Daviess County John Doe /////// 571 | Forensic Files

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[Music] January of 1990 the messenger Inquirer reported the following with the headline at the top of page one
announcing victim of brutal murder discovered the body of a man beaten and shot with
hands feet and teeth removed was discovered Sunday morning January 7 1990 in South Davies County Kentucky
the public affairs officer for Kentucky State Police says quote it's absolutely a case of
Foul Play and whoever did this attempted to obscure the identity of the body they
didn't want any fingerprints or any identification from dental records it appears that was deliberate
one trooper with over 15 years experience with the force described it as the most brutal murder he has seen
the Davies County coroner was at the scene and judging from a preliminary inspection
said of the body it appears the victim was shot at least twice and severely beaten on the chest
and head with a blunt instrument he said that there were no tattoos or identifying marks on the body
the unidentified victim was described as being white 25 to 35 years old 125 to 140 pounds about five feet seven
inches tall with collar length brown hair Kentucky State Police said a cadaver dog
trained to find bodies will be brought in to search the area for the victim's body parts
but would not say whether anything besides the body was found at the scene police have no suspects he said
police were urging anyone who may have seen anything unusual or know of a missing person meeting the description
of the victim to call the State Police or the Sheriff's Department they would be keeping all calls
confidential they said adding that the description of the victim will be sent to law enforcement
agencies across the country there is a great quote that sums it up nicely by one of the officers in charge
of the scene when asked to comment on the murder the body recovery scene and the situation as
a whole he simply said it's bizarre the Kentucky State Police said that they would be pursuing all of the
possibilities and quote it may just be a brutal murder or it could be a sophisticated type
situation but it is kind of an unusual situation this is True Crime garage is true
well Captain we are once again in the great state of Kentucky and here we are talking about another unidentified
remains that were found in Kentucky and I want to take it a step further than what we did in the trailer so what you
heard in the trailer there everyone is kind of pieces from the first article that ever came out about this case and
that would be from January of 1990. now the second newspaper article and this is
the same newspaper I don't know if it's the same writer or not but we have the same newspaper here and just on day two
I want everybody to kind of hear how the information has changed already now what
is stated in the trailer is based off of what they would call a preliminary autopsy and that's just simply that we
have the coroner on scene where this body is found and located and kind of assessing the victim and the situation
as he or she would see it on the crime scene and then speaking with the newspaper this article comes out after
they've had time to actually conduct a proper autopsy so listen to how some of this information has changed or or the
variations of the information that we have in this case this article is written by Steve hunt and it's from the
next day saying the headline says slaying victim remains unidentified it says after an autopsy a search by a
cadaver dog and checks of numerous leads authorities have not identified the mutilated body of a man found Sunday in
eastern Davies County the victim a white male this time we have him listed at 25
to 30 years old and now they know that he has been shot six times three times in the head and three times in the chest
with a 22 caliber weapon the victim also had been severely beaten with a blunt instrument and his skull was crushed the
autopsy did not determine what type of instrument was used in the blunt force trauma the man's nude body with its
hands and feet severed was discovered off of Pleasant Valley Road again that's Davies County Kentucky police initially
reported that the victim's teeth had been removed but the autopsy revealed that the majority of the teeth were
still intact of the 2000 death investigations that this coroner has worked he says quote this is the
weirdest the victim is described as being about five feet seven inches tall 120 to 140 pounds with collar length
brown hair I do want to note that I've seen on the internet captain that this collar length brown hair
yeah even though it's reported this way in the first couple days I've seen reports on the internet that state that
it could be hair as long as eight inches so I don't know what the discrepancy is
there but it appears that this individual had quite curly hair and that will become obvious When anybody looks
up pictures of this still unidentified individual difficult thing about this case is the conflicting information
online yes but when they say this is the weirdest case I mean to me it's brutal and maybe possibly leans to
more than one attacker because how much damage was done to this individual and I
think that the the suspicions that you have and that I have really kind of echo what the officer was saying at the crime
scene at the body recovery scene that very first day where he says look this just might be another brutal murder or
it could be something far more sophisticated right we just don't know at this time because we've not been able
to identify this victim the article goes on to say and this is the coroner's word
saying that the victim's hands had been cut off at the wrist and the feet cut off at the ankles and they were unable
to determine the instrument or what instrument was used to amputate the hands and feet by amputating the hands
you're eliminating one of the identifiers but by leaving the teeth then you could get identification
through through dental records yes and the article goes on to state that you know the the sheriff the Davies County
Sheriff at the time he's saying this autopsy was very helpful it did answer some of the questions we have we now
know a little bit more about the circumstances not only how the victim died but what he may have been dealing
with in terms of a perpetrator or I'm sorry what they may be dealing with in terms of a perpetrator he declined to
elaborate the the sheriff did of course if this is sounding familiar to anybody we covered a case on episode 534
we titled that case man with no hands this case is possibly connected to that one yeah and people are probably
thinking hey this sounds familiar that's exactly why because it's a very similar
case where the man with no hands still is just that he's he's a man who has not been named yet he's not been given his
name back they're roughly found around the same time in both in the state of Kentucky and we'll get into those kind
of similarities and differences here in a minute they go on to say the state police goes on to say in this article
that that KET the cadaver dog was brought in they were hoping to find the head I'm sorry they were hoping to find
the hands and feet somewhere at this scene and even with the cadaver dog nothing turned up so
somebody somebody dumped this body there and were very aware and went out of their way to to not leave these items
behind so let me just get this correctly so we have multiple gunshots we have blunt force trauma to the chest and head
and then we have severed hands and feet yeah and so here's what I'm not clear on
and I was hoping to get some clarification on this and maybe we'll we will at some point it seems like the
Kentucky State Police are pretty tight-lipped on this case and and I get it and I understand why I don't think
that either this case or the man with no hands are cold cases I think that they have the potential to heat up very
quickly and a lot of that's based off of Just science right obviously they have the DNA of the man with no hands and
they have the DNA of the Davies County John Doe right what you're hoping at least with that information that at some
point if we identify our victim that may lead us to one understanding the circumstances in how and why this
individual was attacked or killed it also may lead you to a suspect pool a pool of people that would have been
close to this individual maybe they have criminal maybe there's a criminal element with inside that Social Circle
and so it could lead you to to the suspect just by identifying the victim here what's so interesting about that to
me and why I think that that's a very likely situation here Captain is that look at what the lengths that the
perpetrator or perpetrators went to to make sure that the person was not identified right and so it could lead
you right to the suspect's doorstep again the the weird thing here is I'm unclear about the the teeth
right so we two very different reports very quickly in this case where the day of they're saying look teeth were
removed this second day they're saying there were some teeth missing but there were
not none of them were extracted right so what I'm wondering if you look at where
the blunt force trauma occurs on the victim here again they say chest and head but to me the majority of it is on
the face itself yeah in the face and if anybody was listening to our show last week they know that that's important but
here I wonder Captain if the the teeth missing any of the teeth that are missing
if they're simply missing because of the blunt force trauma that maybe somebody didn't go out of their way to extract
them the way that some reports have said here it's just happenstance that when you are applying that force and that
doing that damage bones are going to break bones will chip teeth will chip teeth will be knocked out it's difficult
in in both of these cases to think that there's a family out there that has a missing person in their family why
hasn't this individual been identified and so by us shining the light on it and being able to share this information and
share the image of this victim that that maybe somebody will come forward and say
hey I I knew that guy or or that's a family member right and the thing too you know they're going to do their work
behind the scenes to process all the physical evidence that was found at the scene this would be things like blood
hair fiber samples bullets taken from the body and that last bullets taken from the body is an interesting line
there too because really looking at this crime scene and where they find the victim
I'm guessing that any physical evidence they have they're going to have to pull it from the victim themselves it doesn't
appear like this crime scene will have a wealth of physical evidence it simply looks to me like somebody dumped this
poor guy there covered him up with some sticks and he's he's in the thickets I mean he's in the woods pretty much and
that I guess that's another interesting angle to this whole case when you look at it and it's something that reminds me
very much of the man with no hands obviously that we have a situation that it looks to me like it probably would
have taken two individuals to place this person where he was ultimately found and
so while you may only have one actual murderer you may have more people involved in disposing of this individual
now the man with no hands you know he's found in a barn he's six foot five even even on the short end of it they have
him listed at six foot four right I've seen him listed as tall as six foot six but General consensus seems to be the
man with no hands was six foot five two hundred and thirty pounds and he's found
inside a barn unless you had some tools or something to help you move that person that's going to require two
people to place him here now our Davies County John Doe he is significantly smaller than the man with no hands they
have him listed at approximately five foot six to five foot seven inches tall 125 to 140 pounds
so significantly smaller than the man with no hands however given the lay of the land and where the body was found
again he's found in the thickets in the woods it looks to me like a good chance that
somebody may have had to carry him a decent distance from from the road we don't have any tire tracks that if if
they do have them they've not said this publicly that they have any certain types of tire that they are looking for
what information we do have that is interesting to me is that the corner stating that we believe that he was
killed within a day or a couple days of being found so he's not the decomposition's not extreme here if
we were hoping to find tire tracks or if there ever were any if anybody did drive
off the road you would think you would be finding them given the short period of time that elapsed between placing the
body there and then when these two Hunters are out in the woods and discover this pile of sticks with the
man underneath of it right but also if these cases were connected as the murderer maybe you don't
place this individual in a Tobacco Barn because you don't want them to be connected right so let's take a look at
that the Grant County John Doe if you if you were to want to officially look up the man with no hands
he's referred to as the Grant County John Doe we chose this other name and don't attack us for it because we didn't
come up with it it was actually reported one way at some point that a news Outlet
reported him to be the man with no hands and that was a very interesting title and why do you choose an interesting
title well this guy needs to be identified and the more people that are interested in listening to the
information and looking up the information the better chance it is that he gets identified right so that's why
you roll with that so let's compare the Grant County John Doe the man with no hands to this Davies County John Doe the
Davies County John Doe is found January 7 1990 and remember it's believed that he was killed shortly before being
placed there we have our man with no hands is found April 9 1989. so less than a year apart now they were
found about approximately 185 to 190 miles apart when they're asked about how bizarre this Davies
County John Doe case and situation is you can almost see it you can almost see it if you're reading between the lines
of their words where they're like yeah this is pretty unusual this is very unusual they won't go out of their way
to say it's the only thing we've ever seen like this no because the officers at the same time they're at the scene
and they're going oh wait a second where have I heard of something like this before oh it was in our state and it
happened less than a year ago where the hands were removed of another victim yeah you'd have to assume that
law enforcement heard about the other case you'd have to assume at some point that maybe even those law enforcement
agencies reach out to other people in the state for some help to possibly identify the victim well and in both
cases here Captain we got the state police that are called in immediately right so it's technically belongs to the
same agency you just have different posts that have these uh jurisdiction or or will be actively working a particular
case but let's let's refresh the memories of the beautiful listeners out there so when we're talking about the man with
no hands again that was an episode we did last year November of 2021 episode number 534 the very basic General
summary of the case and this is by the vi cap alert that's on fbi.gov you can find this on their
website says on Sunday April 9 1989 the victim's remains were discovered in a Tobacco Barn in rural Grant County
Kentucky it is estimated the victim was killed approximately two weeks prior the
victim was shot twice in the back of his head with a 22 caliber gun or sorry 22 caliber weapon is the exact words they
use here his hands were cut off and he was stripped of all of his clothing the victim had extensive dental work to
include a 10-unit porcelain fixed a porcelain to Metal Bridge with missing teeth replaced with porcelain pontics I
believe is how you say that for additional information and photographs regarding this victim refer to the
National missing and unidentified person's system namus database case report number
up86 because of the extensive dental work I can't believe that this individual has not been identified right
that's that's always been a very troubling thing for me the first thought that you have in this situation when
somebody like this has not been identified you start to wonder has he ever been reported missing has he ever
been reported missing from anywhere I mean we went through our coverage of that case we went through persons that
would match his height that were reported missing in the months and years leading up to it and we couldn't find
anybody that looked like him we had some great listener feedback on this as well
and with this other case with the Davies County John Doe we hear the same thing repeated in the
Grant County case and the man with no hands case 22 caliber weapon weird right well I know that that's a
pretty common caliber to to use and we we often will cite that on many cases that we've covered here in the garage
but interesting that the bodies disposed of in a very similar fashion and so much so that we're talking 30
years later neither of these individuals have been identified still to this day and in both
cases the same caliber of weapon is used and the man with no hands case shot in the back of the head that seems
execution style to me with the Davies County John Doe I mean it does seem a little different right I mean
it's if we have the blunt force trauma along with six gunshots so a little bit different in that situation but we have
the same caliber the first thing I'm doing if I'm law enforcement is I'm doing a ballistic test to see if those
bullets match the same gun as the first victim exactly and the other thing that makes this really interesting here too
Captain is unfortunately 30 32 years later neither of these individuals identified yet but the work that
Kentucky State Police have done on both of these cases it they've done a lot of hard good work on these cases and that's
why I think that either one of them could heat up like that I mean at a moment's notice they can heat up very
quickly in both cases now as far as the Davies County John Doe goes we did have the officers pointing out very quickly
early on and they're like look this is going to be particularly difficult to investigate because usually we law
enforcement police we have more leads to go on we usually have something to use as a starting point they're saying here
we don't know who the the victim is we don't know how he got here we don't believe him to be local we believe that
he was killed just days or a couple days prior to being placed here but we have no victim name no no clothing nothing to
point us in any kind of Direction at all and one thing that makes this particularly difficult too is we found
this with the man with no hands at some point in their investigation they've not
released a whole lot to the public but at some point their investigation they start kicking the tires on this idea
that well maybe this man was brought here maybe he was driven here from a great distance to be dumped here we
already know that they went to the extent of lengths of removing his hands well maybe they didn't mind driving
hundreds of miles several states away to dispose of this person's body now in the
Davies County John Doe situation they point out that the victim had a quote farmer's tan well he's found
in January in Northern Kentucky in fact this is um I've never been to Davies County but
it it's directly below the uh Indiana border state line there he's found in January in Northern Kentucky and found
within a day or so of having been killed yet he has a farmer's tent and so one thing that they did put out to the
public fairly quickly in in the Davies County case is based off of that information we're we're looking for a
breadcrumb here we are looking for a breadcrumb here we're going to throw this out to the public and say because
of this farmer's tan there's a good chance he was brought here from someplace else yeah unless he's a
complete Weirdo And and wears his T-shirt into the tanning bed exactly exactly so that throws a whole nother
wrench into this situation and we do know that they were putting out the victim's description across the country
they were looking for anybody that would vaguely match the description of this man this is also a tricky situation I
think for law enforcement because if you do identify as family does this put his
family either one of the victims does it put their family In Harm's Way [Music] foreign
[Music] all right we are back to the windows to the walls cheers everybody cheers and make sure
you subscribe to the show that's right because we were at least shows willy-nilly whenever we feel like it
you'll probably miss one if you're not subscribing yeah don't be left don't be left in the dark that's right well here
Captain we got this weird situation when we left off we were talking about how law enforcement were working under the
hypothesis that the victim may be from outside of Davies County that may be driven there and placed there in this in
this spot however they also go out of the way to say that they believe that the killer was probably local
or had some kind of local ties based off of where and how they found the body meaning that they believed that somebody
knew that spot that they didn't just drive and at random pull over and place this victim there so that's a weird kind
of angle to work off of that the victims not from that location but the Killer is
probably local now we have brought up DNA on this case and we know that that's going to be what will ultimately break
this case wide open this situation in 2007 they actually identified the Davies County John Doe as a Scott Michael Morse
so Scott Michael Morris went missing from Indianapolis as a teenager in 1978. let me let's just think about that for a
second I I know we're throwing out a lot of numbers and a lot of locations and information so it gets a little cloudy
sometimes Scott Michael Morris who they identified to be that of the Davies County John Doe
okay soft went missing in 1978 from Indianapolis Davies County John Doe is found in 1990
in Kentucky 12 years 11 and change after this teenager went missing I have a couple different reports here one report
says 2009 the other report says 2010 but regardless both have the same result what they say here Captain is that
further DNA testing I don't know how they arrived at the idea that this person was Scott Michael Morse maybe
some samples got screwed up maybe they were testing something else I I'm a little unclear of how they arrived at
that conclusion yeah but we need to give Kentucky State Police big UPS on this because I mean one of my favorite quotes
is an error only becomes a mistake once you refuse to correct it and here they made an error they did not allow it to
become a mistake because they did correct it and they announced it to the public they're saying look
whether it be 2009 or 2010 we mistakenly identified these remains they do not belong the body does not
belong to that of Scott Michael Morse well one of my favorite quotes is um yes I believe in ghosts but more importantly
I think they should believe in themselves well let's not leave the listeners hanging here because that
Scott Michael Morris angle of the story is interesting in itself so just a quick
little bad choice of words when we're talking about a victim without hands just a quick little aside here as far as
Scott Morris's case goes it says here on the Charlie project website that Scott was last seen in his hometown of
Indianapolis Indiana on August 14 1978. he went to a convenience store down the street from his home and never
returned he was a frequent runaway at the time of his disappearance three days after Scott went missing he called his
family to say that he was working for a carnival in Pennsylvania in 1989 he called a family friend and
said that he was okay and still working for a carnival but would not say where the conversation was very brief and
Scott never got in touch with his loved ones again after that 1989 phone call to
a family friend then we had the nude body found in Davies County Kentucky 1990 was
misidentified as Scott in 2007 the victim had been beaten and shot to death his hands and feet were cut off and his
teeth had been removed again it sounds like only a portion of the teeth were removed and this according to the
Charlie project says in 2009 was when DNA analysis proved that the dead man wasn't Scott more so
a weird angle to that that story that he's misidentified the body's misidentified but then the Scott Morse
case is interesting in itself because he's a known runaway he called a couple times to let his family know that he was
alive in fact he calls the second call comes in 11 years after he goes missing at that point he's not a runaway right
he's never gotten in touch with his family again after 1989 and I've read several articles captain that says that
it's believed that he is is dead that he's no longer with us right and so I guess I mean that's certainly going to
make sense hell this unidentified body was identified to be him but um really I kind of wonder
where this this Scott Morse case goes now if anybody would have any information on the Scott Morris case
you'll want to contact the Indianapolis Police Department for that one at 317-327-6915 but we do want to point out
here based off of all the information we have and that we've seen and received it
appears that Scott Morse wanted to be missing he or at least not with his family yeah but how bizarre is it that
we have a situation where we think possibly because of the distance because of the
time because of the because the way the bodies were found the the torture that was to these victims you could make a
pretty intelligent argument that they're connected and with the 22 caliber yeah then one of the victims is identified
and then they go oops oopsie not not the guy sorry right it makes the case even even stranger
yeah and it's one of those things too that I wanted to make sure that we included
this portion in the show because of what if this Scott Morse guy is still alive and
well and he's fine right he's gone on and he's created a different life for himself living away from his family
we don't know why he left but obviously we have the it's obvious that he did not
want to be with his family for whatever reason but at the same time as The Story
Goes he reaches out at least on two occasions to go out of his way to let them know hey I'm fine I'm you know
nothing terrible has happened to me I wonder if this Scott Morris guy is still out there if they're wrong that
he's not dead has this information that he was you know identified as this this body that was discovered in
Kentucky if this information has just not reached his eyes or ears for some reason
because you have to wonder if he went out of his way twice to let family know hey I'm alive and well right that if
this information had reached him you would think he would reach out one more time and say nope that's not me I'm
not the guy that they found in Kentucky but he's not done that and maybe that's what they're basing off
their statement of well we believe for whatever reason that Scott Morris is is now deceased yeah or strange that
there's no follow-up coming from law enforcement they're the ones that made the mistake
you think maybe at some point they go oh well we you know we did further testing
and we actually think we're wrong and on top of that we actually know what happened to Scott so I do want to make
sure that we discuss the discrepancy in the general information in this case just so that if this were to hit the
right listeners ears that they don't go oh they're not talking about a case that I know about
so rather than rather than we do not know what the exact information is what the most correct information is because
we can only base it off of the very limited information that has been released by the Kentucky State Police
now we have it reported multiple ways from different sources so we're just going to kind of give it all to you and
you can sift through and find what you believe to or or what is in fact the case here but this individual is still
unidentified it's been 32 years it's he's a male that was found in Owensboro Kentucky the age range is weird to me
Captain because I've seen it fluctuate quite a bit it seems to be it seems to be a very fluid situation with this
man's age where he was listed at 20 to 30 years old then at some point He's listed 25 to 30 which is a nice tight
window I like us I like a smaller window so we're more specific here but now as it sits 32 years years later the most
common information you will find is that this individual is estimated to have been 25 to approximately 40 years of age
at the time of his murder he is Caucasian and here again you're going to see a wide swing in the potential height
of this individual where they have him as short as five foot and as tall as five foot seven
and I know that the information that we read at the top of the hour was was different five foot six or five foot
seven but as it sits today most of the information that you find out there will have them listed between five foot and
five foot seven weight seems to be pretty spot on they seem to be pretty convinced about the weight everywhere
I've looked it's all very similar saying 125 to possibly 140 pounds now this particular website
here has the postmortem interval listed at a little bit longer than what we've reported so far which they have it
listed as 36 hours to possibly up to seven days that he was killed before being found I'm gonna go with I really
like what I was hearing from the corner within that first week right that first week the coroner's words always were we
believe he was he was only there for a couple days or had been killed a couple of days before he was found by the two
rabbit Hunters but I'm not trying to be silly here but it'd be tough to give a exact height because he is missing is
right right and and we don't know because I don't think that corner I don't think they released this
information on where where did the uh severing of the feet happen did it happen at the ankle did it happen a
little bit higher we're not really for sure the the early information was the ankles but again that's not something
that's like repeated over and over again so when you see that and you read that you go okay well I'll add that to my
notes and hopefully I get confirmation of that later and you don't you just don't get confirmation of it later right
well somebody knows something in either one of these cases and again I couldn't even default an
individual if you knew something and maybe you knew more of how and why they died you might feel like you're going to
put yourself in danger yeah and while we're on the topic of misidentification we should also point out that very early
on in the case and I'm sure the I mean the the police hate that this didn't work out because it appears that they
had or received some good tip early on in the investigation the way that it's reported is it says rumors but I think
that they received a tip here and maybe the tip was in a form of a rumor but they're saying the rumor was that the
body was that of a Whitesville Kentucky man they do not name the individual but they did you know when we have a
situation where they're not releasing a whole lot of information they are quick to come out and say we looked at that
and it's simply not true it's absolutely not that person is what they state in the papers so another case of where they
may have or at least on the public level there were rumors of misidentification that this guy was possibly this missing
Whitesville Kentucky person of course these all these cases are sad that all these situations are very
tragic that we discuss here in the garage it's all loss of life and loss of a family member a loved one but this is
a little kind of extra weird angle that you don't get in other cases that we do have here
in this case and it's well I'll read it for you it's it's nice and short but uh sad nonetheless the headline here
Captain is funeral held for nameless victim and it says seven people paid their last respects to a man they didn't
know saying quote we memorialize one who we know not this came from the chaplain
that led the services for this unknown individual is a short ceremony that was attended by detectives and members of
law enforcement as well as members from the local sheriff's department it was also attended by the coroner and
representatives from the funeral home that that agreed to host this service for this unknown victim yeah and it's
just kind of sad you know you see these these people that that went out of their
way and had big hearts and heavy hearts and went to this service for an individual that they have
never known may never know in their lifetime it's been 32 years and he's not been identified but kudos to
those people that went and paid their respects to memorialize this this victim this victim of a very brutal murder very
violent murder yeah I'll be lucky to have seven individuals show up at at my funeral I'm gonna show up with one
of those uh Michael Scott fake heads on my right shoulder so that so two we'll count as two I'll sign the book as two
different people well maybe three people will show up well should we get into some of the possible theories because
there's been a lot of theories that have been discussed over the years in this Davies County case and of course A lot
of these theories are going to mirror that of some of the theories that were discussed in the man with no hands
episode I'll read off the list to you and we kind of can go through them one at a time there was a a theory that it
was a Satanic ritual and this is weird because this is is rumored to have been reported that way by law enforcement so
I don't I don't want to just throw that out there and everybody goes well we've heard that a bazillion times this might
be something different it might be something a little more concrete a hate crime a Revenge killing a mob killing a
serial killer and then I wrote down one of my own which I know you will share in
this idea too probably here two perpetrators two or more perpetrators uh as a theory and I base that simply off
of the difficulty of getting the body from however they transported it to the actual physical location where it was
ultimately found but let's Circle back to the top of that list there and we'll start off with the Satanic ritual that's
very interesting to me but I also want to throw this out there too look at the time frame look at the the time period
that when this body was found and with the amputation with the removal of the hands and feet it's not uncommon for
people to speculate that this could be something satanic but also it's 1990 right this is just shortly before West
Memphis Three and remember what was going on in this country at that time where there was a lot of satanic Panic
there was a lot of that going on that started well goes in the 80s and and throughout a lot of the 90s especially
when you're talking about crimes that were to be committed by young adults or teenagers I don't know that anybody's
expecting or suspecting young adults or teenagers to be the perpetrator or perpetrators of this crime but it's
always been reported that that was an angle that police were working or it that they had stated that at some point
again I'm just going to go back to the idea of the amputation mixed with the time frame I could see a situation where
the sheriff's department or somebody is saying that and then really wishing maybe a year or two or ten years later
that they had never said that because it was just a suspicion there was no actual
evidence of that right you would think that they would have found something at the scene to indicate Satanic ritual
which maybe they did I mean they've been tight-lipped about this this case for 32
years yeah could you real quickly remind me of this exact wording that he said law enforcement said about this this
case is we did they say weird or bizarre yeah the one officer summed it up simply
by saying it's bizarre the other officer stated that look this could be just another brutal murder or it could be a
part of something that's much more sophisticated yeah so again I find that statement those terms I find that
bizarre because to me it's like this is brutal this is this is gruesome this is violent these are the terms that I would
be using when somebody starts saying well this is bizarre or this is weird it starts making you question
what else was found at the scene or what other markings are on that victim's body
that we don't know so they one thing that we've not reported yet that is a very interesting angle in this case is
that seminal fluid was found on the victim and it was it did not belong to the victim so the weird angle that that
provides us is this weird situation of two things and this kind of goes to the hate crime Theory
so it's reported two different ways everywhere you go that it's suspected that this individual
had some type of homosexual encounter just before being killed and then other places it's reported as that he was
sexually assaulted and then killed which two there of course are two very very different things which also leans to the
idea of a hate crime right so if he if he himself were homosexual then then people were going okay well maybe this
was some type of hate crime but then you have the complete opposite of that that
would say maybe he was raped or sexually assaulted before being killed so he didn't have a choice in the matter right
so it's all very bizarre where you think that that one element right there if they are able to decipher if they are
able to figure out the very big difference between those two if they have evidence strongly
supporting one over the other I think that that that's stuff that should be released that stuff that
should have been released 30 some years ago if they could determine it back then
because we're talking about a completely different type of perpetrator in that regard well this this is stuff of
nightmares I mean yes if you're not getting up and locking your door right now you don't have a door
and normally when somebody would bring up some kind of Satanic ritual I I'm normally uh
you're gonna have to sell me pretty hard on that yeah but because we've been we've been duped by that before right
maybe not us personally but at least the public has has been fooled by that dozens of times yeah fool me once shame
on you fool me fool me never again um is it possible that some wackadus are out there praying to some
Golden Goat and uh and they decide that there's this ritual where we're going to take a
victim and rape them and torture them and then dispose of the body there's a lot of wackos out there I mean we got
almost 600 episodes to prove that point and the the thing with the sexual assault
with the the rape that also would lead me down another Avenue of potential serial killer right because and I only
am throwing that out there especially at that time yes and we're seeing where there's another victim that's disposed
of in a very similar way and around the same time period less than a year between the two so the difficult thing
here with these theories is that you don't have really a lot of information to point you in One Direction
specifically you have a few different good ideas to work off of with these different theories but nothing that will
point you in a very specific direction that kind of leaves us with the idea of two other possibilities here on our
theories list Captain one being a Revenge killing and the other being some type of mob killing yeah maybe not mob
but some kind of organized crime see this is what happens when you don't pay your your debts off for gambling or
or whatever or you you did something to upset somebody in the mob that you did something against one of their family
members maybe maybe this you know we don't know that the Davies County John Doe was a good person himself we've not
identified him yet to figure out what this guy was up to before getting killed right and we always hear in these
stories oh the colonel he was the nicest guy in the world nobody would ever want
to hurt him lies I'm telling you lies the problem the problem here is we know in the Davies County John Doe case at
least one individual wanted to hurt him at least one individual wanted to hurt him too so and we know there's at least
one individual that wants to hurt you there's a line man at least one the with the mob thing usually I'm quick to kind
of look away from that but when I'm when I'm comparing notes Here on the Davies County John Doe and the man with no
hands I really feel like there might be a little something more to that in in a little more weight that we should apply
to that possible Theory because it wouldn't be terribly far to transport somebody to Kentucky from the greater
Chicago area and there's you know there's mob ties to every big city in this country the other
thing too I know that I think this was brought up when we discussed the man with no hands there's people outside of
Kentucky don't know a whole lot about this angle but there was a a very vicious group that was active years ago
decades ago in that general area and they went by they were called the cornbread Mafia which sounds like a
funny name but yeah read up on them and you won't be laughing very long but one angle that I do want to point
out here this kind of reminds me let's pretend here for a minute captain that these two cases are connected okay my
guess here is if we went into the history of other states to find unidentified individuals we might find
cases that are somewhat similar to these two kind of where I'm going with this is
it makes me think of Richard klinsky and I'm not saying that Richard Kuklinski killed either of these individuals what
I'm saying simply is that watch The Iceman tapes this is this is one of the documentaries that we
discussed years ago you know every every year every so often we pick our favorite
true crime documentaries and create those lists and I think it was the first time that we discussed this Captain one
of the documentaries on my list was the Iceman tapes and this the Iceman tapes is originally from 1992 I believe right
so of course he's locked up I'm not saying that he had any involvement but the thing that you picked up on with
Richard Kuklinski was he's a guy that he's working in organized crime and he is the he is the Hitman well why
is he the Hitman because this is the type of dude that if somebody wasn't paying him to kill people he probably
would be doing it for fun right he's he is the psychopath in that group in that criminal element in that group he's the
guy that they know go to him because he doesn't have a problem offing these people and then the other thing too is
he talks about how he would dispose of these bodies and something very simple right keep it simple stupid one thing
that he pointed out there he's like look I use this method to I often use this method to kill an individual but I also
use this method over and over again to dispose of of the individuals well why did you continue to use that that method
to dispose of the individuals and he said he looked at the the interviewer like they had two heads like they're a
[ __ ] he says he looks at him Michael Scott because it worked it worked when I did it and it worked the first time when
they had trouble identifying my Victim or didn't find him for months or even years I just went okay next time I off
somebody I'm going to use that same method because it works one of the things that I think about in both of
these cases maybe they're severing the hands not to get a bread of that identifier but to make a statement
because back in the day if you stole something they would cut your hands off or cut a
hand off or chop your fingers off so maybe that act of this crime is actually more to send a message to
people yeah it's very interesting to me and I think you might be on to something
there Captain because we have other identifiers that were not they didn't go to other measures to keep this person
unidentified right with the man with no hands he's got extensive dental work expensive extensive dental work say that
three times fast I will try somebody could have could have taken that stuff removed those items
to make it so he couldn't be identified remove the head if you really if you were really
dead set on on making these individuals not identified at all there are other extremes that you could go to but
whoever killed and then disposed of these individuals didn't go to those other lengths for whatever
reason they didn't take those other precautions if you will but they did remove the hands in both
situations and the other thing too like I got to thinking about like well they went out of their way to remove the feet
of the Davies County John Doe but I don't ever remember a case of an individual being identified by their
feet right right I mean you're leaving his DNA because obviously his whole body the rest of his body is there the feet
thing really makes me wonder what was up with the feet why go out of your way to
remove the feet well if we go back to the original idea that a lot of these steps were taken to prevent the
identification of this victim well could the foot for whatever reason one or both
of the feet have some kind of identifier maybe this individual didn't have normal
looking feet maybe there was a tattoo on one of the feet maybe you know you use your imagination
and you can start to see a situation where that might become important but it doesn't appear to have been important in
the man with no hands case that took place in 1989. if you're a betting man and I I know you
like to bet every now and then uh on the horse I like when people say that uh if
you're a betting well I have you happen to be talking to a betting man so so I am a betting man but it won't say it's a
a problem it's only a problem when you lose if you're a betting man would you say
that these again the two weeks in a row it's funny how this stuff works last week we're
talking about the Boardman murder cases and if those were connected uh similar time periods similar area
some similar victimology here the victimology seems different but do you lean towards them being connected
or or not connected I actually lean towards them being connected and usually I and I didn't go into it that way right
I didn't go into looking for reasons to connect these and I'm going to say straight up too
that I didn't find anything that that says to me 100 that they are in fact connected but it just seems a little
convenient a little too convenient to me that yeah the victimology's weird with the
Davies County John Doe we have so little information and again reported different
ways that I don't believe that that allows us to really hone in on one particular
thing here to say that I think the victimology is similar or dissimilar because with the man with no hands
according to the vi cap alert from the FBI his approximate age is 25. well that certainly fits within the age range of
our Davies County John Doe where we're seeing the current information has him listed at age 25 to approximately 40. I
have a difficult time with why that that range is so that they're so so many years applied to how old this guy could
possibly be they're both found nude they're both found with no hands they're both found within a year of one another
in the same state of Kentucky and it for me there's just too many similarities for me to
to get past it right if again you're asking me to wager on something we don't have a lot of information on
I guess if I had to go gut feeling here I'm guessing that they would be I would lean toward them being
connected in some form and it doesn't have to be commanded by the same perpetrator especially if we're talking
about some type of mob hit or some type of criminal group you know I I had really suspected a drug
connection with the man with no hands and then with the Davies County John Doe I just feel like I don't know enough
about who this person could have been to even hypothesize what led to this if I had to go with my
gut feeling um gut and butt feeling I would say connected it's it's eight months between the discovery of two of
these bodies and I know yes it's 140 miles away so there's a big distance there but eight eight months is tough to
shake I wasn't lean so much of a mob hit but to me it kind of seems serial killer
in the sense of well I put one victim here and then I and then I dump another victim somewhere else and I think if we
dove in deeper to that area probably let's say a 300 mile radius to see if there's any other similar cases
those individuals might have already been identified but to see if there's anything similar
um severing of the hands or severing of the feet or the way in which the bodies were dumped
with the man with no hands case I know that a lot of the listeners got on the blog and
stated on there that that one hypothesis they would have is that maybe he was an
undocumented worker someone that we just don't have right information of and that's why he remains so difficult to
identify to this day his ethnic background would have been based off of I think this was parabon
that came out with the man with no hands but some agency has stated that he's probably Eastern European maybe Middle
Eastern descent for the man with no hands I've not seen any of that speculation or information in the Davies
County John Doe but where I can offer a little bit of a little little light at the end of the tunnel for both of these
cases is we know one thing with the man with no hands obviously they have his DNA they're working that they're trying
to figure out if they can identify him using the DNA I seen that last year it was reported that the DNA doe network
was actively working on the man with no hands case it was one of I think five or
six that they were discussing on the news at the time and he was one that they were actively looking into the
basic report that they offered at that time was that we are getting closer to identifying him we have not been able to
get a match to an individual and unfortunately in his case we've not been able to get a match that's close to an
individual meaning they've not matched up with a parent or a sibling they said that they're they're basically
at the the speed bump of we can get we feel like we're getting to distant cousin level with the man with
no hands but nothing close enough that we have any idea of of possibly identifying him or narrowing it down to
a few individuals now with the Davies County John Doe with our case for this week
the light at the end of the tunnel with him is twofold you have not just your victim DNA like
we have in the man with no hands case Brian we have potential suspect DNA and again that's why part of me wants to
go can we clear this up if we do know maybe they don't know and maybe that's why you don't want to release this
information if you don't know it'd be irresponsible but if they do know if they had some way of determining this
sexual assault versus consensual well if especially if it's sexual assault then that changes everything for
me because now that goes from a possible you know friendship or Romance with this other DNA that they have with
the Davies County or it's suspect DNA and so that's the light at the end of the tunnel in the Davies case that one
we could identify this individual possibly we have the science to do it we're working on it we know that they're
actively working it because they misidentified him and then cleared it up so we know that it's been
active at time periods throughout the last 32 years it's a case that's still on the
minds of Kentucky State Police they're probably still doing work on it and so we could have a situation very
soon where either they identify one the victim himself or the suspect in his case
and either way is a huge leap when they were when they were scratching the ground looking for breadcrumbs before
identifying this individual or the DNA that could lead to the suspect huge leap huge break in the case either way
foreign [Music] there is a tip line a tip phone number for the Kentucky State Police if anybody
has any information in the Davies County John Doe case or the Grant County John Doe case the one that we were referring
to as the man with no hands you can use this number for either of those cases and again this will take you to the
Kentucky State Police the number is 1-800-222-55555 we just like your smell we like your
Musk make sure you tell a friend we want their musk to be in the garage as well Colonel do we have any recommended
reading for the beautiful people this week this week and this is very fitting to this week's case as well we are
recommending a book called The Lost family how DNA testing is upending Who We Are
author Libby Copeland does a deep dive into the subject in a deeply reported look at the rise of Home genetic testing
as well as looking into genealogy Buffs the science of DNA and The Business of companies like ancestry and 23 and me
make sure you check out the lost family by Libby Copeland you can find that wonderful title and many more on our
website truecrimegarage.com another thing you can find at the website is a link to off the Record that's our bonus
show we do case updates we get a little silly up here in the garage it's a great
time please join us it's five dollars a month you get every show on Stitcher premium
which is tons of content for five dollars a month you can find that at truecrime garage.com until next week be
good be kind and don't let it thank you

Daviess County John Doe /////// 571

Part 1 of 1

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In January of 1990 the body of a man was recovered from a wooded area in Daviess County Kentucky. It appears the killer or killers went to get lengths to make sure that this victim would not and could not be identified. Advances in DNA technology have certainly change that. Join us for a case that for our longtime listeners will sound hauntingly familiar. Trust us when we say, you will want to tune in for this one.

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Brief Summary

The episode discusses the brutal murder of an unidentified man in Kentucky, exploring details, theories, and connections to similar cases.

Key points

Brutal Murder Discovered. A man was found beaten and shot, with attempts to obscure his identity.
Conflicting Reports. Initial reports on the victim's condition varied significantly after further investigation.
Scott Michael Morse Misidentification. DNA testing revealed the body identified as Scott Michael Morse was not him.
Unidentified Victim's Funeral. A small ceremony held for a nameless victim, attended by law enforcement and community members.
The Bizarre Case Unfolds. Law enforcement describes the case as bizarre, raising questions about the evidence found.
Seminal Fluid Discovery. A shocking revelation: seminal fluid found on the victim did not belong to him.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It's bizarre.

An officer's comment on a brutal murder case.

5:39WatchOct 25, 2022

Tension

65/ 100Some tension

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