September 25, 2024 • 56 mins
In this week's episode, Paul and Kate head to an English bog in 1983 where a human head is found shockingly well preserved. The discovery leads to more exploration of the bog and an astonishing find shines light on the unique nature of the environment in this case.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the
last twenty five years writing about true crime.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
compelling true crimes.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
new insights to old mysteries.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is buried bones.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Hey Paul, Hey Kate, how are you doing.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
I'm doing well. You're very perky and your skin is glowing.
What's the secret?
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Oh? Good god?
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Well, I don't know if this is contributing to whatever
you're seeing or not, you know, but I have. I'm
trying a new diet and I'm sure a lot of
the listeners would cringe, but I'm going very low carb.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Okay, what is your old diet? I kind of see
you as meat and potatoes, but I'm sure I'm wrong
about that. I know sugar, you're repelled by sugar.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
You know, well years ago, I think in my early
forties to mid forties, I had done a physical and
a blood test and you know, the doc or the
results came back and said, you're not there yet, but
you are trending towards pre diabetes, okay, And that's what
really I at that point in time, I really went
low carb, eliminated anything with simple sugar in it, and
(01:58):
quite frankly, I saw a druma improvement in my body
composition as a result. It was sort of like, oh,
I wasn't expecting that. And then over over time, you know,
I've always been very protein centric, you know, because I'm
I lift, I kind of want to maintain a level
of muscle mass, especially as I get older. But then
as I've been kind of diving into the nutrition aspect
(02:22):
and listening to some of these these high end researchers
at universities, they really are focusing in on controlling insulin
and insulin resistance. Because we take a look at, you know,
what's been trending across the world, the recommendations that came
out that was very carb centric and low fat type
(02:44):
of diet, and yet we've seen diabetes and obesity increase
over time. And so I'm now listening to some of
these professors in their research. You know, I'm a biochem major,
but that was good.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
God.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
I got that agree back in nineteen ninety, you know,
and so much knowledge has changed since I had my education.
That was just blown away, and I thought, you know what,
controlling my insulin levels seems to make sense, and so
I've decided I'm going to try that. And so I'm
back on a you know, a low carb, high protein,
and quite frankly a high saturated fat diet now. So
(03:21):
I have incorporated red meat back into my diet because
I used to avoid.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
It, you know.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Okay, yeah, so we'll.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
See how it goes.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
I'm going to do this for a while and get
some blood work done, and you know, also just see
how I feel and how you know, from a physical
performance standpoint, like the lifting or the mountain biking. You know,
am I able to continue to yeah, perform at a
at the same, if not better level on a lower
carb diet and a higher fat diet.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Than what I was doing before. So we'll see. That's
that's been sort of something I've been experimenting with.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
So what does your wife say about all this? Does
she do a lot of the cooking. Does she have
to change anything?
Speaker 3 (04:02):
She does all the cookie so she.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Has an opinion, I'm assuming was she like Paul, I
just bought you all these shredded mini weeds.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
No, but you know that is She's cognizant.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
But it's more the way that I would like if
she's cooking a higher carb meal than I would moderate.
On my end, I'm not expecting any change for the
family's meals at all.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
I learned to cook for me a long time ago,
and you know, at this point, the kids are almost fifteen,
and I offer them tons of food, different, really healthy
foods to eat, and sometimes they want to order something
in with their own money, and sometimes they'll want to
eat with me. But if I tried to cater to
their needs all the time, you know, I would be
up a creek. I just wouldn't be able to do it.
(04:47):
So I cook what I want to cook, what tastes
good to me, what's healthy, and what I enjoy. I'm
really into lots of vegetables, lots of fruit, stuff like that,
and I'm not vegan, but I'm pretty close to it.
So you know I'm kind of at the opposite end
of it, so we would never be able to be married.
It would be it would be horrible for both of us.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
I don't think, like right right here with an arms reach,
I got my zero sugar beef jerky, got my snack now.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
And I have an herbal tea. Okay, there you go.
See And I know that you say there are some
episodes that I present to you that drive you to drink,
so we'll see if this is going to be one
of those episodes.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Okay, Well, I am all ears.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Well, this is a different kind of true crime story
and I don't know if it's solvable, but it is
really interesting, so let's go ahead and set the scene.
We are in England, which I love. I love it
when we go to England. I feel like we're in
Australia and England the most as far as like overseas countries.
(05:52):
But you know, I would like to expand go worldwide
at some point, but we are in England. I feel
like quite a bit. Some of our best stories I
think come out of England.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Well, both of us, you know, have connections to England
or London, and we spent a fair amount of time
in London together.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Yep, okay, So let me tell you this about me
that you probably already know. I am an atmosphere girl.
If I could have a gas lamp in every room
in our house flickering at night, with all the lights on,
a fog machine pumping fog throughout the hallways, I would.
(06:28):
I love creepy macabre. I mean, just like I love
the constant Halloween vibe, which says a lot considering what
I talk about almost every single day of my life
true crime. I like creepy stuff. And we are in
a bog for real bog, England bog for this story.
(06:48):
Are you an atmosphere kind of guy too? Do you?
Do you like kind of certain books that evoke things,
or certain movies or anything that evoke certain kinds of
atmosphere for you?
Speaker 2 (06:57):
You know, I don't go out of my way to
set up any particular atmosphere, but I do gravitate towards,
you know, like what you're talking about a little bit
not necessarily creepy, but more of that that dark type
of environment, you know, like my man cave here is
all dark wood.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
I kind of keep it dark.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
It's in the basement but you know the kind of
the creepy side, you know, I could, I could go
there to a point. It just you know, I don't
want it to go to where Now all I'm seeing
our dead bodies all the time because I deal with that.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Enough says, well, you're not gonna like this story then,
because we are dealing with dead bodies in a blog. Okay,
So this is Cheshire, England, and we are talking about
the Lindo Moss, which is a very large peat bog
in Cheshire. So do you know much about bogs. I
(07:51):
only really kind of know Sherlock homes kind of creepy bogs.
I don't know if I've ever been to a bog before.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
With how you're describing it, you know, the kind of
the peat moss, I just start thinking scotchy, you know,
from that perspective. But I would say with the bog
from I think more from an archaeological standpoint. How you know,
you have various animals as well as humans that have
(08:21):
been preserved, you know, within this bog environment.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Yeah, well this is You're right, a great way to
preserve a body. It's spongy, marshy wetland that is hydrated
most of the time, much of the time by like
rain and snow instead of groundwater. Precipitation has less nutrients
than groundwater, so the bogs are pretty nutrient poor as
(08:44):
a result. And you know this one, the Lindo moss
formed over ten thousand years ago, after the last Ice Age. Yeah,
so it's interesting dump sites, murder scenes have a history.
This one has a particularly very old deep history. Fifteen
hundred acre. That's big. Now it's a fraction of its
original size, but it's still a substantial bog. The decaying
(09:09):
material in Lindo moss transforms into a soil called pete.
I don't know a lot about pete. Pete can be
cut from the bog and dried and used as a
fuel source. And people have been extracting pete from this
moss area, this bog since the Middle Ages, and it
was at first harvested by hand, but as the time
went past the process became mechanized. So I don't know
(09:32):
a lot about pete. Is that what your connection is
with whiskey is that part of it is the peat.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
With the scotch.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
You know, they described scotch just having the kind of
the peaty flavor, and my understanding is somehow pete is
utilized in the manufacture of the Scotch.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
So that's really the extent of my knowledge. When when you.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Say pete and moss, my media thought goes towards the
Scotch manufacturing.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Well, let's move away from the history of this bog
and let's talk about what happens in nineteen eighty three.
So there are two workers named Andy Mold and Steven Dooley,
and they're operating some machinery in the Lindo moss and
they are trying to get the very valuable pete out.
(10:23):
So they notice when they are kind of excavating in
this area what looks like a black soccer ball in
the bog, and they pull it up and they inspect it.
And there's a magazine called Distillations Magazine, and they wrote
a story about this, and so you know, the magazine
says that when Stephen and Andy washed the object, they
(10:46):
discover that it is a human skull, that it's missing
its jaw but still has some skin and some hair
and an eyeball that stared back at them. And the
men of course freak out. Turn this skull this head
over to the police and the police say, we know
exactly who this is. There's been a woman who's been
(11:10):
missing for the last twenty years and she lived right
off of this bog, and this is her, and this
begins a really fascinating murder investigation. So I often think
about the bog, the swamp, you know, the ocean, these
very huge, wide areas when I go and when I'm
in northern California on the one oh one and driving
(11:31):
to my favorite like pub, and I look over and
we're in like the Headlands, and I think this is
a great place to bury a body. I think, what
if there is not an Andy and a Stephen out
there digging around in this place and they happen upon
a body. Gosh, how many bodies are out there that
will just never be found because it's not stumbled upon.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
That happens all the time. There's so many cases, you know,
in which we've got missing persons and they met foul
play and their bodies are have been hidden so well
that in all likelihood they will never be found. And
there's so many cases you know where you think, well,
you know who killed the person. The killer is sitting
(12:11):
in prison but has never revealed where he's put the
murdered victim's body, which for me is very frustrating. You
know that person, you know, has the knowledge, if there
is only a way to be able to get that
person to talk. Yeah, it's interesting you talk about if
it wasn't for Andy and Steven in my jurisdiction that
(12:32):
some of the most common reasons some of these hidden
bodies are found was due to bottle hunters. Oh, okay,
this is this is a little historical thing. Is that
you have people who collect old bottles, and where do
they find these bottles? Often in creeks, and so they're
(12:52):
out there in these remote locations looking for bottles that
are on you know, in the creek bed. And of
course these creeks are typically in a ravine next to
a road, and this is where offenders will drive up,
pull a body out, and throw it down into the
creek and then drive off.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
So I've got multiple cases in which bottle collectors, bottle
hunters are the ones that found these victims.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
I don't know if I've mentioned this to you before,
but I have a very close friend who is a
really great, like nationally ranked rower, and she would row
very early in the morning on Ladybird Lake, which is
a lake here in Austin, and sometimes they would find
the bodies of people who had either taken their own
(13:39):
lives or something had happened to them. They were the
ones who discovered them because they were out so early
in the morning, you know, and they were there. So
this story about the bog really makes me think about
that if we had not had these two men out
there in this area, had happened to struck upon this
and they found this skull, the police would not have
(14:00):
We know who this probably is. So this happened in
eighty three, so just keep that in mind. They go
to the police. The investigators say, okay, we think this
is this woman and her name is Malika Date Fernandez
and she had been missing for twenty years. She went
missing in the sixties. She was married to a local
man named Peter rain Bart. They always thought that Peter
(14:25):
had something to do with her disappearance. She just vanished
off of the face of the earth. He said, I
don't have anything to do with this. I don't know
where she is. And police had never been able to
find her body. They weren't able to trace anything. There's
no cell phones, no CCTV anything like that, and they're
in a remote area along this bog. The most damning
(14:47):
police say, piece of circumstantial evidence they have against Peter
is that Malika was last seen in his cottage, which
is right on the edge of the moss. They didn't
live together at the cottage, but they were separated at
this point. So when these Pete moss workers trying to
excavate this stuff find the human head, Peter's gone. He
(15:08):
doesn't live at the cottage anymore. But the head is
found about three hundred meters from his old home, which
is where you know, Malika was last seen alive. Already,
we're thinking he's probably gotten away with murder. He's thinking
I can dump her body into the bog and it
will disappear and never be preserved. And little does he know.
(15:30):
I guess with all of the circumstances that happen in
this bog, the lack of organisms, I guess that stuff
gets preserved really easily.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Yeah, that's my understanding.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
You know, and you've got these animals that have been
preserved for very long periods of time. You know, you
got what sounds like an anaerobic environment, poor nutrients, and
the pd stuff, so you don't have the typical bacteria
that will cause the animals, including humans, to decompose in
(16:01):
the same way. And so oftentimes these animals they look
like they died, you know, relatively recently, but they are
very old. They've been dead there and preserved for a
very long time.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Well, while police are trying to track down Peter, the
forensic experts take a look at this head and they
say this is a woman and she is somewhere between
thirty and fifty years old. So Malika was in her
early thirties when she went missing. How do they know that?
How are they able to look at this skull? I know,
the eyeball was preserved, and you know, but she's missing
(16:36):
part of a jaw, and I can show you a
photo of what they had. How would they be able
to figure out her age? Is it based on teeth
or something?
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Teeth are used.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
But when you start talking about the anthropological assessment of
a human skull, you know, there's a variety of characteristics
that anthropologists will look at. You know, in terms of gender,
women tend to have what they can called more gracial
type of bony structure. You know, men have more prominent
brows and more prominent, you know, so they look at
(17:08):
is this robust skull? Is this a more gracial skull?
Terms of age? You know, you start taking a look
at the sutures in the skull. You know, when you're young,
the various bones that make up your your cranium, they
have these sutures. Everybody can visualize the skull, and these
(17:29):
sutures are you know, when when a baby is born,
you know, the head has to be able to compress
to pass through the vaginal cavity to come out, and
these sutures are what allow the baby's skull.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
To do that.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
And then as the human grows, these these sutures start
to fuse together. And so the older you get, the
more these sutures are fused. And so an anthropologist can say, well,
based on the state of the sutures, this is the
general age range that this skull is. And there's many
(18:03):
other things, you know, most of them I'm probably forgetting
a whole bunch at this point, but that's generally how
you know, the anthropologist is able to make some opinions.
Now in this day and age, we have you know,
DNA aspects in which we can be much more accurate
with gender determination as an example, and of course being
(18:24):
able to identify somebody based off the DNA we can
recover from the bones, and we've seen where anthropologists will
say this is a female skull and it turns out, well,
it's not a female skull, it's a male skull, or
vice versa.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Moving forward, they feel confident this is a female skull
because this is so close to where Peter's cottage was.
They feel like this has to be Malika. This has
never been a closed case for the police out there.
They have always been looking for her. When they determine
that this skull is somewhere in the right age range,
they go to find Peter and he's not hard to
(19:00):
find because he had just been released for prison after
serving time for sex crimes against children. And when they
go to him about the bog, he starts talking in
a way, really disclosing as much as he can to
try to get himself out of trouble. So Peter and
Malika were married just four days after they met each other,
(19:23):
so this was not a marriage out of love. He
says he had an executive level job at a British
airline and he needed to be married because he was
gay and in the sixties early sixties, it was illegal
to be gay in Britain. In nineteen sixty seven they
passed the Sexual Offenses Act, which decriminalized private homosexual acts
(19:45):
between men who were over twenty one, but this was
in the early sixties, so it was still illegal. Malika
for her part, because I was thinking, why is she
agreeing to this? Would be given the opportunity to take
nearly free flights because she's married to an airline employee.
So both of them went into this marriage, according to him,
with no romance. It was all you know, business and
(20:09):
all of that. That's why she wasn't living with him.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
It's setting up what the relationship is. Now.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
How does Peter benefit if he kills Malika? That's you know,
my first question, hmm. If he's responsible for her going
missing and it's a it's a homicide, how does Peter
benefit if.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
We believe him, he turns Melika into the bad guy.
So what he says is that, you know, within a
couple of months, Malika is pressing him for more money
and again you know she's not around, so we don't know.
Apparently she tried to blackmail him because he wanted to
move in with his boyfriend, with his male partner, and
(20:50):
you know, he put his foot down and said no.
It escalated a violence and then the police pressed him,
pressed him more, and he says, she freaked out out,
she attacked me, and I killed her. He admits this. Oh,
he admits this. When he finds out that this skull
belongs to a woman in her thirties to fifties whatever
that age rage was, and they show him the photo.
(21:12):
He goes, Okay, this is what really happened. This is
not the end of the story. I promise Paul.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
No.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
It's like this is a really quick episode.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
My wheels are spinning a little bit because you've set
the scene in this bog, and we've talked about this bog,
how many bodies are potentially out in this Lindo Moss
area with what they've done relatively, you know, back in
we were talking nineteen eighty three an anthropological assessment, which
(21:45):
in this day and age, I know, can be a
little bit inaccurate. I now start questioning, is this skull
really Malika's? Sounds like they just solved her case, But
do they have Malika's body or do they have somebody
else's body.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
I think, as my mother would say, you're smelling what
I'm cooking. I don't know if my mom says that.
Somebody's mother says that, though, you're on the right track.
So he says, I dismembered her body. I tossed her
into the bog. I tried to burn her body parts first.
And the detective inspector, who's a guy, a smart guy
(22:22):
named George Abbot in eighty three, says, that's weird. We
don't see any signs of burning on the head, and
we can't find any of the other body parts which
they thought would be preserved because this is not moving water,
you know, it's still water. Great, and so we get
to find all about radiocarbon dating. Okay, so now you
will know what they knew how to do. In nineteen
(22:44):
eighty three, George Abbot sends the head off to Oxford
University for another opinion. And this is not the head
of Malika de Fernandez. This is the skull of a woman.
And the skull is dated back seventeen cent Roman Britain.
And then we figure out there is another murder mystery happening,
(23:07):
but it is seventeen centuries old. The oldest case ever.
We're out to saw Fall and it's not this woman.
It's somebody else in the bog. They are really looking
at this bog now, so it is too late. Peter
finds this out, dumbass. He confesses he didn't have to.
He tries to recan't, and it's too late, and he
(23:30):
spends the rest of his life in prison. And just
as a really sad note, they as far as I
can tell, have never found Malika different end as his body.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Also, they didn't get Peter to take them out and
show where he put her body.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
He said it was right where you found the head.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
So Malika's still out there somewhere she is.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
But there are two other bodies that are seventeen centuries
old that we have to deal with. So first, let
me show you the head that they thought was Malika's.
If you're interested in that, or do you want to
you want to learn a little bit more about what
they found with the carbon dating, what do you want
to do?
Speaker 3 (24:03):
No, let me see the head.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Okay, let me see the heads. That's something we say often.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Yes, So I'm looking at a picture of the skull.
As you described, the lower mandible is gone, it looks
like the ruler in front. I can't tell if it's blocking,
you know, like the upper part of the mouth, but
I can see the two orbits and the cranium as
(24:31):
I was describing, you know, I'm not seeing prominent, you know,
brow ridges on this skull. I can see some of
the sutures, and there is what appears to be some
tissue adhering to this skull, both inside the orbits. I'm
not sure if that's part of the peat adhering to
the skull, but it appears that there is some tissue there.
(24:51):
And you had described that one of the eyes was
still present, so I can see where this skull being
found in such a condition. To me, it's like, yes,
this is not a historic body. This is a body
that obviously been deceased for a while, but would be contemporary,
you know, it would be something that would be pursued
(25:12):
as Yeah, we've got a body of somebody that died
probably within the last few years.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Not so much. No, this is very old and we
have a lot of information about her. And there is
a companion who has a very interesting history, and I'll
tell you about that in a second. All the other
pictures have to do with the man who is found
in this bog very close by. So carbon dating, now
(25:39):
we get into the science y bit of this. I
didn't know very much about carbon dating. So the little
summary I have is it measures the level of carbon
fourteen isotope in human remains. Do you want to geek
out and give us an explanation or do you want
me to go with our official little explanation here, It's.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Up to you.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Well, you know, I am familiar with carbon dating to
a point in terms of looking at the ratio of
the carbon fourteen to carbon thirteen isotopes, if I remember correctly,
you know. And it's interesting because there's a variety of
different types of isotopic analysis that can be done, not
(26:18):
just carbon which can help geologically place you know, where
let's say a body had been during life. Because what
we're doing is we're constantly absorbing from the environment that
we're living in, and different locations on the planet or
even within a particular country or state have different ratios
(26:39):
of these isotopes, and so our bodies assimilate those isotopes
in that same ratio. And so scientists can do this
isotopic analysis and say, hey, looks like this person whose
bodies found over in Florida has you know, various isotope
ratios that's more consistent with coming out of the Pacific
Northwest as an example. And I'm doing a very crude
(27:01):
explanation relative to what experts would be able to describe.
But the carbon aspect, it's also how after death your
body is no longer in this assimilation mode, and now
that the carbon ratio changes over time. I'm probably not
doing justice in terms of from the science standpoint, but
(27:25):
fundamentally they're able to age based on that carbon fourteen
carbon thirteen ratio out of the bones or whatever tissue.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
I think that's a good explanation. I'm not sure I
would add too much to it. I will say that
upon further inspection, they at Oxford University said part of
her brain is in here too. So this like magic bog,
has preserved this woman for you know, almost two thousand years.
The water source is interesting preserving bodies and bogs. You
(27:57):
have to have very specific conditions, and we talk about
that with decomposition all the time. How the weather is
so important to an outdoor crime scene, how quickly decomposition
can happen the climate needs to be cool and temperate.
It can't get too hot. At the same time, the
bog temperature ideally is below thirty nine degrees when the
(28:18):
body enters the bog, and so the average annual temperature
you know, needs to be about below fifty degrees. And
apparently that's the condition that we're talking about with the
Lindo moss bog is it's that perfect condition to preserve. So,
I mean, you know, I see why they're able to
then soon make another discovery that is so well preserved
(28:41):
that I have pictures that are to me just stunning.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Yeah, you know, and this is where in essence, these
bodies are refrigerated. Due to the temperature and the ground
temperature that they're in, the bacterial aspect is minimized, you know,
since there isn't a lot of that going on. There's
not a lot of nutrients in this this pet moss.
But also there's a there's a protection from the surface
(29:07):
with these bodies that are under I don't know if
you want to call it ground, but you know now
it's the insects can't access the bodies, and insects are
huge when it comes to you know, part of the
you know, the decay of surface deposits of bodies, but
also predators aren't accessing these bodies perfect conditions.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
And not to get too geeky about this, but there's
also a specific type of moss. It's not just any
old moss that creates these perfect conditions. This moss that's
in the Lindau blog is called Sphagnum moss, which I
had never heard of before. This specific moss alters the
water chemistry. It makes it very highly acidic and low
(29:51):
in oxygen. So when you combine the acidic water with
the lack of oxygen and the low nutrient levels, you're right.
It just stops bacteria and fungi in their tracks, and
it really helps stop the decomposition of the body. Distillation
Magazine says, it's not a decay anymore. They tan like
leather almost so the skin turns brown, the hair goes red,
(30:14):
and the objects in and around the body dissolve away,
as does most of the clothing, so you're left with
the actual body. Gosh, it's so interesting.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
No having recovered skeletal remains and digging up bodies, you
know it is. It's fascinating to see how various objects age.
You know, and you start talking like the clothing. You know,
this is where, you know, digging up a body that's
been buried for a long time. You see how the
(30:43):
different fabrics you will deteriorate over time, whereas you know,
some fabrics don't. Articles of clothing will change color, you know,
as as they age in the ground.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
You know. So it's all just it.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
It's really kind of a surreal different look when evaluating
evidence and bodies and the passage of time. It's not
what you would normally ever experience, you know, But now
you're looking at I've had evidence in storage, it's been
packaged properly, stored properly, but just due to age, you know,
(31:18):
there's been dramatic changes in the appearance of the evidence,
the clothing.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
For example, for Andy Mold, the guy who you know,
made the initial discovery of who we thought was Molika
and it turned out to be the Lindo woman. A
year later, he finds more remains around the same spot.
This time it's a human foot. This time the police go,
this must be Molika. It is not. They search and
(31:43):
search and excavate, and they find an incredibly well preserved
skeletal remains from the bog, which is an upper torso
and a full head. So this is not the Lindo
woman because there's a head. This is about one thousand
years old, so more contemporary than the Lindo Woman. The
(32:04):
Colando woman was seventeen hundred. This is a thousand years
and he is called the Lindo Man and he's from
the Iron Age. He's the one we wonder if was murdered,
and I'll tell you why, because there's so much preserved
on him. It's incredible.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
Yeah, it's like how many bodies are out here?
Speaker 1 (32:20):
A lot? Right, And it's interesting because if you're a
contemporary killer boy, would you want to read up on
this and think this is not the bog? For me,
I probably need to dump somewhere else where they were
not to have Gallow's humor about this, but where they
were decomposed, because this is obviously they're so well preserved. Okay,
so let me tell you about the Lindo Man. So
(32:42):
he is five foot six, he's in his mid to
late twenties. When he died, he had a trimmed beard
and manicured nails. These were all preserved, so they did
not think that he was engaged in intensive labor because
you know, he was very well kept. He was well
built and well fed. He has found naked except for
(33:04):
an armband. So listen to this, and then we can
talk about all of the weird things that happen with
preserving bodies. He's totally naked, so we know that, you know,
the clothing can be dissolved away, except there's an armband
made of fox fur around his arm. So the fox
fur would not I guess not, because why would that
not go away?
Speaker 2 (33:25):
You know, I don't have any any knowledge as to
why the fox for wouldn't deteriorate, but obviously it didn't.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
You know.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
But like what I've seen just modern clothing, you know,
the cotton versus synthetic fibers, the elastic bands, you know,
the various things that are within clothing items such as
like when you start dealing like with bras and the
underwire to a bra or the snaps you know.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
On a jacket.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
You know, this is what I've seen. These different types
of fabric and different types of objects and clothing. They
deteriorate at different rates, and some don't deteriorate at all,
you know, so it's not surprising you you're talking about
this this Lindo man. Was he nude when he was
deposited there? That's a possibility, but it's also entirely possible
(34:17):
the clothing that he had on just happened to deteriorate
in this environment and it's gone.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
You know, but that fox fur band is what remains.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Yeah, well, let me show you this. Get ready for
a little show and tell I mean, why do you
see this? What they found? This man? Andy had to
find this. There's the foot. Oh wow, I know I
have most of his body and you go ahead and
describe what you see.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Yeah, no, I'm looking at a photograph of It's not
just a foot. It's really the lower leg with what
appears to be, you know, most of the tissue and
skin present, though there's you know, weird disruptions to the
skin over the entirety of the surface of of this
lower leg. But the foot itself, at least in the
(35:04):
where I'm seeing the toes, it almost appears that like
the toenails are are still present. You know this this
looks you know, from my perspective, if I ran across this,
I would say, okay, I've got I've got a.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
Relatively recently killed person. I would not be able.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
To draw conclusion as to you know, the disruption to
the skin. In many ways, it almost looks like a
leg that's been run over. It's been a vulsed, you know,
the tissue has been evalced a little bit by a
tire going over. But I know that's not what's happening here.
It's just that, you know, if I were looking at this,
I'd go, yeah, this is a recent, recently deceased body
(35:45):
and some crushing force had been had been applied to
the lower leg.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
I was just thinking, if you're the police chief or
whomever in charge in this area, you would have to
know that this is a body that has the potential
to be very very old. You would have to know
your areas so well in the history of it. Can
you imagine this just being preserved kind of in a
normal way, and you know, it becomes a John Doe
(36:13):
case or something, and then you've got this piece of history.
Now hold on to your hat. Look at this. That
is him?
Speaker 2 (36:20):
So yeah, this is the basically it looks the Lindo man.
It's it's not just as upper torso he's got both
his arms his head. In many ways, it looks like
somebody who has been dismembered through the abdomen. You know,
the lower body is gone, but the skin, the facial
features are are present. You know, there is abnormalities that
(36:45):
stand out. You know, having looked at a lot of
you know, dead bodies, this doesn't look normal.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
You know, that would be a clue. But most certainly it's.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
Shocking on how well preserved the Lindo man is. Considering
he dies a thousand years ago.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
There's another version of him here. I don't know if
this is any more hopeful. I think it's through a case. Actually,
you could probably see the discoloration a little bit better
on this one. It's sort of red, even more leathery
in some ways.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
Yeah, you know, so this photograph, which it is, it
is hard.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
It's more zoomed in on his head and you know,
shoulder area, chest maybe chest area. You know, that type
of discoloration to his skin, which they said is like
a tanning. You know, that's not all that atypical from
what I've seen on dead bodies that end up desiccating.
(37:42):
They mummify surface deposit exposed to the sun. The skin
kind of turns an orangish color, kind of will go
leathery if it desiccates real fast.
Speaker 3 (37:52):
So this is what is often.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Seen in the very arid environments when bodies are dumped
out there, let's say in the Arizona or hikers you know,
die and then you know they dehydrate so fast and
are exposed to the sun.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
It's like this, this brown, brownish orange.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Leather type of look that the skin takes as the
body is decaying.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Well, we're going to come back to these photos. I
have a couple of additional ones to share with you
because this is not as simple. Hey, Paul, tell me
about how bodies are preserved kind of story. This turned
into a big mystery because whoever the Lindo man was,
he really suffered before he died, and we see his injuries.
(38:39):
So let me tell you more about him. So I
told you about the armband made a fox for I
told you he had. Now you know why they know
he had manicured nails, nice nails, because everything was preserved.
He's in good physical health aside from osteoarthritis and a
case of intestinal parasites. How would they know that really
intestinal pair.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
You know, obviously his intestines must have been preserved, and
these parasites must have been found. I don't know if
these are microscopic parasites or would be like a tapeworm.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Wow, oh gosh. There's an archaeologist named Anne Ross. She
thinks that he was based on a lot of this,
that he was either a Celtic priest or like Druid,
or some kind of king because he had no callouses
on his hands, his body had not been previously injured
(39:30):
until he died, and he was definitely not a laborer,
definitely not a warrior. There's a lot we don't know
about him, but there's a I think it's a TV
show called Discover Lindo is reporting that he had eaten
a slightly burned barley based meal, either like a grittle
cake or a thick porridge, along with fragments of hazelnuts
(39:51):
and some traces of meat shortly before his death. I mean,
good Lord, for you to be able to know that
from a thousand years ago is incredible. Incredible.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
Yeah, Well, it just.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Really underscores that it's not just the external aspects of
these bodies that are being preserved, but it's the entirety
of the bodies, including the stomach contents.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
Right, and so They look at his stomach also, so
we know the stomach contents, we know what he ate.
They found traces of mistletoe in his stomach, which might
have been used medicinally, or he might have just eaten
it accidentally, but it is toxic to humans. That's not
what killed him for sure. It could have been used medicinally.
He was dated between two BC and one one nine
(40:35):
AD one hundred and nineteen AD. So you want to
hear about how he did not die. It sounds like
the in the most peaceful way you would think for
a king or a druid or whoever he was.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
Well, we know these you want to call him, These
ancient cultures, they often did horrific things to each other.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
M hmm, absolutely, So let's talk about the brutal death.
It suggested, based on his body that there were multiple
tactics used to kill him. This was I thought this
was interesting using the phrase overkill when you're talking about,
you know, bodies from a thousand years ago, But that
phrase has been associated with a lot of European bog
(41:20):
bodies in places like Ireland and Denmark. Bodies found in
bogs have shown signs of being I'm gonna use this
phrase one day, triple killed. Have you ever used that
phrase before? Triple kill? Okay, they say triple killed. Some
of them have been strangled, bashed in the head, and disemboweled,
(41:41):
just like you said, all at once in what are
believed to be ritualistic sacrifices to gods or goddesses, and
each injury is dedicated to a specific god or goddess.
Isn't it interesting?
Speaker 3 (41:57):
I'm glad I lived today.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
You could still be triple killed. I hope not, but yes.
So these bogs were important to ancient Europeans. You know,
there's an archaeologist and an author named Melanie Giles, and
she told the BBC, we see bogs as empty places.
But that's not how the people in the Iron Age,
which is where Lindo Man was. That's not how people
in the Iron Age saw them. They were taking fuel
(42:21):
from the bog, they were cutting turf, they were taking
iron ore, they're making weapons, you know, there's a lot
coming out of it. And they were hunting the BirdLife.
So the bogs were very productive, rich places for people
in the Iron Age. Let me go through Lindo Man's
specific injuries. We have a lot of archaeologists who want
(42:41):
to know why did this happen to him? And we
have photos of some of the stuff. Were these ritualistic sacrifices?
So first we have experts addressing the missiletoe. So missletoe
is toxic. Do you have any idea, I mean, what
are the consequences of eating missiletoe? I think it's fascinating
(43:01):
for my kids, and they're pretty berries and everything that
would just make you very sick.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
I'm assuming I have no knowledge whatsoever about the toxicity
of missletone.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
I mean, mistletoe to me, is you know the what
is it? It's is it a fungus?
Speaker 2 (43:13):
It grows on trees, you know, and of course it's
the tradition is is if you stand underneath the missletoe,
you owe the other person a kiss or something along
those lines.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
Yep, there you go. So, as I had said before,
mistletoe probably had some medicinal uses, and one was to
calm down nervous disorders people with nervous disorders. And so
they think that maybe before he died, the Lindo Man
was given mistletoe to calm him down. It sounds like
he knew what was coming. The skin on his tourso
(43:46):
had higher levels of copper than elsewhere on his body.
So they think he was painted with a copper pigment,
which might have been some ritual element to his death.
So a copper pigment is that paint? Is that what
that would be?
Speaker 3 (44:00):
Well, that's what it sounds like.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
Wow, you know, I know, different paints used different metals,
you know, in order to get a certain color. So
typically copper either has that kind of that goldish color
or if it's oxidized that now you have that.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
Greenish hue to it. So maybe one of those two colors.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
Mm hmmm. So I mean you get closer and closer.
So this could have been some sort of ritualistic sacrifice.
So he had a cord made of animal sinew tied
around his neck along with it looks like ligature marks.
One of the things that's interesting is that you've got
two neck vertebrae that were broken. It says his neck
was gashed, and there are archaeologists who said that he
(44:45):
was probably strangled from behind before having his throat slashed.
I have no idea how you would figure out what
that order would be. But he also had broken ribs
and a stab wound to his chest. All happened, It
sounds like at the same time, all at once.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Yeah, a homicide victim.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
Oh my gosh. His goal was fractured by something heavy
that left a V shaped gash, like an axe maybe,
and they did a CT scan on him. It showed
that his head swelled and bruised, indicating that the injury
did not result in immediate death, and so he had
been alive long enough for the wound to begin healing.
(45:27):
Is that what swelled and bruised means that it was
starting to heal, and that's how they can kind of
tell that he was alive longer.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
Well, it's showing that the body is responding to the injury.
When I hear the term heal or healing, that's indicating, Okay,
now the tissue is starting to repair itself. And I'm
not sure that that's what they are saying. What I'm
hearing is is that, Okay, the tissue responded to the injury.
It's swelling. You have the bruising, so there's still blood
(45:55):
flowing at the time that that injury occurred. But this
isn't necessarily something you can say is a result of
an injury that happened anti mortem. All you can say
it's perry mortem, because even if the person is technically dead,
the tissues will still respond in a way that they
received an injury. So that's where I would probably say
(46:19):
this in all likelihood, this blow to the head is
occurring contemporaneous to these other acts of violence against him.
Speaker 1 (46:28):
Well, and then on top of that, so hold on,
he's had broken ribs. They think that somebody like something
like a human knee struck him in the back, which
broke one of his ribs. He's got a wound to
his chest, there's a kind of rope thing around his
neck with ligature marks. Two of his neck vertebrae are broken,
his neck was slashed, and his skull was fractured. And
(46:51):
then on top of that, they find water in his lungs,
so they think that he they left him face down
in the bog.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
Gosh obviously very awful and into his life, but all
of these injuries could have occurred very rapidly to him.
You know, you can have multiple offenders that are inflicting
different injuries, and he's being stomped, you know, in some ways,
you know, I'm struggling outside of this maybe the finding
(47:21):
the copper, you know, where they're saying that that might
be indicative of ritualistic you know, his injuries very much
are a line up with he's a homicide victim, and
there's multiple modalities of violence being used against him. Now
that could be done by one person, that could be
done by a group, you know, So it's hard to
(47:44):
truly reconstruct, you know, the why he's he's killed in
the manner that he's killed. When I initially hear ritual,
I'm looking for something that has a certain it's.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
Like a set of rules basically, right where you can
identify him and say, oh, yeah, I've seen this before,
this is the way they do this.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
Right, That's exactly kind of what I was thinking is ritualistic.
It's something ritual is something that has done time and
time again in a certain order.
Speaker 3 (48:14):
That's the point of it, exactly.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
So that's where I always think, Okay, there was evidence
that let's say he's you know, drawn and quartered, you know,
something along those lines, versus what appears to be a
just a mass attack of violence against him.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
Yeah, And I think one of the things that I
don't know about the ritualistic aspect of it they do
talk about the injuries a little bit, saying, now, let's
keep in mind he's a thousand years old and he's
been for a thousand years under very heavy layers of peat,
and they're wondering, experts do wonder how much of these
(48:52):
injuries could be wear and tear basically from being you know,
in this area for so long. Let me show you
this is what but they think he looked like, you know,
good looking guy. And this is his skull where I
think they're pointing to. This is an infrared photo showing
(49:12):
not only the injury on top, but also the splitting
of the skull at the back. I don't know if
this is going to tell you anything. I don't know
if Pete would cause this, I don't who knows.
Speaker 2 (49:20):
Yeah, I'm really unable to make out this photograph. They
say it's an infrared photograph, and so oftentimes that different
wavelengths of light are absorbed or fluoresce from different substances. Infrared,
of course, also can be utilized to show different temperatures
in various objects. Here, this just looks like a blob
(49:46):
to me. This record this is where Yeah, there has
to be an expert that is evaluating you know what
this infrared photograph is showing. Now when they start saying
that some of his injuries that you described to me
are possibly from you know, let's say, hannical stresses of
being buried in this this bog and this peat.
Speaker 3 (50:04):
I mean, the.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
Only thing that I could maybe wonder about is, you know,
like let's say the broken ribs, Yeah, something along those lines,
some of the mechanical forces on the surface of his body,
compression of his body. But when you start talking about
depressed skull, fractures, incisions to his neck, sinew wrapped around
(50:29):
his neck, you know, yeah, obviously probably most of what
is being observed on his body was you know, at
the hands of another.
Speaker 1 (50:38):
As they say, yeah, and I think so, I was
going to show you this is a top view. Can
you see this of the head wound thought to be
done with an axe on his head?
Speaker 2 (50:47):
Yeah, I'm looking at a photograph which shows his head.
Speaker 3 (50:52):
His head's turned to the right.
Speaker 2 (50:53):
He looks in this photograph to be completely bald or
devoid of head hair, but there is towards the base
of the head it's technically the top of his head,
but towards the bottom of this photograph. I'm just going
to describe it from a technical term. This looks like
a laceration from a very significant blow. This is where
the skin the skin has due to the crushing action
(51:19):
of a blunt object, has split apart. But it's irregular,
you know, this is a typical laceration from it's a
broader type of object. And though I can't, you have
to rely on the fact that others are saying that
he had a depressed skull fracture, I would say that
(51:40):
that looks like there's likely a depressed skull fracture underneath
that significant laceration.
Speaker 1 (51:46):
Yeah, they have a This is a close up of
the head wound. I don't know if that's helpful either,
but I mean, regardless, I'm not sure heavy concentrations of
pete would cause us. I did Paul for a moment,
wonder how many other excavators came in and Nick tim
or something. I mean, isn't it Yeah, I mean we've
talked about the machinery could cause some stuff too.
Speaker 2 (52:06):
Yeah, you know, and this is where you know, with
contemporary bodies, you know, looking for evidence that these injuries
occurred anti mortem, you know, during life, versus being paramortem.
So let's say, like fractured ribs. You know, anthropologists, you know,
if you have a skeletal remains and you have let's
(52:27):
say the body's buried, and an excavator comes a log
and digs a body up, you can tell if those
bones were fractured as a result of, you know, the
kind of the finding of the body, versus they were
fractured as a result of let's say the homicide when
the victim was still alive. Because fresh bones fracture differently
than desiccated bones, well, it's the same, it's going to
(52:50):
be the same thing, and taking it evaluating his injuries,
I just don't know how much variance from what we
experience with contemporary body. Would they still be able to
see let's say, hemorrhaging in the wound margins, you know,
in such a preserved body that's thousands of years old,
or would that have leached out and you can't see that,
(53:11):
you know, And that's just part of the I think
the complexity of evaluating his injuries as to when did
they exactly occur, because it's not like we have studies,
you know, in terms of showing, okay, this is how
this type of injury would appear after two thousand years
to determine whether or not it's something an expert would
(53:33):
be able to say, yes, that was something that occurred
and was cause of death.
Speaker 1 (53:37):
Well, you know, to conclude this very strange true crime story.
You know, there are people who are trying to figure
out still, was he robbed? Was this a sacrifice? Who knows?
I mean, was he drawn out there? My notes talk
about this is a remote area, which is you know,
I don't know what it was like a thousand years
(53:58):
ago in the Iron Age. Maybe this wasn't remote. Maybe
this is where a lot of people set up shop
and it wasn't a remote place. You know, we don't know.
But two more bodies were found, all kind of dating
to the same time frame. All it sounds like about
Iron Age time frame, and you know they're studying all
of them and it's pretty amazing. Seventy pieces in nineteen
(54:20):
eighty seven, seventy pieces or more of human bone and
tissue were recovered. And these are just you know, more
and more and they're pulling them out. So the preservation
of murder sites most likely is important, but particularly important
when you have victims and when you have an area
like England that has just been inhabited for thousands of years.
(54:42):
So I love stories like these.
Speaker 3 (54:44):
So I'm going to make a prediction. Cape.
Speaker 2 (54:46):
Okay, I think you're going to buy some little cottage
out there in that bog and set up your atmosphere
in this dark, creepy way, and then in the middle
of the night you're going to be out there looking
for hu and skulls.
Speaker 3 (55:01):
How's that?
Speaker 1 (55:01):
Yes, probably that's awful. Well, listen, Never did I think
a story of murder from a thousand years ago would
teach me so much about present day crime. But I'm
always interested in learning about how bodies are preserved and
what you can find and time of death, and so
I think it's interesting.
Speaker 2 (55:22):
I think I learned a new interview tactic. If I
have a suspect whose wife has gone missing, I'm going
to walk into the interview room with a skull in hand,
put it down on the table, and say we found her.
Speaker 1 (55:37):
We found her. She's been triple killed. Triple killed. Okay, Well,
next week we will have a much more contemporary case.
It could be from the fifteen hundreds, but we'll say
it always for sure. Then this one, Thank you for
joining me on this trip, way far back than we've
ever been.
Speaker 3 (55:58):
Now, it's still fascinating though, I loved it.
Speaker 1 (56:00):
Thanks, thank you. This has been an exactly right production
for our sources and show notes go to Exactlyrightmedia dot
com slash Buried Bones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Emosi.
Speaker 2 (56:16):
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1 (56:20):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 3 (56:23):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1 (56:26):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 2 (56:28):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark, and Danielle Kramer.
Speaker 1 (56:32):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
bary Bones pod.
Speaker 2 (56:37):
Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Age story of murder and the race to decode the
criminal mind, is available now, and
Speaker 1 (56:44):
Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life solving America's Cold
Cases is also available now
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the
last twenty five years writing about true crime.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
compelling true crimes.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
new insights to old mysteries.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is buried bones.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Hey Paul, Hey Kate, how are you doing.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
I'm doing well. You're very perky and your skin is glowing.
What's the secret?
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Oh? Good god?
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Well, I don't know if this is contributing to whatever
you're seeing or not, you know, but I have. I'm
trying a new diet and I'm sure a lot of
the listeners would cringe, but I'm going very low carb.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Okay, what is your old diet? I kind of see
you as meat and potatoes, but I'm sure I'm wrong
about that. I know sugar, you're repelled by sugar.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
You know, well years ago, I think in my early
forties to mid forties, I had done a physical and
a blood test and you know, the doc or the
results came back and said, you're not there yet, but
you are trending towards pre diabetes, okay, And that's what
really I at that point in time, I really went
low carb, eliminated anything with simple sugar in it, and
(01:58):
quite frankly, I saw a druma improvement in my body
composition as a result. It was sort of like, oh,
I wasn't expecting that. And then over over time, you know,
I've always been very protein centric, you know, because I'm
I lift, I kind of want to maintain a level
of muscle mass, especially as I get older. But then
as I've been kind of diving into the nutrition aspect
(02:22):
and listening to some of these these high end researchers
at universities, they really are focusing in on controlling insulin
and insulin resistance. Because we take a look at, you know,
what's been trending across the world, the recommendations that came
out that was very carb centric and low fat type
(02:44):
of diet, and yet we've seen diabetes and obesity increase
over time. And so I'm now listening to some of
these professors in their research. You know, I'm a biochem major,
but that was good.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
God.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
I got that agree back in nineteen ninety, you know,
and so much knowledge has changed since I had my education.
That was just blown away, and I thought, you know what,
controlling my insulin levels seems to make sense, and so
I've decided I'm going to try that. And so I'm
back on a you know, a low carb, high protein,
and quite frankly a high saturated fat diet now. So
(03:21):
I have incorporated red meat back into my diet because
I used to avoid.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
It, you know.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Okay, yeah, so we'll.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
See how it goes.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
I'm going to do this for a while and get
some blood work done, and you know, also just see
how I feel and how you know, from a physical
performance standpoint, like the lifting or the mountain biking. You know,
am I able to continue to yeah, perform at a
at the same, if not better level on a lower
carb diet and a higher fat diet.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Than what I was doing before. So we'll see. That's
that's been sort of something I've been experimenting with.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
So what does your wife say about all this? Does
she do a lot of the cooking. Does she have
to change anything?
Speaker 3 (04:02):
She does all the cookie so she.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Has an opinion, I'm assuming was she like Paul, I
just bought you all these shredded mini weeds.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
No, but you know that is She's cognizant.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
But it's more the way that I would like if
she's cooking a higher carb meal than I would moderate.
On my end, I'm not expecting any change for the
family's meals at all.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
I learned to cook for me a long time ago,
and you know, at this point, the kids are almost fifteen,
and I offer them tons of food, different, really healthy
foods to eat, and sometimes they want to order something
in with their own money, and sometimes they'll want to
eat with me. But if I tried to cater to
their needs all the time, you know, I would be
up a creek. I just wouldn't be able to do it.
(04:47):
So I cook what I want to cook, what tastes
good to me, what's healthy, and what I enjoy. I'm
really into lots of vegetables, lots of fruit, stuff like that,
and I'm not vegan, but I'm pretty close to it.
So you know I'm kind of at the opposite end
of it, so we would never be able to be married.
It would be it would be horrible for both of us.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
I don't think, like right right here with an arms reach,
I got my zero sugar beef jerky, got my snack now.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
And I have an herbal tea. Okay, there you go.
See And I know that you say there are some
episodes that I present to you that drive you to drink,
so we'll see if this is going to be one
of those episodes.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Okay, Well, I am all ears.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Well, this is a different kind of true crime story
and I don't know if it's solvable, but it is
really interesting, so let's go ahead and set the scene.
We are in England, which I love. I love it
when we go to England. I feel like we're in
Australia and England the most as far as like overseas countries.
(05:52):
But you know, I would like to expand go worldwide
at some point, but we are in England. I feel
like quite a bit. Some of our best stories I
think come out of England.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Well, both of us, you know, have connections to England
or London, and we spent a fair amount of time
in London together.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Yep, okay, So let me tell you this about me
that you probably already know. I am an atmosphere girl.
If I could have a gas lamp in every room
in our house flickering at night, with all the lights on,
a fog machine pumping fog throughout the hallways, I would.
(06:28):
I love creepy macabre. I mean, just like I love
the constant Halloween vibe, which says a lot considering what
I talk about almost every single day of my life
true crime. I like creepy stuff. And we are in
a bog for real bog, England bog for this story.
(06:48):
Are you an atmosphere kind of guy too? Do you?
Do you like kind of certain books that evoke things,
or certain movies or anything that evoke certain kinds of
atmosphere for you?
Speaker 2 (06:57):
You know, I don't go out of my way to
set up any particular atmosphere, but I do gravitate towards,
you know, like what you're talking about a little bit
not necessarily creepy, but more of that that dark type
of environment, you know, like my man cave here is
all dark wood.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
I kind of keep it dark.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
It's in the basement but you know the kind of
the creepy side, you know, I could, I could go
there to a point. It just you know, I don't
want it to go to where Now all I'm seeing
our dead bodies all the time because I deal with that.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Enough says, well, you're not gonna like this story then,
because we are dealing with dead bodies in a blog. Okay,
So this is Cheshire, England, and we are talking about
the Lindo Moss, which is a very large peat bog
in Cheshire. So do you know much about bogs. I
(07:51):
only really kind of know Sherlock homes kind of creepy bogs.
I don't know if I've ever been to a bog before.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
With how you're describing it, you know, the kind of
the peat moss, I just start thinking scotchy, you know,
from that perspective. But I would say with the bog
from I think more from an archaeological standpoint. How you know,
you have various animals as well as humans that have
(08:21):
been preserved, you know, within this bog environment.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Yeah, well this is You're right, a great way to
preserve a body. It's spongy, marshy wetland that is hydrated
most of the time, much of the time by like
rain and snow instead of groundwater. Precipitation has less nutrients
than groundwater, so the bogs are pretty nutrient poor as
(08:44):
a result. And you know this one, the Lindo moss
formed over ten thousand years ago, after the last Ice Age. Yeah,
so it's interesting dump sites, murder scenes have a history.
This one has a particularly very old deep history. Fifteen
hundred acre. That's big. Now it's a fraction of its
original size, but it's still a substantial bog. The decaying
(09:09):
material in Lindo moss transforms into a soil called pete.
I don't know a lot about pete. Pete can be
cut from the bog and dried and used as a
fuel source. And people have been extracting pete from this
moss area, this bog since the Middle Ages, and it
was at first harvested by hand, but as the time
went past the process became mechanized. So I don't know
(09:32):
a lot about pete. Is that what your connection is
with whiskey is that part of it is the peat.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
With the scotch.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
You know, they described scotch just having the kind of
the peaty flavor, and my understanding is somehow pete is
utilized in the manufacture of the Scotch.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
So that's really the extent of my knowledge. When when you.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Say pete and moss, my media thought goes towards the
Scotch manufacturing.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Well, let's move away from the history of this bog
and let's talk about what happens in nineteen eighty three.
So there are two workers named Andy Mold and Steven Dooley,
and they're operating some machinery in the Lindo moss and
they are trying to get the very valuable pete out.
(10:23):
So they notice when they are kind of excavating in
this area what looks like a black soccer ball in
the bog, and they pull it up and they inspect it.
And there's a magazine called Distillations Magazine, and they wrote
a story about this, and so you know, the magazine
says that when Stephen and Andy washed the object, they
(10:46):
discover that it is a human skull, that it's missing
its jaw but still has some skin and some hair
and an eyeball that stared back at them. And the
men of course freak out. Turn this skull this head
over to the police and the police say, we know
exactly who this is. There's been a woman who's been
(11:10):
missing for the last twenty years and she lived right
off of this bog, and this is her, and this
begins a really fascinating murder investigation. So I often think
about the bog, the swamp, you know, the ocean, these
very huge, wide areas when I go and when I'm
in northern California on the one oh one and driving
(11:31):
to my favorite like pub, and I look over and
we're in like the Headlands, and I think this is
a great place to bury a body. I think, what
if there is not an Andy and a Stephen out
there digging around in this place and they happen upon
a body. Gosh, how many bodies are out there that
will just never be found because it's not stumbled upon.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
That happens all the time. There's so many cases, you know,
in which we've got missing persons and they met foul
play and their bodies are have been hidden so well
that in all likelihood they will never be found. And
there's so many cases you know where you think, well,
you know who killed the person. The killer is sitting
(12:11):
in prison but has never revealed where he's put the
murdered victim's body, which for me is very frustrating. You
know that person, you know, has the knowledge, if there
is only a way to be able to get that
person to talk. Yeah, it's interesting you talk about if
it wasn't for Andy and Steven in my jurisdiction that
(12:32):
some of the most common reasons some of these hidden
bodies are found was due to bottle hunters. Oh, okay,
this is this is a little historical thing. Is that
you have people who collect old bottles, and where do
they find these bottles? Often in creeks, and so they're
(12:52):
out there in these remote locations looking for bottles that
are on you know, in the creek bed. And of
course these creeks are typically in a ravine next to
a road, and this is where offenders will drive up,
pull a body out, and throw it down into the
creek and then drive off.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
So I've got multiple cases in which bottle collectors, bottle
hunters are the ones that found these victims.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
I don't know if I've mentioned this to you before,
but I have a very close friend who is a
really great, like nationally ranked rower, and she would row
very early in the morning on Ladybird Lake, which is
a lake here in Austin, and sometimes they would find
the bodies of people who had either taken their own
(13:39):
lives or something had happened to them. They were the
ones who discovered them because they were out so early
in the morning, you know, and they were there. So
this story about the bog really makes me think about
that if we had not had these two men out
there in this area, had happened to struck upon this
and they found this skull, the police would not have
(14:00):
We know who this probably is. So this happened in
eighty three, so just keep that in mind. They go
to the police. The investigators say, okay, we think this
is this woman and her name is Malika Date Fernandez
and she had been missing for twenty years. She went
missing in the sixties. She was married to a local
man named Peter rain Bart. They always thought that Peter
(14:25):
had something to do with her disappearance. She just vanished
off of the face of the earth. He said, I
don't have anything to do with this. I don't know
where she is. And police had never been able to
find her body. They weren't able to trace anything. There's
no cell phones, no CCTV anything like that, and they're
in a remote area along this bog. The most damning
(14:47):
police say, piece of circumstantial evidence they have against Peter
is that Malika was last seen in his cottage, which
is right on the edge of the moss. They didn't
live together at the cottage, but they were separated at
this point. So when these Pete moss workers trying to
excavate this stuff find the human head, Peter's gone. He
(15:08):
doesn't live at the cottage anymore. But the head is
found about three hundred meters from his old home, which
is where you know, Malika was last seen alive. Already,
we're thinking he's probably gotten away with murder. He's thinking
I can dump her body into the bog and it
will disappear and never be preserved. And little does he know.
(15:30):
I guess with all of the circumstances that happen in
this bog, the lack of organisms, I guess that stuff
gets preserved really easily.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Yeah, that's my understanding.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
You know, and you've got these animals that have been
preserved for very long periods of time. You know, you
got what sounds like an anaerobic environment, poor nutrients, and
the pd stuff, so you don't have the typical bacteria
that will cause the animals, including humans, to decompose in
(16:01):
the same way. And so oftentimes these animals they look
like they died, you know, relatively recently, but they are
very old. They've been dead there and preserved for a
very long time.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Well, while police are trying to track down Peter, the
forensic experts take a look at this head and they
say this is a woman and she is somewhere between
thirty and fifty years old. So Malika was in her
early thirties when she went missing. How do they know that?
How are they able to look at this skull? I know,
the eyeball was preserved, and you know, but she's missing
(16:36):
part of a jaw, and I can show you a
photo of what they had. How would they be able
to figure out her age? Is it based on teeth
or something?
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Teeth are used.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
But when you start talking about the anthropological assessment of
a human skull, you know, there's a variety of characteristics
that anthropologists will look at. You know, in terms of gender,
women tend to have what they can called more gracial
type of bony structure. You know, men have more prominent
brows and more prominent, you know, so they look at
(17:08):
is this robust skull? Is this a more gracial skull?
Terms of age? You know, you start taking a look
at the sutures in the skull. You know, when you're young,
the various bones that make up your your cranium, they
have these sutures. Everybody can visualize the skull, and these
(17:29):
sutures are you know, when when a baby is born,
you know, the head has to be able to compress
to pass through the vaginal cavity to come out, and
these sutures are what allow the baby's skull.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
To do that.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
And then as the human grows, these these sutures start
to fuse together. And so the older you get, the
more these sutures are fused. And so an anthropologist can say, well,
based on the state of the sutures, this is the
general age range that this skull is. And there's many
(18:03):
other things, you know, most of them I'm probably forgetting
a whole bunch at this point, but that's generally how
you know, the anthropologist is able to make some opinions.
Now in this day and age, we have you know,
DNA aspects in which we can be much more accurate
with gender determination as an example, and of course being
(18:24):
able to identify somebody based off the DNA we can
recover from the bones, and we've seen where anthropologists will
say this is a female skull and it turns out, well,
it's not a female skull, it's a male skull, or
vice versa.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Moving forward, they feel confident this is a female skull
because this is so close to where Peter's cottage was.
They feel like this has to be Malika. This has
never been a closed case for the police out there.
They have always been looking for her. When they determine
that this skull is somewhere in the right age range,
they go to find Peter and he's not hard to
(19:00):
find because he had just been released for prison after
serving time for sex crimes against children. And when they
go to him about the bog, he starts talking in
a way, really disclosing as much as he can to
try to get himself out of trouble. So Peter and
Malika were married just four days after they met each other,
(19:23):
so this was not a marriage out of love. He
says he had an executive level job at a British
airline and he needed to be married because he was
gay and in the sixties early sixties, it was illegal
to be gay in Britain. In nineteen sixty seven they
passed the Sexual Offenses Act, which decriminalized private homosexual acts
(19:45):
between men who were over twenty one, but this was
in the early sixties, so it was still illegal. Malika
for her part, because I was thinking, why is she
agreeing to this? Would be given the opportunity to take
nearly free flights because she's married to an airline employee.
So both of them went into this marriage, according to him,
with no romance. It was all you know, business and
(20:09):
all of that. That's why she wasn't living with him.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
It's setting up what the relationship is. Now.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
How does Peter benefit if he kills Malika? That's you know,
my first question, hmm. If he's responsible for her going
missing and it's a it's a homicide, how does Peter
benefit if.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
We believe him, he turns Melika into the bad guy.
So what he says is that, you know, within a
couple of months, Malika is pressing him for more money
and again you know she's not around, so we don't know.
Apparently she tried to blackmail him because he wanted to
move in with his boyfriend, with his male partner, and
(20:50):
you know, he put his foot down and said no.
It escalated a violence and then the police pressed him,
pressed him more, and he says, she freaked out out,
she attacked me, and I killed her. He admits this. Oh,
he admits this. When he finds out that this skull
belongs to a woman in her thirties to fifties whatever
that age rage was, and they show him the photo.
(21:12):
He goes, Okay, this is what really happened. This is
not the end of the story. I promise Paul.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
No.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
It's like this is a really quick episode.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
My wheels are spinning a little bit because you've set
the scene in this bog, and we've talked about this bog,
how many bodies are potentially out in this Lindo Moss
area with what they've done relatively, you know, back in
we were talking nineteen eighty three an anthropological assessment, which
(21:45):
in this day and age, I know, can be a
little bit inaccurate. I now start questioning, is this skull
really Malika's? Sounds like they just solved her case, But
do they have Malika's body or do they have somebody
else's body.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
I think, as my mother would say, you're smelling what
I'm cooking. I don't know if my mom says that.
Somebody's mother says that, though, you're on the right track.
So he says, I dismembered her body. I tossed her
into the bog. I tried to burn her body parts first.
And the detective inspector, who's a guy, a smart guy
(22:22):
named George Abbot in eighty three, says, that's weird. We
don't see any signs of burning on the head, and
we can't find any of the other body parts which
they thought would be preserved because this is not moving water,
you know, it's still water. Great, and so we get
to find all about radiocarbon dating. Okay, so now you
will know what they knew how to do. In nineteen
(22:44):
eighty three, George Abbot sends the head off to Oxford
University for another opinion. And this is not the head
of Malika de Fernandez. This is the skull of a woman.
And the skull is dated back seventeen cent Roman Britain.
And then we figure out there is another murder mystery happening,
(23:07):
but it is seventeen centuries old. The oldest case ever.
We're out to saw Fall and it's not this woman.
It's somebody else in the bog. They are really looking
at this bog now, so it is too late. Peter
finds this out, dumbass. He confesses he didn't have to.
He tries to recan't, and it's too late, and he
(23:30):
spends the rest of his life in prison. And just
as a really sad note, they as far as I
can tell, have never found Malika different end as his body.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Also, they didn't get Peter to take them out and
show where he put her body.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
He said it was right where you found the head.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
So Malika's still out there somewhere she is.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
But there are two other bodies that are seventeen centuries
old that we have to deal with. So first, let
me show you the head that they thought was Malika's.
If you're interested in that, or do you want to
you want to learn a little bit more about what
they found with the carbon dating, what do you want
to do?
Speaker 3 (24:03):
No, let me see the head.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Okay, let me see the heads. That's something we say often.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Yes, So I'm looking at a picture of the skull.
As you described, the lower mandible is gone, it looks
like the ruler in front. I can't tell if it's blocking,
you know, like the upper part of the mouth, but
I can see the two orbits and the cranium as
(24:31):
I was describing, you know, I'm not seeing prominent, you know,
brow ridges on this skull. I can see some of
the sutures, and there is what appears to be some
tissue adhering to this skull, both inside the orbits. I'm
not sure if that's part of the peat adhering to
the skull, but it appears that there is some tissue there.
(24:51):
And you had described that one of the eyes was
still present, so I can see where this skull being
found in such a condition. To me, it's like, yes,
this is not a historic body. This is a body
that obviously been deceased for a while, but would be contemporary,
you know, it would be something that would be pursued
(25:12):
as Yeah, we've got a body of somebody that died
probably within the last few years.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Not so much. No, this is very old and we
have a lot of information about her. And there is
a companion who has a very interesting history, and I'll
tell you about that in a second. All the other
pictures have to do with the man who is found
in this bog very close by. So carbon dating, now
(25:39):
we get into the science y bit of this. I
didn't know very much about carbon dating. So the little
summary I have is it measures the level of carbon
fourteen isotope in human remains. Do you want to geek
out and give us an explanation or do you want
me to go with our official little explanation here, It's.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Up to you.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Well, you know, I am familiar with carbon dating to
a point in terms of looking at the ratio of
the carbon fourteen to carbon thirteen isotopes, if I remember correctly,
you know. And it's interesting because there's a variety of
different types of isotopic analysis that can be done, not
(26:18):
just carbon which can help geologically place you know, where
let's say a body had been during life. Because what
we're doing is we're constantly absorbing from the environment that
we're living in, and different locations on the planet or
even within a particular country or state have different ratios
(26:39):
of these isotopes, and so our bodies assimilate those isotopes
in that same ratio. And so scientists can do this
isotopic analysis and say, hey, looks like this person whose
bodies found over in Florida has you know, various isotope
ratios that's more consistent with coming out of the Pacific
Northwest as an example. And I'm doing a very crude
(27:01):
explanation relative to what experts would be able to describe.
But the carbon aspect, it's also how after death your
body is no longer in this assimilation mode, and now
that the carbon ratio changes over time. I'm probably not
doing justice in terms of from the science standpoint, but
(27:25):
fundamentally they're able to age based on that carbon fourteen
carbon thirteen ratio out of the bones or whatever tissue.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
I think that's a good explanation. I'm not sure I
would add too much to it. I will say that
upon further inspection, they at Oxford University said part of
her brain is in here too. So this like magic bog,
has preserved this woman for you know, almost two thousand years.
The water source is interesting preserving bodies and bogs. You
(27:57):
have to have very specific conditions, and we talk about
that with decomposition all the time. How the weather is
so important to an outdoor crime scene, how quickly decomposition
can happen the climate needs to be cool and temperate.
It can't get too hot. At the same time, the
bog temperature ideally is below thirty nine degrees when the
(28:18):
body enters the bog, and so the average annual temperature
you know, needs to be about below fifty degrees. And
apparently that's the condition that we're talking about with the
Lindo moss bog is it's that perfect condition to preserve. So,
I mean, you know, I see why they're able to
then soon make another discovery that is so well preserved
(28:41):
that I have pictures that are to me just stunning.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Yeah, you know, and this is where in essence, these
bodies are refrigerated. Due to the temperature and the ground
temperature that they're in, the bacterial aspect is minimized, you know,
since there isn't a lot of that going on. There's
not a lot of nutrients in this this pet moss.
But also there's a there's a protection from the surface
(29:07):
with these bodies that are under I don't know if
you want to call it ground, but you know now
it's the insects can't access the bodies, and insects are
huge when it comes to you know, part of the
you know, the decay of surface deposits of bodies, but
also predators aren't accessing these bodies perfect conditions.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
And not to get too geeky about this, but there's
also a specific type of moss. It's not just any
old moss that creates these perfect conditions. This moss that's
in the Lindau blog is called Sphagnum moss, which I
had never heard of before. This specific moss alters the
water chemistry. It makes it very highly acidic and low
(29:51):
in oxygen. So when you combine the acidic water with
the lack of oxygen and the low nutrient levels, you're right.
It just stops bacteria and fungi in their tracks, and
it really helps stop the decomposition of the body. Distillation
Magazine says, it's not a decay anymore. They tan like
leather almost so the skin turns brown, the hair goes red,
(30:14):
and the objects in and around the body dissolve away,
as does most of the clothing, so you're left with
the actual body. Gosh, it's so interesting.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
No having recovered skeletal remains and digging up bodies, you
know it is. It's fascinating to see how various objects age.
You know, and you start talking like the clothing. You know,
this is where, you know, digging up a body that's
been buried for a long time. You see how the
(30:43):
different fabrics you will deteriorate over time, whereas you know,
some fabrics don't. Articles of clothing will change color, you know,
as as they age in the ground.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
You know. So it's all just it.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
It's really kind of a surreal different look when evaluating
evidence and bodies and the passage of time. It's not
what you would normally ever experience, you know, But now
you're looking at I've had evidence in storage, it's been
packaged properly, stored properly, but just due to age, you know,
(31:18):
there's been dramatic changes in the appearance of the evidence,
the clothing.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
For example, for Andy Mold, the guy who you know,
made the initial discovery of who we thought was Molika
and it turned out to be the Lindo woman. A
year later, he finds more remains around the same spot.
This time it's a human foot. This time the police go,
this must be Molika. It is not. They search and
(31:43):
search and excavate, and they find an incredibly well preserved
skeletal remains from the bog, which is an upper torso
and a full head. So this is not the Lindo
woman because there's a head. This is about one thousand
years old, so more contemporary than the Lindo Woman. The
(32:04):
Colando woman was seventeen hundred. This is a thousand years
and he is called the Lindo Man and he's from
the Iron Age. He's the one we wonder if was murdered,
and I'll tell you why, because there's so much preserved
on him. It's incredible.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
Yeah, it's like how many bodies are out here?
Speaker 1 (32:20):
A lot? Right, And it's interesting because if you're a
contemporary killer boy, would you want to read up on
this and think this is not the bog? For me,
I probably need to dump somewhere else where they were
not to have Gallow's humor about this, but where they
were decomposed, because this is obviously they're so well preserved. Okay,
so let me tell you about the Lindo Man. So
(32:42):
he is five foot six, he's in his mid to
late twenties. When he died, he had a trimmed beard
and manicured nails. These were all preserved, so they did
not think that he was engaged in intensive labor because
you know, he was very well kept. He was well
built and well fed. He has found naked except for
(33:04):
an armband. So listen to this, and then we can
talk about all of the weird things that happen with
preserving bodies. He's totally naked, so we know that, you know,
the clothing can be dissolved away, except there's an armband
made of fox fur around his arm. So the fox
fur would not I guess not, because why would that
not go away?
Speaker 2 (33:25):
You know, I don't have any any knowledge as to
why the fox for wouldn't deteriorate, but obviously it didn't.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
You know.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
But like what I've seen just modern clothing, you know,
the cotton versus synthetic fibers, the elastic bands, you know,
the various things that are within clothing items such as
like when you start dealing like with bras and the
underwire to a bra or the snaps you know.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
On a jacket.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
You know, this is what I've seen. These different types
of fabric and different types of objects and clothing. They
deteriorate at different rates, and some don't deteriorate at all,
you know, so it's not surprising you you're talking about
this this Lindo man. Was he nude when he was
deposited there? That's a possibility, but it's also entirely possible
(34:17):
the clothing that he had on just happened to deteriorate
in this environment and it's gone.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
You know, but that fox fur band is what remains.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Yeah, well, let me show you this. Get ready for
a little show and tell I mean, why do you
see this? What they found? This man? Andy had to
find this. There's the foot. Oh wow, I know I
have most of his body and you go ahead and
describe what you see.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Yeah, no, I'm looking at a photograph of It's not
just a foot. It's really the lower leg with what
appears to be, you know, most of the tissue and
skin present, though there's you know, weird disruptions to the
skin over the entirety of the surface of of this
lower leg. But the foot itself, at least in the
(35:04):
where I'm seeing the toes, it almost appears that like
the toenails are are still present. You know this this
looks you know, from my perspective, if I ran across this,
I would say, okay, I've got I've got a.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
Relatively recently killed person. I would not be able.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
To draw conclusion as to you know, the disruption to
the skin. In many ways, it almost looks like a
leg that's been run over. It's been a vulsed, you know,
the tissue has been evalced a little bit by a
tire going over. But I know that's not what's happening here.
It's just that, you know, if I were looking at this,
I'd go, yeah, this is a recent, recently deceased body
(35:45):
and some crushing force had been had been applied to
the lower leg.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
I was just thinking, if you're the police chief or
whomever in charge in this area, you would have to
know that this is a body that has the potential
to be very very old. You would have to know
your areas so well in the history of it. Can
you imagine this just being preserved kind of in a
normal way, and you know, it becomes a John Doe
(36:13):
case or something, and then you've got this piece of history.
Now hold on to your hat. Look at this. That
is him?
Speaker 2 (36:20):
So yeah, this is the basically it looks the Lindo man.
It's it's not just as upper torso he's got both
his arms his head. In many ways, it looks like
somebody who has been dismembered through the abdomen. You know,
the lower body is gone, but the skin, the facial
features are are present. You know, there is abnormalities that
(36:45):
stand out. You know, having looked at a lot of
you know, dead bodies, this doesn't look normal.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
You know, that would be a clue. But most certainly it's.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
Shocking on how well preserved the Lindo man is. Considering
he dies a thousand years ago.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
There's another version of him here. I don't know if
this is any more hopeful. I think it's through a case. Actually,
you could probably see the discoloration a little bit better
on this one. It's sort of red, even more leathery
in some ways.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
Yeah, you know, so this photograph, which it is, it
is hard.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
It's more zoomed in on his head and you know,
shoulder area, chest maybe chest area. You know, that type
of discoloration to his skin, which they said is like
a tanning. You know, that's not all that atypical from
what I've seen on dead bodies that end up desiccating.
(37:42):
They mummify surface deposit exposed to the sun. The skin
kind of turns an orangish color, kind of will go
leathery if it desiccates real fast.
Speaker 3 (37:52):
So this is what is often.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Seen in the very arid environments when bodies are dumped
out there, let's say in the Arizona or hikers you know,
die and then you know they dehydrate so fast and
are exposed to the sun.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
It's like this, this brown, brownish orange.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Leather type of look that the skin takes as the
body is decaying.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Well, we're going to come back to these photos. I
have a couple of additional ones to share with you
because this is not as simple. Hey, Paul, tell me
about how bodies are preserved kind of story. This turned
into a big mystery because whoever the Lindo man was,
he really suffered before he died, and we see his injuries.
(38:39):
So let me tell you more about him. So I
told you about the armband made a fox for I
told you he had. Now you know why they know
he had manicured nails, nice nails, because everything was preserved.
He's in good physical health aside from osteoarthritis and a
case of intestinal parasites. How would they know that really
intestinal pair.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
You know, obviously his intestines must have been preserved, and
these parasites must have been found. I don't know if
these are microscopic parasites or would be like a tapeworm.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Wow, oh gosh. There's an archaeologist named Anne Ross. She
thinks that he was based on a lot of this,
that he was either a Celtic priest or like Druid,
or some kind of king because he had no callouses
on his hands, his body had not been previously injured
(39:30):
until he died, and he was definitely not a laborer,
definitely not a warrior. There's a lot we don't know
about him, but there's a I think it's a TV
show called Discover Lindo is reporting that he had eaten
a slightly burned barley based meal, either like a grittle
cake or a thick porridge, along with fragments of hazelnuts
(39:51):
and some traces of meat shortly before his death. I mean,
good Lord, for you to be able to know that
from a thousand years ago is incredible. Incredible.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
Yeah, Well, it just.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Really underscores that it's not just the external aspects of
these bodies that are being preserved, but it's the entirety
of the bodies, including the stomach contents.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
Right, and so They look at his stomach also, so
we know the stomach contents, we know what he ate.
They found traces of mistletoe in his stomach, which might
have been used medicinally, or he might have just eaten
it accidentally, but it is toxic to humans. That's not
what killed him for sure. It could have been used medicinally.
He was dated between two BC and one one nine
(40:35):
AD one hundred and nineteen AD. So you want to
hear about how he did not die. It sounds like
the in the most peaceful way you would think for
a king or a druid or whoever he was.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
Well, we know these you want to call him, These
ancient cultures, they often did horrific things to each other.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
M hmm, absolutely, So let's talk about the brutal death.
It suggested, based on his body that there were multiple
tactics used to kill him. This was I thought this
was interesting using the phrase overkill when you're talking about,
you know, bodies from a thousand years ago, But that
phrase has been associated with a lot of European bog
(41:20):
bodies in places like Ireland and Denmark. Bodies found in
bogs have shown signs of being I'm gonna use this
phrase one day, triple killed. Have you ever used that
phrase before? Triple kill? Okay, they say triple killed. Some
of them have been strangled, bashed in the head, and disemboweled,
(41:41):
just like you said, all at once in what are
believed to be ritualistic sacrifices to gods or goddesses, and
each injury is dedicated to a specific god or goddess.
Isn't it interesting?
Speaker 3 (41:57):
I'm glad I lived today.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
You could still be triple killed. I hope not, but yes.
So these bogs were important to ancient Europeans. You know,
there's an archaeologist and an author named Melanie Giles, and
she told the BBC, we see bogs as empty places.
But that's not how the people in the Iron Age,
which is where Lindo Man was. That's not how people
in the Iron Age saw them. They were taking fuel
(42:21):
from the bog, they were cutting turf, they were taking
iron ore, they're making weapons, you know, there's a lot
coming out of it. And they were hunting the BirdLife.
So the bogs were very productive, rich places for people
in the Iron Age. Let me go through Lindo Man's
specific injuries. We have a lot of archaeologists who want
(42:41):
to know why did this happen to him? And we
have photos of some of the stuff. Were these ritualistic sacrifices?
So first we have experts addressing the missiletoe. So missletoe
is toxic. Do you have any idea, I mean, what
are the consequences of eating missiletoe? I think it's fascinating
(43:01):
for my kids, and they're pretty berries and everything that
would just make you very sick.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
I'm assuming I have no knowledge whatsoever about the toxicity
of missletone.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
I mean, mistletoe to me, is you know the what
is it? It's is it a fungus?
Speaker 2 (43:13):
It grows on trees, you know, and of course it's
the tradition is is if you stand underneath the missletoe,
you owe the other person a kiss or something along
those lines.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
Yep, there you go. So, as I had said before,
mistletoe probably had some medicinal uses, and one was to
calm down nervous disorders people with nervous disorders. And so
they think that maybe before he died, the Lindo Man
was given mistletoe to calm him down. It sounds like
he knew what was coming. The skin on his tourso
(43:46):
had higher levels of copper than elsewhere on his body.
So they think he was painted with a copper pigment,
which might have been some ritual element to his death.
So a copper pigment is that paint? Is that what
that would be?
Speaker 3 (44:00):
Well, that's what it sounds like.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
Wow, you know, I know, different paints used different metals,
you know, in order to get a certain color. So
typically copper either has that kind of that goldish color
or if it's oxidized that now you have that.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
Greenish hue to it. So maybe one of those two colors.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
Mm hmmm. So I mean you get closer and closer.
So this could have been some sort of ritualistic sacrifice.
So he had a cord made of animal sinew tied
around his neck along with it looks like ligature marks.
One of the things that's interesting is that you've got
two neck vertebrae that were broken. It says his neck
was gashed, and there are archaeologists who said that he
(44:45):
was probably strangled from behind before having his throat slashed.
I have no idea how you would figure out what
that order would be. But he also had broken ribs
and a stab wound to his chest. All happened, It
sounds like at the same time, all at once.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Yeah, a homicide victim.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
Oh my gosh. His goal was fractured by something heavy
that left a V shaped gash, like an axe maybe,
and they did a CT scan on him. It showed
that his head swelled and bruised, indicating that the injury
did not result in immediate death, and so he had
been alive long enough for the wound to begin healing.
(45:27):
Is that what swelled and bruised means that it was
starting to heal, and that's how they can kind of
tell that he was alive longer.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
Well, it's showing that the body is responding to the injury.
When I hear the term heal or healing, that's indicating, Okay,
now the tissue is starting to repair itself. And I'm
not sure that that's what they are saying. What I'm
hearing is is that, Okay, the tissue responded to the injury.
It's swelling. You have the bruising, so there's still blood
(45:55):
flowing at the time that that injury occurred. But this
isn't necessarily something you can say is a result of
an injury that happened anti mortem. All you can say
it's perry mortem, because even if the person is technically dead,
the tissues will still respond in a way that they
received an injury. So that's where I would probably say
(46:19):
this in all likelihood, this blow to the head is
occurring contemporaneous to these other acts of violence against him.
Speaker 1 (46:28):
Well, and then on top of that, so hold on,
he's had broken ribs. They think that somebody like something
like a human knee struck him in the back, which
broke one of his ribs. He's got a wound to
his chest, there's a kind of rope thing around his
neck with ligature marks. Two of his neck vertebrae are broken,
his neck was slashed, and his skull was fractured. And
(46:51):
then on top of that, they find water in his lungs,
so they think that he they left him face down
in the bog.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
Gosh obviously very awful and into his life, but all
of these injuries could have occurred very rapidly to him.
You know, you can have multiple offenders that are inflicting
different injuries, and he's being stomped, you know, in some ways,
you know, I'm struggling outside of this maybe the finding
(47:21):
the copper, you know, where they're saying that that might
be indicative of ritualistic you know, his injuries very much
are a line up with he's a homicide victim, and
there's multiple modalities of violence being used against him. Now
that could be done by one person, that could be
done by a group, you know, So it's hard to
(47:44):
truly reconstruct, you know, the why he's he's killed in
the manner that he's killed. When I initially hear ritual,
I'm looking for something that has a certain it's.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
Like a set of rules basically, right where you can
identify him and say, oh, yeah, I've seen this before,
this is the way they do this.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
Right, That's exactly kind of what I was thinking is ritualistic.
It's something ritual is something that has done time and
time again in a certain order.
Speaker 3 (48:14):
That's the point of it, exactly.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
So that's where I always think, Okay, there was evidence
that let's say he's you know, drawn and quartered, you know,
something along those lines, versus what appears to be a
just a mass attack of violence against him.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
Yeah, And I think one of the things that I
don't know about the ritualistic aspect of it they do
talk about the injuries a little bit, saying, now, let's
keep in mind he's a thousand years old and he's
been for a thousand years under very heavy layers of peat,
and they're wondering, experts do wonder how much of these
(48:52):
injuries could be wear and tear basically from being you know,
in this area for so long. Let me show you
this is what but they think he looked like, you know,
good looking guy. And this is his skull where I
think they're pointing to. This is an infrared photo showing
(49:12):
not only the injury on top, but also the splitting
of the skull at the back. I don't know if
this is going to tell you anything. I don't know
if Pete would cause this, I don't who knows.
Speaker 2 (49:20):
Yeah, I'm really unable to make out this photograph. They
say it's an infrared photograph, and so oftentimes that different
wavelengths of light are absorbed or fluoresce from different substances. Infrared,
of course, also can be utilized to show different temperatures
in various objects. Here, this just looks like a blob
(49:46):
to me. This record this is where Yeah, there has
to be an expert that is evaluating you know what
this infrared photograph is showing. Now when they start saying
that some of his injuries that you described to me
are possibly from you know, let's say, hannical stresses of
being buried in this this bog and this peat.
Speaker 3 (50:04):
I mean, the.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
Only thing that I could maybe wonder about is, you know,
like let's say the broken ribs, Yeah, something along those lines,
some of the mechanical forces on the surface of his body,
compression of his body. But when you start talking about
depressed skull, fractures, incisions to his neck, sinew wrapped around
(50:29):
his neck, you know, yeah, obviously probably most of what
is being observed on his body was you know, at
the hands of another.
Speaker 1 (50:38):
As they say, yeah, and I think so, I was
going to show you this is a top view. Can
you see this of the head wound thought to be
done with an axe on his head?
Speaker 2 (50:47):
Yeah, I'm looking at a photograph which shows his head.
Speaker 3 (50:52):
His head's turned to the right.
Speaker 2 (50:53):
He looks in this photograph to be completely bald or
devoid of head hair, but there is towards the base
of the head it's technically the top of his head,
but towards the bottom of this photograph. I'm just going
to describe it from a technical term. This looks like
a laceration from a very significant blow. This is where
the skin the skin has due to the crushing action
(51:19):
of a blunt object, has split apart. But it's irregular,
you know, this is a typical laceration from it's a
broader type of object. And though I can't, you have
to rely on the fact that others are saying that
he had a depressed skull fracture, I would say that
(51:40):
that looks like there's likely a depressed skull fracture underneath
that significant laceration.
Speaker 1 (51:46):
Yeah, they have a This is a close up of
the head wound. I don't know if that's helpful either,
but I mean, regardless, I'm not sure heavy concentrations of
pete would cause us. I did Paul for a moment,
wonder how many other excavators came in and Nick tim
or something. I mean, isn't it Yeah, I mean we've
talked about the machinery could cause some stuff too.
Speaker 2 (52:06):
Yeah, you know, and this is where you know, with
contemporary bodies, you know, looking for evidence that these injuries
occurred anti mortem, you know, during life, versus being paramortem.
So let's say, like fractured ribs. You know, anthropologists, you know,
if you have a skeletal remains and you have let's
(52:27):
say the body's buried, and an excavator comes a log
and digs a body up, you can tell if those
bones were fractured as a result of, you know, the
kind of the finding of the body, versus they were
fractured as a result of let's say the homicide when
the victim was still alive. Because fresh bones fracture differently
than desiccated bones, well, it's the same, it's going to
(52:50):
be the same thing, and taking it evaluating his injuries,
I just don't know how much variance from what we
experience with contemporary body. Would they still be able to
see let's say, hemorrhaging in the wound margins, you know,
in such a preserved body that's thousands of years old,
or would that have leached out and you can't see that,
(53:11):
you know, And that's just part of the I think
the complexity of evaluating his injuries as to when did
they exactly occur, because it's not like we have studies,
you know, in terms of showing, okay, this is how
this type of injury would appear after two thousand years
to determine whether or not it's something an expert would
(53:33):
be able to say, yes, that was something that occurred
and was cause of death.
Speaker 1 (53:37):
Well, you know, to conclude this very strange true crime story.
You know, there are people who are trying to figure
out still, was he robbed? Was this a sacrifice? Who knows?
I mean, was he drawn out there? My notes talk
about this is a remote area, which is you know,
I don't know what it was like a thousand years
(53:58):
ago in the Iron Age. Maybe this wasn't remote. Maybe
this is where a lot of people set up shop
and it wasn't a remote place. You know, we don't know.
But two more bodies were found, all kind of dating
to the same time frame. All it sounds like about
Iron Age time frame, and you know they're studying all
of them and it's pretty amazing. Seventy pieces in nineteen
(54:20):
eighty seven, seventy pieces or more of human bone and
tissue were recovered. And these are just you know, more
and more and they're pulling them out. So the preservation
of murder sites most likely is important, but particularly important
when you have victims and when you have an area
like England that has just been inhabited for thousands of years.
(54:42):
So I love stories like these.
Speaker 3 (54:44):
So I'm going to make a prediction. Cape.
Speaker 2 (54:46):
Okay, I think you're going to buy some little cottage
out there in that bog and set up your atmosphere
in this dark, creepy way, and then in the middle
of the night you're going to be out there looking
for hu and skulls.
Speaker 3 (55:01):
How's that?
Speaker 1 (55:01):
Yes, probably that's awful. Well, listen, Never did I think
a story of murder from a thousand years ago would
teach me so much about present day crime. But I'm
always interested in learning about how bodies are preserved and
what you can find and time of death, and so
I think it's interesting.
Speaker 2 (55:22):
I think I learned a new interview tactic. If I
have a suspect whose wife has gone missing, I'm going
to walk into the interview room with a skull in hand,
put it down on the table, and say we found her.
Speaker 1 (55:37):
We found her. She's been triple killed. Triple killed. Okay, Well,
next week we will have a much more contemporary case.
It could be from the fifteen hundreds, but we'll say
it always for sure. Then this one, Thank you for
joining me on this trip, way far back than we've
ever been.
Speaker 3 (55:58):
Now, it's still fascinating though, I loved it.
Speaker 1 (56:00):
Thanks, thank you. This has been an exactly right production
for our sources and show notes go to Exactlyrightmedia dot
com slash Buried Bones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Emosi.
Speaker 2 (56:16):
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1 (56:20):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 3 (56:23):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1 (56:26):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 2 (56:28):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark, and Danielle Kramer.
Speaker 1 (56:32):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
bary Bones pod.
Speaker 2 (56:37):
Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Age story of murder and the race to decode the
criminal mind, is available now, and
Speaker 1 (56:44):
Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life solving America's Cold
Cases is also available now
Hosts And Creators
Kate Winkler Dawson
Paul Holes
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