5 Dead in 10 Months Along One Mile Trail: The Lansing Serial Killer

0:01 Body Bags with Joseph Scott Moore. As investigators, one of the things that we pride ourselves on is pattern recognition. It's something, it's kind of our life's blood. I know that, you know, I'm proud of all of my forensic experience, but part of it that, you know, kind of plays in here is looking for specific patterns, particularly when You have multiple deaths and not just any kind of deaths, but homicides. You're trying to put things together to try to understand them. And forensics is a big part of that.

0:40 It's not, you know, just talking about, I don't know, things like profiling. It's actually the physical evidence, how a body presents, all these sorts of things. Well, today it has come to my attention that we actually have what appears to be, according to authorities, a potential serial killer. Now, we've talked about serial killers before on body bags, but this one is kind of set apart in the sense that the pattern that I'm seeing here is unlike anything that I've covered, to the best of my recollection, on body bags. We're talking about these cases that have emerged out of Lansing, Michigan. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this...

1:28 is Body Bags. Brother Dave.

1:33 Hey.

1:36 How you doing, man?

1:37 Buddy, looking at the possibility that there is a serial killer in Lansing, Michigan, this story, Joe, it's been floating for a little while now.

1:49 It has been, yeah.

1:50 Not that dissimilar from the one we have in Texas.

1:53 Yeah.

1:53 Around the water there, Lady Bird Lake, you know? Yeah. But that... Let's just get to the nitty gritty here. We have five, count them five. We have five men, all referred to as unhoused.

2:07 Okay.

2:08 Because I don't know all of them.

2:09 Structurally challenged?

2:10 Yeah, I didn't know what it meant. I kind of assumed I knew, but I didn't want to go that far, so I looked it up. What does it mean when you're calling somebody unhoused? That means they are homeless in Lansing, Michigan. And friends, there are a lot of reasons people are homeless, okay? And I'm going to leave it at that. But we have five men, and between the ages of 22 and 70, unhoused and all dead in the last 14 months. Check this out. Gino Chouinard, 54 years old. Dennis Dunneback is 70.

2:46 Robert Smith, 57.

2:46 Daniel Lusk, 22. And Louis Woodruff, 57. Now, Joe, when we first started looking, that's five bodies in 14 months. That is something to seriously look at, I think, mainly because it's in one area around Lansing, Michigan, and it is around one area near downtown. Yeah, it is. And, boy, Joe, you're going to have to dig into the injuries and what have you because these were not dead by guns.

3:26 Somebody isn't shooting and the people are not found dead. They're found unconscious, you know, or bleeding or what have you. So this is a little bit different than a lot of other stories we've covered. And in trying to figure out, is there a serial killer at work in Lansing, Michigan?

3:43 Yeah. I got to tell you this. One of the things that's fascinating. Well, there's not one, several, several little points along here that are quite, quite fascinating. First off, we, When we think about serialized events like this, we're looking at injuries, okay, and specifically fatal injuries. That's a pattern that we try to begin to understand because with serial offenders, if they are set on a course, there's a certain comfort level that they attain with the decision, how am I going to weaponize myself in order to facilitate the end of somebody's life? Then we think about body status, which is a big part of this. What condition was the body in when the perpetrator left? Now, there's an interesting little interlude here because with these particular cases, there's

4:43 a couple of these victims that were not finished off. They were allowed medicine, they use the term, they have the dwindles. You have somebody in a hospital and they begin to die. Left a couple of these guys in the dwindles, if you will.

4:59 I've never heard that term, the dwindles.

5:02 Yeah, it's kind of dark humor that you hear in hospitals. Circling the drain is the other one that you hear as well. But we won't go there. And my medical friends out there will know what I'm talking about. And so you have that, and then you have the geographic deposition of bodies, right? What does this tell us relative to the activities of the perpetrator? Also, maybe even more importantly, what does it tell us about the activities of the decedent, the victim? And there's a couple other little things along the way. But, you know, for me, those issues really stand out because I've always envisioned serial killers, and I know this is an old trope, I've always envisioned them as hunters. I can't get off of that. That's just

6:01 something that's kind of, you know, emblazoned in my brain. I can't get off of that in the sense that they are looking to pick off, I think, the least among us many times. You know, you're not going to go– it's weird how you'll see some of these people that– and it's not just serial perpetrators. You know, the person that wants to victimize individuals, you don't see them going after some, you know, 250-pound construction worker, you know, to go beat them down or do some kind of grievous harm to them as part of their serial, you know, event.

6:39 It's always those individuals that are the most vulnerable, right? And so you compare that to animal behavior and you look at, you know, how a lion will kind of circle, you know, just waiting to pick somebody off or pick off, you know, I don't know, the wounded or the youngest or whatever the case would be, the infirm, the old, you know, all those sorts of things. And so you look at this one, this is a bit different. First off, we've got a cluster of males here, don't we, Dave? Yep.

7:07 And as we mentioned, unhoused males. But, you know, Joe, when you look at something like this, I'm kind of curious because as we came to the story, and it had been suggested by a few that we look into it because it's a question mark. Does Lansing, Michigan have a serial killer? And I get it. You've got five homeless men killed in a very short window of time.

7:32 But I want to share a couple of quick things because I'm wondering, Joe, in that line of work, Do you guys have the ability to look out and look at a big picture of what's taking place in the community to even see if there's a pattern here? Or are you guys really so caught up with day to day that you don't have time to look at something unless it's brought to your attention?

7:58 Right. I'm glad you brought that up because that's why. And I can almost guarantee that this is happening right now. And it is key here because it's not. brother Dave and Joe Scott saying that there's a serial killer. This is like the people that are in charge that are, you know, saying this. All right. So when you talk about looking at the big picture, that's, that's why you will always find in any of these kinds of events, they will assemble a task force. And that's because if you have enough manpower, all right, you will, and it all depends on the tempo, right? So if you have, You will actually have people that will be assigned to the task force and this is all they're doing. Right.

8:41 So they're not catching cases. They're ongoing cases. And this is really hard to do because it's very, very expensive because you still got other crimes that have to be investigated around the area. Right. Many times you will find with task force, you will find a multi-agency task force that where they will bring in people from other agencies that they can spare, you know, like a local, you know, like maybe two towns away or a state element, certainly a federal element with this. And this is all they're going to do. They're going to start working this thing and they're going to work from each individual scene and try to build it out relative to the profile and relative to understanding, um, not just the profile of killer,

9:27 but the profile of the, of the victims, you know, what, what, Data set do they fit into? And then you're, you know, you want to try to explain the trauma that they have gone through, the victims that is. So, yeah, it's you're taking that kind of bird's eye view because it is easy to get blinders on, I think. And this is really working a serialized event like this is really this is truly stuff that's between the ears. The investigation is between your ears relative to trust. to understand it and try to make sense of it. Because again, it goes back to pattern recognition.

10:05 I'm like everybody else. I mean, it's what ties them together. And I even sent Joe, I know yesterday as I was looking over this again, because we've been tracking it for a week now and maybe a little longer, but As I was putting them together, I'm going, there are two that don't fit. Now, three is still serial killer status, right?

10:27 Yes, it is.

10:28 Okay.

10:28 Three or more.

10:29 So I do think we are looking at the possibility there is a serial killer who is in the area. Possible. I don't live in Lansing, Michigan. Never been there. So I can't even. understand the geography from a personal standpoint. But let's just look at these, Joe, because of the five men, again, homeless, all unhoused. And I sometimes seems wrong to me say unhoused. It just I'm not really sure why, you know, just seems odd. But all the the bullet points on this case is this five deaths along the river trail. From October 2025 to August 2026.

11:14 I think I said 14 months. Actually, we're looking at, let's just call it 10 months, right? All right. So a year, give or take. Victims are all men. Most suffered facial injuries or blunt force trauma. Now, there's a big difference between a simple facial injury and blunt force trauma. Facial injury could be you're shaving and cut yourself. Blunt force trauma could be a fist to the same spot, right?

11:46 Yeah, or a stomp or a kick. Yeah. And so, again, what elements are involved here from an evidentiary standpoint that, you know, where, you know, the dead are speaking to us, you know, in this particular, in these circumstances. And you have to be very, very careful here. from an interpretive standpoint, how you're going to be reading into anything, how you've been read in by other people that are there, because they can color your opinion. I was just speaking to someone the other day that wanted me to review an autopsy report, and I was glad to do it. And when I did that, I told the individual that was turning this over to me, I don't want to know anything about the case, period. Just let me read the report.

12:42 And this report's been around for a long, long time. And then you come back and you fill me in. Let me know what the circumstantial issues are here. And you have to, I think that if you're on a task force and you're working something like this, which I've been on, I think, two of these task forces over the years, It's very compartmentalized and this is what your job is. And then you try to put it all together.

13:09 But here's the problem, folks. At this point in time, they do have pieces. They do have circumstances. And they do have specific findings. But now the pieces are all kind of spread all over the table like a jigsaw. And no one can seem to find the edges. Music Well, Brother Dave, it's important, I think, for us to just go through these cases one by one and try to understand time, geography, and certainly injuries. And in addition to that, the individual, trying to understand what demographic do they fall into. Now, you had said that we have five at this point in time. And here's the curious thing, just kind of going ahead and laying the groundwork. Geographically, these all happen in a very small space. You know, when compared to

14:19 like you have, I say small space, we're talking about a stretch of this trail. And I think it's the river trail is what it's referred to as. And it does literally run along the side of a river. It looks like You know, to me, when you see it, it looks like a place that people would go and contemplatively walk or jog or take their doggies out and that sort of thing. You've got the river flowing right next to you. But we have to think about who all is occupying the space and why is it that this is, at least at this point in time, it's limited to literally a one mile area. You know, I've worked serial investigations before where you'll have bodies that will be spread over a big geographic area. Dave, this is

15:06 very concentrated. So, you know, our first victim here, this is back on 2025? October 14th of last year. October 14th. This is the Chouinard that was found. And here, again, this is one of these touchstones. When he is found, you had previously mentioned that the subject had facial injuries. Now, The qualifier here is that these aren't just merely facial injuries.

15:33 You talked about cutting yourself shaving. Yeah, technically that is a facial injury. They're using the term serious facial injuries. And so, you know, what does that exactly mean? I'm thinking that it probably means that you've got open wounds to the point where an individual is bleeding, has bled profusely, and oh, by the by, his heart's still pumping when he's found. He is in a state of unconsciousness. And again, this is a serial event because you've got one guy that is alive at this point in time and is actually taken to the hospital where he eventually succumbs. Now, he was in the hospital, Dave, for I don't know, 13 days?

16:24 Well, let me ask you something, Joe, because when they found him, it's 7.35 in the morning. That's when police get a call about an unconscious man bleeding. Yeah. And they show up, and I guess in my mind's eye, because you've got a 54-year-old man in an area where homeless people exist, and police know this. They know the area.

16:45 Of course they do.

16:45 They know the crimes associated with the area.

16:47 Oh, yeah.

16:48 But when people arrive, And your victim is unconscious. There's nobody else around. I mean, that's a tough investigation. You're starting off, well, he's still alive. Get him to the hospital. Let's see if we can get him to recover. But he dies. You're right, 13 days. He died on October 27th last year. And no information. I mean, all they have is a 54-year-old man. who has injuries that he dies from. That's how severe these injuries are.

17:19 Let me kind of give you a little insight in my experience working with homeless. Many of the individuals that you encounter, first off, many people dig being homeless. I know that's a stark revelation, right? Because I've gone from homeless shelters to back out on the street to track people down. I've interviewed a lot of homeless people And, you know, there's been a couple of times, particularly when I was a younger investigator, I'd say, what brought you to this? You know, why are you doing this? I like the freedom of it. I like being able to be free. I've got a place I go pick up my mail. You know, I've got a P.O. box, you know, and I can go down here, get food, you know, and I'm going to go here and hang out, you know,

18:06 and this is where I'm going to live. And so... But the problem is, is that when you're interviewing populations like this, is that many people have been hooked up before on charges. They don't like talking to cops. Matter of fact, they want to have as much distance from the cops as possible. And it's kind of an interesting conundrum, if you will, because you're much more likely to interact with the cops in this kind of environment as opposed to if you were domiciled somewhere. Because there's always going to be something. There's little or no stability, right? So to try to glean information. And now, because you're talking about a homeless environment with Chouinard, is it– brother, we're talking two weeks here. Do you realize how much things–

18:57 how things can shift in a two-week period in an area that encompasses homeless people, particularly if there has been a homicide that has been perpetrated?

19:06 Right.

19:07 Now, you will have the most resilient among the crowd there that will say, no, this is my camp. This is where I live. I'm not leaving. Cops might know them. They'll come in and they'll chat with them, that sort of thing. But just with the first case, I can only imagine back in October of 2025, the cops are looking at this and they're going to say, yeah, this is another, you know, kind of fist of cuffs that's going on within this little community here. Maybe somebody will roll over on it. Maybe they won't. And they're not necessarily working as a homicide in the beginning. They're working this thing as an assault, right? Like a bad assault.

19:43 So you're losing. Because he's not yet. Yeah.

19:46 And how do you go back and where the location that he was in? found, how do you go evaluate that looking for specific information, Dave?

19:56 Wow. So you're going to be looking for cameras all around downtown, but it happened in the pre-dawn hours because they were not even called police until 735. Okay. Already very tough. But here's the other part of this show. And again, remember, the title here is Does Lansing, Michigan Have a Serial Killer? That was the first person to be found in this list of five. It was 268 days before another victim was found in this same geography, the same area. And yet, if you were comparing the first body case... to the second one. This guy in the second one is 70 years old, Joe. Do his injuries match up with the first one?

20:46 So with the second victim, this individual is Dennis Dunback, and he's 70 years old. He's got facial injuries as well. He's unconscious. He's not dead. He's certainly within the same geographic space. We're talking about this one-mile stretch, Dave, which is intriguing to me. Um, the difference with him is that I don't think his injuries are as obviously severe. Okay.

21:15 That doesn't mean that he doesn't have something going on inside his, his, uh, his cranium there, which I think he does, but he's also vomited out there. And so many times you'll, you will actually see people, um, that do have head injuries, um, that you'll find vomitus there. It's one of these things that kind of occurs with a head strike. And of course, if you get any kind of abdominal injuries, you can have vomitus there. But there was a significant amount here. I think one of the things I'd be very curious about is to try to understand if this individual had ingested, like, Well, not necessarily drugs, but if this individual was in fact drunk, because you'll have that association with nausea and vomiting and

22:09 that sort of thing relative to any kind of trauma that the individual may have been subjected to. So this guy actually dies in the hospital as well.

22:19 Let me ask you something, Joe, because when police were first looking at this, They looked at it as, yes, there are injuries that are suspicious, but he might have suffered some type of medical emergency.

22:34 Yeah.

22:35 Maybe. And, you know, Joe, a couple weeks ago at Braylon's football game on a Saturday afternoon, it was really hot. And one of our assistant coaches, he's a 24-year-old football player. He is a healthy young man, right?

22:47 Yeah, yeah.

22:48 He got overheated during the game and fell down.

22:50 Yeah.

22:52 It was when he came back to and tried to stand up that he blacked out again, and he actually damaged his elbow and shoulder.

22:59 Yeah, gravity took over.

23:02 Yes, and this is a healthy young man. Now, a 70-year-old man in a sick situation, because we've got vomiting and what have you, I mean, this really could have been caused by a medical emergency as much as it could be an assault, right?

23:16 Yeah, it could be. You don't know what his... And let's face it, he's at 70 at this point. We don't know how ambulatory this guy was. I mean, if he is living on the streets, though, he has to have the ability to motor around, right? And if he has any kind of pre-existing health conditions, a heart problem, if he's ever stroked, he's got high blood pressure, he's being untreated for it. And yeah, I mean, you have these cases where people will fall forward, they'll strike their face, and it might be a one-off. And whereas if you have somebody that's being attacked, you're going to have injuries on multiple multiple planes of, say, the head and face and the rest of the torso. If it's a single strike,

24:03 you you have you have you have a more difficult time saying, OK, this is a homicidal event. OK, yeah, he could be struck by some kind of blunt object, but, you know, like a hammer or the ground. You don't know if he was pushed or if somebody assaulted him. But here's the thing. On both of these two cases, Dave, the medical examiner had actually left these deaths classified as undetermined.

24:37 They didn't drag them in and say, okay, yeah, this is a homicide. And again, when you're studying patterns... we've got a lot of time that's elapsing here, brother. You know, so you're not necessarily putting these two things together, you know, immediately. And that, what was that, the time spread that we were talking about?

25:02 268 days. I think it was the third, I think it was the next death joke that actually had people going, okay, wait a minute, you know, because you're right. You've got a death and then 268 days pass and another death.

25:16 Yeah.

25:17 And again, in the same general area, in this one mile stretch. Yeah.

25:22 And now we're into, you know, the first one occurred back in October of 2025, what they're calling the first. Yes. And then we have this second individual that, you know, all of these days later, 268 days later, this is going to be in July of 2026. It's hot off the press. So this is just occurred. And then the third The third one that we're talking about, this individual's name is Robert William Smith. But we go back to our age group in here. This guy's 57. Well, this has happened. He was found on July 13, 2026. We've got a pattern that's kind of tightening down now. What are the odds that in this one-mile stretch, that in a period of just a couple of weeks... that you would have an individual that has met the same fate, right,

26:19 in this stretch, right?

26:21 And, you know, on this one, Joe, Robert Smith was found on July 13th. He was found wounded, injured, while our previous dentist, Dunback, was in the hospital. Dunback was found July 9th and is transported unconscious to the hospital in ICU. They find Robert Smith on the 13th, you know, a couple days after. And these are right on top of one another. So, yeah, they're going to immediately go, whoa, what do we have here?

26:57 Well, he died in the hospital. Victim three did. Smith. He dies in the hospital, 57 years old. The ME is going to get involved, do an examination, which they do.

27:09 And the....

27:13 So here's something I haven't talked a lot about on body bags. But many times when you have people that come in the hospital, they're unconscious and they wind up, you know, place them on ICU. They're having to monitor them there. You know, they remain unconscious. They're in a coma because of the medical intervention and what the body does, you know, to try to heal. Right. You know, those injuries are not going to look the same as they did when they rolled through the door. I know that seems kind of an offhand comment, but that's the truth. So, like, when the ME would begin working this case, when their investigator would have been notified, they would have gone in and they would have requested all the records on this. Like,

27:55 what steps did you take, like, from the moment they hit the front door to the moment that they, you know, pronounced death on this individual and they're dead in the ICU? What did you do? What kind of interventions were taken? Because you have to be able to explain the injuries and also any kind of treatment that the individual would have gone through, even if it's just suturing up an area, if they've gone through, if they have CT, anything like this, any kind of imaging that's done because things change just over a very short period of time with the human body.

28:29 And so that, you know, you're looking to, you know, develop a pattern again and Again, you're running up against this. This is what makes these cases so intriguing to me, is that you have subjects that are found at scenes that are still alive. And they're talking about this in terms of a serialized event. I don't know that, you know, you have cases where people have been attacked by serial killers and they were alive when found and have died.

29:03 But now you've kind of got a succession of of these things where individuals are not finished off, which is an odd, odd thing. And then that brings us to the fourth victim, which is Daniel Lusk. Now Daniel Lusk is 22. So we're looking at the pattern here. He's outside. He's way outside, you know, because so far we've had guys that are in their fifties. We've had one guy that's early seventies. Now we've got a 22 year old Dave.

29:32 That's a, That's kind of an odd thing here, right? And and he's being initially at least being lumped in with the rest of these folks.

29:41 It's geography. It really does come down to, okay, he's in the same general area at 22 years old. Daniel Lusk is unhoused as they say, homeless and his, he is found in the same general area, which is why he does get lumped together. He's found on August 20th. Um, early in the morning, like 3.30, 4 o'clock in the morning.

30:03 So even though, well, what kind of injuries did he have, Joe? They're not the same as the other three, correct?

30:12 I'll tell you what kind of injuries he had. He had multiple stab wounds. And again, you know, thinking about this, this is not something that you would say, okay, well, they've changed their you know, they've changed their profile here. They being the serial perpetrator, they've changed their profile and, you know, how they're going to task this out. You know, what am I going to do? Well, I'm going to go from blunt force trauma to stabbing all of a sudden. Now, what that means is that you've lumped this guy into this group of people. Again, granted, it's because of location.

30:46 And now you're having to kind of backpedal on this and say, yeah, this is probably not the same thing because Dave is Is it true this guy's got multiple stab wounds and he's actually found dead at the scene underneath a bridge? They've actually hooked somebody up on this, haven't they, Dave?

31:05 They did. And that's, again, now a bit different than the other two. Because in this case, we do have a person who's in custody. His name is Edward Smith. There's no suspect mentioned in the other case. deaths, and Edward Smith is not connected to those other ones, according to law enforcement right now, but he is connected directly to the death of Daniel Lusk. So there's a lot of difference between Lusk and the others, not just age and injuries and a suspect. But Joe, all these cases are in the same general area, and that is problematic if you're law enforcement trying to solve cases. But now we still have one more to talk about today. Yeah.

31:51 The fifth victim, same area, Joe.

31:54 Yeah. Louis Woodruff, he's 57. And again, he's right in that sweet spot relative to, you know, these individuals that are older and in this odd demographic, I have to admit it is certainly, you know, because most of the time when we're talking about serial perpetrators, we're talking about individuals and, you know, that how many times have we said this? They're going after sex workers, people that are detached from families, generally female, Um, and you know, that's just not the case. And this plays out with Lewis Woodruff because he's, he's found on August the 31st at 3 24 AM. And again, we're going to timing here, right?

32:33 We've had these, these people that are being found in the wee hours and that's undercover of darkness. Okay. So, and again, adjacent to or near a bridge, uh, and I can't, This guy has got severe facial trauma, which is kind of significant here. So with facial trauma, you're going to have blunt force injuries. The police in this case, they began working this as a homicide. And in addition to that, the ME has ruled this as a homicide.

33:08 There was no waffling on this. And they have not, to this point, listed the specific injuries with this individual. But I think that as time goes by, we're going to find more information about all of these injuries and to see if we can potentially recognize a pattern that might dwell within. I think the, the, Big question here.

33:48 At the end of the day, does Lansing, Michigan actually have a serial killer? Well, it would appear that the police believe that they do. This is the reason, I think. First off, you've got victims that have similar injuries, except for one, and that's going to be Lusk. Lusk has been stabbed multiple times, does not necessarily fit within the pattern, fits within the pattern from the perspective of geographic proximity to this trail, That is interesting, I'd have to say, when you're looking at the totality of the rest of these.

34:25 The other ones, though, have sustained blunt force trauma. And back to Lusk, just for one quick second. First off, he's outside the age demographic. He has, in fact, been stabbed to death. And, oh, by the by, they've hooked somebody up and charged them with this guy's death.

34:47 Joe, let me ask you something, because we've covered a lot of different cases over the years. And many times when you have a suspect of multiple murders, multiple homicides, sometimes other cases will get lumped in, you know, trying to clear the books. And that's not the case here, because these are not old cases. These are all within the last year. So oftentimes when it happened with Ted Bundy, if you remember at the end there, people were coming from every state of the union and beyond, you know, saying, I got an unsolved murder here. Is Bundy good for it?

35:23 That's not what we're talking about here. We're actually looking at, and in that case, you mentioned Lusk, he's 22. He has a suspect that is in jail right now. And he's young. So if you take Lusk out of the mix, that leaves us with four possible reasons not taking him totally out, but there are four that have similar injuries, but Joe, one of them, a little bit different than the others. And that's the 70 year old Dennis Dunback.

35:54 Yeah. And, and he is, is, is this, and again, we have to be able to understand all of the injuries and they haven't given us a lot of specifics. They keep using the term facial trauma and they keep talking about blunt force trauma here. And again, That means that they have eliminated any other kind of instrumentality of death.

36:19 We're not talking about shooting. We're not talking about strangling. We're not talking about stabbing other than Lusk. And we think that he might be an outlier here. But we are talking about an individual that, according to them, if this is a serialized event, that gets really up close and personal with these individuals, has the ability to get close to them. And one of the interesting things here, Dave, is that they're talking about these individuals may have been lying down as they were attacked. Well, let's just take, you know, when I hear blunt force trauma, and particularly to the level of severity that they're referring to, I'm thinking about stomping right now. And you would have to You would also have to have an awareness of where

37:09 these individuals are and what they're doing at that time. Well, lying down implies one of two things. Either they were thrown to the ground and stomped upon or beaten, maybe even beaten with an object. I don't know. Or they were sleeping. Well, sleeping is a very personal thing. And if you have individuals along this trail that are homeless, that are housing themselves along this pathway adjacent to the river.

37:38 Who would have knowledge of where each individual here is sleeping? Because they're talking about them being on the ground when they are attacked. That's fascinating. I would imagine that one of the things they may have found when they went back out to the scene was maybe a copious amount of blood that had been you know, deposited in one specific area. Maybe they bled there for, we know that they were unconscious when they were found to a man, they were unconscious. So if you're stomping on somebody and they're bleeding out and they're unconscious, they ain't moving. So if there's no movement with the body, like if you've got a blood trail that comes into a central location where you have a concentration of blood, that's different. There

38:24 were attacks somewhere else and maybe deposited themselves there. Maybe they passed out there. Now, if you've got that one area where you're finding blood deposition and there are no trails leading off, that's interesting. And I would also like to know, thinking about stomping, again, makes sense, were they able to appreciate bloody footprints? Now, depending upon how long it took somebody to get out there, we think about the first victim. The first victim was hospitalized for Two weeks, right?

39:02 My money is on it probably rained in that two-week period, all right? That's, you know, or, you know, you've got dewfall. You've got all of these other factors. So if there were bloody footprints there, you're not going to be able to recover that. Interesting point here, and one of the reasons I want to know about these injuries. Let's just say that it is a shoe, okay? Well, if you got a shoe you're gonna have a pattern with that shoe if it is some kind of uh a waffle pattern like on a uh a jogging yeah a jogging shoe or maybe you know you're talking about big old brogans uh boots um you know and they have a specific pattern you know you think about hiking boots the diamond patterns that you have on those Any number of things,

39:48 and you will see those patterns reflected. We're talking about facial injuries. You will actually see them here. Now, if the individual is walking around carrying a hammer or carrying a brick, or maybe it's a weapon of opportunity. We've talked about those. Maybe they're using a stone of some kind that they just kind of pick up. We're adjacent to a river, so they probably got riprap, which is the busted up bits of rock that sit adjacent to a river to kind of hold everything in place and hold the water back. Are they just doing that or are they showing up with something that is, you know, that is that you're capable of killing somebody with? And, you know, I'm going kind of going back and forth

40:30 in my mind here. I'm thinking about, well, if the individual has been traumatized by a specific object, if you've been in hospital for a while, you're not going to be able to pick up those patterns because healing is going on. You're fighting against nature, right? It's not like we have somebody who's dead at the scene. With a couple of these victims, we do have one that is dead at the scene, but it's not like you're going to be able to recognize that pattern that may have happened two weeks earlier. Because even when you have a strike with either a foot or a hammer or a rock, you'll have an abrasion. Then you'll have an underlying contusion.

41:07 You might have a fractured bone. A fractured bone isn't really going to give you much information about what type of instrument was used. It can, but not as specific as, say, like a pattern injury on the skin where this attack has taken place. So I guess, you know, we're thinking, do they have a serial killer in Lansing? And it's a very concentrated area. I'm thinking that, you know, you're looking at somebody that is familiar with the area. They certainly know the river. But they're not putting bodies in the water that's right there. You would think that if you're going to kind of throw people off the scent, if you would, dragging an individual down to the river that is literally right there adjacent to this trail, you've

41:54 got people that are found under bridges here. Why not put them in the water and have them wash down the river? You're going to get rid of any kind of evidence, trace evidence that might be left behind. And they're not going to be found. You don't know what their point of origin is. And the point of origin is key with any kind of death investigation. I want to know where the attack took place. But they're choosing not to do that. There's so much here.

42:20 But, you know, hey, Joe, there was one other thing I wanted to point out is that while the investigators have, they've not been able to settle on with 70-year-old Dennis Dunback, they're not even totally committed to that he died from something other than a medical emergency at 70 years old. Now, if you're a homeless at 70, I got a feeling you might not be in the best physical condition anymore, you know, and things could happen. But they noticed this from the very beginning with his case. He was found at one thirty in the afternoon, while as the other were found early morning. And there were other inconsistencies with him.

43:01 So if you look at 70 year old Dennis Dunback and you go, OK, even though he fits the timeline and the geography, His injuries don't match up. And, you know, let's set him off in column B.

43:18 Yeah, yeah.

43:18 And you got Daniel Lusk. Well, we've already said he's 22. He was stabbed, and we already have somebody hooked up on charges. So let's put him in column B with Mr. Dunback.

43:32 Yeah.

43:32 And what that leaves us with are three men, Gino Chouinard, 54, Robert Smith, 57, and Louis Woodruff, 57, all in the same geography, same general area, same type injuries to the head and face, and similar ages here. Two are 54, one is 57. Joe, I think that while there might not be five victims of one killer, there very well could be three.

44:09 There very well could be. And, you know, the things that are standing out in my mind is that this is an incomplete event. That if this is a serial perpetrator, the one thing that I've found at least is that there is a certainty in fatality. And with this, you're just kind of leaving these individuals having been beaten down.

44:35 And you're throwing... You're also... you're also potentially leaving a living witness here. And that implies a level of carelessness. You know, this is, I don't think that you're, you know, you're thinking about a Dennis Rader kind of person here where they're surveying the area, you know, and they're, you know, they're making notes about things and they understand the comings and goings of their victims and all that. I don't think it's that sophisticated. This is somebody that I think is probably used to being around the homeless or has been around the homeless, you know, at some point in time in their life.

45:15 Is homeless, is homeless.

45:16 Yeah. Or could just absolutely positively hate the homeless or they're an opportunist that's going out. And, you know, it's like I kind of opened with brother Dave, um, you know, the, essentially the, the weakest among us, um, If you want to, you know, kind of exercise your ability to have control over somebody's living or dying, who better than to walk up on a guy that is unhoused, that's sleeping in the bushes, and you stomp on him or you beat him, you know, in that location. And then you just kind of walk away from it. I'm fascinated to see how this is going to go. And I want to know how far out, if you think about this area in this area, Along this trail, this river trail in Lansing, if we make that the bullseye, okay, and going eccentrically,

46:12 expanding out, I want to know how many other deaths there have been that are due to blunt force trauma. I want to know what categories they fit in. I want to know male, female. I want to know age, survivability of injuries, anything like that. And, you know, kind of expanding out from that because, again, going back to patterns.

46:33 Did this person just emerge out of the mist or have they been at this for a while? And it's something that just hasn't been recognized. Are there other bodies along this trail?

46:43 Man, y'all did catch that. The professor just gave me homework. Y'all did see that, right?

46:49 So, yeah, I mean, you know, looking at this, I'm thinking, yeah, they've got something afoot here and there are a lot of similarities. We'll see how this develops because I can tell you guys there's going to be a lot of interest in this. And Yeah, the police are very interested, but I got to tell you, our friends up in Lansing, Michigan are interested too. Because you got somebody that is going out and they are killing people for no reason whatsoever other than whatever is in their mind. We'll keep you abreast of this case and we'll continue to follow along.

47:24 I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags.