The Manosphere Report

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0:19Today on The David Rutherford Show, I welcome Joseph Scott Morgan, head of forensics at

0:26Jackson State University, as well as a normal appearance on Nancy Grace, and also has

0:32his own podcast, The Body Bags Podcast.

0:36Don't miss this one. We talk Zorro Ranch, a missing UFO general, and what it

0:41means to brush up and deal with death on a daily basis.

0:45Today on The David Rutherford Show.

0:56Joseph, welcome to the show.

0:59Again, let me just, I just really want to emphasize your background.

1:07You're an MFS, FAB, MDI, and you're a distinguished scholar of applied forensics at Jackson

1:15State University, and you hold a faculty rank of associate professor of applied forensics.

1:21You also hold a master's of forensic sciences degree from National University, and you're a

1:27board -certified fellow of the American Board of Medical -Legal Death Investigators.

1:34And from what we chatted before, you've also had extensive experience in New Orleans and

1:43in a coroner's office, as well as in Georgia and greater Atlanta area, too.

1:48So I guess I think the biggest thing that we'll get into eventually is just

1:56what it's like to how this job restructures your perceptions of death and as you

2:03watch how other human beings have to deal with it as it goes.

2:07But before we jump into that, you recently did a fantastic show on the Zorro

2:13Ranch with Epstein, and I would just love to get your, you know, your ideas

2:18behind this and why it could be kind of the next big break in the

2:26case. I guess it seems like, you know, it's difficult to say there aren't many

2:30active cases going on right now.

2:33So I'd love to hear your impression of what this might mean for the greater

2:36context of the Epstein files.

2:39Yeah. Well, first off, thank you for having me.

2:42It's an honor and a privilege.

2:43Thank you so much. Yeah, as far as Epstein, I've kind of got a history

2:49going back. You know, I started literally just kind of back up a little bit.

2:56I think it was the morning after he was found dead.

3:00I'd heard, you know, heard about him, you know, forever and ever, you know, in

3:05the news and whatnot, in the news cycle.

3:10But when he died, of course, I was on the air almost immediately.

3:15I had people calling me from all over.

3:16And from just from that beginning, that's when my appetite from a forensic standpoint kind

3:23of got, kind of whetted my appetite, if you will.

3:26And so I began to follow it very closely and follow that thread.

3:31Because there's all, as you know, it's, there's so many roads you can go down

3:36with it. So I really try to stay, I hate to use the term, but

3:40stay, well, I'll stay within my guardrails instead of, say, within my lane.

3:44Because I think that there's interconnectivity with a lot of stuff.

3:47And so I've been following it for a while.

3:50And I've had a lot of conversations with people, particularly in forensics, about findings, you

3:55know, from the jail and what there was and what there wasn't.

4:00And then, I guess it was probably three years ago, I was chatting with a

4:06buddy of mine. And he's an old homicide detective.

4:12And we were talking about, if you had access to, say, young women, and they're,

4:22say, Eastern or even Western European, can't speak the language, and you come dragging them

4:28to the U .S., they're essentially disposable.

4:32And so that was our supposition.

4:35And the idea was, well, what would you do with them?

4:38Well, some people had said on Little St.

4:39James, you know, surrounded by sharks, you know, you take them out there.

4:44To the fishes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, alpha, alpha predator.

4:49But then I got to thinking about the ranch, and I'm thinking, you know, first

4:53off, what the hell do you need with this?

4:55Because your boy ain't no rancher.

4:58That's for sure. You know, and so I'm thinking, why would you need this?

5:02Well, the purpose is isolation.

5:04If you want to get rid of somebody, and I know that you probably spent

5:07time out there in the deserts, and it goes on forever and ever, you know,

5:13and it's like a sea, a sea of sand and caliche as far as you

5:20can see, you know, what you're going to do.

5:22And then this story popped.

5:24And we've had this. I would say probably about three or four years ago.

5:27And then, you know, this leaked email.

5:29And again, I don't know how much feracity to assign any of this stuff, you

5:33know, because I can't necessarily validate it.

5:35And even though it's in a dump, you just never know because there's any number

5:39of people that are involved with it.

5:40But if I take that bit of knowledge and I begin to think about it,

5:43that's one of the reasons that I wanted to cover it on my podcast, Body

5:47Bags, you know, because what would you do?

5:49How could you facilitate it?

5:51Like, well, the fact that it's a so -called ranch, which, you know, equates to

5:58for many people what they refer to as agricultural welfare.

6:01You know, a rich guy will buy a ranch or a farm just to write

6:05this thing off. Well, they have to maintain it.

6:08And it's my understanding they even have a fire department on this thing.

6:10And you know he's got equipment out there because you can't go into that soil

6:14out there like that caliche that I imagined.

6:16Two good old boys with a couple of shovels and dig a hole.

6:20The pickaxe, yeah, it doesn't rock.

6:22Yeah, it just don't rock.

6:24And so anyway, I knew that if you're going to do this, you're going to

6:27have to show up with some kind of heavy equipment.

6:29The problem with this is that you're talking about – this is what I do.

6:35If somebody tells me there's a body located somewhere, I will try to expand that

6:40area in my mind because generally memories are very poor.

6:43Or I'm going to at least double that area.

6:46And you're going to need to kind of target that area and begin to look

6:50at it. They've got all the time in the world.

6:53It's not like they're going anywhere.

6:54The place is locked down.

6:56It's secured. So you need to go back as far as you can.

6:59And I was – I had a discussion with my son because he's a GIS

7:07guy. He does the geospatial stuff.

7:09And it's like, son, how would you – if you were trying to target an

7:13area, what would you do as far as looking for changes?

7:16Because you know there's people that do all this.

7:18Their brain works in a different way than mine does.

7:20Those are my favorite people at the agency I worked with.

7:23I mean, they're just operating on a different level in how they aggregate data.

7:27They can see things abstractly.

7:28That's right. He said, well, Dad, the first thing you need to do is go

7:31back and – they need to pull all the old satellite imagery.

7:35And they'll just walk their way through this thing.

7:37And then he goes into kind of the more complex issues like geo changes, hydrology,

7:44and all these sorts of things.

7:45And what's going to impact that area the most, looking at the rise and the

7:50fall, the contour of land, you know, how much rainfall do you get in a

7:54particular area over a particular time?

7:56And then you kind of tighten it down.

7:58And he said from that, you can build out and you can begin to use

8:01things like LIDAR beneath drones and even, you know, certain aerial platforms other than drones

8:10where they can kind of sweep the area and go back and forth.

8:12And you look for those little changes.

8:14You might be using infrared or, you know, you never know what kind of spectral

8:17analysis they're going to do.

8:19And you're just looking for changes in the soil.

8:23And there's – it's a two -edged sword because out there things do change.

8:28They don't change a lot, though, not like down here in the south.

8:31No. You know, because it's baked in out there.

8:34So if you see any kind of abnormality, you can kind of hone in on

8:38that. My biggest fear, I think, moving forward with this is that the state's handling

8:45it. And I don't know what kind of resources they have, but if it was

8:49me putting teams together, I'm not going to go out and grab a bunch of

8:55– and I'm not disparaging them, but I'm just saying I'm not going to be

8:59looking for a group of crime scene investigators to go work a particular area.

9:05I'm going to break this thing down into teams, and the team lead will always

9:08be a forensic anthropologist. And I'll probably have a geologist at my disposal as well.

9:13And you populate each one of those teams with crime scene investigators, photographers, and those

9:20sorts of things that will do the bidding of the forensic anthropologist because they can

9:24read the soil. You know, people hear about places like the Body Farm at UT,

9:28the Maple Center down in Florida, University of Florida, which is a fantastic place.

9:33And they've got human desiccation labs in a lot of different places where we've studied

9:37burials and all that. So you want those people to be – you know, to

9:41use the military term, the tip of the spear.

9:43Right. So they're not – they're looking at this from a scientific perspective.

9:49They're not looking at this necessarily from a prosecutorial perspective.

9:53They're looking – what does the science reveal to us?

9:56And they need to take their time.

9:58The only problem is that – and we see this with the Guthrie case right

10:01now – is that the media are the clock watchers.

10:05That's right. And they control the pace.

10:07And there's always stuff going on in the background that the public doesn't need to

10:11know. You know, if you're not inside the investigative bubble, you don't need that data.

10:16You just don't, you know.

10:18And so there's always something that's working.

10:20It all depends on – you know, it's generally not the technology.

10:24It's operator error, you know, in anything that you do.

10:26Always. I love that you just said that.

10:29Always. Yeah. You know, and I'm chief among centers.

10:33I failed multiple times throughout my career in Atlanta and New Orleans.

10:38You know, in screwed -up cases, we all do.

10:40No one's perfect at all.

10:42And so you have to take your time and work these cases.

10:47I think the biggest question people will ask, well, Morgan, if we – if they

10:52do – discover something will there be anything left well that all depends on um

10:57it all depends on and i call it memorialization of the dead it all depends

11:03on how the bodies were memorialized and what i mean by that that's kind of

11:06a broad statement uh did they cocoon the bodies in anything and what were they

11:11cocooned in if they used a tarp uh or did they just throw remains into

11:17into bare earth were the bodies clothed in any way did they strip them of

11:22any clothing uh did they entomb them because just but you know you got heavy

11:27heavy equipment uh if you've got somebody that goes and digs a hole and they

11:31they pour concrete on top well that works to our benefit i got all i

11:37got all the time in the world go out there and bust up concrete right

11:40i'll take my sweet time i'll sit there at the sun have have a cold

11:44drink while i'm doing it and go back to work i'm not in any rush

11:47i'm not running from anybody so what's inside of this area is going to be

11:53dependent upon how the bodies were treated during that period of time um you know

11:59because what you're looking for are going to be any kind of traumatic artifacts that

12:03are left behind i think in in the the messaging here we had heard that

12:11at least this was an asphyxial kind of death so if if you're you know

12:16if you're talking about that can you go over that real quick in terms of

12:19that messaging and i think they're you know because one of the things i learned

12:22on your your show it was this this anonymous tip that had come into a

12:28local uh news reporter i think it was 17 right yeah yeah and can you

12:34just talk about that 17 or 19 it was in that time period yeah it's

12:37like a 24 month period yep and this person had formerly worked there apparently had

12:43dropped the dime on this and said that and called into a radio show and

12:46i can't remember if it was if it was a local show in like albuquerque

12:50or santa fe or one of these places guy was a conservative radio talk host

12:54host of one of these shows and said yeah you got there's two girls uh

13:01that were uh that were strangled uh or asphyxiated during rough sex or rough sex

13:09play and you know the first thing i thought about is that okay if it

13:17happens once and it's rough sex it's not excusable but you kind of you kind

13:24of think okay it got out of hand and how many times have i heard

13:27that over my career it got out of hand i can't even imagine but now

13:31we're we're talking about that's right you're starting to develop a pattern here and that

13:36goes to psychopathy at that point in time because if there's two if you've got

13:40somebody saying there's two guess what i think i think there's more yeah there's more

13:45than two right uh this way my mind works as an investigator you know as

13:51a forensic scientist i um i'm not gonna buy the first thing down the pike

13:56um if you're saying two i'm gonna think four or six or whatever it is

14:01whatever multiple of two you want to work out right right um so you can

14:05also even if now like just as as to extrapolate on what you're talking about

14:10the psychopathy of it right we even if you just look at the the a

14:15bunch of the emails and just the connotation of that type of of what integrated

14:24um play to them because that's what it seemed like it's playful this is playful

14:31language of how they're talking about you know oh i hope i hope she's all

14:36right or you know you know and it's just like it's almost this afterthought of

14:42um you know there's no there's no humanization of of these girls that they're with

14:48in any concept right it's just about their own uh um whatever type of pleasure

14:55they're into and it and apparently it has this this undertone of of of rough

14:59sex or in in many cases if you go back to the 2008 or the

15:042005 -6 stuff out of palm beach there's some physicality in all of this as

15:10well too yeah there is and and you know being a medical legal death investigator

15:16and two of arguably or atlanta new orleans used to be one of the biggest

15:21cities in south prior to katrina but in two of the largest metropolitan areas um

15:26in the south i've worked several series of serial homicides over the course of my

15:32career and um you know with with that said there was always an element of

15:39dehumanization you know and you hear that's kind of rote you know you hear it

15:42in movies and whatnot and all that sort of stuff but there's a grain of

15:45truth in that where uh people individuals are used as playthings essentially to satisfy whatever

15:54kind of primal lust or set you know they're trying to satisfy a need whatever

15:59it is and they they get off on the horror and the terror of it

16:03and and uh you can only imagine uh you've got this young young lady that

16:10can't speak can't speak english um she has no family around she's been taken away

16:17out in the middle of the desert somewhere and And all hope is lost at

16:21that point in time. And you can imagine what kind of pleasure some psychopath would

16:28derive from that because they truly, they become God out there, you know, in the

16:33midst of that. They have this individual's life in their hands.

16:38And that goes to, you know, you begin to think about the, pardon me, you

16:44go to think about, you know, we think about killing, right, and homicides and whatnot.

16:50And there's very kind of, there's kind of a, this mild change that takes place

16:56when you think about modalities of homicide.

17:00You know, you've got somebody that, you know, shows up and they're going to shoot

17:03somebody. All right. Right. Well, as you all know, you can do that from a

17:07great distance. You can do it close up.

17:09But when you start to get into things like bludgeoning, where you're beating somebody to

17:13death, or you're utilizing a sharp force weapon to stab them, which has a sexual

17:19connotation all in and of itself because of the thrusting of the knife.

17:23We saw that. I think I saw that in Idaho.

17:25I think that was completely sexually motivated.

17:28100%. 100%. With a K -bar.

17:32And probably at the top of the list is going to be suffocation.

17:36Because you can, when you're applying force to somebody's neck, you can sense their breath

17:45on your skin. You can feel the texture of their skin, perspiration.

17:50You can feel the rise and fall of their chest.

17:52You can feel fear to a certain degree.

17:54You can feel the rapid nature of their pulse, and then when they get into

17:58that perimortem state where pulse begins to wane and goes away.

18:03So you tie that back to whatever this bug is that they have in their

18:07brain that needs to be fed.

18:12And it gets really, really dark in a hurry.

18:14And I've been, you know, in my career, I've been in dark spots where I've

18:18had to witness the aftermath of a lot of these things.

18:22And for me, you know, they, Epstein, I think, has been elevated up to, on

18:29this perch, that he's somehow this super criminal.

18:33He's as much of a scumbag as anybody else.

18:36Right, right. I've worked cases that individuals died, died at their hand.

18:41If, in fact, he did do this, he's no different.

18:45He's no different than any other kind of serialized perpetrator that's out there.

18:50It's just that, you know, Ted Bundy, he wasn't connected, and I didn't work in

18:55a Ted Bundy case. I'm just using that as an example.

18:58Ted Bundy, you know, didn't have political influencers all around him and people of power.

19:04And a billion dollars, right, and access to anything you wanted.

19:07Anything you wanted at any point in time, which makes you uber dangerous.

19:11You know, I don't know.

19:12I mean, he's right up there with Caligula.

19:14You know, when you begin, you begin to think about that.

19:17That's a brilliant, that's a brilliant correlation.

19:20That's a brilliant, where there's no boundaries.

19:23None. Right, the power that you, it's almost, and I think it correlates to the

19:27transhumanism emails going back and forth with different people, Peter Thiel and some of these

19:34other people, and talking about research conducting at the ranch as well, too.

19:39So, I mean, I would imagine as an investigator, you certainly are looking for those

19:46correlations in conjunction with, you know, an area that would suffice for this type of

19:54activity. So, if let's say you were all of a sudden called by New Mexico

19:59and whoever's doing the investigations, how would you approach it?

20:05Very methodically. I would put together a plan before I ever set foot on that

20:14ridgeline. And some people refer to it as a ridgeline.

20:17I've heard other people say that it's a cattle grazing area.

20:20And they might very well be adjacent.

20:22I can tell you this.

20:23We're talking about, just to put this into focus for folks, we're talking about an

20:28area that is, I think, that is in excess of 8 ,000 acres.

20:34In addition to that, it is buffered by state land, which, you know, like if

20:42you've got like BLM, I'm referring to Bureau of Land Management, where you've got this

20:49kind of, so you're truly isolated.

20:51I mean, you're out in the wilderness.

20:53You know, I would, before we ever, we would look at aerial surveillance.

20:58I mean, be very, very careful about this whole thing.

21:01We're going to have a plan when we go in.

21:02We're going to have points of ingress, you know, and thinking about keeping it as

21:09secure as possible and having accountability.

21:12Because I don't want anybody looking over my shoulder while I'm working.

21:15I don't work for free.

21:16This isn't, you know, this isn't a sideshow.

21:19I want to go out there.

21:20There's only specific people that will be allowed access out there.

21:23Because this is going to be painstaking work.

21:26You cannot go in half -cocked on any level.

21:29You have to go in and really understand what your objective is here.

21:34And it's, at this point in time, you're not going there to seek justice or

21:40to arrest people and all that embroidered stuff that you hear about.

21:44But you're going out there to see if you can discover human remains.

21:47You're going to have to go in half -cocked on any level.

21:48It's the most effective way to do that.

21:50And look, for all I know, you might get out there and you might find

21:53human remains and they might not be connected to anything.

21:57And that has happened. I've worked cases like that, you know, where we knew that

22:01there was a dumping ground for somebody.

22:02We went out there and we found another human remain that was not related to

22:06the case that we had initially showed up or we have found the initial case

22:09that we showed up. And, oh, by the way, there was another body out there.

22:13So that does happen. But that's in a more densely populated area.

22:17So if I go out there and we find any kind of human remain that's

22:20there, I'm going to begin to think, okay, well, is this tied back to him?

22:25And then you have to begin to think about, well, does the physical findings that

22:35I'm looking at from an anthropological standpoint, do they marry up with the timeline in

22:41which he had possession of this property?

22:43You know, because I think that he probably gained possession of it like in 93.

22:49It was disposed of, I think, in 23 by the estate.

22:53You know, I'm sure that Mark Epstein, his brother, was involved in that to some

22:58degree or somebody associated with that group.

23:02You know, however that was handled, that's not my – that's down the hall and

23:05to the left. That's not my department.

23:07So, you know, but you think about that 20 -year period and when did he

23:11last visit that location? And how does that marry up with the story that the

23:18source has given them? Which, by the way, that individual's name was redacted, of course,

23:23out of the document. And I'm hoping that the feds – I'm hoping that the

23:27feds are pressing – that they found that individual and they're pressing them right now

23:31for more detail because the more detail you have, I'd want to be armed with

23:35that before I would go out there.

23:37I would also hope that the feds would have the foresight to say, look, we'll

23:48offer resources. And I'm not just talking about, like, the ERT from FBI.

23:55Yeah, right, wearing their FBI jackets doing a FOD walk down at the grounds, right?

23:59Well, I want to say, can you let me – can you please ask folks

24:04at the Smithsonian if they'll come out?

24:06Because the Smithsonian has some of the best forensic anthropologists in the world.

24:09I didn't know that. Oh, yeah, yeah.

24:11And so that's why that little clip in Silence of the Lambs when Thomas –

24:18what's his name? I can't remember the guy that wrote the book.

24:20But when they show up, she shows up at the – and, you know, they've

24:24got the entomologists that's there.

24:26Yeah. And they pull the – well, you have anthropologists that are there too, some

24:29of the best in the world.

24:31Wow. I'd want to have the best on my team out there and not just

24:35– you know, I'm not disparaging, but I just – I don't want merely the

24:39ERT. I want PhD -level anthropologists that are out there that can kind of read

24:45the ground. There's a lot riding on this because if you're talking about human trafficking,

24:51which everybody always goes around beating the drum about, let's see if you want to

24:54put your money where your mouth is.

24:56And invest the time and resources to pull these people out, send them out there,

25:01and get these teams together.

25:02And I'm talking about full bore.

25:05You know, again, I wasn't – I'm not making a joke when I say I

25:09want a geologist out there.

25:10I want them to – and I don't want a geologist that's up in an

25:14ivory tower at some other location.

25:16I want somebody that understands the geology of this specific location, period, end of paragraph.

25:22So all of this stuff has to be organized and facilitated, and that's going to

25:28be the most important thing.

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26:52Hi, I'm Lita, and my business, The Donut Mum, is backed by ComBank.

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27:19Eligibility criteria and T's and C's apply.

27:21You know, I just, it's, I think, I love the comment about the press, you

27:28know, and what that does to, you know, your chief of police, your local mayor,

27:34your congressman, whoever it is up the food chain that starts thinking about polling numbers

27:40as opposed to running a sophisticated operation, right?

27:43Um, and I think you're seeing that again, you mentioned the Guthrie case.

27:48There's this other case that's fascinating me right now.

27:51It's about this and it's in the same area, this, uh, general who was part

27:56of the UFO program and at the air force and he's been missing 14 days

28:01now. And, and it's, it's really starting to pick up steam and, and, and the

28:07news cycle as well, too.

28:09Um, what's that like for those people who are running the investigations, who are getting

28:15pressure from the press, from the families, from the, you know, the political people that

28:22need a win, right? How, how, what kind of role does that play on a

28:27lead investigator and then everybody beneath them in terms of, you know, because it is,

28:32I mean, it's science. I mean, you guys are in, in the midst and it's,

28:36it's, you know, and a lot of the stuff that you're collecting is microscopic even.

28:41And, and that's, I mean, that's a whole nother level that when you allow your

28:46mind to, to go to a microscopic level, it, what is it?

28:50It amplifies the space of, of the relevant space of analysis, you know, times X

28:56times, whatever it is. So how does, how does that pressure work in the, in

29:02the food chain of, or in the hierarchy of, of, of jobs?

29:06And then how do you guys push back on it in a way that kind

29:10of comports with, you know, giving you the space and time you need to do

29:14it right? I'm going to tell you a real quick story that kind of sums

29:17us up. Awesome. That's all I was asking.

29:20I just want, I just want you to tell a story.

29:22No, no, no, no, no, no, it's completely salient.

29:26We had a, a mass shooting that happened many, many years ago in one of

29:32the jurisdictions I worked in.

29:35And we had in excess of 13 people that were dead.

29:39All right. And there were other people that were dead in other locations that were

29:43not in our jurisdiction, but yet that were still part of the case.

29:48The same perpetrator killed them as well.

29:51And the individual that had done the killing had gone into an office park and

29:59just smoked everybody that was in this location.

30:02I'm talking about people just sitting at their computer terminals.

30:05Wow. And I probably in that moment, Tom saw one of the best examples of

30:13leadership I've ever seen in my life.

30:15And from, in my little world, all right, as a medical legal death investigator, our

30:21boss at the time that was the chief, chief investigator, did you know he never

30:25walked onto the scene with us?

30:28He stayed right at the tape and he would come to the door of the

30:36building and ask us, what do we need?

30:40He handled all the questions.

30:42Wow. Everything. We never dealt with the press.

30:46And the thing about when you have a multiple event like this, you know, I

30:50talked about teams just a second ago relative to thing in New Mexico.

30:55We had to break up into teams because you don't just, you don't have one

31:01guy that's going to go through and work all the bodies.

31:04So you break up into teams and you process one body individual or two bodies

31:08individually. And it's very labor intensive work.

31:11You talked about, you know, you're working at a micro level because, you know, the

31:16old, I use the old adage with my students at Jacksonville State where I say,

31:21you know, if you, once you walk across a threshold for the first time, you

31:25can never walk across it for the first time again.

31:28It's there. You know, lawyers like to say you can't unring the bell.

31:32That sound goes forward. And so if I can have somebody that is managing the

31:38outside and they should be trained to do this, they're keeping the monkey off our

31:42backs while we're doing the detail heavy lifting stuff that's there.

31:46Now, they're doing their own heavy lifting.

31:47All right. I'm not diminishing what they're doing.

31:50Keep them off of our back and let us weave together this tapestry of evidence

31:54that we have because, and that was years and years ago.

31:58So, right, can you imagine nowadays the environment that we walk into now, I equate

32:05it to, let's see, like walking into a surgical suite.

32:10You have to be prepped when you walk in.

32:12You have to know what you're going to be doing.

32:14And that's going to change just like surgery changes.

32:17But you walk into this environment, you have to be in your total gear when

32:22you walk in. You have to be geared up in your brain.

32:24And you have to act like anything – I tell my kids that I teach

32:29now, I give them two examples.

32:31Either pretend that there are buried landmines everywhere in that space that you're going to

32:36be stepping or coiled rattlesnakes.

32:38That anything that you do, you're going to impact the outcome of this case.

32:43Again, if you're making a difference.

32:43You're in your brain. Because of your stupidity or your lack or your use of

32:48wisdom. You can change the flow anyway.

32:52And, you know, if you really want to lay it on thick, you tell them,

32:54well, look, you know, if you don't do your job, there might be somebody walking

32:58the streets that could kill somebody else or do whatever horrible thing they might be

33:03about. So you have to break this thing down and talk about the general that's

33:09missing. I mean, that individual, those individuals that are currently working that case, my hope

33:15is that they've got people keeping monkeys off of their back.

33:21And they're able to focus like a laser on every little breadcrumb.

33:26And I'm talking about things like digital breadcrumbs because that's a world that we exist

33:30in today because these damn things, we carry a crime scene in our pocket everywhere

33:34we go now. That's right.

33:35That's right. We do. I mean, that's the reality of it.

33:38I tell my kids all the time that I teach.

33:40It's like you're going to behold things and see things in your career that I

33:43could not have even fathomed.

33:45Even fathomed. Yeah, that's – I couldn't plumb the depths of it.

33:48Yeah, yeah. And that's just in the digital world.

33:51You get more into my world, and now you're seeing the utility of DNA.

33:56And that goes to being again in this world that's almost like a surgical suite

34:01because if you walk into an environment, there's an old adage in forensics, it's rather

34:09– the statement I'm going to make is more lengthy than this, but just suffice.

34:13It's called LeCard's Exchange Principle or LeCard's Principle of Exchange.

34:17And over 100 years ago, well in excess of 100 years ago, a guy named

34:22Edmond LeCard, who founded the world's first crime lab, actually in Lyon, France, he came

34:28up with a statement, it's brilliant in mind, and it still applies today even in

34:32digital, not just physical evidence but in digital evidence.

34:35His comment was every contact leaves a trace.

34:39And so that means that the environment you entered into, you're introducing yourself even as

34:46a processor of the scene.

34:48So anything you drag in from your unit, on your shoes, any dog hair you

34:52brought from home, and you're walking into this environment.

34:57And I think that extends – A sneeze, a sneeze, right?

35:00A sneeze? Yeah. Anything. A snot ball.

35:04A snot ball, a drip of sweat, right?

35:07Your perfume, you know, anything it seems like because that's – I mean – Well,

35:13even more profound than that, I think, is that – and LeCard, I don't know

35:17if he went to this or not.

35:19If you've got personal shit going on at home, you're bringing that with you too.

35:24Dude, I love that you just said that.

35:26And that's going to impact the way you handle the case, how you view people

35:30you're interviewing. And that's the rub, isn't it?

35:34Yeah. Our flesh, our humanity, because you cannot check your humanity at the door.

35:39You want to think that you can, and you build up a callus relative to,

35:44you know, like me, the thousands and thousands of bodies that I worked over the

35:49course of my career, over 20 years.

35:53You think you've developed a callus to it where you can flip it, but you're

35:56still impacted, even at a microscopic level, how, you know, what you're doing, what your

36:07attitude is when you show up, the workload that you're dealing with.

36:11And everybody pisses and moans about workload, but if you're – in my world, if

36:16you're – in the MDI world, medical legal death investigation world, there's not as many

36:24of us as there are homicide detectives because we handle all deaths.

36:29You know, it's not just merely homicides.

36:31It's – there's five manners of death.

36:36You've got natural, undetermined suicide, accidental, and homicide.

36:41So we're not merely just interested in homicides.

36:43So if you're an MDI and you go out and you work suicide, you might

36:47catch a motor vehicle accident.

36:49Oh, and then you've got an elderly person that's died at home, and you're going

36:52to roll on that. Oh, and by the way, we've got a double homicide you

36:55have to go on. And that's all in the course of one shift.

36:58So you're – you literally move from case to case.

37:03When I started out, when dinosaurs were on the earth, when I was working in

37:07New Orleans, and I was a young man.

37:09I was the youngest MDI in the country at that point in time.

37:11I was only – how old was I?

37:15I probably was in the morgue for the first time when I was 20, and

37:19I was working on bodies and working as an investigator at the same time when

37:23I was 21. There were three investigators, and we handled all the little jurisdictions in

37:31there, and then I was doing autopsies during the day.

37:33So your mind has to be right.

37:35You have to get into this point where you can walk in and observe, make

37:39the notes, because unlike you see on television where you've got some hot -looking forensic

37:44pathologist that Hollywood sets up and they send out to the scene, that doesn't happen.

37:50Forensic pathologists don't go to crime scenes.

37:52Not at 2 o 'clock in the morning.

37:54They don't crawl under houses with maggot -infested bodies.

37:57That's the MDI that does that.

37:58We're their eyes and ears in the field.

38:00And so we're making notes, and we're collecting data like that to bring that back

38:03into them so that they can do the autopsy.

38:07So you have to be on your game is what I'm saying.

38:11So you have to be on your screen.

38:11that world you know trying to make your way through it and so if you're

38:13not right in your mind uh if you're not physically squared away which many times

38:18i was not showing up you know just dog tired just trying to be a

38:24human outside of work um you know that's that's a hard thing to do because

38:29you're not a robot you know you're you're still going to go in and bear

38:33witness and nobody nobody in your outside world like you go to a party and

38:40you know some guys like i don't know he manages the 7 -eleven or he

38:44owns a 7 -eleven or owns a couple of fast food places or a gym

38:48or he sells insurance what kind of conversation am i going to have with that

38:52guy you can't you know they're going to ask me to entertain them yeah what's

38:57the worst thing you've ever seen man and then after you tell them that they'll

39:01they'll say wow that's really messed up so are we going to get together for

39:05golf tomorrow yeah yeah yeah that's kind of well this goes back to what really

39:11when we first chatted earlier in the week you know this was the thing that

39:15struck me i mean pretty quickly into our conversation and you called that as in

39:21your and it's the mindset but the mindset of of of dealing with death or

39:27the culture of death and and i shared with you a little bit about you

39:31know uh working with a therapist that had extensive reach you know background working with

39:36special operations guys you know we come from a culture of death as well too

39:41right everything we're doing is essentially a component of of of killing bad guys right

39:48you know and you're on the other side of that end uh but in a

39:53much more comprehensive reality because you're dealing with all five of those those deaths so

39:59if you could because i think one of the things and i was trying to

40:03figure out how to ask you this and and the best way to launch into

40:07this because it is so there's a theological component there's a there's a metaphysical component

40:14to it there's a philosophy philosophical component to all things right death is is right

40:20there's two certainties in your life isn't you're going to be born and you're going

40:24to die yes and but yet it i believe death is the most under assessed

40:30thing within whatever the regular aspect of of civilian modern civilian existence is you and

40:39and and that's why i think we see this fascination and you talked a little

40:43maybe you could tell the story you told me we talked about how infatuated people

40:47have come with true crime series or true crime podcasts or whatever it is and

40:51it is a booming i mean just last night we watched uh my wife and

40:55i watched the documentary about andrea yates who murdered her five kids but it was

41:01a result of the influence of that cult leader um you know and and just

41:06and how that twisted her mind enough to go through with the most atrocious thing

41:11there is on the planet with is the killing of children but people like to

41:15touch it or taste it but they really don't understand it so no they don't

41:21let's let's let's start with maybe the process of what you went from that 20

41:3021 year old kid to who you are now what you learned about the proximity

41:35to death and then maybe once you've gone down that those rabbit holes and anywhere

41:41you want to take it maybe we we we kind of come back to a

41:44place of why do you think um people are so infatuated with with grazing up

41:52against it but are still petrified of the reality they're still petrified they they truly

41:57are um and and that's a huge question no no no that's okay i'll try

42:02to break it down uh yeah so i i was i mean because i i

42:06believe i truly believe in my heart of hearts there's this this primal being within

42:10us that has fear and indwelling fear of death and look you can church it

42:14up any way you want to people say i can do that okay go ahead

42:20and most people most people think they can do it maybe they can do it

42:27for a little while um maybe they're smarter than i than i was because i

42:32paid the price for it because i stayed i did it a lot longer than

42:35i should have i was almost like an infant when you know my wife wound

42:40up having to take care of me oh wow um and so but going back

42:44in time for me you know kind of how i got into it um um

42:48everybody everybody has a you know somebody done somebody wrong song you know everybody has

42:54that and i do too and but you know for me came up pretty rough

42:59family background and was always told i would never amount to anything that i was

43:05going to be a failure um that and i would turn out just like my

43:10father had okay and my father was a vietnam vet uh that tried to kill

43:17our family you know when i was very young man and you know he disappeared

43:23out of our life um and he was always held up primarily by my stepfather

43:29or somebody that i'm going to wind up just like him and if for anybody

43:33that i didn't realize i was doing it but for anybody that ever watched sonfeld

43:37uh i would I would take George's attitude, and I didn't know I was doing

43:41it. I was going to do the opposite of that.

43:43And you'll hear a lot of people that go through trauma in their life.

43:45I was not going to be like that.

43:47I was going to be a good family man, which I've striven to be.

43:51I was going to be a good friend.

43:53I was going to be a good husband.

43:55And I was going to excel at whatever I did.

43:59I was not going to be sorry.

44:01I was not going to be late for work.

44:03I was going to maintain a job.

44:05And I was going to do something that nobody else could do.

44:08Wow. And I wanted something that I could do like that.

44:14I tried. I say tried the military.

44:16I was in the Guard, signed up in high school, went to – and I

44:21saw that as maybe a potential escape for me, but got into forensics and forensics

44:27took. And it was something that when I started working, I had no education.

44:38I came into this backwards.

44:40So I started literally working, pushing a mop in a morgue while I was going

44:44to college. And it just so happened that the morgue that I was – the

44:50hospital I was working at became the morgue for the parish.

44:53They don't have counties in Louisiana became the morgue for the parish because the morgue

44:59for the parish was so run down.

45:00It was actually sat on the side of the old gallows.

45:03That's how old it was.

45:04Oh, my gosh. And the morgue was actually contained inside of the parish prison.

45:08We had to walk into the prison every day to do autopsies.

45:12And we did 1 ,000 per year in that little morgue.

45:14Wow. And so it was being repaired.

45:16And so I became friends with the guy that was – essentially became my mentor

45:23that was probably the finest forensic scientist I've ever known in my life.

45:28And I just started showing up in autopsies, not getting paid for it.

45:31I'd go to school full time, work at the hospital as an orderly, and then

45:36show up and go to autopsies.

45:37And I had a pathologist said, well, this guy's crazy enough to hang around here

45:42with flies lighting on him, and I'll just make him my scribe.

45:47And he made me his scribe.

45:48I would sit there so that he didn't have to come out of his gloves,

45:50and I would just write.

45:52And finally, one day, he says, you want to close?

45:55And I was like, what do you mean?

45:57I've been closing. I've been mopping up.

45:58And he said, no, do you want to close?

46:00And he handed me the needle, and he showed me how to sew a body

46:03up. Oh, my gosh. And then finally, that evolved into, do you want to open?

46:10And I'll never forget the first time how terrified I was because I didn't know

46:13how much pressure to apply to do a standard Y incision, and I did.

46:19And I found out that retrospectively, the morgue is the best classroom I ever sat

46:26in, still to this day.

46:28And I tell my students that at Jack State, I'll say, this is all fine

46:33and good. You hear some white -haired old man pontificate every day to you.

46:38The best classroom you'll ever go to is the morgue if you want to become

46:41an effective death investigator because you learn more there.

46:45You learn more. It's like what you do in the military.

46:49There's kind of a recipe.

46:52See one, do one, teach one.

46:54And medicine does that. Medicine is not a lot different than the military, like procedurally.

46:59You have to go through these steps.

47:01It's the same thing in the morgue.

47:02You see this thing before you.

47:04There's a way to work the problem.

47:05We're not sitting in a classroom.

47:07And by God, you better do it right.

47:10And so I began to kind of absorb.

47:12And so I'd just go to autopsies all the time.

47:16Then I started going to scenes.

47:18And I had two guys apply and quit within six months for an investigative position.

47:29I took the job. And they finally gave me the job, this young kid who

47:35had no business doing it.

47:37And I stayed there for seven years.

47:40Wow. Yeah. And then. That's incredible.

47:43What was the visceral shift between the morgue and on scene?

47:47Because you can still feel the energy on scenes, right, that are relatively new, right?

47:54Families. Yeah. Families. That's what I would imagine.

47:58Because, you know, there's nothing like, like when I came in, when I came in,

48:03they, they, it was at the height of crack hitting the street.

48:10So we had like, there were a lot of drive -by shootings back then, more

48:16so than you hear about today.

48:17So it was nothing that I would go out and I would do an examination

48:20on body and I'd do it in front of an audience of about 200 people

48:23and they're all angry. And, um, and the dynamic of dealing with families, because the

48:29other part to the job of the MDI is also notifying the families.

48:33And I've done like 2 ,000 of those in person over the course of my

48:36career. I've done one and it was the worst experience I've ever had.

48:40Yeah. The, the first one I did, I still remember the last one I did

48:44and none of them were, they, it's not, it's not like they get any better.

48:50There's no flashes of joy.

48:52You don't bring, you know, and I've always said, it's like pulling a pin on

48:55grenade, throwing it in a room, closing the door behind you, just listen for the

48:58boom and the screams. And, and that's, you, it's like you walk into somebody's family

49:05and they're, they're. There's everything that was before you and there's everything that's after you.

49:10And that sounds horribly egocentric to say that, but you're a marker in time for

49:15these people. They might not remember you, but that moment in time, and I would

49:21submit to anybody that's listening to us right now, reflect just for a moment when

49:26you were a little kid and the first time someone that you loved or that

49:30you knew died. And I tell you this, most people, and I find this very

49:35interesting, it goes to human psychology, I think, to a great degree, who we are

49:38as people. I have people that can recall sounds, sights, they can remember the clothing

49:44they were wearing. They remember who told them.

49:48They remember what their response was.

49:51However, this is something interesting that I found out.

49:56When you go to notify somebody and, you know, you knock at the door, you

50:01badge them, they let you in.

50:03Of course, the question is, what's wrong?

50:06Have a seat. You inform them that the loved one is dead.

50:11Did you know that after you have told them that, that most people, and this

50:15is kind of obvious, but there's been a couple of studies about it, most people

50:21don't remember anything you say after the first 10 minutes.

50:26And to a person, to a person, I would get a phone call the next

50:31day. That's why I always had to leave a phone number so that they could

50:34contact me because I could, they might ask questions about, you know, what happened.

50:39They always want to know where they are, where the body is.

50:41Um, and they want to know who did it, if it's a homicide, if it's

50:47a suicide, they always believe it's a homicide.

50:51Um, and we wind up, you know, in our world, we work, we work all

50:55of the homicides, but we work more suicides than we do homicides because police are

51:00not vested in, in homicides.

51:02And many times suicides are, they're more challenging to investigate than even homicides.

51:08Uh, well, they're usually, there's no note, there's no nothing, there's no reasoning.

51:12And, you know, and, and, and what most people don't understand with, uh, annual gun

51:17deaths, it's like 60 % or more of annual gun deaths are self -inflicted gunshot

51:23wounds. Yeah, they are. It's, it's a massive amount of people.

51:27Yeah, yeah, it is. And, and you don't, unless somebody's famous, you know, uh, unless

51:33the media. Right. Unless the media deems that this person has value, you're never going

51:39to hear about it. That's why I always look, kind of give them the side

51:44eye. Anytime I see some media personality saying, we must address the, we must address

51:50the tragedy of suicide in our, in our world.

51:53You're an asshole. Yeah, completely.

51:55You're an asshole. Because if, if you really wanted to address that, you would truly

51:59have a conversation about it and talk about the numbers that are out there and

52:02not just when Robin Williams hangs itself or Philip Seymour Hoffman dies either of a

52:09drug OD or he takes, I don't know, it's not going to change my life

52:12one way or another, but I know what does because I've stood over the bodies.

52:17I've cut people down, you know, that have suspended themselves.

52:22Um, and I've had to go out and tell families and, um, you know, the

52:27media can bang that drum all they want to all day long, but it's a

52:30real, it's a, and I've, you know, and, and people do it for all kinds

52:35of reasons. It's not just one thing, um, you know, and, uh, you, it's a,

52:42it's a real, it's a real sadness that you bear witness to because as an

52:48investigator, you walk into an environment and many times you're the only person in the

52:52room with a deceased that has taken their own life.

52:55You know, people are all over homicides, you know, everybody wants to know, and yeah,

52:58it requires because things can go to court and all that sort of stuff, but

53:01you're really, as an MDI, you're the person that's bearing witness to the fact that

53:08this person ever even existed.

53:09Wow. That's heavy. And really heavy.

53:14Yeah. That's why I tell my kids, first off, our working assumption is that all

53:21deaths are homicides until proven otherwise.

53:23And we've heard that for years and years, but I also tell them this, um,

53:28if you will step back and take yourself out of this idea that about forensic

53:35science and understand now almost in, uh, going back to antiquity, you're a historian because

53:47you're making note of a life that has been lived that no one else will

53:52ever make note of. I've seen over the course of my career, I've seen some

53:56of the most, you know, being on cold case squads and things like that over

54:00the years, uh, I've seen some of the most disrespectful narratives that you can, where

54:05people just kind of passively wrote things down.

54:08They didn't pay attention to detail.

54:10And it's like, if I read this thing from 30 years ago, it's like, I

54:16don't know anything about this person.

54:17I'm not saying I need to know the granular detail of their comings and goings

54:21as a person, but just the fact that they occupied the space, what was their

54:25life like? What was the environment like in that environment?

54:29I tell my kids that not only are you, you're a potential forensic scientist, you're

54:33going to be a historian.

54:34Because literally nowadays, the world that we exist in with the digital world, you know,

54:40500 years from now, somebody is actually going to be reading your report.

54:43Whether they're doing genealogy or whether they're working on a case, you're the only marker

54:49in time for that. I never thought about it like that.

54:53It's such an awesome way to think about it, a tragic situation, is that you're

55:00the generator of the final history of that individual.

55:04And listen, so many times, man, I failed.

55:07It took me a long time to learn that.

55:09It really did. I failed miserably many times in documenting the life that had been

55:15lived. And, you know, I wrestled with that many times.

55:20You know, did I show the due care that I should have showed at that

55:24moment in time? Or was I worried about something else in my life that was

55:28very temporal at that moment in time?

55:30Because, you know, you're on this – when you brush up against death and you

55:36inhabit this world, you're literally doing God's work.

55:40I mean, you're there from the perspective of you're seeing things and you're given the

55:48privilege of making note of a life that this person that may have taken their

55:56life, for instance, thought was no longer worth living.

55:59They didn't feel like they had any value.

56:01Maybe their family even had transmitted that information to them that they didn't have any

56:07value. You know, but how much value can you show?

56:12That's what you're going to be judged on at some point in time in my

56:16field. You know, if you – did you honor that person with the words that

56:20you wrote and the things that you said relative to their death?

56:23Did their death mean enough to you that you would conduct a thorough investigation?

56:30It seems so counterintuitive though too because it's like there's an aspect of it that

56:35you want to keep it scientific.

56:37But what you're saying – what you're saying after, what, four decades of doing this,

56:44you're looking at it as like there's this – there's this deeper responsibility.

56:53There is. That is affiliated with this job.

56:59It's more than a job, right?

57:02Anything I think that's relative to death, there's more than – it's more than a

57:06job, right? Because there's something sacred in it in and of itself.

57:11Like you're saying, there's a connection to the individual and the days that they led

57:16leading up to whatever the thing that brought them to their demise.

57:21And there's something – there's a spiritual aspect in that as well too.

57:25So as you went through these transitions and you got to that place where you

57:31described that your wife had to almost take care of you in an adolescent capacity,

57:35how did you come back out of that and begin to restructure the way you

57:40engaged in this? There's this – what is it – there's a – there's got

57:49to be some ethereal term for what it is.

57:52Like you're carrying the – you're co -mingling the tragic nature of the soul's ending,

58:01but you're also preserving it like you said in the document of the historical record

58:07of that person existed and they were relevant in some capacity.

58:14It was a very long road for me and still, you know, I'll have those

58:21moments, you know, where the last time I left the ME's office – I've told

58:26the story many times – but the last time I left the ME's office was

58:29in an ambulance and that was in Atlanta.

58:33I was talking to one of my childhood friends that was a homicide detective in

58:37Atlanta. We'd gone out to eat lunch together and I'd had – been having the

58:43same heart attack for about six months.

58:45And I'd go to the emergency room and they'd say, you're okay.

58:50And every single day I felt like the walls were closing on me.

58:53And it had been happening for a while.

58:55It had tremors. I couldn't focus at all.

59:00It had affected my speech to a certain degree.

59:03I found myself stumbling over my words.

59:07Lightheadedness, dizziness. I'd go out and I'd run, I'd jog, and still there was no

59:12alleviating it. And here's the thing I should have known – well, woulda, shoulda, coulda,

59:19but the days that – when I would get off work for the week, you

59:27know, when I would be done, when I went to get in my car, the

59:32only thing I could think about was I got to be back here in 48

59:35hours. And I would spend the entire time that I was off when I should

59:38have been thinking about my wife and my children.

59:41I've got to go back.

59:42I've got to go back.

59:42I could take a two -week vacation and there would not be a single day

59:47that I would not sit there in utter dread of going back to work.

59:52And I was a senior investigator.

59:54I was a supervisor. I had the chief medical examiner who's dead and gone now.

1:00:01He walked up to me and said, we understand you're having trouble, but you have

1:00:04to understand everybody here looks up to you.

1:00:06You got to suck it up and deal with it.

1:00:11And so you feel hemmed in.

1:00:13And I'd done all this stuff, and this is my own vanity.

1:00:16I'd done all this stuff nationally.

1:00:17Like I'd helped design the national standards for medical legal death investigators.

1:00:24I was on a federal task force called the Milwaukee Task Force.

1:00:29And there was 12 of us from like L .A., Seattle, New York, D .C.,

1:00:33Atlanta, New Orleans, Dallas. I could go through Chicago.

1:00:37I could go through the whole list.

1:00:38And we came together with the seminal document through NIJ that said this is what

1:00:44you need to have in order to be an effective medical legal death investigator because

1:00:49nobody had ever codified it before.

1:00:51I was very proud of that.

1:00:53And so people in that sense did look up to me.

1:00:58But, you know, that stuff, when compared to the price that you pay physically and

1:01:04mentally and also spiritually and from a familial standpoint, it ain't worth the gunpowder to

1:01:09blow it to hell. It's really not.

1:01:12And it's easy for an old man to sit back and say that to some

1:01:16young, hungry investigator who wants to prove themselves and do all this stuff in the

1:01:20field and say that they're resolute.

1:01:21And they don't mind being around the horror.

1:01:24They don't mind bearing witness to those things that other people would flee from.

1:01:28You can say that to your blue in the face.

1:01:31Brother, it ain't going to work.

1:01:32It's just not because I was that person.

1:01:35And so when my wife finally got that remnant of what was left of me,

1:01:42I was a babbling idiot.

1:01:43I really was. The psychiatrist that saw me, this would have been in five, I

1:01:50think, four or five, 2004 or five.

1:01:53She had done her residency at the VA in Seattle with Vietnam Vets.

1:02:00And she had told me at that point in time, this is before you heard

1:02:02a lot about PTSD, before it really hit, you know, the big splash with it.

1:02:07And she said, you're the worst case of PTSD I've seen since Vietnam.

1:02:10And all I could form out of my mouth, and this is really pathetic, was

1:02:15work, work. You know, I want to go back to work.

1:02:20That thing that had been burrowing under my skin for all this period of time.

1:02:25And she finally looked at me.

1:02:27Her name was Dr. Rao.

1:02:28I'll never forget her. It's a little Indian lady.

1:02:31And she said, Mr. Morgan, she said, if you attempt to go back to work,

1:02:36I will have you judicially committed.

1:02:38And it was at that moment in time that I had this, that identity that

1:02:46I had. And my identity was a death investigator.

1:02:49That was it. Isn't that pathetic?

1:02:52You know, that's pathetic. That was my identity.

1:02:54Hey, I'm Jono. And my physio practice is backed by ComBank.

1:02:58My business account lets me run my clinic my way.

1:03:01The business account that grows with you.

1:03:03No doubt. Eligibility criteria and T's and C's apply.

1:03:07Product target market determinations can be found on the ComBank website.

1:03:10I've seen it. We experience the same thing in our world, right?

1:03:15Guys go in. They get involved.

1:03:18They get hooked on that.

1:03:19Whatever. You know, it's not adrenaline.

1:03:21It's deeper than that. You feel you're serving something that's at a higher order.

1:03:27And regardless of how it's physiologically destroying you, as well as emotionally and spiritually, you

1:03:36can't pull out. You just keep going and going and going until you're like where

1:03:41you hit. You're nonverbal in most cases.

1:03:44And your emotional construct is relative to the job itself and only itself.

1:03:51And I, you know, the, the, the, I, I think like the, the number one

1:03:58greatest challenge with all of that is, is it destroys that send the genuine sensation

1:04:05of what intimacy is, right?

1:04:07Because there's an, there's an intimacy in death and that seems to override the, the,

1:04:13the, the natural intimacy that is the most fulfilling, which is in your relationships.

1:04:18And so, yeah. Yeah, I got to tell you, so just kind of a little

1:04:23slice of life from my world and people might be really, have you ever seen,

1:04:29have you ever seen great apes that, you know, like they do the, where they're

1:04:35in the jungle and they're, they're filming these apes, you know, and they're taking care

1:04:39of one another. And, and, and they're sitting there and they're picking nits out of

1:04:42each other's coat. We do that in medical legal death investigation.

1:04:48Only, I'll give you an example.

1:04:50It's like, because we're a very small group of people.

1:04:53We're not like cops where our world is completely different.

1:04:56All right. Because we're around literally death.

1:04:59We're not getting kitty cats out of trees.

1:05:00We're not finding lost children.

1:05:02We're not having. There's no wins, right?

1:05:05There's no wins. Yeah. So we would, if we were going to go somewhere, we

1:05:11would ask one of our colleagues, smell my hair.

1:05:17And because we had been out on a decomp and we would, if we had

1:05:21to go with regular people, we didn't want to be offensive in any way.

1:05:26And we would smell each other.

1:05:28And that's a real. Real weird behavior when I used to get home from work.

1:05:34God bless my wife. I love that woman.

1:05:36I swear. Yeah, God bless your wife for helping you.

1:05:43She would show up at the back door of our house, and she would hold

1:05:47me on the stoop. And she'd say, did you have decomp today?

1:05:53And she's got kids in the house, my kids.

1:05:55Yeah, yeah. And I'd say, no.

1:05:59And she'd say, come here, let me smell you.

1:06:01Because it's not just the fact that you had not gone out of one.

1:06:05You're around the environment. That's right.

1:06:07And so she's the one that's, you know, and she'd say, take them off.

1:06:11And I'd have to take my clothes off the door.

1:06:13And most other married couples don't, they don't have that experience.

1:06:18You're not stripping down. You're not going through your decontermination.

1:06:21This is not a good stripping down.

1:06:23No, no. You're going through your decon process.

1:06:27And that's something that regularly happened, you know.

1:06:31Wow. And it affects you in everything.

1:06:36And a lot of this is the PTSD that comes through, too.

1:06:38Because it's like when you, like if my wife and I were to, and I

1:06:45avoided Atlanta. That was my last stop in my career.

1:06:47I never, still to this day, I don't like to go to Atlanta.

1:06:50Because when I go to Atlanta, I don't, I don't see Atlanta from the perspective

1:06:56that everybody else does. Like we'll be going down the road and, you know, and

1:07:00just spontaneously it'll spark an eye.

1:07:02I had that case here.

1:07:03I had that case there.

1:07:05Exactly. Wow. Yeah, on this corner, I had a homeless guy over here.

1:07:10I had someone, you know, that motor vehicle accident or I had a suicide here

1:07:14or we didn't find this person for three months.

1:07:17They were in that house.

1:07:17I crawled under that house.

1:07:19Everywhere you go is populated by that.

1:07:22Wow. And people, you know, people will always ask me because I'm around the dead.

1:07:27And this gets back into this kind of weird world that people have this perception

1:07:32of with dead. And it's like they always, one of the big questions, you know,

1:07:36that people that have never been around death, they always want to ask, you know,

1:07:39have you ever seen ghosts?

1:07:41And it's like, no. No, I've never seen ghosts.

1:07:45You know, I'm haunted by events.

1:07:48I'm haunted by the living.

1:07:51You know, I'm haunted by the daughter who I was talking to outside of her

1:07:58dad's house. The last time they talked was three months earlier and they fought.

1:08:04She came over to the house and his body looked like it was moving across

1:08:09the floor because he had maggots all over him.

1:08:11And she fell on the floor, hugged his body.

1:08:13And as I'm interviewing her, she's got maggots crawling in her hair and she's got

1:08:17decomp fluid on her face.

1:08:18Because that's the kind of thing I'm haunted by.

1:08:22You know, and all of us, all of us, you know, we all have those

1:08:25little stories, you know, that are part and parcel of, you know, kind of documenting

1:08:31this journey. That we're on this really, and I know that you guys in your

1:08:36community, you have the same feeling with this.

1:08:41It's in the sense that, who else are you going to talk to about this

1:08:45that can identify with it?

1:08:47Because nobody can understand the depth and breadth of it most of the time.

1:08:53You might catch a spark from a couple of people, but, and nobody wants to

1:08:57hear you whine about it either.

1:08:58And that's the other thing you have to fight about, particularly as a man.

1:09:01You know, you sit here and say, well, nobody wants to hear me bitch about

1:09:03this. They're sick of hearing about it.

1:09:06And how much of a man am I that I can't just deal with it

1:09:09and sally forth, you know, set my face like Flint and going into the storm.

1:09:13Well, brother, I've been setting my face like Flint my entire life.

1:09:16Yeah. You know, at some point in time, you got to back off on the

1:09:18throttle. For sure. I went through three therapists before I came to one that happened

1:09:24to be an old Vietnam vet that had gotten a PhD in psychology.

1:09:27First two had no idea.

1:09:29I started telling them the nightmares I was having, a recurrent nightmare, being surrounded by

1:09:35decomposing bodies, floating on a barge that had cut loose on the Mississippi River.

1:09:40And I was stuck to the barge and the bodies were all over me.

1:09:44And, you know, the therapist would sit there, you know, like this.

1:09:47And finally, I wound up with a guy that, and what he taught me to

1:09:51do, and it's something I hated to do when I was in high school.

1:09:54I hated that teacher that would say, okay, guys, we're going to journal.

1:09:58Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I started writing, and it turned into a memoir because

1:10:02I was going to burn it.

1:10:04I was going to burn it.

1:10:06And I wrote that thing, I guess, back in 12.

1:10:09I sat in a cabin up in the mountains while I was working as a

1:10:13teacher and as a college professor, instructor.

1:10:18And I just, I bled on the keyboard.

1:10:22And it was a big purgative kind of event for me.

1:10:27And, you know, it helped me, I think, to a great degree.

1:10:31There was still, you still don't, you know, I still couldn't go to Walmart, you

1:10:37know, and be surrounded by people I don't know.

1:10:39I didn't want to go to restaurants because I'd be out of control.

1:10:42I'd feel like, you know, I was going to be murdered anywhere I went.

1:10:46I liked teaching because I could be up at the lectern, and I had a

1:10:49view all over the classroom.

1:10:51I could leave and run back to my office and lock the door and sit

1:10:54there. I could leave. live in that kind of isolated environment.

1:10:59But you know, what's really weird is that some of the best therapy sessions I

1:11:03ever had was just talking to myself in front of my classes.

1:11:06I bet. You know, and just teaching them the basics of forensics.

1:11:10And I found that I was kind of purging myself along the way.

1:11:14That's, I feel the same way when I, when I got a client that I'm

1:11:18coaching for performance stuff and it's, you know, there's, there's some type of emotional hangup

1:11:24or there's some trauma that they're trying to process or whatever, you know, it's, it's,

1:11:29I'm, I'm talking through, I, you know, the greatest references.

1:11:32Well, I had a really difficult time with this thing.

1:11:36This is what I kind of thought about.

1:11:37Are you thinking, you know, and you can, you work through it as you're, you

1:11:42know, integrating the techniques that got you in the situation in the first place.

1:11:46Right. And, and it puts, it drops that layer of humanity on what otherwise seems

1:11:51to be this sterile kind of, um, lifeless, uh, uh, existence.

1:11:58Right. Yeah. And, and, and, and I just think that's, that's, it's such a, uh,

1:12:03uh, like you said, it's, it's so cathartic in so many ways and, and that's

1:12:08what you're looking for. Um, let's just pivot real quick.

1:12:12And I just really want to get your perspective on this, you know, phenomenal, you

1:12:18know, I don't know, maybe phenomenological obsession with crime stories, death shows, psych, you know,

1:12:25psychopathic killers and, and the consciousness of a society that now is somehow holding this

1:12:35form of entertainment as well as, cause I, as we started out with Epstein, there's

1:12:41almost like, uh, uh, a voyeurism with the, the, the magnitude of destruction that he

1:12:48left in his wake. Like we're, the humans are enticed by this.

1:12:54Why do you think that is, is the way it is within the human consciousness?

1:12:59And then what are, what are the negative aspects that can really, uh, um, kind

1:13:05of, um, what it's almost, it'll be a residue that exists within your soul.

1:13:12First off, um, I've always, people have asked me about true crime and, you know,

1:13:19what I feel like as a forensic scientist being involved in it.

1:13:23Um, part of me, the little boy in me has always felt as though that

1:13:30the true crime genre that's out there right now, those are our modern ghost stories,

1:13:36you know, from when we were kids and we'd sit around a campfire and we

1:13:41won't wanted to be scared.

1:13:43There's always something within humans where we want to be, be scared.

1:13:48And it's not just a true crime.

1:13:51I, um, it's a story of heroes that are overcoming, you know, they're coming face

1:13:57to face with death. I was just thinking that for me, it was war stories,

1:14:00right? Yeah, me too. Uh, my, my family distantly is related to Audie Murphy.

1:14:06And so like, I don't know many, yeah, I think my grandmother and his mother

1:14:11were both Killians. Okay. So that was her last name.

1:14:16And, um, I was always fascinated by Audie, um, and any number of the other

1:14:25people, particularly in the military world, you know, cause I got enough little boy in

1:14:30me. I'm still fascinated by him to this day.

1:14:32Um, I love to hear the stories and overcoming those things.

1:14:37Um, there's a part of us that I have found and that is quite, quite

1:14:48telling, I think about unsolved things.

1:14:51We were, I was never good at jigsaw puzzles.

1:14:56I hated jigsaw puzzles. I didn't have the patience for them, patience for them.

1:15:00There are a lot of people that love them.

1:15:02The puzzles that I always put together were a real broad tapestry.

1:15:06And I think that some people see that.

1:15:08Is there something, is there some thread that's been left unpulled out there that maybe

1:15:14they're going to be the person that's going to have the lottery ticket that's going

1:15:16to pull that thread and there'll be a reveal to it.

1:15:20There's that element. But then you've got the other, the other elements out there.

1:15:25I mentioned Ted Bundy a few moments ago.

1:15:27Well, how many more damn times can we talk about Ted Bundy?

1:15:32I don't know. I don't know.

1:15:34I mean, each generation, each new generation, each new generation.

1:15:38You're right. And, uh, Ed Gein, you know, I mean, Ed Gein, the butcher of

1:15:43Plainfield, they just had a big splash with a television show, you know, about him.

1:15:48Um, that was back in the fifties, dude.

1:15:50You know what I mean?

1:15:51Yeah. Again, you know, you go Jack the Ripper, you know, I did an episode

1:15:55on Jack the Ripper because they found the shawl that allegedly had seminal deposition on

1:16:01it that was connected to this guy that had always been on the list.

1:16:05Uh, that was Polish, Polish Jew, uh, that was a barber or something in London.

1:16:10Right. Uh, people are always fascinated by that.

1:16:13That is an unknown, but it's, you know, it's very, very salacious.

1:16:17Um, I, I, I don't know, but here's kind of the curious thing.

1:16:22I go to Chrome Con every year and I, you know, which is the big,

1:16:26you know, people hear of Comic -Con, you know, that happens down in San Diego.

1:16:30That was like the first of these con kind of shows.

1:16:36And I've spoken extensively with these things.

1:16:39I'm going back this year.

1:16:42The thing that kind of separates CrimeCon apart from everything else that I've done, when

1:16:49I first started going, I didn't go the first year.

1:16:53The first year it was in Indianapolis.

1:16:54I think, I can't remember where the second year was.

1:16:57Anyway, oh, Nashville. We were in Nashville.

1:16:59And I saw something that I didn't expect to see.

1:17:07Nancy Grace had a table, you know, where she set up, if you've never been

1:17:10to one of these things, they set up, you know, the stars of the thing,

1:17:14set up tables, booths, if you will.

1:17:16You can go by and get a picture made, get an autograph.

1:17:22And I agreed because I'd known Nancy for a long time.

1:17:25She was a prosecutor in Atlanta, and I was a death investigator with the ME

1:17:28there. And I would appear on her show when she was still back on HLN.

1:17:34And I was going to be on a couple of her panels.

1:17:36Well, we went to the first time that she was going to be at her

1:17:40table where she had fans showing up.

1:17:45And I saw something that broke my heart.

1:17:51And it's hard to break my heart.

1:17:55There were people there that wanted to meet her because of the celebrity part of

1:18:01it. But there were equal amounts of people that were there, and this line went

1:18:07forever. There were people that had paid thousands of dollars to travel to Nashville.

1:18:11One lady came with her daughter, drove all the way from Seattle to Nashville.

1:18:16Whoa. And what I was seeing were these people that had stacks of files that

1:18:23were this thick. And I had a lady.

1:18:25I was just kind of standing outside the line.

1:18:27They knew my voice because they would hear me on her show.

1:18:30You're Joe Scott. I was like, yes, ma 'am, I am.

1:18:32How are you today? You know, where are you from?

1:18:34My wife was working the line with me.

1:18:39And she said, in tears, can you please give this to Nancy?

1:18:44And I was like, what the hell?

1:18:47What is this? You know?

1:18:49Yeah. My sister was raped and murdered in 1974 in Dallas, and the cops had

1:18:54never helped us. Can you please help us?

1:18:55And the next thing I knew, I looked down the line.

1:18:58It was like a freaking scene out of a movie.

1:19:01It's like every third person had a stack of files in their hand.

1:19:05I was like, you got to be kidding me.

1:19:07And there were these people that just wanted hope.

1:19:11And you're not going to get that where you're dressing up like, you know, Bugs

1:19:16Bunny and going to Comic -Con.

1:19:19You show up there and there are people that actually have, they have no hope.

1:19:25No hope. So you've got the people that show up for the stories, but then

1:19:35you have the people that show up because the system has failed them.

1:19:40And you're the last ditch effort.

1:19:45And now, because of some of the stuff that's been done, there's been crowd -solving

1:19:50efforts that have been put forth where you get a collection of brains together and

1:19:56you all look at these cases and I've seen it work.

1:20:02So that's, it's a two -edged sword.

1:20:05It's also put more emphasis on holding people accountable that are doing things in the

1:20:15view. Like when I started covering the Idaho cases, the massacre, what they refer to

1:20:21as the Idaho massacre. Again, I was, it happened, those bodies were discovered at about

1:20:281 ,300 hours on Sunday afternoon.

1:20:35I had my first media call at 6 that evening, wanted me to make comment.

1:20:40Didn't stop for two years.

1:20:42It's like every, every, at least every other week I would give an interview about

1:20:47it. There's only so much I can say.

1:20:49I wasn't inside the tape, but every single day that case was scrutinized about why

1:20:58are they handling it this way?

1:21:01We've seen this done other ways.

1:21:02You know, we, we even, and people in the public, civilians would say, even we

1:21:07know not to do this.

1:21:09And of course, I'd, I'd have to back them off and say, you don't know

1:21:12what's going on on the inside.

1:21:13You cannot just make a simple judgment by virtue of what you're seeing coming in

1:21:17and out of the house.

1:21:18Then I started seeing, seeing things.

1:21:20I'm thinking, well, that's kind of interesting.

1:21:22And then they got to the point where we're going to tear down the house

1:21:25and thing hadn't even gone to trial yet.

1:21:29And so, you know, and I'm starting to think, well, maybe some people have, have

1:21:33a point here, you know?

1:21:35And so now the spotlight has kind of shifted where, you know, those that work

1:21:42in public service and those that handle cases, they're held to a different standard.

1:21:47Wow. You know, because the public's watching and it's, brother, it's 24 -7.

1:21:51Don't think. And so, you know, you know, the kids, when the utilizz is on

1:21:52single thing. It's like, yeah, we know, you know, that's enough WINNik.

1:21:52Don't think for two seconds that people aren't watching what's going on out there.

1:21:56They're making notes every day.

1:21:59You see it in Guthrie right now.

1:22:01Well, the most significant one in the last few years is Charlie Kirk's death, right?

1:22:07Charlie's death. I was actually on, I think I was on with Pierce Morgan, Rob

1:22:15O 'Neill. That's where I saw you first.

1:22:19Yeah, and Mike, the CIA, Mike, I can't remember his name.

1:22:27He's on Rogue and a bunch.

1:22:29Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was on there, and they were just trying to get my

1:22:31assessment of just from a forensic standpoint of what I thought at that moment in

1:22:36time and just having that discussion.

1:22:39And so that has evolved over time, and everybody has opinions about it.

1:22:46Everybody's a ballistics expert. Everybody's a medical legal expert and all these sorts of things.

1:22:54And you kind of have to – you take the good with the bad, and

1:22:56you understand procedurally how things are gone, how things are done.

1:23:01But then, you know, you start hearing, you know, there's all these conspiratorial pieces that

1:23:06come in. But, you know, there's always been conspiratorial pieces about everything.

1:23:10And so you – I try to look at it through an investigator's eyes and

1:23:14try to say, what do I know scientifically?

1:23:16What can I verify scientifically?

1:23:18And some stuff I just – I can't because I don't have the data in

1:23:21front of me. Right. I can kind of address how it should be handled.

1:23:24And hopefully it meets the standard that we expect of everybody as an investigator and

1:23:31how these things are handled and processed and, you know, move forward on.

1:23:35Because at the end of the day, you want – well, with Charlie's case, you

1:23:39know, you want somebody held accountable for that.

1:23:41That's right. You know, you want somebody's feet put to the fire.

1:23:44And you want to understand what their point of origin is.

1:23:48You know, what's going on here?

1:23:51You know, why did this happen?

1:23:53Right. Why was it allowed to happen?

1:23:55You know, and so you think about that.

1:23:57Well, and I think that's such an important thing to kind of maybe close on

1:24:02is the why, right? And there's an aspect of death that, you know, obviously transcends

1:24:11the why. It does. Yeah, and so, you know, I would imagine as a person

1:24:17that spent so much time, you know, I mean processing literally every conceivable construct of

1:24:27death, you know, I would even imagine extensively your own death, you know, your father's

1:24:36death, your generations of death, your siblings' death or whoever around you has died.

1:24:41And, you know, but, you know, what is some advice that you can give to

1:24:51people to help them better process – and it's better such a horrible word to

1:24:58use. I'm trying to better prepare them, yeah, to better prepare them, I think, for

1:25:06the inevitability of their own death or, more importantly, the inevitability of them experiencing the

1:25:13death of someone they love or care about.

1:25:16I'm going to tell you a word that people need to completely and totally rid

1:25:22themselves of, and I'm begging you to do this, and that's the word closure.

1:25:27It is the biggest bunch of crap that has been sold to us as a

1:25:37society, and let me tell you why.

1:25:39It's one of the most dismissive terms on the face of the planet.

1:25:44If some doe -eyed fool looks at you and says, well, maybe someday they'll have

1:25:50closure. In other words, what you're saying is, shut your mouth.

1:25:55I don't have any more time to listen to anything that you have to say.

1:25:58Let's move on to the next death.

1:26:02Death, because with death, there is no closure.

1:26:08Death, death is something that we all experience.

1:26:12People need to warm up to the fact that death is going to be part

1:26:15of their experience in life.

1:26:16From the moment we're born, we start dying, okay?

1:26:19And each one of us close our chapter.

1:26:23We die at certain intervals, at a certain interval.

1:26:26You're going to lose people along the way that you thought that would be with

1:26:29you forever and ever. Amen.

1:26:31You'll have people that, you know, you'll have the three -pack -a -day grandpa that'll

1:26:36live until he's 99, and no one can explain it, all right?

1:26:42People need to embrace the fact that they're going to die.

1:26:45And in that, in that foundationally, life will be so much sweeter that it's –

1:26:54and it's not about escaping this life.

1:26:56It's about living this life because I've seen so many people out there that have

1:27:02chosen to escape it. And I'm not talking about somebody that has a press contact

1:27:09gunshot wound. I'm talking about people that just have given up, and it's almost a

1:27:17passive suicide. But – I've seen a lot of that.

1:27:21People don't think about that.

1:27:23There are people that will just allow themselves to develop what I call the dwindles,

1:27:27and they're circling the drain.

1:27:29I had a friend who just died of that last year.

1:27:32Yeah, and it's a tragedy.

1:27:33After four years. Yeah. It's a tragedy.

1:27:35It really is. You have to find that will.

1:27:38Now, for me, that will has shifted from it's not about me.

1:27:48It's about my relationship with God.

1:27:51And every time I go to Mass now at this point in my life when

1:27:56I walk in and I understand that the God that I worship is greater than

1:28:03all of this, that God created life and he created death.

1:28:06And it's going to happen.

1:28:08We are not meant to go on in this physical body to infinity.

1:28:15And we are all in either spiritual or physical state of decay.

1:28:22That's the reality of it.

1:28:24If you just look at it from a biological standpoint, you can try to stem

1:28:28it. You can try to knock it down and say, I'm going to do this

1:28:33with myself. But either way, you're loping toward the end at the entire time.

1:28:41Right now, my wife has, as I'm speaking right now, she's in the van and

1:28:47she's gone to go pick up my grandbabies in another state and driving them back

1:28:51here. I'm going to absorb that this weekend and enjoy every single moment that I

1:28:59have with them. Because I didn't, brother, I didn't think that I would get to

1:29:06this point. I really, you know, I saw myself in that room or in those

1:29:10dreams surrounded by death with flies lighting on me.

1:29:15And there were many nights, you know, that I would, I would stare at the

1:29:20cold blue scale and thinking, I can't, I can't do this anymore.

1:29:25I can't see this, but it's, it's, it's all that I knew.

1:29:29It's all that I was.

1:29:30It was the essence of me.

1:29:31But I've realized that that's not me.

1:29:35That is not me. There's more to me than Joseph Scott Morgan, the death investigator

1:29:41and the college professor and the guy that you see on TV.

1:29:50Well, I'll tell you what, sir, you just have to, you have to back off

1:29:53and, and, and just understand that it's on the way.

1:29:56And it's, it's part of it, but, but don't, please, I'm begging people, just this

1:30:03idea of closure. You'll never have it.

1:30:05You need to celebrate the life and the time that you had with these people

1:30:08and the life and the time that you have that you're afforded.

1:30:11Amen. And I just, um, this has been one of the most impactful interviews I've

1:30:17ever done. I've never heard anybody be able to articulate what you just did is,

1:30:24is in the way that you did it.

1:30:26Um, I just, um, man, I'm kind of at a loss for words, which Jordy

1:30:34will tell you is virtually impossible.

1:30:35So, um, again, sir, um, just thank you.

1:30:41Oh, thank you for bestowing the magnitude of that wisdom on me personally.

1:30:48It's just, uh, I mean, you know, I've been in the culture of death my

1:30:54entire adult life and still get those 1130 texts at night.

1:30:59Hey, my, you know, my, another, another friend's dead and, and, you know, it's integrated

1:31:04into our familial situation pretty intensely as well too.

1:31:07And, and so, but your words, they, they have a lot of weight, a lot

1:31:12of meaning and I just, man, I can't thank you enough for coming on.

1:31:17You're quite welcome. Thanks for having me.

1:31:18And thank you for everything that you do for the community.

1:31:19We appreciate you. Yeah, thank you very much.

1:31:23Um, last, before you go, I just, where can people listen to your show?

1:31:26Cause if, if, if this is even remotely what you do on a regular basis,

1:31:31man, I want to push my entire audience towards you because it's just powerful, powerful

1:31:38stuff. Well, that's kind of you.

1:31:40Uh, first off, I, uh, big shout out to my university is Jacksonville State University

1:31:44in Jacksonville, Alabama, not Florida.

1:31:47Uh, we're in the foothills of, of the Appalachian mountains at the very tail end

1:31:52of it. One of the most, a place that I have found peace in my

1:31:55life. And I would say that, you know, no, you now knowing a little bit

1:31:59of something about me, I found a place of peace and they exist for everybody

1:32:02out there. I can tell you that I've just found mine in this little old

1:32:06town here in Alabama. Um, but, uh, you can check out our forensics program there

1:32:12and, uh, which is pretty amazing.

1:32:15It's one of the best in the Southeast.

1:32:18I'd say it is the best in the Southeastern United States.

1:32:21Uh, as far as, uh, my appearances and whatnot, I'm new to YouTube.

1:32:26So I've been doing, I'm on my 500th episode of my podcast or we just,

1:32:31we passed it to, uh, on Monday, actually.

1:32:35Congratulations. That's a big milestone.

1:32:37Oh, well, thank you. We dropped three episodes per week.

1:32:40We're on iHeart and Apple and pod and, uh, uh, what is it?

1:32:44Spotify. Spotify. But I just have hopped on YouTube.

1:32:48for the very first time and uh it's body bags with joseph scott morgan it's

1:32:52at joseph scott morgan on youtube so check us out uh we've breached uh we've

1:32:59been live on youtube for i think three and a half four weeks now and

1:33:05we're closing in on 5 000 followers or subscribers that's amazing that's so awesome well

1:33:13we've been congratulations well thank you they backloaded all and right now we're about to

1:33:18go to video haven't done that i don't have the bravery that you have uh

1:33:22we're about to go to we're about to go to video pretty soon but all

1:33:25of the old the cat our catalog yeah i never thought i'd use that term

1:33:30about something i'm involved with our catalog is now on youtube um and uh you

1:33:38know we listen the thing i do with body bags and the reason i call

1:33:42it body bags it puts some people off is that and give you a story

1:33:45about that real real quick is that uh uh every time i would look uh

1:33:51into our vehicles when i worked for the me we would carry a stack of

1:33:55body bags with us and there's a certain time when we would have to replenish

1:33:59and for every body bag uh that represents a person yeah and so my show

1:34:05is called body bags with joseph scott morgan and so it's emblematic of the deaths

1:34:10that occur all around the country some of the things but we i focus on

1:34:13forensic education and take cases that are in the news and i talk about it

1:34:17from a forensic perspective because a lot of people have not been blessed with the

1:34:21opportunities i've had of working in forensics and having a graduate degree in forensics and

1:34:25all that stuff and so i like to talk to people that you know are

1:34:30interested in what i'm interested in and don't have the same advantages that i've had

1:34:33so that's why we do it and we thoroughly enjoy it so three times a

1:34:37week we drop on tuesday thursday tuesday wednesdays and thursdays well i'm a subscriber now

1:34:42so i'm looking forward to putting that in my repertoire as well too uh you

1:34:46know joseph you're a pretty phenomenal human being not just like your technical expertise but

1:34:51the way you're able to like i said deliver um the narrative of life and

1:34:57death is uh it's uh really i gotta say it's pretty unmatched to everybody i've

1:35:02come across so thanks again for coming on god you're quite welcome thank you god

1:35:06bless you as well hi i'm lita and my husband and i run the donut

1:35:20mum we're backed by com bank so every payment's protected we have the same smart

1:35:25security as the big stores business security baked in no doubt eligibility criteria and t's

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1:35:32t's and t's and t's and t's and t's and t's and t's and t's

1:35:32and t's and t's and t's and t's and t's and t's and t's and

1:35:32t's and t's and t's and t's and t's and t's and t's and t's

1:35:32and t's and t's and t's and t's and t's and t's and t's and

1:35:32t's and t's and t's and t's and t's and t's and t's and t's

1:35:32and t's and t's and t's and t's and t's and t's and t's and

1:35:32t Thank you.

David Rutherford Show: Jo Scott Morgan - Epstein’s Ranch, Crime Scene Truth, and the Meaning of Death