Pathology with Dr. Priya | A Zone 7 Series: Jewelry, Tattoos, and the Stories They Tell
Zone 7 with Sheryl McCollum
iHeartPodcasts and CrimeOnline
4.4 • 696 Ratings
🗓️ 18 August 2025
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A skeleton in the woods. A decade-old missing persons case. No clothing, no wallet—just scattered bones, a handgun, and one unusual clue: a custom brass belt buckle engraved with an eagle. It was the one thing friends and family could describe without hesitation, and it was all Dr. Priya Banerjee needed to confirm an identity and bring long-awaited closure.
In this episode, Dr. Priya Banerjee joins Sheryl McCollum to explore how jewelry, tattoos, piercings, and other personal effects can crack a case wide open. From thin gold chains to infrared-revealed tattoos, shotgun-damaged accessories to telling purse contents, Dr. Priya recounts cases proving that meticulous documentation isn’t just procedure—it’s often the key to solving cases.
Highlights
- (0:00) "Dead men do tell tales.” —the investigative value of jewelry, piercings, and tattoos
- (1:45) Purse contents: receipts, bus passes, and the kind of intel you can’t Google
- (4:00) The thin gold chain that confirmed an identity
- (5:30) Belt buckles don’t lie: solving a decade-old missing persons case
- (9:00) A John Doe’s everyday markers: custom belt buckle, company ring, 70s tattoos
- (10:30) Tattoos and piercings that shout “this is who I am”—from faith and hometown pride to game-day loyalties
- (17:30) Medical examiners and law enforcement: the investigative dream team
About the Hosts
Dr. Priya Banerjee is a board-certified forensic pathologist with extensive experience in death investigation, clinical forensics, and courtroom testimony. A graduate of Johns Hopkins, she served for over a decade as Rhode Island’s state medical examiner and now runs a private forensic pathology practice. Her work includes military deaths, NSA cases, and high-profile investigations. Dr. Priya has also been featured as a forensic expert on platforms such as CrimeOnline and Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. She is a dedicated educator, animal lover, and proud mom.
Website: anchorforensicpathology.com
Twitter/X: @Autopsy_MD
Sheryl McCollum is an Emmy Award–winning CSI, a writer for CrimeOnline, and the Forensic and Crime Scene Expert for Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. She works as a CSI for a metro Atlanta Police Department and is the co-author of the textbook Cold Case: Pathways to Justice. Sheryl is also the founder and director of the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute (CCIRI), a nationally recognized nonprofit that brings together universities, law enforcement, and experts to help solve unsolved homicides, missing persons cases, and kidnappings.
Email: [email protected]
Twitter/X: @ColdCaseTips
Facebook: @sheryl.mccollum
Instagram: @officialzone7podcast
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
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| 0:44.1 | Doc, welcome back. |
| 0:45.9 | Oh, thank you for having me. |
| 0:49.0 | I tell you, we covered clothing pretty good, |
| 0:51.4 | but it is really important to me to talk about jewelry and piercings and tattoos and marks and how |
| 0:56.0 | those things will literally allow a victim to give you some victimology on their own. |
| 1:03.0 | Absolutely. It tells you so much. |
| 1:06.0 | It tells you so much and there's so much truth to dead men do telltales. |
| 1:11.6 | I think about personal effects, jewelry. |
| 1:14.6 | You know, I had a homicide that looked like someone had thought, |
| 1:19.6 | this middle of the night in a cemetery and my investigator thought it was like a rope-style jewelry. |
| 1:25.6 | And I said, no, that's a ligature mark. Obviously, it was almost nearly dark. You can't see. And it ended up being like a ligature mark, a strangulation mark. But he also had chains on his neck. Do you understand? So it's hard to see. You're like, oh, did that just make a mark sort of post-mortem? Is it, you know, |
| 1:45.1 | misinterpretation? Then you think about, you know, I've seen various necklaces or jewelry |
... |
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