From Manson Family Murders to Execution by Beheading: Truth About Sharp Force Injuries

Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan

CrimeOnline and iHeartPodcasts

True Crime

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

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Summary

Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss the Manson family murders and the real injuries suffered by the victims, as well as beheadings carried out hundreds of years ago in an effort to explain the difference in the type of injuries created by all manner of weapons that can be used to stab, slice, carve, and disembowel. Professor Morgan explains the difference between the facts of a case and how injuries and weapons are shown in film and how difficult it is to determine the source of a sharp force injury.

Transcript Highlights
00:13.87 Introduction - Sharp Force Injuries

01:11.86 Description of a beheading

04:56.77 Sharp force injury

10:02.83 Executioner refusing to execute

14:59.68 Stabbing injuries

20:27.08 Studying the margin - edges of injury

24:48.30 Always look for the "winking eye"

29:58.47 Thorough autopsy - tongue comes out

35:03.25 First documented autopsy, Caesar

38:58.59 Manson family knife attacks, Sharon Tate

45:03.35 Manson Murders shown in movie shows fork bouncing up and down, ridiculous

46:2 9.07 Conclusion

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is an I-Heart podcast.
0:05.5	Bodybacks with Joseph Scott Moore.
0:10.0	It was a really cold morning.
0:12.4	Matter of fact,
0:13.3	folks around town said that there would be ice that day.
0:18.7	It was the morning of January the 30th, 1649, and the head of state, the
0:26.9	king of England, walked across the banqueting floor in the main chamber at the banqueting house, part of Whitehall Palace in London, literally right down the road from present-day Parliament.
0:47.9	It wasn't a normal stroll. He was walking to a window window and outside of that window
0:55.2	there had been built a scaffold
0:57.4	and as he stepped through the window
1:00.5	the cold wind cut through him
1:03.7	he had asked for extra
1:06.0	clothing that morning
1:07.9	so that the crowd could not see him shivering because he didn't want to give
1:14.4	the impression that he was afraid.
1:19.5	For a moment he looked out over the crowd.
1:21.7	He knew that the crowd was so vast, they'd never hear what he would have to say.
1:36.1	He looked at the two attendants and the executioner, told them that he was not guilty of the charges of which he had been found guilty of.
1:48.6	And then he turned to the executioner and says, when I kneel down and lay my head on the block, I'm going to pray. And when I extend my arms, that will be your signal to swing the axe.
1:55.6	In that one moment, Europe changed. Europe changed because it was viewed that all power derived from God
2:08.6	through their sovereign. And as Charles's head rolled over the surface of that scaffold.
2:18.3	The executioner wearing a homemade mask and a wig,
	...

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