50-Year Forensic Breakthrough! Ted Bundy and the Police Chief's Daughter

0:01 Body Bags with Joseph Scott Moore. The media loves to use terms like, oh, here it is, iconic. You know, there's certain words out there that folks in the media, they love to use, and they kind of get watered down over a period of time. You don't really understand. You don't really understand what... they mean when they say iconic, but I can tell you this. When it comes to the world of media and individuals that have committed arguably some of the most horrific crimes in the history of our nation, they would use the term iconic. They would probably even use the term iconic as it applied to Theodore Ted Bundy. Now, I choose not to use iconic relative to him. For me, it generally has a positive connotation.

1:06 But you know the one thing about people that commit these horrible crimes, which we know that Ted Bundy did because he confessed to many of them. You know the one thing that we always forget are the names of his victims. Today, on body bags, Brother Dave and I were going to discuss a case that has recently popped onto our radar. And this person has now, after all these years, been identified as one of Bundy's victims. I'm talking about Melissa Ann Smith. And she was brutally murdered by Ted Bundy, who we now know did this. We're going to talk about her and her injuries and the path that investigators have been on for years and years to try to figure out who exactly was responsible for her homicide. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags.

2:24 Brother Dave, as always, it is such a joy to be back with you, my friend. We get to talk all the time, don't we? We chat about everything and anything.

2:32 We end up on between the shows we do with Nancy Grace and everything. Yeah, it gets crazy sometimes.

2:39 It really does. I think, you know, part of me would like to sit around and discuss baseball and music and all those sorts of things. But, you know, today is... It's kind of an interesting day, I think, with us laying down this episode. And I want to tell the story. I know I've told it before, but I have to because I'm too young to have had a connection to the Bundy investigations that occurred, you know, all over America, you know, throughout, you know, the West and the Northwest and certainly down in Florida. But I ran into a lot of those guys over the years at particular conferences and that sort of thing. And there's one moment in time, Dave, that really stands out to me. And it was in 1989.

3:28 I was at a homicide conference. As a matter of fact, it was the first time I'd ever met Dr. Henry Lee. He was at this conference as well. And you go to these things and you're in a big ballroom at some fancy hotel, which we were in downtown New Orleans. And the guy that is like directing the he's the head of the conference, right? He gets up before this collected group of homicide investigators from all over America. And the one thing about it is if you ever have a convention and people say it's going to be in New Orleans, you'll have people that would not normally sign up to come to a convention, you know, because it's like there's certain niche things like Vegas and and New Orleans, and I guess to a lesser degree, Orlando, but people

4:18 want to come to New Orleans. And we had investigators from all over the country, great speakers. I still remember it to this day. But that morning, he walked up to the dais, Dave, and he very quietly, the first speaker had popped up. He said, before we go any further, I would like to come before you today and tell each member of this gathering that as of, and he gave the time, Ted Bundy is now dead. And that it kind of, you know, it's, you know, kind of like, you know, throwing cold water, you know, in your face, you know, you suddenly realize, you know, what, what has occurred because for so many years we heard about Bundy all the time and people would teach based upon Bundy and his movements and how he went about committing these

5:13 crimes and everything. And David was at that moment that the whole group and there had to have been three, four hundred people in this room all stood and cheered. And I looked around and there was a group of older investigators. You could tell they were, you know, probably at the end of their career and they were weeping.

5:36 And it was like one of those powerful moments, you know, and I was a very young investigator at the time and. had, I think up to that point, I probably worked one series of serial homicides. And for me at that age, I just wanted to sit at the feet of people like this just to learn and get a... You don't learn this stuff in a classroom. You learn it out in the field and you learn from the people that had done it. And the Bundy cases were so complex and they covered such a vast geographic area. And I know we've had others since then that have been identified, but You know, he's kind of like he's like that benchmark, you know, that everything else kind of pivots off of, I guess, because they were so extensive.

6:23 You know, the one thing Bundy always tried to argue away from was that he wasn't a pedophile killer. He did not kill children. And yet I believe his first and last victims were children. I believe he killed a nine year old in the neighborhood that he lived near, a little girl that they never found her body. they found a screen had been taken out and this little nine-year-old girl it happened to be an area where the road had been dug up and was being repaved and she went missing and ted bundy was in that area at that time i believe he was 14 or 16 at the time but that was the first one i believe and then the last one was kimberly leach kimberly leach was only 12 years old And when we think about– again,

7:09 we're going to be talking about a couple of different women today. Well, 17 is not a woman. It's still a teenager, a child almost. But Melissa Ann Smith was 17 when Bundy killed her. And I think about when he was put to death in Florida, it was for the Chi Omega killings and for Kimberly Leach, his last victim.

7:31 Kimberly was only 12.

7:32 Yeah, she was– and she was– That was in Tallahassee where that had occurred.

7:37 Yes, and lured her. He lured her pretending to be a fireman, you know? Right. There's so much wrong with that. But anyway, let's stick to this on today. And the reason we're talking about this today is because Melissa Ann Smith, she disappeared out with friends, out with a girlfriend, okay? And this happened, again, in 1974, October of 1974. Let me get the exact date because it actually is important because she went missing on October the 18th. A couple of weeks later, on October the 31st, another 17-year-old went missing, Laura Ann Amy. And they actually identified Bundy's DNA in the Laura Ann Amy case in April of this year.

8:28 The difference between that case and that case led to this case getting solved. Because Ted Bundy, in his last moments, you were mentioning of when he was put to death finally in 1989. It was January of 89 at like 7.20 in the morning, 7.19 a.m., something like that. And I was thinking about this with what we've dealt with in Tennessee with the lethal injection, you know, and worrying about what happens there. Well, he was in all sparky and his head caught on fire, I think.

8:57 He did. Yeah, he had, as a matter of fact, and anybody can see these, but I actually use this in some of my classes. Actually, my bite mark section I teach. And just as like a little aside, if you've never seen the images from Bundy after the autopsy, because you can see where his head has been stitched back up.

9:19 Yeah.

9:19 Dave, he's got like third degree burns on his scalp. They've shaved his head. You know, one of the things, one of his draws, you know, because this guy still had women that were contacting him, you know, and he drew. a certain batch of people that were out there romantically. When you see his scalp, he fancied himself a pretty boy, I think. He was always dressed in suave, and people would describe him that way. He had thick hair. Not in this image, dude. He's laid out on a funeral home gurney, which they're different than regular hospital gurneys. Okay.

10:01 And the, have you ever seen those drapes that they use that funeral homes use and it'll have embroidery on the side with the name. You can see that and it's folded back and they took this shot in profile of him, by the way. And he's got second, third degree burns all over his scalp. Uh, Sparky got him.

10:20 I mean, got him. Sure shooting. He was down for the count. And you can actually see. And yeah, he was he was gone. Unlike, you know, the situation up in Nashville.

10:32 Well, anyway, that's what I was thinking about was Bundy. You know, I remember it being referred to as a Bundy Q.

10:38 Yeah. Yeah.

10:38 You like your Bundy fried.

10:40 Yeah.

10:40 Yeah.

10:41 Yeah.

10:41 They they cracked me up. Then they cracked me up now. But. When I was looking at this case earlier, and we're going to run down the autopsy because I knew the case, okay, of Melissa. And I knew the case of Laura. I followed Bundy because I was impacted by that case. I've told you before, I got impacted by Manson. The Manson murders when I was a child scared me. I lived in an area where people were scared and were talking about those murders. And then when Bundy happened, it was in the mid to late 70s. when we actually first started hearing about this Ted Bundy. In the Northwest, the Ted Killer, you know, if you remember from Lake Sammamish, that was where Janice Ott was last seen talking to a man who identified himself as Ted. That's where the

11:28 Ted came from. Well, not to dig too deep into this, because y'all probably already have, and if you haven't, I encourage you to read The Stranger Beside Me. That was an incredible book by Ann Rule, and it's about her time working a rape crisis hotline At night, she was Seattle's first female police officer on the beat in the late 50s. And here she is in the late 60s, early 70s, manning a rape crisis line. And who was helping?

11:55 Theodore Robert Bundy, sitting beside her night after night. They were buddies. She had no idea of the evil she was sitting next to. And neither did the women who came in contact with him immediately, usually. They actually probably saw, you mentioned, He was kind of a pretty boy. He probably showed that side to women at first, but it turned evil very quickly. And with the case we're talking about now with Melissa, he didn't name her. I was going to talk, you know, when you were talking about how they announced his death at the conference. Right.

12:30 Yeah.

12:30 One of the things that Bundy tried to do for all of his whatever stick. OK, he kept trying to prolong the date that he had to sit in the chair. And he was trying to bargain with it. If you remember, he had the 700 Club coming down there. So he could claim that it was pornography that got him into it.

12:47 And it's like, no, he was just evil.

12:49 Yeah, it was James Dobson that had come in, if I remember correctly.

12:53 And I'll tell you, I have a real special feeling about this. But if you became a believer and you're sentenced to death for what you did, and you become a believer while you're in prison, you wouldn't be fighting the death penalty. Because if you're truly a believer, you're going to be absent of the body is to be present with the Lord. You're just getting there quicker. So your bad deeds got you in the front of the line, if you look at it my way. So I think, you know, hey, you know, but when Bundy starts throwing out all these names, he's confessing to everything. I mean, it was like the Henry Lee Lucas thing. I mean, he's confessing to stuff he's never heard of.

13:30 Right.

13:31 And so these daggone detectives from all over are spending their money to come out to interview Bundy. Well, he did confess to Laura Ann Amy, who was killed two weeks after Melissa. The thing is, is that they kept Laura Amy's case open, Joe, until this past April. Even though Bundy confessed to it in January of 89, they did not close that case with Laura Ann Amy because they didn't have proof. And he was confessing to so many things. They weren't closing it until they had proof. Well, they finally did get proof. The DNA that they were actually able to pull up from Laura Ann Amy actually was Ted Bundy. They proved it. And it was that that they got from the Laura Ann Amy case in April.

14:21 That's what gave them the ability, Joe, to find out what that Melissa Ann Smith was also a victim of Theodore Robert Bundy. Now, her dad is the chief of police, Joe. And this poor girl, all she did was go out on October 18th. 17 years old. She goes to a pizza parlor with some friends early in the evening. And then she goes to another restaurant where another friend works.

14:46 And that's the last time anybody sees her. I thought it was fascinating that she left the house in the early evening, last seen around eight o'clock. But when she didn't come home by curfew, she was reported missing right away. They didn't wait, Joe. And I got a feeling if your dad's chief of police and his daughter's missing, yeah, that's going to go out before 24 or 48 hours.

15:07 Really quick. Yeah, it'll be out.

15:09 I remember now thinking back during those days, and this predates me, you know, obviously when I became an investigator, but still, we would use teletype. And so if you needed to get the word out about anything and you're going to do like an all points bulletin, they would send this thing out via teletype to all of the surrounding, you know, police departments and you could indicate where it was going to be shot off to and all this sort of thing. And that's an interesting element considering whose child she is, was, that, you know, that there would have been, they would have been hyper aware looking for her, Dave. But, you know, the thing about it is, Yeah, she was missing, but she wasn't found for some time, Dave.

16:01 And they believe that her killer kept her alive for a few days. They don't believe she was killed the night she went missing, Joe. This was new to me. I knew the case of Melissa Ann Smith. I knew the case of Laura Ann Amy. I've studied these things. I did not know. until I was looking over the case file today, that he kept her alive. Because when her body was found, it hadn't been out there very long.

16:35 And it was days.

16:37 Days. And her injuries, which are so ghastly in this particular case. But Dave, I've got to tell you something, brother. Do you realize that the cornerstones, the cornerstone, one of the corner, well, you can't have multiple cornerstones, but just suffice it to say, scientifically, it was a cornerstone to the prosecution of Ted Bundy was bite mark evidence. And now, the world that we're in, if you were just to approach this case with bite mark evidence alone, It wouldn't get you anywhere because bite marks are no longer used.

17:17 It's not recognized any longer. But isn't it fascinating? The journey that we've been on all these years with cases from all over the country. We land here today with a case that is directly tied back to Ted Bundy. Not through bite mark, but through DNA. DNA. Bro, Dave, you know, it's one thing if your child doesn't make curfew, you know, but that weariness that you have and that fear that sets upon you, it gets into your bones.

18:07 Because you're thinking all the while, where is she? Where is she? And I can only imagine, you know, with her dad being the chief of police, he's sitting there and he's thinking everything I have at my disposal. You know, when we have to frame it back to 1974, every bit of authority, the people that I have around me, the resources that I can call on like that. And I can't get my kid to manifest anywhere around.

18:35 What a horrible thing.

18:36 Horrible set of circumstances for this family to be going through, Dave.

18:40 It is. It's just, again, that's why I thought it was really, it's understandable that the chief of police, when his 17-year-old daughter goes missing, that, yeah, you can get a missing persons report that night because they all work for him. Go look for my daughter. And I'm glad, but the thing is, there was a nine-day search for Melissa.

19:04 And in that nine days, there was nothing. It was just like a UFO came and landed and took her away. There was no, I mean, nothing, Joe. I've looked through the papers to see what the reports were in the press, and they're looking everywhere. You know, all surrounding areas, they're looking for her and can't find her. Nobody saw anything, for crying out loud. But Melissa Ann Smith, after nine days, on October the 27th of 1974, two deer hunters came upon her Horribly battered body. She had been sexually assaulted.

19:43 The description of her body is horrific. And and you can break that down with the autopsy report because what these guys saw you don't unsee it no and you don't after nine days the only thing they could come up with which she hadn't been there nine days she had not been in that ditch in that position for nine days So that left them with the idea that Melissa Ann Smith was kidnapped the night that she was taken, was held alive for some period of time before her killer, Bundy, took her life. And when he did, it's despicable.

20:34 Yeah, it is. And, you know, uh, I was thinking back to everything that we know about, um, his MO modus operandi. Um, and he had a, um, well, first off, we know that he had a penchant for biting, which is a very intimate thing. Okay. Now there's no indication that Melissa Ann, according to what we know now, based upon the reports that were out there, that they identified specific bite marks. However, um, if you think about this, uh, this practice that he engaged in. And it's actually, I think it's identified as actually one of these, uh, paraphilias, if you will. It's like a, uh, there's connectivity between aberrant sexual behavior and, and events like this homicides. Um, and it's kind of a, uh, uh, forcing himself on her.

21:32 And it's, it's the ultimate, I've always, I've always envisioned, um, There's one infamous image out there from the Cayo house where they've got a bite mark that is imaged on the buttock of one of the sisters of Cayo. By the way, a shameless plug real quick. I urge anybody who is interested in Bundy and what it's like to be a survivor, I'm hoping that you guys will seek out Kathy Kleiner Rubin's book, a light in the dark.

22:07 It's surviving more than Ted Bundy. And I consider her a friend. You've met her, Dave. We both know her from CrimeCon. And she is an angel on earth. She is one of the sweetest. She was beaten so badly with a stick of firewood in that coyote house that night by him. But that goes to the idea that he really really engaged, not only in biting people, but he loved to beat people. And that's one of these things.

22:39 And that's, you know, when it rises to this level of trauma that this child endured, she's got multiple lacerations all.

22:52 Over her body. Let me ask you something.

22:54 Yeah.

22:54 Because you were talking about the Cayo house and it was Lisa Levy that he bit. And that was where the bite mark that ended up in court. But, you know, in that case, he just was in a frenzy. And he was walking into the house. As he got into the house, he just grabbed a piece of firewood. That was his weapon. He just grabbed it. It was there.

23:16 He had no weapon. He just went into the house with this. And what he did in a very short window of time, the destruction that he leveled, he nearly bit. One of the victims nipple off, you know, it was just this fierce attack. It was animalistic in its attack and it was intense. But in the case of Melissa Ann Smith, when you look at her kidnapping and keeping her alive for a few days, do you think because it was earlier on in his killing that maybe it wasn't as animalistic, that it was more thought out, that it was more evil?

23:55 Yeah. some people have alluded to the fact that, and I've heard this before about other serial killers, not just Bundy himself, but that they get sloppy as they progress. They hit like a, there's a zone that they'll hit where they're thinking about things very carefully and they're very systematic and all this sort of thing. They're planning. And then as they get used to what they're doing, And they're engaging in this because this is all he lived for.

24:29 It's not like he's out there earning a living doing something of significance with his life. The purpose of Bundy's existence was to terrorize, sexually assault, and murder. That was the totality of his existence. Now, back to what you were saying with the Kaio circumstances. I think that there is a place that you will see him get to.

24:59 And I think he probably got there a couple of times where it's like it kind of ebbs and flows with him. He would go into, I think, a sexually fueled frenzy where he was trying to satisfy this urge that he had. And we'll be into the person that gets between him and what his desire is. As a matter of fact, he's seeking out people. he wants in his line of sight. I think that that's probably what happened because you've got these two cases that are so closely associated geographically and time-wise, right? I mean, we're talking about a couple of weeks. The idea that he's lingering about, that's another salient point here, Dave, to what you had stated earlier, that Melissa Ann they didn't believe that she

25:51 had died immediately, that she had been kept somewhere. So you think about, you know, the idea, is he holed up somewhere? Is he thinking about these things? And it's the only thing he can consider. He's observing the environment. You know, he is like, you know, he's like a wild animal that's, that's hunting for prey, you know, and people use that term to apply to these people a lot over the years. And it would seem he's, He was the apex predator in the world of these two young women at that point in time. So when you begin to think about what he inflicted upon Melissa Ann, it is, in fact, the stuff of nightmares. Dr. Moore, who did her examination, just in very broad strokes, what was identified initially with... melissa ann is that she had

26:50 sustained multiple head injuries with also um she's got a bilateral subdural hematoma which um i think i've described these before but just bear with me.

27:04 Please give me a refresher so the dura the dura sack if you will if you've Never seen one, but you've been around a birth before, if you've ever seen.

27:15 It always reminds me of this. Now, you can talk to other people. It won't. But if you've ever been around a birth and you see a placenta, you know, that the baby is in, right? Dura, to me, always looks like placenta every time I see it, you know. And so, it is a sac that the brain floats in because our brain cannot. Can you imagine if your brain didn't have a shock absorber built in? So, it's like a sac. where cerebral spinal fluid is literally flowing and washing over the brain. And it kind of cushions us.

27:50 If your brain was just sitting in your skull, there's all these little ridges and points along. You would die. What is bilateral subdural? Bilateral means it's on both sides. So both hemispheres of the brain. And you have epidural, which is on top of the dura. Okay. This is subdural. So he has hit her so hard that internally the brain has ruptured the vessels and the brain is a wonder of creation. It has got so much vasculature to it.

28:30 He has ruptured the vessels in the brain and that blood is leaching out of the brain and it's getting in between the dura.

28:38 Okay.

28:39 Okay.

28:40 And the brain surface, the arachnoid surface of the brain, and it creates pressure. You know, most of the time, if you have a person, a living patient, that has sustained something like this, they're going to have to go in and release that pressure on the brain. But she's been struck so hard, Dave, that it's setting up on both sides of her brain. And so her brain is impacted this way. I think my big question is, to your earlier point, How close in time was this fracture that she has sustained? Did she linger? Did she linger in this place that they suspect that he may have held her for a period of time? And all the while, it's getting worse and worse. Her brain would be swelling.

29:26 She'd probably drift off into coma, okay? And he's there. If he's in a sequestered location where he can do whatever the devil is telling him to do, Well, let's don't put it on the devil. Devil's innocent here. He made a free will decision to do this. All right. And so as he is beating this child, which he did, and according to what the doctor saw, she's got this bilateral subdural hematoma. She's got the skull fracture. But in addition to that, Dave, She's got lacerations externally on her scalp.

30:04 And we all know from body bags what we've learned in the past. If you have a laceration, that means it's a blunt object. Okay. He loved using random objects as well. So, I love the fact that you talked about it's almost animalistic.

30:19 Yeah.

30:20 He might show up with a hammer. He might use a stick of firewood like he did with Kaio. Anything that is within his grasp that he could use. And Bundy traveled with a kit as well. Some people refer to these as murder kits. We've heard that term used a lot. I think that Bundy may have been the genesis for the term murder kit. And that gives you an indication that the serial perpetrator has got planning going on.

30:49 He's set up. You've got rope. You've got tape. You've got any kind of restraint that you might need. You might have an implement or two.

30:55 Got a mask.

30:56 Yeah.

30:57 You're, you, you, you've got something to disguise yourself with. There's planning going on here. So he's, he's also inflicted Dave, a basilar skull fracture, which the basilar area is in the back. So if everybody finds a knot on the back of your head, the occiput, you go into that area. So she's been hammered on the backside as well, which now you're getting into the brainstem area. Um, With all of this trauma to the head, that was not enough because, Dave, he's disfigured her. She's got lacerations all over her face, so he is just pounding away on her. She does have a fractured hyoid in her neck, which, as you and I have robustly talked about, when do we get those? Well, it's not a ligature strangulation. It's a manual strangulation. where

31:57 you're going high on the neck. If everybody will go superior to your Adam's apple right here, sits right here, you have to go really, really high on the neck to get access to the hyoid, and he's squeezing it. Now, he's either throttling her or C-clamping her at that point in time. Now, in addition to that, she did in fact have a ligature mark around her neck. Some of these people will use a ligature as a means of.

32:22 Torture.

32:22 I actually worked a case It was a succession of serial homicides where the perpetrator in those cases had a groat that as he is, see if I can put this politely, violating the victims who were drugged. He would wrap this thing around their neck and he would twist it down. And then when they were just about to the point of death, guess what he would do? He'd release it and they'd start breathing again.

32:50 Isn't that what the clown guy in Chicago did with some of his? Yeah.

32:54 Yeah. Yeah.

32:56 Gacy. Gacy.

32:57 And he was all about these guys are sadist is what it comes down to. And they live for the pleasure they derive. from seeing people suffer. And they literally have, in their minds at least, they have this power over life that they can either allow you to live or they can rob you of your life. She's got all kinds of other lacerations all over her body, abrasions. You don't know if those are coming about as a result of his fist scuffing her, where it takes off that top layer of skin. or if he's dragging her about as she's unconscious, the hell that she would have gone through.

33:44 And I really wonder, looking back retrospectively at this case, you know, when we sustain an injury, and this is one of the things that they could be going on that maybe the pathologist at the time opined about, was that if they saw... healing at a cellular level, like all the sections that we take at autopsy, we study those and you can see the cells beginning to repair their self in pretty short order. And there are certain things that we look for at a cellular level, you know, when we're looking through our microscopes, the pathologists are, and you can actually say, okay, well, this is in fact a recent injury, but there's evidence this thing has been healing for a period of time. And then you've got

34:35 even fresher injuries. So When you're talking about a case of kidnapping, restraint, confinement, and ongoing torture, that's certainly one of the indicators that you are going to be taking a look at. And, of course, going to Ted Bundy, his goal with everything, I think, at the end of the day was not just to take life, but also use sex as a torture methodology as well. She's got a laceration that is involving her genitalia. That area in there, he has ripped her to shreds, essentially. And all the while, he's receiving joy from all of this. You know, it is a rush for him. It's like, you know, straight adrenaline into his veins. And once he gets a taste of that, it becomes more there's like this climax for

35:31 him at the end. And then once he's done, he takes the body and he just discards the body, Dave. And I think that that's what we're looking at in this particular case. And he just found an isolated area to dump her body out in the woods, man. You know, I got to tell you, with all of these injuries, Dave, that she sustained, you know, when the investigators initially looked at Melissa Ann's body, she had such head trauma that as they're observing her body, they thought that she had actually sustained a gunshot wound, brother.

36:15 I am so glad you brought that up because I made a note of it. You mentioned this on one of our episodes dealing with injuries and And how sometimes when you see something on location with the body, it looks one way. And you don't say it out loud. Just like you don't say, well, I found blood over here.

36:36 I found something that looks like it might be. It's brownish red in color, you know.

36:43 Yeah, and I'm chief among sinners relative to that. I got burned early on in my career being out in the field and thinking I'm the smartest guy in the room and making a call out there. And you wind up. You really get in a twist when you do that. So you just you call it like you see it, but you don't want to be specific.

37:00 And with this one, they thought she was shot in the back of the head. And there was so much other damage, though, Joe. I mean, were they maybe I hate to say this because it wasn't wishful thinking that he ended her life suddenly because they could tell because of the injuries. So many of them all over her body.

37:20 She had damage to her lungs for crying out loud. I mean, the damage was so specific. But what was it to the back of her head that was not a gunshot wound?

37:29 Well, it's multiple lacerations in these underlying fractures. Remember how I referred to the basilar skull fracture?

37:35 Right.

37:35 That bone is so thick back here. It takes a tremendous amount of force to fracture that. And if you're using some kind of unidentified object in order to facilitate that, you can– It would be easy. It would be easy. I'm not judging these guys in any way. Don't misconstrue what I'm saying. It would be very easy to confuse that.

37:58 First off, you're going to have a mass of blood externally, matted hair, just super saturated, dried, semi-coagulated blood perhaps. And as you're in the field and you're kind of parting the hair, You can make that call and say, well, gee whiz, guys, this looks like a gunshot wound. And you might, you know, I've had cases where I go to the morgue with a body and I'll say, Doc, I don't know, this might be a gunshot wound. And then after you clean this area, wash the hair, and I don't mean shampoo, but cleanse the area after you've collected all of your evidence. And oh, by the way, her head would have been shaved. So that's the only way you can fully appreciate and document it. These injuries,

38:44 I know that sounds, for some reason, it always puts people off when they hear about us shaving the hair off of people's head in a morgue.

38:53 It just seems like extra damage to a body that's already been damaged.

38:57 It does. But we're not, you know, we have to understand that in the morgue, we don't mutilate bodies, but we do things. We're not there for the aesthetic value. of what's going to happen. Funeral homes can fix that, okay, to a certain degree. But we have to be able to appreciate this because let's just say, for instance, okay, that she had sustained a gunshot wound. Well, you can't look at the hair. You can't look at a suspected gunshot wound with matted hair and appreciate range of fire. Okay, because the muzzle is going to blow the stuff out.

39:37 It's going to impregnate the skin all around it. You've got tattooing and smoke and all that stuff. And if you've got hair that's obscuring that, you're not going to get an answer as to how far away the end of that muzzle was to the point to that fatal area where it struck the skull. So we have to do these things in order to examine. But you know, Dave, the beauty, if there can be beauty here in all of this, is that they did do a kit on her, I think, at that point in time, and they were able to find his leavings, if you will, seminal deposition, and God bless them. Dave, we're 50 years down range.

40:24 They retained all this stuff. And it's viable. I mean, absolutely viable in this case. Oh, it is. I mean, a tip of the cap to these guys, man.

40:34 When I was looking over and because again, I go back to, I didn't trust any of his confessions. You know, I felt like all he was doing was trying to buy time and time's up, dude. Which is what eventually happened. They finally said, yeah, we're done with you. And Then he started begging. You know, it was really interesting how this, you know, dead-eyed killer who, again, last person he killed was a 12-year-old girl, Kimberly Leach. I really want people to forget that when they romanticize Theodore Robert Bundy. But when he killed Melissa Ann Smith and Laura Ann Amy, they were both 17-year-old little girls, okay? 17-year-old girls who had parents that loved them, boyfriends that wanted to, you know,

41:13 go out to the movies with them. They were just kids. And He took both of those within two weeks of one another. You know, it was Laura and Amy that he admitted or confessed to it. And I mentioned earlier that while Bundy did confess before his electrocution that he killed Laura and Amy, they did not believe him. They didn't take it as because he's not a believable person.

41:36 And so they needed to find information. Now, granted, That's a good lead to work on. And based on where he was geographically and where other crimes have been committed, they considered him as a primary suspect in the death of Melissa Ann Smith and Laura Ann Amy. But until you prove it, it's just an assumption and you cannot assume.

41:57 So they kept both these cases wide open. But it was Laura Ann Amy that actually they knew Bundy claimed it. So let's try to prove it. And they did. Once they were able to prove that he was the person responsible for the DNA found on Laura and Amy. They did that in April of this year. That's when they went full force with Melissa and Smith to determine, you know, where did it come from? And they were able to tie it back to the evidence from Laura and Amy was a match for what they found on Melissa and Smith.

42:34 Yeah, amazing. You know, you wonder... You know, you begin to think about these two young women. Had they ever crossed paths before? They even know that one another had existed and they were going to come into the orbit of of this beast who just wreaked havoc, you know, all over, all over out West particularly. And then, of course, down in Florida as well. And you you begin to think about the recovery of the DNA evidence. And you don't know how that's going to play out, brother, because this is. This is not necessarily one of those cases where you would need to use familial DNA necessarily in order to kind of narrow it down for him because they would have his DNA available through any kind of

43:22 sample to compare.

43:23 I believe we're going to be updating this story again, Joe.

43:27 Do you now?

43:28 Yes.

43:29 Well, this is the area that he was in. I think this was in Summit County, Utah. It was a hunting ground where he perpetrated these crimes for these two. But looking forward, going back to these other places that he has visited over the years, he made stops in Colorado. We certainly have him up in Washington State and that sort of thing.

43:58 That's where he escaped jail was in Colorado.

44:01 Yeah, exactly. You think about that. And, of course, I remember– I got to meet the, uh, the sheriff at one point in time. This was many years ago. And forgive me, I cannot remember this gentleman's name. He was the guy, uh, that was the sheriff down in Florida. And he had conversations with Bundy. He said, you're not going to be getting out of my jail. And they, they had created a specially designed cell for him where it was, you know, cause he had a history of doing this. He's also the guy that compelled Bundy, uh, uh, See, I can't remember his words specifically. He says, this doctor's coming in here, and they're going to get a bite mark impression from you, whether you like it or not. And they compelled him

44:45 to give that bite mark impression.

44:48 Because Bundy was trying to file his teeth.

44:51 Yeah, he was. And if you look at his dentition, he's got these offset teeth. There's like this exploded view that people have created of his mouth. this imagery where you see these like recessed lateral incisors, particularly on the lower bite, and the canines are moved forward. I mean, it's a ghastly looking arrangement of his teeth. He's got a chip tooth up here, making him very, very distinctive.

45:18 But I got to tell you, brother, nothing, and I mean nothing on the face of this planet will tell the tale like DNA. This perpetrator is gone now. He was sizzled like a sausage in the electric chair down in the Sunshine State. But, you know, for a moment, we breathe life back into Melissa Ann. And with that life that has been breathed back into her case all these years later, maybe new information will be developed and we'll begin to see who else he may have victimized over these years. Please keep in mind, folks, it's not about the serial killer. It's about the victims. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags.