Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Decompositional Changes -Deciphering COD
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Get a creamy coconut chocolatey crunch out of an Almond Joy today and taste paradise. Thanks, Almond Joy, for being our partner. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Moore. For the general public, I think that what defines my profession, the first thing that pops onto the radar is not necessarily injuries, you know, horrible trauma.

sadness, grief, all of those sorts of things. The one question that people seem to ask me all the time is, how is it that you deal with being around decomposing human remains? That's not necessarily a one-size-fits-all question. It is something that I learned to do over a protracted period of time. Now, don't misunderstand me.

I never got completely used to it. I think that all of you out there would probably think that I was an absolute lunatic if I said that I had. However, you do build up somewhat of a callous to it after a time. But today, we're going to discuss human decomposition, and I'm going to kind of give you an insight from my perspective of death investigation. So hold on to your hats, because class is in with Professor Morgan.

I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Brother Dave, good to be back with you, man. I've been on my world tour, man, all over Europe and hitting spots in Paris and in Amsterdam and...

I was going to ask you if you met any liver puddlians. I did. You know, I did meet a few liver puddlians, puddlians, puddlians, puddlians. You know, the documentary called the Beatles because they're complete Beatles. And yeah, Jerry and the pacemakers, he actually called them liver puddlians. Yeah.

Yeah, and let's see, who else was it? Was it Herman and the Hermits that sang? Yeah, Herman and the Hermits. That's Peter Noon. No, Ferry Across the Mercy. No. Who was that? Oh, come on. That was not Peter Noon and the Herman's Hermits. It was Jerry and the Pacemakers. Ferry Across the Mercy. Yeah, Jerry and the Pacemakers. Yeah, I actually sat out and drank a pint next to the Mersey River out there with my beautiful bride, Kimmy, and it was a glorious, glorious night.

sunshiny day gentle breeze blowing in off water and when i say and look we're we're back home in south it's like i don't know what 80 humidity out there yeah dude we had to wear sweatshirts and that's in you know we're we're in june and so and they were saying oh isn't this nice warm weather i'm thinking but it was it was enjoyable it was refreshing i'm glad to be back home and uh

Certainly glad to be back with you, Brother Dave. I've missed being on the air with you and spent time over in CrimeCon, CrimeCon UK in London. So that was a blast, and we're going to talk about that more in another episode. But I thought coming back, we continue our series of

of forensic education with your humble host here and, you know, try to go down this line. I got to tell you something. We had a show today on Nancy Grace, and we were talking about the Holly Bobo case. And in this discussion that Nancy and I were having,

we were talking about blood in the garage. Holly Bobo was kid, a 20 year old kidnapped from her own home in Tennessee, um, by a couple of ruffians. And she was actually in her garage carport getting ready to get in her car to go to school. 745 in the morning when she was taken. Okay. Yeah. And there were two different spots of blood in the garage. And Nancy was asking, what did that mean? And I thought, well,

I'm not the right guy to answer this, but I do know because of Joe, you know? And so I actually broke it all down and I said, well, a forensic person would say, and I was like, this blood droplet is different than this blood smear. Right. And it was really cool to be able to bring that to the discussion because then, you know, it, it means something, everything that you talk about on this show with regard to crime and that's, it's body bags, but it's,

It actually helps all of us to have a better understanding of when the crime happens, how does it get solved? Ultimately, you and I talk about the victims every day. And how do you, it's never about closure, but it is about finding some resolution, some finality, and finding the justice that that person and their family deserves. And it all comes together. Forensically, you have to prove it. You know, you can actually convict.

a person of murder without ever having a dead body. Yeah, you can. Yeah. The blood, the blood, the blood, for instance, many times it's representative of the corpus delecti, which means the body of the case. And so, and I think I've said this before, the more blood you have and,

uh, scientists love to use the term copious. I always liked that copious amounts of blood. Yeah. Copious amounts of blood, uh, you know, huge volume of blood, which, and again, here, here's another, uh, uh, term or phrase they like to use, uh, incompatibility with life. You know, that's, that's one of those things you spill so much blood, you know, that,

And depending upon the person, you know, you have a finite amount of blood in your body. And even that finite amount that within the ranges of blood that you have within your body is going to dictate whether or not you're going to survive or not. You know, whether it's going to be sufficient to the task of providing your cells with oxygenated blood supply. So, but, you know, with decomposition, yeah.

We discuss blood in decomposition and blood, in fact, because it is an element of

a complex element. Blood is not a standalone substance. It's a compound of many things. And blood itself does decompose. All I have to tell you is, listen, if you've ever had like a rotten bit of meat in your refrigerator, say for instance, you forgot the

uh the roast that was wrapped in cellophane it was in the back of your refrigerator you say oh look a roast and you pull it out and some of that seeps out onto the floor uh it's one of the foulest substances known to man it's not necessarily just the the you know that that

that element of the roast that is decomposing. It's that liquid that's contained there in, which is blood and it, it changes color. It, it's got an awful, awful scent to it. And we'll go into that in, in this particular episode of body bags, but yeah, it's, it's part and parcel of what we do. People, I want to go back just for a second though, because many, many times people say, I don't see how in the world you bear blood.

staying locked up in a room, which I have, um, with a decomposing body and how can you do what you have to do scientifically as far as assessments go and, and, and dwell that environment with that. And it's, you know how, let me, let me just throw this out to you, Dave. Do you have any idea how I adjusted my mindset to it? Any idea whatsoever? Like what did I do?

I looked at it. I looked at decomposition as a normal biological process, almost like birth. And I've been present for the birth of my children and, and people will go on and on about what a beautiful thing birth is. It is, it is a beautiful thing. You know, when new life comes about, however, it's an ugly thing too. If you've never been present for birth, um,

And you see what occurs in the midst of all of this. It's a very bloody affair.

And so but that's a natural biological process. And I've always tried to understand it from that perspective. If I could ever get my because look, you know, death investigators have bad days, too, obviously. It's like you're standing there. You don't want to be around a decomposing body. But I have to you always kind of have to anchor yourself in the thought that, OK, if I'm going to be here, I'm going to set my feet in stone.

I'm going to understand this as a normal biological process. I have to get past the odor and the things that you see that surround the body in order to find the truth. And of course, in science, that's all I'm interested in. I'm not interested in all this other peripheral stuff that a lot of people go after in the criminal justice system. That stuff, to me, is outside my wheelhouse. I like to understand what science is trying to tell me and listen carefully.

So decomposition in human brains, Dave, is one of the finest teachers that is out there. Now, it happens quick, doesn't it? I mean, when we, from the moment we die, our body starts decomposing right away. Isn't that correct? Yeah, it does. You can't see it. In small ways. Yeah, in small ways. You can't see it. You can't smell it. But yeah, at a cellular level, yeah.

the cells begin to essentially break down. And you're not going to necessarily see it immediately. And we're going to get into another episode where we're going to be talking about immediate kind of post-mortem changes, but we're kind of taking a broad view. You're not going to get like within...

within minutes of death, you're not going to have a foul odor emanating from the body that's associated with decomposition. Now you can't have a foul odor that's emanating from human remains. Say for instance, if they soil themselves during the, during the throes of death. And that does in fact happen. It doesn't happen every time. A lot of people say, well, doesn't that happen every single time? I thought that wasn't it. I learned it wasn't, but I did for the longest time. I thought that when a person died, everything, everything,

just let go. The sphincter's kind of loosened. There you go. Merry Christmas. I'm glad, I'm glad you actually mentioned that because, um, that, you know, when you get that, um, that release, say for instance, of an individual's bowels, um, many times that will take some time to occur. And you mentioned the sphincter muscle specifically. Um, you have to have that area of the tissue begin to break down so that that tension is no longer there. And if there is feces, um,

um, in the bowel, it can release. And that does happen. You'll have bladder releases many times, lots of times bladder releases happen. I found when they're in the perimortem, say when they're in the throes of death, you know, that, that will occur. Um, but you know, you, you don't have it every single time. I think a lot of people, um,

under this idea that it occurs in every single event like this. And it just doesn't. Isn't that because part of its biology that we're all different. I mean, like Elvis, when Elvis died, we know that he had an impacted colon. Isn't that what that was called? Yeah. Yeah. He, and a lot of that had to do with these kind of opiate based drugs, which you'll find constipated all the time. He was. Yeah, he was. And people that are addicted to things like heroin and morphine and also the

any kind of opioid, even if it's some kind of synthetic, you know, thing that has been created in a lab, it'll essentially lock up the bowels. And I've done...

I've done autopsies on individuals or participated in autopsies on individuals that are heroin ODs. And you'll have their entire large bowel with fecal impaction. And it's a miserable existence because they can't pass anything. And plus, most of the time, they don't eat healthy foods anyway that keep the system rolling.

Um, and they're, they're not hydrated either, which plays a big role into it. So it doesn't happen every single time, but interesting fact about, about, um, Elvis, um,

With his death, you know, his, I think, and I know that you're going to know this, but I think his last, his last words were, I'm going to the bathroom to read. I think it's what he told his girlfriend at the time. Ginger Alden. Yeah. I knew you'd know that. And so he's, he's on the toilet or as my granny used to say, he's on the commode and he dies. And did you know that there is a,

significant number of people, such a significant number of people that are found dead on toilets that we actually have a term, a kind of a euphemistic term that we use in death investigation called toilet sign. And here's why. Many folks that do die while seated on the toilet, they have mistaken the

this urgency to go to the bathroom, that is masking an MI. They're actually having a heart attack. So they will go to the bathroom, sit on the toilet, and many times the strain of being on the toilet will push them over the edge. So yeah, we literally have, I can't tell you, it's a countless number. At first, you know, when I was a young investigator, I didn't think it was a real thing. And the older guys had told me that it was a real thing. And so, you know, how older guys, you know,

They talk to us knuckleheads that are young. You don't believe anything until it's proven to you. Trust me, I've got a 23-year-old son. And so when it's demonstrated, you say, oh, my gosh, they were right. Yeah, I've been catching all these cases. They're natural deaths, but I've been catching these cases with individuals on toilets.

And so, yeah, it's legitimate. I don't know that there's ever been a definitive scientific study about toilet sign, but it's a real thing. It's something that we talk about and we talked about it for years and years in the field.

And, you know, we'll just say, yeah, we have a toilet sign case today. Wow. So, yeah. And that that that's a real thing that does. One of the things that when we start talking about decomposition and I didn't when you when you first mentioned wanting to do this, do you realize that those of us who follow crime report on crime cover, you know, crimes that most of us only know about?

the scientific aspect of things when people like you are talking on a crime show, because most of us are not in an academic area. We're not taking, you know, your class at school. And this is the only way we find out is by you sharing your knowledge, because I don't know what happens. I mean, I really don't. I know that the minute I die, that everything stops living because I'm dead. And obviously if you're not living, you're dying, which means you're heading back to dirt eventually. Yeah.

Yeah. That's all I know. I don't know the speed that it happens. I would think it'd be very quickly. You know, in a broad sense, it look, everything is environmentally dependent, you know, and I've mentioned this countless times on our program where, you know, we're, we're referring to and the biggest, the biggest factor is heat.

Um, I, you know, where, you know, I've gone out on scenes, man, where I've had multiple bodies in a location that all died as a result of, um, one case in particular had, uh, uh, I think it was four guys that had transported dope from Mexico. They were in a van and they were tasked with meeting person. They were going to do the exchange with, uh,

in a warehouse area in Atlanta, actually not too far from Six Flags Atlanta in an industrial park. And all four of these guys were shot in the van through the windows and killed. And the dope was taken. We didn't find their bodies for two months.

And they were just parked under a tree. And it's actually a conversion van that was over there. And no one, some guy decided to walk back there and smoke a cigarette. And when he did, he catches a whiff. Well, when I opened the door of that van, when I got there, liquid came pouring out of the van. And that was decompositional fluid. And so they'd been there for two months. I've had them even worse than that, where bodies will...

They don't turn into puddles necessarily, but the skin becomes very soft and spongy. It's much like a sponge. And you can feel it kind of when you place your hands on the decomposing tissue. It feels like it feels almost like the crackling of bubble wrap many times. And that's because the the the cells in that area in some of these cases are

They kind of expand where there's decompositional gases that are contained within that area. And you can almost feel it crackle beneath your fingertips. I've had friends that have said that, and this has never happened to me, but I've had people that have said that bodies, when they go to pull on them,

literally come apart at joints. Now that's never happened with me. I've had, I've had the manifestation was referred to as skin slippage. And you'll hear this in trials many times. They'll talk about skin slippage for instance. And that's where the epidermis, that top layer of skin, even down to the dermis below the epidermis will literally peel off, you know, in your hand. And,

But that takes time. It takes a certain amount of time. There's almost like this kind of tenderizing factor, if you will. Give me a little latitude there with that, that has to take place. Eventually, the bodies will, in fact, dry out. But before they dry out, there's a whole process that occurs before you ever get to that markup.

I think it's important to understand that, you know, decomposition can mean a variety of different things to folks. You know, when I was a kid, I had to build a composting bin in the backyard. My mother is...

She loves gardening. She always has. And so everywhere she's lived, she's had a composting bin. And what does that mean? Well, you in the composting bin, you're going to throw organic materials in there. I remember her putting coffee grounds and eggshells and everything else, and not to mention all of the leaves from the previous fall. And you have to turn it. You have to turn it. Some people put earthworms in there, all kinds of things going. But you're trying to break down that organic substance that's in there.

Um, and it creates this rich, you know, kind of rich dirt. And it's interesting, Dave, that you said a few moments ago that we, that we turn, you know, we turn into dust and, you know, there's that old Bible, uh, verse that, you know, what was it from dust? You, you came in from dust, you shall return. And that, that is truly the definition of what happens. It just takes some time. It's not, it's,

It's not some kind of fantastical movie event. You have to be down for a long time. But what kicks this whole thing off is heat, heat and absence of life. But, you know, kind of the functional definition for decomposition, how do you define it? Well, it's a disintegration of body tissues after death is known as decomposition. And I mentioned to you just a moment ago that one of my –

One of my favorite characters in Looney Tunes, in the Looney Tunes universe is the Martian that, you know, he's got the disintegrator ray that he uses. And of course, Bugs always turns it around on him. I don't think any good Bugs Bunny cartoons ever were made after probably about 1970, by the way. Just my thoughts. But anyway, you know, what does disintegration mean?

Well, we know what integrated is. That means to blend, right? Or if you have integrated circuits, you know, for instance, if you're talking, if you're speaking to somebody that's like an electrical engineer, well, we're actually integrated. All of our systems are integrated. Well, once that spark of life has left the body and you no longer have this process of keeping cells oxygenated, you have cellular respiration that's going on, these things over a period of time

will actually begin to pull apart and they naturally fall apart. And so that's, that's part of the process. And it's something that we, you know, that you have to understand. All right. So as you're going through this entire process to, I guess I, I'm approaching it a little bit different in trying to think about the decomposition because, yeah, because it's not

something I'm used to talking about. You know, when you were talking about the roast in the refrigerator, you know, things like that, opening up bad meat from the store, you know, and you get that whiff, you know that you're getting something bad. So when you're talking about this beginning stages here, where it's starting to break down, what does that tell you when you're coming in as an investigator and looking at things as you're studying that individual? Because

All the time we want to know, well, we always want to know the motive. Why did this happen? But when? When did this happen? You and I have talked about that. You've got to tell me exactly when this person died, Joe. I need to know. Was it before or after dinner? Did they eat dinner at 10 o'clock or 8 o'clock? And sometimes those things can't be told.

by the contents of your stomach. There's got to be more. Yeah, you're right. And if you're looking for me or any of my colleagues to tell you, and I'm saying you in the universal sense, Dave, that when somebody actually died, it's an empirical impossibility. Anybody that tells you that they can is lying. And so, you know, in the short term, and that's a micro, a micro examination, you know, when, and we'll talk about this on another episode, but,

Um, even in that sense, we, the best we can do is some people say they can do it in three, you know, within a three hour window, um,

Most of the time, I think it's going to be about four to five if you cover all your bases. But if you know other things surrounding it, because, you know, we build that timeline. And as we're building the timeline of activity, you can take all that into consideration and narrow it down even further based on what you're seeing in the physical realm of the actual decomposition. So not just blindly finding a body on the street, you know. Right. Yeah. If you can...

If you can kind of, well, here's the word, integrate some of those circumstantial findings. Right. Yeah. You've, you've got a better shot, but broadly, you know, when we're talking about decomposition very broadly, that's, that's hard to do. It's,

It's very difficult to, particularly if you have a body that in we listen, we use terms like early decomposition, moderate decomposition and advanced decomposition, and then you'll have skeletonization. So you've got kind of that spectrum of four things there. When one of the things that you have to consider is that there's actually a

Two processes of decomposition going on and kind of the way in my simple mind, the way I like to look at it, you have autolytic changes and auto means self, right? So you have autolysis that goes on, which is kind of the body breaking down from within. And if you think about it from the perspective of a body literally digesting itself,

That's autolysis. Okay. So, you know, everything that is contained within life, when you have cellular respiration on the systems or firing ceases to be at that point in time. So the body begins to kind of, from an enzyme standpoint, begins to kind of digest itself. Then you have putrefaction that goes on. And then, you know, in very broad terms, you begin to, you know, think about

changes that are produced by, you know, the action of bacteria and microorganisms. And that can, that can come like in an external manifestation. And then you have, you know, if you think about even more broadly, um,

Um, you, you have the introduction of, of animals or even insects that are attacking the body externally. And then, you know, and that's going to promote decomposition. So there's, you, you've got a lot to kind of consider when you come across a body that's bloated and rotting and kind of, you know, coming apart.

One of the things that's always fascinated me and my students at JSU, I'll ask them this question. And, of course, I'll get this resounding sound when I give it to them. If you've ever seen one of these steakhouse commercials where they'll say, we've got beautiful dry-aged beef or we do wet-aging process, you know what they're talking about.

they're tenderizing those steaks that they have through the process of decomposition, you know, and you can have dry aged, which if you go to, if one of my goals in life is to try to get a reservation at Luger Steakhouse in, in Manhattan, it's supposed to be the best steak in the world.

Because I think I know where the best steak in the world is, and that's Charlie's Steakhouse in New Orleans. So I want to see what Luger's is. Uh-oh. But they have a basement set up. We have just set a goal for body bags. You and I, you've got to take me to Charlie's in New Orleans. I'll take you to Charlie's. Yeah, I will take you to Charlie's. And one of the best places.

best dining experiences I've ever had. But with Charlie's, Charlie's uses, I think they used to use a dry aging method. And the thing about it is with that, they're talking about, they get this fine cut of beef and we don't like to think about this sort of thing, but you know,

Aged beef is far better to eat than, say, for instance, if you take it right off the hoof. You have to let it decompose. And they don't use the term decompose. They say aged. It's much more mellow. It's like an aged whiskey or wine, a vintage wine. They try to put it in those terms. But what it comes down to is decomposing so that we can eat it, so that it's tender for us to eat.

So we're really not talking about getting fresh meat. We're talking about getting, I mean, I'm kind of grossed out by that, Joe. I didn't know that. I really did. I thought if I go down here to where they've got this, there's a bunch of cattle out here and they got some pretty fat ones that look good. That if I was to get that one, skin that, you take care of the hide. I want that. Turn that into a steak. I'd like to have that tomorrow morning with my eggs.

That's not going to be worth eating compared to some that's...

If a body is left out, say, in the wild or even in a house, and the body is not refrigerated, the body...

is going to do what bodies do. And look, this can be stemmed through the process of what mortuary scientists do. And that is infuse the body or profuse the body with embalming fluid. And they, they cease that process, you know, of, or slow it down, decompositional process. It kind of freezes it for that moment. And with decomposition though, you,

You have to get there early in order to stop it because this, I can tell you with decomposition, once it starts, it's like a barreling freight train. It's really hard to get the handle on it. Okay. And so when you hear people say, well, and this is non-trauma related, you have some elderly person that has been not found for a week or two weeks in a home and

Uh, and the mortuary, uh, says, well, you're going to have to have a closed casket. People say, well, why would you have to have a closed casket? Well, it's because the body's been decomposing for that period of time, maybe under the most adverse conditions you can imagine where, you know, there's no,

there's no air con that's that's operating um maybe they're subject to i don't know flies and everything else that's in and there's there's no amount of restorative work i guess there is you'd have to pay a lot of money but there's really no amount of restorative work that you can go in and you can patch this person up so that they're presentable for an open casket so

The absence of an open casket does not necessarily mean that this is a trauma-related event. Many times it can be decompositional-related. Okay, let me...

Back to just on decomposition, when you're talking 24 to 36 hours, right, you're going to start seeing outward signs of the decomposition of the body, right? Yes. Okay. In that first 24 hours, and in particular, I'm thinking about in Idaho, in Moscow, Idaho, where the four college students were murdered.

And we believe based on the information, which I really want to talk to you about that timeline. But what we understand is that sometime between four and four thirty in the morning, all four of the students were murdered by knife. And but their bodies were not found by law enforcement until eight hours later. All right. Is there going to be. I mean.

Is there going to be significant changes in the body during that eight hour time period? Not in the broad sense that we're in a macro sense that we're talking about here real broadly, where you're going to have bloating and all those things that are commonly associated with decomposition. You're not going to have it in there. However, I think that it's key that we come back and address that the Idaho killings are

When we discuss the micro, the micro sense of decomposition and those changes within that 11 hour framework, you're not going to see or 11 to 12 hour framework. You're not going to see much happen. It's with how can I say this with an external manifestation, which can be appreciated with the unaided eye, you know, where you're examining the body.

However, within the 24 to 36 hour, and again, these brackets of time are very, very broad. One of the things that will happen and something that kind of manifests itself, everybody that's listening to me will take your right hand and place it above the level of your pelvis on the right side of your abdomen. That approximates the area where your appendix is.

No one can really explain it, but one of the things that we see manifested in decomposition, like an external manifestation, is that that area, you'll get a focal area of greenish discoloration that will occur there.

And it truly is. It turns kind of a green color. And that many, many times doesn't happen every case, but many times it'll be, you know, that's generally about 24 to 36 hours. Well, Morgan, why is that important? Well, it's important because if I have that manifestation that is occurring, that's a marker in time. Okay. So if I look at the body and I have no other information, if I'm just visually eyeballing the body and I see something,

I see, you know, this greenish coloration on the abdomen. I can say, wow, this might be an indication this person's been down at least 24 to 36 hours. And you roll that into the idea that maybe their limbs are flaccid, and flaccid means flexible, okay, or bendable. Well, that means the rider's already left the body. Okay. I got to know. Yeah. Because I, like many people, don't know.

How quickly does Riger rigor mortis set in and how quickly does it let go? Because we all know of stories that we've told. As a matter of fact, we had one not that long ago where two gentlemen killed the third guy that they were having a three-way party with. Right. And went to get a tub at Home Depot or wherever. And when they came back, the guy was stiff and they had to break his legs and beat him, you know, his body to make it soft enough to get in the tub. Right.

If they just waited, how long would they have to wait for the body to release again? 24 to 36 hours. Okay. 24 to 36 hours, and it's going to remain fixed. And that's the one thing I never can understand about people that desecrate bodies beyond what they've already been desecrated, where they get axes and these sorts of things and try to chop the legs off or whatever.

If you wait, and again, obviously time plays a factor because anybody that brings death upon another person, they're not wanting to hang around and be patient about it. The bodies become flaccid again. They become, let's term, malleable again. So that you can bend them, you can contract them. You know, rigor moris doesn't hang around for every and every eight minutes. It's just not one of those things that occurs, particularly in an unembalmed state.

So, you know, it, it will leave, it dissipates over a period of time. But when you're looking out over, you know, kind of broadly over this, uh, the spectrum of death, um, with decomposition, you, you look for other signs as, as you march down that timeline. Like after you get beyond that, that greenish discoloration that takes place on the abdomen, you're talking, um, uh,

About 36 to 48 hours, the body will become or start to distend itself.

which means you'll see the first signs of bloating. You know, the abdomen begins to swell up. Well, and the face will swell too. You know, you'll see the face beginning to kind of swell. If a person has had their appendix out, is there still a greenish type of color? Yeah, it manifests down there. And I don't know why it is because it's kind of the –

Uh, at that end where you have the vernal, it was the called the vernal form appendix, uh, sound there. Verniform is like, I think it's the Latin word for worm is actually what it translates into. Um, it, it will still manifest down that area, even, you know, if an individual is absent their appendix and it's down in that, that area. I don't know if it, because it's on the opposite end.

of the large bowel from where, you know, the rectum is. Okay. So it's kind of looped all the way around there. Um, and you know, that's where, uh, the food, uh, that's being digested in the, you know, in the small intestine dumps into that part of the intestine, the lower right side, if you're talking about the right side of the person's body, and then it

It traverses from the ascending large bowel to where it crosses over into the descending bowel and eventually is eliminated from the body. I don't know if that plays a role into it, but you couple that and you go to another stage where you've got this kind of slight bloating that's going on.

And with, and particularly in the facial notice it, uh, you'll get kind of the face will have a swollen appearance and you'll also see the first signs of something. Here's another term they use in, um, in, uh, uh, butchery with, with beef. It doesn't mean the same thing, but you'll, we use this term called marbling and marbling. If you imagine, if you've got a spider web that would normally be, I don't know, spider webs are gray, white, uh,

If you imagine a black spider web superimposed upon a body, and it's got these kind of weird lines that run all over the place, it's black, dark, dark black. Well, that's like blood that is decomposing in the vessels, and it's showing through the face. So you'll see it first manifest kind of around the jowls and the cheeks and that sort of thing, the neck.

Um, and that'll extend out as time goes by. So you'll have these kind of curvilinear lines, you know, that run over, you know, all over the body. And that's actually what we refer to as marbling. But again, Dave, that brings us back to this, this benchmarking of time. That's, you know, you're going to talk about top end. That's, that's going to take about 48 hours.

you know, with an unattended body that's found ideally in a protected environment, you know, like in a house where, you know, you don't have any kind of post-mortem feasting that's going on with animals or things like that. And again, the more of these little markers that we can get as death investigators, it allows us through science and the natural biological process to tell the story of the dead.

I know a lot of people are fans of dried fruit that are listening out there. I see it everywhere I go, you know, in various grocery stores and this sort of thing. I've never really developed a taste for it. It's kind of like when I was a kid, I don't know about you Dave, but when I was a kid, I was made to eat beef liver. I can't do it anymore. The reason I can't do it anymore is that

beef liver looks just like human liver to me, you know, and I participate in all those autopsies for all those years. But with the dried fruit, one of the things I think about when I see it is a term that we refer to as desiccation because they call it desiccated. You know, it's dried, you know, and

or the drying of limbs and particularly our appendages like our feet, your toes, feet, fingers, and your hands, the more peripheral you are to that kind of center core in a body, the more

the higher the probability is that area is going to dry out. And that's what desiccation is. So if you're, if you, you know, you couple that with the, uh, the bloating that you see and as the next step that you move on to is going to be manifested in the idea that the extremities, and I'm talking about if you'll just touch your fingertips or tips of your toes right now, those areas out of every other location in the body will become dry first. And so the fingers, uh,

The fingers actually take on an appearance like, you know, when you're little and your mom tells you, you know, let me look at your hands, how long you been in the pool. You get this kind of shriveled appearance here. That's basically the way it looks. The only difference is, is that with the tips of fingers and decomposition, and this happens to the nose as well, it'll turn kind of a black discoloration.

And it's dried out. There's no more moisture left in that environment. And so if we benchmark that time, you're talking about probably about 48 to 60 hours downrange after death at that point in time when you're kind of pacing yourself through the scene. That's why it's important at a scene that you –

You don't want to miss anything, but at the scene, particularly for the purposes of contextualizing things, it's important to be able to see it for what it is at the scene and be able to document that you observed that there before you removed the body.

at, you know, at the scene and take, take the body to the coroner's office, the medical examiner's office, where it's going to be examined. You mentioned about the nose and all I'm thinking is Michael Jackson. Yeah. Had so many surgeries on his nose. He had a prosthetic end to his nose. Can I tell you, there are a couple of times, a couple of images I have seen of him over the years where it actually made my mind drift back to people that, that I, when I examined their bodies, I,

Their nose had that same appearance. It's kind of dried, and it gives it a, I don't know how to say it, a very diminutive appearance. It's not robust and full like you see in life. Fingers in particular. Fingers are really creepy on the dead because they're shriveled. They're shriveled at the ends. They almost have like a...

a claw-like manifestation. What's really interesting as finger shrivel and toe shrivel, the abdomen actually begins to bloat. So you've got this kind of juxtaposition. And with the bloating of the abdomen, you're talking, you know, 72 hours that begins to happen. So the body is swelling. And what's happening is all this gas is building up in the body. And as it builds up, one of the foulest substances known to man begins to

exude from the body and it generally will, any orifice in the body, it'll come through and you see it a lot in the nose, the mouth, and it's called purging. So you've got this cellular substance where the cells are breaking down and it's a combination of blood and other elements and it creates this flow. And I think I had shown this image to you, Dave, of this fellow that was sitting in a chair and

And he's swollen, bloated. And you know that guy, Dave, in life, he only weighed about 160 pounds. Oh, my. I thought that was a 200-pound man that had been shot in the chest. I know. And all of the blood that you see on his chest, everything.

everything that you see on his chest is not blood. Well, it's blood in it. That's, that's actually purge fluid or decal fluid. Yeah. And it's pouring, it's coming out of his nose and his mouth. You're talking about the picture with the guy sitting in the chair, like a TV chair. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Just so y'all know, and I'm not going to include this on, I'm not going to show you guys this picture, you'd have to pay extra for that, but it's in this presentation and I opened the

Joe explains these things to me ahead of time. It's not going to make me look like a total dummy. And I opened that picture. I'm not kidding. I thought the guy had been shot because of that. He was discovered a day or two later. I didn't realize that this was a fairly small guy and died of natural causes. I've got a fascinating story that goes along with that because there was a very young police officer that called my office the day that he was the first person to show up. It was a welfare check they'd gone out on.

And the guy lived alone. He had been divorced for a while. And he was, I think he was like in his late 50s. And he was working. You know, you see in the image, he's still wearing T-shirt, blue jeans and work boots. And he sat in his chair and had a heart attack and died. Well, the young cop, and I'm not judging this guy because I would have thought the same thing. He called me.

from a landline at that time. This was many years ago and said, yeah, we need you out here immediately. I think we've got a guy that has been beaten to death. And he even said at that time, someone may have used a hatchet on him or an ax. And when you see this, it's so grotesque and over the top,

That's what you're thinking. You know, your mind automatically goes to that because where could all this staining come from? And it's even contrasted by the fact the guy's wearing a white T-shirt. Well, the guy has no trauma to his body. That's all decomp fluid that it's it is one of the most disgusting substances known to man. And once it makes contact with anything you're wearing, your clothing or anything like that,

Go ahead and start the bonfire and burn those clothes because you'll never, they're unusable after that point. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Bonfire. You know what's great about your investment account with the big guys? It's actually a time machine. Log in and Zoom. Welcome back to 1999.

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