August 31, 2023 • 37 mins
Keith Palumbo and David Rossillo Jr. meet a grim fate in a double homicide; their bodies are discovered concealed inside a crypt within the eerie, abandoned Mount Moriah Cemetery.
Unraveling the complexities of this chilling case, Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack explore the labyrinthine investigation that led authorities to the hidden burial site, thanks to a tip about Keith's disappearance and the involvement of a woman with close ties to both the Warlocks Motorcycle Club in Philadelphia and the cemetery.
The episode delves into the forensic intricacies—from gunshot residue on decomposing bodies to the challenges of DNA matching—and uncovers the lengths criminals will go to hide their heinous acts. It also touches on the human stories behind the headlines, offering a gripping journey through the dark corners of crime and justice.
Time codes:
00:00:20 — Joseph Scott Morgan discusses his comfort around the dead and introduces the topic of a double homicide case involving an old, abandoned burial ground.
00:02:14 — Joe Scott talks about Mount Moriah, a cemetery named after a biblical location.
00:03:00 — Dave Mack introduces the victims, Keith Palumbo, a musician and tattoo artist, and David Rossillo Jr., who had no known connections to the Warlocks Motorcycle Club in Philadelphia.
00:04:00 — Discussion of how Keith's disappearance was reported and the significant tip that led police to start their search at the cemetery.
00:07:36 — Highlighting the logistical difficulties of the investigation, Joe Scott explains the challenges of accessing the burial site due to its depth and lack of a ladder or staircase.
00:09:00 — Dave mentions that the police were expecting to find Keith Palumbo but discovered David Rossillo Jr.'s body as well. Morgan discusses the state of Rossillo’s remains.
00:11:00 — The hosts speculate about the crypt being used as a common dumping ground by organized crime groups, raising questions about the extent of criminal activity.
00:14:48 — Discussion about the significance of the carpet found at the crime scene, and speculation on its potential connection to the body.
00:15:00 — Morgan begins to explain what forensic evidence can be obtained from a decomposing body, particularly when a gunshot wound to the head is involved.
00:17:00 — An explanation of how bruises can still be detected on a decomposing body.
00:21:31 — The process of transferring remains from a crypt to a medical examiner's wagon, with added emphasis on the importance of maintaining the integrity of the remains.
00:25:22 — The challenges the police faced in identifying the bodies, particularly David Rossillo Jr., who had not been reported missing, and the role of informants in criminal investigations, particularly within tightly-knit organizations like motorcycle clubs.
00:32:53 — Joe Scott Morgan delves into the difficulties of determining a cause of death with skeletal remains, especially if the skull is fractured or parts are missing. He elaborates on how animals can complicate an investigation.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. A question that is
thrown my way time and time again when people find
out what I did for a living is Morgan, How
in the world could you be around the dead so much?
(00:32):
Doesn't it take a toll? My knee jerk reaction is
I don't mind being around the dead. As a matter
of fact, the finality of death is rather peaceful, contrary
to which you see, you know, and here perhaps it's
not like some movie where you see the dead displaying horror.
It's the living that trouble me most of the time.
I certainly feel less safe around the living than I
(00:55):
do the dead. It all depends on how you look
at it, and sometimes things are not as they seem.
We're going to be discussing two cases that take place
at the same location, and the level of horror that
is involved in this would make the strongest of us
(01:16):
shaking our boots. Today. We're going to be discussing a
double homicide where the remains were deposited in an old,
abandoned burial ground. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is
Body Backs. Dave mac I don't know about you. I'm
(01:38):
not afraid of graveyards and cemeteries. As a matter of fact,
I find them rather peaceful. There's actually beauty in them.
There are a couple of them that I will seek
out during the fall because they're so gorgeous when you
can see the change in the leaves and that sort
of thing. And of course I'm always going on about
how I am from New Orleans, and you begin to
(02:00):
talk about artistry, and you visit those mausoleums, those graves
that are all above ground. They're famous for having above
ground graves because they'll flood if you try to bury
the bodies beneath the ground. They're unbelievably gorgeous. I urge
anybody that ever goes to New Orleans to take a
cemetery tour because it is something to behold the money
(02:20):
that has been invested in these final resting spots. But
this case, that cases actually that we're going to discuss,
involve a place called Mount Moriah, which is kind of
fascinating because that in the Bible, I think that that's
the location where Abraham took his son Isaac to sacrifice him.
But that's what this cemetery, graveyard burial ground will get into.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
That was named we need two body bags, Joe, two
body bags for today. Police were actually looking for Keith Blumbo,
and when they found him, they found another man, David Rizillo,
that they weren't even looking for. So let's back up
and paint this with a very broad brush. The Warlocks
motorcycle club in Philadelphia, according to the National Organization, the
(03:08):
charter for the Warlocks in Philadelphia was being pulled because
they were too violent, just too thuggish. They had too
many street thugs and we're doing things the National Charter
didn't like.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
These are not weakend warriors. These are serious, serious individuals.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
But the bottom line is Keith Palombo and David Rizillo
were two guys on the outside looking in when it
comes to the Warlocks. Keith Plombo was a musician, tattoo artist.
He comes from a big family, but a very big
family that's awesomely connected. They talked every day, they messaged
one another. They were in constant contact with each other,
and at Keith Palombo, at the age of thirty six,
(03:44):
still called his mother every day just to make sure
everything was okay. That's how tight this family was. I
mentioned Keith was a well known guitar player in the
Philadelphia area, also well known in the area as a
tattoo artist. Well know how popular tattoos have become in
the last fifteen to twenty years. So when police were
called on February tenth, they were told, we haven't seen
(04:04):
him since February sixth. The interviews start taking place with
family and friends, and that's where police get their first
big tip, and it is when a relative says that
Keith told him, if I ever go missing, start the
search at the cemetery. That basically gives you two options.
Keith knew that the Warlocks used the cemetery as a
dumping ground for people they clipped. That's one.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Option.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Two is that maybe Keith had been threatened with winding
up in the cemetery, and the cemetery in question, by
the way, Mount Mariah Cemetery. As the police are putting
the case together, they have the Warlocks, they have the cemetery.
They've got a missing person, Keith Palumbo. They need that
one missing link and they find it in a woman
by the name of Donna Morelli. Donna Morelli was known
(04:48):
to have close ties to the Warlocks. She was in
a longtime relationship with the former leader of the biker
club Eric Martinsen. He died in twenty fifteen, but she
still had direct contact with the Warlocks. Hirelli also lived
right across the street from the cemetery, and by the way,
Donna Morelli is actually a board member of the Friends
(05:08):
of Mount Moriah Cemetery. That's the nonprofit form to clean
and preserve the cemetery after it closed in twenty eleven.
So here is your direct tie between the Warlocks, the cemetery,
and Keith Palumbo. So the police pay a call on
Donna Morelli. Donna Morelli knows something the police aren't even
looking for. She knows they're going to find Keith Plumbo.
She knows they're going to find something else too, so
(05:31):
she starts negotiating, and the police use this information to
find out where is the crypt inside the cemetery where
they might find Keith Palumbo. So what happens next, Joe.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
There are not too many situations as an investigator where
you're faced with these unusual circumstances where you're literally standing
in the middle of an abandoned graveyard, and within the
abandoned graveyard, you're actually staring down into a crypt. You
had no idea the crypt was there, and it's just
(06:05):
it's the unusual fact that the police came into this information.
If anything ever happens to me. Palombo was quoted as saying,
look in the graveyard, my lord.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
They did.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
And when you pull the slab back, you're not just
to imagine, if you will, the deepest, darkest, blackest space
that you can possibly imagine. It's obviously windowless. You're talking
about an environment that is completely encased underground in brick
with dirt thrown on top of it. And the dirt
has been compacted for years and years, so there is
(06:38):
not a bit of light getting into this area. The
last time there was any light, and we can only
assume that it may have been starlight or moonlight, was
cast down into this pit was the days that these
bodies had been cast down in there. Maybe they used
a flashlight. I doubt that they really even cared, because listen,
when it comes to this process and how these bodies
(07:02):
were disposed of, Palombo and Rosello, you said something that
was really key here, Dave. They were tossed away like garbage.
So it's not like when you think about this crypt,
you think about how respectfully the rest of these bodies
were treated down there. These guys were essentially the top
of the crypt was pulled back and they were dumped
down in there. So the police are faced with a
(07:25):
very interesting prospect. First off, how are they going to
safely get down into this hole? Well, the fire department
shows up and they provide a ladder. There's not a
ladder that would go down in this thing. If there
had been a ladder at some point in time in
order to facilitate these bodies being taken down, it would
have been picked up and removed because keep in mind,
you have to place this large stone slab over this opening,
(07:49):
so there's not like a staircase that's built down that.
There's not a winch system or certainly an elevator or
something like that to facilitate the bodies going down on
the ground.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Picture, you get to the bottom and there's a crypt keeper,
just like from TV. Now that all makes sense. How
never understood it? Now I get it.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Crypt Keeper is suddenly is certainly a metaphorical character there
for the afterlife. In this sense, you've got nothingness, You've
got black, deep, dark nothingness. And when you're processing the
scene going down into the depths, because you literally are
you have to flood this area with lights so before
you can do anything in this environment, because the smallest
(08:27):
little clue down there, a ripped piece of clothing, cigarette butt.
I've actually had cases Dave with clandestine burials where the
people were digging the hole and they flicked a cigarette
butt down into the hole and we were able to
do DNA off the cigarette butt. So you never know
what you're going to find.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
And they think they're going to find one, they are
Just to be crystal clear, they the police, they believe
they're going to find the body of Keith Palumbo. They
don't know about David Rissolo. They only think and they
think that Keith was there maybe two months.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Rissolo, to be honest with you, he would have been
almost completely skeletonized by this point and whatever clothing, which
again is a big part of this, whatever clothing he
would have had on, would have essentially been a container
for his skeletal remains. You've got this kind of point
(09:41):
of impact that happens when Keith Palombo is dropped down
onto this pre existing skeletal remain, so you can have
some disruption in the remains at that point in time
as well. So anything that may have been in one
configuration is suddenly distorted. Then on top of that, you've
got this process that is going on with this now
(10:06):
recent decompositional event where Palombo's body is beginning to break down.
We're talking about two months down the road. There still
would be soft tissue. And yeah, the odor would have
been incredibly foul. Even though this is technically subterranean and
you're going to have you'll consistently the ambient interior temperature
(10:27):
and here is going to remain consistently at roughly below
seventy degrees more than likely.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
What about humidity, Is it going to be humid?
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it would and this and hey listen,
this space would have been probably damp. There is no crypt, tomb, casket,
or coffin that is free of moisture. People try to
sell this, They try to tell you that it is.
But these environments you're underground. So with just and keep
in mind the water table itself as it rises and fallen.
(10:56):
And this crypt, as we know, has been there for
well in excess of probably one hundred years. It has
experienced water damage over the years. You can just look
at the bodies that were stored in there from the
cromseen photos and you can see mold and mildew, and
the caskets are actually beginning to break down. Some of
them have broken down that are in there. So, yeah,
the humidity is going to play a key role in this.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Police went down to find Keith Palombo. They expect one body,
fairly new. But the police aren't stupid. They know, hey, man,
if this was used to get rid of one guy,
maybe this might be like the Mob Graveyard but for
the biker gang, the Warlocks of Philadelphia.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Yeah, and there's pre knowledge of this too. Remember what
Keith Palombo actually told his family. He said, if I
ever go missing, look in the graveyard. Well, what the
heck does that mean?
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Start the search at the cemetery?
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Yeah, start searching cemetery. What does that mean? Does did
that mean that he had knowledge of this other fellow
that had been dumped down in there? Or And this
is really chilling when you think about it. Are there
other locations throughout the cemetery And the sheer magnitude of
this when you begin to kind of do the calculus
here is mind blowing. If this was in fact a
(12:14):
dumping ground to get rid of bodies and maybe it
wasn't just them. Keep in mind with and I don't
want to go too far filled with this. You can
fantasize about this all you want, but let's just explore
is just for a moment. The underworld is interconnected. They're
not on an island. You have people doing business, very
dark things, but they're still networked with one another and interconnected.
(12:36):
Let's just say that one organized crime group got together
with the other one said yeah, well we use this
area on a regular basis. Nobody's going to look there.
It's the perfect set of circumstances. After you get into
the space and you've got all of these other casketed
bodies or previously casketed bodies, you're thinking the damage on
these coffins. Did it occur as a result of somebody
(12:58):
meddling with it or is it a natural event where
they're just breaking down over time? Even if it's old wood.
If these are old wooden caskets, which they look like,
if they've been freshly cracked, you could appreciate that on
the broken ends they won't have as much weather because
as they were intact prior to being broken, that area
(13:19):
would have kind of been protected. But you could look
for fresh breaks and hear and so that would give
you an idea of activity. And that's the most important thing.
Someone has been down there before. Someone has an awareness.
Someone had broken the seal on that crypt at some
point in time and gone down there, and they would
have had an awareness of it. Someone had passed through
that graveyard. Dave repeatedly looking for space to place these bodies.
(13:44):
But still at the end of the day, what do
you do with all of this when you get it
back to the medical examder's office.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
And that's the question is what did Keith Palumbo? What
did his body look like after being in this crypt
subterranean temperature moist about eight weeks. We know that, according
to documents related to the court case, that he was
shot in the face. Are you still going to have
enough soft tissue to find a bullet?
Speaker 1 (14:10):
The bullet here, I think is probably a secondary because
the bullet can actually pass through the head. Here's what's key.
We know that he was shot in the face. As
a matter of fact, one of the reports has from
one of the people that kind of rolled over on
this case. They shot him on a carpeted area and
rolled his body up in the carpet and actually trimmed
off pieces of it. The carpet was super saturated, and
(14:31):
the police have never released the information relative to this carpet.
Was it down there with the body? I think that
that's a fascinating bit of forensic evidence. But back to
his body, what would it reveal? Listen, even with decomposing remains,
Let's just say, if you will put your the tip
of your finger in the center of your forehead, that
soft tissue right there. Someone is shot in the center
(14:53):
of their forehead and it's within I don't know, probably
within about eight inches, you're going to have some type
of deposition on the surface of that skin. Now, will
it be more difficult to see on a decomposing body, Yeah,
it will be. Bodies do. In fact, they go through
stages relative to the color of their skin as they
(15:15):
are decomposing. First you'll have this kind of reddish hue
that will take place with the body. Then it'll become
this kind of sickly pink color. Then it expands out
into a green and then into a black, and then
finally the tissue is eradicated. He would not have hit
that kind of blackened state yet, So you could still
appreciate any kind of stippling or tattooing that was there
(15:38):
on skin. And also if the muzzle of that weapon
was close enough to the face, as we've been told
that it was fired, they would have done a detailed
dissection immediately over that defect. Defect is just a fancy
term for the hole, the bullet hole that's in the body.
And when you reflect that, let's say that it was
within say an inch of the forehead, there's a high
(16:02):
possibility that you would get what's referred to as soot
deposition on the external table of the skull, which means
that once you pull away that soft tissue, you can
actually appreciate perhaps gunpowder residue on the surface of the bone.
It would still be there. That's not going to dissipate.
The skin might disappear, and obviously it would soft tissue,
(16:25):
but not just over this period of time. It's a
foul mess to work with, trust me, it is. And
if he was shot anywhere else in the body, we
know in the face, but there's multiple gunshots, there's a
possibility you can still find some residue there. And also
if he was beaten down in any way, did you know,
even if a body is decomposing, you can still in
(16:46):
the anti mortem state when we are bruised, we have
these focal areas of hemorrhage in the anti mortem state
that occurs. That means our heart is still pumping. You've
got this hemorrhage that's leaching out into what's referred to
as an interstitial tissue. Even in decompositional phase, you can
still appreciate that if you still have tissue. So they
would have examined that. Finally, one of the things that
(17:08):
they're going to try to discover with him. Even before
they as we used to say in the morgue, before
they put the cold steel to the body, they would
have done X rays. And X rays are important in
any kind of autops you do. I don't care how
benign it might seem. If you have that radiographic record
of the body, that's something that will never go away.
(17:30):
And you want to do that before you ever remove
the clothing, period, because you don't know what's hiding beneath
these radio opaque things. And with these bullets projectiles, as
they pass through and they cavitate through the skull, they
leave a little lead storm. Lots of times and you
can actually track that little lead storm and figure out
what the trajectory of the round is. And that's important
(17:52):
here because as a body begins to decompose, and particularly
when you're talking about the brain, the brain goes into
almost this doesn't have the same consistency as it does
in life. It's not quite as firm. So before you
ever touch the brain, like open it with the striker
saw where we removed the skull cap and all that
sort of thing. If you're looking at a radiographic record
(18:15):
of this, you can still see that little lead track.
If that bullet is fragmenting, you can pick up on
the trajectory. So if this eyewitness is saying, yeah, I
saw him shoot him in the face. He was standing
three feet away from him, or two feet away or
six inches away from him. He had gotten Palombo down
on his knees before he shot him. Well, now you're
(18:36):
talking about a trajectory that's going from above to below,
from front to back, and it's on a really pitched angle.
Maybe Palombo didn't look up at him when he was shot.
Maybe he just kept his eyes looking straight ahead. If
he's on his knees at the guy's thighs as he's
been shot, and he shot more on the top of
the head that can be interpreted as the face, or
maybe they're face to face. Maybe he's got his chest
(18:58):
thrown out and he whips the gun out, sticks it
right in his face and shoose him. That's going to
give you a more front to back without as much
of a pitch. So that's why the X rays are
so very important.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
So months after he's been in that grip and you
can still figure that out. Now, how would you get
the body out? Because I'm going to assume there's going
to be a barely in depth investigation of his body
right there where it's found before they move it.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Right.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Yeah, I got to say something here real quick. A
plug for all of my friends in the fire service.
I have gotten out of more tight fixes as a
medical legal death investigator as a result of fire service
being at a scene. And you want to know why
police officers are very fastidious with their uniforms. The thing
about firefighters, they'll look at you and it doesn't matter
(19:43):
how dirty the task is. They'll say, oh yeah, doc,
we'll be glad to help you. What do you need.
We've got a special knot that we can tie or
we've got this and that that we can help you
out with. We got this brand new tool we want
to use. And let me tell you, when they would
have gotten Palombo's body out, fire rescue would have been
involved and it would have been just like a regular rescue. However,
(20:05):
you're talking about a markedly decomposed body. So the body
would have been bagged.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
When you say bagged, you mean like in the body
bag as.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
In body bag. Yeah, to completely contain the body. Here's
another bit about body bags, since we're on the topic.
Bodies don't go directly into body bags. What happens is
we line the body bags with a clean white sheet.
And the reason we do that is that when we
place the body that is recovered at the scene into
(20:33):
the body bag that is in fact lined with a sheet,
we're guaranteed to a certain degree, and it's not perfect,
but to a certain degree that we can recover any
kind of trace evidence that might fall off. It's not
going to go anywhere. And so we can tie the
sheet off around the body and then zip the body
bag closed and lock it. We actually have these little
(20:54):
plastic locks. Then the body would have been placed into
a life saving basket essentially, like you see mountain rescues
being done and all this sort of thing, and it
would have been pulled up by the firefighters. That there's
a great shot from the scene that was put out
by the DA's office. I urge anybody go take a
look at this, and you can see firefighters looking over
(21:16):
into the crypt and they would have pulled them out
and then they would have transferred it to the medical
examiner's wagon and off they go, and.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
They would try to keep them level the whole way.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
As best you can. You don't want to jostle any remains.
Skeletal remains are going to be a bit different. The
(21:52):
one saving grace is if in fact the skeletal remains
were still contained within clothing, we have to assumed that
they were. That is, if shirt, pants, shoes, all of
those items that would have acted as kind of a
containment resource for the body. So it's not like at
the scene, I think people believe that we're going to
(22:15):
do this really detailed examination or remains of the scene.
That's not what we're going to do. Our goal at
the scene is to try to keep bodies as intact,
anatomically oriented minds you as we possibly can. That's not
always going to be the case, but do care would
have had to have been taken with the skeletal remains
(22:35):
to try to gently scoop beneath them while they're intact.
There's a high probability that you're going to lose, say,
for instance, the elements of the hand, any kind of
bony structures there. The feet are very are highly complex structurally,
so you've got bones that make up the ankle structure,
and then of course you have the toes and everything
(22:56):
else that's associated with that. So you want to be
as careful as you can. And the clothing that would
have been down there I've seen as a matter of fact,
I worked a skeletal case from New Orleans many years
ago where a guy went beneath his house in seventy four,
and this was actually profiled on a Michael Biden's autopsy
show on HBO many years ago. He went beneath the
(23:17):
house in nineteen seventy four and shot himself and the family.
They didn't discover that guy's body until like nineteen I
think it was like nineteen eighty nine, and I got
called out and the blue jeans are still there. He
still had the big wide belt that everybody wore back then.
The blue jeans were flared, you could still appreciate those.
(23:38):
He had leather shoes on and still had a mechanic
shirt on that had his name. You ever seen the
mechanic shirts that had the name, still had the name
where it was visible. And there was an old thirty
eight caliber revolver that was rusted away laying right there.
This goal was even still there, so you have to
be careful with the clothing is very very fragile. In
this environment you talked about humidity, it begins to break down.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
We know the police went down into the crypt to
look for Keith Palombo. That's who they were there to find.
That's what their investigation led them there. They had it
all covered now by then. They go down to the
crypt and they find his body. But they find now, granted,
we have a crypt that's got plenty of other bodies
in it, but those are obviously supposed to be there.
(24:21):
But then you have these two that don't match the rest.
One still has hair and skin, the other has been
there for considerably longer. Now, when you think about David
Rozillo being in this crypt, that for again, he was
last seen in December of twenty seventeen. We're now in
April of twenty twenty and police had to do DNA,
(24:45):
they had to actually do the whole forensic thing on him.
So where do you start. You know, you've got the
body on top. It was the one you were expecting
to find, and based on the condition of his body
the remains, they knew they had their right guy. Of
course they did the dental tsking and everything wants to
prove it, but they knew this was the guy we
were looking for.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
But what in the world.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
This is another guy that has been dumped, probably by
the same people, which is why they had to get information,
and they started making deals with different members of the
Warlocks gang because they didn't even know who they were
looking at. Nobody had reported this person missing. That was
the thing with David Rizillo. They didn't know he was
even there. They didn't know he was missing.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
That's a problem for you. However, since the police, the
investigators would know, they're kind of on a very tight
spectrum here because you're talking about a motorcycle club and
there are a finite number of people that could be
a member or associated with that club. Well, you begin
to think about the police. Law enforcement are always going
to have informants. I don't care how secure you might
(25:47):
think your organization is, There's always going to be somebody
around that's going to rat you out.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
There is no honor among thieves and criminals. You know
how drug dealers get caught by the idiots that use
the drugs. They get caught with it because they're driving
around high and they have what they bought for twenty
five bucks. Cob gives them two choices. Do you want
to go to charge maybe a fellon you lose your
job and everything else, or tell me who you bought
this from.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Who'd you get it from? And you kind of follow
the stream.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
Yeah, and that's what they did here.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
We know they did it because right at the very
beginning we know that it was Donna Morelli. Donna Morelli
was the woman who was on the board to keep
the cemetery up. We know that Donna Morelli was the
former main lady of the club. Her husband or I
don't know what they call him, but her man, he
had been the head of the club and she lived
(26:35):
right there next to it. She was the one who
gave them information about Keith Palombo, and so now who
is this other body? You're the investigator, Joe. All you
have are bones in what is obviously a place where
the Warlocks are dumping bodies. And I think you were
right when you said, Keith Palombo said, if I ever
(26:57):
go missing, search the cemetery first, because he used as
a threat or he knew.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
And even more sinister, did he participate. I don't know
that we would ever know, but you have to entertain
that because that thread investigatively can connect, can connect back
to that. You look at this kind of short list
of people that you have, this gentleman that they found
just down there, you begin to wonder, what do you
(27:22):
have to go on. Obviously DNA, we know that they
either extracted DNA, probably from a tooth, more than likely,
because teeth are The way I've described it in my
class is relative to DNA extraction. If you think about
extracting DNA from say a softer tissue, it's like having
(27:43):
a leather briefcase that you're taking it from. If you
take it from teeth, DNA is like having a steel
briefcase because it's that resilient. I mean, some of the
most fantastic work that scientists are doing right now and
trying to understand genetics, and those sorts of things, particularly
in our prehistory, come from teeth of mast dons and
(28:04):
all those sorts of things, because it's a container, it's
not bone, and so they would have that. But another
kind of broader strokes. There are other evidentiary clues here.
You know I'd mentioned that clothing, Well, that clothing is
going to have a specific size, it's going to have
a specific manufacturer. There might be name tapes or name
tax and also you might have a government ID. I
(28:25):
never trust government issued identification on anybody, particularly on a
decomposed remain, a skeletal remain, because it can be placed there.
I have no idea. I can't look at the idea
and say that it is this person. So it's a
good place to start and see. I would have thought
that had been a good one. I really if you had,
if I was on a test, I just failed. Now
(28:46):
I make sense, Joe, It makes perfectly good sense that
you wouldn't trust that. There have been many, many people
that have been misidentified with driver's licenses that they had
on them. I don't trust them. I don't trust military ideas.
I've seen enough of them. They can either be forged
or faked, or somebody can be carrying somebody else's it's
too much of a risk. You're actually what you're doing
(29:06):
is you're running the risk of good and this has happened.
You're running the risk of basing an identification and subsequently
a notification to a family on a government on a
piece of paper. I don't want to do that. I
might go to a family and say, look, we have
a remain here that might be your loved one, but
we have to make sure. What can you tell me
about the dental history. What can you tell me about
(29:28):
the medical history? Is there anywhere I can go for
a dental chart? Can I get a DNA sample from
his familial line? And if that is the case, then
I can compare what I have the unknown to the known,
and that's the most important thing.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
And so that's what they did with David Rizilla, which
is why it ended up going to court. As we
know now, Donna Morelli actually was the source of information.
She was able to plea it down, which is how
it helped to find out who he was. But they
did the DNA matching and everything. But I was kind
of car because we had talked about the condition of
the body for Keith Palumbo, that he was still eight
(30:06):
weeks pasted, that he still had soft tissue and what
have you. But with David Rizzolo, they had to depend
on other waves to find out to prove what had happened.
Is one thing for somebody to say what happened, but
you can't take her word for it, because, well, for
crying out loud, everybody we're dealing with, we know is
a member of the Warlocks gang here in Philadelphia, but
(30:27):
they all claim they were not members of the They
were never involved in the case of the guy who
they knew was a leader of the thing for years
in court they said no, he was a probationary guy.
So you can't believe anything that's being said. But what
can you find out When you've got the bones, you've
got the clothing, you've got this evidence, there's enough to
(30:48):
piece too and two together and then form your line
of attack. But you're going to find these bones in there,
and you don't know if this is where they were
when they were first put down there or were they
knocked around with the other body was dropped in are
the rodents that can get into a crypt, so the
bunts could be drug around.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Yeah, most certainly, and rats in particular are attracted particularly
with exposed remain like this because put it quite bluntly,
other animal life attracts other animal life. And so once
those say, for instance, the fly which to get into
a crypt is an easy feat for a fly, and
if they're smelling this decompositional event, they're going to be
(31:27):
attracted to it. They have no fear of the dark,
and that sense that they have, that sense rather that
they have will attract them to the body and they
begin their cycle and it's a naturally occurring event. It's
just like any other mammal that dies. We all go
through the same process. But in that subterranean world, Yeah,
you'll get all kinds of armints that will come in
(31:49):
there and they will begin to do what they do
with human remains, and you would see evidence on that,
even the skeletal remains. You'll see there's any number of
cases that are out there where you have naw marks
on bone that's left behind. And why do they do that, Well,
animals have a natural affinity for minerals, and so they're
(32:10):
seeking out these things that they can get from bone,
for instance, whether it's a calcium, they're searching for protein.
Anything that they can know on that is at their disposal,
they will seek it out and they will they will
utilize it. So yet the bones can be compromised to
that point, however, you're at a real you're behind the
eight ball where the skeletal remain if you're looking for
(32:34):
a cause of death, and I think that that's probably
what everybody would want to know. Here's another problem. Let's
just say, just like Palombo, he was shot in the face, well,
his head. As long as there's a soft tissue around
the head, you still have containment. The skull would be fragmented,
it'd be fractured as decomposition continues on in its natural state.
(32:55):
Not talking about an embalmed body. The bones literally kind
of fall upon It's like a fracturing clay pot, okay,
and they'll be cast about where the skeletal remain. Now
you're at this point where if he was shot in
the face, you might be dealing with massive skull fracture
that's going on. There's no more soft tissue to hold
it together. We're talking multiple years down range. So it
(33:17):
could be lying down there in multiple parts. Well, guess what.
A rodent will take the smaller bits of bone, like
the table of the skull, and if they've got a hole,
say in the wall of that crypt, they will literally
take that back to their nest and they'll gnaw on it.
Possums do this all the time out in the woods
with bone possums and raccoons. They'll haul bits of bone
(33:39):
off to their little nest, their little areas where they live,
and they'll feast on this. And you'll wind up missing
bits of bone out there with skeletons that have been
down for a protracted period of time. I think that's
one of the reasons like we rarely find, for instance,
like hyoid bones those and bones in the neck that
everybody's always going on about because it's very fragile, it's
(34:00):
very tiny, and so that would be prime for say
an animal to grab hold of and they haul it away. Well,
if the hyoid is missing, for instance, and say just
some generic case out there, and you're thinking, wow, is
this a homicide, Was this a strangulation or something? I
need to see if it was fractured, it's not there, Well,
you got to check that off the list. You can't
check it. That's a problem. You can't prove it. So
(34:22):
with his skull, with the skeletal remains, what you're looking
for is even after death, if you have the totality
of the skull, you can still put it together all right,
and you'll use wax or clay kind of to seal
it up many times, and you can appreciate the form
of it, and you can also appreciate if there are
any defects in the skull. So if he's shot in
(34:43):
the forehead, for instance, that's going to have internal beveling.
So you think about a beveled glass. The interior of
that bone is blown out and it's beveled on the inside.
It's smooth on the outside, and it's just the opposite
if it exit, If it exits out of the back
of the head externally, you'll have it external beveling, but
the interior the skull will be smooth where the whole
(35:03):
passes through. So that's how we determine where a skeleton
or with a skull, which one is the entrance versus exit,
And then is it a throw and through wound. You know,
I've picked up skulls before and kind of shook them
a little bit. And you can actually hear a projectile
rattling around inside the cranial vault, which for us we
get excited about because we've got to project all there.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
So you've got, in this case, combination of good old
police work going to your local biker gang and breaking
it down. But when they get down the crypt, they
find what they're looking for, but they find something they
didn't even know was there. And that's where the forensics
really had to go into overdrive to figure out who
this guy is. Even though they had a story from
(35:47):
different individuals in the gang in the club, they still
had to prove who he was, and eventually they did
so David Rizzolo and Keith Plumbo both were able to
be put to rest.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
That's the key to it all. At the end of
the day, I can't help but think though that with
the investigators that were out there when they found Keith
Palombo's remained, there was a certain amount of relief. Obviously
they'd been speaking with the family, but always in the
back of their mind they're thinking, how are we going
to make sense of this? Because this is the ultimate puzzle,
(36:21):
isn't it? When You have one individual that you're looking for,
and suddenly, is almost like some kind of sick bonus,
you find the skeletal remains of another homicide victim. I'm
Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body Backs.
Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. A question that is
thrown my way time and time again when people find
out what I did for a living is Morgan, How
in the world could you be around the dead so much?
(00:32):
Doesn't it take a toll? My knee jerk reaction is
I don't mind being around the dead. As a matter
of fact, the finality of death is rather peaceful, contrary
to which you see, you know, and here perhaps it's
not like some movie where you see the dead displaying horror.
It's the living that trouble me most of the time.
I certainly feel less safe around the living than I
(00:55):
do the dead. It all depends on how you look
at it, and sometimes things are not as they seem.
We're going to be discussing two cases that take place
at the same location, and the level of horror that
is involved in this would make the strongest of us
(01:16):
shaking our boots. Today. We're going to be discussing a
double homicide where the remains were deposited in an old,
abandoned burial ground. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is
Body Backs. Dave mac I don't know about you. I'm
(01:38):
not afraid of graveyards and cemeteries. As a matter of fact,
I find them rather peaceful. There's actually beauty in them.
There are a couple of them that I will seek
out during the fall because they're so gorgeous when you
can see the change in the leaves and that sort
of thing. And of course I'm always going on about
how I am from New Orleans, and you begin to
(02:00):
talk about artistry, and you visit those mausoleums, those graves
that are all above ground. They're famous for having above
ground graves because they'll flood if you try to bury
the bodies beneath the ground. They're unbelievably gorgeous. I urge
anybody that ever goes to New Orleans to take a
cemetery tour because it is something to behold the money
(02:20):
that has been invested in these final resting spots. But
this case, that cases actually that we're going to discuss,
involve a place called Mount Moriah, which is kind of
fascinating because that in the Bible, I think that that's
the location where Abraham took his son Isaac to sacrifice him.
But that's what this cemetery, graveyard burial ground will get into.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
That was named we need two body bags, Joe, two
body bags for today. Police were actually looking for Keith Blumbo,
and when they found him, they found another man, David Rizillo,
that they weren't even looking for. So let's back up
and paint this with a very broad brush. The Warlocks
motorcycle club in Philadelphia, according to the National Organization, the
(03:08):
charter for the Warlocks in Philadelphia was being pulled because
they were too violent, just too thuggish. They had too
many street thugs and we're doing things the National Charter
didn't like.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
These are not weakend warriors. These are serious, serious individuals.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
But the bottom line is Keith Palombo and David Rizillo
were two guys on the outside looking in when it
comes to the Warlocks. Keith Plombo was a musician, tattoo artist.
He comes from a big family, but a very big
family that's awesomely connected. They talked every day, they messaged
one another. They were in constant contact with each other,
and at Keith Palombo, at the age of thirty six,
(03:44):
still called his mother every day just to make sure
everything was okay. That's how tight this family was. I
mentioned Keith was a well known guitar player in the
Philadelphia area, also well known in the area as a
tattoo artist. Well know how popular tattoos have become in
the last fifteen to twenty years. So when police were
called on February tenth, they were told, we haven't seen
(04:04):
him since February sixth. The interviews start taking place with
family and friends, and that's where police get their first
big tip, and it is when a relative says that
Keith told him, if I ever go missing, start the
search at the cemetery. That basically gives you two options.
Keith knew that the Warlocks used the cemetery as a
dumping ground for people they clipped. That's one.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Option.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Two is that maybe Keith had been threatened with winding
up in the cemetery, and the cemetery in question, by
the way, Mount Mariah Cemetery. As the police are putting
the case together, they have the Warlocks, they have the cemetery.
They've got a missing person, Keith Palumbo. They need that
one missing link and they find it in a woman
by the name of Donna Morelli. Donna Morelli was known
(04:48):
to have close ties to the Warlocks. She was in
a longtime relationship with the former leader of the biker
club Eric Martinsen. He died in twenty fifteen, but she
still had direct contact with the Warlocks. Hirelli also lived
right across the street from the cemetery, and by the way,
Donna Morelli is actually a board member of the Friends
(05:08):
of Mount Moriah Cemetery. That's the nonprofit form to clean
and preserve the cemetery after it closed in twenty eleven.
So here is your direct tie between the Warlocks, the cemetery,
and Keith Palumbo. So the police pay a call on
Donna Morelli. Donna Morelli knows something the police aren't even
looking for. She knows they're going to find Keith Plumbo.
She knows they're going to find something else too, so
(05:31):
she starts negotiating, and the police use this information to
find out where is the crypt inside the cemetery where
they might find Keith Palumbo. So what happens next, Joe.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
There are not too many situations as an investigator where
you're faced with these unusual circumstances where you're literally standing
in the middle of an abandoned graveyard, and within the
abandoned graveyard, you're actually staring down into a crypt. You
had no idea the crypt was there, and it's just
(06:05):
it's the unusual fact that the police came into this information.
If anything ever happens to me. Palombo was quoted as saying,
look in the graveyard, my lord.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
They did.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
And when you pull the slab back, you're not just
to imagine, if you will, the deepest, darkest, blackest space
that you can possibly imagine. It's obviously windowless. You're talking
about an environment that is completely encased underground in brick
with dirt thrown on top of it. And the dirt
has been compacted for years and years, so there is
(06:38):
not a bit of light getting into this area. The
last time there was any light, and we can only
assume that it may have been starlight or moonlight, was
cast down into this pit was the days that these
bodies had been cast down in there. Maybe they used
a flashlight. I doubt that they really even cared, because listen,
when it comes to this process and how these bodies
(07:02):
were disposed of, Palombo and Rosello, you said something that
was really key here, Dave. They were tossed away like garbage.
So it's not like when you think about this crypt,
you think about how respectfully the rest of these bodies
were treated down there. These guys were essentially the top
of the crypt was pulled back and they were dumped
down in there. So the police are faced with a
(07:25):
very interesting prospect. First off, how are they going to
safely get down into this hole? Well, the fire department
shows up and they provide a ladder. There's not a
ladder that would go down in this thing. If there
had been a ladder at some point in time in
order to facilitate these bodies being taken down, it would
have been picked up and removed because keep in mind,
you have to place this large stone slab over this opening,
(07:49):
so there's not like a staircase that's built down that.
There's not a winch system or certainly an elevator or
something like that to facilitate the bodies going down on
the ground.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Picture, you get to the bottom and there's a crypt keeper,
just like from TV. Now that all makes sense. How
never understood it? Now I get it.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Crypt Keeper is suddenly is certainly a metaphorical character there
for the afterlife. In this sense, you've got nothingness, You've
got black, deep, dark nothingness. And when you're processing the
scene going down into the depths, because you literally are
you have to flood this area with lights so before
you can do anything in this environment, because the smallest
(08:27):
little clue down there, a ripped piece of clothing, cigarette butt.
I've actually had cases Dave with clandestine burials where the
people were digging the hole and they flicked a cigarette
butt down into the hole and we were able to
do DNA off the cigarette butt. So you never know
what you're going to find.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
And they think they're going to find one, they are
Just to be crystal clear, they the police, they believe
they're going to find the body of Keith Palumbo. They
don't know about David Rissolo. They only think and they
think that Keith was there maybe two months.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Rissolo, to be honest with you, he would have been
almost completely skeletonized by this point and whatever clothing, which
again is a big part of this, whatever clothing he
would have had on, would have essentially been a container
for his skeletal remains. You've got this kind of point
(09:41):
of impact that happens when Keith Palombo is dropped down
onto this pre existing skeletal remain, so you can have
some disruption in the remains at that point in time
as well. So anything that may have been in one
configuration is suddenly distorted. Then on top of that, you've
got this process that is going on with this now
(10:06):
recent decompositional event where Palombo's body is beginning to break down.
We're talking about two months down the road. There still
would be soft tissue. And yeah, the odor would have
been incredibly foul. Even though this is technically subterranean and
you're going to have you'll consistently the ambient interior temperature
(10:27):
and here is going to remain consistently at roughly below
seventy degrees more than likely.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
What about humidity, Is it going to be humid?
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it would and this and hey listen,
this space would have been probably damp. There is no crypt, tomb, casket,
or coffin that is free of moisture. People try to
sell this, They try to tell you that it is.
But these environments you're underground. So with just and keep
in mind the water table itself as it rises and fallen.
(10:56):
And this crypt, as we know, has been there for
well in excess of probably one hundred years. It has
experienced water damage over the years. You can just look
at the bodies that were stored in there from the
cromseen photos and you can see mold and mildew, and
the caskets are actually beginning to break down. Some of
them have broken down that are in there. So, yeah,
the humidity is going to play a key role in this.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Police went down to find Keith Palombo. They expect one body,
fairly new. But the police aren't stupid. They know, hey, man,
if this was used to get rid of one guy,
maybe this might be like the Mob Graveyard but for
the biker gang, the Warlocks of Philadelphia.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Yeah, and there's pre knowledge of this too. Remember what
Keith Palombo actually told his family. He said, if I
ever go missing, look in the graveyard. Well, what the
heck does that mean?
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Start the search at the cemetery?
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Yeah, start searching cemetery. What does that mean? Does did
that mean that he had knowledge of this other fellow
that had been dumped down in there? Or And this
is really chilling when you think about it. Are there
other locations throughout the cemetery And the sheer magnitude of
this when you begin to kind of do the calculus
here is mind blowing. If this was in fact a
(12:14):
dumping ground to get rid of bodies and maybe it
wasn't just them. Keep in mind with and I don't
want to go too far filled with this. You can
fantasize about this all you want, but let's just explore
is just for a moment. The underworld is interconnected. They're
not on an island. You have people doing business, very
dark things, but they're still networked with one another and interconnected.
(12:36):
Let's just say that one organized crime group got together
with the other one said yeah, well we use this
area on a regular basis. Nobody's going to look there.
It's the perfect set of circumstances. After you get into
the space and you've got all of these other casketed
bodies or previously casketed bodies, you're thinking the damage on
these coffins. Did it occur as a result of somebody
(12:58):
meddling with it or is it a natural event where
they're just breaking down over time? Even if it's old wood.
If these are old wooden caskets, which they look like,
if they've been freshly cracked, you could appreciate that on
the broken ends they won't have as much weather because
as they were intact prior to being broken, that area
(13:19):
would have kind of been protected. But you could look
for fresh breaks and hear and so that would give
you an idea of activity. And that's the most important thing.
Someone has been down there before. Someone has an awareness.
Someone had broken the seal on that crypt at some
point in time and gone down there, and they would
have had an awareness of it. Someone had passed through
that graveyard. Dave repeatedly looking for space to place these bodies.
(13:44):
But still at the end of the day, what do
you do with all of this when you get it
back to the medical examder's office.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
And that's the question is what did Keith Palumbo? What
did his body look like after being in this crypt
subterranean temperature moist about eight weeks. We know that, according
to documents related to the court case, that he was
shot in the face. Are you still going to have
enough soft tissue to find a bullet?
Speaker 1 (14:10):
The bullet here, I think is probably a secondary because
the bullet can actually pass through the head. Here's what's key.
We know that he was shot in the face. As
a matter of fact, one of the reports has from
one of the people that kind of rolled over on
this case. They shot him on a carpeted area and
rolled his body up in the carpet and actually trimmed
off pieces of it. The carpet was super saturated, and
(14:31):
the police have never released the information relative to this carpet.
Was it down there with the body? I think that
that's a fascinating bit of forensic evidence. But back to
his body, what would it reveal? Listen, even with decomposing remains,
Let's just say, if you will put your the tip
of your finger in the center of your forehead, that
soft tissue right there. Someone is shot in the center
(14:53):
of their forehead and it's within I don't know, probably
within about eight inches, you're going to have some type
of deposition on the surface of that skin. Now, will
it be more difficult to see on a decomposing body, Yeah,
it will be. Bodies do. In fact, they go through
stages relative to the color of their skin as they
(15:15):
are decomposing. First you'll have this kind of reddish hue
that will take place with the body. Then it'll become
this kind of sickly pink color. Then it expands out
into a green and then into a black, and then
finally the tissue is eradicated. He would not have hit
that kind of blackened state yet, So you could still
appreciate any kind of stippling or tattooing that was there
(15:38):
on skin. And also if the muzzle of that weapon
was close enough to the face, as we've been told
that it was fired, they would have done a detailed
dissection immediately over that defect. Defect is just a fancy
term for the hole, the bullet hole that's in the body.
And when you reflect that, let's say that it was
within say an inch of the forehead, there's a high
(16:02):
possibility that you would get what's referred to as soot
deposition on the external table of the skull, which means
that once you pull away that soft tissue, you can
actually appreciate perhaps gunpowder residue on the surface of the bone.
It would still be there. That's not going to dissipate.
The skin might disappear, and obviously it would soft tissue,
(16:25):
but not just over this period of time. It's a
foul mess to work with, trust me, it is. And
if he was shot anywhere else in the body, we
know in the face, but there's multiple gunshots, there's a
possibility you can still find some residue there. And also
if he was beaten down in any way, did you know,
even if a body is decomposing, you can still in
(16:46):
the anti mortem state when we are bruised, we have
these focal areas of hemorrhage in the anti mortem state
that occurs. That means our heart is still pumping. You've
got this hemorrhage that's leaching out into what's referred to
as an interstitial tissue. Even in decompositional phase, you can
still appreciate that if you still have tissue. So they
would have examined that. Finally, one of the things that
(17:08):
they're going to try to discover with him. Even before
they as we used to say in the morgue, before
they put the cold steel to the body, they would
have done X rays. And X rays are important in
any kind of autops you do. I don't care how
benign it might seem. If you have that radiographic record
of the body, that's something that will never go away.
(17:30):
And you want to do that before you ever remove
the clothing, period, because you don't know what's hiding beneath
these radio opaque things. And with these bullets projectiles, as
they pass through and they cavitate through the skull, they
leave a little lead storm. Lots of times and you
can actually track that little lead storm and figure out
what the trajectory of the round is. And that's important
(17:52):
here because as a body begins to decompose, and particularly
when you're talking about the brain, the brain goes into
almost this doesn't have the same consistency as it does
in life. It's not quite as firm. So before you
ever touch the brain, like open it with the striker
saw where we removed the skull cap and all that
sort of thing. If you're looking at a radiographic record
(18:15):
of this, you can still see that little lead track.
If that bullet is fragmenting, you can pick up on
the trajectory. So if this eyewitness is saying, yeah, I
saw him shoot him in the face. He was standing
three feet away from him, or two feet away or
six inches away from him. He had gotten Palombo down
on his knees before he shot him. Well, now you're
(18:36):
talking about a trajectory that's going from above to below,
from front to back, and it's on a really pitched angle.
Maybe Palombo didn't look up at him when he was shot.
Maybe he just kept his eyes looking straight ahead. If
he's on his knees at the guy's thighs as he's
been shot, and he shot more on the top of
the head that can be interpreted as the face, or
maybe they're face to face. Maybe he's got his chest
(18:58):
thrown out and he whips the gun out, sticks it
right in his face and shoose him. That's going to
give you a more front to back without as much
of a pitch. So that's why the X rays are
so very important.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
So months after he's been in that grip and you
can still figure that out. Now, how would you get
the body out? Because I'm going to assume there's going
to be a barely in depth investigation of his body
right there where it's found before they move it.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Right.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Yeah, I got to say something here real quick. A
plug for all of my friends in the fire service.
I have gotten out of more tight fixes as a
medical legal death investigator as a result of fire service
being at a scene. And you want to know why
police officers are very fastidious with their uniforms. The thing
about firefighters, they'll look at you and it doesn't matter
(19:43):
how dirty the task is. They'll say, oh yeah, doc,
we'll be glad to help you. What do you need.
We've got a special knot that we can tie or
we've got this and that that we can help you
out with. We got this brand new tool we want
to use. And let me tell you, when they would
have gotten Palombo's body out, fire rescue would have been
involved and it would have been just like a regular rescue. However,
(20:05):
you're talking about a markedly decomposed body. So the body
would have been bagged.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
When you say bagged, you mean like in the body
bag as.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
In body bag. Yeah, to completely contain the body. Here's
another bit about body bags, since we're on the topic.
Bodies don't go directly into body bags. What happens is
we line the body bags with a clean white sheet.
And the reason we do that is that when we
place the body that is recovered at the scene into
(20:33):
the body bag that is in fact lined with a sheet,
we're guaranteed to a certain degree, and it's not perfect,
but to a certain degree that we can recover any
kind of trace evidence that might fall off. It's not
going to go anywhere. And so we can tie the
sheet off around the body and then zip the body
bag closed and lock it. We actually have these little
(20:54):
plastic locks. Then the body would have been placed into
a life saving basket essentially, like you see mountain rescues
being done and all this sort of thing, and it
would have been pulled up by the firefighters. That there's
a great shot from the scene that was put out
by the DA's office. I urge anybody go take a
look at this, and you can see firefighters looking over
(21:16):
into the crypt and they would have pulled them out
and then they would have transferred it to the medical
examiner's wagon and off they go, and.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
They would try to keep them level the whole way.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
As best you can. You don't want to jostle any remains.
Skeletal remains are going to be a bit different. The
(21:52):
one saving grace is if in fact the skeletal remains
were still contained within clothing, we have to assumed that
they were. That is, if shirt, pants, shoes, all of
those items that would have acted as kind of a
containment resource for the body. So it's not like at
the scene, I think people believe that we're going to
(22:15):
do this really detailed examination or remains of the scene.
That's not what we're going to do. Our goal at
the scene is to try to keep bodies as intact,
anatomically oriented minds you as we possibly can. That's not
always going to be the case, but do care would
have had to have been taken with the skeletal remains
(22:35):
to try to gently scoop beneath them while they're intact.
There's a high probability that you're going to lose, say,
for instance, the elements of the hand, any kind of
bony structures there. The feet are very are highly complex structurally,
so you've got bones that make up the ankle structure,
and then of course you have the toes and everything
(22:56):
else that's associated with that. So you want to be
as careful as you can. And the clothing that would
have been down there I've seen as a matter of fact,
I worked a skeletal case from New Orleans many years
ago where a guy went beneath his house in seventy four,
and this was actually profiled on a Michael Biden's autopsy
show on HBO many years ago. He went beneath the
(23:17):
house in nineteen seventy four and shot himself and the family.
They didn't discover that guy's body until like nineteen I
think it was like nineteen eighty nine, and I got
called out and the blue jeans are still there. He
still had the big wide belt that everybody wore back then.
The blue jeans were flared, you could still appreciate those.
(23:38):
He had leather shoes on and still had a mechanic
shirt on that had his name. You ever seen the
mechanic shirts that had the name, still had the name
where it was visible. And there was an old thirty
eight caliber revolver that was rusted away laying right there.
This goal was even still there, so you have to
be careful with the clothing is very very fragile. In
this environment you talked about humidity, it begins to break down.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
We know the police went down into the crypt to
look for Keith Palombo. That's who they were there to find.
That's what their investigation led them there. They had it
all covered now by then. They go down to the
crypt and they find his body. But they find now, granted,
we have a crypt that's got plenty of other bodies
in it, but those are obviously supposed to be there.
(24:21):
But then you have these two that don't match the rest.
One still has hair and skin, the other has been
there for considerably longer. Now, when you think about David
Rozillo being in this crypt, that for again, he was
last seen in December of twenty seventeen. We're now in
April of twenty twenty and police had to do DNA,
(24:45):
they had to actually do the whole forensic thing on him.
So where do you start. You know, you've got the
body on top. It was the one you were expecting
to find, and based on the condition of his body
the remains, they knew they had their right guy. Of
course they did the dental tsking and everything wants to
prove it, but they knew this was the guy we
were looking for.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
But what in the world.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
This is another guy that has been dumped, probably by
the same people, which is why they had to get information,
and they started making deals with different members of the
Warlocks gang because they didn't even know who they were
looking at. Nobody had reported this person missing. That was
the thing with David Rizillo. They didn't know he was
even there. They didn't know he was missing.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
That's a problem for you. However, since the police, the
investigators would know, they're kind of on a very tight
spectrum here because you're talking about a motorcycle club and
there are a finite number of people that could be
a member or associated with that club. Well, you begin
to think about the police. Law enforcement are always going
to have informants. I don't care how secure you might
(25:47):
think your organization is, There's always going to be somebody
around that's going to rat you out.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
There is no honor among thieves and criminals. You know
how drug dealers get caught by the idiots that use
the drugs. They get caught with it because they're driving
around high and they have what they bought for twenty
five bucks. Cob gives them two choices. Do you want
to go to charge maybe a fellon you lose your
job and everything else, or tell me who you bought
this from.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Who'd you get it from? And you kind of follow
the stream.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
Yeah, and that's what they did here.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
We know they did it because right at the very
beginning we know that it was Donna Morelli. Donna Morelli
was the woman who was on the board to keep
the cemetery up. We know that Donna Morelli was the
former main lady of the club. Her husband or I
don't know what they call him, but her man, he
had been the head of the club and she lived
(26:35):
right there next to it. She was the one who
gave them information about Keith Palombo, and so now who
is this other body? You're the investigator, Joe. All you
have are bones in what is obviously a place where
the Warlocks are dumping bodies. And I think you were
right when you said, Keith Palombo said, if I ever
(26:57):
go missing, search the cemetery first, because he used as
a threat or he knew.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
And even more sinister, did he participate. I don't know
that we would ever know, but you have to entertain
that because that thread investigatively can connect, can connect back
to that. You look at this kind of short list
of people that you have, this gentleman that they found
just down there, you begin to wonder, what do you
(27:22):
have to go on. Obviously DNA, we know that they
either extracted DNA, probably from a tooth, more than likely,
because teeth are The way I've described it in my
class is relative to DNA extraction. If you think about
extracting DNA from say a softer tissue, it's like having
(27:43):
a leather briefcase that you're taking it from. If you
take it from teeth, DNA is like having a steel
briefcase because it's that resilient. I mean, some of the
most fantastic work that scientists are doing right now and
trying to understand genetics, and those sorts of things, particularly
in our prehistory, come from teeth of mast dons and
(28:04):
all those sorts of things, because it's a container, it's
not bone, and so they would have that. But another
kind of broader strokes. There are other evidentiary clues here.
You know I'd mentioned that clothing, Well, that clothing is
going to have a specific size, it's going to have
a specific manufacturer. There might be name tapes or name
tax and also you might have a government ID. I
(28:25):
never trust government issued identification on anybody, particularly on a
decomposed remain, a skeletal remain, because it can be placed there.
I have no idea. I can't look at the idea
and say that it is this person. So it's a
good place to start and see. I would have thought
that had been a good one. I really if you had,
if I was on a test, I just failed. Now
(28:46):
I make sense, Joe, It makes perfectly good sense that
you wouldn't trust that. There have been many, many people
that have been misidentified with driver's licenses that they had
on them. I don't trust them. I don't trust military ideas.
I've seen enough of them. They can either be forged
or faked, or somebody can be carrying somebody else's it's
too much of a risk. You're actually what you're doing
(29:06):
is you're running the risk of good and this has happened.
You're running the risk of basing an identification and subsequently
a notification to a family on a government on a
piece of paper. I don't want to do that. I
might go to a family and say, look, we have
a remain here that might be your loved one, but
we have to make sure. What can you tell me
about the dental history. What can you tell me about
(29:28):
the medical history? Is there anywhere I can go for
a dental chart? Can I get a DNA sample from
his familial line? And if that is the case, then
I can compare what I have the unknown to the known,
and that's the most important thing.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
And so that's what they did with David Rizilla, which
is why it ended up going to court. As we
know now, Donna Morelli actually was the source of information.
She was able to plea it down, which is how
it helped to find out who he was. But they
did the DNA matching and everything. But I was kind
of car because we had talked about the condition of
the body for Keith Palumbo, that he was still eight
(30:06):
weeks pasted, that he still had soft tissue and what
have you. But with David Rizzolo, they had to depend
on other waves to find out to prove what had happened.
Is one thing for somebody to say what happened, but
you can't take her word for it, because, well, for
crying out loud, everybody we're dealing with, we know is
a member of the Warlocks gang here in Philadelphia, but
(30:27):
they all claim they were not members of the They
were never involved in the case of the guy who
they knew was a leader of the thing for years
in court they said no, he was a probationary guy.
So you can't believe anything that's being said. But what
can you find out When you've got the bones, you've
got the clothing, you've got this evidence, there's enough to
(30:48):
piece too and two together and then form your line
of attack. But you're going to find these bones in there,
and you don't know if this is where they were
when they were first put down there or were they
knocked around with the other body was dropped in are
the rodents that can get into a crypt, so the
bunts could be drug around.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Yeah, most certainly, and rats in particular are attracted particularly
with exposed remain like this because put it quite bluntly,
other animal life attracts other animal life. And so once
those say, for instance, the fly which to get into
a crypt is an easy feat for a fly, and
if they're smelling this decompositional event, they're going to be
(31:27):
attracted to it. They have no fear of the dark,
and that sense that they have, that sense rather that
they have will attract them to the body and they
begin their cycle and it's a naturally occurring event. It's
just like any other mammal that dies. We all go
through the same process. But in that subterranean world, Yeah,
you'll get all kinds of armints that will come in
(31:49):
there and they will begin to do what they do
with human remains, and you would see evidence on that,
even the skeletal remains. You'll see there's any number of
cases that are out there where you have naw marks
on bone that's left behind. And why do they do that, Well,
animals have a natural affinity for minerals, and so they're
(32:10):
seeking out these things that they can get from bone,
for instance, whether it's a calcium, they're searching for protein.
Anything that they can know on that is at their disposal,
they will seek it out and they will they will
utilize it. So yet the bones can be compromised to
that point, however, you're at a real you're behind the
eight ball where the skeletal remain if you're looking for
(32:34):
a cause of death, and I think that that's probably
what everybody would want to know. Here's another problem. Let's
just say, just like Palombo, he was shot in the face, well,
his head. As long as there's a soft tissue around
the head, you still have containment. The skull would be fragmented,
it'd be fractured as decomposition continues on in its natural state.
(32:55):
Not talking about an embalmed body. The bones literally kind
of fall upon It's like a fracturing clay pot, okay,
and they'll be cast about where the skeletal remain. Now
you're at this point where if he was shot in
the face, you might be dealing with massive skull fracture
that's going on. There's no more soft tissue to hold
it together. We're talking multiple years down range. So it
(33:17):
could be lying down there in multiple parts. Well, guess what.
A rodent will take the smaller bits of bone, like
the table of the skull, and if they've got a hole,
say in the wall of that crypt, they will literally
take that back to their nest and they'll gnaw on it.
Possums do this all the time out in the woods
with bone possums and raccoons. They'll haul bits of bone
(33:39):
off to their little nest, their little areas where they live,
and they'll feast on this. And you'll wind up missing
bits of bone out there with skeletons that have been
down for a protracted period of time. I think that's
one of the reasons like we rarely find, for instance,
like hyoid bones those and bones in the neck that
everybody's always going on about because it's very fragile, it's
(34:00):
very tiny, and so that would be prime for say
an animal to grab hold of and they haul it away. Well,
if the hyoid is missing, for instance, and say just
some generic case out there, and you're thinking, wow, is
this a homicide, Was this a strangulation or something? I
need to see if it was fractured, it's not there, Well,
you got to check that off the list. You can't
check it. That's a problem. You can't prove it. So
(34:22):
with his skull, with the skeletal remains, what you're looking
for is even after death, if you have the totality
of the skull, you can still put it together all right,
and you'll use wax or clay kind of to seal
it up many times, and you can appreciate the form
of it, and you can also appreciate if there are
any defects in the skull. So if he's shot in
(34:43):
the forehead, for instance, that's going to have internal beveling.
So you think about a beveled glass. The interior of
that bone is blown out and it's beveled on the inside.
It's smooth on the outside, and it's just the opposite
if it exit, If it exits out of the back
of the head externally, you'll have it external beveling, but
the interior the skull will be smooth where the whole
(35:03):
passes through. So that's how we determine where a skeleton
or with a skull, which one is the entrance versus exit,
And then is it a throw and through wound. You know,
I've picked up skulls before and kind of shook them
a little bit. And you can actually hear a projectile
rattling around inside the cranial vault, which for us we
get excited about because we've got to project all there.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
So you've got, in this case, combination of good old
police work going to your local biker gang and breaking
it down. But when they get down the crypt, they
find what they're looking for, but they find something they
didn't even know was there. And that's where the forensics
really had to go into overdrive to figure out who
this guy is. Even though they had a story from
(35:47):
different individuals in the gang in the club, they still
had to prove who he was, and eventually they did
so David Rizzolo and Keith Plumbo both were able to
be put to rest.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
That's the key to it all. At the end of
the day, I can't help but think though that with
the investigators that were out there when they found Keith
Palombo's remained, there was a certain amount of relief. Obviously
they'd been speaking with the family, but always in the
back of their mind they're thinking, how are we going
to make sense of this? Because this is the ultimate puzzle,
(36:21):
isn't it? When You have one individual that you're looking for,
and suddenly, is almost like some kind of sick bonus,
you find the skeletal remains of another homicide victim. I'm
Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body Backs.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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