Investigating the Unthinkable: Behind the Tape on the Scene of a Mass Murder

Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan

CrimeOnline and iHeartPodcasts

True Crime

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 4 May 2023

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode of Body Bags, host Joseph Scott Morgan and co-host Dave Mack delve into the emotionally challenging experiences and unique difficulties faced by death investigators and first responders during mass shooting events. They emphasize the importance of maintaining a systematic approach while navigating the emotional and logistical complexities of these events, they discuss the challenges of identifying victims in various settings, explore the significance of conducting autopsies in cases of mass shootings or multiple homicides, how to address religious objections, and the role of medical legal authorities in making final decisions.

Time-codes:

00:00 - Introduction.

01:10 - JoeScott's friend's experience with the Columbine massacre.

02:30 - Discussing being inside the tape on a mass homicide.

03:55 - Broad range of incidents classified as mass shootings.

05:05 - Mention of H. Wayne Carver III and Sandy Hook case.

06:05 - Mass fatality events are not always defined by a specific number of victims.

07:00 - Joseph's involvement in the Buckhead shooting investigation.

08:20 - Mentally processing mass shooting crime scenes in everyday environments.

10:10 - First responders' life-saving mode and gathering information.

11:55 - Challenge of identifying victims in a mass shooting.

14:40 - Identifying victims in different settings (schools vs. public spaces).

15:50 - Increased difficulties faced by death investigators during mass shooting events.

17:30 - Emotional toll of being a death investigator in mass casualty situations.

18:10 - Potential dangers for first responders during mass shooting events.

20:40 - The concept of secondary devices and staying vigilant at crime scenes.

23:25 - Challenges in handling multiple victims and assessing postmortem changes.

25:20 - Use of Tyvek suits for protection during investigations.

26:35 - Composition of investigation teams and processing bodies at crime scenes.

28:05 - Importance of addressing legal requirements and thorough documentation.

31:05 - Moral and legal responsibilities of forensic investigators.

32:45 - Need for autopsies even when the perpetrator is known.

33:20 - Handling religious objections to autopsies.

36:00 - Medical legal authorities can override religious objections to autopsies.

37:30 - Outro.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	A few years ago, I was at a party, I was sitting around a pool, actually down in New Orleans.
0:25.7	I was no longer working with a corner down there, since moved on to the medical examiner,
0:31.3	but it was a party of a group of us that had gotten together to create national standards
0:37.7	for medical legal death investigators, and we were very informal gathering.
0:43.0	We've been working really hard on this program for a couple of years, and it was finally coming
0:47.4	to a conclusion we were hanging out, having a few beers.
0:52.8	One of the gentlemen that was there, I'd become pretty good friends with him, and he was from Colorado,
0:59.2	as a matter of fact, he worked at the Denver Corners office at the time.
1:04.0	He was an interesting fellow because he had been homicide detective in Denver, and prior
1:09.6	to that, he had been a bee cop in Denver, which is how you kind of get your start before
1:15.0	you make it into the homicide bureau.
1:17.5	After arching all of that, my friend had been a corpsman in the Navy, a combat corpsman
1:25.0	that was assigned to a Marine Corps rifle company during Vietnam, and he had done several
1:32.0	tours as a Navy corpsman, you know, in the Marine Corps, they refer to them as Doc, and
1:37.0	they are held in very high esteem, because they take care of these Marines.
1:41.6	My friend told me a story that night, that I'll never forget, when the Columbine massacre
1:48.9	took place.
1:50.3	It was not in Denver, it was in a location that didn't have the same level of resources,
1:55.1	and then what he told me was that he got summoned to that scene to lend a hand, and I remember
2:01.2	sitting there and him looking at me and telling me, out of everything that he had seen in
2:06.7	his career, with a coroner's office in Denver, with the homicide bureau in Denver, and
2:14.7	as a bee cop there in that major city, nothing scarred him as deeply as Columbine.
	...

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