Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - The Unspeakable Death of Ingrid Lyne

Episode Date: February 9, 2022

40-year-old Ingrid Lyne, a mother of three, disappears after a date to a professional baseball game. Her date, 37-year-old John Charlton, tells police he was too drunk the night before to remember wha...t happened. Lyne's partial remains were found in a recycling bin miles away from her home. Investigators believe Lyne was killed in her own home, and dismembered in the bathtub with a 15-inch pruning saw. Human flesh and blood were found in the bathtub drain. An investigation finds that Charlton has a criminal history in six states and that his parents had taken out a restraining order against him. Today on Body Bags, forensics expert and former death scene investigator Joseph Scott Morgan looks at what it would take to go through with this type of grisly crime. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. Just imagine you're 40 years old. You're the mother of three beautiful daughters. You're divorced. Your life has gotten back on track. As a professional, you're successful. You worked as a nurse. But you're lonely.
Starting point is 00:00:44 And you desire love and romance back in your life. You see somebody for about a month, don't know that much about them. How are you to know that this relationship was going to end in death? I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Back with me again today is my friend Jackie Howard, executive producer of Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Jackie, tell us about Ingrid Lynn. Ingrid Lynn was last seen by her friends on April 8th, and she was reported missing on April 9th. Her mother tried to reach her daughter but was unable to. They were on the same phone plan, and using that plan details, she found a number, a phone number that was consistent within her daughter's calling range.
Starting point is 00:01:35 That person was John Charlton. Charlton and Lynn had been dating about a month, and in fact, the night before she went missing, Lynn and Charlton had attended a professional baseball game together, the Seattle Mariners. Again, she was reported missing the next day. Just hours later, a homeowner nearly 10 miles away from Lynn's home called police,
Starting point is 00:02:00 reporting finding dismembered body parts inside translucent trash bags inside his recycle bin. The homeowner had been out of town and the bin should have been empty. Body parts were found in other areas. The body of Ingrid Lynn's bathroom, as well as trash bags identical to those which contained her body parts. Body parts were found at at least three Seattle locations. Now, John Tarleton told police that he was drinking at the baseball game. In fact, he said he drank so much that he could
Starting point is 00:02:46 not remember what happened. He claimed he blacked out and in fact did not spend the night in the home. He said he slept on the Seattle streets. Ultimately, Charlton is arrested. He pled guilty to all charges. I've worked a lot of cases where people have discovered remains, and it's one thing to walk up on an intact body. But can you imagine in the normalcy of life, just going about your daily routine, you know, just something as simple as walking out to the street to retrieve your trash bin and bring it back in, you notice that it's heavy. You flip it open, and then all of a sudden you look down and you see a human foot or a leg or a hand. This man who found these remains, he dumped all of this out on his lawn to examine it.
Starting point is 00:03:39 I can only imagine that probably what struck him first is this idea is, can this really be happening? I've had people over the years just say this over and over again when they have found intact human remains. But how much more so when you begin to think about the fact that these are dismembered? That is a human remain that has been literally torn apart. And it's quite striking. And secondarily to that, remember, these bins were supposed to have been emptied. Just imagine if they had been emptied and you wouldn't have had that initial lead. And for police in this particular case, that is a huge, huge benchmark in time when it comes to a death investigation. it to you. This is probably my biggest nightmare waiting to happen. Let's talk specifically about what was done to Ingrid. First of all, we're not really sure how she died, or are we?
Starting point is 00:04:33 Well, I think that's the trouble here. Many times you'll have people that suppose that if a body is, in fact, dismembered, that we in the medical legal community, that's the coroners and medical examiners, the forensic pathologists, we cannot make a determination relative to the cause of death. And in Ingrid Lynn's case, they were able to surmise that. Now, I got a bit of information I'm going to drop on you here, and this is kind of chilling. First off, when they recovered those initial remains that we were talking about, this gentleman found in his, in his recycle bin out there, one of those items was the head.
Starting point is 00:05:15 Okay. Be perfectly blunt. And the fact that not only did they have a human head, but the police automatically noticed that the facial features of these remains matched up to Ingrid Lynn, who had been reported missing. Remember, this is the mother of three young girls, all right? She's got people that are missing her, this sort of thing. They're curious as to where she is. So this went out on the wire pretty quickly. The fact that these remains were recognizable gives us an indication as to what the medical examiner there had to work with. And that means
Starting point is 00:05:57 that soft tissue, Jackie, was still intact, probably intact around the neck. So, when the post-mortem examination is done, and yeah, you still do an autopsy even on dismembered remains, that's part of what we do, they would have been able to go into the tissue of her neck, all that remained of her neck, and would have what we refer to as reflected it. And underlying that area, you could see obvious trauma. And that trauma, at least in my opinion, based upon what they saw, gave an indication that there had been direct pressure applied. And this is kind of one of these little thin wires, if you will, that we walk in post-mortem examinations, we have to determine if something is actually
Starting point is 00:06:46 antemortem, that means prior to death, or if it's postmortem. And in this case, based upon the fact that they have evidence of strangulation, that tells us that these events that led to this hemorrhage underlying in soft tissues of her neck, that means that it's antemortem, that this was occurring before death. The way we know that is that blood is pumping at this moment in time. So as pressure is being applied to her neck and the area around the structures in her neck, you think about the larynx and all those sorts of things that we look at, you've got indwelling hemorrhage there.
Starting point is 00:07:20 So the blood is pumping, you're compressing this area, you're squeezing the vessels, and that blood begins to leach out and it causes specific hemorrhage in those areas. And so as it gets out in soft tissue, it leaves a mark. It's not going anywhere. So even after she's dead and her body is so traumatized in a post-mortem state with dismemberment, that evidence is still going to be there. And that's how they made the determination about her exact cause of death. Do we know if it was ligature or manual? That's not specified as to whether or not it was a ligature or a manual strangulation. Most of the time when you have someone that has sustained a ligature strangulation in the cause of death from a medical legal standpoint, they will actually say ligature strangulation in the cause of death from a medical legal standpoint, they will actually say ligature strangulation, which implies that a cord or a wire or a rope
Starting point is 00:08:14 was actually utilized in bringing about this person's death. Most of the time when you hear strangulation as a standalone like this, you can kind of take an intellectual leap there and suppose that the medical examiner is going to list this as a manual, that this is more of a manual event that's nonspecific. And one of the ways that we look at this is we begin to think about, you know, with ligature strangulation, you've got like a thin cord. Just imagine a thin cord and you apply it to a surface. And the hemorrhage is very, very specific and uniform. When manual strangulation, you're going to have what's referred to as diffuse hemorrhage because the pressure is being applied in multiple locations.
Starting point is 00:08:57 It's not just specifically on one little line that you would get from a rope or a wire. So it's diffuse hemorrhage in this area. So that's probably what they landed upon. At the end of the day. I would have to imagine. And I realize I say that a lot to you. But I would have to imagine. That given what was done to Ingrid.
Starting point is 00:09:17 In fact that she was decapitated. Would also interfere. With coming to a final conclusion. About how she was strangled. Yeah, it certainly could. And, you know, you have to think about, you know, the process of dismemberment and the mindset that goes into this. You know, you begin to think about an individual that decides to take some kind of instrument
Starting point is 00:09:42 and literally take a human body apart. Well, at the end of the day, there's two reasons why an individual does this. First off, they try to obliterate any ability to identify a body, which in this case was not successful. And then you try to mask or cover up how an individual died. And you would think in doing that, they would disrupt the ability for us to make a determination post-mortem as to the cause of death. But that's rarely the case. You know, you think about gunshot wounds, we can discover those on dismembered bodies. And certainly, if we have specific trauma like a strangulation death,
Starting point is 00:10:26 we can still determine those things. The problem is that many times, most of the time, let's just say most of the time, the perpetrators of these crimes that engage in this, they're not sophisticated scientifically. They don't have an understanding of the end game, if you will, when we get those remains back to our facility to examine them. We have the ability to look in places and see things that they never even consider, Jackie. And so that's, you know, it's kind of a head scratcher because, you know, when you're talking about dismembering a body, you're talking about a tremendous amount of time that's involved in this. Thought has to go into it.
Starting point is 00:11:05 You have to do it in a contained area because it's such a messy affair, you know, when you're going through the process of literally taking apart a human remain. And so what is your end goal here? You know, and I'm kind of throwing that out there relative to rhetorically for a perpetrator in a case like this. What is your end goal in trying to take apart a body? Now, I think that there's probably a lot of forensic psychologists and psychiatrists and psychologists out there that would say, well, it's an attempt to destroy the individual and do away with them and do further harm to them, even in death. And that might be the case. But from a practical standpoint, why in the world are you going to take an instrument and literally saw through bone and then take the individual elements of the body,
Starting point is 00:11:59 such as in Ingrid Lynn's case, and package them individually? Why are you going to go to all that trouble? We discuss the most horrible things that happen to humans on body bags. That's our purpose, you know, to break down the forensics and talk about this. In this particular case, she began to think about what happened to Ingrid Lynn, not just her death, but what happened after her death. And it's mind-boggling, I think, to the normal person out there that's walking up and down the street. They don't even consider that a monster like this might be out there among us, but they truly are, Jackie. And unfortunately, Ingrid Lynn ran into one. So we know that she was strangled and that her body was dismembered and discarded.
Starting point is 00:13:11 Police found a pruning saw in her bathroom that was used to dismember her body. What is a pruning saw and how hard is it to dismember a body with a pruning saw? When you begin to think about the different types of cutting instruments that are out there. And when I say cutting instruments, I'm talking about everything from butcher knives to serrated steak knives to axes, machetes. And, of course, we have an entire subset of saws. I mean, how many of us over the years have considered a saw? Most people don't in their day-to-day life, unless you're a carpenter or unless you're, I don't know what they call them, a tree surgeon, for instance. You think about the utility of the tool that you're going to bring to work. It's like a tree
Starting point is 00:13:57 surgeon that goes out to trim tree limbs. They don't bring a hacksaw. Next time you're out there, you take a look at a hacksaw and see what those teeth look like. They're very, very fine. They're tiny, very tiny. Whereas when you begin to consider, for instance, a saw that would be used to prune a tree, those teeth are, first off, they're very large. They're very jagged.
Starting point is 00:14:23 And they're kind of offset, if you will. And when I say offset, if you look down what's referred to as the long axis of the blade, and I'm talking about looking at the blade down the length of it, you'll see that those teeth are kind of offset. And each saw, just like a fingerprint, for instance, is unique to itself. And that's heavily dependent upon the level of usage that goes into it. In this particular case, we're talking about a pruning saw. And it's similar to maybe what you would think about with a limb saw. That's kind of a bowed type of handle on it, but it's different.
Starting point is 00:15:05 This has got a standalone grip handle and the blade is actually curved and it facilitates being able to go out and kind of a one man operation, if you will, place it into a tight space and trim limbs. You'd see somebody using a pruning saw more likely on a set of boxwoods in front of their home, as opposed to some gigantic oak tree. All right. But the teeth are very broad. It leaves a very distinctive mark. And so when we examine things microscopically, for instance, like tool marks in a case like this, we would look for specific indentations and marks on that bone. Because remember, forensics is all about connectivity, you know, tying back to, say,
Starting point is 00:15:46 an instrument like this. Can you take that saw and marry it up to the marks that are left on the body? And that's what would be done, say, for instance, in the criminalistic section, or maybe in the hands of a forensic anthropologist who actually specializes in dismemberment. And yes, those people do in fact exist. I've actually got a good friend that did research in this area. So it's all about tying back to the saw. And when you get this saw, and I can only imagine when they recovered the saw at the scene, Jackie, one of the things that they're going to look for is in those teeth of the
Starting point is 00:16:24 saw. The reason I pointed out that they're so offset, they're very difficult to clean up. So what are you going to find? You'll never get everything off of them, Jackie. You're going to get, you're going to see what's left behind, say, for instance, like bone dust, or it kind of turns into like wet sawdust, if you will, and it will collect in specific areas. And most perpetrators don't consider that. Then, of course, you're going to have blood that's going to be left behind. And I know this is very gruesome, but you're going to actually have skin tissue and you will have muscle tissue. And if the saw pass through any kind of
Starting point is 00:17:02 cartilaginous body, that's a separate type of tissue that microscopically is very identifiable because it has specific markers in it that you can look and identify. But here's the linkage here. Not only are you marking the bone, and I can talk about what that's going to look like, but also this tissue that's left behind is specifically identifiable as it applies to a victim. Because, yeah, we could do things like blood typing, but what's really kind of the home run for us in the forensics area is DNA tiebacks. And this tissue that you're talking about is absolutely, absolutely just rife with DNA that's been left behind. You begin to think about things like blood. Blood, you know, we can go back and not only tie the blood and tie it back, you know, to all the O grouping, B grouping, AB grouping, that sort of thing. But at a molecular level relative to DNA, you can tie that back to a specific individual. And in Ingrid Lynn's case, we have, other than being dismembered, the remains are not compromised by decomposition on any level.
Starting point is 00:18:19 So you can retrieve DNA from her and compare it to the saw. And so those are tiebacks that we'll have. And then when you begin to look at the saw as it manifests itself on the bone, these hard surfaces, I recommend anybody that's sawing something at home, like you're sawing a piece of wood, maybe a limb. When you look at it, there is a distinctive mark that is left behind by that blade. And you might look at it and say, you know what? I'm looking at this. They all look the same. Trust me, they're not. With most dismemberment cases, we have what are referred to as stop starts. First off, the person's not very, we hope that nobody is very proficient at dismemberment,
Starting point is 00:19:02 but they don't really know where to begin. And the fact that most people that at dismemberment, but they don't really know where to begin. And the fact that most people that commit dismemberment or perpetrate dismemberment, they don't go to a joint. They'll go specifically to the shaft of a bone. And every time you draw that blade across a bone, you have to reset it. So you'll have multiple little marks on the bone. And these are referred to by some as stop starts. And so you get these multiple little fingerprints from the saw that you will.
Starting point is 00:19:31 And then the one that you finally decide on where you start a groove, that's going to leave microscopic impressions of the blade as well. So again, talking about tiebacks, that's one of the things from an evidentiary standpoint that we're looking for with the saw. You can match the saw up to the injuries that are left behind. The trick, however, is putting the saw into the hand of the perpetrator. In this case, we'd be talking about Charlton.
Starting point is 00:19:59 One of the things that strikes me about using this type of a weapon, because it is so coarse, the blade is very coarse. It's not a fine-toothed instrument. It's not designed to make a clean cut. So what I'm seeing here is that this is going to be a very messy scene. Charlton would have been covered in blood and tissue. I think, yeah, I guess that he could have been covered in blood and tissue. It would appear, though, Jackie, that he at least had the thought to do this in a bathtub. Remember, that's where a goodly amount of this evidence was found.
Starting point is 00:20:44 And this is not like a blunt force event where you're slamming down onto something and you've got all kinds of blood staining that's occurring at a low or medium velocity here. What you're looking at, though, is containment in this particular area. And I'm glad that you mentioned the brutality of this, because as you mentioned, those teeth are very robust, if you will. I mean, when you can look at it, even if you go to a hardware store and you see one of these saws hanging on the wall there, it's markedly different. Say, for instance, than like the saws that we use in the autopsy room, which are striker saws. I mean, how many of us have watched one of these shows and they've, you know, one of these TV shows where they they'll make that that loud pitch humming noise when some actor that's portraying a forensic pathologist goes to open the body. Those are bone saws that you hear.
Starting point is 00:21:43 It's real high pitch and those are called agitating saws. And the teeth are very, very fine. They're actually even finer than like a hacksaw. But they still kick up dust. They still leave marks behind. With a pruning saw like this, it's so very robust that it's going to be very distinctive in the marks that are left behind. And one of the things that you have to consider in a case involving a dismemberment is the fact that, you know, in medical terms, when let's say a doctor is going to do an amputation. When they do an amputation, they don't just pull out a saw and take the person's limb off. That's not how it's done. It's a surgical procedure. So, you're going to start off by utilizing a sharp instrument a
Starting point is 00:22:25 very sharp instrument like scalpel you have to get through the tissue to get to the impacted place that's not what happened here jackie we're talking about an individual that wielded a pruning saw that apparently went through tissue that it's not meant to go through all right that's what makes this so ghastly. That's why you'll have tissue caught up in the teeth. That's why tissue is kind of flushed down the drain in this case, if you will. He's using the saw that's normally meant to cut through a solid surface, like a tree limb, to go through a layer of skin and a layer of muscle,
Starting point is 00:23:02 multiple layers of muscle. If you're talking about something like the long bones in the legs, you know, you get up around the femur in that area, you're going to have to go through muscles like the thigh and that are contained within the glutes, all those sorts of areas. And so it's going to capture a lot of tissue in that case, a very coarse way of doing things. But Joe, you're talking about the bits of skin and tissue and the blood being in a bathtub. So obviously, as you mentioned before, a lot of that went down the drain. That's potential evidence that could be gone. What do you do? How do you recover or can you
Starting point is 00:23:38 that evidence? Yeah, that's a fantastic question. I urge everybody at home to go to your bathroom sink, for instance, because you can appreciate it this way very easily, or even your kitchen sink. And look beneath, and you'll see the curved nature of the drain pipe beneath. That's called a trap down there. And they're set up for, I'm not a plumber, but they're set up for a variety of different reasons. But they're there for a specific purpose, and they're called a trap for a reason. So, in forensics, when we're working one of these scenes, such as the Ingrid Lynn case, we will take these apart. I've participated in this because you're looking for specific evidence that ties back to a specific event. And, you know, look, people do this,
Starting point is 00:24:31 authorities do this in drug cases as well, Jackie, when people are trying to wash things down sinks and, you know, things like that. But in this particular case, we're talking about human tissue. And one of the first indicators, this is why you have to be very, very careful at crime scenes. One of the first indicators that they had at the scene is that when they began to examine the tub, and keep in mind this pruning saw was found immediately adjacent to the toilet, all right, in the bathroom, which it turned out later is where her remains were dismembered. When they began to look at the drain there in the bottom of that tub, they saw what appeared to be a red substance there, I'm sure. And as it turned out, it turned out to be blood.
Starting point is 00:25:13 But they had to go beneath and take the trap out from beneath the bathtub. And when they did that, they hit a motherload of evidence because caught in that trap, that curved pipe beneath the tub, it's apparent that Charlton had And in this particular case, they were able to find muscle tissue and skin tissue, and they were able to find actually some semblance of blood therein. And again, when you pull us as investigators are always having to observe the abnormal in context of the normal. You know, you begin to think about this home that Ingrid Lynn had created with her family, you know, the love that she extended to her children. And this was a home that she had. And, you know, you begin to think
Starting point is 00:26:46 about the horror that took place in here. And of course, you know, you pause for a moment and it sets in the reality of what you're observing. And you begin to think what would motivate an individual to do this and how could they do it, Jackie? Yeah, Joe, I am really at a loss for understanding this as well as you are, especially when we find out that John Charlton had a criminal history and even his parents were afraid of him. They had sought a restraining order against him in 2006, and that restraining order was taken out because they feared their son's drunken outbursts and saying that he had taken the movie Hannibal, which if you remember is about a serial killer, and told his mother that she should watch it and beware. Once Charlton was picked up, he told police that he had been drinking so much that he could not remember what happened.
Starting point is 00:27:46 So I want to know, is that possible? Drinking so much that you black out and drinking so much that you pass out. And if he's drinking this much, could he even do what we know he did to Ingrid Lynn? You know, most of us were familiar with legal alcohol intoxication in most states. And that turns out to be most. And this is kind of generalized. And it's varied from year to year over the years. But it's generally from year to year over the years, but it's generally about 0.08.
Starting point is 00:28:26 And when we think about that, you think about, well, what does it take to get someone into that state where they are that drunk? For a man, it can be about two to five drinks, and that's heavily dependent upon what type of alcohol you're drinking, you know, the alcohol level, the level of you know, a lot of alcohol and still be able to communicate and to function. They're going to be impaired, but they can still, you know, kind of reason if you will. So there's essentially, you know, like three stages or there's about five stages to, to being intoxicated or inebriated. As some people say, you've got, you know, like where somebody is sober, that's going to fall, you know, anywhere in that, you know, that kind of 0.01 to 0.05 level. And you're not, you're not legally, as they say, drunk at that point in time. And then you get up into stage two, which is what they deem as euphoria where, you know, people are giddy, they're
Starting point is 00:29:45 kind of happy, grooving along, that sort of thing. But this is the danger area when you think about driving impaired. And that's going to put you in that 0.03 to up to 0.12 in intoxication. Now, you get up to stage three with this, and you're talking about 0.9, 0.09 up to 0.25. And you'll have individuals that become impaired at that point in time. It makes it very dangerous to drive if you're operating anything. People get drowsy. They're kind of swaying back and forth.
Starting point is 00:30:22 They can stumble. And then what Charlton is implying is he was literally at stage four where you get into this confused state. And you're talking about a blood alcohol level that's like 0.18 up to 0.30. Individuals that can't walk. They lose their memory. They're not aware of anything. Slurring speech. So you're going to tell me that this fellow who is claiming to be blackout, knee-walking drunk at this point in time is going to be able to handle himself in these circumstances where he is going to take a saw. Mind you, after he strangles this woman, he's going to take a saw and methodically dismember her body. And we're not talking about
Starting point is 00:31:13 just in like a couple of rough pieces. We're talking about multiple pieces. Reflect back to the fellow that found the first deposit of remains he'd left behind. There were four. He found her head. He found a foot. He found a lower leg. And he found an arm with a hand attached. That's four pieces right there. That requires some level of motor skill in order to do that. And so that's what's so weird about his explanation in this particular case.
Starting point is 00:31:58 And then on top of that, he's done this packaging, if you will, of all of these remains and driven around in her vehicle, mind you, and deposited them at a variety of locations. And to this day, there are some of her remains that still have yet to be recovered. I'm just I'm not buying this explanation that he was so impaired by alcohol, he doesn't remember anything that happened. He had, in my opinion at least, cognitive behavior that marries up with somebody that can actually handle fine motor skills. You just mentioned fine motor skills. You just mentioned fine motor skills. Obviously, everybody handles and processes alcohol differently. But I don't see how someone, if he can't drive, which he said that Ingrid Lynn drove them back from the ballgame, how could he do this? Yeah, you're absolutely right. And, you know, OK, you're saying you had alcohol on board.
Starting point is 00:32:45 Okay, I'm buying it. You had alcohol on board. You went to a ball game. Maybe you had a few beers. Maybe you're in that euphoric state. Now, you can say all day long that I was so drunk that Ms. Lynn had to drive me back to her residence. Who's going to dispute that? Well, Ingrid Lynn's no longer around to dispute that.
Starting point is 00:33:05 She's dead. Not only she dead, you dismembered her afterwards. So, you know, that's the thing about the dead. The dead can't speak up for themselves. You can say anything you want to about the dead. All right. And in this case, he did. He puts this on her that he's so drunk that she had to drive him back. And he even mentioned that she was acting weird at some point in time. So what is it? Is she acting weird? Or are you so drunk and impaired that you have little or no awareness of your ability to operate a vehicle or to walk and she's got to take care of you, but yet you were able to understand or to evaluate her where you're applying this term that she's acting weird? What does that even mean?
Starting point is 00:33:49 So you've got kind of a tangled narrative that he's given here. And that's why I'm not buying it, because, you know, what happened was, was that after he had gotten her in that house and he murdered her, he went into her kitchen, Jackie. And we know this because the police found this. They found a box. They found a box in her kitchen of these translucent garbage bags. And every single bag originated from that box that Ms. Lynn owned. And he took bag after bag after bag after bag and individually bundled her remains, wrapped them up neatly.
Starting point is 00:34:31 He even acquired at some point in time, a cooler. Some of these remains were found a couple of days later in a cooler, not just in the garbage bag that we had talked about earlier, but he had deposited them in a cooler along the roadside as well. And not to mention, some of her remains were actually found at a recycling center. And it almost seems, I don't know, in some sick, twisted way, almost providential that they were able to even find her remains at all. Because at any one moment in time, someone could have not have been paying attention to their surroundings and her remains would have never been found potentially.
Starting point is 00:35:10 Now, you could go back to the house and see what was left behind in the drain and the drain trap that we're talking about and in the teeth of the saw. And his attorneys for a while were saying, well, there's no forensic tiebacks to him relative to this event. Well, maybe you can't say that they had anything that would tie him back. But, you know, at the end of all of this, the reality is he's the only person that had been with her that night. He purposed apparently to do this because I don't know what happened that night. I don't know if anybody will really know what happened that night. I do know that at some point, Tom, he took his hands and wrapped them around her neck and choked the life out of her, strangled her to death. And then he decided to completely destroy all that remained of her.
Starting point is 00:36:01 Well, Joe, Ingrid Lynn's killer, John Robert Charlton, is now locked up. He pled guilty to Lynn's murder. The judge in sentencing Charlton said she would lock him up for life if she could. She sentenced Charlton to 27 years, nine months in prison, and that was the harshest sentence that she could hand down. 39-year-old Tarleton pled guilty to premeditated first-degree murder. With this sentence, Joe, Tarleton can be out of prison when he is 66 years old. I agree with the judge. I got to say, I can't believe that this is all of the time that he got. Because you know what?
Starting point is 00:36:50 When you look at this and you see what he had done that night, remember, there was a lot of thought that went into this on his part. All right. You know, and this doesn't make it any better. But if he had killed her in a crime of passion and then just walked away, that's one thing. But, you know, you see what he does afterwards. That's evidence of a depraved mind. And you give the history going all the way back to his parents. You know, he's threatening his parents.
Starting point is 00:37:19 Parents had to get a restraining order on this guy prior to this. And I know that, you know, that act is not necessarily associated with this particular horrible, horrible event. But you think about that this is all he gets. And what did he do? Well, yeah, he killed this young woman. Then he dismembered her, disrespected her body. But he not only killed her, he essentially killed a family. Think about those three babies she leaves behind. Think about her mama, even her ex-husband, who she had a great relationship with. They were co-parenting these babies. He completely eradicated that by virtue of his decision that night. And this is all the time that he gets. He has life to be lived still, even if he is let out, because he's going to be in his early to mid-60s, perhaps, when he walks free out of that prison there in Washington.
Starting point is 00:38:15 But what he's left in his wake, he is utterly and completely destroyed. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. This is an iHeart Podcast.

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