March 26, 2025 • 49 mins
Jessie Marie Peterson, 31, an attorney with Type One Diabetes, is admitted to the hospital for a diabetes-related illness.
Two days later, she calls her mother around 2:30 p.m. and asks her to come pick her up and take her home. When her mother shows up two-hours later, she is told that Jessie Marie Peterson checked herself out of the hospital, Against Medical Advice (AMA).
Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack take a close look at what really happened to Jessie Marie Peterson and why was her mother told she had checked out, when according to their own records, she was pronounced dead at 4:27 p.m. at the medical center.
While the family spent over a year looking for Jessie, her body had been sitting in a storage facility.
Transcript Highlights
00:05.18 Introduction
01:59.25 Hospital tells family patient left AMA
06:53.65 Family is looking for Jessie Peterson, attorney
11:48.34 Jessie is ready to leave hospital, accomplished woman
16:11.54 Lawsuit filed
21:10.19 She calls her mother at 2:30, two hours later she is gone
25:20.07 Hospital claims she left AMA
30:22.43 Mother begins looking for Jessie
35:15.51 Jessie Marie Peterson was dead and for a year the family is looking for Jessie
40:06.21 Body is placed into cold storage
45:08.31 Her body is found after a year, remains are not viewable
49:01.24 Conclusion
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quality datas, but Joseph's gotten more. I don't know of
too many people that would want to be admitted to
the hospital if they you know, if they had their
way in a perfect world, it's it's certainly not a
place where you go to rest, because if that's what
(00:24):
you're looking for rest, that is, you know, go buy
an airplane ticket, go some isolated location and rest there,
or just stay at home.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Hospitals are one of.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
These places that's like a beehive. I've worked in them,
I've always thought of them that way. You've got worker
bees that are scurrying all over the place. They have
these very specific jobs that they do, and everybody's important.
It doesn't matter if you're the chief of neurosurgery or
you're the janitor. Everybody has a job, and if it
(01:00):
breaks down, then everything else begins to erode. Well, just
like any other kind of I don't know, organization, there
are problems that arise, things that you can't necessarily foresee.
(01:25):
Most of the time, the focus in the hospital is
taking care of those that are ill, taking care of
those who are on death doorstep and brought back. But
there's another responsibility that hospitals have and that is to
(01:46):
take care of the dead and their families. Today, we're
going to discuss a case that is shocking iking for
a lot of reasons, but namely, a patient walks into
(02:07):
a hospital to receive treatment and it's not seen again
until her body is discovered in long term storage. I'm
Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks, Dave. I've worked
in hospitals that have really bad morgs, and I've worked
(02:31):
in them that have state of the art morks. And
that's in addition to the work that I've done with
corners and medical examiners. I've never told you this, but
I don't think at least, but I used to work
as a side job. I worked for private pathology groups
(02:52):
where hospital pathologists don't like to do autopsy. So I
would go to the hospital and I think they were
like in the group, the group that I worked with
in Atlanta, they serviced like seven different hospitals. So I
travel all over the metro area Atlanta and go assistant
autopsies and it was I enjoyed it. I enjoyed doing autopsies,
(03:16):
but the doctor would just ask me, well, what were
your finding, and they might not ever walk into the morgue,
and it varied from doctor to doctor. So I've seen
a lot of a lot of the good and the bad.
You know, when you're in a morgue, you've got a cooler,
(03:36):
maybe a couple of coolers, and you're having to handle
the body by yourself, if you can imagine. I think
that's one of the reasons my back is run.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Now, that's where the term dead weight comes from.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
It is it is, and it is dead weight.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
But you know, you see all kinds of things. Really,
you talk about getting into the guts operationally of a
hospital that's born out in the way the morgue is
run and the way the morgue is handled, because I
think that it's indicative of the way a lot of
other things in the hospital are handled. Because you know,
(04:13):
let's face it, if you cannot, if you cannot respect
the dead, that's a real baseline kind of thing. If
you cannot, you know, how are you treating the living?
You know, because the dead people might not agree with this,
but the dead are the most helpless among us, right,
They're totally dependent upon us and by extension, their families too.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
But you know, one of the things in a funeral
home is the You cannot leave a body alone in
the funeral home because if something happens, if there's a fire,
somebody has to be there to get the body or
bodies out of the funeral home. Now, I don't know
if that's still a law. In this case. We are
dealing with a thirty one year old, very accomplished woman.
(04:58):
She is a prosecuting attorney, and she has some medical
issues if she's diabetic and some other things. She had
had an infection in her foot one time and had
surgery on it, but going to the hospital is not
something she does on a regular basis. However, she did
find herself in a diabetic situation where she goes to
the hospital, but after two days she calls her mom, Hey,
(05:19):
come and get me. I need to get out of here.
Now there's a little blurriness as to what transpired at
this point with Jesse Peterson, but no matter how it happens.
At twoint thirty, she on April the eighth, she calls
her mom, would you come and get me at the hospital?
All right, Jesse, I'm away. When mom arrives around four
(05:39):
thirty or so, Jesse's not there. Where's my daughter? What
are you talking about? She checked herself out and left.
They actually tell her that I talked to my daughter
two hours ago. She said she was leaving. Where is she?
She checked herself out and left. Now Mom immediately starts
(06:00):
looking for her, because why would the hospital tell her
something wrong. You know, she can't find her, calling friends,
calling family, checking around, can't find her anywhere. She was
in the hospital, checked herself out, and now she's missing. Joe.
They actually look for her, and then they do this
standard turn her in as a missing person. She's an adult.
(06:21):
Here's the problem. We've gone to this before. She's a
thirty one year old, accomplished adult. She has the right
to be to disappear herself as she wants to. It
might not be what we'd want for her, but that's
what we say happened. So there you go. For a year.
Joseph Scott Morgan. For a year, the family is looking
for a year. They're calling the police for updates. For
(06:44):
a year. They're organizing people to go out and look.
For a year. They are talking to homeless people, and
they mentioned this in some of the stories I've heard.
They went to the roughest sections of town to find
out if maybe somehow she had a psychological break with
reality and is lost among the homeless population. And they
(07:06):
went there in the hours of the night when most
of us are sound asleep. They went into those areas
just at the thought that their daughter, their cousin, their
sisters would be there. And for a year they didn't
know Joe because the hospital said she checked herself out
and left.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Yeah. How what a horrible set of circumstances. Particularly, you know,
this is one of the things that you know, I
think people make a sport of this comment sometimes, but
there are instances where where people will say things like, well,
we need to find them because they've got medical problems,
(07:46):
you know, and that might be a ruse or whatever
the case might be, just try to get their hands
on the person. That's the case here, you know, with
with miss Peterson, she she had been and she was ten, dave,
she'd been diagnosed with type one diabetes.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
And just give us a breakdown of what Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Well i'll tell you. I'll tell you specifically. In other words,
her pancreas would not produce insulin period, all right, And
that's at a baseline. We have to have insulin in
order to survive and her pancreas for whatever reason, whether
(08:29):
it's a genetic predisposition, whatever it is, when she was ten.
You know, she's diagnosed with this condition, and there are
all kinds of peripheral medical problems that come along with us.
You had mentioned the surgical intervention for her foot. It's
one thing if you injure your foot, If you don't
have diabetes, okay, but you injure your foot and maybe
(08:54):
you've got an open wound. Well, the next thing you know,
you've got a doctor looking at you saying, we're gonna
have to amputate your foot, all right, and the vessels
begin to collapse. There's cardiovascular problems that come about. Uh,
there's a real diminishment many times the body on I've
heard I heard one person describe it at one point
(09:16):
in time as if the body almost tries to digest itself,
you know, and so they many times, if you're not
real vital, you're not on top of it. This condition,
it it gives you this kind of very wasting appearance,
you know, uh, drawn thin. Many times you have to
(09:39):
be really on top of the circumstances relative to your
own personal health. I've got a number of friends that
have type one diabetes and they actually have insulin pumps
that you know, are attached to a belt loop or whatever,
and you'll see them every now and then, you know,
and they're they have sensors, you know, that can give
them an indication and when they're out of balance and
(10:02):
they have to be very careful about what they ingest.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
You know.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
It's there are a lot of people that have type
two diabetes or have the precursors, you know, those sorts
of things. They'll still eat like they want. They can
get a bump of insulin from an injection or however
it is that they receive it and it'll put them
back on balance. That's not the case with type one.
Some people refer to it as juvenile diabetes because it's
something that you develop when you're young. There are people
(10:26):
that are adults that develop Type one, but for the
most part, and she fits right in that bracket, doesn't
she She's ten years old, David. This is something going
back to the family in this case. This is something
that her mother, God bless her. I saw an interview.
I was watching an interview with mom. This is a
(10:47):
fight they've been fighting together. Her entire life, and it
sounds like they were very close.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Mom and daughter were.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
I mean, she's calling her mom to come pick me up,
you know, from the hospital, and this is a fight.
They've been fighting for a long time. And now the
daughter checks into the hospital for what has been described
as a diabetic event, because sometimes it gets so bad
(11:15):
that you need to have around the clock monitoring, you know,
check your sugars and all these sorts of things. And
she had had enough. I mean, like many of us,
you know, you go to the hospital. You know, after
a few days, it's like I think, I'm and this
is a person that would really know her body.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
You know, this is not an idiot, Joe. This is
no very accomplished woman. Very much that you pointed this out,
I understand so much better because I did have some
questions in my head as to what was going on.
So she had been in the hospital a couple of
months earlier, in January with she did have a diabetic event,
and I mentioned a few minutes ago she did have surgery,
(11:59):
you know, year prior. But by the time it rolls
around here and mom is coming to get her at
the hospital, she knows her body. She's had her filla
bey in the hospital and she's leaving. Okay, I get
that now, I understand, But I don't understand how mom
shows up and they give her the she checked herself out.
(12:23):
We don't know where she is. I mean, why would
we know she left on her own against doctor advice?
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Yeah, and when.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
That's an interesting thing because this is what's commonly referred
to as AMA. And for those of you that have
never been in a hospital environment, or maybe it's a
situation in your own life where you have you've had
all you can stand, you don't feel like you're receiving
the treatments you want, or the treatment is so horrible
(12:57):
you're like, look, anything is better than this. I'm checking
myself out. And what they will ask you to do
is they will ask you to sign a paper that
says I'm leaving against medical advice or that AMA. They're saying, look,
you need to stay here for your own good. And
(13:20):
I can assume that she was probably being followed by
a team of physicians. Certainly, you know nowadays it's hard
to find when you go to hospital. They're populated by
what are called hospitalists now, and hospitalists are It's not
like the old days where you would have your own
personal physician and they would have privileges at the hospital,
(13:42):
and I guess they still do have privileges, but you're
going to be treated by what's referred to as a hospitalist,
and they're like all things to all people. They're supposed
to manage the healthcare of the individual that is an endpatient,
and they'll be called up to ICU, they'll be called,
you know, perhaps to the adolescent war. If somebody has
(14:05):
got their post surgical and they're in the hospital, that
doctor is physically what they're referred to as being in
the house, and the hospital actually pays them. Some people
are fans of this, some or not. I've heard both
sides of it over the years, because you don't, you know,
it's one thing, and plus people get used to having
(14:26):
their own doctor.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
You know.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
The best doctor I ever had was this guy that
was he's now retired Dave. He could treat just about anything,
and he was an old country doctor and the kind
that you know would give it to you straight. You
need to stop eating like you're eating, or we're going
to do this for you, or this is the advice.
(14:49):
Or my friend over here is a great specialist. I'm
going to say those those people don't exist so much
as they used to, I don't think, in my opinion,
but she would have been followed probably by I hope,
by an intercarnologist, who an intercarnologist is an individual, and
she would have had to have had one on the
outside that's following her specifically for the treatment of her
(15:13):
type one diabetes.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
But I know this.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
You're talking about a woman, Jesse Murray Peterson, who had
a great relationship we believe, with her mother, a great
relationship with her sisters, and all of a sudden she
just walks away from it all a life that she
had built, a life that she had struggled to form
(15:41):
in spite of type one diabetes. Let's you know my
(16:02):
thought about this, Dave. You know, after you know, doing
these this reading about this case is so bizarre. Again,
this is one of these cases that didn't really you know,
it didn't hop up on my radar. It just kind
of appeared. I think it was actually where I saw
it was actually a People of All Things People magazine article.
(16:23):
They still call themselves a magazine. I'm not sure, but.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
I will tell you I've noted it when we when
I've seen information I've noted people magazine, and I'm like,
I don't think it's right, but yeah, yeah, but you
know why we saw this, It's the same reason we
saw the one about the Satanist ear eater. A lawsuit
was filed.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
A lawsuit has been filed in this case as well.
I think that you know, there are a.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Lot of frivolous lawsuits out there, Buddy, this ain't frivolous.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
This is this is something that yeah, I think that
this is certainly justified. But you know, she's this is
taking place in uh In, California, up in Carmichael, California,
and kind of set in the stage here. Jesse had
previously been a prosecutor in Placer County, California. Now this
(17:14):
is far northern California. I've never been able to really
understand how, you know, Californians divide the state up. You know,
they're very sectional. But this is near the Nevada border,
or Placer County is near the Nevada border where she
was a prosecutor. Mountainous terrain, probably very very beautiful high
(17:39):
desert maybe in some of those locations up there, But
to that point she had had all she could stand.
She had been admitted back on April the sixth, twenty three,
and I think that it was like at two thirty
in the afternoon on the eighth, she says, you know,
(18:03):
I'm going to call Mama and have her come pick
me up. I've had all that I can stand.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
At the point, you pointed out something, Joe about her
being diagnosed with type one diabetes as a ten year old,
and we're talking about somebody who has lived with diabetes
for twenty one years and has been hospitalized for diabetic
events in the past. So she has a much better
understanding of her body and what's working and what's not
(18:30):
than I would have, I think. And she calls her
mom at two thirty. Mom arrives two hours later, and
I need to pay attention to this. At four twenty
seven pm, Jesse Peterson was pronounced dead at the hospital.
(18:52):
Now her mother is arriving to take her home. Jesse
has called her at two thirty, Come get me mom
out of here. When she arrives, Jesse's mother is told
she signed herself out and left against medical advice Ama,
as you mentioned. But at four twenty seven pm she
(19:14):
had been pronounced dead.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
So gim me just hang on, hang on one second,
just so I can get this right in my mind.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Yeah, good luck.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Gim me.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Can you give me the time frame here again from
are we talking literally two hours from the moment? Is
it roughly two hours from the moment she called mama
And then you're saying that she's pronounced dead at this
point in tom and Mama shows up and she's being
(19:43):
told Ama.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Right, that's exactly what happened. I know it sounds messed up,
but that is exactly what happened. Okay, two thirty phone call,
come get me, Mom gets herself together, you know, and
comes to get her at the hospital. She arrives sometime
around after four point thirty in the afternoon. We don't
know exactly what time she arrived at the hospital. We
(20:06):
do know it was about approximately two hours after the
phone call, and we know that Jesse was already dead
according to the hospital.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Yeah, let me tell you something real quick about about
the set of circumstances.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
This is not like.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
You've got somebody that has got say, for instance, Lord
bless them, but a terminal illness where everybody's gathered around
their deathbed, as it were, and you know, folks are
saying their goodbyes and all those sorts of things that
come along with those unfortunate circumstances where you know, we
lose loved ones. They were talking about a woman who
(20:48):
is verbal. Okay, it's not like she's on ICU with
you know, feeding to or she's on event you know
where she can't. We're talking about someone that has just
called her mother. Dave, Can I tell you what's going
to happen with somebody like her?
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Because I can't figure it out, Joe, it's hard.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Let me, well, let me just kind of let me
kind of lay out the space and time, okay, because
this is something that would be so so documented to
the nth degree traditionally, because they would have had to
what's referred to as running a code on her. Now,
(21:37):
I know that people have seen movies and these sorts
of things where you know you'll have like traditionally, the old,
the old way of doing things was when you're in
the hospital. If you ever heard the term code blue.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
And this is.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
I don't know that it's worldwide, it was certainly nationwide.
You know when you heard code blue.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Anybody that was.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
That was certified in advanced life support, which is a
course that you have to go through. Doctors go through it,
nurses go through it, everybody that is part of a
team to try to keep somebody alive. And this is
advanced resuscitation essentially, is what they're We're going far beyond
here just doing chess compressions, Okay, we're talking about pushing
(22:30):
drugs and you know, using the paddles and doing all
this sort of thing. When that call goes out, however
it's coded at the hospital, you would have a flurry
of activity where these people are rushing to this location
and depend upon where she is, there would be a
crash cart. And the reason I'm telling you this is
(22:52):
that this thing is so documented. These events are so
very documented because there are doctor's notes, nurses notes. If
they've got respiratory team there, their notes are there. And
then you've got somebody that is generally it's going to
be a nurse that's responsible for that crash cart. And
(23:14):
the crash cart is locked down and so it's got
certain drugs in it that have to be administered and
then it has to be replenished because you don't know
when the next the next code is going to be,
so all You've got all of this documentation that's taking place,
and Mama shows up within a two hour window and
(23:38):
she doesn't. They're saying she's left Ama. This is not
like some patient with dementia or something that's just wandered
off the campus of the hospital. We're talking about a
young woman who had had a conversation that requested her
mother to come and pick her up, and then all
(23:59):
of a sudden, she vanishes into thin air. She's no
longer there.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
I gotta tell.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
You, you know, I'm not trying to bury the lead here,
but I got to tell you if just say, for instance,
someone in a similar case, we're so inclined.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
To file a lawsuit about this.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
There is so much documentation that is going to back
up the activities of those individuals that were involved in this,
because it's almost like it's almost if you've ever been
to a play. Okay, like just think of the most
meticulously planned play that you've ever sat in that and
(24:43):
you're thinking, how in the world they do that. This
is like everyone on these teams knows their job, and
they have specific marks they have to hit at specific
times in order to facilitate the most important thing in
and that's preservation of life. And it is so meticulously documented, David.
(25:05):
That's why it baffles me that anyone would put forth
the idea that, yeah, she's she's AMA. She walked out
of the hospital. You know, I don't know she got
in a cab or called an uber or whatever the
case might be, a horse drawne carriage. I have no idea,
(25:29):
but she's AMA. She signed herself out, she's gone. Really,
you know, you're the mom. You're thinking really, And I just.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Talked to her two hours ago. She told me to
come and get her. That's why I'm here. Now you're
saying she left.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
It makes no sense.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
No, it boggles the mind, Joe.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
But here's can I throw in one more thing here,
because if we're assuming that they're not using I'm assuming
not you. I don't want to throw you into the
same kettle of fish with me, but I'm assuming that
talk about documentation, these phone calls that were made were
(26:09):
probably done over cellular devices. Those are markers in time,
you know, you know, when when this all comes down,
you know, because this is a lawsuit, they're going to
pull those records and they're going to say, you know, ma'am,
we understand that you called your daughter at approximately this time.
We've pulled these records. By the way, here can you
(26:32):
show us approximately you know when you spoke with your
daughter and boom there is it's a digital marker. And
who by the way, if you pull the records for
Jesse's phone, it's going to show that boom, she answered
the phone call, or that Jesse called her. Rather, I've
got this backwards. Jesse calls her, come and get me, mama,
(26:54):
And you've got these two people that are communicating that
seem to line up. You take just the digital data
alone and marry that up with the code information I
was referring to where she goes into cardiac arrest, because
that's what would have happened. I don't think they just
merely found her dead in the hallway, you know, and
(27:19):
didn't attempt to do anything. Whether they would have attempted
to resuscitate her, there would have been a whole team involved.
And here's the other thing. When it comes down to
a lawsuit, Dave, every single person that was involved in
this case will receive a subpoena. They will go into
(27:44):
a courtroom and they will be directly questioned by the
attorney that's handling this case for the family. I don't
know what their defense is going to be, but I
got to tell you I think they're going to have
quite the uphilt out of here. So your child, and
(28:18):
trust me, there's still a child thirty one years old.
You're a mama. This is somebody that you love. You're invested,
all right, you love them, and particularly you've been on
this journey with them of type one diabetes. You understand. Okay,
you show up and your daughter, who's you know, by
(28:41):
all indications, is in her right mind when she contacts you,
she's vanished. David, I got to ask you a question
as as a daddy. Let me let me throw this
out to you. Your child calls you and says, come
and pick me up at the hospital.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
Brother?
Speaker 2 (28:59):
What and they're not there?
Speaker 1 (29:02):
And you know that they've got a critical medical issue
that you know needs to be tended to. They've also
previously got a foot injury. What are you gonna do?
I got to ask you, what you know, knee jerk
reaction here? You know, kind of what what would be
your your initial response here?
Speaker 3 (29:22):
The same as you I'm going to start looking. And
I thought about this because mom shows up to pick
her up. She's fully expecting her probably to be sitting
in the lobby area ready to go, or out front.
I mean, she's not expecting to go to the room
and find her laying in bed, not ready to go,
because she said I'm ready to go, come get me.
So when when mom shows up and she is told
(29:45):
she's not here, she laughed, She checked herself out against
medical advice and left. Now the knee jerk is going,
I believe is the same for all of us. I'm
going to stop messing with the hospital. I'm going to
believe that what they're telling me is the truth, and
I I'm going to react accordingly. My first thought, I'm
looking around the parking lot. Yep, I'm going to look.
Is there a way she would have started walking? You know,
(30:07):
why did she not wait for me to get here?
She knew I was coming. It's only been a couple
hours since we talked. How far could she have gotten
what transpired that? I don't know. But you're going to
believe that the hospital is being truthful. So immediately you're
not going to start grilling them and let me see
your charts, let me see you know, you're not gonna
do that yet. You're going to do that later on,
but right now you're looking, You're calling family. Hey man,
(30:29):
she checked herself out and I can't find her. So
it's going to start like that. You're you're really going
to think, I'm going to find her out here somewhere,
she's just mad. I mean, those are the basic things
I'm thinking as a parent, and then it's going to
go from that.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Well, let me ask you a question real quick. Have
you ever left a hospital mad?
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Yeah, I've been in a position where I don't care
if I had to drag myself out of my bloody stumps. Yeah,
I'm out of place. But yeah, yeah, I mean, and yeah,
that's that's certainly plausible.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
You've had a numans.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
Yeah. So that's what I'm thinking as a parent. You know. Now,
the other part of this is what we don't know.
We know that the relationship between mother and daughter is
very strong here because you mentioned this, and it's very important.
For twenty one years, mom and daughter have been bonded
together over type one diabetes. This is not something you
can ignore or take a break from. You don't get
(31:25):
a vacation from this medical malady. You actually have this
every day from the time you wake up till the
time you go to sleep and during your sleeping hours.
As a parent, we are concerned about our child. No
matter how old they get, no matter how accomplished they become,
they still have this underlying medical issue that requires constant attention.
So she knows all these things, that relationship is, that
(31:49):
medical drama, that is an everyday thing. So Mom's concerned
what happened and where is she? So you're not going
to go into the hospital files yet because you're going
to be looking for her right away and after you
don't immediately find it. This is just me. You got
a couple hours tied up. Let's check all the basic
places where we think she would go. Let's call all
(32:09):
the friends we can think of that she would reach
out to. But then there's going to be nobody has
heard from her a senior since I talked to her
two hours before I showed up to pick her up.
And so now you go back to the hospital, Well,
probably report her to the police missing. They get brought
in fairly early on, and because of the medical issue,
(32:30):
we need help finding her. And it's only going to
be after that that you go back to the hospital
and say, okay, now you're going to show me the
charts and reports of everything you described a few minutes ago,
and that's where you're going to actually start getting into
a full accounting of a minute my minute timeline to
determine where she is. And again from the hospital standpoint, Joe,
(32:54):
she left. We don't know. It's like a third grader
giving mom and dad an answer as to why they
fail the test.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Let me tell you where this actually breaks down in
kind of the structure of the hierarchical structure within the hospital.
It's not going to be it could be the physician
that reaches out that is the attending the hospitalist. But
if this is a hospitalist, keep in mind, this individual
(33:21):
moves on to the next case, okay, And that's not
an excuse, that's just the reality. You know, they move
on down the line. You know where this really breaks
down is a social worker, because you've got there's a
whole group of people within the hospital that are there
for the care of families and also making arrangements for
(33:43):
individuals that have difficulties in their lives or just you know,
post hospital treatment. You know, they make everybody aware and
so in my experience, the social worker that works in
the hospital, and they are assigned, they're employed by the hospital.
They're the ones that are actually task with contacting the
(34:09):
family and making sure that the family understands everything. Well,
we're still we're at a point right now.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Dave, where she's dead, Jesse's.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Dead, all right, this is now you're at a point
who who did not check these boxes? Relative to did
did some people just assume that someone else was going
to do this? You know, after you have this this flourish, this,
(34:44):
you know, this event with a code, they're going back
to restocking the you know, the the crash cart. They're
wrapping the body and what's referred to as a morg pack,
which prepa he or somebody to go to the morgue.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
Okay, I was gonna say, you got to tell me
what that is because I don't know. But just fyi, Joe,
let's just let's cut to the meat of this. Yeah,
the hospital tells the family she left on her own,
but she didn't ever leave. She's dead at the hospital
and they start a cover up fairly early on. I'm
(35:22):
an alleged cover up maybe mainly Yeah, I want to
be clear that the family for a year is looking
for jesse Marie Peterson, thirty one year old Type one
diabetic lawyer. Okay, they're looking for her everywhere for a year.
Can you imagine that, Joe. We cover missing persons stories
(35:43):
a lot with Nancy Grace, and usually it ends up
really bad where we eventually find the body. In this case,
they never find her body anywhere. They're looking everywhere. It
is a year and four days later that the family
gets a call from a detective. Remember I told you
they did go to the police, and they did report
her missing, and the local police did their job at
(36:05):
trying to find a missing adult with a medical issue.
A year and four days after mom shows up to
pick her daughter up at the hospital, the detective calls
and says, hey, we found her. She's dead and the
hospital knew. Now, Joe, I want you to tell me
what happened to the body of jesse Marie Peterson.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
At this point, when she has been declared dead, Dave,
they would have prepared her body to take her to
their more facility in this hospital. And this hospital is
actually Mercy San Juan Hospital, and it's in Sacramento County, California.
(36:55):
And that's who the police eventually had gotten involved in
this case to try to try to determine what happened
to her, because you know, they're working this thing as
a missing person's case. After they have gone through this
detective has gone through interviewing people, probably requesting medical records,
(37:17):
trying to understand the timeline, they have this kind of epiphany.
I can only imagine where they're saying. It's very dramatic
when you think about it. She never left the hospital,
so kind of narrows it down as far as the
search goes. You've had mom, you've had friends, you've had
(37:38):
extended family that have been trying. They're exhausting every possibility
here to try to find her. For mind, you, I
have to restate what you've stated for over a year, Dave,
for over a year, and all the while she had
never left the hospital. She had not just simply gone
into And here's the really, here's the real rub with this.
(38:07):
They didn't just take her.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
To the MORK.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
They took her to a location within the hospital that
is a long term cult storage unit. And that's going
to be different than like if Grandma dies up on
ICU and you're waiting for the funeral home to come
(38:34):
and pick the body up and remove. Okay, when you
place a body into a storage you know, a cult
storage unit within the hospital you're talking about, you have
made a determination. This is an active choice that you're making.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Here.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
You're saying, well, we've one of two things. We either
our perception is she doesn't have family, and we don't
know what to do with the body. Which at that
point in time, the corner should have been notified and
have stepped in because they would have brought all of
their resources to bear and I can imagine Sacramento County
(39:19):
Sheriff's Office investigator had reached out to the corner as well,
was this case ever reported to you? That would have
been one of the first steps.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
And then.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
They have to make a decision about what they're going
to do with her body. So, after they've prepared her
body in a morg pack, which sometimes the variable it's
plastic sheeting a body is sometimes a body will actually
look like a mummy wrapped in plastic where the feet
are tied off with external strings, the hands are tied inside.
(39:49):
The inside the packaging, there's a gauze that goes around
the head to hold the jaw in place all of
these sorts of things, and sometimes they'll just place them
into a body bag and then they're going to take
them to this storage unit. Which for me, if you're
(40:09):
placing a body into cold storage, what you're saying is
all hope is lost. We don't know where the family is,
this individual is indigent or two we got to try
to figure this out because we fail to contact the
next ken or let mama know within two hours of
her having called and had contact with her, and it
(40:33):
was just left just kind of pushed off into the
ether there where you're thinking, well, no one's going to
miss her, no one has shown back up to claim her.
But all the while, you know Mama's out there looking
for her now along with the police and Dave. What
this cold storage does to human remains. We many people
(41:00):
have this perception that if you.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
That if you.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Take a body and you place the body into a cooler, okay,
that the body goes into this kind of stasis where
nothing changes with the body. Nothing could be further from
the truth.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (41:20):
That messes with me, that that really does, because I
assumed that Joe, I really did think that if you
pass away and you're put in something that will keep
you chill. You know that that everything stays the same,
and that they can look at you two years later
and figure out what happened. I didn't I thought that
would happen, just because you know, I just thought that.
(41:43):
I don't know why I'm an idiot, But no, what
actually happened?
Speaker 1 (41:45):
I mean, why would you know that? I mean, most
people don't know. I'm glad that most people don't know it.
But you know, I've you.
Speaker 3 (41:52):
Know, you're saying worse than that. It's the opposite of that.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
Well it is. And here's one of the big things. Uh,
with cold storage of bodies.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
What happens, As we all know, there's limited humidity. Okay,
so the body is not retaining any kind of moisture
at this point.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
So the body.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
Begins to dry out. Essentially, now the body is cold,
all right, it's cold storage. You're not going to have
the profound, decompositional odor that you would if say, someone
was left out, a body was left out and was
not cold stored, and it knocks that down. However, there's
(42:43):
a price to be paid.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
The body will be.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Almost it will have a parchment like appearance. You'll see
like the fingertips that we've talked about this with the mummification,
remember well, it's kind of the same principle in the
sense that the body, because of the lack of humidity
in this cold, cold environment, which most cold storage is
colder than a standard more crypt because you don't you
(43:12):
don't want to put a body.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
You don't want to put a body.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
In cold storage unless they're going to be there for
a protracted period of time. Remember, most of the dead
that we deal with are fresh dead, and they're going
to be released directly, you know, to a funeral home.
And even after we're done with autopsies and things like that,
the funeral home can still work with the body, you know,
to get the body presentable for viewing and all that
(43:37):
goes along with that. But with cold storage, one of
the things that you'll see that's so profound the eyes. Actually,
you know, you hear about people having sunken eyes. This
is the absolute truth that the eyes do sink back
into the head. And that's because there's a lack of
(43:58):
moisture in the body. So just that in and of it,
in and of itself, that presentation, you would have a
very difficult time trying to kind of, you know, resurrect
any kind of appropriate appearance for the body, just based
on the eyes alone. I've seen this over and over
(44:18):
again throughout my career with bodies that have been in
long term storage. Secondly, the color of the skin changes.
You will actually have bodies that and these temperatures can
get very very cold, they're sub freezing. The bodies will
actually develop a red hue to them that's indicative of
(44:41):
like freezer burn Like you've heard the term freezer burned.
You know that you have. There's not a dime's worth
of difference between something that you would put into a
deep freeze and deep freezing a human remain. So when
in fact her body is finally found and located in
(45:04):
the hospital, which now, Dave, we're talking, correct me if
I'm wrong, in excess of three hundred and sixty.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
Five days, we're talking sixty nine.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
Three hundred and sixty nine days since she was last
known alive, she will have gone a long way down
the path of change. And when they found her, Dave,
when they finally located her body in this hospital, her
remains are not viewable. So let's think about what this
(45:36):
mama has been through. First off, she's been through. My
daughter calls me because she no longer wants to be here.
She shows up, she's told that your daughter's not here.
She left Ama against medical advice. Now she's in a fever,
(45:59):
trying to find her daughter, flipping over every rock that
she possibly can out there.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
It's a poor woman.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
Living every night thinking, oh, my lord, has she been kidnapped?
Has she been killed? Has is she wandering the streets?
She doesn't have her medication because again I bring us
back to Jesse being ten years old and Mama having
to watch over and take care of all of these needs.
She's been wringing her hands for a year. Oh and
(46:30):
then by the by, she gets the call from the
Sacramento Sheriff's office from a detective that tells her we
found your daughter. I wonder, just for a moment, maybe
there was a spark of hope, just in that little
second perhaps where Mama thought, maybe there's still a chance.
(46:58):
She didn't realize that when the have told her that.
To add insult to injury, she discovers that her daughter's
body is so badly decomposed that they couldn't view her.
(47:24):
They couldn't view her they couldn't grieve her, They couldn't
mourn her. She had been placed into that cult storage unit.
I'd like to know what else was in that cult
storage unit. I'd like to know was she stored with
other things? Whereas there more than just Jesse's mortal remains
(47:50):
contained within there is under the sun. There is no explanation,
there is no excuse use that can be made for
the decisions that were made. They say that broken hearts
never mend. This is sole crushing, absolutely soul crushing, and
(48:19):
like it or not, the people at the hospital, the administrators,
the medical staff, the doctor that didn't sign the death
certificate for over a year, they're going to have stand
and deliver because they will receive a subpoena. They will
(48:42):
go to a courthouse and they will have to explain
themselves under oath. There will be more to come in
this case, and I hope that we can follow up
on it until then, I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
is body facts.
Quality datas, but Joseph's gotten more. I don't know of
too many people that would want to be admitted to
the hospital if they you know, if they had their
way in a perfect world, it's it's certainly not a
place where you go to rest, because if that's what
(00:24):
you're looking for rest, that is, you know, go buy
an airplane ticket, go some isolated location and rest there,
or just stay at home.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Hospitals are one of.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
These places that's like a beehive. I've worked in them,
I've always thought of them that way. You've got worker
bees that are scurrying all over the place. They have
these very specific jobs that they do, and everybody's important.
It doesn't matter if you're the chief of neurosurgery or
you're the janitor. Everybody has a job, and if it
(01:00):
breaks down, then everything else begins to erode. Well, just
like any other kind of I don't know, organization, there
are problems that arise, things that you can't necessarily foresee.
(01:25):
Most of the time, the focus in the hospital is
taking care of those that are ill, taking care of
those who are on death doorstep and brought back. But
there's another responsibility that hospitals have and that is to
(01:46):
take care of the dead and their families. Today, we're
going to discuss a case that is shocking iking for
a lot of reasons, but namely, a patient walks into
(02:07):
a hospital to receive treatment and it's not seen again
until her body is discovered in long term storage. I'm
Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks, Dave. I've worked
in hospitals that have really bad morgs, and I've worked
(02:31):
in them that have state of the art morks. And
that's in addition to the work that I've done with
corners and medical examiners. I've never told you this, but
I don't think at least, but I used to work
as a side job. I worked for private pathology groups
(02:52):
where hospital pathologists don't like to do autopsy. So I
would go to the hospital and I think they were
like in the group, the group that I worked with
in Atlanta, they serviced like seven different hospitals. So I
travel all over the metro area Atlanta and go assistant
autopsies and it was I enjoyed it. I enjoyed doing autopsies,
(03:16):
but the doctor would just ask me, well, what were
your finding, and they might not ever walk into the morgue,
and it varied from doctor to doctor. So I've seen
a lot of a lot of the good and the bad.
You know, when you're in a morgue, you've got a cooler,
(03:36):
maybe a couple of coolers, and you're having to handle
the body by yourself, if you can imagine. I think
that's one of the reasons my back is run.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Now, that's where the term dead weight comes from.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
It is it is, and it is dead weight.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
But you know, you see all kinds of things. Really,
you talk about getting into the guts operationally of a
hospital that's born out in the way the morgue is
run and the way the morgue is handled, because I
think that it's indicative of the way a lot of
other things in the hospital are handled. Because you know,
(04:13):
let's face it, if you cannot, if you cannot respect
the dead, that's a real baseline kind of thing. If
you cannot, you know, how are you treating the living?
You know, because the dead people might not agree with this,
but the dead are the most helpless among us, right,
They're totally dependent upon us and by extension, their families too.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
But you know, one of the things in a funeral
home is the You cannot leave a body alone in
the funeral home because if something happens, if there's a fire,
somebody has to be there to get the body or
bodies out of the funeral home. Now, I don't know
if that's still a law. In this case. We are
dealing with a thirty one year old, very accomplished woman.
(04:58):
She is a prosecuting attorney, and she has some medical
issues if she's diabetic and some other things. She had
had an infection in her foot one time and had
surgery on it, but going to the hospital is not
something she does on a regular basis. However, she did
find herself in a diabetic situation where she goes to
the hospital, but after two days she calls her mom, Hey,
(05:19):
come and get me. I need to get out of here.
Now there's a little blurriness as to what transpired at
this point with Jesse Peterson, but no matter how it happens.
At twoint thirty, she on April the eighth, she calls
her mom, would you come and get me at the hospital?
All right, Jesse, I'm away. When mom arrives around four
(05:39):
thirty or so, Jesse's not there. Where's my daughter? What
are you talking about? She checked herself out and left.
They actually tell her that I talked to my daughter
two hours ago. She said she was leaving. Where is she?
She checked herself out and left. Now Mom immediately starts
(06:00):
looking for her, because why would the hospital tell her
something wrong. You know, she can't find her, calling friends,
calling family, checking around, can't find her anywhere. She was
in the hospital, checked herself out, and now she's missing. Joe.
They actually look for her, and then they do this
standard turn her in as a missing person. She's an adult.
(06:21):
Here's the problem. We've gone to this before. She's a
thirty one year old, accomplished adult. She has the right
to be to disappear herself as she wants to. It
might not be what we'd want for her, but that's
what we say happened. So there you go. For a year.
Joseph Scott Morgan. For a year, the family is looking
for a year. They're calling the police for updates. For
(06:44):
a year. They're organizing people to go out and look.
For a year. They are talking to homeless people, and
they mentioned this in some of the stories I've heard.
They went to the roughest sections of town to find
out if maybe somehow she had a psychological break with
reality and is lost among the homeless population. And they
(07:06):
went there in the hours of the night when most
of us are sound asleep. They went into those areas
just at the thought that their daughter, their cousin, their
sisters would be there. And for a year they didn't
know Joe because the hospital said she checked herself out
and left.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Yeah. How what a horrible set of circumstances. Particularly, you know,
this is one of the things that you know, I
think people make a sport of this comment sometimes, but
there are instances where where people will say things like, well,
we need to find them because they've got medical problems,
(07:46):
you know, and that might be a ruse or whatever
the case might be, just try to get their hands
on the person. That's the case here, you know, with
with miss Peterson, she she had been and she was ten, dave,
she'd been diagnosed with type one diabetes.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
And just give us a breakdown of what Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Well i'll tell you. I'll tell you specifically. In other words,
her pancreas would not produce insulin period, all right, And
that's at a baseline. We have to have insulin in
order to survive and her pancreas for whatever reason, whether
(08:29):
it's a genetic predisposition, whatever it is, when she was ten.
You know, she's diagnosed with this condition, and there are
all kinds of peripheral medical problems that come along with us.
You had mentioned the surgical intervention for her foot. It's
one thing if you injure your foot, If you don't
have diabetes, okay, but you injure your foot and maybe
(08:54):
you've got an open wound. Well, the next thing you know,
you've got a doctor looking at you saying, we're gonna
have to amputate your foot, all right, and the vessels
begin to collapse. There's cardiovascular problems that come about. Uh,
there's a real diminishment many times the body on I've
heard I heard one person describe it at one point
(09:16):
in time as if the body almost tries to digest itself,
you know, and so they many times, if you're not
real vital, you're not on top of it. This condition,
it it gives you this kind of very wasting appearance,
you know, uh, drawn thin. Many times you have to
(09:39):
be really on top of the circumstances relative to your
own personal health. I've got a number of friends that
have type one diabetes and they actually have insulin pumps
that you know, are attached to a belt loop or whatever,
and you'll see them every now and then, you know,
and they're they have sensors, you know, that can give
them an indication and when they're out of balance and
(10:02):
they have to be very careful about what they ingest.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
You know.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
It's there are a lot of people that have type
two diabetes or have the precursors, you know, those sorts
of things. They'll still eat like they want. They can
get a bump of insulin from an injection or however
it is that they receive it and it'll put them
back on balance. That's not the case with type one.
Some people refer to it as juvenile diabetes because it's
something that you develop when you're young. There are people
(10:26):
that are adults that develop Type one, but for the
most part, and she fits right in that bracket, doesn't
she She's ten years old, David. This is something going
back to the family in this case. This is something
that her mother, God bless her. I saw an interview.
I was watching an interview with mom. This is a
(10:47):
fight they've been fighting together. Her entire life, and it
sounds like they were very close.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Mom and daughter were.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
I mean, she's calling her mom to come pick me up,
you know, from the hospital, and this is a fight.
They've been fighting for a long time. And now the
daughter checks into the hospital for what has been described
as a diabetic event, because sometimes it gets so bad
(11:15):
that you need to have around the clock monitoring, you know,
check your sugars and all these sorts of things. And
she had had enough. I mean, like many of us,
you know, you go to the hospital. You know, after
a few days, it's like I think, I'm and this
is a person that would really know her body.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
You know, this is not an idiot, Joe. This is
no very accomplished woman. Very much that you pointed this out,
I understand so much better because I did have some
questions in my head as to what was going on.
So she had been in the hospital a couple of
months earlier, in January with she did have a diabetic event,
and I mentioned a few minutes ago she did have surgery,
(11:59):
you know, year prior. But by the time it rolls
around here and mom is coming to get her at
the hospital, she knows her body. She's had her filla
bey in the hospital and she's leaving. Okay, I get
that now, I understand, But I don't understand how mom
shows up and they give her the she checked herself out.
(12:23):
We don't know where she is. I mean, why would
we know she left on her own against doctor advice?
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Yeah, and when.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
That's an interesting thing because this is what's commonly referred
to as AMA. And for those of you that have
never been in a hospital environment, or maybe it's a
situation in your own life where you have you've had
all you can stand, you don't feel like you're receiving
the treatments you want, or the treatment is so horrible
(12:57):
you're like, look, anything is better than this. I'm checking
myself out. And what they will ask you to do
is they will ask you to sign a paper that
says I'm leaving against medical advice or that AMA. They're saying, look,
you need to stay here for your own good. And
(13:20):
I can assume that she was probably being followed by
a team of physicians. Certainly, you know nowadays it's hard
to find when you go to hospital. They're populated by
what are called hospitalists now, and hospitalists are It's not
like the old days where you would have your own
personal physician and they would have privileges at the hospital,
(13:42):
and I guess they still do have privileges, but you're
going to be treated by what's referred to as a hospitalist,
and they're like all things to all people. They're supposed
to manage the healthcare of the individual that is an endpatient,
and they'll be called up to ICU, they'll be called,
you know, perhaps to the adolescent war. If somebody has
(14:05):
got their post surgical and they're in the hospital, that
doctor is physically what they're referred to as being in
the house, and the hospital actually pays them. Some people
are fans of this, some or not. I've heard both
sides of it over the years, because you don't, you know,
it's one thing, and plus people get used to having
(14:26):
their own doctor.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
You know.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
The best doctor I ever had was this guy that
was he's now retired Dave. He could treat just about anything,
and he was an old country doctor and the kind
that you know would give it to you straight. You
need to stop eating like you're eating, or we're going
to do this for you, or this is the advice.
(14:49):
Or my friend over here is a great specialist. I'm
going to say those those people don't exist so much
as they used to, I don't think, in my opinion,
but she would have been followed probably by I hope,
by an intercarnologist, who an intercarnologist is an individual, and
she would have had to have had one on the
outside that's following her specifically for the treatment of her
(15:13):
type one diabetes.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
But I know this.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
You're talking about a woman, Jesse Murray Peterson, who had
a great relationship we believe, with her mother, a great
relationship with her sisters, and all of a sudden she
just walks away from it all a life that she
had built, a life that she had struggled to form
(15:41):
in spite of type one diabetes. Let's you know my
(16:02):
thought about this, Dave. You know, after you know, doing
these this reading about this case is so bizarre. Again,
this is one of these cases that didn't really you know,
it didn't hop up on my radar. It just kind
of appeared. I think it was actually where I saw
it was actually a People of All Things People magazine article.
(16:23):
They still call themselves a magazine. I'm not sure, but.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
I will tell you I've noted it when we when
I've seen information I've noted people magazine, and I'm like,
I don't think it's right, but yeah, yeah, but you
know why we saw this, It's the same reason we
saw the one about the Satanist ear eater. A lawsuit
was filed.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
A lawsuit has been filed in this case as well.
I think that you know, there are a.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Lot of frivolous lawsuits out there, Buddy, this ain't frivolous.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
This is this is something that yeah, I think that
this is certainly justified. But you know, she's this is
taking place in uh In, California, up in Carmichael, California,
and kind of set in the stage here. Jesse had
previously been a prosecutor in Placer County, California. Now this
(17:14):
is far northern California. I've never been able to really
understand how, you know, Californians divide the state up. You know,
they're very sectional. But this is near the Nevada border,
or Placer County is near the Nevada border where she
was a prosecutor. Mountainous terrain, probably very very beautiful high
(17:39):
desert maybe in some of those locations up there, But
to that point she had had all she could stand.
She had been admitted back on April the sixth, twenty three,
and I think that it was like at two thirty
in the afternoon on the eighth, she says, you know,
(18:03):
I'm going to call Mama and have her come pick
me up. I've had all that I can stand.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
At the point, you pointed out something, Joe about her
being diagnosed with type one diabetes as a ten year old,
and we're talking about somebody who has lived with diabetes
for twenty one years and has been hospitalized for diabetic
events in the past. So she has a much better
understanding of her body and what's working and what's not
(18:30):
than I would have, I think. And she calls her
mom at two thirty. Mom arrives two hours later, and
I need to pay attention to this. At four twenty
seven pm, Jesse Peterson was pronounced dead at the hospital.
(18:52):
Now her mother is arriving to take her home. Jesse
has called her at two thirty, Come get me mom
out of here. When she arrives, Jesse's mother is told
she signed herself out and left against medical advice Ama,
as you mentioned. But at four twenty seven pm she
(19:14):
had been pronounced dead.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
So gim me just hang on, hang on one second,
just so I can get this right in my mind.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Yeah, good luck.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Gim me.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Can you give me the time frame here again from
are we talking literally two hours from the moment? Is
it roughly two hours from the moment she called mama
And then you're saying that she's pronounced dead at this
point in tom and Mama shows up and she's being
(19:43):
told Ama.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Right, that's exactly what happened. I know it sounds messed up,
but that is exactly what happened. Okay, two thirty phone call,
come get me, Mom gets herself together, you know, and
comes to get her at the hospital. She arrives sometime
around after four point thirty in the afternoon. We don't
know exactly what time she arrived at the hospital. We
(20:06):
do know it was about approximately two hours after the
phone call, and we know that Jesse was already dead
according to the hospital.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Yeah, let me tell you something real quick about about
the set of circumstances.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
This is not like.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
You've got somebody that has got say, for instance, Lord
bless them, but a terminal illness where everybody's gathered around
their deathbed, as it were, and you know, folks are
saying their goodbyes and all those sorts of things that
come along with those unfortunate circumstances where you know, we
lose loved ones. They were talking about a woman who
(20:48):
is verbal. Okay, it's not like she's on ICU with
you know, feeding to or she's on event you know
where she can't. We're talking about someone that has just
called her mother. Dave, Can I tell you what's going
to happen with somebody like her?
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Because I can't figure it out, Joe, it's hard.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Let me, well, let me just kind of let me
kind of lay out the space and time, okay, because
this is something that would be so so documented to
the nth degree traditionally, because they would have had to
what's referred to as running a code on her. Now,
(21:37):
I know that people have seen movies and these sorts
of things where you know you'll have like traditionally, the old,
the old way of doing things was when you're in
the hospital. If you ever heard the term code blue.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
And this is.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
I don't know that it's worldwide, it was certainly nationwide.
You know when you heard code blue.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Anybody that was.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
That was certified in advanced life support, which is a
course that you have to go through. Doctors go through it,
nurses go through it, everybody that is part of a
team to try to keep somebody alive. And this is
advanced resuscitation essentially, is what they're We're going far beyond
here just doing chess compressions, Okay, we're talking about pushing
(22:30):
drugs and you know, using the paddles and doing all
this sort of thing. When that call goes out, however
it's coded at the hospital, you would have a flurry
of activity where these people are rushing to this location
and depend upon where she is, there would be a
crash cart. And the reason I'm telling you this is
(22:52):
that this thing is so documented. These events are so
very documented because there are doctor's notes, nurses notes. If
they've got respiratory team there, their notes are there. And
then you've got somebody that is generally it's going to
be a nurse that's responsible for that crash cart. And
(23:14):
the crash cart is locked down and so it's got
certain drugs in it that have to be administered and
then it has to be replenished because you don't know
when the next the next code is going to be,
so all You've got all of this documentation that's taking place,
and Mama shows up within a two hour window and
(23:38):
she doesn't. They're saying she's left Ama. This is not
like some patient with dementia or something that's just wandered
off the campus of the hospital. We're talking about a
young woman who had had a conversation that requested her
mother to come and pick her up, and then all
(23:59):
of a sudden, she vanishes into thin air. She's no
longer there.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
I gotta tell.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
You, you know, I'm not trying to bury the lead here,
but I got to tell you if just say, for instance,
someone in a similar case, we're so inclined.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
To file a lawsuit about this.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
There is so much documentation that is going to back
up the activities of those individuals that were involved in this,
because it's almost like it's almost if you've ever been
to a play. Okay, like just think of the most
meticulously planned play that you've ever sat in that and
(24:43):
you're thinking, how in the world they do that. This
is like everyone on these teams knows their job, and
they have specific marks they have to hit at specific
times in order to facilitate the most important thing in
and that's preservation of life. And it is so meticulously documented, David.
(25:05):
That's why it baffles me that anyone would put forth
the idea that, yeah, she's she's AMA. She walked out
of the hospital. You know, I don't know she got
in a cab or called an uber or whatever the
case might be, a horse drawne carriage. I have no idea,
(25:29):
but she's AMA. She signed herself out, she's gone. Really,
you know, you're the mom. You're thinking really, And I just.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Talked to her two hours ago. She told me to
come and get her. That's why I'm here. Now you're
saying she left.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
It makes no sense.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
No, it boggles the mind, Joe.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
But here's can I throw in one more thing here,
because if we're assuming that they're not using I'm assuming
not you. I don't want to throw you into the
same kettle of fish with me, but I'm assuming that
talk about documentation, these phone calls that were made were
(26:09):
probably done over cellular devices. Those are markers in time,
you know, you know, when when this all comes down,
you know, because this is a lawsuit, they're going to
pull those records and they're going to say, you know, ma'am,
we understand that you called your daughter at approximately this time.
We've pulled these records. By the way, here can you
(26:32):
show us approximately you know when you spoke with your
daughter and boom there is it's a digital marker. And
who by the way, if you pull the records for
Jesse's phone, it's going to show that boom, she answered
the phone call, or that Jesse called her. Rather, I've
got this backwards. Jesse calls her, come and get me, mama,
(26:54):
And you've got these two people that are communicating that
seem to line up. You take just the digital data
alone and marry that up with the code information I
was referring to where she goes into cardiac arrest, because
that's what would have happened. I don't think they just
merely found her dead in the hallway, you know, and
(27:19):
didn't attempt to do anything. Whether they would have attempted
to resuscitate her, there would have been a whole team involved.
And here's the other thing. When it comes down to
a lawsuit, Dave, every single person that was involved in
this case will receive a subpoena. They will go into
(27:44):
a courtroom and they will be directly questioned by the
attorney that's handling this case for the family. I don't
know what their defense is going to be, but I
got to tell you I think they're going to have
quite the uphilt out of here. So your child, and
(28:18):
trust me, there's still a child thirty one years old.
You're a mama. This is somebody that you love. You're invested,
all right, you love them, and particularly you've been on
this journey with them of type one diabetes. You understand. Okay,
you show up and your daughter, who's you know, by
(28:41):
all indications, is in her right mind when she contacts you,
she's vanished. David, I got to ask you a question
as as a daddy. Let me let me throw this
out to you. Your child calls you and says, come
and pick me up at the hospital.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
Brother?
Speaker 2 (28:59):
What and they're not there?
Speaker 1 (29:02):
And you know that they've got a critical medical issue
that you know needs to be tended to. They've also
previously got a foot injury. What are you gonna do?
I got to ask you, what you know, knee jerk
reaction here? You know, kind of what what would be
your your initial response here?
Speaker 3 (29:22):
The same as you I'm going to start looking. And
I thought about this because mom shows up to pick
her up. She's fully expecting her probably to be sitting
in the lobby area ready to go, or out front.
I mean, she's not expecting to go to the room
and find her laying in bed, not ready to go,
because she said I'm ready to go, come get me.
So when when mom shows up and she is told
(29:45):
she's not here, she laughed, She checked herself out against
medical advice and left. Now the knee jerk is going,
I believe is the same for all of us. I'm
going to stop messing with the hospital. I'm going to
believe that what they're telling me is the truth, and
I I'm going to react accordingly. My first thought, I'm
looking around the parking lot. Yep, I'm going to look.
Is there a way she would have started walking? You know,
(30:07):
why did she not wait for me to get here?
She knew I was coming. It's only been a couple
hours since we talked. How far could she have gotten
what transpired that? I don't know. But you're going to
believe that the hospital is being truthful. So immediately you're
not going to start grilling them and let me see
your charts, let me see you know, you're not gonna
do that yet. You're going to do that later on,
but right now you're looking, You're calling family. Hey man,
(30:29):
she checked herself out and I can't find her. So
it's going to start like that. You're you're really going
to think, I'm going to find her out here somewhere,
she's just mad. I mean, those are the basic things
I'm thinking as a parent, and then it's going to
go from that.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Well, let me ask you a question real quick. Have
you ever left a hospital mad?
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Yeah, I've been in a position where I don't care
if I had to drag myself out of my bloody stumps. Yeah,
I'm out of place. But yeah, yeah, I mean, and yeah,
that's that's certainly plausible.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
You've had a numans.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
Yeah. So that's what I'm thinking as a parent. You know. Now,
the other part of this is what we don't know.
We know that the relationship between mother and daughter is
very strong here because you mentioned this, and it's very important.
For twenty one years, mom and daughter have been bonded
together over type one diabetes. This is not something you
can ignore or take a break from. You don't get
(31:25):
a vacation from this medical malady. You actually have this
every day from the time you wake up till the
time you go to sleep and during your sleeping hours.
As a parent, we are concerned about our child. No
matter how old they get, no matter how accomplished they become,
they still have this underlying medical issue that requires constant attention.
So she knows all these things, that relationship is, that
(31:49):
medical drama, that is an everyday thing. So Mom's concerned
what happened and where is she? So you're not going
to go into the hospital files yet because you're going
to be looking for her right away and after you
don't immediately find it. This is just me. You got
a couple hours tied up. Let's check all the basic
places where we think she would go. Let's call all
(32:09):
the friends we can think of that she would reach
out to. But then there's going to be nobody has
heard from her a senior since I talked to her
two hours before I showed up to pick her up.
And so now you go back to the hospital, Well,
probably report her to the police missing. They get brought
in fairly early on, and because of the medical issue,
(32:30):
we need help finding her. And it's only going to
be after that that you go back to the hospital
and say, okay, now you're going to show me the
charts and reports of everything you described a few minutes ago,
and that's where you're going to actually start getting into
a full accounting of a minute my minute timeline to
determine where she is. And again from the hospital standpoint, Joe,
(32:54):
she left. We don't know. It's like a third grader
giving mom and dad an answer as to why they
fail the test.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Let me tell you where this actually breaks down in
kind of the structure of the hierarchical structure within the hospital.
It's not going to be it could be the physician
that reaches out that is the attending the hospitalist. But
if this is a hospitalist, keep in mind, this individual
(33:21):
moves on to the next case, okay, And that's not
an excuse, that's just the reality. You know, they move
on down the line. You know where this really breaks
down is a social worker, because you've got there's a
whole group of people within the hospital that are there
for the care of families and also making arrangements for
(33:43):
individuals that have difficulties in their lives or just you know,
post hospital treatment. You know, they make everybody aware and
so in my experience, the social worker that works in
the hospital, and they are assigned, they're employed by the hospital.
They're the ones that are actually task with contacting the
(34:09):
family and making sure that the family understands everything. Well,
we're still we're at a point right now.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Dave, where she's dead, Jesse's.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Dead, all right, this is now you're at a point
who who did not check these boxes? Relative to did
did some people just assume that someone else was going
to do this? You know, after you have this this flourish, this,
(34:44):
you know, this event with a code, they're going back
to restocking the you know, the the crash cart. They're
wrapping the body and what's referred to as a morg pack,
which prepa he or somebody to go to the morgue.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
Okay, I was gonna say, you got to tell me
what that is because I don't know. But just fyi, Joe,
let's just let's cut to the meat of this. Yeah,
the hospital tells the family she left on her own,
but she didn't ever leave. She's dead at the hospital
and they start a cover up fairly early on. I'm
(35:22):
an alleged cover up maybe mainly Yeah, I want to
be clear that the family for a year is looking
for jesse Marie Peterson, thirty one year old Type one
diabetic lawyer. Okay, they're looking for her everywhere for a year.
Can you imagine that, Joe. We cover missing persons stories
(35:43):
a lot with Nancy Grace, and usually it ends up
really bad where we eventually find the body. In this case,
they never find her body anywhere. They're looking everywhere. It
is a year and four days later that the family
gets a call from a detective. Remember I told you
they did go to the police, and they did report
her missing, and the local police did their job at
(36:05):
trying to find a missing adult with a medical issue.
A year and four days after mom shows up to
pick her daughter up at the hospital, the detective calls
and says, hey, we found her. She's dead and the
hospital knew. Now, Joe, I want you to tell me
what happened to the body of jesse Marie Peterson.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
At this point, when she has been declared dead, Dave,
they would have prepared her body to take her to
their more facility in this hospital. And this hospital is
actually Mercy San Juan Hospital, and it's in Sacramento County, California.
(36:55):
And that's who the police eventually had gotten involved in
this case to try to try to determine what happened
to her, because you know, they're working this thing as
a missing person's case. After they have gone through this
detective has gone through interviewing people, probably requesting medical records,
(37:17):
trying to understand the timeline, they have this kind of epiphany.
I can only imagine where they're saying. It's very dramatic
when you think about it. She never left the hospital,
so kind of narrows it down as far as the
search goes. You've had mom, you've had friends, you've had
(37:38):
extended family that have been trying. They're exhausting every possibility
here to try to find her. For mind, you, I
have to restate what you've stated for over a year, Dave,
for over a year, and all the while she had
never left the hospital. She had not just simply gone
into And here's the really, here's the real rub with this.
(38:07):
They didn't just take her.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
To the MORK.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
They took her to a location within the hospital that
is a long term cult storage unit. And that's going
to be different than like if Grandma dies up on
ICU and you're waiting for the funeral home to come
(38:34):
and pick the body up and remove. Okay, when you
place a body into a storage you know, a cult
storage unit within the hospital you're talking about, you have
made a determination. This is an active choice that you're making.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Here.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
You're saying, well, we've one of two things. We either
our perception is she doesn't have family, and we don't
know what to do with the body. Which at that
point in time, the corner should have been notified and
have stepped in because they would have brought all of
their resources to bear and I can imagine Sacramento County
(39:19):
Sheriff's Office investigator had reached out to the corner as well,
was this case ever reported to you? That would have
been one of the first steps.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
And then.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
They have to make a decision about what they're going
to do with her body. So, after they've prepared her
body in a morg pack, which sometimes the variable it's
plastic sheeting a body is sometimes a body will actually
look like a mummy wrapped in plastic where the feet
are tied off with external strings, the hands are tied inside.
(39:49):
The inside the packaging, there's a gauze that goes around
the head to hold the jaw in place all of
these sorts of things, and sometimes they'll just place them
into a body bag and then they're going to take
them to this storage unit. Which for me, if you're
(40:09):
placing a body into cold storage, what you're saying is
all hope is lost. We don't know where the family is,
this individual is indigent or two we got to try
to figure this out because we fail to contact the
next ken or let mama know within two hours of
her having called and had contact with her, and it
(40:33):
was just left just kind of pushed off into the
ether there where you're thinking, well, no one's going to
miss her, no one has shown back up to claim her.
But all the while, you know Mama's out there looking
for her now along with the police and Dave. What
this cold storage does to human remains. We many people
(41:00):
have this perception that if you.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
That if you.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Take a body and you place the body into a cooler, okay,
that the body goes into this kind of stasis where
nothing changes with the body. Nothing could be further from
the truth.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (41:20):
That messes with me, that that really does, because I
assumed that Joe, I really did think that if you
pass away and you're put in something that will keep
you chill. You know that that everything stays the same,
and that they can look at you two years later
and figure out what happened. I didn't I thought that
would happen, just because you know, I just thought that.
(41:43):
I don't know why I'm an idiot, But no, what
actually happened?
Speaker 1 (41:45):
I mean, why would you know that? I mean, most
people don't know. I'm glad that most people don't know it.
But you know, I've you.
Speaker 3 (41:52):
Know, you're saying worse than that. It's the opposite of that.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
Well it is. And here's one of the big things. Uh,
with cold storage of bodies.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
What happens, As we all know, there's limited humidity. Okay,
so the body is not retaining any kind of moisture
at this point.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
So the body.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
Begins to dry out. Essentially, now the body is cold,
all right, it's cold storage. You're not going to have
the profound, decompositional odor that you would if say, someone
was left out, a body was left out and was
not cold stored, and it knocks that down. However, there's
(42:43):
a price to be paid.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
The body will be.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Almost it will have a parchment like appearance. You'll see
like the fingertips that we've talked about this with the mummification,
remember well, it's kind of the same principle in the
sense that the body, because of the lack of humidity
in this cold, cold environment, which most cold storage is
colder than a standard more crypt because you don't you
(43:12):
don't want to put a body.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
You don't want to put a body.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
In cold storage unless they're going to be there for
a protracted period of time. Remember, most of the dead
that we deal with are fresh dead, and they're going
to be released directly, you know, to a funeral home.
And even after we're done with autopsies and things like that,
the funeral home can still work with the body, you know,
to get the body presentable for viewing and all that
(43:37):
goes along with that. But with cold storage, one of
the things that you'll see that's so profound the eyes. Actually,
you know, you hear about people having sunken eyes. This
is the absolute truth that the eyes do sink back
into the head. And that's because there's a lack of
(43:58):
moisture in the body. So just that in and of it,
in and of itself, that presentation, you would have a
very difficult time trying to kind of, you know, resurrect
any kind of appropriate appearance for the body, just based
on the eyes alone. I've seen this over and over
(44:18):
again throughout my career with bodies that have been in
long term storage. Secondly, the color of the skin changes.
You will actually have bodies that and these temperatures can
get very very cold, they're sub freezing. The bodies will
actually develop a red hue to them that's indicative of
(44:41):
like freezer burn Like you've heard the term freezer burned.
You know that you have. There's not a dime's worth
of difference between something that you would put into a
deep freeze and deep freezing a human remain. So when
in fact her body is finally found and located in
(45:04):
the hospital, which now, Dave, we're talking, correct me if
I'm wrong, in excess of three hundred and sixty.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
Five days, we're talking sixty nine.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
Three hundred and sixty nine days since she was last
known alive, she will have gone a long way down
the path of change. And when they found her, Dave,
when they finally located her body in this hospital, her
remains are not viewable. So let's think about what this
(45:36):
mama has been through. First off, she's been through. My
daughter calls me because she no longer wants to be here.
She shows up, she's told that your daughter's not here.
She left Ama against medical advice. Now she's in a fever,
(45:59):
trying to find her daughter, flipping over every rock that
she possibly can out there.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
It's a poor woman.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
Living every night thinking, oh, my lord, has she been kidnapped?
Has she been killed? Has is she wandering the streets?
She doesn't have her medication because again I bring us
back to Jesse being ten years old and Mama having
to watch over and take care of all of these needs.
She's been wringing her hands for a year. Oh and
(46:30):
then by the by, she gets the call from the
Sacramento Sheriff's office from a detective that tells her we
found your daughter. I wonder, just for a moment, maybe
there was a spark of hope, just in that little
second perhaps where Mama thought, maybe there's still a chance.
(46:58):
She didn't realize that when the have told her that.
To add insult to injury, she discovers that her daughter's
body is so badly decomposed that they couldn't view her.
(47:24):
They couldn't view her they couldn't grieve her, They couldn't
mourn her. She had been placed into that cult storage unit.
I'd like to know what else was in that cult
storage unit. I'd like to know was she stored with
other things? Whereas there more than just Jesse's mortal remains
(47:50):
contained within there is under the sun. There is no explanation,
there is no excuse use that can be made for
the decisions that were made. They say that broken hearts
never mend. This is sole crushing, absolutely soul crushing, and
(48:19):
like it or not, the people at the hospital, the administrators,
the medical staff, the doctor that didn't sign the death
certificate for over a year, they're going to have stand
and deliver because they will receive a subpoena. They will
(48:42):
go to a courthouse and they will have to explain
themselves under oath. There will be more to come in
this case, and I hope that we can follow up
on it until then, I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
is body facts.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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