adults probably in terms of their true developmental age. And having another separation from their siblings on top of being separated from their parents could be additionally disturbing for them. Well, as you have stated, quote, when we come into the world, our attachment figures are our primary sources of safety and security, no matter how abusive they are. That includes siblings. What do you make of the fact that they are separated from the parents? Thank God. We're happy for that. But in their mind,

that's all they know. Yeah, I mean, I think that's going to be a real hurdle to overcome as they move forward. And something that is hard for the public to recognize is that, you know, those of us on the other side are really grateful that they've been rescued, but they may be primarily grieving and afraid of what the world holds. So one thing I've been curious about, for example, is how much contact they had with the outside world, not in terms of interactions with other people, because we know those were pretty limited, but in terms of access to media and things like that. For all we know, they could have very little idea of what the world is like, or they could have false ideas of what the world is like that their parents have um have provided them with well let's go back to what we know let's follow up on that uh joining me chuck roberts scott kimbler joe scott morgan dr bethany

marshall and dr jesse barelli chuck roberts it was my understanding in their bedroom where they were padlocked not just chained but chained and padlocked to their beds. Fed once a day at most. They got a shower twice a year. A year. I don't call anything about TVs being in there. Nothing. No, absolutely.

And, you know, no contact with the outside world. It's amazing that the little girl, the teenager, knew how to use a cell phone and dial 911. But the smaller children apparently were raised by the older children. That's part of this quiverful movement. The family was part of this movement that called for large families. And David Turin's parents said that God called on them to have more children. They were homeschooled. They completely shunned the influences of outside world. The children were told to memorize the Bible in its entirety. It was a lot of, you know,

psychological coercion. You know, to Dr. Bethany Marshall, L.A. psychoanalyst, why does God always get dragged into these scenarios? I'm pretty sure he slash she had nothing to do with what these parents did to their children. I mean, I and I am not certainly not one to quote a scripture, but I do recall, let the little ones come unto me, for such is the kingdom of God. In other words, children are the closest thing on earth to the angel. That's the way I take it. I certainly don't think that includes padlocking them to their beds and starving them and letting them lie there in their own feces. And you're in Dr. Bethany Marshall.

I don't know if you remember this, you probably don't, but one night we were going live as usual on our HLN show, and I was in a fit because the previous night I had stayed with the children, as you know, until the last second, and had bathed them lotion them put them fresh dives giving them a bottle and then sneaked or snuck anyway creeped I'll go with creep since I know the correct tense crap thank you thank you out the door and when I got home a few hours later, you know, the crosstown traffic in Manhattan was crazy, blah, blah. In those few hours, they had each gotten a scorching case of diaper rash. How did that happen so quickly? I do not know.

But I came in. They were asleep. I didn't want to bother them. I waited for about an hour, and then I went in and checked them. They were, oh, it was awful. And they cried and they cried and they cried. And the next night I almost had to stay home from work. But I couldn't bring myself to say, I can't come to work because the children have diaper rash.

I knew somewhere deep in my psyche that that was wrong. So I covered them in butt paste and did my best. So Dr. Bethany, that's just after, I guess it was five hours. They were already like red welts and they looked like, it was awful. What about these children? I mean, how do they blame God on what they were doing to their children lying there because they couldn't get away from their beds and urine and feces? I'm getting far afield of cadaver dogs. And how many counts, Jackie?

How many felony counts? 75 felony counts. That's the latest. But why are they dragging God into it? They were no more homeschooling these children than the man in the moon. Nancy, because the monster at the head of this family, the father, David Turpin, was probably a sociopath. And as you know, these sociopaths are so grandiose. They always think they have a direct pipeline to God.

They're speaking to God. They're the mouthpiece of God. And they use religiosity to coerce their families and their children. And so I think this is even worse than a house of horrors where the children are malnourished. I keep thinking about the role of sadism in how the children were treated because they love to torture these children. You know, according to one report, if they got water above their wrists, they were punished because they were then told that they were playing with water. And I know I'm always bringing sex into these things, but, but

Seda sadism is one of the five sexual perversions. And so I think of sadism and sexual deviancy going hand in hand. And I keep thinking that what we're going to discover is that this was actually a sex cult, that the father kept having more and more children so that he could have sexual relations with them. It's just a theory. This hasn't been substantiated. And that we might even find that some of the children were fathered, that the father fathered other children with his own children, because there's already one lewd sex act against a child. That was one of the charges. So I think that sexual perversion and deviancy is going to be something that emerges as a part of the story with this family. Nancy, if I could just interrupt.

You know what? You just read my mind, Joseph Scott Morgan. I was just coming to you because I have this on my list of new developments, but Dr. Bethany just brought it up. Joseph Scott Morgan, forensics professor at Jacksonville State University. Not only are they planning to bring in cadaver dogs to the old two old homes in the current home but they're considering ordering dna now you heard what dr bethany was just referring to like um for instance were some of these children fathered by other children but also were they kidnapped were any of them kidnapped if you look at them they have aling similarity. I don't see a kidnap going down. But DNA testing, how difficult is that going to be? Well, with the current children, the ones that are living, it's not going to be very difficult.

And this is one of the things that police, and I going to I was I was reading Doctor Bethany's mind on this as well because this. Psychosexual thing that's going on where they're keeping these kids sequestered. I remember covering a couple of cases like this in the past. You've got this this kind of intermingling potentially. Let me just put it in. let me catch it in these terms if i was investigating a case similar to this um i would look long and hard at the dna

of the older children uh compared to that of the younger children in this particular case uh because i'd want to make sure that there was no interbreeding going on and that opens up an entire different can of worms here. Oh man you're not kidding and they've got to be super careful with the DNA because you've got if this is true the children's DNA is very similar to the parents DNA and if there was incest going on in the home, it's going to be a tricky affair, but certainly nothing a DNA expert can't handle. Here's the good news. They're alive. They have life.

They will be in therapy probably the rest of their lives to have anything close to a semblance of normalcy. But they're alive. They survived. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories, and we're bringing you the very latest in the developments in the so-called House of Horrors. We're also learning the mom-a-lot when she was just 16 that the plant they plan to have even more children than these 13 because they wanted their own reality show it goes on and on the homes the mom was brought up in was extremely violent we are told by an aunt. And then there's the disturbing parade of children,

occasionally like once every couple of years, they would be trotted out in matching outfits, family photos taken, say, at Disneyland, or a renewal of vows for the parents in Vegas, and sent around disseminated specifically to give the appearance that everything was just fine. Little did the world, including relatives, know that behind those walls, the children were being tortured day and night. You know, I woke up this morning, Joseph Scott Morgan, you know, at about 5 o'clock.

Joe Scott, what time do you get up? Well, Alan calls me so early. You know, I get up pretty early, you know, so I don't know. Generally about 6.30 a.m., I guess. Oh, I'm going to start calling you at 5 o'clock to make sure you're up now. Please do. Dr. Bethany, I'm going to let you have your beauty sleep. But Chuck and Scott, you too, Dr. Jesse, I won't pick on you yet since you're new today.

But I think I'm going to start rousting you guys up at 5 o'clock with me to try to get everything done. I envisioned having children. Then I got the blessing of twins. It's double time, and I need energy. And you know what I really want? I want all the energy all day long. But fatigue, getting worn out, exhausted happens. And as you age, it gets worse and worse every year.

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The mom elopes with this guy when she's 16. I believe he's 24. There was, according to the aunt on the maternal side, violence in their home as they were growing up. Listen to what the aunt says. There was abuse

in your family. Yes. And you and your family have been fairly open about that in the wake of this discovery. Can you tell us a little about that? Yes. I'm sorry, it's okay. We should have loved and trusted. He abused my mother and sexually abused my mother. And then me and Louise and a few of our cousins in the family, that was a situation that was ongoing for me and my sisters, only because my mother had so much abuse in her life. I think that she was still going through it as an adult. And my mother still took us around this person a lot. Including Louise, and some people believe that may have played a role because now we're being told that David is accused of at least one lewd act

against a child under the age of 14. It's not an excuse, of course. It's just a background piece of information. Did you, I know that you saw Louise being in... Sorry. That's painful to talk about. It's the first time I've ever talked about it, so, you know. Have you outed publicly the man who did this?

No. It's always been a big secret in our family. The adults in our family protected him because he was family. And there was so much that went on with that. I don't, you know, but it was always a dark family secret that he did this. That's from NBC's Today Show. We also know that statistically, if you grow up in a home with violence, your home will be violent. How does this fit in, Dr. Bethany? Attack that,

along with the fact we now know the mom wants to have even more children to have her own reality show. How bass-ackwards is that? It certainly is, Nancy. Well, first of all, the fact that she was 16 when she married him or when they got together tells me that already he had a fondness for minors, okay? So that maybe goes with the sex cult theory. Secondly, if she was exposed to such violence growing up, the idea of love and violence was fused in her mind in some way, as if love and violence are one in the same. So in her own recovery process, and hopefully she'll get some treatment while incarcerated, she'll have to unlink the two because the two are very linked for her. So with her upbringing where love and violence

are fused, and according to one report, I read that the children in her home watched their own mother being raped. So we have violence, love, and sex being fused, which I think is in some way got recreated in her own family. I don't believe that she wanted more children to have a reality TV show. She might be saying that she she wanted more children to satisfy her husband's sexual cravings. You know, people often say one thing and they mean another. Well, listen to this to Dr. Jesse Borelli, psychologist joining us from University of California. She actually said, according to the brother, Billy Lambert, quote, she used to say how they would be perfect for TV

and would often mention they'd be a bigger hit than the reality show Kate Plus Eight. Jessie? Yeah, I think I would side with Dr. Bethany on this, too. I think that having a lot of children for a reality TV show is something that's said now more commonly, and my guess would be that that's not the real reason, but that it has something more to do with either what Dr. Bethany said or with the desire to be needed by people who are helpless, which is kind of where my mind goes when I think about this case.

To Chuck Roberts, Crime Stories investigative reporter, is it true that the two-year-old was never abused? That's what the Riverside DA is saying, at least according to the Washington Post, that that's why there were only 12 child abuse charges brought, that the two-year-old was apparently physically unharmed altogether. And, you know, I keep going back to what happened with the neighbors. You know, the neighbors say that they saw them outside once in a while mowing the lawn and then going right back in the house. And they interviewed a neighbor of the Turpins in Texas, a guy named Ricky Vineyard,

who said, we thought about reporting them for child abuse, but because David Turpin was armed and did target practice outside, we didn't want any repercussions. So neighbors had an idea, at least in two places, that something was terribly wrong. What do you make of it, Dr. Bethany Marshall, L.A. psychoanalyst, that they would also dress the children up for instance in matching i guess that's when they got their biannual shower dress them up and for instance matching disney t-shirts and take them and pose at disney then be there for the day then take them back home and chain them back to their beds that must have been excruciating for the children to see another world for one day and then go back to a dark bedroom with the window

shutter chained to your bed, lying in feces. Well, I don't understand that. It's so cruel, Bethany. It's actually quite perplexing. I've been looking at the photos thinking like, what motivated the parents to take the kids out of hiding, maybe for a Facebook post, maybe to cover up all the sadism that was going on in the household, maybe as a part of the father's own grandiosity. Maybe he just wanted a photo to prove that he was the head of the household. But I think that what we're going to learn is that ultimately this is what saved the children's lives. Because as I think the reporter said earlier in the show, it's sort of surprising that the child who escaped knew how to use a cell phone or even knew to escape or knew that there was another world out there.

So I think unwittingly, you know, the parents, you know, dressing the kids up, taking them to Disneyland, exposed them to the idea that they were living in an upside down world. Without that, Nancy, maybe they would never have even known to try to seek help. There is a former classmate of one of the older sons who was tortured in their California home, who spoke about what she observed. Angie Parent reveals the older son had a, quote, sadness in his face and eyes, that once she saw him at a class potluck, and he just scarfed down the food. an introvert who always wore the same clothes

all semester she would he would be taken to school and the mom would wait for him to come out and he had to come straight to the car now that was the old one of the older sons and they were enrolled in a course at mount san jacinto college and that was years ago he wouldn't even make eye contact what does that say to you dr jesse barelli wearing the same clothes every day i guess i could be accused of that quiet and not making any eye contact and when they did have food one day a potluck get together he just gorged himself i think what it says to me is a number of things that one of them is that the parents were so successful in making the children afraid of the outside world that this kid is scared to even

meet the eyes of another person. You know, I think that here, and several people commented on how, how is it that these children left the house and didn't reach out to someone, right? So on those outings to Disneyland, how did they not make contact or tell people that they were being held captive? And I think that the psychological control was maybe more powerful even than the physical control that these parents exerted. You know, a lot of people have made much ado about the fact that, for instance, in that case, when he would be allowed to go to a one-hour class and the mom would watch him go in and wait for him to come out like a hawk. But many people have argued, Dr. Bethany Marshall, why didn't he or some of the other children say something about their torture

when they were at Disneyland? But if you will remember, for instance, Dylan and Shasta Groney, who were witnesses to one of their parents' murder along with other people in the home, they were kidnapped. They were brutally molested day after day after day in front of each other. The little boy, Dylan, was murdered. His sister saw that the Shasta the little girl was spotted on closed circuit tv inside of 7-eleven very afraid looking down she wouldn't make eye contact with anyone and the perpetrator was there in the in the 7-eleven with her she was wandering up the aisles she She never said a word. Then there's like

Sean Hornbeck. Do you remember Sean Hornbeck and Ben Ownby? I do. Hornbeck, they were both taken off their bicycles in a very rural area. As I recall, it may have been Idaho. But they were

kidnapped and Hornbeck was kept for years and molested and beaten and tortured by a guy, a horrible, horrible guy, Michael Devlin in Kirkwood. That's where it was, Kirkwood. I remember that one, too. And the few times he was released, he wouldn't say anything. There's a reason for that, Dr. Bethany. And not only that, with Hornbeck, the boy would ride his bicycle around in the complex where they lived, where he was away from the captor. And even then, he did not seek help.

So I think that what we see in these cases is that there's a particular type of mind control. And that is that the captor makes the victim feel quite paranoid of the outside world. They tell the victim, if you escape or you try to seek help, it's going to be worse for you out there than it is here. Those people, they'll kill you. They'll torture you. They're not going to believe you. They'll torture you. They're not going to believe you. It's your fault. You're going to end up in jail, not me. And these types of messages are just drilled into the brains of the victims so that they actually become more scared of the outside world than of the own captor. And then to the other psychologist was making the point of these

dependent relationships. You know, no victim is filled with solely bad feelings about the captor. In other words, they usually have a mix of positive and negative feelings towards the captor. So they are bonded with the captors. And so the idea of then leaving that person sometimes makes them feel, you know, quite anxious and depressed as if they don't know how they're going to survive in the world without them. What do we know also to you, Chuck Roberts, Crime Stories investigative reporter about dead animals being found in and around the home home and i also learned that from a guy named ricky vineyard a guy who was is a tree feller he said that there were dead dogs and cats that was in texas yes and they did find uh animals deceased animals inside the house.

But oddly enough, two Maltese terriers were found in the home in California, in Paris, California, in better condition than the children that they'd been taken care of. So, you know, I think a lot of this is going to come out in the journals. According to the DA, Mike Estrin, they recovered hundreds of journals from inside the children's homes. So that's probably going to be part of the evidence, what motivated them. And one other point, if you allow me, the Department of Education says that David Turpin opened what was called the Sandcastle Day School, a K-12 school, a private school, in 2011. It'll be interesting to see whether anybody from the outside world was a student at that school or whether that was just for his own children. Well, we learned that in one of the homes, two chihuahua dogs were found malnourished and the only way they could survive was from eating waste from a mound of soiled diapers in a trailer behind the property where the children slept that's how the two little

chihuahuas lived in the current home in california the two-year-old and the dogs were fine we learned We learned that they allegedly, I can hardly even say it, would starve their children to weaken them and assert power, then taunt them by displaying desserts that they could eat but the children couldn't have. They were shackled and beaten for even simple, minor, perceived, not real infractions. That's what's happening now as we follow the so-called House of Horrors investigation. I want to pause now and thank our partners making our investigation today possible. Here on SiriusXM 132. It's LegalZoom. And now that the holidays are over, it's time to buckle down and write your own story for 2018. LegalZoom can help you make this the year you finally get serious and launch and run your own business. Or they can help you rest easier at night knowing your family's future is taken care of

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Kathleen Dawn West found dead outside her home in a very quiet and up. I'm looking at your house right now. It's beautiful. Found dead outside her home in a quiet bedroom community. It's just south of Birmingham. She only had on her sports bra. I don't know where the rest of her clothes were. Found dead.

And this is what we're discovering. This mom, she's just, she looks like a model. Had a secret life. A secret life going down. This full-time wife and mother. But to Scott Kimbler joining me, Crime Stories investigative reporter, what can you tell me, what did you learn about her so-called secret life? Well, her secret life wasn't all that much of

a secret. She had a double life, if you will, where she had an explicit adult website and was very active on Twitter and on Facebook with posting explicit photos. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Explicit. Because all I'm seeing are shots of her with like some skimpy shorts on and maybe a push-up sports bra. Is there more to it than that? Because I don't call that explicit. I see people jogging in that. In fact, I'm holding up my left hand. Hold on.

Let me hold up my other left hand. I plead guilty to running in shorts and a sports bra. Of course, Bethany, that was many, many years ago. Now it's all I can do to like walk a fast walk at best. It's certainly not in shorts and a sports bra. To the humiliation of my children, that's not going to happen. But is there something wrong with that, Scott Kimber? Is that explicit to you?

Not entirely explicit, no, but she did have an adult website that actually charged for access, and that is described as a sexually explicit material website, and an adult website where she went by the name Kitty Cat West. Wait a minute. Did you just say Kitty Cat West? Yes, Kitty Cat West.

Okay, I was going to ask you to say it again just to make you say it. But wait a minute. I'm getting way far afield. Joseph Scott Morgan, I don't give a flying fig if this lady went by the name Kitty Cat West. I don't care about her website or her bishop bra or anything else. I care about who killed this woman. But apparently police are paying great attention to this website thinking that may have

something to do with her murder and i'll tell you this uh if some kook was onto her website and then she was so naive as to somehow let it slip where she actually lived i could see a connection joseph scott morgan what do we know about her body? Let's start with the murder and not the kitty cat West, AKA alias. Hit me, Joe Scott. I want to know about the murder. Yeah, she was, uh, she was found, uh, outdoors, uh, and in, in, in the sports bra that you had mentioned, face down, and she's got some type of injury to her head. We know that she was bleeding from the head, but to this point, we don't really know what the nature or the origin of this injury is. Well, I can guarantee you one thing, Joseph Scott Morgan. You know, let me go to another woman who can just, you know, talk some sense into you, gentlemen.

Dr. Bethany Marshall, L.A. psychoanalyst. I guarantee you she didn't walk outside without any pants on. All right. Let's just start with that. She did not. Which makes this, which puts a whole other spin on this. Let's just say she wasn't mugged. This wasn't a random drive-by.

Okay? No. And it's so strange because she's found outside, face down, nothing but a sports bra. Somebody who wants to be viewed online as being beautiful, she bills herself as an exhibitionist, is not going to go outside and present herself to the world like that. I mean, she's not going to want to be seen like that. This is a beautiful woman. I think something happened either in the middle of the night or in that home where she was either attacked or dragged outside and that the crime,

in other words, the crime started somewhere else, started in the home, started in a car, started in some other location, and she tried to escape, and that's where she ended up, outside the house on the sidewalk. Okay, Joseph Scott Morgan, now that Bethany Marshall and I have schooled you in your forensics analysis of this, let's hear the rest of your thoughts. Yeah, we're not going to know a lot until we're made aware of what the specific injuries are. All we know at this point in time and all that they've released is that there's blood emanating from her head, and they don't even give a specific location relative to her head. What was really kind of interesting is that there was a cell phone that was found adjacent to the body,

along with some type of green bottle as it's being characterized. So a lot is going to be told by, you know, if they can tie back the ownership of this phone, if it was hers, why would she be dressed like this outside or lack of being dressed outside? And her cell phone is there. You know, there's any number of scenarios that I'm sure that the police are looking at, and they're playing this kind of close to the vest. Joining me, Dr. Bethany Marshall, psychoanalyst out of L.A., Joseph Scott Morgan, forensics expert, professor at Jacksonville State University. And joining me, Scott Kimler, crime stories investigative reporter, Alan Duke from L.A. and Jackie Howard in Atlanta.

To you, Scott Kimbler, I want to go through the facts again. Do we know what time of the day or night her body was found? Yes, Nancy, her body was found at actually 5 a.m. in the morning on a Saturday in this town about 30 miles south of Birmingham. You know, this is a murder mystery surrounding a full-time wife and mother who allegedly leads a double life as an online exhibitionist with a $15.99 a month subscription website. She's found half-clothed in the street near her alabama home a very upscale neighborhood south of birmingham face down next to her was a cell phone and a bottle we don't know what the

bottle was about she was still wearing a sports bra and bleeding from the head. For all I know, she was out jogging. I don't know. There are hundreds of photographs and videos on her page. Did someone follow her home from her gym? Did someone figure out where she lived? On Facebook, she appeared to be like every other soccer mom, a mother of one daughter with a happy marriage. We believe her husband was in the military.

We are not sure about that right now. But we do know that she's been found dead. Her mother has made a public plea for the world to let them bury her in peace. Who I'm really hurting for right now is the daughter and the husband. I've got a pretty good idea, Dr. Bethany. The daughter had no idea about her mom, what her mom did while she was at school. And overarching is the loss of your mother. The loss of the mother, her mother, and in such a cruel and brutal way. And Nancy, as you know, now there's this huge Facebook community that has assembled to try to crack the crime.

And I was reading a little bit some of the posts of this Facebook community. They're talking about her online activities. They're talking about her being kitty cat Wes. They're wondering if she was stalked by a fan. Now, in our digital age, this daughter is potentially going to read all of this on top of the suffering of losing her own mother. The mother's reputation is going to be drug through the mud. And the fact that the mother is a victim kind of gets lost in the sauce sometimes in these kinds of cases. So the daughter's not only missing, has lost her own mother, but now her whole conception of who her mother was is something that she's going to be working through in the middle of her grief. I mean,

it's such a tragedy. You know, thinking about what Bethany's saying, because, you know, Joseph Scott Morgan, both of you guys know my children. They very rarely got to see the HLN program because it's all about, you know, real murder and crime. That's a lot different from watching, you know, Murder, She Wrote or Monk. But once in a while, they could see certain segments and they would say, Joe Scott, Mom, why are you so mean? Because it's completely the polar opposite of how I am with them. Believe it or not, I'm the pushover. I'm the one playing ping pong at 1030 at night on a school night. And it's hard for them to reconcile just that. And the other day, something happened at school with a 10 point subtraction because the children didn't bring in a water

xylophone and a card trick for a presentation and I got an email the night before claiming because of a snow day they would be due on Thursday not Tuesday so I convinced them they didn't have to take the meal well guess what they did guess what the children said in the car just out of the blue joe scott they go mom please don't slit her tires i'm like lucy why would you even and so i said lucy we're not slitting tires because of course we'd get caught and there's cameras surveillance cameras in the park no i said it's wrong but she sees this on tv i must have been talking about a stalker i don't know what they saw me saying on tv but she can't was having a hard time with just with that to reconcile what she saw for 20 minutes on tv with the me she's known for 10 years who lets her get away with everything and is now stuck

raising her guinea pigs okay so can you imagine what this little girl is going through joe scott morgan no no uh absolutely can't uh nancy and this is something that she's going to have to bear, just like Dr. Bethany said, for ages to come. With this particular case, as you well know, we've covered so many of these over our time together. The reality is that if you have an individual that's in a domestic situation, they're married, they have close intimates, we always look at them, but there's another layer to this, Nancy. This woman is on the World Wide Web with this imagery out there. Now, whether it's perception or reality, there are people that are out there that could consider her to be one of their intimates. They could develop a particular fixation on this woman. And as was mentioned earlier, if any information leaked out about her location, where she lived, who she associated with, this adds a very sinister level to this because people might take this

fantasy to another level where they seek her out. So you have to look in this particular case, not just at the immediate intimates in her family group, but also these individuals that she had contact with. And I would start to tell the truth with this subscriber list that we're talking about. Well, we also know this. With me is Scott Kimler, Crime Stories investigative reporter. Scott, we understand that the neighbor's daughter was up early that Saturday morning going to work. The last time Dawn had been heard from publicly was a seemingly normal Twitter tweet the night before. So the neighbor's daughter gets up to go to work super early Saturday morning, and she sees Dawn in the roadway and went back to get her father.

The father goes. He says Dawn West was face down, partially in the grass and partially in the street. Does that mean she had been out jogging in the early morning hours? He touched her back to see if she was breathing and she was not she was as we know only wearing a sports bra bleeding from the head a cell phone was nearby and a green liquor bottle was on top of the cell phone as if it had been placed there so this is somebody staging a scene. Now, the husband, according to the neighbor, was briefly brought out on the scene.

Neighbors called 911. We don't know if the daughter was in the home, the little girl, or not. So let me ask you, Scott Kimbler, what more do we know in the search for a killer? The police in Calera, Alabama have been very quiet about this. The media has tried to question police about this, but we have not gotten very many answers at all out of Police Chief Sean Lemley. Joining me also, Alan Duke from L.A.

Alan, what can you tell me about metadata? Well, a lot of journalists who use Twitter to cover news know that if you click in the right place on a lot of tweets, you can actually figure out where the tweet was tweeted from. Geographically, you can pinpoint where she is when she's tweeting. And she was very active as Kitty Kat West on Twitter. So that may be one way that a killer could have found her. Well, one more thing, Dr. Bethany Marshall, of course, you always look at the spouse first. I have a strong suspicion. I mean, I don't know if leaving the wife out on the street would be the MO of a spousal homicide.

No, I don't feel that the husband is responsible for this. And the reason for that, Nancy, is that she was very public with this persona, this kitty cat West, which tells me that she was not in an abusive relationship. Abusive men are very jealous. So the profile of a husband who is this tolerant that he allows her to have this kind of, we're calling it a double life, but not really if she's tweeting it out and she has followers, is somebody who's quite generous in terms of allowing her to have her own activities and make money however she wants. So I don't see this as a part of a domestic violence or a domestic homicide situation. I need to know more before I can peg it either way. But I do know there are no suspects and there are no persons of interest in this case. But I, again, emphasize what Dawn's mother has said.

Please give them your prayers and your support as they go through the horrible time of burial, funeral, grieving, especially in light of the little girl left behind. If you know anything about the brutal murder of Dawn Martin West, please call 205-668-3505. 205-668-3505. 205-668-3505. Nancy Grace, Crime Stories, signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.