BODY BAGS WITH JOSEPH SCOTT MORGAN " From The Black Dahlia to Ed Gein, The Five of Dismemberment!

Summary

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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan – "From The Black Dahlia to Ed Gein, The Five of Dismemberment"

Podcast: Crime Stories with Nancy Grace
Episode Date: January 4, 2026

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Overview of the Episode

In this gripping episode, Joseph Scott Morgan (forensic death investigator) and co-host Dave delve deep into the disturbing world of dismemberment as it appears in notorious true crime cases. Using historical cases like The Black Dahlia and referencing infamous murderers such as Ed Gein, they introduce and explain the five main types of dismemberment found in forensic investigations — "defensive," "aggressive," "offensive," and more. The discussion bridges criminal psychology, forensic details, and cultural reactions to true crime, making for a discussion that is raw, analytical, and at times, chilling.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Black Dahlia Case as Iconic Dismemberment

Timestamps: 00:05 – 17:12

• Media Sensation & Crime Scene Horrors

  • The Black Dahlia (Elizabeth Short) murder (1947) is used as a benchmark case for dismemberment due to its shocking display and media frenzy.
  • Dave emphasizes media coverage:

    "There are always cases...that caught attention because of the B-roll video and physical description. No matter what you say, a body...in grass for all to see is a shocking thing." (04:26)

  • Joseph describes the surgical precision with which Short was bisected, suggesting substantial knowledge and "privacy and most important, time." (08:37)

• Crime Scene Details

  • Morgan details the post-mortem arrangement:

    "Her bowels were actually neatly tucked beneath her body as she was laid out. The body is actually offset, which is really weird." (09:49)

  • Discussion of the "glasgow smile" cut into her face, and musings about its possible influence on movies (The Dark Knight, 10:06).

• Speculation over Perpetrator’s Identity

  • Dave brings up the recurring theory about the killer being a surgeon, possibly the father of a book author (12:36).
  • Morgan expresses skepticism about armchair sleuths linking the Black Dahlia with Zodiac, noting that many such amateur theories lack real proof.

    "It just seems so mercenary for me...because my daddy did it." (14:03)

• No Pattern or Copycats

  • Both note that, despite the case's infamy, "the Dahlia is a one-off" with no other similar cases in that era/region (16:24).
  • Emphasis on forensic indicators of skill and the psychology of body presentation.

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2. The Five Types of Dismemberment Introduced

Timestamps: 17:12 – 48:19

Joseph Scott Morgan transitions into a structured breakdown of dismemberment types observed in his forensic career:

A. Defensive Dismemberment

Example Case: Oklahoma (four men killed/dismembered for body disposal)
Timestamps: 17:12 – 29:58

• Purpose is practical: to make a body manageable and difficult to identify/discover.
• Morgan explains:

  "You have to break this body down into elements just to make it manageable...particularly nasty business." (18:35)

• The Oklahoma case: Perpetrator kills four men he suspected of theft, uses his scrap yard and tools for dismemberment, and attempts to scatter pieces in a river (21:40).
• Forensics challenge: Identifying and reconstructing bodies made difficult when multiple, similarly built victims are involved.

B. Aggressive Dismemberment

Example Cases: Chandler Halderson (Wisconsin), Maryland Matricide
Timestamps: 29:58 – 36:27

• Motivation is emotion-driven, often rooted in rage, frustration, or shame.
• In the Halderson case, a son murders and frantically disposes of his parents after his lies are exposed:

  "He had been lying for so long and...the jig was up, now he's left with, well, if I kill them, I'll get all their stuff." (30:53-Dave)

• Contrast is made between organized psychopaths versus disorganized, frenzied killers:

  "He's kind of frenzied...can you imagine being that? Well, I don't think you can. Hopefully you can't, but hopefully neither can I." (31:06)

• Maryland case: Daughter uses a chainsaw to dismember her grandmother, tries to "render her down" on a backyard grill (34:13), underlining the brutality and lack of planning in such cases.

C. Offensive Dismemberment

Example Cases: Gainesville Ripper, Ingrid Lynn (Seattle), Taylor Schabusiness
Timestamps: 36:27 – 47:15

• Here, the act is sexually motivated: the dismemberment itself is the end goal/aspect of gratification.
• Noted for sadism and a taste for domination, often with extensive mutilation.
• Ingrid Lynn: After a first date, her remains were disposed across multiple trash bins. Key backtracking in the investigation thanks to her mother's actions and forensics discovered a limb saw was used in the bathroom (42:19).
• Taylor Schabusiness Case:
  • After killing Shad Thyron, Schabusiness continued sexual acts with the corpse.

    "She continued to have sex with his dead body...I just can't think of a sane person who would do that." (46:38 – Dave)

• Morgan’s nuanced take:

  "That's why I think that she's touched by sadism here. Not Satanism. Sadism. She has this desire, I think, to inflict pain, and I think through the pain and sexual dominance she exerted over this guy...that came out as the end game." (47:15)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Joseph Scott Morgan, on Black Dahlia’s surgical dismemberment:

  “The margins, like, where the dissection actually took place...not like somebody had done this in a fever. This was very specific. All right. And this goes to someone that...had a certain level of comfort and probably privacy and most important, time.” (08:39)

• Dave, on encountering Elizabeth Short’s body:

  “No matter what you say, a body that is dismembered and is sitting in grass for all to see is a shocking thing, no matter who you are or where you are.” (06:41)

• Joseph, on motivations behind dismemberment:

  “I hate the ‘why’ question, but dismemberment is one of those things where you’ll get that a lot. Why, why, why would—? And I think that it’s one of these things that people cannot take the measure of...because it’s so grotesque and over the top.” (17:12)

• Dave, on the Oklahoma case:

  “If you just find body parts floating in a river, you know, that’s a, that's a tough sell.” (26:18)

• Joseph, on typologies:

  “A psychopath could actually sit there and think about [dismemberment] in a very ordered manner if they're going to do this. This is, you know, part A, part B, part C. That’s not what he did.” (32:30)

• On discovering body parts by accident:

  “When you go to pull [the trash bin] back in, you don’t expect it to still be heavy...he’s staring down at a foot.” (40:03)

• Morgan, on sadistic murderers:

  “I think she perfectly knew exactly what she was doing the entire time, because it wasn’t, ‘Oops, I messed up.’ It was, you know, ...it wasn’t any of that. No, it wasn’t.” (47:15)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:05 – Joseph introduces theme: compartmentalizing knowledge and body parts; The Black Dahlia case noted for dismemberment.
• 04:26-10:06 – Intense discussion of Black Dahlia’s crime scene, media attention, and theory speculation.
• 12:11 – Zodiac/Black Dahlia linkage theories debunked; skepticism about evidence.
• 17:12 – Introduction of five types of dismemberment.
• 20:39-29:58 – Oklahoma river case (defensive dismemberment).
• 29:58-36:27 – Chandler Halderson & aggressive dismemberment cases.
• 36:27-47:15 – Offensive dismemberment, sexual sadism, details of heartbreaking cases (Ingrid Lynn, Taylor Schabusiness).
• 48:19 – Episode wraps, promising more on this subject.

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Episode Tone & Style

The episode is analytic, unsparing in its forensic detail, but also empathetic to the human tragedy and psychological disturbance involved. Both Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave maintain a conversational, at times darkly informal tone that grounds the technical autopsy and criminal psychology in real-world horror.

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Summary prepared for listeners and true crime enthusiasts seeking a comprehensive, illuminating guide to this episode of Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. The focus is on content-rich, forensic and narrative exploration of dismemberment in some of America’s most disturbing homicide cases.

Transcript

[Dave]

This is an iHeart podcast, guaranteed human.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. I'm not by any means the brightest guy in the world. I think that a lot of it, any knowledge that I have that I've been blessed with, comes from repetition and being around it. What I do, you know, for so long, you know, you just kind of absorb it after a while. It doesn't mean that you're. That you're intuitively. Makes sense there, intuitively intelligent. It just means that you can absorb information in my. My area is very specific, okay, in death investigation. And granted, there are all kinds of subcategories within death investigation, but for me, it always has been. The best way to learn things is to compartmentalize them, and I picked them up. I was a big advocate when I was an undergraduate in college of using index cards to run through before I would do testing and that sort of thing. I loved that because it really made me learn the information. But, you know, that kind of breaking down of things lending itself to absorption of knowledge. It's certainly a way that we work in the morgue. We don't just essentially do all of our dissections at one time. We take it piece by piece and learning from each individual element of the human body what we can to try to arrive at a cause and ultimately a manner of death. But, you know, there are people out there, and we've talked about them on the show, who do their own compartmentalizing of human remains. They break them down into various elements and also for various reasons, which we're going to discuss today. Today we're going to talk about the five. The five types of dismemberment that we come across in the field, in forensic science, in medical, legal, death investigation. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Masks. And Dave, you know, you can verify this. I had already mentioned to you that I wanted to do this going into the end of the year, that because we've talked so much about dismemberment, I kind of wanted to cap this thing off relative to what we're trying to do when we bring these cases. And just to go ahead and get this out of the way, I do in fact believe that there is an uptick in the number of dismemberments that are being covered in the news. I can't scientifically verify that. Hopefully I can. Maybe I can get my graduate assistant on that and start collecting some data. But people dismember for all different reasons. But the reason I'm saying to you, I need you to validate up front that I had already said this to you maybe a week or so back that I wanted to do this episode, Body Bags, because just yesterday, without any prior knowledge, there has been an article that has dropped that where it is. I think it was in the Post. I'm not sure. I think it was in the Post and maybe the Daily, Daily Mail Times, where they are now saying that there is a connection between the Black Dahlia and the Zodiac Killer. Now, I'm not here to, you know, to talk about those cases necessarily, particularly the Zodiac, because I don't know that that'll ever be solved. And certainly at this distance in time, I don't know that the Black Dahlia case, but it's one of the first cases I think, that many people ever heard about where there was and really made a big splash, where there was a dismemberment. Well, and it was a very particular kind of dismemberment.

[Dave]

In the case of Elizabeth Short, who was the Black Dahlia, if you remember, Joe, this case, it's. We have on this program talked about how B roll footage for television and pictures actually means a lot about getting coverage for a case. There are always. There are always cases. I don't want to knock any missing person's case or death or anything like that, but I'll give you an example. JonBenet Ramsey, she had. Granted, she's a child who is found dead in her own home. They thought she was kidding. I mean, that whole story. But the reason it caught the attention of the world was all the B roll video that was shown every time they mentioned the case. Here we go. We got the girl on stage. We've got her dancing. We got her, you know, trussed up, wearing makeup and all that at 5 and 6 years old. And as news people cover stories, they look for that. They look for things that will make their story stand out, whether it's the producer trying to make your leg up on the next gig or whatever. And so that actually matters in the coverage that happens, especially when a story is static, meaning there's no new information coming out. In the case of Elizabeth Short, the very first time I ever saw the story, Joe, it was a. It was photos, pictures taken at the scene of this dismembered woman and how her body was positioned in pieces and the description of how her body was found and people were walking. You know, you're talking about in the post World War era of. It was after World War II, right? 40.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah. Yeah, it's like 40, 47. Yeah. It was a 47.

[Dave]

But Elizabeth Short, her. She was called the Black Dahlia because she was seen by a woman walking with her child in a stroller and by others before the police were ever called. And you had a news person with his camera taking photos as police arrived on the scene.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yep.

[Dave]

So before any official photos were taken of this victim, they were already produced. They were already going through the film, you know, and getting it on the paper the next day.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yes.

[Dave]

So that story gained a lot of momentum because of the physical description and the pictures that fit that. Because no matter what you say, a body that is dismembered and is sitting in grass for all to see is a shocking thing, no matter who you are or where you are. It's not something we ever expect to see in our life.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

No, it's not. And can you imagine this. This mother pushing, you know, her. Her baby down the street? And this is kind of a. And this is a weird thing to say now, an undeveloped area of Los Angeles, right? Yeah, it was like. And when you take a look, you can actually see where. I'm not going to say that things had been, you know, that things had been stubbed, you know, ready to build a house over them relative to plumbing and all that, but it looked like that you could tell where sidewalks had been poured and so forth and so on. And her body is laying out there. And she, Elizabeth Short, had been bisected and bisected here, obviously, by two. And again, this goes to the process of dismemberment. She's cut across, if you just think about it, in the. Well, if she's standing up, she's cut in the horizontal plane or around her equator of her body. Okay. And when you see her, her arms are actually bent at the elbow and over her head, palms up, her legs are spread, which I've actually seen that before in. In a series of serial killings where the legs were always spread apart. It's like. It's like a humiliation kind of thing that's going on. And, you know, she. You're literally laid bare before the world. And. And the margins, the margins of the incisions were very, very neat.

[Dave]

What do you mean when you say margins?

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

The margins, like, where the dissection actually took place. So when she's cut in this kind of equatorial position around her midline, there's not like, you know, how we'll get these cases and we'll talk about them. It's like, you know, somebody had done this, like, in a fever. They were using all manner of Tools. This was very specific. All right. And this. This goes to someone that. That, you know, I hate to use the term training, but it was someone that had a certain level of comfort and probably privacy and most important, time. Very little blood left in the body. So it gives you an indication the body had probably been drained. And here's something else. Did you know that her bowels were actually neatly tucked beneath her body as she was laid out? Right. Yeah, dude. But when you look at her body down the long axis. So if we're standing at the top of her head, looking down the long axis from the top of her head to her feet, did you know that the body is actually offset, which is really weird. Like the lower torch. I'm sorry.

[Dave]

It's on purpose.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

I can. I don't know. You went to. The person that did this, went to so much trouble to do a kneed incision or a bisection, actually taking the body completely apart, but yet you don't take the time to align the body.

[Dave]

Right.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

The body is kind of offset. Now, you know, I'm not Karen with a Sea Stark out here. I can't sit here. And as a forensic psychologist, which I ain't and don't want to be, I can't, you know, sit here and tell you what kind of profile this person had. However, I can tell you that the body is obviously askew. The other thing, and I find this fascinating. We'll talk about movies in just a second. But when you think about her body, I think about the Batman with Heath Ledger in it, because she actually had a smile cut into her face. Her face was actually just so disfigured. And it goes from the corner of her mouth up, just turning up. And I swear, Dave, it looks just like the smile that Heath Ledger had in the Batman movie, which to me, in that canon of movies is probably the best. Heath Ledger was incredible as a joker and I think very disturbing. But, you know, just that was carved into her face. And I wonder if. If they got that idea and reflect that. You know, you and I talk about movies every now and then on the show. I got to tell you, there was a movie that came out in 2006 which was directed by Depalma, and it was a complete dumpster fire. I cannot tell you how disappointed I was in that movie. I was really, really hoping that it was going to be one of these things that really knocked our socks off. And it was a dumpster fire with really bad smell to it. I don't know how else, but interestingly enough, Going back to the Zodiac connection, David Fincher, who did. I think he did seven. He was slated to do that movie. He didn't do it. He's the one that winds up doing the Zodiac movie, which was fantastic. That had Jake Gyllenhaal in it. And that movie was actually. Even though you didn't see a slash or anything, it was quite terrifying.

[Dave]

All right, now, Joe, what is happening now? And we did talk about this. You and I talked about the Black Dahlia story, like, last week, and for there to be some movement on this story now this week and today. It's all over. I'm surprised at a connection between the Zodiac, which is predominantly San Francisco, Northern California.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Exactly.

[Dave]

You have the Black Dahlia, which is one murder case in Southern California in a neighborhood in the 40s, residential neighborhood in the south part of Los Angeles. I. I guess I'm trying to figure out, based on a number of things that have been said about the Black Dahlia case, there's a man who has written a book about his father believing that his father, who is a surgeon, actually was the murderer, and he has this whole thing cooked up where his dad, you know, got her home and dissect. Just drain it all over blood in the bathtub kind of thing.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah. No, and I. I actually went off. There's a tape of me on YouTube, I think, and I was on with Vinnie Politan on HLN years ago. And I. I don't know if it's the same guy. Yeah. But I go off. I was. I was actually. I did a phoner. I was nowhere. And they said, we want you to comment on this book that's just come out. I said, oh, I'll be glad to, because if you've got this much information, at that time, there were still a lot of family members that were alive, I guess there still are. Of Zodiac victims. If you've got this information, get an attorney, go to San Francisco, to the PD and these other associated, and get in their face and say, I've got this information. What can you do with it? Let's get some resolutions for this. It just seems so mercenary for me. Yeah. About. Yeah. Because my daddy did it.

[Dave]

Yeah.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

And. And then, of course, I get these responses like, well, he made an attempt to go to the Chief of Police of San Francisco. Yeah, well, nothing ever came of that.

[Dave]

Right.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

You know, because there was supposed to be DNA connectivity. But with this case, what they're saying now and again, this is another amateur sleuth that has come onto this thing. They're opining that this case in particular is connected to the Zodiac. And the one suspect is a guy that was a combat medic in World War II. Okay. And that he had some disturbances and this sort of thing. And he had gotten into fights and was really unbalanced. And so he actually winds up changing his name because they were initially looking at him as a witness in the Black Dahlia. And eventually he changes his name and bounces out of town. Right. And abandons like his family and everything else. Well, he makes his way back to the Bay Area, I think in the early 60s. I might be way off here, but that's kind of how the story is going. Makes contact, I think, with his daughter maybe, again, I don't really know. And he essentially has gone off his nut apparently and involved himself somehow in these so called zodiac killings. And I still don't know that there's substantive proof that these kind of interlaced, that what they have said or interlaced cases are actually connected. I don't know that there's ever been positive proof that that, you know, actually happened.

[Dave]

Wasn't Zodiac similar to Berkowitz, you know, shooting couples and.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah, there was elements of that. You had the one cab driver that was like, what's that area that's like really, really ritzy in or used to be in, in. Is it Spot, Spy, Glass Hill or whatever. It's like a neighbor. I can't remember that. I love San Francisco. I used to love San Francisco, but he was shot. He was a cabbie. He was shot. He was a single. That was shot there in his car. And they had the lovers on lover lane. Lovers lane. Then he varies and attacks this young couple out by lake with a knife.

[Dave]

Right.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

You know, that sort of thing kind of changed. But with those cases there was. This is the big standout to me, Dave. There was no dismemberment.

[Dave]

That's what I was going to ask you.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah.

[Dave]

I don't remember anything ever being. And yet the Dahlia is a one off. You know, we don't have another case in Southern California within that same time frame where anything like what happened with Elizabeth Short was reported as happening again. And somebody who would go to this great effort to present the body in such a way where the sharp. Where it wasn't an amateur or wasn't somebody who didn't know what they were doing because of her body. Right. You were talking about how her body was positioned a little off center, but still the cutting was professional or experienced. Yes, draining of the blood was experienced. I mean, there was a lot going on with that one body. And it doesn't seem like people start at that level. It's like they grow into that level.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Right? And a corpse is a corpse. You know, like if you can turn someone by your own hand into a corpse, in other words, kill them. That body. That body. People love to throw the term around objectification all the time, and they use it, I think, incorrectly. This is truly the epitome of turning a person into a doll, if you will, and breaking that person apart from by any means necessary. But it fits. This case does. At least the Black Dahlia fits into one specific category. Some of the stuff I'm going to reveal might just shock you. I hate the why question, but dismemberment is one of those things where you'll get that a lot. Why, why, why would. And I think that it's one of these things that people cannot take the measure of, Dave, because they. It's so foreign, because it's so grotesque and over the top. And you and I have spoken about this in the past where, you know, I'll say, wasn't enough just to kill the person, right? You've got to go another step deeper into evil here. And so with that said, I, I felt that it was incumbent upon us to kind of, to kind of talk about, you know, some of these, some of these cases. And, you know, the, the first, the first stop along the tour here is something where that's called defensive dismemberment. And most of the time, this is more of a. This, this is dismemberment is used. It has specific utility. In other words, you can't, you cannot move the body. You have to do something after you have killed an individual, to fragment or to parse up or however you want to frame it. You have to break this body down into elements just to make it manageable. Dave. In some, some of these cases, these people can be rather rotund because that's very difficult to manage. There's a reason they call it dead weight. And what's really kind of ghastly about this dismemberment of a morbidly obese person is particularly nasty business. And there are a multiplicity of reasons why, but it just, it takes it to a whole new level. But I think, if I remember correctly, Dave, there was a case that you and I, and it wasn't so much this case, it was out of Oklahoma, this case had anything to do with. You had somebody that was morbidly obese. You had. And you And I were both shocked by this. I remember when we laid this down, we had multiple people that were dissected. Dave.

[Dave]

I know. And when you're talking about for men, okay, immediately, I'm gonna be honest with you, that shocks me, and I don't think it should shock me anymore than any other group of four that were found dead and are pulled from a river. But, Joe, the fact that we've got four men and they were all very young, and, And I mean, we're talking 29, 30, and 32, that just tells you a lot about the men who were killed, but it doesn't tell you a whole lot else. Joe, our police chief there at the time, his name is Joe Prentice, and he actually said at a news conference, all four bodies were dismembered before being placed in the river. And that is what caused difficulty in determining identities, and that's why it took so long. So do they know. Were they all killed at the same time in the same place and then taken out in a jamboat and tossed over the side like chum?

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

That's an excellent question. And there's not too much, you know, there's not a lot, you know, in a river. River is going to act, you know, in some landlocked place like. Like Oklahoma, where this took place. River is going to primarily be used to disguise a body. All right? Because there's not. It's not like you're going to the Everglades or south Louisiana, you know, where you got the swamp crawfish will feed on bodies. Most lakes, most ponds and. And creeks and rivers in that area of the country, you've got plenty of crawfish. And there might be. As the body begins to soften, you can have other scavengers that might come along, like catfish, probably to a certain degree. Other species might feed on bodies, but you're not going to have kind of the wholesale total disruption of the body. Now the aquatic environment is going to break. Break these bits down quicker because body is, in fact, dissected, if I'm not mistaken. Was it in this particular case? I can't remember if the guy. The guy used tools in this, and it seems like there were power tools. I'm not mistaken. And what had happened is the perpetrator in this case caught these fellas stealing from him, and he owned like a. A junkyard or something like this. And what's really weird is these guys had showed up on bicycles to do this. That kind of stood out in my mind as well.

[Dave]

It does, because you're Dealing with, you know, what if you're 29 years old, 30, 32, and you're riding a bicycle, you know, everybody does that when they're seven, but not when you're 30, unless you're mountain biking or in a race for something. Unless you have. You don't just tool around town.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

If you live in London or New York.

[Dave]

Right.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Not in Oklahoma, but not in rural Oklahoma. And I can't. And these guys. These guys were big guys. You know, they were like outdoorsy kind of guys. A couple of them. They're. They're. They're. They obviously used, you know, the news media use these images of these subjects wearing, like, utility worker vests. These guys. Or like, they were road crew. These guys had worked out they were hard workers, you know, or worked, you know, worked in the real world. They both got those kind of farmer tans going on and this sort of thing. But apparently this guy thought that they were stealing from him. And, you know, I remember after this guy facilitated this, and I remember telling you at the time, there's no telling what type of instruments this guy had because he ran. He ran a junkyard. And, you know, you. If you're dealing things like scrap metal, there's all kinds of ways to break up bodies. But this is going to be a defensive dismemberment because he's trying to put as much distance between himself and these bodies as he can. He's got to do something to dispose of them. When you begin to think about, you know, what am I going to do with four grown men and their bodies? What's kind of odd about this is that even after this had done, he went to all the trouble to dissect the bodies. I guess he's sitting around wringing his hands because he bolts. He hops in a car and drives off to Florida. At this point in time, of course, they eventually catch this guy. But, you know, one more point I'd make about this case is the fact that when they're trying to put these bodies back together, you've got four guys that probably all approximate the same size. And when you take four bodies and let's just say they're all bisected, okay? Which just means cut in two. I think that there was probably more extensive cutting than that. You still have to put pieces together to make them match. And it's not like it's some kind of toy set where it's, you know, insert slot B into slot A and you've got a connection with this piece. It's not like that because you're having to scientifically connect them together, which can be problematic. But in this case, you've got an individual that used the facility of his location in order to make this happen and try to get as much distance between him and the bodies. It's weird because many people will essentially kill people and not put distance between themselves and leave them around. This guy made an effort to get these bodies away from him and it's still. The wheel still came off. Dave.

[Dave]

You know, interesting you use that term because they never located the bicycles that these four men took out of the house. You know, they leave one of the family members homes and all four of these adult men go tooling at 9 o' clock at night down the road, they end up at Joseph Kennedy Salvage yard where they're up to no good. Now, by the way, police got this information from a fifth man who was invited onto the crime spree and he's the one that went to police. I don't know if he came to them after they went missing, before the bodies were found. Don't know. But they did have an insider that came up and said, hey, they were stealing stuff and I was invited, but I didn't go or I'd have been in there with them. And that's how they were able to tie this together. Because if you just find body parts floating in a river, you know, that's a, that's a tough sell. And yeah, you mentioned Kennedy. Joseph Kennedy takes off, you know, for Daytona, Florida, which is where they got him. And they rested him there in Daytona, Florida and had to Daytona beach and had to actually extradite him back to Oklahoma where he was formerly charged with four counts of first degree murder. And they never, I don't think they ever found the gun that he shot them first. Okay, he kills them with a gun, then he dismembers them.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah, because you can't. What's he going to do? He's going to try to knock each one of these guys in the head with a ball peen hammer. You have to do this quickly in order to knock these guys down and take them by surprise. And you know that, you know that that goes into the elements of what would be the motivation? Because I don't know about you, but I've had things stolen from me and I do have rage. I'm sure you've had rage. When you've had things that have stolen from you, you have anger. It, you know, on the surface it does make you, I think, aggressive, but it's not the Same as the second type of dismemberment, which is actually referred to as aggressive dismemberment. Now, you know, how do we kind of break this down with aggressive dismemberment, which is number two along our continuum here of dismemberments? It's the second most common. It's most of the time, it is. There is a little fire that's burning within somebody where they are angry over probably a protracted period of time. They might see themselves as failure. They might not want to be held accountable for something horrific that they have done. And I say horrific. That's not the correct word. Let's just say that in the case of Chandler Halderson out of Wisconsin, his whole thing was he had been lying to both his mom and dad, Dave, for a protracted period of time, deceiving them, you know, trying to, you know, trying to make them think that he was out in the job market, that he's working, and they're confronting him about this, and all of a sudden this. This kid snaps. You have to think that, you know, was his motivation anger and laziness, you know, and that one moment that he decided to put forward motion into his life. He didn't do it in the area of studying to improve himself or whatever. I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to kill my parents and then I'm going to, you know, split them up into pieces and try to get rid of their bodies. Dave.

[Dave]

And he. Actually, I had to cover this case, and I think you run it a lot, too, with.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

I was. I was.

[Dave]

We spent a lot of time looking at the case piece by piece, literally to try to determine what really was going on here. Because I think sometimes when we see, especially a child that attacks parents, we try to think, was there something underlying? Was there something else here? Because for us, we think there has to be something more. It couldn't really have just been that he. He had been lying for so long and he knew he was caught and they were going to cut off funding his lifestyle, you know, that he was. The jig was up, and now he's left with, well, if I kill them, I'll get all their stuff and live my life. You know, that's where we get stuck with that sometimes, because we have to. We in our own minds have to figure out, why would anybody do this?

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yes.

[Dave]

And there is no rhyme or reason to it. It really makes no sense. When you've got a young person that chooses this path as a decision they think is A good way to go about life right now for them and their parents.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah. And I think that he, you know, I guess again this goes to motivation and it's not necessarily my bailiwick, but when you see what he did to their bodies, he's got them, you know, he's got, he's got them in multiple pieces and he's, you can tell that he's kind of frenzied because he's trying to decide how he's going to divest himself of his parents remains. Can you imagine being that? Well, I don't think you can. Hopefully you can't, but hopefully neither can I.

[Dave]

Right.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

But all of a sudden you're faced with this kind of eye popping situation where it's like, oh, okay, I've literally pulled the trigger on my parents. Yeah, they know and what am I going to do now?

[Dave]

Multiple gunshot wounds, you know?

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah, they did.

[Dave]

It was a hunting accident. You're not, you know, you're not out hunting with Dick Cheney. You can't say it was an accident.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Right.

[Dave]

Your parents, they've got multiple gunshot wounds. So your next best choice, I mean, think about it. The best choices this guy had made led him to this. So we're not dealing with a mental or mature individual. We're dealing with an idiot who chose one idiot action after another. Now you mentioned frenzied in his way of, of dismembering.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yes.

[Dave]

How would that be different in terms of what you would see as you're looking at the. I hate to make it sound like you're putting a puzzle together, but I would imagine that's what you're doing, trying to figure out everything.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah, you are, you, you're in a situation where I think that you cannot, you don't, your brain is not ordered to, to the point. And this actually goes, I think to the fact that he's not some psychopath. Because a psychopath could actually sit there and think about very, in a very ordered manner if they're going to do this. This is, you know, part A, part B, part C. That's not what he did. He even attempted to burn the bodies in, in the, I think in the, the fireplace in the home. He winds up distributing the bodies at a cabin that was up the road, you know, from the family home. And you know, he's lied about what became of them. Where did they go?

[Dave]

He reported him missing. That was all. He's the one that reported him missing.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah. And if I remember correctly, he walked down the road to neighbors houses and asked Them. Have you seen my parents?

[Dave]

Yeah, it was crazy.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

And the one thing that really stands out to me is there's that. That one woman, they had a video of her. I don't know if she had her phone out or whatever it was. She let him in her house. And this is in the wake of this. And he's like, I'm just here looking for my parents. Can you help me? And I'm thinking, oh, my Lord. Boy, did she dodge bullet. This case, Dave, and I don't know if you remember this, but this case is not too dissimilar from one other one that was an aggressive dismemberment. And it was the two women. It was a daughter and a granddaughter. And this was in Maryland.

[Dave]

Oh, yes, I remember. In the basement.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah, yeah. Where the. The daughter had killed the grandmother and they. They had used. Or she had used a chainsaw and made her daughter act as a lookout to see if the sisters of grandmother were going to show up. And what makes this so incredible, I think that this was again, another aggression related kind of thing with the dismemberment. What are you going to do? Because they tried. This is the part that got me. Not that the rest of it with a chainsaw and everything doesn't get me, but they tried to render her down on a barbecue girl in the backyard. And again, that goes to, you know, this anger. There's no honoring of the dead here. And actually she retained the body parts. They were in a basement. In the basement down. Down in the house where she had actually been killed. She'd been killed up in her room. And so there was a lot of blood deposition. You've got a chainsaw that generates high velocity blood deposition. Almost looks like high velocity gunshot wounds. And it would be everywhere. One of the most messy undertakings that you can possibly have. But, you know, we've left you with two at this point. We've still got, believe it or not, three more different types of dismemberment to go. Hold on to your hat. We've, we've had this, this discussion going, Dave, about the types of dismemberment. Probably one of the most chilling ones that, you know, they're all chilling by their own right. But there is, there is a type of dismemberment that is out there that actually drives a person. It's. I think that. That the actual dismemberment of the body is the end game. It's the thrill of it.

[Dave]

Oh, wow.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Because there is a sexual connotation. I think that Even if you look perhaps back at the Gainesville Ripper, you know, that the. The movie Scream was based on. There was a sexual element to that. I believe. I believe there were at least one, maybe two. I can't recall. My brain's foggy right now, the decapitations. But, you know, with. With. With offensive dismemberment, there's an element that they believe that is sexual in nature. The person probably has a taste of sadism. That's part of who they are. It's part of the person that they are. The. You know, the case I think that first came to. To mind for me, and I mentioned this case a lot because it's so horrific, is the. The murder of Ingrid Lynn up in Seattle, you know, where she had been on a dating app and, you know, she was a nurse, had two small kids, had a good relationship with her ex husband. I think the ex husband was. Yeah, she was gorgeous. Had, you know, the ex husband, had the kids so she could go out on a date. They went to a Mariners ball game in Seattle, and they. Being the person that she hooked up with on the dating app, Dave. And this. This did not end well.

[Dave]

John Robert Charlton was his name.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah.

[Dave]

Takes her out to a Seattle Mariners game. What a great first date. You know, if you're.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Hey, look, I got to say, that was mine and Kim's first date, man. We went to see the Toronto Blue Jays in interleague play against the Braves.

[Dave]

Wow.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Took her on a Friday night. Yeah. I'll never Forget. It was 1998. John Smoltz pitched, and he lost four.

[Dave]

Oh, wow, dude, you should have never gone out with her again after that. Come on. At any rate, so Charlton takes her out and they go on this. This date. And you mentioned the ex husband watching the children so she could go on this date, which is. There are a few people that I know, thankfully, who have survived the divorce and maintained a good relationship for their children, and that's what they were attempting to do, which that tells me a lot about the person we're talking about here in Ingrid's case, because it takes a certain intestinal fortitude, put others first. And to put herself in a position with this person she doesn't know. And to go to a very safe first date at a ball game.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah.

[Dave]

She's reported missing the next day, and she's last seen, you know, going out on the date. The thing that got me about this one, and you might have to correct me because wasn't it a homeowner?

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah.

[Dave]

That had Because Seattle being what it is, not knocking it. My sister lives in Seattle, and she's a school teacher. She's not liberal, but my sister, they have. They have cans, you know, between recycling and not recycling. And, boy, if you put the wrong thing in the wrong can, you're in trouble. And that's what came to mind on this, because this had something to do with the recycling that caused this neighbor to look and go, hey, this ain't mine. I didn't put this here.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah, he. He went out there and goes to. You know when. If you live in a city that does trash pickup, and you go, you. You put your bin out by the road. When you go to pull it back in, you don't expect it to still be heavy.

[Dave]

No.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Okay. So this guy is pulling the trash bin back in. It's heavy. He's like, what is this? He opens the lid up. If I remember correctly, he's staring down at a foot.

[Dave]

Yes.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

And. Yeah. No. It's one of the most horrific things.

[Dave]

And here's where my mind went.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah.

[Dave]

When we first had this, Joe, my first thought was, okay, the case is broken because this homeowner. Because the homeowner had. The body, was in his trash can as he's pulling it back up. If the killer had been a couple hours or minutes earlier.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yep.

[Dave]

She would have been in the trash, and nobody would have known.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

No, I'm so glad you said that, because that's indicative of a timestamp relative when that particular remain was placed in there. So, you know, that he must have deposited this after the trash run had taken place, you know, because you wouldn't have had this reaction from the owner. Right. So dragging it back in. Looks down, and I can't even imagine. You know, I've got visions of myself walking up my bathrobe with a cup of coffee in my hand, and I'm walking back up the driveway, you know, with. With the bend trailing behind me, and you feel this weight, and you open it up. And as it turns out, when she did not show up to pick up the kids, or. No, wait, that wasn't the way it was. The husband. Ex husband. Brought the kids back to their home. She didn't answer the door. And he's like, one of the first people, I think it was. It was one of her relatives that he alerted.

[Dave]

He called her mom.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

They called the mom. They made entry, and she's nowhere to be found. And that was just so far outside of the norm. But you know what. What was eventually discovered, other than her remains After a period of time that had been, you know, subsequently deposited in various bins around the area, they discovered that whoever did this had actually used a limb saw, which, if you think about the big curved handle, you know, with a thin blade.

[Dave]

No, one of the hands, like a handsaw. Not a power saw.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

No, not a power saw, but like a limb saw. And so. And he did this in the bathroom because you could see they still had. They had trace evidence around the drain. They had it in the drain trap of blood and tissue. Because you're going to generate, if you. I urge everybody, if you get a chance to take a look at one of these saws, look down the long axis of the saw, and you'll see that the teeth are not perfectly aligned. They're kind of offset a little bit. Well, have you ever wondered why when you look at one of these saws, if you ever saw the limb off, there's a lot of sawdust that gets caught up in there, and that's because it's very destructive. Okay? Very, very destructive. It really goes through these limbs in a very efficient way. However, it gathers up all of this dust and the bark and everything else that's particulated at that point in time. It's the same thing with bone and muscle and any kind of sinew that it goes through and the skin and the hair, you know, you'll get that caught up on the blade as well.

[Dave]

You know, Joe, how they got him, you know how they figured out who it was?

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Please tell me it was her mom.

[Dave]

Okay, when. When the mom is called by the ex husband and they make entry into her house, okay, she's not. Lynn is not home angry. She's nowhere to be found. And so they look around and they find her purse and they find her phone. Mom picks up her phone, and she knows who she was going to go out on a date with, knowing that she was going out with Charlton. So what does she do? Using the cell phone in the residence, Lynn's mother calls Charlton and hey, what happened? Where is she? And as soon as she hung up from the phone, she called the police. She used herself, her daughter's cell phone, to call the police and say, hey. Or actually, you know what? She sent a text to Charlton. That's what it was. It was not voice. It was text. Sorry. And then she called the police, and that's when they discovered the blood and everything else at Charlton's place.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah, and. And they're. They're trying to say, you know, the police are trying to. Pete, no pun. Intended. I keep falling in that trap. They're trying to put this thing together relative to who she had finally had contact with. And look at the top list. And what's really weird, Dave, is this perpetrator was homeless man, you know, and. And he. When you see him in the interviews, he looks like a kind of a well put together guy, but he's living on streets, you know, up in Seattle, unlike, you know, the case involving. And we're. I can't say we're just coming off of this. It seems like it has been going on forever and ever. And this is that damn Taylorship business case as well. And again, I think this falls into the category of offensive dismemberment, because this poor guy that she just absolutely wrecked, he. He's kind of this. To me, he just. He always came off. And everything that I read about him, everything that I saw, he kind of came off as. As kind of a passive kind of guy. She's 25. Shad Thyron, who is the victim here, is 24. You know, she's actually charged in this case, Dave, of, you know, like I said. And that's why I believe it goes to this homicide, obviously, because she killed him, but third degree sexual abuse and mutilating a corpse.

[Dave]

Yeah.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

And, you know, she had. She had actually done this down in the basement of his mother's home, man.

[Dave]

Yeah. And, you know, it was. It was Shad Therian's mom who actually discovered.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yeah.

[Dave]

And parts of his anatomy, parts of his body.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Yep.

[Dave]

And police found that your business used knives that were found in the home. Okay. Just knives found in the home, Joe. To dismember a body after. After she killed him, she continued to have sex with his dead body. Now, there are so many questions I have about that that, to be honest with you, I don't even want to ask because I don't want my brain to go down that path.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Right.

[Dave]

But immediately, I'm really. That's. I know that you cannot just say, just because I don't understand the proclivity, that it makes that person insane. I just can't think of a sane person who would do that. But based on her activity and what she did after and the way she presents herself. Yep. I think she perfectly knew exactly what she was doing the entire time, because it wasn't, oops, I messed up. It was, you know, it wasn't, hey, man, we're into this really kinky stuff. We like to take it really close to death as we climax. It wasn't any of that Joe no, it wasn't.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

And that's why I think that she's touched by sadism here. I don't mean Satanism. I mean sadism. She has this desire, I think, to inflict pain, and I think through the pain and the sexual dominant dominance that she exerted over this guy, not just in life, Dave, but in death as well. I think that that came out at the end game here. Just like with all of these offensive dismemberment cases, it plays out so that it's a, it's, it's a, an event where these individuals can, in fact, bring themselves to sexual satisfaction, even if it means murder. Dismemberment. That was part one of the types of dismemberment. Part two is coming up. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags.

[Dave]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Joseph Scott Morgan]

Guaranteed Human.