January 8, 2025 • 40 mins
A fire was reported November 7th, 2024, at Broadmoor Self-Storage in Kentwood, Michigan. Firefighters cut the lock off unit 454, and discovered the body of Corinne Abosamra. Morgan Wingeier rented a storage unit at Broadmoor Self-Storage and allowed Corinne Abosamra to live in the unit. On the day of the fire, Wingeier left Abosamra in the unit and locked it with a pad lock on the outside. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss what is known so far about the death of Abosamra and look closely at the evidence to see if it leads to accident or murder.
Transcribe Highlights
00:00.41 Introduction
02:00.28 Renting a Storage Unit
04:54.75 At a fire scene, everything looks the same
09:06.27 Would someone rent a storage unit to render down a body
14:34.80 Finding charred remains in the storage unit
19:53.52 Did Morgan Wingeier forget she locked Abosamra in storage unit
24:28.50 Victim was in the unit for 10 hours before fire was seen
29:07.64 Wingeier didn't return to the storage unit
34:10.35 Heat coming off a fire, no escape
39:47.36 Conclusion
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body bus, but Joseph's gotten more. Over the course of
my career as a death investigator, I was part of
several national committees. I had to travel all over the country,
various meetings and that sort of thing, And of one
(00:21):
of my fondest memories was going to Michigan and teaching
a group of investigators there the National Standards for Medical
Legal death Investigation. And the spot chosen for that instruction
was a place that became one of my favorite towns,
(00:44):
certainly up north, and that's Grand Rapids, Michigan. I got
to tell you, if you've never been there, it is
a lovely, lovely place. I didn't expect it, and during
that period of time I appreciated, first off, the people were,
and also how very cold it was at night. Because
(01:04):
I was up there in November, wound up going salmon
fishing while I was there and almost drowned. But that aside,
I loved that location and I loved that place. But
today I've got a case I want to present to
you all that is, at least in my way of thinking,
(01:25):
it's one of the most horrible ways that a person
could die. It takes place just south of Grand Rapids
in the town of Kentwood, Michigan. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
and this is Bodybacks. Over the course of our marriage,
Dave Kim and I have rented multiple storage units over
(01:49):
this period of time. They are unnecessary evil. I think
our house got destroyed by tornado and we salvaged everything
that we could and put it into storage. And we've
had to use them before as well because we just
can't can't, just can't seem to get rid of chunk
(02:09):
many times. And they certainly serve a purpose side, but
it's like when you go to one after you've rented it.
Every time you open the door to one of these places,
you don't know what you're going to find inside, particularly
as it applies to your property being degraded in there.
(02:31):
Maybe there was a leak, which have we've had happened before,
or maybe you smell something bad in there, like a
dead animal, which we have found rats before. It's just
there's something about them that puts me off, and I
think a lot of it has to do with a
labor that's involved. But I got to tell you, Dave,
when you go to storage unit, one of the things
(02:55):
you don't expect to find is a dead person. And
that's essentially what our case revolves around today.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
This story of the charred remains, that's the headline, charred
remains of woman found in padlocked storage unit, got it
by fire. My first thought, Joe, was how did you
get in there to get padlocked in? For starters? Second,
(03:26):
why didn't you call for anybody you know? And then
down the list? And it's only after reading this and
finding out that this I don't know if it was
a you know you mentioned Nancy says intent can be
formed in the Lincoln an eye. I don't know what
the intent was here. Was the intent to lock this
(03:47):
person in there and cause her death?
Speaker 1 (03:50):
I don't know. And they're not they're not really spilling
the beans at this point. This this case is fresh.
I mean, it is a new case, and it caught
my eye because the proximity to Grand Rapids and the
bizarre nature of it. And that's why I wanted because
I think that there's a lot that we can kind
of discuss relative to the forensics here. But you know,
(04:12):
when we go out to assess an environment, first off,
fire environments or the remnant thereof you never know what
you're going to find. I can't tell you how many
times I've had friends. This has only happened to me once,
but I've had colleagues that have actually discovered other bodies
that they did not expect. One of the reasons is
(04:36):
is that when you walk into a fire scene, a
lot of the items that are in there all look
the same because you know, you're talking about fire, which
is this kind of living, breathing entity that's seeking to continue.
(04:56):
It's what fire is defined as an uninhibited chem reaction.
That means that there's nothing that's going to if anything
disrupts it. There's like four components that you're looking for
with fire in order to make it sustainable. If any
of those four points along continuum get disrupted in any way,
(05:17):
then the fire is not gonna you know, it's not
just going to simply burn itself out. You have to
have a starter, which is a heat source. You have
to have fuel, and then you have to have a
free supply of oxygen. Okay, so that's more like three
points along continuum. But you have to have all of
(05:38):
those elements to come into place to sustain fire. And
that's one of the things we look at. And the
fuel for something like this is not necessarily. I know
that many people think, well, gasoline or some type of
petroleum agent is fuel. No, it's not. It's a starter
or it's an accelerant, because you know when you burn
(06:00):
up gasoline, when you use that as an accelerant, it
burns up rather quickly, particularly in the gaseous form. But
what you're looking at as far as sustainable fuel, I mean,
think about the stuff that you've you've stored in your
in your storage units over the years. You think about
I don't know if you're like anything like we were
when we were really young. You didn't have handmade carved
(06:25):
mahogany furniture. You had stuff made out of press board, uh,
really bad fabrics on the coverings. Then you had pictures
and all kinds of others, old clothes, things like that.
And then to boot you got cardboard boxes. You can't
go to you can't go to U haul or even
(06:45):
to a storage unit without them trying to sell you
boxesally and.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
You know what, going and moving, you go to the
grocery store out in the back boxes.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Oh absolutely, And so you think about a sustainable fuel source.
Cardboard boxes, those core coreated boxes are one of the
best around and even even like if you have because
we'll soore stuff in plastic as well. So you know
you've got those clip on lids, Well, what is plastic
(07:14):
made out of. It's a petroleum based product. So once
those things ignite and it begins to change, that kind
of a chemical change begins. As you introduce heat to
the substance that makes up those little it becomes a
sustainable fuel source. After a while, you just have to
attain enough heat in order to facilitate that.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
But what about a rentally unit that has limited ox
there's not a lot of wind blowing through. They're pretty
you know, they're tight, they're got doors on them, in
this case padlog door, but there's oftentimes not very much
space inside those yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah, and you begin to think about and this is
something that meet people don't think about. Let's see, how
can I put this if you let's just say that.
Let's just say that you an I sit down, We
go and we get inside of a two man submarine. Okay,
(08:11):
in that submarine as.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
You out, you're already stuck again.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
I couldn't take it, well, you and I would be
displacing the oxygen in there. So for us introducing the
mass of our bodies into that environment. Then we're displacing
that oxygen that would otherwise be there. So if you've
got all of these items and you don't have free
flowing air through there, you're going to have a limited
amount of oxygen contained in that space. And so you
(08:39):
begin to think about, well, if there's a victim in here,
where they breathing at the time the fire initiated, or
is this something where perhaps they had died prior to
and someone decided to foolishly try to incinerate the body
in there. That's why, you know, like one of the
things you look at with this, you're thinking, Gee, Louisa,
(09:00):
is it would somebody use a storage unit in order
to render down a body? I just I don't with fire,
I don't know. It seems like it'd be rather glaring
to me if you were like the watchman out there,
you know, keeping keeping tabs on the thing. All right.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Well, from a timeline standpoint, we know that Morgan Wingire
was at the storage unit with her mother. They're seen
on surveillance video at twelve thirty six pm. We're talking
November seventh, now, November seventh, in Michigan, in this particular
area of Michigan, Is it going to be really cold?
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Yes, okay at night in particular, and we're talking about
night here well actually, and keep in mind we're Alabama
boys too, right, so there their perception of cold might
not be the same as ours. But when it gets
down to it, if the if the environmental temperature is uncomfortable,
you're going to be uncomfortable and it's going to be cold,
and you're going to look for a heat source.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Would right now.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Morgan wing IRE's mother actually rented the store unit for
her for Morgan. Morgan and her mother are seen at
the storage unit at twelve thirty six pm, so just afternoon.
They then on surveillance video you can see Morgan Wingire
actually put a padlock on the door and lock it.
(10:20):
They then leave at eight point thirty that night. On
surveillance video, smoke is seen coming out from the storage unit.
I don't know to a level because it's dark, but
enough that it can be seen on surveillance video. Just
after nine pm, flames are seen coming out of the
(10:45):
storage units. And these are several units sitting side by side.
At just around eleven pm, police and fire show up
to the fire, which has now been going on for
at least an hour hour half two hours, at least
two and a half hours because of when the smoke
was first seen.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Yeah, and the firefighters are merely being called out to
a structure fire. They had no idea.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Got a storage unit on fire. That's all exactly exactly.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
The thing is is that they didn't know until they
opened the door. And I wonder how this goes on, Joe,
because they get there and they see the storage units,
they're not all padlocked from the outside. Now, I'm going
to guess that you and I both have rented storage units,
and if you put your stuff in there, you do
put a lock on it.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Oh yeah, yeah, you definitely do. And there are some
that have the I've seen some that have like it's
not really a dead bolt, but there's like an external
lock that comes the thing comes equipped with, right, which
I would never trust in a million years. If I've
got valuables in there, I'm going to buy the top
of the line lock and put it, which can still
be defeated pretty easily with a pair of bolt cutters,
(11:52):
which it appears is what the fire service used to
gain access.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
They had padlock was used on the door. Yeah, they had.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
They had to get in there and they had to
cut that lock in order to gain access to it.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Now, when they open this door, Joe, because the other
units were on fire, I'm going to assume it's not
just one little place. We know it's been burning for
two and a half hours based on surveillance video, at
least two and a half hours, yep. But we don't
know the actual starting point yet. We don't know did
it start in the padlocked room or did it start
(12:26):
in one of the other units. The only thing we
do know is that at twelve thirty six pm, Morgan
wing Eyre and her mother were outside that unit number
four fifty four when Morgan actually put a padlock on
the door and spun it to lock the door. Firemen
show up, They cut the padlock off and get in
the door. And what do they find, Joseph Scott Morgan.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Well, they find a young woman's body that is in
amongst the burn debris in this environment, and she used
to cease. You know, at this point in time, there's
no saving her or anything like this. And immediately, you know,
I think that first off, anytime, well, let me back up.
(13:08):
Anytime there's a structure fire, you're going to have a
fire marshal that's going to come out and probably a
fire investigator and they're going to say.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
I didn't know that. Wa. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Anytime there's a building, a structure he's on fire, they
actually begin an investigation.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Is that because of yeah? Well yeah, I mean, and
nothing's you know, look, the firefighters, and God bless them,
they've saved my life before. I love firefighters. I love
working with them, and I've said that plainly many times
over the years. They're not there to assess a scene
other than trying to get a fire knocked down and
make it safe. And once they back back out, as
(13:46):
it said, once all the flames have been knocked down
and they've got the things secured, that's when searches begin. Now,
firefighters do find bodies, okay. So if they're in there
and they're walking around, they've got the big powerful lights on,
they've got respirators on, you know, so that because can
you imagine the amount of smoke inside this thing, and
(14:06):
it would have just come rolling out on them. I'm
amazed by the fact that they were able to appreciate
her body in that environment. But once you find that
body like that, particularly in this case, and they have
subdued the fire to the point they've knocked it down,
there's no more flame, they're going to back out and
they're going to secure the thing, and they're going to
call an arson investigator. They're going to call the police.
(14:28):
And in this case what they found was on imagine. Well,
I think it's kind of obvious, Dave, you can't lock
(14:52):
yourself into a structure with the padlock. They've already got
CCTV of this young woman locking that. What fascinates me
about this is it Wingmer's mother was physically there. How
do you not have an awareness that there's somebody in there?
You know what I'm saying?
Speaker 2 (15:11):
That's kind of Isn't that odd that the story that
we've been told is that Morgan wing Ire, her mother
rented the storage unit for her and she was allowing
karenn o Ba Samra to stay in the unit. I'm
(15:36):
going to go out on a limb here and say,
this is not an apartment, this is a storage unit.
And Morgan wing Ire and Karin Obasamra, according to Morgan's mother,
had been in a relationship previously and This is stuff
coming from Morgan's mother. Morgan wing Are has not spoken
out about this. We have no quotes from her. She's
(15:58):
in jail right now.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
We'll tell you why.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
But it's her mother that gives us the quotes Joe
about them being in a relationship and that she claimed
that Karen Obasamra had been homeless, homeless person. I'm going
to be straight up with you, man. Karen Obasamra highly
educated woman at thirty three years old. She's got her degrees,
(16:21):
she's got her career, she's going places. So I'm gonna
follow down a path here and I'm going to suggest
something that is unpopular. But Morgan wing Ir had been
arrested last year, well, twenty twenty three on methamphetamin charges. Okay,
(16:46):
based on the situation, Morgan wing Ir is hiding Karen
Obisamra in that storage unit from her mother. From Morgan's mother.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Wow, And I don't know, I mean, this is all
speculative on part you know. So what what would be
the motivation behind a grown woman hiding another grown woman
in a storage unit in a storage unit, unless you
were trying to I don't know. Perhaps you know, knock
(17:20):
down any kind of suspicion on the mother's part that
they were still involved in a relationship, right.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
The padlock came from They're at the survey at the
unit and the mother says to you know, because it's
rented in the mother's name, and her mother insists, you're
not going to put a lock on that. Put a
lock on that storage unit. That's when Morgan put the
lock on the storage unit. That's when she locked that
padlock on at twelve thirty six pm. It was because
(17:48):
her mother rented the inn. Her mother said, put a
lock on that.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Yeah, and we're talking, dude, we're talking hours after all.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
But think about it, Joe. The twelve thirty six they're
at the unit. The smoke is seen at eight thirty
on surveillance at nine, flames are seen at eleven. Cops
and fires show up, but Morgan wing II or Mark
I mean Morgan Wingyre never shows back up. Police go
(18:15):
looking for her and don't find her until the next
day at eleven thirty am in a hotel. She said
she had no plans to be away from the unit
that long. She just got tied up with doing some errands. Well,
at twenty three hours she left that woman in that
padlocked storage unit, Joe for twenty three hours without anything,
(18:40):
and by the way, she wasn't headed back over to
the unit when police found her. Police found her in
a hotel room.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
What would be the motivation for you to take up
at least temporary residency in a motel somewhere, so to
the point where you're adjunct to a fire that you
were last known, your last known whereabouts was going to
be at that fire, locking the door, and all of
(19:10):
a sudden you come up registered at a motel and look,
I mean, why are you not going back to your
mother's house? Why are you? And so many questions come
about here, and I begin to think, was this purposed?
You know?
Speaker 3 (19:27):
What?
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Were you? Were you just being mean? I hate to
reduce it down to that, but were you just because
you know? She I will go ahead and give this
bit away. She has been charged ay with false imprisonment. Now,
if you say false imprisonment, you know, maybe angels dancing
on the head of the pen here. But you began
to think, well she was was she actually imprisoning her
(19:55):
to hold her or did she just create the environment
where it's legitimate she forgot that she was in there.
How do you forget another human being that you, according
to the mother, that you have been involved in an
intimate relationship with. How do you forget that person that
you had locked them in there? I don't understand it.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Well, you know what sometimes and I'm gonna I'm just
gonna speculate that sometimes people who use drugs lose track
of time, especially when they use drugs like methamphetamine, they
tend to lose track of time. I'm not suggesting for
a minute that Morgan Wingeyre went out on a drug
bene and ended up in a hotel when police found
her to tell her that her storage unit was burned
(20:35):
up with a person inside and they have her on
surveillance video padlocking the door. By the way, Corinne Obisamra
was left inside that storage unit, Joe with nothing, no food,
no water, no light, and no phone, no means of communication,
just all for help or anything else.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Yeah, who in the world nowadays? I know there are
people well don't get me wrong, but who doesn't have
at least a burn her phone, you know, with them?
And we're talking about a lady that is by all accounts,
is highly educated, has been successful you listen to her
family talk about her, and she's been involved in things
(21:17):
like public service, you know, like working with people, outreach,
those sorts of things. She's got this kind of bubbly
personality and you think about, well, what, you know, what
kind of detour did she take in her life that
would wind up with her inside of a non heated,
non electrified storage unit where she doesn't have access to heat.
(21:43):
She's just kind of cast aside in the saying, and
then locked down, and then suddenly, mysteriously a fire begins.
(22:06):
You know, David, fire is such a mystery weed. We've
covered on body backs, We've covered some firecases in the past,
but you know, fire is such a mystery. The most
important thing I think for fire investigators and death investigators
is to try to determine two things. First off, the
(22:28):
source of the heat. Remember I talked about the uninhibited
chemical chain reaction of fire. Is it sustainable? And adjacent
to that is going to be point of origin. Where
did this thing start? Because you have to wonder did
(22:49):
it start in the middle of the floor. I don't
know about you, but Dave correct me if I'm wrong.
Storage units are commonly built on concrete slabs, aren't they.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Those I've rented have been Yes.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Yeah, this one altered to the ground, the beams and everything,
or you know, those girders are like you know, they're
driven into the ground with bolts and held in place.
It's not like you're going to dig a hole, dig
a fire pit, you know, and create a fire. And
even if you did, what what are you going to
use as fuel in there?
Speaker 2 (23:21):
And you know, I think that's why there is some
mystery surrounding this because so far we haven't been told
that the fire began in that unit. We were only
told that fire department officials had to cut the padlock
off of it to get inside. And you know, we
(23:42):
can assume that that's where the fire began. We can
assume because they were knocking it down everywhere else, but
they still had a problem in that unit. We can
assume those things, but we don't know that for a fact.
That's why I was asking about oxygen in a room
and how much there because you're a confined area. That's
usually a you know, it's twelve by fourteen or whatever,
and it usually has stuff in it. You know, Let's
(24:04):
just say for the sake of all that's good and
human in this world that here, this poor woman is
in being hidden in a storage unit with nothing, and
maybe she's got a lighter in her pocket, and maybe
she's trying to light she's cold, she's hungry, she's thirsty.
Maybe she's trying to just burn, you know, something to
(24:25):
stay warm, trying to burn some papers or cloth.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
I don't know. But at what.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Point do we look at this and say she was
in there for at least ten hours before the fire
was seen.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
You know what a what a hopeless feeling that would be.
You know, no matter how much you rattle or bang
on that door, nobody's coming to your rescue. The thing
is locked externally, and there's not a latch. I don't think.
I'm sure that people out there will correct me, but
to the best milage, it's not an internal latch, and
even if there was, it's secure from the outside. So
(25:00):
how hopeless would that be? And listen, this is the
other thing too. We're talking about November. So in the
middle of the day, this metallic box that you've got
all your stuff stored in, you're going to have some
radiant heating that's in there. My brother, is that sun
begins to dip down up there in Michigan, You're going
(25:22):
to feel that chill. And can you imagine, let's just say,
for the sacred argument, that she is in fact seated
on that concrete floor, how cold that is. And it's
one of those if you've ever sat on like really
cold stone like that for a protracted period of time,
you know how people say I can feel the cold
in my bones. That's the way it feels. It just
(25:43):
kind of travels up throughout your body. And you know,
for I don't know what she had that she could
have wrapped herself in. You know, did she have a
blanket even you know, one of the basic necessities of life, warmth,
heat protection coverage, or there any other clothes that were
in there that she could have put on, just to
you know, try to try to salvage any kind of
(26:06):
heat that her little body was generating in that environment.
But we do have a clue here, Dave. There's a
comment that firefighters made in regards to this, and I
found this kind of compelling, Dave. They didn't say that
her body was found. They said that her charred remains
(26:29):
were found. And that's that's different Because I've worked a
lot of cases over the years where people did in
fact die of smoke inholation. You know the old adage
about how many times we've seen the thing. We even
learned it when we were kids. If there's a fire
in the room, you get on get on the floor,
and you crawl right crawl because there's still breatheable. Yeah,
there's still breathable oxygen down there, But you do that
(26:51):
in order to escape where you're going to escape to.
Can you imagine the panic that would set in Let's
just say that she did in fact start a fire
in there just for her on comfort. Well, where you
going to go to to escape it, and the place
is not lighted, She can't see what's around there. There
may have been a lot of flammable items that were
in there. But we do know that she's sequestered in
(27:13):
this area against her will because she can't leave. I
can't imagine anybody in their right mind saying, will you
please get the padlock and lock me up inside of
the storage unit and don't come back and check on me,
And by the way, don't give me any means to
communicate with anybody out there. You know, it's just it,
(27:34):
it's mind boggling when you think about it, Dave.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
I actually went back over this story multiple times and
looked through multiple sources, and because they kept thinking I'm
missing something here, I am missing something And in reality
you have to make it. You know you don't have to.
But if you make a couple of assumptions and you
can get there, it's explainable as to what happened. Now
(27:57):
on its surface, just looking at it as just too
Joe blows. You have a person who my mom rented
this unit for me, and I'm hiding a friend in there,
but I don't want my mom to find out. And
I don't know how mom doesn't know, but she apparently
doesn't know that Karen Obisamra is staying inside the storage unit.
(28:20):
And as they're getting ready to pull away that day,
Morgan wing Eire's mother says, hey, why is that not
lock that up? That's my stuff, and lock it up.
So she does now her intention. I'm going to come
back in a couple hours. You know, I'm going to
lock it now, but I'm coming back. She knows she
according to Morgan wing Ire herself, she told police she
(28:41):
knew that Karen Abusamra had no phone no food, no nothing.
She knew that when she left her there. She didn't
plan on leaving her there for a long time. She
planned on coming back, but you know what, she didn't
come back, and she didn't come back because I think
she was Probably the only thing that explains it, Joe,
(29:05):
is she was using drugs and was not coming back
because of that, because she was high now.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Or she was cruel beyond measure, if she.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Did this intentionally and willfully, she locked somebody in there
and then just didn't come back. Because I got to
say this, it's not like this woman was only locked
in there for ten hours. Back up and regroup and
realize the person that should put the padlock on there
wasn't back there for twenty three hours. Okay, she didn't.
It wasn't ten hours in her mind's eye. It had
(29:35):
been twenty three hours when police found her at the
hotel and she still wasn't on her way back to
the storage unit. So if that was her intent to
lock that girl up and let her die, mission accomplished.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Well, I think that we have some clues here considering
how she was charged, because they did in fact charge her,
I believe Dave correct me. If I'm wrong with involuntary manslaughter.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
They did for.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Right now because they haven't released a lot of information
in regards to the status of this poor woman's body.
And here's another bit, they don't know what the origin
of this fire was.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
I was hoping you did.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
I'm not in my notes asked Joe about the origin
of the fire, because I can't find it anywhere, and
they're not saying.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
Well, the origin, most of the time is going to
be determined. You've got two ways to frame origin. For
most laymen, you'll say the origin is whatever started the fire, Okay,
how did it originate? But for us, origin in forensics
(30:49):
is more of a spatial assessment. Okay, Like origin is
where you know, like your country of origin, your place
of origin, So where did it start? How do we
determine that? Most of the time you're going to determine
that based upon the degree of damage in a location.
So it's relatively simple. The more damage you have in
(31:13):
a location, that means that the fire is burned there
the longest, and perhaps more intensely. Like if you start
a fire, if you've got a I don't know, a
sixteen by twenty room, I don't know if that makes
sense or not. But anyway, you start a fire over
in the corner of a room with dry wall, you know, gypsum,
(31:34):
you know, made out of that, maybe you stack some
rags there, you put a little gasoline, and you start it. Well,
I'm not saying that that fire can't leap and get
in behind the walls, because they do get up in
the ceiling burn their way around. But the most damage
that's going to be done is where those rags were. Well,
here's here's the rub, if you will. If this is
(31:59):
on a concrete surface and she started in the middle
of the room, are they going to be able to
tell what the actual point of origin was? Was it
over in a corner, because concrete doesn't necessarily it'll be
you know, kind of scorched, scored, if you will, But
it's not going to it's not like wood that's gonna
(32:20):
you know, become brittle and fall apart. Well, if it's
right there on the floor, this could make this a
bit more of a heavy lift for the forensics people
after they get in there. The other thing I want
to know, well, I guess the big ask is how
did the mother not know that there was a living
human being? Inside of there, and that goes to the
(32:42):
next question, was she in fact living okay? So at autopsy,
one of the things the first things you're going to
look for is going to be small smoking relation. Did
she inhalate or breathe in inhale the debris that's burning
up around her or is there no evidence of that
(33:04):
where you don't have any of the soot as we
refer to it into the airway, into the lungs, into
the narries of the nose, the sinuses. Is it absent
any kind of damage you can actually, you know when
you do a dissection on a throat, on the neck,
the elements of the neck and you look into the trachia,
(33:24):
I don't This is one of the most horrible things
to me. By the way, Dave, did you know that
when we open open the neck, we'll cut right down
through the center of it, through through the airway And
if an individual has been exposed to superheated air, there
(33:48):
are focal areas inside of the airway where it was burning.
Just grab hold of that, just for a second. You
can see color changes that are like, oh my god,
this person. And if we've ever been if you've ever
been around a fire like an outdoor fire perhaps and
a bonfire, and you're too close to it. It's one
thing you feel the heat coming off, but if you
(34:10):
take a breath in, you can feel the heat that
you're taking on board. Just imagine you can't escape from
the bonfire. There's nowhere to run. You're right there, everything
is burning up around you. So my big question from
a forensics perspective is was was she alive at the
time that the fire was going on? Because it begs
(34:33):
this question, how could the mother not have an awareness
that this person was in there where they just quiet,
That's something else happened to them beforehand. And secondly, I
want to know what exactly was her cause of death.
If it's not smoke inhalation orre there other injuries sustained.
(34:55):
And that opens up an entire myriad of problems that
you're faced with fires, Because if you're talking about a
bullet hole somebody's been shot, you can still pick up
on that. With X rays you can actually see I've
seen bodies that have been burned after they were executed
execution style in the back of the head and you can
(35:17):
still see within the cranial vault if you will you'll
see this kind of lead snowstorm that's in there where
the projectile particulated and kind of spread out through there.
You can still see that. Some fires get so hot, though,
I've had cases where fires have gotten so hot. First off,
you have heat fractures to bone as well as the skull.
(35:39):
I've opened up skulls before where brains were liquefied because
of the heat. It's almost like the brain boiled inside
of the skull. So those types of things do happen.
It's hard to take the measure of it, isn't it.
So there's there's a lot more unanswered questions that need
to be asked. I think that it's possible that if
(36:01):
they see anything that is other than as advertised as
they say many times, they can up charge her more
than likely Dave on this, It wouldn't just simply be
involuntary manslaughter. If they find something else that's going on
with her, then that can certainly, I think, you know,
(36:22):
probably make those charges a bit more robust.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Do you think that, Yeah, You've opened my eyes to
a lot of the things that I didn't realize were
possible in figuring out because I went back to make
sure that it wasn't smokeing elation that you know. What
did they find? What did fire and police find? And
they found the charred remains of corn Alba Samra And that's.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
What we know.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
And then we know that Morgan Wingeire put the padlock
on the door at twelve thirty six pm and was gone.
They didn't even find her for twenty three hours, and
when they did, she was at a hotel. She was
not at the unit unit burned that day. So I'm
looking at it from the person who put the lock on.
She didn't come back. She said she planned to come back,
(37:09):
but she didn't. So what was it? Did you really
want to? Just were you killing this person by putting?
And then you mentioned it was she killed before this
happened and a fire started in another unit and came
into that unit.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
That's a possibility, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
It is. Wow, you just you brought back a memory
when you said was there an intent to kill her?
And that would make this almost like a almost a
passive form of homicide instead of kind of a proactive
like I'm going to not I yeah, but I'm going
(37:46):
to take a weapon and do away with somebody. It's
almost like passively you know, well, you know, and that
goes to this idea of neglect, which we see. You know,
that comes up in other cases, but this is on
a different level because you're whether you're drug addlest or not,
I don't know what our status is, but you're subjecting
(38:09):
this woman first off, to just sheare panic, right, because
I don't know about you. I don't do good in small,
dark spaces. I'm not saying this. I'm not saying the
storage union. It's small by any means. However, can you
imagine bumping around in the dark and you don't have
any source of light. You have no idea what's in there,
I mean boxes and just debris.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Even jem if it was nothing, if there was nothing
in there, yeah yeah, And he's walking around the still
that you can't see.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Yeah, I know. And there's no source of light. I've
been Every storage unit I've had has had I think
some light switch in it. Now, I've had one that didn't,
and I've had them that don't have power sources either,
I guess for good reason. You know, where you can't
plug in something in there. I've had other ones, and
you get what you get. You know, if you up charge,
(38:59):
you know they'll charge you for it, you know, and
certainly you know you have the ones that are in
climate you know, they always use the climate controlled storage units.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
You know, I got one step up from the dirt
barn in my neighbor's backyard, you know, cheapest one I
could find.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
That's where my stuff was back Yeah, exactly, And so
you you consider all of that if if I think
the big thing here is was their intent to do
harm to this poor woman. And we can't say at
this point in time if her intention was just to
leave her in there forever and ever. Amen, we don't know,
(39:35):
but we do know that this poor woman was locked
in a sword unit and abandoned for hours upon hours
until mysteriously a fire starts. There's gonna be more to
follow in this case until then. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan,
and this is Body Backs
Body bus, but Joseph's gotten more. Over the course of
my career as a death investigator, I was part of
several national committees. I had to travel all over the country,
various meetings and that sort of thing, And of one
(00:21):
of my fondest memories was going to Michigan and teaching
a group of investigators there the National Standards for Medical
Legal death Investigation. And the spot chosen for that instruction
was a place that became one of my favorite towns,
(00:44):
certainly up north, and that's Grand Rapids, Michigan. I got
to tell you, if you've never been there, it is
a lovely, lovely place. I didn't expect it, and during
that period of time I appreciated, first off, the people were,
and also how very cold it was at night. Because
(01:04):
I was up there in November, wound up going salmon
fishing while I was there and almost drowned. But that aside,
I loved that location and I loved that place. But
today I've got a case I want to present to
you all that is, at least in my way of thinking,
(01:25):
it's one of the most horrible ways that a person
could die. It takes place just south of Grand Rapids
in the town of Kentwood, Michigan. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
and this is Bodybacks. Over the course of our marriage,
Dave Kim and I have rented multiple storage units over
(01:49):
this period of time. They are unnecessary evil. I think
our house got destroyed by tornado and we salvaged everything
that we could and put it into storage. And we've
had to use them before as well because we just
can't can't, just can't seem to get rid of chunk
(02:09):
many times. And they certainly serve a purpose side, but
it's like when you go to one after you've rented it.
Every time you open the door to one of these places,
you don't know what you're going to find inside, particularly
as it applies to your property being degraded in there.
(02:31):
Maybe there was a leak, which have we've had happened before,
or maybe you smell something bad in there, like a
dead animal, which we have found rats before. It's just
there's something about them that puts me off, and I
think a lot of it has to do with a
labor that's involved. But I got to tell you, Dave,
when you go to storage unit, one of the things
(02:55):
you don't expect to find is a dead person. And
that's essentially what our case revolves around today.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
This story of the charred remains, that's the headline, charred
remains of woman found in padlocked storage unit, got it
by fire. My first thought, Joe, was how did you
get in there to get padlocked in? For starters? Second,
(03:26):
why didn't you call for anybody you know? And then
down the list? And it's only after reading this and
finding out that this I don't know if it was
a you know you mentioned Nancy says intent can be
formed in the Lincoln an eye. I don't know what
the intent was here. Was the intent to lock this
(03:47):
person in there and cause her death?
Speaker 1 (03:50):
I don't know. And they're not they're not really spilling
the beans at this point. This this case is fresh.
I mean, it is a new case, and it caught
my eye because the proximity to Grand Rapids and the
bizarre nature of it. And that's why I wanted because
I think that there's a lot that we can kind
of discuss relative to the forensics here. But you know,
(04:12):
when we go out to assess an environment, first off,
fire environments or the remnant thereof you never know what
you're going to find. I can't tell you how many
times I've had friends. This has only happened to me once,
but I've had colleagues that have actually discovered other bodies
that they did not expect. One of the reasons is
(04:36):
is that when you walk into a fire scene, a
lot of the items that are in there all look
the same because you know, you're talking about fire, which
is this kind of living, breathing entity that's seeking to continue.
(04:56):
It's what fire is defined as an uninhibited chem reaction.
That means that there's nothing that's going to if anything
disrupts it. There's like four components that you're looking for
with fire in order to make it sustainable. If any
of those four points along continuum get disrupted in any way,
(05:17):
then the fire is not gonna you know, it's not
just going to simply burn itself out. You have to
have a starter, which is a heat source. You have
to have fuel, and then you have to have a
free supply of oxygen. Okay, so that's more like three
points along continuum. But you have to have all of
(05:38):
those elements to come into place to sustain fire. And
that's one of the things we look at. And the
fuel for something like this is not necessarily. I know
that many people think, well, gasoline or some type of
petroleum agent is fuel. No, it's not. It's a starter
or it's an accelerant, because you know when you burn
(06:00):
up gasoline, when you use that as an accelerant, it
burns up rather quickly, particularly in the gaseous form. But
what you're looking at as far as sustainable fuel, I mean,
think about the stuff that you've you've stored in your
in your storage units over the years. You think about
I don't know if you're like anything like we were
when we were really young. You didn't have handmade carved
(06:25):
mahogany furniture. You had stuff made out of press board, uh,
really bad fabrics on the coverings. Then you had pictures
and all kinds of others, old clothes, things like that.
And then to boot you got cardboard boxes. You can't
go to you can't go to U haul or even
(06:45):
to a storage unit without them trying to sell you
boxesally and.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
You know what, going and moving, you go to the
grocery store out in the back boxes.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Oh absolutely, And so you think about a sustainable fuel source.
Cardboard boxes, those core coreated boxes are one of the
best around and even even like if you have because
we'll soore stuff in plastic as well. So you know
you've got those clip on lids, Well, what is plastic
(07:14):
made out of. It's a petroleum based product. So once
those things ignite and it begins to change, that kind
of a chemical change begins. As you introduce heat to
the substance that makes up those little it becomes a
sustainable fuel source. After a while, you just have to
attain enough heat in order to facilitate that.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
But what about a rentally unit that has limited ox
there's not a lot of wind blowing through. They're pretty
you know, they're tight, they're got doors on them, in
this case padlog door, but there's oftentimes not very much
space inside those yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah, and you begin to think about and this is
something that meet people don't think about. Let's see, how
can I put this if you let's just say that.
Let's just say that you an I sit down, We
go and we get inside of a two man submarine. Okay,
(08:11):
in that submarine as.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
You out, you're already stuck again.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
I couldn't take it, well, you and I would be
displacing the oxygen in there. So for us introducing the
mass of our bodies into that environment. Then we're displacing
that oxygen that would otherwise be there. So if you've
got all of these items and you don't have free
flowing air through there, you're going to have a limited
amount of oxygen contained in that space. And so you
(08:39):
begin to think about, well, if there's a victim in here,
where they breathing at the time the fire initiated, or
is this something where perhaps they had died prior to
and someone decided to foolishly try to incinerate the body
in there. That's why, you know, like one of the
things you look at with this, you're thinking, Gee, Louisa,
(09:00):
is it would somebody use a storage unit in order
to render down a body? I just I don't with fire,
I don't know. It seems like it'd be rather glaring
to me if you were like the watchman out there,
you know, keeping keeping tabs on the thing. All right.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Well, from a timeline standpoint, we know that Morgan Wingire
was at the storage unit with her mother. They're seen
on surveillance video at twelve thirty six pm. We're talking
November seventh, now, November seventh, in Michigan, in this particular
area of Michigan, Is it going to be really cold?
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Yes, okay at night in particular, and we're talking about
night here well actually, and keep in mind we're Alabama
boys too, right, so there their perception of cold might
not be the same as ours. But when it gets
down to it, if the if the environmental temperature is uncomfortable,
you're going to be uncomfortable and it's going to be cold,
and you're going to look for a heat source.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Would right now.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Morgan wing IRE's mother actually rented the store unit for
her for Morgan. Morgan and her mother are seen at
the storage unit at twelve thirty six pm, so just afternoon.
They then on surveillance video you can see Morgan Wingire
actually put a padlock on the door and lock it.
(10:20):
They then leave at eight point thirty that night. On
surveillance video, smoke is seen coming out from the storage unit.
I don't know to a level because it's dark, but
enough that it can be seen on surveillance video. Just
after nine pm, flames are seen coming out of the
(10:45):
storage units. And these are several units sitting side by side.
At just around eleven pm, police and fire show up
to the fire, which has now been going on for
at least an hour hour half two hours, at least
two and a half hours because of when the smoke
was first seen.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Yeah, and the firefighters are merely being called out to
a structure fire. They had no idea.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Got a storage unit on fire. That's all exactly exactly.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
The thing is is that they didn't know until they
opened the door. And I wonder how this goes on, Joe,
because they get there and they see the storage units,
they're not all padlocked from the outside. Now, I'm going
to guess that you and I both have rented storage units,
and if you put your stuff in there, you do
put a lock on it.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Oh yeah, yeah, you definitely do. And there are some
that have the I've seen some that have like it's
not really a dead bolt, but there's like an external
lock that comes the thing comes equipped with, right, which
I would never trust in a million years. If I've
got valuables in there, I'm going to buy the top
of the line lock and put it, which can still
be defeated pretty easily with a pair of bolt cutters,
(11:52):
which it appears is what the fire service used to
gain access.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
They had padlock was used on the door. Yeah, they had.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
They had to get in there and they had to
cut that lock in order to gain access to it.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Now, when they open this door, Joe, because the other
units were on fire, I'm going to assume it's not
just one little place. We know it's been burning for
two and a half hours based on surveillance video, at
least two and a half hours, yep. But we don't
know the actual starting point yet. We don't know did
it start in the padlocked room or did it start
(12:26):
in one of the other units. The only thing we
do know is that at twelve thirty six pm, Morgan
wing Eyre and her mother were outside that unit number
four fifty four when Morgan actually put a padlock on
the door and spun it to lock the door. Firemen
show up, They cut the padlock off and get in
the door. And what do they find, Joseph Scott Morgan.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Well, they find a young woman's body that is in
amongst the burn debris in this environment, and she used
to cease. You know, at this point in time, there's
no saving her or anything like this. And immediately, you know,
I think that first off, anytime, well, let me back up.
(13:08):
Anytime there's a structure fire, you're going to have a
fire marshal that's going to come out and probably a
fire investigator and they're going to say.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
I didn't know that. Wa. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Anytime there's a building, a structure he's on fire, they
actually begin an investigation.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Is that because of yeah? Well yeah, I mean, and
nothing's you know, look, the firefighters, and God bless them,
they've saved my life before. I love firefighters. I love
working with them, and I've said that plainly many times
over the years. They're not there to assess a scene
other than trying to get a fire knocked down and
make it safe. And once they back back out, as
(13:46):
it said, once all the flames have been knocked down
and they've got the things secured, that's when searches begin. Now,
firefighters do find bodies, okay. So if they're in there
and they're walking around, they've got the big powerful lights on,
they've got respirators on, you know, so that because can
you imagine the amount of smoke inside this thing, and
(14:06):
it would have just come rolling out on them. I'm
amazed by the fact that they were able to appreciate
her body in that environment. But once you find that
body like that, particularly in this case, and they have
subdued the fire to the point they've knocked it down,
there's no more flame, they're going to back out and
they're going to secure the thing, and they're going to
call an arson investigator. They're going to call the police.
(14:28):
And in this case what they found was on imagine. Well,
I think it's kind of obvious, Dave, you can't lock
(14:52):
yourself into a structure with the padlock. They've already got
CCTV of this young woman locking that. What fascinates me
about this is it Wingmer's mother was physically there. How
do you not have an awareness that there's somebody in there?
You know what I'm saying?
Speaker 2 (15:11):
That's kind of Isn't that odd that the story that
we've been told is that Morgan wing Ire, her mother
rented the storage unit for her and she was allowing
karenn o Ba Samra to stay in the unit. I'm
(15:36):
going to go out on a limb here and say,
this is not an apartment, this is a storage unit.
And Morgan wing Ire and Karin Obasamra, according to Morgan's mother,
had been in a relationship previously and This is stuff
coming from Morgan's mother. Morgan wing Are has not spoken
out about this. We have no quotes from her. She's
(15:58):
in jail right now.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
We'll tell you why.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
But it's her mother that gives us the quotes Joe
about them being in a relationship and that she claimed
that Karen Obasamra had been homeless, homeless person. I'm going
to be straight up with you, man. Karen Obasamra highly
educated woman at thirty three years old. She's got her degrees,
(16:21):
she's got her career, she's going places. So I'm gonna
follow down a path here and I'm going to suggest
something that is unpopular. But Morgan wing Ir had been
arrested last year, well, twenty twenty three on methamphetamin charges. Okay,
(16:46):
based on the situation, Morgan wing Ir is hiding Karen
Obisamra in that storage unit from her mother. From Morgan's mother.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Wow, And I don't know, I mean, this is all
speculative on part you know. So what what would be
the motivation behind a grown woman hiding another grown woman
in a storage unit in a storage unit, unless you
were trying to I don't know. Perhaps you know, knock
(17:20):
down any kind of suspicion on the mother's part that
they were still involved in a relationship, right.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
The padlock came from They're at the survey at the
unit and the mother says to you know, because it's
rented in the mother's name, and her mother insists, you're
not going to put a lock on that. Put a
lock on that storage unit. That's when Morgan put the
lock on the storage unit. That's when she locked that
padlock on at twelve thirty six pm. It was because
(17:48):
her mother rented the inn. Her mother said, put a
lock on that.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Yeah, and we're talking, dude, we're talking hours after all.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
But think about it, Joe. The twelve thirty six they're
at the unit. The smoke is seen at eight thirty
on surveillance at nine, flames are seen at eleven. Cops
and fires show up, but Morgan wing II or Mark
I mean Morgan Wingyre never shows back up. Police go
(18:15):
looking for her and don't find her until the next
day at eleven thirty am in a hotel. She said
she had no plans to be away from the unit
that long. She just got tied up with doing some errands. Well,
at twenty three hours she left that woman in that
padlocked storage unit, Joe for twenty three hours without anything,
(18:40):
and by the way, she wasn't headed back over to
the unit when police found her. Police found her in
a hotel room.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
What would be the motivation for you to take up
at least temporary residency in a motel somewhere, so to
the point where you're adjunct to a fire that you
were last known, your last known whereabouts was going to
be at that fire, locking the door, and all of
(19:10):
a sudden you come up registered at a motel and look,
I mean, why are you not going back to your
mother's house? Why are you? And so many questions come
about here, and I begin to think, was this purposed?
You know?
Speaker 3 (19:27):
What?
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Were you? Were you just being mean? I hate to
reduce it down to that, but were you just because
you know? She I will go ahead and give this
bit away. She has been charged ay with false imprisonment. Now,
if you say false imprisonment, you know, maybe angels dancing
on the head of the pen here. But you began
to think, well she was was she actually imprisoning her
(19:55):
to hold her or did she just create the environment
where it's legitimate she forgot that she was in there.
How do you forget another human being that you, according
to the mother, that you have been involved in an
intimate relationship with. How do you forget that person that
you had locked them in there? I don't understand it.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Well, you know what sometimes and I'm gonna I'm just
gonna speculate that sometimes people who use drugs lose track
of time, especially when they use drugs like methamphetamine, they
tend to lose track of time. I'm not suggesting for
a minute that Morgan Wingeyre went out on a drug
bene and ended up in a hotel when police found
her to tell her that her storage unit was burned
(20:35):
up with a person inside and they have her on
surveillance video padlocking the door. By the way, Corinne Obisamra
was left inside that storage unit, Joe with nothing, no food,
no water, no light, and no phone, no means of communication,
just all for help or anything else.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Yeah, who in the world nowadays? I know there are
people well don't get me wrong, but who doesn't have
at least a burn her phone, you know, with them?
And we're talking about a lady that is by all accounts,
is highly educated, has been successful you listen to her
family talk about her, and she's been involved in things
(21:17):
like public service, you know, like working with people, outreach,
those sorts of things. She's got this kind of bubbly
personality and you think about, well, what, you know, what
kind of detour did she take in her life that
would wind up with her inside of a non heated,
non electrified storage unit where she doesn't have access to heat.
(21:43):
She's just kind of cast aside in the saying, and
then locked down, and then suddenly, mysteriously a fire begins.
(22:06):
You know, David, fire is such a mystery weed. We've
covered on body backs, We've covered some firecases in the past,
but you know, fire is such a mystery. The most
important thing I think for fire investigators and death investigators
is to try to determine two things. First off, the
(22:28):
source of the heat. Remember I talked about the uninhibited
chemical chain reaction of fire. Is it sustainable? And adjacent
to that is going to be point of origin. Where
did this thing start? Because you have to wonder did
(22:49):
it start in the middle of the floor. I don't
know about you, but Dave correct me if I'm wrong.
Storage units are commonly built on concrete slabs, aren't they.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Those I've rented have been Yes.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Yeah, this one altered to the ground, the beams and everything,
or you know, those girders are like you know, they're
driven into the ground with bolts and held in place.
It's not like you're going to dig a hole, dig
a fire pit, you know, and create a fire. And
even if you did, what what are you going to
use as fuel in there?
Speaker 2 (23:21):
And you know, I think that's why there is some
mystery surrounding this because so far we haven't been told
that the fire began in that unit. We were only
told that fire department officials had to cut the padlock
off of it to get inside. And you know, we
(23:42):
can assume that that's where the fire began. We can
assume because they were knocking it down everywhere else, but
they still had a problem in that unit. We can
assume those things, but we don't know that for a fact.
That's why I was asking about oxygen in a room
and how much there because you're a confined area. That's
usually a you know, it's twelve by fourteen or whatever,
and it usually has stuff in it. You know, Let's
(24:04):
just say for the sake of all that's good and
human in this world that here, this poor woman is
in being hidden in a storage unit with nothing, and
maybe she's got a lighter in her pocket, and maybe
she's trying to light she's cold, she's hungry, she's thirsty.
Maybe she's trying to just burn, you know, something to
(24:25):
stay warm, trying to burn some papers or cloth.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
I don't know. But at what.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Point do we look at this and say she was
in there for at least ten hours before the fire
was seen.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
You know what a what a hopeless feeling that would be.
You know, no matter how much you rattle or bang
on that door, nobody's coming to your rescue. The thing
is locked externally, and there's not a latch. I don't think.
I'm sure that people out there will correct me, but
to the best milage, it's not an internal latch, and
even if there was, it's secure from the outside. So
(25:00):
how hopeless would that be? And listen, this is the
other thing too. We're talking about November. So in the
middle of the day, this metallic box that you've got
all your stuff stored in, you're going to have some
radiant heating that's in there. My brother, is that sun
begins to dip down up there in Michigan, You're going
(25:22):
to feel that chill. And can you imagine, let's just say,
for the sacred argument, that she is in fact seated
on that concrete floor, how cold that is. And it's
one of those if you've ever sat on like really
cold stone like that for a protracted period of time,
you know how people say I can feel the cold
in my bones. That's the way it feels. It just
(25:43):
kind of travels up throughout your body. And you know,
for I don't know what she had that she could
have wrapped herself in. You know, did she have a
blanket even you know, one of the basic necessities of life, warmth,
heat protection coverage, or there any other clothes that were
in there that she could have put on, just to
you know, try to try to salvage any kind of
(26:06):
heat that her little body was generating in that environment.
But we do have a clue here, Dave. There's a
comment that firefighters made in regards to this, and I
found this kind of compelling, Dave. They didn't say that
her body was found. They said that her charred remains
(26:29):
were found. And that's that's different Because I've worked a
lot of cases over the years where people did in
fact die of smoke inholation. You know the old adage
about how many times we've seen the thing. We even
learned it when we were kids. If there's a fire
in the room, you get on get on the floor,
and you crawl right crawl because there's still breatheable. Yeah,
there's still breathable oxygen down there, But you do that
(26:51):
in order to escape where you're going to escape to.
Can you imagine the panic that would set in Let's
just say that she did in fact start a fire
in there just for her on comfort. Well, where you
going to go to to escape it, and the place
is not lighted, She can't see what's around there. There
may have been a lot of flammable items that were
in there. But we do know that she's sequestered in
(27:13):
this area against her will because she can't leave. I
can't imagine anybody in their right mind saying, will you
please get the padlock and lock me up inside of
the storage unit and don't come back and check on me,
And by the way, don't give me any means to
communicate with anybody out there. You know, it's just it,
(27:34):
it's mind boggling when you think about it, Dave.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
I actually went back over this story multiple times and
looked through multiple sources, and because they kept thinking I'm
missing something here, I am missing something And in reality
you have to make it. You know you don't have to.
But if you make a couple of assumptions and you
can get there, it's explainable as to what happened. Now
(27:57):
on its surface, just looking at it as just too
Joe blows. You have a person who my mom rented
this unit for me, and I'm hiding a friend in there,
but I don't want my mom to find out. And
I don't know how mom doesn't know, but she apparently
doesn't know that Karen Obisamra is staying inside the storage unit.
(28:20):
And as they're getting ready to pull away that day,
Morgan wing Eire's mother says, hey, why is that not
lock that up? That's my stuff, and lock it up.
So she does now her intention. I'm going to come
back in a couple hours. You know, I'm going to
lock it now, but I'm coming back. She knows she
according to Morgan wing Ire herself, she told police she
(28:41):
knew that Karen Abusamra had no phone no food, no nothing.
She knew that when she left her there. She didn't
plan on leaving her there for a long time. She
planned on coming back, but you know what, she didn't
come back, and she didn't come back because I think
she was Probably the only thing that explains it, Joe,
(29:05):
is she was using drugs and was not coming back
because of that, because she was high now.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Or she was cruel beyond measure, if she.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Did this intentionally and willfully, she locked somebody in there
and then just didn't come back. Because I got to
say this, it's not like this woman was only locked
in there for ten hours. Back up and regroup and
realize the person that should put the padlock on there
wasn't back there for twenty three hours. Okay, she didn't.
It wasn't ten hours in her mind's eye. It had
(29:35):
been twenty three hours when police found her at the
hotel and she still wasn't on her way back to
the storage unit. So if that was her intent to
lock that girl up and let her die, mission accomplished.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Well, I think that we have some clues here considering
how she was charged, because they did in fact charge her,
I believe Dave correct me. If I'm wrong with involuntary manslaughter.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
They did for.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Right now because they haven't released a lot of information
in regards to the status of this poor woman's body.
And here's another bit, they don't know what the origin
of this fire was.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
I was hoping you did.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
I'm not in my notes asked Joe about the origin
of the fire, because I can't find it anywhere, and
they're not saying.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
Well, the origin, most of the time is going to
be determined. You've got two ways to frame origin. For
most laymen, you'll say the origin is whatever started the fire, Okay,
how did it originate? But for us, origin in forensics
(30:49):
is more of a spatial assessment. Okay, Like origin is
where you know, like your country of origin, your place
of origin, So where did it start? How do we
determine that? Most of the time you're going to determine
that based upon the degree of damage in a location.
So it's relatively simple. The more damage you have in
(31:13):
a location, that means that the fire is burned there
the longest, and perhaps more intensely. Like if you start
a fire, if you've got a I don't know, a
sixteen by twenty room, I don't know if that makes
sense or not. But anyway, you start a fire over
in the corner of a room with dry wall, you know, gypsum,
(31:34):
you know, made out of that, maybe you stack some
rags there, you put a little gasoline, and you start it. Well,
I'm not saying that that fire can't leap and get
in behind the walls, because they do get up in
the ceiling burn their way around. But the most damage
that's going to be done is where those rags were. Well,
here's here's the rub, if you will. If this is
(31:59):
on a concrete surface and she started in the middle
of the room, are they going to be able to
tell what the actual point of origin was? Was it
over in a corner, because concrete doesn't necessarily it'll be
you know, kind of scorched, scored, if you will, But
it's not going to it's not like wood that's gonna
(32:20):
you know, become brittle and fall apart. Well, if it's
right there on the floor, this could make this a
bit more of a heavy lift for the forensics people
after they get in there. The other thing I want
to know, well, I guess the big ask is how
did the mother not know that there was a living
human being? Inside of there, and that goes to the
(32:42):
next question, was she in fact living okay? So at autopsy,
one of the things the first things you're going to
look for is going to be small smoking relation. Did
she inhalate or breathe in inhale the debris that's burning
up around her or is there no evidence of that
(33:04):
where you don't have any of the soot as we
refer to it into the airway, into the lungs, into
the narries of the nose, the sinuses. Is it absent
any kind of damage you can actually, you know when
you do a dissection on a throat, on the neck,
the elements of the neck and you look into the trachia,
(33:24):
I don't This is one of the most horrible things
to me. By the way, Dave, did you know that
when we open open the neck, we'll cut right down
through the center of it, through through the airway And
if an individual has been exposed to superheated air, there
(33:48):
are focal areas inside of the airway where it was burning.
Just grab hold of that, just for a second. You
can see color changes that are like, oh my god,
this person. And if we've ever been if you've ever
been around a fire like an outdoor fire perhaps and
a bonfire, and you're too close to it. It's one
thing you feel the heat coming off, but if you
(34:10):
take a breath in, you can feel the heat that
you're taking on board. Just imagine you can't escape from
the bonfire. There's nowhere to run. You're right there, everything
is burning up around you. So my big question from
a forensics perspective is was was she alive at the
time that the fire was going on? Because it begs
(34:33):
this question, how could the mother not have an awareness
that this person was in there where they just quiet,
That's something else happened to them beforehand. And secondly, I
want to know what exactly was her cause of death.
If it's not smoke inhalation orre there other injuries sustained.
(34:55):
And that opens up an entire myriad of problems that
you're faced with fires, Because if you're talking about a
bullet hole somebody's been shot, you can still pick up
on that. With X rays you can actually see I've
seen bodies that have been burned after they were executed
execution style in the back of the head and you can
(35:17):
still see within the cranial vault if you will you'll
see this kind of lead snowstorm that's in there where
the projectile particulated and kind of spread out through there.
You can still see that. Some fires get so hot, though,
I've had cases where fires have gotten so hot. First off,
you have heat fractures to bone as well as the skull.
(35:39):
I've opened up skulls before where brains were liquefied because
of the heat. It's almost like the brain boiled inside
of the skull. So those types of things do happen.
It's hard to take the measure of it, isn't it.
So there's there's a lot more unanswered questions that need
to be asked. I think that it's possible that if
(36:01):
they see anything that is other than as advertised as
they say many times, they can up charge her more
than likely Dave on this, It wouldn't just simply be
involuntary manslaughter. If they find something else that's going on
with her, then that can certainly, I think, you know,
(36:22):
probably make those charges a bit more robust.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Do you think that, Yeah, You've opened my eyes to
a lot of the things that I didn't realize were
possible in figuring out because I went back to make
sure that it wasn't smokeing elation that you know. What
did they find? What did fire and police find? And
they found the charred remains of corn Alba Samra And that's.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
What we know.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
And then we know that Morgan Wingeire put the padlock
on the door at twelve thirty six pm and was gone.
They didn't even find her for twenty three hours, and
when they did, she was at a hotel. She was
not at the unit unit burned that day. So I'm
looking at it from the person who put the lock on.
She didn't come back. She said she planned to come back,
(37:09):
but she didn't. So what was it? Did you really
want to? Just were you killing this person by putting?
And then you mentioned it was she killed before this
happened and a fire started in another unit and came
into that unit.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
That's a possibility, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
It is. Wow, you just you brought back a memory
when you said was there an intent to kill her?
And that would make this almost like a almost a
passive form of homicide instead of kind of a proactive
like I'm going to not I yeah, but I'm going
(37:46):
to take a weapon and do away with somebody. It's
almost like passively you know, well, you know, and that
goes to this idea of neglect, which we see. You know,
that comes up in other cases, but this is on
a different level because you're whether you're drug addlest or not,
I don't know what our status is, but you're subjecting
(38:09):
this woman first off, to just sheare panic, right, because
I don't know about you. I don't do good in small,
dark spaces. I'm not saying this. I'm not saying the
storage union. It's small by any means. However, can you
imagine bumping around in the dark and you don't have
any source of light. You have no idea what's in there,
I mean boxes and just debris.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Even jem if it was nothing, if there was nothing
in there, yeah yeah, And he's walking around the still
that you can't see.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Yeah, I know. And there's no source of light. I've
been Every storage unit I've had has had I think
some light switch in it. Now, I've had one that didn't,
and I've had them that don't have power sources either,
I guess for good reason. You know, where you can't
plug in something in there. I've had other ones, and
you get what you get. You know, if you up charge,
(38:59):
you know they'll charge you for it, you know, and
certainly you know you have the ones that are in
climate you know, they always use the climate controlled storage units.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
You know, I got one step up from the dirt
barn in my neighbor's backyard, you know, cheapest one I
could find.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
That's where my stuff was back Yeah, exactly, And so
you you consider all of that if if I think
the big thing here is was their intent to do
harm to this poor woman. And we can't say at
this point in time if her intention was just to
leave her in there forever and ever. Amen, we don't know,
(39:35):
but we do know that this poor woman was locked
in a sword unit and abandoned for hours upon hours
until mysteriously a fire starts. There's gonna be more to
follow in this case until then. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan,
and this is Body Backs
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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