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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan

Headless-Handless-Body Dumped in Upstate New York Identified: Who Killed Clyde Coppage?

Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan

CrimeOnline and iHeartPodcasts

True Crime

4.72.1K Ratings

🗓️ 25 March 2026

⏱️ 45 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A headless, handless, nude body with an "X" carved into his chest is found in rural New York state on March 20, 1970. As the body has no head, no hands, no identification or clothing, the case goes cold quickly and the body is laid to rest as Allegany County John Doe 1970. No "Missing Person" report was filed, ever. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack take a look at an almost impossible to solve case, that got cracked wide open 56 years later changing the name from John Doe, to Clyde Coppage, age 35, when he was murdered in 1970. His killer has never been caught and the case remains "Active". 

 

 

 

 

 


Transcribe Highlights

00:00.05 Introduction - Treasure Island

01:44.63 X marked the spot

04:13.46 Unidentified body

07:06.71 Headless, handless, Nude body, X carved in chest, found on side of road

10:34.01 Smell of human decay difficult to defeat

14:58.98 Cold area

20:21.90 Allegany County John Doe

25:00.38 Missing person report never filed

30:15.24 Body placed in inexpensive casket

35:13.62 Using tissue builder to restore finger prints

38:50.59 Creating timeline

43:21.90 Don't know the nature of injuries

45:00.38 Conclusion

 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is an I-Heart podcast.

0:02.5

Guaranteed Human.

0:05.7

Quantity facts, but Joseph's Got More.

0:10.0

Robert Louie Stevenson.

0:12.4

I was fascinated when I was, you know, a kid and I read Treasure Island for the first time.

0:24.4

You know, those stories now, they, I don't know, I guess it seems kind of quaint.

0:29.4

But, you know, what always fascinated me about that story was kind of the mystery.

0:34.9

And you're seeing it through this kid's eyes and you're

0:41.0

thinking about what that wildlife would have been like you know with pirates and I guess

0:52.1

the ultimate thing is the mystery, isn't it?

0:57.7

Buried treasure, treasure maps.

0:58.5

Imagine that.

1:03.2

Going out and putting a shovel into the soil and recovering something

1:05.6

that had quite a bit of value to it.

1:10.5

Today on body bags, we're going to talk about a case that, I don't know,

1:17.9

it's been 50 years in the making, a case that involves something that was buried,

1:26.1

buried and after it had been discarded by the state because no one claimed it.

1:35.4

No one claimed it.

1:38.0

For 50 years, a mystery.

1:40.7

A mystery that has in fact been solved.

1:47.3

Oh, by the way, did I mention that in this case there is an X involved in this?

1:58.0

Only the X didn't mark the spot.

...

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