December 31, 2024 • 33 mins
In this episode of the Body Bags, hosts Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack unpack the chilling homicide of famed neurosurgeon Dr. Devon Hoover, who was found in his Detroit mansion. They discuss the details of the murder, the physical evidence, the complexities of the gunshot wounds, the forensics, and theorize about the identity of the murderer and their familiarity with the residence.
Time-codes: 00:00 - Introduction.
01:20 - Dr. Devon Hoover.
02:45 - of Dr. Hoover's grand home and his profession.
05:30 - The demanding path to neurosurgery.
07:40 - Skills required for neurosurgery.
08:10 - Dr. Hoover's personality and devotion to work.
0:00 - Introduction to "crawlspace" in relation to the murder.
12:15 - Discovery of Dr. Hoover's body in the attic crawlspace.
13:00 - Peculiarities in the murder scene.
15:30 - Postmortem changes and body positioning.
16:40 - Importance of postmortem interval in the case.
17:15 - Speculation on potential suspects and motives.
18:55 - Dr. Hoover's attic.
20:00 - Forensic analysis of Dr. Hoover's gunshot wounds and the intimate nature of the crime.
23:20 - Evidence suggesting the perpetrator's familiarity with the house.
26:10 - Detailed impact of a close-range gunshot wound.
28:30 - Examination of the array of forensic tests.
30:30 - Observations indicating the murderer might be known to the victim, such as lack of forced entry.
31:05 - Perpetrator's meticulous body cover-up, suggesting a personal connection.
32:55 - Outro.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So here we are, my friends. At the end of
the year, a new year is upon us. But before
we exit out of twenty four, I'd like to first off,
thank you for listening to Body Backs with Joseph Scott Morgan.
But in addition to that, I'd also like us to reflect.
(00:22):
That's why over the next three days we are going
to have a countdown of the top ten most downloaded
episodes of Body Backs with Joseph Scott Morgan. I hope
that you will please join us over the next few
days as we look back over this past year, digging
(00:47):
in to some of the most intriguing cases that we
have covered. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body
Backs Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
One of my favorite things to do, particularly when I'm
back home down in New Orleans and my family down
the are is if I ever have an opportunity, I
love to go visit old homes, particularly those that are
opened during the holiday season. You really get to appreciate
the beauty of them because the homes down there are
so very old, and you can tell that people love
(01:40):
them at one point in time or loved the idea
of them. They dumped a lot of money into them,
maybe one hundred and fifty, maybe one hundred and seventy
five years ago. It comes through, it kind of echoes
down through time and you can see where people lived
a life, and I think that that's it's quite remarkable,
(02:01):
it really is. It's not like something that was thrown
up recently, you know, and has no I don't know.
I guess the word is patina hunted. You know, it's
a dwelling that people existed in. But today, I gotta say,
there is a homicide that has occurred inarguably one of
(02:22):
the wealthiest areas in the metro Detroit City area up there,
and it involves an old house, a house that was renown,
a house that was loved, and a house that was
known for hospitality. And you know, I think truly that's
one of the great things that truly makes a home
(02:44):
an inviting place. We're going to talk today about the
homicide of doctor DeVaughn Hoover. I'm Josephcott Morgan and this
is body Bags Dave. I started reading this story about
doctor Hoover up in Detroit, and we hear a lot
(03:08):
about Detroit and how dangerous it is and for a
long time. Feel I feel sorry because Detroit is one
of the grand cities of America. It was for a
long time, and there was a lot of wealth up
there for a long time, and you can still see
remnants of that if you ever visit visit Detroit, you
go out by the lake and you see some of
(03:28):
these mansions that people in dwelled all those years ago,
that had just wealth that many of us cannot even
begin to imagine. And I think that that's what we're
dealing with here, we're talking about I don't know if
the term palatial is appropriate here, but it's certainly striking.
This home is it's up there. As my granny used
to say, I wouldn't want to have to push a
(03:49):
vacuum cleaner through it.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Oil Boy, nine bedrooms, twelve thousand square feet. Beautiful home,
but it is not a new mansion that was thrown
up in the last six months. Doctor Devon Hoover is
one of these men that people have nothing bad to say.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Nothing.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
You can find something negative about anybody, but when it
comes to doctor Devon Hoover, he was loved by his patients,
he was loved by his neighbors. One of his neighbors
said that when he first bought the house, that it
was doctor Hoover who came over and introduced himself and said, now,
if you haven't owned an older, big home before, there
are some things you need to know. And he said
(04:28):
that they became friends because he hadn't owned a home
like that, and they do require a lot more attention
than you're used to doing around a home. The payoff,
of course, as you mentioned palatial, that was actually how
the home was referred to, and doctor Hoover opened it
up to the community to raise money for all types
(04:48):
of charities and things that needed attention. He opened his
doors and said do it here, it's my place. And
doctor Hoover, he's a neurosurgeon, which Joe, just give me
the run of the mill explanation of what is a newgent.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
The way I look at specialties in medicine, and one
of the ways that many people that either work in
medicine or work around the periphery of medicine, when you
hear what the occupation is of any particular physician, you
want to know what they're specially is, so you know,
you can have like internal medicine people, you can have
mergency room doctors. You can have psychiatrists, you can have
(05:23):
orthopedic specialists. But when it comes to neurosurgery, if you're
measuring it by the length of time that it takes
to make it through your postdoctoral training, your residency in medicine,
it's probably, to say the very least, the most robust.
(05:44):
So just imagine it this way. You've probably done four
years as an undergraduate, and you've got a bachelor's degree
in more than likely pre med or biology or chemistry
or biochem or some science. Then you go to medical school.
Well that's going to take you four years, right well,
depended upon the program at minimum. When you're talking about neurosurgery,
now this is after you've completed your four years in
(06:06):
medical school, you're staring down the barrel of at least
at minimum six years. Just wrap your brain around that
for a second. You're talking about six plus years. And
some do subspecialties once they are complete with an actual
neurosurgery residency. And there are some people that will do
(06:28):
let me see how kind of break it down, they'll
do like a general surgery residency, which is a few
years in and of itself. It's rather robust itself, and
then they'll go into neurosurgery. There are some people that
will do neurosurgery, and there are certain people that are
also neurologists, which is different as well. They treat people
(06:49):
externally for head trauma and spinal trauma and those sorts
of things, kind of measuring if you've ever had concussion
or something like that, and the doctor comes in and
they're checking your neuro responses and they'll stay here, squeeze fingers,
how many fingers am I holding up? And they'll do
all these measurements, and they'll do imaging and all that
sort of thing. Well, doctor Hoover, he would have had
to do all of that. Plus he's actually the guy
(07:11):
that goes in and operates on the brain, and in
his particular case, he specialized in the neck and in
the spine, and so that's his area. So if you
had any kind of spinal trauma or neck trauma, which
spine neck essentially the same thing where you have the
brain stem that comes out of the backside of the brain,
(07:34):
all right, and then it turns literally turns into the
spinal cord that stends down through the cervical vertebra and
then through the thoracic vertebra, the lumbar, and so it
controls It's kind of like the neuro pathway. It's the
big highway that controls all of the little nerve endings
that extend out through the body. So at any of
(07:54):
those levels, you've see people that are, say paraplegics or quadriplegics,
depended upon where those injuries have taken place on the
spine dictates how their body is going to be compromised.
So he would go in and these people are fascinating
to me, and they're having to do like microsurgery on
these very, very delicate tissues. That's how skilled this guy was.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
All I can think of is when Judge Smells looks
at Danny and Caddyshack and says, well, the world needs
ditch diggers too. Boy, that's where I am. If I
was faced with those choices, Joe, I would be on
the ditch digger side. But I don't even understand two
thirds of what you just said.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
There's nothing wrong with ditchdiggers man, And as Judge Smail says,
the world needs them. But the thing about doctor Hoover,
the fact that he did this, he was essentially married
to his work, and you'll find many people that are
like this, that operate at that high level. There's no
way I could do it. I don't have the intellectual capability.
(08:52):
And you know, sometimes this is what's amazing about him.
I'm not saying it's the case with every neurosurgeon. Don't
get me wrong, don't misquote me. Many times they're so
very intense. Have you ever met somebody that's so very
intellectually intense that it almost seems like they'll brush you off,
or they don't have time for you, or maybe they
don't have a good bedside manner if they're a physician.
(09:14):
That's not Devon Hoover. He had a way about him
that his patience. These people that he treated genuinely liked
this guy. And by extension, he's got this beautiful home
that he's probably dumped. You can only imagine how much money,
because it's not just once you have an old home,
(09:36):
just to upkeep alone, and can you imagine on twelve
thousand square feet just to upkeep along is a real burden.
But he's inviting people to his home. He was regarded
as kind of a warm, hospitable person, and the horror
of this case is the fact that the house is
the side of this a place that probably brought a
(09:57):
lot of joy. I can only imagine just looking at
this place externally, how beautiful this thing would have been decorated,
probably at Christmas time. I'm sure it was striking. It
was probably if they have a tour of homes, it
was probably on the tour of homes warm and inviting.
And it's something so horrible could happen to this man
(10:18):
that was so beloved and so skilled at what he did.
And it's not just hospitality and his outreach to the community.
It's the fact that Dave he could go in and
he could actually aid in the repair and recovery of
people that had sustained catastrophic injuries. Every article that I
(11:01):
have read about doctor Hoover's homicide has included the word,
and it's a compound word, crawl space. That word sends
a chill up my spine every time I hear it,
because I got to tell you, the first thing I
think about when I hear crawl space is John Wayne Gacy.
I always think about the bodies that were buried beneath
(11:24):
his house in the crawl space when he victimized all
those young men for so many years. But that's not
the case. In doctor Hoover's homicide, He's actually found Dave
in a unique location, in this beautiful home. He's found
in the attic crawl space.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
This is a man who lives alone.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Fifty three year old.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
He is single. He's a single minded kind of fella.
He was born in Indiana. He was the fourth child
of seven, and he was the only boy in his family.
Before he went to college, he worked on a dairy farm.
The guy that became one of the best of the
best neurosurgeon. His family and friends were a priority in
his life. There was a quote from his obituary. He
(12:08):
rarely missed a Hoover family event and made the drive
to Indiana frequently to visit his parents and sisters, often
playing with his many nieces and nephews. He spent quality
time with many friends and enjoyed traveling with them to
unique places around the world. Now, when you put that
with what we talked about how his neighbors talked about him,
one neighbor actually said, for a man small in stature,
(12:31):
he was indeed larger than life. Yet he didn't show
up for a family event in Indiana as expected, and
because he was always in tune with his family. When
he didn't show up, the family called for the police
to go by. Police show up at this palatial home,
this twelve thousand square foot nine bedroom estate that was
(12:53):
a showplace, and they saw enough that led them to
find him. You mentioned cross space in the attic. How
does a fifty three year old man with no enemies
end up dead in the attic crawl space.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
At the time of our taping here, we still don't
know who did this. Okay, they released a bit of
tantalizing information here, and I'm so glad you picked up
on this. They said that he was not just dragged
to this location where his body was finally found, David.
They said he was dragged face down, And you're thinking, well,
(13:29):
how can you actually arrive at that conclusion. That information
is actually coming from the Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office, which,
by the way, is one of the most storied offices
in the history of forensic pathologists. This is actually the
place where doctor Werner Spitz did a lot of his work,
and doctor Spitz is one of the co authors of
(13:49):
what we regard as our bible in forensic science. Medical
legal investigation of death. And it was first published back
in nineteen sixty six. So the the place that did
his examination, that did the examination on doctor Hoover's remains
is a top location for assessment of trauma, okay, as
(14:12):
it applies to post mortem assessment. And what they're saying
is that he was found in this crawl space, but
he had been drug there face down. So when people
are saying drug face down, first off, what are we thinking, Well,
we're thinking that perhaps there was some kind of manifestation
(14:32):
on his body that would give an indication first off,
that he was drug Well, how do we conclude that, Well,
if blood is streaked in a particular way, Okay, perhaps
that's the case, Say that it's on one contact surface
and not on the other, and you have this kind
of strided appearance of say, for instance, blood that's been
left behind. And when I say strided, that literally means streaks, okay,
(14:57):
or kind of linear streaks. Another thing, was there any
kind of post mortem trauma to the body, Well, what
would that mean? Well, the body can be scraped in
a post mortem state. You can actually knock away the
top layer of skin that won't have the same kind
of abrasian appearance that we have during life, where it
(15:17):
becomes red and irritated. And we've all fallen at some
point in our time and skinned our knees or skinned
our elbows, and we know what an abrasion looks like.
And of course we know that the dead don't bruise,
but you can have markings on a body that would
give you an indication of some kind of what we
refer to as post mortem trauma. Now, a third way
(15:38):
that this could happen, and perhaps one of the most chilling,
is that we wonder well had post mortem changes begun
to take place to the point where there was a
reorientation of the body from where it had initially laid
to where it was finally found resting. And what I
(16:00):
mean by that, one of the things that we would
look for is deposition of post mortem lividity, in other words,
that settling of blood. Did you have, say, for instance,
a presentation where the blood had settled on the front
side of the body, Okay, what's referred to as the
anterior aspect, and maybe there was no presentation on the back,
(16:23):
but yet you've got post mortem trauma on the back
that gives you an indication that they were initially laying
in one position and then drug vis a v the
other side of the body. It could be flip flopped
either way. So we don't know a lot right now
at this point to kind of put a fine point
on that. But the reason that's so chilling is you
begin to think, well, whoever did this to him, and
(16:44):
what they did to him was quite shocking. Whoever did
this to him? Did they sit there with a body
while post mortem changes began to take place, and that
there was evidence regarding that on the examination of the
body at the scene. Was that measured in any way?
Because what's key here is kind of and I always
(17:05):
fall back to this as the post mortal interval, that
time that has elapsed since doctor Hoover unfortunately drew his
last breath, to the point in which he was moved,
and then beyond that to the point in which he
was discovered. How long had he actually been down? And
that's going to be key in this case. Who would
have access to him in this grand home in which
(17:29):
he dwells. Who would purpose to do this kind of
harm to this man that had done so much for
so many people over the years. Who was beloved, who
would traumatize him to this degree. We do know this,
whoever perpetrated this crime felt comfortable enough to take a
(17:50):
handgun and shoot doctor Hoover execution style in the head twice.
(18:18):
But when you see a big house, you ride by
it and you look at it, at least I do,
and I think, you know, what in the world goes
on in there? You think, what kind of history in dwells,
those walls, what has that structure born witness to over
the years. And when I think attic in a big
home like that, you always think of some kind of
scary movie or something where you've got mannequins, you know,
(18:41):
in dwelling the area, and old boxes and all that
sort of thing. But you know, I think that the
attic in this place was probably a storage location that
doctor Hoover would have gone into regularly. He's probably always
decorating his home. Certainly, you thinking around the holidays, he's
going to be inviting people over. Maybe kept his his
Christmas decorations or Easter decorations or those sorts of things
(19:01):
up in the attic so you'd have easy access to them.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Joe, let me back up for a second. Let me
get back to this. I'm curious as to how this happens,
and you're gonna have to fill in the blanks. All right,
We've got doctor Hoover, his family asks the police to
go by and do a welfare check. When they get there,
we don't know if there was anybody there when they
got there. We know the police said there was no
forced entry, and they believe that doctor Hoover knew who
(19:27):
did this to him. So staying with that, I'm trying
to picture what did the police see when they got
in there that led them to the attic, Because obviously
you mentioned the person that did this, they felt comfortable
enough in the home to shoot him dead in one
place and to drag his body you mentioned face down.
I mean, who does that if you care about somebody,
(19:49):
even if you have done this, All I could think
of is dragging this person upstairs with his head hitting
every stair along the way.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
You know, you hear us talk a lot in in
forensics about track marks and those sorts of things. As
I had mentioned, or I had alluded to, doctor Hoover
sustained massive head trauma. He actually sustained two gunshot wounds
to the head.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
One of those wasn't closed, and the other one was
how do they know that, Joe? How do they determine this.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
The way this is determined? First off, if you look
at the one that they're referring to as an indeterminate distance,
which what that means is it's and dependent upon the
weapon that's used, you have to kind of qualify that
when you say that anything that's essentially about eighteen inches
away from the point of impact, you're not going to
(20:38):
have any kind of sid deposition or powder deposition around
the wound. You're certainly not going to have what's referred
to as like a gas injury, where you'll get kind
of a stell eight wound that you see with like
press contact stell eate like stellar Okay, that's where it
comes from. Star shape here, people say star shaped wound
because the skin kind of tears when happens. Well, you're
(21:00):
not going to have that presentation. With indeterminate range, that
means that they will be shot from some distance and
you don't know you still don't know anything about sequencing.
Some people will say, well, they're shot at a distance
and then someone moves in and shoots them close. Well,
you don't know that you can have individuals that are
actually executed with a contact gunshot wound and then just
(21:22):
for the coup de gras, if you will, in this
person's mind, they're going to shoot them again, and this
is as they've moved away from the body. So you
can't there's no way you can go back and look
at this and say, well, this was actually the sequence
of events, unless you just have somebody that just pops
up and says, well, this is what happened. But no
evidence of that distant wound. But the other wound that
(21:42):
they talk about, there's actually a muzzling print that's left behind.
And what that means is that when the muzzle of
the weapon that means the end of the barrel actually
contacts the surface of the skin, you will get an impression,
and it's really pressive to see from a forensic standpoint.
(22:03):
You can actually see an impression of the structure of
the barrel underneath many times, and sometimes you'll actually see
a circular ring around the area as well. That will
lead you to conclude that this weapon was so close
that when it was discharged with such force, it actually
(22:24):
left an imprint on the skin of the end of
the weapon and it's almost like a negative image, you
know what I'm saying, like a photograph, And so that
gives you proximity, doesn't it in that particular case, And
it also gives you an indication of intimacy that this
individual whoever fired this weapon had the ability to get
that close to doctor Hoover when they discharge the weapon,
(22:47):
and when you begin to think about things like intimacy.
Here's something that's that's quite interesting from an investigative standpoint.
When he's found, he's found unclosed. Now he's covered in
several layers blankets. I think there's a carpet carpet that's
involved that he was covered with. But when we are nude,
we are at our most vulnerable because you're not covered.
(23:11):
Your shame involved perhaps or they've made you take your
clothes off at gunpoint, and this is kind of a
dehumanization thing that takes place many times. So you've got
him in the state, and he's in the state when
he is found. And back to how they began to
understand what the point of origin is and that is
where the event may have taken place. There's no indication
(23:34):
of that, but they know that he was drug so
that tells us that there's evidence that there is perhaps
a blood trail leading to the attic. And one thing
that really resonates with me, David, correct me if I'm wrong.
Didn't you make reference to the fact that he was
diminutive in size. He's kind of a smaller guy.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
A neighbor had said that for a man small in stature,
he was indeed larger than life. So that makes you
assume he was not a big man.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Yeah, So why are you going to drag him unless
perhaps you've dehumanized him where you're going to treat him
like an animal that you shot, or that the person
that did this may not have the physical strength to
put their hands or put their arms beneath them and
cradle them, or maybe they just find this level of
trauma and gore because it would have been a significant
(24:21):
amount of gore. And when I say that, I mean
because anytime there's trauma to the head where you have blood,
and certainly many times you'll have brain matter that's actually
extruding through the head through the injuries, people might not
want to get that on themselves. So maybe that's the
reason you drug him up there. Here's the thing, whoever
put him in that location. They knew about that location,
(24:45):
They knew that that attic cross space existed. That's intimate knowledge.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
And the fact that I want to go back to
the gunshots to the head because you made a couple
of statements there, and I'm curious because we do have
two shots, and according to the police report or the automsy,
he had abrasions on his face suggesting he was in
a prone position with the left side of his face
resting against some kind of surface when he was shot.
(25:13):
Could they determine, based on this and other factors, were
both of these shots potentially fatal? Or was one shot?
Could you determine that this shot wounded in but this
was the kill shot?
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Yeah, perhaps, anytime the head is involved and gunfire is involved,
you're going to have certainly the potential for fatal trauma.
It's the one area of the body where even a
glancing gunshot wound to the head can lead to a
fatal outcome. The trick is and kind of the measure
that forensic pathologists will look at this on balance. Most
(25:47):
of the time they'll say, well, what created the most
trauma in this particular case. They'll look at one injury
and they say, is this potentially a survivable injury? Say,
if it just clipped one area of the brain, if
he had gotten medical treatment, could he have survived this?
Whereas with the other one, maybe it passed through an
(26:09):
area that controls the autonomic nervous system. Okay, where you
just know that heartbeat is going to see, respiration is
going to cease. All is so traumatic, and not to
mention if there's a muzzle stamp on this one injury,
you're not just going to have dave the gunshot wound,
which is bad enough that you're dealing with that's going
(26:30):
to create this channel through the brain. You're also going
to be fighting against things like say, for instance, the
bone being blown apart in there and it creates additional
little satellite fragments. Are shrapnel bone trapnel actually is what
it turns out to be. And so it injures the
brain in that way. And also you have to factor
in if it's that close, you might have gas injuries.
(26:52):
So with the gas injuries, you have hot gas, and
we all know what hot gas does. It rapidly expands,
it goes into the cranial vault and you'll have this
massive fracturing that takes place in the skull. So you've
gotten multiple things that multiple layers here that are occurring
that any number of these scenes could get fatal in
and of himself.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
Now we know that he was wrapped in a blank
you mentioned this, and the actual order they said that
he was wrapped in a sheet, then carpeting or then
a rug, and then carpeting was laid over the top
of his body in that cross space. So and we
know that he was shot and killed when he was
naked with one sock dark sock on his foot. You
mentioned being humiliated by being nude and being taken down
(27:34):
like this. Would there have been when the police are
on the scene trying to figure everything out, would they
be taking like clippings under his fingernails to see if
there was a little bit of a fight or anything.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Yeah, they would, And typically that's going to happen at
the more people will see us at scenes where we
bag the hands, and we've talked about that in previous episodes.
But our hands are those things through which we defend ourselves.
It's those things through which we just from a tactile
sense that we sense the world around us. I mean,
even the small children we're touching things. Okay, it's an
(28:07):
extension of our brain essentially, and we're touching things and
that information is coming in. So the hands are bagged
traditionally at the scene, and then when we get the
body into a controlled environment at the morgue, we'll do
nail scrapings. Okay, we'll do the nail scrapings. We'll catch
all of the debris that are under the fingernails, because
this is very intimate event. Remember he's nude. And then
(28:30):
we'll do nail clippings to look if anything is there
in the clippings themselves, and they will probably believe it
or not. They would probably do a gunshot residue test
on his hands. People might not think about that, but
we actually do to see if, for instance, if there
was any way let's say, say, for instance, the gunshot
(28:50):
wounds to the back of the head, which we think
that it approximates those two gunshot ones are essentially in
the rear word areas of the head. If he's got
his hands okay, behind his head and he shot in
the head, that can be a valuable piece of information
as to his posture, what his relationship was with the
individual that shot him, a fiscal relationship from the end
(29:14):
of the muzzle to his body, and you might have
soot deposition on the hands, so you'll do that. And
of course here's the most glaring thing many people don't
actually think about, Dave. I don't know if you've thought
about this, but even though he's a male, he's nude.
Guess what we're gonna do, actually do a rape kit.
We're gonna do rape kit on him. And some people
(29:35):
don't think that we do those on males, but we do,
We actually do.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
It actually makes sense when you think about the fact
that he is naked and rolled up in a blanket.
If he was shot in the back of the head
due to a bad debt and left you, they wouldn't
take trouble to hide him orning else because obviously whoever
did this Joe did not take a lot of time
to clean up or anything else, because police were able
to go there on a welfare check and find his
(29:59):
body in the end, they were able to do that
in a welfare check, so obviously they didn't walk in
and go, hey, everything looks fine here and.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Turn around taking it on the heel. No, no, no,
they saw evidence of something had occurred in this environment,
and I'm sure it was quite horrific when these police
officers showed up and they're looking through the house or
doing a safety check. It's a welfare check. They can
you imagine if it's two of them. I have this
vision in my mind, this image in my mind of
one guy looking at the other guy and saying, Oh,
(30:28):
this doesn't look good. And then they followed the blood
trail and it leads into some small door up in
the attic area, and there they find his remains in there.
And here's a big piece. Remember what you said early on,
They said there was no signs of forced entry at
this place, So that gives you an indication that the
individual may have been there before, that they knew the doctor.
(30:50):
And also we go back to this idea of covering
up the body. Why do you want to cover the body?
What's your purpose for? Cause you just executed it. Man,
where are you going to go and not just covering
once you're going to layer him. It's almost like you're
tucking him in. Why are you going to put all
these layers on top of him? What's your purpose? You're
(31:11):
trying to hide him? Well, we know that you've taken
him to the cross space up there, But why go
to all of that trouble again? If his face was covered,
we can assume that it was. Many times, face covering
is associated with an intimate act because the individual does
not want to look the individual in the face that
they've just done this great harm to.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Oh, now that makes sense. I'm actually I was confused
about how a guy that is naked with one sock on,
shot twice in the head, then drug on his face
up to his what will be a temporary final resting place.
But then the perpetrator takes the time to roll him
up in three layers of blanket and carpet and then
placing him in this cross space so that he's covered
(31:51):
up after this humiliation and devastating act.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Yeah, and I got to tell you, Dave, I have
real hope in this case that they're going to find
out who did this. I know that they have taken
somebody into custody, they had to release them, But they
have taken one person into custody and questioned them and
subsequently release them. What's this area like. Well, we've determined
that doctor Hoover's home is quite fine. It's quite palatial,
(32:17):
as we said when we started this conversation, I would
think that there would be security cameras around this area,
and I would think that if the police went around
and they were to collect footage. Now, a lot of
this is going to be depended upon the time of
day when it happened, they might be able to collect
an image. And of course, as we know in all
cases like this, that as you begin to work the case,
(32:40):
you extend outward, who are the intimates in his life?
Who has he had recent contact with, Who has he
had a beef with, who has he maybe been in
a relationship with, who would want to absolutely destroy this
fine man. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is bodybacks
(33:13):
mm hmm
So here we are, my friends. At the end of
the year, a new year is upon us. But before
we exit out of twenty four, I'd like to first off,
thank you for listening to Body Backs with Joseph Scott Morgan.
But in addition to that, I'd also like us to reflect.
(00:22):
That's why over the next three days we are going
to have a countdown of the top ten most downloaded
episodes of Body Backs with Joseph Scott Morgan. I hope
that you will please join us over the next few
days as we look back over this past year, digging
(00:47):
in to some of the most intriguing cases that we
have covered. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body
Backs Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
One of my favorite things to do, particularly when I'm
back home down in New Orleans and my family down
the are is if I ever have an opportunity, I
love to go visit old homes, particularly those that are
opened during the holiday season. You really get to appreciate
the beauty of them because the homes down there are
so very old, and you can tell that people love
(01:40):
them at one point in time or loved the idea
of them. They dumped a lot of money into them,
maybe one hundred and fifty, maybe one hundred and seventy
five years ago. It comes through, it kind of echoes
down through time and you can see where people lived
a life, and I think that that's it's quite remarkable,
(02:01):
it really is. It's not like something that was thrown
up recently, you know, and has no I don't know.
I guess the word is patina hunted. You know, it's
a dwelling that people existed in. But today, I gotta say,
there is a homicide that has occurred inarguably one of
(02:22):
the wealthiest areas in the metro Detroit City area up there,
and it involves an old house, a house that was renown,
a house that was loved, and a house that was
known for hospitality. And you know, I think truly that's
one of the great things that truly makes a home
(02:44):
an inviting place. We're going to talk today about the
homicide of doctor DeVaughn Hoover. I'm Josephcott Morgan and this
is body Bags Dave. I started reading this story about
doctor Hoover up in Detroit, and we hear a lot
(03:08):
about Detroit and how dangerous it is and for a
long time. Feel I feel sorry because Detroit is one
of the grand cities of America. It was for a
long time, and there was a lot of wealth up
there for a long time, and you can still see
remnants of that if you ever visit visit Detroit, you
go out by the lake and you see some of
(03:28):
these mansions that people in dwelled all those years ago,
that had just wealth that many of us cannot even
begin to imagine. And I think that that's what we're
dealing with here, we're talking about I don't know if
the term palatial is appropriate here, but it's certainly striking.
This home is it's up there. As my granny used
to say, I wouldn't want to have to push a
(03:49):
vacuum cleaner through it.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Oil Boy, nine bedrooms, twelve thousand square feet. Beautiful home,
but it is not a new mansion that was thrown
up in the last six months. Doctor Devon Hoover is
one of these men that people have nothing bad to say.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Nothing.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
You can find something negative about anybody, but when it
comes to doctor Devon Hoover, he was loved by his patients,
he was loved by his neighbors. One of his neighbors
said that when he first bought the house, that it
was doctor Hoover who came over and introduced himself and said, now,
if you haven't owned an older, big home before, there
are some things you need to know. And he said
(04:28):
that they became friends because he hadn't owned a home
like that, and they do require a lot more attention
than you're used to doing around a home. The payoff,
of course, as you mentioned palatial, that was actually how
the home was referred to, and doctor Hoover opened it
up to the community to raise money for all types
(04:48):
of charities and things that needed attention. He opened his
doors and said do it here, it's my place. And
doctor Hoover, he's a neurosurgeon, which Joe, just give me
the run of the mill explanation of what is a newgent.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
The way I look at specialties in medicine, and one
of the ways that many people that either work in
medicine or work around the periphery of medicine, when you
hear what the occupation is of any particular physician, you
want to know what they're specially is, so you know,
you can have like internal medicine people, you can have
mergency room doctors. You can have psychiatrists, you can have
(05:23):
orthopedic specialists. But when it comes to neurosurgery, if you're
measuring it by the length of time that it takes
to make it through your postdoctoral training, your residency in medicine,
it's probably, to say the very least, the most robust.
(05:44):
So just imagine it this way. You've probably done four
years as an undergraduate, and you've got a bachelor's degree
in more than likely pre med or biology or chemistry
or biochem or some science. Then you go to medical school.
Well that's going to take you four years, right well,
depended upon the program at minimum. When you're talking about neurosurgery,
now this is after you've completed your four years in
(06:06):
medical school, you're staring down the barrel of at least
at minimum six years. Just wrap your brain around that
for a second. You're talking about six plus years. And
some do subspecialties once they are complete with an actual
neurosurgery residency. And there are some people that will do
(06:28):
let me see how kind of break it down, they'll
do like a general surgery residency, which is a few
years in and of itself. It's rather robust itself, and
then they'll go into neurosurgery. There are some people that
will do neurosurgery, and there are certain people that are
also neurologists, which is different as well. They treat people
(06:49):
externally for head trauma and spinal trauma and those sorts
of things, kind of measuring if you've ever had concussion
or something like that, and the doctor comes in and
they're checking your neuro responses and they'll stay here, squeeze fingers,
how many fingers am I holding up? And they'll do
all these measurements, and they'll do imaging and all that
sort of thing. Well, doctor Hoover, he would have had
to do all of that. Plus he's actually the guy
(07:11):
that goes in and operates on the brain, and in
his particular case, he specialized in the neck and in
the spine, and so that's his area. So if you
had any kind of spinal trauma or neck trauma, which
spine neck essentially the same thing where you have the
brain stem that comes out of the backside of the brain,
(07:34):
all right, and then it turns literally turns into the
spinal cord that stends down through the cervical vertebra and
then through the thoracic vertebra, the lumbar, and so it
controls It's kind of like the neuro pathway. It's the
big highway that controls all of the little nerve endings
that extend out through the body. So at any of
(07:54):
those levels, you've see people that are, say paraplegics or quadriplegics,
depended upon where those injuries have taken place on the
spine dictates how their body is going to be compromised.
So he would go in and these people are fascinating
to me, and they're having to do like microsurgery on
these very, very delicate tissues. That's how skilled this guy was.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
All I can think of is when Judge Smells looks
at Danny and Caddyshack and says, well, the world needs
ditch diggers too. Boy, that's where I am. If I
was faced with those choices, Joe, I would be on
the ditch digger side. But I don't even understand two
thirds of what you just said.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
There's nothing wrong with ditchdiggers man, And as Judge Smail says,
the world needs them. But the thing about doctor Hoover,
the fact that he did this, he was essentially married
to his work, and you'll find many people that are
like this, that operate at that high level. There's no
way I could do it. I don't have the intellectual capability.
(08:52):
And you know, sometimes this is what's amazing about him.
I'm not saying it's the case with every neurosurgeon. Don't
get me wrong, don't misquote me. Many times they're so
very intense. Have you ever met somebody that's so very
intellectually intense that it almost seems like they'll brush you off,
or they don't have time for you, or maybe they
don't have a good bedside manner if they're a physician.
(09:14):
That's not Devon Hoover. He had a way about him
that his patience. These people that he treated genuinely liked
this guy. And by extension, he's got this beautiful home
that he's probably dumped. You can only imagine how much money,
because it's not just once you have an old home,
(09:36):
just to upkeep alone, and can you imagine on twelve
thousand square feet just to upkeep along is a real burden.
But he's inviting people to his home. He was regarded
as kind of a warm, hospitable person, and the horror
of this case is the fact that the house is
the side of this a place that probably brought a
(09:57):
lot of joy. I can only imagine just looking at
this place externally, how beautiful this thing would have been decorated,
probably at Christmas time. I'm sure it was striking. It
was probably if they have a tour of homes, it
was probably on the tour of homes warm and inviting.
And it's something so horrible could happen to this man
(10:18):
that was so beloved and so skilled at what he did.
And it's not just hospitality and his outreach to the community.
It's the fact that Dave he could go in and
he could actually aid in the repair and recovery of
people that had sustained catastrophic injuries. Every article that I
(11:01):
have read about doctor Hoover's homicide has included the word,
and it's a compound word, crawl space. That word sends
a chill up my spine every time I hear it,
because I got to tell you, the first thing I
think about when I hear crawl space is John Wayne Gacy.
I always think about the bodies that were buried beneath
(11:24):
his house in the crawl space when he victimized all
those young men for so many years. But that's not
the case. In doctor Hoover's homicide, He's actually found Dave
in a unique location, in this beautiful home. He's found
in the attic crawl space.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
This is a man who lives alone.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Fifty three year old.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
He is single. He's a single minded kind of fella.
He was born in Indiana. He was the fourth child
of seven, and he was the only boy in his family.
Before he went to college, he worked on a dairy farm.
The guy that became one of the best of the
best neurosurgeon. His family and friends were a priority in
his life. There was a quote from his obituary. He
(12:08):
rarely missed a Hoover family event and made the drive
to Indiana frequently to visit his parents and sisters, often
playing with his many nieces and nephews. He spent quality
time with many friends and enjoyed traveling with them to
unique places around the world. Now, when you put that
with what we talked about how his neighbors talked about him,
one neighbor actually said, for a man small in stature,
(12:31):
he was indeed larger than life. Yet he didn't show
up for a family event in Indiana as expected, and
because he was always in tune with his family. When
he didn't show up, the family called for the police
to go by. Police show up at this palatial home,
this twelve thousand square foot nine bedroom estate that was
(12:53):
a showplace, and they saw enough that led them to
find him. You mentioned cross space in the attic. How
does a fifty three year old man with no enemies
end up dead in the attic crawl space.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
At the time of our taping here, we still don't
know who did this. Okay, they released a bit of
tantalizing information here, and I'm so glad you picked up
on this. They said that he was not just dragged
to this location where his body was finally found, David.
They said he was dragged face down, And you're thinking, well,
(13:29):
how can you actually arrive at that conclusion. That information
is actually coming from the Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office, which,
by the way, is one of the most storied offices
in the history of forensic pathologists. This is actually the
place where doctor Werner Spitz did a lot of his work,
and doctor Spitz is one of the co authors of
(13:49):
what we regard as our bible in forensic science. Medical
legal investigation of death. And it was first published back
in nineteen sixty six. So the the place that did
his examination, that did the examination on doctor Hoover's remains
is a top location for assessment of trauma, okay, as
(14:12):
it applies to post mortem assessment. And what they're saying
is that he was found in this crawl space, but
he had been drug there face down. So when people
are saying drug face down, first off, what are we thinking, Well,
we're thinking that perhaps there was some kind of manifestation
(14:32):
on his body that would give an indication first off,
that he was drug Well, how do we conclude that, Well,
if blood is streaked in a particular way, Okay, perhaps
that's the case, Say that it's on one contact surface
and not on the other, and you have this kind
of strided appearance of say, for instance, blood that's been
left behind. And when I say strided, that literally means streaks, okay,
(14:57):
or kind of linear streaks. Another thing, was there any
kind of post mortem trauma to the body, Well, what
would that mean? Well, the body can be scraped in
a post mortem state. You can actually knock away the
top layer of skin that won't have the same kind
of abrasian appearance that we have during life, where it
(15:17):
becomes red and irritated. And we've all fallen at some
point in our time and skinned our knees or skinned
our elbows, and we know what an abrasion looks like.
And of course we know that the dead don't bruise,
but you can have markings on a body that would
give you an indication of some kind of what we
refer to as post mortem trauma. Now, a third way
(15:38):
that this could happen, and perhaps one of the most chilling,
is that we wonder well had post mortem changes begun
to take place to the point where there was a
reorientation of the body from where it had initially laid
to where it was finally found resting. And what I
(16:00):
mean by that, one of the things that we would
look for is deposition of post mortem lividity, in other words,
that settling of blood. Did you have, say, for instance,
a presentation where the blood had settled on the front
side of the body, Okay, what's referred to as the
anterior aspect, and maybe there was no presentation on the back,
(16:23):
but yet you've got post mortem trauma on the back
that gives you an indication that they were initially laying
in one position and then drug vis a v the
other side of the body. It could be flip flopped
either way. So we don't know a lot right now
at this point to kind of put a fine point
on that. But the reason that's so chilling is you
begin to think, well, whoever did this to him, and
(16:44):
what they did to him was quite shocking. Whoever did
this to him? Did they sit there with a body
while post mortem changes began to take place, and that
there was evidence regarding that on the examination of the
body at the scene. Was that measured in any way?
Because what's key here is kind of and I always
(17:05):
fall back to this as the post mortal interval, that
time that has elapsed since doctor Hoover unfortunately drew his
last breath, to the point in which he was moved,
and then beyond that to the point in which he
was discovered. How long had he actually been down? And
that's going to be key in this case. Who would
have access to him in this grand home in which
(17:29):
he dwells. Who would purpose to do this kind of
harm to this man that had done so much for
so many people over the years. Who was beloved, who
would traumatize him to this degree. We do know this,
whoever perpetrated this crime felt comfortable enough to take a
(17:50):
handgun and shoot doctor Hoover execution style in the head twice.
(18:18):
But when you see a big house, you ride by
it and you look at it, at least I do,
and I think, you know, what in the world goes
on in there? You think, what kind of history in dwells,
those walls, what has that structure born witness to over
the years. And when I think attic in a big
home like that, you always think of some kind of
scary movie or something where you've got mannequins, you know,
(18:41):
in dwelling the area, and old boxes and all that
sort of thing. But you know, I think that the
attic in this place was probably a storage location that
doctor Hoover would have gone into regularly. He's probably always
decorating his home. Certainly, you thinking around the holidays, he's
going to be inviting people over. Maybe kept his his
Christmas decorations or Easter decorations or those sorts of things
(19:01):
up in the attic so you'd have easy access to them.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Joe, let me back up for a second. Let me
get back to this. I'm curious as to how this happens,
and you're gonna have to fill in the blanks. All right,
We've got doctor Hoover, his family asks the police to
go by and do a welfare check. When they get there,
we don't know if there was anybody there when they
got there. We know the police said there was no
forced entry, and they believe that doctor Hoover knew who
(19:27):
did this to him. So staying with that, I'm trying
to picture what did the police see when they got
in there that led them to the attic, Because obviously
you mentioned the person that did this, they felt comfortable
enough in the home to shoot him dead in one
place and to drag his body you mentioned face down.
I mean, who does that if you care about somebody,
(19:49):
even if you have done this, All I could think
of is dragging this person upstairs with his head hitting
every stair along the way.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
You know, you hear us talk a lot in in
forensics about track marks and those sorts of things. As
I had mentioned, or I had alluded to, doctor Hoover
sustained massive head trauma. He actually sustained two gunshot wounds
to the head.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
One of those wasn't closed, and the other one was
how do they know that, Joe? How do they determine this.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
The way this is determined? First off, if you look
at the one that they're referring to as an indeterminate distance,
which what that means is it's and dependent upon the
weapon that's used, you have to kind of qualify that
when you say that anything that's essentially about eighteen inches
away from the point of impact, you're not going to
(20:38):
have any kind of sid deposition or powder deposition around
the wound. You're certainly not going to have what's referred
to as like a gas injury, where you'll get kind
of a stell eight wound that you see with like
press contact stell eate like stellar Okay, that's where it
comes from. Star shape here, people say star shaped wound
because the skin kind of tears when happens. Well, you're
(21:00):
not going to have that presentation. With indeterminate range, that
means that they will be shot from some distance and
you don't know you still don't know anything about sequencing.
Some people will say, well, they're shot at a distance
and then someone moves in and shoots them close. Well,
you don't know that you can have individuals that are
actually executed with a contact gunshot wound and then just
(21:22):
for the coup de gras, if you will, in this
person's mind, they're going to shoot them again, and this
is as they've moved away from the body. So you
can't there's no way you can go back and look
at this and say, well, this was actually the sequence
of events, unless you just have somebody that just pops
up and says, well, this is what happened. But no
evidence of that distant wound. But the other wound that
(21:42):
they talk about, there's actually a muzzling print that's left behind.
And what that means is that when the muzzle of
the weapon that means the end of the barrel actually
contacts the surface of the skin, you will get an impression,
and it's really pressive to see from a forensic standpoint.
(22:03):
You can actually see an impression of the structure of
the barrel underneath many times, and sometimes you'll actually see
a circular ring around the area as well. That will
lead you to conclude that this weapon was so close
that when it was discharged with such force, it actually
(22:24):
left an imprint on the skin of the end of
the weapon and it's almost like a negative image, you
know what I'm saying, like a photograph, And so that
gives you proximity, doesn't it in that particular case, And
it also gives you an indication of intimacy that this
individual whoever fired this weapon had the ability to get
that close to doctor Hoover when they discharge the weapon,
(22:47):
and when you begin to think about things like intimacy.
Here's something that's that's quite interesting from an investigative standpoint.
When he's found, he's found unclosed. Now he's covered in
several layers blankets. I think there's a carpet carpet that's
involved that he was covered with. But when we are nude,
we are at our most vulnerable because you're not covered.
(23:11):
Your shame involved perhaps or they've made you take your
clothes off at gunpoint, and this is kind of a
dehumanization thing that takes place many times. So you've got
him in the state, and he's in the state when
he is found. And back to how they began to
understand what the point of origin is and that is
where the event may have taken place. There's no indication
(23:34):
of that, but they know that he was drug so
that tells us that there's evidence that there is perhaps
a blood trail leading to the attic. And one thing
that really resonates with me, David, correct me if I'm wrong.
Didn't you make reference to the fact that he was
diminutive in size. He's kind of a smaller guy.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
A neighbor had said that for a man small in stature,
he was indeed larger than life. So that makes you
assume he was not a big man.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Yeah, So why are you going to drag him unless
perhaps you've dehumanized him where you're going to treat him
like an animal that you shot, or that the person
that did this may not have the physical strength to
put their hands or put their arms beneath them and
cradle them, or maybe they just find this level of
trauma and gore because it would have been a significant
(24:21):
amount of gore. And when I say that, I mean
because anytime there's trauma to the head where you have blood,
and certainly many times you'll have brain matter that's actually
extruding through the head through the injuries, people might not
want to get that on themselves. So maybe that's the
reason you drug him up there. Here's the thing, whoever
put him in that location. They knew about that location,
(24:45):
They knew that that attic cross space existed. That's intimate knowledge.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
And the fact that I want to go back to
the gunshots to the head because you made a couple
of statements there, and I'm curious because we do have
two shots, and according to the police report or the automsy,
he had abrasions on his face suggesting he was in
a prone position with the left side of his face
resting against some kind of surface when he was shot.
(25:13):
Could they determine, based on this and other factors, were
both of these shots potentially fatal? Or was one shot?
Could you determine that this shot wounded in but this
was the kill shot?
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Yeah, perhaps, anytime the head is involved and gunfire is involved,
you're going to have certainly the potential for fatal trauma.
It's the one area of the body where even a
glancing gunshot wound to the head can lead to a
fatal outcome. The trick is and kind of the measure
that forensic pathologists will look at this on balance. Most
(25:47):
of the time they'll say, well, what created the most
trauma in this particular case. They'll look at one injury
and they say, is this potentially a survivable injury? Say,
if it just clipped one area of the brain, if
he had gotten medical treatment, could he have survived this?
Whereas with the other one, maybe it passed through an
(26:09):
area that controls the autonomic nervous system. Okay, where you
just know that heartbeat is going to see, respiration is
going to cease. All is so traumatic, and not to
mention if there's a muzzle stamp on this one injury,
you're not just going to have dave the gunshot wound,
which is bad enough that you're dealing with that's going
(26:30):
to create this channel through the brain. You're also going
to be fighting against things like say, for instance, the
bone being blown apart in there and it creates additional
little satellite fragments. Are shrapnel bone trapnel actually is what
it turns out to be. And so it injures the
brain in that way. And also you have to factor
in if it's that close, you might have gas injuries.
(26:52):
So with the gas injuries, you have hot gas, and
we all know what hot gas does. It rapidly expands,
it goes into the cranial vault and you'll have this
massive fracturing that takes place in the skull. So you've
gotten multiple things that multiple layers here that are occurring
that any number of these scenes could get fatal in
and of himself.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
Now we know that he was wrapped in a blank
you mentioned this, and the actual order they said that
he was wrapped in a sheet, then carpeting or then
a rug, and then carpeting was laid over the top
of his body in that cross space. So and we
know that he was shot and killed when he was
naked with one sock dark sock on his foot. You
mentioned being humiliated by being nude and being taken down
(27:34):
like this. Would there have been when the police are
on the scene trying to figure everything out, would they
be taking like clippings under his fingernails to see if
there was a little bit of a fight or anything.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Yeah, they would, And typically that's going to happen at
the more people will see us at scenes where we
bag the hands, and we've talked about that in previous episodes.
But our hands are those things through which we defend ourselves.
It's those things through which we just from a tactile
sense that we sense the world around us. I mean,
even the small children we're touching things. Okay, it's an
(28:07):
extension of our brain essentially, and we're touching things and
that information is coming in. So the hands are bagged
traditionally at the scene, and then when we get the
body into a controlled environment at the morgue, we'll do
nail scrapings. Okay, we'll do the nail scrapings. We'll catch
all of the debris that are under the fingernails, because
this is very intimate event. Remember he's nude. And then
(28:30):
we'll do nail clippings to look if anything is there
in the clippings themselves, and they will probably believe it
or not. They would probably do a gunshot residue test
on his hands. People might not think about that, but
we actually do to see if, for instance, if there
was any way let's say, say, for instance, the gunshot
(28:50):
wounds to the back of the head, which we think
that it approximates those two gunshot ones are essentially in
the rear word areas of the head. If he's got
his hands okay, behind his head and he shot in
the head, that can be a valuable piece of information
as to his posture, what his relationship was with the
individual that shot him, a fiscal relationship from the end
(29:14):
of the muzzle to his body, and you might have
soot deposition on the hands, so you'll do that. And
of course here's the most glaring thing many people don't
actually think about, Dave. I don't know if you've thought
about this, but even though he's a male, he's nude.
Guess what we're gonna do, actually do a rape kit.
We're gonna do rape kit on him. And some people
(29:35):
don't think that we do those on males, but we do,
We actually do.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
It actually makes sense when you think about the fact
that he is naked and rolled up in a blanket.
If he was shot in the back of the head
due to a bad debt and left you, they wouldn't
take trouble to hide him orning else because obviously whoever
did this Joe did not take a lot of time
to clean up or anything else, because police were able
to go there on a welfare check and find his
(29:59):
body in the end, they were able to do that
in a welfare check, so obviously they didn't walk in
and go, hey, everything looks fine here and.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Turn around taking it on the heel. No, no, no,
they saw evidence of something had occurred in this environment,
and I'm sure it was quite horrific when these police
officers showed up and they're looking through the house or
doing a safety check. It's a welfare check. They can
you imagine if it's two of them. I have this
vision in my mind, this image in my mind of
one guy looking at the other guy and saying, Oh,
(30:28):
this doesn't look good. And then they followed the blood
trail and it leads into some small door up in
the attic area, and there they find his remains in there.
And here's a big piece. Remember what you said early on,
They said there was no signs of forced entry at
this place, So that gives you an indication that the
individual may have been there before, that they knew the doctor.
(30:50):
And also we go back to this idea of covering
up the body. Why do you want to cover the body?
What's your purpose for? Cause you just executed it. Man,
where are you going to go and not just covering
once you're going to layer him. It's almost like you're
tucking him in. Why are you going to put all
these layers on top of him? What's your purpose? You're
(31:11):
trying to hide him? Well, we know that you've taken
him to the cross space up there, But why go
to all of that trouble again? If his face was covered,
we can assume that it was. Many times, face covering
is associated with an intimate act because the individual does
not want to look the individual in the face that
they've just done this great harm to.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Oh, now that makes sense. I'm actually I was confused
about how a guy that is naked with one sock on,
shot twice in the head, then drug on his face
up to his what will be a temporary final resting place.
But then the perpetrator takes the time to roll him
up in three layers of blanket and carpet and then
placing him in this cross space so that he's covered
(31:51):
up after this humiliation and devastating act.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Yeah, and I got to tell you, Dave, I have
real hope in this case that they're going to find
out who did this. I know that they have taken
somebody into custody, they had to release them, But they
have taken one person into custody and questioned them and
subsequently release them. What's this area like. Well, we've determined
that doctor Hoover's home is quite fine. It's quite palatial,
(32:17):
as we said when we started this conversation, I would
think that there would be security cameras around this area,
and I would think that if the police went around
and they were to collect footage. Now, a lot of
this is going to be depended upon the time of
day when it happened, they might be able to collect
an image. And of course, as we know in all
cases like this, that as you begin to work the case,
(32:40):
you extend outward, who are the intimates in his life?
Who has he had recent contact with, Who has he
had a beef with, who has he maybe been in
a relationship with, who would want to absolutely destroy this
fine man. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is bodybacks
(33:13):
mm hmm
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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