June 21, 2022 • 35 mins
Murdered in a uniquely gruesome and prolonged series of events; Reggie and Carol Sumner are the helpless victims of a month-long plan carried out with the help of a familiar face. Buried alive in a pre-dug hole near the Florida/Georgia line, these two high-school sweethearts suffer their terrible end at the hands of Tiffany Cole, her boyfriend Michael James Jackson, Alan Wade, and Bruce Kent Nixon, Jr.
Tiffany Cole buys a vehicle from the Sumner family and travels to Jacksonville regularly to pay down her debt. That is, until her new boyfriend, Michael James Jackson, hatches a plan that ends in the Sumners' deaths.
After being buried alive, under hundreds of pounds of dirt, an autopsy determines that the couple's cause of death is mechanical asphyxiation (i.e. physical interference with breathing and or circulation). In this episode of Body Bags, forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan and Jackie Howard take a closer look at these horrifying deaths.
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Body Backs with Joseph Scott Morgan. Throughout our lives, we
we face health issues off and on, and you never
know what's really going to kind of finally knock you
(00:28):
to your knees. But the beauty part of that is
it sometimes when we're struggling with our health, we have
an unintended angel that kind of enters into our life
and promises to be with us to the day that
we die. Well, that was the case with Reggie and
Carrol Summer. They found one another. They found one another,
(00:53):
and they held onto one another very very tightly, and
they were enjoying their retirement. But they were both faced
with great obstacles and the greatest top school was yet
to come. It ended in their deaths. Today we're going
to talk about the double homicide of Reggie and Carol Sumner.
(01:15):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Backs. Jackie Howard,
executive producer of Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, is joining
me today. Jackie, what can you tell us about Reggie
and Carol. Carol and Reggie Simner reportedly met in high
(01:36):
school and rekindled their relationship later in life. They found
each other, they wanted the same things out of the
rest of their life, and they wanted to spend time together.
Yet this couple was suffering through some health issues. Reggie
had diabetes and he had also had some injuries to
his ankle which required him to need the assistance of
(01:58):
a wheelchair or a cane on occasion. However, Carol was
suffering through liver cancer as well as happatitis as a result.
It's this combination of health issues that will come into
play a little later, Joe, So let's talk about how
their health issues are impacting their life right now. Their
quality of life, cancer, health injuries, and diabetes. Yeah, it's
(02:22):
a horrible set of circumstances to be faced with. You know,
they were not like really really elderly people. This couple
was only sixty one years old and they had a
lot of years in front of mine. I think that
that's what they thought. At one point in time. They
had made this really, this really warm promise to one another.
It really struck me when I was doing the research
(02:42):
on this case, how they would be with one another
until the day they died, that they had promised to
take care of one another, and you know, they they
had gotten together back up in South Carolina, and they
felt strong enough about the relationship that they had together
up there despite their health issues, that they decided to
(03:04):
sell everything they had up in South Carolina and moved
down to Jacksonville, Florida, you know, just southbound on and
set up a home down there, and that they would
spend the rest of their days down there. And you know,
I think that one of the thoughts that came to
mind someone who had quoted Reggie at one point time
(03:26):
as having said that the doctors felt like that the
environment down in Jacksonville, near the near the beach would
be good for his condition, and he was. You know,
they hadn't just said that he had diabetes. People have
stated over and over and over again, relative to to
his history that he had severe diabetes, which means he
(03:49):
was obviously insulin dependent. It's not some kind of pre
diabetic state. That means his sugars were probably out of
whack and he had to have constant monitoring, you know,
where he's taking his blood sugar level constantly, several times
a day. He's having to be treated by an end
of chronologist that's a physician that actually works with people
(04:10):
that have diabetes. And he was on very specific medication,
and you know, at the towards the end of his life,
Reggie had injured his ankle. And one of the big
fears for people that have diabetes or any kind of injuries,
particularly to their peripheral areas, you know, their hands, their feet,
(04:32):
these sorts of things, because they don't heal quite as well.
And this was a severe injury. He he had actually
fractured an ankle and it required him at least for
part of the time, to be wheelchair bound. So you
can imagine that. You know, he's dealing with everything that's
associated with diabetes, including maybe compromised eyesight, you know, fatigue,
(04:53):
constant sleepiness, just a general malaise much of the time.
And then on top of that, his wife, Carol, she
is faced with this huge struggle of liver cancer, and
liver cancer is not something that somebody just kind of
easily bounces back from. She's in the midst of this
(05:15):
of fighting this disease, and because she had developed liver cancer,
it sent her into what's referred to as hepatic failure,
which is where the liver begins to shut down and
all the functions that everything that is required of the
(05:37):
liver to do, you know, systemically is compromised. At that
point in time, she develops jauntice along with the hepatitis,
and that means that she would have a yellow tinge
to her skin, in constant pain. There's always problems with digestion, nausea,
these sorts of things associated with this disease, and not
to mention again, in a very feeble, weakened state. I mean,
(05:58):
they're they're both of these people are fragile as newborn kittens.
As we look at their health conditions, Joe, we see
the term vulnerable keep being mentioned about these two people.
What is it about their conditions that make them vulnerable?
Are we saying that their body is vulnerable to disease?
(06:20):
Are we saying that these two individuals really are are
physically feeble and unable to defend themselves. Yeah, yeah, that's
a big part of this. And you know, you can
even look at primal animal activity and see how predators
actually pick the weakest among the her those that they
(06:43):
know that they can control and take down. And in
the Sumner's case, they were the weakest of the week,
you know, and of course that they have things that
people might want, that sort of thing. But they're compromised
in sense that if you know, if if someone came
into their home to attack them in any way, they
(07:06):
would not be able to put up a fight. It
would be like a grown man going head to head with,
you know, somebody that has the strength probably of maybe
an eight year old child. At this point in time,
they're they're just living day to day, hour to hour,
minute to minute, you know, and probably to a great
(07:26):
degree thankful for every second that they have on this
earth because they I think that they probably understood how
fragile their life was. You said, predator Joe, and you
really couldn't have phrased that any better, because that is
what happened to this couple. They met a group of predators,
Tiffany Cole, Michael James Jackson, Alan Wade, Bruce Kent Nixon Jr.
(07:50):
When the Sumners moved to Jacksonville, Florida, they sold a
car to Tiffany Cole. Cole agreed to make monthly payments
and often drove down to jackson to make those monthly payments. Well.
In June of two thousand five, Cole and her new boyfriend,
Michael Jackson drove to Jacksonville to complete the paperwork on
(08:10):
the sale of the car. And while they were there,
they stayed with the Sumners at their home and it
was there that a plan to rob this couple that
had been so generous to Tiffany Cole was hatched. They
planned to steal money from their bank accounts. But what's more,
they decided that they were not adverse to killing this
(08:33):
couple if necessary. Joe, this this goes to this thought,
you know, talking about predators and the behavior of those
types they observed for a while. You know, they'll watch,
they'll see if there's any danger to them. And once
they're in such an intimate environment, you know, when you're
in that small, tight, little circle of you know, someone's home,
(08:57):
you're actually sleeping in their bed, you're eating their food,
you're you know, using their bathroom facilities, all these sorts
of things, the predator has the ability to walk through
there and check everything, see how vulnerable, how how easy
it is perhaps to access the home, how easy it
is to maybe take things that are just lying around.
(09:19):
But here, here's here's the most important part. If you're
a predator and you're in what's referred to as in
asymmetrical relationship with a person. That means that you're dominant
over someone that is weaker. You're looking at them and
you can exploit things you can see that they're you know,
I use term feeble, and I don't mean that is
(09:40):
a disrespecting term. It's just that they're feeble in the
sense that in their physical bodies that are very weak.
And that's something that you would catch on too very quickly.
You know. You think about Carol suffering from hepatic failure
due to liver cancer, and she's anytime she takes a step,
she to grab hold of the back of the chair
(10:02):
or brace herself against the wall. She has to measure
every footfall that she has in the house. Or you
begin to look and see that Reggie he he doesn't
move very well because of his ankle, that he would
rather be in the wheelchair kind of moving himself about
(10:22):
the house as opposed to ambulating anywhere and automatically. If
you are of the mindset to attack someone to take
everything that they have, it's at that moment in time
that bells start going off in your mind. If you
are the aggressor here and you know that this is
an easy mark for Reggie and Carol Sumner. They they
(11:05):
lived with this false sense of security. If I think
you think that you got the the world kind of
figured out that you're here in this place that you've
moved to for maybe to better your health and and
to move on with your life and and adjust your
life so that you can be happy and enjoy the
love of one another. But that suddenly turned a horror
(11:27):
for them. It did. They trusted Tiffany Cole, which turned
out to be not a very good idea. Tiffany Cole,
Michael Jackson, Alan Wade, Bruce Kent Nixon Jr. Took a month,
took one month to put their plan into action. They
intended to invade the home, asked to use the phone,
(11:50):
and then once inside they were going to attack the family.
And that's exactly what they did. But it was Wade
and Nixon, who the Sumners did not know, two men
who knocked down the door and asked to use the phone.
Once inside, they attacked the couple. The couple was bound
and gagged with the duct tape and from there put
into the trunk of their Lincoln town car. And meanwhile,
(12:14):
Tiffany Colin Michael Jackson Traveled in their car planning to
deliberately get pulled over for speeding if police got too
close to the Lincoln. Now what would have these physical
limitations done to the sum nurse, considering they already had
their own physical limitations. Well, first off, and I think
(12:35):
I think that it goes without saying. You know, our
our fight or flight kicks in. But here's the problem.
When you're when you are physiologically compromised, like Reggie and
Carol were, you might have that thought in your mind
that I need to flee, that I need to get away,
that I need to put distance between myself and danger.
(12:57):
What's really horrific about this is that now you're wrapped
in these bodies that are riddled with disease, diabetes and
cancer and these sorts of things. So you know, you're
you're thinking back, I would imagine two when you were
thirty and you could have maybe put distance between yourself
and in danger. But now you're in this compromise position
(13:18):
and you can't. So you've got adrenaline pumping even though
you can't use it to get away. Your breathing becomes shallow.
And one of the important points here, and something we
need to keep in mind, is that duct tape was
used on on both Carol and Reggie, and so when
that occurs, you know, we know that the police have
(13:40):
used the term gagged over and over again. I don't
necessarily think that this was a matter of the perpetrators
having taken duct tape and put a you know, a
wat of it into their mouth and jammed it down
their throat or anything like that. I think that it
was a covering over their mouth, potentially their nose, I'm
not sure, but certainly they're eyes as well. So now
(14:03):
you you know, your body is demanding more oxygen because
you're shallow breathing, and you've got health problems and your
airways compromised to the point where you can't uptake oxygen
and everything begins to fail. You know, for world Reggie,
who's suffering from severe diabetes, I'm sure his sugar's probably
got out of whack. And you know, along with diabetes
(14:25):
also comes issues like heart disease and these sorts of things,
so his his cardiovascular system could have well have been
compromised as well at this moment time. You know, it's
really important to have people ask me this question a lot.
You know, when you begin to think about manners and
causes of death. And they don't see a natural disease
(14:49):
that can be utilized as a means to commit homicide.
But I gotta tell you it can. If somebody is
compromised already and you have an awareness of that, you
can push somebody to the brink. You can actually kill
them visa VI. The in dwelling disease. They have. I
worked cases like that, and it's it's absolutely horrific. It's
not you know, it's not as simple as just shooting
(15:09):
somebody or stabbing somebody. Um, because physiologically they are compromised,
they have disease on board. You can harm, do great
harm to someone this way. And you know, this idea
of being in fear of your life being confined, I mean,
I don't know that many of us could ever even
(15:29):
begin to comprehend this idea of being bound and gagged
and blindfolded. You're already frail, and then you're essentially placed
into the trunk of your own car and you're completely
deprived of any of your external century indicators. Here. Maybe
you can smell, maybe you can't, but you can't see.
(15:51):
You're having to be helped along to walk, and the
next thing. You know, you can feel yourself on a
hard surface. You hear the trunk slam, and now you're
going down the road. You're moving away from where it
is that you felt you were safe in and you're
bumping down the road and in total and complete pitch
black darkness. One of the things that I know about diabetes, Joe,
(16:15):
is when you're sugar is high, it changes your emotions.
It changes the way that you think. You become confused,
you can become angry, and and then when you crash,
you can die from your sugar being out of range.
(16:36):
So describe for me what he would be going through
already in a panic, from worrying about his wife, worrying
about his own life, and worrying about his health. You know,
is he going to be able to assist her in
any way? So talk to me and explain about how
all of that is also impacting his idea or notion
(16:59):
of survival. Yeah, you know, and we don't you know.
When you you begin to think about the timeline when
these two showed up at the door and took control
of Reggie and Carol in their own home, you begin
to think about this. You don't know where either Reggie
or Carol were were their medications that day? And that's
a that's a critical point here because diabetics in particular
(17:22):
so dependent upon their medications to maintenance their life day
in and day out and to measure their sugar levels.
If if he becomes say, for instance, what's referred to
as hypoglycemic, which means that sugar dips precipitously, you become lightheaded, disoriented,
those sorts of things, and you have no idea, You're
(17:45):
you're totally completely confused at that moment time. So it
would impact your life greatly. It would impact your ability
to make decisions to defend yourself this sort of thing. Now,
if his sugar was going in the other way, if
if it had jumped up to an unexpected level because
it wasn't being maintenanced, and he's in this, you know,
(18:06):
you're gonna again become short of breath, diphyretic, which means
you're gonna be sweating a lot, feeling like you're gonna
pass out. Either way, it's horrible situation to be in.
And yeah, he would not have been in a position two,
you know, take care of his wife or or himself
at that point in time, you have to compound their
situation with the fact that they are in the trunk
(18:28):
of a car. How is that oxygen supply going to
impact what is going on? And are they in fact
getting more exhaust from the vehicle than they are oxygen. Yeah,
that a lot of that is going to be depended
upon how structurally intact the vehicle is, and of course
the exhaust system. I've had friends of mine that are
(18:49):
medical legal death investigators that have worked cases where people
have been placed into trunks and they have asphyxiated, not
from the lack of fresh oxygen being able to just
be present, but because there was an intrusion into that
environment of carbon monoxide, because there was a faulty exhaust system,
and that can play a part of it. And of
(19:09):
course we look for that at autopsy and there's certain
things that and they would have done this with both
Carol and Reggie. And if folks at home can just
think about this, think about the brightest artificial cherry pink
color you've ever seen on a piece of candy or
popsicle or something like that. That's actually the color, believe
it or not, that that the skin of people turns
(19:31):
that have been exposed to carbon monoxide, even the whites
of their eyes become kind of cherry pink and color.
And so that's something that when we see it at autopsy,
it's a huge flag for us. You know, we're thinking, well,
they have been exposed to something, and generally that leads
back to carbon oxide. And of course they would do
you know, in toxicology when they draw blood, there's a
(19:52):
test that we call carboxy hemoglobin level, which checks the
level of carbon oxide that an individual has in their system.
You know, just out walking around, there are minimal standards
that you know you're going to be exposed to, particularly
in urban environments of exhausting that's worth of thing, but
you can get up into those critical areas where it's
(20:12):
going to compromise your system, and that's certainly something that
would have played a part. Now when you think about
them shallow breathing in this environment, if they have any
other kind of associated problems with their heart their lungs,
that's going to play a part. And yet if the
quality of oxygen might not be there. But the question
you have to ask, is a trunk actually completely sealed
(20:37):
off from available fresh air, and that is generally not
the case. It's just not It's not like you're in
a plastic bag. So there would have been an air supply,
just I can't attest to the quality of the air
that they would have breathed and how much there would
have been in there. So the Sumners were forced to
(21:15):
hand over their financial information, their pin numbers for their
bank accounts. Tiffany Cole and Michael Jackson took their jewelry
and ponded and stole other items from the Sumners home,
and again the A T M card was used to
obtain more than a thousand dollars in cash. Now you
would think that this would be enough. You've stolen these
(21:36):
things from this family, you've taken them away, but that
was not how this was to end. The couple was
driven to South Georgia and placed in a four by
six ft grave that the perpetrators had dug in advance
in case it was necessary, you know, on body bags.
(21:58):
I think in a previous episode actually confessed to something.
I let my listeners know that myself am claustrophobic and
I cannot think of many things in this world that
would terrify me anymore than being closed up in a
grave or to be buried alive, and unfortunately and Reggie
(22:21):
and Carol Sumners case, that's what happened to them. The
perpetrators decided that despite the fact that the Sumners had
cooperated and give them all the information that they wanted,
they had already stolen money, jewels, and other items from
the home. They decided that it was necessary to kill
the Sumners. But instead of shooting, strangling, bludgeoning this couple,
(22:47):
they placed them into this grave that they dug and
buried them alive. Joe, I, my mind is blown. I
can't even begin to imagine, number one, what was going
through this couple's mind. But let's talk about what would
have happened to them, how did they die? The thing
(23:08):
that really strikes me in in Reggie and Carol's cases
the fact that it has come out that this grave
had been dug almost two days in advance. So let's
think about that just for a second. That means that
there was a plan in place. There was never necessarily
a plan to do anything other than have Carol and
(23:34):
Reggie's lives end in a hand dug hole out in
this desolate area down in South Georgia, which is literally
right across the border coming up out of North Florida,
you know, Jacksonville, Florida and and the border with Georgia
are not that far away. But these perpetrators chose an
(23:54):
area that was very isolated, and they went out there
two days in advance. And this this just boggles of
mind and dug this hole that they were going to
place this couple into, and I, you know, part of me,
you know, you're you're reading this and you're learning about it,
and you're thinking, you know, wow, I really wish on
one level, if they were gonna take them out, that
they would have done it mercifully. This this is probably,
(24:18):
in my estimation, at least, one of the most horrific
ways UH an individual can die. And it's not like
you're placed in an air tight coffin. Regi and Carol
Sumner were placed in a big hole in the ground
with a big pile of dirt adjacent to it. They
had been bound with duct tape. Hang on a second Joe.
(24:41):
The perpetrators reported that the couple had actually freed themselves
from their bindings. Number one, how could they have done that?
And what were the reports? Yeah, you know, the duct
tape was used to bind them with. And what does
duct tape, you know, what's the purpose of It's got
a really strong adhesive on the back of anybody's got
(25:01):
duct tapering your home can attest to this. It's certainly
stronger than any kind of tape you might use a
Christmas time to wrap packages with very resilient, very fibrous
and adhes if it's relatively strong. But let's keep in
mind this is Florida. You've got high relative humidity. You're
placing it on bare skin, which means that they were sweating.
(25:22):
And I would think probably Reggie in particular, because of
his diabetes. Diabetics many times when they are stressed, began
to sweat profusely, and that may have led to him
being able to shed these bindings. But I think probably
the most chilling part of this is that the perpetrators,
(25:44):
when they were later interviewed, stated that both Reggie and
Carol when they opened the trunk and they found him
in the back of that car, they were holding on
to one another, so they had adjusted to the point
where they could at least embrace. And when the purpose
actually said they were praying, maybe they were praying that
they would be delivered from this. Maybe they were praying
(26:06):
for God's mercy at that moment in time, But this
I do know. Once that trunk was open, they took
this couple out of that car and they put them
into this hole that it had been dug two days
in advance, with the thought, with the thought that this
is how their lives were going to end. How did
(26:27):
their lives end? Joe? When you were buried alive, do
you inhale dirt into your lungs and suffocate? Do you
are you unable to expand your lungs and suffocate? That's
two types of asphyxiation? There? Am I missing something? Joe?
(26:48):
Was there another type? I gotta tell you. When I
was reading over the testimony of the medical examiner in
this particular case and what what his determination was, it
really struck me because I had never come across the
case like this. The forensic pathologists that did the autopsy
on Reggie and Carroll's bodies actually came to the conclusion
(27:08):
that they had died of mechanical asphyxia. And let me
kind of break that down because it sounds, I don't know,
kind of bizarre. When you begin to think about it,
you think of mechanism that sort of thing, and and
many times that's what it means. It means that, you know,
one one descriptor that's famously used is to say someone
has a scarf and it's hanging over some type of
(27:30):
machinery that's operating and they get pulled in by the
scarf and it essentially chokes them asphyxiates them. Right there,
that's mechanical, and that's that's a classic example of that. However,
you have you have this elderly couple that's actually placed
into a grave and then dirt is placed upon their body.
(27:52):
So think about the dirt being the mechanism here, and
you've got two factors that work here. So not only
were they mechanically asshixiated and is this is more of
what's referred to as a compression asphyxia. That means when
you begin to have weight placed upon you where your
(28:14):
chest can no longer rise and fall, which you know,
if you're digging, say for instance, they did dig a deep,
deep hole. That's a lot of dirt that you're gonna
put on their bodies. It's going to compromise their ability
for their chest a rise and fall, to inhalate, to
excelay all those sorts of things, and then you're diminishing
the amount of oxygen that's in there. And to your
(28:35):
point earlier, one of the other factors involved in this
case is that when the forensic pathologists did the dissection
and he began to closely look at the airway of
both Carol and Reggie, not just the airway, but Jackie
actually looked in the lungs. One of the things he
found were particular bits of soil, the same soil that
(29:00):
you would have found down there. And I can tell
you what that soul looks like. It's gonna be very sandy.
It's gonna be very very sandy. There might be some
loam mixed in with it. And that that dirt that
was from down there that you commonly see in Florida,
those sorts of things that you walk upon when maybe
you go to the beach, go on a vacation with
your family. That's what they had within their airways, and
(29:25):
at the end, that's what actually wound up killing them
because they inhalated this dirt that was being piled on
top of them. So it's this kind of complex event
that goes on, and you couple that with all of
that natural disease process. You know, Carol's liver cancer and
hepatitis and her being jaunticed and all those things that
(29:47):
come along with that, and then of course Reggie's diabetes
and his inability to move around. He was also incontinent
as well, which sometimes happens obviously with age, but it
can happen with diabetic patients that are in a greatly
physically compromised position. He's they're they're not receiving any kind
of care whatsoever. As a matter of fact, every with
(30:09):
every shovelful of dirt, there's more and more harm, there's
more and more danger that is coming to rest upon them,
to the point where it was the position they were
in was just completely and totally incompatible with life, and
they succumb there in the grave, lying there next to
each other. We've talked in the past a lot about asphyxia,
and we've talked about positional asphyxia. So is mechanical asphyxia
(30:35):
and positional asphyxia the same thing. No, they're not. And
I'll give you a great example of positional asphyxia. And
this is from my own personal experience working cases, and
I've had this happen a number of times. I say
a number is several times throughout my career, and it's
it's kind of a thread that runs through and people
(30:55):
are not aware of the effects that heroin has on somebody.
It really depressed, says the respiratory system obviously, you know,
you get into this kind of dream like state. And
I've had a number of heroin addicts that have set
there what they call their works up on a sink,
you know, where they'll they'll render down, they're injectable down
into a liquid form. They'll draw it up after they've
(31:19):
they've turned it off on their arm and they're seated
on a toilet seat. They inject the heroin and in
these cases I've worked, the heroin addict after they have
dosed themselves will actually fall between the wall and the
edge of the toilet and in this compromised position that
(31:39):
can't get up, and this leads to that's a classic
example of positional ASPHIXI, and there's any number of other
things that can happen. You'd be actually surprised how many
people that are involved in car accidents die as a
result of kind of a positional slash compression asphyxia. Many
times you're in a position where you're us can no
(32:00):
longer rise and fall, and it comes and it's It's
not something that you can absolutely say positively that this
is in fact positional asphyxia without having very strong evidence
of it. In the event of a positional asphyxia, you
have this evidence of this kind of staring you in
the face, where they're in such a contracted position that
(32:21):
means their body is is positioned in such a manner
which their chest can no longer rise and fall and
they can't get free of it. In Carol, in Reggie's case,
though this is the mechanical asphyxia, it was a means
to an end. If you think of that dirt being
piled upon them, them being compressed by the dirt, them
(32:44):
inhalating the dirt. This was as if they had utilized
this dirt just like somebody would use a firearm to
kill them. How long would this couple have suffered? I
can say this, It would have been an excruciating death.
It would not have been quick. It would have been
they would have been gasping for air. You know. I
(33:06):
equated to you know, someone catching a fish and and
bringing bringing the fish up on the deck or the
dock and seeing you know, that fish gasping for air.
You can see their lips moving, their gills expanding, and
there's nothing there for them to breathe in, and they
would have been attempting to squeeze everybody of oxygen out
of that environment. Unfortunately there was none to be had.
(33:29):
And so the first thing that would have happened is
I think more than likely they would have gone into
a real state of panic. Again. If they weren't shallow
breathing before, then they're certainly shallow breathing now, and that
means that quick respirations, very very shallow. And then something
happens that's referred to as an oxia at that point
(33:51):
in time, where your brain goes into a deprived state
of oxygen. So you have this even further disorientation where
they're in this kind of dream like a milky state,
if you will, and at they're going to lose consciousness
of eventually. The key here though is and I don't
(34:11):
know that it's necessarily measurable. You know, if you were
to ask a forensic pathologist on the stand, you know, doctor,
in your opinion, how long in fact did this take.
I think that that the physician would probably state what
the literature states, you know that your brain can't you know,
sustained life without oxygen for any longer than you know,
three or four minutes. But it would not have been quick.
(34:34):
It would not have been as quick as, say, for instance,
that they have been executed with a pistol. Perhaps all
four of these perpetrators are now in jail for the
murders of Reggie and Carrol Sumner. Just this past week,
Alan Wade was again sentenced, but he was taken off
of death row and sentenced to life in prison. I'm
(35:02):
Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body Backs
Body Backs with Joseph Scott Morgan. Throughout our lives, we
we face health issues off and on, and you never
know what's really going to kind of finally knock you
(00:28):
to your knees. But the beauty part of that is
it sometimes when we're struggling with our health, we have
an unintended angel that kind of enters into our life
and promises to be with us to the day that
we die. Well, that was the case with Reggie and
Carrol Summer. They found one another. They found one another,
(00:53):
and they held onto one another very very tightly, and
they were enjoying their retirement. But they were both faced
with great obstacles and the greatest top school was yet
to come. It ended in their deaths. Today we're going
to talk about the double homicide of Reggie and Carol Sumner.
(01:15):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Backs. Jackie Howard,
executive producer of Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, is joining
me today. Jackie, what can you tell us about Reggie
and Carol. Carol and Reggie Simner reportedly met in high
(01:36):
school and rekindled their relationship later in life. They found
each other, they wanted the same things out of the
rest of their life, and they wanted to spend time together.
Yet this couple was suffering through some health issues. Reggie
had diabetes and he had also had some injuries to
his ankle which required him to need the assistance of
(01:58):
a wheelchair or a cane on occasion. However, Carol was
suffering through liver cancer as well as happatitis as a result.
It's this combination of health issues that will come into
play a little later, Joe, So let's talk about how
their health issues are impacting their life right now. Their
quality of life, cancer, health injuries, and diabetes. Yeah, it's
(02:22):
a horrible set of circumstances to be faced with. You know,
they were not like really really elderly people. This couple
was only sixty one years old and they had a
lot of years in front of mine. I think that
that's what they thought. At one point in time. They
had made this really, this really warm promise to one another.
It really struck me when I was doing the research
(02:42):
on this case, how they would be with one another
until the day they died, that they had promised to
take care of one another, and you know, they they
had gotten together back up in South Carolina, and they
felt strong enough about the relationship that they had together
up there despite their health issues, that they decided to
(03:04):
sell everything they had up in South Carolina and moved
down to Jacksonville, Florida, you know, just southbound on and
set up a home down there, and that they would
spend the rest of their days down there. And you know,
I think that one of the thoughts that came to
mind someone who had quoted Reggie at one point time
(03:26):
as having said that the doctors felt like that the
environment down in Jacksonville, near the near the beach would
be good for his condition, and he was. You know,
they hadn't just said that he had diabetes. People have
stated over and over and over again, relative to to
his history that he had severe diabetes, which means he
(03:49):
was obviously insulin dependent. It's not some kind of pre
diabetic state. That means his sugars were probably out of
whack and he had to have constant monitoring, you know,
where he's taking his blood sugar level constantly, several times
a day. He's having to be treated by an end
of chronologist that's a physician that actually works with people
(04:10):
that have diabetes. And he was on very specific medication,
and you know, at the towards the end of his life,
Reggie had injured his ankle. And one of the big
fears for people that have diabetes or any kind of injuries,
particularly to their peripheral areas, you know, their hands, their feet,
(04:32):
these sorts of things, because they don't heal quite as well.
And this was a severe injury. He he had actually
fractured an ankle and it required him at least for
part of the time, to be wheelchair bound. So you
can imagine that. You know, he's dealing with everything that's
associated with diabetes, including maybe compromised eyesight, you know, fatigue,
(04:53):
constant sleepiness, just a general malaise much of the time.
And then on top of that, his wife, Carol, she
is faced with this huge struggle of liver cancer, and
liver cancer is not something that somebody just kind of
easily bounces back from. She's in the midst of this
(05:15):
of fighting this disease, and because she had developed liver cancer,
it sent her into what's referred to as hepatic failure,
which is where the liver begins to shut down and
all the functions that everything that is required of the
(05:37):
liver to do, you know, systemically is compromised. At that
point in time, she develops jauntice along with the hepatitis,
and that means that she would have a yellow tinge
to her skin, in constant pain. There's always problems with digestion, nausea,
these sorts of things associated with this disease, and not
to mention again, in a very feeble, weakened state. I mean,
(05:58):
they're they're both of these people are fragile as newborn kittens.
As we look at their health conditions, Joe, we see
the term vulnerable keep being mentioned about these two people.
What is it about their conditions that make them vulnerable?
Are we saying that their body is vulnerable to disease?
(06:20):
Are we saying that these two individuals really are are
physically feeble and unable to defend themselves. Yeah, yeah, that's
a big part of this. And you know, you can
even look at primal animal activity and see how predators
actually pick the weakest among the her those that they
(06:43):
know that they can control and take down. And in
the Sumner's case, they were the weakest of the week,
you know, and of course that they have things that
people might want, that sort of thing. But they're compromised
in sense that if you know, if if someone came
into their home to attack them in any way, they
(07:06):
would not be able to put up a fight. It
would be like a grown man going head to head with,
you know, somebody that has the strength probably of maybe
an eight year old child. At this point in time,
they're they're just living day to day, hour to hour,
minute to minute, you know, and probably to a great
(07:26):
degree thankful for every second that they have on this
earth because they I think that they probably understood how
fragile their life was. You said, predator Joe, and you
really couldn't have phrased that any better, because that is
what happened to this couple. They met a group of predators,
Tiffany Cole, Michael James Jackson, Alan Wade, Bruce Kent Nixon Jr.
(07:50):
When the Sumners moved to Jacksonville, Florida, they sold a
car to Tiffany Cole. Cole agreed to make monthly payments
and often drove down to jackson to make those monthly payments. Well.
In June of two thousand five, Cole and her new boyfriend,
Michael Jackson drove to Jacksonville to complete the paperwork on
(08:10):
the sale of the car. And while they were there,
they stayed with the Sumners at their home and it
was there that a plan to rob this couple that
had been so generous to Tiffany Cole was hatched. They
planned to steal money from their bank accounts. But what's more,
they decided that they were not adverse to killing this
(08:33):
couple if necessary. Joe, this this goes to this thought,
you know, talking about predators and the behavior of those
types they observed for a while. You know, they'll watch,
they'll see if there's any danger to them. And once
they're in such an intimate environment, you know, when you're
in that small, tight, little circle of you know, someone's home,
(08:57):
you're actually sleeping in their bed, you're eating their food,
you're you know, using their bathroom facilities, all these sorts
of things, the predator has the ability to walk through
there and check everything, see how vulnerable, how how easy
it is perhaps to access the home, how easy it
is to maybe take things that are just lying around.
(09:19):
But here, here's here's the most important part. If you're
a predator and you're in what's referred to as in
asymmetrical relationship with a person. That means that you're dominant
over someone that is weaker. You're looking at them and
you can exploit things you can see that they're you know,
I use term feeble, and I don't mean that is
(09:40):
a disrespecting term. It's just that they're feeble in the
sense that in their physical bodies that are very weak.
And that's something that you would catch on too very quickly.
You know. You think about Carol suffering from hepatic failure
due to liver cancer, and she's anytime she takes a step,
she to grab hold of the back of the chair
(10:02):
or brace herself against the wall. She has to measure
every footfall that she has in the house. Or you
begin to look and see that Reggie he he doesn't
move very well because of his ankle, that he would
rather be in the wheelchair kind of moving himself about
(10:22):
the house as opposed to ambulating anywhere and automatically. If
you are of the mindset to attack someone to take
everything that they have, it's at that moment in time
that bells start going off in your mind. If you
are the aggressor here and you know that this is
an easy mark for Reggie and Carol Sumner. They they
(11:05):
lived with this false sense of security. If I think
you think that you got the the world kind of
figured out that you're here in this place that you've
moved to for maybe to better your health and and
to move on with your life and and adjust your
life so that you can be happy and enjoy the
love of one another. But that suddenly turned a horror
(11:27):
for them. It did. They trusted Tiffany Cole, which turned
out to be not a very good idea. Tiffany Cole,
Michael Jackson, Alan Wade, Bruce Kent Nixon Jr. Took a month,
took one month to put their plan into action. They
intended to invade the home, asked to use the phone,
(11:50):
and then once inside they were going to attack the family.
And that's exactly what they did. But it was Wade
and Nixon, who the Sumners did not know, two men
who knocked down the door and asked to use the phone.
Once inside, they attacked the couple. The couple was bound
and gagged with the duct tape and from there put
into the trunk of their Lincoln town car. And meanwhile,
(12:14):
Tiffany Colin Michael Jackson Traveled in their car planning to
deliberately get pulled over for speeding if police got too
close to the Lincoln. Now what would have these physical
limitations done to the sum nurse, considering they already had
their own physical limitations. Well, first off, and I think
(12:35):
I think that it goes without saying. You know, our
our fight or flight kicks in. But here's the problem.
When you're when you are physiologically compromised, like Reggie and
Carol were, you might have that thought in your mind
that I need to flee, that I need to get away,
that I need to put distance between myself and danger.
(12:57):
What's really horrific about this is that now you're wrapped
in these bodies that are riddled with disease, diabetes and
cancer and these sorts of things. So you know, you're
you're thinking back, I would imagine two when you were
thirty and you could have maybe put distance between yourself
and in danger. But now you're in this compromise position
(13:18):
and you can't. So you've got adrenaline pumping even though
you can't use it to get away. Your breathing becomes shallow.
And one of the important points here, and something we
need to keep in mind, is that duct tape was
used on on both Carol and Reggie, and so when
that occurs, you know, we know that the police have
(13:40):
used the term gagged over and over again. I don't
necessarily think that this was a matter of the perpetrators
having taken duct tape and put a you know, a
wat of it into their mouth and jammed it down
their throat or anything like that. I think that it
was a covering over their mouth, potentially their nose, I'm
not sure, but certainly they're eyes as well. So now
(14:03):
you you know, your body is demanding more oxygen because
you're shallow breathing, and you've got health problems and your
airways compromised to the point where you can't uptake oxygen
and everything begins to fail. You know, for world Reggie,
who's suffering from severe diabetes, I'm sure his sugar's probably
got out of whack. And you know, along with diabetes
(14:25):
also comes issues like heart disease and these sorts of things,
so his his cardiovascular system could have well have been
compromised as well at this moment time. You know, it's
really important to have people ask me this question a lot.
You know, when you begin to think about manners and
causes of death. And they don't see a natural disease
(14:49):
that can be utilized as a means to commit homicide.
But I gotta tell you it can. If somebody is
compromised already and you have an awareness of that, you
can push somebody to the brink. You can actually kill
them visa VI. The in dwelling disease. They have. I
worked cases like that, and it's it's absolutely horrific. It's
not you know, it's not as simple as just shooting
(15:09):
somebody or stabbing somebody. Um, because physiologically they are compromised,
they have disease on board. You can harm, do great
harm to someone this way. And you know, this idea
of being in fear of your life being confined, I mean,
I don't know that many of us could ever even
(15:29):
begin to comprehend this idea of being bound and gagged
and blindfolded. You're already frail, and then you're essentially placed
into the trunk of your own car and you're completely
deprived of any of your external century indicators. Here. Maybe
you can smell, maybe you can't, but you can't see.
(15:51):
You're having to be helped along to walk, and the
next thing. You know, you can feel yourself on a
hard surface. You hear the trunk slam, and now you're
going down the road. You're moving away from where it
is that you felt you were safe in and you're
bumping down the road and in total and complete pitch
black darkness. One of the things that I know about diabetes, Joe,
(16:15):
is when you're sugar is high, it changes your emotions.
It changes the way that you think. You become confused,
you can become angry, and and then when you crash,
you can die from your sugar being out of range.
(16:36):
So describe for me what he would be going through
already in a panic, from worrying about his wife, worrying
about his own life, and worrying about his health. You know,
is he going to be able to assist her in
any way? So talk to me and explain about how
all of that is also impacting his idea or notion
(16:59):
of survival. Yeah, you know, and we don't you know.
When you you begin to think about the timeline when
these two showed up at the door and took control
of Reggie and Carol in their own home, you begin
to think about this. You don't know where either Reggie
or Carol were were their medications that day? And that's
a that's a critical point here because diabetics in particular
(17:22):
so dependent upon their medications to maintenance their life day
in and day out and to measure their sugar levels.
If if he becomes say, for instance, what's referred to
as hypoglycemic, which means that sugar dips precipitously, you become lightheaded, disoriented,
those sorts of things, and you have no idea, You're
(17:45):
you're totally completely confused at that moment time. So it
would impact your life greatly. It would impact your ability
to make decisions to defend yourself this sort of thing. Now,
if his sugar was going in the other way, if
if it had jumped up to an unexpected level because
it wasn't being maintenanced, and he's in this, you know,
(18:06):
you're gonna again become short of breath, diphyretic, which means
you're gonna be sweating a lot, feeling like you're gonna
pass out. Either way, it's horrible situation to be in.
And yeah, he would not have been in a position two,
you know, take care of his wife or or himself
at that point in time, you have to compound their
situation with the fact that they are in the trunk
(18:28):
of a car. How is that oxygen supply going to
impact what is going on? And are they in fact
getting more exhaust from the vehicle than they are oxygen. Yeah,
that a lot of that is going to be depended
upon how structurally intact the vehicle is, and of course
the exhaust system. I've had friends of mine that are
(18:49):
medical legal death investigators that have worked cases where people
have been placed into trunks and they have asphyxiated, not
from the lack of fresh oxygen being able to just
be present, but because there was an intrusion into that
environment of carbon monoxide, because there was a faulty exhaust system,
and that can play a part of it. And of
(19:09):
course we look for that at autopsy and there's certain
things that and they would have done this with both
Carol and Reggie. And if folks at home can just
think about this, think about the brightest artificial cherry pink
color you've ever seen on a piece of candy or
popsicle or something like that. That's actually the color, believe
it or not, that that the skin of people turns
(19:31):
that have been exposed to carbon monoxide, even the whites
of their eyes become kind of cherry pink and color.
And so that's something that when we see it at autopsy,
it's a huge flag for us. You know, we're thinking, well,
they have been exposed to something, and generally that leads
back to carbon oxide. And of course they would do
you know, in toxicology when they draw blood, there's a
(19:52):
test that we call carboxy hemoglobin level, which checks the
level of carbon oxide that an individual has in their system.
You know, just out walking around, there are minimal standards
that you know you're going to be exposed to, particularly
in urban environments of exhausting that's worth of thing, but
you can get up into those critical areas where it's
(20:12):
going to compromise your system, and that's certainly something that
would have played a part. Now when you think about
them shallow breathing in this environment, if they have any
other kind of associated problems with their heart their lungs,
that's going to play a part. And yet if the
quality of oxygen might not be there. But the question
you have to ask, is a trunk actually completely sealed
(20:37):
off from available fresh air, and that is generally not
the case. It's just not It's not like you're in
a plastic bag. So there would have been an air supply,
just I can't attest to the quality of the air
that they would have breathed and how much there would
have been in there. So the Sumners were forced to
(21:15):
hand over their financial information, their pin numbers for their
bank accounts. Tiffany Cole and Michael Jackson took their jewelry
and ponded and stole other items from the Sumners home,
and again the A T M card was used to
obtain more than a thousand dollars in cash. Now you
would think that this would be enough. You've stolen these
(21:36):
things from this family, you've taken them away, but that
was not how this was to end. The couple was
driven to South Georgia and placed in a four by
six ft grave that the perpetrators had dug in advance
in case it was necessary, you know, on body bags.
(21:58):
I think in a previous episode actually confessed to something.
I let my listeners know that myself am claustrophobic and
I cannot think of many things in this world that
would terrify me anymore than being closed up in a
grave or to be buried alive, and unfortunately and Reggie
(22:21):
and Carol Sumners case, that's what happened to them. The
perpetrators decided that despite the fact that the Sumners had
cooperated and give them all the information that they wanted,
they had already stolen money, jewels, and other items from
the home. They decided that it was necessary to kill
the Sumners. But instead of shooting, strangling, bludgeoning this couple,
(22:47):
they placed them into this grave that they dug and
buried them alive. Joe, I, my mind is blown. I
can't even begin to imagine, number one, what was going
through this couple's mind. But let's talk about what would
have happened to them, how did they die? The thing
(23:08):
that really strikes me in in Reggie and Carol's cases
the fact that it has come out that this grave
had been dug almost two days in advance. So let's
think about that just for a second. That means that
there was a plan in place. There was never necessarily
a plan to do anything other than have Carol and
(23:34):
Reggie's lives end in a hand dug hole out in
this desolate area down in South Georgia, which is literally
right across the border coming up out of North Florida,
you know, Jacksonville, Florida and and the border with Georgia
are not that far away. But these perpetrators chose an
(23:54):
area that was very isolated, and they went out there
two days in advance. And this this just boggles of
mind and dug this hole that they were going to
place this couple into, and I, you know, part of me,
you know, you're you're reading this and you're learning about it,
and you're thinking, you know, wow, I really wish on
one level, if they were gonna take them out, that
they would have done it mercifully. This this is probably,
(24:18):
in my estimation, at least, one of the most horrific
ways UH an individual can die. And it's not like
you're placed in an air tight coffin. Regi and Carol
Sumner were placed in a big hole in the ground
with a big pile of dirt adjacent to it. They
had been bound with duct tape. Hang on a second Joe.
(24:41):
The perpetrators reported that the couple had actually freed themselves
from their bindings. Number one, how could they have done that?
And what were the reports? Yeah, you know, the duct
tape was used to bind them with. And what does
duct tape, you know, what's the purpose of It's got
a really strong adhesive on the back of anybody's got
(25:01):
duct tapering your home can attest to this. It's certainly
stronger than any kind of tape you might use a
Christmas time to wrap packages with very resilient, very fibrous
and adhes if it's relatively strong. But let's keep in
mind this is Florida. You've got high relative humidity. You're
placing it on bare skin, which means that they were sweating.
(25:22):
And I would think probably Reggie in particular, because of
his diabetes. Diabetics many times when they are stressed, began
to sweat profusely, and that may have led to him
being able to shed these bindings. But I think probably
the most chilling part of this is that the perpetrators,
(25:44):
when they were later interviewed, stated that both Reggie and
Carol when they opened the trunk and they found him
in the back of that car, they were holding on
to one another, so they had adjusted to the point
where they could at least embrace. And when the purpose
actually said they were praying, maybe they were praying that
they would be delivered from this. Maybe they were praying
(26:06):
for God's mercy at that moment in time, But this
I do know. Once that trunk was open, they took
this couple out of that car and they put them
into this hole that it had been dug two days
in advance, with the thought, with the thought that this
is how their lives were going to end. How did
(26:27):
their lives end? Joe? When you were buried alive, do
you inhale dirt into your lungs and suffocate? Do you
are you unable to expand your lungs and suffocate? That's
two types of asphyxiation? There? Am I missing something? Joe?
(26:48):
Was there another type? I gotta tell you. When I
was reading over the testimony of the medical examiner in
this particular case and what what his determination was, it
really struck me because I had never come across the
case like this. The forensic pathologists that did the autopsy
on Reggie and Carroll's bodies actually came to the conclusion
(27:08):
that they had died of mechanical asphyxia. And let me
kind of break that down because it sounds, I don't know,
kind of bizarre. When you begin to think about it,
you think of mechanism that sort of thing, and and
many times that's what it means. It means that, you know,
one one descriptor that's famously used is to say someone
has a scarf and it's hanging over some type of
(27:30):
machinery that's operating and they get pulled in by the
scarf and it essentially chokes them asphyxiates them. Right there,
that's mechanical, and that's that's a classic example of that. However,
you have you have this elderly couple that's actually placed
into a grave and then dirt is placed upon their body.
(27:52):
So think about the dirt being the mechanism here, and
you've got two factors that work here. So not only
were they mechanically asshixiated and is this is more of
what's referred to as a compression asphyxia. That means when
you begin to have weight placed upon you where your
(28:14):
chest can no longer rise and fall, which you know,
if you're digging, say for instance, they did dig a deep,
deep hole. That's a lot of dirt that you're gonna
put on their bodies. It's going to compromise their ability
for their chest a rise and fall, to inhalate, to
excelay all those sorts of things, and then you're diminishing
the amount of oxygen that's in there. And to your
(28:35):
point earlier, one of the other factors involved in this
case is that when the forensic pathologists did the dissection
and he began to closely look at the airway of
both Carol and Reggie, not just the airway, but Jackie
actually looked in the lungs. One of the things he
found were particular bits of soil, the same soil that
(29:00):
you would have found down there. And I can tell
you what that soul looks like. It's gonna be very sandy.
It's gonna be very very sandy. There might be some
loam mixed in with it. And that that dirt that
was from down there that you commonly see in Florida,
those sorts of things that you walk upon when maybe
you go to the beach, go on a vacation with
your family. That's what they had within their airways, and
(29:25):
at the end, that's what actually wound up killing them
because they inhalated this dirt that was being piled on
top of them. So it's this kind of complex event
that goes on, and you couple that with all of
that natural disease process. You know, Carol's liver cancer and
hepatitis and her being jaunticed and all those things that
(29:47):
come along with that, and then of course Reggie's diabetes
and his inability to move around. He was also incontinent
as well, which sometimes happens obviously with age, but it
can happen with diabetic patients that are in a greatly
physically compromised position. He's they're they're not receiving any kind
of care whatsoever. As a matter of fact, every with
(30:09):
every shovelful of dirt, there's more and more harm, there's
more and more danger that is coming to rest upon them,
to the point where it was the position they were
in was just completely and totally incompatible with life, and
they succumb there in the grave, lying there next to
each other. We've talked in the past a lot about asphyxia,
and we've talked about positional asphyxia. So is mechanical asphyxia
(30:35):
and positional asphyxia the same thing. No, they're not. And
I'll give you a great example of positional asphyxia. And
this is from my own personal experience working cases, and
I've had this happen a number of times. I say
a number is several times throughout my career, and it's
it's kind of a thread that runs through and people
(30:55):
are not aware of the effects that heroin has on somebody.
It really depressed, says the respiratory system obviously, you know,
you get into this kind of dream like state. And
I've had a number of heroin addicts that have set
there what they call their works up on a sink,
you know, where they'll they'll render down, they're injectable down
into a liquid form. They'll draw it up after they've
(31:19):
they've turned it off on their arm and they're seated
on a toilet seat. They inject the heroin and in
these cases I've worked, the heroin addict after they have
dosed themselves will actually fall between the wall and the
edge of the toilet and in this compromised position that
(31:39):
can't get up, and this leads to that's a classic
example of positional ASPHIXI, and there's any number of other
things that can happen. You'd be actually surprised how many
people that are involved in car accidents die as a
result of kind of a positional slash compression asphyxia. Many
times you're in a position where you're us can no
(32:00):
longer rise and fall, and it comes and it's It's
not something that you can absolutely say positively that this
is in fact positional asphyxia without having very strong evidence
of it. In the event of a positional asphyxia, you
have this evidence of this kind of staring you in
the face, where they're in such a contracted position that
(32:21):
means their body is is positioned in such a manner
which their chest can no longer rise and fall and
they can't get free of it. In Carol, in Reggie's case,
though this is the mechanical asphyxia, it was a means
to an end. If you think of that dirt being
piled upon them, them being compressed by the dirt, them
(32:44):
inhalating the dirt. This was as if they had utilized
this dirt just like somebody would use a firearm to
kill them. How long would this couple have suffered? I
can say this, It would have been an excruciating death.
It would not have been quick. It would have been
they would have been gasping for air. You know. I
(33:06):
equated to you know, someone catching a fish and and
bringing bringing the fish up on the deck or the
dock and seeing you know, that fish gasping for air.
You can see their lips moving, their gills expanding, and
there's nothing there for them to breathe in, and they
would have been attempting to squeeze everybody of oxygen out
of that environment. Unfortunately there was none to be had.
(33:29):
And so the first thing that would have happened is
I think more than likely they would have gone into
a real state of panic. Again. If they weren't shallow
breathing before, then they're certainly shallow breathing now, and that
means that quick respirations, very very shallow. And then something
happens that's referred to as an oxia at that point
(33:51):
in time, where your brain goes into a deprived state
of oxygen. So you have this even further disorientation where
they're in this kind of dream like a milky state,
if you will, and at they're going to lose consciousness
of eventually. The key here though is and I don't
(34:11):
know that it's necessarily measurable. You know, if you were
to ask a forensic pathologist on the stand, you know, doctor,
in your opinion, how long in fact did this take.
I think that that the physician would probably state what
the literature states, you know that your brain can't you know,
sustained life without oxygen for any longer than you know,
three or four minutes. But it would not have been quick.
(34:34):
It would not have been as quick as, say, for instance,
that they have been executed with a pistol. Perhaps all
four of these perpetrators are now in jail for the
murders of Reggie and Carrol Sumner. Just this past week,
Alan Wade was again sentenced, but he was taken off
of death row and sentenced to life in prison. I'm
(35:02):
Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body Backs
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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