A Pink Hammer's Dark Secrets: The Mysterious Death of Leon Hignite

Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan

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True Crime

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 4 April 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

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Summary

In this episode of "Body Bags," Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack delve into the chilling case of 76-year-old Leon Hignite, who was found abandoned in his home with gruesome injuries.

They explore the forensic details of blood spatter patterns and analyze the severity of Leon's injuries, the challenges faced by the medical team, and the disturbing circumstances surrounding the incident.

Time Codes:

0:00 - Introduction

01:17 - Overview and background

04:28 - Dave questions how the blood on the ceiling and wall could have resulted from Leon's supposed fall in the bathroom.

05:07 - Leon's limited ability to communicate due to his blindness and hearing impairment.

06:17 - The autopsy reveals that Leon sustained at least 30 blunt force impacts to his head.

07:42 - Paramedics find Leon in a deplorable state on the bedroom floor, surrounded by blood and waste.

09:46 - Leon’s feelings of helplessness and hopelessness.

10:10 - Leon is found after three days.

10:41 - Leon's medical condition, age, blindness, and other health issues.

11:04 - The police arrive to serve a search warrant and discover the house set on fire.

11:56 - Medical intervention needed for Leon's head trauma.

13:14 - Carol Hignite's claims she gave Leon ice chips to hydrate him.

14:39 - Were the injuries Leon sustained typical of a fall?

16:10 - The forensic implications of overlapping contusions and fractured areas.

18:05 - The pink hammer.

20:47 - The forensic challenges of blood being found on the hammer.

22:14 - The differences between blood spatter from impact vs. cast-off.

24:01 - Blood velocities and their relation to various weapons.

25:30 - What happened those 3 days before 911 was called?

27:40 - Outro

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	We're body bags with Joseph Scott Morgan.
0:19.9	Down here in the south we have some interesting names that we call our grandparents.
0:24.9	Maybe that's the case all over the country, but for me, spending my entire life down here
0:29.1	that's kind of the norm.
0:30.7	I call my grandfather Pappal.
0:32.6	I love that man or anything.
0:34.2	I had two Pappals.
0:35.6	But the one I'm thinking about right now was what's referred to as a finishing contractor
0:41.2	or finishing carpenter.
0:42.9	And he ran a crew guys, it would actually frame houses.
0:46.4	He was not a big man, but he had gigantic hands and he had forms that are remembered as
0:51.4	a small child that look like Papa.
0:54.1	And the reason I bring this up is that he always carried a hammer and he had a wide
0:59.0	variety of hammers.
1:00.2	I think probably the one that everybody knows about is a claw hammer.
1:04.4	That means that you've got the blunted side where you're driving nails and you've got
1:08.4	the other side that's a little mount.
1:10.8	Today we're going to talk about a case that involves a hammer.
1:14.8	And it's a hammer that my grandfather probably never would have been seen with.
1:18.4	It's actually a pink claw hammer.
1:21.4	But we're going to talk about its involvement in the alleged homicide of a nail-dirty man
1:27.4	of 76 years of age.
	...

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