- 5 months ago
- #murdermystery
- #forensicscience
3 cases of When the Dead Speaks through forensic science.
#murdermystery #forensicscience
#murdermystery #forensicscience
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00:00Hello and welcome to the Dark Mystery Lounge.
00:03You know, forensic science has come a long way in the past century or so.
00:07A lot of cases went unsolved because we simply didn't have the technology.
00:11Nowadays, something as simple as a bite mark, a hair, or even touch DNA can be enough to crack a case wide open.
00:18Even though the cases we are going to take a look at today are older ones,
00:22if it weren't for smart medical examiners and investigators, these cases would have turned into cold cases.
00:28So let's take a look at three cases of When the Dead Speaks.
00:41On the morning of April 16, 1983, two East Moline fishermen, just after 9 a.m.,
00:47spotted a strange object that washed ashore on the banks of the Mississippi River.
00:52Upon closer inspection, they found it had a more familiar shape.
00:55It was part of a human body.
00:56Police recalled they retrieved the torso, along with the stomach and intestines, out of the water.
01:02The torso was taken to the Davenport Morgue, where an autopsy was performed.
01:07The torso only measured 18 inches.
01:09Since they didn't have an entire body, the medical examiner could only find limited information.
01:14The torso belonged to a white female who had at least one child because it was an episiotomy scar
01:20and had been dismembered with a chainsaw due to the cuts on the body.
01:24Police searched the marshlands of the Mississippi River to see if they could find any morphs, but nothing turned up.
01:29At the time, there were 79 women missing in the state of Iowa, so searching for the identity was going to be difficult.
01:36So the torso was packed in ice and taken to Dr. Clyde Snow in Oklahoma City, who specializes in the study of bones.
01:44Dr. Snow defleshed the torso in a concentration of hydrogen peroxide.
01:49What remained were the pelvic bones and upper femur.
01:52His analysis was that this was a white female, about the age between 28 and 40 years old, 5'3", plus or minus 3 inches,
02:01who weighed approximately 125 to 145 pounds and who exercised a lot.
02:07And the person who dismembered the woman had to have had a pretty good knowledge of anatomy.
02:12Searching the missing persons database, out of the 79 women missing in the state of Iowa, only one person fit that description.
02:19Her name was Joyce Clint, a 33-year-old housewife.
02:22She was 5'5 and weighed 128 pounds.
02:26She was known to exercise strenuously.
02:28She was married to a chiropractor named James Clint.
02:31After 13 years of marriage, they were going through a messy divorce, arguing and fighting over finances and the custody of their 13-year-old son.
02:40She was reported missing a week prior to her torso being found.
02:44James went on TV to make a statement on his wife's disappearance.
02:48He said she just left one day and never came back.
02:51And if she's watching this to call her son.
02:53James didn't show any emotion whatsoever, and at times he even smirked.
02:57He seemed more annoyed that she was missing rather than worried about her safety and welfare.
03:03On March 28, 1984, James was arrested for the murder of his wife.
03:07At trial, James denied ever killing his wife and claims that the torso is not his wife and that she is still alive.
03:14Blood samples were taken at autopsy, then compared them to Joyce's parents and son, and found that they were a perfect match.
03:22Dr. Snow testified, giving the jury a breakdown of his analysis.
03:26One piece of evidence that James was not aware of was that Joyce secretly tape-recorded a 45-minute argument between her and James.
03:34In this recording, she confronts him about threatening to cut her up into little pieces and threatening to kill her.
03:40All because she got a lawyer, paid for by her neighbors, when she learned that James was going to proceed with a divorce and even had a mistress.
03:48She asked him why he would threaten her, and he said, because I hate you.
03:52After this recording was done, Joyce gave the tape to her neighbor for safekeeping.
03:56And this was the day before Joyce went missing.
03:59Plus, the testimony of his mistress, where she was promised that James was going to get a divorce and marry her.
04:05That was enough to find James Clint guilty of second-degree murder, and he was sentenced to 50 years in prison.
04:12Seven years later, James finally confessed to murdering his wife.
04:15Joyce's remains were buried at Davenport Memorial Cemetery.
04:19Thanks to forensic science and the tape recording, Joyce had spoken from the grave, and justice was served.
04:29Lois Juergens came from a large family of 16 siblings, but she and her husband, Harold, had been trying to have a child of their own for over 16 frustrating years.
04:43They finally decided to adopt a little boy they named Robert.
04:47Three years later, they adopted another baby boy named Dennis.
04:50Robert learned very quickly to stay out of the way of his new mother,
04:54because even the smallest mess or mistake that he would make would result in Lois flying into a rage.
05:00One stormy night on April 11, 1965, Robert woke up to hearing loud screaming from Dennis' room.
05:07Lois was holding Dennis and kept screaming his name over and over, but he was limp in her arms, not responding.
05:13Two days later, three-year-old Dennis was laid to rest.
05:16The cause of death was ruled as peritonitis due to a perforation of the bowel due to a fall.
05:22And for some unknown reason, Lois was never a suspect of any foul play.
05:27So little Dennis laid in St. Mary's Cemetery for 15 years.
05:31The cause of his death was unquestioned, until his biological mother decided to search for her son.
05:36Dennis Craig Juergens was born, Dennis Craig Puckett, on December 6, 1961, to Jerry Sherwood, who was in a home for delinquent girls.
05:45Being a ward of the state, she was forced to give up her son for adoption.
05:49Even though Jerry would grow up, get married, and have four more children, she never forgot the baby that the state had taken away from her.
05:56She decided to contact County Welfare Department only to be informed by mail that her son had died back in 1965.
06:04Learning of her son's death, Jerry wanted to say goodbye to the son that she barely knew.
06:09So she went to the mortuary where Dennis' funeral had taken place to find his burial records.
06:14She found the burial records and old faded newspaper clippings.
06:18One sentence in particular caught her eye.
06:20The body also bore multiple injuries and bruises.
06:24She looked up at her son and daughter and said,
06:26My son was beaten to death. I just know it.
06:29Jerry's gut instinct drove her to investigate what really happened to her baby.
06:33She tried to call Lois Juergens, and she said that she would mail her some of his mementos, but nothing ever arrived.
06:40She tried to call again and found that the number had been changed.
06:43Jerry made a call to Ramsey County Medical Examiner's Office and spoke with Dr. Michael McKee.
06:49He was able to obtain the original records of the first autopsy, and the photographs were very shocking and revealing.
06:56Little Dennis bore multiple bruises all over his body, and his stomach was distented, meaning that he was being starved.
07:02He concluded that this was clearly a homicide.
07:06They exhumed the body of Little Dennis, who was very well preserved.
07:09He still had fingernail marks behind his ear, and a purple spot at the tip of his penis.
07:14And one of the medical examiners working on this case said,
07:18If I was a betting man, I would say that was a bite mark.
07:20Dr. McGee found a bowel that had the defect that ruptured, and concluded that this kind of injury cannot be caused by an accidental fall.
07:29In order to rupture the bowel, Dennis would have had to have been punched or kicked with a great deal of force in order for that tear to happen.
07:36He listed Dennis' death as a homicide.
07:39In 1987, Lois Juergens was brought to trial for the murder of Dennis Juergens.
07:44Robert Juergens testified against his mother and exposed for the first time what life was like in the Juergens' home.
07:51She was very abusive, especially to Dennis, who was targeted and was called the bad child.
07:56Robert saw the autopsy pictures and wasn't surprised in the least bit, saying that's how Dennis always looked.
08:02Lois was found guilty of third-degree murder and was sentenced to 25 years, then was paroled in 1995.
08:10Lois claimed that she was innocent until the day she died on May 7, 2013, at the age of 87.
08:17Thanks to a mother's instincts and her determination, Little Dennis' voice was finally heard.
08:22The End
08:26On December 8, 1976, the production crew of the television show The Six Million Dollar Man
08:35was filming scenes for the Carnival of Spies episode in the funhouse at the Pike Amusement Park in Long Beach, California.
08:43During the shoot, a prop man moved what he thought was a wax mannequin that was hanging from a noose,
08:48when the mannequin's arm broke off at the elbow.
08:51To his horror, there was a human bone sticking out.
08:54Police were called and the mummified corpse was taken to the Los Angeles coroner's office.
09:00An autopsy was performed and determined that the body was that of a human male who died of a gunshot wound to the chest.
09:07The body was completely petrified, covered in wax, and had been covered with layers of phosphorus paint.
09:13The body weighed approximately 50 pounds and was 5'3 in height.
09:17The examination also revealed incisions from the original autopsy and embalming.
09:22Tests conducted on the tissues showed the presence of arsenic, which was a component of embalming fluid until the late 1920s.
09:30Tests also revealed tuberculosis in the lungs.
09:32While the bullet that caused the fatal wound was presumably removed during the original autopsy, the bullet jacket was found.
09:40It was determined to be a gas check, which were first used in 1905 until 1940.
09:46These clues helped investigators pinpoint the era in which the man had been killed.
09:50Further clues to the man's identity were found when the mandible was removed for dental analysis.
09:56Inside the mouth was a 1924 penny and ticket stubs to the 140 West Pike Sideshow and Louis Sonny's Museum of Crime.
10:06Investigators contacted Dan Sonny to confirm that the body was of Elmer McCurdy.
10:11Forensic anthropologist Dr. Clyde Snow was also called in to help make a positive identification.
10:18Dr. Snow took radiographs of the skull and placed them over the photo of McCurdy taken at the time of death in a process called superimposition.
10:28Dr. Snow was able to confirm that the skull was that of Elmer McCurdy.
10:32Elmer's criminal career is a fine example of the saying,
10:35If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all.
10:38Elmer McCurdy was born January 1st, 1880 in Maine.
10:42In 1907, Elmer joined the United States Army, where he learned how to use nitroglycerin for demolition purposes.
10:50He was honorably discharged from the Quartermaster Corps on November 7, 1910.
10:54Elmer decided to use nitroglycerin in his robberies, but this would become a mistake, as he either used too much or not enough.
11:02On March 24, 1911, he and three other men decided to rob the Iron Mountain, Missouri Pacific train, number 104,
11:11after Elmer heard that one of the cars contained a safe with $4,000.
11:15They successfully stopped the train and located the safe, but when it came time to open the safe,
11:21Elmer put too much nitroglycerin on the door, blowing it open and melting the majority of the money, which were silver coins.
11:27Elmer and his partners managed to net $450 in silver coins.
11:31On September 21, 1911, Elmer and two other men attempted to rob a bank in Kansas.
11:38After spending two hours breaking through the bank wall with a hammer,
11:42Elmer placed a nitroglycerin charge around the door of the bank's outer vault.
11:46The blast blew the vault door through the bank, destroying the interior, but did not damage the safe inside the vault.
11:53Elmer then tried to blow the safe door open with nitroglycerin, but the charge bailed to ignite.
11:58After the lookout man got scared and ran off, Elmer and his accomplices stole $150 in coins that were in a tray outside the safe and fled.
12:08Elmer's final robbery took place on October 4, 1911, near Oquesa, Oklahoma.
12:14Elmer and two accomplices planned to rob a cagey train after hearing that it contained $400,000 in cash that was intended as royalty payments to the Osage Nation.
12:24However, Elmer and his men mistakenly stopped a passenger train instead.
12:29The men were able to steal only $46 from the mail clerk, two jugs of whiskey, a revolver, a coat, and the train conductor's watch.
12:38The newspaper account of the robbery later called it one of the smallest in history of train robbery.
12:43Elmer was disappointed and went to his friend's ranch, where he stayed at for a safe place to lay low.
12:49He began drinking the jugs of whiskey he stole.
12:52By this time, he was very ill with tuberculosis, which he developed after working in mines, and with a mild case of pneumonia, and with trichinosis.
13:01Unbeknownst to Elmer, he had been implicated in the robbery, and a $2,000 reward for his capture was issued.
13:08In the early morning hours of October 7, a posse of three sheriffs, brothers Bob and Stringer Fenton, and Dick Wallace, tracked Elmer to the hay shed using bloodhounds.
13:19Elmer yelled,
13:20You'll never take me alive!
13:21as he shot at them.
13:23They agreed and shot him dead.
13:24Elmer's body was taken to the local undertaker and owner of the funeral parlor, who either heard of Elmer's criminal past, or just doesn't respect the dead at all,
13:34decided he was not going to bury nor let anyone claim Elmer's body without payment.
13:38So he embalmed him, shaved, and dressed the body up, propped Elmer's body while in a coffin in the corner of the funeral parlor,
13:46and charged a nickel to see who he dubbed the bandit who wouldn't give up.
13:51These people would then put the nickel in Elmer's mouth.
13:54Five years later, the man claiming to be Elmer's brother claimed the body, where it was displayed in various sideshow attractions for decades.
14:02Passing from one sideshow owner to another, no one believed that this man was real.
14:07After 65 years of being a prop and sideshow attraction, Elmer McCurdy was finally laid to rest in the Boothill section of the Summit View Cemetery in Gunther, Oklahoma.
14:18A graveside service was attended by approximately 300 people, was conducted, after which Elmer was buried next to another outlaw named Bill Doolin.
14:28To ensure that Elmer's body would not be stolen, two feet of concrete was poured over his casket.
14:34If it wasn't for that film crew, who knows how long Elmer would have stayed in that funhouse for, but now his story can be told, even if his death occurred over a hundred years ago.
14:44Well, what did you think of these cases? Let me know in the comments down below.
14:48If you enjoyed this video, smash that like button, and if you really like what I do, subscribe, will ya?
14:54Thank you for hanging out with me in the Dark Mystery Lounge.
14:57This is Phoenix, signing out. Have a good evening, and stay safe.
15:00We'll see you in the Dark Mystery Lounge.
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